Mad God (Phil Tippett, 2022): 2.5/5

A miraculous, odd, sui generis object involving elaborate set design, plus a slosh of artistry including traditional cell animations, stop motion, puppets, models, stagecraft, photography, sound design, armatures, props, wardrobe. Although, really, it could have used a writer! 

 

The Offer (Michael Tolkin, Leslie Greif, 2022):3.5/5

Low-rent but still a distinct pleasure to hang out with some version of Coppola and Evans, Pacino and Brando. I rank this at the same tier as the Motely Crue movie, The Dirt: high compliment! They used to make movies about kings, now it’s all Freddie Mercury, Elton John, Joan Crawford and Elvis. 

 

Dashcam (Rob Savage, 2022): 3/5

From the director of 2020’s Host (a favorite, made with very scarce means). This one is not the in the same league, but it’s nevertheless worth one’s time. The “Instagram” mise en scène and personalities are a big turnoff. Still, when the horror goes down (which is early and often), the iPhone grammar makes the vicious horror stuff more realistic and intense (while also choppy and abstract). 

 

Love Death + Robots, S3E2, “Bad Travelling” (David Fincher, 2022): 4/5  

Smart, fun and good-looking quasi-retelling of Alien in 22 minutes. My favorite thing associated with Fincher since 2010’s The Social Network. 

 

Sicilia! (Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, 1999): 2/5

A man returns to Sicily to visit his mother. The movie seems to be made by someone who has never seen a movie, just heard them described. The characters declare their lines like kids in a school play, and the camera often lingers on their blank faces long before they speak and long after they have finished. A camera on a hill slowly pans from one side of a valley to the other and back again, then repeats the pan and return. Shrug!

 

THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971): 3/5

Quite a weird, off-putting and bold film—a 2001-drunk fence-swing full of audacious world-building. Unfortunately, it’s dramatically inert and full of barriers to audience identification and enjoyment. Lucas is not quite done with the extreme use of white, technology that is both old-feeling and futuristic, and robot cops. 

 

Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz, 2012): 1.5/5

We wander around inside of an old man’s idiosyncratic memories and fantasies, kind of like spending two hours talking to someone else’s quirky father in a retirement home. 

 

Man Push Cart (Ramin Bahrani, 2005): 3.5/5

Simple and specific, but with a deep well of feeling, primarily sadness and nostalgia. 

 

The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002): 3.5/5

Survivor guilt, the movie. The watcher. The feeler. The revenant. A sort of greatest hits of Warsaw ghetto anecdotes, all exceedingly grim on the subject of power. Dramatically, extremely compelling.  

 

Destry Rides Again (George Marshall, 1939): 3.5/5

Oh, the pleasure of watching, amidst sundry odd World Classics, a normal, swift, witty entertainment such as we have here. Dietrich is so great: sexy, strong and game for anything, including a prolonged cat fight. Stewart is clever and full of savoir faire—the other side of Stewart in the West, since this is the peacemaker and bringer of the law/future (a la Liberty Valance) instead of the psychopath of most of his Anthony Mann westerns, including…

 

The Man from Laramie (Anthony Mann, 1955): 3.5/5

Technicolor and cinemascope plus Anthony Mann’s shot composition and those cloudy skies of New Mexico, and you barely need anything else. Which is good, since the themes of this run thin beyond “Apache bad.” This turns out to be a kind of family drama with weak actual sons vs. strong adopted sons, wherein Stewart serves as a vengeful detective character outside of the dramatic action. He and Arthur Kennedy are both predictably great. 

 

Tommy (Ken Russell, 1975): 3/5

Some spoilers ahead for the “plot” of Tommy, but: I had no idea that the reason Tommy was deaf, dumb and blind was that he witnessed his mom and her new lover murder his father (returned from the war). Hamlet alert! But instead of Hamlet's “the play is the thing," Tommy becomes a Stranger in a Strange Land-type spiritual leader. All the consumerism paranoia (and baked beans) are leftover obsessions from The Who Sell Out era. Nicholson and Ann Margaret reunite four years after Carnal Knowledge. Townsend re-recorded all these songs, liberally incorporating the synths he was so obsessed with at the time, and it sounds pretty cool. The vocals by Oliver Reed and Margaret ruin almost everything, but the groovy extended synth rock jam-outs in "Eyesight for the Blind" then "Acid Queen" {starting at 26 mins in), make those parts worth a watch. Unfortunately, I’m only talking about the remarkable music here, not the visuals, which are garbagy.

 

 

Céline Sciamma Mini-Fest

One’s the short, sweet and unforgettable story of a young girl going into the woods and making some discoveries about herself … and the other is Petite Maman. 

 

Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021): 3/5

An 8-year-old tries to grok her own mother—a mysterious process. A dream play, digging into trauma through metaphor (although I feel as if this describes half of the contemporary moves I watch, including those from my beloved Ari Aster and Miyazaki). I was expecting a more overtly supernatural presentation and felt a bit let down; I will re-watch soon. 

 

Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, 2011): 4.5/5

Stunningly beautiful and emotional. Although I am unlike the main character in many ways, I related to it deeply. Some of the best child acting I’ve ever seen (outside of Paper Moon.) 

Terence Davies Film Fest

In his later career, Davies has (more or less successfully) ported the intensity and interiority of this autobiographical works to fiction. What surprises me is that the screenplays he writes now are so packed with words. He once make poetic works about normal people; now he makes normal movies about poets. 

 

Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies. 1988): 4/5

A movie glowing, vibrating with personal feeling. Here, irony is foregrounded, with the cheery songs juxtaposed with hard times and bad fathers. The group singing of "Roll out the Barrel" in the bomb shelter is a highlight of this method. 

 

Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, 2008): 2/5

Liverpool, late 40s to the present, through documentary footage, poetry, songs. My favorite bit is when the narrator (Davies) talks about his adolescent love for Bruckner and Mahler over footage of the Beatles and young people rocking out joyfully in the Cavern, etc—a rare bit of irony in what is for the most part sentimental, sacred and mournful about everything up to about 1960 and cranky about much after. 

 

Sunset Song (Terence Davies, 2015): 4/5

An “epic” made up of the most normal things of life: parents dying, brothers leaving home, falling in love, the day of marriage, babies being born. Yet Davies makes each moment hum with great feeling (as in his earlier autobiographies). The last 50 minutes, regarding WWI, worked less well for me, but overall this is Davies putting his particular gifts to good work. 

