Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021): 3.5/5

The central conceit of how the Uncle Vanya’s dialogue relates to our movie’s plot and characters is really masterful. I was expecting something kind of empty, with long drives and enigmatic silences, but this was traditionally engaging. 

 

Uncle Vanya (Ian Rickson, 2020): 3.5/5

Watching Drive My Car, I was concerned that I was missing stuff thematically because I know zero about Uncle Vanya. But actually, for the most part, the film tells you what you need to know via context clues, and the Vanya dialogue is pretty re-contexualized. The Uncle Vanya scenes that play out in Drive My Car seem sexy, but in fact the play concerns a debauched and lethargic family dynasty petering out—and the subsequent realization that one’s life is meaningless and, worse, over. 

 

Vanya on 42^nd Street (Louis Malle, 1994): 3.5/5

I was hoping for some comment or analysis or interpretation or extension of the play but no, this is simply a performance of it. Nicely understated, since it’s an adaptation of the language by Mamet. 

 

Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine, 2022): 2.5/5

Keep your finger hovering over the skip-forward button, and you can have a pretty fun 22 minutes. 

 

After Yang (Kogonada, 2022): 2/5

Could robots have a soul, and if so would it be made up of/demonstrated by memory plus emotion plus self-identify plus the love of others or some shit. 

 

The Adam Project (Shawn Levy, 2022): 3/5

Indefensible sci-fi garbage that nevertheless hooked me with basic bitch father/son dynamics. I swear that during the two parts that made me tear up, I didn’t even hear the dialogue. I was just responding to the situation, facial expressions and music—and filling it in with memories and impressions of my life with my dad and/or with Jack. That’s cinema, but How Humiliating!

 

Nine Days (Edson Oda, 2021): 3.5/5

A guy has to choose what kind of person, from a dozen candidates, should be born on Earth. Compelling throughout. They say that the mark of a good director is that all the performances are good (as here, especially Zazie Beetz). I found the ending to be transcendent, but your mileage may vary. 

 

Beyond the infinite Two Minutes (Junta Yamaguchi, 2020): 3/5

A computer allows the characters to see two minutes into the future. Low-stakes fun as they spin out the sci-fi possibilities. 

 

Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012): 4.5/5

In the cinema of clarity and commonplace brutality, it’s a masterpiece. Basic, primal, universal. 

 

White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009): 4/5

Explicitly declares that it is going to diagnose how we get WWII and the Holocaust, then presents us with three kinds of circa-WW1 German men, with all their feelings of superiority, god-complex, self-righteousness and fixation on innocence/purity — inflicted on their children, who express everything that is repressed. A lot to think about, and expressed swiftly and dramatically.

 

Rancho Deluxe (Frank Perry, 1975): 2/5

A hazy-dazy movie, full of dumb and likablly handsome young rustlers, driving faded pick-ups around Montana. Script (barely) written by Thomas McGuane. 

 

Dodes’ka-den (Akira Kurosawa, 1970): 2/5

Very much a filmed play, with all the long monologues and artificiality that implies. Traditional Japanese theatre acting, including slow movement and exaggerated face work. The abstract plane of action (a stagy garbage dump) reminds one of Beckett, but this movie lacks humor. 

 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926): 3.5/5

The supposedly first animated movie is all silhouettes, although there are all kinds of grey-scale backgrounds as well as evocative blues, reds, greens and yellows. (Right up there on the screen In 1923). Beautiful design, Tabu-like naked-lady bathing, witches, racist depictions of Chinese and Arabic characters, and plenty of other delights. 

 

Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951): 3/5

The Holy Fool of Gump (and unfortunately just as facile) crossed with the what-are-you -gonna-do generosity and gagginess of Tati, with a dash of radical humanism. Wish-fulfillment in troubled times. Honestly, I don’t have a taste for these fairy tale films (like Demy’s Donkey Skin, of which this is a neo-real cousin).  

 

Train Again, 20 mins. (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021): 3.5/5

I have some doubts about its conceptual discipline/rigor, but it’s a pretty good experience. 

 

In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003): 3.5/5

Genuinely hot and sexy and also actually disturbing, with a pretty bleak and paranoid outlook. It compares favorably to Pakula’s Klute.

 

Quai des Orfèvres (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947): 3.5/5

There’s a murder that both our protagonists seem guilty of. Will the sharp-eyed police detective find the right man? Smart entertainment. 

 

The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, 2015): 3/5

A maid lives in the home of a wealthy family, but when her estranged daughter also comes to live there, all the relationships and power dynamics shift. Schematic. 

 

 

Pre-1978 Agnes Varda Film Fest

Varda is a magpie or gleaner of styles, perspectives, and strategies—a genius of spontaneous and mutating order. She doesn’t take any premise seriously for long, and changes rules frequently. This must madden The Formalists. 

 

La Pointe-Courte (Agnès Varda, 1955): 3/5

A talkfest with a strong sense of place, as a couple on the rocks wanders around a fishing village, past boats, nets, cats and fishermen and women of every shape. Comparable to early Bergman and Rossellini’s Journey to Italy (from the previous year). Varda says she was telling two stories that never interact (inspired by Faulkner’s Wild Palms), but the fishermen’s story isn’t exactly a narrative and comes off as mere scene-setting. 

