This month had me watching several Christopher Nolan movies, thanks to the TIFF Lightbox’s summer retrospective on him. I also went out of my way to watch several of the most popular-on-Letterboxd films for each decade—a strategy that I’d like to continue until I’ve seen at least the top 20 most popular films of each decade.
Paris, Texas
United Kingdom, Germany, France | 1984 | 145m | English, Spanish
The key image in this film is when his face is overlaid atop hers in the one-way mirror. Jane is to Travis only what he wants her to be, even after all that has happened. He doesn’t want to relinquish control over her, although I guess he accepts that she’s better off without him in the end.
I don’t have any sympathy for Travis. I don’t really have any for Jane, either. I don’t like movies that try to make me sympathize with bad parents who abandon their children (see my review of Close Encounters of the Third Kind). This is the first movie I watched after becoming a father myself, but I would have had the same reaction even without that fact. Paris, Texas just slightly earns a better score than my 2.5-star baseline for movies that make me go, “I mean, it was fine, I guess.” The cinematography is excellent. The use of color is fantastic. The movie looks great. The music serves it well, too. But for me, I didn’t feel like the payoff was worth the long runtime and slow pace.
M
Germany | 1931 | 110m | German
Great movie—tense and compelling.
HOWEVER, the film’s apparent insistence that justice must be left exclusively to lawful authorities is kind of wild considering that it was released in a country that was two years away from National Socialism. I read another review on here that described M as an “ACAB movie” and I can’t disagree harder. It’s the opposite: even when the police create a massive surveillance state and indiscriminately sweep up innocent people, we still have to trust them because they have “legitimacy” while the mob, even after gathering evidence, extracting an unambiguous confession from the killer, and allowing him a defense, do not. The mob assumes that the state will coddle him in an asylum, eventually let him free, and therefore enable him to kill again. It’s key that Lang doesn’t confirm that this actually happens, withholding the court’s verdict and instead focusing on the mothers who will never be made whole again no matter the outcome.
I don’t think Lang would have liked me because I actually do believe that the death penalty is warranted in some cases, and murdering eight children with the certainty that there will be more would be one of those cases! Thanks for the argument, Fritz Lang; you made your case against capital punishment eloquently, but I don’t agree!
Memento
United States of America | 2000 | 113m | English
Thinking of scratching “DON’T BELIEVE HIS LIES” into my screen the next time I pull up Google Maps, because I left my house at 2:10 for the 3:00 showing of this at the TIFF Lightbox for what was supposed to be a 35 minute drive. I blame the Blue Jays. Probably the World Cup. Idk, I have zero awareness of sports game schedules, but I assume one or both of those contributed to the horrendous traffic today. Memento is not a movie I wanted to show up 15 minutes late to, given its reputation for being confusing!
I might need to track down the opening online somewhere just to make sure I didn’t miss anything key, though I suppose my experience inadvertently lent itself to the deliberately disorienting storytelling. People take advantage of him, he takes advantage of himself—I mean, I think I understood the gist of it. All I could think is that if I were in his position, I would have written things down in paragraph form, nice and neat, in a college-ruled notebook. Preferably with dates and times as headings, as well. Surely there is a better way to organize one’s information than stick-and-poke tattoos, although they do look pretty based and schizopilled.
Tenet
United Kingdom, United States of America | 2020 | 150m | English, Estonian, Russian, Ukrainian
Tenet transcends my usual 2.5 score for movies that make me go “It was fine, I guess” because it’s certainly cool. The backwards action scenes are unlike anything else, the sound was amazing coming from the speakers of theatre 1 at the TIFF Lightbox, and I appreciated how phenomenal it all looked on that clean 70mm print.
I’m not going to pretend like I “got” this movie, though. (Maybe other than noticing right away that the title is a palindrome.) “Don’t try to understand it,” says one character early on. Okay, point taken. But the suspense in many of the scenes felt neutered because, had you paused the movie and put me on the spot to explain what the stakes were in that moment, who all these characters were exactly, or why they were interacting the way they were, I’d struggle to give an answer longer than a sentence or two. I relied on the loud, escalating soundtrack to clue me in when I was supposed to feel tense.
I assume Tenet benefits from rewatches, but anything less than the big screen with that sound system will undoubtedly feel like a letdown! Maybe I’ll rewatch this in a decade, like I did with Interstellar—and that’s only if there is an enticing theatrical rerelease.
I think this time around Nolan got carried away with his beloved cerebral, dense exposition. I felt no emotions beyond “that’s neat” or “huh?” The existence of an off-screen child character is not enough to get me invested in these characters. Tenet is a cool movie visually and aurally that lends itself well to a theatrical viewing—that’s about the most I can say for it.
