Spring Slump

Post-Q1 hangover

We’re entering a tough movie-going phase, post-Oscars, pre-Cannes and subsequent festivals. This time of year I tend to do my clean up of the final screenings from last year’s festivals and see as many re-releases as possible. Right now Angelika Village East is in the middle of their Kubrick retrospective, Cinema 123 is doing musicals for May, etc. This winter, I also started attending 99 Minutes at Nightclub 101 here and there. It’s a wonderful program featuring short films on select Wednesday nights hosted by Marie & moderated by all sorts of interesting people. So, while I lament a lack of big time contenders, I’m lucky to be able to find so many wonderful things in between.

Honestly, I’ve felt underwater the last few weeks even though I’ve been high and dry spending time in the desert, staring at the river from the 14th floor of my office and rotting in my bed watching the Mets collapse day after day (14 games in, but baseball is all about drama). So today while I shelf some more focused posts, I figured I’d do a quick recap of the movies I’ve watched Jan-March.

On a disgusting January day, my friend Eli and I visited the Museum of the Moving Image. We started with the Jim Henson exhibit, annd after getting emotional about Muppets, we continued upstairs. As we climbed we heard the Mission Impossible theme then seconds later, we were greeted by a massive banner announcing a retrospective of the 8 films. This prompted an immediate re-watch upon returning to my apartment that evening. At present, I’m up to the 5th one and I’ve been earnestly enjoying them even when they’re undeniably bad. At minimum, I’m expanding my palate for action blockbusters. At most, I’m getting a jump start on a pre-Digger Tom Cruise binge.

While cat-sitting in Brooklyn, I trapesed through the snow to the Prospect Park Nitehawk to see The Housemaid solo. I truly never thought “Cinnamon Girl” by Lana Del Rey could make me burst out laughing, but this delicious piece of garbage proved me wrong. This is also around the time 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple came out. I’ve been loving this franchise & will be booking a first class ticket (my feet) to an AMC to see the next one, should it get funding.

The final blizzard of the winter was peppered with home-viewings of the following: Totally Fucked Up by Greg Araki, Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break (my most rewatchable film ever), and 1998’s Wild Things. In the middle of Totally Fucked Up, something totally fucked up happened: a mouse ran into my living room. This was during one of the 14+ inch snowstorms & I was getting stir crazy. I almost welcomed the second beating heart… almost. I guess can’t help but find some admiration for a mouse that only comes out for an experimental gay 90s film. I yelled at it to go back where it came from and, to my surprise, it did just that. When the snow cleared enough for the exterminator to come, he said it must have gone back through the freshly-chewed hole behind my oven. He filled it and that was a wrap on my brief brush with my gay guy mouse.

One windy weekend, I saw The Voice of Hind Rajab, The Moment and Pillion, insane 1, 2, 3, I know. The former is one of the only movies I’ve ever chosen to not rate on Letterboxd. How do you rate a tragedy? I walked home feeling weird about the gamification of critique on top of the insane weight of living through this horrendous slaughter. I thoroughly enjoyed both The Moment & Pillion, both gave me some kind of renewed spring hope of making things and finding freedom in exploration. Watching the bikers in Pillion enjoy the summer in various levels of workwear and bondage made me feel insane sitting in the theater in 3 pairs of pants. I remember walking home from both (one at AMC 19, one at Angelika) and arriving at the intersection of 12th and 5th to be met with twin gusts of wind that almost knocked me over exactly 24 hours apart.

We’re 5 films into our 8th season of Film Club. So far this year we’ve done The Apartment (1960), Evil Does Not Exist (2023), Crash (1996), Zodiac (2007), and Monster (2003). Up next is our first of two Robert Redford selections, Three Days of the Condor (1975). Of the first five, my favorite was Crash. I’d seen it a few times before, most recently at The Roxy a few years ago. I’m such a big Cronenberg fan, which absolutely tracks if you know me well. Since February, one of my employees presented me with a mold of his upper jaw and one of my teammates showed me her full 360 dental x-ray & shortly after sent me a photo of her freshly extracted wisdom teeth with an explanation that they wouldn’t let her keep them to give to me. This is all serving as a wonderful reminder that I am very lucky to work somewhere where they value individuality.

Wide release wrap includes Wurthering Heights, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie (so good I saw it twice: once in New York and once on a weekend trip to see my friends in Philly), Sirāt, Reminders of Him, and most recently, The Drama. Wurthering Heights… no comment other than great Charli soundtrack. Sirāt was one of the most frustrating watches for me in years despite eventually coming to terms with really liking it. Screenshot of my typo-riddled review below. Reminders of Him was part of a time-honored tradition where my friend Shirley and I see an absolute piece of trash and end up tearing up regardless. It was a terrible movie but Lauren Graham got me at the end. I LOVED The Drama. It’s maybe a little too fresh to totally get into as I believe it’s best seen with as little context as possible. There’s something cooking for a longer post about general audience inability to trust an artist with a story (see: The Pitt, the impending season 3 of Euphoria).

Just before I left for New Mexico, like literally 7 hours before my plane took off, I saw Marc by Sofia followed by a discussion with Marc Jacobs and Sofia Coppola. My friends joked this was like when you say a dog’s favorite words to watch their head tilt in different interested directions. Marc’s fresh off the runway Miu Miu headband and Sofia’s crystal brooch were the twin-stemmed cherries on top of a beautiful evening.

This past week I was at IFC twice. Once for Miriors No. 3, a quick German jaunt named for one of my favorite pieces of music. Next for the first NYC screening of Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers. The latter was followed by a Q&A with Soderbergh, screenwriter Ed Solomon, Michaela Cole, Ian McKellan and Jessica Gunning. I loved this film. If you can find it playing I highly recommend, especially if you have complicated relationships with one or more artists in your life.

What I’m Watching This Week

I need to watch Three Days of the Condor, as previously mentioned. It’s our Tuesday meeting and as of 1pm on Sunday, I haven’t watched it yet.

I’m hoping to see Exit 8 soon. I’ve enjoyed Neon’s marketing for this so much with the “walking man” appearing in various MTA stations last week.

As I wrap this up, the final game of the Mets v. A’s series is just getting underway. I only know pain.