Steven Rubio's Online Life

film fatales #195: saint omer (alice diop, 2022)

This is the twenty-third film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 23 is called "New Black Film Canon Week":

In 2006 Slate published a list of the 50 best movies by Black filmmakers, curated by Black critics, scholars, and filmmakers themselves. Since then, culturally significant and seminal films like Moonlight and Get Out have been released so this year they have updated and expanded the list to 75 movies. These movies span over a hundred years, several countries, a variety of genres and styles, and encompass different sizes of production budgets.

This week let’s celebrate Black filmmakers and watch one of these artistic treasures from Slate’s The New Black Canon.

Saint Omer has already been established as one of the best films in recent years (it is currently #291 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century). Alice Diop was a director of documentaries who attended the real-life trial of a woman who left her one-year-old child on the beach to die. Taken by the story, Diop decided to make her first fiction feature, basing it on the real trial. There is a character, Rama (Kayije Kagame), a writer attending the trial in order to write a book about it, who is a stand-in for Diop at the real trial. There's a certain meta quality to all of this, but Diop doesn't just rely on a documentary style to tell this story, and the acting, which is powerful throughout, is a constant reminder that we watching fiction. Rama identifies with the defendant (played by Guslagie Malanda) to some degree, which further complicates the meta aspect (since Rama is also a version of Diop).

Saint Omer is easy to follow, but the emotional and philosophical angles are complex. As the mother says, when asked why she abandoned her daughter, "I hope this trial can give me the answer". She tries to understand what she has done, the court and the spectators also look for understanding, and we in the audience look to Diop to explain everything. But she isn't trying to simply explain. It's a mystery without a solution, but it's not frustrating. Rather, Diop convinces us that we often can't understand what others do, or even what we ourselves have done.

call me by your name (luca guadagnino, 2017)

This is the twenty-second film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 22 is called "Time Out for Romance Week":

It can be easy to balk at watching a romance movie since they all-too-often offer nothing beyond the trite paint-by-number genre trappings common to the Hallmark Channel. Sometimes they can also veer into sickeningly saccharine territory or can unrealistically portray love as a simple, lasting feeling between two impossibly witty and beautiful people that sets real-life people up for unrealistic expectations. However, since love is actually an enormously complex and powerful force that is different for every single person, it is a theme that drives many fantastic movies. The key is not to oversimplify it, but explore it for how much it can stir the soul in so many different directions.

This Valentine’s season watch one of these fantastic movies all about that complicated emotion from Time Out’s The 100 Most Romantic Films of All Time.

Call me a romantic: I've seen 79 of the 100 Most Romantic Films of All Time. It's clear why Call Me by Your Name is on the list. (It's 15th on the list, and the 4th-most recent.) It's subtle approach to love between two men may be a bit too safe, but the emotions displayed by actors Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer as the two are touching and real. Some have complained about the age difference between the two characters (one is 24, the other 17), but Chalamet is both believably 17 (he was 20 when the film was shot) and believably mature enough to make his own decisions. It's a coming-of-age story, but I didn't find it creepy.

But there's another reason that Call Me by Your Name feels differently now than it must have in 2017. In 2021, charges emerged accusing Hammer of cases of sexual abuse. Other accusations arose. Hammer was never charged, although the cases were opened for a fair amount of time. Hammer's acting career hit a wall ... he hasn't acted in a film since the accusations appeared. It's not my place here to figure out what did and didn't happen in those cases. But it definitely affects how I watched a movie about a 24-year-old man beginning an affair with a 17-year-old. That's not fair, but I can't just pretend it doesn't exist. So there's a creepiness to the film that I don't think I would have felt had I seen it in 2017.

