Features
The biggest multiplex theater in Europe resides in Madrid, where I now live: Kinépolis, the crowning achievement of a European franchise of movie theaters based in Belgium.
It wasn’t until I moved to San Jose, California, that I first became aware of the idea of a community of fellow film-lovers. Up to then, movie-watching even in the most packed theaters had struck me as an essentially solitary act; these were secluded moments of thrilling discovery savored but seldom shared.
The slight shiver of excitement I habitually feel when sitting down to watch a new Ken Loach film is amplified on this occasion by a simple coincidence of dates: I am about to view Route Irish at home on my laptop, on the same day that it’s released in cinemas across the UK.
Salut les cubains is neither masterwork nor grand failure; it’s too slight to be either. What it does do, which is valuable, is make visible the blind spots not only in her approach to political filmmaking but by association that of her French New Wave contemporaries.
Surely the appeal of entering a theater completely blind to what is about to appear on the screen is one other cinephiles share with me—but it’s also one that is difficult to realize.
As someone who grew up with an awareness of being at the margins of a larger diaspora, I found the concept of an all-embracing Chinese-language cinema that could reflect the complexity and variety of life in overseas communities to be a major discovery.
Don Roos’s The Other Woman promised to make for an appealingly middlebrow hour and a half in front of the tube (may I still call it that?), and which, in description, reminded me of all of those 1980s and early 1990s female-centric domestic dramedies studios used to churn out.
How about a very early computer-age romantic comedy, starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, called Desk Set? It’s hardly obscure, but I’d never seen it. Click, boom, presto. Instantly, it begins.
Newer modes of viewing require us to make decisions about what kinds of films we are willing to watch in nontraditional formats. It would be senseless to watch a widescreen epic like Lawrence of Arabia on a tablet device, yet many may choose to do so.
Fair to say, my life in New York revolved around movies. It’s no wonder that leaving again—about two and a half years ago, I moved to Portland, Oregon, for the hell of it, ready for a new experience—felt almost like I was banishing myself from the film world.
David Mackenzie’s Perfect Sense, Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter, Gregg Araki’s Kaboom
Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Cindy Meehl’s Buck, Dee Rees’s Pariah, Göran Hugo Olsson’s The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
Susanne Rostock’s Sing Your Song, James Marsh’s Project Nim
Years in Review
Most Endangered Species, 2010 Leading Man MVP, Worst Cinematography, Most Unexpectedly Moving Finale, Phat Tony Award, Most Unexpectedly Luscious, Most Boring British Film, Best Cameo, and more