* Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein, 2023): 3.5/5
A funny and rollicking good time. Get ready for five more.
Babylon (Damien Chazelle, 2022): 4/5
I really liked the opening dance party, a high-energy 30-minute set piece. Then I loved the next 25 minutes, a “shoot five silent films at the same time plus Spike Jones and Brad Pitt on set” set piece with amazing rhythm and pacing and a climax of emotion. Probably the best hour or film of the year. After that it’s diminishing returns. Snake sequence is disastrous.
Women Talking (Sarah Polley, 2022): 3/5
I appreciated the formal choice of keeping the men off the screen for the whole movie. The drama is strong, but it’s obvious from the beginning what these characters should do, and the rest is just the audience mentally yelling at the characters to do it. And I’m sorry but Rooney Mara, Clair Foy, Jessie Buckley—this the acting B-team for sure. Ben Wishaw’s character is so weepy and wimpy he was more like a “chick” than the rest of them put together (surely the point).
L’Intrus (Claire Denis, 2004): 3/5
Elliptical, even for Denis. Shares with its protagonist a feeling of displacement. “Where am I and why am I here” is the movie’s heartbeat, from France to Switzerland to Hong Kong to Tahiti. I have some guesses about who the main character is and what his relationship is to other people on screen, but guesses would be all they would be. A puzzle movie, and which inspires some contemplation/construction after the movie is over.
7 Women (John Ford, 1955): 3.5/5
Has a very similar structure to Stagecoach, with a cast of characters passing through danger while playing out their emotional arcs. This is the same but instead of the stagecoach moving, it’s different scenarios sweeping through an American convent in China. Anne Bancroft, as the new doctor, is surely the hottest and most bad-ass woman in Ford’s oeuvre.
Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, 2000): 3/5
“It’s hard to be a human, all these years.” My problem is that I find Andersson’s movies nightmarish. I realize that this feeling is supposed to be balanced by humor, but this doesn’t tickle my funny bone. So it’s just a despairing ghoul fest.
Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002): 3.5/5
Ozymandias, the movie. Like Jancsó’s great Electra, My Love, it’s a time-slippery, dreamy musical and dance celebration about the events of the 19th and 20th century in their nation/country. This one is staged in the State Hermitage Museum instead of in a scrabbly field—but I prefer the ecstatic, joyous and folkloric tone of Jancsó’s over the officious, decorative and grand scale of this one. This same movie, tripping balls through the Smithsonian while recounting 250 years of American history might be my favorite movie of 2024.
The Sun (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2005): 2/5
Following Hirohito in the final days of WWII, this is comparable in theme to Downfall and Altman’s Secret Honor. Resignation, defiance, anger, fear, denial, old grudges, personal indulgences and reveries arise. Tone is play-like, airless and soporific.
Multiple Maniacs, rw (John Waters, 1970): 3.5/5
An amateurish and hilarious parade of disgusting and mocking perversion. Devine’s best performance. The main weasly but refined bad-guy scumbag has a great poster for Losey's Boom! (as well as a print of Warhol's Jackie O) on his wall—more of the best kind of bad taste. I love the list of people they can’t wait to murder: Ann Margaret. Trisha Nixon. Shirley Temple. The Pope. Ronald Reagan and his family. Barbara Streisand. The lobster scene still shocks!
Necktie, 2 mins (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2013): 3/5
Two 10-year-old girls have a duel in a forest.
Nimic, 12 mins (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2019): 3.5/5
An eerie and amusing short about being easily replaced. Staring Matt Dillon: so Drugstore Cowboy was his peak? If so, I’ll take it.
Rose Hobart, 20 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1936): 4/5
A Lynchian interaction between two (or more) tones/dramas. Had anyone before “sampled” previous footage and recontextualized it? We will never know. Why aren’t we getting 10 of these a year—short films that just use footage from Top Gun 2 to tell a woman’s drama, shit like that? At the film’s premier in 1936, Salvador Dali knocked the projector over with his umbrella half-way through, yelling that he had long wanted to make a film identical to this and how it must have been stolen from his dreams. A+ monkey performance.
Jack’s Dream, 6 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1938): 2/5
Storybook puppets, a sinking ship, a sea horse—all with a watery wave.
The Midnight Party, 4 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1938): 3/5
More reappropriated cultural detritus, including seagulls and high-contrast circus performers.
Thimble Theatre, 7 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1938): 2.5/5
Manipulated shots from old movies, especially those featuring animals.
