My 2024 Watchlist Obsession!

I have had this movie under serious consideration for quite a while and I think your review has just tipped the scales.
Plus I didn't know Melanie Lynskey when I put it in the queue and now I think she's a treasure who should be in everything so finding out it's her definitely adds some urgency.

It's really good.

And to stay as vague as possible, I had worried about it being too much of a downer, but there's some sweetness and even some optimism in there.

That's good to hear because that was also my concern. I saw some of the charm in an early trailer but I worried that the darkness of it would just depress me too much, especially in that I consider myself to feel pretty much exactly how it sounds Ruth feels. I was actually drawn to the movie initially just because the title sounds like something I would say.

This movie is not at all a rug pull. I also get tired of movies that are advertised as being off-kilter comedies and then end up being super depressing. Don't get me wrong: the movie deals heavily with themes of depression, social alienation, isolation, etc. But it's not just out to twist the knife on people who feel those things. It's also about human connection and how someone might find a way to cope with a world that can feel arbitrary and cruel. So it's not all sunshine and rainbows, and it is sad in some ways, but it's also very funny and human. Especially heading into the last act, I just think the movie nails it.

For some reason I’ve never heard of this movie. It’s in my watchlist now.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Blue Ruin is in my Top 10 of all time. And I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore is so good. Blair's screenplay made the people Ruth and Tony were after seem truly evil. That's a hard thing to pull off. I spent most of the movie scared shitless for Ruth and Tony.

I'll try not to get into too much of a groove as far as expressing my own political views go when reviewing Best of Enemies, because talking about a documentary such as this, it would be easy to lapse into just that. I can tell you though that the story of William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal isn't warm, as I was almost expecting it to become. You might think I'm crazy for thinking someone on the extreme right and someone on the extreme left would have eventually become good friends, but the two intellectual heavyweights had so much in common, aside from their political views. When television stations kept on calling the two back to debate each other at presidential conventions during election cycles, the repeated proximity might have been the cause for some kind of guarded respect and admiration at least. But no - Buckley Jr. and Vidal hated each other venomously, to their dying day. They were the epitome for a lot of what we regard as the "culture wars" these days, and their ideas and arguments are the same as the ones that remain unresolved as the United States becomes more and more polarised and divided into two camps. On the verge of the Nixon era, the fight for civil rights had, as an opposing force almost, a fight for "law and order", which the left accused the right of being thinly veiled racism. This, and many other subjects, were debated between the two acid-tongued ideologues.

This documentary walks that difficult line in being balanced - which I thought was it's best feature. It interviews people from both sides of the equation, many of them being acquaintances or friends of Vidal or Buckley Jr. At the time their debates were first being aired, during the late 1960s, being gay was not socially acceptable to the mainstream, but Gore Vidal was openly expressing his opinion that there's nothing abnormal about homosexuality. While never admitting he was gay, it's kind of widely accepted that Gore Vidal was - and while I feel like I'm treading on dangerous ground here, it's suggested in this documentary that William F. Buckley Jr. may have been also. He seems to have the mannerisms, but honestly - they also square neatly with people who are extremely wealthy intellectuals. Both of these men had rubbed shoulders with political giants (Buckley Jr. ended up being a close friend, confidante and advisor to Ronald Reagan, while Gore Vidal's sister-in-law was Jackie Kennedy, giving him access to the inner circle being related to JFK opened up) and were born with silver spoons in their mouths. They were both writers, and were both the same age (their birth dates were only one month apart.) This documentary shows how parallel their lives really were, but it seems that political views can be friendship kryptonite.

In the end I really liked what this documentary was really about - how it bemoaned the fact that back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, political debate was still possible in a meaningful way because all Americans were watching the same three television channels. These days, everyone is watching media that simply confirms their worldview - right or wrong - and that impedes the discourse and discovery essential to the healthy progress of our functioning political processes. Best of Enemies is best exemplified as being emblematic of that by working as a worthy and tolerable watch from people on both sides of the fence. We get to revel and commiserate with both William F. Buckley Jr.'s glorious victories and agonizing defeats and Gore Vidal's. We get to hear withering debate from both sides, look at the people making these arguments, and see how much we've got in common with those we hate simply because they espouse views we think are incorrect and unsound. From a historical point of view, we get to see the seed of future culture wars being planted at a time of great civil unrest in America. All of that makes for a very interesting and stimulating hour and a half - and makes this a really good documentary.

