Welcome back to the 4 Favorites series!
This was a great month for both first-time watches and rewatches. In addition to the movies listed here, I also went back and saw “American Fiction” again, which I liked even more the second time around; and I saw “Tenet” in 70mm, which fully converted me into a Tenethead.
That’s the Christopher Nolan movie I’ve most drastically changed my opinion on since my first watch. Seeing it again in a different format (in the same theater I saw it in the first time) just made it click for me in a way that it hadn’t before. It’s a Dudes Rock movie about the power of friendship, and I think that’s beautiful.
In other publication news, I wrote a review of Jason Kirk’s debut novel “Hell Is A World Without You,” which is a fictional account of what it was like to grow up attending Christian youth groups in the early 2000s. I loved it. (Kirk also featured a blurb from my review in his own newsletter, which you can read here.)
But now, as Vin Diesel says … THE MOVIES:
“Perfect Days”
Most days for Hirayama are exactly the same.
He wakes up at the sound of his neighbor sweeping the sidewalk, rolls his bed mat up, and checks the spot in the book he was reading the night before.
He brushes his teeth and puts his work uniform on. He gathers his keys and some yen and walks out the door.
He pauses to look up at the trees and smile. He uses some of his money to buy a coffee from the vending machine next to his small apartment, gets in his car, takes a sip of coffee, and picks out a cassette tape to listen to on the way to work.
Then, he drives to work, where he cleans public toilets all day. (Side note: This movie has beautiful toilets. America’s public bathroom infrastructure is trash on a good day, but it’s absolute shit compared to Japan’s.)
Hirayama approaches cleaning a toilet like a carpenter approaches carving a piece of wood. There’s a reverence and craftsmanship at work with him, one that is not present with his younger coworker. Sometimes on his lunch break, Hirayama takes photographs; sometimes he looks at plants.
When his workday is done, he goes to a bathhouse, then to a local bar to get some dinner and watch some baseball. Then he goes home, waters his plants, unrolls his bed, and reads his book before going to sleep. When he dreams, he dreams of the pictures he took or the people he saw that day.
And then, he does the same thing the next day. Until we start to see little intrusions into Hirayama’s schedule: a lovesick coworker; a homeless man who always stands on the corner near Hirayama’s first stop of the day; a child who wanders into a bathroom looking for his mom; Hirayama’s niece running away from home.
“Perfect Days” doesn’t have a traditional plot. We’re just hanging out with Hirayama as he goes about his day. And Hirayama is a man of few words, highlighted by an amazing performance from Koji Yakusho. But we learn a little bit about Hirayama’s backstory through how he reacts to everyone he comes across. He’s very happy with his simple life, but there’s still some regret and melancholy there, too.
One might think that a movie following the everyday routine of a toilet cleaner would be boring or repetitive, but that’s not the case. Director Wim Wenders and cinematographer Franz Lustig make sure to highlight the differences in Hirayama’s day — his routine is the same, but the angles used to film it change each time. And Hirayama welcomes all of the disruptions to his schedule, viewing them as an opportunity to be present and experience something new. He might not be living in perfect days, but he has the opportunity to make them perfect multiple times a day.
I’ve seen some reviews that think this movie fetishizes the working class. I don’t think that’s true. “Perfect Days” is about finding beauty in everything we experience, whether it’s a toilet, a treetop or a song.
This is a stunning film. It makes you stop and think about how much wonder and beauty is out there in the world if we would only think to honor each small moment of our days as potentially life-giving. I’ve been looking at treetops differently ever since.
Now playing in theaters.
“Plus One”
Ben and Alice are friends from college. Ben has problems with commitment; Alice just got out of a long-term relationship. They agree to be each others’ wedding dates for all 10 (!) weddings they have to attend over the summer, one acting as the wing(wo)man for the other.
Would you believe that they develop feelings for one another? And would you believe that they get together, only to break up 3/4 of the way through the movie because of their emotional incompatibility? And would you further believe that the movie ends with a sweeping speech and declaration of love?
If you don’t, then you haven’t seen enough rom-coms.
Anyone can clearly see where this movie’s plot is going within the first five minutes, but that’s not why you watch rom-coms. You watch rom-coms for the chemistry, and the chemistry between Jack Quaid and Maya Erskine could power an entire city. This movie is charming and funny, and also features a great supporting performance from Ed Begley, Jr. saying “Drats.” What more could you want?
Available to stream on Netflix or available on physical media.
“Roman J. Israel, Esq.”
This is a very slippery movie. It doesn’t neatly fit into any genre. It’s about a lawyer, but it’s not a courtroom drama. It’s a workplace thriller, but Roman J. Israel, Esq. doesn’t uncover any conspiracies that go all the way to the top. It’s a Message Movie, with a lot on its mind about the American prison industrial complex, but it doesn’t end with a grandstanding speech during a trial.
The central struggle of this movie is the age-old “man vs. himself” conflict. What would it take for you to bend your morals? After a lifetime of careful consideration and high standards, Roman makes one mistake that changes the trajectory of his life. He then decides to disbar and sue himself. “The Pelican Brief,” this is not.
Much like its protagonist, “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” is hard to pin down. The tones don’t always mesh, but this movie takes a lot of wild swings and constantly zigs when you expect it to zag.
I think the moment I fully got on board with this was Roman’s paranoid, one-sided U-Haul car chase scored to the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today.”
I was fully immersed in this movie, largely due to Denzel Washington’s performance, and I’m excited to watch it again.
Available to stream on Hulu or available on physical media. (Or check it out at your local library, which is what I did.)
“Thanksgiving”
I was very surprised at how much I liked this. I’ve never been a big fan of Eli Roth. “Hostel” is a great look at the Ugly American overseas, but it’s also one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen; “The House With a Clock In Its Walls” and its mishmash of tones didn’t work for me.
This movie got its start as a joke trailer stuffed in between two films for “Grindhouse,” the 2007 double bill from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. I wasn’t expecting much.
But this was a lot of fun. Gruesome and disgusting, but still fun. “Thanksgiving” is also a look at the Ugly American, except this time they’re not traveling overseas, they’re standing in line at Walmart on Thanksgiving for early Black Friday sales.
Roth figured out a way to cook up a late ‘90s slasher film and transport it to today. In the process, he ripped out the irony and wink-wink-nudge-nudge qualities of most of today’s horror films and delivered the full meal straight to the table. The third act reveal of the killer’s motive and the final moments are also straight out of the Dark Castle playbook.
Plus, you get to hear Patrick Dempsey do the strongest New England accent put to film since “Good Will Hunting.”
Available to stream on Netflix or available on physical media. Or, you could do what I always do, and rent it on iTunes, thus ensuring its streaming debut a week later.
That’s all, folks. If you liked what you saw here, click that subscribe button (promise I won’t send any annoying emails) and tell all your friends!
This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer.
If there’s anything you want to see covered in a future newsletter, let me know!
You can find me in other corners of the internet as well. There’s Friends At Dusk, my podcast about Christopher Nolan films; my personal website (which focuses on pop culture, stories about religion and my journalism clips); a Twitter account and a Letterboxd account. Subscribe away.