A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, February 22, 2026

Seen But Not Reviewed

It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, 2025)

Cruel Intentions (Roger Kumble, 1999)

Lancelot du Lac (Robert Bresson, 1974)

Hamnet (Chloë Zhao, 2025)

Hooper (Hal Needham, 1978)

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (Mary Bronstein, 2025)

High Pressure (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)

The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025)

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (William Klein, 1966)

The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021)

Seduction: The Cruel Woman (Elfi Mikesch, Monika Treut, 1999)

12:08 East of Bucharest (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2006)

Bleeder (Nicolas Winding Refn, 1999)

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tom Tykwer, 2006)

Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-wai, 2008)

A Different Image (Alile Sharon Larkin, 1982)

SLC Punk! (James Merendino, 1999)

Big City Blues (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)

Maniac Cop 2 (William Lustig, 1990)

Sex (Dag Johan Haugerud, 2024)

The Hunted (William Friedkin, 2003)

King of the Night (Hector Babenco, 1975)

Lúcio Flávio (Hector Babenco, 1977)

Prison on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1987)

Prison on Fire II (Ringo Lam, 1991)

One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

Wake Up Dead Man (Rian Johnson, 2025

Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier, 2011)

Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, 2025)

Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg, 2014)

I Am Not a Witch (Rungano Nyoni, 2017)

West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (Med Hondo, 1979)

You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan, 2000)

Framed (Richard Wallace, 1947)

The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)

Chloe (Atom Egoyan, 2009)

Maniac (William Lustig, 1980)

The Bellboy (Jerry Lewis, 1960)(

My Blueberry Nights (Wong Kar-wai, 2007)

Eve's Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, 1997)

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, 2024)

Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, 2025)

Pariah (Dee Rees, 2011)

Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings