Girls behaving badly
and the best movies of the decade
On the eve of a new decade, I present my second installment of Moviepudding. Format still subject to change. Thank you so much for subscribing!
Looking for a something to watch? Start here.
The Souvenir
Joanna Hogg
You know when you like that one band that no one’s ever heard of until the release of their third album that ushers in all the recognition they deserve? The cinematic equivalent of that obscure band for me is the English director Joanna Hogg. 2019 saw the release of her fourth feature and while it hasn’t thrust her ahead of franchise filmdom, she’s been gently incepted into the public eye by marketing mavens at A24. (The film is also being re-screened at Alamo Drafthouse.)
Starring Honor Swinton Byrne (more earthly spawn of Tilda), The Souvenir is about a young woman in a bad relationship with a mysterious man with a brick-strong jawline. Hogg’s autobiographical tale, set in 80s London and spiked with decent songs, brocade shoulder pads, and moody lighting, is accessibly familiar and a good starting point to her work. But it lacks the depths of her earlier films, which don’t reveal their true selves as easily. Those who watch though will be rewarded with more finely-tuned visions of quiet devastation and subtle destruction as in Unrelated where Hogg somehow also utilizes a mop of an actor/man named Tom Hiddleston, a grand feat in and of itself.
RIYL: Comfortable silences, Sofia Coppola, landscape paintings, neutral palettes + cerulean blue, long train rides spent staring out the window.
Young Adult
Jason Reitman
People of a certain age remember Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman best for Juno, which they adored in formative years and probably feel sheepish about now. So maybe I don't know if that film holds up because I am half-embarassed to rewatch it, but I do know that the lady once repeatedly referred to by the media while I was in college as “the stripper who wrote a screenplay and won an Oscar” and the man still known as “the less-than son of the director of Ghostbusters” are never as good at what they do as when they work together.
If you don’t know by now, Charlize Theron, smeared in last night’s eyeliner, plays a (ghost) writer of a "disturbingly popular teen series", who also lives her own version of a YA novel. She tries to win back her teenage sweetheart (Patrick Wilson) whom she refuses to believe is happily married and ensnares Patton Oswalt as her sidekick.
Reitman's hackneyed directorial tics are still on display (CLOSE-UP: rewinding mixtape), but do not interfere with the Cody’s darkish material, which is essentially an unrelenting portrait of an unlikeable bitch (a very edgy move back in 2011!) You can't glean entirely how much of her character’s behavior is extreme sarcasm, truth disguised as sarcasm, or belligerence fueled by Maker's.
RIYL: Enlightened, stealing office supplies, holding grudges, juuling where you shouldn’t.
Toni Erdmann
Maren Ade
This movie is three hours long. It never dispenses any real backstory. Part of it takes place in a mall in Romania. Someone belts out a Whitney Houston number. I laughed until I cried, and then cried again for real. This German film in which a frigid middle aged business woman and her poorly disguised dad (dracula teeth) has all the makings of a great holiday movie.
RIYL: Delaying gratification, petit fours, passive aggression, rooting for Shiv and Logan to have a heart-to-heart in Succession.
Last Days of Disco
Whit Stillman
Do you like the way people talk Aaron Sorkin movies? Do you think you’d like it better if the characters dialed back their moral indignation or at least sounded less like they were fueled by cocaine? Do you prefer your (privileged white) characters to be better equipped with manners and discretion? Did you attend liberal arts school hoping to philosophize with your fellow peers in a reserved setting, maybe over highballs? Do you find yourself wishing there were more egalitarian places to socialize, like the disco? Do you like movies that are endlessly quotable? Do you want to know why Chloe Sevigny deserves to be famous?
RIYL: Already answered, but, the chatty parts of Noah Baumbach movies, Diner, Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”, Chuck Klosterman, being part of a group chat.
SUGGESTED PAIRING
Daisies (Vera Chytilova, 1966)
Daisies, the premiere example of the Czech New Wave, doesn’t really have a plot: two young ladies, (petite gluttons, really) both named Marie gallivant across Eastern Europe playing pranks on male suitor sand causing small acts of food-related destruction. The film alights into a kaleidoscopic array of color — tarragon green, ruby red grapefruit, vivid marigold, like the best egg yolks — without the burden of explanation or reason. Every hue has the look of cellophane; pep and creative possibility reminiscent of childhood. Indeed, the film is one about play and for, as the dedication goes “those who get upset only over a stomped-upon bed of lettuce.” But count this movie as neither frivolous nor self-involved, neither heady nor preening. because under the petals of romantic anarchy lies a a blatant damnation of patriarchal society and the wasteful state of a communist country.
x Angela Dimayuga’s chicken soup / sticky rice / ashwaghanda root
Angela Dimayuga is one of today’s new-wavey chefs who finds the the intersection food, politics, gender identity and more, infusing everything they do with both education and nourishment. I would pair Daisies with her grand showstopping Josefina’s House Special Chicken — magnificent bird, burnished and stuffed with pork chorizo, eggs, olives, raisins, etc. more logical bedfellows once you get to know the history behind this Filipino dish. Alas it’s been taken off the menu of Mission of Chinese, which she built up into the idiosyncratic hipster utopia it is today , so here is her version of a fortifying korean chicken stew (samgyetang) instead, which also fuses tradition with today.
