KANOPY

Hopefully I am on the upswing from a gross cold that has been nagging me for a few days.  After my post yesterday I poked around looking for streaming sources that could take up the slack for Filmstruck, and I found Kanopy.  It's pretty amazing--a free service curated for libraries.  All you need is your card number and PIN from a participating library (KC participates) and you are in business.  It is available on Roku.

Note: this does not take the place of patronizing your local art cinema and buying lots of popcorn and Twizzlers.

The Circle Jerks doc was a blast--I knew a little of their history and this rounded it out.  When Off! took the baton I didn't realize how poignant that was for those left behind, or how many miles CJ had slogged, as so many bands do, barely holding it together.  They are an important band.  "Wild In The Streets" is one of the great rock and roll songs of all time.   

Election was an epic gangster flick with elements I've liked from other Johnnie To movies--casual, detailed looks at different guys in an ensemble cast.  They eat a lot, they hang out a lot, and talk, which is a big part of a gang with a code.  Some of the violence is super brutal.  Rolling rival gangsters down a steep hill, buttoned up in small crates--and so beautifully shot, at the same time.  Eerie interludes in the natural world and lots of Hong Kong neon too.

Axolotl Overkill was like Juno with claws and tons of cocaine-fueled angst, set in Berlin.  There's no coming of age moment or epiphany, and the adults in the film are mostly impotent, or shitty, detached, and predatory. The kid in this movie is in the process of surviving, wised-up enough to know borderline personality disorder isn't a thing, unless it is a thing, but no one knows what it is, unless they do or pretend they do.  It was a close look at a lot of intractable f*cked-up-ness.  The kid still had fight and tender feelings at the end so there was hope--much empathy for her, and it was hard to watch at times.