Blindspotting: A Primer

PREFACE

or, The Dragging of Feet and the Tiring of Reviews

This was originally supposed to be a supplementary year-in-review for 2024, accompanying our annual podcast special and expanding upon my self-reflection in an attempt to articulate something considerably more personal about my movie-watching last year.

Of course, now such a piece would feel not only like a silly thing to publish, here on the first of February—what with anyone who might read it having likely turned their attention fully toward the current year—but also like an obligatory exercise for me, as I have now also diverted essentially all of my faculties to the present and future. I do feel a small pang of regret that I never took the time to make even so much as a Facebook post highlighting my most prominent cinephile habits and favorite first-watches of 2024. It’s nice to have at least something archived to mark the closure of another trip around the Sun, after all. Alas, there’s always next year.

More importantly (and the reason I’m still trying to get this now-evolved piece published relatively early in the year): I wanted to write something that would function as a catalyst for positively altering my relationship with writing about movies.

In 2024, I published a measly total of seven written articles, down from 19 in 2023… down from 30 in 2022. And only four of those seven were new-release reviews—the editorial bread and butter of most who would call themselves “film critics” or “film journalists,” including me.

The truth is that I had a lot of reviews in mind that I planned to write last year and simply didn’t follow through on them. When it came down to it, I just didn’t really feel like publishing a formal review on most of the new movies I watched. In most cases, either I got what I needed out of discussing the film informally with friends (or formally, on friends’ podcasts), or I felt intimidated by the prospect of putting my feelings into written word at a level of quality that I would find satisfactory.

It was a strange insecurity to develop more than a decade into doing this, and I’m not entirely sure where it came from. (Probably a lack of practice!) But it became clear to me last year that I wasn’t really enjoying writing about movies as much as I used to—at least when it came to reviewing new releases, which is the type of article I’m most accustomed to writing. I think, partly, I was just growing somewhat tired of habitually trying to find clever, thoughtful, and/or heterogenous ways of articulating whether or not a movie is good. I have Letterboxd for that, after all!

Nevertheless, the act of writing remains important to me. I genuinely enjoy the process, and even—somewhat egotistically—enjoy reading my own writing back as a reminder of (or resolution to) my ultimate feelings about a given subject.

Additionally, I think I’m simply a more eloquent, thorough, and insightful communicator in written form than spoken. I love the relaxed, off-the-cuff conversations Logan and I have on the podcast, and having a partner to bounce thoughts off of in real-time is a blessing I wouldn’t trade for a thousand personal-best reviews—but I firmly believe that I often don’t do my best-possible analysis in that back-and-forth conversational environment.

That’s not to say we don’t have a great show, nor that I’m an insignificant component to its quality; it’s just that, cognitively, I think I’m discoursing with a hand tied behind my back on the oral stage. Logan, on the other hand, has an incredible knack for formulating and articulating his points on the fly, and putting them into words that are accessible to a listener and approachable to his on-air counterpart, which is probably why he’s typically more verbose than I am in any given episode; that environment is his forte. It’s one of many ways he and I differ that ultimately enhances the show.

But I still need to write. I feel the urge. I want to put my best, most articulate, and most personally enriching film analysis out into the world, and the best way I know how to do that is in writing. And if reviewing new movies has largely felt unsatisfying and/or intimidating lately, then I need a different outlet.

I think the answer—for me, for now, anyway—is specificity. Get personal with it. Like I am right now.

Friend of the pod Evan Dossey started a monthly film journal last year in which he chronicles anything he’s watched that has left a lasting impression on him. It’s not inherently tied to any movie news or recent releases; it’s just a guy who loves movies writing about the stuff he’s discovering (and rediscovering) lately, according to his unique idiosyncrasies and whims as a film-lover. It’s genuinely great stuff, and some of my favorite journalistic content to read lately (a tall claim given the abundance of stellar writing coming out of that website).

Now, Evan obviously cannot and would not take credit for “inventing” what is essentially a cinephile blog, but I’ll go ahead and attribute my inspiration for this piece (and the series it will spawn) to him, as it was his excellent writing, introspection, and infectious revelling in film discovery which moved me to find a new way to approach my output as a film analyst.

In a nutshell: I want to improve my relationship with writing about movies by making it more about me.

As conceited as that may sound, I genuinely think it will make for more interesting commentary to anyone who reads it and a more satisfying process for me. I’m not swearing off new-release reviews, by any means; I think I just want to relieve myself of the pressure of reviews being my primary form of written expression as a film critic.