Call Me by Your Name is #157 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.

african-american directors series: neptune frost (saul williams and anisia uzeyman, 2021)

This is the twenty-first film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 21 is called "Afrofuturism Week":

Afrofuturism is an exciting subgenre of science-fiction movies that has been gaining traction in the past few years with mainstream offerings such as the Black Panther and Spider-Verse films, as well as the TV show Lovecraft Country. Afrofuturism is all about centering and taking pride in the Black experience in alternate or imagined realities where Black people can define themselves, potentially without the influence of Western ideas or understandings. These stories can inspire people to build toward a better future and question the past and present social structures that create and maintain cultural and economic inequality between races. Common tropes include the use of African iconography, a rich color palette, and a focus on how technology and culture intersect.

This week, let’s escape the real world and venture forth into a world of new realities made possible by Afrofuturism with this list here.

From the examples I have seen, I think I had a mistaken sense of what made Afrofuturism. I'd seen the mainstream offerings, the Black Panther and Spider-Verse films and the TV show Lovecraft Country. If I'd looked at the suggested list more closely, I might have had a better feel for what Neptune Frost might be like. Touki Bouki ("unencumbered by the 'rules' of cinema"), Sankofa ("uses time travel to place a woman from modern times back into the horrors of the old South"), Fast Color ("a superhero movie, although a very low-key one that can be approached as just a mysterious fantasy"). The introduction above of Afrofuturism is a useful description of what happens in Neptune Frost: "centering and taking pride in the Black experience in alternate or imagined realities where Black people can define themselves, potentially without the influence of Western ideas or understandings" including "the use of African iconography, a rich color palette, and a focus on how technology and culture intersect."

That describes Neptune Frost, but in truth it's a film that defies ordinary description. Saul Williams and Anisia Useyman create a unique world, rooted in Burundi but taking place in a future connected intrinsically to technology. A community of young adults, dedicated to a different kind of world, use unexplained hacking skills to subvert the larger society while staying hidden (China and Russia are initially blamed for the hacks). The connection to "The Internet" eventually destroys them, or rather, the discovery of the community by the outside world allows the powers that be to destroy them. One person remains ... I don't know if this was meant as a positive ending, perhaps it's meant to be ambiguous.

Oh, and it's a musical.

Gender fluidity, colonialism, and yes, science-fiction ... it's a unique blend. Willliams and Useyman deserve praise for creating something new. Sometimes inscrutable, but always fascinating to look at ... I, at least, had never seen anything like it.

film fatales #194: the miseducation of cameron post (desiree akhavan, 2018)

This is the twentieth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 20 is called "The Female Gaze Week":

The numbers, as you can probably imagine, are terrible. The Celluloid Ceiling reports that only 7% of the top 250 highest-grossing movies in 2022 employed female cinematographers. A lousy seven percent! Hearteningly, women continue making slow but steady inroads into the industry, but still, it could be a lot better. After all, a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences make for a far more varied and rewarding cinematic landscape; we should all consider ourselves blessed to see the world through someone else's eyes.

In that spirit, this week's challenge is to watch a film lensed by a woman. Lola Landekić's list, The Female Gaze, or: 100 Films by Female Cinematographers, is a good place to start, but any film with a female DP is fair game.

Chloë Grace Moretz has snuck up on me. I don't think of her as one of my favorites, although I loved her so much in Kick-Ass that I made her my Facebook avatar. But The Miseducation of Cameron Post is the 7th movie with Moretz I have seen, and while she's not always the lead, the movies are often quite good, and she usually stands out. About Kick-Ass, I wrote, "the #1 reason to watch Kick-Ass is Chloë Grace Moretz." She was one of the best things in Scorsese's Hugo, and she carries the action movie Shadow in the Cloud.

Moretz is the titular Cameron Post, a teenager caught making out with another girl at her prom, who is sent to a "conversion" camp. The film is more low-key than you'd expect ... the "camp" is creepy and quietly abusive of the kids, but the film is more a character study of young people than it is a diatribe against conversion therapy. In a scene where Cameron is questioned by an investigator after one of the kids tries to kill himself, she explains how the camp works on the teens. She says she feels safe, but that she doesn't trust the staff members. Asked if she thinks the staff has her best interests in mind, she replies, "No one's, you know, beating us. But you asked me if I trust them. And sure, I trust them to drive the van safely, and I trust them to buy food." Told that the investigator isn't there to examine the mission of the facility "unless that includes abuse or neglect", Cameron asks, "Yeah, but what about emotional abuse?" Moretz speaks softly, but her face speaks loudly ... she wears that emotional abuse where we can see it.

