Pretty Good, I Guess

Hello, I'm Ben. He/him. This is mostly a movie watching journal. movies in 2018 chart ('17) ('16) ('15) ('14) ('13) ('12) photo blog

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Hi! So I’m not really using this as a movie watching journal anymore!

If you’re still interested in reading my thoughts about movies I watch, I’ve moved to letterboxd - https://letterboxd.com/goodiguess/ - which I’ve basically been using this blog as since 2012.

Here is a list I made of my favorite new-to-me movies I watched in 2018 - https://letterboxd.com/goodiguess/list/2018-new-to-me/

Maybe I’ll post here again in less than 6 months!  Maybe I’ll go back to posting Strokes memes, the reason anyone followed this blog in the first place! 

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79 - A Woman’s Face (1941) - Movies in 2018

-Great noiry playfulness. The first half of the film has so much fun hiding the scar, giving the film a lot of excuses for delightful in-fiction shadows, perfect turns of the head and dramatic blocking, amazing hat work, leading to about three or four wonderful reveals. Leads up to the best reveal of all - bandage removal!

-A great dance/party sequence about glances and bubbling feelings, tense with dramatic irony, begun with an incredibly fun montage of remembering made up of intense piano mashing double exposure.

-A great horse sleigh chase sequence in the snow, waterfalls and all.

-Great tension filled cable car scene, all without dialogue, focused on reaction shots, off-kilter angles, and slow hand movements. Cinema!

-With all that fun filmmaking, it also has amazing performances from everyone, ranging from comedic to romantic to deeply melodramatic. Joan Crawford is incredible, relishing every character turn, from a kind of femme fatale all the way into tender romantic lead. Watching this, there's no question she was one of the greats.

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78 - Leave No Trace (2018) - Movies in 2018

Quiet, observational, tender coming of age film. Attentive to performances, the way routine shapes understandings of self and community. A lesser film would have focused on the father, the daughter functioning as a side character and emotional conflict. Instead, it's a film about a teen girl trying to come to an understanding of the world, attuned to the way people observe her and the way people observe her dad, her longing for a community and family. Growing up is understanding yourself but also coming to terms with your parents as real people, and this film understands that more than most.

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77 - Sorry To Bother You (2018) - Movies in 2018

I love that this movie exists. I love how willing it is to be weird, take swift turns, and trust that the audience is with it as it follows its dystopian satire logic to its sci fi ends. I love that much of its character conflict is how being a scab makes all of your friends dislike you. I love how so much of the film is about how easy it is for resistance to be corrupted, how existing and succeeding in white supremacy and capitalism means selling some of your soul, and every character exist on a spectrum of how much they're willing to give up of themselves for a kind of gain. And yet, it doesn't really come together.

A lot of the movie is about how Cash puts on a performance, his "white voice," and how that allows him dubious access to a certain kind of capital, the insidious cult of corporate incentives. We also see how Detroit puts on a performance, for art in and out of the gallery. Even Squeeze performs, salting and organizing, to his co-workers and to the media. The film's most astute and biting moments are when we see how these performances are being received, and what this reception does to the performer. That's why the most compelling scenes are with Cash at Lift's party, as he is more explicitly performing versions of Blackness for a white audience, and we see immediate audience response, and then his recognition. The rest of the film doesn't spend time with the reception of these performances, since much of the telemarketing is told in montage, and other scenes about performance aren't given much time. (Detroit's gallery performance scene has no bite, unfortunately, and her character feels woefully underdeveloped.)

By focusing on the satiric world building instead of character's reactions to one another, it loses itself a bit. This world building is full of interesting ideas, but they feel a little removed, both very on-the-nose (not a bad thing!) and a little shallow at the same time. The film's all over the place, and then quickly throws a bunch of stuff at the wall right at the end, not quite sticking enough for emotional or comedic weight. I really wanted to like this a lot, but I'm more uncertain about it, disappointed. Excited to see what Riley's next film is.

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76 - Dune (1984) - Movies in 2018

Nonsense, narratively hazy scene to scene, it's almost indecipherable, it's as if it's one long vision. Very admirably weird, the film seems to be at odds with itself to tell a lot of confusing exposition or to be a dream state, so it exists in this weird, fascinatingly messy in between.

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75 - You Were Never Really Here (2018) - Movies in 2018

Joe stands on an above ground subway platform. His eyes closed, he slowly leans forward, out of the darkness, into the sunlight. We see him leaning from below, up through the tracks, and by a skeptical, bruised onlooker before he recomposes himself. This is one of the most tension filled moments in the film, a character anticipating trauma, remembering trauma, waiting to re-enter a traumatic and scarring scene. For a film about violence, its moments of contemporaneous violence are fairly regimented – rhythmic montage through surveillance cameras, empty spaces with action just out of reach. It's the memory of violence, repressed and expressed, lingering in memory, that are the most jarring. A passing moment on the street, in the quiet in between spaces, in the aftermath of enacted violence, in a coping mechanism that simultaneously calms as it re-triggers.

