Predator: Killer of Killers (Dan Trachtenberg, 2025): 4/5
One of my favorites of a lousy half-year. Excellent action filmmaking á la classic Spielberg.
* F1 The Movie (Joseph Kosinski, 2025): 4/5
Jack wanted to see it, and I was concerned that it would be talky in a normal, adult way. But no. It’s basically a dozen races that are exciting in a traditional action-movie, pure-cinema way. Brad Pitt continues to perfect doing more with less.
Friendship (Andrew DeYoung, 2025): 3.5/5
Comedy as horror. Jack can take any violence or suspense in a movie, but if a character is embarrassed or humiliated, say…in front of his class or friends, he literally can’t watch it. During this movie, I felt the same way—perhaps because this was me in junior high. Michelle, you are certainly onto something with the Marvel angle. We are just all babies, wanting our dose of superhero Mayors with wigs.
Final Destination Bloodlines (Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein): 3/5
Horror as comedy. The (pretty great) first 20 minutes sets up that this movie doesn’t give a fuck. It will kill anyone at any time. Afterwards they set up quite a lot of lifeless plot—and we have not exactly been given instructions to care. Like Starship Troopers, this movie keeps building eye-rolling dramas up and … knocking ‘em down.
Clown in a Cornfield (Eli Craig, 2025): 3/5
A Gen Z take on Scream (non-supernatural murder mystery), with a much different culprit. I, for one, feel the frustration that this movie is violently expressing—where the olds are sitting in their positions of power and the rest of us just have to, I guess, fuck off.
* The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, 2025): 2/5
I know you’re going to find this a familiar feeling, but… this just didn’t click for me. I found it cold, insincere, grating and just not funny. Cool production design tho!
* Lilo and Stitch (Dean Fleischer Camp, 2025): 2/5
Possibly because he doesn’t look very good, the filmmakers rarely just rest the camera on Stitch and let him do his thing. Instead, he skitters around, knocking stuff over as if desperately trying to prove he exists in the real world. It’s tragic that this was Camp’s follow-up to the magical Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.
* How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlois, 2025): 3/5
I liked the original a lot, and that’s basically exactly what you get here. A low bar, but after Lilo and Stitch, this seems like an accomplishment.
* Elio (Domee Shi, Madeline Sharafian, Adrian Molina, 2025): 3/5
Inventive, colorful and entertaining. Jack said he didn’t like it, but I suspect that’s because sadness and loneliness so thoroughly underly the drama.
Mountainhead (Jesse Armstrong, 2025): 3/5
A venomous take on tech bro amorality and dick-swinging. Funny, true and glib.
The Code (Eugene Kotlyarenko, 2025): 1/5
Young people looking at screens x1000 (plus COVID).
Hi Diddle Diddle (Andrew L. Stone, 1943): 3/5
An amiable gag-a-minute war-time farce, with several misunderstandings and scams going at the same time.
The Taste of Things (Trần Anh Hùng, 2023): 3.5/5
An almost drama-free process film about making art and the power of a collaborator—as exquisitely beautiful as an 18th-century still life, and just as overflowing with dead animals.
The Battle of Chile, Parts 1-3, 4h23m (Patricio Guzmán, 1975): 3/5
A traditional documentary in everything but it’s length and its timeliness (released just two years after the coup it analyzes). One thinks of Latin American revolutions (like Cuba) as the poor rising up to overthrow the rich and powerful. Here (as I’m sure you know but I hadn’t really groked before) the script is flipped. The Socialist president, Allende, has been legally elected twice (!) and it’s the bourgeoisie (backed by the U.S.) who rebel and take over the government by force. #Allendesuicide
Nostalgia for the Light, rw (Patricio Guzmán, 2010): 4/5
A big-brained, arty and heartfelt film about the way we look (and fail to look) at the past. Perfect companion piece to The Battle of Chile, by an older man.
