Properly Screened

Since its release, this film has left audiences perplexed. Myself included. It’s often cited as the best film of the twenty-first century, a reputation that somehow coexists with the fact that most viewers don’t fully understand what the hell they just watched. Mulholland Drive (2001) is meant to be felt not understood. I saw this as part of 4-Star Theater's celebration of David Lynch's birthday with a friend who had never seen the film. I failed to warn her that this was a two-and-a-half hour fever dream. In hindsight, that omission was very Lynchian. Lynch was notoriously cagey about explaining his work, leaving viewers to interpret what the film was about. But the generally accepted reading of the plot is Diane Selwyn is an aspiring actress who comes to Los Angeles after winning a jitterbug contest and receiving an inheritance from her aunt. She falls in love with another actress, Camilla, who ultimately betrays her by sleeping with the director of the film they are working...

All I knew about this film going into it was (1) it is very long, (2) it’s set in feudal Japan, and (3) it’s widely considered the cinematic blueprint for the “men-on-a-mission” genre. I suppose there is much to say about this film. But it’s all been said. What I was left thinking about is why there was so much bare ass in this movie. This is, of course, a ridiculous thing to fixate on when watching Seven Samurai (1954), a film that essentially taught modern cinema how to assemble a team, define each member with economy and clarity, and stage action so cleanly that it still puts contemporary blockbusters to shame. Kurosawa’s command of movement is staggering. Every frame feels deliberate. Nothing is wasted. And yet. Why is Kikuchiyo, played by Toshiro Mifune, slaying bandits in a thong? Kikuchiyo is different. While the other samurai are presented as professionals, right down to their clothing, his outfit is improvised and stolen. He looks exposed, sometimes indecent by comparison, wh...

It took some historical context for me to understand why this noir, which initially felt campy and predictable, has endured as a masterpiece. Compared to modern films like The Substance or Black Swan that also explore what happens to women when they are no longer seen as desirable, Sunset Blvd. (1950) feels restrained, classical, and polite. What I didn't realize was that Sunset Blvd. was the first film brave enough to tell the truth about what how Hollywood treats leading ladies as they age. Gloria Swanson, a real silent-era icon --- at one time the most famous woman in the world --- was cast as Norma Desmond, a forgotten middle-aged silent-era star living in a decaying mansion on Sunset Boulevard. The film follows struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis, played by William Holden, who becomes Norma's (ambivalently) kept (much younger) man. Norma is convinced she’s on the verge of a comeback, while the audience can see she’s descending into madness. When it premiered, studio exec...

Wanting something badly enough has a way of loosening your boundaries. That’s the theme at the center of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960), a cynical comedy about realizing how much of yourself you’ve given away. For C.C. Baxter (played by Jack Lemmon), ambition turns his apartment into a hook up spot for his bosses and their mistresses. Baxter is a lonely insurance clerk in New York City looking to climb the corporate ladder. He falls into a scheme where he allows the executives at his firm to borrow his Upper West Side apartment for their trysts in return for promises of advancement. At first this arrangement feels harmless, but over time, Baxter isn’t just giving up his space, he's giving up his sense of dignity.  Fran Kubelik (played by Shirley MacLaine) is making a similar compromise in love. Fran works as the "elevator girl" at the same insurance company. She’s romantically involved with Mr. Sheldrake, Baxter’s married boss, who promises he will leave his wife fo...

Edward Yang's slice-of-life family drama has been called meditative, bittersweet, and stunning by film critics. I found it... fine. At three-hours long, it wasn't terribly painful, but it was just fine. I couldn't connect with the sense of disappointment, heartbreak, joy, and love the film is known for. Maybe the long takes, austere cinematography, or slow pacing of New Taiwanese Cinema are all too subtle for me. But Yi Yi (2000) felt overly restrained.  In my effort to understand why this film is considered one of the best ever made, I learned that yi yi means “one by one” in Mandarin. The film doesn’t follow any conventional narrative patterns; things simply unfold as they do in real life, one after another, one by one. So I suppose it's poetic. But it might be lost on me.  Yi Yi on Letterboxd

