I've Seen Parts #38

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - Trouble in Paradise

Jul 02, 2021

Firstly, if you’re here as a prank… or if you’ve suddenly come to wearing a morph suit printed with the image of your own body standing at one of those skinny lecterns on a stage in front of Vatican III and this is pulled up on the tablet in front of you, let me kindly direct you to the About page.

I was told by an app for posting photos that eight years ago, in 2013, promptly following my graduation from h*gh sch**l, I was reading Camus’s The Stranger, which I had somehow heard about in the early 2010s. I would love to know what networks I was tapped into when Facebook was still just my friends posting song lyrics, tagging each other as Pokémon, and liking pages called “Why would you call me when you can just text me” or “Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I know everything.” The intrigue into absurdist fiction was validated by my seeing the iconic B&W hypnoto-starbust of The Stranger’s cover make an appearance in such TV dramas as American Horror Story and The Leftovers, which did not lead me to believe that I had stumbled upon something that had a reputation on par with its actual substance, but instead that I was somehow in the know about what serious minds think of serious things.

The post in question from the app in question features a passage in which Meursault is confronted by his employer for being unambitious and too satisfied with his lackluster existence, to which he replies that “people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another.” When I read that in 2013, I found it to be—and I’m engaging in some reflection here myself—reflective of a mindset that hounded me for the next few years into college: that I was already satisfied with who I was, that I had little alterations to make or directions to grow, that I had all I needed to watch life happen to me. I didn’t realize then how underdeveloped I was, primeval to the point of being protozoic compared to who I have become and am #Becoming. When I look back on myself looking ahead, thinking through that quote as something strikingly axiomatic and plainly true, that we don’t really change and we need to accept it, I feel the predictable mortified paroxysms of hindsight, but I also feel a certain sadness—not quite regret—that it took me so long to realize that a life is something that is built, not something that is witnessed.

Now, reading that quote again in the wake of a third graduation, I see my current self contemporaneous with all the others, wondering what will come next. While most of my fears are more addressed, confronted, and relinquished than they were eight years ago, the quote still revivifies a lot of them: To whose standards of satisfaction am I holding myself? Am I who I intend to be? Am I doing this right? This time, I feel I have significantly more tools at my disposal to disassemble the doubts and uneases that plague this track of thought, but it doesn’t mean that I’m always able to breeze through the reassembly.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

dir. Martin McDonagh, 2017

I went to see this at the local movie tavern, where they serve you food to eat during the movie, which is an idea I like in theory (chewing food while staring at screen) more than I do in praxis (too dry but also too wet veggie wrap). The thing about this film is that it’s compelling, and then you have to step back and ask what you’re being compelled to feel, or else the whole thing is just mismanaged moral ambiguity at best.

Three Colors: Blue & Three Colors: White

dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994

Any time Juliette Binoche is wearing a coat, it’s like, yes of course. You’ll notice that the final film of the trilogy (Red), which is based on the colors of the French flag and the values—liberty, equality, fraternity—they symbolize, is not listed here. This is because I loved the first installation, and was then bored by the second one enough that I decided not to seek out the third.

Three Identical Strangers

dir. Tim Wardle, 2018

I saw this on a first date and we sat in the back, but if my date expected any shenanigans to take place during that 1.5 hours valued at $13, he was sorely mistaken (an ex once expressed appreciation that when I suggested we watch a movie, I actually meant we should watch the movie). The man a couple rows ahead of us had different ideas, it seemed. When the credits began to roll, he hiked up and buckled his pants, which apparently had been unbuckled and hiked down at some point, and left the theater. The date was otherwise fine, and so was the film, which was about triplets separated at birth and therefore not all that erotic to me, but to each their own, just not in a Regal Cinemas.

Thunder Road

dir. Jim Cummings, 2018

Watched the single-take short film that serves as the base for this film, found out it was made by an Emerson alum, and then went to a screening of the feature when it came out. I think we can start moving away from cop narratives, even (and especially?) if they are about being good dads.

