Thoughts on Desk Set

    On Criterion last Sunday, I watched Desk Set, a 1957 romantic comedy directed by Walter Lang and written by Henry and Phoebe Ephron, adapted from the 1955 play of the same name by Walter Marchant. The movie centers on Bunny Watson (Katharine Hepburn), a documentalist who works in the reference department of a television network in Manhattan. She and the other librarians (Joan Blondell, Dina Merrill, Sue Randall) all answer phone calls from the general public asking about obscure trivia questions from their reference library, and the women have all memorized facts and can tell people things immediately, or know exactly what section the reference material it is in. The women have bonded with each other, and are close with other secretaries in the building, working like a network to look out for each other. 

    Methods engineer and efficiency expert Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy) comes in for a meeting with the boss Mr. Azae (Nicolas Joy), but arrives a day early for his appointment, so he spends time in the reference department, arising suspicion from the librarians. It is eventually revealed that Sumner has developed a giant computer system called Electromagnetic Memory and Research Arithmetical Calculator, with the acronym EMERAC, nicknamed "Emmy." He and Mr. Azae have been in talks to install the computer in the reference department, as a faster way of generating results from the public questions, and the librarians fear that this machine will replace them and put them out of work. This also made me think of the film Hidden Figures, where the women "computers" at NASA work as mathematicians but aren't valued, and a giant IBM computer in the 1960s threatens to replace them.

    Bunny is dating rising network executive Mike Cutler (Gig Young), but is frustrated that after seven years together, he hasn't proposed to her yet. Richard finds Bunny to be smart and captivating and is intrigued by her, especially when he interviews her about her ability to calculate facts and information very quickly, like asking questions about train arrivals and number of passengers at stops.

    I wasn't as into the romantic comedy parts of the movie, although I did like the scenes where Bunny impressed Richard with her sharp intelligence. But I was really into the scenes with her and her coworkers, like with Joan Blondell as being a co-leader with Bunny, with her older age and seniority, and I've always liked her as a great comedic actress of the 1930s. 

    As an archivist, I related a lot to the reference environment and being able to memorize random facts and niche trivia to ramble off to people, and was amazed at how prescient the film was with the librarians fearing that the computer would take over their jobs, like the fear today with A.I. being used to replace people in the tech industry and leading to massive layoffs.

    The finale, where Neva Patterson as Miss Warriner is trying to handle the phones and enter information into Emmy at the same time, and taking too long to deliver the answers and getting the wrong results from Emmy was hilarious, and an excellent scene of comedic acting from her, especially when she just freaks out on everybody out of sheer frustration, it was awesome.

    I really liked this film, and I had recognized the last name of the writers, and was correct in realizing they were the parents of the journalist/screenwriter/director Nora Ephron, who would reach mainstream fame with her romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie & Julia, and writing the screenplays for When Harry Met Sally . . ., Silkwood, and Heartburn.

    This was a really good movie, and I'm happy I watched it.

Thoughts on Memoir of a Snail

     On Hulu, I watched Memoir of a Snail, a 2024 Australian stop-motion animated tragicomedy film written and directed by Adam Eliot. The film centers on a twin brother and sister, Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Grace (Sarah Snook), who come of age in 1970s Melbourne, being separated by being orphaned in youth, and largely following Grace's life as a lonely misfit.

    The twins' mother had died in childbirth, and they are raised by their French father Percy (Dominique Pinon), who was once a juggler and street performer but is now a paraplegic alcoholic. Grace develops an affinity for collecting snails, which her late mother was fond of as well, and her brother protects her from bullies who tease her for her cleft lip. When their father dies from sleep apnea, the children are split into different foster families and separated on opposite ends of the country, with Grace in Canberra and Gilbert in Perth. Grace is raised by a nudist swingers couple who are kind but often absent to pursue their own adult lives, and Gilbert is raised by a Christian fundamentalist family who abuse him and force him to do grunt work of putting stickers on their apples for very little pay, which he is expected to give to the church collection jar weekly.