By Night With Torch and Spear, 8 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1942): 2.5/5
It’s fun to watch silent films backwards, upside-down and in negative. A smelting plant, primitive tribes, a caterpillar.
Centuries of June, 12 mins (Joseph Cornell, Stan Brakhage, 1955): 2.5/5
A change of style: This film and the rest I watched use original footage. Look at the exterior of this old house. And here are some kids, possibly playing King of the Hill. A memory piece.
Angel, 4 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1957): 3/5
Trees reflected in the still and lightly waving water of a fountain. Leaves float on the surface, and an angel statue presides over all. Lovely.
Nymphlight, 10 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1957): 2/5
Bryant Park. A beautiful blonde in blown-out light and so, so, so many pigeons. In a couple of years, it will be as if I’ve never set my eyes on these films.
A Portrait of Ga, 4 mins (Margaret Tait, 1952): 2/5
Arial, 4 mins (Margaret Tait, 1974): 3/5
Colour Poems, 12 mins (Margaret Tait, 1974): 3/5
Poems interested in water, grass, trees, birds, dirt, rain, light in Ireland. “All the color and all the dreams in the beam.’
Begone Dull Care (Evelyn Lambart, Norman McLaren, 1949): 3/5
Expertly integrates/originates the styles of several familiar color blotch and scratch films over too-frenetic music.
Shoes, 52 mins (Lois Weber, 1915): 3/5
Focus is on two poor shopgirls surrounded by predatory and creepy rich (compared to them) men. Chabrol would approve of this portrait of these bonne femmes. It 1915, isolated, solitary close ups have become so routine that this one throws in a close up of our disintegrating protagonist in a cracked mirror. Nice. For the want of a shoe, the war is lost.
The Smiling Madame Beudet, 42 mins (Germaine Dulac, 1923): 4/5
Reminds me of Mrs. Dalloway (published two years later) in its interest in a middle-aged woman bored with her domestic life, with a focus on her thoughts, dreams and desires, especially her feelings of her being imprisoned by her marriage and house.
The Seashell and the Clergyman, 41 mins (Germaine Dulac, 1928): 3/5
It’s surrealism so it’s hard to remember all the random parts. There’s a priest who seems to be repeatedly killing the same clergyman. One time he throws him off a roof. Suddenly we are in an interior space with smoke and a body falling through a dark void, then we’re back outside and the camera pans up up up the cliff, and finally there’s a long shot of the sky. So repeatedly the opposite of expectations.
The Circus, rw (Charlie Chaplin, 1928): 4/5
Some killer bits, especially the concluding tight wire act involving a hidden harness to hold him up (which slips off halfway through), plus monkeys. The last five minutes provide a surprisingly satisfying emotional grace note reminiscent of The Searchers.
Chantal Akerman Film Fest
These movies are slow and emotionally emptied out, but I’m appreciating the experience of getting on their wavelength.
Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1978): 3/5
“I think I should try to fix things, a better life and all of that. But if you ask what a better life would be, I can’t even imagine it. It’s not just about food for everyone. We know that’s not it (although it’s a start).” Lots of time is spent watching micro-twitches of amusement or at least interest play across Anna’s mostly inert face as the (mostly) men in her life monologue, often about their piteous love lives. “You’re born. You eat. You drink. You screw when you can. And you die.”
I’m Hungry, I’m Cold, 12 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1984): 3.5/5
A surprisingly Godardian lovers-on-the-run movie. Proof that Akerman could (1) move fast (2) be fun (3) play with genre. What to do with this object that is “entertaining” and “funny”? Do I rate it high because it matches my traditional movie-going expectations or low because it fails to express CA’s “authentic voice” as I’ve come to understand it?
Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels, 60 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1994): 2.5/5
Logorrheic young people obsessed with analyzing and confessing their own feelings and contradictions—Indebted to Eustache and pointing the way to Before Sunrise.
The Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000): 3.5/5
in many ways this is what a relationship feels like. A really nice and sensitive person loves you and wants the best for you and needs to know everything about you and all your thoughts and where you are at all fucking times. Has the most traditional look and feel of all the movies I’ve seen of CA, complete with a thriller-sounding score.
No Home Movies (Chantal Akerman, 2015): 3/5
Recreates the home-as-prison vibes so often found in her work, this time as a documentary about her mom. The green tile in the kitchen, the puttering about, the sweaters indoors. Here the home extends to be correlative to consciousness itself—as her mother’s condition worsen, the rooms themselves darken to the point where the mother disappears from the screen.
