Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller, 2024): 4/5

Consistently delivers horrifying WTF moments, but no matter how grotesque and sadistic script is, the filmmaking is joyful and the tone is light and melodramatic. The camera movement in, around, under, over, and through the tanker in the central action scene is thrilling over and over. There are also bold monochromatic passages in orange and blue, and I’m reminded that Miller released a b/w version of Fury Road, although here he integrates it into the storytelling. Does Anya Taylor-Joy ever blink? Every bit as good as Fury Road.

 

I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024): 3.5/5

Heavy Lynch vibes. A feeling of unease and that everything is unreal slash assembled from our past media experiences. Our protagonist is frustrating because he never lets us travel down the yellow brick road, but maybe it’s better that it all vibrates just outside explanation. It’s tempting to see this autobiographically as a trans text, but I think it works for all kinds of repression/confusion. I’m really glad people are digging on this, and I’m in on the next movie, with hopefully a budget larger than a half an episode of House of the Dragon—although personally I was hoping for the slightly creepier vibes of World’s Fair.

 

* Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann, 2024): 3.5/5

The new “emotions” don’t add much, and the adventures of joy, anger, fear, envy and sadness across an abstract inner landscape are not exciting or new. But when we’re in the real world with our 13-year-old protagonist, the film works gangbusters. I related heavily to the girl growing up and becoming more complex, and tears came early and often.

 

Hit Man (Richard Linklater, 2024): 2/5

Hegel says it’s OK to kill the police officer that is trying to arrest you for your crimes. Glen Powell is going to be a huge star.

 

Civil War (Alex Garland, 2024): 2.5/5

The film remains apolitical, but when people were shooting at one another I wanted to know who is fighting who for what. That’s drama. Without that, it’s just guns, gear and fear with little meaning. The movie tries to settle for a story about noble and important war photographers, but I find it hard to believe that little black and white images do shit.

 

The Garfield Movie (Mark Dindal, 2024): 2.5/5

Better than it had to be, but mostly because it places Garfield in a traditional adventure plot such that it could have been any character at all.

 

Baby Reindeer, 7 eps (Richard Gadd, 2024): 2.5/5

Stalking: fine. Trans issues: Oh, I see. Rape: uh oh. Sexual abuse in the church: you gotta be kidding me. Just a lot to put yourself through. Too much.

 

Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023): 3.5/5

Breathtaking special effects, especially when Godzilla walks into Tokyo for some good old-fashioned building-smashin’. The monster here is the physical embodiment of our protagonist’s shame at failing in his kamikaze mission, which is interesting, but the rest of the relationship drama at the center of the film didn’t interest me much. Not as good as Shin Godzilla.

 

Bambi (David Hand, 1942): 3.5/5

The most arty and abstract of Disney movies (setting Fantasia aside). Also, the most adult, frankly addressing aging and death. No plot, no conflict, little dialogue and none of it expository—just a circle of life through the seasons and on through the phases of life. Echoes through Lion King and Pocahontas but also Miyazaki’s close attention to nature. Brief but lovely songs. Why can’t more songs be 45 perfect seconds, then we move on?

 

Raw Deal, rw (Anthony Mann, 1948): 3.5/5

Extraordinary direction and cinematography/lighting courtesy of John Alton, although the script and acting are just OK. John Ireland, always my favorite gunsel, is the exception.

 

From the East (Chantal Akerman, 1993): 2/5

It’s madness that 12 contributors to the latest Sight & Sound poll put this vacation footage from the Eastern Bloc on their top 10 favorite movies list.

 

Tout Une Nuit (Chantal Akerman, 1982): 2.5/5

A series of romantic intrigues in a variety of tones. Slowly arcs from the bar to the street to the stair to the bed to aftermaths.

 

Going in Style (Martin Brest, 1979): 4/5

A friggin’ delight, both funny and serious. George Burns is great (!)—self-possessed, still and droll. And indeed all the actors are superb. George Burns was 83, Lee Strasberg 78, and Art Carney the baby of the bunch at 61. A sequence in 1979 Las Vegas displays real joy and pure enjoyment, answering the question “What do they want the money for anyway?”

 

Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You! (Charles Roxburgh, 2012): 3.5/5

Magic Spot (Charles Roxburgh, 2022): 3/5

Like a lot of outsider art, these movies are naïve, direct, and grotesquely ignorant of rules. They are incompetent, but the incompetence doesn’t get in the way of them being good. They are not mistakes—the films are just the way the makers want them, the only way the makers could make them. They’re not “so bad it’s good.” They’re just good.

