Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer, 1960): 3.5/5

Someone in 1960, after watching Inherit the Wind: “Wow, this was a rousing film about an issue relevant to recent history. What a thing. I wonder what kinds of debates and arguments people will be having in the future.”

Me, 60+ years later: “Still this one.” :(

rewatched North By Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959): 4/5

Still thankful the lead role went to Cary Grant instead of James Stewart as originally intended. Don’t have a problem with Stewart in general, but he was too old-looking* and meek for Grace Kelly in Rear Window five years earlier. He’s quite literally anti-suave, and that role at least called for someone with a lumpy, milquetoast demeanor. Could you imagine him fitting into the proto-Bond mold sculpted for the wrong-man hero here, gently schmoozing Eva Marie Saint or supplicating the agility required in the final set piece? (Sorry, Jimmy! You weren’t the right man for the job.) And as good as Grant is—he’s great, actually—Mason is even better, parlaying his dastardly disposition with frightening nonchalance. A bit long, maybe, though I’m not sure what, if anything, you could trim without much narrative implication. But as far as “fun” movies go, this one’s a lot of fun, nearly start to finish. My favorite gambit is how Hitch fools us not once, not twice, but thrice with the same goddamn gun. (Final gripe: Did Roger’s mom give birth to him when she was thirteen years old, or what? They couldn’t find a single older woman?)

*For clarification, I am fully aware that Grant is older than Stewart, but their dispositions would never reveal as much. As charming as he might’ve been in his The Shop Around the Corner days, Steward was a curdled raisin by the late fifties. In contrast, Grant was aging eloquently, like a fine wine. Grape analogies are neat.

Trap (M. Night Shyamalan, 2024): 3/5

Pitch: "What if... Taylor Swift caught The Zodiac Killer?"

Also i really thought he was gonna have gay sex to escape that arena

Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1957): 4/5

“Touching, isn’t it? The way he counts on his wife.”

“Yes, like a drowning man clutching at a razor blade.”

Leon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994): 2.5/5

I don't think pedophilia is very professional!

rewatched Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford,1939): 3.5/5

History gets shaped as Henry Fonda’s body slowly accepts its final mythological state. Very much a movie on the craft of a public performance by Ford and Fonda, equal partners in what doubles as sculpting an origin myth and the process behind it. A movie of constant doubles, stark and haunted by death, while light, taken by its Americana setting and slowly shaped by its procedural needs. Ford achieves a relaxed quality that feels at odds with the enterprise without never undermining it, quite the opposite. Young Mr. Lincoln, of course, came out the same year as Stagecoach, the year Ford went from being just a filmmaker capable of greatness to the American Filmmaker, and they are also fine mirrors, the earlier movies considerations about civilization and society in movement plays against this one about history advancing and democracy getting shaped.

She's All That (Robert Iscove, 1999): 2/5

RIGHT ABOUT NOW. THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER.

Also, freaking EVERYONE is in this movie wtf

Josie and the Pussycats ( Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont, 2001): 3/5

*My wife and I trying to decide on a movie to watch*

Wife: Josie and The Pussycats?

Me: Sure. I've actually never seen it.

Wife: YOU'VE NEVER SEEN JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS?!

Me: No I -

*Backdoor Lover by DuJour already starts blaring from the television*

rewatched Tabu (F. W. Murnau, 1931): 4/5

Moonlight, paranoia, and tragedy. Murnau's most heartbreaking film.

rewatched The Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931): 3.5/5

An iconic film, a star-making performance, and a genre-defining work. Really need a spin-off/sequel with the queer-coded tailor. What’s that queen up to?

The Pied Piper (Jacques Demy, 1972): 3.5/5

Demy did not have the widest range but when he was working in his wheelhouse the results were pretty magical. After the debacle of Model Shop, Demy leaves behind the real world, at least on the surface, to give a very contemporary telling of an old story. The use of plague, the way it fuels all of man's worst impulses, and the dogged optimism of the ending all spoke to me. And the scene with the cake is a must for any montage about Demy's body of work.

