Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024): 4/5

We don’t really know what to do with these large, unwieldy, mixed-bag omnibus works by one director, including Kieslowski’s Dekalog, Lynch’s Twin Peaks Season 3, and Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl shorts. Are they one movie or many? This one moves from most accessible to least, which is a challenge. The first hour-long story stands with any of his work, but the final story is cruel in about 10 directions, toward all its characters and the audience. Wild times!

 

The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders, 2024): 4/5

A very sweet and surprisingly frank movie (with regard to death). We saw it in 3D, and it was really cool, lots of depth. (Haha). I wish the visual design was just a bit more stylized, but I freely cop to crying often and at times continuously. Stupid kid’s movie. 

 

Between the Temples (Nathan Silver, 2024): 3.5/5

Here, as in Harold and Maude, the manic pixie dream girl is an old lady (here Carol Kane) feeding our protagonist psychedelics and self-acceptance on the way to reinvention. When I first saw Harold and Maude when I was 18 or so, I thought it would be improved by not having Harold actually have sex with Ruth Gordon, but this movie reminds me that it’s garbage without it. As someone who loved Taxi when I was young and impressionable, I confess that I also love Carol Kane and want to marry her forever. And this nice conclusion that it’s important for us all to hear once in a while: “From here on out, what you do and who you are is up to you and only you. Amen.”

 

Deadpool & Wolverine (Shawn Levy, 2024): 3.5/5

Designed for (and, for all I know, by) 13-year-old boys. Jack said in no uncertain terms that it was his favorite movie all time. God knows what he made of references such as “flicking the button.” Not much, I hope.

 

Rebel Ridge (Jeremy Saulnier, 2024): 3/5

A tense and original thriller until the baggy second half. The 95-minute cut of this is way better. Not bad, but I don’t love Saulnier’s trajectory toward more anonymous (if “topical”) adult contemporary fare.

 

Harold and the Purple Crayon (Carlos Saldanha, 2024): 3/5

More entertaining than it had any right to be. I like star Zachary Levy, who brings a real sense of actually being a kid to the role (as he did in the perfectly decent Shazam movies).

 

Presumed Innocent, Season 1 (Anne Sewitsky, 2024): 3.5/5

Pretty crappy, but after Melissa and I watched the first 20 minutes, it was a full-on binge sprint to the end, and we never do that. Gyllenhaal is fine, Peter Sarsgaard rules, and O-T Fagbenl is a goddamn revelation.

Presumed Innocent (Alan J. Pakula, 1990): 3.5/5

Funny how this is shorter, yet still takes the time to help the audience understand the motivations of several of the characters better than the 7-hour version. No one breathes through his nose louder than Harrison Ford.

 

Chilly Scenes of Winter (Joan Micklin Silver, 1979): 2.5/5

Just as dour, sad and dramatically static as I feared—the reason I avoided it for so long—although it is good to see John Heard and Peter Riegert in their prime. Entirely too much harmonica in the soundtrack.

 

The Late Show (Robert Benton, 1977): 3.5/5

A shaggy LA detective story, not unlike Lebowski, but this one’s a two hander between Art Carney and Lily Tomlin, both a pleasure to watch. Extra half-star because the copy on Kanopy has a very visible cigarette mark in the upper right corner just at the climax of the second act—screaming, like everything else in the film, that it’s a 70s film.

 

Darker than Amber (Robert Clouse, 1970): 3/5

I grew up reading a series of detective stories by John D. MacDonald following beach bum/ detective Travis McGee in Fort Lauderdale. In this low-rent movie adaptation, McGee is played by a too-old but still good Rod Taylor—and there’s his houseboat The Busted Flush and his car, a Rolls Royce he calls Miss Agnes, all that the 50s sexual politics, and last and sort of least, a mystery. Clouse went on to direct Enter the Dragon.

 

Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969): 3/5

After a brief introduction, this is almost wordless, and the images are pretty amazing, filled as they are with exotic locations, rituals, and costumes as well as plenty of blood. It’s perverse to cast Maria Callas in the lead role and then barely let her speak, but her gaze and bearing are arias.

 

Cigarettes & Coffee (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1993): 3.5/5

Well-written and formally strong (i.e., he moves the camera rigidly and with dramatic purpose). This kid’s going to be big.