 

Milford Graves Full Mantis (Jake Meginsky, 2018): 3/5

A doc about a far-out drummer with a trippy personality/worldview.

 

Men Don’t Leave, rw (Paul Brickman, 1990): 3.5/5

At 23 I loved this movie, Brickman’s follow-up to Risky Business—which is strange, since it’s so sad. 33 years later, I can connect it favorably to weepy woman’s pictures where the new widow must make her way in the world selling pies and keeping track of her children’s needs as well as she can (ie, pretty badly), especially Mildred Pierce, Imitation of Life, and Stella Dallas. Jessica Lange knocks it out of the park.

 

Birth, rw (Jonathan Glazer, 2004): 3.5/5

A very Kubrick/Lynch experience, where all the characters seem hypnotized, and you become hypnotized yourself, until you’re not really asking ‘why’ the characters are acting the way they do, just following along. Since the movie is about grieving, not birth, it must have started out being called Death, not Birth, right? Kidman astounds.

 

Enough Said, rw (Nicole Holofcener, 2013): 4/5

The acting is stupendous, and I related deeply (still) to the feelings these characters have as their daughters are preparing to go off to college. Unusually large number of scenes in bed between these characters, but it’s realistic: at the beginning of a relationship people have sex a lot (and obviously if you’re lucky, you know, it keeps going…).

 

 

Early David Lean Film Fest

Lean’s first four films were written by Noël Coward, but none is as good as his Design for Living (directed by Lubitsch, obv), but few movies are. This fest was spurred by my viewing of The Passionate Friends, which kind of blew my mind. I watched it twice. Between Brief Encounter and The Passionate Friends, Lean directs two Dickens adaptations.

 

In Which We Serve (David Lean, Noël Coward, 1942): 3/5

Noël Coward not only wrote this but co-directed and starred in it, and he’s a confident performer with a natural gravity. Some realistic war footage, including a pretty harrowing boat-vs-plane battle, with ample flashes back to mundane (or let’s say universal) domestic dramas that brought each man to this point. Good acting and characters, but—it being a war-time production—the upper lips sure are stiff.

 

This Happy Breed (David Lean, 1944): 3/5

Telling the story of an average English family in the 20 years between the wars, this film—like In Which We Serve—is episodic and full of drama of the of most unexceptional sort. This makes the film both dull and, in the end, moving as a portrait of all of England.

 

Blithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945): 2.5/5

A man’s first wife returns as a ghost, and everyone speaks with Noël Coward’s witty dialogue. However, I don’t really know what he’s getting at here. Not really a comment on marriage, and full of shallow and quarrelsome people and ghosts. I happened to see the actual play recently, and at twice the length, it was twice as funny and twice as tiresome.  

 

Brief Encounter, rw (David Lean, 1945): 4/5

A love story that focuses almost exclusively on sadness, anxiety, regret and shame. “If only I could die.”

 

The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949): 5/5

Slots next to Call Me by Your Name and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (and, well, Brief Encounter) as great stories of impossible passions. Ann Todd is amazingly expressive, and Trevor Howard is a charismatic revelation. The cinematography, with all its fluttering shadows, is beyond beautiful, especially in the scene where they take a long gondola ride into crystalline purity of the top of the Alps. I watched this because I had heard that PTA cited it as an influence on Phantom Thread, and indeed there is an extremely familiar-looking New Year’s Eve party here, among other parallels.

 

 

Jean Grémillon Film Fest

Reminiscent of Carné and early Renoir in their moody romanticism. Remorques and Lumiere d’ete were both written by Jacques Prévert, who also wrote Children of Paradise, Port of Shadows, Le Jour Se Leve, and The Crimes of Monsieur Lange. None of these Grémillon films are quite as good as those (though Remorques comes close), but few movies are.

 

Lady Killer (Jean Grémillon, 1937): 3/5

Jean Gabin is a ladies man, who finally falls in love and gets a taste of his own medicine. The film’s climactic meeting between the characters is strikingly shot and charged with emotion—and the outcome works better than it did in Renior’s La Bête Humaine, a year later.

