for reels: July 2021
A monthly look back at my Letterboxd diary.
Welcome to for reels, a monthly look back at my movie diary on Letterboxd // Today, I’m looking back at July 2021 //
I dunno about y’all but July was a helluva movie month at my house. Went to the theater a lot, to varying degrees of success (more on that in a min), streamed my way through all the hot summer nights at home, read a couple of movie-related books (Quentin Tarantino’s new Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood novelization and Brian De Palma’s breezy, trashy crime thriller Are Snakes Necessary? - both slapped) and cranked out a few fun pieces along the way. If you haven’t yet, feel free to peruse my latest edition of the tube on Folk Filmmaking, and if it’s the sort of thing you’re into check out my list of summer movies to watch when you’re stoned for Weedmaps.
I live a block ‘n change away from the beach so needless to say I clocked in some hours there as well. What’s fun about Long Beach is they film a lot of movies out here so every once in awhile you hit the sand and stumble into a shoot. A couple weeks ago my wife and I went out to the beach and found ourselves soaking up the sun next to a whole WWII beach-storming scene with explosions and everything. I assumed it was for an actual WWII movie or TV show or something, then a couple days later my wife found out it was a shoot for a TikTok star’s music video or something. Dunno if there’s any significance to that other than I feel like I’m the grandma in that “sure grandma, let’s get you to bed” meme being like “in my day there were these things called movies and they used to shoot them on the actual beach right outside my apartment which has since been devoured by the toxic ocean.” Never thought that in my lifetime watching movies would be akin to, like, calling someone on a rotary phone but here we are. You know what though I still think movies are the best so what can ya do except lean into that shit amirite? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, here are some fake awards for 10ish notable joints from my Letterboxd diary in July.
Best New Movie: No Sudden Move (2021)
Steven Soderbergh’s latest micro-masterpiece dropped on HBO Max at the top of the month and currently holds the #2 spot in my 2021 movie rankings. What a quietly brilliant, prescient, experimental piece of entertainment (something you could say about most of Soderbergh’s post-unretirement output). It’s an immaculately cast, mechanically inventive crime thriller with a keen understanding of what America really is and always has been. If this one flew under your radar, I couldn’t recommend it enough.
Best New-to-Me Movie: The Game (1997)
This was the only David Fincher joint I hadn’t seen. Finally got to it when it popped up on Netflix and damn… fuckin’ loved it. Maybe I’m just outta the loop but I feel like this one gets lost in the Fincher shuffle ‘cause it’s wedged between Se7en and Fight Club and doesn’t even come close to having the cultural cachet of those movies. Understandable, but pound for pound I feel like it’s like just as good. Fincher makes great use of Michael Douglas’s cuckold-thriller persona (in similar fashion to the way he turned Gone Girl into a total farce about Ben Affleck’s stardom, absolutely love that shit) and constructs a grotesque, indelibly cold potboiler that’s really aged well ‘cause at its heart, its about the terror of personal data aggregation and corporate reality shaping that defines our existence today. Also, if it weren’t for the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man existing, this film would definitely take home the gold medal for Best Use of Jefferson Airplane in a Movie.
Rewarding Rewatches: Night Moves (1975), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
We knocked out a bunch of stellar rewatches at my house in July, had some trouble even narrowing it down to two. For the sake of brevity though, the ones that stuck with me most were the 1975 Hollywood neo-noir Night Moves and 2006’s mega-blockbuster sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
I’ve been on a bit of a Gene Hackman kick as of late and when Night Moves came up on the Criterion Channel I knew I had to revisit it. Hackman plays laid-back private eye Hank Moesby, who’s hired by an aging actress to track down her missing teenage daughter. The plot, as it always does, thickens from there and the movie becomes a portrait of a decent guy completely in over his head in a world of indecent people. The tweet below is a bit of a spoiler but not one that ruins the movie imo, and it perfectly sums up why so many of these, like, nihilistic thrillers from the ‘70s are more relevant today than they’ve ever been.
