Cha Cha Real Smooth (Cooper Raiff, 2022): 4/5

Refreshingly warm and open-hearted. Sob sob sob at the bittersweet ending not unlike that of Call Me by Your Name. 

 

Better Call Saul, season 6 (Vince Gilligan, 2022): 4/5

Great acting and pacing all around. The time-tripping and ghost-visiting of the last several episodes were a great pleasure. My "save Kim at all costs" stance is satisfied.

Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022): 3/5

A modest sci-fi story, simply told. Not burdened by the need to examine and solve systematic racism, thank god. I wish I had seen it in the theatre.

 

Prey (Dan Trachtenberg, 2022): 1/5

I can’t think of a worse-directed movie—with the action chopped up and reassembled in random order. Of course, I never liked the original one either.

 

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Sophie Hyde, 2022): 2/5

Sex-positive but oh so boring. The male lead, Daryl McCormack, is a charmer, and I look forward to seeing him in a good movie.

 

Minions: The Rise of Gru (Kyle Balda, 2022): 1.5/5

The Sea Beast (Chris Williams, 2022): 2/5

Yep, I have an 8-year-old.

 

Husbands (John Cassavetes, 1970): 2/5

Packed with strained acting exercises and disgusting misogyny or, to put it charitably, misanthropy. These characters don’t know what they want, and subsequently the actors flounder in many of these long scenes, not knowing what to do. 

 

Un Coeur en Hiver (Claude Sautet, 1992): 3/5

Reserved, intelligent, cold and remote, like it’s main character, who can’t (and doesn’t want to) get out of his own head. Maybe 35 years ago, I could have related, but thank Christ I don’t any more.

 

The Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934): 3/5

Ethnography, with a typical interest in ritual, religion, dance and other art, shelter-building, harvest—but atypically poetic and idiosyncratic. Curious use of Western music throughout. 

 

Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015): 3/5

A (double) trip upriver, with plenty of “never get out of the boat” moments. But it never really went cosmic for me, not for lack of trying.

 

Anything for Jackson (Justin G. Dyck, 2020): 2/5

Deservedly obscure Satan-themed horror movie without enough Old Nick. 

 

 

Wilder/Brackett Mini Fest

 

Five Graves to Cairo (Billy Wilder, 1943): 3/5

A British soldier stumbles into an Egyptian village moments before Rommel himself (a smoldering and pouty Erich von Stroheim) and serves as a kind of spy, posing as a porter. A packed screenplay, with lots of business in a variety of tones and a screwball pace. I wonder what Hitchcock could have done with the material, streamlining and slowing down what’s there to draw the tension out of the scenes of near-discovery. 

 

The Lost Weekend, rw (Billy Wilder, 1945): 4/5

“Don't wipe [the ring his glass makes on the bar counter] away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle.” Full of wonderfully anti-social behavior. Shirking duties. Breaking promises. Theft (“I assure you I’m not a thief. I’m not a thief!”) Being unshaven and sweaty. Indulging in self-loathing as well as grandiose fantasies about being an artist or some shit. Killing oneself for pleasure. 

 

A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948): 3/5

“Fly off back home. Wash your hands. Wash your lips. You’ve got so much soap in the United States.” She’s a judgmental prig. He’s a cynical player of the black market, in love with a nightclub singer and ex-Nazi (Marlena Dietrich) in post-war Berlin. Some crackling dialogue ensues, of course: “That’s where he married Eva Brawn, and that’s where they killed themselves. A lot of people say it was the perfect honeymoon.” However, the light, satiric tone feels a bit glib in such a decimated city. The characters in this movie should be introduced to those in Germany Year Zero. It would straighten them all out. 

 

 

Noir in Color Mini-Fest

 

Leave Her to Heaven, rw (John M. Stahl, 1945): 4.5/5

In Technicolor, and with coloring so bold and unreal that it almost looks like a comic book, favoring blues and oranges as well as insanely glowing skin tones. Our main character is a brand of maniac rarely, if ever, seen on screen, and the famed scene on the lake is one of the iciest in all of cinema and worth the price of admission alone. This is the only John Stahl movie I’ve seen (of 37). 

