A.V. Club frowns on use of the first person in reviews, so I didn't mention it above, but I lived in Bushwick for many years, starting in 1998 before the neighborhood had really started to gentrify. (I was the only white person on my block—Hart St. between Irving and Knickerbocker.) And I used to jokingly refer to it…

IT WILL NEVER END YOU WILL BE OPPRESSED BY OFFHAND OBSERVATIONS SUCH AS THESE UNTIL THE END OF TIME MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The old man's sad existence was illuminated specifically by the fall of the South Tower, in which 630 people are estimated to have died. But thanks for your polite and thoughtful attempt to point out what you mistakenly thought was an error.

Yeah, I don't know how that happened. It's not that I missed it—I just somehow forgot, despite writing the review only a couple of days after seeing the film. Weird. Anyway, I'll fix it. Thanks.

I made note of that when I first saw the film at Toronto last year and then somehow completely forgot it when writing that sentence. (Probably because I was pleased to have a word other than "camera" available.)

I certainly agree that those things happened in the movie, so that's not our point of contention. What I don't buy is that they'd fall in love with each other based on those things. Basically, I don't understand why this becomes a love story. The whole Taki's date thing, in particular—again, as I note above in the…

It feels mostly scripted to me. Key probably improvised a bit, but for him I'll allow it.

You're right, I phrased that poorly. It's more like he's growing attached to the idea of her daughter. Effect on his maturity level is the same, though.

If you think 'If you think tracking shots are good, you don't get cinema' was my argument, you don't get my argument.

As I noted, the messages that we see aren't remotely personal—it's not an epistolary courtship out of Jane Austen or something. They leave each other instructions. So it's a question of whether you believe that you can fall in love with someone you've never met based on how that person's friends and family treat you…

And/or everything that Adrien tells the family is a lie.

No, it does not. (I did not think "Frantz" is the German word for France.)

Thanks, (just about) everyone. Really touched by all the kind words. (And I assume these comments were joking, but just to be clear: I'm not depressed or anything, much less suicidal. Just a wee bit maudlin, as one gets whenever something long-term comes to an end.)

For the immediate future, yeah. Though of course I'm still writing at least a little something about every film on Letterboxd (where I'm currently behind on Black Girl and Raise the Red Lantern).

No, he frequented the main rec.arts.movies groups. His real-life interests are exactly the same as Vern's interests. He just suddenly created that persona one day in I think 1999 (and stopped posting as himself shortly thereafter). And then created the website, which is how my detective friend worked out his identity…

I am not Vern. (And I know who Vern is, thanks to some remarkable sleuthing by a friend of mine. You wouldn't recognize his real name, unless maybe you hung out on the Usenet movie groups in the late '90s.)

Yes. Christmas 2015, I think.

I'll still be writing film reviews on a regular basis.

I definitely read the ending as much more conventionally happy than you do (though I did forget to mention the weirdness of setting up a romance between two kids who will now essentially live as siblings). Upon reflection, though, I think my main problem is that the film strives to acknowledge reality in what's still…

I'm informed by the publicist that the subtitled version will also be opening theatrically this week (though it was the dubbed version they provided to me, for some reason). Best to check with your local theater and make sure.