Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021): 4.5/5

Or, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE VALLEY (in 70mm)

Easy, breezy effervescence anchored by two absolutely impish charmers. So organic and delightful. Best PTA has done in a long time. Extra half star for Alana Haim who is a fucking SUPERNOVA star.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021): 3.5/5

A hypnotic and absurd satire on the childish, misinformed and hateful state of contemporary life. It definitely won't be for everyone, not least because of the hardcore pornography scattered throughout and the bizarre expression of feminist fury that is the conclusion. I will definitely re-watch this film at some point down the line. Also, it will be interesting to see how this film is going to age, as it is firmly planted in the year 2020, with the ubiquity of face masks throughout (sometimes worn under the nose, and commented on by other characters; Covid is never a major topic, though, merely a nuisance on the side that the characters are dealing with), but also its highly political themes. During the runtime I thought of both Chris Marker and Abbas Kiarostami. Those are lofty comparisons, especially for a movie so raunchy, but the unique blending of fact and fiction bears all the requisite hallmarks.

The Humans (Stephen Karam, 2021): 2/5

Most films and stories begin with indirect commotion to set the scene. An establishment of people, places and things relevant to the experience you're about to have. Idle chit-chat, a roaming camera perspective that hasn't settled on its primary subject yet. What THE HUMANS presupposes is, what if that were the entire movie?

By the time an actual non-ambient "set piece" occurs for the first time, the movie is 5 minutes from ending and I realized I'd spent 100+ waiting for it to start. It's a challenging way to tell a story - through off-hand gestures, fleeting dialogue exchanges, and heavily symbolic use of physical space. It's like you're strolling past the door frame through which the movie is happening but you never really stop there to observe it at length. Interesting, yes. Altman must be beaming in pride from the afterlife.

But I needed something to grasp onto. If the grand theme is something along the lines of: families are fragile and messy, corrosive and rotting, full of pain and excruciatingly mundane, but also unbreakable, a lighthouse in the stormy sea of life, then I get it and I got it within the first 5 minutes, hoping for an expansion, a deepening, a series of subsequent examples that really stoked some cerebral or emotional embers. Relationships can be dreadful. Okay. I must be missing something here. Intricate, unsettling sound design, arguably meticulous blocking and some observant bits of conversational nuance can't mean that much to me in a vacuum. Despite the A+ cast, this is the waiting room of films.

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Aleksandre Kobridze, 2021): 3.5/5

Still processing this but it's really quite lovely if you can persist through the lulls and grab onto the details as required. I really appreciated it as a romantic fable that didn’t try to manipulate you, and as a city symphony.

Spencer (Pablo Larrain, 2021): 3/5

Spencer soars in its technicals, and Stewart is a genuine doppelganger here. The Greenwood score, j'adore, especially when it's all plasticky beads and chintzy jazz, and Claire Mathon shot the hell out of this.

Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021): 3/5

Textbook Verhoeven. Her only crime was being horny and theatrical.

Last Night in SoHo (Edgar Wright, 2021): 2/5

Honestly the whole movie hinges on the wigs not looking stupid and they kind of do.

King Richard (Reinaldo Marcus Green, 2021): 3/5

This doesn't make any sudden moves and sometimes that's the assignment.

The Last Duel (Ridley Scott, 2021): 3/5

“Customary protestations.” If I feel angry at the state of current society I guess I only need to watch a historical drama to remind me of the progress we've made.

The most surprising thing about this medieval France Rashomon is how little the remembered accounts of the three characters differ in their basic facts, only disputing the degree of Matt Damon's loserdom.

tick, tick...BOOM! (Lin Manuel Miranda, 2021): 1.5/5

Glad theater kids finally got their BLACK PANTHER. Kinda a problem though when your least favorite part of a musical is the musical numbers.

Passing (Rebecca Hall, 2021): 3.5/5

A lot to admire here, especially in how confident Rebecca Hall's direction is in knowing that this is her first feature film behind the camera - and also in what she brings out from both Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. Extra half star for the queer subtext.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Michael Showalter, 2021): 3/5

Great to watch the incredible journey of Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain’s jaws continuously grow over the course of 2 hours.

The Beta Test (Jim Cummings, 2021): 3/5

The tone of Eyes Wide Shut with the script of a 40s hard-boiled film noir that has the anxious danger of American Psycho lurking just beneath the film's surface. Juggles so many different ideas and critiques that it is on the verge of thematic incomprehensibility at every waking moment, but Cummings's performance is so maniacal (and honestly probably pretty accurate) that it's not too difficult to get onto this movie's wavelength for a bit. It's not fully cohesive, but it certainly holds your attention.

There's Someone Inside Your House (Patrick Brice, 2021): 1.5/5

Pretty blah. Not sure why Brice is concentrating on cheap chills rather than making more uneasy comedies like THE OVERNIGHT. What's that? Ka-ching, you say?

Introducing, Selma Blair (Rachel Fleit, 2021): 3/5

"This is what happens that I don't want people to see," says actress Selma Blair, as her comfort dog jumps off her lap and her speech begins to painfully shut down into a pall of spastic tremors.

You can't watch this scene without feeling profoundly moved.

Nine Days (Edson Oda, 2020): 1.5/5

Way too cute and superficially inspirational for my taste. Also, why is all the tech in this non-Earthly realm specifically from about four decades ago?

L'humanite (Bruno Dumont, 1999): 1/5

Soporifically uninteresting on every level save for its sheer cussed unconventionality. And Schotte's bizarro performance pretty much kills the movie for me. A stultifying debut. Any debate about the identity of the killer or the details of the murder investigation is utterly irrelevant.

Polisse (Maiwenn, 2011): 2/5

Tonally, a total mess. Vignettes veer from comedy to melodrama to kitchen sink drama to after-school-special and back again. The end is a baffling--yet gorgeously shot--moment that is completely unearned since no character is developed enough to make the beats really land. Would have made a gripping television show, but, I think CSI's got that covered.

rewatched Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984): 1.5/5

I kind of hate Sam Shepard, to be honest (as a writer, including for the stage)—his spill-your-guts approach to dramaturgy, while catnip to actors, tends to be the exact opposite of what moves me, and the extended finale here, which I assume the movie's ardent fans treasure, still seems to me that most egregious of sins, the regurgitated backstory. (And what a weird way of saying he was an abusive pedophile. But ok... as long as he is sad about it!)

Also, maybe I’m too stupid to understand Harry Dean Stanton's appeal but he doesn’t have the chops in the form of silent charisma to carry a movie like this.

Gervaise (Rene Clement, 1956): 4/5

Perhaps the ultimate example of what the Cahiers du Cinema critics meant when they were denouncing "la qualité française." The thing about "la qualité française" is that it was still, well, quality. GERVAISE fits the Howard Hawks definition of a masterpiece containing three great scenes and no bad ones: a wince-inducing sudsy fight at a laundromat, a long dinner with a bunch of miniature arcs in its own right, and a feverish cup-massage scene that goes out of control. Lots of fantastic little details along the way – mud on boots in the Louvre, a bunch of tiny sight gags that reveal character at a show – and Maria Schell is a great lead.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jaromil Jires, 1970): 1.5/5

Narratively in shambles, as deeply surrealist stuff tends to be. There's also a great deal of unintentionally silly imagery being put to poor use (e.g. just about all of the Nosferatu-looking demons, the powdery make-up of the mother, etc.).

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (Denis Cote, 2013): 1/5

SPOILER ALERT:

Strictly speaking, no they didn't.