Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021): 3.5/5

The central conceit of how the Uncle Vanya’s dialogue relates to our movie’s plot and characters is really masterful. I was expecting something kind of empty, with long drives and enigmatic silences, but this was traditionally engaging. 

 

Uncle Vanya (Ian Rickson, 2020): 3.5/5

Watching Drive My Car, I was concerned that I was missing stuff thematically because I know zero about Uncle Vanya. But actually, for the most part, the film tells you what you need to know via context clues, and the Vanya dialogue is pretty re-contexualized. The Uncle Vanya scenes that play out in Drive My Car seem sexy, but in fact the play concerns a debauched and lethargic family dynasty petering out—and the subsequent realization that one’s life is meaningless and, worse, over. 

 

Vanya on 42^nd Street (Louis Malle, 1994): 3.5/5

I was hoping for some comment or analysis or interpretation or extension of the play but no, this is simply a performance of it. Nicely understated, since it’s an adaptation of the language by Mamet. 

 

Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine, 2022): 2.5/5

Keep your finger hovering over the skip-forward button, and you can have a pretty fun 22 minutes. 

 

After Yang (Kogonada, 2022): 2/5

Could robots have a soul, and if so would it be made up of/demonstrated by memory plus emotion plus self-identify plus the love of others or some shit. 

 

The Adam Project (Shawn Levy, 2022): 3/5

Indefensible sci-fi garbage that nevertheless hooked me with basic bitch father/son dynamics. I swear that during the two parts that made me tear up, I didn’t even hear the dialogue. I was just responding to the situation, facial expressions and music—and filling it in with memories and impressions of my life with my dad and/or with Jack. That’s cinema, but How Humiliating!

 

Nine Days (Edson Oda, 2021): 3.5/5

A guy has to choose what kind of person, from a dozen candidates, should be born on Earth. Compelling throughout. They say that the mark of a good director is that all the performances are good (as here, especially Zazie Beetz). I found the ending to be transcendent, but your mileage may vary. 

 

Beyond the infinite Two Minutes (Junta Yamaguchi, 2020): 3/5

A computer allows the characters to see two minutes into the future. Low-stakes fun as they spin out the sci-fi possibilities. 

 

Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012): 4.5/5

In the cinema of clarity and commonplace brutality, it’s a masterpiece. Basic, primal, universal. 

 

White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009): 4/5

Explicitly declares that it is going to diagnose how we get WWII and the Holocaust, then presents us with three kinds of circa-WW1 German men, with all their feelings of superiority, god-complex, self-righteousness and fixation on innocence/purity — inflicted on their children, who express everything that is repressed. A lot to think about, and expressed swiftly and dramatically.

 

Rancho Deluxe (Frank Perry, 1975): 2/5

A hazy-dazy movie, full of dumb and likablly handsome young rustlers, driving faded pick-ups around Montana. Script (barely) written by Thomas McGuane. 

 

Dodes’ka-den (Akira Kurosawa, 1970): 2/5

Very much a filmed play, with all the long monologues and artificiality that implies. Traditional Japanese theatre acting, including slow movement and exaggerated face work. The abstract plane of action (a stagy garbage dump) reminds one of Beckett, but this movie lacks humor. 

 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926): 3.5/5

The supposedly first animated movie is all silhouettes, although there are all kinds of grey-scale backgrounds as well as evocative blues, reds, greens and yellows. (Right up there on the screen In 1923). Beautiful design, Tabu-like naked-lady bathing, witches, racist depictions of Chinese and Arabic characters, and plenty of other delights. 

 

Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951): 3/5

The Holy Fool of Gump (and unfortunately just as facile) crossed with the what-are-you -gonna-do generosity and gagginess of Tati, with a dash of radical humanism. Wish-fulfillment in troubled times. Honestly, I don’t have a taste for these fairy tale films (like Demy’s Donkey Skin, of which this is a neo-real cousin).  

 

Train Again, 20 mins. (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021): 3.5/5

I have some doubts about its conceptual discipline/rigor, but it’s a pretty good experience. 

 

In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003): 3.5/5

Genuinely hot and sexy and also actually disturbing, with a pretty bleak and paranoid outlook. It compares favorably to Pakula’s Klute.

 

Quai des Orfèvres (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947): 3.5/5

There’s a murder that both our protagonists seem guilty of. Will the sharp-eyed police detective find the right man? Smart entertainment. 

 

The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, 2015): 3/5

A maid lives in the home of a wealthy family, but when her estranged daughter also comes to live there, all the relationships and power dynamics shift. Schematic. 