Daughters ( Angela Patton, Natalie Rae, 2024): 3.5/5

It’s easy to be cynical when you hear the premise: a father daughter dance for incarcerated dads. And sure, it checks all the boxes for a Sundance award winner. But you’d have to be a Trump voter not to be moved and wrecked by this. Very well made doc, recalls the Apted 7up docs but with more poetic interludes.

The Union (Julian Farino, 2024): 1.5/5

This can't be what the strikes were for!

Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann, 2024): 2/5

A film all about feelings that made me feel nothing

National Anthem (Luke Gilford, 2023): 2/5

“Levi’s commercial for Pride Month” vibes. Hate to trash a queer cowboy commune movie but this thing stinks. No perspective, no story, no teeth - just a collection of aspirational/pandering imagery. At least everyone in it is pretty.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962): 3/5

A somewhat discursive film. Its opening solemnity thankfully gives way to a more anarchic tone and style: Richardson was never one for placidity. Tom Courtenay (about four decades away from knighthood) is very fine as the titular lonely long-distance runner. Alternately charming and affectless, he reminds one of the British answer to James Dean, and all the Rebel With A Cause baggage that conjures up.

As far as kitchen sink realism goes, this isn’t as strong as say, A Taste of Honey (also directed by Tony) or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (also written by Sillitoe); the underlying material simply isn’t as potent or compelling.

Cuckoo (Tilman Singer, 2024): 2.5/5

Stylish but overstuffed; at once too much was going on but you got the sense that scenes fleshing out the world and characters were cut for time.

Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung, 2024): 1.5/5

yeah sure we'll fix global warming by [checks notes] firing rockets at tornadoes until they die. welcome back ronald reagan

Coup! (Joseph Schuman, Austin Stark, 2024): 3/5

Covid social commentary by way of spanish flu. Parasite, but cunty. I always love me some Peter Sarsgaard.

Voyage of Time: Life's Journey (Terrence Malick, 2016): 2.5/5

Trying to decipher how this is any different than interlacing pages from Science Weekly, Zoobooks, and National Geographic; sure, “motion,” but that’s a formality, indicative of the medium itself, far from a justification of existence. You could say that you pick up Cate Blanchett’s whispered narration, too, but that’s almost an anti-argument at this point, instead highlighting a benefit of the magazines as Malick’s propensity for rambling off philosophical one-liners is rapidly approaching the land of self-derivation, steadily traversing the spectrum from pretentious to satirical (though I’m sure neither of those were ever Terry’s true intention, which makes it all the more troublesome). As beautiful as it is, the purely observational formlessness doesn’t yield enough material to fill the mold of a 90-minute feature, leaving a solidified final product that looks great on the outside but is uniformly porous and brittle throughout. As a final bid of positive empathy: I’d still take this over TO THE WONDER, KNIGHT OF CUPS, and SONG TO SONG, whatever that’s worth.

Blue Thunder (John Badham, 1983): 3/5

Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby clearly meant this to be a very post-70s ACAB thriller about the growing danger of the police as a militarized force that relies on bullets and surveillance to keep the citizenry in line but director John Badham had something else in mind. You can see that the third act was really meant to be a PTSD afflicted cop turning the establishment’s weapon against them (shades of Christopher Dorner) but instead we get a neat and tidy 80s technothriller where the government is capable of manufacturing crime in order to justify authoritarianism but all it takes is one tape to a local news station to bring it all down. I would like to imagine O’Bannon and Jakoby intended the cops to be horny creeps as critique and not for yuks but I could be reaching. Badham handles the aerial duels well but it feels like something Michael Mann could have turned into art. Shoutout to John Alonzo’s Panavision cinematography with its eye for L.A. 's haze and raise a glass for the great Warren Oates. That this film’s ending was totally ignored to turn the film into a short-lived TV series tells you all you need to know about the times.