 

Cléo From 5 to 7, rw (Agnès Varda, 1962): 3.5/5

Cléo from 5 to 7: Remembrances and Anecdotes, 36 mins (Agnès Varda, 2005): 3.5/5

Enjoyed the original as a hangout on the streets, apartments and parks of Paris. But the follow-up documentary Remembrances bumps it a half point for helping me see it as a reflection on deeper issues of seeing and being seen, as well as the inexorable movement of time. 

 

Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965): 4.5/5

Packed with beauty and spontaneity. Cut together in a new way and churning with new feelings. Deserves to be in the conversation with the other New Wave Masterpieces. The man at the center is a bummer but the storytelling a big wow. 

 

Les Creatures (Agnès Varda, 1966): 3/5

Nutty science fiction about a guy who is controlling people in a village, plus meta-fiction stuff about the sadistic role of an author in the lives of his characters. An eccentric use of Catherine Deneuve (as a mute), Michel Piccoli (with a huge scar/gash running down the middle of his forehead), and (Bergman’s) Eva Dahlbeck. 

 

Elsa la Rose, 20 mins (Agnès Varda, 1966): 2/5

Banal portrait of the wife of surrealist poet Louis Aragon, who was also a writer. I know no more about why I should care about them than before I watched the film. 

 

Black Panthers, 28 mins (Agnès Varda, 1968): 2.5/5

A time capsule rather than an interrogation. 

 

Lions Love (Agnès Varda, 1969): 2/5

An acid-addled stumble through Hollywood in June of 1968. Charmless characters but great wallpaper. “There never was a Hollywood. It’s just a mining camp with service from the Ritz.”

 

Nausicaa (Agnès Varda, 1971): 4/5

A kaleidoscopic probing at the Greek civil war in 1968, which accuses the U.S. of installing a government performing an anti-intellectual, military-based coup and purge, plus torture. With intersecting fiction parts plus interviews of actual participants, news footage, breaking the fourth wall, Brechtian satiric parts, etc. Yet, it’s by far the most grounded and emotional of all the New Wave 68 Marxist movies I’ve seen. 

 

Plaisir d’Amour en Iran, 6 mins (Agnès Varda, 1976): 3/5

An excerpt from One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, which should have just be incorporated into that film. Our two lovers contemplate Iranian architecture and poetry. 

 

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, 1977): 4.5/5

A French hippy masterpiece and a blatantly political film—warmly feminist about girls doing it for themselves. Tells the story of two women over a decade, and fills it with moments between women that seem like secrets that no men talk about and I’m not even supposed to know. Not as formally inventive as Le Bonheur, but on the other hand for a while this an epistolary narrative as well as a stealth musical with decent songs and dance. Is there a song about the women on a tour boat in Amsterdam who were all there from France to get legal abortions? A definitive yes.

 

 

Akerman Mini-Mini-Fest

I’m good with these female directors undermining narrative constraints and setting off in bold or even odd new directions. 

 

Sauté ma ville, 13 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1968): 3/5

For some reason this 18-year-old doesn’t seem satisfied with the boxed food she is given to eat, the cooking she must do, the cleaning and beauty products that make her and her home pretty. 

 

La Chambre, 11 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1972): 3/5

A chair with a red velour back, a breakfast table, a teapot, curtains, a woman looking out guardedly, possibly masterbating, later fondling an apple meaningfully, the rhyme of a red chair, a lamp.  

 

News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976): 3.5/5

Mother’s letters add pathos, yet I can’t imagine a more mundane depiction of NYC. Perhaps this is the point (alienation: discuss). I wonder whether native New Yorkers are seeing a lot of Then vs Now stuff, lost on me. 

 

 

Movies I Avoided for Decades Because I Thought They Were Going to Be Bad, and I Was Right

 

The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1967): 1.5/5

I realize comedy is subjective and that it’s not cool to judge anti gay and anti-trans jokes by todays standards, but really this movie stinks on ice. If it’s not funny, their strategy is to say it louder—and believe me, there’s a LOT of yelling in this movie. 

 

The Party (Blake Edwards, 1968): 2/5

There is a lot of Tati here and Clouseau obviously. However, Hulot retains his dignity because he seems to ignore or not care about other people’s opinions of him, and Clouseau continues to consider himself the world’s greatest detective no matter the evidence. On the other hand, this character seems fully aware of how personally humiliating his misadventures are. Notice, I didn’t even mention the brown-face Sellers wears throughout. Why did this character have to be Indian except because the creators think Indians are funny?

 

The Ghost and Mrs Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947): 2/5

At least three disgusting men behaving leeringly toward a pretty modern Gene Tierney. “My dear, since Eve picked the apple, no woman has ever been taken entirely unawares. When a woman is kissed, it’s because deep down she wants to be kissed,” says the gross ghost sea captain Rex Harrison, who led a “very manly life.” In the end she is in love with a very Trumpian image of a manly man, who tells it like it is—a man who, in the movie, literally doesn’t exist any more. 

 

A Simple Plan (Sam Raimi, 1998): 2/5

A Predetermined Slog

 

Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968): 2/5

Skips jokelessly through a series of genres, including the western, war movie, boxing flick, adventure, horror, with toothless satire of advertising and the manufactured identities and cameos by Timothy Carey, Jack Nicholson, Zappa and Victor Mature (??) in a series of ascots. With some head-shop use of color and negative-image. Good songs, though.