by Arik Devens
Not sure I understand why this isn’t better reviewed here. It’s a masterpiece. A threadbare plot but it doesn’t matter at all. Mortal Kombat wasn’t trying to copy just any random action film for its entire story, only the best! There is a purity to a great action film that is hard to match in almost any other genre. It’s possible to make a credible film that is stripped back to the barest…
It’s an incredible achievement that he was making films in the 50s and in the 2000s. It’s a shame these are the films he was making. I hated this. Basically all of it. Even more than the work of Hollis Frampton , which I was already extremely mixed on, this was a chore to get through. I hated this so much that I don’t even really have anything to say about it. Usually strong feelings lead to…
They say chivalry is dead, but this man just beat up a bar full of people and committed breaking and entering, all in the name of love. Another month, another movie. At this rate... well there’s no real point in contemplating what will happen at this rate. Anyway, if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that I have no idea what the future holds. Not for things far more important than this little…
Amazing how this can feel prescient, naive, and relevant all at the same time. Ah that new year smell around here. Ok, so it’s March, but still! 2026 has started off basically just like 2025, not a lot of movie time, but the spirit remains intact. One thing I have noticed over the last few years is that there is quite a bit more initial inertia required to start back up again with this project, if…
Quantity continues to decline, but quality never does. And there you have it, another year just about over. Time continues to have very little sway over the rhythm of my life. Well, except for the general absence of it for movie watching. This is year eleven around here and I watched... checks notes... a grand total of fifteen films. But, as I said last year , some films is still infinitely more…
I suppose it’s nice to know that they couldn’t be bothered to hire an actual native English speaker to play one any more than American films typically do for foreign languages here. This is a strange one. Strange in the sense that it doesn’t seem to know quite what it wants to be. It starts out as an honestly pretty brutal “screwball” style comedy about three couples, all of whom are married to…
Not sure the guy in the bar really needed that, but, you know, I get it. There was a moment while watching this film that I suddenly had the thought that the attitudes about life and humor presented here reminded me somewhat of the upper midwest. I quickly searched to learn that, yes, there is a large contingent of folk of Finnish descent living there. It all made so much sense. It’s something…
The effects and design are insane for the time, and hold up surprisingly well even for today. But far more interesting to me now is the message. The powers of suggestion, mass belief, and fear are so incredibly strong. This is one of those rare times on this journey through cinema history where I’ve actually already seen the film before. In this case, I’m not sure when exactly I first watched…
This hasn’t aged well to say the least. It’s transphobic and ridiculous. It’s also so much fun and that museum scene is absolutely incredible. So many bonus points for the heroine and the teenage boy not having a romance. I seem to be on a thriller kick lately, which is definitely not always the case. But the winds of interest are fickle and ever changing, as they say. At any rate, this is another…
Perhaps it’s just the nature of a seventies/thirties back-to-back watch, but I couldn’t get into this one at all. Brutal for its time, and a great illustration of what we lost with the coming of the Hays Code, but I just couldn’t find my way in. I didn’t like this film. Well... it’s not quite that simple I suppose. I liked parts of this film and I was bored by most of it. I suspect a large part of…
Venice is the perfect spot for a thriller, especially a gothic one like this. It’s already all alleys and water and religious iconography. Creepy and in this film not even a little beautiful. Just all sinister decay. The unease was intense and I am generally afraid of discovering too late that I’ve made a fatal error. Brutal. I’ve never been to Venice. To be quite honest I’ve never really even…
This grew on me more and more as it went on. What a charming lovely film. Laughton is a genius as always, of course, but it’s the heart of it all that really makes it special. Hilarious and charming. Part of the challenge of watching these at the rate I’m currently managing, is that I’ve lost some of my superhero power of attention. One of the things I’ve noted in the past here is that modern…