 

Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog, 1971): 3/5

Treats blind and deaf people as if they were most exotic and amazing beings on earth, and indeed they are displayed here not unlike in a freak show. Nevertheless, the net effect is powerful empathy for their great isolation.

 

A Swedish Love Story (Roy Andersson, 1970): 3/5

I was curious what Andersson’s movies were like before his style solidified to its current state where the rooms tells us much more than the faces. This is a naturalistic and sun-dappled story of young love, contrasting the tender hopefulness of the (realistically inarticulate) teenagers with the bitterness and disappointment of their elders.

 

You, the Living (Roy Andersson, 2007): 3.5/5

Both Andersson’s funniest movie and the one with the clearest prescription for this miserable world: Play music and sing songs. Drink. Fall in love. Don’t be mean or petty. And dream.

 

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson, 2014): 3.5/5

Quite despairing, for all its deadpan humor. Ultimately asks, “Is it right to use people simply for your own pleasure,” implicating everyone who is not actively fighting for equality for all. No wonder all his characters are deeply depressed.

 

Blue Velvet, rw (David Lynch, 1986): 5/5

Lynch is a genius for using secondary characters as projections and analogs to comment on the psychological state of our protagonist (Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Wild at Heart). Here, our protagonist feels desire and freedom for the first time and creates Frank so he will be confronted with and punished for his own naughty pleasures.

 

I Am Somebody, 30m (Madeline Anderson, 1970): 3/5

Are the striking hospital workers in Charleston in 1969, mostly black women, harassed by the all-white police force? No! (Just kidding.)

 

America, 30m (Garrett Bradley, 2019): 2.5/5

Early film from the documentarian who brought us Time in 2020. Some lovely images, including some dreamy uses of sound and superimposition, and lots of black people smiling and doing their thing. But more context is required for real meaning and emotion.

 

 

Experimental Film Corner

 

Too Early / Too Late (Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, 1981): 2/5

A call for revolution using mostly landscapes. This is my third film by the Straubs, (after Sicilia and the Bach one), and I am very far from understanding the merits of their methods.

 

The Hart of London (Jack Chambers, 1970): 3/5

An experimental film that is a trial at 80 minutes. Banal images of small town life are degraded, flipped to a negative, superimposed, and otherwise abstracted—often very beautifully. Themes that come to mind include the foggy workings of memory, the art of seeing, civilization vs. nature, then and now. Stan Brakhage called it “one of the few GREAT films of all cinema," and, well, he would. Is a live human birth depicted? You know it is.

 

Walden: Diaries, Notes and Sketches, 2h57m (Jonas Mekas, 1968): 3/5

This and As I Was Moving… (and as far as I know all of Mekas’ work) is made up of silent footage of his regular life—going to Central Park, weddings, the circus, visiting friends—sometimes chopped and/or sped up, and with a variety of music and the occasional voice-over comment from Mekas. This one lacks the welcome and warm self-analysis from As I Was Moving, possibly because in the 32 years between the two films he has accepted the limitations and power of his methods. “Love is built on very ordinary things.”

 

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, 4h45m (Jonas Mekas, 2000): 3.5/5

This long, long home movie is boring. It’s also beautiful and insightful—and keeps reminding the viewer that their own lives are full of ecstatic beauty and meaning, if only we would notice it once in a while. Mekas, who in his voice-over comes off as a wise, thoughtful and happy guy, says, “By now you must have noticed that what you are seeing is a sort of masterpiece of nothing.” “Keep looking for things in places where there is nothing.” “Happiness is beauty.” “The local is the only universal. Upon that all art builds.” “Every action should be a prayer.” “Why do I have to make a film. Why can’t I just film?”

 

Wim Wenders Film Fest

During the 70s, Wenders made movies about people of their time, reacting to the sins of the previous generation. Perfect Days is about a person out of time. Progress?

 

Same Player Shoots Again, 12m (Wim Wenders, 1968): 2/5

Wenders’ first surviving work. Experimental and repetitive.

 

The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (Wim Wenders, 1972): 3/5

Very poised for a first feature. Wenders has the utmost confidence that what he is showing you is interesting (although it’s not much). So we get a couple days in the life of a fractious soccer player on vacation—wandering streets, watching movies, picking up girls (he’s good at this), getting beat up repeatedly, taking bus rides. There is one huge event, but overall It’s a violent and empty vision (in a serene sort of way), and the event doesn’t change much. Prefigures both Akerman (especially Les Rendez-vous d’Anna six years later) and Hong Sang Soo.