 

 

Pre-1978 Agnes Varda Film Fest

Varda is a magpie or gleaner of styles, perspectives, and strategies—a genius of spontaneous and mutating order. She doesn’t take any premise seriously for long, and changes rules frequently. This must madden The Formalists. 

 

La Pointe-Courte (Agnès Varda, 1955): 3/5

A talkfest with a strong sense of place, as a couple on the rocks wanders around a fishing village, past boats, nets, cats and fishermen and women of every shape. Comparable to early Bergman and Rossellini’s Journey to Italy (from the previous year). Varda says she was telling two stories that never interact (inspired by Faulkner’s Wild Palms), but the fishermen’s story isn’t exactly a narrative and comes off as mere scene-setting. 

 

Cléo From 5 to 7, rw (Agnès Varda, 1962): 3.5/5

Cléo from 5 to 7: Remembrances and Anecdotes, 36 mins (Agnès Varda, 2005): 3.5/5

Enjoyed the original as a hangout on the streets, apartments and parks of Paris. But the follow-up documentary Remembrances bumps it a half point for helping me see it as a reflection on deeper issues of seeing and being seen, as well as the inexorable movement of time. 

 

Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965): 4.5/5

Packed with beauty and spontaneity. Cut together in a new way and churning with new feelings. Deserves to be in the conversation with the other New Wave Masterpieces. The man at the center is a bummer but the storytelling a big wow. 

 

Les Creatures (Agnès Varda, 1966): 3/5

Nutty science fiction about a guy who is controlling people in a village, plus meta-fiction stuff about the sadistic role of an author in the lives of his characters. An eccentric use of Catherine Deneuve (as a mute), Michel Piccoli (with a huge scar/gash running down the middle of his forehead), and (Bergman’s) Eva Dahlbeck. 

 

Elsa la Rose, 20 mins (Agnès Varda, 1966): 2/5

Banal portrait of the wife of surrealist poet Louis Aragon, who was also a writer. I know no more about why I should care about them than before I watched the film. 

 

Black Panthers, 28 mins (Agnès Varda, 1968): 2.5/5

A time capsule rather than an interrogation. 

 

Lions Love (Agnès Varda, 1969): 2/5

An acid-addled stumble through Hollywood in June of 1968. Charmless characters but great wallpaper. “There never was a Hollywood. It’s just a mining camp with service from the Ritz.”

 

Nausicaa (Agnès Varda, 1971): 4/5

A kaleidoscopic probing at the Greek civil war in 1968, which accuses the U.S. of installing a government performing an anti-intellectual, military-based coup and purge, plus torture. With intersecting fiction parts plus interviews of actual participants, news footage, breaking the fourth wall, Brechtian satiric parts, etc. Yet, it’s by far the most grounded and emotional of all the New Wave 68 Marxist movies I’ve seen. 

 

Plaisir d’Amour en Iran, 6 mins (Agnès Varda, 1976): 3/5

An excerpt from One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, which should have just be incorporated into that film. Our two lovers contemplate Iranian architecture and poetry. 

 

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, 1977): 4.5/5

A French hippy masterpiece and a blatantly political film—warmly feminist about girls doing it for themselves. Tells the story of two women over a decade, and fills it with moments between women that seem like secrets that no men talk about and I’m not even supposed to know. Not as formally inventive as Le Bonheur, but on the other hand for a while this an epistolary narrative as well as a stealth musical with decent songs and dance. Is there a song about the women on a tour boat in Amsterdam who were all there from France to get legal abortions? A definitive yes.

 

 

Akerman Mini-Mini-Fest

I’m good with these female directors undermining narrative constraints and setting off in bold or even odd new directions. 

 

Sauté ma ville, 13 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1968): 3/5

For some reason this 18-year-old doesn’t seem satisfied with the boxed food she is given to eat, the cooking she must do, the cleaning and beauty products that make her and her home pretty. 

 

La Chambre, 11 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1972): 3/5

A chair with a red velour back, a breakfast table, a teapot, curtains, a woman looking out guardedly, possibly masterbating, later fondling an apple meaningfully, the rhyme of a red chair, a lamp.  

 

News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976): 3.5/5

Mother’s letters add pathos, yet I can’t imagine a more mundane depiction of NYC. Perhaps this is the point (alienation: discuss). I wonder whether native New Yorkers are seeing a lot of Then vs Now stuff, lost on me. 

 

 

Movies I Avoided for Decades Because I Thought They Were Going to Be Bad, and I Was Right

 

The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1967): 1.5/5

I realize comedy is subjective and that it’s not cool to judge anti gay and anti-trans jokes by todays standards, but really this movie stinks on ice. If it’s not funny, their strategy is to say it louder—and believe me, there’s a LOT of yelling in this movie. 