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74 - Let The Sunshine In (2018) - Movies in 2018

A gentle neurosis builds, but never indulges too much in bitterness. For a film that's so much about dissatisfaction, Binoche and Denis are able to convey such genuine hope for love that it remains deeply romantic. From graceful camera moves to perfectly timed, brilliantly observed close ups, Denis finds moments of real hope for love among acidic conversations with disappointing men.

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73 - The Maltese Falcon (1941) - Movies in 2018

Sorry, this didn't do much for me at all. I appreciated the early shot of Bogart being woken up in the middle of the night by a phone, and the accusatory looks of the last scene. The rest of it just never grabbed me, the whole thing feels a little too murky and unattainable.

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72 - First Reformed (2018) - Movies in 2018

There are astonishing moments in this, aesthetically, emotionally, politically. I appreciate how Hawke's increasingly deadly self-seriousness has room for some deadpan humor, perhaps morbidly, at how much turmoil he's in and how he expresses himself. The sense of quiet throughout the whole film is nicely unsettling, creating a kind of impeding dread. You can feel his righteous anger, but it is in his bubbling misogyny that you begin to turn against him, uncertain. Which seems smart, maybe... And yet... The ending, the very final shot, completely lost me. The final moment is such garbage, it almost turned me against the entire movie. I "get" it, but gosh, no thanks. The more I think about it the more this moment makes me dislike the whole thing, which I'm not sure has happened to me before. This is his salvation? Is it not just a fantasy, a cheap answer?

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71 - Manhunt (2017) - Movies in 2018

CGI enhanced slow motion replaces repetition of action from multiple angles. Instead of seeing the same action repeated and slowed, we see the action slowed down so minutely, the world freezes while the characters move in super-human, hyper-sensitive ways. Green screen and CGI composition enhances montage. Our lead out-running a train he was about to be hit by a few seconds earlier. Our duo dancing around each other on jet-skis, eyes shifting with the floating water droplets. A dove flying right in front of your opponent's eyes at just the right moment, allowing you to get away. The eye is foregrounded so much, literally, it's clear Woo is excited about digital's ability to expand and extend possibilities of vision within the cinematic image. The narrative gets out of hand, but the high melodrama and amount of digital experimentation, you gotta respect it.

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70 - Ganja & Hess (1973) - Movies in 2018

Narratively slight, and a little hard to follow, but montage is where this really shines. Their first sex scene, rhythmically jump cutting around the bed in different embraces, is a particular highlight in a film filled with dreamy sequences. Not all of it works for me, and not all of it landed, but its strengths are very strong.

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69 - Incredibles 2 (2018) - Movies in 2018

All of the action is great – exciting, clear, visually inventive, superhero fighting as a form of creativity and self discovery, and great physical comedy. The rest of it feels not that deep. The villain is both obvious and muddled, presenting themes the film doesn't really want to tackle, glazing over ideas to get to a quick conclusion. ScreenSlaver is a lazy and dumb idea, but the movie also kind of knows this is underdeveloped, so it skims past the ideology. Family and gendered work could be an interesting part of this, but it ultimately gets a shallow treatment. Luckily it spends more of this time on Jack Jack stuff, all wonderful action comedy moments.

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68 - Old Joy (2006) - Movies in 2018

I appreciated its atmosphere, its tender moments of quiet release, the recognition of how uniquely awkward a distant friendship can feel. Reichardt is always a very observant filmmaker, but it felt a little flat, a little absent of the character substance I wanted.

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67 - The Clock (1945) - Movies in 2018

The way it undercuts its romantic swells with deep cynicism and sadness are maybe the best parts of this – the loud train sounds interrupting the judge with Garland and Walker's searching looks to listen closely over the noise, the uncertain dinner afterwards with the man watching in the background, making Garland self-conscious, re-examining impulsive love. Also, remarkable how much this movie is about the navigation of the city, while being shot on sets and rear projection.

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66 - The Rules of the Game (1939) - Movies in 2018

A movie about foreground and background, and the mess of not being able to see the whole picture, unable to fully understand your position (romantically, politically). Expert staging, the camera floating between messy individual dramas, engulfing you in it before you know it.

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65 - Paddington 2 (2017) - Movies in 2018

“When Paddington put the toothbrush in his ears and then his nose....that was funny" - 3 year old niece

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64 - Strange Days (1995) - Movies in 2018

The quintessential VR dystopia film about new cinematic technologies and the possibilities and dangers of empathy when this new technology records racist police violence and rape. A pretty wild movie, on all accounts.