#the last time I rewatched a movie so many times in a row was after I finally decided to watch HTTYD 1 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

teddybeartoji · 2 months

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my latest films!!!

hi hello citizens of loserville i bring you a few ramblings about a few movies bc why the hell not!! very much not proofread i just wrote down whatever popped into my head so yk bear that in mind

fight club (1999) -

this was my tenth rewatch............................. THIS IS MY COMFORT MOVIE OKAYY DON'T JUDGE ME second time to see it on the big screen too!!! this is the perfect movie for me - it has the soundtrack (btw when i first saw this film i got so addicted to the score that the artist ended up being on my spotify top5), it has the actors, it has the outfits, the pacing, THE JOKES, the visuals etc etc etc it's very good for me

NOW this is very niche this is special but just yk stay with me here.... i am driven by two things - curiosity and spite. and my curiosity is very... extreme..... meaning that for like many years now i've been telling my friend about how i need to get punched in the face at least one bECAUSE I JUST NEED TO KNOW WHAT THAT FEELS LIKE OKAY NOTHING MORE TO IT THAN PURE CURIOSITY and then i'm watching fight club..... and The Scene comes. brad pitt goes i want you to hit me. huh? edward norton goes huh? and then pitt just tells him that he's never been to a fight and drops the line of how much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight - the way my mouth just hung open i think a couple of flies flew in there. bc what. he... he gets me..... I JUST NEED TO KNOW OKAY it's stupid i know i know and yet......... here i am + somewhere on tumblr there's a post that says "touch starved but for physical violence,, touch starved but in a sensory seeking way,, AUTISTIC FIGHT CLUB WHEN???" and this just sums it up pretty well i think

i love the narrator btw. super loser. i like his final outfit and i like it when pitt calls him "ikea boy". he's literally me. + i don't like brad pitt he can die but his outfits in this one thoughhhhhhhhhhhh ULTIMATE GENDER GUY when he has that shorter shirt on and it lifts up when he raises his hands broooooo insane

oke anyway i really like this silly little movie i won't go too in depth bc this post is already long i am writing this after i already did the last two parts lmao

when harry met sally (1989) -

MY FIRST WATCHHH!!!! absolutely loved it. i was doing breathing exercises as to not BAWL MY FUCKING EYES OUT i am a changed person now.

had the amazing oppurtunity to see this at the cinema too and let me tell you - it just made it so much better. it feels... so fucking good.... to laugh with people. no better feeling than just a room full of strangers, laughing and enjoying a film together. hearing a chuckle from a row over or a whisper followed by a quiet giggle or just having the entirety of the room laugh together as one is just so so so good i'm sorry my vocabulary is just good and amazing but yk it's about the fucking point okay. i loved it. made me feel good, made my heart warm.

the movie itself. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. yeah. the main characters were so fucking great, felt like real people yk. and the dynamic between them???????????????????????? ouch. there's a point in the film where she says that she's difficult while bawling her eyes out and the guy responds with you're challenging with hearts in his eyes while gently brushing the hair from her face. look whatever i might be biased here - as a Challenging person myself, it just felt so reassuring to hear that like that. ++ while she's very stubborn and like things to be the way she wants them to be, he's so fucking patient with her and i think that's my favourite thing of the whole movie. how patient he is. how when everybody else is rolling their eyes, sighing, listening to her tell her very specific order - he's just calmly waiting with a smile on his face. yeah no i'm like super normal about this btw.

the same scene where's she's crying, she's ranting at first, right? she's pacing around, yapping his ear off while he's sitting on the bed with a tissue box in his hand, offering her one the second she throws the away. his eyes are glued to her, he's literally changing and turning himself on the bed so he could be facing her at all time. I'M SOOO NORMALLLLL. when she finally sits down, his eyes are still on her; i'm talking tilting his head just to catch a glimpse of her eyes. + how he kept touching her - a hand in her hair or a hand on her shoulder/thigh sighhhhhhhhhh this guy is the new rolemodel love how i say new when this film literally came out in 1989....

NOWWWW THIS MOVIE AND SATORU MY BELOVED. I THINK. HE WOULD FUCKING LOVE THIS ONE. I THINK HE WOULD ABSOLUTELY ADORE IT. i kept thinking about him during the movie too (smh down very bad) but i just.... i feel like he actually fits the male character very well. he's annoying. he's funny. he has a staring problem. he's touch starved. he's sensitive. he's silly. he's patient (yes while gojo can be very impatient with a lot of things i think when it comes to his beloved... he's ready to take all the time in the world). he's thoughtful. he's a bit childish. he's gentle. he's funny. yes i said that twice what about it. i love him i love them. there's a point in the film where the guy is talking about a hookup and he goes "i made her meow." and i just shghashagsahshgashgahg like c'monnnnn how is this not the most gojocoded thing ever. and he was super chill about it too; his friend had to ask three times you made her meow? and everytime he went i made her meow

this is genuinely a film that i recommend to everyone. it's so fucking sweet and i just had the biggest smile on my face throughout the entire thing ahhhh i really did love it please please lovers watch it<33

dune (2021)

this was my sixth time seeing this movie............. fourth time at the cinema too...... ANYWAY i love denis villeneuve this man is a fucking genius i love all of his movies soooooo much they always look amazing and they sound amazing

the sound design aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa sorry to get weird about it but hearing this is like having a real braingasm. especially at the cinema. my eyes were rolling back inside my head this is not a joke ++ the soundtrack. HELLOO???? i mean ofc it's good it's the god himself hans zimmer for fuck's sake he always delivers he's so fucking good

NOWW i neeed to talk about oscar isaac. very important. my most watched actor of last year btw i think he's wonderful. in this film - i think he gives the best performance out of the whole cast and you can't even argue with me bc i'm literally right. his character is so stoic and he seems so strong and powerful and yet whenever he's with his son or his wife you can just see the love. okay this is mostly villeneuve's directions but knowing oscar's work it's 10000% him too.

it's the small touches and gazes - right in the beginning, it's this important Thing and he's the duke of house atreides he needs to look the part, he looks tough he looks serious but then he looks over to his wife and gives THE most reassuring little look wahh and then he does the same with paul. and it's the other way around bc he looks at paul (his son for who don't know btw), kind of asking for reassurance too although he's literally the duke??? and they can't even stop the deal, it's already happening but he still wanted his son's approval...

