Mary Magdalene (Garth Davis, 2018): 1.5/5

i'm starting a support group for lesbians who have slaved through the shittiest films just for rooney mara. we meet once a month in the last standing blockbuster video store on earth. 

Loving Pablo (Fernando Leon de Aranoa, 2017): 2/5

Title ostensibly refers to Cruz's journalist, but more accurately describes the film itself.

Downsizing (Alexander Payne, 2017): 1.5/5

What a colossal mess. Spends over an hour on intriguing world-building and exposition only to throw it all away in the 2nd and 3rd acts for several pointless tangents that don’t utilize the premise at all. Bullshit bait and switch.

In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2019): 1.5/5

Great score and stunning visuals, but the story felt excessively chaotic and whatever point it was trying to make about labor and consumerism was completely lost on me. I understand that the general sense of exaggeration and the utterly grotesque nature of the events are a purposeful part of the various euro-horror homages being paid by the director but, in the end, they just amplified my general sense of detachment from what is an occasionally funny but ultimately tedious (and excessively long) narrative. 

Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, 2019): 3/5

Laura Dern,...pin your heel to my neck, school me in court and drain my bank account DRY, please. Extra half star for Ray Liotta saying “avant garde”

All I Wanna Do (Sarah Kernochan, 1998): 3/5

This opens with the credit A Film By Everybody Who Made it and it's cute AF.

The most feminist film of '98? Full of tough girls who destroy men, are proudly horny, hungry, and ambitious. It made me legitimately crave canned ravioli.

The Forest for the Trees (Maren Ade, 2003): 4/5

Cringe-inducing, beautifully calibrated portrait of toxic neediness. Ade (Toni Erdman) and her remarkable lead actress, Eva Lobau, somehow create a character who's intensely lovable despite her ignorance of pretty much every social convention known to man; each faux pas registers like a million tiny pinpricks. Imagine Single White Female as a naturalistic European drama instead of a dopey American thriller.

The Lion King (Jon Favreau, 2019): 1/5

THEY FILMED "CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT" DURING THE FUCKING DAY

IT LITERALLY SAYS NIGHT IN THE NAME YOU IMBECILES

I Lost My Body (Jeremy Clapin, 2019): 2.5/5

Intriguing so long as it remains somewhat mysterious; falls apart when its timelines converge.

Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby (Neal Brennan, 2019): 3.5/5

the "skip politics" bit was absolutely genius, better than all of bandersnatch

Circle (Aaron Hann, Mario Miscione, 2015): 2/5

Cube 4: Circle

I had that joke written before I even started the movie.

Errementari: The Blacksmith and The Devil (Paul Urkijo Alijo, 2017): 2.5/5

A fantastical horror journey into an 1800s world of christianity, demons, and predictable plot points. Extra half star because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie in Basque before. Nice of Netflix to dive into a region and culture that most people probably have no idea about. Do NOT watch this with the awful English dub 

The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019): 3/5

anna paquin: so do you want me to say anything or-

martin scorsese: no i literally just want you to vibe

Basically Scorsese's FORREST GUMP.

Generation Wealth (Lauren Greenfield, 2018): 2.5/5

Apparently you can get salmonella from bukakke.

Why is this not as good as THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES, or even Greenfield's photographic worth? Is it because its insights into American (and international) excess and the destructiveness of capitalism isn't really new? Or that the questions it poses feel too broad and limiting? The film ends up being less about "generation wealth" more about Greenfield narrativizing her own life and neuroses and history through the lens of her work. The footage and interviews have enough interesting content to easily fill 3 different documentaries, but the uneven structure and framing device make it clear that greenfield doesn’t really know what to say with this wealth of material.

The Fall (6 minutes) (Jonathan Glazer, 2019): 3.5/5

Immaculately shot and exceedingly haunting, Jonathan Glazer proves once again to be a master of atmosphere and dread. I wish it was longer and cannot wait to see his new feature once it comes out.

Beautiful Boy (Felix van Groeningen, 2018): 2/5

timothée: i don’t do meth! *sneaks off to do meth*

steve carrell: WHHY ARE YOU RUNNING?? WHY ARE YOU RUNNING????????

Imagine this but repeated every 20 minutes over the course of 2 hours and you have Beautiful Boy.

Oh god and the music choices in this movie... well they certainly were choices.

