rewatched Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984): 5/5

The ne plus ultra of concert films due to a combination of Demme’s approach to this kind of doc (no backstage footage or preshow b-roll), Jordan Cronenweth’s cinematography (he also shot Blade Runner) and Lisa Day’s cutting (she also cut Eddie Murphy: Raw). And of course it’s also the band. Their infectious joy and energy and the way they interact with the other musicians (all of whom are Black which makes this film feel like a perfect analogy for the dialectic of American popular music). Film’s ability to capture lightning in a bottle, especially when the live performance and the film’s style are in perfect sync as with this film, is something that makes me love this medium more and more as I grow older. It’s the only Time Machine we’ll ever have.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (40 minutes) (Wes Anderson, 2023): 4/5

My favorite Wes since Fantastic Mr. Fox. (Probably because this was my favorite Roald Dahl story growing up.) Delightful, charming, and very fun.

Bottoms (Emma Seligman, 2023): 3/5

A soft 3. Shiva Baby, Emma Seligman's directorial debut was a bona fide indie hit a couple of years ago. Her follow-up is another collaboration with co-writer/actress Rachel Sennott, also featuring Ayo Edebiri (The Bear) and... [checks notes] retired NFL running back Marshawn Lynch? This thing operates at such a specific and bizarre frequency. Put Heathers and Superbad in a blender, add a dash of Fight Club, and then make the vast majority of the characters female and queer - that's the pitch. Moderately funny and genuinely empowering.

Strays (Josh Greenbaum, 2023): 1.5/5

Raunchy comedy where the whole joke is dogs fucking, dogs swearing and dogs shitting. Feels like it was written by 12 year olds who just learned about swear words.

No One Will Save You (Brian Duffield, 2023): 2.5/5

Signs is better.

The Ox Bow Incident (William Wellman, 1943): 4/5

Like a retroactive westernized blend of 12 Angry Men and Paths of Glory: a tight-lipped examination of capital punishment, the clarity of justice, the morality of man, and the misuse of systematic power—all in just 75 minutes, too!

Main reservation is how the film takes an unnecessarily melodramatic curve near the end—I don’t have much of a problem with the idea wanting to be conveyed by the dead man’s letter to his wife, but it seems uncompromisingly forthright; is that really what a dying man would write to his wife? It seemed like every other line was genuine and heartfelt, and the in-between ones served only a blunt condemnation to the men, as if he knew it’d eventually get read aloud. Also kind of strange how literally nothing becomes of Gil’s past relationship and eventually re-encounter with Rose, aside from an underhanded warning from her new husband, which seems entirely superfluous but is entertaining nevertheless. The Ox-Bow Incident is pretty marvelous in all other aspects, though, from its confident plodding to the exasperated moral grayness. Most striking shot in the entire movie comes just after the three men are hanged from a tree. We don’t see the act itself—we see everything that happens around it, though, and as the cavalry rides away and the camera pans across, the backlit sunlight casts three silhouettes onto the ground of their lifeless bodies just dangling in the air. Breathtaking.

The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944): 3.5/5

If you’re Fritz Lang, you’re hardly in need of a rehearsal run in a genre you more or less invented. But if you do take a practice lap, it’s little surprise it comes out as solidly competent as The Woman in the Window.

Like looking into the reflection in a pane of glass, “Window” mirrors a Lang film that would release just one year after it; Scarlet Street. Also starring Edward G. Robinson. And Joan Bennett. And Dan Duryea. In a noir-worthy twist, however, the two films do have different teams of writers.

While “Window” stands on its own as a tight and competent entry in Lang’s filmography, it’s difficult to see it in solo, out of “Scarlet’s” shadow. The setup for each work is remarkably similar; an impotent man falls for a mysterious woman out of his league, and in so doing, trips into a plot of murder and intrigue.

With the roster of talent involved, it’s hard to put up an objection to watching Robinson and Bennett stretch their already bountiful capacities before unleashing them at full strength in “Scarlet.” Though, “Window” really does feel like seeing the two cold read material they would make a meal out of in short order. The pair in “Window” seem somewhat stilted; appearing to still be chewing on the dry bone, before getting to the juiciest aspects of their parts.

