1. There’s a lot of debate about whether Trump is delusional or evil. (Why not both?) This WaPo story leans toward the evil interpretation:

Former president Donald Trump’s communications director recounted popping into the Oval Office roughly a week after the 2020 election to find a morose Trump watching TV: “Can you believe I lost to this f—ing guy?” Trump lamented, referring to then-President-elect Joe Biden.

A young aide to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows recalled Meadows telling her, “A lot of times he’ll tell me that he lost but he wants to keep fighting it.” . . .

“Please recognize that President Donald Trump was in a unique position, better informed about the absence of widespread election fraud than almost any other American president,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said. “Trump’s own campaign experts told him that there was no evidence to support his claims. His own Justice Department appointees investigated the election fraud claims and told him — point blank — they were false. In mid-December 2020, President Trump’s senior advisers told him the time had come to concede the election. Donald Trump knew the courts had ruled against him.”

“He had all of this information,” Cheney continued, “but still, he made the conscious choice to claim fraudulently that the election was stolen.”

2. Back in the early 1990s, I recall people saying that racism used to be a problem before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but was no longer a problem. Check out this graph.

In the 1980s, I recall one politically liberal woman telling me she opposed interracial marriage. I was shocked, as at the time one of my cousins was married to a black guy, as was a second cousin. Another cousin was married to a guy from India. My sister was married to a Hispanic. It was at that point that I realized I’d grown up in a liberal bubble (Madison, WI.) When I got married in 1994, most Americans opposed my marriage.

3. Ben Southwood has a good essay on why low fertility rates are not likely to persist in the long run:

A simplistic little model I built suggests that if one percent of the fertile UK population had a fertility rate 1.2 above the 1.8 norm, it would take over 200 years for the population to beat its current level, assuming zero immigration and everything staying static.

But I still think the story is true and important: humans are like bacteria, and we are evolving bacterial resistance to the antibiotic of low fertility.

4. The Hudson Bay Company was quite large:

Right after buying Alaska, we came close to buying the HBC. Had we done so, we would have eventually absorbed British Colombia and Canada’a far northern islands. The US would then be almost twice it’s current size:

In 1869, the United States offered the Company $10,000,000 for its land. If it had gone through, it would have meant that the USA would today control the vast majority of what instead became Canada. Under political pressure from Britain, this very generous offer was rejected and the Company agreed to cease to be a geographical entity, transferring all of its land to the British Government.

4. Reason magazine’s Matt Welch has a good article on immigration and jobs:

Policy analysts who favor reduced immigration to the United States have always had one plausibly compelling argument: If you cut off the supply of cheaper labor, they maintained, employers would be forced to raise wages for lower-skilled, native-born workers, who would then demonstrate the fiction behind the contention that there were some jobs “Americans just won’t do.”

Well, we have just conducted a fascinating real-world test of that hypothesis. Beginning with the restrictionist presidency of Donald Trump in 2017, and then supercharging through the effective 2020–21 border-closure triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. took in about 1.7 million fewer working-age immigrants than would have come at the prior intake rate, according to a recent analysis by Giovanni Peri, economics professor at University of California at Davis.

Alas, those not in the labor force Americans never showed up:

This should have been the moment when the startlingly high number of prime-aged Americans classified as Not in the Labor Force (“NILFs,” no really) got off the sidelines and back into the job market.

And yet: “That did not increase work rates or labor force participation of Americans who are already here,” says American Enterprise Institute economist Nicholas Eberstadt, author of the freshly revised (with post-pandemic intro) 2016 book Men Without Work. “We’ve now got this incredible peacetime labor shortage, and we also have a drop in the number of people in the workforce, by at least a ballpark of 3 million lower than we would have expected on trend before COVID. And that’s leaving out immigration, so it’s actually lower.”

5. File this story under “politics is a helluva drug“:

For more than a decade, few places in the nation were associated with anti-vaccine movements as much as Marin County, the bluff-lined peninsula of coastal redwoods and stunning views just north of San Francisco. . . .

Now, Marin County’s Covid vaccination rate among all residents is 91 percent, compared with 68 percent nationwide.

The county has also shed its reputation as an anti-vaccine haven in part because of how much vocal resistance has taken root elsewhere. Marin County was once faulted for having a childhood vaccination rate of 78 percent. Now, almost every county in America has a lower Covid vaccination rate among children.

The anti-vaccine movement used to be a place where the left met the right, but increased polarization during the pandemic has made such a combination difficult to sustain, said Jennifer Reich, sociology professor at the University of Colorado Denver and the author of “Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines.”

6. On the same note, study after study shows that Republicans are more likely to die of Covid:

Last month, though, the National Bureau of Economic Research published an important study from researchers affiliated with Yale University. They took 577,659 death records from Ohio and Florida between January 2018 and December 2021 and matched the decedents to a 2017 voter file. In other words, they were able to identify the partisanship not only of the places those people lived but of the people themselves.