The Hour of The Furnaces, 4h20m (Octavio Getino, Fernando E. Solanas, 1968): 3/5
Begins as an examination of “neo-colonialization” in Argentina—meaning that forces from outside of the country own almost all of the industry and access to natural resources, taking all wealth out of the country and keeping the people poor. Then tells the story of Argentina’s democratically elected Socialist leader (Juan Perón) overthrown because he attempted to do something about this (nationalization of industries and factories, etc). Ends with a call for an armed uprising in Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, and Guatemala—an “epic struggle for all of Latin America,” akin to Vietnam. Stylistically, it’s mostly interviews with people from all levels of society, some passages of exciting montage, and lots of on-screen text. This—and the fact that that the directors took the film around Argentina to screen at various union meetings, village halls and other community spaces as a way to raise awareness of the causes of injustice—must have made Godard apoplectically jealous.
Subarnarekha (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960): 3.5/5
Told in multiple chapters or movements, with leaps forward in time—and with the characters being affected by the events of the drama and changing. I always like that: like a novel, or as the title would have it, a river. After Ghatak’s The Cloud-Capped Star, I was concerned this would be more misery porn, but instead this is a lovely star-crossed romance with consequences. Very free and expressive camerawork and music. #suicide
The Age of Earth (Glauber Rocha, 1980): 1.5/5
I don’t begrudge any drama students who want to put on crazy costumes and dance around and chant ritualistically, waving sticks wrapped in red ribbons and shouting poetic revolutionary statements and nonsense—possibly obliquely referencing past events or literatures. Do it for two and a half hours! Or in the case of Out 1, do it for eight hours for all I care. Just don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s creating a new and essential cinematic form.
Throw Down (Johnnie To, 2004): 2.5/5
Bizarre premise and tone. For much of this semi-comic movie, it feels like a melodramatic gangster flick. But eventually we realize they are not fighting about money but about who is the best judo fighter(!?). All they want is the honor of challenging and fighting the best. One of the judo dudes has fallen from the straight path through gambling and drink. To seek redemption, he and another judo guy must spar a lot, which consists of rolling around on the ground, wrapping one’s legs around the other sweaty person, and making grunts of exertion—until finally falling to the mat in detumescent satisfaction.
Green Fish (Lee Chang-dong, 1997): 3/5
Guy gets out of the army and falls in with a gangster, also falling in love with the gangster’s girlfriend. These are cliches, but Lee keeps the proceedings on edge with unpredictable rhythms and stabs of violence.
Peppermint Candy (Lee Chang-dong, 1999): 3.5/5
Digs back, back, back into our protagonist’s life, through small degradations, missteps, and heart-closings—to learn how he came to behave as he does in the opening scene. A tremendous performance, as he becomes increasingly young, unmarked, and innocent.
Notes Towards an African Orestes, 65m (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970): 2/5
Pasolini describes the plot of Euripides’ play over footage from his vacation across Africa, while musing aloud about connections between the play and what he sees as a rising Africa, newly throwing off colonialism and embracing democracy (and how did that go?). To their credit, the actual Africans he talks to seem confused about the project and dubious about Pasolini’s naïve projections onto the African people. A film that surely launched a thousand dissertations.
The impossible Voyage (Georges Méliès, 1904): 3.5/5
Amazing that the template for the colorful, effects-heavy sci-fi blockbuster is established in 1904. Emotional engagement is secondary to the eye-tricking technology (which here is pretty great).
El Mumia/ The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969): 3/5
Called by some the best Egyptian movie, this in many ways is a mummy movie. There are ancient tombs (real ones, not sets), graverobbers, curses, murder, and music that invokes dread. All very authentic and in a chillingly still style. Safe to say the ancient dead haunt these people.
Trás-os-Montes (Margarida Cordeiro , António Reis): 3.5/5
A dreamy portrait of a village and its inhabitants. Stories, music and dances, weaving, rolling hills and fields, the milling of flour, sheep and donkeys, childbirth, and the introduction of disruptive technologies such as a phonograph and a toy ball. Also examines politics (a voice expressing a feeling of isolation from the capital and powerlessness), sociology (a voice that expressing that the villagers intermarry and ask people in other families to be godfathers, etc., until the whole village mourns when a tragedy happens), plus, I think, actual dreams and other reveries.