    Grace, while receiving letters from Gilbert and hoping to be reunited, makes friends with Pinky (Jacki Weaver), an eccentric and kind older woman who has lived a colorful life despite setbacks (both her husbands died by accident; she got fired from many jobs; she lost her pinky finger while dancing), and she becomes Grace's foster mother when her foster parents retire to join a nudist colony. She acts as a supportive rock for Grace, as Grace grows up and becomes an obsessive hoarder with her snails and snail-related collectibles, wearing a snail hat with eyes on wires on top.

   This film was incredibly touching to me. It has a very dark, weird, sepia-toned look to it, and it's a film meant for adults, not a children's film. As Grace and Gilbert grow up, they face more challenges and struggles, and I related a lot to Grace wanting to cocoon herself at home with her favorite things, especially as her trauma has kept her from really living her life. Pinky's words to her at the end of the film (Pinky dies as an old woman right at the beginning of the film, then the film starts at the twins' childhood to get to how Pinky came to be in Grace's life) really resonated with me:

    "No, I won't tell you the horrors I remember, but do want to tell you what it's like to feel imprisoned, caged. It was simply dreadful. But in the years since, I've learnt that the worst cages are the ones we create for ourselves. You have created a cage for yourself, Gracie. Your cage has never been locked . . . but your fears have kept you trapped . . . Start anew. A bit of self-pity's OK, but it's time to move on. There'll be pain, but that's life. You have to face it head-on. Be brave."

    The film was loosely based on Eliot's own life, and was Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Film. Eliot had won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for his 2003 short film Harvie Krumpet. The lead actors are great in the film, but especially Jacki Weaver, who was fantastic as Pinky and brings a lot of heart to this wonderful oddball character who acknowledges that life is hard, but doesn't want to dwell on looking backwards. She will help Grace by making comparisons to snails, saying that snails only move forward, and don't go backwards over their own paths.

    I'm glad I checked out this film, it was a strange little gem to watch.

Thoughts on The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

    On Criterion, I watched The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, a 1972 West German New Wave psychological romantic film written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, based on his play of the same name. The film centers on the title character Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen), a fashion designer who lives in a luxurious apartment in Bremen, and the whole film takes place in the apartment. She is rich, very thin, and lounges around in gowns and wigs, ordering around her silent personal assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann), who keeps a taciturn expression.

    Petra is twice-married, her first husband having died in a car accident when Petra was pregnant with their daughter, Gaby, and she recently divorced her second husband because of his controlling nature. Through her cousin Sidonie (Katrin Schaake), she meets Sidonie's friend Karin (Hanna Schygulla), a young 23-year old woman, who just returned to Germany after having lived in Sydney for five years with her husband. Petra is immediately attracted to Karin, telling her she should be a model, and the two develop a quick relationship, with Petra offering to financially support her while she trains to become a model. They talk about their lives, Petra having grown up happy and comfortable while Karin came from a traumatic background. Petra projects an obsession onto Karin, being enraptured by her, while Karin is flattered by the compliments but doesn't feel the same for Petra.

    The film is more of a melodrama, and Petra's obsession with Karin does feel over-the-top, especially when she's only known her for a short time, but codependency is a big part of the story, as Petra feels lonely, often at home with Marlene at her beck and call, and clings to Karin's youth and beauty, despite that Petra herself is only 35 and still very beautiful and young herself.

    The film is set in the then-present of the 1970s, but has a 1930s look, with the women having short, styled hair, wearing cloche hats and long gowns, projecting more of a 1920s-1930s glamour to them, it did confuse me at first to figure out the time period of the story.

    I found Marlene more fascinating in her silence, especially when observing this doomed sapphic affair from a distance but unable to comment on it to stay professional, but judging it all the same.

    I liked the film, but the melodrama was too much for me, and made me talk back at the screen like, "C'mon, Petra, get it together" when she's moaning over wanting Karin to love her back or wanting her to return. It was a nice film to watch, but not really for me.