What they found is that the rate of excess death — that is, deaths above the expected toll relative to the pre-pandemic baseline — was higher for Republicans, particularly after vaccines were rolled out.

“Registered Republicans in Florida and Ohio had higher excess death rates than registered Democrats, driven by a large mortality gap in the period after all adults were eligible for vaccines,” the researchers write. “These results adjust for county-by-age differences in excess deaths during the pandemic, suggesting that there were within-age-by-county differences in excess death associated with political party affiliation.”

It turns out that watching Tucker Carlson is bad for your health:

COVID-19 vaccines have reduced infections and hospitalizations across the globe, yet resistance to vaccination remains strong. This paper investigates the role of cable television news in vaccine hesitancy and associated local vaccination rates in the United States. We find that, in the earlier stages of the vaccine roll-out (starting May 2021), higher local viewership of Fox News Channel has been associated with lower local vaccination rates. We can verify that this association is causal using exogenous geographical variation in the channel lineup. The effect is driven by younger individuals (under 65 years of age), for whom COVID-19 has a low mortality risk. Consistent with changes in beliefs about the effectiveness of the vaccine as a mechanism, we find that Fox News increased reported vaccine hesitancy in local survey responses. We can rule out that the effect is due to differences in partisanship, to local health policies, or to local COVID-19 infections or death rates. The other two major television networks, CNN and MSNBC, have no effect. That, in turn, indicates that more differentiated characteristics, like the networks’ messaging or tendency for controversy, matter and that the effect of Fox News on COVID-19 vaccine uptake is not due to the general consumption of cable news. We also show that there is no historical effect of Fox News on flu vaccination rates, suggesting that the effect is COVID-19-specific and not driven by general skepticism toward vaccines.

7. Liz Truss came into office with bold plans to boost growth. Now it all seems to be falling apart:

A former Cabinet minister who supports the PM’s agenda also cast heavy doubts on her having the time to enact any of it.

“Who could argue with focusing on growth? But this takes time and there is a lot of uncertainty attached to it. It’s not like we haven’t been trying to encourage economically inactive people into work since 2010, for example. And some it will probably get dinged [scrapped] anyway, like the planning reforms.”

One Tory veteran of previous parliamentary battles adds: “There is no way they are getting planning through. They are just going to be stuck.”

Planning reforms means zoning reforms in American lingo. The supply side tax cuts are also gone.

8. Remember when it was the GOP that opposed strict zoning rules? Here’s Bloomberg:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration is urging the city of Gainesville to abandon its zoning reforms after it became the first in the state to vote to eliminate single-family zoning citywide this summer. In an unprecedented move for the agency, Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) sent a letter to Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe objecting to the city’s zoning plan last month. Gainesville’s City Commission is poised to vote to move forward with the changes anyway on Oct. 17.

The action raises the specter of Republican-controlled state governments stepping in to stop cities from passing progressive housing reforms — and mystifies some conservatives who support deregulation in the housing market.

I’m not “mystified”. The GOP abandoned free markets long ago.

9. California just legalized jaywalking.

A new law signed on Friday will allow Californians to legally jaywalk without being ticketed.

Now it’s time to legalize drugs and prostitution.

10. Philipp Markolin has a very good essay on why it is so hard to push back against conspiracy theories. One issue is politics:

The conspiracy myth playbook

The best predictor of believing in a conspiracy theory? Already believing in others

Has anybody noticed something weird going on in the US?

January 6th and Trump’s election steal myth, anti-vaccine conspiracy fantasies, lableak and biosafety fearmongering, QAnon, white genocide, moral panics about immigrant caravans or LGBTQ minorities; many of the most hateful and conspiratorial narratives seem to aggregate around a political movement, leader, and ideology. Prima facie, it is odd to see such a diverse set of conspiratorial ideas neatly align with a large segment of the population that happens to vote for the same political party under the whip of an autocratic leader. Even before the weird cult-like and parasocial worshiping of its demagogue, the MAGA movement is primarily animated by conspiracy myths, and this is dangerous.

It is also a strategy.

Political leaders and movements can use conspiracy myths to gain power, and this is not unique to the US by any means, we could also talk about Poland, Italy, and Hungary, or Myanmar, Nigeria, the Philippines or Brazil, and many other nations currently in democratic decline. Making use of conspiracy myths is one of the oldest tricks in the book that authoritarian leaders and movements use to attack opponents, galvanize followers, shift blame or responsibility, and undermine institutions that threaten their power.

11. Jordan Schneider discusses the new controls on tech exports to China:

Regardless of how narrowly Washington tries to draw the impact of these regs to allow for firms like LAM and ASML to continue working with Chinese companies on fabricating lagging edge chips, the explicit decision to try to freeze Chinese domestic manufacturing above a defined level will be perceived as a deeply provocative move, with lasting commercial, technological, and geopolitical repercussions. . . .

These export controls are even more dramatic of a “Sputnik moment” than what Trump delivered with Huawei’s foreign direct product rule. Even though the Administration may not have consciously timed the rollout of these regulations to the opening of the Party Congress, Chinese officials will certainly assume they have, in turn coloring their view of America’s intentions.