 

The Island, 25m (Wim Wenders, 1974): 2.5/5

A child’s father is an asshole, so she doesn’t really want to obey/align with them. In other words, 1970s German Youths Confronting the Nazi Pasts of All the Adults Around Them, the Movie.

 

Wrong Move (Wim Wenders, 1975): 3/5

Almost an essay movie about loneliness, recent German history, and (sort of embarrassingly) the power of The Author: “I walked through the cement landscape like one who cared, the hero.” This film comes between the Alice in the Cities and Kings of the Road (my two favorite Wenders) and shares those films’ co-star Rüdiger Vogler (not to mention good roles for Fassbinder’s Hanna Schygulla and a mute but charming role for “Nastassja Nakszynski” (which is how 12-year-old Nastassja Kinski is billed)). But this film, like Goalie (and Wings of Desire) is written by Nobel-winning German author Peter Handke and is more serious, isolated, disappointed, disconnected, and despairing—even suicidal.

 

The State of Things (Wim Wenders, 1982): 3/5

“You can’t build a movie without a story. You ever try to build a house without walls? A movie has got to have walls, you know?” “Why walls? The space between the characters can carry the load.”

 

Tokyo-Ga (Wim Wenders, 1985): 2.5/5

A portrait of Tokyo and a tribute to Wenders’ beloved Ozu. The Ozu material is slight but welcome, but the “Look at this gol-dang double-decker golf driving range” stuff hasn’t aged well. Chris Marker, whose Sans Soliel is infinitely better than this movie in terms of subtlety and poetics, actually appears in the film.

 

The End of Violence (Wim Wenders, 1997): 2/5

More plot than any other Wenders that I’ve seen, but it’s all nonsense. A film producer is at the center of a conspiracy and someone wants to kill him, so he lives with a random Mexican family and works as a gardener while he solves the mystery. Also involves surveillance, El Salvadoran death squads, Tarantino-esque funny hit men, and some touching scenes with a clearly diminished Sam Fuller (who died the same year the movie was released).

 

Anselm (Wim Wenders, 2023): 2/5

Portrait of German artist Anselm Kiefer. Originally shown in 3D, and many reviews attest to the importance of the technique. Whomp whomp. Wenders keeps making portraits of fellow artists, including Tokyo-Ga (Ozu), Lightning Over Water (Nicolas Ray), Buena Vista Social Club, Pina, Notebook on Cities and Clothes (fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto), and The Salt of the Earth.

 

Perfect Days (Wim Wenders, 2023): 4.5/5

Beautiful serenity. No non-diegetic music. No current events. No screens. Almost no dialogue. Only what is happening in this moment. Our protagonist lives in an isolated monastery of his own making, in the middle of Tokyo, and his level of presence is basically the subject of the film. In the vein of my beloved Paterson, but while Jarmusch’s movie is funnier and more personally relatable, this one has a refined and classic feel, and the protagonist’s behavior is more aspirational. Great dream sequences. The only misstep is all the fetishistic cassette stuff, which is both dumb and out of character—just to make him seem cool to a particular group of cool people, a la the guitars in Only Lovers Left Alive. Honest question: is this actually a good way to live? Should one live primitively to be authentic? Is it OK to side-eye the reality of all the people who are at Chipotle while you’re eating lunch?

 

Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer, 1960): 3.5/5

Someone in 1960, after watching Inherit the Wind: “Wow, this was a rousing film about an issue relevant to recent history. What a thing. I wonder what kinds of debates and arguments people will be having in the future.”