So what shape will this new, more personal expression take? Well, allow me to introduce you to:

BLINDSPOTTING

What is blindspotting?

“Blindspotting” is what I call it when making an effort to check off a film I’ve long had on my watchlist, or which I otherwise feel is a movie I “should” watch based on years of hearing it’s great, or that it’s “essential in the grand cinematic canon,” or whatever. It is a “blind spot” in my movie-watching repertoire because it is something I feel I’m missing out on for not having seen, and I want to and ought to watch it, for the sake of my enrichment and entertainment as a movie nerd.

Everyone I know who loves movies does this, to some degree; most of us have watchlists longer than the time we have left on this earth, and we frequently find ourselves saying, “Ugh, I need to watch that,” when a friend mentions a beloved film. But in order to compartmentalize and make my watchlist feel more digestible and achievable (even though it isn’t), I like to group my list into like kinds or categories, assigning myself little “projects” to focus on, according to patterns that make sense to me. For example, completing a director’s filmography, watching all of the most influential films of a given genre, or checking out the best movies about a particular subject are all examples of criteria that could form the basis of a “project” that I would assign myself.

Sometimes I give myself a deadline to “finish” (or at least cover a major chunk of) the project. I might make it my mission to complete the project within a year (or a few years, depending on the number of films involved), or before the next film in the director’s filmography releases. I enjoy this system of organization because it allows me to immerse myself in a specific area of cinematic history for a time; I get to revel in a little fixation for awhile, while also crossing movies off my long list of blind spots.

The unfortunate side effect of this method is, of course, that I wind up adding movies to my watchlist in order to beef up the project at-hand into something that feels definitive. But who cares? It’s more cool shit to watch.

What is “BLINDSPOTTING”?

“Blindspotting” is also the title of this new written series I’m starting, in which I will chronicle my progress in tackling these so-called “projects.” Every so often (hopefully several times a year), whenever I watch a handful of movies in a given project, I’ll write a “Blindspotting” entry discussing them and how they did or did not stand out to me amongst the rest. It’ll function partly as a form of accountability for me in making progress on my lists, and partly (hopefully) as an amusing or even insightful journey through an important branch of cinema that you may or may not know anything about.

In terms of how these articles will be formatted, I’ll probably do five or six movies per article, and I’ll title the article based on which “project” I’m focusing on in this entry and how many entries I’ve done on said project. So “Blindspotting: Essential Westerns, Vol. 1” would indicate the first entry in my journaling my journey through the Western genre.

Unfortunately, I’m already deep into all my current projects, so you won’t get to see these journeys from the beginning. But I’ll take the opportunity in this primer to give you a sense of my progress on each project thus far.

Lastly,

What is Blindspotting?

Blindspotting is a 2018 film written by and starring Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs and directed by Carlos López Estrada. I don’t really know what it’s about. I haven’t seen it. I hear it’s great. Maybe I’ll find a reason to write about it in “Blindspotting” one day.

CURRENT PROJECTS

So what projects am I starting this series with? What kinds of films can you expect to read about? Well, here’s what I’m currently working on. Each item in the list below links to a more elaborate explanation further down the page, along with summaries of any recent titles I’ve watched:

Essential Westerns

Essential Japanese Cinema

The World of Animation

The Films of David Lynch

But again, these are just the current works in-progress. I may, at any point, start new ones and fold them into this series. I might just decide I need to watch the highlights of the French New Wave, or the entire filmography of Neil Breen. (Both of those are doubtful, but you never know.)

I’ve taken on and completed other projects prior to this series too. For example, ahead of Killers of the Flower Moon in 2022, I watched almost all of Martin Scorsese’s filmography. Then in 2023, for some reason, I decided to use the Gran Turismo movie, of all things, as an excuse to explore racing cinema; I’m glad I did, because it led me to Grand Prix, which fucking rules.

Last October, as the main theme of my horror viewing of the month, I exposed myself to a bunch of iconic “torture porn” films—Martyrs, Hostel, Salò, A Serbian Film, to name a few. I wasn’t terribly impressed by any of them, but they did turn me down an intriguing rabbit hole of truly hardcore shit, like the Guinea Pig films (both Japanese and American versions) and the August Underground series. I’m not promising to write about them in this series, but the sicko in me does kinda want to check them out this October. We’ll see.