i mean then it's the obvious "you'll still be the only thing I have ever wanted you to be- my son." LIKE WHAT AN INSANE LINE my daddy issues are crying a bit i think. and when they're talking he has his hand on his shoulder and it just sooo refreshing to see a father-son relationship like that.

and when he's with his wife, jessica..... godddddd the hand holding when they arrive on arrakis.... the way he lays his head on her lap while she massages the skin between his brows and he reaches up, just to hold her too................. FUUUCKKKK and it's just his eyes man he acts with his eyes and he's sooo fucking good

talking about his eyes- eee wait this paragraph contains a big spoiler ig so if u haven't seen it don't read this one. anyway... when he's paralysed and he can literally only act with his eyes.............. HE DOES IT SO WELL AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA when the baron gets close and talks about how his family will die how his son will die and the one singular tear falls broooooooooooo i can'tttt he's sickk i love him a lot

this is such a simple movie while simultaneously being like light years away from simple. not a lot happens while a lot happens??????? first time u might be a bit confused (this is questionable though bc i haven't read the book but i thought that villeneuve made the story rather easy to understand but my dad (who also hasn't read the book) didn't understand shit and i had to explain everything to him????) while again - not a lot is happening. everybody knows that this is a two and a half hour INTRO to the next part, it's just setting the tone for the next one but it's still so fucking good on its own it's insane.

+ shoutout to stellan skarsgard too!!! i feel like he's a bit underrated in a sense that i rarely see anybody talking about him even though he's in so many big things and he's sooooo good??????? absolutely devours every single role of his and this was no exception. LOVEDD the scene where the baron is first introduced (the sound design and the soundtrack were crazy in this scene too), he's just immediately sooooo off-putting??? he's a bit scary and like weirdly calm and a bit uncanny and well, something is just not right about this guy and you're just hooked. cool guy. a+

good movie. i like. super excited for the new one!!!! oh wait also also they showed us a secret little clip from the new one and i had chills it looked so fucking good and then villeneuve talked a few words too and i was just looking at this guy talking about his movie with a big big smile my cheeks hurt after that i hope he's having a wonderful day

#does this even make sense??#not really #when i say i rambled i mean i rambled #but will i read it over and make it better?#also no #enjoy the crumbs my lovers #ceo of letterboxd says hello

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frikatilhi · 5 months

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9 people you’d like to get to know better!

Thanks for the tag, @ana-chronista!

three ships: Currently, Bojere duh. Previously, um, there are many to choose from but let's go with Steve/Bucky (MCU) and Steve/Danno (Hawaii Five-O) and leave my dark rpf past out of this one.

first ship: I'm not sure how I got into shipping exactly, because by the time Merry/Pippin came along it was not new to me. But it was the first big one, which very quickly lead to Monaboyd, which was the first huge one. Can't believe those guys are still friends after more than 20 years since meeting (!!!) and doing a play together soon (!!!) (man, if that was in Europe I'd be sooo tempted).

last song: Apart from last night's JO stream, Hyvää yötä ja huomenta by Don Huonot (it's for... reasons, ok?)

Luodinkestävää sydäntä Ei oo vielä keksittykään Turha pelätä laukausta Sillä yksinäisyys saman reiän nakertaa

last film: In the cinema, Barbenheimer. I don't get to go as much nowadays, but I used to see something around 50 movies a year at the theather (including festivals). Some day I'll go back to Midnight sun and Rakkautta & anarkiaa and spend my days watching four films in a row...

currently reading: Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (physical book) and Miehiä ja mielenrauhaa by Marja Kangas (on audio), both are for book club. (If that one friend from book club who is a Käärijä fan and sometimes reads fic happens to lurk on Tumblr: if you saw this NO YOU DIDN'T) I used to read a lot, but since the kid and getting back into fandom I barely read any actual books /o\

currently watching: Kid shows on Yle Areena omg. When I need to turn my brain off, I tend to gravitate to trash reality, like Temptation Island Suomi, Selling Sunset or Love is Blind or the likes. We also watch Taskmaster UK a lot. Last finished show was Ted Lasso, which I kinda want to watch again soon. Shows that I should finish at some point: all the Star Wars stuff on Disney+, Daisy Jones and the Six, Community rewatch, Three Pines

currently consuming: Pepsi Max (always)

currently craving: Breakfast even though it's almost lunch time, forgot to eat this morning

No idea who's been tagged already and who's done it, so here are some random tags: @devotedlydarkcrown @maladroitoracle @reserved-fruit @cinder-rose @lumea-art @neppu @bambiesque @drugsforaddicts @izpira-se-zlato

#ask

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outeremissary · 6 months

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9 People You'd Like to Get to Know Better

Tagged by @turbulentpumpkin43. Thanks for thinking of me! I know I haven't been around much (for reasons we don't need to get into), but truly nothing summons me faster than the email notification about a tag game where I know I'm going to have to say something horribly embarrassing about myself.

Three Ships: I mean, if we're counting stuff with OCs then obviously anyone following my knows Balthazar and Tristian (and the wonderful polycule with Vio) is my number one. Aside from that, the latest volume of Witch Hat has fully converted me into an Agott/Coco true believer. I actually did like the Coco/Tarteh vibe but Agott's special brand of slowly changing rival just has me by the throat. Aside from that? Ummm. Elliot and Leo from Pandora Hearts? Does that count? I did my full reread of Pandora Hearts while afk in September and those two have had me since like 2012 or 2013 or whenever they were introduced in the English release. But now that I'm older and more mature I can better appreciate what the messy later arcs had to give, and that's the beauty of a relationship between equals corrupted by a growing imbalance no one has the strength to acknowledge and devotion so deep it tears both of their lives apart. That's awesome. 11/10, everyone read Pandora Hearts and I'm not even joking

First Ever Ship: Gamers, back in early 2012 when I was in middle school and could only see images on the computer at school because searching for anything visual online was mega bad for rural internet, a friend of mine used a science classroom computer to discover you could find non-canon images of The Legend of Zelda if you searched terms like "Link blue" and scrolled down a couple rows. I distinctly remember this as the first ever time I really understood the concept of "fan art," and more importantly as my entry into fandom as we all began to realize many of these came from the same site: a place called "DeviantArt." Some of these contained such salacious and unthinkable things as two boys holding hands and blushing, and also both of those boys were Link. I was so captivated by these mysterious images that I followed them to their Four Swords Adventures manga RP fandom source, where I am not proud to say the first "ship" I adopted as such was Vio (Violet Link for people who spent their time doing better things at thirteen) and Shadow (Shadow Link, of course). That's right, everyone! It was edgy Link selfcest yaoi between a traitor and an angsty villain all the way down!!! And you know what? When I write that I don't think my taste has changed. Except the selfcest. Mostly.

