The other day I watched Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “Millenium Mambo.” The cinematography, washes of blue and orange glow in nightlife settings, immediately caught my eye. It felt like one of those moody, dead-end world type films, and I love a dead-end world.
What I didn’t expect was to accidentally watch a horror movie, though.
"Millennium Mambo" follows Vicky, a woman in her early 20s, and her life — or lack of one. It’s narrated by Vicky ten years in the future, looking back on her younger self. She drinks, parties, drifts between places and men, mostly because there’s nothing else anchoring her. It’s very real, and very scary.
There’s one scene I can’t stop replaying: Vicky goes out partying, then suddenly, we cut to a grainy CCTV shot of an apartment hallway. She’s lying face-down on the floor, completely still. For some time, nothing happens. Then, she slowly, painfully begins dragging herself toward a door, struggling to unlock it. The stillness of the frame, the silence, the helplessness…is gutting. No dramatic music, no screaming, just this low point that somehow feels even lower than everything else before it.
"Millennium Mambo" is about longing for direction. And as someone in their early 20s, that alone is enough to make it a horror movie. Not in the jump-scare kind of way, but in the quiet, creeping way of realizing you don’t know where you’re going. Or worse — that you might not even be moving at all.
“MORE” - PULP ➔
It is a monumental day for the horny and sexually repressed — because my favorite band of all time, Pulp, just released a new album after 23 years.
This is Pulp at their most mature, but maybe more than that, at their most tender. Of course it wouldn’t be a Pulp album without a horny track or two, but what caught me off guard were the genuinely heartfelt songs. So many of them feel gentle yet immediate, soft but unwavering in their message. More than once I caught myself saying “AWWW” out loud. The lyrics are just that sweet — which shouldn’t be surprising, really, because Pulp lyrics never miss.
My early standouts are:
These lines from the latter actually killed me:
“Please stay in touch with me
In this contactless society
Anywhere that you may be
The Northern Star leads back to me”
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ - This album is fabulous. No notes.