the groundhog day project

I found a clip of Kevin Smith reacting to Brigsby Bear last night. He laughed, he cried. Exclaim called it "awkward as all hell". I thought it was beautiful. But, of course, the Internet is full of outspoken dicks and pickers of nits. Hell, I'm one of them. (By the way, on my original review of Swiss Army Man last year (which has since been transferred from one YouTube channel to another, so the comment is gone), the first comment was a guy pointing out that I looked like I was about to cry near the end of it. No overt criticism, but just pointing it out without extra commentary suggests judgment. Like how dare anyone have an emotional response to a film? Hell, when it comes to how I rate movies on IMDb, an emotional response, regardless of objective quality, usually means I'll at least rate a movie an 8 out of 10. I love an emotional response. I love a movie that makes me think, makes me feel.) I am watching Dave Made a Maze again as I think about this past...

I tend to like weird little movies. A couple of my favorites from last year were The Lobster and Swiss Army Man . A couple of my favorites from this year now would be Brigsby Bear and Dave Made a Maze . I'm gonna watch both of those again tonight because... Well, because I can. The year is coming to an end. It's Oscar season, the Golden Globes are just over a week away, and it's time to start putting it all together, some perspective on 2017 in movies—putting off the perspective of my childhood in movies for a few days from now (but I will get back to that)—and make some recommendations perhaps... First, there's this—when Dave Made a Maze art director Jeff White was asked by Tessa Morrison at Other Worlds , "Knowing everything you learned from this, what would you travel back in time and tell yourself on Day One of fabrication [of the cardboard sets]?": I'm not sure that there was anything I could tell myself at that point that I would have believed. ...

Today: a deconstruction of this year so far in film... for me. I saw Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri this morning--and loved it--and got to thinking about the little movies that not enough people see. Take for example this list of things that bother me (an incomplete list in not particular order): War Christian rock Factory farming Racism People leaving spreading knives in the sink, you know, because they're so damn hard to clean Sexism Domestic abuse Self-indulgent filmmakers who are not also clever, or who were once clever but turned out to be one-trick ponies Tax breaks for the rich Donald Trump People saying it's a bad year for movies when they've seen maybe two, and those only because they were playing on a few thousand screens, and they make no fucking effort at all to seek out better movies, more movies That last one. Bugs the crap out of me. Especially in a year in which one of the biggest films at the box office-- Wonder Woman was also pretty good. E...