Not all reckless abandons are created equal. Some happen to be quiet incidentally cliché in their very nature. Take the preemptive isolating focus that predetermines Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014); or just the very concept of Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006). My taste in the study of hubris falls more closely with Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), Risi’s Il Sorpasso (1962), Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959); where drive becomes second to the sheer addiction to seeing something through, like trying to scratch an itch until it stops itching– knowing full well it will absolutely never stop itching. Where the game is not the chase but the negotiation of a new finish line every day. So here are five films; on misplaced ambition.

Eephus (Carson Lund)

Carson Lund’s quiet drama about a recreational baseball league playing their last game at a stadium slated for demolition to make way for a new school is the token sports film on this list for a few reasons. One of them of course being that it felt unnecessarily contrarian not to have any sports movies at all. The other reason being that as someone who was not born in this country and only barely knows the rules of America’s favorite pastime, Eephus made me realize that baseball is the most cinematic sport because it is an almost direct metaphor for life. The sun is coming down and you’re losing light, you already lost your starting pitcher to an ill-forgotten christening, and the very ground you stand on is at stake. So what do you do? You keep playing until the end.

Viva Riva! (Djo Munga)

Riva is a petty thief who upon returning to Kinshasa decides immediately to start pursuing the girlfriend of a prominent gangster, unencumbered by fear as he rides the high of stealing a truck load of gasoline from much scarier Angolan gangsters. Beyond being an incredibly sexy film, there is a scene where Riva gives head through the bars of a wrought iron gate, Munga’s direction is thrilling and vibrant. Every single character’s motivation is coated in greed not because they are not in a dire need but because it precludes their sense of judgment detrimentally. The deepness of the need in fact, is what guides their greed. Also a good indication that the Black lesbian cop phenomenon is not exclusive to American media. Still not sure what’s going on there.

Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World (Radu Jude)

The peripheral narrative structure of Radu Jude’s comedy is in itself a game of hubris; a company is recruiting former workers to essentially blame themselves for their own injuries on camera and putting the footage into safety instructional videos for new employees. The production assistant at the center of this enterprise is addicted to using a specific filter to make TikToks as an Andrew Tate-esque character. Jude manages a satirical collage of labor against the background of corporate humanism and being a person with a phone in a perfectly balanced picture. This is a restless film in that its characters are tired and its form is frenetic. There are sporadic inclusions of footage from an old film, repetitive changes in aspect ratios, and a lot of loud traffic noises. The world of the film feels suffocating and seemingly with no end in sight for anyone involved. No sleep, just grind.

Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a gay man in need of good fortune will lie. Shirley Clarke’s documentary about a man supposedly named Jason Holliday is 105 minutes of him getting drunk and lying in an unbelievably detached way. And you can tell when he ventures into the truth that it is arresting even for him. The entire thing was filmed over the course of twelve consecutive hours and Jason is an ascetic encapsulation of the good ole “fake it ‘till you make it.” Except he never quite made anything. The grandeur was a cheap fabrication reduced to nothing more than extraneous anecdotes full of names that all sound passé. Faced with a camera and a spout of verbal attacks from the people pointing it, it’s safer to just hold on to the lie.

Red Rooms (Pascal Plante)

I have been weirdly very into Canadian, and particularly French-Canadian cinema as of late. Shoutout to Lumiere Cinema at The Music Hall for being the only place in Los Angeles that played Who By Fire (2024). Red Rooms was one I unfortunately missed in theaters. Let me first say, I think it’s great that someone made a movie to give red-pilled guys hope that women who are hot by profession frequent their weird online spaces. I find it is difficult to describe this film without sounding slightly crazy. A fashion model in Montreal gets caught up in the media circus of a gruesome triple murder and begins attending the trial which leads to increasingly strange choices on her part. The film is less driven by plot and more by an even descent into a psychosis induced by a completely unexplained and unmotivated curiosity. For the love of the game baby!

I often think about the scene in The Sopranos where Tony says “I have a semester and a half of college, so I understand Freud.” If you believe in the stuff, the expanse of the death drive makes human behavior impossibly fascinating. The cinematic mission of moralizing that, of sanitizing perspective into an objective is bad storytelling. Actually, that propensity is entirely skipping over the storytelling part to instead jump start crystalizing the myth. There is a difference between a myth and a story. I happen to be suspicious of people solely intent on creating the former.