 

Niagara (Henry Hathaway, 1953): 3.5/5

Produced and co-written by Charles Brackett who wanted to “do something with Niagara Falls,” and, in fact, the falls itself is pretty powerful and passionate. Shot in Technicolor, the movie is full of hallucinatory reds, yellows and greens as well as a rainbow motif (truly putting a hat on a hat). Features a Hitchcockian use of the falls themselves as well as of Joseph Cotton as a morally ambiguous character. Marilyn Monroe is about as good as I’ve seen her outside of The Misfits, but, sorry, she’s still mostly terrible. 

 

A Kiss Before Dying (Gerd Oswald, 1956): 3/5

Photographed in CinemaScope, color by DeLuxe, from a novel by ira levin, 14 years before Rosemary’s Baby. Cinematography by Lucien Ballard, who shot Morocco, The Devil is a Woman, The Killing, Mikey and Nicky, and The Wild Bunch. Robert Wagner plays a very modern character: a bland, suave, brooding, good-looking and well-dressed psychopath. The movie efficiently delivers some thrills, and Wagner is perfectly cast as someone undisturbed by any deep feelings. 

 

Party Girl (Nicholas Ray, 1958): 2/5

In CinemaScope and Metrocolor, but unlike the other films in the series I’ve watched, it looks like shit—displaying horrible vomits of colors. Cyd Charisse likewise is stiff and dowdy. The exceptions to both of these observations are during the two dance numbers, where suddenly Charisse reveals herself as long-legged and graceful and the lush pinks and reds show her off like a queen/stripper. Lee Cobb is good but Robert Taylor is a stiff, and hatchet-faced John Ireland is criminally underused. More of a gangster movie than a noir.

 

 

Aki Kaurismäki Film Fest

Simple stories, told with maximum efficiency and minimum dialogue. Still, the feelings come through clearly. Half-funny and half-sad in the way of Tati, Jarmusch, Wes Anderson, Hal Hartley, Chaplin. Live music is often lovingly presented, with beautiful authenticity, fingers-on-strings-wise. 

 

Shadows in Paradise (Aki Kaurismäki, 1986): 3/5

(A bad title.) Love among the barely-holding-on. This is a good time to talk about ensemble players because Kati Outinen (who makes 10 films with Kaurismäki) and Matti Pellonpää (my favorite, who makes seven (and Night on Earth) and dies at 44) are very good and, as time goes on, bring so many lives to each new character. 

 

Ariel, rw (Aki Kaurismäki, 1988): 5/5

“Take the car keys. They’re your inheritance,” says the protagonist’s father, “I’ve had it with this shit.” Cocking a pistol, he leaves the room, a shot rings out, and our protagonist is away in his huge Cadillac convertible, symbol of American-brand freedom. There follows a deadpan crime epic in one hour and 14 minutes, complete with desperation, romance, irony, revenge, a prison break, a bank robbery, lovers on the run and a flight to Mexico. 

 

The Match Factory Girl, rw (Aki Kaurismäki, 1990): 3.5/5

In the running for the most despairing and lonely of Kaurismäki’s films (which is saying something), but at least the main character takes her fate into her own hands. That’s a kind of control. 

 

La Vie de Boheme (Aki Kaurismäki, 1992): 4/5

Aki en Français, in beautiful b&w, and in a lighter register than usual (until it isn’t), with plenty of actual whole-jokes. It must have tickled Kaurismäki to borrow the same source material as La Boheme, playing off the huge emotions of the opera with his own deadpan, matter of fact style. And indeed, it is quite droll. Weirdly, the film features Jean-Pierre Leaud, Louis Malle and Sam Fuller cameos. (Parenthetically, Fuller also shows up in The American Friend, Hammett, The State of Things, and The End of Violence for Wim Wenders; in Sons and Somebody to Love for Alexandre Rockwell; in 1941 for Spielberg; in The Last Movie for Dennis Hopper; and in Pierrot le Fou for Godard).

 

Drifting Clouds (Aki Kaurismäki, 1996): 3/5

A genuinely sad-feeling film (although with usual deadpan distancing devices) about a normal couple, suddenly unemployed. It has an unearned happy ending, and I’m here for it.

 

Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki, 2011): 3.5/5

It takes a village to deal with sad immigrant teenagers, especially when the people in said community are all also sad about their dying wives, etc. Lead André Wilms returns 19 years after La Vie De Bohème, which adds great gravity and melancholy (of course) to the role.

