#212

July 13th was when I watched Midsommar, which was great. Here is what I have looked at since then, in no particular order, not including Hell or High Water, which I mentioned, and am still thinking about.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Cube
Cube Zero
Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus
Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling
It: Chapter One
It: Chapter Two
part of The Third Man, got bored, probably try again someday
Mean Streets
Rocky

Think there might be more, but I'm not gonna go ferreting around anywhere to remind myself of anything. You know what movie I should watch next? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This is not the first time I've said this, but it's the first time I've typed it; hopefully this helps it stick.

It seems also that a lot of good movies are going to be coming out. Finding myself more a theater patron than in several years; haven't gone to the movies a ton since 2013 or so, not compared to how it used to be. All of my teens through my early twenties, Hollywood could reliably count on my box office dollar; rare was the season when there weren't a couple-three things to catch each month. Then I started to feel like practically all new movies fucking sucked. Most may have, but how can you compare to, for example, 2004, which is vintner's year for movies if there ever was one. I know I've missed a lot of good movies.

Man, when I was twenty-one I watched about three hundred fucking movies in less than a year. All kinds of fun shit too; Eastern European stop-motion from the late seventies and eighties, bizarre illegal pornography (hope no one has heard of The Sinful Dwarf), obscure film versions of famous operas, all manner of whatever and also tons of regular shit too. My friend and roommate would often choose the evening's picture, and my ex would go to bed before it was half done, and my friend would four out of five times fall asleep before the end.

Don't remember individual pictures so much as I remember the year of nights begun in company and ended alone, finales only I would stay awake for, if not a hundred percent lucid; the bitter, satisfying pleasure of seeing a thing through to the end mixing well with the booze and the smoke and the television's light illuminating witness, shining down my vigil. 


--JL