The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, 2024): 3/5
A better, more grounded version of Cloud Atlas—a tale of intergenerational trauma, connecting across eras, with excellent set design. Intelligent and “romantic,” with some striking images and narrative gambits, but emotionally distant. Léa Seydoux is beautiful and an excellent actress.
Gasoline Rainbow (Turner Ross, Bill Ross IV, 2024): 3/5
The Rosses follow up their seedy and empathetic portrait of drunks (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets) and lyrical and empathetic portrait of three brothers wandering around New Orleans (Tchoupitoulas)—with an American Graffiti / American Honey end-of-summer episodic road trip that extends their use of documentary styles but sadly is inferior to both. The teen characters are a bit vague, dumb, and uncharismatic (realistically so), although most of the locals they encounter are authentic and interesting. What I wouldn’t have given for the charisma of a Shia LaBeouf or even a young Richard Dreyfuss.
Ferrari (Michael Mann, 2023): 2/5
Just a strange decision to make this movie all about Ferrari’s wife and mistress. The Ferrari character could have been a cobbler. What’s more, much of the dramatic crux of the story takes place before the film opens, and all we get are people talking about it—making this perhaps the most cerebral racing picture of all time. No matter how good Adam Driver is (he’s fine), why select such a young actor for the role and then deny (for the most part) the flashbacks that would be age-appropriate and illustrate the key moments in this character’s internal life?
Variety (Bette Gordon, 1983): 3.5/5
A woman who likes to watch men watch women. A film made by women about women and for women—about desire and 70s NYC Times Square. Offers a long, gender-swapped version of the Vertigo following-and-watching sequence. The female gaze?
The Timekeepers of Eternity (Aristotelis Maragkos, 2021): 3.5/5
Perfectly exemplifies the truism that most movies should be one-third the length and a lot more experimental. But elucidate for me: why this text? There is a trivial paper-tearing connection—and since the tears are often around the characters in frame, something about isolation. But many texts would benefit from this treatment, and should get it.
A Portrait, 2m (Aristotelis Maragkos, 2014): 3/5
An unsentimental biography of the artist’s grandfather, animated with elegant single-line drawings.
Allison, 7m (Paul Brickman, 2012): 2/5
Exceedingly minor except that, curiously, it’s the only thing Paul Brickman directed other than Risky Business and Men Don’t Leave.
Brewster McCloud, rw (Robert Altman, 1970): 3.5/5
A heady and silly archetypal tale. Bud Cort is a pure, virginal Kid who with the help of an Angel is building actual wings so he can “escape.” Sex with one of his temptresses (played by classic sex-pot Shelley Duvall) causes the Angel to retreat and “Icarus” to fall. All the bird stuff is silly until Bud Cort tests his Angel-less wings. The film pads out its run time with a parody of police drama, especially Bullet, including a pretty decent car chase. I would say Altman sees himself as the naive artist who just longs to fly (but whose appetites mean he is destined to be brought to the ground).
Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, 2005): 3/5
Not great but not deserving of the reviling it has received. The always great Kristen Dunst plays a classic manic pixie dream girl (a year after Garden State) to the blank but serviceable (and certainly extremely handsome) Orlando Bloom, dealing with a huge professional setback as well as the death of his mostly estranged father. Crowe’s dialogue occasionally shines, but like later Tarantino, he seems to have some trouble distinguishing his wheat from his chaff.
Jafar Panahi/Iranian Film Fest
Over and over Panahi makes the viewer ask: how much of this is real and how much fiction? I believe it is always the latter, but the ambiguity is powerful—a Schrödinger's drama, always real and always manufactured. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that, since his ban, “Panahi” has entered his own fictional universe as a character—intelligent yet slightly befuddled, indulgent to follow a tangent, quietly persistent, amiable, always watching and present, thoughtful about the damage his camera is doing.
The White Balloon, rw (Jafar Panahi, 1995): 3/5
An epic tale, confined within three city blocks. Compares unfavorably to the occasionally magic Where is the Friend’s House? Penned by Kiarostami, with whom Panahi served as Assistant Director (on, say, the previous year’s marvelous Through the Olive Trees).
The Mirror (Jafar Panahi, 1997): 4/5
A five-year-old girl wanders the busiest street in Tehran, trying to get home. Then there is a radical, metaphysical shift at the halfway mark that changes everything and nothing. The actress wakes but finds herself in the same bad dream anyway—this female in Iran who can’t even use the same bus doors as men.
The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000): 3/5
Pahani’s most anxious and despairing film, lacking his usual humanism, warmth and flashes of beauty. Follows a roundelay of women, Slacker-style, each desperately hemmed in by the rules regulating women’s rights and behavior.
Crimson Gold, rw (Jafar Panahi, 2003): 4.5/5
An anomaly in Panahi’s work. Whereas most of his films are family melodramas concerned with women and children, this one is concerned with class, criminals and even specific acts performed by government agents (arresting people for dancing). Impressionistic and largely plotless, it does show Panahi typical willingness to enjoy an exchange of ideas between two people, thrown together briefly.
The Accordion, 8m (Jafar Panahi, 2010): 3.5/5
An emotional act of radical empathy, a spin-off of two characters that show up on the “fictional” bus in The Mirror. Basically, a terrific scene Panahi left on the cutting room floor to ensure that 1h30m runtime that I love so much. At that length, I forgive all.
Where are you, Jafar Panahi?, 20m (Jafar Panahi, 2016): 3.5/5
Autofiction video document features Panahi and fellow director Majid Barzegar on the winding road that leads from Tehran to Kiarostami’s relatively new grave, talking about why they make art, the responsibilities and the dangers. For a fan of Kiarostami, the gentle sway of the winding roads is its own pleasure.
3 Faces (Jafar Panahi, 2018): 4/5
Gracefully and warmly celebrates rebellious young women, emotional actresses/people, and longstanding war horses of beautiful resistance à la Nina Simon. Full of the intrusive kindness of village life—and people asking him to take an oath saying he is telling the truth.
Hidden, 19m (Jafar Panahi, 2020): 4/5
A documentary retelling of 3 Faces, extending and deepening the original themes of mistrust between reality and fiction.
Life, 19m (Jafar Panahi, 2021): 2/5
Home movies of the Covid era don’t connect (yet?), like someone recounting a dream.
No Bears (Jafar Panahi, 2022): 5/5
“You know very well that villagers are different from city people. Town people have problems with authorities. Villagers have problems with superstitions.” “There are no bears. Stories made up to scare us. Our fear empowers others. No bears!” Equivalence between moviemaking and escaping across some border. Equivalence between both the city and village governments in their passionate interest in an image—and wanting to take it away. And most powerfully and blasphemously, equivalence between a camera and the Koran. The final third perfectly expresses how the “goodness” of the ruling body corrupts even the most innocent interaction between good person and good person.
The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998): 3.5/5
Two 11-year-old girls have literally been locked in their house their entire lives (a metaphor for all women in Iran). A social worker frees them and tells them to go make friends, and we follow them for an afternoon of buying apples and playing in the park. Their maladroit antics are reminiscent of Gummo in their aimlessness and grotesqueness. The film also shares Gummo’s ambiguity between documentary and fiction, since it uses all the actual people involved in this actual incident.
Salaam Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1995): 3.5/5
Makhmalbaf puts a small ad in a newspaper looking for actors, and thousands of passionate cinephiles show up—so he decides to interview a number of them, investigating the nature of acting and cinema itself. As with a lot of Makhmalbaf, there is a sense of the director being a very alive presence—awake and open to the emotion and drama of the situation as it is actually evolving.
