We Live in Time (John Crowley, 2024): 4.5/5
Admittedly I’m in an emotionally vulnerable state at the moment, but this lovely and heart-felt story started working for me right away, and the waterworks persisted throughout. I guess people don’t like this movie as much as I did—too weepy?—but I don’t understand why Pugh isn’t at least being considered for best actress.
His Three Daughters (Azazel Jacobs, 2024): 3.5/5
Not much more than an actor’s showcase, but I was completely emotionally engaged. The resolution in the last 15 minutes was miraculously, magically effective and sob sob sob. Inspired a rewatch of Jacobs’ previous film, French Exit, starring the great Michelle Pfeiffer, and I liked it just as much as the first time.
Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard, 2024): 1/5
A complete disaster. Muddled themes and characters, and a mish-mashed garbage can of genre and razzle-dazzle that, to me, was horrendously distancing—making the experience not only grating and ugly but also remote and anti-human.
Conclave (Edward Berger, 2024): 1.5/5
So hushed and self-serious. And why the hand-wringing about making the Catholic church more liberal? The Catholic church is supposed to be conservative—conservatives need a church too and there are plenty of other churches for people who don’t like it. And the resulting film is so programmatic! "Oh, it’s going to be this guy. No, that guy is bad. So it’s going to be this guy. No, that guy is bad." Ho hum. In the current state of the world, the oh so shocking conclusion comes off as completely tone-deaf and cutely self-satisfied.
My Old Ass (Megan Park, 2024): 3.5/5
Sweet, gently insightful and surprisingly moving. The beautiful and talented Maisy Stella is going to be a big star, if she wants to be. (Although, big quibble: why make our protagonist gay in the beginning if she’s just going to fall in love with a man? This movie really isn’t interested in bisexuality, and it somehow feels like a “win” for the character that she can finally have a real love with someone, instead of all that unsatisfying lesbian stuff.)
Evil Does Not Exist (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, 2024): 3/5
Kind of a slow, deliberate and serious remake of (the great) Local Hero. Does a good job of expressing the value of the film’s prized location through quiet attention.
Blitz (Steve McQueen, 2024): 3/5
Well-appointed but curiously unemotional—although McQueen’s other, more successful, films are also characterized by this restraint. The film mostly follows the episodic journey of our young protagonist as he travels across a torn landscape trying to go home, and unfortunately the movie this reminded me most of was 1917 (although this is better). The parts of the film that don’t follow the child are even less engaging. Why does the script devote time to Saoirse Ronan’s singing career? Paul Weller (of The Jam) himself plays the grandfather, and charisma radiates off him like the sun.
Challengers, rw (Luca Guadagnino, 2024): 5/5
What I love about Ingmar Bergman’s movies (and this one) is that every conversation is two people really telling one another what they think. The characters are always volleying points of view back and forth, making moves, and sometimes getting their feelings hurt and/or attacking the net.
Saturday Night (Jason Reitman, 2024): 3.5
I watched SNL several times in the first season because I was allowed to stay up late when my parents had a dinner party (which evidently was pretty often). Did I mention that one time I eavesdropped on my parents telling their friends that they had gone to see (and had walked out of) Deep Throat? Yeah, really entertaining film—a great cast, and it really moves.
Disclaimer, 7 eps. (Alfonso Cuarón, 2024): 3.5/5
Blanchett is stunning, and Cuarón directs the shit out of this OK plot. Whoever put Kevin Klein in his wife’s pink sweater for much of the run-time deserves a raise. Leila George turns in the sexiest performance of the year. More of her, please.
Interview with a Vampire, Season 1, 7 eps. (Rolin Jones, 2022): 3.5/5
My daughter Rosa actually wrote her master’s thesis on this season, and I rudely waited until now to watch it. Not bad! They make some good decisions in updating the text, including making Louis (Brad Pitt’s character in the film) a black man, and making the relationship between Louis and Lestat explicitly gay (not quite even subtext in the original book and movie). Rosa can provide the true insight into this content in my stead: “Dissecting lovers Louis and Lestat as psychological, social, and economic doubles reveals how their relationship aids Louis in accepting himself as a queer Black man in a heteronormative, White world through the doubling of his sexuality, race, and class with the vampire. This doubling implicates us in our own historic doubling as well. To explore the framed narrative of twenty-first century America (the audience) gazing in towards twentieth century America (Louis) looking at eighteenth century Europe (Lestat) is to see the present as a double of the past, endlessly repeating itself.
His Kind of Woman (John Farrow, 1951): 4/5
For most of the movie, an atmospheric and enjoyable romp with Robert Mitchum in an exotic location with mugging gangsters, Jane Russell singing, romance, comedy, drinks, gambling, and a crack script full of hard-boiled one-liners, ala To Have and Have Not and Key Largo. Then John Farrow was fired, new director Richard Fleisher (and Howard Hughes himself) reshot the final third, and we are abandoned to plot requirements. Still, the long series of shoot-outs is at least enlivened by mugging actor Vincent Price playing a mugging actor and, most importantly, Robert Mitchum stripped to the waist.
The Straight Story, rw (David Lynch, 1999): 3/5
One monologue places this firmly within the valorization of the Greatest Generation with their WWII memories and values, their wretched stubborn horizon gazing, and their emphysema. But I doubt Lynch thinks too much about that, and is probably just interested in these humans, with their will, their unknowability, and their dreams. A lot of the zen-like dialogue works great, and the acting performances of Farnsworth and Spacek are just perfect—although all the lyrical second-unit helicopter-over-corn smoothing shots grate. Pair with Herzog’s Stroszek to see more naifs wandering across the American landscape.
