TÁR (Todd Field, 2022): 3.5/5
The title character and the film itself are highly intellectual and cultured—the script is among the most erudite and highbrow I’ve ever experienced (a real pleasure, for me at least). Unfortunately the film doesn’t give her much to do, really.
Amsterdam (David O. Russell, 2022): 3.5/5
Madcap and funny. Christian Bale nails it. Admittedly, horrible third act problems.
Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022): 2/5
I did not connect to this bummed-out story. Boo hoo, I’m too sad to be a parent. But in talking to other people who have seen it, I am retroactively intrigued by the idea that at the end of the movie, you know exactly what happens next, although it is never, never mentioned in the text.
Don’t Worry, Darling (Olivia Wilde, 2022): 1.5/5
Melissa and I really enjoyed the first half hour, which features lots of sexy sex-time, so rare in mainstream American movies these days. The rest lies somewhere between dumb and embarrassingly dumb. Harry and Florence Pugh are fine. The script is not.
See How They Run (Tom George, 2022): 1.5/5
A dumb title for a dumb movie. How would one guess it’s a “super-clever” whodunnit? This bag of smirky quirks is how many people think about Wes Anderson these days, I’m afraid.
Wendell & Wild (Henry Selick, 2022): 3/5
Detailed and brilliantly odd. Why are all these characters black. Why not?
My Father’s Dragon (Nora Twomey, 2022): 3/5
Surprising original. Displays a real desire to escape from (some) narrative cliches.
Viva l’Amour (Tsai Ming-liang, 1994): 2.5/5
Can one make an interesting movie about boredom? This one, depicting aimlessness and loneliness among the Taiwanese young people, doesn’t succeed. Ends with a 6-minute, unbroken take of our protagonist crying on a bench. How/why is the movie title in French?
Él (Luis Buñuel, 1953): 3/5
Our protagonist begins as a love-struck man of the community and rapidly devolves, Breaking Bad-style, into a jealous and murderous monster. I have read comparisons to Vertigo, but the jealousy and pain of Obscure Object of Desire is much closer analogy. What’s more intriguing is the film’s interest in sex and the church. It begins with a priest washing and kissing feet. Then our protagonist falls in love with the sexiest feet/shoes in the church, and it’s over. The film’s climax features our protagonist violently attacking a priest at the altar in from of all his parishioners. Very satisfying.
Nazarin (Luis Buñuel, 1959): 4/5
A heartfelt retelling of the life of Christ, sincerely empathetic for the very poorest sinners. The Jesus character is beautiful and righteous, with real compassion and a St. Francis-like communion with all life, etc. Includes philosophy, miracles, cavorting with prostitutes, plus the passion. As with Pasolini’s Gospel According to St. Matthew, the real question is, “How serious is this movie by this notorious rabble-rouser and kicker of lick-spittle priests (see Él)?” Answer: As a heart attack.
Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa, 1948): 3.5/5
A drunken gangster meets a drunken doctor, and redemption in pursued. Mifune is suave and tubercular in a hot-ass white suit, but Takashi Shimura (who appears in 21 of Kurosawa’s 30 films) rips apart his fantasy, calling all the gangsters on their “feudalistic loyalty crap.”
Ikiru, rw (Akira Kurosawa, 1952): 4.5/5
A beautiful movie in the tradition of Capra about what we can really accomplish in this short life. I love how the narrative structure of the last 50 minutes provides an answer, as the inspiring story of our protagonist (Takashi Shimura again) is told with contributions from all the people at his funeral. Meaning that one’s life is (perhaps) measured by all those one has moved, however briefly.
The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa, 1960): 3.5/5
A tale of revenge and corporate corruption. Long, but narratively strong à la Leone or Melville—continually setting up confrontations and revelations among the many characters. Full of bravura sequences, including an ironic and amusing opening wedding where reporters are waiting for some of the guests to be arrested.
Little Stabs at Happiness, 15 mins. (Ken Jacobs, 1953): 3.5/5
Raw-boned, inventive and narcissistic in a TicToc closed-feedback sort of way.
Brazilian Film Fest
Cinema Novo: um verdadeiro busto.
Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha, 1964): 2/5
Nonsense at a high aesthetic level. A spiritual journey and playful within the Western genre à la Jodorowsky, but more austere. Our protagonist kills his boss over a money dispute, then joins up with a babbling mystic Christian, then a bloody-minded outlaw. But the film is dragged down by lots of strange and senseless speechifying and a languorous second half. They call it avant-garde, but I don’t know…it reads as incompetence.
Entranced Earth/Terra em Transe (Glauber Rocha, 1967): 2/5
Poetry and politics, neither one of which I really understood. An idealistic politician says he’s going to help the people and is elected—but he soon compromises and betrays his ideals, then is buried by conservative and corporate forces. And yet nothing really moving, and there are long, dull passages of incoherent and hysterical political rhetoric or lamentation for a failed revolution.
Antonio das Mortes (Glauber Rocha, 1969): 2/5
At best, you could say Rocha is putting genre, Brazilian myth and legend, and revolutionary zeal into a blender and splashing it around the scrubby desert. At worst, you could say this is fucking nonsense, barely interested in anything other than songs, dances and other crude rituals. Revisits the Cangaceiro bandits of Black God, White Devil—Brazilian folk heroes/outlaws fighting for the people. Antonio is our protagonist, I guess, but he’s fighting against the outlaws for a government trying to bring stability to the country. General muddiness abounds.
Barren Lives/Vidas Secas (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1963): 2.5/5
A Beckett-level of devastation, ruin and emptiness. A family looks for work in the desert of Northeast Brazil, with everything stacked against them from exploitative employers, to government taxes, to the police and army. Poor people are, indeed, poor.
A Dog’s Will/O Auto da Compadecida (Guel Arraes, 2000): 1.5/5
A manic and tiresome comedy, incorporating limp farce, toothless satire of religion, and sub-Three’s Company misunderstandings. Absolutely beloved in Brazil.
Bicycle Thieves-based Iranian Film Fest
The Iranians somehow all excel at these simple stories, mining real drama out of the real world. As if the whole country took the Dogme 95 pledge.
The Cyclist (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1989): 3/5
A man needs money for his sick wife’s hospital stay, so he agrees to ride a bicycle around a courtyard for a week without sleep. A circus atmosphere arises, as this poor nobody becomes the focus of a whole community, including gangsters betting on him, people taking advantage of the crowd to sell their wares, as well as groups of school children, old people and so on using him as a learning moment.
A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996): 4.5/5
A funny and compassionate little Möbius strip of a movie, like Close Up in a lighter tone. A director is making a movie recreating and examining the time when he stabbed a policeman at the age of 17. But memories are tricky and young people have changed so much that the actors don’t really even want to pretend to commit this act of violence—which leads to a perfect last frame. 78 minutes. Available on YouTube.
The Silence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1998): 2/5
A lovely experimental, drama-light film about a blind boy who also likes to walk around with his fingers in his ears. He gets lost or led astray several times but then just cuts to him being back and safe. Shrug emoji.
The Song of Sparrows (Majid Majidi, 2008): 3.5/5
A man who lives in the countryside outside of Tehran loses his job and must travel to the city on his motorcycle daily to make a living. Rather than concentrating on the anxiety, difficulty and pain of the situation, however, the movie generously sees this circumstance as opening new opportunities, challenges and ideas for the poor guy.
Homework (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989): 2.5/5
The emphasis on education for these kids is beautiful but perilous. The education seems focused on rote learning, always with a religious bent, instead of on creativity. Students are put under a lot of pressure to succeed, and the parents are not in a good position to help them, since many are illiterate themselves and ignorant of changing learning techniques (although experts in corporal punishment). This is interesting as far as it goes, but considering this is a film by Kiarostami, the thesis is disappointingly unambiguous.
Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002): 3/5
Women (in Iran, etc.) are fucked. The film is just six women (and one boy) talking but I’m not sure it passes the Bechtel test, since they almost exclusively speak about the men who define them and dictate how they should/must behave.
Farhadi Film Fest
Farhadi didn’t get the memo about neo-realism and instead seems to be modeling Bergman, Mike Leigh or even more classical dramatists like, let’s say, Arthur Miller. These are well-plotted and at times intense potboilers, full of drama often brought about because of the smallest of decisions—and often heightened by cascading third-act revelations. Farhadi doesn’t shy away from the big images, either. At the beginning of The Salesman the feuding couple’s apartment building literally collapses around them. And the soundtrack of Fireworks Wednesday sounds like constant random gunfire (like the Alfred Molina scene in Boogie Nights, but for two hours).
