Steven Rubio's Online Life

insomnia (erik skjoldbjærg, 1997)

I liked Christopher Nolan's remake with Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank, but that was more than 20 years ago so I have to look at what I wrote at the time just to remember having seen it. (I liked the acting, especially the way Pacino and Williams were relatively muted.) Then, I noted that since I hadn't seen the original, I couldn't make a comparison. Now I've seen the original, but since I can't really remember the remake, a comparison would be pointless once again.

Stellan Skarsgård is impressive as what amount to the title character. His cop-with-insomnia makes sense partly because the film takes place in the land of the midnight sun. It's always daytime during the film, and the cop can't sleep. That's the physical explanation, but the cop is also troubled by his own actions, messing with evidence to protect himself and burnish his reputation as a brilliant detective. The midnight sun is a visual representation for his angst, and the cinematography of Erling Thurmann-Andersen drives this home effectively.

Everything in Insomnia is done well, and I have no real complaints. But the whole thing feels a bit like an exercise ... I was impressed but not engrossed, found it to be a good movie but not a classic. This was the feature debut for Norwegian director Erik Skjoldbjærg, and it shows promise, although I haven't seen any of his subsequent movies, and admit I have only even heard of one of them (Prozac Nation, with Christina Ricci). I'd say he is a subject for future examination, but I have a feeling that since it took me almost 30 years to see his debut, I might not participate in those exams.

tiny tim: king for a day (johan von sydow, 2020)

This is the fifteenth 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 15 is called "Different Drums Week":

Think outside the box: wear a giant papier-mâché head and front a band. Don't conform: master an other-worldy-sounding instrument. Blaze a new trail: start singing metal in your 90s. Be unexpected: bring pop to the opera and opera to the club. Embrace the unconventional: start a one-man band. Stray from the beaten path: become the greatest, worst singer ever.

This week's challenge is to march to the beat of your own drum by watching a film that marries documentary and decidedly non-mainstream music in a swirl of sound and storytelling that converges outside the popular consciousness. Thankfully, Mike Sean has curated a handy selection of fitting novelties on his delightfully esoteric Different Drums: Documentaries on Musical Curiosities list.

Johan von Sydow takes a stylistic kitchen-sink approach to his documentary on the singer Tiny Tim. He blends old performance footage with animated recreations, interviews with relevant people in Tiny's life and voice-over narration taken from Tiny's diary read by Weird Al Yankovic. There is a lot of love for Tiny Tim in the movie ... the film wants us to embrace the eccentricities in the man's life, wants to show us the art behind the man's presentation. We hear from avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas, and are reminded that Bob Dylan and John Lennon were fans.

There is no attempt to offer a complete version of Tiny's life. The film's short running time (78 minutes) helps ensure this, since von Sydow is covering the entire length of Tiny's life and needs to squeeze in what von Sydow thinks is important. We don't know what von Sydow is leaving out. The movie isn't merely a gloss on Tiny Tim. We see the ups and downs of his private life, including his three marriages (one of the interviewees is his daughter), but I never lost the feeling that something was being left out.

The film ends with a marvelous anecdote that I can't resist spoiling. The legendary Wavy Gravy, who knew everyone in Greenwich Village during Tiny's formative years, tells a story about he and Tiny Tim catching a ride with Neal Cassady. As Wavy tells the story, we see an animated representation.

We were driving up the west side highway in New York ... with Neal Cassady driving the car, and Neal and Tiny singing Bing Crosby duets as we drove along. Every now and then he'd go, "Oh Mr. Cassady, not so fast!" "Oh relax, Tiny, everything's cool! I'm just gonna roll this joint and drive with my knee.

Perhaps it helps if you know me a little bit. The idea of Wavy Gravy, Tiny Tim, and Neal Cassady together in a car makes my day.

film fatales #200: bergman island (marie nyreröd, 2006)

A bit of an oddity, and a real pleasure for Bergman fans, Bergman Island is an edit of three television interviews Marie Nyreröd conducted with Ingmar Bergman at his home on the isolated island of Fårö. Bergman was in his 80s, and Nyreröd is a congenial and astute interviewers. The film is good for what it is, as we watch and listen to one of cinema's greats. Nonetheless, it's not overwhelming as a film ... Nyreröd has cut the original three interviews down by approximately half, and while the two walk around the island and inside Bergman's house, essentially this is two talking heads. Interesting because of the subject matter, worth a look, but otherwise nothing special.

songs from the second floor (roy andersson, 2000)

Long ago, I invented a genre of movies I call "Not for Steven," aka the works of Terrence Malick. These are movies where the director clearly accomplishes what they've set out to do, but I don't care for the results. Songs from the Second Floor is Not for Steven, but I admit, I haven't got the slightest idea what Roy Andersson was up to, so I can't say whether or not he accomplished his goals. His film connects with a lot of people, and critics love it ... it's #40 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century (#456 all-time).

