Category: Fours

Sculpted Spatial Force Is this the best film ever made? For me today in its afterglow it is. I’m so fickle. I think if all else were equal, I’ll always take embodied, real cinema that is coherently integrated. The way of telling the story is ideally complex and folded, using tricks to make the story… Continue reading I Am Cuba (1964)

Insides of Emma (The Fall of Angels) When I watch a movie, all sorts of machinery kicks in. I am aware of only some of that, and can massage and train only a bit of it — of what I see of myself. This machinery is based on layers, folding, recursion. It is just how… Continue reading Inception (2010)

Gently Weeps This film hit a sweet spot for me. It merges essential Shintoism, magic and origami in a story about storytelling, four subjects of deep interest for me. This is orgasmic level engagement, this mix. I need to see it again in 3D to see if it improves. This would have been the very… Continue reading Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Every Hair on your Head One of the key things a storyteller needs to decide is the tense of the story. Is it something that happened in the past, is happening now or will/could happen? Each of these bestows riches on a film and we have some masterpieces of each. Krzysztof Kieslowski explored these each… Continue reading 21 Grams (2003)

The Women This is an amazing experience, becoming more so the further we get from it. When I see “Apocalypse Now, or even “Mosquito Coast” I see this. In fact whenever I see both an actor and a director/writer risking all in a coordinated way, I see this. And when I see a combination of… Continue reading Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

Solid Shadows with Death Wishes I know a few of this man’s films. They are among the richest experiences I know, but I was surprised at how deeply this one worked on me. The surprise comes in part from knowing how specific his target audience was. I am the right generation but the wrong decade… Continue reading Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967)

Subterranean Drugs I’m involved in a study of ‘folding’ in film; folding is a matter of overlain or referenced narratives. Sometimes the folding is something only of interest to highbrow specialists, but usually it is a matter of fun. Some folding is a matter of introducing bizarre conventions, and once they enter in one film… Continue reading The Phantom Empire (1935)

The Witch’s Looking-glass I’m putting this on my list of films you must see. It is short and at first glance completely uninteresting. But look again. Here’s what happens: Young Frankenstein goes to college where he discovers the secret of life. Interesting that the filmmakers would think it cinematic to watch a man think and… Continue reading Frankenstein (1910)