Glad to catch this one - a play based on this documentary was written by James Graham, premiering at the Young Vic in 2021. The film itself premiered at Sundance in 2015 - highly rated and winner of numerous film awards.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Best of Enemies

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At it's core, The Fits is a coming of age drama that takes place in Cincinnati, with eleven-year-old Toni (Royalty Hightower) starting to find herself when she happens upon a girl's dance team called the Lionesses, joining them and making the transition from more tomboyish pursuits such as boxing with her brother, who is older and a kind of mentor. What makes it more unique are the background events framed against Toni's story, which incorporate a contagious series of fits that all the girls eventually find themselves having. The source of these convulsive and scary episodes is a mystery, but slowly, as the days progress, one girl after another find themselves afflicted. As the newsworthy events evolve, it becomes obvious that experiencing this has become a kind of rite of passage for the girls - with those who have just had their attack suddenly finding themselves popular, and the source of wonder as they recount what it felt like. Are they really the victim of some biological, physical illness, or are the victims continuing the process because they feel compelled to play their part in a kind of conversion disorder? Will Toni find herself an outcast if she never gets to experience one of these fits?

First-time director Anna Rose Holmer found inspiration for this film when she became interested in stories involving historic cases of mass psychogenic illness - the most famous of which is probably the Dancing plague of 1518, which occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (France). It's generally regarded as a case of stress-induced hysteria - us humans being particularly susceptible to certain kinds of influence under certain situations. As kids we're particularly vulnerable to influences, especially from our peers - so makes sense that this kind of thing would propagate in the environment we have in this film, but that makes me wonder - why doesn't this happen with any regularity in real life? In any case, although I'm focusing on it right here there is a much more heavy emphasis on Toni herself, and her personal story than there is on what's happening with this series of seizures - making The Fits far, far more grounded than what I'm making it sound like. It's slow-paced, and our protagonist hardly speaks a word during the first half of the film - and I think that's more because she's reserved than shy. I expect it has a much more heavy resonance with those who grew up girls, with specific kinds of girlhood experiences explored in many scenes.

I could see that it was doing many interesting things film-wise, and I'm really interested in the whole 'conversion disorder' side of things, so I feel a little guilty and disappointed that The Fits didn't grab me as much as it has others. Being a regular movie-watcher, I might be suffering from a little "coming of age fatigue", and while I obviously think that a female perspective is absolutely essential to cinema, and too-often disregarded, I found it hard to identify with a movie in which one of the central metaphors is related to the onset of menstruation, and there are so many connections being made with the minds of those in the audience who grew up girls. I can't say I wasn't intrigued by it's approach however, and as is usual I kind of feel the urge to watch it again after thinking about it as much as I have as a requirement to write about it. Essentially, it's a movie about initiation - the kind of which you can't control, which can leave people at risk of isolation if the initiated consider themselves a tight-knit group or community. Using dance enhances everything Holmer is looking at because it's an activity in which those participating keep in step, and replicate what others are doing - whether that be painting your nails, piercing your ears or having a convulsive fit.

Glad to catch this one - 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, 90/100 on Metacritic, and a winner of various film festival awards after gaining universal acclaim.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Fits

To let you off the hook a little here: I didn't think that this movie really did what it had set out to do. The idea is just fine, but it's not executed in a way that cuts to the heart of belonging and the idea of "affliction" as being a right of passage. It's frustrating, because it's right there, so close to saying something powerful about performance and belonging and things in your body that are out of your control, but it somehow falls a bit flat. I think this is merely an okay film, menstruation not required.


Also, a friend just posted a trailer for a new Saulnier film! "But then I was like, nahhhhh". Very much looking forward to it.

I really struggled to pinpoint why this movie didn't excite me more, despite the fact it had all the elements of a really great film - and had so much going for it. In the end, flailing around in the dark, I think I settled on me not relating to the feminine perspective (and a very unfortunate grasp for a potential metaphor there) - but I think you simply said it more succinctly, plainly and in an infinitely better way. It's frustrating, because The Fits really is hovering around that area of awesomeness like a golf shot that is one blade of grass from being a hole in one.

