Steven Rubio's Online Life

2024 Movies Wrapup

Some lists from Letterboxd. First, the one you're most used to seeing at the end of the year, my ratings of the 2024 movies I've seen. These aren't particularly important coming from me because there are so many recent films I have yet to see. This list will continue to change, so depending on when you click on this link, the number of films will increase. The list also includes two movies Letterboxd considers 2023 movies, that seem to be eligible for Oscars this year (His Three Daughters and Hit Man). Anyway:

All Movies of 2024 I Have Seen

My top five as of this moment: Anora, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Wild Robot, His Three Daughters, My Old Ass.

The next list highlights my favorite 2023 movies. I do this each year because by this time, I've seen a lot more than I had by last December.

Top 10 Movies of 2023 (#1 is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse)

Geezer Cinema took a bit of a hit this year, between my broken ankle, my wife's cancer treatment, and her trip to Portugal and Italy. We still managed to see 36 Geezer movies in 2024. Here is the ongoing list of Geezer Cinema, which is now up to 257, dating back to July 9, 2019:

Geezer Cinema (best this year was Lone Star)

Finally, all of the movies I watched in 2024. I saw 183.

Movies I Watched in 2024

The best films from that list, all of which I had seen before: Bonnie and Clyde, Bride of Frankenstein, Frankenstein, The Last Picture Show, Lone Star, The Night of the Hunter, Parasite, The Seventh Seal, Spartacus, Sweet Smell of Success, Thelma & Louise, Touch of Evil, Winter's Bone. Honorable mention to the best movie I watched for the first time in 2024, to The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Letterboxd also now provides stats for individual lists, so I know I saw films from 35 countries in 14 languages.

revisiting the 9s: chop shop (ramin bahrani, 2007)

[This is the twenty-third in a series that will probably be VERY intermittent, if I remember to post at all. I've long known that while I have given my share of 10-out-of-10 ratings for movies over the years, in almost every case, those movies are fairly old. So I got this idea to go back and revisit movies of relatively recent vintage that I gave a rating of 9, to see if time and perspective convinced me to bump that rating up to 10.]

In 2009, I wrote:

Director Ramin Bahrani works with supreme confidence ... any misgivings that might arise as you watch are, well, they don't arise because you're sucked in to the matter-of-fact presentation of a segment of American life invisible to most of us. Perhaps afterwards you wonder about the plot (or lack of same), or how much the realist style matches the reality of what is being shown. But this is a remarkable film that reminds one of any number of genres, none of which seem to be American (Italian neo-realism is one clear influence).

I agree with everything I said at the time. I'm still not convinced this is a "10". Roger Ebert once wrote that with Chop Shop "we have an American film with the raw power of 'City of God'". It's splitting hairs, I suppose, but City of God is the kind of great movie that elicits a "10" from me as soon I see it ... it came out in 2002, and it never made a list of "9s". Maybe it's the lack of sensationalism, but in the end, Chop Shop doesn't jump off the screen the way City of God does. Chop Shop is a wonderful movie, but it's not quite a classic.

stand for something

"So when the Democrats supply an endless stream of weapons to an aggressive ally so that that ally can oppress a weaker population and kill thousands of children, well, the Democrats have forsaken their reason to exist. What use is this party? If I were for oppression, and violence, and the granting of carte blanche to stronger groups to use force to obliterate weaker groups, I would be a Republican. They have traditionally supported those things in a more straightforward way. The Biden administration’s decision to support those things as well does not mean that I will become a Republican. It does, however, mean that I and millions of people like me have been effectively robbed of a political home. Even more so than before. If the Republicans stand for fascism and the Democrats stand for nothing, the Republicans are going to win. And, indeed, they did."

-- Hamilton Nolan, "Stand for Something"

music friday: 2004

Where did that come from?

geezer cinema: juror #2 (clint eastwood, 2024)

Clint Eastwood. It's like a brand name. You know what you are getting from a film he directed, even when he is 94 years old. Mick LaSalle encapsulated Eastwood's career: "Think about a legendary actor like John Wayne — enormous, iconic, indelible. Think of a director like John Ford — monumental, untouchable, profound. Now imagine if John Wayne and John Ford were the same guy."

Eastwood is/was an iconic actor, which isn't to say he was a great actor, although he certainly let his audience know the kind of character he was playing on a basic level. He was a popular movie star, although for me, the closest he came to a classic was in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. He has a handful of Oscars, but none of them are for acting (in fairness, he has been nominated twice). Characters like Harry Callahan are easy to describe and easy to remember, and it's harder than it looks to portray the essence of such a shallow character. I'm not here to denigrate Eastwood's acting, nor am I denying his appeal to audiences. You know what you are getting: a minimalist approach that largely avoids overt emotionalism.

Eastwood as director is much like Eastwood the actor, and I fear at this point I'm just repeating myself, for I say this every time I see once of his pictures. He takes a minimalist approach, he stays within his budget, he trusts his actors, and from everything I know his movie sets are good to work on. But the closest he came to a classic was Mystic River, with maybe Letters from Iwo Jima second. He's made enough solid movies to convince a lot of people he is a great director ... and of course, two of his Oscars are for Best Director. But he also made weaker movies ... OK, if you make as many as he has, perhaps a little weakness is inevitable. People remember his work under Sergio Leone, and his Oscar for Unforgiven, and gradually we just assume everything he does is quality. But the Westerns he has directed include such non-classics as Pale Rider and The Outlaw Josey Wales, films with reputations that don't match what's on the screen. And what to make of stuff like Absolute Power and Space Cowboys? (It's worth noting that both of those movies had reasonably-sized budgets and made money worldwide. Clint Eastwood makes money for his studios.)