Me, 60+ years later: “Still this one.” :(

rewatched North By Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959): 4/5

Still thankful the lead role went to Cary Grant instead of James Stewart as originally intended. Don’t have a problem with Stewart in general, but he was too old-looking* and meek for Grace Kelly in Rear Window five years earlier. He’s quite literally anti-suave, and that role at least called for someone with a lumpy, milquetoast demeanor. Could you imagine him fitting into the proto-Bond mold sculpted for the wrong-man hero here, gently schmoozing Eva Marie Saint or supplicating the agility required in the final set piece? (Sorry, Jimmy! You weren’t the right man for the job.) And as good as Grant is—he’s great, actually—Mason is even better, parlaying his dastardly disposition with frightening nonchalance. A bit long, maybe, though I’m not sure what, if anything, you could trim without much narrative implication. But as far as “fun” movies go, this one’s a lot of fun, nearly start to finish. My favorite gambit is how Hitch fools us not once, not twice, but thrice with the same goddamn gun. (Final gripe: Did Roger’s mom give birth to him when she was thirteen years old, or what? They couldn’t find a single older woman?)

*For clarification, I am fully aware that Grant is older than Stewart, but their dispositions would never reveal as much. As charming as he might’ve been in his The Shop Around the Corner days, Steward was a curdled raisin by the late fifties. In contrast, Grant was aging eloquently, like a fine wine. Grape analogies are neat.

Trap (M. Night Shyamalan, 2024): 3/5

Pitch: "What if... Taylor Swift caught The Zodiac Killer?"

Also i really thought he was gonna have gay sex to escape that arena

Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1957): 4/5

“Touching, isn’t it? The way he counts on his wife.”

“Yes, like a drowning man clutching at a razor blade.”

Leon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994): 2.5/5

I don't think pedophilia is very professional!

rewatched Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford,1939): 3.5/5

History gets shaped as Henry Fonda’s body slowly accepts its final mythological state. Very much a movie on the craft of a public performance by Ford and Fonda, equal partners in what doubles as sculpting an origin myth and the process behind it. A movie of constant doubles, stark and haunted by death, while light, taken by its Americana setting and slowly shaped by its procedural needs. Ford achieves a relaxed quality that feels at odds with the enterprise without never undermining it, quite the opposite. Young Mr. Lincoln, of course, came out the same year as Stagecoach, the year Ford went from being just a filmmaker capable of greatness to the American Filmmaker, and they are also fine mirrors, the earlier movies considerations about civilization and society in movement plays against this one about history advancing and democracy getting shaped.

She's All That (Robert Iscove, 1999): 2/5

RIGHT ABOUT NOW. THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER.

Also, freaking EVERYONE is in this movie wtf

Josie and the Pussycats ( Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont, 2001): 3/5

*My wife and I trying to decide on a movie to watch*

Wife: Josie and The Pussycats?

Me: Sure. I've actually never seen it.

Wife: YOU'VE NEVER SEEN JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS?!

Me: No I -

*Backdoor Lover by DuJour already starts blaring from the television*

rewatched Tabu (F. W. Murnau, 1931): 4/5

Moonlight, paranoia, and tragedy. Murnau's most heartbreaking film.

rewatched The Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931): 3.5/5

An iconic film, a star-making performance, and a genre-defining work. Really need a spin-off/sequel with the queer-coded tailor. What’s that queen up to?

The Pied Piper (Jacques Demy, 1972): 3.5/5

Demy did not have the widest range but when he was working in his wheelhouse the results were pretty magical. After the debacle of Model Shop, Demy leaves behind the real world, at least on the surface, to give a very contemporary telling of an old story. The use of plague, the way it fuels all of man's worst impulses, and the dogged optimism of the ending all spoke to me. And the scene with the cake is a must for any montage about Demy's body of work.

Daughters ( Angela Patton, Natalie Rae, 2024): 3.5/5

It’s easy to be cynical when you hear the premise: a father daughter dance for incarcerated dads. And sure, it checks all the boxes for a Sundance award winner. But you’d have to be a Trump voter not to be moved and wrecked by this. Very well made doc, recalls the Apted 7up docs but with more poetic interludes.

The Union (Julian Farino, 2024): 1.5/5

This can't be what the strikes were for!

Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann, 2024): 2/5

A film all about feelings that made me feel nothing

National Anthem (Luke Gilford, 2023): 2/5

“Levi’s commercial for Pride Month” vibes. Hate to trash a queer cowboy commune movie but this thing stinks. No perspective, no story, no teeth - just a collection of aspirational/pandering imagery. At least everyone in it is pretty.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962): 3/5

A somewhat discursive film. Its opening solemnity thankfully gives way to a more anarchic tone and style: Richardson was never one for placidity. Tom Courtenay (about four decades away from knighthood) is very fine as the titular lonely long-distance runner. Alternately charming and affectless, he reminds one of the British answer to James Dean, and all the Rebel With A Cause baggage that conjures up.