Whiplash
United States of America | 2014 | 107m | English
What a movie. One of the best I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe ever. You don’t need to hear it from me—the last sequence in this film is jaw-dropping. Looks like my plan to go through the top 20 most popular movies on Letterboxd for each decade is paying off.
Whiplash speaks to every driven, obsessive, hyper-ambitious young man who pines for greatness and desperately wants respect—even when it comes from their abusive mentor. Maybe especially when it comes from them. Yet when we get Fletcher’s explanation for why he’s such a hardass… well, it makes sense, at least to me. Maybe I have the right psychology for this film to resonate so deeply with me.
The funny thing is: I don’t even know who Charlie Parker is.
The Odyssey
United Kingdom, United States of America | 2026 | 173m | English
Watched on 70mm IMAX, of course. I’m so thankful I live next to one of these handful of locations that can project the movie the way it was intended. I can even forgive the fact that I had to purchase my ticket far in advance and wait past the opening week before an acceptable seat opened up. (Those front rows at a true IMAX theater are not good!)
Reading The Odyssey in high school seems like a rite of passage for many, but somehow I missed that. I went into this without knowing what would happen in the story, even though I had 3,000 years to prepare. Christopher Nolan gets to indulge in his love for non-linear storytelling, but it feels appropriately restrained this time. It’s not out of place, given the nature of how we have characters piecing together the whereabouts of other characters based on legends on rumors of their past exploits. It’s not the convoluted excess of Tenet or even Inception; instead, it’s just a good, epic story that leads to a satisfying and badass conclusion.
Ghost in the Shell
Japan, United Kingdom | 1995 | 83m | Japanese
The debut of the new manga-faithful adaptation of Ghost in the Shell as a series felt like a good time to revisit this anime classic that I had certainly seen many years ago but hardly remembered, other than all the gratuitous robot nudity.
The animation is stunning, but while I can appreciate the maturity and complexity of its ideas, I still don’t think they are presented coherently enough over the course of its brief runtime. I felt confused the first time I watched this years ago; I felt confused again this time, albeit less so. I may actually watch this again before too long because the more I read about it and think about it, the more I come to appreciate what this film is doing.
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Japan | 2004 | 100m | Japanese
I have a distinct memory of renting the DVD of this from Netflix and watching it with my dad in the basement of my old house. When the movie was over, feeling confused, I said, “I think I need to watch this again.” My dad replied, “Why would you ever want to watch that again?”
He didn’t get it. To be fair, I didn’t get it the first time either. My memory of this movie consisted of the final showdown against all the gynoids and little else. I certainly don’t think I picked up on the (rather fucked up) plot point that these were all sex robots imbued with the consciousness of kidnapped girls who ached to kill and be killed to end their horrible fate. Watching this movie again, probably 20 years later, I have the benefits of a patient, adult brain and the fact that I watched the first movie shortly before this.
Innocence is actually remarkable as a sequel to Ghost in the Shell. It expands upon the philosophizing and neo-noir, cyberpunk atmosphere in a way that feels like a genuine step forward, rather than a simple retread of the first movie—which it easily could have done to much fanfare. The one area that the first movie is unmistakably better, though, is in the purely hand-drawn animation. While the moody, early-2000s CGI has its moments, I definitely prefer the look of the original. That being said, Innocence is still overall an absolutely stunning film to look at. I’m kind of in awe that this movie exists—it’s so obtuse and mature that I have to imagine its appeal is limited, yet these filmmakers secured the time and budget to assemble something so complex, intricate, and beautiful for those who are willing to invest their time and thought into this story.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
United States of America | 1977 | 74m | English
You can almost call this the first movie that I watched with my infant son—although he was sleeping on my chest the whole time, head facing away from the screen, so I don’t think it counts.
That’s okay. I wasn’t putting this on for him. I was putting this on for me! (And my mom, who came to visit.) It was a trip down memory lane… the VHS of this tape was a well-worn favorite of mine as a very young child. Watching it now, I am struck by how lousy these characters are as neighbors to one another. Their “many adventures” amount to a lot of silly nonsense, but this movie is unquestionably wholesome and adorable.
Other Movies I Saw this Month
- Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) [3/5]
- Paris is Burning (1990) [4/5]
- His Girl Friday (1940) [3/5]
- It Happened One Night (1934) [4.5/5]
- City Lights (1931) [3.5/5]
- Too Many Cooks (2014) [2.5/5]
- Lights Out (2013) [3/5]
- Modern Times (1936) [5/5]
- Audition (1999) [2.5/5]
- Following (1998) [3/5]
- Fight Club (1999) [4.5/5]
Best Movies I Saw This Month
- Whiplash
- Modern Times
- Fight Club
- It Happened One Night
Worst Movies I Saw This Month
- Too Many Cooks
- Audition
Josh Anderson 