Thoughts on No Other Choice

     On Hulu, I watched No Other Choice, a 2025 South Korean black comedy thriller directed by Park Chan-wook, co-written by Park, Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, and Lee Ja-hye, based on the 1997 novel The Ax by Donald Westlake. The film centers on Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), a veteran employee of 25 years at a papermaking company, who lives a happy life in his childhood home that he bought, living in bliss with his wife Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) and his children Si-one (Woo Seung Kim) and Ri-one (Choi So Yul). When his company is bought out and he refuses to fire his fellow employees, he is laid off, and promises his family that he will find another job in the paper industry within three months.

    Thirteen months later, he hasn't found a new job, and his family is in dire financial straits. His house will be foreclosed in three months; Mi-ri has taken a part-time job as a dental assistant, and Ri-one, who is an autistic cello prodigy, is recommended by her instructor for advanced lessons that the family cannot afford. Man-su has been trying to get a job as a manager with another papermaking company, Moon Paper, a Japanese-owned company expanding in South Korea, and is jealous of his competition, and is driven to stalk and murder them in order to win the job.

    His competition are all ordinary middle-management types who aren't better off than he is. Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min) is an unemployed alcoholic with an actress wife A-ra (Yeom Hye-ran, in one of the film's standout performances outside of Lee Byung-hun) who resents his sloth attitude; Si-jo (Cha Seung-won) works at a shoe store and isn't happy, but is fine to have a job and get by; and Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon), who works at Moon Paper and may get promoted. The scenarios are over-the-top and ridiculous, and the movie, at nearly two and a half hours long, does extend past a point where it feels like three victims is one too many, where Man-su desperately wants a job to be a cog in the capitalist corporate machine, romanticizing how important paper is to create cigarette filters and books and other items, where he feels he doesn't have any other purpose in his life outside of his job and his family, and his obsession reveals more that he's just a horrible and demented person.

    I really liked the dark comedy, and how the film keeps repeating the line "no other choice," taking on different meanings for it. The cinematography by Kim Woo-hyung was fantastic, like the zoom-out tracking shots that looked unique and impressive, layering characters in superimposed images, or other playful ways of filmmaking that I enjoyed.

    I was disappointed that this film didn't get an Oscar nomination, though there were a lot of great international films that got nominated or short-listed. I'm glad I watched this and checked it out.

Thoughts on Portrait of Jason

     On Criterion, I watched Portrait of Jason, a 1967 documentary directed by Shirley Clarke, where she and her then-partner, actor Carl Lee, interview Jason Holliday, a gay Black hustler and aspiring cabaret performer, who tells stories about his life and his friends in a very charming, bon vivant kind of way, getting drunker throughout the 12-hour shooting of the interview in December 1966 at Clarke's Chelsea Hotel penthouse apartment in New York City. 

    His personality is loud, and as a gay Black man living in the 1960s, it's important that his personality takes up space, because he has had to live with racism and homophobia, and his attitude is a performance to protect his more vulnerable self. He tells stories of sex work and musician friends and his abusive parents, and he easily slips into impressions of Katharine Hepburn and other stars, putting on a show for Clarke and Lee.

    Throughout the film, the production keeps being interrupted, with off-screen talk from Clarke and Lee, the screen going to black with the audio heard, fading in and out of focus, re-starting shots, etc. It is interesting to watch a documentary from the 1960s that leaves all the messy bits in, as well as in the last third of the film, where Lee keeps antagonizing Holliday and telling him he's full of shit and cursing at him, trying to get him to open up about painful parts of his life, even as Holliday is very drunk and crying and being broken down emotionally. It's rough, as that part of the film becomes more raw and vulnerable to watch. It feels more exploitative, and yet Clarke left it in anyway, as if to feel more "real."

    I've read other reviews that explore this film in a much more insightful way than I can, bringing up themes of classism (Clarke came from a wealthy family and made this film where she enabled an addict hustler for a film to show white "intellectual" audiences); racism (Holliday came up in the Jim Crow-era South), homophobia, and blurring the lines between performance and reality.

