Device Notes

I got a copy of Shuna's Journey .  Same as the last two times I made this kind of post: this is not an exhaustive list, it's a list of the best movies I saw that I felt prepared to say something about and hadn't already said anything about.  The best movies I saw this year that I haven't said anything about are The Reckless Moment , Poisson d'Avril , and Bush Mama .  As for movies that came out this year, I would say this was a year for 3-out-of-5-star movies, to put it in brief, though I was a big fan of Mad God , The Orbital Children , Crimes of the Future , and The Fabelmans . Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022) This is one of the funniest films of the year.  A lot of the best gags are about just how ridiculous the characters of this universe look when they're around things that should be normal.  Dr. Hedo, the genius scientist who builds a new Cell, eats Oreos.  Bulma asks Shenron for cosmetic surgery.  Videl asks Piccolo to pick up her and ...

  I passed the bar exam.  October to December is a weird period for post like this because it's when new movies that sound good start coming out.  (And this year, the Avatar sequel, which I did not have major expectations for but still wanted to see.)  It's also weird because I, like many people, tend to watch more horror movies in the month of October.  Not to mention that this year there was the Sight and Sound list and all the attending comments and criticism.  That's why there's one very, very old film here as well.   Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) I don't think I'll ever be fully on board with this stuff.  The vague "foreignness" of the Na'vi and the smoothness of Hollywood verisimilar CGI put me off.  But I appreciated how obvious it was that this movie was made by a vegan who likes to go to the beach, and the fight scene that takes up the whole last hour had surprising momentum.  There is one way in which this film changed my ...

    As for how people have been discussing the list, I don't have much to say about it that others haven't already said.  Basically, it matches the tastes of "Film Twitter" (whatever that is).  It's probably because over the last ten years, critics have been more immersed in the internet and have wanted to explore a wider range of films.  What surprised me most is how highly films from the last ten years ranked.   Some people have been complaining about the "accessibility" of Jeanne Dielman .  Surely anyone who learns what Jeanne Dielman is can get a basic idea of how it's different from most movies and will not go in unprepared.  No one is forcing them to watch it.  In any case, I've discussed Jeanne Dielman with people who aren't film fans.  Some of them were interested, some were not, but none of them seemed to think that its existence invalidated the medium of cinema or the practice of film criticism.   As for the ...