Lang, too, is more than aptly competent in his noir domain with “Window,” keeping its somewhat unbelievable prospect in tangible motion throughout. But it’s only in a cheap gag in the film’s closing moments that he somewhat accidentally finds himself in the nightmarish visual antics that make “Scarlet” so instantly iconic.

American Dharma (Errol Morris, 2018): 3/5

First, I still prefer my Errol Morris joints to be about non-famous and non-political subjects, rather than his American villains series. Second, I cannot recommend this unless you’re ready to relive huge chunks of the 2016 presidential campaign.

"He [Morris] does his subject an ill-advised service in glamorizing his apocalyptic tendencies; he ends the film with the set in flames [...] Bannon emerges terrifyingly and yet in a way his admirers will probably love" - Sight & Sound

I think this review misses the point in two ways. On the more obvious level, Morris is not glamorizing Bannon. His camera's view of Bannon is, throughout the film, doom-laden. The score, the burning flags, the Wellesian low angles all are geared towards presenting this man as the Devil he shamelessly professes to admire. On the second front, his admirers will view the film in whatever light they want to because, as the film shows throughout, the likes of Bannon and his lot will see what they want to because that's the nature of interpretation. He consistently reinterprets the films discussed herein to meet his own worldview and 'American Dharma' clearly highlights that hypocrisy.

The most illuminating part of American Dharma is when Steve Bannon is discussing the economics of digital currency in video games. He goes on a lengthy discursive lecture about Dave the overweight office worker and his more illustrious digital life in some MMORPG, contrasting his sad death and small funeral with the glorious send off he would receive in the game (funeral pyre, thousands of attendants). His conceit is that that virtual life is just as valid and as real, more desired, more valid, even. This belief profoundly underscores the entirety of Steve Bannon's worldview.

Anyway, one hopes that the enduring cultural significance of this doc will be nil, but only time will tell whether the musings of Bannon are a preamble to something worse, or merely the cruel reactionary fantasies of a pathetic, self-styled Mephistopheles.

Talk to Me ( Michael and Danny Philippou, 2023): 2/5

Or, Talk to the Hand.

Underwhelming with the supposed ‘scariest film of the year’ tag. Perfunctory chills, emotionally unimpactful, too predictable, unremarkable in form. Very basic possession horror film that has very little about it to make it stand out from others of its kind. I’d rather have been watching The Exorcist or Hereditary.

Thief (Michael Mann, 1981): 3/5

Mann shows up in his feature debut pretty fully formed with a film that owes a debt to Hawks and Peckinpah, but his style is instantly recognizable to anyone who has seen Heat. And as a parable about old school Chicagoan labor pushing back on 1980s corporatization, it works. The depiction of the police as nothing more than another corporatized goon squad out to screw the working man is beautifully of its time and has aged nicely.

Theater Camp (Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman, 2023): 2.5/5

Sprightly and chucklesome. (An afterschool program called Chekhov for Children of Divorce is a very good joke!) For all of its low key charm, Theatre Camp is a little too thin to sustain interest. The mockumentary style is famously hit or miss and this is no exception. When it works this strings together a few chortles and has some genuine heart but just as often, the humor falls a little flat for me. Love and respect to everyone who this was for. I am not one of them. And that’s okay!

Shortcomings (Randall Park, 2023): 2.5/5

If I had a nickel for every time Stephanie Hsu stars in an 2023 Asian-themed comedy, in which she plays a successful actress, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

And if I had a nickel for every time Hsu, Sherry Cola, Timothy Simons and Ronny Chieng star in a 2023 Asian-themed comedy, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Anyway, a couple of snickers here and there in a misguided character study that never really justifies its existence outside of a few snide observations and surface-level commentary. Definitely not a terrible debut from Park, because there's a heart beating underneath and you can tell he's passionate, but the cynicism lying underneath every motivation didn't really resonate with me. Pretty much the definition of a Sundance debut.

Birth/Rebirth (Laura Moss, 2023): 2.5/5

It’s labeled as horror, don’t know that I’d go there. Marin Ireland is so fucking good though. It’s a slow burn and like all slow burns, your mileage will vary.

