Softening the Blow: Hotel by the River (Gangbyeon Hotel / 강변 호텔 2018)

Hotel cafes, like airport restaurants and long-haul trains, are a magical place. People from all walks of life gather there for a few brief moments before setting off again to who knows where. These places allow for serendipitous encounters that can sometimes be life-altering, and that often reveal how people’s lives rhyme. That’s the vibe going into writer-director Hong Sang-soo’s Hotel by the River (Gangbyeon Hotel / 강변 호텔 2018), set entirely at and near a small hotel by the Han River over a day and change in the dead of winter, when everything is covered in snow. And since this is Hong, we viewers are also meeting the characters serendipitously, with no introduction or exposition.

Thoughts on Monolith (2022)

The jump scare is a curious thing. It has to be sudden, but suddenness alone just creates disorientation. You can add loud discordant notes, but that’s like your friend “scaring” you by punching you—a purely biological reaction devoid of cinematic interest. No, a good jump scare depends on expectation: The viewer must expect  something to happen, but not know when. And as viewers grow savvy to horror beats, the not knowing gets ever harder. Which brings us to Monolith (2022).

Dreams from My Father: Marooned Awakening (2022)

Fear doesn’t always manifest in the banal way we expect it to. It can tantalizingly mislead an audience. In the form of unsettling sound effects, it echoes, as it were, in a character’s inner world rather than in a shallow murder scene. It can sometimes be a red herring that distracts us from the real threats. This is how it works in Musaab Mustafa’s Marooned Awakening (2022), cowritten with Cameron Ashplant, less a psychological thriller than a heart-to-heart—yet as scary as it could be—between a son and his father.

Thoughts on Deep Impact (1998)

Released a couple of months before that other space rock-hits-Earth film, Armageddon (1988), Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact (1998) is much more sober than Michael Bay’s preposterously crude deep-fried filth. It’s a melodrama more than an action thriller. The surprise is that it does melodrama so well.

Thoughts on Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Tom Cruise is kind of like a modern-day studio head, grabbing collaborators to produce and put out big tentpole films. Just read his interactions with his actual studio, Paramount Pictures. His most fruitful collaborator to date has been with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote and directed the latest Mission: Impossible films and did the final rewrite of Top Gun: Maverick (2022), directed by Joseph Kosinsky. After Cruise and McQuarrie perfected the action thriller with Mission: Impossible—Fallout (2018), now they’re back (along with some other screenwriters and story originators) to perfect the hero’s farewell.

Getting Gerried by Nature: Gerry (2002)

In 2002, Gus Van Sant followed his aggressively mediocre Finding Forrester (2000) with the aggressively experimental Gerry (2002). It doesn’t have opening titles, and for most of its 103 minutes the only two people we see are Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, who both play guys named Gerry. (I’m going to use the actors’ names to avoid confusion.) There’s even a running joke about how the name “Gerry” gets turned into a vague, all-purpose word (Affleck, Damon, and Van Sant co-wrote and co-edited)—e.g., “I crow’s-nested up here to scout-about the ravine ’cause I thought maybe you gerried the rendezvous”; “We could have just bailed early, you know. There were so many gerrys along the way”; or, “And then we gerried off to the animal tracks.” The first 20 minutes are just long takes of Matt and Casey driving and then walking in the California semi-desert with minimal dialogue. What makes Gerry worth watching is in how it perfectly captures what it’s like to get lost in the wilderness. As someone who once got lost in the wilderness, I should know.

A Few Brief Thoughts on Some (More) Interesting Short Films

It’s been a year and a half since my last shorts roundup, and the pandemic is still ongoing; the only difference is that people are starting to not care anymore. I wonder if it has something to do with how the internet has diminished our attention spans and memories. In any case, here in chronological order of premiere date are the shorts I watched that engaged me enough to want to finish them and write about them. If I don’t provide a link, I saw it on MUBI.

Thoughts on Inside (2021)

Bo Burnham’s Inside (2021), which the YouTube and stand-up comedian, writer-director, and actor wrote, directed, shot, edited, scored, sound edited, and starred in alone, is the truest account we have of Burnham the auteur. I’m not naïve about the segues, which Richard Brody notes are part of the construction. I’m considering the whole.

Thoughts on Microhabitat (Sogongnyeo / 소공녀 2017)

Writer-director Jeon Go-woon’s debut, Microhabitat (Sogongnyeo / 소공녀 2017), is a straightforwardly told adaptation of Tokyo Story (Tōkyō Monogatari / 東京物語 1953), and is almost as moving, mostly thanks to lead actress Esom’s compassionate and free-spirited performance as Mi-so. She knows what makes her happy—Esse cigarettes, Glenfiddich whiskey, and her boyfriend, Han-sol (Ahn Jae-hong)—and how to get them: direct contribution to society via housecleaning and donating blood. When rent and cig prices go up, she can’t afford all three, so she decides to cut back on rent. Instead, she couchsurfs with her former university bandmates. But there’s always a reason she can’t stay long.

Thoughts on Silver Bullets (2011)

Writer-director-cinematographer-editor Joe Swanberg’s Silver Bullets (2011) is one of his better-balanced works, and also has the distinction of being Kate Lyn Sheil’s breakout role, in terms of arthouse circles, anyway; her performance with the widest audience is probably as the religious-minded Lisa Williams in seasons 2 and 3 of House of Cards (2013-18). Filmmaker Ethan (Swanberg) is jealous that girlfriend Claire (Sheil) is starring in a low-budget werewolf film directed by the more famous Ben (Ti West), and so casts Claire’s best friend Charlie (Amy Seimetz) as his girlfriend in the next of his intimate mumblecore dramas. Sound like someone we know?