Personal statement:
I've always craved some balance of danger and diplomacy and I accept that the world I was born into was violent and often deranged.
What I look for in cinema is precisely that strangeness I've always know to be true. Not that normalcy and happiness and grace don't exist, but some shadow blocked it from view. I suppose my world followed a different star than most: German, cold people, broken people haunted by griefs, dead people, Poe characters, zombies.
A Herzog world. A Tarkovsky world. Never proud enough to really be Bergman characters, never really wanting to shine, never human enough to break through doubt.
I was born of doubters, people who thought themselves hopeless before some tragic circumstance. And so I like the things I like for all my own reasons. Gummo made me cry for joy, watching that boy eat that candy bar in the bath while his mom washed his hair. That's what love feels like. I suppose I'm a mama's boy.
I want movies to thrill me emotionally. I want to be riveted. I want to be moved with recognition. I want the anarchy of Godard and the petulance of Fassbinder. There is so much European cinema to see! I can't wait as things become available. I watched every Bunuel film I could get my hands on for no good reason. I can't say I figured it all out, but I gave it a shot and liked a lot of it. That great one where no one can leave the room, what's it called... hold on....
The Exterminating Angel