Clearly the moral here is to never try and bribe Jackie Chan. He’ll bring his long suffering girlfriend to the big fight and still win. This was a ton of fun. There’s honestly not that much more to say other than that. There’s no huge idea or interesting plot or family memory to draw on, or anything like that. It’s a super fun, silly, occasionally jaw dropping, martial arts film from one of the…
I’m not nearly Czech enough to understand most of this, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Summers are a special treasure, lusty old men perhaps somewhat less so. My mother has somewhat recently developed a serious interest in doing genealogical research on her family. It’s particularly interesting given that her ancestors were from a diaspora population and her parents were refugees. Through this…
All marriage is work, but arranged marriage seems like it’s playing on hard mode. I randomly had a night with time for a movie recently, and decided it had been far too long since I’d watched a film by Yasujiro Ozu . It’s amazing really, I’ve only seen two of his non-silent fully developed works, and yet I would absolutely declare him as one of my all time favorite directors. That’s how good these…
The low points are pretty low, but luckily the 1970s Italian fashion, and the majesty of Bruce Lee, are enough in the end. We are incredibly firmly back on it’s-been-too-long-since-I-watched-this corner. Not my favorite corner, certainly. But one that is simply a fact of my current life. I watched this about three weeks ago, as of writing. To be honest, I’m not sure I had that much to say about it…
Poor guy was minding his own business, hiding from himself, as you do. Then his good-for-nothing brother just had to show up and ruin everything. I have mentioned before that Breathless was the film that, more than any other, introduced me to this journey through the history of world “cinema”. To be sure, I had seen “art films” before, in particular Ran , but that was the one that just knocked me…
Every director who has ever been called an auteur should have to make a film like this about somewhere they lived. This is the film I remember having seen many years ago and really appreciating. It didn’t diminish at all in a second viewing. If anything, my journey through Bergman’s filmography has only deepened my appreciation of what a relative oddity this is. Like most people I’m sad that we…
A well meaning attempt to gently agitate for change. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it didn’t do much to change the fundamental realities of this place that Bergman so loved. Well then. The last few years have not been kind to my movie watching habit, and so far 2025 looks like the worst one yet. Not since the heady days of 2020 have I really made any significant progress here. But, I…
Man, there are saps and then there’s this guy. It’s almost like he wants to be played. I don’t like the films of Christopher Nolan . Inception made me super angry, you can hear me rant about it on my old podcast . Batman Begins was fine. The Dark Knight was also fine, but seriously overrated. The Dark Knight Rises was terrible. Boring and long. So very, very long. I gave up after that and didn’t…
This wasn’t a great year for quantity, but it was for quality. Overall a phenomenal set of film experiences. And that’s it for 2024 here at Cinema Gadfly. A new record for fewest films watched, but also a ten year anniversary celebrated. And few films isn’t no films, after all. This journey continues, even if it feels glacial at times. These films are my meditation, and I will keep going at…
Ordinary people as Greek epic poems, only no one knows or cares. Llewyn Davis is not going to “make it”. In this case, making it is the music business and financial, or critical, success. He’s talented, to a point. But he’s also completely incapable of helping himself get ahead. He’s caustic and sardonic. He doesn’t connect with, well, anyone really. He isn’t a great showman or a great spectacle.…
For all of us who are raising our kids while also trying to break generational chains of trauma. I feel very fortunate to be a part of the first generation of my family who even could do that. But, also, man that sucks sometimes. On the one hand I could write about this film for an entire book. On the other hand, I don’t really want to put any of those thoughts on the internet. So that leaves me…
It’s a small film to treasure. If you like this sort of oddball village meets outsider genre you’re going to love it. As someone whose favorite television show was once Northern Exposure and someone who once loved living in Scotland, I absolutely ate this up. There is a genre that I love, but I don’t know if it has a name. It’s definitely a fish-out-of-water vibe, but with the addition of an…
I’m really gonna go out on a limb here, and say that the Bergman of this era wasn’t, like, totally satisfied with his life, or feeling particularly connected to those around him. It’s always a shame when I can’t write about these films expeditiously. I’ve mentioned it many times at this point. Life gets in the way, and, well, that’s life. It’s always a shame, but it’s especially a shame this time,…
