Device Notes

The film alternates between two frame stories which both involve hearings.  One is to renew J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance and one to confirm Lewis Strauss (pronounced “Strawss,” he insists) as Secretary of Commerce.   Near the start of Strauss’s hearing, a senator makes a reference to “the Oppenheimer affair.”   It’s clear that the hearing about Oppenheimer’s security clearance is a McCarthyist kangaroo court.   But their only question which fazes Oppenheimer is their most genuine: why did Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, turn around and become an opponent of hydrogen bombs? The film opens with intellectual montage.    This is always thuddingly obvious, but that's not a problem when it's as effective as it is here.   In this movie, the montage is motivated largely by Oppenheimer's subjective experience.  Oppenheimer imagines the mysterious reality behind the world we perceive; Oppenheimer visits a museum and examines Pic...

Castle in the Sky  is about two children, Pazu and Sheeta, who each have some attachment to the mythical floating island Laputa and the ancient civilization that lived there.  Pazu's late father once managed to photograph the island, and he wants to show the world that it's real.  Sheeta is a descendant of ancient Laputans who heard many stories about them from her grandmother.  There's also an evil government agent, Muska, who pursues Laputa because he believes it houses powerful weapons. It's an adventure film about looking for treasure.  Mamoru Oshii said it was one of the few Studio Ghibli movies he liked because it had a "good structure" for a "boy's adventure."  It isn't quite so solemn as Nausicaä or Grave of the Fireflies .  (Oshii had some choice comments about that last one.) The world Pazu lives in feels antique in the characters' style of dress, their clunky machines, and their lifestyles.  I was not surprised to learn the v...

For once, most of these are films I actually went to go see in a theater.  Ponyo was a rewatch, but the last time I saw that movie, I was only 13.  I was excited to see that one, because I didn't love it when I first saw it.  So far, whenever I haven't been totally won over by one of Miyazaki's films, I've been blown away when I went to see it in a theater.  Ponyo  was no exception.  I've often found people's insistence the importance of the theater experience a little overstated or confusing, but these films have convinced me. Asteroid City (2023) Wes Anderson often has actors perform with low expression, and out of all his films this one may exemplify that the most.  I don't really perceive them as expressionless, but empty, portraying people drained of energy and expectation.  Many suggest Asteroid City is a film about grief, but if so, it's a late stage of grief, or the aftermath.  One has no more tears, but senses some emptiness behind t...