Transit (d. Christian Petzold) Some thoughts on Transit. It offers an alternative universe where fascists are closing in on dissidents and minorities in what looks to be contemporary France. The mood harks back to WWII movies, including its unchecked orientalism. Why does Petzold set it in sun-drenched Marseilles which looks more Mediterranean than Europe? Because …
Author Archives: orpheusfx28
Put on an incel face
Joker (d. Todd Phillips) Only Joaquin Phoenix could have played this role in a movie that exhibits a kind of sensibility very much of the present rooted in doublings. Joaquin has his dead brother’s career, River, for those who can still remember the deceased’s short-lived stardom. The film itself is the twin other of Phillip’s …
It punches down, actually
Parasite (d. Bong Joon-ho) Who is this movie for? We have two screen-like windows in the film. For the less prosperous family, it’s a small submerged opening while for their wealthier counterpart, it’s large and magnificent—and the view ain’t that bad either. The reason I ask this question is because, while the movie seems to …
(for the time being)
Proposed seminar for ACLA 2020. Not yet approved. In a lecture given in 1996, the late novelist Toni Morrison postulates, “Infinity is now, apparently, the domain of the past…Twenty or forty years into the twenty-first century appears to be all there is of the “real time” available to our imagination…(In) the late twentieth century (unlike …
Toxic rooms
The Room (d. Tommy Wiseau) From 2014. I finally went to see the midnight movie The Room last night and read the film seriously despite the hoots and talk back from the audience. It is a bad film in a sense that director/writer/actor/producer takes cliches sincerely from bad objects like soft-core porn movies, meaning to …
This colonial life
Branches of the Tree (d. Satyajit Ray) (1990) From 2014. Made and released in 1990, Ray’s film arrives as an artifact of a bygone sensibility, with its deliberately slow pacing, as it explores each branch of a family tree, and a belief in simpler virtues (“Work is faith” and “Honesty is the best policy”). The …
Forsaken sister
Three Daughters (d. Satyajit Ray) (1961) From 2014. Originally conceived as a three-part film, with each story running roughly an hour long, Ray explores the fates of women in Indian society of the 50s. The middle film, the part that had been missing for decades, involves a ghost story in a once opulent mansion conceived …
Loyalty oaths
A Flame at the Pier / Namida wo shishi no tategami ni (d. Shinoda Masahiro) (1961) Pale Flower (d. Shinoda Masahiro) (1963) Two films about instrumentalizing oneself for the service of others. Flame at the Pier (1961) has the embers of the war still burning ever just so slightly as the protagonist’s loyalty is based …
Bonfire of virilities
Once Upon A Time in…Hollywood (d. Quentin Tarantino) (Revised) My entry into the film is through the undignified portrayal of Bruce Lee. He is shown as a trash talking fake. Why? So that Quentin can build up the Brad Pitt’s character’s badass-ness. Who is he, Cliff Booth? He is a stunt double for an increasingly …
Femme fatalism
Female Student Guerrilla (d. Wakamatsu Koji) (1969) Dare to Stop Us (d. Shiraishi Kazuya) (2018) Dare to Stop Us follows the brief period of collaboration known as the Wakamatsu Pro (productions) between Wakamatsu and Adachi. The focus is, surprisingly, on a novice female production assistant who quickly wins over the respect of Wakamatsu-san, portrayed as …
Orpheus in Hell: Unlicensed Film Reviews 