Public library in Portland, film and music desk, which mostly means I fix the disc player. I like films where somebody has a job. I take notes on index cards out of habit. I have recommended Low Tide to eleven people and counting.
A pilot about a woman going back to coaching in the town she left, and it does not once make a joke at the town's expense. That is the whole reason I trust it. The scene at the gym supply closet, where she counts the balls and finds there are eleven, told me more about that school's budget than any dialogue could have. I want six more of these.
Two sisters, one cliff, an afternoon that neither of them wants to end. There is a long stretch with no dialogue where the younger one keeps trying to swim out further than she should and the older one keeps not stopping her. I thought about my own sister for three days afterwards.
A film where somebody has a job, which is my favourite kind. The mother works nights at a distribution centre and the film knows what that does to a house. Nobody speaks in the mornings. I have never seen that portrayed correctly before and I grew up in a house exactly like it.
Seventeen minutes of the hours between two and five in the morning at the edge of a town, and the coyotes are barely in it. Mostly it is sprinklers, a paper route, a woman doing tai chi in a car park. I have put this on for people who tell me they do not like documentaries. It works every time.
I put this on for a teenager who was waiting for his mother at the desk and he watched the whole thing standing up with his coat on. That is the review. It is very funny and it is kind to everybody in it, including the manager, which almost never happens in a film about a bad job.
Thirteen minutes about a municipal pool closing for the season and the two lifeguards who have to drain it. It is very funny and slightly sad in the way that jobs are. The bit with the lost property box killed me. Somebody left a single flipper. One.
Eight minutes of a man walking a beach at low tide collecting things that people lost. He names them. That is the film. By the fifth object I was crying and I could not have told you why, and on the second watch I still could not. I have recommended it to eleven people. Nine have come back to say thank you.