Borderline (Rebbie Ratner, 2016): 3/5

Lmao at that one part where the main subject, Regina, joined a gay volleyball team called Volley Parton to meet other women and ended up surrounded by gay guys. A doc about BPD, stigmas, and the volatile nature of it all.

Rings (F. Javier Gutierrez, 2017): 1/5

"let's get the guy from The Big Bang Theory to read the wikipedia plot description of the american remake for an hour and a half"

― someone, somewhere, apparently

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (Andre Ovredal, 2023): 1/5

Bland and basic, lacks anything approaching tension. It putters along with no rhythm or pace to speak of. It’s almost an achievement to create a dracula movie in which the count himself has absolutely no presence whatsoever. Also, if you start a movie by telling everyone how it ends, you better make the journey worth it. They didn't.

My Scientology Movie (John Dower, 2015): 2.5/5

Theroux must have been bummed when GOING CLEAR came out, as it renders the bulk of the first half of this film a looooong slog of glossing over lightly what we already know in copious detail. Some nice tension in the second half, and Paz de la Huerta's cameo is brilliant. Kind of all over the place in structure but it's worth it to see the reenactments near the end, especially the scene where fake David Miscavage and fake Tom Cruise play backgammon.

Henry Fool (Hal Hartley, 1997): 2.5/5

Quirky, cryptic, and further proof that Hal Hartley is not for me, despite the immense talent brought to the table for this one (Urbaniak, Posey and Corrigan absurd crossover). Feels like the kinda movie that would be parodied in an adult animated sitcom as a joke about artsy indie dramas.

Anais in Love (Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, 2021): 3/5

Call it The 2nd Worst Person in the World. Another story of an indecisive young woman stumbling through adult responsibilities while falling in and out of love. For her first feature, director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet assuredly keeps the tone gentle, even for one character’s cancer-relapse subplot. At times, it all feels lighter than air, for better or worse.

The highlight is Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Always a welcome presence, she plays the object of Anais’ obsessive desire with intelligence, sensuality, and a mature confidence. The film brightens whenever she’s on screen, which is often after the first act. The movie is officially about Anais’ sentimental education, but it’s her teacher that commands the attention.

A League of Their Own (Penny Marshall, 1992): 3/5

Corny underdog sports saga as pop feminist praxis in tribute to the praxes of a half-century earlier. Receives strength from its wide comic ensemble—all these women (and a few men) bitching and bonding and scrapping and sliding into home. Lori Petty has her toothy grin and firecracker energy; Geena Davis is taller, slower to move, performing as if she doesn't need you to watch, but is benevolent enough to allow it. Each actress burns with confidence; they clash through the simple act of sharing the frame. That's a solid foundation for what's ultimately an old-fashioned, bittersweet melodrama.

Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001): 2/5

I guess I am morbidly fascinated by the post Matrix trash-core “hacker rave AOL daddy aesthetic” of the late 90s/early 2000s. I also am fascinated by shitty John Travolta performances. Stunt work is varied - there's a minute long sequence of several characters falling down a hill that looks awful but the bus chase at the end is admittedly impressive. Cheadle and Berry are wasted in thankless roles and everyone recites the 'stock hacker dialogue' the same way a person may read the ingredients off a cereal box. It's enjoyable enough in a 'what on earth am I watching' way as the tone shifts between family drama, car chases, lengthy discussions about terrorism and inept attempts to lean on the fourth wall. Sadly, there's an unpleasant undercurrent of misogyny throughout which puts a damper on the general enjoyment.

  

Linoleum (Colin West, 2023): 2/5

An adolescent and dumb script slams together Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jones, Donnie Darko, Garden State. I prayed for it to be over, despite its short length, but also got pretty emotional once the film revealed all—and hated myself in the morning. 

 

No One Will Save You (Brian Duffield, 2023): 2.5/5

I really enjoyed Spontaneous, the other movie by this writer/director, but the best thing about this sci-fi horror film is its commitment to having no dialogue whatsoever. In theory, this is something I would love, and I did! But the action was uninspired, and I did have some questions about the narrative that certainly could have been cleared up with a couple of brief sentences exchanged between characters.

