Four selections from the past month. A film that brought me back to cinema, a graphic memoir about growing up between worlds, music for the colder weather, and a Brooklyn shop that makes a case for personal taste.
Film
Moonlight
(2016)
Barry Jenkins · Director
Before college, I watched hundreds of films. Cinema was a considerable part of my life, something I devoted hours to without giving it much thought. But somewhere along the way, that part of my life slipped away. I stopped watching films with the same curiosity and regularity, and for a few years, I hardly watched them at all.
I can't quite remember what compelled me to watch Moonlight, but I suspect I was missing something artful in my life, even if I didn't know it at the time.
What I remember most is how it made me feel. I was struck by the beauty of its images, the sparseness of its dialogue, and the extraordinary tenderness with which Barry Jenkins approaches his characters. There is a lyricism to Moonlight that I hadn't really encountered before. The soundtrack, the colors, the quiet moments between conversations: everything seemed to exist in some kind of harmony. It was perhaps the first time I understood that a film could possess something resembling a melody.
I've watched a great many films in the years since, and I still struggle to think of many that are as consistently beautiful to look at. But what makes Moonlight so affecting isn't simply its visual elegance. It's the way Jenkins allows the smallest gestures to carry enormous emotional weight, often without a word being spoken.
Ten years on, Moonlight has secured its place in the history of American cinema. Yet I find myself thinking less about its place in film history than its place in my own.
There are certain films that shape your relationship with cinema, sometimes without you realizing it. Moonlight brought me back to a part of myself I had neglected, and rekindled a love of watching films that has stayed with me ever since.
Book
Persepolis & Persepolis 2
(2000–2001)
Marjane Satrapi · Author
I've developed a particular affection for graphic memoirs, especially those that use the apparent simplicity of illustration to explore complicated lives. Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis reminded me of much of what I loved about Alison Bechdel's Fun Home.
There is something wonderful about experiencing childhood through drawings. Satrapi's black-and-white illustrations have an almost childlike directness, making the political and historical circumstances of her upbringing in Iran all the more striking. Enormous events are understood through small, ordinary moments: conversations with her parents, school, friendships, and the peculiar misunderstandings of being young.
I enjoyed the first volume enormously, but found Persepolis 2 even better. As Satrapi grows older and leaves Iran for Europe, the memoir becomes a moving reflection on belonging, independence, and the uncomfortable distance between who we are and where we come from.
Both volumes are funny, affecting, and immensely enjoyable. They reminded me how well the graphic form can capture memory, particularly the strange mixture of innocence and understanding with which we look back on our younger selves.
Album
Dopamine Chamber
(2026)
Fontaines D.C. · Artist
I've had Fontaines D.C. on repeat lately, which feels appropriate for the arrival of colder weather. Their music has always had a certain autumnal quality to me, although I suspect that has as much to do with when I tend to listen to them as anything inherent in the songs themselves.
I absolutely loved Romance when it was released. It felt like a band becoming more comfortable with the possibilities of its own sound, moving beyond the sharper edges of their earlier records without abandoning what made them interesting. Dopamine Chamber feels like another step in that direction.
What I particularly enjoy is the melodic quality of the music. There is something episodic about it, as though each song is working through a different mood while remaining part of a larger whole. The arrangements feel considered, the melodies have room to develop, and the music seems to reward repeated listening.
It's become something of a soundtrack to October for me. Walking around New York as the evenings grow darker and the temperature begins to fall, I've found myself returning to it again and again. Embrace the chill, I suppose.
Fontaines D.C. are hardly a band in need of discovery at this point. They've become enormously popular, and I'm certainly not offering some overlooked musical curiosity here. But I do think there's a difference between hearing an album and spending time with it.
I've enjoyed doing the latter with this one. If you've already given it a listen, perhaps it's worth another, preferably on a long walk with nowhere particularly urgent to be.
Place
Tati Shop
Greenpoint · Brooklyn
I walked into Tati Shop in Greenpoint and immediately thought that, if I were ever to open a store of my own, it would probably look something like this. That is, assuming I didn't have to concern myself too much with making money.
DVDs, coffee-table books, retro football shirts, and an assortment of other objects that seem to have been selected simply because somebody finds them interesting. It's a rather specific collection of things, but one that makes perfect sense to me.
I've always enjoyed shops that feel like extensions of someone's personality. There is a certain voyeuristic pleasure in looking through another person's tastes, particularly when those tastes have been made physical. You can learn quite a lot about someone from the films they collect, the books they display, or the football shirts they choose to hang on a wall.
Perhaps that's part of what appeals to me about Tati Shop. It doesn't feel especially concerned with offering something for everyone. Instead, it presents a particular sensibility and invites you to spend some time with it.
I'm increasingly drawn to these sorts of spaces, particularly as so much of our cultural life becomes less tangible. There's something satisfying about a place where interests are allowed to take up actual space, where a film exists as a DVD on a shelf rather than another thumbnail on a screen.
I like the idea that the things we collect can serve as small expressions of who we are, or at least who we'd like to be. Tati Shop seems to understand that instinct rather well.
Worth stopping by if you're in Greenpoint.