Ghostlight (Alex Thompson, Kelly O’Sullivan, 2024): 4.5/5

Very Ordinary People. Middlebrow, but lots of sobs from me throughout and one of the best versions of Romeo and Juliet I’ve seen. Has a main character that I somewhat resemble (father of a teenage daughter), and whom I definitely recognize among my acquaintance group. And when I realized the connection between our protagonist and Romeo—and what he is deliberately putting himself through, I lost it. Keith Kupferer lands on my best actor shortlist.

 

Aggro Drift (Harmony Korine, 2024): 4/5

Deeply psychedelic and stunningly original, visually (but God save the poor sons of bitches trying to trip to this dumb, gross and violent narrative content). A movie unlike any other, and very vivid—with killer music.

 

The Animal Kingdom, (Thomas Cailley, 2024): 3/5

A freeform metaphor for racism, adolescence, gender, transition, class divide, educated vs non-educated. Pairs with Brewster McCloud: Two movies about pre-adult boys longing to turn into birds (and escape, be free, be unique, be themselves).

 

Longlegs (Osgood Perkins, 2024): 2.5/5

An incoherent blender of emotional situations and horror genres, in which the title character plays no important role beyond star power. Both The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House do more with (a lot) less.

 

Maxxxine (Ti West, 2024): 2/5

Half-asses its way through several horror genres with vague 80s framing and lighting, with lots of actor stuff, but to what end? I never thought I would write this sentence, but: The Neon Demon is better.

 

Rocco and his Brothers, rw (Luchino Visconti, 1960: 4.5/5

Epic filmmaking, with many scenes (such as those in a boxing arena) that involve hundreds of extras. Delon gives a sensitive and emotional performance akin to Dean or Clift. So much Raging Bull (and Scorsese in general) flows from this, although Delon’s character is even more obviously Coppola’s sensitive Michael, ground down by his family’s brutality and corruption that he takes on as his burden and destiny. And indeed, the irony of the conclusion, with simultaneous ascent and descent, rivals The Godfather’s in its algebra of what is won and lost in its story of a family trying to move up in the world.

 

A Woman Under the Influence, rw (John Cassavetes, 1974): 5/5

Reminds me of those Jafar Panahi movies where the women are driven crazy by all the random rules of behavior and comportment developed by men (and society, e.g., men). What IS the greatest performance by a woman in a film (if not this)? RIP to a queen.

 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, rw (Céline Sciamma, 2019): 5/5

Exquisitely moving and beautiful movie with two great performances and a knockout ending. I can’t believe I forgot to mention this one when recently enumerating movies about the making of a piece of art (see La Belle Noiseuse, Victor Erice’s The Quince Tree Sun and Mamoulian’s Song of Songs, below.) If you go to Letterboxd, you will see that for this movie alone, they have changed the little stars in their rating system to little fires—and, honestly, fair.

 

Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine, 1958): 3.5/5

To my great relief, the lonely, disabled incel at the heart of this story is not just punished sadly over and over by fate (looking at you The Cloud-Capped Star, etc, etc.)—but rather is a creepy murderer! This genre energy greatly enlivens this large-casted portrait of all kinds of people in and around the train station in Cairo.

 

Wings (Larisa Shepitko, 1966): 3/5

A plotless character study of a woman who was more important, powerful, useful and free in the Soviet system in the past and who is trying to figure out her role and realizing her former behavior patterns are no longer relevant.

 

Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, Carl Froelich, 1931): 3/5

Everyone in the girl’s school loves pretty and kind Miss von Bernburg, especially the new girl—whom Bernburg kisses on the mouth and makes her the gift of her underwear. Originates (?) some women-in-prison tropes, including a cruel headmistress and (a quick but joyously received) spanking.

 

Eraserhead, rw (David Lynch, 1977): 4/5

The sound design is a marvel of mood, and all the details are plainly homemade in a very “from one person’s mind” way. My favorite bit is when the mound of dirt topped with a small plant (an image that has recurred throughout the movie) slides into the room with the black and white checkered floor and initiates the whole “yep, he’s an Eraserhead alright” sequence.

