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.
Catching up on my movies log from late summer here. At the end of August I went to see “Bottoms,” the new comedy by Emma Seligman (who also made the scrappy “Shiva Baby”). There’s a lot of funny stuff going on in this madcap, subversive teen comedy, but watching it as a fan of slapstick is also an exercise in frustration. Like so many other films where realism and verisimilitude are distorted for the sake of the jokes, “Bottoms” continually hints at going for broke, truly unleashing a no-holds-barred sensibility that could elevate it into classic status. And time and again, it pulls back from the brink, opting instead for pro forma sentimentality or uninspired moralizing or just unnecessary emotional exposition. As a result the laughs are outweighed by the wasted potential.
What always confounds me about these movies is that we live in a time when it should be easier than ever, technically, to push slapstick comedies to their absolute limit. The kind of sight gags that legends of the form Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker used to produce were incredibly laborious and often difficult to set up in pre-CG Hollywood. Take for example the bar fight in an Old West saloon that was staged under water in their 1984 film “Top Secret!”; it only lasts for a minute or so but it’s a triumph of whatever-it-takes filmmaking.
With the robust CG-fueled toolbox at the disposal of today’s directors, those kinds of gags are infinitely easier to pull off. The onscreen rendering of absurd, surreal, completely unexpected non sequitirs of virtually any scale are now theoretically within the grasp of any comedy director. In fact, we should be living in a golden age of slapstick comedy right now; screens should be overflowing with 21st century riffs on “Airplane!” It’s a mystery—a frustrating mystery to me—why we’re not.
Here are all seventeen movies I watched in August.
“The Handmaiden” (2016) ★★★★½ Rewatched. Every film Park Chan-wook makes is like a meticulously wrapped gift.
“Night and the City” (1950) ★★★★ Rewatched. A relentlessly dark tale of an irredeemable grifter trying to get ahead in post-War London. A masterpiece.
“Pee-wee's Big Adventure” (1985) ★★★½ Lit up from within by Paul Reubens’s uncanny understanding of both the naïveté and the churlishness of the child mind.
“Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985) ★★★½ Not a perfect film, but an ideal vehicle for Madonna, and a lovely time capsule of early 80s New York.
“They Cloned Tyrone” (2023) ★★★½ The first hour of this loopy sci-fi horror comedy is practically on fire. The rest can’t match that, but this is still better than most original streaming productions. Doubly sad then that it just got lost in the shuffle.
“Spaceballs” (1987) ★★ Sadly this is just an amusing slog.
“The Goat” (1921) ★★★★ Buster Keaton takes on the police.
“The Frozen North” (1922) ★★½ Uncharacteristically brutal, even for a Buster Keaton joint.
“Oppenheimer” (2023) ★★★½ Rewatched. I didn’t like this much the first time but on rewatch, I appreciated it so much more, especially the intricate structure. Read my review.
“Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993) ★ I avoided this for decades, assuming it was dumb. I was right.
“Suzhou River” (2000) ★★ This mainland Chinese romance is all vibe and little brains.
“Sorcerer” (1977) ★★★★ A terrible title for a tremendous movie. This is a masterpiece.
“The Flash” (2023) ★★ Rewatched. Kids wanted to watch it. I didn’t, but I watched it anyway.
“Bottoms” (2023) ★★★ This subversive teen comedy has a lot of laughs, but it never really goes for broke.
This is the latest, highly delayed, roundup of my monthly movie consumption. You can also see what I previously watched in July, in June, in May, 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.