 

A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies, 2016): 3/5

A script full of arguments that are witty to the point of being airless, plus perhaps too few dashes of her great poetry. Still, Davies displays an interest in the melancholy details of not just his own history but also those of other artists. 

 

Benediction (Terence Davies, 2021): 3/5

Some years in the life of poet Siegfried Sassoon, dealing with the aftermath of WWI and a serial love life—with a script once again chock full of catty witticisms (and here Wilde is explicitly cited). Overall, pretty compelling, but one can’t help feeling that Davies is moving through familiar territory in relation to both the subject and style of A Quiet Passion. Only the occasional, startling eddies of dream and surreality enliven the proceedings. 

 

 

Pier Paolo Pasolini in the 60s Film Fest

Always too intellectual, perverse and detached to really make Neorealism, Pasolini increasingly reaches towards realms spiritual, mystical and abstract.

Accattone, rw? (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1961): 3.5/5

The lead character is a two-bit pimp, and we spend too long hanging out with him and his woman-abusing pig-friends. In this and in Mamma Rosa, the pimp (played by the same actor) makes the same complaint: that their prostitute ruined them by giving them money: “Without you I would be a decent thief by now.” As the film progresses and as our main character becomes more lost and suffers more, it becomes more complex, more dreamy and more symbolic, eventually becoming a bit of a Passion Play. Bertolucci serves as assistant director. 

 

Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962): 3.5/5

The titular character is indeed a whore with a heart of gold, but thankfully this is mostly about her trying to save her son from idleness and the world’s everyday brutality. Wonder if that works out for her: “You would hang on the cross for him, wouldn’t you?” her friend eventually asks. A deep class resentment extends all the way up the line: “Explain to me why I’m a nobody and you’re the King of Kings.”

 

The Ricotta, 31 mins (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1963): 3/5

Part of the omnibus movie RO.GO.PA.G, which also features shorts by Godard, Rossellini and (the undistinguished) Ugo Gregoretti. This one is about a director (Orson Welles, dubbed but seemingly speaking Italian) filming a life of Jesus, specifically the Calvary scene. It’s comic and I guess blasphemous, but it’s grappling toward a re-made sincerity about Jesus and what he stands for. Still, it got him sentenced to several months in prison (suspended) for contempt of religion. 

 

Love Meetings (Comizi d’amore) (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964): 4/5

Very generous of Pasolini to create this documentary where he travels throughout Italy and interviews people about their ideas on sexuality of kinds, women’s rights, divorce, the family and so on. Fascinating view of a divided nation (north vs south, men vs women, rich vs. poor, educated vs. non-educated) and quite a clear context for his films’ sense of anger and protest. Similar but superior to Chronicle of a Summer, three years earlier, because of its frankness and interest in taboo.

 

The Gospel According to St. Matthew, rw (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964): 3/5

Peculiarly restrained. For example, when Satan is tempting Jesus in the wilderness, he shows Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” (according to Matthew). One would suspect that any director (and most of all Pasolini) would have some fun with a line like that, but here it’s just the camera looking down from a mountain onto some distant, hazy villages. I suppose this is Pasolini showing he can play it straight and daring the Catholic church to hypocritically condemn him anyway. In the end, Pasolini brings total simplicity and a bevy of expressive (and hot) disciples. 

 

The Hawks and the Sparrows (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1966): 1.5/5

A nonsensical and tiresome comedy. Here’s a sample joke. There’s guy whose name is Hannibal the Vegetarian, and his two kids are named Paysthepiper and Colgateandgargle. Do you see what we’re dealing with here? Some broad and silly potshots at religion, class, conformity. Has it ever worked to speed up a bit of action, Benny Hill-style, to make it “funnier”? Bergman did this too, in his worst movie, All These Women. 

 

Teorema, rw (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968): 5/5

Terence Stamp shows up in a bourgeois household and fucks the maid, son, wife, daughter and father, in that order. This profound mystical experience, or as Pasolini called it, “an encounter with the real,” sends each of their lives in a new direction: becoming artistic, sainted, mad, and free from material desires and traditional sexual roles. A kind of solution for the problems of the bourgeoisie, told simply and with little dialogue (The tagline: “There are only 923 words spoken in Teorema–but it says everything!”)

 

Porcile (Pigsty) (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969): 2/5

Cannibalism, pig-fucking, Nazis, beheadings, Jean-Pierre Léaud, and other atrocities. Two stories, one involving blabby ex-Nazis now successful industrialists and the other an almost wordless tale of people battling with swords and primitive guns (and being visited by the Virgin Mary, Adam and Eve, etc.) on a prehistoric volcanic terrain (left over from Teorema). Basically: bourgeoisie bad.

 

 

Bob Fosse Film Fest

Miserable, sad and obsessive movies from a miserable, sad and obsessive guy.

Sweet Charity (Bob Fosse, 1969): 2.5/5

Fosse’s adaptation of Nights of Calabria, but our protagonist is not allowed to be a prostitute, just a taxi dancer. Brilliant dance sequences and lots of fun with the camera and framing, but since it’s a musical from a certain time, it’s a 2 1/2 hour plus intermission roadshow—bloated, overstuffed and undramatic (and a huge flop).

 

Lenny, rw (Bob Fosse, 1974): 2.5/5

Top-shelf movie craft, as Fosse pushes to expand film grammar, with long takes and flashy and new-feeling editing—and demonstrates ample emotional control. But, hot take, Hoffman sucks. He’s comic timing is poop, and his evident desire to be liked by the audience is a turn-off and probably inaccurate biographically. On the other hand, the movie isn’t really interested in Lenny the Comedian but rather in Lenny the First Amendment Warrior. We’re shown him being not funny on the way up, then a very brief window of being pretty funny, then not funny on the way down.

 

Star 80, rw (Bob Fosse, 1983): 3/5

in the conversation for the darkest, creepiest movie of all time—or at least the most repugnant movie that also features The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek.” Roberts is superbly slimy and toxic, and Fosse’s control guarantees an intense emotional experience. It’s Fosse’s most savage condemnation of the entertainment system, featuring not just Paul Snider but also Hugh Hefner and several other gross men victimizing the naïf. Hemingway is perfectly cast.