 

The Elephant Man, rw (David Lynch, 1980): 4/5

Lynch amply displays his ability to make a traditional movie with interesting characters and full of emotion. Although really it’s the numerous odd touches and between-plot weirdnesses that are exciting, including an astonishing, audacious, disorienting and deep first three minutes of dreamtime. The more you zone in on the sound design, vivid and dreamy references to the industrial age, and set design the more you see what a miracle this movie is.

 

Perfumed Nightmare (Kidlat Tahimik, 1977): 3/5

A warm, idiosyncratic, childlike and colorful bit of autobiographical ethnography, overdubbed in English (!), where you’re hanging out in a small village 15 miles from Manila—like a slightly more documentary Pather Panchali, but for the Philippines. Our protagonist is excited and inspired by the American military, American cultural imperialism, and especially the American space program—but when he moves to Paris, his views on progress, technology and capitalism become more ambivalent.

 

Masculin Féminin, rw (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966): 4/5

“Man’s conscience doesn’t determine his existence. His social being determines his conscience.” It’s semiotics—examining where we get the words we use, the thoughts we have, and our ways of living (spoiler: from our environment). Plus, a temperature-taking of socialism in France (Not great: “Give us a TV and car, and deliver us from liberty.”) Demands re-invention of the medium at every level and “down with the republic of cowards.” My good friend once told me it was his favorite movie of all time, and it’s interesting to think this could be anyone’s Apocalypse Now.

 

Hitchcock/Truffaut (Kent Jones, 2015): 3.5/5

A poppy talking-head review of AH’s biggies. Linklater, Fincher, Scorsese, James Gray and Desplechin (!!) weigh in, plus 30 percent AH talking about himself during the Truffaut interview. Lots of footage of amazing cinema, if that’s what you’re into. Fincher gets down to basics, saying: “Directing is really three things. You are editing behavior over time. And then controlling moments that should be really fast and making them slow. And moments that should be slow and making them fast.”

 

Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948): 3.5/5

A supernatural romance between Joseph Cotton and Jennifer Jones, with some painting-related techniques I haven’t seen before. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode, but one of the sentimental ones in the season when all the episodes were an hour long. It’s about the nature of artistic inspiration, but what distinguishes it from Portrait, La Belle Noiseuse, and The Song of Songs (see below) is its complete lack of lust (unless one counts dreaming of lighthouses, which probably one should). She’s always a ghost, so the connection (to art and love) remains spiritual (and grandiloquent). The emotional climax is tinted an ecstatic green and then red (in technicolor no less), a technique I’ve not seen outside of earlier silents.

 

Pas de deux, 13m (Norman McLaren, 1968): 3/5

The people who made this may or may not have taken the LSD on one or more occasions.

 

Ballet Mécanique (Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy, 1924): 3.5/5

I bunch of smart kids fucking off, pushing the limits of these primitive cinematic tools. Almost meaningless today but brilliant in its time/context, one can almost feel.

 

Fuses, 29m (Carolee Schneeman, 1964-66): 3/5

Stan Brakhage makes a porno. Degraded and chaotic images make the viewer ask, “Is that hot or disturbing?” A: Why not both? The Guardian says, “Fuses succeeds perhaps more than any other film in objectifying the sexual streamings of the body's mind,” and I couldn’t have said it better/worse myself.

 

Vive le Tour, 18m (Louis Malle, 1962): 3/5

It’s easy to imagine Wes Anderson watching and loving this CBS Wide World of Sports segment of a movie about the 1962 Tour-de-France.

Crazeologie, 6m (Louis Malle, 1954): 3/5

Malle’s surreal and comic student film.

 

 

Rouben Mamoulian Film Fest

An extremely reliable (and, I’m told innovative) genre director. Here we have a gangster movie, a historical romance, a rom-com, and a swashbuckling adventure—all elegantly entertaining. Also famous for horror (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.) and musical (the Lubitch-indebted Love Me Tonight.)