 

Chelsea Girls, 3h30m (Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey, 1966): 3/5

Gummo (Harmony Korine, 1997): 3/5

Killing time with trashy misfits. I think what the audience is feeling here (or wanting to feel) is simply an encounter with the real, in all its grotesque boredom. Which makes me think about a third title…

Champions (Bobby Farrelly, 2023): 3/5

The Bad News Bears, but basketball and starring developmentally disabled young people. I always enjoy developmentally disabled performers. Their line-readings are often unstable, and they’re not exactly acting—but rather, at best, being themselves, being real. Indeed, isn’t that what all the best acting is (and other profound thoughts about documentary vs. fiction).

 

The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Jean Renoir, 1936): 3/5

Strange structure. For 98% of the film, it’s just the story of a guy writing western tall tales for a magazine and falling in love. Then in the last 8 minutes, out of nowhere, he is driven to a crime. The end. 

 

French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1955): 3/5

A broad, colorful and silly bonbon packed with singing, dancing, light romance, charming sets recreating a dream Montmartre, and Jean Gabin acting out the very definition of savior faire. It’s full of unusual, surprisingly adult emotional moments. Still, the glib and cartoonish surface is quite a turn-off. Ends with 20 minutes of performance within the Moulin Rouge, which I was little amused by.  

 

The Devil, Probably (Robert Bresson, 1974): 3/5

Existential French hippies, full of anhedonia. “I don’t want to die. I hate life, but I also hate death. I find it appalling.” This is so clearly in the Bresson/Schrader wheelhouse—as if the priest from First Reformed had all the suicidal ideation and none of the lust or environmental activism.

 

Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1967): 3.5/5

Ridiculously entertaining and well-paced tale featuring a series of escalating sword fights, one on one, one on six, whatever. Lots of expert bad guys and good guys (including a hot, bad-ass woman). Stillness within fights reminds one of—and is possibly influenced by?—Leone. 

 

Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003): 3/5

If Dragon Inn is one of Taiwan’s great action movies, Goodbye Dragon Inn is one of its great in-action movies. The cruising men (and one handicapped woman) shuffle through the aisles, hallways, balconies and bathrooms of a rundown movie palace playing King Hu’s Dragon Inn. They seem like ghosts, haunting the theatre and perhaps the film itself—extending the metaphor to include all of us spectators, peering passively at films all day and night. No matter how much you lust after them, they just stand there, smoking their cigarettes. Only three lines of dialogue but each of them nails the themes of the film. Contrasts between the two Dragon Inn films are relevant: teamwork v. solitude, day v. night, fast v. slow, triumphant v. elegiac.

 

Rififi, rw? (Jules Dassin, 1955): 3.5/5

We are told (in song) the title means “rough and tumble,” and indeed this heist movie lacks the elegance and savior faire of the Oceans movies (for example). These are petty, sweaty and mean people. In fact, with its street photography and its tragic irony, this has a lot more in common with The Killing. 

  

Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998): 3/5

Middlebrow story of an older lady accompanying a recently orphaned nine-year-old boy to find his estranged father. Are Hou Hsiao-hsien movies (and other recent slow cinema) turning me off of routine plot beats?

 

Mother and Son, 1h5m (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1997): 4/5

Intimate and surprisingly sensual portrait of a son taking care of his dying mother. Distorted lenses and vivid colors make for an unusual, artificial, storybook-like and often ravishingly beautiful experience. Hypnotic and hallucinatory. 

 

Stars in My Crown (Jacques Tourneur, 1950): 4/5

Really the story of a whole town, with four or five narrative threads playing out in a proto-Altman, Winesburg Ohio way. A preacher and a doctor are slight rivals in a good-hearted small town with occasional greed and racism. Sob sob sob at the beautiful sincerity about the value of community at the climax, akin to the bank speech at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. 

