Was watching "Ballerina" the other day just for some whatever slop "content" (didn't finish it). I have watched some of the John Wick movies but the brutality of the "action" never did anything for me, even as a huge fan of 80s and 90s action blockbusters, and this was just more of the same except with an even more physically frail protagonist? Yeah, whatever. Somehow, I still got something really valuable out of the experience. In one scene they show the outside of an old movie theatre with the title "Andrei Rublev dir. Tarkovsky" on the marquee. I was vaguely aware of both Tarkovsky and Rublev, so I was like, fuck it, I'll watch that instead, and it was an amazing decision. Art cannot exist solely to generate profit. And that's not to promote authoritarian soviet-style socialism either; they banned and then heavily censored the film. Without the immediately necessary impetus of protesting the repressive state apparatus, art (and religion for that matter) cannot truly exist, and without them generating that spiritual drive, people lose faith in institutions writ large. Have a lot more to say on this and related matters but this is already a rant in a void that could go in a million different directions, and my ADHD can't be bothered