weekly digest: finally wrote about ‘Oppenheimer,’ and barely scratched its surface
everything that happened at Flick Filosopher from Monday, August 21, to Sunday, August 27
I finally got my review of Oppenheimer up last week, which simultaneously feels like a big relief and also like a capitulation of sorts. This is the kind of movie about which I feel like I could write a book, there’s so much interesting going on in it, and having to narrow down what I feel is the most important stuff to say on a first go-round is so tough! The film is bound to be in the discourse for months ahead, at least, and will surely feature prominently in the upcoming awards season (and rightly so), so maybe I’ll find time to say more about it in the coming months. But that will necessarily come at the expense of writing about other films, because there are only so many hours in the day…
I don’t hate that we have so damn many entertainment options nowadays, but I also kind long for an era that stopped existing before I was even born: when there were far fewer new movies every week, when they played for a year or 18 months, when there were longer, more contemplative conversations to be had about them. We can try to slow down and have those sorts of long, drawn-out discussions about movies today, but it seems like no one has that kind of attention span. There’s just too much new and shiny to catch our eye every week.
And now I’m sounding like an old curmudgeon, so I’ll shut up, and go back to trying to figure out how to make the world today work for me…
—MaryAnn
new at flick filosopher, Aug 21–27
daily stream: attend a delightfully nasty little soiree with Cillian Murphy (and others)
2017’s The Party is on Kanopy in the US, Curzon Home Cinema in the UK. [read more]
daily stream: the ethics of war on a nuclear-armed planet
2003’s The Fog of War is on Prime and Apple TV on both sides of the Atlantic. [read more]
Oppenheimer movie review: a particle of concern, a wave of complicity [pictured]
With human paradoxes at its nucleus, this is a riveting portrait, both intimate and epic, of the self-involved men who think they make the world go round… and too often, tragically, do. [read the review | cinemas US/UK]
loaded question: what location-specific cultural event would you love to travel to?
I’ll get to the Edinburgh Fringe someday. Maybe you’re burning to attend Burning Man in Nevada, hopped up for Oktoberfest in Germany, or down to boogie at Carnival in Rio? [reply at Flick Filosopher | reply at Substack | reply at Patreon]
what I’m watching and bingeing
Ted Lasso S3 [Apple TV+ globally]: the thing I noticed in the one episode I watched last week is that there was, finally, a teensy indication of the global pandemic we’ve been living through, but only in the background, where we glimpsed the outside seating that restaurants in the Richmond area of London (where the show is set and shot) have set up in an attempt to stay open while also not infecting their customers; it was sort of shocking, as a half-assed acknowledgement of our reality without actually confronting or dealing with it; I feel like Ted would have something to say about approaching reality with those sorts of blinders…
Invasion [Apple TV+ globally]: finished S01, which was a tad disappointing, feels neither here nor there, too much personal drama unrelated to, you know, frickin’ aliens invading, but I stuck with it cuz I’m a huge sci-fi dork; started S02, which, now that I’m watching in real time will be only one episode per week, and one episode in, it’s already more gripping, lots more scary shit and weird alien tech; at least the aliens feel really alien, they’re like macroscopic viruses or something, deeply freaky and disturbing
coming up at Flick Filosopher…
based-on-a-true-videogame Gran Turismo
gay romance Passages
British indie Scrapper
underwater thriller The Dive
alien-contact dramedy Jules
documentary Kokomo City
Barbie
Meg 2: The Trench
Joy Ride
tween classic onscreen Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.
And more, including reviews of many of the other films I’ve been promising since forever, I’m sorry. :-(
follow me…
Bluesky | Twitter | Letterboxd | Rotten Tomatoes | Pinterest | Mastodon | Post | Spoutible | Facebook