This has grown on me over the years. I still see little of the Wes Anderson style to come, but it’s a charming film. So, here’s the flip-side of the Narayama coin. I assume that you, dear reader, cannot imagine what I could possible write next. Well, don’t worry, I’m here for you! This is the other way expectations can go. Unlike last time, where I waited ten years to watch a film, I’ve seen this…
I have to say, I’m not a fan of sending senior citizens to a mountain top to die of exposure. I guess I’m just weird like that. There is something so interesting about expectations. I don’t talk about the collecting aspect of this journey that often, but I own the first thousand or so of these films on physical media. This one was one of the first I bought, its lack of supplements meaning that it…
How can something so beautiful be so incredibly tense. It’s all just too much. I’m not really all that surprised that this didn’t do well upon its initial 1955 release. It’s far too “art house” for that, not to mention that it came out at a time where the idea that preachers weren’t to be automatically trusted was somewhat less obvious than it is today. Throw in a proto- Southern Gothic aesthetic,…
It’s crazy to think that zooming in and crossfades were new at one point, but then so was everything. The thing about watching early films from an established and beloved director, is that you’re often not watching them as much for what they are, as for what you know they lead to later on. This is probably even more true if the director is mostly known for films in the sound era and you’re…
This is just so, so, so boring. I get that these films are for someone, I really do, they are just not at all for me. I’ve been struggling to sit down and write anything about this film. That’s because it was boring. Boring things are hard to write about, because even thinking about them is also boring. Watching the film was boring, thinking about it was boring, and I don’t want this writing to…
There’s to the point and then there’s Finnish to the point. I don’t think I’d do well there, but I do love watching it. What is so striking about this film is the matter-of-fact dispassionate way everything in it plays out. It creates a world where anything can happen at any time, because it would all be treated as more or less the same. No one reacts to anything essentially, it all just happens…
This is deep, but like a river rather than the sea. We’re back on “it’s been such a long time since I watched this” corner. Oh how I haven’t missed you! For those of you who don’t celebrate, this means that I watched this film, thought about it, and then got busy with the rest of my life before writing my thoughts down. I don’t like when this happens because I lose the depth of my thinking. Sadly…
Finally back in the AGCU! This is where all his characters end up eventually, even Obi-Wan Kenobi. Especially Obi-Wan. A force ghost painting pictures of feet forevermore. It’s been quite a while since my last Alec Guinness film, which is an utterly intolerable situation to be in. Luckily I have rectified it, with this oddball weirdo of a movie. Funny and charming, but also just random and…
I must admit that I totally misunderstood the plot, and had to read the Wikipedia just to understand what happened. But who cares, this was stylish and fun and I loved it. I’m not even going to bother to write about how long it’s been since I’ve written. It’s such a cliche at this point and I’m just going to ignore it and continue like nothing happened. Nothing in the previous two sentences…
The only way to win is not to play? Samurai films have often been called the “Westerns” of Japanese filmmaking. It makes a lot of sense. They contain many similar elements, and directors have been influenced in both directions. For every Kurosawa homage to John Ford there’s a Sergio Leone remake of Kurosawa. Both genres are fundamentally about myth making. But, at least in this film, there’s a…
Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but it doesn’t look all that fun to grow up in a super wealthy family. This film, which is utterly delightful, was not a hit when it was initially released in 1938. By itself that’s not all that remarkable, there are plenty of now-acknowledged classics that were missed upon their debut. What is more interesting is to contemplate why it was disliked, and what that…
Free Chen Zhen! This movie is fun and silly and badass, and all the things you’d expect from a Bruce Lee picture. He’s righteous, he kicks ass, he’s a superhero. The plot is a bit over the top, and more than a bit ridiculous, but it doesn’t matter because the entire thing is just too much fun. I really enjoyed it. Having said that, there are a couple things that are a bit deeper to explore. This…