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

I saw this 3 different times the week it played at the ArcLight in Hollywood. Best film of the year. Best of the decade. The greatest cinematic experience of my life, bar none. 

I'm, and I can't stress this enough, yelling.

Stop Whatever It Is You're Doing

And go see PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, in theaters now. 

That is all.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Sorry for my absence.  The burden of articulating my reactions to daily movie viewing has reminded me why I never wanted to be a film critic: it too often feels like an exercise in finding new ways to express disappointment.  As emotional defense, cheap sarcasm and glib philosophizing become the coin of the realm (e.g., "filmtwitter").  That said, here are some ramblings about a few movies I saw in a theater this year.

The Theatrical Experience, June-November 2019

*The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019): 5/5
Exquisitely captures the self-doubting, cold-blooded, sweaty-armpit anxiety of being a grad student in the arts.  Julie, like most grad students, is white, average, and middle class, with vague artistic aspirations that have something to do with documenting the lives of laborers she knows nothing about.  In film school, she must affect the detached worldliness required to fit in with the smart set.  Hopelessly plain and out of her depth, she latches on to just the guy who can teach her the ways of the world: older, wiser, aristocratic.  Increasingly estranged from family and schoolmates, Julie naively travels alone down Anthony's road of excess to the palace of wisdom, with no wisecracking sidekick to announce the red flags.  And so with each troubling discovery, Julie's anxieties about Anthony, her lack of self-knowledge, and her place in the world become our own. As the English would say, Fucking brilliant, that.

*The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot, 2019): 4/5
Even without the flimsy narrative, this works as a lyrical documentary--a poetic love letter to a disappearing community and way of life.

*Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019): 2/5
Sure, it was an entertaining ride.  But what could have been a funny and touching portrait of two aging tinseltown cowboys scraping by in a culture now ruled by teens and TV is undermined by QT's thirst for exploitation.  Putting Sharon Tate next door is just lazy and contrived, exploiting her impending doom for dramatic gravitas that is cheap and unearned.  QT: please stop fucking with history and open a chain of Jack Rabbit Slim's, where you can have it your way.

*Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov, 2019): 5/5
Shot over several years, this haunting observational portait of a middle-aged Macedonian beekeeper living in a cave dwelling with her dying mother quietly documents what happens to traditional subsistence agriculture when a large nomadic family--and the demands of global capitalism--move in.  Beautiful and shattering.  This one stayed with me for a long time.

*Lawrence of Arabia, rw (David Lean, 1962): 4/5
The greatest White Savior in the Desert story since J.C.  And that Larry is so pretty and self-punishing, with hardly a woman to be seen... it's as if MGM had asked Kenneth Anger to re-make King of Kings! But for all its white male privilege and imperialist pomp, the film is astonishingly wise and critical of neo-colonialism: in the end, the Arabs rule the nation but the Brits still rule the utilities. Lawrence realizes too late that the Arabs had won the battle but lost the war.

*Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (Salvador Simo, 2018): 2/5
A wry, animated look at how Luis Bunuel shot the weird, subversive Las Hurdes, aka Land Without Bread.  Production wraps, Bunuel's film is premiered, chaos ensues, The End.  But the key to Las Hurdes's subversion--its patronizing Voice of God narration--is NEVER mentioned.  Idiotic.

*Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019): 3/5
Must every American astronaut now explore outer space in search of a lost family member, a la Interstellar, Gravity, and First Man?  Whatever happened to exploring space out of national duty, or scientific curiosity, or just because it's there?  So goes another disappointment from James Gray.  As with The Lost City of Z, which couldn't decide if Percy Fawcett was Indiana Jones or Aguirre, Ad Astra includes a stunning dune buggy gunfight on the moon, a pointless, obligatory attack by space primates, and Big Questions about whether mankind has destroyed the universe.  Gray seems like a smart guy who wants to make ambiguity-riddled art cinema but also wants mainstream box office success.  As a compromise, he makes arty genre pictures that resist proven genre conventions, satisfying neither the demands of art nor genre.

*Satantango (Bela Tarr, 1994): 3/5
A supposedly cinematic thing I'll never do again.  I dropped in at the Egyptian on a Saturday from 2:00-10:45pm to catch the 4K restoration, supervised by Tarr, in all its miserable glory.  For me, this never reached the transcendent splendor of Werckmeister Harmonies, which remains my favorite Tarr film.

