msicism posts
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The Section Formerly Known as Masters
Last year, TIFF edged toward maybe considering reviving its terminated Masters program(me), not by putting the section back but by adding a sort of subcategory to a few of its films in other sections. Seven films were labeled Luminaries, which strikes me as a fine new name for the old section, one that avoids any untow...
The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993)
BY REQUEST: Chris LesterLast seen November 2003. Although it's unfair, when I watch The Age of Innocence I cannot help comparing it in my mind with Terence Davies' astonishing The House of Mirth. Every good literary adaptation is, in part, a work of literary criticism, and these two artists, Davies and Scorsese...
Our Body (Claire Simon, 2023)
A film is always several things at once. To a great extent, it is a group of images and sounds that are assembled into a text, a piece of communication that has its own material relationships and formal coherence. But as a work of communication, a film always arrives within a social and cultural context. Mostly the tex...
Arcadia (Yorgos Zois, 2024)
Maximum big surprise?No, not exactly, but Arcadia is watchable enough, given that Zois lays out a number of worthy gimmicks and follows them where they'd logically go. If you ever plan on seeing this film (which I'd have bet the farm would end up in ND/NF, but what do I know), then you might want to check out h...
David Bordwell (1947-2024)
Few academics in the humanities have had the impact, in their field and beyond it, that David Bordwell had. He and his partner Kristin Thompson essentially created a whole new discourse within film studies, one that has influenced several generations of scholars but also film critics, filmmakers, and ordinary cinephile...
No Hard Feelings!
I've been meaning to leave a note here to acknowledge a situation that might be weird, although I certainly don't want it to be. A few of the recent choices from the subscriber lottery have been films that, as it turned out, I did not like very much. And I've been a little worried that the recommenders migh...
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow, 2023)
Like many of you, I've been hearing about Joanna Arnow for a while now. In cinephile circles, her films I Hate Myself :) and Bad at Dancing have gotten an unusual amount of attention for narrative shorts. As you may know, the formidable Dan Sallitt is a fan, and he's a tough customer, not exactly Mikey the Life...
The Aerial (Esteban Sapir, 2007)
BY REQUEST: DanielOne of the reasons I enjoy the subscriber lottery so much is that I end up watching films I almost certainly wouldn't otherwise see. And even when I don't like those films -- and indeed, I did not care for The Aerial -- I find myself thinking about my preferences and why certain things rub me ...
A Sense of Nothing (Francisco Rojas, 2024)
Rojas' last film, A Sea of Glass, was one of my favorite films from 2023, and I fessed up to the fact that I wanted to program it in my Houston show, but was worried its length would be too daunting for the audience. As if answering my hesitancy with an elegant, pristine "screw you," Rojas has produced A Se...
Lovely Rita (Jessica Hausner, 2001)
My feelings about Club Zero, which are conflicted but nevertheless quite negative, prompted me to go back to Jessica Hausner's debut, a film that I recall getting quite a bit of love on the festival circuit back in the day. Lovely Rita does give a pretty clear idea of where Hausner came from, artistically speaking....
Entrance Wounds (Calum Walter, 2023)
If you haven't yet read Phil Coldiron's piece in Cinema Scope #97, on the films of Ross Meckfessel, well, you should. But I mention it here because Phil's discussion of Meckfessel seems relevant to considering Calum Walter's latest film. The article describes open montage, an editing scheme that conscio...
Three Recent Films by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
The somewhat anonymous Mexican experimental film group Colectivo Los Ingrávidos are astonishingly prolific. When one checks in with their Vimeo page, it's often the case that the group have posted a sudden spate of new works. Some of them are fully digital, while others at least originate on celluloid. But I think...
Lottery Without Balls
There still remains one selector from the previous batch, but I wanted to go ahead and line up the next three deciders.As always, contact me either through Patreon messages or email (mjsicinski@gmail.com) and let me know what you'd like to me to watch and review.Thanks all!#27: AUSTIN LANDRY#58: DANIEL CLEMENS#46: ...
Club Zero (Jessica Hausner, 2023)
"The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life." (Walter Benjamin)I have little doubt that Jessica Hausner, who is clearly a talented and intelligent filmmaker, would be horrified by the insinuation that her new film Club Zero is an act of right-wing trolling. And it isn...
Anticipation of the Night (Stan Brakhage, 1958)
It's another InRO special, this time permitting me to go long, and hopefully deep, on one of Brakhage's first definitive works. Here's a sample:"It may be reductive to compare Schoenberg’s break with tonality with Brakhage’s development of a radically new cinematic language, one that largely abandon...
