The telos of this website, its abiding purpose, is a record of the things that I have read and watched. For the reasons undergirding this project see comments on cultural consumption.
The greatest hits of March 2025:
Ruben Östlund’s Triange of Sadness, which is fucking brilliant and hilarious, as always; Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies, for which I cannot be forgiven for not having seen sooner; Disney’s Andor, which I would never have suspected would be possible from the same studio behind the tripe of The Mandolorian; and John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath — freaking beautiful — the first 20 minutes should be mandatory viewing for any high school students trying to understand the Great Depression.
Biggest misses of March ’25:
Ahsoka, and really, who is surprised? not me; The Bear, which is actually not bad, it’s just not really good … and it suffers from a lot of mediocre actors; and The Driver, which thank god a movie is not just dialogue.
March 1
— Ahsoka (2023), half of first episode
Created by Dave Filoni; starring Rosario Dawson, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ray Stevenson, Ivanna Sakhno, Diana Lee Inosanto, David Tennant, and Lars Mikkelsen.
I wanted to believe, but it was just too dumb from the very beginning.
— How to Get Away with Murder (2014), 1.1, half of first episode
Created by Peter Nowalk; starring Viola Davis, Billy Brown, Alfred Enoch, Jack Falahee, Katie Findlay, Aja Naomi King, Matt McGorry, and Karla Souza.
Dumb dumb dumb.
— Aliens (1986)
Directed and written by James Cameron; starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, William Hope, and Al Matthews.
Aliens could have been the film that broke my horror film cherry (please excuse the language). But I pussed out and remained a horror film virgin until …
— The Bear, 2023, 2.1–2
Created by Christopher Storer; starring Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Abby Elliott, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas, Matty Matheson, and Oliver Platt.
— NYRB on O’Hagan, the war on drugs, and letters from resisters in Russia
— Henrik Pontopiddan, Lucky Per, 60 pp.
March 2
— The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Directed by John Ford, with a screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on the novel by John Steinbeck; starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin, Dorris Bowdon, Russell Simpson, O.Z. Whitehead, and John Qualen.
Once again I find myself embarrassed because I had not sooner seen this incredible film. And I must confess that I watched in on broadcast television (a shoutout to earlier days) on the Movies Channel (29-2) that I receive over the airwaves. I confess this because this means that it was interrupted by numerous advertisements breaks.
Regardless, John Carradine’s performance is standout. As has been recognized (albeit not said explicitly) by the Criterion Collection’s “Scene Stealers: Best Supporting Actors,” a collection promoted just before the Oscars (zum Beispiel, Gloria Grahame in The Bad and the Beautiful, Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda, and others I don’t know and don’t want to know).
From the moment Carradine comes on the screen he’s sort of annoying but also fascinating, the former preacher that’s lost the calling. Eventually a Wobbly, if he’d lived long enough. Fonda is undoubtedly the protagonist, but everyone needs their Scottie Pippen.
— NYRB on Anthony Hecht, Afghanistan
— Lucky Per, 35 pp.
— Triangle of Sadness (2022)
Directed and written by Ruben Östlund; starring Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Woody Harrelson, Dolly de Leon, Zlatko Burić, Iris Berben, Vicki Berlin, and Sunnyi Melles.
This is the third and maybe best film I’ve seen by Östlund. The first was Force Majore and second was The Square. Both of those I enjoyed so much. And the former was so fucking hilarious. And the ending was beautiful (“I didn’t know that you smoked”).
This film is less of a film in several meaningful senses than the others. For example, it’s explicitly broken up into pieces (Part 1, 2, and 3). The question being if each of those pieces is equal to the others, in conversation with the others, of a piece with the others …
March 3
— The Driver (1978), last hour
Directed by Walter Hill, who also wrote the screenplay; starring Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern, Isabelle Adjani, Ronee Blakley, Matt Clark, Felice Orlandi, Joseph Walsh, and Rudy Ramos.
Man, it’s a good thing Ryan O’Neal is so gaddamned good looking, because otherwise what would his contribution to this weak movie have been. Bruce Dern’s character is doubtlessly the most interesting. But there is also Isabelle Adjani, whose beauty is absolutely breathtaking.