The challenge this week was to watch a film with a female cinematographers, and the reference to a female gaze is appropriate. But the collaborative nature of film making means I can't always separate the contributions of the various crew members from the writer and director. Director Desiree Akhavan co-wrote the screenplay with Cecilia Frugiuele, from a novel by Emily M. Danforth, with Ashley Connor as cinematographer. Who is ultimately responsible for the film? All of them, although it's the standard that we start with the director (this was Akhavan's second feature, although she has worked frequently in television). I think a director's job is partly to elicit good performances from the cast, and you get that here, not just from Moretz, but from almost everyone (Jennifer Ehle is a bit stereotypical as the villain).

The Miseducation of Cameron Post won't beat you over the head, and some might wish there was more of that kind of style. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, but there was no big fight to get distribution rights, and it wasn't ever shown much in theaters, meaning it lost money, even with a budget of under $1 million. It deserves more attention than it got. The Miseducation of Cameron Post hides in that place between good and great movies, it's worth seeing, and Moretz is once again a standout.

geezer cinema: magnificent warriors (david chung, 1987)

This is the nineteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 19 is called "Contemporary Performers: Michelle Yeoh Week":

Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh began her career in Hong Kong action films. She became an international star after appearing in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies and Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She has continued to appear in action, sci-fi, and comedy films, combining all three with her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, for which she became the first Asian woman to win the Oscar for Best Actress.

This week's challenge is to watch a film starring Michelle Yeoh.

It isn't a very big challenge to get me to watch a Michelle Yeoh movie. I'm a big fan ...Magnificent Warriors (also known as Dynamite Fighters) marks the 17th Michelle Yeoh movie I've seen. A biographical summary of Yeoh's career is complicated. She was only 22 when she made her first movie, going under the name "Michelle Khan", a name change suggested by the studio D&B Films. She broke out with her second film, Yes Madam, which was followed by Royal Warriors, and then Magnificent Warriors ... the latter two had the same director (In the credits for the version we saw, on the Criterion Channel, she was listed as "Michelle Kheng"... her name at birth was "Yeoh Choo Kheng"). She made one more movie, then married Dickson Poon (the D of D&B) and retired from acting. She was 25.

Five years later, she got a divorce and returned to movies. She made some of her best movies then, including Police Story 3: Super Cop, The Heroic Trio, and Wing Chun. All that was left was to conquer Hollywood, which she did in 1997 with the James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies (finally listed in the credits as Michelle Yeoh). Her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon solidified her place on the world stage. Finally came Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar.

Magnificent Warriors, with its Indiana Jones feel, is about even with Royal Warriors in terms of quality. Those two, and Yes Madam, are all fun to watch, and Yeoh/Khan/Kheng has clear screen charisma. If you are going to start your Michelle Yeoh marathon, though, start with the post-retirement films, enjoy the "famous " ones next, and then you're on your own. Even a bad movie is made better by her presence.

film fatales #193: fire of love (sara dosa, 2022)

This is the eighteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 18 is called "Golden Brick Week":

My (Adam Graff’s) favorite podcast about movies is Filmspotting (𝖘𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖓𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖎𝖓: Me too!). For me, the hosts have the perfect blend of genuine insight in their reviews and top five lists to participatory fun like their Massacre Theater segment where listeners guess movies based on their very bad acting of a scene to their March Madness when listeners spend the month determining things like who the best director working today is or what is the best movie of the 90s. The hosts are affable and thoughtful and stay focused on films throughout the podcast, without sacrificing a personal touch.

One feature of Filmspottting is their annual Golden Brick Award, intended to honor underseen films, which is presented to the best film of the year that is not mainstream, made by a relatively new filmmaker, and that shows a clear directorial vision or artistic ambition. This week, watch a movie that was nominated for a Golden Brick from Filmspotting’s own Letterboxd list and give them a listen if you haven’t already.