The honest way of competing with China would be to allow more Chinese engineers to immigrate here. Instead we shamefully try to sabotage their tech industry. What a disgrace.

The 21st century has gotten off to a bad start. The 1980s and 1990s were some of the best decades in human history, and the good times continued into the early 2000s. But in recent years things have gone steadily downhill. In the 1980s and 1990s, most of the news in the financial papers was good news. Now it’s almost all bad news. Mostly self inflicted wounds.

While there are many factors in play, including the aftereffects of Covid, the underlying problem is rising nationalism. Consider the following Bloomberg headline, discussing the effects of the US moves to restrict technology transfer to China:

Chipmaker Rout Engulfs TSMC, Samsung With $240 Billion Wiped Out

• Markets in Korea, Japan and Taiwan return from Monday holiday
• Selloff extended to currency markets, with Korean won falling

That’s all caused by nationalism in the US and China.

Other headlines point to problems with the UK economy. Once again, many factors are at work. But it’s worth noting that ever since 2016 the UK has been doing poorly even relative to other developed countries. Some of us warned that Brexit would reduce the UK’s GDP, and it has. Once again, the fruits of nationalism.

Growth in the US has been slowed by a labor shortage, mostly due to a crackdown on immigration. Again, that’s nationalism.

The global economy has been severely impacted by the war in Ukraine—the result of Russian nationalism.

Trump’s trade war with China, which Biden has continued, is also reflective of nationalism.

Biden’s recent IRA bill has major weaknesses due to various buy America provisions, which will limit their effectiveness in addressing global warming. That’s nationalism.

There has always been a certain amount of bad news. But it used to be offset by occasional good news, such as international trade agreements, deregulation, and privatization. Now we get the bad news without the good.

I actually view these problems as fairly minor. The developed world is pretty rich, and it doesn’t much matter if we lose a few points of GDP growth. The more worrisome effects of rising nationalism will come later, in the form of increased war. There was also a rise of nationalism during the early 20th century, and we all know how that played out.

PS. A while back I recall some pundits complaining about the effects of globalization. Well, how are you guys enjoying the alternative? Have you checked you investment accounts recently?

I just spent 27 days on a European vacation. Here are a few random observations, which you may want to skip:

1. How should we think about the utility derived from a major European vacation? I see a number of factors:

a. The utility derived from planning the vacation—dreaming about what you will do.

b. The utility derived during the vacation. Some of that is the direct experience, some is daydreaming about how you’ll report the results to those back at home (which I’m doing now).

c. The utility derived from reminiscing about your vacation after the fact. In some cases, such as my Australian adventure of 1991, that’s almost all of the utility. I honestly don’t know whether I even enjoyed that vacation at the time, but I get massive utility out of recalling the events, over and over again. Even more than 30 years later.

d. The utility derived from extra vivid during the vacation. When not on vacation my life is boring and my nighttime dreams are dull. On vacation, time slows down and my life becomes full of novel events, and this triggers much more intense and vivid dreams at night. I have a hard time estimating the importance of this factor, but it might well be more important than all of my daytime utility during the vacation.

To summarize, when it comes to vacations the utility is mostly in dreams, with relatively little in actual events like sightseeing and dining out.

2. Thinking back to my first trip to Europe in 1985, I’m struck by how much more complicated things are today. My travel bag is now full of pills, medical devices, various chargers for iPhone, laptop, etc. Life used to be so simple and carefree.

I’m getting old and more cautious, but so is the world. We arrived at the Orange County airport and were told we needed a vaccination certificate. Not from Germany (where I was headed), rather from Amsterdam, an airport I would merely pass through. No problem, I have a picture right here on my phone. It turns out that that is not good enough—I needed the actual paper vaccination card. I’m not sure what is more absurd, the fact that Amsterdam airport would want proof of my vaccination (why?), or the fact that they thought the physical card would prove something the iPhone picture would not. It’s not a tamper proof item like a drivers license of passport, it’s just a crude little piece of cardboard with Pfizer and Moderna scribbled on it. So it was all the way back home again, and then race back to the airport before my flight leaves. A few days later I received some satisfaction, as I read that the head of the Amsterdam airport was fired.

3. The Germans are really good at museums. The new Humboldt Forum in Berlin is great. My one complaint is that almost all of the best paintings in the Gemäldegalerie were unavailable, as they were fixing the lighting in about 1/3 of the galleries–the best galleries. My primary motivation for going to Europe is to sightsee, especially art and architecture. I was especially looking forward to seeing their two Vermeers. Why couldn’t they temporarily put them in another gallery while they remodeled? Oh well, I’ll still catch The Allegory of Painting in Vienna. . . .

No such luck. The magnificent Vermeer in Vienna was being cleaned. That painting is half the reason to visit the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Unfortunately, I’ll never get back to Germany or Austria. Hopefully I’ll eventually see a good image of the cleaned copy on my OLED TV. I had to make do with Dresden’s subpar Vermeer–still a borderline masterpiece.