I've spent my movie watching career generally avoiding the Classic Westerns genre. The frontier masculinity is off putting. So are the racist depictions or Native Americans. And the treatment of women as symbols rather than subjects. This film has all three. In The Searchers (1956), John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a brooding Confederate veteran driven to hunt down the Comanche chief who killed his family and abducted his niece, Debbie, played by Natalie Wood.  This film is one of the most mysterious of the classic Westerns because of the degree that the audience is asked to read into the antihero's motivations. Does Ethan feel he is to blame for the death of his family? Is he on a quest to bring Debbie home because he's secretly her father? Does he mean to rescue her, or is he so outraged by the threat of miscegenation that he'd rather kill her? Is that why Debbie's adopted brother is so insistent in joining him, to guard against his fury? Maybe Ethan is meant to b...

  I’ve been trying to see Singin’ in the Rain in a theater for years, and when a local cinema announced a screening, I really wanted it to work. A local theater --- recently “saved” by a man better known for losing his dental career after some  creative insurance practices and other legal troubles ---  announced a screening just a few miles from my house. I wasn’t sure what to expect, the idea of seeing a film locally felt too good to pass up. Usually, catching one of these titles means driving nearly 250 miles or more round trip. Having the opportunity so close tempted me away from using my better judgement.  I arrived early, hoping for the full experience, but the movie had already started. When I asked why, I was told it began early because “some people showed up early.” Inside, the seating had been replaced with metal café tables and chairs, and the projection was so dim that I could barely make out what was on screen. I'm also almost certain that they wer...

I'm just going to tell you what Roger Ebert said of this film, which he rated four stars. So here is it, verbatim. The screenplay was adapted from a play of no great consequence; memoirs tell of scraps of dialogue jotted down and rushed over to the set. What must have helped is that the characters were firmly established in the minds of the writers, and they were characters so close to the screen personas of the actors that it was hard to write dialogue in the wrong tone.   Humphrey Bogart played strong heroic leads in his career, but he was usually better as the disappointed, wounded, resentful hero. Remember him in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” convinced the others were plotting to steal his gold. In “Casablanca,” he plays Rick Blaine, the hard-drinking American running a nightclub in Casablanca when Morocco was a crossroads for spies, traitors, Nazis and the French Resistance.   The opening scenes dance with comedy; the dialogue combines the cynical with the weary; wi...

I can't watch Alfred Hitchcock films without thinking about Mr. Weesner, my high school video teacher.  But to reduce him to that --- my high school video teacher --- is woefully inadequate. Weesner was a dear family friend and my mentor. Over the decades we must have talked about hundreds of films. And we watched at least a dozen in his home theatre. I was a cocky kid, but he somehow delighted in my hot takes. (Years after his death, I finally watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , one of his favorites. "A sad, toxic depiction of male friendship," I would have told him. That would have made him laugh.) There is so much I want to say about the role he played in how I think about art --- how I think about myself --- but it all gives me a lump in my throat. After his death, I stopped seriously watching movies for years, unable to love or hate something without being overcome with the grief of never being able to talk to him about it.  But, boy did he love Hitchcock, ...

  I tried to watch The Conversation (1974) twice on streaming, but fell asleep both times before the protagonist, played by Gene Hackman, even meets with Harrison Ford, his client's representative. At a friend's insistence, this was not a film to be missed. This was one of the most under appreciated films of all time, he said, by Francis Ford Coppola. It's set in San Francisco, he said. Analog technology has never been better captured in a movie, he said. Try it again, he said.  In spring 2025, after Hackman's passing, American Cinematheque hosted a tribute highlighting many of his most iconic performances, including his breakout role as a lonely wiretapper in The Conversation . And they were showing it at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, home of the world's first film premier. This was my opportunity to try again, but on the big screen. Hackman steals the show in a tense character study about the effect of spying on the spy. An analog sound hacker is convinced ...

