Patriotism (1966)

Published on The Solute 12/2/2019.

Not all film is autobiographical.  But sometimes, it can be scarily precognitive.

3 Songs About Lenin (1934)

Originally published on The Solute on 1/15/2020.

A lot of the time, when choosing what to write about for Year Of The Month, I deliberately choose something I’ve seen many times and have a personal connection to. Once in a while, though, I throw caution to the winds and choose something I’ve never seen.  In this case, caution went out the window, down the hill and off a cliff as I chose something I’d literally never even heard of: Three Songs About Lenin (Три песни о Ленине).

El Orfanato (The Orphanage)

Originally published on The Solute on 2/10/2020.

Once in a while, a movie makes me wish I could come at certain movies through personal experience, like seeing Gravity through the eyes of an astronaut or seeing Clueless through the eyes of a teenage girl. I think it might add something to my experience of those movies, great as they are at expressing those experiences.

The Top Ten of 2019

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Sarah Conner is back and the world faces a new fate.

As Boas Maneiras (Good Manners, 2017)

Two women in São Paulo deal with pregnancy, love and werewolves.

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

Not great, but it won me over after a while with a certain amount of charm and Kunis & McKinnon really do play well off of each other. Definitely worth a rental if you’re looking for a fun, dumb action comedy. (Plus, at one point Justin Theroux sings some Fine Young Cannibals and it’s kind of amazing.)

Oh, and I really enjoyed the running gag of Ivanna Sakhno as your standard Supermodel Ice Queen Spy but with the twist of her increasing exasperation of having to deal with these two oversharing numbskulls.

★★ ★ 

2018 - Written and irected by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra, written by Susanna Fogel & David Iserson.