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Doug Liman·1999·★★★· Rewatched

Saw this at the cinema in 1999 and, I think, never since. Memory had filed it as Rashomon-adjacent, with unreliable narrators and contradiction; on reflection the three strands complete each other rather than compete. A different and altogether gentler trick. Mostly it’s a time capsule of faces I then assumed were headed for bigger things: Scott Wolf, Desmond Askew, Taye Diggs. A very young Melissa McCarthy turns up briefly. And obviously Sarah Polley, whose subsequent career rather outstrips the material here. Watchable, propulsive, thoroughly of its moment. And I say that as someone who considers the turn of the millennium to be a few years ago, not twenty-six.

I Saw the TV Glow

Jane Schoenbrun·2024·★★★½

I don’t entirely know what I just watched, and I think that’s the point. It opens like a coming-of-age film about two kids bonding over a Buffy-esque TV show, then quietly stops being that and becomes something stranger. The Lynch comparisons are well earned. Schoenbrun shoots suburbia soft and pink, and the Alex G score sits underneath everything like static you can’t quite tune out. The broader soundtrack, Caroline Polachek and yeule especially, is great. What stays with me is how patient the film is about not naming what it’s actually about. For anyone working through questions of identity and dysphoria, I suspect this will matter for a long time.

Aftersun

Charlotte Wells·2022·★★★★★

Incredibly affecting. Great performances. The way it deals with memory is stunning; the impact and feeling of the ‘Under Pressure’ sequence will stick with me for a while.

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