The Audition, 16m (Martin Scorsese, 2015): 3/5
Did you know that in 2015, Studio City Macau Resort and Casino gave Scorsese a $70m budget to make a commercial for their casino, starring Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt? I hope they all had fun in Macau! A complete trifle, but there’s no reason not to watch it on YouTube.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_KSYIZ61q0
Bollywood Film Fest
Joyous filmmaking. Fun fact: The term “Bollywood” is actually a bit offensive nowadays because (1) no one really loves a label and (2) the word Bollywood is based on the fact that once many Indian movies were made in Bombay—but today Bombay is now back to being called Mumbai, since the name Bombay was a corrupted Anglicization of the original name. Stupid English people. All these films were massive blockbusters in India.
Om Shanti Om, 2h49m (Farah Khan, 2007): 3.5/5
Contains probably every genre and mood, in a colorful succession—often fun but tiring at its length. Baz Luhrmann has watched and absorbed these films’ sense of spectacle and “moment” over emotional, dramatic and tonal coherence. And he even hired this (female) director to choreograph (the wretched) Moulin Rouge.
12th Fail, 2h26m (Vidhu Vinod Chopram 2023): 3.5/5
No genre mixing or dance numbers—just a broad and entertaining drama about one village boy’s attempt to move to the big city and become a regional policeman to clear out the corruption in his hometown. Still, the film’s length let’s one hang out with these people quite a long time, making the finale undeniably moving.
Dhoom 2, 2h31m (Sanjay Gadhvi, 2006): 3.5/5
Like the Fast and the Furious, but broad and outrageous. (!?!) I dig the over-the-top self-aware, shiny and plastic quality, which feels like future. I rewatched most of Mission Impossible: Fallout the next day and I recognized the similarity.
Sholay, 3h24m (Ramesh Sippy, 1975): 4/5
Lots of influence from Seven Samurai, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and probably every other epic Western. Two really charismatic buddy protagonists, including Amitabh Bachchan—one of the biggest and most beloved stars in Indian cinema and star of 246 films. As these pages will attest, I have watched many Spaghetti Westerns, and this one is one of the best of the genre, in terms of fun.
Peter Hyams Film Fest
Hopping from genre to genre, privileging acting and character over narrative imperative—in the vein of Soderberg and Coens, although not nearly as arch and self-aware. Hyams (who also directed my beloved Busting, with Elliot Gould and Robert Blake) writes many of these as well. A staple of my 80s filmgoing.
Capricorn One (Peter Hyams, 1977): 3.5/5
A worthy addition to the paranoid government cover-up and assassination films of the 70s. At a little over two hours the narrative is shaggy, even lumpy, for a thriller, but the slower, 70s pace really leaves room for performance, and here we feast on loose performances from Elliott Gould, Hal Holbrook, and (wow) Brenda Vaccarro—not to mention Karen Black and Telly Savalas (!!)). James Brolin makes no impression, despite the screen time, and OJ Simpson is amateurish and has a head that is much larger than that of the rest of the cast. Good stuff on imposter syndrome.
Hanover Street (Peter Hyams, 1979): 3.5/5
Poses the question: Would Brief Encounter be even better if Trevor Howard was a wise-cracking but brave bomber pilot who, in the film’s last third, went on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines with Celia Johnson’s husband? Harrison Ford’s acting is a bit wooden, but he makes up for it with pure charisma, plus expert loud-nose-breathing between lines.
Outland, rw (Peter Hyams, 1981): 3.5/5
A solid paranoid thriller that feels like a police procedural and a Western but happens to be set in space. In fact, I greatly prefer this competent, even expert, sci-fi story to Clair Denis’ abstract High Life, so sue me. Like Alien and Star Ware, it prefigures a world where we have colonized multiple planets and the computers are still green-screen circa 1985. Expert work from Connery, Peter Boyle, and James B Sikking. Today, they complain that you can only get your script made if it can be fit into the Marvel universe, but it was ever so. Post Star Wars, if your genre script could be jammed into space, it was a go.
The Star Chamber, rw (Peter Hyams, 1983): 2.5/5
My 57-year-old self agrees with my 14-year-old self that this revenge-o-matic is altogether too moody, somber, classy, and cerebral. Hal Holbrook, James B Sikking, and various featured sweaty, drugged-out, low life criminals are all terrific, but Michael Douglas is too buttoned down and serious to be fun (unlike the more gonzo and enjoyable Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct performances.)
Narrow Margin, rw (Peter Hyams, 1990): 3/5
A by-the-numbers thriller when “the numbers” included efficient storytelling, zero CGI, helicopter shots galore, perfect pauses at the one-hour mark for dramatic and character-revealing exposition before the implausible but well-presented action sequence conclusion. The many, many two-shots make the performances central, which is a real pleasure when we’re talking about M. Emmet Walsh, James Sikking (again, here complete with yellow-lensed shades: clearly evil), J.T. Walsh, and Gene Fucking Hackman.
The Relic (Peter Hyams, 1997): 2.5/5
Hyams is running out of juice here. Basically, Alien in a museum (The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. I’ve been there!), but then again Hyams’ power is not his originality. Acceptable victims here include local politicians, rich donors, and weaselly Chinese researchers.
