Well-executed if completely predictable. Too many jump-scares as well, but nice to see Potter doing something different.

Wow. What a terrible movie this is on rewatch.

"No canned fruit!"

Every surface in the home, the faces of the characters, their clothes, even the very air outside their home, all so nuanced with the texture of hardship.

It pierces the Earth, the universe, and the soul with the same intensity, respect, and grace. Few films touch the Human Condition like this. We live inside this film.

His extended takes flow between past and present as seamlessly as the mind does. I'm haunted by two shots in particular, juxtaposed against each other: the children clinging to the fence at the Albanian border, and the children hugging the railings of the tiered balcony in the abandoned building.

"Uncle, it's a monkey."

So many memories.

He watered down the novel to make a kid's movie, thereby alienating me, but there remain inspired scenes that still touch the kid in me. Despite the script and casting issues, there is magic there. Showed it to my four-year-old yesterday. She loved it. Happy.

We consume so much we end up consuming each other and ourselves.

The most abstract of Hutton's films that I've seen, and the most focused on pure beauty.

A contemplative documentary about Georgia and loss--specifically that something vital to the state is eroding. Haunting and interesting.

The soundscape of this film is mesmerizing.

The Eye Above the Well?

"While one person lives who doesn't forget... No one can forget..."

"Brother... Mother... They were my way into you."

To Cyndi

What a joy(stick).

Not just a film about a particular culture, but a preservation of that culture--itself a part of the oral tradition it partly examines. Brilliant.

"The Sun God, man... That's serious shit."

Bale steals the show. I take away one star for each fighting/training montage. I should take another away from Whalberg, who is hardly a presence in the film. It should have focused on Dicky's story which was far more interesting, and executed with much more humanity.

_"The passing of time modifies my capacity to evoke and introduces a new system of memory selection. Bit by bit those memories I could share with others become blurred and those I cannot share force themselves on me. They are vivid and persistent memories, but not verifyable by anyone else. There are no witnesses.... All submerge in the slowness and silence of distant memory."_

"With a gray background, the film fuses clips and audio from classic movies into Bud’s dreary childhood and brings it to life with an elegance Bach would bring to your home movies." Love love love. Cinema!

I don't think I've seen a more beautiful film this year. I love every second.

The story here is incredible. If he hadn't shot it like a fucking music video there could have been a great film here. Oh well.

"You don't need to know a work to be influenced by it. Cinema consists entirely of resonances. That's why it's impossible to create masterpieces in the classical sense, but also what makes it so rich." --Ruiz

Glad I had free passes. Missed opportunity.

"Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.” -- Carl Th. Dreyer

How to Make Sure You Don't Screw Up Joyce: Use his words. Hire great actors.

Stands out in everything he does. Just saw him in The Dead.