Monumental. In the sense of, monument to cinema, monument to image, monument to humanity. RESURRECTION plays with not so much what it means to be alive, but what it -is- to be alive, and it does so with such an utterly assured formalism that you get swept under the shadow of the monument almost instantly. And make no mistake, Bi Gan is a cinematic hypnotist. He's doing the magic-we-come-to-this-place-for on an incredibly vast scale, then pulling back the literal curtain…

None of us have that kind of time.

Shoutout to Danny for calling this “Luc movie 101” because it is. I cried through most of the back half of the movie. Sentimentality and earnestness are the most crucial efforts we have to make, and to reflect them in a film is admirable, even when clumsy—and Kurosawa is far from clumsy, even if he is straightforward.
The ending scene is not quite Auld Lang Syng. But it’s not pessimistic either. It…

The elements of THE BACKROOMS which draw from recent elevated horror—the voiceover, overt trauma allegories, and body horror Lite monster designs—are acceptably realized but ultimately detract from the elements of the film which draw from internet horror spaces and the Backroom’s communally-endowed characteristics. The latter elements make the film and are done remarkably well. Flooring production design efforts here—would have given an arm (read: shoulder) to be in the Art Department—and a seemingly effortless camera sensibility throughout. It ultimately suffers…

Exhilarating to the point of thinking “this outdoes every other great 21st century film” throughout the whole runtime. Is that true? Unlikely, but I’d hazard it could be the best great modern American film—specifically in that it’s so viscerally American it’s difficult not to feel that larger than life feeling which encompasses both the best and worst of the country at every turn.

I’d like to get a bit more Pynchon-ed before digging into the film’s politics (this is a…