As far as kitchen sink realism goes, this isn’t as strong as say, A Taste of Honey (also directed by Tony) or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (also written by Sillitoe); the underlying material simply isn’t as potent or compelling.

Cuckoo (Tilman Singer, 2024): 2.5/5

Stylish but overstuffed; at once too much was going on but you got the sense that scenes fleshing out the world and characters were cut for time.

Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung, 2024): 1.5/5

yeah sure we'll fix global warming by [checks notes] firing rockets at tornadoes until they die. welcome back ronald reagan

Coup! (Joseph Schuman, Austin Stark, 2024): 3/5

Covid social commentary by way of spanish flu. Parasite, but cunty. I always love me some Peter Sarsgaard.

Voyage of Time: Life's Journey (Terrence Malick, 2016): 2.5/5

Trying to decipher how this is any different than interlacing pages from Science Weekly, Zoobooks, and National Geographic; sure, “motion,” but that’s a formality, indicative of the medium itself, far from a justification of existence. You could say that you pick up Cate Blanchett’s whispered narration, too, but that’s almost an anti-argument at this point, instead highlighting a benefit of the magazines as Malick’s propensity for rambling off philosophical one-liners is rapidly approaching the land of self-derivation, steadily traversing the spectrum from pretentious to satirical (though I’m sure neither of those were ever Terry’s true intention, which makes it all the more troublesome). As beautiful as it is, the purely observational formlessness doesn’t yield enough material to fill the mold of a 90-minute feature, leaving a solidified final product that looks great on the outside but is uniformly porous and brittle throughout. As a final bid of positive empathy: I’d still take this over TO THE WONDER, KNIGHT OF CUPS, and SONG TO SONG, whatever that’s worth.

Blue Thunder (John Badham, 1983): 3/5

Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby clearly meant this to be a very post-70s ACAB thriller about the growing danger of the police as a militarized force that relies on bullets and surveillance to keep the citizenry in line but director John Badham had something else in mind. You can see that the third act was really meant to be a PTSD afflicted cop turning the establishment’s weapon against them (shades of Christopher Dorner) but instead we get a neat and tidy 80s technothriller where the government is capable of manufacturing crime in order to justify authoritarianism but all it takes is one tape to a local news station to bring it all down. I would like to imagine O’Bannon and Jakoby intended the cops to be horny creeps as critique and not for yuks but I could be reaching. Badham handles the aerial duels well but it feels like something Michael Mann could have turned into art. Shoutout to John Alonzo’s Panavision cinematography with its eye for L.A. 's haze and raise a glass for the great Warren Oates. That this film’s ending was totally ignored to turn the film into a short-lived TV series tells you all you need to know about the times.

Ghostlight (Alex Thompson, Kelly O’Sullivan, 2024): 4.5/5

Very Ordinary People. Middlebrow, but lots of sobs from me throughout and one of the best versions of Romeo and Juliet I’ve seen. Has a main character that I somewhat resemble (father of a teenage daughter), and whom I definitely recognize among my acquaintance group. And when I realized the connection between our protagonist and Romeo—and what he is deliberately putting himself through, I lost it. Keith Kupferer lands on my best actor shortlist.

 

Aggro Drift (Harmony Korine, 2024): 4/5

Deeply psychedelic and stunningly original, visually (but God save the poor sons of bitches trying to trip to this dumb, gross and violent narrative content). A movie unlike any other, and very vivid—with killer music.

 

The Animal Kingdom, (Thomas Cailley, 2024): 3/5

A freeform metaphor for racism, adolescence, gender, transition, class divide, educated vs non-educated. Pairs with Brewster McCloud: Two movies about pre-adult boys longing to turn into birds (and escape, be free, be unique, be themselves).

 

Longlegs (Osgood Perkins, 2024): 2.5/5

An incoherent blender of emotional situations and horror genres, in which the title character plays no important role beyond star power. Both The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House do more with (a lot) less.

 

Maxxxine (Ti West, 2024): 2/5

Half-asses its way through several horror genres with vague 80s framing and lighting, with lots of actor stuff, but to what end? I never thought I would write this sentence, but: The Neon Demon is better.

