Of these last 10 films I’ve watched, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour stands out as obviously the best of these screenings. With its lengthy runtime (317 minutes), its thoughtful conversations between its four female thirty-somethings, and the impassively flat intonations of its delivered dialogue, Hamaguchi evokes a literary experience cinematically and creates something immersively captivating – a melodramatic inkblot into which the viewer can pour their emotions into. Truth be told, despite how fascinating Happy Hour proved to be, I cannot ignore Jackass Forever. I never really watched the original MTV program, finding it too sophomoric for my tastes. The TV show seemed to only confirm that youth was wasted on the young, yet I now find myself getting more invested in the Jackass crew as they age. Their pain seems more real, more genuine, and the entire enterprise seems to enjoyably push back on the notion that wisdom is wasted on the old. There’s certainly an aspect of Peter Pan about the whole thing, with Johnny Knoxville (now a silver fox) and his Lost Boys fending off father time by riding a shopping cart straight into him at high speeds. Forever stands far from the genius of Jackass 3D (which was easily the best use of 3D’s mainstream resurgence, standing as a kind of post-millennial cinema of attractions), but it was still a ridiculous 96 minutes that I often found invaluable. Love that “Cup Test.”
- What We Do in the Shadows (Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement, 2014)
- Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine, 2022)
- The Demon (Brunello Rondi, 1963)
- Happy Hour (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2015)
- Black Angel (Roy William Neill, 1946)
- Attila Marcel (Sylvain Chomet, 2013)
- Slaughterhouse-Five (George Roy Hill, 1972)
- Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond, 2021)
- Shark (Jason Hehir and Thomas Odelfelt, 2022)
- In the Name of the Italian People (Dino Risi, 1971)
Truth be told, these last 10 films screened longer ago than is usual as I’m currently working my way through Mariano Llinás’ La Flor (2018), an epic undertaking at nearly fourteen hours and made up of six episodes starring the same four actresses, with the first four episodes stopping short their natural endings, the fifth remaking a famous French film of the 1930s, and the sixth depicting only a conclusion. Midway through at the time this post is written, La Flor seems to be an intriguing experiment in narrative that seems to luxuriate in its own vagueness, whether by its plotting, its dialogue, or even its planes of focus. Sprinkled between La Flor has been screenings of Good Mythical Morning, a YouTube comedy show featuring Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal playing games, having fun, and participating in taste tests (our favourite). I was already familiar with GMM but I’ve now got my wife addicted to the program in anticipation of Rhett and Link’s forthcoming Food Network show, Inside Eats with Rhett & Link.
Make Mine Criterion! 