So what about Juror #2? It's one of Eastwood's better movies ... he lets his actors act, he lets the screenplay do its thing, and all of it is solid. There are hokey plot twists, but Eastwood gets about as much as you can out of a courtroom drama in 2024. He deserves the plaudits, even if he wasn't 94 years old. But is Juror #2 as good as Anora, or Furiosa, or The Wild Robot, or His Three Daughters? No. It's as good as The Beekeeper with Jason Statham, and that is not an insult ... The Beekeeper is a good movie. But it's not great, and neither is Juror #2.

buchanan rides alone (budd boetticher, 1958)

Another in a series of westerns made by director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott. It's the third I've seen (the others being The Tall T and Ride Lonesome). All of them are solid efforts, made inexpensively but artistically. These films aren't just B-Westerns. Scott's presence is commanding, and Boetticher has a sure hand. The cinematographer is Lucien Ballard, who worked on many Peckinpah movies, including The Wild Bunch.

The films are nothing special, but perhaps that's part of their charm. They are concise (Buchanan Rides Alone is 80 minutes), and if you aren't watching an all-time classic, at least you're not sorry you've seen it. If this seems like faint praise, well, sometimes a movie like this is exactly what you need. And there's something to be said for low-budget genre pictures that don't disappoint, given how many of them do.

the seventh seal (ingmar bergman, 1957)

How is it that I have never written about The Seventh Seal? Like many of my generation, Ingmar Bergman was my introduction to international "art" cinema. In my case, once a week I would watch a movie on a local UHF station (ask your grandparents) that showed arthouse movies, dubbed, probably edited to get rid of nudity, with commercials. The one that convinced me that I was onto something more than hoping for a naked person on late-60s broadcast teevee was Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly. I'm not sure what others I saw then, but when I became a film major in 1973 and spent the next year-and-a-half doing nothing but watching movies, I got a substantial dose of what was considered canon at that time, meaning I saw a lot of Bergman. Over the years, The Seventh Seal has been one of my very favorite Bergman movies (second only to Smiles of a Summer Night), and I have seen it many times. Which is why I'm surprised I never got around to writing about it.

The film's imagery is so iconic that it gets parodied to this day, nearly 70 years since it came out. It's the Bergman many people think of ... I suspect they imagine all of his films are like this one. Not everyone is convinced ... David Thomson wrote that it was "the ultimate step in this rather academic way of recording human torment", claiming "It's medievalism and the wholesale allegory now seem frivolous and theatrical diversions from true seriousness." It's not that Thomson is wrong, exactly ... The Seventh Seal does academically record human torment. It's just that it's far from frivolous, which is why it still affects audiences. If you haven't seen it for awhile, you might be surprised at the moments of humor. There's no chance a visionary juggler is going to be as iconic as Death playing chess with Max von Sydow. And despite the humor, Bergman does beat us to a pulp with the awfulness of life during the plague, where half of the people despair because God is punishing them while the other half despair because they don't believe in God.

The cinematography of Gunnar Fischer is exemplary. The Seventh Seal is a film that demands to be seen at least once, even if you decide it's not your cup of tea. #82 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the 1000 greatest films of all time, where it is championed by everyone from Roger Corman to Paul Verhoeven.

https://letterboxd.com/masoo/list/top-ten-ingmar-bergman-movies/

rickey henderson

güeros (alonso ruizpalacios, 2014)

This is the sixteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 16 is called "Viva la revolucion! Week":

Order and adherence to social norms is so intrinsic to any society that almost any kind of social change can only occur very gradually. Art and movies can be a part of what brings about this kind of slow change as societies evolve. However, there have been groups throughout history who have felt that the need for a new social order is so necessary that they sought to quick-start the change they wanted through the powerful force of violence and revolution.

Whether it be a depiction of an actual historic event or something like the overthrow of a futuristic dystopia, this week watch a movie about a political revolution where violence is involved. Here is a list from Darren Carver-Balsiger to help you get started.

The politics, the revolution, the violence, they are all here, but none of them drive the story, which is ultimately a road movie that takes place amidst those events. It's 1999 in Mexico City, and a student strike at UNAM essentially has shut down the university. A mother sends her young troublesome son Tomás to stay with his brother "Sombra" in Mexico City. Sombra and his roommate Santos are taking advantage of the strike to ignore school ... they are slackers. Sombra's girlfriend Ana is involved with the strikers, and writer-director Alonso Ruizpalacios gets all four characters to travel around town, crossing with various elements of the strike while looking for an old folk-rocker named Epigmenio Cruz.

This was the first feature for Ruizpalacios, and he has a confident tone, full of influences, notably of French New Wave filmmakers like Godard. Güeros is shot in black & white and has a documentary feel which makes the strike scenes especially believable. No particular political stance is taken in the film ... what matters is the characters and how they relate as they interact with the world around them. Epigmenio disappoints when they finally find him, and Ana deserts Sombra for the strike, at which point everything is pretty much back to where they were when Tomás first arrives in the city.

The cinematography of Damián García is excellent. Overall, Güeros is impressive without ever knocking you over. It makes you want to watch more films by Ruizpalacios.

[This was also part of my occasional ongoing attempt to watch movies in Spanish using subtitles in Spanish. I read a summary of the plot in advance. I felt this was my most successful try yet ... I never felt lost.]

music friday: bluesky 60s

Another steal from my daily Bluesky music posts. I'm up to 1973 now ... here are the three songs that closed out the 1960s. First, 1967:

1968:

And 1969: