Wonka (Paul King, 2023): 1.5/5

MY Willy Wonka is not just a charming optimist who makes great candy and sings mediocre songs. The Wonka here is not the man who will later intentionally endanger (albeit spoiled) children. More malice please. So you get nothing! You lose! Good day, Sir!

 

Little Darlings (Ronald F. Maxwell, 1980): 4.5/5

Has a loose, summer camp, Meatballs tone but also the emotional sophistication of Denis’ U.S. Go Home (and shares the same plot). Two girls set out on an adventure with the intention to have sex and confront complex feelings. Tatum O’Neal and (especially) Kristy McNichol deliver great performances. And damnit if that brief last scene didn’t kill me.

 

Freebie and the Bean (Richard Rush, 1974): 3.5/5

A comic, downbeat, 70s cop movie, with ample brutal slapstick and wry banter—commenting on or perhaps just indulging in the accepted violence, anti-woman, (and, here, even anti-trans) nature this genre. Tonally a mess, but not necessarily in an unpleasant way. James Caan is surprisingly light in his feet, self-deprecating and funny. 

 

Busting, rw (Peter Hyams, 1974): 4.5/5

The movie views these guys as schnooks, and indeed they are. Being assholes to working-girl sex workers and people at a gay bar. Hanging around public toilets and massage parlors. Getting shot at the Grand Central Market in downtown L.A. in 1974. Yet the righteous, angry and MASH-flippant comradery between Elliot Gould and Robert Blake is hilarious and perfect. Just about every shot zooms around on what I’m told is a Doorway Dolly, which makes the film really kinetic and modern. My parents took me to see this when I was 7; I loved it then, and I still love it. 

 

The Dion Brothers (Jack Starrett, 1974): 3.5/5

A deconstruction of the heist movie, starring Stacy Keach and Frederic Forrest as two very goofy, dumb brothers from a mining town, helping commit the world’s easiest armored car robbery then being double-crossed. The pretty decent last half hour is a long shoot-out in a 6-story building that is in the middle of being torn down by a wrecking ball—expressing everything this movie is trying to say about these characters’ life prospects as well as about Hollywood itself. 

 

Race with the Devil (Jack Starrett, 1974): 3.5/5

A drive-in programmer starring Warren Oates, Peter Fonda, and Loretta Switt in a kind of Deliverance situation with two hippyish couples vs the rednecks. As with Deliverance, after an upsetting initial incident, the paranoia is effectively unnerving. 

 

Stranger at My Door (William Witney, 1956): 3/5

QT continually upholds Witney as the best action director of his generation (1940s-1960s and into television) and of all time, and this is his highest-rated on Letterboxd. As promised, the 7 minutes of action are exceptionally kinetic and exciting. The rest is a horny hostage drama that culminates in a pretty square redemption arc. 

 

The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927): 3.5/5

A horrifying premise, where we are asked to identify with a monster (although I can’t really say in what way Lon Chaney is a monster, since it’s a fun reveal. Does he have arms or not? Yes!) A tale of self/denial, self-mutualization, self-negation.

 

Pioneer, 16m (David Lowery, 2011): 3.5/5

Beautifully, naively emotional. A man relates the complexity of his life before his son, and agrees on a pact between them.  “When I’m gone, I’ll just be gone and that’s all there is to it. And then what you have to do? What you have to do is find out why you’re still alive.”

 

Xanadu (Robert Greenwald, 1980): 2/5

I bought this soundtrack album in 1980 (I was 13), and I listened to it, especially the ELO songs and especially the title track, a billion times—yet I had never, until now, made it all the way through the movie, and for that I thank Pedro Costa. Of course, there’s a reason I never made it through this odd object before. It’s as if aliens/really old producers asked themselves, “What do kids like these days? We’ll give them ALL of it in one movie.” So we have roller skating and roller dancing, Urban Cowboy-esque sexy cowboys, New Wave skinny ties and sharp sideburns, neon, thrift stores, an animated sequence, Kung Foo Fighters, The Tubes—and of course, a surprising amount to time devoted to swing music/dancing, 40s movie tropes, zoot suits, and Gene Kelly. Olivia Newton John is the only one who seems to be above all the shit.

 

The Aviator’s Wife (Éric Rohmer, 1981): 2.5/5

One of R’s “Comedies and Proverbs,” this proverb being “You can’t think about nothing.” Which here describes both the male and female part of a couple who are overthinking a trivial misunderstanding—a simple scenario that never quite becomes interesting.

 

Boyfriends and Girlfriends (Éric Rohmer, 1987): 2.5/5

Another of R’s Comedies and Proverbs,” this proverb being “the friend of my friend is my friend.” A romantic square, where the talky and neurotic first hour is paid off in the Romanticism of the last half hour. It’s a cliche for Rohmer, but the film is awfully talky—and reliant on the talking for effect. Hong Sang-soo is often compared to Rohmer, because his movies are also mostly just young people talking. But here I miss HSS’s formal trickery, which makes this kind of story both lighter and more complex. 