The delivery of that line - I'm going to be all over Rebel Ridge as soon as it's released as well. Good timing, getting into Jeremy Saulnier's stuff right now!

I have that too sometimes. Like "Maybe this movie would resonate with me if I were [a parent/a baseball fan/a veteran]". And certain parts of the movie definitely capture some of the anxiety of adolescent girlhood, but those moments of recognition aren't the difference between "getting" this movie and not getting it.

My getting the movie, liking/admiring it in many ways and enjoying it were never all on the same page with this one. Usually those three catch the same bus, but this time one walked, one caught the bus and the other stayed home.

Ever since I first saw You Only Live Twice as a kid, it has been stamped into my mind that gender inequality is so broadly accepted in Japan that people can walk about saying "a woman's job is to serve a man" without being considered chauvinist - at least in the 1960s - but the bar hostesses in Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs strike an unusual balance between independence and subservience. The bars that light up certain districts are being kept profitable by free-thinking ladies with business plans of their own, and they basically do what they can to make a guy feel special so the business they work for thrives. It's not particularly noble much of the time, with these ladies often being tasked with luring wealthy new patrons by having dalliances with them and more - but their earnings provide them with opportunities. Keiko Yashiro (Hideko Takamine) is considered fairly old to be one of these hostesses (she's approaching 30 - so old!), and being a widow, she's of the opinion that she'd like to open a bar of her own. If she could only scrape up enough money to do so. The only other option is to marry again, but matters of finance and the heart can be cruel, and her path is strewn with disappointment, dashed hope, and the mirage of happiness.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is narrated by Keiko, who compares these bars during daylight hours to ladies without make-up on, in a very poetic, Japanese way. She's a little severe with her family, but the demands they make for money (to keep her brother out of jail, to help with her nephew's hospital bills and placate her mother) come right on the heels of her financially troubled friend's (Yuri - played by Keiko Awaji) suicide - where at Yuri's funeral the creditors come a-knocking to demand Yuri's mother pay up - now. While Japan's economy really takes off, it seems there are plenty of people biting off more than they can chew, hoping to emulate the success of others. But despite Keiko's taciturn attitude to many, she won my sympathy wholeheartedly - losing her husband at such a young age, and having this tough gig by circumstance helps, but I was mostly won over by way of a truly wide-ranging, sorrowful, angst-ridden performance from Takamine. It sees her exploring the depths of desperation people like her character are driven to in a system that's not geared towards a woman having much chance at succeeding. While being a hostess doesn't look like the most wonderful of occupations, the clock is ticking and the abyss looms in front of poor Keiko.

So - what I liked about When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is that it shows quite clearly that although Japan had a culture where women had seemingly always been seen the way they were, it was still obvious to artists like Mikio Naruse and writer Ryūzō Kikushima that this was unfair, and that the whole "hostess" line of employment wasn't something anybody would really enjoy as a career choice without feeling demeaned. Whenever Keiko goes up those stairs, it seems like a little part of her spirit and self-respect dies a little - but she sees her chance to own one of these establishments as something she can look at and consider that all of those years did amount to something that she could be proud of (another, very different, form of ascension.) Unfortunately, to have enough money to do this puts her at the mercy of the men she's been entertaining for so long, and the men who treated Yuri with such contempt and lack of respect. There are many great performances in this - but the only one that really counts is Hideko Takamine's, who covers all the bases in an emotional sense, and it's to Mikio Naruse's credit as well that the exploration of her character isn't one-sided or glib. I was so, so, so sad and affected by her and this film - and feel a deeper appreciation for how tough it was for women in 1960s Japan who wanted more than to simply be of service to a man.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #377, with a 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Also included in Kinema Junpo Critic's Top 200 best Japanese films of all time.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.

When people speak about abuses/inequities of the past, that common line is "Well, people didn't know any better." But the fact is . . . people DID know better. And it's always interesting seeing glimpses of that in art (books, movies, music) from those eras.

You've never seen Grey Gardens?! Ooh, you are in for a treat. I think about that movie at least once a week, and after you watch it I'll tell you specifically why.