Fire of Love is an Oscar-nominated documentary about two French "volcanologists", Katia and Maurice Krafft, and their relationship with each other and with volcanoes. Both are fascinated with the latter ... one could say obsessed ... they make a fine team because they share that fascination. The "love" of the title refers to their love for each other ... the "fire of love" adds volcanoes to the picture. It feels like something Werner Herzog might film, and in fact, Herzog released his own documentary about the Kraffts, The Fire Within, that same year. I haven't seen it, but I have seen other Herzog documentaries, and he usually manages to work himself into the situations he is presenting. Sara Dosa, working with writers Shane Boris, Erin Casper, and Jocelyne Chaput (with Casper and Chaput also serving as editors) artfully hide themselves ... the film is almost entirely archival footage, much taken by the Kraffts, with no after-the-fact interviews. It feels as you are watching as if the Kraffts are the ones who made the movie, and I imagine if they could see it, they'd be pleased (they ended up dying in 1991 during a volcano eruption).

But Fire of Love also features a running narration, read by Miranda July. I found nothing wrong with July's reading, but the narration does tend to impose a direction to what we see. Between that and the editing, you come to understand that despite being at the center of the picture, the Kraffts are not the real authors of this film. Dosa hides herself, but in plain sight.

The Kraffts are very interesting, and their love of their work together helps to overcome the moments (and there are many) when you wonder just what these crazy people are going to do next. Dosa tries hard not to pass judgement on the couple, and mostly succeeds. I found myself wavering at times, but the Kraffts kind of invite that. Also, we get to watch from the comforts of the theater or our living room, while the Kraffts are often right next to the flowing lava. We risk nothing by watching the movie ... the Kraffts risk everything on a regular basis, and are aware of the possibilities. They just can't deny what they see as the beauty of the earth. And their footage offers remarkable evidence that the earth really is alive.

the lady in red (lewis teague, 1979)

This is the seventeenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 17 is called "Cream of the Grindhouse Crop Week":

Even though exploitation films overtly sensationalize the lurid subjects they depict, it doesn’t mean the movies have to be bad! After all, arthouse movies from Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski featured similar content to critical acclaim and were often played alongside exploitation films in Grindhouses, the kind of movie theaters, popular in the 70s, that mostly played exploitation films.

This week let’s watch one of the top movies from the heyday of the Grindhouse era. Even though we’ll be watching in the comfort of our own homes and at a time when easy access and exposure to all kinds of images and films is the norm, let’s imagine what it was like to make our way in the dark to one of these little theaters and see these kinds of images for the first time in the company of a bunch of other curious strangers. Watch a movie that made either the original or updated Top 20 Grindhouse Classics from The Grindhouse Cinema Database or Quentin Tarantino’s personal Top 20 Grindhouse Classics, which he shared with The Grindhouse Cinema Database while filming Inglorious Basterds. All movies featured in all three lists can be found in AlpineSuperstar’s list here.

As is so often the case with movies like this, the trivial angles are more interesting than the actual movie. So let me get the movie itself out of the way. It's good for what it is, a worthy addition to the Grindhouse Canon. That doesn't mean it's a great movie ... not even close. But it's better than the usual, and the ways in which exploitation movies can go wrong are mostly avoided. Director Lewis Teague keeps things moving, writer John Sayles doesn't trip over his own feet, Pamela Sue Martin is a reasonably appealing lead. It's based on fact without rubbing that in our faces (the "facts" being the relationship between the Lady in Red and criminal John Dillinger). You need a tolerance for staples of grindhouse like violence (lots of shootouts) and nudity (Martin's character spends time in a women's prison, and later works in a brothel). Everyone knew what they were doing, which is why Roger Corman hired them in the first place.

We've already hinted at some of the interesting trivia. Pamela Sue Martin had played Nancy Drew on television for two seasons, and wanted to change her image. So she did a Playboy pictorial, and then this movie. Later, she featured in Dynasty for several years, and even once hosted Saturday Night Live.

