Return of the Herzog Hole and a String of Dissapointments

 My Beautiful Blog At Its Humble Beginning

So I am making a blog I've decided. 

To explain this decision, for a long time I've been very drawn to the frightening alluring of writing things online. For much of my life I was an avid Twitter user, and when I stepped away from that I became a very avid poster on Tumblr. For a while I had sort of a newsletter that I sent to my friends sometimes. Anyway I suppose these are all just blog adjacent things. 

I never really knew what I would do a blog about is part of the problem. This week I watched a lot of movies and I thought, well it's interesting the way these things relate to each other, so I thought that might be a good idea for a blog.

I also think it's important for me to really get into writing a lot again. These days I'm too burnt out with university to spend much time writing for myself. I write reviews for a online magazine sometimes but it doesn't exactly keep me in a habit. So instead I'll keep this weekly blog for a while. Who knows how long.

Great Beginnings

My little BP nom checklist

I started this week strong with No Other Choice. I had committed to seeing it when I still thought it might be up for an Oscar (I love to see the Oscar nominees, here's a little chart I have on the whiteboard beside my bed where I've been keeping track of how many I have left to see this year). It now isn't up for a Oscar (sad) but I went to see it anyway. 

I thought the story of this film sounded very interesting, but primarily I liked the trailer for its audacious and inventive kind of style. There's this part where he turns up a dial and big text on the screen counts up the RT percentage that the film got. I thought that was really cool. Usually when I'm waiting for a film to start I just go on my phone for a little while or talk to whoever I'm with, but I always looked up for the No Other Choice trailer.

In the end I thought the story was only okay. It bummed me out as someone who spent last summer desperately failing to find a job, and made me nervous about the world as someone who will graduate and have to start a career in a few months. On Thursday I had a really depressing lecture about Utopia and Plato and the ongoing strikes at my univeristy, so I've been in a bit of a funk all week.

Just like the trailer what I really liked about No Other Choice was the filmmaking. I think Park Chan-Wook knows how to shoot screens and how to incorporate modern tech into his films in a really incredible way. There's a really cool shot where you don't even know your watching a screen and then the focus pulls out and you see all the dust on the laptop screen and the main guy's face reflected in it, and I thought that was really cool.

Back in the Hole

I was thinking about the Werner Herzog documentary Into the Abyss recently, mostly because I had a class about executions and how they have historically been written about. I thought Into the Abyss was really great but I found it so harrowing that I stopped watching Herzog films for a while, ending a long period I called the 'Herzog hole', where all I ever wanted to do was watch Herzog docs.

So I decided I'd get back in the hole and go through a couple more Herzog docs this week. 

I started with La Soufriere, which is only half an hour long and is about a volcano that didn't blow up. Herzog has a lot of docs about volcanos and I don't really get his fascination with them, I always come out of his volcano docs sort of dissapointed. I liked La Soufriere because I like all of the long shots of this big town on a little South American island, but mostly I thought it was
sort of dull, and I agree with Werner that its a bit embarassing for him that the volcano didn't erupt.

This is where that unexploded volcano was

Cute little Clive wrapped up all warm in the antarctic

For some reason I watched another volcano doc  after that. This one was called Into The Infero, and its sort of a 'best of' for Herzog's other volcano docs. I found it kind of basic and uninteresting, but I really liked some of the people in it. Herzog's friend Clive is the face of the doc for the most part, and he's this really cute little English man who is very mild mannered and loves volcanos. He was in Encounters at the End of the World as well and both times I found him very delightful. Also at one point in Inferno they meet this crazy Southern researcher who just seems like an absolute blast in that loud American way.  So in the end I quite enjoyed Inferno.

Lastly I watch Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which is a man recreating his time imprisoned by the Viet Cong while fighting as a pilot for the Americans in the Vietnam war. I liked it because the guy himself, Dieter, is pretty interesting. He's quite like Herzog in a lot of ways, and comes across as almost completely deranged. I think that sort of distracts Herzog from the more interesting questions though. There's a lot to be said about Dieter's inexplicable loyalty to American imperialism which never really comes up, and I find that a bit of a failure.

Cinema Flops

So I wasn't very happy with my Herzog watching, though I quite liked the films I watched I was disappointed in them. In between them I went to see some films at the cinema, The History of Sound and Is This Thing On? I found both of these films disappointing as well.

The History of Sound is pretty miserable, and Josh O'Connor is only in the first half anyway. A lot of people complain about queer movies having sad endings or being all about gay men dying and being sad. I've never really understood that because I usually love movies about people dying and being sad, but I really understood it with The History of Sound. What could've been a cute little film about some boys palling about with locals and having gay sex in rural Maine soon flipped to become some Paul Mescal looks sad slop. I don't really love Paul Mescal, I find him slightly annoying. It's sad because I do like many films that he's in. I enjoyed Hamnet and I really loved Aftersun, but even then he was never what grabbed me about these things. I find him a good supporting actor and a weak lead, so I like the first half of The History of Sound and I detested the second half.

Is This Thing On? I liked a lot more. I find Bradley Cooper pretty delightful and I have a great admiration for him. He's really funny in this film and in some ways feels like the heart of the whole thing. He plays a little weirdo friend of Will Arnett and I thought it ruled in an incredible way. Unfortunately my favourite part was really the stand-up sections, which they basically ignore after the first hour in favour of more divorce stuff. I like the divorce plot but really I wanted to see a film about stand up, so I came out of the film mostly wishing I could rewatch The Big Sick. Especially since I've been thinking about Kumail Nanjiani a lot recently. Seems like he's everywhere these days, it annoys me because that's literally my guy, where were the rest of you when Silcon Valley was airing, you know?

Bradley and Arnett in Is This Thing On?
please enjoy how funny and silly Brad looks here with his big hat

Beautiful Hope

I was having a big of a bad film week, completely unintentionally, and that sucked for me because mostly I like watching good films. But on Saturday I dragged myself back to the cinema to see Iron Lung with a friend.

I felt a bit awkward about it because I don't care about Markiplier and I thought everone there would probably be Markiplier fans. They probably were but I stopped worrying about that when I realised that Iron Lung completely ruled. It's not perfect. Technically it's probably a few steps below most of what I watched this week, but atmospherically it gave me everything that felt lost to me all week.

Iron Lung is so uncomfortable and immersive and needling, I thought it was just incredible. When we left my friend said he thought it was too long, and I sort of agreed but really I was having such a good time I wish it was even longer. 

I think it's really nice that a self-produced little movie like Iron Lung has made so much at the box office. After such a frustrating week it made me so happy to see, and the film has completely lifted my spirits (which is funny because mostly when I was watching it I felt great dread)

End of Week

Not a very good week to start this on because I watched so many bad films. But I'm starting this on Monday when really in the future I'd like to post on Sunday night, so that means I already know how my next film week starts off. Today I watched Train Dreams, and I unexepectedly completely loved it, but more on that next week.

BONUS TV ZONE

I've been rewatching The Pitt lately because I just can't get enough and one episode per week is not sustaining my da pitt loving heart. I keep thinking about how Gerran Howell is from Young Dracula. It makes me annoyed that Americans are always posting about how they think Gerran Howell is hot now. I've been thinking that Gerran Howell is hot since I was ten years old! If I talk about this too much though I sound like an asshole, especially with the Kumail thing. But I do think I have a special hold on Gerran because if you aren't British and in your 20s then certainly you have no idea what Young Dracula is, right?