Feel a bit sheepish saying this about Adjani because the basis for this judgment is wholly subjective, right? Yet I must admit that it is Adjani’s appearance in this film — not her character, per se — that is so stunning. And while I think she’s a beautiful woman, it’s really just in this film that she’s so stunning (I think I’ve also seen Truffaut’s Adele H., and have def seen Herzog’s Nosferatu, not seen Besson’s Subway, nor Ishtar, maybe Camille Claudel).
Moreover, women are a commodity in film (perhaps all visual media!?). And that is an understatement. Arguably more important than the actual performance is the promise and suggestion that a person’s appearance offers to filmmakers.
What better example of it than Valley of the Dolls, which would probably have been forgotten if Sharon Tate had not been so cruelly murdered.
— Valley of the Dolls (1967), last hour
Directed by Mark Robson, with a screenplay by Helen Deutsch and Dorothy Kingsley, based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann; starring Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate, Susan Hayward, Paul Burke, Lee Grant, Tony Scotti, and Alexander Davion.)
— Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), first hour
Directed by Russ Meyer, with a screenplay by Roger Ebert; starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, John Lazar, Michael Blodgett, David Gurian, Edy Williams, and Erica Gavin.
I think one night, late at night, I’d read about this film. But it’s a hilarious sort of conceit, Roger Ebert and Russ Meyer working together to make a movie! Of course, this is probably because I know Roger Ebert principally from his contributions to film criticism on the public television.
Yet the film itself is worthy of at least hour hour’s viewing — maybe not the whole thing.
— Lucky Per, 40 pp.
— Adrian Johns, Science of Reading, 25 pp.
— NYRB on music and memorial after the Holocaust
March 6
— Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg, with a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, and a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan; starring Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm Elliott, Wolf Kahler, and Alfred Molina.
— Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), first 20 minutes
Directed by Steven Spielberg, with a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, and a screenplay by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz; starring Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Ke Huy Quan, Amrish Puri, Roshan Seth, Philip Stone, Roy Chiao, and Ric Young.
The first time I’d tried to watch this in quite a long time. Kate Capshaw is absolutely dreadful. The story is stupid. Lucian banged the gong.
— Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Directed by Steven Spielberg, with a story by George Lucas and Menno Meyjes, and a screenplay by Jeffrey Boam; starring Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Denholm Elliott, Alison Doody, Julian Glover, River Phoenix, John Rhys-Davies, and Michael Byrne.
March 8
— The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli, with a screenplay by Charles Schnee, based on the short story Memorial to a Bad Man by George Bradshaw; starring Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame, Gilbert Roland, and Leo G. Carroll.
Given the hulabaloo about this film, I was disappointed. I generally feel doubtful about films entirely constructed of flashbacks (although there are of course exceptions!). Partially because they remind me of television episodes in which parts of older episodes are rerun with the characters waxing nostalgic about them. But of course, it’s just a chance for the show’s creators to bring out some of the greatest hits and not have to create a wholly new episode.
Of course, that doesn’t really apply here. But the film is itself broken into episodes and the most interesting is not the one with Gloria Grahame, but the one with Lana Turner. Turner’s character is sort of washed up before the fact, but Douglas’ Shields does everything to rejuvenate her, only to drop her like a bad habit when the most recent film is complete.
March 9
— House of Cards (1990), Episodes 1-3
Directed by Paul Seed and adapted by Andrew Davies from the novel by Michael Dobbs; starring Ian Richardson, Susannah Harker, David Lyon, Diane Fletcher, Miles Anderson, Malcolm Tierney, Alphonsia Emmanuel, and William Chubb.
— Lucky Per, 15 pp.
March 10-11
— House of Cards, 4
— Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1 (2014)
Directed by James Gunn, with a screenplay by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman, based on the Marvel Comics team created by Arnold Drake, Gene Colan, and Dan Abnett; starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel (voice), Bradley Cooper (voice), Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, and Karen Gillan.
First of all, yes, Gunn and whoever else are clever in their very, very effective usage of 70s/80s music as a soundtrack that is not merely a background effect, but a genuine part of diagesis.
But doesn’t that go the other way too? Should music ever be part of diagesis?
At least it’s not a freaking montage sequence meant to express the passage of time. That shit is so tired.
March 12
— NYRB on Richard Evans book on ordinary Germans, Chris Hayes’ book on attention
— Lucky Per, 35 pp.
