"What can be done? Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that."

"Unlike the dark alleys of traditional noir, OUT OF TIME operates in broad daylight. The color palette adds vibrancy to the images: Hawaiian shirts and warm hues, tangelos and teals that splash—like many neo-noirs this side of Point Blank—in rich contrast to the traditional use of chiaroscuro."

Fritz Lang's original Dr. Mabuse the Gambler. It's a towering effort that can only be achieved by hubristic youth that captivates beyond the limitations of silent film. Rich with personality and style, the script also pops with so much amorality that can still be seen in more comic booky cinema.

For @bwdr.bsky.social’s “What Is to be Done?” issue, I wrote about HIGH NOON—a film whose political voltage still hums in our own time. The film is a parable of civic abandonment, the fragility of conscience, and what happens when good people wait for someone else to act.

LOVE HOTEL, a 1985 Japanese pink film/erotic drama that transcends its exploitation roots, achieving a level of devastation (emotional, libidinal) that stunned me. A movie about how you can spend your whole life trying to solve what happened one night, when you could have let that night solve you.

BW/DR sharing the eyes wide shut article today lmaooooo

Agreed!

“Kubrick is too mannered to ever think of surrendering his narrative vision to surrealism for its own sake. Nothing is done here out of simple absurdity. Everything is done with intent.”

"In the life of every critic, I suspect, there is a work of art that cracks open one’s most basic sensibilities, and FAR FROM HEAVEN, Todd Haynes’ near-perfect reinterpretation of the suburban melodrama, was just such a bolt from the blue."

Did a 90s rewatch double feature of Thelma & Louise and Devil in a Blue Dress. Both are spectacular star vehicles. And both have supporting performances from relative unknowns that made audiences ask, “Who in the world is THAT?”

New today: "At its core, HIGH NOON is a parable about civic abandonment, the inherent danger in waiting for the moment to act & discovering that no one will stand beside you—a quality which makes it an apt tale for our current political moment." - Riley Womack (🎨 by @studioralston.bsky.social)

News From Home (1976)

Carnival of Souls (Harvey, 1962) - Michelangelo Antonioni's Night of the Living Dead Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows (Jay, 1998) - The biggest "I can't believe they got that on tape" this side of The Jinx Red Rooms (Plante, 2003) - beyond harrowing Kneecap (Peppiatt, 2024) - beyond inspiring

It's amazing that such a harrowing film was an actual box-office hit. Probably would not even get a theatrical release if it came out today

RIP Tatsuya Nakadai - one of the all time greats of world cinema variety.com/2025/film/ob...

Saw the remaster of Yi Yi in the theater for the 25th anniversary and that movie has everything. It's graceful and expansive, uninterested in anything tidy, instead giving us the chaos of life with everything entangled in and rhyming with everything else.

I saw All That Jazz for the first time this year and I've thought about it every day since.

Network. I was familiar with the film's famous speech before, but seeing it in the context of the film, and how relevant it is in today's times, hit like a truck.

I legit think it’s CLASS OF 1999. Dystopian schools filled with student gangs that end up having to fight automoton teachers whose military-grade programming turns them into killing machines? One of whom is played by Pam Grier? Art. Goddamn art. What a midnighter blast.

THEY ALL LAUGHED, Bogdanovich’s most rigorous *and* his loosest and loopiest. A film that pushes screwball plotting into a nearly avant garde tangle, leaving you to just soak in the vibes. John Ritter’s performance is a miracle. And by the end you find yourself unaccountably moved.

Inside Llewyn Davis. Perfectly conveys what it looks and feels like to be deep in pursuit of something —a warm winter coat, a few bucks, a place to sleep, artistic fulfillment and connection, love, contentment, a lost cat, etc.

This is the secret point of all of this! And if anybody wants to make a letterboxd list out of it, that’d be swell 🖤

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES. An absolute masterpiece: focused, gentle, elegiac. Such love amid such loss.

Hopscotch (1980) Walter Matthau on the run from various security services because he's releasing all their big secrets. He's smart in a Doctorish way and has Glenda Jackson as his confident and foil. Only found out about it because of the Criterion edition and wish I'd grown up with it.

