The allure and danger of looking. Framed perfectly by the opening scene of gawkers over the man killed on the train tracks.

Second Safdie Christmas Day family movie outing.

Just a sequence of events. Almost all plot and no meaningful consequence.

I was asked by a friend’s partner what this was about, and I replied along the lines of “what’s any piece of art about?”, eliciting boos from another friend.

This works best as just a thing to encounter and react to. To borrow from Sontag, “an erotics of art”. I was grinning throughout so much of the film, relishing in the implausible things I was seeing and feeling. It's hard to have an overall reaction to a series of vignettes, and I don't know that the cinema-senses-time link really delivers. But as a whole, I was entranced by what I was seeing. Falling into a shared dream with a mostly full theater crowd.

Couldn’t live up to its predecessor, since they’re effectively out of reveals to surprise with.

One moment did stick out: the first half of the sex scene in the film, and how it genuinely looked and moved the way that actual human beings have sex, as opposed to the way it’s often depicted on screen.

Less funny than I'd hoped. It is interesting how the original title can be read as "Supermarket Women" and be just as applicable.

Wall-to-wall bangers. I’ve been a big fan of Ya Got Trouble for years, and so it’s wonderful to encounter it in its context.

I’m fond of how Marian is protrayed. Contrary to so many romantic roles for women, she isn't naïve or duped or fragile or anything. She sees Hill for who he is, and she’s fine with the deception, and the expected short-lived interactions, because it's just nice to feel wanted some times.

I did love the lighting effects on display here, where the entire sun could fade out an leave a solitary figure in spotlight.

Oshii is my favorite nonsense merchant. There’s something endearing about someone smashing together religious and philosophical texts like a child with their action figures. Sometimes beauty emerges from that. Sometimes it doesn’t. I’m never unhappy with the time spent, though.

This one benefits from the sparseness of dialog. Sure we get some Noah’s Ark stuff, but mostly we just get to encounter the images, and feel their tension. It called to mind how classical music and jazz never have to defend their abstractness, but film does, which is a shame. This watches this like a symphony.

It’s a shame the film is so ugly when it doesn’t need to be. Unclearly motivated soft focus everywhere. Tons and tons of medium close-ups, to the point where it isn't always obvious where two characters, who are speaking, are relative to one another (especially egregious is the main confrontation between mother and daughter).

Made me think of better films that touch on what comes after one’s creative peak. Especially Mo Better Blues, which gives us that necessary coda that's mostly lacking here.

A common defense of media is “The depiction of [juvenile or explotative thing] is a critique of [thing]!” and I rarely buy it. Depiction isn’t neutral. The manner of depiction conditions the way the audience receives it. This film can't be critiquing the ‘stunted psychology’ of Denji when at every turn it indulges in it with bare-assed fan service. Based on the manner of depiction, and the fan response to it, it seems clear that the expected audience should not merely empathize with, but be reflected in Denji.

The only repite is when all the characters dissolve into the abstracted images of action.

Ultimately too constrained by its twin genre conventions (the AIDS film and the coming of age film) to do much of interest. Its one feature that I really appreciated was that the character who ultimately succumbs to AIDS was allowed to be a full person (necessarily so due to being a historical figure). He’s selfish and thorny and flawed in ways that so many fictional characters in similar circumstances aren’t permitted to be.

Third movie of the Roxie’s “Graveyard Shift” marathon.

The film I’d been waiting for all night. I’d heard about its metatextual qualities and was primed and ready. When the film opened in French, with no subtitles, I assumed that was part of it. It wasn’t for 5-10 minutes before the film was stopped, and the maestro of the evening apologized for the mixup, in French, and assured us they were working on it. After one more false start, they gave up, and welcomed us to sit back and enjoy Wes Craven’s Nouveau Nightmare. Alas, on the third go, it was in English.

Fun movie, but not as fun as those first 15 minutes.

The second film of the Roxie’s “Graveyard Shift” marathon.

The crassness and vulgarity of it was made more palatable by seeing it in a group setting, with many who were well aware of it. Being able to share in our repulsion at various moments made dealing with those moments easier, where watching it alone would produce a far more sleazy sensation.