 

The Party (Blake Edwards, 1968): 2/5

There is a lot of Tati here and Clouseau obviously. However, Hulot retains his dignity because he seems to ignore or not care about other people’s opinions of him, and Clouseau continues to consider himself the world’s greatest detective no matter the evidence. On the other hand, this character seems fully aware of how personally humiliating his misadventures are. Notice, I didn’t even mention the brown-face Sellers wears throughout. Why did this character have to be Indian except because the creators think Indians are funny?

 

The Ghost and Mrs Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947): 2/5

At least three disgusting men behaving leeringly toward a pretty modern Gene Tierney. “My dear, since Eve picked the apple, no woman has ever been taken entirely unawares. When a woman is kissed, it’s because deep down she wants to be kissed,” says the gross ghost sea captain Rex Harrison, who led a “very manly life.” In the end she is in love with a very Trumpian image of a manly man, who tells it like it is—a man who, in the movie, literally doesn’t exist any more. 

 

A Simple Plan (Sam Raimi, 1998): 2/5

A Predetermined Slog

 

Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968): 2/5

Skips jokelessly through a series of genres, including the western, war movie, boxing flick, adventure, horror, with toothless satire of advertising and the manufactured identities and cameos by Timothy Carey, Jack Nicholson, Zappa and Victor Mature (??) in a series of ascots. With some head-shop use of color and negative-image. Good songs, though.

 Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2012): 2/5

For, you see, life itself is a museum, and it's always open.

GACK.

Basically it played to me like a feature-length extension of American Beauty's swirling plastic bag. If everything is interesting and worthy of attention, as Jem Cohen insists, then nothing is, I would argue.

CODA (Sian Heder, 2021): 3/5

Major Hallmark/Disney Channel Original Movie vibes. So very "yeah it's sweet!" it's no wonder the Academy was powerless.

Deep Water (Adrian Lyne, 2022): 2/5

Poly people will name their daughter Trixie and keep snails as pets, next thing you know they’re murdering.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022): 4/5

Charlie Kaufman’s multiverse-Tree of Life, if made for Adult Swim.

Has a lot of heart, is weird/kooky but stays fully committed to the bit. An undeniable feat of filmmaking in terms of editing and creativity. Extra star for having Michelle Yeoh at the helm.

Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, 2021): 4/5

Poetry in the absurd. With minimal dialogue and no narration, this documentary still provides a nuanced (and occasionally pointed) exploration of supply, demand, and consumption on a truly mind-boggling scale. There is so much here that’s indelible - that opening scene of the hunt where jobs are classified as “standing up” or “sitting down,” the sex doll factory, the drill team salute, the butler academy, the indoor amusement park, the video game room, the fancy party, the lipstick made for female soldiers, the final shots of the misty waterfront, and above all the rules for hugging.

After Yang (Kogonada, 2021): 3/5

The opening credits scene is better than the movie itself. Narrative is underwhelming and way too ruminative with underwritten characters. Points for the production design, perfectly framed cinematography, and skillfully utilized special effects though.

Turning Red (Domee Shi, 2022): 2.5/5

Whatever it's a film for kids. (No big sin, of course.)

Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962): 3/5

Not much to this apart from its eerie, somnambulistic vibe, though admittedly it is sometimes potent.

X (Ti West, 2022): 2/5

Horny grandma commits crimes. Didn't absolutely hate it like I have Ti West's previous films so there's that. Some ok gore and Mia Goth's side boob shots are the highlights.

The Tinder Swindler (Felicity Morris, 2022): 1/5

Why would a billionaire be on tinder? Why didn’t the women say “ask your billionaire dad for money”?? Why would Netflix think I would sympathize with people who willingly got involved with someone they thought was either an arms dealer, a Mossad agent or the heir to a fortune built through owning diamond mines in Angola and building settlements in the West Bank???

Dick Johnson is Dead (Kirsten Johnson, 2021): 4/5

Someone explain to my tear-drenched t-shirt why this is being marketed as a zany comedy??? What's depicted here without question is one of my greatest fears. Sure, I found myself wanting to do without the fantasy Heaven sequences and some of the other goofy bits...but really that was me resisting this as much as I could. "It would be so easy if loving only gave us the beautiful. But what loving demands is that we face the fear of losing each other. That when it gets messy we hold each other close. And when we can, we defiantly celebrate our brief moments of joy." By the finale I was powerless and destroyed in the best way.

