Okay, this change of heart was kind of inevitable and I was content to wait for the streaming release for a rematch but everyone constantly going back for more (really Mitchell and Samm, five rounds? It's not a literal game of tennis) made it hard to resist seeing it again less than three weeks after the first viewing to continue cashing in on the hype.
So yeah, it all clicked now. I really needed to see this movie again so…
The year is 1967. It's a groundbreaking year for music — psychedelia is in full force, The Velvet Underground are inspiring the next generation of bands, and The Beatles have perfected the art of the concept album. Rock idols are our saviours! The seismic force of their cultural impact still reverberates today and it also reached the shores of Latvia, a baltic country sharing borders with Estonia and Lithuania.
Four White Shirts, a Latvian film directed by Rolands Kalniņš in…
Exquisitely crafted, and perhaps Brian De Palma's finest hour as a director, but tanked by a typically mediocre Mamet script (no mercy for that hack, idc). It's such a Dad movie to a fault.
A pop song of a movie with an acidic aftertaste. Toxic masculinity, double standards, and delusional thinking sugarcoated. You see yourself in its mirror then think: oh no.
I don't deny the offputting nature of Rob, but a plunge into his psyche is what storytelling is for — our ugly honest selves represented and, with a little luck and humility, exorcised.
And of course, a movie for the overthinker, for the Bruce worshipper, for the obsessive ranker, it's all just…
The bleakest and most intense film Wes has ever made. I couldn't have taken another five minutes.
I've been coming to terms with the lingering damage my childhood bullies did to me. I had buried it down and I only started talking about it for the first time recently. It was never anything as severe as what's depicted in the film, but there's a catharsis here in the mere act of storytelling that I found very affecting. It tore my heart to shreds.
