The Man Who Fell to Earth
This was weird and wild and wonderful. If you don’t dig the production design or overall style of this movie, we can’t be friends. And I know the plot is a bit thin, but I couldn’t care less. Davie Bowie was a freaking cat-eyed alien with a fedora. I loved it.

My one real grievance with the movie is that level of eroticism was a bit much for my taste. But it’s Bowie! What did I bloody expect?!
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The Hunger
*David Bowie’s name pops up*
Me: I love it.

*35 minutes later*
Me: Ew. This is not the Bowie I came for.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
I enjoyed this, but admittedly I had higher hopes. Most of the performances are very good (especially Bowie, Tom Conti, and Takeshi) but I felt that the narrative was lacking and the pacing was a bit slow. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score was excellent, but it often felt tonally jarring when it bumped up against the melancholy of the rest of the film. I’ll definitely be watching this again at some point in the future, but for this first watch I just felt a little let down.

Labyrinth
Wow, this really skirts the line between cute and terrifying... like really skirts it.

I spent so much of this movie trying to decide whether I would’ve liked this as a kid, but once I got to the scene at the Bog of Eternal Stench I knew that the answer would’ve been abso-toot-ly!

I’m looking forward to many rewatches of this thing. I especially loved the puppet effects, character design and performances, production design, score/Bowie songs, and just the sheer oddity of it all.

Basquiat
This was a really affecting, well-directed film, anchored by a fantastic lead performance from Jeffrey Wright. I also thought Christopher Walken was awesome in his cameo as a writer who comes to interview Basquiat— he had a suspicious energy that played really well off of Wright’s sort of calculated nonchalance. Best scene in the movie!

Throne of Blood
Macbeth is definitely a lot more engaging to me as a samurai movie, but I still can’t say I was totally enthralled by this. The scenes in the forest were the best bits by far— I love a good ghost!

The Hidden Fortress
"Help me, Rokurota Makabe. You're my only hope."

I thought this was great! Mifune is awesome in the Obi-Wan role, but Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara were the standouts for me. I especially loved how the first 25 minutes of the movie were just C-3PO and R2-D2 rolling around the desert bickering and looking for gold. I mean, this goes without saying, but I thought this movie was genuinely funny and thrilling— not quite an "action comedy," but the tone fell somewhere between Shakespeare and Spielberg in the best possible way.

In terms of its influence on George Lucas— I feel like he pulled the right stuff into Star Wars to elevate the story with a new setting, but totally botched it when it came to The Phantom Menace... he even stole the wipes!!

Yojimbo
I didn't expect this to have as much comedy as it did. Though I wasn't quite sure where it was going at first, once I understood the basic conceit (that Sanjuro was just going to play everything to his advantage and jump back and forth between the two bumbling gangs), the whole movie just sort of opened up. Adding A Fistful of Dollars to my watchlist now!

Sanjuro
This one was even more light-hearted and frivolous than Yojimbo, but I think its simpler plot makes for a less exciting watch. Mainly, I was disappointed that Sanjuro did not seem as cunning or sharp in this film. Rather than jumping back and forth between rival gangs, deftly twisting situations to confuse and incite them, Sanjuro spends this whole movie with one group of idiot fighters who never seem to understand what's really happening. Sanjuro is still pulling the strings, but in a much less compelling way. Still, it's not a bad film by any stretch— just a bit of a let down after the richly drawn action and conflict of Yojimbo.

Ending slaps 1000% tho.

High and Low
Despite a nearly two and a half hour runtime, this movie just floats by. The tense, play-like drama that makes up the first half of the film is impossible to look away from, and the calculated police procedural that follows in the second half is equally compelling. This is far and away my favorite film from both Kurosawa and Mifune— a true masterwork.

Moon
​Anyone who knows me knows that I love three things:
1. Space movies
2. Doppelgängers
3. The great David Bowie and all who are associated
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So this was a real treat! I regret pulling up the Wikipedia page before watching, because just looking at the cast list kind of spoiled the whole premise for me. But other than that, my only real complaint is that it felt way too short. I thought I was nearing the midway point and I was surprised to see twenty minutes left in the movie! Still it was a fun watch with a rad performance from Sam Rockwell.

Pan’s Labyrinth
I liked this, but didn’t love it. The costumes, makeup, creature design, and body horror elements were all great, but I ultimately felt like I just didn’t get enough time in either “world” to fully invest in it. The relationships between Ofelia, her mother, the captain, and the maid were intriguing enough, but I think I needed a little bit more time with them.
This might be a super douchey thing to say, but I feel like this could have been a great miniseries… But seriously, there’s a lot of great stuff here, I wouldn’t be opposed to Guillermo expanding on this material in the future (though he should get on it while Dafne Keen is still young!)

The Pianist
~an anecdote~

It was April 2017. I was standing outside a bar in New York City with my gf and a couple other friends. We were all there for our one friend’s 20th birthday, and she was sufficiently drunk, despite the fact that we had not yet been admitted to the bar.

While we stood outside waiting for her “connect” to get us in, Adrien Brody walked by with his dog. As he passed us, I leaned into our circle of conversation and said, “Hey, I think that’s Adrien Brody.”

Everybody turned to look down the street and stared at Mr. Brody as his dog peed freely on a tree just a few yards away from us.

Then my drunk friend yelled out, “WHO THE FUCK IS ADRIEN BRODY?”

Keep in mind, we were still well within the earshot of Mr. Brody, whose dog was continuing to pee on the tree.

I said, “Shhh, he can probably hear us…” to which she responded,

“I DON’T CARE. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO THE FUCK ADRIEN BRODY IS!”

I whisper-shouted, “He has a fucking Oscar!”

Then we all went quiet and looked back at Mr. Brody, whose dog was still peeing. He was staring at us, expressionless. I wanted to apologize on behalf of my friend, or at least let him know in some way that I knew who the fuck Adrien Brody was. But I didn’t say anything. None of us said anything. After a few seconds, his dog finished peeing and he walked away.

Anyway, this is the movie he won that Oscar for.

Moulin Rouge!
To me, Baz Luhrmann and Michael Bay embody a very similar type of chaotic evil that I simply cannot handle. It’s just a “not for me” situation here, though Nicole Kidman is admittedly stunning and Ewen McGregor is charming as all Hell. Still, this just wasn’t my vibe.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
“I’d rather be a ghost, drifting by your side as a condemned soul than enter heaven without you. Because of your love, I will never be a lonely spirit.”

Man I really liked this. What stood out most to me were the great performances from Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi, the original score, AND THOSE FIGHT SCENES OF COURSE.