I guess I should watch The Power of the Dog, then. It looks profoundly disturbing.

It is. Like the The Lost Daughter, it has a slowness and almost awkwardness which is profoundly uncomfortable and tense-making (at least for me).

So many movies I have not seen! I usually realize there's a lot I haven't seen at this point, but this year it is a whole new level of missing out. All I've seen from megan's list is Black Widow and Matrix Resurrections.

Probably a third to half my list is Indie Spirit screeners, so not on the general radar, and some I only watched because they finally have an app that makes it really easy to do. I've pretty much seen the ones I was most interested in but I still have Parallel Mothers and Passing and then I'll probably watch a few more that are directed by women.

Movies feel like too much of a time commitment lately, I dunno. I know I want to see Macbeth but I haven't felt like I could sit still for it.

A lot of my movie selections are based on time involved. I have to really want to see something that clocks in over 2 hours. Since the Math Greek has been here, and we are both fairly cautious pandemic-wise, we've pretty much settled into a routine of work during the day, late afternoon walk, dinner & a movie. Longer movies only happen if dinner ends up on the early side. Luckily Indie Spirit movies tend to meet that and, if they are over, it is not because of unnecessary bloat.

Speaking of unnecessary bloat, I just watched Nightmare Alley. It has a lot to recommend it, but man does it drag in the middle. In the last few days, I've watched that and Tick, Tick... Boom! (not a great film, but interesting and there's a moment where it sort of clicked into place for me) and CODA. CODA was much better than I expected. A sweet heartwarming family drama/sports film dynamic. Not a great film, but certainly a crowd-pleaser. It's a remake of a French film that I've seen clips of because it stars one of the more popular French winners of their version of The Voice.

Other fun, shorter films I would recommend from my list are Shiva Baby (on HBO) and Plan B (on Hulu, and, if you like that, check out the recent similarly themed Unpregnant on HBO).

The Lost Daughter definitely had that uncomfortable feel, but it also made me lol a couple times.

Fellow horror peeps recommended an indie horror comedy (?) Lo and I watched it this week. It's almost like a filmed stage play, but the prosthetics/makeup on the titular demon were A-movie quality. I had fun watching, and one of the supporting characters made me really miss Andy Hallett as Lorne.

I continue to watch recent critical darlings at an alarming rate, though I did for some reason also get Gambit (a delightful 1960s caper starring Michael Caine & Shirley MacLaine) out of the library. I think Buffistas would really enjoy that one.

Apple had a 99c rental deal for Titane so I decided to brave that one, even though Ducournau's previous film, Raw, literally made me sick and I couldn't finish it. This was also body horror (and even more bizarre plot-wise) but I made it through. Definitely a unique vision to be sure.

Two Indie Spirit films, one fiction, the other a documentary, did some interesting weaving of narratives. Parallel Mothers is sort of hard to describe. It seems rather straight-forward on its surface but goes all sorts of places I didn't expect. It is definitely a film where being forced to use subtitles (Note: I generally put captioning on anyways, even in English) is a benefit because it makes the double meaning of a lot of the text more obvious. I liked it, but I'm not sure Cruz's performance is so "amazing" that she deserves an Oscar nomination. It looks gorgeous. Sometimes I think Almodóvar is the Nancy Meyers of Europe when it comes to kitchens I covet. It will be interesting to see how this one stacks up against the other foreign-language films once we've seen more of them.

I didn't really want to watch Procession, which is about pedophile priests, but the Math Greek is generally more interested in documentaries these days so I told him to go ahead and that I would work with it in the background. I ended up more fascinated by it than he was. I thought it was a really interesting process, part-documentary, part-trauma therapy, telling the story of the men involved by having them come together to develop and film dramatic scenes depicting their abuse and/or representing the power dynamics of the church as they saw them. Powerful stuff.

I also saw Soderbergh's latest, Kimi, on HBO and loved it. Of course, I also love The Net, which is essentially what it is, updated for our post-pandemic world. Definite recommend, if only for Zoë Kravitz's hair.

Ooh, I kind of forgot about Soderbergh's existence and I have access to HBO...

Ooh, I kind of forgot about Soderbergh's existence and I have access to HBO...

While you're on HBO, we also liked last year's No Sudden Move, also by Soderbergh. It's a heist/crime/mystery with an incredible cast. Very Elmore Leonard.

Sweet!

It was only ten months or so in the making, but seeing Scola and Hec this past weekend inspired me to finally wrap up my look at the 1930s: [link]

Now, on to the 1940s!

inspired me to finally wrap up my look at the 1930s

I'm just reading it now! Your "Bringing Up Baby" hate is beyond the pale! But I respect your taste, and depth of research and diligence.

I will note that "Hellbound Train" is part of a long tradition of sermons in the Black church along that theme.

I know it best from Chuck Berry's great song "Downbound Train" but it's all clearly derived from the same almost folk process that informed sermons which were taken, changed, adapted just as folk songs and folk stories were done.

Here's Chuck: [link]