As expected, this is better than the terrible American version in basically every way. It’s still a goofy mess but at least it’s authentically so, with a fun weird story and some epic moments. It’s become an almost comical tradition around here that I first tell you how long it’s been since I watched the film I’m writing about. That said, this one will hopefully be the record. I watched this more…
The problem with seeing yourself in someone else’s story during the good times is it’s that much harder to watch in the hard ones. Absolutely soul destructive, in the best way. It’s all fun and games to insert yourself into a fictional narrative, until the narrative shifts and you’re left holding an uncomfortable space. That’s a fancy way of saying that this just got really real, and really…
Milestones are important to mark in life. They help give meaning to all the time we’ve invested and all the work we’ve done. This is a big one for me. Something pretty incredible happened over the weekend. It’s a bit hard, at this point, for me to pinpoint exactly when this site “started”. That’s because the early days were unsurprisingly chaotic, and this wasn’t what it’s become for quite a…
As someone who once had a Facebook group dedicated to my pet called “Che is not a revolutionary, he’s my cat”, I think I’m entitled to believe this film was basically just made for me. It’s a shame whenever I can’t find the time to write up my thoughts in a timely manner. I’ve certainly mentioned that ad nauseam for the past year or so. But it’s especially unfortunate this time, because this film…
I have a soft spot for basically every element that makes up this movie… so yeah, not really a surprise that I loved it. But, oh man, I would have watched this every day if I’d seen it in ‘95. A new year, and finally I got to watch something! This early part of 2024 seems to be starting just how 2023 finished, which makes sense. But that means it’s still a real struggle for me to carve out the…
Well, it’s that time again. Time to turn off the lights on another year around here, recharge, and come back even more excited in 2024. What a year. What a wonderful, terrible, all the things year. I can’t really believe it’s already almost over, but here we are. I will be traveling for the rest of the year, so this is my last opportunity to sum things up with a final entry. It’s a tradition I’ve…
I’m a sucker for the genre, but also, how the hell do you not enjoy this?!? Time dulls the impact of most media, but man this one hit Hollywood and American popular consciousness like a bomb going off. It singlehandedly sparked the Blaxploitation era and gave us the first Black superhero character. It showed a view into a NYC that is now long gone, as well as commented on the nature of…
Wes Anderson makes movies about the world I wish we lived in. Also, man Bruce Willis is bad in this, it’s the only drawback. It’s become more than a cliche around here. I watched a movie, yay! Oh, but, it was like a week ago. Boo! Oh well. I write these like 99.9% for future me to enjoy, and this will be a persistent reminder of just what was going on at this point in my life. I don’t have time…
If you don’t like this, I don’t know what to tell you. We probably wouldn’t have much to talk about anyway. Oh, and but also, this perfect soundtrack, by Tangerine Dream, was nominated for a Razzie for Worst Musical Score?! What the hell was wrong with people in the eighties?!? Welcome back to “it’s been a crazy long time since I watched this” theater, wherein I try to recollect the memories of a…
This is undeniably a masterpiece, but I hated watching it. That’s not even a knock on Bergman, who remains my favorite director. It’s a testament to this film completely achieving its goal. It was uncomfortable and awful to behold. Typically, if it had been more than two weeks since I’d watched one of these films, I’d be apologizing to you all for the resultant sketchy thoughts I’d have to share.…
I like Zatoichi, but man I wish they would have made 26 of these instead. Mifune was the absolute GOAT, and Nakadai wasn’t far off. As is so often the case when a movie is just really good, I don’t have that much to say about it. I’ve written before about how much easier it is to talk about things you don’t like, or things that provoke some immense question. In this case, this is just a super fun…
Man Kenji Misumi filmed em nice. Every shot is absolutely beautiful. It doesn’t hurt that this also has the most narrative weight the series has had for quite a few films. I had pretty low expectations for this one, and it dramatically exceeded them. Ultimately, this is a series about loss. Due to his circumstances, Ichi will never know happiness, nor peace, nor any semblance of a normal life. His…
Wow. It’s a good thing this is the last film, because there really isn’t anywhere to take the story at this point. So over the top and deranged. I know others disagree, but I throughly enjoyed this. I mentioned in my previous essay that there was a lot riding on this, the final film in the series. The first film setup a lot of story, which the middle four films mostly ignored. I assumed that they…