The other, more respectable first ship I remember not long after that was Ulquihime. What can I say, there's just something about the Stockholm syndrome of it all.

Last Song: No title - REOL. Narrowly missed this being edgy early Vocaloid. I've been revisiting old favorites recently.

Last Movie: I'm pretty sure it was Surf's Up. For whatever reason my friend decided we should rewatch it when I visited him a few weeks ago. Holds up better than it should, but I've rewatched it twice in little over a year and truly that is my Surf's Up limit. That trip was also when my friend forced me to watch Barbie and the D&D movie. Look at me catching up on relevant pop culture only for fucking Surf's Up to be what made this list.

Currently Reading: I'm pretty sure this came up last time, but because I haven't gotten started on a better book since then I'm unfortunately still periodically chipping at The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn. This book fucking sucks. Don't read it. If we could manga and stories that are actually good I recently did a Witch Hat Atelier reread after getting volume 11!!! That volume is. So painfully personal.

Currently Watching: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Jujutsu Kaisen season 2. JJK is with my friend for weekly hangout, but Edgerunners is a solo endeavor because it was bumming him out way too much. Good show though. Also JJK was way more of a bummer than expected in ways that caught me off guard??? I'm not getting over what happened to that girl, I really got fucking got by that scene. Jesus

Currently Consuming: Nothing. Just finished dinner, where I had a chicken sandwich and fries. I need groceries. It's dire.

Currently Craving: doing something creative, but that would require moving the giant zine pile on my chair........ this is how I'm procrastinating

I'm sorry, but I'm actually not tagging anyone on this tonight! I haven't been on enough lately to know who has or hasn't done it, and frankly I'm not ready to be back on Tumblr enough to map that out. If you're seeing this and want to do it, please go ahead and do it. Tag me like I tagged you, we are collaborators in this and I want to see what you say.

#I'll be real gamers the selfcest devil has whispered in my ear a time or two as I've continued to workshop my DUrge #I'm not elaborating on that.#anyway with this up it's time to move the zine pile that also stopped me from adding a Spotify link and try to do some stuff #my terrifying backlog won't work through itself...#tag game #turbulentpumpkin43 #I feel like I've told one or two of these stories before so Ash. I'm sorry if any of these bits are played out.

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jimsmovieworld · 1 year

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THE FACULTY- 1998 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

One of my favourite 90s movies.

A group of students at Herrington high school in Ohio start to suspect something is seriously wrong with the faculty at their school.

A new species (alien) is found on the football field, and suddenly everyone is acting strange and cant get enough water. What gives?

Thats exactly what they aim to find out.

What makes The Faculty great?

Its a very fun blend of horror, thriller and scifi. Although the films main influence is "Invasion of the body snatchers", many other films are referenced.

The Scene where they all do Zekes homemade drug "Scat" is a reference to the blood test scene in The Thing.

As with pretty much any movie that came out in the late 90s, Scream had a big influence on it.

The script for The Faculty had been kicking around for a while with no buyer. After the success of Scream, Mirimax bought it and hired Scream writer Kevin Williamson to do a rewrite.

Williamson was originally also going to direct but turned it down to direct "Teaching Mrs Tingle", the role of director then went to Robert Rodriquez.

The music for The Faculty is also done by Marco Beltrami who did the soundtrack for Scream.

The Faculty grossed 63 million dollars on a 15 million dollar budget

The Faculty is a very light hearted and fun movie. The opening ten minutes at the high school set this up. Theres like five fights in a row its hilarious. Lots of sharp and funny dialogue in the film.

On this rewatch i was particularly entertained by the recurring couple that are constantly fighting each other (until they get taken over).

The guy is played by Scary Movie and Meet the Parents actor Jon Abrahams.

The villain in this movie is a queen alien who came to earth to control humans and take over as her planet started to die. So the fact anyone can be taken over leads to a lot of good moments and intrigue about who is still human. My favourite out of the faculty in the film is the Coach played by Robert Patrick. Hes so fucking funny in this film, just the way he stares at people cracks me up.

The strongest part of the film for me is the excellent cast and great main characters.

Josh Hartnett is great as Zeke, a very smart guy whos too busy selling porn tapes and drugs to pay attention in school.

MaryBeth, a real sweetheart who is new in school.

Elijah Wood as Casey, the school nerd who is the first to suspect somethings wrong.

Jordana Brewster as Delilah. Head Cheerleader and grade A bitch, (actually she can be cool sometimes). Charisma Carpenter was offered the role of Delilah but thought it was too close to her role of Cordelia on Buffy so turned it down.

Shawn Hatosy is also good as Stan.

Love the couples that emerge in this film. An odd or unlikely couple in a film when done right is always nice to see. This film does it three times with Zeke and Marybeth, Casey and Delilah and Stan and Stokely. And it works!

Saving the best for last. My favourite part of this film is Stokely played by Clea Duvall. Always been my favourite character in this film and one of my favourite movie goths of all time.

Stokely is smart, resourceful and did i mention shes a hot goth? Give me a break!

After this very enjoyable rewatch of The Faculty id like to officially induct Clea Duvall into the jimsmovieworld hall of fame.