John Sayles began his movie career with Roger Corman. He went on to become a respected writer/director of art films, as well as a novelist. John Dillinger was played by the popular TV actor Robert Conrad. Perhaps one reason the film isn't called "Dillinger" is that the character doesn't turn up until the movie is more than halfway done. The supporting cast is filled with great actors, cult stars, and "that guys" ... Louise Fletcher had won a Best Actress Oscar only a few years earlier ... Mary Woronov (who has one scene) was a member of Warhol's Factory ... Christopher Lloyd was a bad guy named "Frognose" ... and it wouldn't be a Corman movie without the immortal Dick Miller, who this time manages a sweatshop. Finally, there's Robert Forster as a very cool hitman ... apparently the role was too small to suit Forster's agent, which for some reason is why Forster's name is not in the credits. Behind the scenes, The Lady in Red was one of the earliest films with James Horner doing the music. Horner went on to win two Oscars for Titanic. On a consumer guide level, if you want to watch a violent action movie with lots of nudity, you'll like The Lady in Red. But it's not a classic.

film fatales # 191: outside in (lynn shelton, 2017)

This is the sixteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 16 is called "Lin, Lyne, Lynn, Lynn, or Lynne Week":

This week, we pay homage to Benjamin Milot, LSC's previous host. Back in 2018, he came up with the idea of loosely grouping four or five prominent actors or directors based only on the similarity of their names. Not only did this create a clever title for a theme week, but it also tended to provide a wide range of films from which to choose, producing a creative cornucopia of cinema to sate any palate.

In that spirit, we continue his vital work. This week, you'll pick a movie directed by one of the following: Justin Lin, Adrian Lyne, Darren Lynn Bousman, Lynn Shelton, or Lynne Ramsay. Or, if you're up for a real challenge, choose one from each!

P.S. We know Adrian's last name is pronounced "line," but it looks the same, so don't fight it.

I had seen one other movie directed by Lynn Shelton, Sword of Trust, and much of what I said about that film applies to Outside In:

I wanted to like Sword of Trust ... But the best I can say is that I didn't dislike it. ... I never quit rooting for the movie ... Everyone does good work, but overall, I wanted a little more.

Once again, Shelton shows herself to be a good director of actors. But the basic plot (ex-con returns, faces problems) reminded me too much of the great, forgotten TV series Rectify, and it doesn't come close. Edie Falco does excellent work as a woman who wears her emotions on her face, and as always, I liked Kaitlin Dever. But Jay Duplass was a real problem for me. I've never been a big fan of his screen presence (this was the first movie with him that I had seen, but he turns up on my TV a lot), and his role as the ex-con seems ill-fitted to what Duplass gives us. I expected someone more hardened, and that could be on me, since he's not a typical ex-con. And I may have suffered from submerged macho syndrome, because while Falco's emotional turmoil moved me, I quickly tired of seeing Duplass performing a similar role. (Duplass also co-wrote the script with Shelton.) So now I've seen two of Lynn Shelton's features, I'd like to see more, but I haven't gone overboard on what I've seen so far.

x (ti west, 2022)

This is the fifteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 15 is called "Condemned! Week":

In 1995, in celebration of the centenary of the motion picture, the Vatican released a list of 45 titles divided into three groups. Its "Some Important Films" list highlighted a selection of outstanding films the Papacy felt warranted inclusion into the list's "Religion," "Values," and "Art" categories. "The Church's overall judgment of this art form, as of all genuine art, is positive and hopeful," John Paul II offered.

That's not what this week is about, though.

The Pope continued, "Unfortunately, though, some cinema productions merit criticism and disapproval, even severe criticism and disapproval. This is the case when films distort the truth, oppress genuine freedom, or show scenes of sex and violence offensive to human dignity." And so, from November 2003 to July 2022, the Catholic News Service and the former Office for Film and Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops handed out an "O" rating to those movies deemed "morally objectionable."

