June 2024: Restorations, Westerns, Silents, Godzilla, and the Best Films of 2024 So Far!
Monthly Roundup Post
Welcome to my monthly round up post. Here you will find all my writing from the previous month, plus a look at everything I watched. I’m publishing this a bit early this month as I am heading to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival today!
This month I conducted a number of interviews, wrote about the nostalgia of VHS trailers and promos, reviewed a movie that took me back to my country roots, wrote about a lot of silent westerns, and talked about the best films of both 1924 and 2024!
Interview: Director-Writer-Producer-Actor Jake Allyn on Ride
Podcast: The Entertainment 20. What is the Best Movie of 2024 So Far?
Podcast: A Very Good Year Episode 79: 1924 with Marya E. Gates
The Best Films of 2024 So Far: How To Have Sex, The People’s Joker
This month I watched a lot of restorations of films directed by women and I am always so grateful when I discover a new gem from the past. I also went on a bit of a Georges Méliès kick. All in all I watched 65 new-to-me films (everything I watch at KVIFF, even if it’s in June, I’m going to include in next month’s wrap up). As always, the best way to keep up with my thoughts on what I’m watching as I watch is to follow over on Letterboxd.
It’s been so wonderful to see the warm reception that the restoration of writer-director Bridgett M. Davis’ Naked Acts has received. Davis has such a clear intention with her film, using its imagery and its dialogue to express its themes in a way that seems to be less and less common with today’s contemporary filmmakers.
Another restoration I enjoyed seeing for the first time was Rose Troche’s New Queer Cinema classic Go Fish, which centers on a group of lesbians and their various relationship ups and downs in Chicago in the mid-90s. Very much of its time, but in the most charming way possible.
One of the all-time great feel bad movies about Hollywood, I’m so glad I finally caught up with Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus about the life and death of TV star Bob Crane. This is probably the greatest performance of Greg Kinnear’s career, while Willem Dafoe gives his best line delivery since “No one should own music!” in The English Patient (you’ll know what I’m referring to when you hear the line.)
I watched Bud Schaetzle’s doc This Is Garth Brooks after finishing my articles about Ride and damn did it get me hyped. It’s such a wonderful look at the country superstar’s process as a performer. At one point he goes to the very top of a stadium to share how he likes to go up to the worst spots in venues to try to figure out how to reach the person sitting in those terrible seats. That’s why he was the greatest performer of the 1990s!
Georges Méliès is one of my favorite weirdo directors and his 1907 short film L'éclipse du soleil en pleine lune (The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon) is one of his weirdest — and queerest — that I’ve seen to date. Happy Pride indeed!
I wrote a lot about Christina Hornisher’s newly restored art house horror Hollywood 90028 over on Letterboxd, but here’s an excerpt from that:
A fantastic addition to the L.A. hates itself cannon. A bleak exploration of the misogyny and violence inherent in the movie business via the story of an actual violent murderer. . .who just happens to make movies. I can only imagine the shit director Christina Hornisher saw at UCLA film school or in Hollywood itself while she was making this film. It reminded me of this time when one of my many jobs at WB was to add metadata to Warner Archive Instant and there was a note from a studio executive on one film from around the same time this film was made that said "Needs more sex. Add a rape."
Hornisher uses the exploitation plotting and the cameraman's job shooting porno loops as a way to turn the camera right back on Hollywood itself. (I don't this movie is anti-porn. I think porn is used here as a metaphor for the debasement of everyone in the entertainment industry in general, and women in particular.)
I also just love that she filmed the beautiful murals that used to be all over L.A. (nearly a decade before Varda's film Mur Murs) and the old houses on Bunker Hill before they were (mostly) all torn down. The conversation about how all the old people have been pushed out of L.A. so that land developers can buy their houses, tear them down, and build apartments that will sit empty because they're too expensive for the young people who are left to afford still rings true fifty years later.
I loved the structure of Lagueria Davis’s Black Barbie, which starts out as a generic talking heads documentary and becomes part cultural anthropology, part corporate history, part sociological study, and part playful experimental art film.
Louis Lumière’s 1899 La petite fille et son chat (The Little Girl and Her Cat) is considered the world’s earliest cat video and it does not disappoint. So fluffy!
I wrote about Rachel Amodeo’s one and done No Wave film What About Me in yesterday’s Directed By Women Viewing Guide, but I must reiterate that it is one of the best films I’ve seen all year. It’s such a deeply empathetic look at how anyone can end up on the path towards homelessness and a startling examination of both the kindness and cruelty of strangers.
There is just too much to say about Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, so I will just say that getting to see it on 35mm in the presence of the director himself, who gave a wonderful intro, sat through the film with the audience, and then did a heartfelt post-film Q&A, is one of my theatrical highlights of the year.
Almost completely shot in one long take, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, co-directed by Kathleen Hepburn and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, is a truly visceral experience. It follows of two women who share a day together as one ((Tailfeathers ) tries to help the other (Violet Nelson) out of an abusive situation. I’m grateful to Cinema Chicago for screening the film as part of their free Summer Series this year.
Also, I wanted to give a shout out to the Music Box Theatre for their amazing Godzilla Vs. Music Box week. The 24-hour Showa Era Godzilla marathon is definitely a highlight of my year so far and getting to see Mothra on the big screen was a dream come true. Also, the stop motion bumper they commissioned of various Godzillas playing DND (see below) is this summer’s must-watch short film.
P.S. - Don’t forget every week on Friday afternoons paid subscribers get my Directed By Women Viewing Guide, with picks for new releases and streaming hidden gems.