Doing this thing this way - seeing more films in a week than most people see in five years - has value, serious value, as well as flaws. I always have "the moment" in the first few days where I am reminded of this once again; it happened tonight. It's something about peeling back the layers a bit, exposing the raw skin, being as thoroughly "in it" as you can be for a short space of time. I got so fucked around by movies tonight I was literally stumbling in the street outside the Ryerson as we waited to go in to the Midnight. I got completely enthralled and fulfilled by Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge. As with its predecessor, Cafe Lumiere, any rational assessment would say that I, particularly, would hate this movie. Yet it was the first film I've seen this year that's going on the list - the first really great one. I would have turned around and seen it again on the spot. After that Matty Price and I detoured to Shoot 'Em Up and then I had all kinds of time to rush Control, so I did; I ended up running into Tut in line and hanging out with her for a while, and then into the movie, which started hella late due to Star In Attendance issues. And then the movie handed me my ass. There are just movies that, for whatever reason, make me feel that I am going to be this lonely for the rest of my life and that there isn't a single fucking thing I can do about it. It's rarely due to any obvious connection; I mean, I don't give a toss about Ian Curtis and never have. But I was within a hair's breadth of losing it by the end of this movie: the skin was peeled back, I was feeling it right on the bone, right on the raw tissue. And I pretty much just wanted to go home, crawl into a hole, and die. But I pushed on to the Midnight and I'm glad I did, because Frontière(s) basically handed me my ass again - but in a far better way for a guy that saw six movies today. Frontière(s) is so balls-to-the-wall gruesome that it basically wrung me out like a useless old wash rag. Stunningly, surprisingly, a way better film than I had any business expecting, particularly in its anti-torture-porn torture-pornness as regards the women. And by the end, I felt like I'd bled every single powerful emotion in the universe out of every pore in my body. And I came home clean.