* Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021): 4/5

An unusual experience, with its silence, its languor, its long musical performances, its ravishing tableau and landscapes, its mysteries. I have spoilerific ideas about what’s happening with The Gonk, etc., but the movie's joys are more experiential than narrative. Still, I found the climax to be perfectly satisfying, emotionally. Also, gobsmacked and pleased to find myself watching it in the company of my dear friend Michelle! How could it fail to be a pleasure? 

 

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021): 4/5

I liked all three of these talky stories of women in complex emotional situations—stuffed with compulsions, betrayals, doublings and proxies. Made me reflect favorably on Drive My Car, and the complexity of the main character’s relationship with his wife and lead actor. 

 

* Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan, 2022): 3/5

Overstuffed with jokes and ideas, many (many) of which don’t work. But even at a 50/50 hit rate, there’s plenty here to laugh at, shake one’s head at, and generally have fun with. 

 

The Batman (Matt Reeves, 2022): 2.5/5

The tear-streaked-mascara Batman. The Nirvana Batman. The detective Batman. The Se7en Batman. The first-responder Batman. The daddy-issues Batman. The too-depressed-and-obsessive-to-have-sex-with-Catwoman Batman.

 

X (Ti West, 2022): 2.5/5

They (also) say that direction is all about tone management, and this one is all over the place. Or maybe it’s just new, this combination of 70s realism and  80s cartoonish Texas-Chainsaw-2-level exaggeration—idiosyncratic, talkie and weird. But West makes the fatal mistake of using a young person in sub-mediocre oldie makeup to play the baddie, who should have just been played by an actual, capable and hot old person. Totally changes the movie’s vibe, meaning and balance. 

 

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

“A good building always makes a beautiful ruin.” Goddard’s living ghost haunts this word-strewn, quote-haunted critique of power and organization, especially capitalism, socialism, communism. Explicitly revolting against repression, censorship and distortion in all forms. Christ, did I (ironically) watch a censored version? God, I hope not. (I heard the one on Hulu is censored, so I went out of my way to rent it on Amazon Video, and it was rated NR. But still I wonder.)

 

Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, 2021): 3.5/5

An arty, fly-on-the-wall portrait of modern China. Definitely some images of wonder and power, but I’m not positive of the thesis. I would say that it’s about how one’s culture determines one’s behavior and reality and … Is China what the future looks like?

 

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

Likable but too long and styleless, and it lets the hypocritical duo completely and unsatisfyingly off the hook. My favorite of Chastain’s performances, so good on Oscar.

 

Pyassa (Guru Dutt, 1957): 4/5

Like a 30s Hollywood musical but with poets and prostitutes and full of deep despair about the state of the world. Beautiful high-contrast black and white, and many tuneful and unusual (to Western ears) songs. 

 

Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper Flowers) (Guru Dutt, 1959): 4/5

The main character is a film director who we first see as an old, lonely man. Thereafter we flash back to tell his life. References to Citizen Kane dominate the first half— from that story structure, to the pipe he smokes, to a white cockatoo, to specific camera shots, deep focus and beautiful shafts of light. Eventually morphs into a full-on remake of A Star is Born. Just a couple of songs, but their melodies are used beautifully throughout the score.

 

Smooth Talk (Joyce Chopra, 1985): 4/5

Manages to be both languid and devastating, zeroing in on a certain rite of passage with harrowing and frank emotional and psychological detail. Chopra lets long scenes play out, with emotions flipping back and forth and around. Dern is really great. 

 

Pusher (Nicolas Winding Refn, 1996): 3/5

Mads Mikkelsen is to Pusher as Deniro is to Mean Streets. This story of Swedish drug dealing is short, nasty and brutish. Also jittery. 

 

War and Peace, 422 min. (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1965): 4/5

Everything Cimino was trying to do with Heavens Gate, plus a dozen other tricks and vibes, including radical voiceover interiority all over the place a la Malick. “All of that is in me. All of that IS me.” Battle scenes are a heady mix of exact historical recreations and impressionistic swirling. 

 

Out 1, 743 mins. (Jacques Rivette, 1971): 1.5/5

An unsatisfying and head-scratching waste of 12.38888 hours, rivaling Alexanderplatz and, more relevantly, The Mother and the Whore as the biggest waste of (a lot of) time by a revered movie. Bored and boring theater kids senselessly fucking around does not a critique of post-1968 make! In the final episode Rivette randomly introduces a bunch of formal fuckery such as suddenly the dialogue is backwards or silenced, “lets just have 10 seconds of black here and there in the middle of this scene,” etc., as if even Rivette has become bored or self-contemptuous. Near the end, one of main characters runs down the beach yelling “Leave me alone!” and I couldn’t agree more.

 

Severance, season 1 (Dan Erickson, Ben Stiller): 2/5

Does a TV show have an obligation to answer any — or, actually, even one — of the dozens of questions and loose-ends it raises? If so, this fails.