 

The Other Side of Hope (Aki Kaurismäki, 2017): 3.5/5

“All melancholics get sent back.” That’s Kaurismäki expressing, in the script, why he identifies so much with the immigrants in his two most recent films. As always Kaurismäki privileges image over dialogue and demonstrates the power of music from one’s own region for conveying self. 

 

 

Miklós Jancsó Film Fest

Jancsó is interested in how moments flow together and uses long, long shots—often containing power and mood-flips as gentle as the wind. Usually long shots (as used by, say, Scorsese or Angelopoulos) are headed somewhere or travel along with characters; Jancsó’s camera instead stalks around restlessly, turning this way and that, searchingly. Most of these movies are semi-musicals, with gorgeous camera movement, choreographed moments and literal dancing. Plus, Jancsó often has his characters sing their thoughts as if no one could hear them—including the rebels at the end of The Round Up as well as the Red who, once he knows the jig is up, sings his pro-Red song right into the White guy’s face. 

 

The Round-Up (Miklós Jancsó, 1966): 3.5/5

Advanced Interrogation Techniques, the Movie. Also: Mustache, the Movie. Seriously, every person on screen has a mustache, even the horses. Trademark radical and ironic flips of fate.  Deliberately confusing (and confusingly deliberate) but, once all the cards have been played, devastating. 

 

The Red and the White, rw (Miklós Jancsó, 1967): 5/5

A god’s eye view of war, full of irony and “the bewildering suddenness of combat” (Richard Brody). Jancsó’s largest-scale work, it confirms and vindicates his interest in groups over individuals.

 

The Confrontation (Miklós Jancsó, 1969): 3.5/5

Turns a jaundiced eye on the revolutionaries once they have achieved power. A group enters a seminary and, at first, it’s all “Let’s debate,” with questions such as “What is the role of the individual in history?” and “Is the world knowable?” However, soon enough it’s “I suggest we set up methods of revolutionary terror.” Of course, Jancsó punctuates this with many, many revolutionary songs and dances.

 

Sirrocco / Winter Wind (Miklós Jancsó, 1969): 3/5

A hero of the war becomes a paranoid fugitive, in 13 long, prowling shots. Lots of stalking around, pointing guns, giving orders, changing one’s mind and giving opposite orders, uncovering plots real and imagined—none of it making much actual sense.

 

Red Psalm (Miklós Jancsó, 1972): 3.5/5

Young socialists stand up to the authorities. Surprisingly it does not go well. The long take from 10:30-15:15 (to take one example) flows across many hundreds of extras, through a dozen set-ups, drop-ins, dramas and moods. 

 

Electra, My Love (Miklós Jancsó, 1974): 4/5

A retelling of the Greek play in 12 beautiful, flowing shots—and the Jancsô film that most explicitly embraces the abstraction and serenity of a musical. A field, a crowd of about 500 people, dance and other ritualized movement, music, a Bob Dylan type with guitar serving as a Greek chorus, three dwarves, 50 horses, a team of men cracking whips, a dozen hawks and 100s of doves, a giant rolling ball, a hill covered with candles, ample (if chaste) nudity, and general socialist hippy vibes. For those needing ties to Hungarian politics, Electra works to overthrow the current, anti-freedom regime. The voice of Young Hungary saying, “Our discontent will not be silenced, and this is something we are willing to die for.”

 

 

The Gorky Trilogy

A project much like The Apu Trilogy—Maxim Gorky at three points in his early life. Stalin loved Gorky and personally invited him back to the USSR in 1932, after years of exile—possibly because of Gorky’s sentimental peasant stories, representing the nobility of “the people of the land,” etc. (This is ignorant speculation on my part, of course). 

The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (Mark Donskoy, 1938): 3.5/5

Village life, including a beloved grandmother. A portrait of the artist as a young man approximately 100 times better than Belfast, encompassing multiple touching emotional arcs. My favorite involved one of the kindest characters, a young man, being asked to carry a really heavy cross up a hill to a graveyard (for someone else’s wife); he stumbles and the cross crushes him to death. 

My Apprenticeship (Mark Donskoy, 1939): 3/5

Wherein the protagonist brings his natural honestly into the petty, cruel and dishonest world as a servant to a selfish rich family, on a steamboat surrounded by slippery and thieving characters, and within a casually grueling icon-making workshop. Preaches the simple act of standing up for what you believe in.

