is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
Here we are on the last day of June and I’m only now squeezing in my roundup of movies I watched back in May. I managed to get to the theaters twice, first for “Sisu,” a highly implausible if very well made riff on “John Wick” that brings us the always welcome opportunity to enjoy mistreating a bunch of Nazi jerks. It’s an enjoyable romp but at the end of its short runtime you may agree with me that it was pretty dumb. But hey, so are Nazis!
More substantively, I also went to see Julia Louis-Dreyfus in director Nicole Holofcener’s “You Hurt My Feelings.” This is the kind of movie that Woody Allen used to get on the cultural radar once a year, but that has become increasingly rare in the super-hero/streaming/post-pandemic age. It’s a comedy of privilege centering around a novelist, a psychologist, an interior decorator and an actor whose cozy, uptown Manhattan lives are ruptured by a single overheard conversation. It sounds like a groaner, I know, but Holofcener directs with real nuance and care, and she affords such extraordinary generosity to her characters that it’s not difficult to find deep sympathy for all of them. This is helped in no small part by Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the lead role; she turns in a performance of such precise, authentic emotional authenticity that’s miles away from her iconic “Seinfeld” role—but that’s almost as hilarious. “You Hurt My Feelings” came and went from theaters quickly, but I hope it finds a new audience on video.
Here are all twenty movies that I watched in May.
“No Bears” (2022) ★★★★ This raw, unsparing Iranian film made in exile is the antithesis of the ongoing crop of auteur-driven “cinema is magic” vanity projects.
“Airplane!” (1980) ★★★ Rewatched. An old favorite, but I’m not sure it’s aging so well.
“Miami Blues” (1990) ★★★½ Rewatched. Frequently overlooked, pitch black noir set in brilliant Floridian sunlight. Alec Baldwin is fully convincing an entitled crazy man, somehow.
“Cure” (1997) ★★★★ Japanese serial killer noir is “Se7en” without the showboating.
“Sisu” (2023) ★★★ “Wick”-style ultra-violence carnival that brings back the fun of terrorizing Nazis.
“Predator” (1987) ★★½ Rewatched. Would’ve been a standard action flick with a horror flick grafted onto it were it not for how extremely cool and exceptionally well conceived the Predator himself is.
“Three Ages” (1923) ★★½ Buster Keaton in an epoch-spanning comedy that never really rises above the conceit. However it does set a template for countless Looney Tunes gags.
“Smoking Causes Coughing” (2022) ★★★ Wonderfully absurdist French satire about a Power Rangers-like superhero team with real issues.
“Rye Lane” (2023) ★★★★ First two acts of this “Before Sunrise”-style comedy are just about perfect.
“The High Sign” (1921) ★★★★ Buster Keaton turns doles out a string of “typically brilliant” stunts and laughs, and then towards the end blows it all out of the water with multi-level prop house that blew my mind.
“To the Ends of the Earth” (2019) ★★ A young Japanese TV personality ponders the remoteness of Uzbekistan, from the director of “Cure.” This one is much more boring though.
“Bull Durham” (1988) ★★★★½ Rewatched. The best baseball movie of all time, if not also the best sports movie of all time.
“The Balloonatic” (1923) ★★★ Another Buster Keaton joint. Starts off in a funhouse, detours to a fishing hole, and ends up in mid-air in a hot air balloon, and somehow it all makes sense.
“Winchester '73” (1950) ★★★½ Jimmy Stewart enters the bitter stage of his career in this sprawling Western.
“Missing” (2023) ★★★ “Screenlife” drama is fairly preposterous while also being highly, highly watchable.
“You Hurt My Feelings” (2023) ★★★★ Navel-gazing but warmly hilarious comedy of mid-life manners, directed by Nicole Holofcener.
“The Electric House” (1922) ★★ Little more than a series of setups for Buster Keaton to do his thing.
“Bend of the River” (1952) ★★★★ Another bitter, dark western in which Jimmy Stewart works out the trauma from his war service.
“Speedy” (1928) ★★★★½ Harold Lloyd goes to Manhattan, where he seems to whip the whole town into a frenzy.
“Enough Said” (2013) ★★★½ Went back for more Holofcener. A romantic comedy that only occasionally stretches credulity is like a gift of character development to her leads, a remarkably precise Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and a warmly powerful James Gandolfini, in his last screen role.
This is the latest roundup of my monthly movie consumption. You can also see what I previously watched in April, in March, in February, in January, in 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. Also, you can always keep up with what I’m watching by following me on Letterboxd—where I’m also writing tons of capsule reviews.