*The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019): 3.5/5
Funny that this would be my next theatrical film experience after Satantango, as both share a B&W square frame, an infatuation with the drunken forlornness of laborers, indifference toward narrative coherence, and a tendency to go on for far too long.

*Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodovar, 2019): 3/5
For mature audiences only.  I share with Almodovar, who just turned 70 (!), an interest in life after work, the treachery of the body in advancing age, the perils of regret and the necessity of forgiveness, and the hope that psychopharmacology might relieve one's burdens, if only temporarily.  (My ticket stub read, "1 Adult Pain.") In this valedictory, semi-autobiographical work, the director weaves these complex strands together with skill and a lightness of touch, but perhaps a little too neatly and with too much contrivance.  Almodovar is, after all, an artist who confronts life's darkest moments but always finds some light.

*Ford v Ferrari (James Mangold, 2019): 3/5
Like Ron Howard, James Mangold is one of a dying breed: a mainstream director who delivers solid, middle-budget, character-driven entertainment that occasionally panders and lacks any discernible stamp of authorship.  FvF features an intriguing backstory and thrilling racing sequences that never resort to comic-book CGI nonsense--no Baby Drivers allowed here.  Is the title mocking Fast v Furious?  I hope so.

Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018): 2/5

Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018): 2/5

Two Euro 2018 movies about dancing yourself (and others) to death. Largely forgettable works by a couple of my favorite and least consistent working directors.

Diary of a Country Priest, rw (Robert Bresson, 1951):4/5

The point seems to summed up in the priest’s insistence that “All is Grace.” When I texted Jerry to ask whether he believed this statement (which I guess I figured he didn’t), here was his reply, which it’s hard to argue with: "Grace = Bresson, Folly = Bunuel. Shit = Genet. I’d agree with any of these, depending on my circumstances at the moment."

Triangle (Christopher Smith, 2009): 3/5

Fun time-tripping sci-fi adventure.

Undone (Raphael Bob-Waksberg, 2019): 3.5/5

Fun time-tripping roto-scope-animation sci-fi adventure.

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019): 5/5

Playful, trippy, and horrifying. Aster once again grounds the movie’s horrors in the characters’ real trauma, and spins familiar elements into vivid new shapes. Mines the loss of individual identity of the “psychedelic experience” for maximum horror and ecstasy.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie (Scott Aukerman, 2019): 3/5

I’m a fan, and there were plenty of faint pleasures here.

Your Name (Makoto Shinkai, 2016): 2.5/5

I keep thinking that it’s impossible for Hayao Miyazaki’s movies to be that far ahead of any other Japanese animation. But this movie didn’t provide any evidence to the contrary.

Succession, Seasons 1&2 (Jesse Armstrong, 2018/2019): 3.5/5

Lear refuses to give up his kingdom but the three siblings fight and plot anyway.

Too Old to Die Young, Eps 1, 3 & 5 (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2019): 2/5

Watched the first one, which had a devotion to tableau and stasis worthy of Parajanov. Vowed I’d never watch another. Then someone said to watch 3, so I did. Vowed I’d never watch another. Then someone said I had to watch 5, so I did. You can’t say I didn’t try.

The Amazing Jonathan Documentary (Benjamin Berman, 2019): 2/5

People who smoke meth are erratic.

Last Year at Marienbad, rw (Alain Resnais, 1961): 2.5/5

I had a lot more patience for high formalism tom-foolery when I was in my 20s.

The Old Dark House, rw (James Whale, 1932): 5/5

Halloween Watch #1: Delivers ace performances from Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger and Charles Laughton, as well as resolution for all the characters—all in 72 spooky and madcap minutes.

City of the Living Dead (Lucio Fulci, 1980): 1.5/5

Halloween Watch #2:  You’ll hear horror people talk about Fulci as a horror master, but this one never got off the ground for me as either an eye-gouging crowd-pleaser or a synth zone-out.

Friday the 13^th: Parts 2&3 (Steve Miner, 1981/2): 3.5/5

Halloween Watch #3: Contrary to my expectations, these were well-made, efficient, enjoyable and blessedly subtext-free.

High Tension (Alexandre Aja, 2003): 3/5

Halloween Watch #3:  French take on the slasher. Aja has a reputation for brutality, but perhaps we’ve gone a lot farther in the subsequent 16 years?

The King (David Michod, 2019): 3/5

Chalamet lacks the gravitas to really play Hal/Henry V, but his interiority did help to make the character more thoughtful and conscious-wracked than I’ve ever considered him before. Joel Edgerton plays a surprisingly buff and sober Falstaff, and Robert Pattinson has fun channeling Klaus Kinski.

Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019): 4/5

A full-on gaze into the abyss, anchored by another seriously great performance from Phoenix. If you’re going to really notice and feel the meanness, misery, pain and meaningless of our stupid world—well, ya just gotta laugh, right? Or let yourself go crazy, or blow your brains out? The movie gets into trouble when it tries to articulate an alternative, because any response other than anarchic madness just becomes a different brand of fascism.

The Art of Self-Defense (Riley Stearns, 2019): 2/5

Fight Club set in the Napolean Dynomite universe. Yeah, that doesn’t work, does it?

* The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019): 3/5

Plenty to enjoy here, including two terrific performances. But like The VVitch, it remained too static and open-ended to really satisfy.

The Farewell (Lulu Wang, 2019): 2.5/5

Charming and shallow. Our main character never really acts—and turns out to be just wrong the whole time?

The Tin Drum, rw (Volker Scholondorff, 1979): 3.5/5

Certainly one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. Free-flowing fuckery, and question marks at every turn. Barbaric, Mystical, Bored: You have given the century its name.

Frozen 2 (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, 2019): 2/5

In which Elsa confronts the genocide of the native people by her ancestors (literally, her grandfather), and the conflict is resolved by destroying a dam that is a symbol of the exploitation. So kind of a cross between Dances with Wolves and Zjangke Jia’s Still Life. Jack was as bored as I was, and we didn’t leave humming the songs—but…I didn’t get the first one either, so what do I know.

The Image Book (Godard, 2018): No Rating

Not much point in "reviewing" this, as Godard's post-'80s collage essays operate in a free-associative, heavily allusive (yet somehow didactic) mode that just holds very little interest for me. Been rough sledding ever since nouvelle vague. (GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE, with its radical 3-D experimentation and comparative lack of aphoristic pseudo-wisdom, is a partial exception to the rule, though I still got restless.) It'd be like my trying to assess the value of an opera, or a ballet—I could take a stab, certainly, but there's no particular reason why anyone should care what I think. See also: most avant-garde cinema.

Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019): 1.5/5

"A fundamental difference between THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and its sequel, HANNIBAL, is that the former is frightening, involving and disturbing, while the latter is merely disturbing." - Roger Ebert

Loving (Jeff Nichols, 2016): 3/5

Good and restrained, very geared towards driving home how ordinary and lovely its central couple were. Has no interest in mounting an argument against systemic racism, nor should it--what this movie is about is a matter of fact, and it wants it to feel that way. It'd work regardless, but Ruth Negga's performance is superb.

Lyle (Stewart Thorndike, 2014): 2/5

Or, Rosemary's Gayby

Also, who names their daughter Lyle? I'm sure not even lesbians in Brooklyn would do that shit.

Pass Over (Spike Lee, Dayna Taymor, 2018): 3/5

The absurdism of Waiting For Godot was a perfect template to explore systemic racism. Fascinating to watch something that's at once blatantly theatrical and aggressively cinematic. (I assume Lee shot multiple performances, each from a variety of different angles, because otherwise he must have spent a fortune digitally removing the camera crew in post.)

Snowpiercer (Bong Joon Ho, 2013): 2/5

What if Tilda had just played all of the roles?

The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019): 2.5/5

Or, Dump That Mother Fucking Asshole (otherwise known as DTMFA)

With little regard for plot, pacing and narrative structure, THE SOUVENIR is a patchwork of capricious moments that chronicles a destructive, Phantom Thread-like relationship through a random flow of highly-personal memories. Messy, fragmented and autobiographical in nature, it’s the kind of lovesick story that doesn’t really have a clear purpose in mind, nor does it care to take you anywhere in particular, but it does allow Joanna Hogg to get therapeutic, purge some demons, and wax cinematically self-indulgent for 2 hours. A little too muted and emotionally barren for my taste, but some people are gonna absolutely love this stuffy mix of reverie and requiem. With Scorsese, Tilda, and A24 all backing it, I just wished it converted into something more universally moving.

