Thoughts on Drylongso

    On Criterion, I watched Drylongso, a 1998 coming-of-age drama directed by Cauleen Smith and written by Smith and Salim Akil. The film was shot on 16MM film in Oakland, CA, and explores themes of race, gender, and identity, focusing on a Black female photography student named Pica (Toby Smith) who takes Polaroid photos of young Black boys and men in their neighborhood, because she fears they will be lost to prison or violence, thinking they are like an "endangered species" and will disappear without anyone remembering them. Her college professor is skeptical towards her project, likely seeing it as too dark subject matter, despite it being a close reality for many in their neighborhood. She lives with her mother and grandmother, and works a night job papering walls, which puts her safety at risk, as there are news reports of a serial killer going around in the neighborhood, with some of the young men she's photographed as their victims.

    Pica meets Tobi (April Barnett) a young woman who is being abused by her boyfriend, and dresses as a guy on the streets, in a durag and flannel shirt and jeans, to avoid being harassed by men, and is initially mistaken as a male by Pica when she asks to take her photograph. They become friends and talk about their shared fears for their safety. I sometimes got a bit of a queer vibe through their connection with each other, though they stay platonic friends.

    Malik (Will Power) is a local guy in the neighborhood who is friends with Pica, with some light flirtation going on, and he keeps asking Pica when she's going to take his picture. Pica doesn't take his photo likely because she's afraid that by taking his photo, it seals his fate, and dooms him to the same tragic end that she sees happening to Black men in her home. She wants to preserve memories and legacies of the men in her neighborhood, while being keenly aware of the futures they have due to class and race. She is at both an archivist and an artist, a memory keeper, and her work is crucial in making sure that community members are not forgotten.

    The film has a quiet, personal feel to it, where there aren't any well-known actors in the film, so it's easier to get involved in the film as though the characters were real. The neighborhood in Oakland is depicted as a close-knit, working class/middle class community where everyone knows each other, Smith based the film on her experiences working at the Haight Asbury Free Clinic and the Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, where she would hear about Black men being murdered or going to prison, while also hearing from young Black women about teen pregnancy and a complicated welfare system, as well as having to ward off violence from men. Smith said in a 1998 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle: "I was seeing young black girls 8 or 9 years old who really needed someone to care for them. I got tired of seeing young black women being talked about in terms of blame -- teen pregnancy, welfare -- whereas young black men were being talked about as victims in need of defense. Girls are treated with such disrespect. Pica came out of that frustration." 

    I heard of this film through the YouTuber Yhara zayd, who posted a short video review of the film for her Patreon subscribers, of which I am one, and I found her insight fascinating, giving a spotlight to a hidden gem of 1990s indie films. She discusses how Pica's method of using a Polaroid camera, as opposed to a camera where she would have to develop the film later, speaks to not wanting to waste any time, taking as much photos as she can while using a camera that was becoming obsolete as technology. She astutely states how even though the film is centered on a Black female character, who befriends another Black woman, the film is largely remembered for being about the erasure of Black men, which I also headlined my review with because it is a major focus in the film. However, the friendship between Pica and Tobi is important, as they can find self-preservation when with each other, as well as protecting one another from violence by men. She notes how Pica keeps people at bay to protect her emotions, while Tobi, living in a more upwardly mobile neighborhood, feels like her feminine appearance makes her a target for abuse, and feels like she is in a gilded cage.

    It's a really special, understated small film, and I'm glad that I watched it thanks to Yhara zayd's recommendation. 

Thoughts on Hummingbirds

     On Criterion, I watched Hummingbirds, a 2023 documentary directed by Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras (with co-directors in Jillian Schlesinger and Miguel Drake-McLaughlin), documenting themselves in their summer together as friends, in their fleeting youth as they grow out of being teenagers and become young women.

    They live in Laredo, Texas, bordering Mexico, and Beba is an undocumented immigrant, and she talks about having been deported with her mother when she was in third grade, and being like “I had perfect attendance!”, but making it back to the U.S., and trying to gain residency and citizenship. They also talk about not fitting in as Mexican women in the U.S., but not being seen as “really” Mexican in Mexico.

    They use their summer for creative self-expression as artists, like playing music, filming dancers and dancing themselves, and working as activists to advocate for abortion (like changing a yard sign from Pray to End Abortion to Pray 4 Legal Abortion) and immigration rights, calling out injustices of the U.S. Border Patrol.

