The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, 2021): 3.5/5

Much to like and appreciate, including some cool and daring camera stuff. Issac’s performance is noteworthy—some Travis Bickel intensity but also a Bressonian, mannequin-like stillness and monotone. Unfortunately the traumatic subtext (merely hinted at in Taxi Driver) overwhelms the text (poker), which is actually more compelling.

Malignant (James Wan, 2021): 3.5/5

Non-elevated B-movie schlock. A bit too long due to second act problems as we stretch toward a third act reveal, but gonzo and fun.

The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1952): 2/5

A completely empty display of chintzy theatrics with fairy tale archetypes. 

The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1992): 3/5

As much of a museum piece as A City of Sadness. I think Davies must have a very good memory, saying of 1956: these are our songs, our clothes, our customs, the rain and how time moved. It reminds me of the all-time great ending shot of Tarkovski’s Nostalghia (I think), where we are shown his mother posing in a meadow with a white dog (I think) and the camera pulls back for several minutes until we discern that the whole scene, barn and meadow, is inside a massive church.

2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004): 3/5

A movie about having sex with a lot of extremely hot girls because you’re sad about how in the past you loved an extremely hot girl. There’s also some future stuff, but that doesn’t add anything beyond (even more) stunning visuals, including the most beautiful greens. Some last-second voiceover during the end credits intimates the whole thing is about missing the way Hong Kong was before the hand-off to China: ok! 

La Piscine (Jacques Deray, 1969): 3.5/5

Frisky and sensual in the first act. History, temptation and, finally, murder complicate the second act. The third act is morally shocking yet satisfying. 

Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973): 2/5

Art house animation with exploitative violence, nudity and rape, lots of rape. Obviously made for heads, but i feel sorry for anyone who dropped acid and then watched this massively upsetting bummer.  

Clint Eastwood Film Fest

In a scene where other directors would've had him on his knees at someone's bedside, grasping their hand and crying and begging for forgiveness, Eastwood shoots himself just standing there stock-still. Nothing fancy. Eastman never writes his own scripts of course, and I would even say he has poor taste or skill in picking them. Still, Eastwood does have a thing for bad/absent dads seeking redemption and forgiveness—a theme in four of the six movies below.

Cry Macho (Clint Eastwood, 2021): 3/5 

After-school-special level of complexity in terms of narrative and character. But its straightforwardness and lack of adornment—it’s one-take unfussiness—is a feature not a bug. “I don’t know how to cure ‘old,’” says 91-year-old Eastwood’s character, who travels down to Mexico City to rescue the 13-year-old child of a friend of his from the drug-dealing mother. They end up hiding out in a Mexican village community and staying there. So: pro-Mexico? Eastwood’s presence and acting chops are diminished but still quite a pleasure. 

The Mule (Clint Eastwood, 2018): 3/5

This also is not a sophisticated or well-written movie, but it’s not a bad one. Eastwood is a frail and naive old guy who is knowingly yet innocently running drugs across state lines. Over a series of road trips he encounters lesbian bikers, black youths, scary cartel Mexicans, etc., and he engages them all with bemused but warm acceptance. This is not a red state tract and even explicitly points out that a Mexican-American being pulled over by the police is experiencing the most dangerous five minutes of his life. Is this too didactic? A loose and easy-breezy feeling ensure it doesn’t feel that way. Honestly, this is one of most unsentimental and normal portraits of a very old character I’ve seen. Eastwood is barely acting, just training the camera on himself while breathing (this is a compliment). 

Sully (Clint Eastwood, 2016): 3.5/5

The movie could have been, and even pretends to be, an investigation as to whether Sully made the right call to land on the a Hudson instead of returning to LaGuardia. The simulations said he could have. But the movie biases you to believe Sully because the first thing the audience is shown is the plane not making it back and crashing into a building (Sully’s nightmare)—plus there’s Hanks. Ultimately we are shown two versions of the events. One a big budget movie version that corroborates Sully’s (and America’s) version of events. The other a 80s video game version where he made the wrong call. Cinema trumps video games, so Sully is vindicated. Is Eastwood-the-director aware of this formal, meta-textural argument? Doubtful. “We did our job” is the movie’s very Boomer theme, in a universe where Boomers are being doubted and questioned on every side by Gen X, Z and Millennials. 

Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004): 3/5

I thought all the boxing stuff was excellent, and the turn in the third act maudlin and unnecessary. 

Flags of my Father (Clint Eastwood, 2006): 3/5

Eastman does Iwo Jima with 90s CGI and bunch of pretty good actors, including Barry Pepper. Deserves (unfavorable) comparison to Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, although it’s a million times better than 1914. After 45 minutes it mostly shifts focus to be about the selling and fundraising of the war (bail bonds) via the marketing of that famous raising of the flag image, with all the accompanying irony and cynicism. Also about the imposter syndrome and survivor guilt of its subjects, the vast gulf between legend and reality, and how history must be simplified to be remembered. Everything is clear, but in last 30 minutes we suddenly get a voiceover narrator explaining the themes and conclusions of the film. Thanks, filmmakers! 