3. After Berlin, we visited Dresden, Prague, Budapest and Vienna. Some good art nouveau architecture, but otherwise mostly what I expected. I am about 30 years late on Prague. If you are an art lover, don’t miss the Friedrich paintings in Berlin and Dresden—some of them look overly romantic, but the 5 or 6 best examples of his work are extremely good.

The one revelation for me was Austria, especially rural Austria. At first I wondered if what I was seeing was an unrepresentative sample—tourist areas that looked richer than usual. But no, the whole of rural Austria looks extremely impressive—like a Swiss travel poster. It’s makes America’s built environment look shoddy by comparison.

Everything looked high quality and attractive. The trains, trams and buses all looked brand new. The roads had no potholes and were well designed. The drivers were all skilled and the traffic flowed smoothly. Doors and windows seemed as solid as a bank vault, not the flimsy Home Depot crap you get in America.

Yes, I know that America is richer than Austria. I know that there is more to GDP than the quality of the built environment. Services matter (don’t ask about their food). Size of houses matters. But I’d also argue that quality counts for something, and probably gets overlooked in GDP comparisons. If an Austrian (or German) told me that America seemed poorer than their home country, I would not argue with them. It’s all subjective.

The residential buildings in rural Austria were quite attractive, quite unlike the ugly new houses being built in America. I can’t blame America for lacking the beautiful baroque buildings of Vienna and Salzburg; we are too new to have any of those. But why is even the modern architecture in Austria so much better. What’s our excuse?

Salzburg had a beautiful new public building with several large swimming pools. Everything seemed super high quality. As an aside, the changing room had men, women, and children all mixed together. I suspect that many puritanical Americans would be horrified. You cannot let children see naked bodies! They should be home watching action films with hundreds of bodies being blown to pieces.

Speaking of children, my favorite experience on the trip was standing on a subway platform in Vienna and watching a roughly 8-year old girl in a ponytail skipping right along the edge of the platform in a scooter. An American parent that allowed their little girl to do that would be imprisoned for child abuse. In Austria, the kids still roam free, often taking public transport without parents. Life seems much healthier there than here.

PS. It should be Wien and Salzburg or Vienna and Salt Castle. Americans need to make up their minds. Do we want to use their names or ours.

I was very pleased to see that Ben Bernanke was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. Bernanke had a major influence on my thinking in several different areas. Here I will focus on Bernanke’s 1995 JMCB paper on the Great Depression. This excerpt (discussing the interrelationship of bank runs and exchange rate crises) is particularly important:

A particularly destabilizing aspect of this process was the tendency of fears about the soundness of banks and expectations of exchange-rate devaluation to reinforce each other (Bernanke and James 1991; Temin 1993). An element that the two types of crises had in common was the so-called “hot money,” short-term deposits held by foreigners in domestic banks. On one hand, expectations of devaluation induced outflows of the hot-money deposits (as well as flight by domestic depositors), which threatened to trigger general bank runs. On the other hand, a fall in confidence in a domestic banking system (arising, for example, from the failure of a major bank) often led to a flight of short-term capital from the country, draining international reserves and threatening convertibility. Other than abandoning the parity altogether, central banks could do little in the face of combined banking and exchange-rate crises, as the former seemed to demand easy money policies while the latter required
monetary tightening.

From a theoretical perspective, the sharp declines in the money-gold ratio during the early 1930s have an interesting implication: namely, that under the gold standard as it operated during this period, there appeared to be multiple potential equilibrium values of the money supply. Broadly speaking, when financial investors and other members of the public were “optimistic,” believing that the banking system would remain stable and gold parities would be defended, the money-gold ratio and hence the money stock itself remained “high.” More precisely, confidence in the banks allowed the ratio of inside money to base to remain high, while confidence in the exchange rate made central banks willing to hold foreign exchange reserves and to keep relatively low coverage ratios. In contrast, when investors and the general public became “pessimistic,” anticipating bank runs and devaluation, these expectations were to some degree self-confirming and resulted in “low” values of the money-gold ratio and the money stock. In its vulnerability to self-confirming expectations, the gold standard appears to have borne a strong analogy to a fractional-reserve banking system in the absence of deposit insurance: For example, Diamond and Dybvig (1983) have shown that in such a system there may be two Nash equilibria, one in which depositor confidence ensures that there will be no run on the bank, the other in which the fears of a run (and the resulting liquidation of the bank) are self-confirming.

These ideas run through much of my 2015 book on the Great Depression. For instance, in the spring of 1932, the Fed implemented a QE program with the goal of spurring recovery from the Great Depression. Unfortunately, this policy triggered fears of currency devaluation, which led to an outflow of gold from the US. This is one example of what Bernanke calls “multiple monetary equilibria”. As a result, under an international gold standard an expansionary policy initiative might actually end up having a contractionary impact on the economy, especially if it triggers a loss of confidence in the currency.