Fireworks Wednesday (Asghar Farhadi, 2006): 4/5
The first third is a sneaky variation on Yojimbo/For a Few Dollars More/Hammett's Red Harvest/Miller’s Crossing, where our protagonist keeps switching allegiances, sharing information and pitting rivals against one another on the way up the ladder. Thereafter, she becomes more of a Marlowe, passively observing and noticing all the multigenerational betrayals, lies and pain caused by the character’s’ infidelities, while also serving as an ironic framing device representing the naive first experience of love. In other words: heart pounding, complex and literate.
About Elly (Asghar Farhadi, 2009): 4/5
A group of friends vacation at the beach, but the newcomer to the group disappears. Did she drown or just leave? Did any of them really know her? Some terrifically dramatic and emotionally charged situations, and damn that’s just the best.
A Separation, rw (Asghar Farhadi, 2011): 4/5
Once again, the drama is precipitated by tiny actions, lies or decisions that initially seem inconsequential but eventually blow up everything.
The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi, 2016): 4/5
Evolves into a sort of Iranian Death Wish—a revenge tale that indicts everyone involved. Stars a terrific Shahab Hosseini, who has appeared in three (out of 9) of Farhadi’s films, playing very different people.
Kubrick I Haven’t Watched for a While
Wherein the director decides: “Let’s take out all that clarity that you like and replace it with ambiguity.”
Fear and Desire, rw (Stanley Kubrick, 1953): 3/5
Radical interiority and editing. Kurosawa, Dostoyevsky, Huston’s Red Badge of Courage and The Thin Red Line are influences/fellow travelers. The 20 mins that involve the girl suck.
Paths of Glory, rw (Stanley Kubrick, 1957): 4.5/5
Quite a critique of the intellect, for a chess-enthusiast like Kubrick. In the end, all those beautiful, elegant, refined rooms are the setting for the utmost stupidity. One understands why war is a turn-on not for dumb kids (the subject of many a war movie) but for governments and lawyers—fun and guilt-free displays of ultimate power. Rather than a star vehicle for Douglas, the script makes room for as many as 15 memorable non-lead roles including those played by Ralph Meeker, Adolph Menjou, Tim Carey, etc.
Barry Lyndon, rw (Stanley Kubrick, 1975): 4/5
Possibly informed by my recent readings of George Elliott’s Middlemarch, Dicken’s Bleak House, and Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, I (newly) found this film funny, brilliant and beautiful—full of wit and event. Its slowness invites viewers to just momentarily breathe in the colors and geometry. But it also lends the film a sense of hypnosis, as in The Shining, where the historic moment vibrates. And here the long arc of the narrative invites a “god’s eye view” that permits Kubrick to justify his emotional remove as a sin of the original text, not his own. (Akin to Pasolini’s “It’s not me” strategy in Arabian Nights.) The “moral” of Barry Lyndon (stated clearly up front) is that all these people, good or bad, happy or sad, died a long, long time ago—and that their lives, despite their drama as depicted, had no meaning. Perfect.
Eyes Wide Shut, rw (Stanley Kubrick, 1999): 4/5
The movie has a completely unique look and feel—dreamy, slow and hypnotic (a characteristic that annoyed me when I last saw it, during its theatrical run). As Nicole Kidman dances with a debonaire stranger in front of what David Ehrlich calls “a million Christmas lights,” her line-readings become slower and more sing-songy, following the sway of the dance and music rather than underlining the meaning (which feels odd in a way that perhaps only the 80th take of something could). She is seduced and deeply considers accepting his offer of sex, but ultimately refuses—an act that is repeated over and over by both parties in the film. Originally, I saw the film as being too judgmental of Kidman’s character, who hasn’t actually done anything beyond having an intense fantasy (something that is completely OK, even beautiful). But now I can see that it is only Cruise’s character who can’t handle her complexity, not Kubrick. Sydney Pollack is perfect and very welcome—since his line-readings are allowed to be more traditionally realistic, and cut through the naive and narcissistic dream of the last two hours.