Absolute power (Clint Eastwood, 1997): 2.5/5

Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Lara Kinney, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, and Judy Davis gamely wrestling with routine material. The president antagonist here is an exaggerated Clinton (being into rough sex/murder)—although one scene also pointedly takes place at the Watergate.

Jia Zhang-ke Film Festival

The strength of Jia’s movies lies in their open-ended feel, where we’re just hanging out in these symbolically weighted mileaux and wondering whether anything will happen to or around these characters. This leads to both authenticity and a documentary value. 

Xiao Wu (Pickpocket) (Jia Zhang-ke, 1997): 3.5/5

Bresson or Schrader would certainly recognize this story of compulsion, degradation and disintegration. But here we are denied the interiority of a diary, and instead the characters are given depth and meaning by their role/place in the sweep of history. Like Wes Anderson (for example) Jia takes seriously the simple, deep and pervasive lyrics of pop songs. Like Hard Eight and Bottle Rocket, this movie is like an egg, containing nascent versions of the director’s style to come (although this is better than either of those films).

Platform (Jia Zhang-ke, 2000): 4/5

Mostly medium-to-long shots emphasize environment over character and give the movie an unengaging feel in its first hour. But very slowly one realizes that years are passing—eventually about a dozen—and changes are afoot. A bunch of theater kids escape the brown and resourceless town in a parade of increasingly rickety vehicles (although unfortunately they find little to interest them outside of the city’s walls either). At first they present only state-approved songs, but soon are singing bad pop tunes slavered in bad guitar solos—hardly an improvement. A character named Sianming is unable to jump on the artistic party tractor because he feels he has to work in a mine to earn enough money for his sister to get educated. By the end of the movie, change comes to the town, bringing nicer teapots and the color red, if not actual hope and fulfillment. Jia parents were intellectuals who were relocated to the remote town in the film, making this document an actual testament to the power of art to help one (Jia) escape and dream, one of the themes of the movie.

Unknown Pleasures (Jia Zhang-ke, 2002): 3.5/5

Jia’s first feature using video, so the image is at times rough (and other times quite beautiful) but high-wire long takes proliferate. Powerful use of off-screen space, with, for example, characters walking out of frame but still being regarded by people in the shot. I did not realize that Zhao Tao was in all of Jia’s features (she’s also his wife since 2012), but this idea is already paying off in this second role, as we bring feelings about her and a sense of her history into this film. Noteworthy use of ambient sound/sound pollution as well: a constant flow of radio announcements, music, traffic noise. Contains a Jaw-dropping reference to Pulp Fiction. Supposedly shot in three weeks.

The World (Jia Zhang-ke, 2004): 3/5

A third film about The Life of an Artist in China. The text itself is perhaps not as sharp as in the last two movies. However Beijing World Park itself—with its “see the (fake and diminished) world without leaving Beijing” motto and some of the most beautiful landmarks of the world presented at 1/3 size—is one of the all-time most powerful free-floating metaphors and just keeps paying off. Later in the movie, relatives show up from the town in Platform in their Mao-era caps and jackets and their lack of affect, looking like visitors from a univers undreamed of by the architects of the World Park. 

Still Life, rw (Jia Zhang-ke, 2006): 5/5

Love in (the) ruins, with amazing authentic building destruction and the sprawling green landscapes of Three Gorges—that’s what I call production values. A real sense of documentary persists, with mostly medium shots, and heavy-duty symbols are in full force, with the protagonist’s former life literally underwater due to the transformations China is undergoing. A stronger narrative than usual as Sianming, whom we know from Platform and The World, searching for his estranged wife and daughter (he won best actor at Venice). A UFO in the middle magically passes the narrative center/POV to a (different) wife searching for her own spouse. She drinks from a water bottle in almost every scene, trying to fill herself up with water like the gorge. Kiarostami and Antonioni vibes. 

24 City (Jia Zhang-ke, 2008): 2.5/5

Jia finds another powerful central conceit—an old munitions factory being torn down and replaced by high rise apartments. But instead of placing a narrative inside this symbol, here we have a series of (recreated) direct address testimonies from previous factory workers and eventually their children, making this more of a documentary tapestry and a bit unsatisfying, cathartically. 

A Touch of Sin, rw (Jia Zhang-ke, 2013): 4.5/5

“Shooting guns isn’t boring.” All of Jia’s movies present people struggling in environments that do not suit them or, indeed, anyone. But for the first time, characters here are overtly critical of the corruption and frankly pissed, making for easily the most angry, violent and direct of Jia’s works. The narrative is open and wide-eyed, with a large cast of destructive and self-destructive characters, yet it also has moments of traditional genre movie intensity. Contains the following bit of chit-chat between two carefree workers at a spa: First girl: “Did you know animals commit suicide?” Second girl: “Don’t they know the saying ‘better to live miserably than die happy?’” First girl: (Smiling brightly) “Animals wouldn’t agree.” (Bounces off with a cheery smile).

Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhang-ke, 2015): 3/5

Medium shots and western mise en scene have taken over. Close-ups, tranquil guitar music on the soundtrack, and even bad CGI. A much more traditional love triangle, the death of a father, a mother separated from her son, and other melodramatic elements.