 

Xala (Ousmane Sembène, 1975): 2.5/5

Begins with satiric scene where African businessmen kick out the French off the board of the African national bank with a speech about the African future of Africa—but the French immediately give each of the businessmen a suitcase of cash and remain standing in the back of the room. The movie proceeds to follow one of the businessmen’s marriage to his third wife (a status symbol) and subsequent impotence. A cure for the impotence is pursued at such length that one forgets the first scene until the final scene where it comes around again. In the end, the whole film just comes down to the first and last scene—with quite a bit of tonally shaky and questionably essential material between.  

 

L’Amour Fou, 4h12m (Jacques Rivette, 1969): 1.5/5

A young, callow theatre director is in the middle of rehearsals for a production of Racine (basically the French equivalent of Shakespeare), but his girlfriend feels neglected, bored and empty and occasionally expresses suicidal and murderous thoughts. There’s some fun in connecting this drama to that of the play that is being rehearsed, but mostly it’s a long, long slog. 

 

Abraham’s Valley, 3h32m (Manoel de Oliveira, 1993): 1.5/5

Ema grows up, gets married, takes lovers, and engages in tedious, self-satisfied philosophic and poetic conversations full of epigrams that remain completely out of my grasp. Here’s an example from the narration: “Ema had the extraordinary power to make a radiant desire run like a bush fire over corpses of legendary virility, stubborn virility.” Uh huh. It’s based on a book by Portuguese writer Agustina Bessa-Luís, whose work (which Oliveira adapted four times) is described this way: “notions of time and space become vague, and planes of reality flow together, dimming the sense of a logical order of events.” Uh huh.

 

The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965): 4.5/5

The first hour and a half is perfectly perfect perfection. The last hour is a completely different film, often beautiful and gripping but slower, more serious, more internal. Actual sex and violence is heavily implied. It’s a kids movie! 

 

Il Grido (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1957): 3/5

A man’s wife leaves him, and he begins to wander from town to town, job to job, girl to girl, never finding anything of value. Five Easy Pieces vibes, but even more mud, fog and meaninglessness.

 

Jurassic Park, rw (Steven Spielberg, 1993): 4.5/5

More brutal than a typical modern action movie (cow v. dinosaur is especially upsetting, then and now) and completely effective, with one action set piece after another, cascading. Effects still mostly good due to high practical content. 

The Last Run (Richard Fleischer, 1971): 3/5

George C. Scott takes one last gig as a getaway driver—and it’s a death trip, baby! 

 

The New Centurions (Richard Fleischer, 1972): 3.5/5

An L.A. cop story, with the verisimilitude that Joseph Wambaugh brings to the table, but shaggy and in an episodic CHiPs mode (but a billion times more cynical and suicide-ish). It even features a young Eric Estrada, but the real draws are George C. Scott and Stacy Keach, both excellent. 

 

Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975): 4/5

One of the most lurid and upsetting movies I’ve ever seen—and, taken on its surface, one of the most racist. The slaveowner protagonists spend most of the movie enacting the most degrading slave dramas on the black characters, reminding me of 12 Years a Slave or even Salo at times. It takes a shocking amount time for any of the black characters to demonstrate a personality or a desire for agency. The second half of Django Unchained seems to be an explicit corrective.

 

Navajo Joe (Sergio Corbucci, 1966): 3.5/5

Outstanding double feature with Mandingo, both very much on the side of their non-white characters while still prominently featuring a lot of upsetting racism (among the characters coded as bad). I can’t help but appreciate and admire how front and center the confrontation and discussion of the reality of actual horrible racism is (it’s just the depiction that is rough). This film is the one Burt Reynolds made with the second-best spaghetti Western director as his TV work was drying up, just like Rick Dalton! And Reynolds is great here, in a feral, physical and acrobatic performance.

 

The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1967): 4/5

The best non-Leone spaghetti western I’ve seen (which admittedly isn’t saying much). Clever plot has Lee Van Cleef—grey-chest-haired but steely eyed—pursuing a bandit accused of a horrific crime (but innocent). The gag is that Van Cleef keeps catching him (like five times or more) but the smart and likable bandit keeps escaping and otherwise wriggling out of it. Traditionally entertaining. 

 

Coogan’s Bluff (Don Siegel, 1968): 2/5

Almost no police work is on display here. Mostly it’s a grotesque, comic fish out of water where a rapey/traditional-values Arizona lawman is confronted with a bunch of acid-soaked New York hippies. Whoever wins, we lose. 