Kimi (Steven Soderbergh, 2022): 3/5

Starts out very derivative but the groundwork gets laid for a fun third act. Seems to me Soderbergh's scaled back his ambition to the point where he may never make another truly great film, but at least he's finally stopped fucking around with goofy lenses.

Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985): 3/5

In between the opening shantytown shootout/demolition derby and the truly astonishing climactic fight sequence, featuring stunts so insane that it's hard to believe the entire cast wasn't hospitalized for months afterward, is a solid hour that's virtually action-free, during which Chan cranks up the mugging and I remember why I've never been very motivated to catch up with his oeuvre. As always, what's funny is very much a matter of taste, so I can't argue with those who enjoy seeing Chan get hit in the face with a cake not once, not twice, but three times in the midst of a standard Three's Company scenario. I'm just never gonna fully embrace a movie that's 25% kinetic masterpiece and 75% static tedium.

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (Michael Lehmann, 2022): 1/5

This had EVERY CHANCE to be a good parody. Decent cast, the budget was there. Unfortunately, it commits the cardinal sin for parody: it’s not clever. This cleaves so closely to the structure of the narratives it's trying to make fun of that there's no space for it to actually take a view on them. Its attempts at mimicking the genre's tropes come just too close to the high camp of the genre itself that they barely register. Just all around lazy, mishandled, and completely devoid of joy.

Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944): 3.5/5

What economy! As masterful an exercise in “single location” filmmaking as you’ll see, and we’re not talking about one house or one room, but one BOAT. A great Hitchcock picture that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.

Clean, Shaven (Lodge Kerrigan, 1993): 1.5/5

Seems like this is in the Criterion Collection because it has the most sound editing in a movie. Otherwise it’s just kind of miserable and grating, which I get is probably the point, but doesn’t make it something I’d ever want to revisit.

Boiler Room (Ben Younger, 2000): 3/5

Part well-observed takedown of broker culture as an indictment of chauvinist capitalist excess and part formulaic daddy issues actor showcase. Well-realized moments, like when they watch "Wall Street," stand out and it has a unique place as a financial services movie in a pre-9/11 and pre-2007 mortgage crisis world. Extra half star for the very lovely Nia Long.

Hannibal Rising (Peter Webber, 2007): 1.5/5

Where Gong Li (poor Gong Li) teaches teenage Dr. Lecter (her nephew) Kendo so he can get revenge on the Nazis that ate his baby sister. Admittedly if this plot were, say, season 6 of the TV series, I might be more into it (transmedia forever). It already sort of looks like "Hannibal" anyway, with its self-consciously operatic chiaroscuro.

Red Dragon (Brett Ratner, 2002): 2.5/5

Expository wholesale re-staging of Mann's MANHUNTER with a name-brand cast, and what's worse Ratner occasionally pulling out Demme's confessional straight-into-camera close-ups for no other reason than to sew this up visually with THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Only Fiennes really rescues this, bringing a frenzied physical menace to Dolarhyde where Tom Noonan was all imposing, quiet control.

Lucy and Desi (Amy Poehler, 2022): 3.5/5

Doesn't get beyond 101 territory but still sweetly made. Skip Being the Ricardos and just watch this doc instead.

Hot take: I Love Lucy is such a funny show.

Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021): 2/5

Pretentious and exhausting. So last century. Stories concentrated on people’s idiosyncratic forms of grieving always stir me to some extent—this one didn't at all. Also, not really important, but I don't understand the point of subtitled multilingual theater. From what I can tell, the whole point of that discipline is to deliberately redirect viewers' attention to nonverbal cues; it's not clear to me what one gains merely from having actors converse in different tongues, while translating them all on a projected screen.

Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997): 2.5/5

I'm back to where I always end up with Miyazaki, feeling frustrated by what seem like purely random flourishes. My gut feeling is that he's a great animator but a bad storyteller. Since my knowledge of Japanese mythology is basically nil, however, what seems random and unsatisfying to me may well make perfect sense to others. In any case, I've never been able to just roll with the weirdness, as most of my peers have. They see a dazzling masterpiece; I see a prettier version of Takashi Miike's dumbfounding The Great Yokai War.

Black Moon (Louis Malle, 1975): 1/5

Few things are more painful than bad surrealism. There's virtually nothing here to either delight or disconcert. Just a bunch of naked children running wild, an old lady jabbering nonsense into a wireless radio, the occasional "talking" animal (mostly indecipherable grunting and squeaking), and Joe Dallesandro's presence as counterculture Ken doll. Dream logic has rarely been so prosaic, and if there's a less sensuous film about a young girl's sexual awakening (metaphorical or otherwise), may it thud right on past.