Shifting gears, revisited the Pirates franchise for the first time in I don’t know how long and found the direct sequel, Dead Man’s Chest, to be a total fuckin’ delight. I remember riding for it hard when it came out and, in addition to remembering what it was like when fucking pirates were bigger than superheroes at the movies, I was relieved to find how much it held up. Film columnist Mia Vicino’s Letterboxd review really sums it up for me:
davy jones going Phantom Mode and playing organ with his face tentacles … the sword fight on the spinning wheel … oodles of Cronenbergian slime … will and elizabeth being hot and refusing to communicate with each other … english character actor tom hollander as smarmy powdered wig villain ………. yup yup i’m annointing Dead Man’s Chest as my official fav Pirate. who dares to join me crew 🏴☠️
Also, this “Girl at bachelorette party who can’t stop talking about Pirates of the Caribbean 2 Dead Man’s Chest” was very much my vibe for like the rest of the week:
Theater Hit: Old (2021)
I guess this whole delta variant situation is sorta putting the kibosh on movie theaters being back. Still, managed to go back to theaters in a big way in July. Here’s the thing though, as much as I love movie theaters and will continue to frequent them while they’re still around, the big theater chains that have managed to survive the pandemic are doing almost nothing to justify their continued existence. Case in point, went and saw the new M. Night Shyamalan joint Old and the screen was goddamn blurry. Like, not completely blurry but just enough to buuuug, ya know? Tried to tell a worker but when they came in and looked at the screen they just shrugged and said “looks fine to me” which I kind of expected ‘cause there’s no way they pay or train people enough to do anything about whatever shitty dim-ass-bulb projectors they have at AMCs. Not tryna be a dick here I just think if theaters want to continue to exist they should actually do the bare minimum to make the experience better than (or at least distinct from) watching a movie at home. ‘Cause the small theaters that are making those efforts are still delivering magical times, man. Case in point: went to the New Beverly in Hollywood a few weeks ago and it was the first time back at a theater that actually made me tear up because the communal joy and enthusiasm was so palpable.
Having said all that, I loved Old and technical hiccups aside I was really glad to have watched it on a big screen. Shyamalan can really work a fuckin’ camera. Thanks to all the “beach that makes you old memes” (which have been great) this movie is already mostly a punchline in the public consciousness but I thought it was pretty fantastic. Super original body horror with some pretty fun schlocky dystopian sci-fi elements, exceptionally moving character work and a lot of great camera tricks and editing. I know Shyamalan’s whole vibe doesn’t really work for a lot of people the way it works for me (honestly thought his last film, the critically panned and very underseen Glass, was a genuinely great late-stage superhero flick) but I highly recommend taking a chance on this one.
Top-Shelf Cage Rage: Pig (2021)
Also caught Pig in theaters. Great movie about grief and emotional memory with a phenomenal Nic Cage performance that lives up to the hype and then some. Reminds you why he’s one of our great screen actors and not just the eccentric shlockmeister of recent years (no shade you understand my take is Cage is doing his best work right now). He just really shows up for this one to flex some serious dramatic chops, ya know? Hadn’t seen a Cage performance quite like this in a minute. Well worth the price of admission and, like I said, the rest of the movie ain’t bad either.
New Fav (non-Hammer) Vampire Movie: Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Expected to enjoy this one but not that I’d vibe with it as hard as I did. Other than Hammer’s Christopher Lee/Dracula movies, this might be my new fav vampire flick. It’s certainly my new fav Jim Jarmusch film. Idk it just had such a strong vibe all the way through and had a lot of interesting things to say about what it would mean to live forever as a sexy vampire, no joke. Also, I’m not like the biggest Tilda Swinton fan but she was fuckin’ immaculate in this role, like beyond the obviousness of her playing a vampire. She imbues the character with just the right amount of warmth and beatnik exuberance. Tom Hiddleston ain’t bad either. Next time you’re in the mood for a vampire hangout movie with a killer soundtrack, sink your fangs into this shit.
Killer Threequel: Scream 3 (2000)
Love and appreciate Scream and Scream 2 as much as anyone who loves slashers and/or remembers the ‘90s, but it took me ‘till last month to get around to 3 and 4. Liked ‘em both, but 3 was the one that really surprised me. About a half-step down from Scream 2 (my personal fav entry) but still pretty fuckin’ solid… as long as you can look past Courtney Cox’s microbangs :/ The meta-Hollywood angle really worked for me. Well played Mr. Craven. Oh, and Parker Posey just drops in and fucking owns, as usual.
Exceptional Slashers: The Stepfather (1987)& Stepfather II (1989)
Had heard nothing but good things about the Stepfather films, saw they were streaming on Amazon and took ‘em for a spin. An incendiary slasher premise (a serial killer goes around marrying into families, kills them when it inevitably goes sour, changes his identity and moves onto the next family) that becomes Reagan-era allegory of borderline They Live-level wit and accuracy. The Gipper stepfathered us all, the Freddy Krueger that still haunts the American dream. Anyway, if you’re a slasher head it won’t take long to see why these movies belong in the top-shelf slasher canon.
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