 

Remorques/Stormy Waters (Jean Grémillon, 1941): 4/5

Like The Deer Hunter, this begins with a wedding where you meet everyone, then the boys all go off on a dangerous mission (here on the ocean) that will change everything. Beautiful 30s shadow and fog cinematography and a leaning toward a documentary feeling when possible, thus poetic realism.

 

Le Ciel Est à Vous/The Woman Who Dared (Jean Grémillon, 1944): 2.5/5

A happy family is made even more happy (then unhappy, then happy again) as the wife takes up flying. A huge hit and a feel-good experience, but a shallow one.

 

Lumiere d’ete/Summer Light (Jean Grémillon, 1943): 3.5/5

Another tale of doomed love from Jacques Prévert. Three flawed men are obsessed with a young innocent, and a nearby dam construction site ensures that there are plenty of explosives, guns and cliffs about. What could go wrong? Made during the Occupation and banned until after the war for its portrayal of very debauched and cruel aristocratic and artistic classes.

 

The King and the Mockingbird (Paul Grimault, 1980): 2.5/5

Jacques Prévert wrote this animated movie as well, and it does tangentially feature two star-crossed lovers. Originally begun in 1952 and eventually completed in 1980, Grimault’s style is close to that of Max Fleischer (such as Gulliver’s Travels).

 

 

Spaghetti Western Film Fest

I’m surprised to find a pervasive theme of armed collectivist revolution and an impulse to lift up one’s poorest compadres once and for all (and get away with the gold) in these anarchic, argumentative, risible, lumpy, cartoonish, emotional, emphatic, new-feeling outdoor adventures (with guns). Not smooth, but full of anti-social crazies, weird corners and directorial whims. A romantic (if “fallen”) vision. Peckinpah is the closest American analogy. “Don’t buy bread. Buy dynamite.”

 

Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966): 3/5

Clint Eastwood look- and sound-alike Franco Nero pits two factions against one another in the quest for gold, with a final shootout in a cemetery. Familiar ground, but this is short and well-told, with a surreal amount of mud.

 

A Bullet for the General (Damiano Damiani, 1967): 3/5

A band of thieves (who want the gold) turns into a band of revolutionaries (who want the gold). The first of Damiani’s so called Zapata westerns. Written by Franco Solinas, who also penned The Battle of Algiers.

 

Face to Face (Sergio Sollima, 1967): 3.5/5

Interesting premise. The bad guy slowly grows a conscience, while our protagonist—a tubercular professor—pulls a Breaking Bad, turning ever more to the dark side. Written by Sergio Donati, who wrote For a Few Dollars More.

 

The Hellbenders (Sergio Corbucci, 1967): 3.5/5

Has a non-spaghetti feel. Joseph Cotten himself heads up a family of murderers to rival the Clantons. Displays of cruelty and rape-iness are at an elevated level, and Cotten wears a level of lipstick that could not be accidental.

 

The Mercenary (Sergio Corbucci, 1968): 3.5/5

I appreciate a universe where (excellent) third-stringers Franco Nero, Woody Strode, Jack Palance (who plays Curly, in a hideous curly-haired wig) cosplay The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Very dynamic camerawork, including rapid editing and a generous dollop of flashy zooms. Chaotic shootouts reminiscent of The Wild Bunch. Full of tough corners for our protagonists.

 

Companeros (Sergio Corbucci, 1970): 3.5/5

A broad comedy adventure with Marxist /Christian revolutionary ideals. Jack Palance wanders around the Mexican foothills in a cape, smoking joints, and talking to his pet hawk, as one does. Also the hawk ate the guy’s hand 10 years earlier, which saved his life. It’s that kind of movie. Plus an explicit plea for non-violence as a solution, making it a welcome response to the myth of retributive violence so routinely championed in cinema. Music by Ennio Morricone. Very recognizable but kind of … broad.  Although let’s face it, he fucking owns whistling.

 

And God Said to Cain (Antonio Margheriti, 1970): 3/5

This straightforward revenge plot is familiar from movies I grew up with such as High Plains Drifter. Makes me consider how few of these Spaghettis have revenge plots. A young Klaus Kinski is used expertly—the angles on his face are sharp enough to cut paper.

 

Keoma (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976): 3.5/5

Tons of cool and outrageous slo-mo death rolls and flips, plus thick layer of nihilism, which here means the near constant threat of rape and death. Many astonishing shots and tricks, pushing gunshot kills into a ballet that exaggerates Peckinpah’s already pretty arch vibe.