Summer of Sam (Spike Lee, 1999): 2.5/5

Another of Spike's rippers on trauma and tribalism and glimmering hope, only this one also has a talking dog.

Cop Land (James Mangold, 1997): 3/5

So many of these 90's indie crime dramas depend on Michael Rappaport being a dipshit who fucks it up for everyone.

Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992): 2.5/5

Nothing but downward spiral, plus one agonized act of forgiveness. The early, iconic scene in which Lt. Bad staggers around naked, his face a mask of pain, arguably does more harm than good—it's certainly arresting and memorable, but it overwhelms what's otherwise a remarkably flat, almost procedural portrait of ingrained vice.

West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021): 2/5

Ansel Elgort has to be stopped, now. I’m not doing this for another 20 years. If they had to put him in a musical, it should have been as a “Sound of Music” Nazi.

Anyway, Spielberg works his magic here and there, but it’s only 4 minutes longer than the original and it feels like at least 45.

Caveat (Damian McCarthy, 2020): 3/5

Interesting little flick; dug the aesthetic and the setting. Has a sort of Silent Hill element with the gritty, rundown house and uncanny, supernatural aspects. The plot is a little unfocused though; all the pieces are there but motivations and decisions feel off in a nonsensical way. Still, an engaging and promising debut.

The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021): 1.5/5

This is what I imagine people who’ve never seen foreign films are picturing when they say, “I don’t like foreign films.”

 The Rescue (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin): 3.5/5

More emotionally rewarding than Free Solo. Sure, there are political motivations for the expensive rescue effort, but to see the extent of people and resources in action is remarkable. True heroes here.

House of Gucci (Ridley Scott, 2021): 1/5

The ghost of George Michael should sue for the inclusion of his music in this dull debacle.

rewatched The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993): 3/5

Ada's wholehearted surrender to Baines still troubles me. Campion really does present Baines' sexual blackmail as a genuine expression of pure love, which comes perilously close to "I beat you because I care." And the film just doesn't complicate that enough for my taste.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Cohen, 2021): 3/5

The concerted minimalism… the high contrast digital black & white photography, the quasi-modernist production design and modest costumes, the relaxed almost conversational approach to the performances… all aggressively fine. It remains very much the kind of film you cue up on your classroom’s TV to try and get students to eat their literary vegetables. I hope Joel had fun though.

Haxan (Benjamin Christensen, 1922): 3/5

Despite its alternate title/subtitle (Witchcraft Through the Ages), I'd always assumed this to be a silent horror movie a la Vampyr and Nosferatu, not a documentary that for a while seems to function more as an academic treatise. First 15 minutes are so expository, in fact, and rely so heavily on paintings and illustrations (complete with an actual pointer entering the frame now and then to flag a specific element) that I began mentally preparing my standard "this should have been a book" complaint, which I'd never expected might apply to a film made nearly a century ago. Thankfully, Christensen soon shifts into dramatic mode, albeit mostly by way of producing what amounts to a proto-Crucible—one that ultimately blames women's pesky uteri for the needless slaughter of countless innocents.

Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro, 2021): 1/5

I remain almost completely allergic to the very pretty and profoundly boring work of Guillermo del Toro.

Compliance (Craig Zobel, 2012): 1/5

Absolutely the worst experience I've ever had watching a movie in recent memory like I... had to pause several times and felt like ripping my hair out this was so.... and during one of those pauses I read the Wikipedia page of the actual incidents including the major one this is based on which just made the rest of the experience that much worse. Jesus fucking christ. (I still love Ann Dowd all the same.)

True Stories (David Byrne, 1986): 3.5/5

David Byrne is such a beautiful, weird man. An examination/celebration of Texas and Americana that also feels like a precursor to everything that aired on Adult Swim in the 2010s. It would make a terrific small town sesquicentennial double feature with Waiting for Guffman.

The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988): 4/5

If I'm totally honest with myself, I have to admit that this film drags quite a bit in the middle; it's basically just the drive, the tunnel, the disappearance, the rehearsal, and then the final Faustian bargain, which collectively is maybe half the total running time. If I'm even more honest with myself, though, I have to admit that I don't much care.

Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine, 2022): 2.5/5

A thought-provoking film about friendship. Extra half star for Chris Pontius as Buffalo Bill in their Silence of the Lambs prank.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (Stephen Chiodo, 1988): 2/5

Not very keen on this sort of readymade cult item, but murderous aliens that happen to look like clowns to us wasn't necessarily a bad idea. Applying the funhouse motif to literally everything—their spaceship is a circus tent; their cocoons resemble cotton candy; eggs as popcorn kernels—made it all the more fun.