  

 

Noé Film Fest

Like Kubrick, minus 50 IQ points. This is not necessarily an insult.

 

Irréversible, rw (Gaspar Noé, 2002): 4.5/5

Noé displays a mastery of his medium and an authentic sadism. The film is so powerful and so unlovable—a grotesque, tiresome and mean masterwork. 

 

Lux Aeterna (Gaspar Noé, 2019): 4/5

Coincidently, this has the same plot as Pasolini’s La Racotta, above, but Noé is of course more interested in the pain of the Calvary than in salvation. As if usually the case with Noé, most of the interest is in the technique, which here is all split-screen—something Noé makes seem bold and new, on the level of 3D. But in this case, by combining two planes of drama and tone into a single cinematic moment, it creates emotional and spiritual depth instead of visual. The first Marvel movie that is shot completely in split screen is going to blow people’s minds. Watching this made me realize that Vortex is actually a refinement of this technique, but what is lost? Because … 

 

Vortex (Gaspar Noé, 2021): 2/5

For a filmmaker whose bread and butter are his audaciousness and originality, this film surprisingly runs over much of the same ground as the great Amour. And in great contrast to Lux Aeterna, I simply don’t understand what the split screen brings to the table. With this technique, the deepest effects occur with the greatest differences between the two images. But here, for the most part, both images are within the same apartment and often within the same room and even abutting one another. What’s the value proposition of the split screen in such a case?

Veep (Armando Iannucci, 2012- 2019): 5/5

"That's like trying to use a croissant as a fucking dildo. Let me be more clear: It doesn't do the job, and it makes a fucking mess."

Sublime, vicious, and masterful. Zenith of comedy.

Flux Gourmet (Peter Strickland, 2022): 2/5

More like FART GOURMET amirite. An acquired taste, Strickland is cementing his reputation for boldly weird artsy films defined by oddball characters and eroticism made tedious. Flux Gourmet is an unappetizing send-up of our culture’s obsession with creating viral art and the corporations who fuel them. Not for me.

Merrily We Go to Hell (Dorothy Arzner, 1932): 3/5
Started hooting and hollering when Cary Grant randomly showed up as Sylvia Sidney's sidepiece.

Wiener-Dog (Todd Solondz, 2016): 2.5/5
Solondz doing Au Hasard Balthazar. Not as deliberately galling as Storytelling or Palindromes. Loved the Intermission.

Cha Cha Real Smooth (Cooper Raiff, 2022): 1/5
Just insufferable, masturbatory nonsense. Pure vanity act for a narcissistic kid with no story that makes any iota of sense or has a compelling nature whatsoever. COOPER RAIFF COME OUTSIDE I PROMISE I WON'T JUMP YOU.

Streetwise (Martin Bell, 1984): 4/5

In 1983 Life magazine featured an article called “Streets of the Lost”, written by Cheryl McCall with accompanying photographs by Mary Ellen Mark. The topic was the homeless and/or downtrodden teens of Seattle, kids who form their own loose civilization on the streets, surviving through prostitution, pimping, stealing, dumpster diving, donating blood; whatever it takes. Mark eventually convinced her husband Martin Bell that there was more to be discovered, and that making a documentary would be a worthwhile endeavor. And thus the uncompromising, devastating, sprawling, intimate, fragile Streetwise was born.

Spiderhead (Joseph Kosinski, 2022): 1/5

STOP MAKING MILES TELLER HAPPEN

Crimes of the Future (Cronenberg, 2022): 2.5/5

Sad male artist is saved by eating plastic. They have sex by letting bone machines cut them up. Viggo growls a lot. Kristen is straight.


The Mountain (Rick Alverson, 2018): 1/5
It's formally rigorous, full of actors you'd want to see in a movie (Goldblum! Denis Levant! Udo Kier, very briefly!) and a story about a man performing lobotomies, electroshock therapies, plus other barbaric procedures on the road. And yet, this is one dryyyyyy cracker. Rick Alverson is really working hard to drain every last drop of energy.


TFW No GF (Alex Lee Moyer, 2020): 2/5
Surely there's no way we're enabling the worst parts of these guys' behavior by making a documentary that purports to examine them as a social trend but really just gives them another platform for self pity and attention-seeking.

Jack Goes Boating (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, 2010): 2.5/5
Dull indie flick with a rough script, carried only by PSH's acting chops. Then again, what movie is PSH bad in? Exactly.

The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1970): 3/5
Was prepared for this to be clumsy and amateurish (after all, Kastle took on the job only after Scorsese got fired, and then never directed another film) but it's formally precise and well acted which makes the film's squalid nature that much more upsetting. Shirley Stoler, in particular, transcends the easy grotesquerie that her role seems to demand, while also avoiding stealth plays for audience sympathy; alternately petulant and ferocious, Martha simply IS, without apology or explanation.


Devs (Alex Garland, 2020): 1.5/5
There's something intriguing -- always -- about Singularity-type ideas that somehow fuse the concept of a computer simulation with a pot-boiler of a mystery, and DEVS serves it on the most beautiful platter possible: a marvel of production design, clean and supportive. But for all the money spent on the sets and effects, there's no excuse for featuring what is probably the single worst lead performance of any major prestige drama in the last 25 years. Sonoya Mizuno is deeply, all-encompassingly terrible in a way it's hard to fathom, episode after episode. No idea why Garland's obsessed with her


Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990): 2/5
You like tits here's 3.

Plan 9 From Outer Space (Ed Wood, 1957): 0/5
Cool automatic door I'm glad they opened it every 3 seconds to remind me of where the entire budget went.

The Lost Leonardo (Andreas Koefoed, 2021): 3/5
Pretty standard but interesting documentary about the strange provenance of one of the most contested and virtually priceless paintings in the world. The Lost Leonardo and its examination of "the male Mona Lisa" looks beyond issues of authenticity and to more interestingly related topics like tax shelters for the world's wealthiest people, academics who only want to discover or discredit things to serve their own egos, and the increasing use of art works as political capital.

