Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023): 4/5
My first Triet, and I'm now very curious. Thoroughly gripping, loved the forensic attention to detail, both in the case at hand and in relationship dynamics, and the fastidious lack of score. Also the way it interweaves objective, near banal coverage with intensely subjective and empathic rough camera movements (a double take in the courtroom is particularly striking, and a zoom at a key moment got what I believe to be intended laughs) seems wholly unique. Aided by Sandra Huller's five star performance (an acting masterclass) and a brilliantly layered script, Triet has delivered one of the most morally attuned critiques of the fundamental dysfunction at the heart of the current zeitgeist that nails what Todd Field and Cate Blanchet sought to achieve in TAR without resorting to that film's more overtly confrontational and controversial schematics.
This is one of the most emotionally intelligent films you're likely to see this year. Well worth a look.
Killers of the Flower Moon (Scorsese, 2023): 4/5
Another sprawling Late Marty epic as both an elegy for a forgotten American tragedy and an American master of crime films lamenting on the true cost of evil. Leo’s Ernest Burkhart is a dimwitted ex-soldier led to moral ruin by smarter men for whom they became willing pawns. Scorsese has never been more Shakespearean than here. Of course this film belongs to Lily Gladstone, the magnificent actress who plays a wealthy Osage woman besieged by an orchestrated wave of death meant to steal her tribe’s wealth. Gladstone’s prodigious gifts bring this woman to life and express love and fear in a way that belie the words she utters. And the story calls on her to create crushing grief usually reserved for Greek Tragedy. She astonishes. Robert De Niro won’t get the attention he deserves here but his turn as William Hale is some of his best work in years. It is striking how different this film is from the mid-career crime epics that have come to define Martin Scorsese. This film eschews the propulsive drive and violent excess that once was the director’s signature. Instead we get a compelling portrait of the moral damnation that sprang from America’s Original Sin. It’s a rough ride, but we can’t look away. Doing that has led us to this. Sad. Moving. Infuriating. And the genius and emotional gut-punch of that fucking ending cannot be debated.
rewatched The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973): 5/5
"What an excellent day for an exorcism."
Few films are celebrated as the preeminent in their respective genre, even fewer deserve the title. But unlike others, horror is such a sweeping genre brimming with a multitude of sub genres— to dub a single film as the best is far more difficult.
The Exorcist: Believer (David Gordon Green, 2023): 1.5/5
Or, THE EXORSISTERS.
Possibly the lamest one in the Exorcist franchise, the demons weren't cunty, there's the whole "town is experiencing trauma so let's get together and pray" storyline. And like characters will just be existing in a normal situation and suddenly stare off into the distance and start monologuing like "do u know what evil really is!? I think It's not having hope!!" and you as an audience member will be like um ok? Who asked!?
The most frightening thing about this movie is that David Gordon Green is supposed to make a trilogy of this. Speaking of which, you can tell he was never bullied in high school and all I’m saying is it’s not too late to start.
Passages (Ira Sachs, 2023): 2/5
I continue to find Sachs badly wanting; his instincts are commendable, but I never fundamentally believe anything that I'm seeing in his films. Also didn't like how neither Martin nor Agathe ever comes across as more than an empty vehicle for Tomas to repeatedly, narcissistically sideswipe, and Passages isn't disciplined enough (despite some excellent individual shots, e.g. one in which Tomas' body completely obscures Martin's as they argue in bed at night) to make that dynamic compelling to me. Nice to see frank sexuality onscreen for a change, but that's the only level on which anyone connects.
The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green, 2023): 3/5
Two Canadian female backpackers travel to the Australian outback to earn a bit of money working in a bar, in order to support their backpacker lifestyle. The locals are a bit shifty and trouble ensues.
I didn't really like how the movie kept walking right up to the point at which a conventional gnarly genre film would truly kick in and then warily retreat. Just seemed to tiptoe around its fundamental purpose and visceral draw. There's constant nerve-shredding tension, yes, but then nothing ever quite crosses the line into actual horror.
But having another young woman, Liv, in the same circumstances roll with toxic masculinity, and often appear to be having way more fun as a result, keeps the film from feeling overly didactic, even as we're generally recoiling alongside Hanna.
rewatched The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942): 4/5
Mildly amusing when thinking of Orson expecting mass audiences to empathize with George Amberson Minafer.
Constantine (Francis Lawrence, 2005): 2.5/5
Tilda Swinton. Gavin Rossdale?!
rewatched Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958): 4/5
I remembered this as an unassailable classic, but nothing about the desert hotel plot thread really worked for me on this viewing - performances, motivations, awkward timing necessitated by cross-cutting between two storylines, Vargas leaving his wife out there, the sodium pentathol in lieu of heroin (what, it's legal to inject people unwillingly with non-lethal doses?) - apart from some nice shots (duh, it's Welles). Rest is aces, bravura, essential cinema, give or take the brownface.
rewatched It (1990): 3/5
I would rather wake up to the 2017 Pennywise next to me than the 1990 Pennywise, I feel like the 90s Pennywise would try and do some freaky shit to me not gonna lie, and the 2017 one would just kill me.
Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965): 3.5/5
Of all his films, Chimes at Midnight was reportedly Orson Welles' own personal favorite of his work. I can see why— the ornate Shakespearean dramaturgy is an overwhelming indulgence of his grandiose and decadent thespian proclivities. There’s a lot to admire on a shot-by-shot basis, but I never could quite fully engage with it. It could be that I don’t have a strong ear for Shakespeare, but that’s exactly why I’ve always valued cinematic adaptations of his works; the visuals fill in the story for me in a way that a handful of actors milling about a stage simply can’t.
Sound of Freedom (Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, 2023): 1/5
*sharts loudly*
That's the sound of freedom.
Basically: black and brown people are the villains, American prisons are great, the US government should be able to act however it desires all over the world in militaristic ways because they have a divine right to “liberate”. Pro-state nationalistic propaganda all hidden under the facade of “heroic acts”.
You'd think this vaguely faith-based anti-child trafficking hagiography would amount to some sort of ironically amusing late-night AM QAnon wankery, but this is so monotonous and self-serious that it becomes simply an interminable dirge that hops episodically from one canned movie-subplot to another. Styleless filmmaking as well, drab acting, and hollow cinematography. If you need a movie to convince you that pedophilia and child sex trafficking are a problem, then here you go.
Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989): 2.5/5
After having both arms cut off by her philandering husband, a circus performer compels her adult son to stand behind her and serve as her hands as she embarks upon a murderous, vengeful rampage. Like all Jodorowsky films, there's a ton of arbitrary weirdness I don't get: why does Concha's disfigurement need to reflect the patron saint of a bizarre church/cult that she apparently runs in her spare time? Why the operatic crane shot of young Fenix mourning a dead elephant? Why does one key sequence involve a bunch of folks with Down syndrome whose sole function is to be offered cocaine and hookers (merely as a means of reuniting Dark Fenix with the Tattooed Lady)? WHY at one point some random dude literally peels one of his ears off of his head and starts smacking Alma about the face with it???
Well, it's certainly not a movie one forgets, I guess. But Jodorowsky's particular brand of surrealism has always struck me as fundamentally empty, for whatever reason. Perhaps I'm too much of a rationalist to appreciate a by-any-means-necessary approach to the ostensibly visionary. I think Jodorowsky just ain't my bag. He's plenty singular, but not in a way that I find appealing.
Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975): 4/5
One of the greatest and most essential exploitation films ever made. Gleefully does away with any pretense to good taste and lets the rules of propriety that allow oppression to thrive expose themselves. Everything here is a hypocrisy.
The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965): 4/5
Almost entirely visually organized by the Alps, the lines of the mountains...though rigid still a part of nature. They're a representation of the harmony that Maria brings out of her new family. Her love of the world is frivolous but pure, still Godly, and the structure and sacrifice of religion is unusually but crucially contrasted with the Captain's discipline, a micro version of the larger conflict between love and fascism.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (Wolfgang Reitherman, John Lounsbery, 1977): 3.5/5
The strong tug of nostalgia that I felt here has little to do with Milne's beloved characters, and almost everything to do with preferring pre-Pixar picture-book flatness. Not that I didn't love Toy Story and its immediate successors, but who wants EVERYTHING to be so damn tactile? At this point I might even get all misty-eyed watching The Fox and the Hound.
Reptile (Grant Singer, 2023): 2/5
Worst title in cinematic history.
All the right ingredients are here in Reptile to deliver a serviceably creepy crime story replete with True Detective detachment and Fincher atmosphere. But it never comes together to create any real tension, stakes or pathos. The result is derivative, lifeless, characterless…
rewatched Anaconda (Luis Llosa, 1997): 1.5/5
Screaming snakes, Danny Trejo committing suicide up a mast, Jon Voight going full 'Hopkins', Eric Stoltz choking on a wasp, Owen Wilson's jungle horniness, Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez bathing in monkey blood ... it can only be Anaconda.
Ghostwatch (Lesley Manning, 1992): 3/5
Remarkably deft mockumentary. Imagine Paranormal Activity as a live episode of something like Ghost Hunters crossed with 60 Minutes.
It Lives Inside (Bishal Dutta, 2023): 1/5
More like It Lives Inside.....the TRASH!
The Burial (Margaret Betts, 2023): 3/5
Jamie Foxx is electric.
The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947): 2.5/5
Bastardized Irish accent notwithstanding, this is such an uninteresting and incoherent mess. Just watch the final 5 minutes for some innovative camerawork and nifty editing.
Agree on Anatomy of a Fall. Probably my favorite of the year so far.
ReplyDeleteDisagree on Passages, which I thought was a significant improvement the other Sachs' movie I've seen.
Gratified that you also enjoyed (?) Mandingo and Sound of Music.