Cineclub

Un chant d'amour. Dir. Jean Genet. 1950

There's so much beauty packed into these twenty five minutes. And seeing it tonight for the first time, its influence on generations of visual artists is obvious if you have seen a music video or purchased underwear in the last thirty years.

The film was banned and eventually deemed obscene by the Supreme Court. I think the standard for obscenity has changed since then, but if at the time obscenity was any depiction that leaves you desiring intimacy with a strong, hairy-chested man of mediterranean descent, I think this film is deliciously obscene. 

I imagine these days the justification for banning the film would probably be more for its depictions of smoking than sex.

Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror. Dir. F.W. Murnau. 1922

Soon it will be November, but right now it is October.

Right now you are prone to earnestly and emphatically saying things like: "I recommend waiting to eat the Mexican toaster pastry. It is extremely hot and to take a bite now would surely be madness!"

Instead of "Careful, that's hot."

Come November, perhaps you will be grateful there are not so many vampire movies available and stealing your soul and replacing it with adverbs.

Heart of Glass. Dir. Werner Herzog. 1976

This is the third Herzog film we have watched, so it may be early to ask this question: Is there one character in all of his movies who does nothing but laugh?

Nosferatu Phantom of The Night. Dir. Werner Herzog. 1979

In the village where I live, we are surrounded by tortilla chips. In the many, many Mexican restaurants, the servers drop hot bowls of the golden triangles and say to you as you sit down, "Welcome ¡Estás en tu casa!"

There are row after row of Doritos in the shops. There is even an unguarded bag of tortilla chips at work today. So it is possible here to eat corn chips every day at almost every meal and in between. And I suffer from the corn chip curse—once I start eating them, I don't stop until they are all gone. Afterward I always experience guilt and indigestion. But that hot salty crunch.

Since the chips in the office kitchen are not mine, and I know I cannot eat one without eating them all—cursed curse—I hiss, I bite a knuckle, and I turn away. This is for the best. It is definitely not a good thing to eat all the corn chips. They are loaded with empty calories and if you eat all of them every day, before long you will surely die.

But there are worse things than death. What if you are a vampire who cannot not die? Then one day you see a photo of your real estate broker's wife, Lucy. She has such a beautiful neck. You know that if you cannot die perhaps your condition would be a little easier if at least you could love her and she would love you back.

That is what this movie is about. 

Santa Sangre. Dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky. 1989

A sensitive young man uses vaudeville and press-on nails to relive his colorful childhood.

The Forbidden Room. Dir. Guy Madden. 2015

We watched this colorful film about how to take a bath. It took us three nights. There are many reasons to like it. Some of which are: Udo Kier as a father who returns from the dead to raid the fridge. A song by Sparks. Geraldine Chaplin cracking a whip. Typographically frenzied odes to silent films. Volcano justice. And flapjacks used as a breathing apparatus.

I think flapjacks is Canadian for pancakes.

Quick-witted Luke Skywalker takes advantage of Darth Vader’s confusion when asked to explain the facsimile machine. Things get a little worse and a lot louder. Luke eventually manages to lock Darth in the conference room. Meanwhile, Leia or however it’s spelled, and Han make it past the gruff yet lovable bug-eyed security guard to help Luke. When they try to escape, Vader has shut off the elevators and they must take the stairs. A few flights down, Leah notices something odd about the staircase. It’s a trap! They run to return up just as the doors are closing and the stairs fall away. But Luke doesn’t get through. He’s there balanced on a ledge between the new precipice and the fire door. He bangs on the door. He almost loses his balance. He bangs more. He shout’s Laya’s name. “Leica! Leica! Leica!” Nothing. Just when it seems all is lost, a bug-eyed janitor opens the door. Luke finds Lia and Han and they rush to the heliport on the roof and fly away as the credits roll.

You know, the last time Matt Damon found himself stranded on an inhospitable planet, he was such a dick to the other astronauts who came back for him, I really think this time they should think long and hard before doing him any favors.

After watching back-to-back biopics for cosmologist Stephen Hawking and comic actor Cantinflas, details of the two ambitious films quickly blend together. My date and I finish our wine and make love with a newfound appreciation for both our motor and improvisational skills. Beneath the planetarium-like brick dome of our casita, atop a caster equipped houseplant stand, in contortions which look uncomfortable, we declare our passions for one another using only our left hands and the street slang of Mexico City delivered at a steady clip of five words per minute spoken in the robot voices of early 8-bit pornography.

Did you take Quiz One? Okay, now take Quiz Two. It is more or less the same as Quiz One, except it stops abruptly in what feels like the middle. Now, wait a year and take the second part of Quiz Two, which we’ll call Quiz Three, Part One. Do you still want to take Quiz Three, Part Two? Congratulations, you are The Hunger Games!

The people of a dying Earth are so weary of dusty corn chips, they could just cry. So they do. They cry and cry until they’re running out of air and are almost suffocating. Soon a jokey robot and a group of crying astronauts are crying their way through space and time in hopes of saving the human race even though there is no guarantee whatsoever they’ll ever be crying tears of joy when they are reunited with their crying families.