Watcher (Chloe Okuno, 2022): 2.5/5
Low impact, Polanski laced Eurohorror with a solid attention to atmosphere. Does it amount to much? Not really, but the compositions (and Maika Monroe) look great on a big screen, and the bloody finale is satisfying enough that it’s worth at least one look.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975): 0.5/5
i-
WHAT

Official Competition (Gaston Duprat, Mariano Cohn, 2021): 3.5/5
Well crafted, very funny, and a great looking film about filmmaking and the art of acting. Also a fabulous production design which enhances the over-the-top isolated world of artistic pretension.

Fire Island (Andrew Anh, 2022): 2/5
fire island gays u mean FIGS

  

* Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg, 2022): 4/5

No matter how prepared we are for this vision of the future by similar imagery in other Cronenberg works, there is still a steady torrent of shocking and exciting grotesquery, here. It’s a high class (slow and regal Instead of sweaty and feral), remake of Videodrome, complete with belly slots and the need to feed the public’s desire to experience pain and sex (in every variation). 

 

* Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022): 4/5

Cracking entertainment that succeeds at everything it’s trying to do. 

 

Men (Alex Garland, 2022): 3.5/5

An arty and suspenseful horror movie, with some original images. I floated happily along on the pillow of tension. The end swings (not quite successfully) for Kubrick, by which I mean profound and awe-filled incomprehensibility. Why not! 

 

RRR (S. S. Rajamouli, 2022): 3/5

Histrionic, cartoony and overlong—too much in every way—but if you work to get on its wavelength, it’s a lot of fun. 

 

Dinner in America (Adam Rehmeier, 2022): 3.5/5

The first third is nerve wracking and fun, as we gleefully follow a really wild character, liable to do anything at all. Eventually we settle into a decent ‘lovers on the run’ narrative. After all the stunning nihilism of the beginning, it’s hard for movies like this to figure out what the characters DO care about—here punk rock, skee ball (?!) and of course love.

 

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun, 2022):3.5/5

Creepy and insightful. The style is a bit “social media,” but the whole time you’re kind of wondering how genre vs “real” this movie is going to be (the genre being “supernatural horror”), and I found the resolution to be pretty satisfying.

 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi, 2022): 1.5/5

Raimi, where art thou?

 

Barry, Season 3 (Alec Berg, Bill Hader, 2022): 3.5/5

Quite a ride. Ironic and dark. 

 

The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2021): 3.5/5

Not very consequential or particularly insightful, but entertaining and full of emotion. It says more about me than the movie that I kept saying, “If she would just get a job (or occupation) that made her feel that her life had some value, everything else would fall into place. She will never love another person until she loves herself first.”

 

The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2014): 4.5/5

Inexorably climbs/burrows from the low-level killers of The Act of Killing to the generals, to the politicians at the time, to his own uncle and even mother, all denying knowledge and responsibility, silently letting the past be past and whistling past the graveyard until finally everyone has forgotten. 

 

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (Hideaki Anno, 1997): 2/5

Since it caps a long anime series that I’ve not seen, it was impenetrable in terms of meaning or drama. So, for me, abstract to a surreal level, but very fast. 

 

Little Children (Todd Field, 2006): 3.5/5

A well-told suburban tale, full of flawed people. Winslet is a very sexy Bovary, and Jackie Earle Haley is perfect as the neighborhood sex offender. At least three times better than Revolutionary Road. 

 

Benny’s Video (Michael Haneke, 1992): 3/5

That’s some cold-ass shit. 

 

The Travelling Players (Theo Angelopoulos, 1975): 3.5/5

The story of conflict-torn Greece 1933-1952, told by following a troupe of actors. Largely made up of very long takes, often travelling and often stunning in effect—filled with reveals, reversals and other grace notes. Since it’s about not individuals but groups of people, over time and caught in the waves of history, it bears a resemblance to The Red and the White and Jia Zhangke’s Platform. 

 

Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, 271 mins. (Fritz Lang, 1922): 3/5

Murder, suicide, shoot-outs, car chases, gambling joints, cocaine, disguises, an escape route through the sewer, nightclubs with (actual) topless entertainers, mesmerism, and sets reflecting Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Expressionism and African art. 

 

Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006): 2.5/5

As a didactic argument about the punishing effects of IMF debt on Africa is held in the town’s central courtyard, the camera captures village life in all its art, love, fantasy, child rearing, goat herding, cooking and cleaning. 

 

Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2014): 3/5

After overcoming a significant timing/rhythm difference compared to Western Film Tradition, this settles into a terrifying portrait of what it feels like when a dozen guys with AK-47s ride into town on their motorcycles and begin to apply Islamic law, including public whipping for playing music and stoning. I’m pretty sure it’s realistic, which is amazing. Meanwhile (and almost tangential to the above) a father kills a neighbor over a cattle dispute and is put to death. 

 

The Fontainhas Trilogy, Plus, Film Fest

I love when a trilogy evolves in style/strategy over its movies: Ray’s Apu Trilogy, Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy, Bergman’s God’s Silence Trilogy, Romero’s Dead Trilogy. Here, no matter the style, we are really never asked for sorrow and pity for these people (a la Schindler’s List), because yes they are already filled with dignity for no reason at all. “They toil not. Neither do they spin,” and that’s Jesus, brother (according to Matthew).

 

Ossos (Pedro Costa, 1997): 3.5/5

Things you’ll find in this movie and don’t appear elsewhere in The Fontainhas Trilogy: plot, professional lighting, characters who want something, tracking shots, rooms with doors and glass in the windows, people with jobs, people dancing and listening to music for pleasure. Things you’ll find in this movie and the rest of the trilogy: Vanda, that sickly green paint, lack of non-diegetic music, lots of authentic ambient background noise as if from neighbors with kids, long silences, lethargy, despair, a deep well of empathy for these hopeless people. 

 

In Vanda’s Room (Pedro Costa, 2000): 3.5/5

A peculiar time at the movies but doubtlessly full of defiance, beauty and feeling. These people, who seem to live in a literal garbage dump, spend about a fifth of the running time tidying and straightening up their places, yet certainly this remains the grimiest movie ever made. Some junkies sit hunched over in a dark room, trying for five minutes to untangle a mass of yarn, while far, far, far in the distance someone listens to the song “I’ve Got the Power.”

