#16: March Round-Up
Dune 2, Spike Lee’s Amarcord and two new hoots and hollers.
I’m now getting this out so late that early March feels like a million years ago. It was the Oscars! Dune 2! Sorry! Last month I was busy “making the new apartment a home” (putting up movie posters), seeing friends and family who were in town, nursing a TMJ related toothache for two weeks before dropping $400 on x-rays/a nightguard & enjoying the first perfect park walks of spring. I finally have to stop saying “it’s coming together” about the apartment and must now retire the excuse “it’s just been so hectic moving in.” It’s time to go to pilates & buy a Japanese textbook & generally get my act together.
New Releases
The big movie news of March was Dune: Part Two and sorry you have to hear my Dune opinion at this stage. Anyway I thought it was three hours of beautiful looking, often thrilling, emotionally rushed set-up for Dune: Messiah.1 I know there’s no way around it but I missed Rebecca Ferguson as an only lightly bad vibes warrior mom… zealots are so boring…. My big take is that it’s annoying that Villeneuve treats the Chani/Paul romance so perfunctorily as to be unconvincing and that he has basically zero interest in Fremen life and people beyond watching them topple Harkonnen ships in 4-5 different wide, majestic battle sequences. The best part of this movie was Austin Butler’s Feyd Rautha and the freaky, colorless planet of Giedi Prime with the ink splotch fireworks. I am devastated that he only gets to be in one of these!!!
The rest of March was full of little movies, all varying degrees of good. The best was Julio Torres’ Problemista which is a whimsical and oddly open-hearted and fantastically specific comedy about the circuitous and impossible logic of U.S. immigration, the upside of delusion, and how scary it is to use anything that isn’t Google Sheets. I liked Torres’ tenderness toward Tilda’s horrible boss and the idea that you gotta be a bit of an insane and persistent bitch to get what you want in the world (but POLITELY).
On the other side of the Brooklyn spectrum was Free Time, another extremely specific and funny movie about work, or in this case, not working. It’s about a late 20s office worker who takes the “I shouldn’t spend all day shackled by capitalism, I should be on a beach eating fruit and making art!” rhetoric to heart and impulsively quits his job only to realize a) everyone is busy during the day and b) he does need money.
Late Night with the Devil is a predictable but enjoyably nasty movie with a great setting (70s late night talk show!) and zero commitment to the found footage bit. I still liked it, which made the AI scandal around it all the more annoying.
Rep Screenings
Danielle and I went to see JFK at BAM after an outdoor Forma Pasta lunch special, which is basically my ideal Sunday itinerary. Jim Garrison felt 500% more insane to me this go around, but it made it all the more moving to watch a man ruin his entire life for kind of a goofy reason because he feels earnestly compelled to push against the U.S. war machine, just a little. I really want to spend the rest of this year asking people where they land on the Kennedy assassination. If I get past “where do you work?” I am going to ask you this. Be warned!
I rewatched two more unimpeachable classics this month, at the Paris: Badlands and Amarcord. Great and great!
The big rep discovery of the month for me was Crooklyn at the Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn. I loved this so much!!!!! Sorry to be corny, but I love the warm chaos of a house full of children and I like when everybody’s screaming at each other, in a happy way. Basically Crooklyn is Spike Lee’s Amarcord (and his sister Joie Lee’s, who wrote the initial screenplay), chronicling a summer in the life of 9 year old Troy as she plays with her brothers, gets peer pressured into a little petty theft, has a weird time at her suburban aunt’s house and like Titta in Amarcord, experiences her first major loss. Delroy Lindo plays the starving artist patriarch whose deep love for his family is countered by his selfish insistence on artistic purity over helping around the house and Alfre Woodard is the strict, breadwinning matriarch who has to actually deal with the logistics of keeping a roof over the heads of five children. They are both SO damn good in this. And yes, I know it’s trite but I’m enraged neither of them have Oscars!!!! Lindo’s never even been nominated.
Aliens in People Suits
I watched two movies where an alien is on Earth dressed up like a human: John Carpenter’s Starman and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. I thought I’d be into Starman—I love sincerity & Karen Allen—but it just didn’t work for me on any level. Under the Skin on the other hand!!!!! Will anything this year devastate me as much as Scarlett Johansson’s unnamed alien, having softened a bit toward humans, attempting to eat a slice of cake before her body rejects it?
On the subject of Glazer, I also watched Sexy Beast but I watched it while I was painting the “martini vending machine” for my Oscars party and turns out everyone’s accents in this are so thick I really needed to be giving it my full attention. What I did catch seemed excellent! Ben Kingsley!
A bunch of other new-to-me (and Adam) movies
Adam made me watch Freddy Got Fingered which was not my thing, as expected, but I liked the Backwards Man.
We watched Pierrot Le Fou, which Adam boldly bought in the Criterion sale despite the fact that we both have regularly mixed feelings about Godard. Loved it though!! It’s so playful and summery and I really can just sit around watching Anna Karina do whatever in her primary color outfits.
Cruising is another cop-hating banger from William Friedkin. Flawed, but also moody and gorgeous and upsetting!
Oscar winning short The Last Repair Shop made us WEEP. I love my friends, the repair shop employees. My only complaint is I want more! I want to know everything about instrument repair and the students and this shop!!
The Deer Hunter started off strong with a full hour-long Slavic wedding sequence and then once the boys are shipped off to war, it becomes a trauma story that is admittedly slightly less interesting to me. Big fan of the scene where the boys sing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” in the bar while bumming around playing pool. I am feeling so emotional lately about John Cazale and Meryl Streep.