What Women Want (Nancy Meyers, 2000): 1.5/5

The premise of this film is that Mel Gibson has to electrocute himself multiple times to be a decent person.

rewatched Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971): 2.5/5

I really just want to strangle Maude, to be honest. She's a Manic Pixie Dream Crone, embracing life and seizing the day with the kind of pushy, simpleminded vigor that in reality would drive somebody like Harold to demock his mock suicides. That Harold sleeps with her is still shockingly bold (even given that nothing but the afterglow is shown) but there's only so much ostensibly delightful nonconformity I can stomach, and around the time Maude steals the cop's motorcycle I started actively rooting for her demise.

The Blob (Irvin S. Yeaworth, 1958): 1/5

All downhill from the title song. I'm not an aficionado of bad genre films, but this seems insufficiently cheesy/fun even by those limited standards.

Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971): 1.5/5

Lots of smart folks, including Peckinpah himself, have attempted to make a case for this as something other than vile misogynistic Neanderthal bullshit, but I remain unconvinced. Superbly made does not trump hateful.

rewatched Schindler's List (Stephen Spielberg, 1993): 4/5

me: [starts a 195 minute movie at 12:50am]
me: this is a great idea

The Lady in the Van (Nicholas Hytner, 2015): 1/5

Ungrateful old hag meets dull-as-dishwater playwright. What could pozzZzzzZzzzZzZzZzzZzzzzZZzz… zZZzzz… ZzzzZzzzzz… oh sorry, I dozed off there for a while. What was the question again?

rewatched The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957): 4/5

Guinness' Col. Nicholson one of the all-time great movie characters. Holden section does flag.

rewatched Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974): 5/5

Few things have ever been funnier than young Gene Wilder shouting. But the film's genius is how seriously it takes everything except the jokes, faithfully replicating the look of Universal's '30s horror and constructing a credible narrative framework that serves to heighten the absurdity.

The Wind (Emma Tammi, 2018): 2/5

The Witch, but make it a Western and not good. But also the goat should be white. #WhitePhillip

Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019): 4/5

Remember when the Toy Story saga felt complete without the fourth film? We were such fools back then...

The thing I like about the TOY STORYs is that because the toys' existential angst is so foregrounded and palpable, the movies can go from almost cloying to downright upsetting on a dime. This one even gets near the idea that Woody and the gang's relative stability is a privileged experience, that the life of your average toy is probably a sad, lonely one, that their self-actualization is rare. The adventure this time is slight but the egalitarian streak is ramped up, I really related to the new character who only wants to go in the trash, and I'd gladly sit through another story if it's going to be this stealthily thoughtful.

The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019): 3/5

Carl Th. Dreyer presents Bela Tarr's THE SHINING.

An ambitious divergence from The Witch’s occult dread into the genre’s more obscure depths. The film is a roaring tempest of style and performance: a descent into cackling insanity, writhing with furious energy against the confines of its square frame. I still prefer The Witch, but Eggers’ dedication to authenticity, the riveting visuals, and fascinating interplay between the central duo are unparalleled as a unique, exquisite cinematic experience.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (Vince Gilligan, 2019): 2/5

Not even a coda, more of three-episode-long narrative digression that never feels as spontaneous or desperate as the series. Well made and the cast is fine, but absolutely not a story that needed to be told in any way, shape, or form. Take it or leave it.

The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh, 2019): 2.5/5

Stevie was like "Have you guys read Das Kapital?"

Skin (Guy Nattiv, 2019): 2/5

if clint eastwood was more liberal but just as tone deaf

Ma (Tate Taylor, 2019): 2/5

Must a movie be good? Is it not enough to see Octavia Spencer, unhinged?

Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho, 2019): 4/5

Bong's version of a heist movie about a diabolically clever and resourceful family is a pretty straightforward crowdpleaser. Just lots of fun, and act two's big twist (this film has the cleanest Syd Field structure in recent memory) made me think that Bong was saying something truly bold and incisive about senseless infighting among the bottom 20%. What happens at the climax doesn't really fit that interpretation, though, and by the final scene it's quite clear that we're looking at a familiar binary lament that's unequivocally allied with the have-nots. The spaces we occupy. The artful ones where the light and warmth streams in. The lower ones, where the shit water flows. What those of us below won’t do to get above. What those of us above cannot comprehend is below. “So metaphorical.”