D.W. Griffith Biograph Short Film Fest
Since so much plot is happening in such a short amount of time, plus small moments of tremendous beauty—primitive, universal and otherwise—these shorts demand your attention almost like little emotional puzzles. I was interested to realize that DWG very rarely used titles for dialogue, just as chapter headings. After watching all of these, I was amazed to discover, searching this site, that I had watched a bunch of them already, back in 2012, the same week I watched Kes, which I remember like it was yesterday.
The Lonely Villa (06.10.1909): 3/5
Pretty intense home invasion story, but no real cross cutting. Key image: Marion Leonard cowering together with three curly headed daughters, while thieves smash the door down.
Those Awful Hats (10.25.1909): 2.5/5
A three-minute doodle making fun of women at the movies. Thought to be a sort-of public service announcement instructing the ladies in how to comport themselves. Key image: those awful hats.
The Country Doctor (07.08.1909): 3.5/5
Slightly ironic tale of a doctor’s ailing daughter. Key image: the sick daughter herself, with black-circled eyes and a thousand-yard stare.
They Would Elope (08.09.1909): 3/5
A short (8 mins) comedy where a couple’s elopement is thwarted as their carriage, auto, and canoe all fail. Key image: the would-be groom pushing Pickford in a wheelbarrow.
The Sealed Room (09.02.1909): 3.5/5
DWG loves Poe. Key image: The mad aristocrat building a wall, shutting in Marion Leonard and her lover.
The Mountaineer’s Honor (11.25.1909): 5/5
The original filmic manic pixie dream girl, as Pickford flits around like a bird and immediately makes the solitary dreamer fall in love with her. Remarkable how much of this is shot outside in beautiful, deep landscapes. There is more focus on character and performance here. Key image: The anguish on the grandmother’s face (in medium shot) when she realizes she must shoot her grandson. I could not predict how this one would play out.
A Corner in Wheat (12.13.1909): 4/5
So much happens in only 13 minutes. It outlines the fates of two families, rich and poor while sketching the trap of a whole society. Contrasts the animation and rigor of the rich against the immobility and languor of the poor. Key image: a hand grasping up through falling wheat.
To Save Her Soul (12.27.1909): 3/5
God’s Lonely Priest charges into the room to save innocent Pickford from the decadence of the entertainment industry and soon is waving a gun around. Very unsatisfying ending for this modern audience member. Key image: A terrified Pickford writhing on the floor and pulling open her top of her dress dating him to shoot her bare chest.
The Unchanging Sea (05.05.1910): 3/5
A sailor is lost and sea, leaving behind his wife Linda Arvidson and daughter. Turns out he’s alive but has lost his memory. Twenty years pass, and another accident brings him back to his family. Key image: the wife’s back as she gazes out into the rough and overwhelming sea.
Wilful (sic) Peggy (08.25.1910): 3.5/5
A lord falls in love with wild peasant-girl Pickford, who has some problems fitting into high society. As in The School Teacher and the Waif and Mountaineer’s Honor, Pickford excels at playing a wild, untamed, feral girl. Key image: after violently fighting off a would-be suitor, Pickford’s garter breaks and she takes it off and throws it on the ground. When she goes inside, the lord runs up and grabs it greedily.
When a Man Loves (01.05.1911): 3/5
A comic romance wherein irresistible Pickford is again desired by two men. Key image: the last shot which manages to strike a tone surprisingly close to the ending of Some Like it Hot.
The Lonedale Operator (03.23.1911): 3.5/5
Immediate difference in how objects are arrayed on screen. We see Blanche Sweet in the foreground and a horse and carriage moving deep in the background, then later she walks toward the camera, coming very close and then walking past it. Early use of close-up (or, really, an insert) to reveal she has held off the thieves not with a gun but with a wrench. Key images: cross-cutting between thieves breaking into her office with train charging to the rescue.
The Mender of Nets (02.15.1912): 4/5
A tragic romance, showing off Pickford’s acting chops, her expressions and body language expressing melancholy, love, horror, sorrow. Key image: the opening shot of serene Pickford posed in front of—and almost overwhelmed by—a rugged coastline and raging sea.
A Lodging for the Night (05.09.1912): 3/5
Presents a kind of “magic white male” character who is able to cut across conventions in Mexico, solving father /daughter conflicts and buddying up with local authorities to thwart thieves. Key image: the look on the face of our ingénue when she sings to the moon to bring her a lover and the writer protagonist shows up. She takes a moment to thank the moon and sanctify the relationship. Innocent and beautiful.
