Went to see The Mustang yesterday, a terrific small film about a prison-run rehabilitation program for wild mustangs. The parallel between the main character and the horse he is trying to tame could have been much more sledgehammer-y, but by and large, the director takes a light hand. Matthias Schoenaerts, an excellent Flemish actor whom I've seen in a bunch of things and whose name I could never spell and always have to look up, is splendid as the lead and acts almost entirely with his body language and his eyes to a devastating effect. Beautiful-looking film, too. It's the first feature film by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, who is French and has done most of her work in front of the camera. Very impressive film for a debut.

This makes for the third movie I've seen in the last couple of years that was made by an outsider on the American West, esp. on the subject of the relationship between a man and a horse, after Lean On Pete by Andrew Haigh (Brit) and The Rider by Chloé Zhao (Chinese). All worthwhile watching, moving in different ways.

Unfortunately, there was a couple that was sitting in the row behind me who would just NOT SHUT UP. They were not even trying to be quiet -- just talking at a full volume for the first 20 minutes and really, really loudly rattling their popcorn bucket and just being rude, thoughtless assholes. I ended up moving away half an hour into the film rather than trying to interact with them. UGH. Why are people so bad about the most basic of etiquette?

"Special hell, for child molesters and people who talk at the theater."

Preach. The dude in the couple also complained loudly that this seemed like a "propaganda movie" after the first 5 minutes, whatever the fuck that meant in this setting. Ugh. I love movies. Not so fond of people most of the time.

On a happier news, The Criterion Channel is live!! The app is available on my Android TV and seems to work pretty well. After activating my device, I skimmed around various films available for streaming on the channel. I really like the curatory aspect of their selections -- there are themed movie groups, and recs from various directors/actors/critics. The current active theme list has 'Columbia noir', which has a bunch of film noir I've never even heard about -- looking forward to digging into that.

They also have various thematic pairings of a short and a feature length film. I picked on something called 'Mystery Train,' and watched this marvellous Canadian stop-motion animated short called Madame Tutli-Putli (available on youtube for free, it turns out), paired with Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, which I have actually never watched in full. I only watched about 20 mins of the latter 'cause it was getting late and am eager to get back to it.

So far, zero regrets in paying through the year. :)

Madame Tutli-Putli

I've seen that! I loved it.

Star Wars movie title thoughts?

Was a title announced, or are you asking what we think it should be?

Never mind; I just saw it on Facebook.

I have zero opinion on the title, because I'm just not really invested in the SW movies. I mean, I like them, but it's nice to just like something without throwing my fannish little heart into it.

Yeah, I like Star Wars, but it burned through all of my enthusiasm in the 00s.

I've also learned to never get too enthusiastic about any JJ Abrams project, either.

I am mostly invested in Rey. And Finn and Poe. And Leia. And Rose.

And also Lando. And Chewie. And BB-8.