 

City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931): 3.5/5

An early Gary Cooper performance pits his typical homespun, honest, innocent character against the Chicago mob circa 1930. Also gives him a girl who loves him and understands the world better than he ever will.

 

Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933): 3.5/5

Garbo is strong and sexy as the queen of Sweden who tires of the cold and isolation of her position. In film studies, much is made of her dressing and passing as a man for one long sequence at an inn as well as for a couple mildly flirtatious interactions with some women—but the fact remains that she is very much in love with a man. Their Roman Holiday-like affair is the warm and funny heart of a movie that features rather too much court stuff and speechifying.

 

Song of Songs (Rouben Mamoulian, 1934): 3.5/5

A horny rom-com. Marlene Dietrich is the innocent young girl, new to Berlin, who shyly agrees to serve as a model for the handsome sculptor across the street. She stands in his studio naked, and obviously we only see her face. But her nude sculpture is standing right there between her and the artist, and he’s rubbing his hands all over it (although not the breasts). Hot stuff! Put this one on the list of movies about the making of a piece of art.

 

The Mark of Zorro (Rouben Mamoulian, 1940): 3.5/5

Ridiculously fun Sunday morning Family Film Festival vibes. A virtual remake of Robin Hood, from two years earlier. Basil Rathbone returns as the heel, and gruff-voiced Preston Sturges regular Eugene Palette plays Fray Felipe/Friar Tuck. This is my first Tyrone Power movie (not counting against-type Witness for the Prosecution), and I’m impressed. He’s handsome and graceful.

 

Blood and Sand (Rouben Mamoulian, 1941): 3/5

Reunites Power with Linda Darnell (also stunning in My Darling Clementine) for a bullfighting rags-to-riches drama (that spends too much time on the routine story of Power loving two women). Why does the artificiality of the set and lighting please me so much here, when it turns me off in (say) Lang’s corny Moonfleet and The Tiger of Eschnapur? The only answer is tone. This feels light, romantic and graceful—and beautiful, bathed in soft purples and yellows.

 

 Thelma (Josh Margolin, 2024): 3/5

A gentle geriatric heist flick, playing out as a low-stakes Mission Impossible exactly as directly parodied throughout the film. June Squibb is equally adorable, capable, and intelligent as Thelma, carrying the whole story on her seasoned shoulders. But it's light on laughs and needs more effort from the supporting cast to get them. Harmless overall.

The Strangers (Bryan Bertino, 2008): 0.5/5

Am I the only one bothered by the fact that, at one point, they note it's around 4 am or so, and the timeline of the movie easily traverses several hours, and yet it remains dark for SO long? Anyway, a dismal experience with little to no reward as a viewer.

Eternals (Chloe Zhao, 2021): 0/5

Not just “not cinema”, but the result of the gradual and meticulous wearing down of the human spirit disguised as pop art. China was 100% right to ban this.

Procession (Robert Greene, 2021): No rating

Been avoiding writing about this one because I really struggled with it and most of the ways I struggled with it made me seem like a bad human being.

Here's the question: who is this film for? I would say it is principally for the six men who are its subjects, all who have suffered abominable sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, none of whom deserve to have their mode of therapy subverted for the purpose of improving my entertainment experience (to the extent you can say any film involving this subject matter is "entertainment", but I am using the term very loosely here). Procession relies broadly on its subjects creating film scenes that help them come to terms with their trauma, a process that is clearly and evidently helpful for them and also one that does not result in film scenes that are very good.

Let me be perfectly clear, lest I seem dismissive: the stories of these men are moving and horrific, and you would have to be made of sterner stuff than I not to feel empathy for them. We often say "you can only wonder what someone's going through", but we mean that to say that we can't truly understand their pain. Six horribly damaged people have had a chance to bring attention to injustice and heal from their trauma. And I have no idea how many stars of criticism that's worth.

