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.