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ESSENTIAL WESTERNS

This is the one that really started me on my kick of assigning myself “projects” to whittle down my watchlist/blind spots. Two years ago, after clocking something like 600 hours across multiple revisitations to the 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption 2, I decided that I loved the Western aesthetic too much for someone who’s barely seen any actual westerns. So I aimed to rectify that with this list of 55 films, which I curated based on renown, Letterboxd rating, a series of articles about the genre, and friends’ recommendations. I intended to watch that entire list inside of a year, in order of release. That was over two years ago. You should be able to see my progress on the list; I’m into the 2000s now!

I think this might be the only list on which I included movies I’ve already seen before, mostly because I wanted to revisit them in the context of having more experience within the genre.

As a barometer for my taste, I’ll list ten of my favorite films I’ve discovered on this journey so far, in order of release:

High Noon (1952)
The Searchers (1956)
Rio Bravo (1959)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
The Great Silence (1968)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
Unforgiven (1992)
Open Range (2003) 

I’ve only watched one more western so far this year: The Proposition, which I discovered thanks (again) to Mr. Dossey. I’m pretty sure it’s one of his favorite movies ever, and it certainly rocked my socks off too. It spoke to me on a mostly atmospheric/aesthetic level, as its tone, visual style, and soundscape were very clearly core inspirations for the Red Dead Redemption games (a fact I hadn’t realized until watching). Danny Huston gives a kickass performance in a movie that’s actually worthy of him, for once. It’s a gritty, grimy film with not a hero in sight; just a bunch of hardened, deplorable bastards looking for some shred of peace in a land of lawlessness. It’s hard to believe it’s set entirely in Australia. Just a damning examination of brutality in the Outback. No Wild West required.

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ESSENTIAL JAPANESE CINEMA

I think this originally started as a mission to watch more of Akira Kurosawa’s films (toward which I have been productive), but my love of samurai history and mythology, along with my budding interest in Japanese culture in general, caused it to bloom to a deep-dive into the country’s cinematic offerings as a whole. The list I curated was based on renown, Letterboxd rating, friends’ recommendations, and shit that simply sounded interesting to me. I have a Letterboxd list for this one as well that’s over 150 strong.

I’ve watched a lot of Kurosawa since starting this list, but I’ve also discovered Masaki Kobayashi, Yasujiro Ozu, Takeshi Kitano, Shinya Tsukamoto, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and more wonderful voices. I’ve also fallen in love with actor Koji Yakusho, after being introduced to him in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure a few years ago and then reminded to watch more of his movies by 2023’s Perfect Days.

Here are ten of my favorite Japanese films I’ve watched since starting this project:

Harakiri (1962)
Throne of Blood (1957)
The Tale of Zatoichi (1962)
Zatoichi’s Vengeance (1966)
Samurai Rebellion (1967)
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972)
Ran (1985)
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
13 Assassins (2009)
Shin Godzilla (2016)

You see those two adjacent Zatoichi films on the list? That’s right, I’m also watching those! Friend of the pod Adam LeClerc and I are working through the series together. He’s a good partner for the journey, as he has plenty of experience with older long-running Japanese movie franchises on account of his being a Godzilla fan.

In case you aren’t familiar, the Zatoichi films follow actor Shintaro Katsu as the titular blind swordsman across late-Edo-period Japan. The pulp series spawned 25 films across 11 years in the original run, with a final follow-up directed by Katsu himself in 1989. Don’t be fooled by the four year gap between the two I listed; those are actually the first and thirteenth films in the series.

There are also several remakes (official and unofficial), ripoffs, and loose adaptations of the Zatoichi character—including Blind Fury, a 1989 Phillip Noyce film starring Rutger Hauer that happens to be an adaptation of Zatoichi Challenged, the 17th film in the series.

I’m not giving Zatoichi his own section here in this primer, but you can bet your ass I’ll be posting “Blindspotting” articles every time Adam and I make our way through a handful of the blind swordsman’s adventures (and likely some of the ripoffs and adaptations too). I’ll probably try to rank them all when we’re done as well.

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THE WORLD OF ANIMATION

This is probably the most eclectic and whims-led project I’m working on. It started a few years ago as an attempt to expose myself to more anime films, but it quickly became a broader effort to discover more animated cinema of all kinds and to find those delicious deep-cuts. There are some famous and iconic movies on my list, for sure, but it’s primarily the product of countless YouTube and Letterboxd rabbit holes I’ve found myself in—shit that simply sounds cool to me.