Hoop Dreams!! Good and evil, love and hate, success and failure, vice and virtue - all in two Chicago households, all on the basketball court

PARIS, TEXAS. You watch a movie like that and you thank whoever or whatever you usually thank for things for the existence of movies.

Jean Vigo's L'Atalante. Emotional longing manifests itself in surreal and musical movie magic. It's incredibly sad that such an amazing filmmaker had to die so young. One of my favorites.

The Straight Story, which I hadn’t seen in a couple of decades and still brought me close to tears. There’s just this overwhelming sense of kindness in the film that makes the viewer want to be a better human.

Separate Tables (1959), for moral maturity.

YI YI DEEP COVER THE DEVIL'S BATH NOTORIOUS PEKING OPERA BLUES WALKER EVE'S BAYOU CITY ON FIRE JOHNNY GUITAR THE APPOINTMENT ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST MY DINNER WITH ANDRE HANGOVER SQUARE MCCABE & MRS.MILLER THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER

THE BLOOD SHIP (1927), which I have been wanting to see for more than a decade and it lived up to the hype! The hype, of course, being a bloody and decadent seafaring revenge tale.

Crossing Delancey, a movie that made me romantic for New York

Night Moves Don't Bother to Knock Mona Lisa The Company What Lies Beneath Light from Light Kindred Dead Mail All the President's Men McCabe and Mrs. Miller The Serpent and the Rainbow Dead and Buried Good Time What Lies Beneath

Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher, which I’ve meant to see for years & finally did. It’s not influenced by Terence Davies & Ken Loach, it uses their tools to make something new, personal, & specific - maybe the most assured & mature debut I’ve ever seen, one of the best British movies of all time

It might be CODE UNKNOWN. boxd.it/alPfqJ

If I can only pick one that's not a Kubrick film I'm always going on about: W.C. Fields' 1933 short film A FATAL GLASS OF BEER is one of the funniest things I've ever seen, and maybe it's the world's first postmodern film, the way it continually draws attention to its own lack of realism.

I finally watched Sorcerer this year, and it absolutely delivers. Unique storytelling, incredibly tense moments, absolutely nails the ending.

The Taking of Pelham 123, original 1974 version. perfectly paced movie, absolutely no fat on the narrative

Youssef Chahine’s Cairo Station. Criterion release. Just a stunner.

The Long Good Friday (1980): the film that gave us Bob Hoskins, who anchors a plot with an enthralling, historically informed spin on the "gangster trying to go straight" trope. featuring a rapturous, heart-pounding score as well as an all-time twist ending

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, which took me by surprise because I tend to bounce pretty hard off Carpenter. Loved the dream sequences and the precise mix of setting and surreality

Blow Out because it's a movie about making movies and an exploration of political corruption. Also because it takes place in Philadelphia and showcases John Travolta at his finest.

Zerograd (1988) is my movie to beat for ‘discovery of the year.’ A nightmarish comedy about the fall of the Soviet Union. Surreal, funny, sad, at times beautiful. I’m sure a lot of the cultural references went over my head but what an experience!

BAD AXE from 2022. A documentary that follows an immigrant family trying to keep their restaurant afloat in rural Michigan during COVID and Trump’s first term. Sadly, it still feels very relevant. You desperately wish we would have learned some lessons and come out the other side better, but alas…

Sunday in the Country by Bertrand Tavernier You read that title, and you instantly imagine a mood-and you’re right but you’re so wrong too! Yes, It’s full of tenderness, beauty but also so much ENERGY, dancing through times invention, regret, bitterness. It’s a peaceful and angry film,

Was genuinely awestruck by THE SWIMMER this year as a wild, surreal, riveting, film with probably Burt Lancaster's best performance

Sticking to first time watches, likely a tie between Wanda (such great performances and tone) and The Eve of Ivan Kupalo (completely gobsmacked by something I’d never heard of). Second time watches: The Long Day Closes, which is simply a masterpiece.

The "Why" of #1 should speak for itself — it's Ozu. It's just about perfect. But all of these have been memorable. I suspect I'll go back to HEDWIG and THE NOVELIST'S FILM repeatedly — can't stop thinking about them.