Patterns (Fielder Cook, 1956): 5/5
Eviscerating, ethically dense, philosophically expansive, and morally challenging. This boardroom-set psychodrama is one of the most intense, psychologically perceptive films that surgically exposes the mercenary practices of office politics I can ever recall seeing. Maestro Rod Serling's steely, razor-sharp script is brought to such blazingly vivid life by some truly outstanding 'across-the-boardroom' performances. Absolutely flawless adult entertainment and a stunning indictment of corporate culture that remains as relevant today as it did when it was written over half a century ago. This film deserves to be remembered in the same capacity as other classics of its era such as 12 Angry Men and The Night of the Hunter, but somehow it remains shockingly obscure.
History is Made at Night (Frank Borzage, 1937): 4.5/5
Almost a perfect specimen of why the world fell under the spell of Old Hollywood.
Favorite scene: During Paul and Irene's initial trip to the Chateau Bleu, each time the film cuts away and back again, a few less members of the ensemble band are playing, until only the violinist is left. Then, in a wisp of subversive auteurism, when the couple are about to share their first kiss, a moment that would be accompanied in any other Hollywood movie by a close-up and a sappy, melodramatic music cue, Borzage instead immediately cuts to the lone violist, still playing, as a cheeky grin slowly grows upon his face. Just sublime.
Sudden Fear (David Miller, 1952): 4.5/5
One of the most perfect leading-lady vehicles ever. Ninety percent of the screen time, two supporting actors, and barely any side characters or subplot. I just know Joan Crawford was gagged for this role. She gets to be romantic and stubborn and hysteric and vulnerable. And baby can that woman cry!!
Last and First Men (Johann Johannsson, 2020): 4/5
The Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson's film is an experimental hybrid: part science fiction, part documentary, and part meditation. As a meditation, the film works as a beautiful visual accompaniment to his atmospheric score. As a documentary, the film consists of artful images of "spomeniks." These are an extensive series of monuments built in the former Yugoslavia between 1950 and 1980 as anti-fascist memorials. They have an other-worldly strangeness to them - a sort of abstract concrete brutalism - which Johannsson uses in the context of the narrative to depict the eerie remains of a post-human future. But away from its narrative context, the film also works as a visual tribute to these wonderful real world structures. As a science fiction, Last and First Men is based on Olaf Stapledon’s 1930 novel of the same name. The story is narrated by Tilda Swinton, and is set "2000 million years into the future", following many stages in the further evolution of our species. She is addressing our time on the eve of mankind’s extinction. The good news, it seems, is that we’ve survived malignant microbes and climate change, however, it appears we will not survive a final celestial catastrophe, which is slowly forming to bring an end to our period of history. She recounts aspects of our descendants’ endeavours to preserve and enhance our species over the span of time, while also explaining the existence of the monuments as symbols of our staged development, and the final fate that now awaits us.
The elements all come together as a kind of memorial to human existence. It heralds a philosophical acceptance of our fate as being just a brief flash within the immensity of time and space. Johannsson’s requiem for humanity has echoes with La Jetee and the films of Bela Tarr, but ultimately this last and first film is a singular monument.
Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948): 3/5
Structurally this movie is insane. It’s like Inception, with flashbacks instead of dreams. People are having flashbacks inside other people's flashbacks. The doctor is telling his story through a flashback, and in that flashback the husband walks in and starts telling his story, and now the husband is having a flashback inside the doc’s flashback. Nutty! Produced by legendary producer Hal B. Wallis, the mastermind behind such gems as Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Little Caesar, I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, The Furies to name just a couple.
The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953): 3/5
Hop in boys, we’re going on a joy ride with a droopy eyed serial killer. Highlights include: free trip to Mexico, sleeping under the stars, fishing, desert hiking, stealing gas, learning car maintenance. A “this could happen to you!” film noir flick about the dangers of cross-country travel and roadside slayers by leading lady smart girl Ida Lupino. An economical film heavy on close-quarters dread and light on character development.
Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992): 3/5
What is gender? What is a woman? What is a man? What is love? What is time? What is attraction? What is sexuality? What is life? What is Tilda Swinton's secret? What is femininity? What is masculinity? What is the purpose? What is this film?
Don't Bother to Knock (Roy Ward Baker, 1952): 3/5
Damn can everyone relax? She just tied the kid up it’s not like she killed her
Reality (Tina Satter, 2023): 3.5/5
Largely fascinating in its use of verbatim (it's adapted from the audio file of whistle-blower Reality Winner's home visit from the FBI, complete with grammatical errors and a remarkably circuitous conversation about pets). Minor complaint: it fails to trust that the moments of quotidian reality that it uses in Act 1 would work equally and effectively in Act 3 without OTT sound design.
Argylle (Matthew Vaughn, 2024): 1/5
Congratulations to the Manson murders, now no longer the worst thing to ever be associated with The Beatles.
Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963): 4.5/5
Martin Ritt’s HUD is one of those films engineered for me to love. With a firecracker of a script, an ensemble cast doing some of their best work, and a revisionist western style that examines the death of the old west, HUD is a punch of a character study. Its titular character - "The man with the barbed wire soul!" proclaimed the film's marketing - is played by Paul Newman who rose to the challenge with a performance almost as ugly enough to counteract his physical beauty.
It's also a visually stunning film. Shot in big sky country by legendary James Wong Howe, a poet of monochrome, HUD's blacks are as inky as its whites are searing, and exterior shots tend to envelop the cast in one or the other—or, when folks are resting a spell on the porch at night, in both of them at once. This look has nothing to do with film noir, but it's equally striking; Howe deservedly won an Oscar for his work here, one of three that HUD received.
Recommended double-bill: The Last Picture Show, another Larry McMurtry adaptation.