I just love the animated medium. I grew up on Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry VHS compilations as much as (if not more than) the contemporary cartoons of my childhood, so fluid, expressive animation and chameleonic voice acting just really vibrate my soul. I’ve always been fascinated by the freedom animation grants to go beyond what is physically possible with actors in front of a camera; it has the ability to transport us to entirely different dimensions of storytelling. Some of the most beautiful motion pictures ever made were drawn by animators on cels or even computers.

Fair warning: in case you weren’t already aware, I’m pretty into Gundam, and by extension, I have a fascination with mecha anime (or, really, any media centered around giant robots, no matter the culture of origin). So you’re likely to see that stuff pretty frequently in my animation-focused entries.

With a few exceptions, I’d say I mostly have yet to get into the really niche/nerd shit on this list, but 2025 is gonna be a big year for this project. Here are some of my favorite animated films I’ve discovered along the way:

Golgo 13: The Professional (1983)
Gurren Lagann The Movie: The Lights in the Sky are Stars (2009)
Porco Rosso (1992)
Barefoot Gen (1983)
Mars Express (2024)
Redline (2009)
Inu-Oh (2021)

I recently rewatched Golgo 13, after discovering it for the first time just last year. Holy shit; what a sleaze-tastic spectacle. Genuinely one of the most visually rich animated films I’ve ever seen… in service of a pretty typical espionage story about the most generic assassin you’ve ever met, named Duke Togo. As you can imagine about a hyperviolent 80s hitman movie that borrows heavily from James Bond and other spy staples, it’s incredibly misogynistic. But it’s also a sensory feast and pretty much the pinnacle of cool-guy spysploitation.

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THE FILMS OF DAVID LYNCH

This is the only director’s filmography I’m actively working on at the moment. Five years ago, during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, friend of the pod Jake Atwood and I, who lived near each other and had fuck-all to do, decided to start watching through Lynch’s filmography. We got a few movies under our belt relatively quickly, but as lockdown lifted and professional and social obligations spun up once again, our progress slowed dramatically. We fell off the train.

Until this past Sunday, it had been almost two years since we watched one of Lynch’s films together, though I did watch the first two seasons of Twin Peaks on my own last fall, which I mostly really enjoyed.

Sadly, it took the visionary director’s tragic passing to rekindle our motivation to complete his canon. We decided to celebrate his life with a viewing of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

I can’t say I deeply loved the original run of Twin Peaks the way so many others have—I think it’s unignorably marred by unfortunate realities of the TV landscape of the time, along with Lynch’s temporary departure from the series in the second season, and just general narrative bloat throughout. That said, there were still plenty of moments that blew me away, and I was generally engaged (or at least entertained) by Lynch’s take on small-town hijinks. And I can certainly admire the simple fact that something as bold and strange as this was broadcast on TV in 1990. I love Lynch’s depiction of the American Experiment as this bizarre, beautiful Frankenstein’s Monster of cultural memes and traditions, wrought with corruption, greed, and subterfuge at all levels of society. White picket fences and mid-century diners obscuring Eraserhead babies underneath. It’s satire and earnest tribute in equal measure, in the same stroke. He deals in this subject in a lot of his work, but the longform televised medium gives him more room to play with the social and bureaucratic intricacies of the eponymous town.

And Fire Walk With Me—goddamn. Probably one of the most emotionally effective and wince-worthy depictions of sexual and psychological trauma that I’ve ever seen, without ever being excessively graphic about it or hand-wringing for political relevance. It’s clear from the series that Laura Palmer went through a lot in her final days, but what the film reveals about her life—from her perspective this time—is all the sadder, further enriching the mystery that invests an entire town in the wake of her death. Getting to see everything from Laura’s POV gives her an agency and a depth that we never could have gotten from the show alone. Sheryl Lee absolutely knocks it out of the park with her bone-chilling, heartbreaking performance.

At this point, Jake and I have only one Lynch feature left to watch: his 1999 G-rated Disney drama The Straight Story. It’s an intriguing one at face value in that it ostensibly lacks most of the tenets of Lynch’s storytelling and style. But perhaps an earnest examination of good, old-fashioned, working-class American perseverance is perfectly Lynchian in its own right. More to come on that one.

Since he has just 10 narrative features in his filmography, I’ll wait and rank them by personal preference when I come back to write about The Straight Story.

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So that’s “Blindspotting!” I’m really excited about this series and to have found a new outlet for my always-running movie brain. I can’t wait to get deeper into the aforementioned projects, and to come up with new ones along the way. I already do this for my own amusement, but it’s even more fun to think I’ll get to share the journey with you now. Feel free to reach out on socials if you have any recommendations for additions to the above projects, or for new projects entirely!