#the faculty #movie #film #movie review #horror #thriller #scifi #90s movie #90s horror #kevin williamson #robert rodriguez #josh hartnett #cult movie #elijah wood #clea duvall #robert patrick

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mindoniel · 1 year

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I was tagged by @uneassasymphonie to show my 4 favourite films, so let’s give it a try:

1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - almost four hours long masterpiece. The landscapes and atmosphere! Soundtrack! Dialogues and acting! The dynamics between Lawrence and Ali! It got me interested in the life of T.E. Lawrence and since then my life hasn't been the same. The movie and history are two separate things, but I still think it’s one of the greatest and most beautiful historical epics. Everytime after watching it I feel like I’ve been on a great journey.

2. Ravenous (1999)- homoerotic cannibals? Yes, please! I firstly watched it because of the Terror fandom and Atun-Shei Films. I haven't seen a movie like this before. It has dark (sometimes absurd) humor, horror elements, bizzare soundtrack and the symbolism and the topics that it touches! Hunger, addiction, desire, cowardice, morality, manifest destiny and homoeroticism & cannibalism of course. Funny and dark, entertaining and thought-provoking... Perfect!

3. Treasure Planet (2002) - pirates in space and it’s all steampunk! I got a DVD for my 5th birthday. I was rewatching it several times a day, several days in a row and till this day I remember many of the lines. I’m not a sci-fi fan, but I was captivated by Treasure Planet’s world, story and characters. First movie that I was obsessed with.

4. How to Train Your Dragon (2010) - again a movie from my childhood. All 3 parts are important as a whole story but the first one is still my favourite. I was basically growing up with the characters and the last part came out when one of the chapters of my life was also at an end (perfect timing, life!). I always loved how dragons and vikings were designed here and how the relationships and maturing of the characters were shown. And most importantly Hiccup felt so relatable to me. I may say that I looked at him and I saw myself…

So these are the movies that I rewatched the most and feel a strong emotional connection to. And since it’s „4 favourite movies” and not „tv series” I didn’t include The Terror, but it has equally the first place in my heart. And if I was to choose only non-animated films I would probably go for Master & Commander (2003) and maybe Union of Salvation (2019) or Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). But I also had a Tolkien phase and still respect Lord of the Rings. I love rewatching all of them

I’ll tag @habemuscarnificem @chris-pikes @seashantseas and @comradebread and see what happens

#but there is so much more that i didn’t include #mostly historical films horrors westerns and animations #maybe i will list some of them someday #and thanks for tagging me!

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mistahgrundy · 2 years

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more horror movies I have watched

Rewatched Pontypool. Still good! Forgot about the weird ass part near the beginning with that uh singing family though. Whew that was some high octane post 9/11 weirdness. If you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about.

I finally sat down and watched that prequel to The Thing from 2011. I'd been hesitant to watch it because The Thing is one of my very favorite movies of all time and good golly that's hard to live up to. I figured I'd be annoyed at it no matter what, I can't help it, I'm that kinda nerd. Anyway, I don't know. It was not good. Not terrible? But not good either. and knowing what I know about the special effects in it made it all the worse. Like how I KNOW they did practical effects but the studio made them toss them out for shitty cgi in post production. I imagine the CGI would have been better if they'd gone in with the intention of that in the first place instead of doing it kinda last minute?

But, regardless of the special effects it just wasn't that great anyway. It didn't really do anything interesting, in fact quite the opposite. You know the 82 movie is kind of a spooky who done it because you don't quite know who the thing is, and even upon rewatch you really can't tell just WHEN all the changes took place. Like you can kinda infer that the first person to get Thing'd was Norris, but you'll never really know. And the others? Who knows. And at the end you don't know if Childs or MacReady are Things. They probably aren't. there's a lot of easily debunked fan theories on why Childs is a thing, but my personal theory is neither of them are. Anyway, the 2011 movie is just straight up more like an action movie than a tense scary movie. Not my vibe. Also a lot of the story beats were 1:1 the 82 movie which I found odd. Like I think they wanted me to think "Oh, neat, just like in the test scene from the 80s movie. Nice!" but I was just like what come on the whole time. It's not unwatchable, it's worth a watch, but it's just... ehhhh. Also no neon lighting like the original. no fun colors.

You will never see lighting like this in the 2011 movie and that's a damn shame.

I rewatched The Exorcist. I forgot like everything about it, I hadn't seen it in so long. It's a very slow movie. I have a hard time wrapping my head around people thinking it's scary, because it's really not, but it's cool, it's a good movie. It's just not that scary. Also the devil just gets clowned on the whole movie. Prince of darkness my ass.

Watched Cloverfield for the first time! A good movie but DEEPLY unpleasant to watch. I still have a headache and it's been like 16 hours since I watched it. And I couldn't look at the screen for maybe like 80% of the film. So every now and then I'll look up and go "wow neat" and then have to look back down. lmao I wonder how many people who saw it in theatre just straight up barfed. Back when Paranormal Activity came out I saw that in theatre and the lady who was sitting next to me really looked like she was gonna lose it for most of the movie (she left half way through and never came back, I was glad). And THAT movie didn't move and shake around NEARLY as much. Although we were in the very front row, which is not ideal.

at the beginning of the movie when it was still just an annoying party I didn't care about one of the dudes there was someone I recognized and I was like "why is there a recognizeable actor in this movie that's taking me out!" but I realized later it was the dude from Superstore, so I guess he wasn't anyone yet. lol, jonah

I rewatched the Sixth Sense! Is it a horror movie? mmmmm not really. But it's good and cool and Bruce Willis is great in it.

I remember the first time I watched it, it was with my parents after it came out on home video. We got to that part with the little sick girl's funeral, and as soon as my mom saw the mom in the red dress at the funeral, my mom was like "Oh no she has munchausens!"

man how did my mom know about munchausens by proxy. I think she blurted that out before the big reveal too.

Oh, I forgot, I watched Halloween yesterday as well, for the first time. Ehhhh. Not my thing. I'm not a slasher movie person. I guess it was good. I wouldn't watch it again. Jamie Lee Curtis was good in it though, and the soundtrack is obviously memorable. I'm not a tit fan, maybe if I liked looking at titties I'd enjoy this movie more? lol

#movie blabbing #kind of reviews?

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amostexcellentblog · 2 years

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Every Judy Movie-#11

Way, way back in High School I set out to watch every single one of Judy Garland’s movies. Several I’ve rewatched many times since, others I had no desire to see again. Now, in honor of the centennial of her birth, I thought I’d do something with this knowledge and make a quick write up of my thoughts on all of them...