In the same article, Bernanke discussed evidence that sticky nominal wages may have contributed to the Great Depression:

Using data from ten European countries for 1935, Eichengreen and Sachs showed that Gold Bloc countries systematically had high real wages and low levels of industrial output, while countries not on gold had much lower real wages and higher levels of production (all variables were measured relative to 1929).

In a recent paper, Bernanke and Carey (1994) extended the Eichengreen-Sachs analysis in a number of ways: First, they expanded the sample from ten to twenty-two countries, and they employed annual data for 1931-1936 rather than for 1935 only. Second, to avoid the spurious attribution to real wages of price effects operating through non-wage channels, in regressions they separated the real wage into its nominal-wage and price-level components. Third, they controlled for factors other than wages affecting aggregate supply and used instrumental variables techniques to correct for simultaneity bias in output and wage determination. . . .

Most importantly, the coefficient on nominal wages is highly significant and approximately equal and opposite in magnitude to the coefficient on the price level, as suggested by the sticky-wage hypothesis. In particular, equation (2) indicates that countries in which nominal wages adjusted relatively slowly toward changing price levels experienced the sharpest declines in manufacturing output.

Sticky nominal wages also played a big role in my 2015 book, and more broadly the way I think about business cycles.

PS. I am currently traveling, but will have more to say about Bernanke when I return home later in the week.

PPS. Two members of what I call the “Princeton School of Monetary Economics” have now won Nobel Prizes. Who’s next?

PPPS. To those who say it’s not really a Nobel Prize, I have only two words: Get a life.

Wait, is that three?

In addition to these films, I also watched the first 5 seasons of Better Call Saul. It was a bit uneven but fairly entertaining. Better than those typically overrated middlebrow “quality TV” series that are so beloved by critics.

2022:Q3 films

Newer Films:

Tintoretto: A Rebel in Venice  (Italy)  3.7  Perhaps my favorite art film, although as a documentary I’ve overrated it here.  Too much talking heads and not enough of Tintoretto’s paintings.  But I feel lucky to live in a world where this sort of film is even possible.  I’ve been to Venice twice, and will likely never get back again.  This is the next best thing.  As soon as it ended, I watched it a second time.

Tintoretto had a sign in his studio saying “The drawing of Michelangelo and the color of Titian”.  He’s arguably one of the 10 best painters that ever lived, and probably the least famous of that group.

Hermitage:  The Power of Art  (Italy/Russia)  3.6  Italian documentary that spends half its time on the Hermitage Museum and the other half on the history of St. Petersburg.  St. Petersburg is number one on my list of cities I have yet to see.  Because it’s increasingly doubtful I’ll ever get there, I thought I should at least watch this film.  The film has some stunning nighttime views of the city.

The same Italian company produced a documentary on the Prado, narrated by Jeremy Irons.  Unfortunately, you’d need a documentary 10 times as long to even come close to doing justice to that collection. 

Fire of Love  (Canadian)  3.5  Two people who got far more out of life than I ever will.

The True Adventures of Raoul Walsh:  (US)  3.5  What a life!

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once   (US)  3.2  Fernando Pessoa once wrote a poem that can be translated as:

To feel everything in every way

To live everything from all sides 

To be the same thing in all ways possible at the same time 

To realize in oneself all humanity in all moments 

In one scattered, extravagant, complete and aloof moment.

I see why some people love this film; the directors clearly have talent.  But 2½ hours of almost non-stop fighting is just too much for me.  I’m too old for this sort of film.

Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache   (Nepal)  3.2    I have mixed feelings about this one.  Mark Lee provides some beautiful cinematography, but the director doesn’t seem to know how to draw in the viewer.

Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres.  (US)  3.1  Documentary about a Chinese-American writer for Rolling Stone magazine.  A very likable writer—and a so-so film.

Wood and Water  (Germany)  3.1  A film that draws you in, if you are in the right mood.  But I often felt like I’d seen the same sort of thing done better by other directors. The critics liked it a bit more than I did.

Mio on the Shore  (Japan)  3.0  I really wanted to like this film (and it had a few really nice images), but in the end the director wasn’t up to the task of creating the sort of film that he clearly intended to produce.  It wandered aimlessly from one sort of art film to another.

Older Films:

Playtime  (France, 1967, CC)   3.9  How to describe this one of a kind film?  It’s almost silent, apart from ambient background noise.  It’s color, but often without much color.  There’s no plot.  Imagine Buster Keaton doing a remake of Chaplin’s Modern Times, but with 70 mm widescreen in 1960s Paris. Alternatively, it might be the world’s only architectural comedy.  Whatever it is, it’s a treasure.  It MUST be seen on at least a relatively big screen—there’s so much going on in the margins.  It’s like a book where all the interest is in the footnotes.

Today, we are further away in time from Playtime than I was from Modern Times when I saw it around 1980.  And yet it seems much less “antique”.  Just another example of how mid-century modern is the eternal modern.