On the nose, yes, but every single scene claps and the whole thing is ratcheted tight as fuck. Destined to age well.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu (Rob Letterman, 2019): 1/5

I have no real connection to Pokémon, never played the games, collected the cards or read the manga. I only watched because it promises Pikachu in a cute little Sherlock Holmes hat but then he fucking LOSES THE HAT like halfway through. Bullshit.

1 star for the design of the titular Pokémon - certainly cute.

rewatched In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000): 5/5

imagine .... basing your entire plot ..... on the concept of cheating on maggie cheung ........... sorry wong kar-wai, It's Just Not Realistic

Late Spring (Yashiro Ozu, 1949): 2.5/5

Ozu's sensibility ultimately may just be too sedate for my taste—I've seen most of the acknowledged classics now and have never been wowed, not even by Tokyo Story. Maybe one day I'll mature enough.

The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938): 3.5/5

Works beautifully as a nimble entertainment that the pointed anti-isolationism creeps up on you unawares. But it's the gradual progression from frivolity to impassioned engagement that gives the film teeth. Charters and Caldicott abandon their designated role as comic relief and join the fight, while the appeaser gets gunned down before he can even wave his white flag; it's the quintessential pre-war film, serving much the same function as the conclusion of Foreign Correspondent without making such a sententious fuss about it.

The Night Eats The World (Dominque Rocher, 2018): 2/5

“With the participation of Denis Lavant” is the coolest way to list a supporting actor who’s too good for the movie they’re appearing in.

The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982): 3.5/5

Jerry Lewis has the best unimpressed face.

L'enfance Nue (Maurice Pialat, 1968): 4/5

An extremely graceful, slow, and beautiful look at a wayward youth. Deeply moving.

Boulevard (Dito Monteil, 2014): 2/5

No fun trashing this earnest coming-out tale featuring Robin Williams's final on-screen performance. The film just isn't very good, it's pretty generic in terms of older gay man falls in love with young gigolo while not having an explicitly sexual relationship with him.

Booksmart (Olivia Wilde, 2019): 3.5/5

Consistently very amusing and charming, but doesn't have much trajectory. There's not a ton in the way of stakes, never the sense of actual jeopardy. Still, representation and fealty to experience are both great, so keep it up The Movies.

Child's Play (Lars Klevberg, 2019): 0.5/5

Hot garbage top to bottom by Hollywood mercs with zero fucks. Far too superficial to function as a social commentary, far too void of tension to function as a horror, far too void of wit to function as a comedy/satire and far too obnoxiously cliche-ridden in general. Actually makes me appreciate how well put together the original was.

Krisha (Trey Edward Schults, 2015): 3/5

Valiant attempt to fashion a movie out of almost nothing, and Schults comes impressively close to pulling it off. Formally, KRISHA takes its cue primarily from the percussive anxiety of PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (fragmentary frantic activity accompanied by a jittery score). Combining that approach with a no-thanks exposition policy, plus Fairchild's intensely neurotic performance, yields arresting results, which means that quite a long time passes before the material's fundamental thinness becomes evident.

Anima (15 mins) (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2019): 3.5/5

"Cue the sliding violins, in sympathy" - Thom Yorke

I love this format - long strange music videos that span across a few songs. Can PTA's next film be a musical please????

Brightburn (David Yarovesky, 2019): 0.5/5

THE FUNNIEST FUCKING END CREDITS CUT IN THE WORLD. (They play Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy")

Daddy Longlegs (Benny and Josh Safdie, 2009): 3/5

If Cassavetes directed BIG DADDY.

Juliet, Naked (Jesse Peretz, 2018): 2.5/5

All I keep thinking about is that Ethan Hawke sure can afford to get his teeth fixed but he doesn't and I find his crooked teeth refreshing to see on screen.

The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018): 1.5/5

A talky bloat that clocks in at 3 hours. A total slog, and this time Ceylan doesn't have a stunning location to visually offset the excessive prattle.

Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019): 2.5/5

Very brave choice for Joaquin to play a lonely guy on the edge of a breakdown!!! It's refreshing to see that from him!!!