Ragtime (Milos Forman, 1981): 3/5

Ragtime represents a lost era of American film: a sprawling big studio historical epic that brings up some of the thorny social issues of the day. This was Milos Forman’s follow up to the disastrous Hair and while this is a step up, there’s something about Ragtime that just doesn’t quite work. Perhaps it’s the fact that while the direction is perfectly serviceable, it feels like the work of an anonymous journeyman. Of course we can see the plight of Howard E. Rollins Jr.’s Coalhouse Walker appealing to Forman and his love for doomed rebels, but it’s pretty astonishing that the man who made Taking Off just 10 years ago had been so sanded down to dull smoothness due to success, an Oscar, and a flop. That said, it’s a shame there was no 40th anniversary re-release for the film in 2021 as its bleak depiction of race and the fate of a Black man who refuses to accept racist bullying would resonate with audiences in the Black Lives Matter era. Maybe that is precisely why the studio probably doesn’t want to revive it.

In a Violent Nature (Chris Nash, 2024): 3/5

Some creative and brutal kills. Yoga girl has one of the craziest deaths I’ve seen.

House of Wax (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2005): 0.5/5

I actually don't fully hate this because there’s a scene from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane.

White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Ambercrombie & Fitch (Alison Klayman, 2022): 1/5

Netflix proudly presents: Another Wikipedia Article In Motion

Also, I have officially never felt older than when talking heads had to explain the concept of magazines or that malls are like physical versions of learning fashion trends through social media influencers. Time really does come for us all.

Morbius (Daniel Espinosa, 2022): 0.5/5

Morbius more like Mor bs…all that’s missing is i and u <3

MaXXXine (Ti West, 2024): 2/5

If I was tepid on milquetoast Ti before, now I'm stone cold. A flaccid climax that suffers even more acutely in the wake of Pearl, which set up Mia Goth as a screeching, pickled and dimpled hagseed starlet worthy to wrest the axe from Joan Crawford...and then throws a wet blanket over thermite by giving her zilch to do here.

MaXXXine betrays no interest in any of the movies it lazily cobbles into a hollow vinyl shellac, a retro fetishistic facade as flimsy as a VHS cardboard slipcase, and seemingly no desire to pick at the cracked, gritty zirconia of celebrity, or what breeds in the scuzzy groin of Hollywood, porn, video, and true crime. Suffused in surfacestatic, and as idle as lint.

Glad to see Kevin Bacon had fun for a weekend, though.

A Quiet Place: Day One (Michael Sarnoski, 2024): 2.5/5

Three whole movies and somehow no one died from the aliens hearing them fart

The Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie, 2005): 0/5

rob you're from fuckin' Massachusetts, calm down

Meet Me in the Bathroom (Will Lovelace, Dylan Southern, 2022): 2.5/5

This should've been a 10-episode docu-series for HBO but instead they smashed it all into one 105 minute documentary.

Also, Julian Casablancas is a dull and charmless frontman.

The Garfield Movie (Mark Dindal, 2024): 3/5

The G in LGBT stands for Garfield.

The Garfield Movie presents a multifaceted narrative exploring the profound psychological impacts of abandonment, the search for identity, and the moral complexities of crime. This film centers on Garfield, an orange tabby cat abandoned at an early age by his criminal father, Vic. Garfield is found on the street and adopted by Jon, but his constant fear of abandonment causes him to obsessively overeat. The arrival of his biological father and the involvement of Garfield’s loyal adopted brother, Odie—a dog—further intensify the narrative, culminating in a heist orchestrated by Jinx, Vic’s vengeful former partner in crime. This heist tests familial bonds and personal resilience, ultimately revealing deeper truths about loyalty and redemption.

Longlegs (Osgood Perkins, 2024): 3/5

Above Average Legs. I do like it, but I'm not sure it's good. Good creeps, definite tone and imagery. ESSENTIAL Cage. This one goes on his Mount Rushmore. I hesitate to say anymore, but he is OUT THERE, and he absolutely makes this movie, on whatever level it succeeds. (Cage claims he's playing his mother, but, come on, he's 100% playing Travolta.) Keeping him out of frame for so long, in the movie and in marketing, is the most effective thing about it. It gives it exactly the atmosphere you came in hoping for.

