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Megalopolis (2024)

Some people think this movie will be reappraised in 10 or 20 years, but as far as I can tell those people have not yet offered a good reason to believe this, except maybe that by then cinema as a whole will have degraded to a point where Megalopolis stands out.  Maybe when the time comes, I will see if anyone has something different to say.  Many of the film critics I follow or film fans I talk to have an auteurist streak, so it's only natural they would be interested in Francis Ford Coppola's vision of utopia.  Still:  "Transcends all categories of good and bad"  "Francis Ford Coppola has never been freer"  "the product of a delusional romantic"  "the work of an artist who has absolute faith in cinema's power to create emotionally affective images purely through his own force of will" These are all quotes from basically positive reviews of the film, some from fans posting their comments online and some from my favorite film critics....
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The last 3 months: October-December 2024

The header image is from Ne Zha 2 , which came out a few weeks ago and is now the highest grossing non-English language movie ever.  (It's the seventh highest period.)  The movie is not bad.  It's certainly better than the first Ne Zha .  I don't have that much to say about it, and you've definitely seen similar movies before.  But it's worth seeing.   What I find interesting about it is how similar it is to the other movies that made $2 billion.  Its scale and spectacle put it in the same camp as the Avatar movies.  What I wonder now, though, is if in ten years the list of highest-grossing movies will be dominated by movies like Ne Zha 2 , mass market movies made for an audience of over a billion people.  I'd like to see if it's the audience or the formula that made the difference.     A Touch of Sin (2013) This film gave me a new appreciation for filmmakers who make similar films over and over again.  Jia Zhangke isn...
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The TSPDT Poll 2021

For those who don't know, TSPDT decided to poll the general public about the greatest films of all time.   I submitted a list, which I'll share here: Angel's Egg (Mamoru Oshii, 1985) Awaara (Raj Kapoor, 1951) Barravento (Glauber Rocha, 1962) Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999) Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene, 1966) Duel to the Death (Ching Siu-Tung, 1983) Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim, 1922) Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2003) Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) Hellzapoppin' (H.C. Potter, 1941) Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) Monsieur Verdoux (Charlie Chaplin, 1947) October (Sergei Eisenstein, 1927) The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark, 1986) Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1973) Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001) Spontaneous Combustion (Tobe Hooper, 1990) Swing You Sinners! (Dave Fleischer, 1930) Tale of Tales (Yuri Norstein, 1979) The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata, 201...
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