    They talk about how hard their moms worked, and how they want their moms to be able to relax and enjoy their lives, while also saying how they grew up quickly as children with experiencing food insecurity, taking care of their younger siblings, and the challenges with immigration and their citizenship statuses.

    I really liked this movie. It’s short, at just 77 minutes long, and has an artsy look with the girls dancing at the magic hour sunset and being illuminated by it, and being punks and activists and switching easily between English and Spanish and straddling both U.S. and Mexican cultures. It’s a coming of age movie that combines their cultural identities with their activism, and was really interesting to watch.

Thoughts on It Happened Tomorrow

   On Criterion, I watched It Happened Tomorrow, a 1944 fantasy film directed by René Clair, and co-written by Clair, Dudley Nichols, and Helene Fraenkel, based on the one-act play "The Jest of Haha Laba" by Lord Dunsany. The film has a fun, whimsical feeling to it, mixing a fantasy premise with romance, set in the 1890s, where Lawrence Stevens (Dick Powell) is a newspaper columnist who writes obituaries, and he is given tomorrow's evening newspaper by an elderly newspaper man named Pop Benson, though he doesn't read the newspaper at first. He and his friends go to see a mind-reading act featuring the "Great Siglioni" Oscar Smith (Jack Oakie) and his "clairvoyant" assistant, Sylvia (Linda Darnell) (they are actually uncle and niece). Lawrence later gets Sylvia to go out on a date with him, and he notices the future date on the newspaper, as well as the predictions, like snowfall the next day, a job opening for a waiter preceding the firing of one, and most, importantly, a robbery at the box office of the opera during a performance. Lawrence takes Sylvia to the opera so he can be present during the robbery and write the article for the paper, but it backfires when the police question him on knowing things if he was there and knew all the details ahead of time, thinking he was in on it.

    The movie swirls in a series of adventures, with Lawrence taking advantage of the future editions of the newspaper, until the news isn't in his favor, and he tries to prevent fate from taking its course. I thought it was a fun movie with a quirky premise, adding in time travel via the future newspaper, the period setting of the 1890s (the film opens with a bookending sequence of the couple celebrating their 50th anniversary with their friends and family), and very charming. Clair also directed the equally charming I Married a Witch (1942), starring Veronica Lake as a witch who was burned at the stake in colonial Salem, puts a curse on the lineage of the man who burned her by causing his male descendants to marry the wrong woman, and she comes back to life in the 1940s to torture his latest male descendant, only to fall in love with him instead. I did prefer I Married a Witch more to It Happened Tomorrow, but they are fun, enjoyable fantasy comedies of the 1940s.

    The plot of It Happened Tomorrow, where a man tries to change events based on a future newspaper, did make me think of the 1990s TV show Early Edition, where Kyle Chandler played an everyman who receives "tomorrow's newspaper today," and they are local stories and headlines about bad things that he has to work to figure out the cause of, and doing the detective work to prevent from happening. I watched it sometimes as an adolescent, and thought it was a decent TV show, though not too well-remembered today.

    I would recommend this movie as an offbeat fantasy film with time travel elements, and something unique of the time in which it came out.

Thoughts on the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Shorts Tour

    Yesterday at the IFC Center, I went to see a screening of a selection of shorts from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Most were narrative films, with one documentary, and one animated film. It was really interesting to watch a variety of short films, and I keep up with some short films that I see through Criterion, Le Cinema Club, and the Oscar-nominated and shortlisted short films. 

    My favorites were the following:

    Grandma Nai Who Plays Favorites, written and directed by Chheangkea, from Cambodia/France, where during her family's annual Qingming visit to sweep her tomb and have a picnic together, the ghost of Grandma Nai (Saroeun Nay) watches her chaotic family, who just pray to her for money and cars, and sees her likely queer grandson be made to court a girl for possible engagement. I liked the quietness of Grandma Nai sitting by her grandson and looking caring and understanding as the boy is polite but not romantically attracted to the girl, including when he is pressured by his mother to give her Grandma Nai's bracelet as a gift, something he clearly doesn't want to part with. It's a really lovely story that ends with dancing in a karaoke club.