Our introduction to Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (known as "Big Edie") and Edith Bouvier Beale ("Little Edie") in Grey Gardens does a little to malign them in our eyes to start with, but at the same time it's quite accurate. Instead of it being on the personal level brothers Albert and David Maysles manage to give us through the rest of this film, we at first see them as their fellow East Hampton residents do in New York. That is, through news reports on a general call to arms because of the state the Beale house is in - which includes the mess a few dozen cats make, along with the wildlife they freely invite to take up residence. It's the kind of squalor you encounter sometimes on your local news, on TV shows about hoarders or even, if you're unfortunate, in real life - but what strikes us as most incongruent about this case is the fact that the Beales are close, direct family members of ex-U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. This virtually makes them American royalty, and in newspaper clippings we see that Jackie Kennedy herself ended up paying a visit with a crew of her own to fix the place up and save these two ladies from the possible consequences the Suffolk County Health Department had in store for them. If that's not a shaky enough start in itself, our first impression when we actually meet and start to get to know these two ladies is that they're both dancing to the beat of a very different drum to most of us.

Once we're settled in, and have gotten used to the dynamic, our whole perspective starts to change. Sure, Little Edie might be suffering from a little arrested development (she strikes me as being perpetually around 14-years of age) and their standards of clean, healthy living might be a little impaired, but there's certainly overlap with the craziest members of my family. This all sweetens all the more once you know them well enough to understand that they're actually nice. The mechanism behind this revelation is the relationship mother and daughter manage to build with camera-operator and director (at times either Albert or David), which starts to feel quite intimate and inclusive. It reminds me of the Kirsten Johnson methodology concerning bringing herself - the observer - into the picture in Cameraperson. You don't feel the presence of either during the first half of this documentary, but as the ladies reference them more and more, they start to appear - as if ghosts summoned via invocation. In fact, there are many uncomfortable (and yet seemingly, sweet and adorable) moments where it seems Little Edie is flirting with one or the other. Overall, it's obvious that there's a deep reservoir of love shared between mother and daughter as well, who bicker as any parent and offspring might.

The Beale house, Grey Gardens itself, is ramshackle, flea-ridden, filthy and in disrepair. The gardens surrounding it aren't really gardens anymore - with overgrown fields of weed and grass, tangled vines, and dense scrubland as far as the eye can see. The critters most of us try to keep out are lovingly fed with the bread and cat food Little Evie deposits in the attic, and they can constantly be heard skittering in every gap open to them throughout this wonderland. From the heart of all this comes singing and dancing - with Big and Little Edie (the former once a recognized singer, and still capable of pleasing the ear) often filling the air with impromptu tunes. Their existence doesn't seem an unhappy one - just, nostaligic to the point of being a little regretful. It just seems typically familial in many ways. Although seemingly being reclusive, there's a gardener, Brooks Hyers, and handyman, Jerry Torre, seemingly caught in their orbit. Look, it felt like I could literally smell their filthy living conditions at times watching this (how anyone could sleep on Big Edie's mattress is beyond me), but I actually enjoyed listening to them wax lyrical about their past, in their very own eccentric manner. They are now both immortalised on film, their personalities igniting a fever-dream of reminiscence, mother-daughter ties, peculiarity and dilapidation. All very human, and not without a touch of sadness despite the hurricane force of manic energy and joie de vivre that emanates from our subjects. Set against the physical ruins of what was obviously a grand place years ago, there are echoes of what once were - and that combined with the connection we manage to make with the Beales - who so often look back - worked through me, right into my heart as a profound contemplation of how a life goes by.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #123 (which also includes The Beales of Grey Gardens, a companion film edited together from unused footage in 2006). In the 2014 Sight and Sound poll film critics voted Grey Gardens the tenth-best documentary film of all time. In a PBS poll conducted in 2012, it topped the list of the 100 greatest documentary films of all time.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Grey Gardens

^ Great film but start with Jean de Florette 1986 mate, Manon of the Spring is "Part 2".

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Ah! Jean de Florette was the very next film on my watchlist - I must have put these two in at the same time. Thanks for the info!

Next : Jean de Florette (1986)

Enjoy! Both of them combined are in my new and refreshed top 250. Look forward to your review(s).

So sometimes I let my cats have a midnight snack, and instead of putting it in each bowl I will sometimes just drop some kibble on the ground, and I always picture myself as Little Edie throwing the cat food to the raccoons.

Totally bonkers & so good. Seen it so many times. Surprisingly, the fictional movie with Drew Barrymore was very good too.