Reflecting on My DECADE LONG ABANDONMENT OF MALL MOVIES

I've not been in a movie theater more than a dozen times in recent years.....like neurotic Bobby Fisher, who disdained the interjection of a squeaky chair or a cough from the balcony, I've abandoned attendance at any 'event' that is filled with slurping, chewing, texting, talking people...(and I can, of course, be one of those 'TALKERS', if the Film is less interesting than washing hubcaps).....Recently, on a dare, which I accepted.....ummmmm.....I was given the 'opportunity' to attend 'the movie of my choice'......looking over the 'offerings' at local cinema houses, I spotted, from the sidewalk: "Directed by Luca Guadagnino", who had created one of my favorite films, I AM LOVE.......Do I need to relive my teen-age frustrations? Why not? What reasons do millions of us need to attend Marvel Comics adaptations of youthful superhero fantasy fixations, romantic comedies or slaphappy excesses of complicity in terrors and delights? Then, I noticed Hugh Jackman's new 'vehicle'......immediately, recalling LIKE WATER FOR ELEPHANTS.......Yes, this one! Wait.....the Christopher Plummer 'replacement for humiliated Kevin Spacey' film!.....maybe..... In my youth, I averaged seeing about 5 movies a week! Now, it's a struggle to drive out of my driveway into the bustling World out 'there'....Well, maybe for an "Epic" in 3-D, smellorama,  even the allure of Super-Vistavision Cinerama with Masturbatory Vibrating Seating....but there is none of that...(dismissing super-hero-power fantasy films)......December is a good month for "movies"....that I usually wait a couple of years to watch....at home, for 'free'.......Wait...Wait! there are a few hundred great films in my home library that I've not seen, or have almost forgotten (and need to re-watch)......o.k. Showtime....step it up! .......I gave, with sweat on my brow, the 'free pass' away.........Whew!

 

I watched "M", that I'd not seen in many years......the exquisite new prints of the film, with cleaned-up audio, certainly arrested my attentions......I thought of 'NOW'......as the Establishment becomes fixated on outing specific 'evil' surrogates, drawing attention to the pervasiveness of the criminality that pervades Society, in general, ritual sacrifices must appease the Hoi Polloi and negate its deep-seated guilt....... Die Neue Sachlichkeit's 'realism', expressed in circles, squares, arrows and lines......Criminals are just exaggerations of Everyman's latent intentionality.......Justice is the moral atonement of the righteous......I thought of the saga of Charles Manson...I thought of Trumpworld.....about compulsion and intent......The 'frame' from the movie, that persists in my memory, is the scene in which a book store's street window display is of a massive display of cutlery, flatware and folding knives, moving to a bookstore window in which a spinning hypnosis wheel and a moving, downward-pointing arrow draw the viewers' attention to, then away from the books......

 As I was contemplating a boxed set of Cassavetes Films.....an ordinarily supercilious acquaintance, locked into festive X'mas mode, 'recommended' that I abandon what he considers my 'high-mindedness' and consider some much lighter cinematic....dare I even use this word in this context......fare.....just the fake Duchenne smile on his 'recommended' entertainment 'boxed set' is enough to make me vomit up my breakfast and look for a Criterion Edition Box of Kathryn Bigelow/Nagisa Ôshima collaboratives, all singing...all dancing....'light' entertainment.....But, since this would/did NEVER happen, I'll 'go' for the compromise of 'Terry Gilliam's Greatest Hits'! o.k. everybody happy with that? I'm still grieving the cancellation of Hannibal and tossing a metal-toed combat boot at a screenful of NBA combat sports that edged it from Primetime to yesterday's news......."Mondo" is what most folks really, really like.....more 'guilty pleasures'......