movies of all variety
Mulholland Drive (2001): 10/10.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992): 10/10. Terrifying, and very beautiful.
Blue Velvet (1986): 10/10. The most coherent Lynch movie, and there is somehing remotely sad about the ending, as well as the fact that the police are actually useful and the Yellow Man is a corrupt outlier. But there is a day when the robins will come, and the robins will represent love, and all will be well. Suburbia: 0. David Lynch: 1.
Dune (1984): 10/10.
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013): 9/10. So so so beautiful, the art style is so suited for the mythological narrative. Also, obviously interesting for its depiction of court life in the Heian period. Parenthood is framed in such a melancholy yet ultimately unconditionally brave and loving way.
Grave of the Fireflies (1988): 10/10. Seito enrages me so much, and whenever I watch this movie I think about that interview with Akiyuki Nosaka and Isao Takahata where Nosaka talks about how Seito is a romanticized version of himself, and in reality he stole food for himself instead of his sister, and acted even more selfishly and the same day that she dies he returns to the village and discovers that the war is over, and I'm not trying to accuse him of anything but at this point who knows how far Seito's fantasy world extends? He's already sacrificed his sister in order to assuage his wounded nationalistic and slash or masculine pride, who's to say that he won't sacrifice the last bit of objectivity left in the movie too? A guy in a reading group last year quoted Adorno saying that the leap into the future, clean over the conditions of the present, lands in the past. I completely forgot the context but he was talking about how he envisioned someone jumping on an escalator and instead of getting any further they get horribly mangled and crushed in the steps. It might have been imaginative excesses in Minima Moralia? Anyway that seems like an apt way of thinking about Seito trying to produce a kind of utopian heaven for two people on earth, but its grotesque instead of beautiful, and so the film ends up critiquing the Japanese nationalist tendency to justify self interested acts with patriotism, unable to confront the past. But also there is no such thing as an anti-war movie! And part of the reason why anyone cares about Seito or Setsuko is because of the rigid indifference from the rest of society, and the repressive orders from the conformist aunt, and because all the things that awaken his dormant hero fantasy appeal to us too, which is terrifying and complicated in another way. Also Michio Mamiya's score, wow!!
Ponyo (2008): 8/10. So cute!!!! So very charming. And the fact that the forces of nature operate in ways complementary to transformation is heartwarming. Allegory for transition?
Howl's Moving Castle (2004): 10/10. This is the most perfect movie of all time. Howl's man cave is perfect, Turnip Head's sacrifice is perfect, the countryside is perfect, the Witch of the Waste turned old is perfect. Once again I think the Howl/Calcifer dynamic is possibly one of the most interesting and unexplored areas. The scene where Howl as a boy catches him and gives him his heart is so moving. He loves him so much!!! That gay little boy is so dear to me.
Spirited Away (2001): 9/10. I always found No-Face insanely scary as a child. But I think a lot of what makes this really good is the grotesque elements of the bathhouse and bodily transformation.
Princess Mononoke (1997): 9/10. The opening scene with the boar is a banger. Also Lady Eboshi saying they need to get the living home is crazy aura.
Porco Rosso (1992): 8/10.
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989): 6/10.
Castle in the Sky (1986): 8/10.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984): 9/10.
Sherlock Hound (1984): 10/10. I'm biased because I just like Sherlock Holmes, but this adds quite a lot in terms of worldbuilding and characterisation.
Paprika (2006): So surreal and awesome. Rip jean baudrillard you would have loved the DC mini. I can't believe movies killed his boyfriend. I definitely need to watch this again soon and pay more attention to the dialogue. I love dreamscapes.
Tokyo Godfathers (2003): 7/10. Utterly peak. Who up smoking that Satoshi Kon pack. Sometimes Hana's character comes across as intensely transphobic and a few comedic bits don't really land. But genuinely so charming, hopeful, warm, eccentric. Everything feels real and possible because everyone is connected in some fragile way, even if the plot is beyond haphazard. Need to rewatch for Christmas.