I, the Worst of All (Maria Luisa Bemberg, 1990): 3/5

i love gay nuns & chiaroscuro

Euphoria Seasons 1 & 2 (Sam Levinson): 4/5

Trashy, soapy HS teen drama and yet...I can't stop watching. I was deeply closeted until I was 20 or 21 and thus did not partake in any sexy sexual activities during my HS years. ("I'm on yearbook! I don't have time for drinking or partying!") Nice to see kids these days being so open and accepting during what is arguably the lamest, worst time in your life.

NEW OBSESSION ALERT: Hunter Schafer. And Zendaya is fantastic. They're really going places.

2021

Post-tornado movie theater, Mayfield KY, Dec 2021

Best found footage:  Get Back, Summer of Soul

Strained Seriousness:  Pig, The Card Counter, The Power of the Dog

Polished turds:  The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Nightmare Alley

Much ado about nothing:  Being the Ricardos, Spencer

Wishing we were European:  The Lost Daughter, The French Dispatch

Wishing we were dead:  Don't Look Up, The Beta Test

Havana Syndrome:  Dune

 2021 Movies, more or less in descending order of preference 

West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021): 5/5

Spielberg crafts a deliriously vibrant, touching movie out of Kushner’s observant script and six or seven great songs (despite a huge lull in Act Three). Full of CGI and auto tune, and oh so perfect. Yet for once I take great pleasure in the perfection. I watched most of it twice and I’m prepared to watch it again right now.

 

The Killing of Two Lovers (Robert Machoian, 2021): 4/5

Constructed largely of majestically long, penetrating, theatrical one-takes. Our protagonist is trying to hold his family together while he himself is falling apart. I loved how the viewers are thrown back and forth as whether our protagonist is awesome or a monster.

 

Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar, 2021): 4/5

Compelling drama and good pacing. Plus amazing production design and music. Like Antonioni, it’s a pleasure just to be in that environment. It’s been a while since I had seen Penelope Cruz in a Spanish movie, and I had long forgotten how good she is.

 

A Hero (Asghar Farhadi, 2021): 3.5/5

Carefully steps the viewer through the many, tiny moral gradients that lie between innocence and guilt, between freedom and incarceration. However, where this arrow is landing is clear from the first frame, so it is also often tedious, frustrating and hard to watch. A slow-motion car wreck. The last shot is really great. 

 

The Souvenir, Part 2 (Joanna Hogg, 2021): 3.5/5

A meditation on a filmed life and an infinite-mirror of self-reflection, with bursts of surrealism comparative to Bunuel and Lynch. Our protagonist is still the weakest link. Probably not a popular opinion in these parts, but I preferred this one to the original.  

 

Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro, 2021): 3.5/5

As usual, the production design is indeed the thing. The characters are merely floating like babies in jars within it. Still Cooper can act. And in a satisfyingly classic noir move, the protagonist is sado-masochistically drawn to the femme fatale, indulging and drowning in his desires. Should have gotten it down to 1:55 though, including jettisoning at least half of the carnies which added up to nothing. The last shot is among the best of the year. A mixed bag but better than Fishfuck: the Movie.

 

House of Gucci (Ridley Scott, 2021): 3.5/5

The basic decision to make all these really good actors perform Italian accents ends up being completely disastrous, ensuring that all the performances are theatrical and broad. Yet the storytelling is swift and the milieu and production design of Milan and New York in the late 70s goes a long way. Better than The Last Duel on every level. 

 

Quo Vadis, Aida (Jasmila Žbanić, 2021): 3/5

Bureaucratic horror, somewhat akin to Night and Fog from the point of view of a Polish mayor. 

 

Red Rocket (Sean Baker, 2021): 3/5

A tough watch, like all of Baker’s movies. Ethically and morally a skin-crawling horror movie. Enjoy!

 

For the Sake of Vicious (Reese Eveneshen and Gabriel Carrer, 2021): 3/5

A low-budget horror movie that starts out as a kidnapping drama, then unexpectedly turns Into a confusing and particularly prolonged and brutal home invasion bloodbath. Wild!

 

Nighthouse (David Bruckner, 2021): 3/5

Overpraised.  It has some moments of effective haunted house-ery, but also a lot of muddy depression and grief stuff. Maybe my least favorite Rebecca Hall performance; here she is In full Madeline Stowe mode. 