 

Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006): 4/5

In the waiting room of heaven or hell. Trades in Vanda’s protean volcano of chaotic images for refinement, stillness and grace. Ventura, our heroin-sniffing protagonist stands silently staring off in the wrong direction, like a mournful ghost, glowing inside dead-aired rooms of beautiful chiaroscuro and rich and luminous pops of red and green and pale yellow. And in fact, both ghosts and the walking dead come up explicitly in the text. More theatrical than grungy, with its elegant squares of light on the floor and its Beckett-esque monologues full of nonsenses and ruin.

 

Horse Money (Pedro Costa, 2014): 3.5/5

The setting moves here to the antiseptic rooms and long, deep-focus, shadowy halls of a mental hospital, and the style emphasizes Costa’s surreal tendencies. Ventura from Colossal Youth is getting some help, his hands shaking like leaves. Vitalina appears for a couple of scenes, full of whispers. Later Ventura leaves the hospital and walks though dreamy streets as well as through the abandoned factory where he once worked and has some arguments with his old ghosts. At one point, the song “Alto Cutelo” by Os Tubarões (“Cape Verde’s most famous musical group,” according to Wikipedia) plays in full as non-diagetic music (!!) and we’re presented with a ravishing series of tableau—an insanely aberrant (although welcome) sequence in Costa’s later work. 

 

Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa, 2019): 3.5/5

Maximizes silence, stillness and gravity and puts even more emphasis on black black black. Costa uses only the bare minimum of light, shining it on just the small part of the frame that he wants us to see—sometimes reminiscent of an iris in silent cinema. Ventura reappears here, worse for wear and more Beckett than ever, mumbling “I go on," while Vitalina mournfully steps through the events she already related in Horse Money. [Considering how Horse Money and Vitalina Varela relate to one another, I’m going to make the crazy prediction that Costa’s next movie will round out this second trilogy by focusing on Tito Furtato, who shows up in Horse Money briefly as a guy who once stabbed Ventura in the head, necessitating 93 stitches.]

 

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul Film Fest

 

Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2000): 4/5

A reflection on the relationship between story and storytelling. Someone off-screen says “Tell me a story.” The character starts to and that story is enacted and interrogated by additional narrators, who tell their own back-stories while also continuing to extend and enact the original story according to their own sensibilities—and other psychedelic, dreamlike, and associative narrative strategies. 

 

Tropical Malady, rw (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004): 5/5

Remains for me a singular experience, full of profound beauty and mystery. The first half is like a very relaxed version Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together. The second half is a radical, profound, psychological and psychedelic journey into the heart of love, sexuality and the world. Strong undercurrents of Kenneth Anger and Lynch. 

 

Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006): 3/5

A relatively conventional tale of two doctors falling in love in a rural hospital. There’s a half-hearted bifurcation in the middle, when the movie seems to be starting over from a different point of view, but nothing heavy. 

 

Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015): 4/5

Rural surrealism, with dreams and local mythological beings freely interacting and mixing with recognizable 21^st-century reality and normalcy—calmly and naturally and full of empathy and wonder. 

 

 

Men (Alex Garland, 2022): 3/5
aka Yes, But We Already Knew All of That: The Movie

Rich in atmosphere and tension, with some marvelous terrifying scenes accompanied by an excellent score and haunting imagery. But it came out of the oven a bit too early with that patently insane third act. Still though, worth a re-watch.

Satantango (Bela Tarr, 1994): 2/5
Satantango so resolutely refuses to occupy the realm of cinema, it seems to stare you in the eye and dare you to call it a ‘movie.’ Bela Tarr’s seven-hour-long Everest on celluloid is out to torment its audience into nihilism. Most often, this abuse comes in the form of momentously long takes that challenge you to care, to emote - at all - after spending eight minutes looking at cows, or a forest, or a drunk man.... Occasionally, though, Tarr employs cruelty so abject that it feels sadistic. (This is most notable in a prolonged sequence of a child torturing a cat.)

I like the part where they went for a walk :)


Hard to Be a God (Aleksey German, 2013): 1.5/5
I suppose I admire the technical prowess, vision, and dedication it must have taken to make this opus. But it's impossible to follow narratively (I'm sure intentional), has disgusting soundscapes and visuals, and a bloated indulgent run-time. Ultimately though, the issue for me isn't so much that nothing "happens" as that nothing progresses; for 3 hours, German just keeps constructing formally complex Steadicam shots that navigate impressively cluttered and decrepit sets populated by grotesques, and while any given few minutes is visually striking, every few minutes is the same few minutes. The entire point of the source material appears to have been discarded in favor of an epic exercise in production design.


rewatched A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielber, 2001) 4/5

Top 3 favorite Spielberg. Kubrick and Spielberg, working together on different time planes, creating a total philosophical and intellectual heartbreaker.


rewatched District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009): 3.5/5
Neill Blomkamp has never been able to properly follow this up, but DISTRICT 9 remains a hell of a feature film debut. A real sci-fi banger, satisfying both for its allegory and action beats.


Redoubt (Matthew Barney, 2019): 1/5
Deranged. Only Yale freshmen philosophy majors would dig this. Cremaster Cycle this is not!

The Human Voice, 30 mins. (Almodovar, 2020): 3.5/5
Beautifully shot, exquisite production design, flawless costumes, and Tilda with her airpods and DVD collection. <3 


The Forgiveness of Blood (Joshua Marston, 2011): 2/5
Maria Full of Grace managed to be consistently tense as well as earnest; here, the blood feud essentially amounts to a lethal variation on house arrest, which means boredom for long stretches. Marston clearly did his homework, and by god, homework is what you'll get.


Valley of the Dolls (Mark Robson, 1967): 2.5/5
First hour: "Not as campy as I'd always heard. Almost elegant, even."

Second hour: "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh."


That Hamilton Woman (Alexander Korda, 1941): 3/5
"Now I’ve kissed you through two centuries.”

Vivian Leigh is the G.O.A.T. of complex triangular relationships: GWTW, Anna Karenina, Streetcar Named Desire, That Lady Hamilton. Olivier’s Nelson is a nest of contradictions, crippled by war and selfishness. Filmed in 1941 with Napoleon as the stand-in for Nazis.


Society (Brian Yuzna, 1989): 1.5/5
An entirely tepid and forgettable hour of occult-thriller "suspense", followed by a must be seen to be believed half hour of the most demented, psychotic body-horror practical effects. This is not what George Constanza wanted!


