I remember, very distinctly, when I regained a delight in writing about movies. It was around January 2016, and I was in a pretty miserable place. I had left a college I liked for a number of reasons, among them because I was giving up on my film studies plans.
Saturday night marked the return of the annual A Day of Silents program at the Castro, one of the many events the San Francisco Silent Film Festival hosts outside of its weeklong extravaganza in the spring. I was only able to catch the evening double bill – missing out on the very silly-looking The Last Man on Earth, Henry King’s dark pastoral Tol’Able David, the Ivor Novello-starring The Rat, and, saddest of all, Reiniger’s Prince Achmed, one of the earliest entries in the Counter-Programming series — but it was, as usual, delightful.
Macon Blair doesn’t personally show up much in his writing/directing debut I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore. — he has more screen time in The Florida Project, probably — but you can feel his jittery, cold-sweat presence throughout.