 

Rocco and his Brothers, rw (Luchino Visconti, 1960: 4.5/5

Epic filmmaking, with many scenes (such as those in a boxing arena) that involve hundreds of extras. Delon gives a sensitive and emotional performance akin to Dean or Clift. So much Raging Bull (and Scorsese in general) flows from this, although Delon’s character is even more obviously Coppola’s sensitive Michael, ground down by his family’s brutality and corruption that he takes on as his burden and destiny. And indeed, the irony of the conclusion, with simultaneous ascent and descent, rivals The Godfather’s in its algebra of what is won and lost in its story of a family trying to move up in the world.

 

A Woman Under the Influence, rw (John Cassavetes, 1974): 5/5

Reminds me of those Jafar Panahi movies where the women are driven crazy by all the random rules of behavior and comportment developed by men (and society, e.g., men). What IS the greatest performance by a woman in a film (if not this)? RIP to a queen.

 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, rw (Céline Sciamma, 2019): 5/5

Exquisitely moving and beautiful movie with two great performances and a knockout ending. I can’t believe I forgot to mention this one when recently enumerating movies about the making of a piece of art (see La Belle Noiseuse, Victor Erice’s The Quince Tree Sun and Mamoulian’s Song of Songs, below.) If you go to Letterboxd, you will see that for this movie alone, they have changed the little stars in their rating system to little fires—and, honestly, fair.

 

Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine, 1958): 3.5/5

To my great relief, the lonely, disabled incel at the heart of this story is not just punished sadly over and over by fate (looking at you The Cloud-Capped Star, etc, etc.)—but rather is a creepy murderer! This genre energy greatly enlivens this large-casted portrait of all kinds of people in and around the train station in Cairo.

 

Wings (Larisa Shepitko, 1966): 3/5

A plotless character study of a woman who was more important, powerful, useful and free in the Soviet system in the past and who is trying to figure out her role and realizing her former behavior patterns are no longer relevant.

 

Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, Carl Froelich, 1931): 3/5

Everyone in the girl’s school loves pretty and kind Miss von Bernburg, especially the new girl—whom Bernburg kisses on the mouth and makes her the gift of her underwear. Originates (?) some women-in-prison tropes, including a cruel headmistress and (a quick but joyously received) spanking.

 

Eraserhead, rw (David Lynch, 1977): 4/5

The sound design is a marvel of mood, and all the details are plainly homemade in a very “from one person’s mind” way. My favorite bit is when the mound of dirt topped with a small plant (an image that has recurred throughout the movie) slides into the room with the black and white checkered floor and initiates the whole “yep, he’s an Eraserhead alright” sequence.

 

The Elephant Man, rw (David Lynch, 1980): 4/5

Lynch amply displays his ability to make a traditional movie with interesting characters and full of emotion. Although really it’s the numerous odd touches and between-plot weirdnesses that are exciting, including an astonishing, audacious, disorienting and deep first three minutes of dreamtime. The more you zone in on the sound design, vivid and dreamy references to the industrial age, and set design the more you see what a miracle this movie is.

 

Perfumed Nightmare (Kidlat Tahimik, 1977): 3/5

A warm, idiosyncratic, childlike and colorful bit of autobiographical ethnography, overdubbed in English (!), where you’re hanging out in a small village 15 miles from Manila—like a slightly more documentary Pather Panchali, but for the Philippines. Our protagonist is excited and inspired by the American military, American cultural imperialism, and especially the American space program—but when he moves to Paris, his views on progress, technology and capitalism become more ambivalent.

 

Masculin Féminin, rw (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966): 4/5

“Man’s conscience doesn’t determine his existence. His social being determines his conscience.” It’s semiotics—examining where we get the words we use, the thoughts we have, and our ways of living (spoiler: from our environment). Plus, a temperature-taking of socialism in France (Not great: “Give us a TV and car, and deliver us from liberty.”) Demands re-invention of the medium at every level and “down with the republic of cowards.” My good friend once told me it was his favorite movie of all time, and it’s interesting to think this could be anyone’s Apocalypse Now.