 

Angels of Sin (Robert Bresson, 1943): 3/5

Bresson’s feature debut charts the somewhat mysterious relationship between two nuns—one who has committed murder then entered the convent, and the other who feels called to be her redeemer. The result: suffering, martyrdom and a change of heart. A nascent work, but still one interested in calmly exploring issues of faith, pride, forgiveness, repentance, a sense of calling, and other tenants of Christian living.

 

A Gentle Woman (Robert Bresson, 1969): 3/5

As in The Devil Probably, our main character is placidly in rebellion against everything that surrounds them and every convention of society, which they find banal. Suicide is the only logical reaction, which here is not a spoiler, since it is the first image of the film. 

 

Hideo Gosha Mini Film Fest

These are spaghetti-like deconstructions of Classic Era samurai films (which tend to emphasize allegiance and honor across society). Here, all the samurai are well-trained but unaffiliated—wandering through a society where it’s every man for himself (until they get sucked into an injustice, ala David Carradine/Kung Fu). I’m never terribly clear about the central narrative of these movies, which usually involve the convergence of three or more life vendettas—but the complexity ensures that emotions are always flashing all over the place. 

 

Three Outlaw Samurai (Hideo Gosha, 1964): 4/5

Three wandering samurai, holding onto their honor and not much else. Lots of amazing swordplay, often in a space too cramped for them to do their usual moves. Blood, sweat and tears. The soundtrack sounds suspiciously like Ennio Morricone, but if this is literally influenced by the spaghetti westerns, it’s a very early example.

 

Sword of the Beast (Hideo Gosha, 1965): 4/5

Nifty Japanese New Wave movie that is both an action-packed samurai movie but also a drama with all the characters trying to decide what side they are on. Makes great use of a shallow, boulder-strewn river bed as its main location—running and fighting in, across and around.

 

Samurai Wolf, 1h15m (Hideo Gosha, 1966): 4/5

A charismatic lead samurai character (who inspired a sequel), and a large cast of other folks with grudges to resolve through ample action sequences—all in 75 minutes. Here the framing stays close in on the characters, trapping them in a mise en scéne that seems to deny their need to swing their huge swords around in their usual fetishistically ritualized way.

 

The Jack Spring Break Film Fest

Jack is 10 this month, and I have discovered yet again that if you show these films to a person his age, they completely slay. This will be a continuing series.

Die Hard, rw (John McTiernan, 1988): 5/5 (Jack's new self-avowed favorite movie)

Terminator 2: Judgement Day, rw (James Cameron, 1991): 5/5

The Road Warrior, rw (George Miller, 1981): 5/5 (Demonstrating excellent taste, Jack preferred this to Fury Road.)

Mad Max: Fury Road, rw (George Miller, 2015): 4/5

1941, rw (Steven Spielberg, 1979): 4/5

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, rw (Steven Spielberg, 1977): 5/5

 

 

Bi Gan Film Fest

In the conversation with Weerasethakul and Tarkovsky.

 

South, 17m (Bi Gan, 2010): 3.5/5

Bi Gan’s student film. His interest in fans and journeys by train, mirrors, TVs, clocks, clouds, mysteries, cigarettes, precious objects like instruments or tapestries or very old books—and other pools of feeling—begins here and radiates outwards.

 

The Poet and Singer, 22m (Bi Gan, 2012): 3.5/5

Relaxed, beautiful, and mundane surrealism. A journey upriver with abstract text opening up a world of emotional possibilities. 

 

Kaili Blues (Bi Gan, 2015): 5/5

A beautiful, gently surreal, glide-y travelogue of a lush Chinese river valley, haunted by aging mopeds, children and brothers both sold and cherished, and rusting corrugated metal. The amazing and emotional heart of the film is a massive, ravishing, funny, dreamy, astonishing, discursive, 41-minute unbroken-shot chunk of drama, through the forested countryside, with a slight-fisheye-lensed Steadicam zooming around, keeping up with cars and motorcycles, walking through buildings, across bridges, everywhere.

 

Long Day’s Journey into Night (Bi Gan, 2018): 2.5/5

Instructive to try to figure out why this film—the highest rated of Gan’s work on Letterboxd—didn’t really work for me. The tone is more moony, hewing closer to Wong Kar Wai’s gorgeous and inert Romanticism, and incorporating cool stylization and irony. Again we have a long one-er (this time in 3D, which is obviously lost to this home-viewer), but instead of an astounding feat of camera movement, most of it stalks our protagonist as he circles around and through a courtyard and the buildings that surround it—more like being trapped on a set, perhaps those in the titular O’Neill play that also features characters unable to re-capture old times. 

 

A Short Story, 15m (Bi Gan, 2022): 3.5/5

Bi Gan asks himself, “What is the most precious thing in the world?” He mostly answers love and connection, but in the dreamiest way possible. I watched it three times in a row.