Title: Little Nellie Kelly

Release Year: 1940

Plot Summary: In early 20th century Ireland, Nellie (Garland) defies her deadbeat father’s (Charles Winninger) wishes and marries Jerry Kelly (George Murphy). Although he refuses to accept Jerry as part of the family, he reluctantly agrees to go with them when they leave Ireland to seek a new life in America.

Their future seems bright in their adopted country until Nellie dies in childbirth. The two men reluctantly raise her daughter together. 17 years later, Little Nellie (Garland again) is the spitting image of her mother, and at the age where she’s discovering boys and pulling away from her overprotective grandpa. While her father supports her budding romance with a local boy, her grandpa is furious to learn he’s the son of his old rival. His stubbornness eventually leads to a falling out between father and grandfather, but all is put right by the end.

Thoughts: This is a very oddly constructed film, with the first 45 minutes devoted to the elder Nellie’s story and the last hour to the younger one. Devised by MGM as a test of Garland’s range as she transitioned into adult roles, the movie calls on Garland to play a double role (which she mostly pulls off), adopt an Irish accent in the first part (meh), and perform her only death scene (she’s pretty good, she doesn’t overdo it). It’s a sentimental, cliché (even by he standards of the time) family drama, but Garland is so naturally warm on screen you instantly root for both her characters and are happy to spend the runtime with them. After three movies in a row where she had to share the screen with Mickey Rooney’s mugging, she’s finally allowed to shine. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re the type who enjoys this sort of earnest, pro-immigration, low stakes comedy-drama then I think you’ll be charmed.

Can Be Enjoyed By: Diehard Fans Only | Casual Fans/Fans of Musicals in General | Essential Viewing for Everyone

#little nellie kelly #Judy Garland #Every Judy Movie

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nidhogg-of-nastrond · 3 years

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Guys I don't think you understand.

I haven't watched a movie on loop since I was eleven.

I am 20 years old and watching the gay Italian fish movie on repeat like the undiagnosed ADHD-having child I am.

#the last time I rewatched a movie so many times in a row was after I finally decided to watch HTTYD 1 #which was like a year after it came out #I would make these little paper airplane things of the dragons and had the movie on in the background #luca #luca 2021 #pixar luca #luca pixar #luca paguro #alberto scorfano #giulia marcovaldo #luberto #alberto x luca #luca x alberto

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innuendostudios · 3 years

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Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

#film noir #neo-noir #criterion channel

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the-pale-goddess · 2 years

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Hey Hilde,

I miss your writing sooo much, but that sex tape fic release has me on the edge of my seat. Hahaha

Random questions because I love these two so much:

Do Tiff and E go to the movies?

If they do go, whose idea it is normally?

Do they actually what the movie or makeout instead?

If they do watch the movie, is it in silence or with commentary?

If they do makeout, have they ever been caught or had fellow movie goers 'shush' them?

Anon, my beloved, I’m tearing up here!!! The fact that you care about these two and my writing so much is everything. I love you ❤️❤️❤️

Do Tiff and E go to the movies? If they do go, whose idea it is normally?

Yes! Tiffany is a cinephile, so she’s the one who insists on going to the cinema from time to time. It certainly isn’t Ethan’s favorite activity, but he’s willing to suffer through any cinematic masterpiece Tiffany is excited about.

Her mission is to fill the gaps in Grumpsey’s knowledge about movies. Obviously she's respectful towards his flagrant disinterest in pop culture; she’s not forcing him to watch anything that might be too much of a torture for him, like MCU movies or other Hollywood blockbusters. She’d rather watch Marvel with a fellow nerd Elijah anyway. And his kids will push MCU down his throat later on kjgkfdjkdj

They usually go to the art house nearby: it's just a few blocks from Ethan's apartment and offers a variety of screenings to choose from.

Do they actually watch the movie or makeout instead?

That's the exact reason why Tiffany tries to schedule cinema dates as soon as the movie she's dying to see hits the screen kdkfhjkg Their home cinema is Ethan's preferred place – to no one's surprise – because they get handsy in no time and the movie becomes nothing but a background noise.

They try to keep their hands off one another when there are people around. But if a movie is particularly boring or when they're revisiting a classic that Tiffany's already seen...A wholly innocent makeout session can't hurt anyone, right? 😌

If they do watch the movie, is it in silence or with commentary?

Tiffany loves commenting on movies. Especially when Ethan is seeing the movie for the first time and it's just another rewatch for her. She'll exclaim „You may want to close your eyes for the next scene” just to gush over the masterful shot composition two seconds later or give him a lecture about the director's entire filmography.

He used to be annoyed by her extensive commentary, but he'd grown to appreciate it and her passion for the craft. After all, Tiffany has Ethan's undivided attention without fail, he finds her distracting for many reasons jkdfjkfd

If they do makeout, have they ever been caught or had fellow movie goers 'shush' them?

They usually sit in the last row and try to be as quiet as possible, so they think they've never been caught. But one staff member always greets them with a wicked smirk that doesn't seem accidental...

Answering your questions was an absolute pleasure (I tried my best to keep it concise because you know I could talk about these two for hours kdgjkdfj) 🥰

Thank you for being such an angel! I’m sending you lots of love and good vibes ❤️❤️❤️

#queue dropped this #ethan ramsey #ethan x mc #ethan x tiffany #tiffany addams #y'all are so precious #sorry for any errors #random facts about tiff

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gottawriteanegoortwo · 3 years

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Yancy x Illinois - First Impressions Aren’t Always the Best

I decided to try properly writing Yanois, just to see how I’d manage it. After rewatching Illinois’ scenes, I think he would get on the nerves of the Yancy I write at first.

Word Count 2,122

(Read more because Illinois talks so much...)

Happy Trails Penitentiary was renowned for its rehabilitation initiatives. They had a wide variety of classes and visitors to help prisoners. Educational courses, chances to learn new skills, pen pal projects. Many prisoners would never have the opportunity for such experiences, and it was an integral part of helping them prepare for a better life outside of prison when their sentence was finished.