Sometimes I Think About Dying (Rachel Lambert, 2023): 3/5
Depicts depression, shit social skills, and office dialogue with pinpoint accuracy. A movie about what happens when the introvert gets chosen by an extrovert. Glad to see Slack get some on-screen representation in film.
Drive-Away Dolls (Ethan Coen, 2024): 2/5
PowerPoint transitions + bowling alley animations and Margaret Qualley (ugh) with that fucking accent. Maybe we don’t need more queer representation IDK.
rewatched Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961): 5/5
What can I say that hasn’t been said already? Funny, bad-ass, riveting, masterfully constructed, just a great fucking time at the movies.
Memory (Michel Franco, 2023): 3/5
Festival boilerplate. Competent but not ultimately filling. Good performances from the leads.
Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve, 2024): 3.5/5
Preferred Part Two more so than Part One. The cinematography, sound and production design continue to be undeniably astonishing and the film’s biggest accomplishments. The lore behind the Reverend Mother and Water of Life was fascinating. Sandworm sequences were pretty great, and the black & white arena scene was beautiful. There are so many moments of top-notch action sequences to boot. Even as my understanding of Fremen and Harkonnens and Bene Gesserit becomes increasingly confused—to say nothing of trying to keep track of the mounting pile of names for Paul Atreides, I was more invested in the characters this time around. Javier Bardem is solid here and is invaluable in adding heft and levity to the material and Pugh is stunning in those costume choices that felt reminiscent of "Excalibur" and Zendaya is really the heart in this movie. Rebecca Ferguson's character is double edged and played so well that I can't help but be fascinated in her dynamics so I must commend her as an actress for making me wrestle with my moralistic nature to believe in her actions. Everything here is a spectacle of wonder and is worth seeing for the experience. The spell cast by Dune and now Dune: Part Two continues to enthrall. Must be the spice.
Spaceman (Johan Renck, 2024): 2.5/5
Hear me out...switch the Sandler and Dano roles, make it super silly, and let us care more about the relationship and we might have a winner.
Lisa Frankenstein (Zelda Williams, 2024): 2/5
Barbie for alt girls. Here's a Cook Book Film Review:
1 cup Frankenstein
Dash of Beetlejuice
Dash of Weird Science
Dash of Heathers
Dash of Jennifer's Body
Directed by Robin Williams's daughter Zelda and written by Diablo Cody.
Proxima (Alice Winocour, 2019): 3/5
The age-old trade-off that many women face: the dizzying heights of career success or the gravitational pull of motherhood. Some manage to have it all, although, when embarking on a years-long journey to Mars, work-life balance can be a bit tough to maintain. I went in expecting a small, DIY, sci-fi thriller. What I got instead is a decidedly terrestrial domestic drama about a mother and daughter trying to navigate the constellation of emotions that attend such a journey. The film is warm and observant if not a bit slight and lifeless. Still, it’s an emotionally rich and worthwhile journey.
The New Mutants (Josh Boone, 2020): 1/5
Kinda like if Hogwarts had a goth phase and Professor X was on sabbatical, and you, the viewer, are stuck in detention. Just a lifeless gallery of cliches from both superhero flicks and the horror genre.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Robert Stevenson, 1971): 2.5/5
Mary Poppins’ lesser-known cousin does almost everything that the Julie Andrews classic does: neglected kids meet a female mentor with powers who go on adventures with a silly adult man and have magical musical adventures where things move by themselves and animated worlds come to life, all against a smoggy and depressing European backdrop. David Tomlinson even appears in both.
Rotting in the Sun (Sebastian Silva, 2023): 3/5
Best modern confession scene ever?
Madame Web (S.J. Clarkson, 2024): 1.5/5
What this film does for superhero movies is the same as what OceanGate did for underwater tours of the Titanic.
rewatched Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010): 4/5
what if we kissed three levels down in ur dreamscape
what if we kissed three levels down in ur dreamscape
Godland (Hlynur Palmason, 2022): 3/5
"This film is inspired by these cool photos we found in Iceland. I assume the guy who took them is an absolute prick."
The Seeding (Barnaby Clay, 2023): 2/5
Basically a mashup of Woman in the Dunes and The Hills Have Eyes but without the profundity of the former or the grit and grime of the latter. Directed by Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O's husband.
Some great recommendations here. Will watch Patterns, History is Made at Night (love Jean Arthur), and even Sorry Wrong Number.
ReplyDeleteSome of my reviews of other things you watched:
Sudden Fear
Rich and crazy-eyed Joan Crawford marries snake-eyed Jack Palance at the end of act one. What could go wrong? I expected to have to wait an hour for Crawford to find out she is being duped, but, no, she discovers this right away and turns the tables. Crawford is portrayed as too old, really, to be powerful or desired; she was 47 at the time of filming. #FriscoNoir
The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953): 3/5
An efficient and unadorned thriller—a guy pointing a gun at two other guys. You can tell the bad guy is bad because he has a lazy eye and shoots a dog.
Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992): 2.5/5
Impressionistic, capricious, free-wheeling pageant across the centuries. Billy Zanes it up.
Reality (Tina Satter, 2023): 2/5
The real hook is the use of actual FBI transcripts for the script, and it is interesting to see how everything truly went down. Although of course, face gestures and body movements (not explicit in the transcript) are crucial to how the words are received. I believe that the movie thinks it’s about how the FBI too-zealously persecuted this woman for her mishandling of classified documents—and indeed the film is largely devoted to emphasizing their micro-aggressions (although generally I found them pretty respectful and kind). But I wonder how the super-lib (I’m assuming) filmmakers and intended audience changed their minds when this same sin of mishandling top secret docs was weaponized against Trumph.