Nimic (2019) | Short Film Spotlight

Matt Dillon (right) on his daily commute in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Nimic (2019) — PHOTO: MUBI

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things; The Favourite; The Killing of a Sacred Deeer) — Story / Screenplay by David Kolbusz (based on an idea by), Yorgos Lanthimos, and Ethymis Filippou.

Recently, I rewatched Yorgos Lanthimos’ short film Nimic starring Matt Dillon, in which we follow as his character leaves his family to go to work, but then, on his way back, a strange woman stalks him and mimics his every move in an attempt to prove that she is actually his wife’s husband and the father of his children. What follows below are my two first reactions to the film, which were originally posted via my Letterboxd profile.

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Asteroid City (2023) | REVIEW

Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck leaning out of a window in Wes Anderson’s ASTEROID CITY — PHOTO: Focus Features / Universal Pictures International.

Directed by Wes Anderson — Screenplay by Wes Anderson — Story by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola.

Everyone who has ever seen one Wes Anderson film knows exactly what a Wes Anderson film looks like. His signature style has made him a lot of fans and admirers over the years, and it has also earned him some notable imitators. Nowadays, with the advent of AI, automatically generated images, and the like, a trend of recreating fake film trailers in the style of Wes Anderson has surfaced. You can now go online and find several videos hyping up fake Wes Anderson-style films with AI-generated images of well-known actors that don’t exactly look right (I even saw one for a fake American adaptation of the iconic Danish Olsen Gang films). With the emergence of such artificiality leading to so many conflicting emotions, might I suggest that you check out the real thing? Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s eleventh feature-length film, is well worth seeking out. As a matter of fact, I think it might be one of his best. 

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REVIEW: The House That Jack Built (2018)

Theatrical Release Poster (Director) — TrustNordisk / Zentropa / IFC Films

The following is a review of The House That Jack Built — Directed by Lars Von Trier.

I have in a previous review described Lars Von Trier, the controversial Danish auteur, as a ‘true auteur mad man,’ and I’ve thought of him as the devil on Danish director Jørgen Leth’s shoulder guiding his every move in the fascinating documentary The Five Obstructions. He has been accused of sexual harassment, some people think he is a misogynist, and he has made a fool of himself by joking about his own identity, Naziism, and Israel. I’m not sure he cares whether or not you like him, and I’m sure he’d say that he’s perfectly happy knowing that his films divide audiences.
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