Q: On what movie viewing experience are you reporting?
A: The experience on the night of January 14th, 2018.
Q: What was the movie viewed?
A: The 18th James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).
Q: Why?
A: Death felt about 2 hours too far away.
The road trip belongs to an incredibly particular technological moment.
There must be an element of protraction; it must take long enough to get from point A to point B to generate enough plot to keep the opening and closing credits 90-plus minutes apart.
We don’t usually recommend streaming titles you have to rent as standalones, but when Don Hertzfeldt suddenly drops a sequel to World of Tomorrow, I’ll make an exception.
Judging by the reactions of friends, Hertzfeldt seems to fall pretty squarely in the love-it-or-hate-it column.
Columbus, Indiana is a town of less than 50,000, located about halfway between Indianapolis and Louisville, that happens to boast enough modernist architecture that its visitor’s guide includes tours of the iconic structures. It’s an improbable fact, a mecca of modernism in the heartland, that long-time video essayist / first-time director / one-name-haver Kogonada relishes in Columbus, one of the absolute best films of 2017 that I didn’t see until 2018.
We first see Jean-Pierre Leaud as Louis XIV in a wheelchair, being rolled through nature by his assistants. It’s the last time The Death of Louis XIV brings us outside. The rest of the film takes place in cramped quarters, mostly around the king’s bed, as he slowly recedes from life.
“There is no such thing as truth,” Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) tells us at one of the many caustic, slippery moments in I, Tonya. “Everyone has their own truth.” This could serve as the self-congratulatory motto for Craig Gillespie‘s well-acted film, a distinctly, and appropriately, Trumpian sentiment for what might be the first of a genre: the Fake News Biopic.
I was never tempted by an explicit resolution like the 52 Films by Women project Rick did last year. I remember people motivating each other to watch “30 films from 30 countries” at some point last year, but couldn’t work up the energy.
It’s an assumption, an article of faith, but it always bears repeating: every best-of list is a subjective snapshot, bound by what we could or would see, the genres to which we gravitate, the last-minute audibles called because we simply can’t bear to leave out a title.
Listen, guys, I’m going to let you in on a big secret: I’m woefully unqualified to write for any movie site. And of the many reasons why, one always comes up around this time of year. I don’t live near any art house or smaller theaters, so unless movies come to the theater attached to the nearby mall (hey, $5 matinees every day!),
Back in January of this year, inspired by the folks at WIF and the initiative they created, I resolved to watch 52 films by women directors in 2017. With only a few days left on the calendar, it seems like a good time to check back in on this “challenge.”