Perfect Blue (1997): 10/10. Haunting soundtrack, Darren Aronofsky wishes he could be this feminist, above all a critique of Japanese society and ugly men and ugly men in Japanese society. New thoughts on the ending: of course there is the embodied Mima and the idealized Mima that everyone lives through, but beyond the screen there is no real Mima. And there is no real trauma other than the simulation of trauma, and no real pain other than the fantasy of pain. And yet the facsimile of the thing, in striving to be real, is realer than the real thing! Probably what's also so horrible about the movie is the implication that Mima's very small life, bound by depressing economic conditions which play out in a lonely room with fish and endless shopping bags, is not worth anything, and definitely not worth more than her second rate career with CHAM. I've been previously undecided in whether or not the ending is a sort of hopeful nod towards Mima's recovery or a terrible sign of mania or repression or delusion, and I think I'm concluding that it's probably the latter, and even if it is the former then something troubling still remains---the real Mima has no substance, so her declaration means less than nothing, and why let the audience know, why presume there is an audience anyway unless Mima has reverted to her old ways? Anyways, it doesn't really matter what she thinks she's saying, we know she's not to be trusted. Both cynicism and the spectacle of cynicism, and optimism and the spectacle of optimism amount to the same kind of unnerving acceptance in the end.
Cosmopolis (2012): 10/10. Don DeLillo is so important to me and by extension this movie. Rob Pattinson is so fucking good, I think this is his best performance of all time. I love how contained the world is (all that Eric is concerned with fits within the limo) and how characters just talk at each other. I love the constant flow of unimportant information, the omnipresent sense of money in freefall. I love that there are patterns of symbols and consistent character actions despite the world being patently random. I love the dialogue, it is so precise and wonderful. I love the systems analyst intern guy. I don't care that the ending is relatively boring, especially if you've read the book. The plot is as asymmetrical as Eric's prostate, the score is beautiful, need I say more?
Black Swan (2010): 7/10. Pretty good.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020): 8/10. Once again, the degree to which I enjoy sad white man nonsense is highly distressing. This is like watching a trainwreck except the train either will be late or has already left the station, because time and order are uncomfortably in flux. Her clothing changes, the parents' ages shift. All signs point to something, which may or may not merely form inescapable loops and unsolvable riddles in the janitor's internal world. It's interesting to see the characters interact, especially given Jesse Plemons's permanently inscrutable facial expression. I like watching the evidence of uncomfortability accumulate.
Anomalisa (2015): 8/10. Incredibly jarring portrayal of egoistic suffering and selfish, self-inflicted pain. Also watched this partially on shrooms, which may add a rating buff.
Synecdoche, New York (2008): 9/10. This film obviously regards its female characters as the arbiters of love and meaning, but is ultimately neutral about assigning blame for Caden Cotard's loneliness (also, Philip Seymour Hoffman is undisputably the goat). He is such a confused, nostalgic, regretful, and ultimately bewildered man, and he always misses the point. And yet his sadness and his ambition are so innovative and strange that even when Kaufman is at his most insufferable, there is something sincere about his morbid schizo dream world. The world is unambiguously absurd, it tends toward death: Olive becomes a prostitute and dies from a tattoo infection, Hazel dies of smoke inhalation (obviously), Caden obviously dies in a sort of alienated simulation mess. And that doesn't change, only the timescale compresses and things speed up. Things gain and shed meaning, and it's fun to spot the patterns. It's unfortunate how much I like existential-dread-slop movies about extremely miserable, apathetic white men. But Kaufman is genuinely so witty and playful about it that it's hard to not be fascinated by his love of the game. On a less relevant note, the central synecdoche concept also reminds me of the Borges short story about the increasingly large maps. Maybe the mimesis seminar last year was actually useful.
Dune: Part Two (2024): 10/10. I love sandslop I love Hans Zimmer I love the gladiator sequence. I moderately like Frank Herbert.
Dune (2021): 10/10. Perfect, chills every time. Incredible sets, costumes, editing. The sense of this world being real is so overwhelming.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017): 9/10. Ryan Gosling is very good. The scale and detail of the sets is astounding.
Withnail & I (1987): 10/10. Old man, space, yaoi.
Angels in America (2003): 10/10. The most beautiful creation relevant to America of all time.
Mickey 17 (2025): 10/10. Such a charming film, optimism nuke.
Parasite (2019): 10/10.
Okja (2017): 6/10. Rather odd in terms of tone and genre, which perhaps could be attibuted to problems with cultural translation.
Snowpiercer (2013): 7/10.
The Batman (2022): 10/10. What can I say, I love emo bisexual Batman. Also, Zoe Kravitz in this movie specifically is the baddest woman of all time wow.