We also watched Maya Deren’s gorgeous, eerie, wonderfully handmade Meshes of the Afternoon, which made me miss LA. Really makes a girl want to stand under a jacaranda tree. Anyway, congrats to Maya Deren for having a vivid subconscious life but all of my dreams are about having to pee and looking for a bathroom and all the toilets are fucked up.
Hoot and Hollers of the Month
There were two excellent candidates for Hoot and Holler-ship this month.
The Ladykillers (the original 1955 version) about bank robbers who pretend to be classical musicians while renting a room from an old widow. I feel like I can’t possibly explain without spoiling the ending, but suffice to say that there are a lot of “this old lady keeps offering us tea while we try to plan a robbery” hijinks and the old lady emerges from the whole situation triumphant in the funniest way possible.
Night of the Comet should be a movie about valley girl sisters fighting zombies with guns and is instead way more about a boring secret government science bunker conspiracy or? whatever? I sort of tuned out by then BUT there is a scene where the girls find a moment of reprieve from the apocalypse at the MALL and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” plays and Adam and I hollered in delight. They’re alone but they have each other and they’re having fun being normal for a moment!!!! I keep listening to the song and it makes me cry now.
Just new-to-me
Burn After Reading was a weird blind spot for me but no longer! It’s very funny. Brad Pitt’s amazing in this.
I was so excited about this teaser for The First Omen that I watched the first Omen, The Omen (1976). I loved it! It’s boring in the exact way I like my horror movies to be, with some nasty Final Destination-esque kills.
Rewatches
I rewatched Barbie, but you already knew that. I rewatched Anatomy of a Fall and frankly liked it less this time. We threw on my favorite Ozu Good Morning which remains sweet and juvenile (compliment) and has one of the all-time cute movie kids.
Adam also bought Dr. Strangelove in the Criterion sale, and every time the final line “Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!” pops into my head I burst out laughing. I forgot how damn silly this movie is, in the best way. Very British.
When Adam was out of town, I had a me-night where I made a shrimp dish (he doesn’t like shrimp) and watched a 2 1/2 hour period piece with a so-so reputation, The Last Samurai. It’s pretty bad, but I like the opening where Tom Cruise’s character is a kind of “closing of the frontier” human exhibit at a world’s fair (?).
I can’t remember what compelled us to put on Toy Story, but what a MOVIE!! Nothing better! We turned on Toy Story 2 immediately after. In Sid’s defense, he seems to have a tough home life, he doesn’t know the toys are ALIVE and he’s actually very creative. I think he could have a bright future in the arts.
Television
I’m going to bang the drum for Starstruck, the best rom-com of the last three years!!!! Starstruck is about a funny but aimless 20-something movie theater employee living in London, Jessie (played by show creator Rose Matafeo), who has a one-night stand with a movie star, Tom Kapoor, that morphs into more. By season 3, which I watched this month, they’ve gotten together and broken up, leading to a bittersweet but immensely romantically satisfying ending. It’s got 20 minute episodes with lots of actual jokes and it features the kind of daffy/insane but charming friend group that Richard Curtis is an expert at—in fact Starstruck reminds me SO much of Notting Hill (particularly my favorite scene, the dinner party).
I also started Girls5Eva which is scratching the joke-a-second itch left by 30 Rock.
We also started watching Shogun and thought it would be this great Thursday night post-tap class thing to throw on but the last two weeks when Adam’s asked “Shogun?” I’ve literally grimaced. I don’t want to!!! I’m sorry, I simply don’t want to watch a beautiful-but-obviously-CGI-in-Canada battle scene and then like, someone makes a face and that’s supposed to be the meme-able moment of the night.
Speaking of boring, I also found the first two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion dull beside the theme song (cool) but I would very earnestly like to be convinced otherwise!!!! I would love to be motivated to continue!!
Theater
Sophia and I went to see Jelly’s Last Jam at the New York City Center which remains my least favorite theatrical *space* in the city, but one I will frequent forever (until I am 36 years old and no longer eligible for the $28 tickets). Sarah’s rave about it was the kick in the pants I needed to buy tickets. This show was so good!!! I often see musicals because I already love them, and any rendition competently rendered will basically work for me, so it’s a real thrill to see a show I don’t know anything about, that’s widely considered imperfect, that’s elevated through the sheer force of talent on stage. I also appreciated that the choreography was clear and center stage and allowed us to kick back and enjoy tap dancing for a few minutes.
Books
I read exactly one book last month and it was John Williams’ Stoner, which I’ve been seeing all over the internet the last year (my algorithm really knows me). Stoner is a 1965 novel about the life of a Midwestern college English professor, William Stoner2, who marries unhappily, never rises the ranks, never writes anything of note, and dies mostly unremembered. Somehow this is not completely depressing, but in fact, exciting and absorbing and moving. Williams employs my favorite kind of prose: really straightforward, plain but not unstylish, a little coldly removed, all in service of a spectacular emotional gut punch.
I was texting about this with my friend Lena (who is reading Stoner now) but what’s so brilliant about this book is that while Stoner’s overarching biography feels sad and frankly pathetic, Williams captures the fact that in between the job you get and the person you marry is all the other stuff that makes up life—reading something that thrills you, feeling motivated and excellent at your unimpressive job, and in Stoner’s case, his love for his daughter. I cried!
I do also find the movie’s pointed disinterest in engaging Herbert’s Arab influences to be awkward (generously…) and I liked Siddhant Adlakha’s review & also Roxana Hadadi on this (this is about Dune 1, but applies!).
John Williams’ Stoner about William Stoner
okkkk i thought you watched meshes of the afternoon between the two toy stories which is a really funny movie sandwich i’ve been laughing at for a full week now…