 

 

Hou Hsiao-hsien Film Fest

Hou’s movies don’t really have plots, whether they take place over a summer or over most of a century. Nor do they have much non-diegetic music nor real closeups. They can feel more like flipping through a book of photos, but the photos are complicated and, in their own way, emotional (like looking at emotion through a telescope). His most revered work (and subsequently the ones I had seen before this deep dive, here represented just by titles and previous score) are his most glacial, ponderous and monotonous. But his early works are more traditionally eventful, and his 2000s run beginning with Millennium Mambo are gorgeous and modern-feeling films about young people—and a great pleasure. Nothing from Hou since 2015, but Letterboxd includes this description of an upcoming, undated) project called Shulan River: “Taking place in modern-day Taipei, Hou Hsiao-Hsien focuses on a lonely river goddess whose waterways have now been covered by modern roadways.” I’m in.

 

The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983): 3/5

Hou called this his “first real film” (it was his fourth), and indeed it already pokes at Hou’s lifelong interests in rural vs. urban life, the passage of time, and how our lives are shaped by the larger-world events we are caught up in. It was also the first of his films written by Chu Tien-wen (a woman), who will write or co-write nearly all of the rest of Hou’s works. The first half hour is like Fellini’s I Vitelloni, with four restless post-high-schoolers fighting, gambling and drinking in a tiny fishing island off Taiwan. Then they decide to move to the mainland, where they each pursue different paths. The last half hour is a romance involving the most thoughtful of the lads, until the girl moves to Taipei—setting the Hou archetype for Taipei representing a different, dreamed of, life. 

 

The Sandwich Man (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983): 3/5

Hou directed the first part of this triptych of three separate stories set in Taiwan in the 60s; his section is entitled “The Son’s Big Doll." It’s a simple, almost neorealistic story of a young father who must dress up as a clown and wear a sandwich board to earn his money. Indeed, it’s hard to make money and retain one’s dignity. 

 

A Summer at Grandpa’s (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1984): 4/5

Anecdotal but still compelling thanks to plenty of incident, a gentle tone, and serene landscapes. A small boy and his little sister visit the country and are confronted with a world that is more complex than previously imagined—and which they don’t really quite understand or have agency in—including a couple of inconvenient pregnancies, developmentally disabled young people, crime and, uh, hemorrhoids. Similarities to My Neighbor Totoro, including setting, tone, sick mother and the ages of the children, can’t be a complete coincidence. 

 

The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985): 3.5/5

 

Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986): 3.5/5

A boy and girl growing up in a mine town kinda like each other. They both move to Taipei to get nothing jobs, and their affection grows. But when he’s drafted, she marries a postman. As is typical with Hou, the characters are always being told by older people how much better they have it now, but in all times, the fates of these characters remain determined by the movements of history that flows around them. 

 

Daughter of the Nile (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1987): 3.5/5

Like the story of The Godfather if Connie was our protagonist. Her brother and husband are both criminals, increasingly, then whacked. As in Mean Street’s our protagonist is kind of a peeper, the drama unfolding just beyond her ken. Narratively, it’s a bit outside—and merely in the current of—the essential drama of the situation. Relatively light in tone. 

 

A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989): 2.5/5

The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1993): 3/5

 

Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1995): 3/5

The final film in Hou’s “Taiwan Trilogy,” along with the above titles. In a way this is a microcosm of Hou’s entire project—contrasting the sacrifices and hardships of Taiwanese young people in the past century with the idleness and narcissism of today’s young people, wasting their lives on trivialities. On the other hand, the modern characters and scenes are so much more vibrant and interesting than those in the past, which Hou shoots in an ugly, grey-green monotone. 

 

Goodbye South Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1996): 3.5/5

A small-time hood and businessman pulls one job involving 3,000 pigs but mostly gambles and hangs out, occasionally dreaming about moving to Shanghai and opening a restaurant. Reminds, again, of Mean Streets, right down to the wild-card younger character, here named Flathead or Flatty.  