Timeline

dir. Richard Donner, 2003

During my voracious film-logging fugue in the summer of 2020, I had to goog “medieval time travel movie” because I was struck by a memory of trees and fire inside a castle. Why pay for hypnotherapy when you can populate a Letterboxd?

Timer

dir. Jac Schaeffer, 2009

I am willing to call this a clever romcom, because, and this might be incorrect, it features a world where people have clocks counting down to when they will fall in love… or die—one of the two. My sister, mom, and I watched this on a clunky Netflix app when smart TVs were still a new idea to me.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

dir. Tomas Alfredson, 2011

The screen of my McAir has seen this, but I might have only seen parts considering the blank canvas this film is in my head. Gary Oldman most likely in wool, smoking.

Tiny Furniture

dir. Lena Dunham, 2010

I didn’t see this for a while, but then I did and it was exactly what I expected in a way that was neither bad nor good. I liked HBO’s Girls and I’m not afraid to admit that.

To Die For

dir. Gus Van Sant, 1995

(Re)watched this most recently on something called Pluto TV, which I had never heard of, but it did allow me to stream with only periodic interruptions by Swagbucks commercials— visibility is a blade!
Important cinema for blondes in fuzzy sweaters (see also Paris, Texas). No offense, but sometimes I imagine what this would be like if Todd Haynes made this, if Gus Van Sant made Paris, Texas, and if Wim Wenders made Carol.

Together Together

dir. Nikole Beckwith, 2021

Ed Helms felt like an intruder in this sea of familiar faces and his character was Bad, but everything else was Good. Give Patti Harrison a SAG award.

To Kill a Mockingbird

dir. Robert Mulligan, 1962

Watched this in school after reading the book, duh. It is great to teach our children how to wield sexism in the fight against racism that can only be won in a fair, honest courtroom.

Tom at the Farm

dir. Xavier Dolan, 2013

The last twenty minutes of this film mean nothing to me because I was distracted by something out my window. Pyschosexual thriller is a genre that is always going to be more exciting in name than in output.

Tomboy

dir. Céline Sciamma, 2011

Céline let me down a little with this one, not in successful combos of emotive punches nor in visual intrigue, but by falling into tropes that appear too frequently when this kind of story is told.

Tongues Untied

dir. Marlon Riggs, 1989

A masterpiece that defies completion, and a gold standard of centering gay Black love and identity as a garden bed of nectarous fruit and fragrant blooms that needs to be weeded with care and diligence if anything is to survive there. A critique of Riggs’s positionally that I’ve heard is that he is hypocritical, or at least the unideal megaphone, because his partner was a white man, to which I say: SNOOZE. Essex Hemphill deserves considerable credit, too, for making this what it is. I will watch this many more times.

Toni Erdmann

dir. Maren Ade, 2016

My dad lost interest in this, but I finished it and thought it was sublime. The U.S. remake of this seems lost in limbo, and I say let’s keep it there indefinitely!

Totally F***ed Up

dir. Gregg Araki, 1993

Hot, and even bothered. I loved this upon my first watch, which was at roughly 11am last summer, and then only liked it during my second, as an assigned film for a class. To me, this highlights the dangers of existential ambivalence while playing at apathy, and the implication of commodified queerness. Have I mentioned already that visibility is a blade?

Total Recall

dir. Len Wiseman, 2012

I have not seen the original even though my dad had a poster in the basement, but I have seen this when Kate Beckinsale was someone I was measuring my attraction to (Colin Farrell was off my radar or so I thought). Science fiction is fun and I do not tire of it.

The Tourist

dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2010

There is running on a roof in this. Definitely saw it.

Town Bloody Hall

dirs. Chris Hegedus, D. A. Pennebaker, 1979

Despite what Norman Mailer’s chauvinism might have you believe, the biggest on-screen rivalry was actually between the eyebrows.

The Town

dir. Ben Affleck, 2010

Owned this on DVD, hilariously, and now I live in Boston—sometimes propaganda works! Was this good, or was it just about white robbery?