This week we'll disregard the positive and the hopeful and turn our attention to those films that earned the church's highest level of criticism and disapproval. Will we still be able to find art? Head over to TajLV's CONDEMNED!! Films Rated Morally Offensive by the Catholic Church list and select a film that could never dream of making any future revision of the "Some Important Films" list. Good luck, sinners, and may God save your souls.

I don't know what this means ... I'm sure it's irrelevant ... but going into this week's challenge, I had seen 78 of those Condemned films (14% of the entire list). Other facts related to that list: I own 6 of the movies. I gave a rating of 9/10 to two of the films (Moonlight and Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood). And I gave a rating of 4/10 to three of the films (The Black Dahlia, Killing Them Softly, and Birds of Prey).

X lies somewhere between Moonlight and Birds of Prey. It's actually pretty good, and it delivers its exploitation values without insulting our intelligence. Writer/director Ti West has an intimate knowledge of the genre ... he has made many horror films over the years, although this is the first one I've seen. West shows the connection between the voyeurism of the porn audience and the voyeurism of the horror audience, but he doesn't beat you over the head with that connection ... he just gives you sex and violence and lets you connect the two. And it makes interesting points about aging, as well.

Fans of the genre know to look for the Final Girl (I can't help but look ... Carol J. Clover was on my dissertation committee). So it's not really a spoiler to note that X is heading to a predictable conclusion. Having said that, West does keep up the suspense by making the two most recognizable actors women, so we can't tell until the end which of Mia Goth and Jenna Ortega will still be around. Even though X came out last year, there is already a prequel, Pearl (and while franchises always smell of money, based on the plot of X, a prequel actually makes sense). The acting throughout is solid (and there's an interesting angle to the casting that would require a spoiler to say more), and the production belies the film's low budget ($1 million). I wouldn't recommend X to people who dislike the genre, but it should satisfy the fans.

film fatales #189: proof (jocelyn moorhouse, 1991)

This is the fourteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 14 is called "Living in Obscurity Week":

Top 10 (or 50, or 100, or 250), Best of, and All-Time Greatest lists are all well and good, but sometimes the discerning movie-watcher desires the sweet thrill of discovery, of stumbling upon an obscure gem, of uncovering a magnificent concoction few others have. There is nothing wrong with those lauded collections of films—they are well-known and revered for good reason. But think about this: by some estimates, there are nearly 5 million films out there in the world! It's like a bucket of LEGO containing pieces of every size; all the little bricks sink to the bottom while the bigger ones rest on top. Movies, it seems, are no different.

This week, let's plunge our hands deep into the movie bucket and shun the measly 1% of films (if we're being generous) that get the most attention. However, 4.95 million films are a bit much to sift through. Luckily, Letterboxd makes our task easy: just pick a title from The Most Obscure Movie Recommendations List Ever as compiled by independent online film journal Bright Wall/Dark Room. Voila! Happy discovering!

Proof was the first feature for writer/director Jocelyn Moorhouse, and it was successful on the festival circuit, opening doors for Moorhouse's subsequent career. I've seen her later movie The Dressmaker, which was also highly regarded, although I felt it didn't add up to much. You could say Proof doesn't fit clearly into any genre, or that it crosses several genres, but in any case, it's just different enough to be surprising throughout. It's a study of a blind man, it's a buddy movie, it's a romantic triangle, and no one can every quite trust anyone else. Trust is at the center of the film ... the blind man can't trust what others say because he can't see evidence of what they are talking about. He takes photographs of everything, and then asks people to describe what they see. He compares their descriptions to what people said when the events took place, and can then know who is honest ... the photographs are his proof.

There's some nice acting going on. Hugo Weaving doesn't overplay his character's blindness, and is all the more believable because of that. Russell Crowe is impossibly young (he was 27), with a pleasing charisma. Geneviève Picot rounds out the triangle, and her character is written almost like a femme fatale from a noir picture. Picot makes it work.

Proof won't knock you off your feet, but it's a solid film and a strong start for Moorhouse.