 

Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998): 2.5/5

 

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001): 4/5

A beautiful, narcissistic young couple go to clubs, have sex, do drugs, fight—to a techno beat. Jaw-dropping compositions and colors, especially blues and oranges. Our first encounter with the ravishing Shu Qi, Hou’s later-day muse who also stars in Three Times and The Assassin.

 

Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003): 5/5

Simple half-story (she’s pregnant) beautifully told, featuring lots of long, long hang-out scenes over meals, etc., highlighting group dynamics and ensemble performances. It’s set in Japan and is supposedly a tribute to Ozu. Indeed, family dynamics are gracefully portrayed, and our protagonist is a daughter in relationship with her (here amazingly silent) father—not to mention all the trains. But what Hou really gets right about Ozu is his tranquility. 

 

Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005): 4/5

Three stories: one in the 60s, one in the 1910s, and one set in the “present”—each told referencing typical kinds of “love” stories of the time as well as the film styles of the time (the 1910 story is silent (except for music), with intertitles). There’s more vibe than dialogue, so it’s all about the graceful visual storytelling—with a tendency for reverie or to just hunker down and calmly watch how all the characters interact. And then there’s those next-level visuals: The dark green pool table, her sea green pants and olive checked shirt, the lime green sliding doors, the plants seen through the window.

 

Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2007): 4.5/5

 

The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015): 2.5/5

I have no idea who anyone is in this movie nor why anyone acts the way they do. The colors are pretty, but I have the same problem with this movie that I do with Hou’s much-lauded Taiwan Trilogy: once the film decides it’s just about the display of the very limited behavior allowed by custom, it feels stuffy and dead to me.

 

 

 The Adults (Dustin Guy Defa, 2023): 3/5

Having siblings as an adult is really weird. You used to grow up together. As kids you share so many experiences, create your own little games, have secrets, look up to each other, shape each other as a person. But as soon as you become an adult to find your own way of life this intense connection quickly disappears. Now you only see them maybe once a year, rarely text or talk, and although you still love them you don't even really know them anymore. And whenever you do get back together it is so hard to share your actual feelings and problems. Instead you just start acting like the goofballs you were as little kids. You just stop being that person you have become.

THE ADULTS perfectly brings that experience to the big screen, creating funny, but also cringey and emotionally heartbreaking scenes that hit almost a little too close to home. Seeing those fictional characters makes you think about your own siblings. Maybe you should call them some time. Wonderfully gentle, autumnal US indie about three siblings maneuvering adulthood and letting go of past slights. Perfectly cast.

Cobweb (Samuel Bodin, 2023): 1/5

Like cobwebs: full of holes, thin, and more clichéd than scary.

Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito, 2020): 3/5

Though her life generated voluminous literature, most people ignore the fact that iconic deaf-blind author Helen Keller was one of the most passionate socialist advocates of her time. John Gianvito resurrects Keller's radical views, which have been largely suppressed or sanitized over the years. In HER SOCIALIST SMILE, he researches how, beginning in her early 30s, the pioneer leftist thinker fervently and eloquently spoke out on behalf of many progressive causes, from the rights of women and the disabled, to international socialism and world peace. Gianvito combines onscreen text taken from her most memorable public appearances, recorded voiceover by politically engaged poet Carolyn Forche, and quiet images of nature, creating another unique blend of activism, historical analysis and poetry. Reminding us that leftist struggles are inseparable from disability advocacy, Keller's words remain remarkably pertinent today.

rewatched Flirting with Disaster (David O. Russel, 1996): 3/5

Good old Ben Stiller! Always the most neurotic and unlikable one.

Also, I wanna be friends with the Richard Jenkins/Josh Brolin FBI power couple so bad.

Inventing the Abbotts (Pat O'Conner, 1997): 2/5

A post-war tale of young love crossing class boundaries, set in a patriarchal all-white, all-heterosexual 50’s where everyone looks like models. It’s almost as horrendous as it sounds, as taken straight from some nostalgic postcard of a time that never was. The plot doesn’t engage, the direction is uninspired, and the premise ideologically suspect and conservative. The film’s only selling point seems to be that it’s full of pretty people. And well, they are very pretty, I’ll give the film that. Too bad that the only one who impresses not only with looks but also with her acting (Jennifer Connelly) disappears halfway through, leaving the rest of the cast just as confused as the narrative is meandering.