Ichi the Killer (Takashi Mike, 2001): 1/5
Movie should have been called Kakihara the Fashion Icon.


Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rorhwacher, 2018): 2/5
Really not into that whole aggressively rough, deep-rural cinematographic approach, which saturates everything with a "timeless" atmosphere. Another intellectual experiment in the same vein as Christian Petzold's Transit - which I also didn't care for.

Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971): 3.5/5
"I'm the best actress in the world."

I like how Bree continues to go to therapy during all this. Essentially structured around a series of various types of interviews, which is great for giving Fonda one complicated monologue after another (all of which she nails) but does have the side effect of the movie doing all your homework for you.

Life (Anton Corbijn, 2015): 1/5
Hey has anyone ever made a movie about like a journalist or writer hanging out with a historical famous person? It could center around a particularly iconic moment in the celebrity's career, and maybe they learn a little something about each other along the way.

An Officer and a Spy (Roman Polanski, 2019): 1/5
Who gives a shit? Demerits for stealing Celine Sciamma's thunder at the Cesar Awards for Best Director.

Happy End (Michael Haneke, 2017): 2/5
Tedious study in upper-class malaise, in which Haneke recycles elements from virtually all of his previous films.

  

The Northman (Robert Eggers, 2022): 3/5

Striking tableau and a fun mixture of fantasy and myth (as with his other two films) but (as with his other two films), what is he telling us? Not much! Ultimately too pictorial, too self-impressed and unsatisfying psychologically. 

 

Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood (Richard Linklater, 2022): 2.5/5

Another movie (after Licorice Pizza) that would seem to be a perfect nostalgia machine for me but really wasn’t. Instead, I watched a lot of Licorice Pizza saying “actually that’s not really exactly the part of the Valley that I was from,” and in fact we’re talking a maybe 6-mile difference. Again in this flick, although I also fondly remember so much of all the interests and obsessions of the time he talks about (playground games, board games, breakfast cereal, tv shows, arcane societal norms, and of course the moonwalk) I remained defiantly on the outside: “Dark Shadows: did not watch.” Do I really require my nostalgia needs be met even more exactly than this?? In the end, too much here is Belfast-level “…and then one day The Monkees were on the Johnny Cash show” non-events. 

 

Brighton Rock (John Boulting, 1948): 3.5/5

Major source of Coen pilferage, including balmy camera placement and exaggerated gangster cockney slang. Watched with the subtitles on to clock some great turns of phrase. Seeing Richard Attenborough as a killer in 10 Rillington Place and this movie makes me realize he is/was one of the all-time great film creeps, and good for him. From a novel by Graham Greene, it’s cold and dead-eyed, with a slimy parody of a romance. 

 

Fires were Started (Humphrey Jennings, 1943): 2.5/5

More mid-war, stiff upper lip hagiography from Jennings. Recreating events and using the actual firefighters in the roles, this one at least brings some formal interest to the documentary/fiction, recalling Kiarostami’s Close Up as well as Flaherty.

  

Ms .45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981): 3.5/5

Femme Death Wish is sexy, cockeyed and psychotic Female Empowerment.

 

Boiling Point (Philip Barantini, 2021): 3.5/5

The whole thing appears to be (and supposedly actually was) one unbroken shot, inside a restaurant on a crucial day. All sorts of surface-level drama ensues, and the one-take ratchets up the tension. I watched this in the middle of my Clarie Denis Film Fest (see below) and perhaps that’s why I was longing for a moment or two where a character just sits there In his or her environment and does not do much of anything.

 

Les Vampires, 412 min (Louis Feuillade, 1915-16): 3.5/5

Secret passages behind paintings, a head in a box, a thrilling on-stage bat dance, a pen full of poison ink, entering a house through the chimney and a secret lair through a well, a cryptogram in a little red notebook, death by hatpin, a corpse being thrown from a moving train, multiple dead people waking up … and of course that great creeping around on the roofs of Paris in a cat suit. 

 

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005): 4/5

I was expecting this sick character to be surrounded by indifference and neglect, symbolizing a bureaucratic and depressed former Soviet country. But that’s not the case. Neighbors, ambulance drivers, doctors and nurses seem to give him the care he needs, more or less (while also dealing with their own stuff). Their first instinct is always to not want to get involved, but soon they are pulled into doing what they can for him. I think this mirrors my own reaction. At first I felt disgusted and bored by this smelly alcoholic, but over time, I actually started caring about the old guy. The last 30 minutes examine the moral algebra of end-of-life treatment, by no means a Romanian issue. In the end, the title itself thrums out the movie’s pitilessness. 

 

The Grandmother, 34 min (David Lynch, 1970): 4/5

Expanding on many of Kenneth Anger’s tricks (especially those in Rabbit’s Moon) plus animation, this story excavates childhood trauma through fixation, exaggeration and immersion as well as sublimation and avoidance though dream and fantasy. 

 

Atlanta, Season 3 (Donald Glover, et al., 2022): 4/5

Excitingly unpredictable, casually surreal and odd, but always worth engaging with. Episode 4 (which can easily be enjoyed as a stand-alone experience) was especially relevant and brillinat, but the whole thing seems very much of its time (in a way that Winning Time can never be.)

 

Euphoria, Season 2 (Sam Levinson, 2022): 4/5

Seems genuinely new, like someone (Levinson) doing whatever it pops into his mind to do. Improvisational and not dramatically predetermined, but with lots of dong. As with first season (and, say, 1930s gangster movies), a very late turn towards punishment, justice and redemption confirms its “acceptability.” 

 

Winning Time, Season 1 (Max Borenstein, Jim Hecht, 2022): 3.5/5

It’s eager to please, and it did. Most of the characters just have one character trait that gets hammered on over and over. Still, that’s TV innit? John C. Riley achieves Gene Hackman-level greatness as Buss.  

 

Paul Newman Playing Legends of the West in the Mid-70s Film Fest

Big mistake watching these back-to-back. Even a couple of weeks out, I can’t remember which scenes were in which movie.

 

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (John Huston, 1972): 3.5/5

A surprisingly entertaining shaggy dog tale, sentimental and ironic, episodic with a lot of humor, some of which works. Uneasy sexual politics but not too bad. Newman, romantic and drunken, transcends the law and rules more or less righteously. Live bears (being bathed by Newman in a creek) and albino Stacy Keach (six months after Fat City) must be seen to be believed. It has a very modern wobble that leads me to believe that Newman and Huston are not only drunk but also stoned. Screenplay by Milius. 