 

About Endlessness (Roy Andersson, 2021): 3/5

A succession of tableau displaying mostly mundane and everyday despair. The mise en scène gives it a god’s eye view, but this god is despairing and powerless. 

 

Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, 2021): 2.5/5

It's a refugee story. It’s a coming out story. It’s a combination refugee and coming out story. 

 

 

I watched some non-2021 movies as well

 

Walking Tall (Phil Karlson, 1974): 3.5/5

A well-made, non-arty bro-Western drive-in movie. A good ole boy who is also very liberal with regard to race feuds with some gooder, older boys with mafia-like connections to the big city. Joe Don Baker is a force of nature—no matter what he does, I believe him. Plus boobs, and you got yourself a pretty satisfyingly tale, morally black-and-white and Old Testament-y. 

 

Permanent Vacation (Jim Jarmusch, 1980): 2.5/5

A young man wanders around a burned-out New York City, encountering a series of eccentrics and crazies. There’s a dance sequence and some reciting from books, and he goes to see Nicolas Ray’s The Savage Innocents. French New Wave is … a bit of an influence. 

 

Heaven Knows What (Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, 2014): 3/5

Just dopey junkies, but in terms of emotional complexity, tension and drama, it’s mile beyond, say, Permanent Vacation. 

 

El Sur (Víctor Erice, 1983): 3/5

Girl grows up with a severely depressed father. “The South” of the title represents his mysteriously powerful past. I understand that Erice intended a whole additional act where she traveled South. Gorgeous browns and soft whites. 

 

The Naked Island (Kaneto Shindō, 1960): 3/5

A metaphorically weighted family farms a desert island, which means they endlessly cross the mile to the mainland for buckets of water and carry them up a steep hill to the plants. No dialogue but plenty of Wages of Fear-type drama with the water. A cross between Man of Aran and the Myth of Sisyphus. 

 

The Gunslinger (Henry King, 1950): 3.5/5

Bob Dylan’s review of this movie, as heard in his song “New Danville Girl” (1984): 

“I wish I could remember that movie just a little bit better

All I remember was that it starred Gregory Peck.

He was shot down in the back by a hungry kid trying to make a name for himself.

The townspeople wanted to crush that kid down and string him up by the neck.

Well the sheriff beat that kid to a bloody pulp.

As the dying gunfighter lay in the sun and gasped for his last breath,

‘Turn him loose, let him go, let him say he outdrew me fair and square.

I want him to feel what it's like to every moment face his death.’

Well, I keep seeing this stuff and it just comes a-rolling in.

And it blows right through me like a ball and chain.”

 

Yearning (Mikio Naruse, 1964): 3.5/5

60s-type melodrama compatible to Sirk, complete with soapy Western music under the most dramatic scenes. Thematically, it also involves changing mores and societal expectations for women and widows in the post-war. 

 

A Woman of Paris : A Drama of Fate (Charlie Chaplin, 1923): 4/5

Here’s something I did not know. In 1923, Chaplain wrote and directed a drama—sharply drawn, swift and of course displaying his usual social satire and keen observations. In scope it reminded me of two books I recently read, The House of Mirth and Sentimental Education. Chaplin also wrote the music, but after 10 minutes I replaced it with the new post rock/minimal classical album by a London band named Caroline, and it was pretty sublime.

 

Scream (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, 2022): 2/5

Some chills but even more clever fan-service. 

 

Marry Me (Kat Coiro, 2022): 2.5/5

J Lo is good. Owen Wilson on the other hand looks and acts like a 50-year-old lady. He seems amazingly uncomfortable and it ruins the movie’s chi. 

 

 * Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021): 4.5/5

Every frame and every scene is a great pleasure. Kind of like a book of intertwined short stories. Cooper Hoffman is superb. 

The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021): 4/5

A (more) homoerotic version of There Will be Blood, with admirable amount of masterbation. The first time I watched it, I completely missed a key plot point near the end, and I didn’t like it much. Then I rewatched, noticed a lot of visual evidence that I didn’t realize was evidence the first time and ended up liking it much better

 

The Matrix Resurrections (Lana Wachowski, 2021): 3/5

The first third is insightful, trippy and new, but the last two thirds is all dumb fisticuffs. So basically it mirrors the trilogy that precedes it. 

The Last Duel (Ridley Scott, 2021): 1.5/5

Square, dull and pedantic. Will the rapist triumph????? The people who say this is like Rashomon (including Ridley Scott on WTF) do not understand Rashomon, which is about (among other things) uncertainty with regard to the nature of reality itself — not about all the characters making themselves the hero. And it’s definitely not about how we all have our version of the story but we should believe the woman/victim. So dumb. 

