#turner ross

[389]

Gasoline Rainbow (2024) dir. Turner Ross, Bill Ross IV

[allweknewisdead]

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020) - Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross

You had a nice place here.

[artfilmfan]

Gasoline Rainbow (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross, 2023)

[pacingmusings]

Seen in 2024:

Gasoline Rainbow (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross), 2023

[cinesludge]

Movie #66 of 2023: I Am Not Your Negro

James Baldwin: "You cannot lynch me and keep me in ghettos without becoming something monstrous yourselves. And furthermore, you give me a terrifying advantage. You never had to look at me. I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me."

[letterboxd-loggd]

Gasoline Rainbow (2023) Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV

September 14th 2024

[backstreetsbackalright]

Memorable Viewing from 2021

No Maps on My Taps (George T. Nierenberg, 1979)

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross, 2020)

Let Your Heart Be Light (Sophy Romvari & Deragh Campbell, 2016)

The Royal Road (2015, Jenni Olson)

Summer of Soul (2021, Questlove)

Light Sleeper (Paul Schrader, 1992)

Married to the Mob (Jonathan Demme, 1988)

Dune (Denis Villeneuve, 2021)

Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)

Bound (Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski, 1996)

[cristalconnors]

BEST PICTURE

THE NOMINEES ARE...

5. BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS, dir. Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross. prod. Michael Gottwald, Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross, Chere Theriot

A rousing documentary experiment that knows life is often just a series of disappointments, and that on the off chance that you find a lifeline and stumble into a circumstantial, highly-dysfunctional found family, that that’s not likely to last. And like the cake says, “this place sucked, anyways.” So, let’s keep dancing.

4. THE INVISIBLE MAN, dir. Leigh Whannell. prod. Jason Blum, Kylie du Fresne

Brilliantly uses a horror framework to explore the burden of proof that survivors of domestic violence face when coming forward, but even outside of this context it is an entirely engrossing feat of genre filmmaking, expertly building tension and crafting scares out of literally nothing, even finding time to engage with pop culture iconography of the 1933 original in unexpected, inventive ways. More studio efforts that are this ambitious, please.

3. LOVERS ROCK, dir. Steve McQueen. Prod. Michael Elliott, Steve McQueen, Anita Overland, Tracey Scoffield, David Tanner

Understands and distills the thrilling possibility (and danger) of a night out with friends, the magic of good music, and the release of the dance floor in a way that precious few other films do. Buzzes with life.

2. BACURAU, dir. Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho. Prod. Saïd Ben Saïd, Emilie Lesclaux, Michel Merkt

A stunning amalgam of all the possibilities of film as a medium distilled into an unruly, captivating caper that seamlessly weaves in and out of disparate tones and genres while remaining remarkably clear headed in its intentions without spelling them out for you. A rousing, political masterpiece. 

AND THE WINNER IS...

1. I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS, dir. Charlie Kaufman. prod. Stefanie Azpiazu, Anthony Bregman, Charlie Kaufman, Robert Salerno

A movie I’m not sure I could recommend to anyone. It’s austere, narratively convoluted, and relentlessly dark. The casual viewer will almost certainly find themselves lost, and those that are attentive and picking up on the (impeccably placed) clues will piece together a deeply upsetting story of alienation, self-deprecation, and suicidal ideation.

The film is an oozing wound, a profoundly vulnerable confrontation with Charlie Kaufman’s notorious reputation for writing women that are fantasies, self-indulgent projections of a deeply lonely man’s idealizations of womanhood and tacitly acknowledges that the criticism is more than fair and attempts to atone for it, casting himself as “Jud” from Oklahoma!, the insecure, misogynist brute who thinks women are his for the taking and has to die. But he’s also accomplishing this by crafting the film as a kind of horror movie from the perspective of the manic pixie dream girl, an archetype he undoubtedly helped create, as she struggles to make sense of the impossible incongruities of the role being assigned to her.

But then the movie also somehow finds time to be an intertextual comment on the ways we engage with works of art, the sometimes unhealthy ideas we glean from them, and how there’s nothing original left to be said, so instead we performatively regurgitate other texts to say what we can't, to show how cultured and smart we are, to signal our worth.

All this is to say nothing of the way the film masterfully depicts the grotesque horrors of aging, the illusion of time, the sensation of feeling ugly, the ongoing repercussions of childhood trauma, and countless other themes that I simply haven’t got the time to get into.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a punishingly bleak film, yes, but it’s also a deeply empathetic one. Watching it makes you want to tap the next sullen, downcast person you see on the shoulder and ask “is everything okay?”