Toy Story, Toy Story 2, & Toy Story 3

dir. John Lasseter, 1995; 1999; dir. Lee Unkrich, 2010

Apparently they are still making these even though the arc was completed in the third installment, no questions please. I never liked this franchise as much as I liked others and that is ok!

Trainspotting & T2

dir. Danny Boyle, 1996; 2017

I watched the first one, which was grueling, while on my Scottish cinema kick circa 2015. There was, at one point, a couch in one of the video editing suites I monitored, and I would sit there and watch movies and try not sink into the holes in the maroon vinyl. The second one I watched while folding laundry.

Trainwreck

dir. Judd Apatow, 2015

Saw this in theaters with my sister and laughed laughed laughed. There was one part that was distinctly the funniest and now I don’t remember it. I saw Amy Schumer live and also laughed laughed laughed there. She faces a lot of critique which is fair, but her TV show is good.

Transformers & Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

dir. Michael Bay, 2007; 2009

I was never a Transformers guy, but I did enjoy this horny little film. I know I saw the sequel but I can’t distinguish the scenes I remember— which one is at the Hoover Dam? No rush with this.

Transit

dir. Christian Petzold, 2018

Saw this at the Coolidge by myself, which as I’ve said before means with a dozen or so strangers, an experience I hope to have again soon, and one that is best suited for watching this film in particular. Everything about this picture (1940s vibes) is very good and absurd and heartbreaking, and I read Anna Seghers’s book and found it to be almost exactly the same, which doesn’t always happen. Franz.

The Transporter & Transporter 3

dirs. Louis Leterrier, Corey Yuen, 2002; dir. Olivier Megaton, 2008

I conducted extensive research (YouTube trailers and Wikipedia plot summaries) to determine which of these movies I’ve seen— I am still not 100% confident.

Treasure Planet

dirs. Ron Clements, John Musker, 2002

I went to see this with friends and moms for my eighth birthday party at the movie theater that was part of a place near my house called Funscape, which only a couple years later would be eaten up by a used car megalopolis. (Imagine how many more movies I might have seen…) I had a video game version of this on PS1, and, as an addendum, the main character is hot, but also, confusingly, so is that cat lady captain.

Tremors

dir. Ron Underwood, 1990

Watched this with my dad because he bought it on HD DVD (high-definition optical disc format war, for the keen historians) and had good things to say about it. I only remember that we watched it during the day.

Troll 2

dir. Claudio Fragasso, 1990

For Halloween, my video art class was invited to our professor’s house to watch a bad scary movie, which, yes, ended up being Troll 2. The professor was, at that time, goat-sitting as a fundraising stunt for her latest film, and so the goat cuddled up on the floor like a dog while we watched.

TRON: Legacy

dir. Joseph Kosinski, 2010

I had no familiarity with the original when I watched this on TV, mostly for Olivia Wilde, whom I was measuring my attraction to (Garrett Hedlund, who I’m told is not Josh Hartnett, was not on my radar and still isn’t). Science fiction is fun and I do not tire of it.

Trouble Every Day

dir. Claire Denis, 2001

Call me a vampire because this film is dark and spiky and I slept on it for a long time.

Trouble in Paradise

dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1932

This is the film that took the longest for me to identify from my memory bank. I tried an abundant combination of words to optimize my goog description formula, including: “con artists on boat film 1930s,” which suggested The Lady Eve (1941; have not seen), which I then had to dig into to see if it was the right film; “thieves lovers at dinner movie 1940s,” which turned up Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989; have not seen but have been meaning to); and “staircase clocks pickpockets old cinema,” which just showed me results about the Titanic.* It wasn’t until this film showed up on a list somewhere that I was able to identify its title and finally add it to the list of films I’ve seen that nobody is requiring.
*Some may note the (in)accuracy of a detail or two might have led me astray.

PLEASE share your own experiences with any of this week’s films in a comment—I’ll include my favorite in next week’s email for my millions of beautiful fans* to enjoy.

I've Seen Parts