 

C’mon C’mon (Mike Mills, 2021): 3.5/5

Mike Mills is obviously a really open guy, emotionally — and that leads to some stunningly feeling places. I related to much of it quite intensely, but I can only imagine how precious a non-parent would find it. 

 

The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2021): 3.5/5

Richly expresses some normal and taboo feelings about ones own children — stuff I’ve heard expressed with candor many, many times. Universal stuff and the polar opposite feeling as that expressed by C’mon C’mon. I love how Gyllenhaal just watches these great actors do their thing, but the result doesn’t explode with meaning. 

Azor (Andreas Fontana, 2021): 2/5

As if you’re watching Martin Sheen and Harrison Ford’s characters from Apocalypse Now hang out for an hour and 20 minutes, then Sheen pops upriver one afternoon to discover that Kurtz Is just yet another errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill. Maybe more depressing but certainly less dramatic. 

 

* Spider-Man: No Way Home (Jon Watts, 2021): 3/5

Lots of action, little jibber jabber. Good job. 

 

* Sing 2 (Garth Jennings, 2021): 3/5

I remember people used to say that as the Boomers died off, Sgt Pepper would stop being named as the number one album in Rolling Stone, etc, and would be replaced with a U2 album, probably Joshua Tree. Thank god that never happened. But now when the old lion in this movie comes emotionally out of retirement to play a song that is universally adored, it’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. And it kinda works.

Belfast (Kenneth Branagh, 2021): 2/5

A memory piece with no plot or even incident, really, unless you count “Then we went to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The end.” I was not emotionally engaged. 

 

The Reason I Jump (Jerry Rothwell, 2021): 3/5

Doc which consists of about 45 minutes of hanging out with non-verbal autistic kids, with voice over from a manuscript written by a non-verbal autistic kid. Beyond Interesting and a great opportunity for self-reflection on one’s life own filters and assumptions.  But that 45 minutes is padded out with long pillow shots and cliched emotional vistas with music. Argument for shorter docs and movies in general.

  

Spencer (Pablo Larraín, 2021): 3/5

It’s in the Sofia Copolla school of ‘poor little rich girls in the cage of their privilege.’ But it’s a little hard to emphasize with her predicament. Don’t we all hate attending family Christmases? Personally, I endeavor to not behave like a neurotic mess during them, and I reserve a special respect for those who succeed. The movie is unlike Jackie in that Jackie O is desperately holding the reins of history, instead of failing to not disappear up her own butt. Still, some beautiful stuff therein.

 

Jakob’s Wife (Travis Stevens, 2021): 3/5

A reverend’s wife gets turned into a vampire and starts asserting herself. I could see the indie version being good (Phantom Thread?), but this one was low-budget fun and full of spraying blood. 

 

tick, tick … Boom!  (Lin-Manuel Miranda, 2021): 1/5

Yes, that’s really what’s it’s officially called. I struggled over several days to finish this movie, which I pretty much hated all aspects of. Tuneless songs and merciless mugging. I understand that the kids these days like it, with their Tiks and their Toks, which…they can have it.

 

Polytechnique (Denis Villeneuve, 2009): 3/5

Restrained, aestheticized, riveting and pointless. It does manage to be ABOUT hatred and violence against women as opposed to just BEING hatred and violence against women. 

 

Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve, 2013): 3/5

Situations change and flip and the characters change with them, which I like. As with Incendies (and Polytechnique for that matter), it’s actually the “worst case scenario death child abuse murder” vibe that repels me. Perhaps Villeneuve equates this with seriousness. Gyllenhaal is good, and Hugh Jackson is acting his balls off but is just ok. 

 

Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2018): 3.5/5

Its simplicity, sincerity, placidty and clarity makes the main character’s enigmic knot of sadness easy to accept and access.

 

Good Time, rw (Josh and Benny Safdie, 2017): 3.5/5

Emotional, spontaneous, nervy, raw and lawless. 

 

Sopranos, six seasons. (David Chase et.al, 1999-2007): 5/5

I didn’t love every moment or every episode or every season (looking at you Season 2). But overall, an epic achievement. The characters don’t change much and it has a sitcom-ish tendency to reset at the end of an episode or season. Still it’s packed with colorful characters that become deeper with each passing episode. Full of rich, dark and profoundly true quotes and observations about fathers and substitute-fathers and sons, and husbands and wives, growing up, the value of friends, dreams and loyalty. Plus, Burt Young riddled with cancer and covered in blood, inhaling a cigarette and listening to Sister Golden Hair. For me, Season 5 was a knockout.