The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, 2024): 3/5

A better, more grounded version of Cloud Atlas—a tale of intergenerational trauma, connecting across eras, with excellent set design. Intelligent and “romantic,” with some striking images and narrative gambits, but emotionally distant. Léa Seydoux is beautiful and an excellent actress.

 

Gasoline Rainbow (Turner Ross, Bill Ross IV, 2024): 3/5

The Rosses follow up their seedy and empathetic portrait of drunks (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets) and lyrical and empathetic portrait of three brothers wandering around New Orleans (Tchoupitoulas)—with an American Graffiti / American Honey end-of-summer episodic road trip that extends their use of documentary styles but sadly is inferior to both. The teen characters are a bit vague, dumb, and uncharismatic (realistically so), although most of the locals they encounter are authentic and interesting. What I wouldn’t have given for the charisma of a Shia LaBeouf or even a young Richard Dreyfuss.

 

Ferrari (Michael Mann, 2023): 2/5

Just a strange decision to make this movie all about Ferrari’s wife and mistress. The Ferrari character could have been a cobbler. What’s more, much of the dramatic crux of the story takes place before the film opens, and all we get are people talking about it—making this perhaps the most cerebral racing picture of all time. No matter how good Adam Driver is (he’s fine), why select such a young actor for the role and then deny (for the most part) the flashbacks that would be age-appropriate and illustrate the key moments in this character’s internal life?

 

Variety (Bette Gordon, 1983): 3.5/5

A woman who likes to watch men watch women. A film made by women about women and for women—about desire and 70s NYC Times Square. Offers a long, gender-swapped version of the Vertigo following-and-watching sequence. The female gaze?

 

The Timekeepers of Eternity (Aristotelis Maragkos, 2021): 3.5/5

Perfectly exemplifies the truism that most movies should be one-third the length and a lot more experimental. But elucidate for me: why this text? There is a trivial paper-tearing connection—and since the tears are often around the characters in frame, something about isolation. But many texts would benefit from this treatment, and should get it.

 

A Portrait, 2m (Aristotelis Maragkos, 2014): 3/5

An unsentimental biography of the artist’s grandfather, animated with elegant single-line drawings.

 

Allison, 7m (Paul Brickman, 2012): 2/5

Exceedingly minor except that, curiously, it’s the only thing Paul Brickman directed other than Risky Business and Men Don’t Leave.

 

Brewster McCloud, rw (Robert Altman, 1970): 3.5/5

A heady and silly archetypal tale. Bud Cort is a pure, virginal Kid who with the help of an Angel is building actual wings so he can “escape.” Sex with one of his temptresses (played by classic sex-pot Shelley Duvall) causes the Angel to retreat and “Icarus” to fall. All the bird stuff is silly until Bud Cort tests his Angel-less wings. The film pads out its run time with a parody of police drama, especially Bullet, including a pretty decent car chase. I would say Altman sees himself as the naive artist who just longs to fly (but whose appetites mean he is destined to be brought to the ground).

 

Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, 2005): 3/5

Not great but not deserving of the reviling it has received. The always great Kristen Dunst plays a classic manic pixie dream girl (a year after Garden State) to the blank but serviceable (and certainly extremely handsome) Orlando Bloom, dealing with a huge professional setback as well as the death of his mostly estranged father. Crowe’s dialogue occasionally shines, but like later Tarantino, he seems to have some trouble distinguishing his wheat from his chaff.

 

 

Jafar Panahi/Iranian Film Fest

Over and over Panahi makes the viewer ask: how much of this is real and how much fiction? I believe it is always the latter, but the ambiguity is powerful—a Schrödinger's drama, always real and always manufactured. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that, since his ban, “Panahi” has entered his own fictional universe as a character—intelligent yet slightly befuddled, indulgent to follow a tangent, quietly persistent, amiable, always watching and present, thoughtful about the damage his camera is doing.