 

Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (Robert Altman, 1976): 3/5

“Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.” William Cody is truly bummed that he must be “Buffalo Bill” to everyone forever, although he also continues to guard the legend with some reverence. He’s haunted by his own inauthenticity, but perhaps not enough. “You want everything to stay the same? Well, that’s going backwards.” 

Andrea Arnold Film Fest

A quick reminder that I also really liked American Honey and Wuthering Heights.

 

Wasp, 26 min (Andrea Arnold, 2003): 3.5/5

Shakey-cam, Dardenne-esque over the shoulder of a single mother with no money and four kids who just wants to have a date night with her old flame, emotions flowing every which way. Anticipates much of Sean Baker’s oeuvre. 

Dog, 11 min (Andrea Arnold, 2001): 3/5

Arnold’s loose, poetic and romantic (if brutal) kitchen sink feel is on full display here. 

Milk, 10 min (Andrea Arnold, 1998): 4/5

Amazingly accomplished short, full of event, emotion, moral complexity and good performances. Comparable to Mike Leigh. 

 

Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006): 3/5

Some good passages, full of relaxed spontaneity. But Arnold is saddled with a script that demands too much emotional business, none of which feels very real. Especially disastrous are the techno-thriller trappings of the first half hour. Really, really good sex scene at 1h20m.

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009): 4/5

Full of elemental drama and unacceptable behavior. Cow and this movie share an interest in what it sounds and feels like to hear someone (someone/ something/ one’s self) breathe, and all the intimacy that implies. 

Cow (Andrea Arnold, 2021): 4.5/5

Simple and profound—just a life from beginning to end. And not at all punishing or didactic, since the farm where we hang out seems like a relatively nice one. Reminds us of how much of our own lives are prescribed and controlled according to corporate forces beyond our knowledge and ken, so we of course develop, gambol, stare blinkeredly at the stars, have sex, give birth, give milk until we can’t walk any more, then boom. Just one in a pattern of millions. (I ask myself, however, to what extent Arnold directed this. Cows live to be 15-20 years old and Fish Tank (certainly her blank check moment) was 13 years ago. Still, whomever, good job)

   

 

Claire Denis Film Fest

Last year, I wrote, “I like the way Bergman’s films tend to eschew long, atmospheric passages showing the environment and someone looking into space and perhaps thinking something. Instead, his movies charge right into the personalities of his characters and the conflicts that must be addressed. Oppositions and grudges are articulated and confronted, without delay, which is thrilling.” Well, this is precisely the opposite strategy from Denis’. Her characters just sit there stewing in their own horny and lonely juices, like fish motionless at the bottom of their dirtying tanks. Her settings, scenarios and mood are strong; plot and progression are not an interest. Half-event piles upon half-event, providing a cloud of “being” without drama or particular meaning. When the being is this specific, sometimes that’s enough.

 

I think that what these characters are missing (not by accident) is belief. They don’t believe in the drama they are in the middle of, and so they lack the necessary determination to move to the next plot point. What’s more, very few of her characters seem to give much of a shit for themselves or any other people, not really. 

 

Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988): 3.5/5

An 8-year-old, living in Camaroon with her mother and father. A half hour in, the father leaves on a trip, and there’s a hyena in the area making weird sounds. For protection the mother invites the thrillingly handsome Isaach De Bankolé into her bedroom and hands him a rifle—and I’m thinking, “It’s all over, bruv.” But it’s not that kind of movie. Or maybe it’s enough that I thought that, and the feeling just hangs there, unresolved, over the rest of the film. Denis dotes much attention on the green and yellow expanses of the landscape, and for good reason.

Nenette and Boni (Claire Denis, 1996): 3/5

An intimate but abstract and impressionistic portrait of a brother (18) and younger sister (pregnant) in Marseille. That’s pretty much it. A wisp of a movie, brooding and resentful. 

 

White Material (Claire Denis, 2009): 3.5/5

A very contemporary film, thematically. Finally we have a (white) character who wants something, but it’s for things to stay the way they are, desperately and in deep denial, even as everyone else is in revolution. Denis returns to Africa, but this time she emphasizes the red of the soil instead of the greens and yellow of the vegetation. Thematic! Huppert is amazing as usual.

 

Bastards (Claire Denis, 2013): 2.5/5

The tone and milieu is that of a thriller, including guns, suicide, pornography, infidelity. But that’s just setting. None of the characters know what they want or what to do about it. Icky and sordid without any of a thriller’s propulsion and catharsis.

Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis, 2017): 2.5/5

Curiously traditional, even rom-commy (at times) framing, script and tone. Does she use Etta James’ “At Last” unironically to express a sudden feeling of love? Yes. Yes, she does. A story of a female artist of a certain age looking for love, one would suspect this is Denis’ most personal script, yet I understand it’s from a novel. Small thing, but the English title bums me out. The original is Un beau soliel intérieur, meaning “The beautiful sun within.” The English version is actually the opposite image and meaning. 

  

 

Ruben Östlund Film Fest

Östlund’s films largely dispense with narrative (which would require the downtime of psychological investigation and dramatic set-ups)—and instead hop from one test for the characters to the next. I think his genius is that he champions not the (usual) crazy and self-rejecting outsider (other than in his first, nascent film) but those who are trying to hang in there with all the dumb requirements of society, with all the consequent negotiations, compromises and humiliating misjudgments. 

 

The Guitar Mongoloid (Ruben Östlund, 2004): 3/5

His first feature. Fixed-camera one-shots of irritating, pathetic, pointless and otherwise normal (if discomforting) behavior. The surveillance-camera video quality and plan fixe makes everything real and inevitable. References are Korine, Haneke, Andersson, Larry David. 

 

Involuntary (Ruben Östlund, 2008): 4/5

Five scenarios depict various characters facing a moral dilemma and deciding to put themselves out there, for once, and draw a line of personal responsibility. It doesn’t go well. Examines the requirement that people in a community conform to the beliefs of the community, even/especially if they are (patently) untrue—as well as the social value of cowardice. Östlund on this movie: “I started to get interested in … when social pressure is really doing the decision of why you do as you do. The extreme fear of losing face.” This is completely the stuff that I think about when I consider whether we, as individuals, have free will (and decide no). The Solomon Asch Conformity Experiment: copy and paste this into Google, and enjoy. 