Man of the West  (US, 1958, CC)  3.8  When I read that Godard called this the best film of 1958, I thought he was trolling.  (Vertigo and Touch of Evil came out the same year.)  But this Anthony Mann western really is a masterpiece, full of scenes of visceral intensity.  It makes other westerns seem bland by comparison.

Midnight Run  (1988, US, CC)  3.8  People will say I’ve overrated this film, but it’s one of my favorite comedies. De Niro and Grodin are even better than I remember—the ultimate buddy film. 

Flowers of Shanghai  (1998, Taiwan, CC)  3.8  Second time I’ve seen this gorgeous Hou Hsiao-hsien film.  (Mark Lee was the cinematographer.) If you watched this, and then immediately watched a Hollywood drama, the latter film would seem absurdly overacted.   There seems to be some disagreement about whether the “flowers” were prostitutes. This makes me wonder how the flowers compare to Japanese geisha. And also why the West doesn’t seem to have anything comparable to either institution.

INLAND EMPIRE  (US, 2006)  3.8  That’s right, the title is all caps.  This film violates a basic rule of filmmaking (and storytelling).  You cannot have too many sources of confusion.  It’s OK to have uncertainty as to whether the protagonist is delusional or lucid.  You can have confusion as to whether the events are natural or supernatural.  You can have confusion as to whether you are watching a movie or a film within a film.  But you cannot have confusion on all of these points!

Lynch gets away with it by providing a greater number of engrossing scenes than almost any other film I’ve seen.  A master class in film technique.  And Laura Dern is spectacular.

Days of Being Wild  (1990, HK, CC)  3.8  The first of 7 consecutive masterpieces by Wong Kar-wai.  Christopher Doyle’s cinematography helped to usher in the golden age of Asian cinema.  Includes some excellent performances, especially by Leslie Cheung.

Jules and Jim  (1962, France, CC)  3.8  A classic of the French New wave.   

Early Summer  (Japan, 1951, CC)  3.8  Second time I’ve seen this one.  Don’t be fooled by the seeming simplicity and slow pace of Ozu’s films, there’s a lot more going on here than you might notice on first viewing.

Fires of the Plain  (Japan, 1959, CC)  3.8  I’ve always wondered why Japanese casualties in WWII battles were an order of magnitude higher than US casualties.  Now I know.  Probably the bleakest, most hopeless film I’ve ever seen.  War films should always show things from the losing side, as it makes it easier to see that every side loses in war.

Donald Ritchie said that today this sort of film could not be made in Japan (presumably due to rising nationalism.)  What a sad comment on the 21^st century.

Damnation  (Hungary, 1988, CC)  3.8   The 4K restoration was wonderful.  Rarely has ugliness looked so beautiful.  Regarded as Bela Tarr’s first masterpiece.

The Fire Within  (France, 1963, CC)  3.8  For a mediocrity like me, it can be disturbing to watch a great artist wrestle with the age-old question of “To be or not to be?”  If I hear someone say that the question is uninteresting or that the answer obvious, I’m inclined to think to myself, “If they don’t believe questions like that are worth pondering, then what makes them wish to live?”  I guess there are some things that I’ll never understand. Louis Malle directed.

The Sound of the Mountain  (Japan, 1954, CC)  3.7  I didn’t recognize that I’d read the novel (by Yasunari Kawabata) until about 15 minutes into the film.   Directed by Naruse and featuring Setsuko Hara.

Destry Rides Again (US, 1939, CC) 3.7 The film that made Jimmy Stewart a star and that re-launched Marlene Dietrich’s career. And the best cat fight you’ll ever see.

Hold Back the Dawn  (US, 1941, CC)  3.7  With so many great films in 1941, this one sort of gets overlooked.  I suppose that Green Card was based on this film, but this one is better.  Hard to believe that Olivia de Havilland died just two years ago, at age 104.

Air Doll  (Japan, 2009, CC)  3.7  When I first saw this film I didn’t know about the great cinematographer Mark Lee.  Now I’ll watch almost anything he films, in this case for a second time.  Underrated by critics, it’s one of Koreeda’s best.

Mon Oncle  (France, 1958, CC)  3.7  One word: plastics.  When this came out, it was a satire on mid-century modernism.  Now that period is ancient history, which makes it an entirely different film—perhaps even more charming than before.

The Thin Man  (US, 1934, CC)  3.6  The list of highly entertaining Hollywood films from the 1930s seems almost endless.  It was the decade where the “talkie” was perfected.

Paper Flowers  (India, 1959, CC)  3.6   Although now viewed as a masterpiece, Guru Dutt’s film was panned at the time.  After it flopped, studios were no longer willing to fund his pictures, and he died a few years later at age 39.  Ironically, the film is about a successful director (played by Dutt) who became an outcast after his last film flopped.  In places it reminded me a bit of 8 ½, a film made 4 years later.

