The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, 2024)

The fountainhead

Brady Corbet's The Brutalist is his three-and-a-half hour Vistavision biopic on a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who emigrates to the United States for a fresh start on life-- use the word 'biopic' loosely because Laszlo Toth is nominally based on Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer only Breuer wasn't a Holocaust survivor, didn't scrabble too hard for his living, and didn't fanatically insist on having every detail of his plans exactly carried out; Corbet needed spicier material to work on, hence the changes.

The film is about capitalism, anti-Semitism, racism (kind of), and the immigrant experience in America; it's big in almost every sense of the word, down to the expansive 70 mm frame-- an extraordinary achievement considering this was shot for a slim $9 million. 

Interview with the Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994)

A Bloody Mess

(WARNING: Plot twists and story discussed in explicit detail)

When I saw Interview With The Vampire I was floored, I couldn't get the movie out of my mind. Said to myself: have to read the book. The very next day I hooked myself a copy and read it. I couldn't believe it, I was devastated; the book if anything was worse than the movie.

Apocalypto's racism

Race to the bottom

Cultural anthropologist Liz Grandia's article* lays out far better than I ever could the kind of heedless ignorance Gibson likes to brandish in his movies (the kind of ignorance that chooses Anne Catherine Emmerich's texts (if they really are her texts-- there's doubt) over the Bible for a movie on Christ, or portrays Jews as demonic money-grubbing backstabbers who let the Romans do their dirty work for them).

Best of 2024

Best I Can Come Up With For The Year List

Too much life going on, had an extremely limited viewing selection this year, a more mainstream list than I’d like. In ascending order, the best of what I saw:

Nosferatu 2024, 1979, 1922 (Robert Eggers, Werner Herzog, FW Murnau)

The blood drinkers

(WARNING: story and plot twists discussed in explicit and gory detail)

FW Murnau did a low-budget unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula titled Nosferatu (1922) which Stoker's widow pursued with a vengeance, demanding all prints and negatives be destroyed (despite which the film went on to achieve unholy immortality); Werner Herzog did a remake in 1979 employing ten thousand rats and his own inimitable filmmaking style; now Robert Eggers-- who professes admiration for the Murnau-- has crafted his own version, shifting emphasis from vampire to victim in his 2024 remake. 

And how does Eggers' compare? Well let me tell you.

Twin Peaks Season 3, Episode 8: "Got a light?"

Ignition

(WARNING story discussed in explicit detail--though how comprehensible details may be is a matter of debate, with both discussion and debate an exercise in futility)

The episode's putative title-- "Got a light?" sounds odd on first reading (online you see it under the episode's thumbnail pic) gains significance later on. 

Starts off plottily enough: Evil Mr. C (Kyle MacLachlan) and less evil Ray (George Griffith) have blackmailed their way out of prison, shaken away any electronic tracers*, turned off into a small side road (how can Lynch fill interminable shots of cars nosing down dirt roads with such dread?). They confront each other, demanding money demanding information, with C pointing the 'friend' he pulled from the glove compartment (a special request planted there by the prison warden) at Ray.

Only C's gun somehow fails to fire. Only Ray in a clever twist produces his own gun shooting C twice in the gut. Only when C drops the lights start flickering and shadowy figures emerge from the woods, dancing around C's body, pulling apart his belly, smearing his own gore on his face, squeezing out an egg sac larva with BOB visibly floating inside (Ray: "I saw something in Cooper. It might be the key to what this is all about.").

High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)

Heaven and hell

Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) may not be on the level of Seven Samurai but it is a great crime thriller, perhaps one of the greatest.