A Bundle a Minute, 6m (Harmony Korine, 1991): 3/5
Korine’s student film. A comic monologue with skits. Edgy but traditionally funny. Available on YouTube.
The Hedonists, 26m (Jia Zhangke, 2016): 3/5
Jia gets a new drone camera and tests it out with the short tale that contrasts old traditions and new realities, as is his wont.
Revive, 18m (Jia Zhangke, 2017): 3/5
As in The World, we have a family drama set in a milieu rich in metaphoric resonance (here an old palace where our protagonist performs in recreated scenes of drama for tourists. Her standard melodrama of wanting a (newly permitted) second child is, in this way, contrasted the fate of a possibility former self from centuries before. Jia’s contribution to the omnibus film Where has the Time Gone.
Surface Tension, 10m (Hollis Frampton, 1968): 3.5/5
Quite a lot of ideas in 10m. A high-speed walk through New York City is enjoyable and influential, as today’s movie editing speeds up. Brilliant curlicue, Golden Ratio-type narrative in last three minutes, where the film’s third part tells a new story with three parts.
Process Red, 4m (Hollis Frampton, 1966): 3/5
Carrots and Peas, 6m (Hollis Frampton, 1969): 3/5
Julien Duvivier Film Fest
Based on these films and the three from last month, I would say that Duvivier’s ample talents peaked at the dawn of sound. His silent films are all excellent, and his early sound films are remarkable for their unusual protagonists, stories and storytelling. Mostly diminishing returns as the years go on (Pepe Le Moko aside).
La Divine Croisière / The Divine Voyage (Julien Duvivier, 1929): 3/5
A tale of shipwrecked sailors and the community that despairingly awaits their return. Outdoor adventure under crystal clear skies, some mild rioting involving tearing down curtains and fire, plus mystic religious ecstasy in the tradition of Ordet. Several moving sequences feature a series of faces, akin to those sequences in Red River.
David Golder (Julien Duvivier, 1931): 3.5/5
A portrait of a longtime successful Jewish businessman overturning his life as he realizes his wife and daughter are just spending his money. An unusual and unpredictable narrative filled with visual invention, rich characters, empathy all around. Hints of Billy Murray in Rushmore, and I saw Wes Anderson cite this film as an influence on The Phoenician Scheme. it’s easy to see that WS admires and emulates Duvivier’s propensity to take everything with a light and humorous touch, even when dealing with sad characters and situations. Both moods are there. #suicide
Poil de Carotte (Julien Duvivier, 1932): 3.5/5
The main character is a (presumably red-headed), spirited boy, always in a good mood but dealing with people who make his life difficult, especially his comically horrible mother. I like how lightly it takes the sadness of our young protagonist (maybe 10 years old) lightly, while still taking it seriously. #suicide
They Were Five / La Belle Equipe (Julien Duvivier, 1936): 3/5
Jean Gabin is one of five friends who win the lottery and decide to open a restaurant and dance hall in the country, beside a lazy river. Like Poil de Carotte, this is remarkable for its sense of joy (until it isn’t).
Pepe Le Moko, rw (Julien Duvivier, 1937): 4.5/5
Shot with magic lenses that distort and rarify the images in a completely unique way, and the characters on both sides of the conflict are complex. A love letter to Paris from the Casbah, a rat maze that Gabin can’t escape. Visually and dramatically, up is divine cool and down is resignation to fate and death. This could be one of the movies that Breathless is based on, especially the end.
Un carnet de bal / Life Dances On (Julien Duvivier, 1937): 3/5
A similar narrative strategy to Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, where our protagonist travels to see what became of her past lovers. The result is series of short stories or sketches, some banal and others exaggeratedly dramatic. Includes a variety of photographic novelties to bring the audience into the protagonist’s mind space: forced perspectives, shadow play, horizontal split screens, rear projection. A massive hit.
The End of the Day (Julien Duvivier, 1939): 3/5
Melancholy and even mournful portrait of a community of aged actors in an old folks home. They have spirit left in them, but precious little.