My Universities (Mark Donskoy, 1940): 2.5/5

By this final film, the messages get more blatant, quoting Schopenhauer and having people ask our protagonist (now looking like River Phoenix) questions like “What is the truth you believe in?” (which is something like “We must act and fight together, collectively”)

 

 

 

 Better Call Saul (Vince Gilligan, 2015 - 2022): 5/5

Done with a degree of narrative complexity and cinematic style that is rare. Time is played with, motivations are obscured, sounds resonate in unexpected ways, views and angles are unexpected but seldom simply flashy show-off tricks.

So many characters have issues and challenges. It is almost the opposite of the classic idea of an evolving hero and stationary helpers and opponents. No one has what they want. Just about everyone evolves in the quest to get it. A few are rocks of dependability in terms of conduct but that is not the same as predictability. Their strength and resolve can often surprise as much as a change of character would.

And the acting remains superb. They form a great ensemble and you just sense that the opening situations and issues in Breaking Bad are looming just out of sight.

The Princess (Ed Perkins, 2022): 2.5/5

While the "archival footage only" aspect is well executed, the Diana story is so well known, and so exhaustively explored in legions of books, films, series and podcasts, that it is simply impossible for Ed Perkins and his team to really add anything new to the narrative, especially since The Princess does essentially just retell that story.

Vengeance (BJ Novak, 2022): 3/5

East Coast millennial journalist gets caught up in a West Texas Neo-noir. A muddied up mystery and crime story more than astutely told by B.J. Novak in an impressive debut. Ashton Kutcher has a small but terrific role.

Prey (Dan Trachtenberg, 2022): 2.5/5

Great movie dog! Extra half star.

Lingua Franca (Isabel Sandoval, 2020): 3.5/5

In Lingua Franca, Isabel Sandoval deftly designed a beautiful, authentic, straightforward-yet-profound, film about an undocumented trans Filipino caregiver navigating paranoia and would-be suitors to obtain a green card. I impatiently wait more from her.

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

I really dig '00s NYC movies. The city doesn't have the cinematic look that it did in previous decades. It's more of a "feeling". This subtle tensile energy that seemingly only the indie auteurs knew how to capture. Man Push Cart is simply executed but absolutely compelling to watch. Sisyphus rolls a boulder and Ahmad pushes a cart. It is that simple, but that’s all it needs to be. The city, desperation, and loneliness get finely captured as does New York City's paradoxically dirty splendor. A profoundly authentic film in displaying estranged ends, the kindness of strangers, and the tedium of everyday work.

Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947): 2.5/5

Better than GdT's overwrought remake, but that ain't sayin' much.

Minions: The Rise of Gru (Kyle Balda, 2022): 2.5/5

Attention casting directors everywhere please cast julie andrews in literally anything her last ever film role cannot be minions 2 the rise of gru.

Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2022): 2.5/5

Still not a fan of Mr. Luhrmann and Ms. Martin (Luhrmann’s wife, co-producer, production designer and costume designer) and their maximalist style. (Not to mention I have complicated feelings towards The King.) However, it's not as terrible as I anticipated. Luhrmann manages to make Elvis feel like the tragedy of America itself: a promised land of electrifying popular art that is always undone by greed and fear. Ah Elvis! Ah humanity!

Resurrection (Andrew Semans, 2022): 2.5/5

I admire that this film really "went there." Probably would have worked better as a short film or crazy one act play though, but as a feature film...meh. Extra half star for Rebecca Hall who bows to no man.

Bullet Train (David Leitch, 2022): 2.5/5

So this is what it's like when an actor I enjoy (Brad Pitt) plays what studio execs must call "a Ryan Reynolds role"...

Predestination (Spierig Brothers, 2014): 3/5

Or, No Matter Where You Go, There You Are: The Movie

Exponentially unsolvable time travel movie (as with essentially any causal loop) with its convoluted quadfecta form. Still, Sarah Snook though. *chef's kiss* And I don't even want to begin analyzing the strange pit of desolation that consumed me the moment John says to his former, female-self, "You're beautiful. Somebody should've told you that," with the faintest whimper in his voice.

An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982): 1/5

A 2 hour long military training video that’s occasionally interrupted by the most benign romance you could possibly conjure up. Hearing that Debra Winger hates this movie makes me like her even more.