 

Play (Ruben Östlund, 2011): 3.5/5

All the people in Involuntary are basically trying to do their own version of doing the right thing. But here we have the same straightjacket of custom and politeness of (white) society, but here the rule-keeping is disrupted and exploited by the (Black, immigrant) kids who are excluded from it. Haneke, especially Code Unknown, is a massive influence.

Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014): 3.5/5

A horror movie poking at our fear of being exposed to ourselves as the selfish assholes we are. This was the first of the Östlund’s work that I saw, and I found it pretty hard to watch and judge-y. But after watching more, I realize that the film isn’t just about this weak man (or even men in general). Serious question: If you have seen it, can you tell me whether the wife saves them in the end or did she just panic needlessly? I think it matters. 

The Square (Ruben Östlund, 2017): 4/5

Full of half-funny, provocative scenes and event, and a real moral investigation of what we do when someone asks for help (ie, more harm than good). Especially savages intellectuals and artists, who demonstrate themselves to be powerless, fearful and self-justifying. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Improbable melodrama delivered with Sirkian mastery by Almodovar, who has fully embraced digital cinema with eye-popping production design and painterly fades to black.  And holy shit, he gives Penelope Cruz the opportunity to be the smart, sexy actress she too rarely has only hinted at.  As in Pain and Glory, Almodovar is still too quick to gloss over conflict for neat resolutions (the lingering "what about us?" question between the mothers/lovers, and other dark undercurrents, are simply dropped), as if the aging director can't bear to spend time on such emotional messiness anymore.  And, after so much elegance and finesse, the final scene literally uncovering Spain's murderous fascist past lands with a thud, pounded home with explanatory text.  This tonal shift is reminiscent of Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid, which, after so much discreet bourgeois bedroom maliciousness, ends with a fascist march in the streets; under Bunuel's direction, however, the ending more organically derives dramatic power by showing what a family's twisted emotional fascism portends.

The Worst Person in the World (Joaquim Trier, 2021): 3/5

The Ballad of Co-Dependency, millenial Norwegian edition. Usually, girls as pretty and smart as Julie realize very early that their beauty is a commodity and, when their career interests lose focus, find a partner who can support their dilettantism; here, she makes the dumb (or self-destructive) choice of leaving a successful cartoonist for a coffee barista.  And then, after loss and regrets, we skip forward and she's a successful photographer, just like that.  (Why can't more contemporary women's films show the pleasures and rewards of work?  Mildred Pierce did it well--all it takes are a couple of montage sequences.)  There are some nice moments along the way, but this kind of realistic melodrama often benefits from an injection of comic sarcasm, which might be beyond Trier's reach.

The Souvenir, Part II (Joanna Hogg, 2021): 1/5

The annoyingly passive and inexpressive Julie, whom no one seems to like or respect, and whose grief is convincing only when she's leaning over a toilet bowl, makes a self-indulgent student film based on her recent loss.  Somehow the power of her art conquers all and she becomes successful.  Her sudden leap to responsible adulthood and success is glossed over with self-reflexive, meta film gimmicks and is not at all earned.

Bergman Island (Mia Hanson-Love, 2021): 2/5

Despite starring Tim Roth, Vicky Krieps, and Mia Wasikowska, this was so dull and enervated that I would rather have spent the time perusing the shelves in that room that housed Bergman's VHS collection.

Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021): 3/5

The fact that PTA grew up in Encino/Sherman Oaks around TV industry types predisposed me to think of this as his (and Gary's) story.  In retrospect, this meandering narrative works better when viewed as Alana's story and her struggle to grow up and find a role in the world, with Gary as a diversion from her problems.  This isn't really clear until the final act when she takes a grown-up political job that isn't enabled by Gary's precocious entrepreneurism, and only then does she realize that he still has a place in her life.  I was grateful that PTA didn't overload every shot with pop culture references a la QT; there were just enough to be fun.

Get Back (Peter Jackson, 2021): 5/5

The five songs performed on the roof are phenomenal in terms of their soulfulness and the sophistication of the five players.  I'd seen/heard these before, but seeing them develop over a month and realizing what each member contributed made them so moving, especially knowing how much contention and distraction had to be overcome to get there.  Their backs were against the wall, and they delivered.  Billy Preston's appearance and immediate integration into the band is truly a deus ex machina that unfolds before our eyes and ears.  Watching John and Paul play the acoustic "Two of Us," now realizing its autobiographical and symbolic meaning and seeing their joyful, loving expressions, brought me to tears.  You want them to go on forever, and knowing they can't just makes it more poignant.  They really brought out the best in each other.

The Wire (David Simon, 5 seasons 2002-2008): 5/5

At first this seems to be just another cynical cop show, with liberal use of F and N words to differentiate the product from network TV.  But by the third season, as it widens its scope, one starts to believe the hype that this audacious examination of Baltimore in crisis is indeed the greatest drama ever made about the intersections of race and class in modern urban America.  In this overwhelmingly Democratic, diverse, neo-liberal city, cops make arrests but justice isn't served; school is taught but little is learned; and public officials too often serve private interests.  Forsaking the "charismatic asshole" approach of other premium cable classics, The Wire invokes socialist realism by eschewing stars for a focus on institutions and communities, and the diverse cast of characters who shore them up and tear them down. This also forsakes a certain amount of pleasure: Dominic West doesn't have the chops to carry the show and his prominence fades mid-series, and compelling characters played by Idris Elba, Sonja Sohn, Amy Ryan, and many others are either eliminated or relegated to the sidelines.  Season 4's focus on a ghetto middle school, and the teenagers who already have no future but a life on the corner, was necessary but especially brutal to watch.  What is gained is a deeper understanding of the symbiotic relationships between police, organized crime, the legal system, politicians, unions, schools, and the media, and how the lack of both funding and community engagement create a downward spiral of quid pro quo deal-making that compels public servants to break the law to maintain order as well as their own livelihoods.  This culminates in a final-season ruse that becomes the city's "Big Lie," involving so many stakeholders that other public servants jump on board to perpetuate it, because admitting the truth would bring them all down.  Sound familiar?