BOOK
3/3
My Happy Life by Lydia Millet - 7.0
A woman locked up in an abandoned mental institution writes about her depressing life to pass the time. The style of the writing was sort of weird and hard to get into, but I like stories that are depressing, and this one was definitely fucking grim.
MOVIES
3/20
Gravity (Short, 1976, Michael Nankin & David Wechter, Projected Beta-SP, Castro) - 9.0
A spoof of educational films by the directors of Midnight Madness where a little girl asks her family and a doctor what gravity is, and they all give her ridiculous answers. It was really fucking funny and great.
School, Girls, and You! (Short, 1978, David Wechter, Projected Beta-SP, Castro) - 9.0
Another educational spoof about a college going coed, and how the boys should deal with being suddenly surrounded by girls. This one is also fucking great, and it stars a young Paul Reubens! You can watch it on youtube here.
Midnight Madness (Rewatch, 1980, Michael Nankin & David Wechter, 35mm, Castro) - 10.0
A guy named Leon gathers a bunch of groups (nerds, jocks, etc.) together to compete in an all-night scavenger hunt. I don’t even know how to describe it, but this shit is unbelievably fucking fun and amazing and perfect. I highly recommend it.
Real Genius (Rewatch, 1985, Martha Coolidge, 35mm, Castro) - 9.0
Val Kilmer and another kid are young geniuses working on a high-powered laser, and when it succeeds, William Atherton tries to steal it and sell it the military, who want to use it as a weapon. Val Kilmer is fucking awesome in it. As is Jon Gries and Michelle Meyrink. And the ending is also great, and brings everything together perfectly.
Electric Dreams (1984, Steve Barron, 35mm, Castro) - 9.0
A guy buys a computer to help organize his life, and the computer is very curious about stuff, and also it talks (creepily voiced by Bud Cort), and when the guy starts dating and falling for his neighbor (Virginia Madsen), the computer also falls in love with her, and so the computer incoveniences the guy at every opportunity. I think this is the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen. I could barely even comprehend anything that was happening, but I know it was something special.
3/29
Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967, Jean-Luc Godard, 35mm, Red Vic) - 2.0
I don’t remember a single fucking thing about this movie except that it was really boring. It’s in Paris. And there’s a girl in it. I think it was political?
3/30
Knowing (2009, Alex Proyas, 35mm, 1000 Van Ness) - 6.5
Nicolas Cage’s son’s elementary school opens a time capsule from 50 years earlier, and the son gets a piece of paper with a bunch of numbers on it, and Nic Cage figures out that the numbers are actually predictions of every major catastrophe that has happened since it was written, as well as a few that are still to come. It’s a pretty decent mystery thriller with two fucking awesome sequences of a plane crashing and a subway going off the rails. The ending fucks everything up, though. Proyas seemingly just gives up trying to find any practical way to tie everything up, so instead cops out and blames it on aliens. Sort of, anyway, I guess maybe they’re actually angels who just look like aliens, and they kidnap some kids to start over with a new Eden or something. It was retarded.
Tokyo! (2009, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Bong Joon-ho, 35mm, Lumiere) - 6.0
Three short films from three distinct filmmakers about Tokyo. Gondry’s is about a girl who feels useless going through a transformation that gives her life purpose, and it’s really good. Carax’s is about a mutant who wreaks havoc, and gets arrested and is put to trial, and it’s got a great opening sequence, but the rest of the movie is pretty much just Denis Lavant squealing in his mutant language for like 30 fucking minutes, and it gets really fucking tiresome. Bong’s is about a hermit who falls for a pizza delivery girl who is possibly a robot, and it is not nearly as good as that sounds, but is still alright.
March Top 8
1. I Love You, Man
2. To Let
3. Gravity
4. School, Girls, and You
5. Electric Dreams
6. The Baby's Room
7. Confessions of a Shopaholic
8. Coraline
Bottom 1
Two or Three Things I Know About Her
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