There's no real plot. The film is a series of vignettes, and for the most part, I think the audience is supposed to make connections between the scenes. Andersson isn't laying it out on a platter for us. Each vignette takes place in front of a stationary camera (there is one scene where the camera moves a bit). People turn up multiple times ... there may be no plot, but there is a continuity among the characters. I just didn't care. For what it's worth, Andersson is inspired by the Peruvian poet César Vallejo, whose poems pop up as dialogue. Some have said Songs from the Second Floor should be seen as a poem, itself.

you will die at twenty (amjad abu alala, 2019)

You Will Die at Twenty is a rare feature from Sudan, made under tense conditions. The first feature for director Amjad Abu Alala, based on a short story, the film was made in Sudan during the Sudanese Revolution. Since there was no real film industry in Sudan, Abu Alala had to rely on outside resources (it's hard to pin down, but at least five production companies  and eight producers were involved).

Which would be interesting trivia but nothing more, if the film wasn't good. And it's much more than good, the story of a mother who is told by an elder that her newborn baby, Muzamil, will die at 20. Whether we in the audience believe this premonition is irrelevant ... most of the village thinks it's true, and as we watch Muzamil grow, we see the burden this brings upon him and his mother. Those burdens are real, even if we find them misguided. Abu Alala doesn't choose a side. He respects the religious beliefs of the villagers but also shows us the impossible restraints those beliefs impose on Muzamil. The end of the movie is gently ambiguous.

Islam Mubarak is quietly powerful as the mother, while Moatasem Rashed and Mustafa Shehata shine as the young Muzamil and the teenager he becomes. The film is gorgeous to look at (Sébastien Goepfert is the cinematographer). Nothing we see on the screen reflects the difficult conditions under which is was made, and it most definitely does not look like a debut feature.

a few 2022 movie lists

I'll probably watch a few more movies this year, but unless one is an all-time classic, these will likely remain the best movies I watched in 2022 for the first time. I gave all of them a rating of 9 on a scale of 10. Sorted by release year:

• Woman in the Dunes (1964)
• Attica (2021)
• Drive My Car (2021)
• Flee (2021)
• Petite Maman (2021)
• Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
• RRR (2022)

Best movies I re-watched this year (all 10/10):

• The Wizard of Oz (1939)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• A Hard Day's Night (1964)
• Jaws (1975)
• The Last Waltz (1978)
• Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The ongoing Geezer Cinema list. We watched 48 Geezer movies this year, beginning with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse back on January 4:

[Letterboxd list of Geezer Cinema movies]

And this list of everything I watched this year:

[Letterboxd list of movies I watched in 2022]

the double life of véronique (krzysztof kieślowski, 1991)

I had seen Kieślowski's Three Colors trilogy (Blue, White ,and Red), which came right after Double Life, and I didn't connect with them. I suppose I appreciated them, in that Not for Steven way, but I always felt like I was missing important context. I fear the same thing happened for me with The Double Life of Véronique, which was visually impressive but which I found confusing. Put the blame on me ... this isn't the first time I've been confused at the movies. The title refers to two women, Weronika and Véronique, both played by Irène Jacob, whose connection is never made explicit. I'm sure this is appealing for some viewers, but I wanted something more concrete. Jacob makes it all work, nonetheless (she was also good in Three Colors: Red). While I wanted more narrative clarity, Jacob is powerful in part because of a certain vague quality. Playing two characters is often an easy way to get awards attention, but if anything, Jacob underplays, never explicitly drawing attention to her acting, which is better for that underplaying. Not that you don't notice her ... she is impossibly beautiful (she was 25 when the film was made, and remains beautiful at 55). The best I can say for the Kieślowski films I have seen is that I can see why others like them so much. #403 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time.

the worst person in the world (joachim trier, 2021)

The story goes that Renate Reinsve had decided to give up on acting to become a carpenter. She met with Joachim Trier, and he wrote her the lead part for his new movie, The Worst Person in the World. Reinsve had done some stage work and had appeared in several Norwegian television series, but she wasn't yet a name. Trier saw something, and Reinsve has now won a couple of Best Actress awards (including one at Cannes). The film is nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Oscars, and if Reinsve is absent from the nominations list, she can take pride in being at the center of a film that is highly regarded.

Trier has said that The Worst Person in the World is a rom-com for people who hate rom-coms. Honestly, I could barely tell it was a rom-com. It is an honest look at love and relationships, how difficult they can be, and how a person can struggle in relationships when they are still finding out who they are. Needless to saw, Reinsve's character (Julie) is not the person referred to in the title, but that title does reflect how we don't always see the good things about ourselves that others recognize in us.

