There’s no corner of cinema so explicit about its role as an act of remembrance than documentary film. Any film, in any genre, carries within it an aspect of memory — as a material object that dates from a certain moment and reflects its conditions, and as something more ethereal, something personal, cultural, and collective, subject to revisiting and remapping.
It’s fundamentally irritating when someone is dead set on shocking you. Full of pride and vague malice, it’s a weirdly authoritarian impulse – a gesture of control that both insults you by assuming you’re a delicate flower who will wilt under the awesome power of the image, while simultaneously flattering itself by imagining the spectacle is so awesomely powerful in the first place.
Spooktober officially came to an end 2 days ago. Let’s wrap this business up!
You can find this year’s previous entries here, here, and here. I did not meet the criteria I set out for myself this time around, and I closed out Spooktober with a movie from the man who also brought us City Slickers.
There is a small, wordless scene very early on in Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project that, in its empathy and assured direction, could stand in for the film as a whole.
Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), the film’s constantly moving, relentlessly yammering 6-year-old protagonist, and her friend Scooty (Christopher Rivera) sit on the pavement, backs against a concrete wall emblazoned with a mural of oranges.
Now that we’ve established the Spooktober premise in the first outing and developed some of the bit players while starting to drive home previously implicit character motivations in its arguably unnecessary sequel, we reach the third entry in the franchise, where either Dokken, Sam Neill, or cathode-ray-deploying Celtic death cults will inevitably play a central role.
Yesterday, we kicked off our October horror movie run-down with an initial five viewings for the month. It would still be surprising if I scramble my way up the deadly, haunted heights of Spooktober to the eerie summit of 31 before Halloween, but it won’t be for lack of trying.
Last year, I took part in the Scary Time Festival of Fright and Terror known as Spooktober, and watched 31 horror movies over the course of the month. It was fun!
I had every intention of doing so again this year — I even have a list; a weird list, sure, but a list nonetheless, with relevant criteria filled and everything — but I’ve fallen way behind.
It’s my pleasure to formally welcome frequent contributor Liz Lundberg to the tiny but ever-increasing “staff” here at Luddite Robot. (In this context, “ever-increasing” specifically refers to Liz and Liz only, but it made it sound more prestigious.)
After a certain amount of time referring to someone as a “guest,” it inevitably becomes clear that they actually just live here now, and this is the situation with Liz.
The Mill Valley Film Fest (MVFF), celebrated its 40th anniversary this weekend, wrapping up the festivities yesterday.
MVFF featured a number of high-profile premieres, renowned festival titles, panels and master classes, and visits from assorted indie luminaries like Great Gerwig, Todd Haynes, Dee Rees, Richard Linklater, and more.
Plenty of films, indeed much of modern art and poetry, has sought beauty in apparent hideousness. At least since Baudelaire fondly remembered a romantic stroll among the graceful swarm of putrid maggots inside “that superb cadaver / blossom[ing] like a flower,” it’s been a constant theme.