Anoher month where I wasn’t really watching that many movies, because my brain felt as if it was time to watch TV shows and/or do something else entirely altogether; I blame the fact that I somehow fell fully into a rewatch of The West Wing, more than anything else. (Eight of the films in the list below are shorts, so it looks deceptively long.) Nonetheless, I want to call out the following things:
- Gimme Danger, a documentary about the Stooges and Iggy Pop’s early career, is a genuine joy, and left me with all manner of warm feelings about Mr. Iguana Pop himself.
- Cool World is fascinatingly bad; it’s one of those movies that you watch, and then go research because it’s so bad and you wonder what kind of shenanigans went on behind the scenes, because surely that was no-one’s artistic vision. (Shenanigans did in fact go on behind the scenes, but having read up on what the original vision of the movie was, I’m not sure it would’ve been that much better.)
- The fact that The Housemaid was a massive hit and out-earned Sinners at the box office last year is truly depressing, now that I’ve seen both movies. The Housemaid is so flat and dull that it did little beyond convince me that Sydney Sweeney has anti-charisma.
- Teenage Superstars — a documentary about the Scottish indie music scene of the 1980s and (very) early 1990s — made me very happy not just for nostalgic reasons (but also, definitely that) but because it’s full of people telling the smallest story imaginable with good humor and occasionally a funny joke.
- I re-watched R.E.M.: Road Movie and R.E.M.: Tourfilm in one evening, speaking of music and 1980s/90s nostalgia. I wore both of those movies out on tape when I was a kid.