 

The White Balloon, rw (Jafar Panahi, 1995): 3/5

An epic tale, confined within three city blocks. Compares unfavorably to the occasionally magic Where is the Friend’s House? Penned by Kiarostami, with whom Panahi served as Assistant Director (on, say, the previous year’s marvelous Through the Olive Trees).

 

The Mirror (Jafar Panahi, 1997): 4/5

A five-year-old girl wanders the busiest street in Tehran, trying to get home. Then there is a radical, metaphysical shift at the halfway mark that changes everything and nothing. The actress wakes but finds herself in the same bad dream anyway—this female in Iran who can’t even use the same bus doors as men.

 

The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000): 3/5

Pahani’s most anxious and despairing film, lacking his usual humanism, warmth and flashes of beauty. Follows a roundelay of women, Slacker-style, each desperately hemmed in by the rules regulating women’s rights and behavior.

 

Crimson Gold, rw (Jafar Panahi, 2003): 4.5/5

An anomaly in Panahi’s work. Whereas most of his films are family melodramas concerned with women and children, this one is concerned with class, criminals and even specific acts performed by government agents (arresting people for dancing). Impressionistic and largely plotless, it does show Panahi typical willingness to enjoy an exchange of ideas between two people, thrown together briefly. 

 

The Accordion, 8m (Jafar Panahi, 2010): 3.5/5

An emotional act of radical empathy, a spin-off of two characters that show up on the “fictional” bus in The Mirror. Basically, a terrific scene Panahi left on the cutting room floor to ensure that 1h30m runtime that I love so much. At that length, I forgive all.

 

Where are you, Jafar Panahi?, 20m (Jafar Panahi, 2016): 3.5/5

Autofiction video document features Panahi and fellow director Majid Barzegar on the winding road that leads from Tehran to Kiarostami’s relatively new grave, talking about why they make art, the responsibilities and the dangers. For a fan of Kiarostami, the gentle sway of the winding roads is its own pleasure.

 

3 Faces (Jafar Panahi, 2018): 4/5

Gracefully and warmly celebrates rebellious young women, emotional actresses/people, and longstanding war horses of beautiful resistance à la Nina Simon. Full of the intrusive kindness of village life—and people asking him to take an oath saying he is telling the truth.

 

Hidden, 19m (Jafar Panahi, 2020): 4/5

A documentary retelling of 3 Faces, extending and deepening the original themes of mistrust between reality and fiction.

 

Life, 19m (Jafar Panahi, 2021): 2/5

Home movies of the Covid era don’t connect (yet?), like someone recounting a dream.

 

No Bears (Jafar Panahi, 2022): 5/5

“You know very well that villagers are different from city people. Town people have problems with authorities. Villagers have problems with superstitions.” “There are no bears. Stories made up to scare us. Our fear empowers others. No bears!” Equivalence between moviemaking and escaping across some border. Equivalence between both the city and village governments in their passionate interest in an image—and wanting to take it away. And most powerfully and blasphemously, equivalence between a camera and the Koran. The final third perfectly expresses how the “goodness” of the ruling body corrupts even the most innocent interaction between good person and good person.

 

The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998): 3.5/5

Two 11-year-old girls have literally been locked in their house their entire lives (a metaphor for all women in Iran). A social worker frees them and tells them to go make friends, and we follow them for an afternoon of buying apples and playing in the park. Their maladroit antics are reminiscent of Gummo in their aimlessness and grotesqueness. The film also shares Gummo’s ambiguity between documentary and fiction, since it uses all the actual people involved in this actual incident.

 

Salaam Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1995): 3.5/5

Makhmalbaf puts a small ad in a newspaper looking for actors, and thousands of passionate cinephiles show up—so he decides to interview a number of them, investigating the nature of acting and cinema itself. As with a lot of Makhmalbaf, there is a sense of the director being a very alive presence—awake and open to the emotion and drama of the situation as it is actually evolving.