March 15
— Lucky Per, 35pp
— Twister (1996)
Directed by Jan de Bont, with a screenplay by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin; starring Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes, Jami Gertz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lois Smith, Alan Ruck, and Jeremy Davies.
I suppose at one time this film wasn’t so hilarious? Nah, it was probably always so. Mainly in the conceit of the two teams struggling to implement their new invention and gain the data necessary to establish early warning systems. The scene where Hunt’s character tries to explain this is so plainly facile.
“They do it for the corporate sponsorship, not the science!”
Neither Cary Elwes nor Bill Paxton deserved this treatment. Helen Hunt, defintely, as she is incapable of the slightest thespian powers. And Philip Seymour Hoffman is enjoying every minute of this, camping it up.
March 16
— Destiny’s Son (Kiru, 1962)
Directed by Kenji Misumi, with a screenplay by Seiji Hoshikawa based on a story by Shōtarō Ikenami; starring Raizō Ichikawa, Shiho Fujimura, Chitose Maki, Takahiro Tamura, Mikijirō Hira, Rokkō Toura, Saburo Date, and Seiji Miyaguchi.
According to the Criterion Collection, this film and others by it are worthy of appreciation. I find myself dissenting. The most worthy part of this film is learning of the life of the central actor, Raizō Ichikawa, who fought vigorously against everything keeping him from success in his chose profession and yet being frowned upon by fate and cancer. The film and the actor’s biography bear an affinity.
March 20
— Lucky Per, 50 pp.
March 21
— Pearl Harbor (2001)
Directed by Michael Bay, with a screenplay by Randall Wallace; starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jon Voight, Alec Baldwin, Tom Sizemore, and Ewan Bremner.
Michael Bay’s visual imagination is so small, so insignificant. Luckily, it is adequate (see usage of this word below) to the size of most American movie-goers’ appetites. Say what you will (what I will, I suspect) Bay has intuited that movies are only a collection of images and so therefore has created a movie that is practically nothing but that. The romantic relationship(s) that are the structure of this film are so vacuous and fragile that they cannot anchor the historical events occurring around them.
March 22
— The Laughing Policeman (1973), first hour
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with a screenplay by Thomas Rickman based on the novel by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö; starring Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, Louis Gossett Jr., Albert Paulsen, Anthony Zerbe, Cathy Lee Crosby, Joanna Cassidy, and Paul Koslo.
— NRYB on the what would the Mueller investigation have been after Trump vs. U.S., British architect Sir John Soane‘s collection of antiquities
Answer to the first part: I am still shocked by the amazing lack of foresight involved in that decision. I mean, has there ever been such a monumental failure of the icons of American intellectual life to think outside of a incredibly limited political and historical view? It is still shocking to me. I remember walking around that day thinking, does anyone realize what just happened? Is everyone else in shock? No expression of disbelief seemed adequate.
On Clare Bucknell’s “Studies for His Mind“, being a review of Bruce Boucher’s Yale. U.P.-published John Soane’s Cabinet: Reflection on and Architect and His Collection. Soane (1753–1837) curated the extravagant collection at No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It sounds dazzling, honestly, albeit crowded (see below) together in a fashion that makes appreciation incredibly difficult.
What Bucknell does well at the beginning of the article is to arouse our fascination and interest in the collection. Then, having established that, she goes into the person whose personality and life created the collection. She posits that it is to the highest degree autobiographical and reflective of Soane’s concerns, triumphs, and failures. And the person, Soane, seems as tediously vengeful and thin-skinned as a certain contemporary personage. Unlike the latter, Soane creates a fascinating tableau avenging himself against those who he feels failed him: his profound sense of anger and failure to take any responsibilities for his life — least of all his inability to appreciate those who assisted him, like George Dance, his one-time mentor — are given expression in this remarkable collection of curios!
Perhaps tiresome, I cannot help thinking about how loathesome a person Soane was and about the inadvertent work that is done to burnish his posterity through an appreciation of his collection.
For more on the collection, see the Sir John Soane’s Museum London website.
March 23
— NYRB on the “The Labor Theory Of AI” and on Arlene Croce
— The Prestige (200?)
Directed by Christopher Nolan, written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan; starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, and that funny guy
March 24
— NYRB on westward expansion and doing justice to Native American history amidst