Learn by fire.

The Sting belongs in the pantheon of films I'm deeply embarrassed to have not watched earlier. Not just because it's a great film — and it is — but because it is so incredibly my shit that I feel retroactively spurned for not having watched it sooner.

The single most pleasurable movie of all time is Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven, and it achieves that status in order to try to convey what makes filmmaking uniquely magical: a sense of shared enchantment between the audience and the director, and the ecstasy of the latter pulling a heist on the former -- not (just) trickery, but the successful creation of an ornate and difficult craft. (See also The Prestige.)

Last year, I watched The War Room, the documentary following Bill Clinton's first campaign — a film I am remiss for having never written about, because it was captivating, satisfying, and illuminating. And whether for good reasons or bad, it punctured most of my belief that the political moment we currently find ourselves in is novel in any grand sense. (See also Days of Rage, which covered the seventies; if you're ever worried about civil unrest, it's the one to reach for.)

June, like any month in which I neither write very much nor read very much, feels already cryptographic in retrospect.