 

Hitchcock/Truffaut (Kent Jones, 2015): 3.5/5

A poppy talking-head review of AH’s biggies. Linklater, Fincher, Scorsese, James Gray and Desplechin (!!) weigh in, plus 30 percent AH talking about himself during the Truffaut interview. Lots of footage of amazing cinema, if that’s what you’re into. Fincher gets down to basics, saying: “Directing is really three things. You are editing behavior over time. And then controlling moments that should be really fast and making them slow. And moments that should be slow and making them fast.”

 

Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948): 3.5/5

A supernatural romance between Joseph Cotton and Jennifer Jones, with some painting-related techniques I haven’t seen before. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode, but one of the sentimental ones in the season when all the episodes were an hour long. It’s about the nature of artistic inspiration, but what distinguishes it from Portrait, La Belle Noiseuse, and The Song of Songs (see below) is its complete lack of lust (unless one counts dreaming of lighthouses, which probably one should). She’s always a ghost, so the connection (to art and love) remains spiritual (and grandiloquent). The emotional climax is tinted an ecstatic green and then red (in technicolor no less), a technique I’ve not seen outside of earlier silents.

 

Pas de deux, 13m (Norman McLaren, 1968): 3/5

The people who made this may or may not have taken the LSD on one or more occasions.

 

Ballet Mécanique (Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy, 1924): 3.5/5

I bunch of smart kids fucking off, pushing the limits of these primitive cinematic tools. Almost meaningless today but brilliant in its time/context, one can almost feel.

 

Fuses, 29m (Carolee Schneeman, 1964-66): 3/5

Stan Brakhage makes a porno. Degraded and chaotic images make the viewer ask, “Is that hot or disturbing?” A: Why not both? The Guardian says, “Fuses succeeds perhaps more than any other film in objectifying the sexual streamings of the body's mind,” and I couldn’t have said it better/worse myself.

 

Vive le Tour, 18m (Louis Malle, 1962): 3/5

It’s easy to imagine Wes Anderson watching and loving this CBS Wide World of Sports segment of a movie about the 1962 Tour-de-France.

Crazeologie, 6m (Louis Malle, 1954): 3/5

Malle’s surreal and comic student film.

 

 

Rouben Mamoulian Film Fest

An extremely reliable (and, I’m told innovative) genre director. Here we have a gangster movie, a historical romance, a rom-com, and a swashbuckling adventure—all elegantly entertaining. Also famous for horror (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.) and musical (the Lubitch-indebted Love Me Tonight.)

 

City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931): 3.5/5

An early Gary Cooper performance pits his typical homespun, honest, innocent character against the Chicago mob circa 1930. Also gives him a girl who loves him and understands the world better than he ever will.

 

Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933): 3.5/5

Garbo is strong and sexy as the queen of Sweden who tires of the cold and isolation of her position. In film studies, much is made of her dressing and passing as a man for one long sequence at an inn as well as for a couple mildly flirtatious interactions with some women—but the fact remains that she is very much in love with a man. Their Roman Holiday-like affair is the warm and funny heart of a movie that features rather too much court stuff and speechifying.

 

Song of Songs (Rouben Mamoulian, 1934): 3.5/5

A horny rom-com. Marlene Dietrich is the innocent young girl, new to Berlin, who shyly agrees to serve as a model for the handsome sculptor across the street. She stands in his studio naked, and obviously we only see her face. But her nude sculpture is standing right there between her and the artist, and he’s rubbing his hands all over it (although not the breasts). Hot stuff! Put this one on the list of movies about the making of a piece of art.

 

The Mark of Zorro (Rouben Mamoulian, 1940): 3.5/5

Ridiculously fun Sunday morning Family Film Festival vibes. A virtual remake of Robin Hood, from two years earlier. Basil Rathbone returns as the heel, and gruff-voiced Preston Sturges regular Eugene Palette plays Fray Felipe/Friar Tuck. This is my first Tyrone Power movie (not counting against-type Witness for the Prosecution), and I’m impressed. He’s handsome and graceful.

 

Blood and Sand (Rouben Mamoulian, 1941): 3/5

Reunites Power with Linda Darnell (also stunning in My Darling Clementine) for a bullfighting rags-to-riches drama (that spends too much time on the routine story of Power loving two women). Why does the artificiality of the set and lighting please me so much here, when it turns me off in (say) Lang’s corny Moonfleet and The Tiger of Eschnapur? The only answer is tone. This feels light, romantic and graceful—and beautiful, bathed in soft purples and yellows.