Dear friend,
once again I’m incredibly late for this post.
Even more incredibly late because the number of films I watch is decreasing, mostly because I’m getting impatient and I am not so inclined to finish a Netflix film when I see it’s going nowhere, especially if the dialogues sound like stock sentences from an 80s B-movie. I won’t name names.
MaXXXine, written and directed by Ti West, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐⭐ (previously: ⭐⭐½)
I was back in the ‘desperate search for something to watch on Netflix’ situation, so I ended up launching West’s latest film, despite not liking it very much on first watch. But it’s always good to give a movie a second chance to see how it plays out when you already have an inkling of where the story is going.
This time I… disliked it less. I still can’t say I enjoyed it: the nods and references to classic films may speak for the author’s love of cinema but mostly feel unjustified.
The final confrontation was shorter than I remembered - and maybe a bit more convincing thematically, now that it doesn’t come as a complete surprise - but I’m still puzzled by its resolution.
One Missed Call/着信アリ, directed by Takashi Miike, written by Minako Daira, based on the novel by Yasushi Akimoto, Japan, 2003 - ⭐⭐⭐
One of the J-Horror classics that even non-horror fans have heard about, and the one I had not yet watched. I was hoping for something strong - maybe not Audition-level extreme, but still a film that would go beyond the tropes of the genre. Instead, it seems quite uninspired - attracting comparisons to the movies that came earlier: a technologically-evolved Ringu of course, but also with a touch of Final Destination - although this aspect, later on, is explained through another long-haired ghost.
The scene in the TV studio was great.
I Saw the TV Glow, written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐⭐ (previously: ⭐⭐⭐½)
In the last week or two Netflix added to its catalogue a couple of films I previously rented because I thought they would never appear on streaming; one is Late Night with the Devil, and this is the other one. Again, I thought revisiting it would allow me to appreciate it more (especially after watching Schoenbrun’s previous film last week); I was hoping to grasp more about the gender-related theme I read so much about - but probably not enough: the narration is a bit too inscrutable for me. It’s like a piece of contemporary art: it can be beautiful or surprising, but sometimes I’d like it to help me understand it better.
Enemy, directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Javier Gullón, based on the novel O Homem Duplicado by José Saramago, Canada, 2013 - ⭐⭐⭐½
I think Enemy was the first Villeneuve film I ever watched, probably because I was intrigued by the synopsis and encouraged by reviews. Eleven years later, I think I’ve had the same reaction as the first time: sceptical for most of its duration, then fully on board by the end. It’s the third act that makes the film a success, and the very ending gives it a further boost for me.
Saturday Night, directed by Jason Reitman, co-written with Gil Kenan, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐
After two Ghostbusters, Reitman looks once again to the past to fictionalise the ninety minutes preceding the first episode of Saturday Night Live. I say ‘fictionalise’ because Reitman has said that everything that he put on screen actually happened… in the weeks before the first broadcast. Maybe it’s because I’m not very invested in the ‘source material’, but to me, this was quite uninteresting and self-indulgent. I think Reitman’s original idea of producing this as a single long take (an idea father Ivan advised against) would have made much more sense.
Willem Dafoe and J.K. Simmons absolutely steal the show, but I also loved how much Cory Michael Smith is immediately recognisable as Chevy Chase even without looking like him at all.