The World According to Garp (George Roy Hill 1982): 2/5

So many things happened in this movie and yet simultaneously nothing happened in this movie. Also, Glenn Close plays the mother of Robin Williams. She is only four years older than him. They look the exact same age. This bothered me very, very much.

Eternity and a Day (Theo Angelopoulos, 1998): 3/5

Sweet little movie about a writer and his act of kindness towards a child with no one else, as well as his reflections on a life lived and one that's about to end, so of course all of those things work for me.

City Hall (Frederick Wiseman, 2020): 3/5

The usual (for recent Wiseman) mix of fascinating and tedious, extended in this case to an ass-numbing 4.5 hours. There's a good 90 minutes' worth of meetings in which you can plainly see that the people who are actually in the room would love to be elsewhere. Highlights are strong, though. And though Trump is mercifully never seen or heard in the film, Boston’s Mayor Walsh is offered up to us as his antithesis, a rebuke to everything he stands for and the embodiment of public service. Show this to any anarcho-capitalist jackass who thinks government is a dirty word.

 Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022): 2.5/5

In gymnastics, when someone attempts a really hard move but can’t land it, you still applaud the effort. So, I'm glad Peele is out here swinging, and I don't want him to stop. But he didn't land this one. Fun ideas with some great moments, but ultimately has the depth of a sketchbook. One thing I find interesting is how Peele is carving out this monopoly on what I’m calling “non-scary horror” (it's a shit name, open to suggestions). He’s using the aesthetics of horror and tension films to make interesting but ultimately widely palatable movies for people who normally can’t fuck with the genre. They're not scary, they're just wearing the clothes. And it's obviously tremendously effective. Make of that what you will.

Nekromantik 2 (Jorg Buttgereit, 1991): 1/5

Like most infamous shock cinema, this is more notorious than it is actually any good. The first one at least rubbed up against some vague post-war Berlin Wall-era anti-establishment anger with its antics. There's a hint of mistrust of German reunification here, but mostly this is interested in what it can get away with, which even then isn't particularly shocking.

The Blob (Chuck Russell, 1988): 3/5

Solid semi-solid movie!

The Gray Man (Anthony and Joe Russon, 2022): 1.5/5

I think if someone watched Bourne Ultimatum, got a concussion, and then went to sleep immediately after, this movie would be the dream they'd have.

The Russo brothers cement themselves as dull corporate hacks with this film.

Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis, 1995): 2/5

The pre-credits scene is a superb little 15-minute short. It's only when he meets Shue that the whole thing turns putrid.

Broadcast News (James L. Brooks, 1987): 3/5

Some days I'm Al Brooks, some days I'm Holly Hunter. But every day I'm Joan Cusack running full-speed into a water fountain.

Citizen Ashe (Sam Pollard, Rex Miller, 2021): 3.5/5

The film is a monument to the gentlemanly and cerebral Ashe, the way he met the challenges of his times, and the toll it took on him. I wouldn’t call him the anti-Ali since Ashe and Ali wanted the same outcomes, they just had completely different styles of going about it. I loved when Dr. Harry Edwards acknowledged that Ashe, whom he initially wrote off as an Uncle Tom, was in some ways more radical than himself while maintaining an elegant, soft-spoken persona. He learned something from Ashe that I think far too few of us (who prefer loud performative defiance to quiet efficacy) have learned.

Persuasion (Carrie Cracknell, 2022): 1/5

A "Fleabag" style punch up of an Austen novel. Horrendous miscalculation. The anachronistic language was another awful decision. AND it's completely UN-HORNY, lacking any real sensuality or romantic vibes. Also, Dakota is just that person who can't be in a period piece...She looks like someone who knows what an iPhone is.

Parallel Mothers (Almodovar, 2021): 4/5
Fantastic. Should have been in a neck-and-neck race with Power of the Dog for the Oscar, but maybe Almodovar's color fetish and flirtations with kitsch and excess don't appeal as much as a good-old stolid drama. How the mothers/lovers' lives and the lives of their babies intertwine is the reason to see this film. It is a film of power and honesty, without a single false note along the way.

Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, 1996): 3/5

“We’re all in pain.

Why can’t we share our pain."

A bit dated and melodramatic but I found it moving at times.

The Secret Lives of Dentists (Alan Rudolph, 2002): 3/5

Harrowing trip into the reticent male psyche with Campbell Scott, plus nimble assistance from a beautifully flustered Hope Davis, and Dennis Leary in the Tyler Durden-esque motormouth role he was born to play; shows a family unit with neither sentimentality nor garish caricature.

