Ida

I will always always always have a thing for great looking movies.

I have my own basis for how good the cinematography of a movie is: if you can choose any random moment in a movie, can you turn that snapshot into a desktop wallpaper? Ida passes this test probably more than any other movie I've seen that was made in 2014. The closest one would be Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin.

I rank cinematography very highly when making my opinion on how I see a certain movie, maybe more than most. Ida does its job as simply as possible. The camera is perfectly static throughout the movie, never following through movement of the characters or adjusting to keep them in the picture. In fact, there are scenes where their faces are halfway cut out, sometimes left out of the shot altogether. A conscious choice, certainly, but I'm not going to pretend that I know the reasoning behind the director's thinking. The only fact there is how amazingly gorgeous each shot ends up being.

The director is also a master at setting up each shot to be a fulfilling as possible. There are ojects in the foreground, middleground, and the background that help set up the scale and perspective of each character. Very Citizen Kane in that aspect.

If you're into the technical aspect of cinema, here's one that's done its job just about as well as it could: Ida, by Pawel Pawlikowski.

God Help The Girl

I really think that this could be my favorite movie of the year.

Let me backtrack a bit here. I first ran into this movie when I was going through Spotify searching for new music. Because I have refined tastes and I like showing off, I put up Spotify's Top 100 Indie list. Lo and behold, first song that came out was titled "God Help The Girl", linked right down below these words.

I never knew Emily Browning could sing, but I'm glad she can.

Well made pop music? Made by the guys from Belle and Sebastian? Emily Browning? I was sold on the movie before I even knew a single thing about it.

I think that's partly the reason why I was so surprised by how it ended up. Don't make the mistake I made. This is not a feel-good movie. I was expecting an all-around better Pitch Perfect, but what I got was Fish Tank: The Musical. It is all the better for it. 

I won't go on and on about this movie, but there's this one scene at the end I really liked. Here's a quote from it, which by itself perfectly encapsulates why I found this movie so endearing, 

"Eve may go on to greatness, but according to me, the greatness already happened this summer. The greatness of this summer came from somewhere else. Just for a moment, we were all in the right place, and the possibilities were infinite."

God Help The Girl just came to me at a perfect moment in time, and although it might not be the best movie of the year or even the best coming of age movie of the year (I think Boyhood claims both for itself), I haven't been able to stop thinking of this movie, which I think is the best sign for how good a movie is to a person. This is my Spring Breakers of 2014. My most unforgettable movie experience of the year, God Help The Girl.

This is my College Dropout

I'm not actually planning on dropping out (but if it worked out for Zuckerberg or Yeezy, why not?), but I do plan this to be the thing that finally gets me doing stuff. I just watched God Help The Girl and Boyhood (I will get to these movies soon enough) pretty much back to back, and it got me convinced to seize some moments while I'm here. So yeah, expect tight soul samples, good fit pics, and great music.