MORE PAIRINGS
Instead of a year-end best-of list, MUBI solicits a fantasy double feature from its writers — a pairing of a new film released this year + an older, but new-to-me film that I watched this year. Here’s one of mine. You can read the rest here.
NEW: Midsommar (Ari Aster, USA)
OLD: A Very Curious Girl (Nelly Kaplan, 1969)
Vengeance is hers in the peculiar countryside.
I DIDN’T LOVE IT BUT YOU MIGHT
Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth is a grandpa's-last-hurrah movie, albeit one gussied up with class and fine china. Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel shuffle around an exquisite Swiss spa discussing their piss and prostrate situation, lest we forget their age. It's all Vogue goes National Geographic, rich in color. The camera roves and swoops through the idyllic Alps — too bad there's nothing but wind echoing between the hills.
RIYL: The Newsroom, Mark Kozalek (actually appears this movie).
BEST MOVIES OF THE LAST TEN YEARS
Lists of films will not save you.
Lists of films will not save films.
List aggregate the already known and consolidate power.
-Elena Gorfinkel, Another Gaze
And yet, here I am making one.
The good thing about these decade spanning lists is the opportunity to reexamine films, especially since I rarely rewatch something even if I love it, partially for the sake of time and never-ending output of new movies to watch, but also because I wonder if it won’t ever be as good, at least that experience of a first watch.
2011 was the year every critic disemboweled themselves over how good they thought Tree of Life was. Every award was a non-race I watched intently between that film which celebrated birth, and another that applauded death — Melancholia. So it’s to my surprise and glee that now Lars Von Trier’s nihilistic vision of the end of the world has placed on these decade lists over Terrence Malick’s life-affirming tone poem. It’s also proof that the film’s loss of momentum was hugely tied to the creator’s gross public remarks/Nazi jokes.
Other movies age poorly. I would have immediately chosen Her not only as a decade defining film but one of its best, had I not rewatched it multiple times as it wended its way from one streaming site to the next. What was once a dreamy tale of 21st century loneliness has ripened into something more sentimental. (Notable survivor of the too-cute mess: Scarlett Johannson’s best performance and high waistlines of Joaquin’s pants, ascending clavicle-ward.) That Her has the sheen and gloss of an Apple commercial and the songs to match — only furthers this point.
Anyway here are some cinema-related things that have haunted me throughout the decade.
2010 The mild mind-fuck of Certified Copy
2011 Melancholia. Kirsten Dunst forever
2012 A regular meal of boiled potatoes in The Turin Horse
2013 Heart pangs and agita after watching American indies Before Midnight and Upstream Color
2014 Nina Hoss singing “Speak Low” at the end of Phoenix
2015 Fabric fit for royalty or maybe Kanye West in The Assassin
2016 A MOST EXCELLENT YEAR FOR MOVIES: Moonlight / A Quiet Passion / Aquarius / Elle / Toni Erdmann
2017 Effective spareness and the chill of spiritual despair in First Reformed. After a slew of duds, Paul Schrader’s comeback and masterpiece.
2018 Burning. The one good thing that ever came from something Murakami wrote.
2019 A friend’s film, a documentary called The Rabbi Goes West.
BEST FOODS OF THE DECADE (SORT OF)
Food years are short. The half-lives of restaurants are quickly reduced by fickle tastes as the number of covers sold directly relates to how good that dish looks plated against pastel stoneware.
As with the movies, revisiting restaurant foods may yield diminished returns. Was last week’s lunch really as good as you told everyone it was? Some things aren’t as good the second time around, for a number of reasons that you can’t neatly isolate — hype, state of mind, state of hunger, wait time (do you over or underrate a meal or experience because of it?).
But there’s one factor I’ve noticed as of late that’s crept into my judgments: cost.
Things taste different, if not better, when you don’t pay for them. The sticker tag immediately creates an expectation that forces me to consider not just whether or not something was good, but whether or not it was worth it. I suppose that’s why food critics, freed from such monetary constraints, can write about food in a way that I cannot. But why shouldn’t price be a determining factor of judgement? (Ryan Sutton at Eater writes with a bent towards this.)
I fear this is the state of my tastebuds/how they relay bliss back to my brain lately; things have started to lose their appeal now that I don’t have to make mental/monetary compromises to afford them. But here are foods from the last decade (more or less equivalent to my seemingly eternal tenure in NYC) that deliver a consistent modicum of pleasure, or at least the fondest of memories.
Di Fara pizza, knighted with a kettle of olive oil
Svizzerina at Via Carota. The only bunless burger that is not an abomination
Hand-torn or knife cut noodles of any origin, misshapen packets of springiness all. (Indonesian pan mee, korean sujaebi, italian malfatti, to name a few.)
The green sauce at Pio Pio
Portuguese egg tarts at New Flushing Bakery
Everything at Cafe Nargis (rice humbly slicked in lamb-fat, dill-doused everything — smallish and large dumplings! kebabs! a very unhealthy and excellent salad!)
RIP ALL THE BURRITOS I KNEW AND LOVED (el atoradero, taqueria de los muertos, etc.)
16 tacos at Tacos El Bronco
Shiso fried rice at Mission Chinese. (Would you believe that one of the best dishes here isn’t even spicy?)
Happy New Year.