If you go into this three-hour, 18th-century period drama expecting a gripping plot, you’ll be disappointed. This isn’t a film you watch to see what happens next; you watch it to look at it --- the compositions, the light, and, if I’m being honest, Ryan O’Neal, who does less acting than posing, but that turns out to be enough. I didn’t fully appreciate Barry Lyndon (1975) until I learned about the lengths Stanley Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott went to make it appear entirely naturally lit. Kubrick looked to artists like Hogarth, Gainsborough, and the Dutch Masters to inform the masterful lighting design.  The candlelit scenes, like the card playing and gambling sequences, are the most famous example. Kubrick used Zeiss Plantar f/0.7 --- ultra-fast --- lenses originally developed for NASA to photograph the moon, and even then production had to create thousands of special candles with multiple wicks just to generate enough light. The effect is extraordinary. It’s perfecti...

  I'm not sure why one Sunday afternoon in January I wanted to watch Eraserhead (1977). David Lynch wasn't much part of my consciousness, beyond renting  Mulholland Drive  on DVD from Netflix back in college. Perhaps my interest was sparked by the recent media coverage of Lynch's passing. No matter. I knew exactly who to ask. My friend Matthew noted that I probably wasn't going to like the film, but if I was going to watch it, I'd better turn the sound up. Way up.  Below is our text exchange during my initial viewing, which is not thoughtful or informed. But it takes me back to the feeling of seeing a piece of art I've grown to love for the first time. Me: "We are four seconds in and the sound is already scaring me. I also have a feeling this is low budget... based on David using a meatball as a planet." Matthew: "It's Lynch's first film. He spent five years and his own money making it. And, very early into the film, Henry gets into an el...

  Parasite (2019) is one of only four films on the list made in the past decade. It’s precise, dark, and intense, but also slyly playful. Shot almost entirely within two homes, it's deeply layered masterclass in technical filmmaking. Bong Joon-ho’s sophisticated blocking—so exact it feels inevitable—often reminds me of Kurosawa. What stays with me most, though, is a quieter moment: Mr. Kim and his son Ki-woo are forced to spend the night in a school gym after their semi-basement apartment floods. Surrounded by other displaced families sleeping on the floor, Mr. Kim offers his bleak philosophy of survival: “You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all…” That idea lingers with me long after the film ends, made all the more haunting by the fact that Parasite itself is so meticulously planned, so ruthlessly controlled. But maybe that tension is part of what makes the film feel so alive. Parasite on Letterboxd

When the first Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time critics' poll was published in 1952, Bicycle Thieves earned the top position. Ten years later, it was relegated to sixth place (tied with Battleship Potemkin ) and Citizen Kane (1941) took the number-one spot. The film stayed there for fifty years, an immovable monolith of “greatness,” until Vertigo nudged it aside in 2012. My dad and I went to a free screening as part of the 90th anniversary celebration of the Golden State Theatre in downtown Monterey. The historic Moorish revival movie palace—with its opulent decor, velvet seats, and frescoed ceiling—was the perfect setting to watch a film that opens in the protagonist’s own palatial estate, Xanadu. It felt a little like stepping through the screen. More happens in the first ten minutes of Citizen Kane than in most full-length features: a death, a mystery, a newsreel obituary, and a montage that sketches the entire arc of a man’s life. The story pieces together the ...

If you can separate the art from the artist, this is a hell of a film. Woody Allen's first is often remembered for its jokes, style, and how credibly it portrays a relationship as it falls apart as a result of cultural incompatibility.  Alvy’s Jewishness is central to how he experiences the world. Annie, a gentile woman from Chippewa Falls, Ohio, comes from a distinctly different place. The movie constantly contrasts their formative experiences: Annie's "Norman Rockwell" childhood and presents from "Grammy" versus Alvy’s grandmother who "never gave gifts. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks." The jokes land because they’re sharp, but also because they expose a real divide. Annie Hall (1977) is a film about the exhaustion of having to translate yourself to the person you love. Alvy’s narrates the failure of their relationship. Throughout the film, Annie grows --- artistically, emotionally, stylistically --- while Alvy largely remains the same...