Recent Posts
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March 29, 2025
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
I have a very patchy history with Robert Altman. I’ve seen a bit of the Player, and allegedly all of Gosford Park and A Prairie Home Companion. I don’t entirely remember either of those, but I’ve also not seen the stuff he’s most celebrated for, Nashville, MASH, The Long Goodbye, Short Cuts, and this.
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March 23, 2025
La Llorona
I really meant to look up the history of Guatemala after watching this, but I definitely have not done it. Nonetheless, I presume it’s all factual. Similar in feel to The Zone of Interest, we’re in the house of the bad guys, who don’t consider themselves the bad guys. Specifically in this case, a general who has been convicted of genocide, stuck with his family in his mansion as an enormous protest lives outside. All of his staff (except one) has quit because, well, he genocided their ethnic group, and so he has to hire someone new who may or may not be a ghost.
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March 15, 2025
Ordet
Ordet (“the Word”) is a Danish movie by Carl Theodor Dreyer, who made, among other things The Passion of Joan of Arc. I haven’t seen lots of silent movies, but that one was incredible, and here he’s allowed to use sounds and words! Fantastic. Morten the farmer has three sons; one is normal, one is an atheist (he says agnostic, but come on), and one is completely fucking mad. Religious conflict ensues.
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March 15, 2025
Brideshead Revisited
Or: Catholicism, you’ve done it again! My understanding is that Evelyn Waugh had complex feelings about Catholicism, at least at the point of writing this book, because he got properly into it later in life.
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March 09, 2025
Tenebrae
Only my second Argento, somehow, after (obviously) Suspiria. An American novelist, Peter Neal, comes to Rome to promote his newest book but slightly before he gets there (thus removing suspicion from him at least) a woman is murdered and pages from his novel is stuffed down her throat. To make the point even further, Neal gets a letter saying yes, his books are the reason.