There was one visitor that most prisoners in Yancy’s ‘Gang’ adored. His name was Illinois, a renowned adventurer and archaeologist. Between his job in the university and research trips, he only had time to visit once every few months. It worked in his favour, as those that wanted to visit were able to to hear the various stories that Illinois was more than happy to tell. Not only that, it would encourage the small ‘fan club’ among the younger prisoners.

It was one of the few events that Yancy avoided. Something about Illinois rubbed him the wrong way. He was so arrogant and cocky, acting like the world revolved around him. It wasn’t an act, either. Yancy had spotted Illinois speaking to the Warden on his first visit two years earlier, and he acted the exact same way as he did in the talk that happened that day. After that, Yancy decided he didn’t want anything to do with the adventurer. But if Illinois were to ever become an inmate? Yancy would make sure Illinois had the snot beaten out of him within the first week.

Unfortunately, a lot of the Gang were of the opposite view, especially those around Yancy’s age. To them, Illinois walked straight out of an adventure movie and lived the ideal life. What prisoner didn’t dream of going exploring in uncharted territories? It meant that they would frequently share Illinois’ tales in rec yard when he came to visit. Yancy would roll his eyes, but keep quiet. Let them have their fun.

Today was the day that Illinois visited the prison. It had been over three months since the last visit, so there was an excited buzz among individuals in the Gang. Yancy spent the morning bracing himself. There was a talk after lunch that the others would go to, which would mean the rest of the afternoon and evening would be nothing but historical chatter and “Illinois is so cool!”. He would grumble, but he would keep that to himself. It wasn’t fair to deflate their excitement. He went to the library, found some random book and focused on that for the day. Then, once they had their excitement, it would die down and Yancy could enjoy more casual conversation.

Which was the plan… Until Bam-Bam pleaded for him to go to the last talk of the day. It turned out that his shift clashed with the talk everyone else they knew went to, and he didn’t want to go alone. Begrudgingly, Yancy closed the book, returned it to the shelf, and followed Bam-Bam. A flaw of being a loyal friend was knowing when to swallow your pride and do something you would rather not do.

When you go to something with low expectations, it can be incredibly difficult to feel the time was used in a worthwhile manner. Some might have memories of a teacher they hated, or a family gathering they had been dreading. This was a similar position to what Yancy found himself in. One of the ‘classrooms’ had been adjusted slightly to allow various displays to take center stage, with the chairs in neat rows in front of it. Bam-Bam and Yancy claimed two seats at the back, allowing the greaser to slouch in the chair with his arms crossed. Then, once more prisoners had arrived, the talk began.

On and on Illinois went, droning endlessly in that slow drawl. Yancy wished he had a TV remote to speed up the talking a fraction. Was Illinois focused on making sure everyone could understand him, or did he want to prolong the joy of hearing himself talk? It might have been more tolerable if Bam-Bam wasn’t genuinely engrossed in the lecture. They could have made amusing comments throughout. Instead, Yancy was stuck. Sure, history was interesting, but Illinois really drove home the stereotype of boring history teachers. The ‘adventures’ even sounded cliché and fake. Maybe he should have taken the book with him after all...

A painfully slow half hour passed. Once the talk was over, Illinois would literally open the floor to the other prisoners. The chairs would be pushed aside and those that wanted to look at the items Illinois brought were welcome to do so. Yancy was dragged along to view the pieces. Most of the articles were dated to be approximately eight thousand years old. What caught Bam-Bam’s attention was a stone carving that vaguely resembled a cat.

“Ahhh, I see the ‘White Jaguar’ has caught your attention.” Yancy had to repress a shudder at the smooth voice interrupting their own questions back and forth. Illinois stepped over, resting an arm against the perspex container. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? A miracle we even found her in the first place. She was why I wasn’t able to visit like I said I would last month.” Bam-Bam’s eager question had Illinois chuckle and shake his hand dismissively. “Oh, I’m sure you two gentlemen have much better things to do than hear about how I nearly lost my right hand in my most recent adventure.” When Bam-Bam insisted otherwise, Illinois smirked (and Yancy nearly gagged).

“If you insist. While on our recent dig, I noticed one of the ruins had a floor panel that looked a little different from the rest. It took a little persuasion, but I got that pesky stone up. There, sprawled out before me, was a staircase leading down into the earth. I picked up one of the torches and made my way down. Slowly, I delved deeper into the darkness. One step gave way under me to set off a series of poison-dipped darts, but I was able to dodge them all without breaking a sweat.” Illinois continued, dramatically regaling every single trap that he encountered until he found the White Jaguar. When taking everything around it, he surmised that the owner of the house had been a thief. The jaguar motif was familiar, as he had noticed something similar in a nearby cave that had been repurposed at the time as a sacred spot.

“- Now, this heart of this cave was still guarded by ancient jaguar spirits. They rattled the large statues as I approached, obviously sensing the treasure I carried. In the middle, there was a jaguar’s head carved out of stone. Its jaw was open wide and I couldn’t help but feel as though it was just the right spot for this precious lady. But then, skeletons of what I assume were magic users from an era long gone by pounced and tried to wrestle the statue off me, but I was too fast for them. At last, I reached the carved head, put the White Jaguar in the mouth… and the stone head moved, trapping my arm in a ferocious bite!” He gestured to the cloth wrapped around his right wrist. It was unwrapped just enough to show the healing bite marks. “It had the strength to bite it clean off, but relented when it realised what I had done by offering my arm as blood payment to return -”

“Wait wait wait.” Yancy’s interruption had Bam-Bam elbow him, but it didn’t stop the objection. “That can’t be right. If youse managed to bring this back to where it’s meant to be, why the fuck is it here?”

“An excellent question. This is my recreation of it. I am no thief. I return artefacts to where they belong. Archaeology has a rotten connection with thievery, and I try to rectify the mistakes of my predecessors.”

“So then this entire thing could be bullshit!” Yancy scoffed. “Bam-Bam, this guy just got bitten by someone’s dog and has made this pile of baloney to hide that.”

“Are you accusing me of being a liar?”

“Well, I ain’t calling you a ‘truther’, that’s for sure!”

