Little secret, a lot of times we don't mind if you "steal". Especially if you are nice, and also don't steal rentals!

Knives Out was a LOT of fun! And holy shit, that was Captain Von Trapp!

Jim and I are going next weekend; Plei has persuaded me!

I took Biyi to see Knives Out last night. Such a good movie!

So good!

I was a bit disappointed by Knives Out. I went in expecting a comedy murder mystery in the vein of Murder by Death or Clue. I didn't find the funny.

Don't get me wrong -- it's a fascinating movie with its intricate plotting and the way little things prove to be important later. (Because we're still in Non-Spoiler Time, I'll only mention Ransom's name.) It'd make a good double feature with The Last of Sheila.

It was nice to see Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, and Christopher Plummer again. And Chris Evans playing against Captain America type as the spoiled rich kid.

The 25 Best Films of 2019: A Video Countdown: [link]

David Ehrlich, who's a film critic for Indiewire, puts these together every year, and they are always a delight. His rule for the music selection is that all the songs he uses in the video compilation have to come from the soundtrack of films released that year (I *knew* there was gonna be a version of "Being Alive," and of course it's Raul Esparza.) He makes idiosyncratic but interesting choices. The section set to "Glasgow (No Place Like Home)" in particular really hit me where I live.

(I don't think I mentioned here how much I loved James Gray's Ad Astra. I saw it in IMAX theater three times in and cried all three times. I know Gray isn't everyone's cup of tea -- he makes contemplative epics that are usually humourless and which can come across ponderous -- but *something* about his sensibilities vibrates in my own particular frequency. He slow-burns to operatic emotions without losing his restraint, which I am a sucker for.)

Of the lesser known films on the list, I only just watched I Lost My Body this past weekend, which is an animated film from France, told partly from the POV of a severed hand (!). It's a strange and evocative little film, and really quite beautiful. It's streaming on Netflix and very much worth your time if you have 90 minutes to spare.

Also on the "lesser known, strange and evocative" spectrum is Christian Petzold's Transit, which Ehrlich describes as Casablanca as directed by Franz Kafka, which is as good a way as any to describe it. It *looks* like it might be about the refugee crisis, or possibly a film about purgatory, and you'd think it was set in a particular time period except it isn't -- the movie made me feel disoriented and unmoored in a way I found difficult to describe. I saw it over a year ago at TIFF and it's one of those films that linger. If interested, you can rent it on Amazon or Google Play. Most of Petzold's earlier work is streaming on The Criterion Channel right now and if you haven't seen it yet, I cannot recommend Phoenix highly enough -- it's got one of the most shattering endings I've seen in any films in recent memory.

The 25 Best Films of 2019: A Video Countdown

David Ehrlich, who's a film critic for Indiewire, puts these together every year, and they are always a delight.

I look forward to this every year. Happy to see that the list is about 1/3 female filmmakers, including 3 of the top 5.

A couple there I hadn't heard of, which is rare for me, but I haven't very good about keeping up with film podcasts this year.

Of the lesser known films on the list, I only just watched I Lost My Body this past weekend, which is an animated film from France, told partly from the POV of a severed hand (!). It's a strange and evocative little film, and really quite beautiful. It's streaming on Netflix and very much worth your time if you have 90 minutes to spare.

FYI, I haven't watched it yet, but Diamantino is streaming on Criterion.

Also on the "lesser known, strange and evocative" spectrum is Christian Petzold's Transit, which Ehrlich describes as Casablanca as directed by Franz Kafka, which is as good a way as any to describe it. It *looks* like it might be about the refugee crisis, or possibly a film about purgatory, and you'd think it's set in a particular time period except it isn't -- the movie made me feel disoriented and unmoored in a way I found difficult to describe. I saw it over a year ago at TIFF and it's one of those films that linger. If interested, you can rent it on Amazon or Google Play. Most of Petzold's earlier work is streaming on The Criterion Channel right now and if you haven't seen it yet, I cannot recommend Phoenix highly enough -- it's got one of the most shattering endings I've seen in any films in recent memory.

While I didn't like it as much as Phoenix, and I still have a lot to see this year, Transit is currently #3 on my Top 25 of 2019: [link]

(I *knew* there was gonna be a version of "Being Alive," and of course it's Raul Esparza.)

I'm not much of a film person really but this probably convinced me to watch this when I come out of my haze of grading projects.

I cannot recommend Phoenix highly enough -- it's got one of the most shattering endings I've seen in any films in recent memory.

Yeah, that was an amazing scene.