The Automat (Lisa Hurwitz, 2021): 3/5

Nice and sweet. Like any good American film it slowly convinces you its subject is somehow integral to understanding modern America even if you knew nothing about it beforehand. Some might think it frivolous or a trifle but I think the film has something to say about the shift in American capitalism before and after World War Two and what we lost as a country in the modern age. Also liked how the editors used the subjects asking questions of the director (which most docs would have cut) and also allowed the subjects to ask questions of one another.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Sophie Hyde, 2022): 3/5

Never really transcends its dull overlit look or PSA mindset, but charming enough on the strength of its leads. Obviously I knew Emma’s performance would be spellbinding but goddamn where has Daryl McCormack been hiding? Goes from holding his own to fully stealing scenes.

The 355 (Simon Kinberg, 2022): 1.5/5

Women…we gotta do better than this

Chastain if you don’t stop bussin down for the CIA…

Peggy Sue Got Married (Francis Ford Coppola, 1986): 2/5

Where Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage have weird fucking faces that somehow pass as both 18 and 43 years old.

JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991): 2.5/5

This movie is almost as long as the actual Kennedy administration. The whole thing is just one long argument and every detail of that argument is wrong.

Dog (Channing Tatum, Reid Carolin, 2022): 1/5

More like Dog SHIT. This is probably Tucker Carlson's favorite movie.

Clean (Paul Solet, 2021): 2/5

Adrien Brody must be going through a midlife crisis. Lead, Co-Writer, Producer, and Original Music & Score.

The Bob's Burgers Movie (Loren Bouchard, Bernard Derriman, 2022): 3/5

“Cotton Candy Dan? Is that the guy who sold corn dogs?”

Delightful and accessible. (Never seen one episode of the show. I might change that.)

The Black Phone (Scott Derrickson, 2022): 2/5

You’re telling me kids in this small town are being kidnapped and murdered every few weeks and no one is hip to the giant black van circling the school that says “Abracadabra” on the side?

Miracle Mile (Steve de Jarnatt, 1988): 3/5

Essentially Los Angeles AFTER HOURS meets THREADS. Who wouldn't want to die at Canter's Deli?

Ozark (Bill Dubuque, Mark Williams, 2017-2022): 3.5/5 

Our anti-heroes are the Byrde family, with Jason Bateman and Laura Linney as the wily, resourceful "our means are better than your means" parents who are digging out of their drug cartel obligations and on the road to "normal" backdoor deals and power brokering that are part and parcel of the free world of a democratic society. On the one hand, the ending begs for continuation, on the other, the cycle of vengeance is never complete as those hillbilly mainstays, the Hatfield and McCoys remind us.

The series is best in the family dynamics with the Byrde kids moving from pre to post-adolescence over the course of the series (as they actors themselves age) and taking polar opposite stands vis a vis their parents, but then there's the cartel family dynamics and Ruth's and Darlene's families as well, all of which reveal flaws that if not classically tragic are still tragic enough to bring death and woe upon those who survive.

And the Byrde parents, though capable of just about anything, never commit violence themselves. Both are supremely skilled at talking their in and out of pickles and devising bad ends for others but always at arm's length. It's a tribute to smarts of a peculiar but vivid kind and is one of the qualities that makes this a worthwhile series to check out. 

SUCCESSION (Jesse Armstrong, Seasons 1-3): 4.5/5

I love Shiv (Sarah Snook's) facial expressivity. She lights up or dims down in a 100 different ways and contrasts with the semi-frozen monster dad, Logan (Brian Cox) and her two brothers Roman (Kieran Culkin) with his straight-faced witty, naughty and sometimes stinging quips, and Kendall (Jeremy Strong) with his slightly tensed, not quite there look and seething anger. Unlike Lear, Logan never turns power over. Instead, maybe because we have much more time to fill, he flatters and seduces one offspring after another with promises that never quite materialize. The betrayals and undercutting piles up, dirty secrets leak out, crises recur, and much of the time the series is a mix of intense close ups and barbed dialogue. It keeps one's focus, and, apart from the predictably musical chairs, interest. It's not quite over but you can bet it won't be changing stripes either.  There's a reason I didn't want to be in the world of business. 

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