Beautifully bleak, ambling character study that gets a lot of mileage juxtaposing a taciturn Schrader-ish loner with various garrulous acquaintances, as well as luxuriating in its ethnographic/documentary rendering of Melbourne’s bayside (as befitting McKenzie’s doc roots). Dips into George V Higgins small-crime territory but dips out so as not to spoil the languor; has a running Egoyan-esque parasocial-surveillance strand that threatens to turn into plot but wisely never does. More proof that the best Aussie cinema has been cruelly hidden from us for years (thankfully changing with this one’s new resto).
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Cold Weather 2010
Rewatched on a whim, and... holds up! Especially for a movie whose contemporaneous selling point was that it was a mumblecore movie that looked nice and had a few suspense set pieces. Captures what it felt like to be alive in 2010 more than my Facebook memories, which mostly consisted of screencaps of movies like Cold Weather (2010).
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Nope 2022
Peele's increasing problem with having to live up to being 'the allegory guy' is that he expends so much effort on embellishing subtext that already comes naturally to the stories he's interested in, at the expense of character, tension, etc. Should've just been about the chimp. Hooted and hollered at The Congos and Exuma drops.
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Exotica 1994
The way that Francis dementedly incorporates the 'no touching' policy into his ploy to lure Eric out of the club, reclaiming the previous night's mistake into carefully planned ritual... I can't think of another film whose ludicrously schematic plot only makes the undercurrent of pain and sorrow more raw. The stars were aligned on this one.
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Armageddon Time 2022
Remembered during this that James Gray called Isabelle Huppert a "fascist" when she served at the Cannes 2009 jury president and then realised that this is essentially Gray's The White Ribbon.
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Mortal Thoughts 1991
Deeply weird and very Rudolphian, despite it being a last minute gun-for-hire job - as elliptical and foggy and insinuating as Remember My Name, and likely plays best as the second half of a double feature with it. Occured to me that I've seen Demi Moore in excerpts from Ghost attached to 'The Movies' montages more than in actual movies (have seen Now & Then, Deconstructing Harry & Margin Call but have memory of her). Excellent turns from her, Headley, Keitel and especially Willis who could've made every Rudolph joint better by replacing Keith Carradine.
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The Devil's Advocate 1997
Snuck in to watch about 20 minutes of this on its initial release after The Jackal had finished (along with several preteen friends; earlier that day we'd hired out a tennis court to watch a few hours of the '98 Warped Tour from the purview of an umpire's chair... kind of a genius idea though we missed Blink-182) and had to bolt after the fitting room scene upon seeing ushers were patrolling the aisles. Had always remembered those 20 minutes…
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Zeros and Ones 2021
I have to admit I can't tell the difference between a good Ferrara and 'good' Ferrara anymore.
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Hated: GG Allin and The Murder Junkies 1993
Sometimes you just need to watch a 50-min doc that you won't fall asleep to.
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Memories of Murder 2003
Realised this is closer to Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling than it is to Zodiac.
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