It seems as though the supreme examples of art within any genre feature the artist creating the work itself in a sort of hall of mirrors regress.  Why does that theme bring out the best in an artist? Because it’s what they know best?   (Think of paintings like Las Meninas or The Art of Painting, or plays like Hamlet, or novels like In Search of Lost Time, etc.  Did Karl Knausgaard understand this on some level?)

House of Bamboo   (US/Japan, 1955, CC)  3.6  Very enjoyable (and underrated) Sam Fuller noir with Robert Stack and Robert Ryan.  Lots of good scenes, but the rooftop finale is especially impressive. Some stunning widescreen Technicolor cinematography.

Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam  (India, 1962, CC)  3.5  Oddly, Guru Dutt looks much younger than in his earlier films.  Unfortunately, the print I saw was in need of restoration. In retrospect, Pyaasu is probably his best film—I think I rated it too low in my previous write-up. His performance in that 1957 film was stunning.   Like Orson Welles, Dutt could play much older roles.

No Regrets for Our Youth  (Japan, 1946, CC)  3.5  One of the more powerful anti-fascist films of the post-war era.  This Kurosawa film came out in 1946, when for one brief shining moment, fascism had been discredited almost everywhere.  It was sad seeing the film in 2022, when authoritarian nationalism is again on the increase in many parts of the world. People never learn. 

The film starred Seksuko Hara, about which Wikipedia says:  “After seeing a Setsuko Hara film, the novelist Shūsaku Endō wrote: “We would sigh or let out a great breath from the depths of our hearts, for what we felt was precisely this: Can it be possible that there is such a woman in this world?””

Seasons  (France, 2015, CC)  3.5  The last 15,000 years in Western Europe from the perspective of animals.  For most of that time, humans were just another animal.  And then something changed.  Surprisingly enlightening to see things from a fresh perspective.

Party Girl  (US, 1958, CC)  3.4  I’d never heard of this Nicholas Ray film, but it’s fairly entertaining and attractive to look at.

After the Thin Man  (US, 1936, CC)  3.4 Almost as entertaining as the first one, but it runs a bit too long.

The Big Knife  (US, 1955, CC)  3.4  A sort of classic of its type.  My one reservation is Rod Steiger, whose acting is so over the top that it almost seems like camp.  Someone like Marlon Brando would have done much better.  Watching this film makes me wonder why Jack Palance wasn’t a big star.

Crosscurrents   (China, 2016)  3.4  Best to see this on a big screen, or a big OLED, as Mark Lee’s stunning nighttime cinematography is the prime attraction.  Otherwise the film is somewhat uneven, a sort of poor man’s Bi Gan film.

Blue Collar  (US, 1978, CC)  3.3  The film has a good opening scene showing factory work to a pounding blues beat. In reality, the UAW workers back then were better paid than what’s portrayed in the film. I had forgotten that Richard Pryor was a good actor.  Oh, and I cannot get enough of that late 1970s decadence.

Louis Kahn:  Silence and Light  (US, 1996)  3.3  When I took a couple architectural history classes back in the 1970s, my professor suggested that Louis Kahn was one of America’s four great architects.  That still seems correct, although now it might be five.  The Kimball in Fort Worth is one of my favorite buildings.

Mies  (US, 1986)  3.3  A documentary that doesn’t insult one’s intelligence.  Has interviews with a wide range of architects and writers, with some very sharp observations about both Mies van der Rohe and his influence on the international style.

Breaking the Maya Code  (US, 2008)  3.3  The first half of this over long documentary is a bit dull, but if you are patient the film provides some highly satisfactory puzzle solving in the second half. 

Eames: The Architect and the Painter (US, 2011)  3.2  Starts out very strong, as they did produce an important body of work.  But the film runs out of energy after a while, with too much on their personalities and too little photography of their important creations. 

Flower Drum Song  (US, 1961, CC)  3.2  Very colorful musical, noteworthy primarily for being the first Hollywood film about Asian Americans (and there wouldn’t be another until 1993.)   Modern viewers will cringe at a few scenes, but it’s still an enjoyable way of absorbing a bit of history—at least if you like old musicals.

Five Graves to Cairo  (US, 1943, CC)  3.2  This entertaining early Billy Wilder film has some decent acting and dialogue, as well as a plot that holds one’s interest.

Out of the Fog (US, 1941, CC)  3.2  Ida Lupino stars in this Raoul Walsh film.

They Drive by Night  (US, 1940, CC)  3.2 Interesting look at the trucking industry when it was a relatively new growth industry.  Raoul Walsh directed this film featuring Bogart and Ida Lupino.

The Revenant   (US/Canada, 2015)  3.2   I wish I could rate this higher, as it has some very impressive scenes.  Unfortunately, this over long film begins to drag after the powerful opening scenes. After the 4^th or 5^th time the protagonist survives an impossible ordeal, the film begins to fell more like spectacle than drama, an increasingly common problem with modern action movies. Please make it feel real.  Less is more.

The Man I Love  (US, 1946, CC)  3.2  Ida Lupino stars in this Raoul Walsh directed noir.  Nothing special, but captures the feel of the immediate postwar period.  My favorite line was when Lupino’s lover mentioned that the night before he’d attempted to travel from Long Beach up to Pasadena—by trolley!!   (And gave up half way.)