Interesting in the abstract. It problematizes the very concept of Batman: a rich white dude who takes to the streets and beats up criminals, ignoring all the systematic ways that he could actually make life better for people in his city. The rich get richer, and they start to imagine the people beneath them as rats and clowns, sick in the head and all ready to murder each other. They fail to see their complicity in a system that drags people down, that pushes the poor and downtrodden into lives outside of the privileged conception of civilized society. They're just filth to be exterminated. In that kind of climate, is it any wonder that the Joker exists?

It's a sophisticated idea that requires real nuance, but all this film can give us are broad strokes: a sweeping largeness that simplifies issues of class struggle and mental illness into all-caps BIG IDEAS.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie (Scott Aukerman, 2019): 4/5

Dumb as hell. The web series has been making me laugh for years and the hilarity continues here.

rewatched The Cell (Tarsem Singh, 2000): 3/5

As lovely as it is deeply stupid, like a MATRIX knockoff designed by a committee of Bob Flanagan, Damien Hirst, and Henry Darger. At its best a genuinely unsettling freakout distilled from a lot of ostentatiously grim, intrinsically misogynist pop serial killer imagery, and at its worst reinforcing the stereotypical crap about violent mental illness being rooted almost exclusively in sexual dysfunction and trauma.

Vampyr (Carl Th. Dreyer 1932): 4/5

They spell vampire differently than me... that's classy! This whole film is classy.

High Flying Bird (Steven Soderbergh, 2019): 2/5

Predominantly intellectual exercise with formal rigor, so: a late Soderbergh movie. Soderbergh filming some power games using a fictional version of the 2011 NBA lockout as inspiration. The league itself is mostly abstracted outside of serving as a source for minutiae (and the "exploration of black bodies" theme that hangs over it). The dialogue is simultaneously dazzling and very deliberately stagey, and true to his promise he manages to get that iPhone camera into some wild spots. It feels very self-satisfied (though I would not call it at all smug). Soderbergh is clearly having a lot of fun here, I just wish he'd share with the rest of us.

I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (Macon Blair, 2017): 3/5

"Melanie Lynskey and Rat-tailed Elijah Wood: Amateur Detectives."

You could do a lot worse than this.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Andre Ovredal, 2019): 1.5/5

Horrendous dialogue with sluggish pacing & some really laughable performances. Aimed at kids who are too old for GOOSEBUMPS but too young for IT.

Leaving Neverland (Dan Reed, 2019): No Rating

As crushing and awful as you've heard, less a documentary than a testimonial. Simply impossible to assess critically. No rating seems appropriate.

Surviving R. Kelly (2019): No Rating

”People will say, ‘Well, why didn't anyone notice?’ The answer is that they all noticed; no one cared because we were black girls.”

Not rating this one for the same reason why I didn't rate Leaving Neverland.

Boo 2! A Madea Halloween (Tyler Perry, 2017): 0.5/5

In hindsight, my rating for Scary Movie 5 was too harsh.

Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960): 2.5/5

Or: Rocco and His Beautiful Face

From the opening scene introducing the Italian matriarch in full-on mamma mia mode, combine with an archaic depiction of red-blooded Italian dudes (the straight-laced one, the bullheaded one, the sensitive one, etc.) plus a patently misogynist, simple-minded treatment of women - wrapped around a shamelessly bombastic M.O. - you get a movie of diminishing returns with a laughably entitled sense of self-importance. I'm absolutely willing to concede the importance of the film's socio-economic commentary, but I can't get over how cruel Visconti's treatment of Nadia is. I get that it's in service of the film's bigger picture, but it doesn't feel earned dramatically. Nice atmosphere, though, and Delon is as good as usual.

Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019): 2.5/5

Moody sci-fi film where our hero travels to the edge of the solar system to confront his daddy issues. An uneven script that's heavy on theme but lacking in character. And the dialogue is bad too. Everything is just a little too straight forward for me, all the characters one dimensional with our lead basically playing a piece of white bread.

You guys ever notice that brad pitt’s kinda hot?

rewatched Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997): 5/5

"It actually says 'the most popular gun in American crime,' like they proud of that shit."

Mandatory rewatch after Hollywood. Pam Grier is a goddess.

Glass (M. Night Shyamalan, 2019): 1/5

A film that exists solely to undermine Unbreakable. It's long and entirely anticlimactic, limping along just to get to some awful twists that sell out the characters.