2021 pt. 1

The films released in the year 2021...  I have written some about these films but I don't know where these notes went.

Krack

Showplace at West End, some evening in January... Maybe the first of many drives this spring and summer to this theater. I'm trying to describe the feelings that come with obvious pleasures. Songs in the clouds, leering through at a screen of warm and glowing expression.

In the Heights

I've been accumulating a history of the summer picture for awhile--probably almost a decade now; there was San Andreas, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Trainwreck, and whatever else... I wonder if I should include films exuding summer's heat from the screen? The whole long vacation in A Summer's Tale; the downsloping dune in My Night at Maud's; alien creatures staring to the sky in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. I think I like musicals, though I hardly know them anymore--where have they gone!? This was our return to the summer dream in a hot city. A wall-face with the sleek design of modernity for all to prance upon. A life perfect atop the summer light, mellowing heat clouding near-naked bodies.

Les choses qu'on dit, les choses qu'on fait

The last handful of Mouret films left me in a bitterness I'm still trying to escape. The structure is the same, but the warm loving feeling we find here is gone. I saw this in the dog days which feels like years ago. It's a picture of obvious late period classification; its mode and sentiment leave the man (and maybe the woman too?) entrenched in the pragmatism that comes with age.

Stillwater

Hollywood plopping the Oklahoman into Marseille, the tip of Europe sprawling with its underlings and leftovers. This man presses through his failures hidden behind an unshaven face and the cap bestowed by his creator.

Nenjam Marappathillai 

Is the near-past gone or merely in a state of dormancy? The first half gave us the romantic dream of the old-world; a true sibling to ENPT which endured a long and troubled path to screen as well. The byzantine imagery of second half went elsewhere. A new design for super zoomers or plot-schizos.