News and Notes, Vol. 2

An abbreviated version of my first-time monthly views today, and then a few minor updates.

First-Time Views, October 2023

1. Audition (1999)

I’ve never been much of a horror guy, but a few years ago I heard someone I respect say that you can’t really understand cinema if you don’t understand horror. Ever since, I’ve been slowly working my way through the canon, eventually landing on this late ‘90s Japanese horror masterpiece. The first 90 minutes of it are so slow and innocuous that I actually had to google it and make sure this was the terrifying movie I’d heard so much about. Man, it had me right where it wanted me.

2. The Swan (2023)

Wes Anderson recently released on Netflix four short films based on Roald Dahl stories. I love Dahl as a child, but I never came across The Swan, a painful bit of poetry about childhood bullying and, in its way, environmental exploitation. This one slayed me.

3. The Holdovers (2023)

You can read my full review for The Rye Record here, but for now, let me say this is probably Paul Giamatti’s best work—and maybe my favorite feature-length film of the year.

4. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

See #1. This is another horror movie I needed to check off my list, and it was a pleasure. The first film directed by Giallo master Dario Argento, it’s more of a serial killer mystery than horror, but its influence is all over modern cinema. There are shades of Zodiac in here and, with its subtle inquiry into the thin line between voyeurism and violence, so much De Palma.

5. Kajillionaire (2020)

I loved Miranda July’s first film, Me and You and Everyone You Know. I was more mixed on her second feature, The Future. Kajillionaire, an eccentric con man movie, fits somewhere in between. It’s about a family of low-rent confidence artists and the efforts of their grown daughter, played brilliantly by Evan Rachel Wood, to break free from their dysfunctional dynamic. It’s diverting and original, with a central metaphor just oblique enough to be read a million different ways, although not much of it stayed with me outside of Wood’s bold performance.

Published Elsewhere

It occurs to me that some of my readers might not follow me on other social media channels, so they probably don’t keep up with my other writing. I use my truest voice here on Substack, but I also write for Washington City Paper, reviewing classic films that are playing in DC theaters that week, and I have a film column at The Rye Record. Here are some things I wrote recently:

The Horror of Don’t Look Now Isn’t in the Occult But in Mundane Misery (WCP)

Ten Years Later, The Wolf of Wall Street Continues to Provoke and Entertain (WCP)

You Be The Judge of The Burial (Rye Record)

I’ll also be on BBC’s “Talking Movies” this weekend with a story on Maestro, the Leonard Bernstein biopic starring and directed by Bradley Cooper. Check your local listings.

My Series for Paid Subscribers

All year, I’ve been publishing essays on the films of 1998 for my paid subscribers. This is just a gentle, humble reminder that if you sign up at any point, you get access to the entire back catalog, which includes essays on The Big Lebowski, The Wedding SInger, Armageddon, Rushmore, Saving Private Ryan, Out of Sight, and more. It has been a real hoot revisiting these films that were so important to me in my teens. There are still four essays coming this year—maybe five, if I’m feeling generous—so now’s the time to get on board. Just click on one of the “1998 in Review” essays, and you’ll be prompted.

To be clear, one way you could do this is to pay the $5 monthly rate, read all the essays, and then subscribe. That’s 20 essays for $5. Not a bad deal.

On the subject, I’m going to continue offering two essays a month for paid subscribers next year, but I’m still deliberating on which year I’ll be digging into. It might be 1988. Maybe 2006. If you have suggestions for a year worth covering, leave them in the comments!

What’s Still Coming

I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but I have some good stuff coming in the next two months. I’ll be wrapping up the baseball season with my final thoughts on the rule changes. I’ll also share my thoughts on the year in film at some point, and I’d like to find a way to speak on the very strange end-of-year crunch that film critics endure. 

And at some point, there will be more baseball movie content. I know I’ve been promising/threatening related to my forthcoming book (Baseball: the Movie, out 5/14/24). It’s still coming, but in the meantime, feel free to visit me over on TikTok, where I share original baseball, movie, and baseball/movie content several times a week.