Well, it’s been ten years since I wrote the first installment of whatever this is but let’s all pretend it’s not a blog. I read it now and it’s all there and it always was: the snarkiness, the appropriate and overdue application of gonzo journalism to snacks and seeing movies, the undying optimism that I’ll write about every film I see. Which I’ve finally accepted I will never do. Starting tomorrow.

This particular combination of human frailties has propelled me, unlike the majority of my fellow bloggites, which of course this is not, to just keep writing. That and the continued idiocy of filmmakers. And the shameless bootlicking of the Critical Mass.

And so, despite dry months, I have produced, according to computers which are always right, 375 posts, about three novels worth. So thanks Bob, who said ‘You should write something about every film you see’. Which I then did not. And thanks to my fans. It’s really both of you that make this thing possible. And my massive unsinkable ego. Thanks to you especially. But you don’t need it, ego. You’ve evolved to be above praise, haven’t you.

I’m extremely happy to report that the film I saw on this tenth anniversary was not Venom, whose unavoidable agony approaches like Brexit (‘Sure I could stop, and I want to. But I said I wouldn’t’), was what will turn out to be the best film of the year, The Sister Brothers

Dorothée did not care for the film, but she has the luxury of being wrong. I have the onus of being awesome. And she did acknowledge it was great. Or good. I have the luxury of remembering it how I want.

The confusing part was the fact that unlike all the films previous at the Vauban, it started only five minutes after its scheduled time. This was ameliorated by the Kinder found at the vending machine.

Since I overwrite for films I hate (and there have been a lot of those this year), I should write extensively about a film I loved. I won’t. There is a tradition to maintain. Which is what everyone says when they want to do what they want to. Like when they say ‘There’s a tradition to break with!’. They both work. Often for the same things.

Two aspects of note: there is a Leonardian quality to the film, in that the characters decide what’s going to happen next. The story begins as Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Reilly go off under there is the expectation of a one act film, that they will ride, arrive and kill the guy.

Then, as is appropriate for good films, a bunch of stuff happens. Stuff that is both unexpected and congruent. There is the sense that all the characters, even the ones off-screen, are thinking, planning and acting. And the story unfolds from that. This is very rare, given the state of cinema. Which has always in such a state! Get yourself together, man! It’s been a hundred years! All you have to do is read this, and do everything I say.

The second is the extraordinary amount of compression within. Which I can talk about in one instance since it gives away none of the story. As two characters (Wow, I’m being so good not saying who) arrive on the coast for the first time, we see a beach strewn with abandoned furniture and supplies, possibly from a ship wreck, or an aborted settlement. I say ‘possibly’ because not only does the film not tell us, but only shows us for no more than five seconds, and then gets on with it. It’s a film that is utterly full, and yet knows how much time to give every moment.

And so I have the rare honor to say the film I saw ten years to the day later was actually good, combined with the agonizing duty of court jester – telling the truth that 90% movies outright suck. Being unemployed myself because the alternative is being a shill for Marvel, or (shudder) praising the likes of Searching, Unsane, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and on and on, where each ‘on’ represents five years, 162.5 posts, 123.5 of which were hit pieces. The pain of which was rewarded by films like this.

Which didn’t make the character study that is Venom any less poignant. A story for the ages! And what special effects! At least that’s what I’ll say when I see it Saturday.

I didn’t say anything about being a shill for Sony. Hire me! Daddy needs a pair of insulated dormer windows! Those volet roulants don’t come cheap.

Or Montblanc. I’m begging here.