Yancy was ready for a proper argument. In fact, he was hoping for one. Instead… Illinois laughed, and it wasn’t that typical ‘cocky chuckle’. It was a bright, genuine laugh. He could almost see Bam-Bam go starry-eyed at such a rare moment. Typical Yancy. Getting more attention from Illinois when he wanted to rile him up.

“I suppose it all does sound rather suspicious when you put it that way. Let me show you something.” Illinois gestured for the pair to follow him toward a display of photographs. Instead of pointing to these, he instead reached for his briefcase. A small photo album was pulled out. Yancy noticed that it was dated three months prior. While Illinois flipped through it, both prisoners could see what looked like an area that had been dug up. It matched the pictures in front of them of an excavation site. At last, Illinois found what he was looking for.

“One Guardian Jaguar, complete with the White Jaguar in its mouth. As you can see, the teeth have fresh blood on them. It was an… Oddly tranquil sight, despite the unfortunate situation.”

“So then why act like these are the real deal? People just take youse’s word for it?”

“Normally those that attend my talks know that what I show are my artistic recreations for purely educational purposes. I suppose I do take for granted that those who attend here are invested regulars.” Illinois gave a small shrug. “It’s an easy mistake to forget to remind people who might be new to my talks. I’m sorry if you thought I was a fraud, but I am the real deal. Too good to be true, yet here I am.”

“Yeah yeah, ‘sucks that I’m perfect as shit’, I get it. Least you knows not to make that mistake again.” Yancy rocked back on his heel with the intention of turning and walking away.

“Now now. I can’t let you walk off like that. Take this.” Another item was pulled out of his briefcase. “I made this smaller model of the White Jaguar as a ‘first draft’. I was intending on using it as motivation to my first-year students but… I think it should stay here with you.” Illinois took the opportunity to reach for Yancy’s hand. The small clay model was gently placed in it before Illinois curled Yancy’s fingers over it to keep it in place. His hands stayed where they were as he continued, “We think the White Jaguar was a symbol of good fortune. Perhaps it might bring you some good luck.” He smiled at Yancy, only to have the moment broken by the guard announcing that there were five minutes before the prisoners had to return to their cells for the afternoon count. Yancy took the chance to quickly leave the room without as much as a ‘goodbye’. At least his friend, who introduced himself as Bam-Bam, quickly thanked Illinois before darting out.

A few more questions were asked of him by other prisoners and curious staff; and then it was time to tidy up to bring everything back to the university. It was only when he reached the White Jaguar model did Illinois hesitate. There was something about that abrasive prisoner he couldn’t put his finger on. Was it because he seemed uninterested in the adventurer? Or was there something else? It was a rare moment that Illinois wished he’d had an excuse to chat to the prisoner longer. Maybe not here, but somewhere quieter. Just the two of them.

Huh… Was this what an attraction felt like? He joked about others falling in love with him so often, he wasn’t sure if this was payback for never returning interest in others. He was drawn toward a prisoner that seemed keen to dismiss his hard work and reputation. And worse! Illinois didn’t even know his name!

Then again… A good adventurer always loves the thrill of a mystery. Maybe he could try and find that prisoner next time he visited. Now that the university was open again, he’d be able to drop by more frequently…

For what it was worth, Yancy also had a mystery on his hands.

Namely, how to get away from Bam-Bam - who would not SHUT UP about their prolonged conversation with Illinois - and half the gang - who were incredibly jealous Yancy got a gift from the Illinois!

He dropped his head against the chow hall table with a low ‘thunk’. This was the opposite of getting the others to stop talking about Illinois around him!

#writersofmark #yancy #illinois ahwm #yanois #markiplier egos #(read-more is for tidiness! :D )#dramatic prisoner (Yancy)#cocky adventurer (Illinois)

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jisvnq · 4 years

Text

[ 04:12AM ]

title | movie marathon

genre | fluff, humor, a bit suggestive, older brother!jaemin

warnings | swearing, one quite detailed kiss

word count | 1.8k

requested | by anonymous

description | where jaemin banned you from the dorms, but you sneak in one night to watch frozen and makeout with jisung anyways.

z.txt | i wrote this quite hurriedly and it was supposed to be posted on jaemin's birthday, but our electricity decided to die 💀 so here it is now, i guess~

"WHAT THE HOLY FU—"

"SHH!" you said urgently, putting your finger up to your lips as Jisung covered his mouth with his own hand. "Jisung, be quie—"

"HEY! Park Jisung!" Renjun's voice came from the next room, knocking loudly on the thin plywood wall separating the two bedrooms. "Quiet down, will you?!"

"S- sorry!" Jisung called back, staring at you with his eyes wide in shock as you haphazardly kicked off your shoes and hopped onto his bed.

He then gave you a look of disbelief, when you just began snuggling under his covers and into his arms with a small grin.

"You!" Jisung whispered scoldingly, setting his laptop down beside him as you made yourself comfy in his lap. "What the— what the absolute hell are you doing in here?"

"I missed you," you mumbled, resting your head against his chest, hearing his quickly beating heart. "All I could do was think of you, but it made me miss you so much I couldn't sleep."

"That's no reason to be here," Jisung said, his actions contradicting his words as he wrapped his arms around you in a tight hug. "You're supposed to be asleep!"

"Hey," you huffed, hitting his forearms lightly. "You're supposed to be asleep too. You told me you were already getting ready to sleep when I called you earlier."

You looked up at him with narrowed eyes and he offers you a bashful grin that made you sigh. "Besides, what are you doing at this hour that made you lie to me? Huh, Park Jisung?"

"Renjun gave me a clear copy of Frozen and Frozen 2," Jisung said sheepishly after your slight scolding. "I was planning on watching it with you next time you came over so I'm checking it out now..."

"Aww," you cooed, reaching up to pinch his cheeks that reddened as quickly as your change in demeanor. "That's so cute~ but Jaemin kicked me out of the dorms the last time he caught us kissing. When do you expect us to have this little marathon of yours?"

When Jisung remained silent, you shook your head, taking his hands in yours.

"Why don't we have the mini-marathon now then?" You suggested.

"Now?" Jisung gave you a look. "You sure we won't get caught? Jaemin will kill the both of us if he finds you in here..."