    Susana, written and directed by Gerardo Coello Escalante and Amandine Thomas, from Mexico/U.S.A. Susana (Bonnie Hellman) is an American tourist in Mexico City, and is a middle-aged awkward-looking woman with thick glasses and bobbed red hair. She feels alone, and is taken in by a group of young American tourists, and parties with them, despite that they are condescending and clearly see her as their pet for entertainment. Mexican locals look on with wariness at how the group takes advantage of Susana. The story goes some interesting places, and I liked how it reminded me of Margo Martindale's touching performance in Alexander Payne's short film 14e Arrondissment, included in Paris Je T'aime, where she plays a solo middle-aged woman visiting Paris and contemplating her life.

    We Were the Scenery, directed by Christopher Radcliff, from the U.S.A. This was a documentary short focusing on Hoa Ti Le and Hue Nguyen Che, who fled Vietnam in 1975 and lived in a refugee camp in the Philippines, and ended up working as extras in Apocalypse Now. It was really fascinating listening to them talk about their memories of the war, fleeing via boat, and looking back on their scenes in the film and pointing out people they knew from the camp who were also cast in bit parts, and looking at their history as survivors of the Vietnam War. 

    The other films were good, but not as standout to me. Such Good Friends, written and directed by Bri Klaproth, from the U.S.A., focuses on the aftermath of a woman ending her toxic friendship via voicemail and the ripple effects it causes where his family take advantage of her. It was decent, and nice to recognize Mindy Sterling as the friend's mom, and I liked the darkly comedic ending. Hurikán, directed by Jan Saska and co-written by Saska and Václav Hašek, from the Czech Republic, was an animated short where the title character is a man with a pig's head, who is trying to impress a female bartender he has a crush on by rushing to get a beer keg for her stand, running into trouble with gangsters and cops and his own beer thirst. I liked the animation and the weirdness of it. Debators, written and directed by Alex Heller, from the U.S.A., focuses on an early morning debate team arguing a bill on minimum wage in front of their teacher judges (J. Cameron Smith and Kenneth Lonergan). It was decent, good for the first one to open the selections. And Azi, written and directed by Montana Mann, from the U.S.A., focused on the titular teenage girl on a weekend vacation with her best friend's family, and gets into an unexpected match of mind games with another guest. This I thought was OK, but didn't feel like it had much of a point to it, it just ended with a flat resolution to me.

    It was really good to go to the IFC Center, as I hadn't been there in many years, and it was formerly the Waverly Theater. I had gone to a midnight movie screening of Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer there nearly twenty years ago, and that film still stands as one of the more chilling films I've ever seen. I had attended the DOC NYC film festival there in 2009-2010, and I'm glad that it's still going strong all these years later. It's a nice theater, situated in the West Village, and was really nice to revisit this past weekend.

Thoughts on Hobson's Choice

    On Criterion, I watched Hobson’s Choice, a 1954 British film directed by David Lean, and co- written by Lean, Wynyard Browne, and Norman Spencer, adapted from the 1916 play of the same name by Harold Brighouse. The film starred Charles Laughton as an 1880s Victorian widowed bookmaker who is a miser and has three grown daughters, and doesn’t pay them wages. He is fine with his two younger daughters getting married but laughs at the thought of his eldest daughter, Maggie (Brenda de Banzie) ever getting married, telling her she’s too old to think about it, “thirty and shelved.” Though when he’s around his bar friends, he says he needs Maggie around to help with the business, vs. his less serious daughters.

    Out of spite towards her father, Maggie decides to marry Will (Sir John Mills), a meek boot maker in the shop, and she’s essentially telling him they are going to marry, even if he doesn’t love her.

    The movie becomes more of a romantic comedy, with a Taming of the Shrew twist feel on it, and Mills brings a lot of nerdy charm as Will, who starts out as nervous and shy and builds more confidence and self-assurance as the story progresses. de Banzie was really fun in a very matter of fact way, knowing she’ll be the one to take care of her alcoholic father and running the business, and using her business sense and pragmatic skills to figure out situations. And Charles Laughton is fun in a gregarious, hammy kind of way as Hobson, playing drunk in a very theatrical way and being a bit of a doofus. It’s really a lovely gem to watch, and I heard of it from hearing Michael Cera recommend it on his Criterion Closet episode, saying “It’s like a Disney movie, flourishing music, every wall to wall gesture,” and called it a magical experience.