Movies!

That was a good one! I saw it at a festival last spring. Very… carnal? Is that a good word for what I’m after, not sure. Maybe?
Very carnal.

We exited discussing what we had actually watched and kind of arrived at a mix of The Hulk, Pulp Fiction, A Weekend at Bernie’s and lesbian porn.
 
I know this is an old one but I really liked TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU..
I like to rewatch movies I watched when I was young and happy. They always make me feel young and happy again, however briefly. 😂

Legally Blonde is a favorite of mine of that genre. Ten things I hate about you would go in that category as well. I recently watched Clueless, too. ☺️

The movie I came to post about, though, was Linklater’s Hit Man. It was so different from what I expected, but at the same time it was exactly what I expected. I liked it!
 
The Outrun was so beautiful. Harsh, though. A little too underlining at times maybe, but the scenery more than made up for it. I want to go to the Orkney Islands now and swim and hang out with the seals. 🤩
 
City of Wind is a Mongolian movie about a 17-year-old Ze who is a shaman, but, naturally, also a teenager.

It was super interesting in so many ways. It takes place in the capital, Ulaanbaatar and it shows the life there in a fascinating contrast between the old and the new. Everything in the movie is always on the verge of change, one way or another.

I think it was the first Mongolian movie I’ve ever seen, loved listening to the language for a longer time for once, too.

Major thumbs up!
 
A few movies I’ve seen this fall that have left an impression:

Invention was a really interesting, quiet and captivating movie about a daughter who deals with her dead father’s estate. He had developed a healing machine and left his daughter the patent for it.

My Favorite Cake was simply amazing, very touching and fun, but also extremely critical and political. One of the very best movies I’ve seen this year.

Sayara was a strange viewing experience. So much better than I expected. It never crossed the line into comedy for me, even if at times it could have. Very brutal. I’ll never think of biting the same way again. They spoke a little bit of Turkmen in the film!!! 🩷

Late Night with the Devil was well made and I loved the setting. A lost footage film that makes perfect sense. Creepy!
 
We watched The Quake, a Norwegian earth quake movie. It was better than I expected! It’s always interesting to see familiar places in a not-familiar setting.

It was the last movie left on the yearly movie challenge set by my library, finished early and easily this year!
 
I rewatched Jodorowsky’s Dune. It’s a documentary about a movie that never got made but still influenced the film industry a lot.

Inspiring and interesting. I so wish the movie had been made.
 
My library’s yearly movie challenge has dropped and there are some fun categories this year. Also some I’m not really looking forward to watching, as every year, but it’s part of what makes this fun. I stretch my limits and watching habits a little.

  1. A film featuring the change of the year
  2. A film featuring a snake
  3. A film made in 1995
  4. A film featuring a hilarious one-liner
  5. A film featuring an unusual colour palette
  6. A film set in Finnish Lapland
  7. An Estonian film
  8. A film shot by a woman
  9. A film featuring a Bollywood scene
  10. A film lasting a maximum of 90 minutes
  11. A film that has won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language
  12. A film that has received an award for its staging
  13. A film featuring a working animal  
  14. A film starring Maggie Smith
  15. A film featuring a person with an allergy
  16. A film taking place in the desert
  17. A film featuring AI that threatens humanity
  18. A film where an idyll is shattered
  19. A film featuring a castle or manor
  20. A film featuring an eccentric person
  21. A British comedy
  22. A film featuring a girl or a woman playing a sport
  23. A film about colonialism
  24. A film featuring people having carefree fun
  25. A film featuring someone whose memory is failing  
  26. A film featuring an alternate history  
  27. A German film that was released before 1939
  28. A Finnish nature documentary  
  29. A film featuring an investigation into a missing person
  30. A film featuring an indigenous person
  31. A film that lies to the audience
  32. A courtroom drama
  33. A film about befriending a robot
  34. A film featuring a dream
  35. A film about refugees
  36. A satire about the art world
  37. A film featuring a nun or a monk
  38. A film featuring a person spying on their neighbour
  39. A film that takes place in a hospital
  40. A horror musical
  41. A film featuring a soulless company or business
  42. A queer film
  43. A Studio Ghibli film
  44. A film featuring a person’s head coming off
  45. A film featuring an evil spirit
  46. A film based on a comic book
  47. A film featuring several generations
  48. A film where it snows
  49. A film recommended by the staff
  50. A film released in 2025 
 
We went to the cinema(!) to see C’é ancora domani by Paola Cortellesi.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21800162/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Highly recommend it.
The story, the acting, the cinematography and scenography, the use of music, are all excellent and the way she blends comedy and musical with a feeling of noir realism and even horror is very interesting.

Yep. I talked about this one yesterday and tried to describe the music choices and the dance scenes. I failed badly. They are amazing. So cool.

I remembered you posted about this too and had to come see what it was you said. I agree with everything! Such a great, great movie.
 
Yep. I talked about this one yesterday and tried to describe the music choices and the dance scenes. I failed badly. They are amazing. So cool.

I remembered you posted about this too and had to come see what it was you said. I agree with everything! Such a great, great movie.
Yes, it was really brilliant and I’m so glad we did go see it.
 
There was a documentary film festival in town and I saw a couple of good ones.

One was Balomania, a documentary about the illegal hot air balloon scene in Brazil. Now there’s a subculture (or maybe superculture, because they’re balloons, sometimes I really crack myself up, never mind me) I knew nothing about and the whole description of it being illegal seemed so wacky that I had to go see it.

It was really interesting and moving, and I also totally get why it’s illegal. Groups of men of various ages spend years making big hot air balloons, gluing together tiny pieces of paper in various secret locations to create intricate designs. They also often attach gigantic flags, nets dotted with lanterns or fireworks in the balloon to send a message or just to create more beautiful art. The flags and nets can be the size of a football field, so just imagine how big the balloon must be to hoist it all up. The pictures in the flag or created by the tiny lanterns attached to a net vary from pop culture references to political, and one was made for a beloved baloeiro, a balloonist, who passed away.

The balloons have started fires, which is why they’re illegal and why the balloon groups have to hide and make their balloons in secret. They even showed how they hid a balloon inside a ceiling to keep it safe from a police raid. They replastered the ceiling and all.

The art and effort put into the balloons were really incredible and a good example what people achieve do when they work towards a common goal.
 
I’ve seen so many good movies this year!

All We Imagine as Light is an excellent, excellent film. It tells the story of Indian nurses in Delhi, who live as roommates. One of them is married to a man who has emigrated to Germany, another has a boyfriend. It’s about friendship, longing, wanting and denial. It’s about the weight of tradition and cultural expectations and about the courage it takes to live as you wish. Slow, quiet, beautifully shot. Great acting.

U Are the Universe is a Ukrainian movie set in space. It’s not really sci fi despite the setting, but rather it’s just a very moving story about humanity and love, and machines. What’s essentially a garbage truck driver ends up being the last person in the universe, until he hears the voice of a woman.

The Things You Kill is about loyalty, family secrets, mindfuckery. Really cool and interesting, a slow burner perhaps. A Turkish university professor suspects his mother’s death wasn’t of natural causes. Things escalate.
 
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