A Beast at Bay (05.27.1912): 3.5/5
Another cross-cutting exhibition, where boyfriend and police pursue, in train and car (!), a kidnapped Pickford. See a car do a small (but very real) jump over bump! Also benefits from the increased stakes of the boyfriend being humiliated at the beginning and needing to prove himself. Key image: Creepy first shot of an escaped prisoner emerging from some fluttery bushes.
The School Teacher and the Waif (06.27.1912): 3/5
A somewhat disturbing story about what happens when teenage Pickford is forced to go to school for the first time. She’s humiliated by the students and the teacher. Later the teacher saves her from the predatory behavior of a traveling fake-medicine salesman (and his blackface-wearing companion) and still later the teacher creepily kisses her hair. Also her father drunkenly locks her outside in the rain and later beats her with a strap. Key image: Pickford forced to wear a literal dunce cap in front of the class.
Friends (09.23.1912): 5/5
Irresistible (sex worker?) Pickford is left by her prospector boyfriend and falls in love with and marries his friend. How will the boyfriend react to the news? Beautiful emphasis on depth of field and filled with bits of business far behind the main characters in the foreground, including people doing jigs, chopping wood etc. I love the scenes in the Old-West town, where all the townspeople appear to be drunk off their ass. Pickford reportedly says this movie contained her first close-up (with DWG saying “Come on, Billy [Bitzer], let's have some fun. Move the camera up and get closer to Mary.”) Key image: a spectacular shot at the edge of a wild river, with the river flowing deep into the distance.
A Feud in the Kentucky Hills (10.02.1912): 5/5
Something was in the water in September/October of 1912. I can’t do better than Jerry’s review in 2020: “Before she became ‘America's Sweetheart," Mary Pickford was playing characters like “Harum-Scarum” [that’s her character’s name in The Mountaineer’s Honor, but she’s doing a similar bouncy thing here] and driving the peckerwoods wild until they start shooting each other. Featuring crisp on-location photography by Billy Bitzer.” This contemporaneous review is also interesting and accurate: “An unusually tense picture, even for a Biograph. In it, after a few scenes that introduce excellently suggested types of mountaineers and give a few glimpses of mountain life, the action becomes like a whirlwind. It is a one act picture of the almost complete annihilation of a mountain family. A love story softens it some; but it is a hard picture, almost brutal. It is for those who like their pictures fiery. It will surely please the gallery and also, we think, many who arc not in the gallery; but, while we feel sure it will be a success, we cannot commend it wholly; it is likely to offend very sensitive minds, because it is a blood-thirsty picture. - The Moving Picture World, October 19, 1912” Key images: The stirring battle/shoot-out scenes pointing forward to Birth of a Nation.
The Painted Lady (10.24.1912): 5/5
I notice that I gave this one 5/5 back in 2012, and I have to agree with my decade-ago self. This is a disturbing story of a traumatic, violent event that causes real madness. Key image: the sexy black shawl that “plain” Blanche Sweet once wore to a clandestine meeting with her only suitor and now will never take off again.
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (10.31.1912): 4/5
Early gangsters. Key image: (this is an easy one) the startling close-to-camera, suspicious regard of the Snapper Kid.
My Baby (11.14.1912): 3/5
Father’s feelings are hurt when his daughter leaves to get married without him and doesn’t talk to the couple for two years but finally realizes he wants to know more about their baby, his grandson. More sentimental than usual. Key image: the father peering through a window like a burglar to see his grandson.
The Mothering Heart (06.21.1913): 4/5
The other short I gave a 5/5 to in 2012. The child-death conclusion is indeed full of intense emotion. Lillian Gish’s first central performance for Biograph; she was 20. Key image: beautiful round shot (an iris, but of the whole frame) of grieving Lillian Gish whacking the rose bushes.
And one full-length:
True Heart Susie (D.W. Griffith, 1919): 3/5
I honestly don’t know how in six years we went from the wild and exciting exteriors, stark beauty and directness of Pig Alley and Mountaineer’s Honor to this iris-shadowed, medium-shot, verbose interior thing. Gish loves a boy and sells the family cow to send him to college; thereafter she watches his life (and mistakes) pathetically from the sidelines. It occurs to me that the longer form allows a deeper emotional engagement with the characters and gives them time to change. Strangely, Gish’s emotional range in this movie only runs from barely pleased to very sad—she’s fun to watch but isn’t really given that much to do.