The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997): 3/5

Like EXOTICA in its carefully concocted structure, Atom Egoyan plays doctor once again, surgically incising a straightforward throughline and splicing it meticulously back together non chronologically to produce an entirely different narrative that becomes not so much about the tragedy of losing someone, but the anguish of living without them (there’s a small, but very clear distinction). The story is fed to us little by little, fragmented not for showmanship, but with a purpose; the precise sequencing does not follow Time, but Emotion—it’s not so much about an accident as it is about coping with things we cannot change, for better or for worse. There’s a staggering depth to THE SWEET HEREAFTER, a film that continues to peel itself back like an onion, layer by layer, only there’s no real core to grab onto in the end; the “resolution” is murky at best, but not in a pompously evasive way, rather it mimics true sentiment in that there’s no clear-cut right-or-wrong way to handle such hefty baggage.

The Starling Girl (Laurel Parmet, 2023): 2.5/5

A perfectly adequate indie coming-of-age drama centered around a daughter stuck navigating the religious zealotry and hypocrisy of her own religious morality. It places a special emphasis on escaping that community and the perils of staying.

It’s a sturdy movie, but suffers from hitting too many of the same beats in too similar a way as a hundred other movies just like it.

rewatched The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, 2000): 3.5/5

Could be considered a self-portrait, even though Varda never exposes herself as a gleaner per se. She becomes a gleaner of images, video, and experiences.

La Cienaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001): 2.5/5

I'm sorry, this just didn't work for me. Abstractly, I get it -- careful and exact observation, check. Organizing metaphor, check. I'm even down with the Chekhov comparisons, up to a point. But the inert, apathetic deadness of all these characters just left me inert, apathetic and half-dead; the happiest moment of my viewing was when I realized it was a half hour shorter than I expected.

The Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955): 3/5

Fundamentally a functional b-movie crime film, The Big Combo is elevated by its style. The sultry jazz score, the inky visuals, razor sharp dialogue and measured direction. On the other hand, the plot lacks some credibility and Cornel Wilde is typically one dimensional.

Insidious: The Red Door (Patrick Wilson, 2023): 1/5

Doesn't deserve a scathing review from me, because nothing happens in this movie to warrant it. In fact, nothing really happens in this film at all. 107 minutes are spent wallowing from scene to scene with surface level explorations of a fragmented father-son relationship and the trauma from previous installments. This repetitive plot jump-scare reliant ass franchise has finally ended which means at last the true evil has been defeated.

Lost River (Ryan Gosling, 2014): 2.5/5

Ryan Gosling in his directorial debut shows an aptitude for constructing moody imagery and soundscapes, but I had a hard time following the narrative, which at times seemed to disappear in a daze. Like a pilfered, Fabergé egg, it is a sight to behold but completely hollow beneath its bejeweled veneer. Favorite aspect of the film is easily that luscious Chromatic score.

House by the River (Fritz Lang, 1950): 3/5

In spite of being a part of Fritz Lang's fascinating shift from Nietzschean supermen to everyman protagonists suddenly pitted in a situation of life and death, House By the River is a mere exercise for him. He makes little use of the limited abilities of the cast, the setting, the story and even lets the film fly with a particularly shabby ending. The film remains enjoyable for the most part as a thriller about an unhinged central character, a guilt- consumed accomplice, a terrible crime, and the symbolic shift of fate caused by the nearby river.

On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981): 2.5/5

Sort of works as an elegy of Old Hollywood. Two of its biggest stars get one last chance to dominate the screen and they do. It's got lots of eye-rolling moments to spare but luckily it's still got a few scenes of genuine warmth and earned sentimentality to go along with it. The actors featured in the film are some of the finest on screen talents of the 20th century, it's just too bad they couldn't find a director capable of matching their talents.

One thing that really irritates me about On Golden Pond is that it contains an overly orchestrated score that underscores every emotion on screen to the point of parody.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton, 2007): 3/5

Musical about baking pies and slaughtering the cast of Harry Potter.