12:19:24
I’ve been discovering many 80s and early 90s movies I somehow never saw. It’s been a joy, given how much I hate nearly every new movie I’ve seen the past few years. I don’t even bother most times with new films, the terrible/soulless new actors/Instagram stars alone are enough to deter me. Unwatchable.
When someone as corny, Normie, Sears catalog-esque as Glen Powell is considered a great new actor, not to mention “hot” and charming, it’s officially over (the only movie I like Powell in is Set It Up, a 2018 romantic comedy no one saw. It’s hard to believe the guy in that movie is the same gym body charm monster we see now). I could barely stomach Brad Pitt my whole life. Most actors these days, both in movies and streaming series, are like people you find at a corporate job or a trendy lame bar (same thing). Why they’re the “big” onscreen for us to watch is beyond me. Maybe because of growing up with Zoom and FaceTime? No one knows the difference between art and sales. Art and social media. Hence why Greta Gerwig’s Barbie gets Oscars.
But it turns out there is much I can still discover, even from the decades I thought I knew very well. Movies are like Matryoshka (nesting) dolls, one inside another inside another inside another. As a former film student of mine I met up with in October told me, “Cinema is endless.”
It’s true.
Yes, I have been disillusioned and red pilled past the point of no return, adrift in a storm the past 5 years, trying to honor and savor what still matters, which is hope.
As Celia Farber put it today on her Substack:
“The feeling is that we are in a waiting room—it has felt that way since March 2020. Life is on hold. Nothing feels real…We’re all in the waiting room, trying to settle our nerves, trying to feel OK. Trying to figure out what our purpose is.”
I still have wonder for this lifeboat called cinema, especially when it comes to the past.
Right now my purpose is watching movies that slipped under my radar, feeling them. Feeling life from before and hoping there is new life again. Life that doesn’t feel inhuman and terrifying.
Where the Heart Is, 1990