Short Fuse (Warren Sonbert, 1992)
Obviously there's a great deal to be said about Warren Sonbert's films on a formal level. His montage style was utterly unique in that it created small time-events while also avoiding linear narrative. Any two shots in Short Fuse could be analyzed according to Eisensteinian principles. Long shots tend to follow...
How to Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker, 2023)
ABOVE: a vaguely phallic swimming poolI must admit, I am not sure there is any version of this film I would have really appreciated. How to Have Sex is a young person's film, and the primary concerns of its protagonists are of very little concern to me. This alone is hardly disqualifying, but perhaps in trying to b...
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Phạm Thiên Ân, 2023)
It's a familiar gambit. A first-time filmmaker, uncertain that the funding vicissitudes of venture capital will ever allow him another at-bat, throws every stray idea into the debut, some sticking and others not. However, with Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Vietnamese director Phạm Thiên Ân takes this approach...
Recent InRO Pieces
Welp. With the official end of Cinema Scope after 25 years, In Review Online is now my main pipeline for getting my work into the wider world. (Granted, I am usually too busy to pitch stories or hit up editors, so if anyone on here has any tips or suggestions, I'd certainly appreciate it.)Anyhow, here's some st...
Maborosi (Koreeda Hirokazu, 1995)
BY REQUEST: Maxwell S.I'm not sure exactly how long ago I first saw Maborosi, since I only have screening logs going back to 2001. I am fairly sure it was the second Koreeda film I saw, going back to it after seeing (and very much enjoying) After Life in first-run at the Castro. A lot of it came back to me on this,...
Priscilla (Sofia Coppola, 2023)
Although I found Priscilla rote and rather tedious, I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be the film of Coppola's that gains admirers in subsequent decades. It is a distillation of the director's stylistic fascinations -- female identity, solitude, stiflingly perfect art direction and mise-en-scene. At the ...
Origin (Ava DuVernay, 2023)
Okay, so Origin is not a good film. There are a lot of things wrong with it. But it is also a very weird film.I have not read Isabel Wilkerson's book, so I am unable to speak to the nuances of her caste theory. However, as presented in DuVernay's film, its problems are fairly apparent. The impetus for this reth...
Good One (India Donaldson, 2024)
Above is the lone film still available for India Donaldson's Sundance premiere Good One. This is unfortunate, because I want to talk about a very specific scene at the start of the film's final third. The three hikers -- Sam (Lily Collias), her father Chris (James Le Gros), and his friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) ...
Lorang's Way (David and Judith MacDougall, 1977)
As usual, in my Writing 1302 courses we are studying documentary form. Since the students have to write a final research paper, I find it useful for them to examine documentaries, good and bad, in order to understand how arguments are constructed and how they incorporate evidence. And although it's a much denser re...
don't blow it in the vector (Richard Sides, 2014)
BY REQUEST: Nicki DuvalIf I had been seduced, or even intrigued, by the music under consideration in this lo-fi doc, I might've been able to overlook its formal and technical shortcomings. But the acts profiled -- Theo Burt, Mark Fell, Lorenzo Senni, and EVOL -- fall between chairs for me. To hear them talk, they m...
Selection Time Again
I did the lottery a bit different this time. Since Patreon now allows unpaid subscribers (who are pretty much just alerted when I post something), I decided to include them in the drawing, since who knows? That might be the nudge that prompts them to subscribe.However, there is no way to list just the paying and free s...
Captain Elliott's Circle (Jake Barningham, 2023)
BY REQUEST: Daniel GormanIf we take the position that essay films are essentially like written essays, only using visual and auditory input as part of their argumentative structure, then essay films ask to be read with a critical eye and this includes rhetorical analysis. Is the film structured in the best possible way...
Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène, 1966)
It seems that Black Girl, Ousmane Sembène's debut featurette, is destined to be his consensus masterpiece. While the cynical streak in me wonders whether Black Girl's brevity plays a role in it being the director's most widely seen film, I think there's much more to it. I finally caught up with Black G...
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig, 2023)
Ideologically, the polar opposite of Air, although perhaps the comparison is unfair. But where the Nike film mobilized and fetishized the past to release endorphins of nostalgia, Are You There God? returns to a point in history that is selected because of its difference from our own time. In our hour of need, Kelly Fre...
Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023)
We all know that the film industry and younger audiences are increasingly squeamish about overt depictions of sexuality on screen, so much so that Ira Sachs' Passages, a solid enough film on its own terms, was hailed by critics as something radical and transgressive, harking back to a freer time. Last year the disc...