Piccadilly  (UK, 1929, CC)  3.1  Anna May Wong’s first starring role, and she’s the main reason to watch this film.  There’s an interesting scene where a black man and a white woman are kicked out of a pub for dancing together.  Not sure what British audiences would have made of the scene back in 1929.

Leave Her to Heaven  (US, 1945, CC)  3.1  A wildly implausible melodrama that is nonetheless quite watchable due to the rich Technicolor photography.

Ziegfeld Girl  (US, 1941, CC)  3.1   This would have been very impressive when it first came out.  But the sentimentality hasn’t aged well and the spectacular Broadway numbers no longer seem so spectacular.  Still, there’s Jimmy Stewart, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, and the legendary Hedy Lamarr.  That’s more than enough to make it watchable.

State of Play  (US, 2009, CC)  3.1 Solid entertainment as long as you put your brain on hold, as the conspiracy theory laden plot is a bit over the top and the dialogue is full of clichés.

Action in the North Atlantic  (US, 1943, CC)  3.1  As long as the characters are not speaking, it’s a pretty good war film with some very impressive sequences.  Unfortunately, it was made in 1943, a time when the government wasn’t looking for nuance or complexity.  Fans of the Jones Act will love this rousing defense of the US Merchant Marines.

The River’s Edge  (US, 1957, CC)  3.1  These color noirs from the 50s are all sort of mesmerizing to watch, even though they are not great films by any normal criterion.

A Kiss Before Dying  (US, 1956, CC)  3.0  Another color noir, this one starring a very young Robert Wagner.  Given the plot, it’s hard to watch this film without thinking about Natalie Wood.

The Hard Way  (US, 1943, CC)  3.0  Fans of melodrama might like this Ida Lupino film more than I did.  I smiled when one young lady exclaimed “Are you trying to kill me” to a therapist, who responded something to the effect “You are much too young to die; the life expectancy of women is 62.”

The Counselor (US, 2013) 3.0   Ridley Scott’s a good director, but his skills don’t mesh with Cormac McCarthy’s screenplay.  There are jarring changes in tone, as the film swings wildly between Basic Instinct style camp and serious tragedy.  Lots of good parts, but I didn’t know what to make of it.

Arabesque  (US, 1966, CC)  3.0  A follow-up to Charade, but not as good.  As with the Bond films, the plots for these Stanley Donen thrillers became increasing ridiculous during the 1960s.  And Gregory Peck is no Cary Grant.  It does have Sophia Loren, and she’s pretty much the only reason to watch it.

Experiment in Terror  (US, 1962, CC)  3.0  This experiment in filmmaking wasn’t quite successful.  Really nice cinematography in the opening sequence, but after that the acting and directing was pretty bland.  Blake Edwards is a decent director, but noirs don’t seem to be his forte.

The Debut  (Netherlands, 1977, CC)  3.0  A love story (directed by a woman) featuring a 41-year old man and a 14-year old girl. Not a particularly good film, but it may be of interest to younger viewers who want to take a peek into a world that is long gone—the decadent late 1970s.  Yes, there really was a time when not everything was viewed through the lens of victims and villains.

Gates of Heaven  (US, 1978, CC)  3.0  Errol Morris’s first film got very good reviews, but 44 years later it doesn’t quite hold up.

Two For the Road  (US/France, 1967, CC)  2.9  Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn don’t have much chemistry and the screenplay is uninspired.  However it does capture the feel of 1967.

The Cool Lakes of Death   (Netherlands, 1982, CC)  2.9  Not a film to see when you are older, and have seen the same ideas in a number of previous films.  It was a chore to sit through more than 2 hours of degradation, as an upper class woman gradually falls into the gutter.

Accused of Murder   (US, 1956, CC)  2.8  Despite the widescreen color format (with some weirdly distorted wide angle shots), this is definitely a B noir.  Yet even with clumsy acting and dialogue, it’s passable entertainment.  Fortunately, it came in at under 75 minutes, leaving time for an episode of Better Call Saul.

Tales of a Golden Geisha  (Japan, 1990, CC)  2.8  During the late 1980s, Itami seemed to gradually lose his touch.  This is his weakest film.

Foreign Intrigue  (US, 1956, CC)  2.4   The film is as bland as its generic title.  Robert Mitchum looks bored by it all.

Year of the Dragon  (US, 1985, CC)  2.0  At times, it’s so bad that it almost becomes a campy success.  But the screenplay by Oliver Stone and Michael Cimino takes itself much too seriously to be a camp classic.  Add in some wildly out of place Mahler and perhaps the most annoying performance in cinema history by Mickey Rourke.   It makes me wonder if I overrated The Deer Hunter.

Father  (Japan, 1988, CC)  1.6  Japan produces some really good films, but there’s also a wide variance.  The Criterion Channel employee that added this “comedy” should be fired.