There is more to the film than Reinsve ... in particular, Anders Danielsen Lie is excellent. But the reason to see The Worst Person in the World is Reinsve, and the character Trier has created for her.

flee (jonas poher rasmussen, 2021)

You can learn a lot about Flee by looking at the three categories for which it has received an Oscar nomination: Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature, and Best International Feature. It is the first movie in Oscar history to get nominated in all three of those categories, and it is clear from those nominations that this is not a straightforward presentation. Animation draws attention to its unreal nature, while documentaries at least pretend to show "real" life. By choosing to animate his film, Jonas Poher Rasmussen is making a statement about the veracity of documentaries.

The film is also complicated by the possible untrustworthy source of its narrative. Flee tells the story of the pseudonymous "Amin", who is a long-time friend of the director, and who is a refugee from Afghanistan. Rasmussen wants to tell Amin's story, wants to give Amin a chance to tell his story, but Amin has good reasons to hide behind anonymity. We don't know exactly what he looks like, since he is animated in a style so close to rotoscoping that we might forget the face is probably not a match for the real person. We learn of his escape from Afghanistan as a child, and to some extent, that explains all of the ways Amin hides the truth. Rasmussen assumes he knows much of the story, but over the course of the film, he learns that Amin has never told people his entire true story. The revelations are new not just to the audience, but also to the director.

Once you realize that Amin will adjust his story to protect himself, you question the validity of what he tells us about his life. The emotional makeup of the character feels very real, and his reasons for protecting himself are obvious. We sympathize with him ... we don't turn against him when we see how his story is sometimes a bit sideways to the facts, just as Rasmussen remains Amin's friend even as he learns that some of what he has known isn't literally true.

It strikes me that my two favorite movies so far from 2021 are documentaries. Summer of Soul remains my top choice, but Flee is in the same league.

what i watched last week

I rarely write about a movie directly after having seen it. Seems like it should marinate a bit before I expound. This practice caught up to me this week, as I watched four movies and, so far, only wrote about one (Purple Noon). So now I have to think back on two I watched early in the week, and do a rush job on one I saw this afternoon. Truth is, what I really want to write about is the season finale of Outlander, but that most definitely cannot be a rush job. So ...

Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014). I might have anticipated a disaster movie, since all I knew going in was that there would be an avalanche in the French Alps. So I was pleasantly surprised to find a film that examined expectations around masculinity and family dynamics, something of a chamber piece that was a bit reminiscent of some of the work of Östlund’s countryman Ingmar Bergman. The whiteness of the snow engulfs the screen ... it feels like we are always in a fog. Some have found a bit of humor in the film, but I must have missed it. And some have seen it as exposing the pretenses of the bourgeoisie, but I preferred to think it exposed all of us. The ending ironically brings things full circle. #273 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century. Watch it with Scenes from a Marriage.

Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952). Takashi Shimura plays a long-time bureaucrat who finds he has cancer and begins to reevaluate his life. Shimura does such a great job of portraying a man beaten down into nothingness that you eventually want to slap him around and tell him to quit being so pathetic. Eventually, he does something with his life, and dies ... at which point there’s still half an hour to go. By the end, even the most hardened viewer (i.e., me) will have felt a case of allergies in the eyes, and it won’t even feel cheap. Not a masterpiece, but very good. Two years later, Shimura starred in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, which is certainly a change of pace from what he gives us here. American fans of a certain age will recognize him for some of his later roles in movies like Godzilla, Gigantis: The Fire Monster, Mothra, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, and Frankenstein Conquers the World. #114 on the TSPDT list of the top 1000 films of all time. Go ahead, watch it alongside Mothra.

San Andreas (Brad Peyton, 2015). If The Rock hadn’t been in it, I probably would have skipped it. I’m glad I didn’t. It’s a winner in the Truth in Advertising contest: it promises earthquakes, and it delivers them. There is no use expecting anything more. It hits all the standard moments (scientist trying to warn everyone, hero trying to re-connect with ex-wife who has a lame boyfriend, nubile daughter with potential suitor), which fill the space between disasters. We’re not exactly talking Mad Max: Fury Road here ... I don’t feel the need to see it again any time soon. But it’s never so stupid you want to give up, the cast is appealing (lots of eye candy between The Rock, Carla Gugino, and Alexandra Daddario, all of whom do good work), and the special effects are worth the money. I got some comments about the movie on Facebook. One friend said she was eager to hear what I thought, since she loved earthquake movies. Another friend said the idea of watching San Andreas was disturbing to her ... she spoke of people she knew who were still dealing with the devastation in Nepal, and then recommended a book, “for reality, not Hollywood bullshit”. Your own opinion of the movie probably depends on where you lie between those two responses.