    I really liked this film and found it fascinating, to watch for two hours, with an interview with a man who was interesting, and luckily lived a long life (he died in 1998 at age 74). The film was added to the National Film Registry in 2015 by the Library of Congress for its historical and cultural importance.

Thoughts on Marvelous and the Black Hole

     On Tubi, I watched the 2021 coming of age drama Marvelous and the Black Hole, written and directed by Kate Tsang. The film stars Miya Cech as Sammy Ko, a teen girl whose mother has recently passed away, and is struggling with her grief and anger, acting out at school and getting into fights and failing classes. She is in danger of being expelled, therapy hasn't helped her, and her father Angus (Leonardo Nam) places her in a community college business class, telling her if she fails the class he will send her away to a reformatory summer camp. Her father treats her like the problem child, letting her sister bully her to be "in charge," and is dating a new woman, who Sammy resents.

    Sammy takes the business course, but isn't interested in it, and ends up meeting in passing an eccentric and salty old woman named Margot (Rhea Perlman), who is a children's magician, and tells folk tales to children using magic, like sleight of hand tricks and making her rabbit appear out of thin air. Sammy is initially resistant to Margot trying to help her, but after she decides to focus on magic for her business course project, she befriends Margot, finding calm and focus in learning how to do sleight of hand magic. Margot also allows Sammy a way to let out her anger and frustrations, like screaming into a pillow, and redirecting her fantasies, like when Sammy imagines murdering her father's girlfriend in a "saw a woman in half" trick and Margot gently tells her not to think about murder as her emotional outlet.

    I really liked this movie a lot. Miya Cech was great in playing Sammy, a girl who feels trapped by her family suppressing her and their emotions, blaming her for getting angry, and refusing to really listen to her. Her father keeps threatening to punish her and take her freedoms away, or sending her away to therapy and classes to have other people manage her or keep her busy while he focuses on his future with his new girlfriend. Only when the family is able to acknowledge their own grief and anger do they drop the formalities with one another, and they can truly accept the mother's death while not forgetting about her.

    The film is intercut with animation, from Tsang's animation background, and it really suits the film well, like when Sammy is telling a fantasy story with her mother as the heroine, and illustrating what is going on inside of Sammy's head.

    Rhea Perlman is wonderful in this film as Margot, an artistic and interesting woman with her own family trauma, and choosing to see joy and light in the world, and bring happiness to children through her use of storytelling and magic. She and Cech really work well together with their oddball friendship and bonding, and it made the film very charming and unique to watch.

Thoughts on News From Home

    On Criterion, I watched News from Home, a 1976 avant-garde documentary film directed by Chantal Akerman. The film consists of long takes of New York City life as Akerman reads in voiceover letters from her Belgian mother that she sent her between 1971-1973. 

    Akerman had moved to New York City at age 21 in 1971, where she did odd jobs, befriended filmmakers like Jonas Melkas and Babette Mangolte, and made films of her own. She returned to Belgium in 1973, and came back to NYC to shoot long takes of the city, then going through a financial crisis. As the camera holds on long takes of people in the subway, walking the streets, or people working the graveyard shifts late at night. 

    Over these images, Akerman in voiceover reads letters from her mother, which often have a passive aggressive tone to them, like "We know you're busy, but please find some time to write back to us," or bugging her about when will be the next time she'll come home to visit. Her mother updates her with mundane news, like when someone got married or had a baby or moved or whatnot.

    There's an interesting contrast between the mother's loving yet nagging correspondence, and the long shots of grimy city life, where people just walk on their way or stare ahead on the subway, save for the few who notice Akerman's camera and stare at her, like one old man on the subway. It brings up feeling lost and alienated in the city while the letters are about news close to home in more closer suburban life.

    I liked it more for seeing shots of 1970s New York City and relating to the feeling of being annoyed by a parent's hectoring for not being close to home, and I saw this more as an experimental art piece, not really as interested in sitting through it, as I let it play on streaming while getting up around my home and doing things, then sitting down to watch more of it. It runs slowly, with the long takes and redundant letters, and I felt I understood it without watching all 90 minutes of it, but I still liked it as an experimental art film.