"Nah," you said with a snort, taking his laptop and placing it back in front of the two of you. "Jaemin won't kill you, he loves you too much. Probably even more than he loves me, but that doesn't matter. I love you more than I love my brother too. I'll restart the video now~"

Jisung wasn't able to say anything with how quickly you changed topics, nothing more than an incredulous laugh able to come out of his mouth. Shaking his head as you excitedly pressed the space bar, to play the video all over again, he rested his head on the top of yours and his eyes gazed down at the bright screen that now played the Disney intro.

You wrapped his arms tighter around you as you felt colder. The warmth his body radiated very much comfortable as the night's chilly air circulated around the room. There wasn't much noise coming from the two of you, who were quite focused on the movie, aside from the bright chuckles and giggles that slipped through your mouths while watching, plus the little teasing side-comments that none of you really took to heart.

"Psh. Kristoff isn't even that good looking."

"Shut up or I'm telling the guys you have a crush on Anna."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Try me, pumpkin."

But halfway through the first movie, that focus didn't last long. Not with Jisung, at least.

If he was going to be totally honest, Renjun had given him the copy of the two movies nearly a week ago. Jisung has already been able to memorize the script and all the songs solely from how many times he's replayed and rewatched the movies.

Every night, he watched them out of complete boredom, as you were banned from the dorm by your brother, who had the misfortune to walk in on one of the many makeout sessions the two of you had.

Though usually, Jaemin would do his best to pretend not to mind you getting all touchy with each other, stating that you were your own people, but you were getting too touchy feely even for his comfort. And so, he decided to ban you from coming over to the dorms for a whole month out of sheer exasperation.

Which, of course, being the naturally clingy person you were, had you whining about it over the phone whenever he had called you. Jisung was honestly surprised you managed to make it to week two before breaking and entering into his room. And it wasn't like he didn't miss you either. He just preferred to play safe so he wouldn't have to get his ass beaten up by Jaemin.

So right now, as he had you square in his lap, comfortably nestled between his arms and against his chest, he found it extremely difficult not to flip you over and pin you down onto his bed so he could kiss the living shit out of you. But he knew you were tired from climbing in through his window, and kissing you would risk the chances of getting caught by your brother at this hour. The last thing he wanted was for you to get kicked out for an even longer period of time.

If he could barely last half a month without having you all to himself, he didn't even want to know how much longer he could.

"Mm," you hummed, feeling Jisung squirm under you. "You good there, Ji?"

"Y- yeah, of course," Jisung said with a cough, squeezing your hands and nuzzling his nose into your hair. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know," you said with a giggle when he inhaled, sighing satisfactorily as he smelled the familiar scent of your shampoo that he missed oh-so much. "Maybe you— h- hey!"

You gasped, feeling his warm hands let go of your cold ones to slip under your shirt, his arms pulling you even closer to him, up higher on his lap, so his lips were level with your neck. "I- I'm actually trying to focus on- on the movie for once!"

Jisung let out a low chuckle as he pressed a feathery kiss to the space between your jaw and your ear and making you squirm. He loved moments like this. Moments where it was him who flustered you, taking you by surprise instead of the other way around like it usually is. "Then focus on the movie, love. No one's telling you not to."

He felt your sharp intake of breath and a smirk made its way onto his face, confidence surging through him like adrenaline as he continued kissing along your jaw down to your neck, his thumbs rubbing circles onto the bared skin of your hips. Two whole weeks of not being able to do anything more than innocent hand holding, sweet cheek kisses, and quick pecks on the lips in the school hallways must have taken its toll on him.

Maybe he was exaggerating and two weeks wasn't much. But he was a growing teenager, and he figured that as much as he needed to eat, he craved for your touch, he craved to touch you. And to say he ate a lot was an understatement.

"Jisung," he heard you whimper quietly, warningly as he began to nibble on your neck, his teeth leaving small red marks on the skin. "Wh- what do you think you're doing?"

"I missed you too much," the boy mumbled, his eyes shamelessly staring down at your lips when you turn around to face him. "Can- can I?"

You nodded and he slowly leaned in, sighing when your lips finally met his. It was slow yet intense, one of his hands settling on the small of your back to gently push you up against him, the other carefully holding the back of your head, guiding your movements to match his.

His tongue slid across your bottom lip and soon he was biting down softly, eliciting a small gasp from you. He used this to his advantage, his tongue slipping into your mouth to meet yours and tracing along the rows of your teeth. Your fingers intertwined with the tufts of his hair as he tilted your head to the side, and you felt his breath hitch when you tugged on the dark strands, the faint sound of the movie playing in the background fading away as you got lost in each other.

But he leaned back rather suddenly, causing the back of his head to hit the headboard with enough force to make a loud bang resound throughout the room, abruptly breaking the kiss as he groaned in pain.

"Ow," Jisung whined, wincing as he held the back of his head. "S- stop- stop laughing! It really hurts!"

"Sorry, Ji," you said, stifling your giggles and bringing your hand up to where his rested, gently massaging the aching bump that began to form on his head. "It was kinda funny though."

"It ruined the mood," the boy pouted, making you laugh. He huffed. "Hey! I said stop laughing! I'm serious here!"

"Alright, pumpkin," you said endearingly, leaning up to press a kiss to his head and turning to the laptop whose screen showed the ending credits of the previous movie. "Let's go watch the next one now, shall we?"

Jisung gave you a sheepish smile. "Right, the movie marathon... but maybe we could do something else instea—?"

"Park Jisung," a groggy voice said as the door opened. "Renjun was complaining about your noise and told me to go check on you. You think you can put your movie marathon on hold tonight?"

"I— uh— yeah," Jisung stuttered in panic, quickly pushing you off his lap. "I was— I was gonna stop anyways—"

"Good," Jaemin grumbled, rubbing his eyes and yawning. "Night, Jisungie. Night, Y/nnie."

"Night, Jaeminnie—" you called back with a snicker before Jisung could put a hand over your mouth.

"Sleep well and—" Jaemin did a double take on the way out and turned around, to see you sitting next to Jisung on his bed, the younger boy covering your mouth with a distressed look on his face. You waved at your brother. "Hold the fuck up. Y/nnie?! How the hell did you get in here?!"

"Uh, I sleep-walked through Jisung's window?"

"Na Y/n."

"Whoopsies?"

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