Baby Ruby (Bess Wohl, 2022): 2/5

Noemie Merlant has entered the Motherverse.

 Huge disappointment. Girl deserves a better and more creative script, not just another forgettable postpartum depression horror which we already seen enough.

 Women Talking (Sarah Polley, 2022): 2.5/5

 From a formal perspective, one of the drabbest films I've seen in some time: Let's just dial down those colors, do a bunch of shot-reverse-shot, and call it an aesthetic! There's nothing interesting going on in terms of blocking or composition, no effort made to translate the themes of confinement and liberation into visual language.

 And then there's the script, which can't decide if it wants to be a parable existing outside of time and space or a realistic depiction of an actual community. It fails on both counts. The women seem far too articulate/woke to be plausible members of a repressive, illiterate, and misogynistic cult, even as they embody simplistic archetypes (the Angry One, the Saintly One, the Wise Old Matron) rather than flesh-and-blood humans.

 Bumper Sticker Idea: I’d rather be watching Carlos Reygadas' SILENT LIGHT.

 Sharper (Benjamin Caron, 2023): 3/5

Fun, narratively intricate, and satisfyingly entertaining mid-budget con movie that would’ve crushed in or around 2010.

The Son (Florian Zeller, 2022): 2.5/5

Aggressively just OK. (Disappointing, since THE FATHER was my second favorite film of 2021.) I so wanted more Anthony Hopkins screen time. I spent half of the film wanting Hopkins to show up and the other half hoping he’d show back up.

Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939): 3/5

Perfectly satisfactory; doesn't commit any backbreaking offenses, except for possibly the underutilization of Laurence Olivier (yes, he's in the film quite a bit, and yes, most people will tell you how great he is in this, but when you stand back and observe his role, he's actually very tame considering his ceiling -- something I can only assume was a function of Wyler's attenuating direction: compare this to REBECCA and tell me there isn't something missing).

Funny Girl (William Wyler, 1968): 3.5/5

Damn charming even if it is about a woman with immense talent and drive being controlled by toxic masculinity.

rewatched They Live (John Carpenter, 1988): 4/5

Roddy Piper's character is a real one. Discovers a secret ruling class of aliens and he just instantly brings a shotgun into a bank and starts killing them. I really think this is the best combination of social satire and mainstream genre filmmaking, satisfying every possible need a sci fi-horror-action audience could have while also being incredibly funny and smart about capitalism's myths and its seductive power.

 Birds of Passage (Ciro Guerra, 2018): 2.5/5

I spent way too much of the viewing trying to work out why they were telling a drug story without any decent action before figuring out that was the point - this is a cautionary tale - but the thing is that at this duration the kind of epic feel the filmmakers were shooting for just didn't carry the emotional resonance or character engagement necessary to make the predictable plot land with anything resembling interest to me. (Doesn't help that the lead actor didn't do much for me.) The cultural specificity is much more intriguing, and some of the location/costume etc is beautiful, but in the end story familiarity overpowered ethnographic intrigue.

 Bound (The Wachowskis, 1996): 4/5

Gershon and Tilly are fucking aces, I am shocked Gina Gershon is not asked to play a butch lesbian more often. I love the weird sweaty fumbliness Joey Pants brings to this thing. A lotta little moves here that they replicated in The Matrix- incredible to know the Wachowskis have been right on the mark since their first film.

 Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023): 2.5/5

M. Night Shyamalan pandering to the gays was not on my 2023 bingo card. Great acting from the little girl. But beyond some solid performances and cinematography choices, and making us consider the unthinkable situation, there is no deeper exploration of what’s happening, leading to an ultimately underwhelming and unsatisfying ending. (So, basically an M. Night Shyamalan film.)

 Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh, 2012): 2.5/5

Perhaps I'd get more charge out of it if Channing Tatum writhing with his shirt off was my thing. His physicality as a dancer, incidentally, is astounding, and in general the dancing scenes are interesting regardless of one's sexuality as a portrait of publicly accepted safe wish-fulfillment.

 Also: did the daytime exteriors in Tampa HAVE to look like piss? I can conceptually understand the desire to present the nightclub as "normal" and outside as "alien" to put us in Mike's head a bit, but it didn't really work for me visually.

 rewatched Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975): 3.5/5

I had fun with this—more than a three-hour epic of the 1700s would suggest, anyway—but I simply wasn’t swept away by its thematic headwind, instead consumed with a mostly superficial awe at its masterful, pictorial compositions. Assuredly, another viewing is necessary to be sure I haven’t overlooked another masterpiece.

Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988): 3/5

A great Tom Cruise role - his embodiment of that young, hotshot douchebag having his composure and sanity slowly chipped away is nearly perfect. Dustin Hoffman is…fine, I guess, though his performance is undeniably one-note (yes, yes, I know he's playing a character with a severely intricate case of autism, but that doesn't necessarily make for a hard -- never mind nuanced -- performance by acting standards).

 Alice, Darling (Mary Nighy, 2022): 2.5/5

Anna Kendrick chopping that wood log was the most eventful thing that happened. It has some good performances, but it's meatless, could have used more work on the script and some spice. Why this was under thriller, I'll never know. 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Ryan Coogler, 2022): 2/5

Not for me. I understand this production was plagued with misfortune, so it's a hard one to rate. The opening funeral procession was very well done, all the way up to the Marvel Studios logo drop, which had weight. After that things started to fall apart for me quickly. Not to mention the ridiculously lengthy run time, good gravy.

Escape from L.A. (John Carpenter, 1996): 1.5/5

Not much to say about this one; if you’re looking for sensible plots or realistic action sequences, look elsewhere. From most scrutable angles, Escape from LA is an awful film, but I’m not sure how much of it is supposed to be self-parody.

 Babylon (Damien Chazelle, 2022): 1/5

 NORMALIZE TELLING DIRECTORS NO. Makes the eternal mistake of reminding you of much better movies you could be watching, only in this case it's like a hundred of them.

 Vive l'amour (Tsai Ming Liang, 1994): 2/5

I thought my internet was buffering twice because this movie is so slow.

 The Golden Glove (Fatih Akin, 2019): 3/5 

If German shock cinema could be said to have a rich tradition, then this -- with its grisly violence, monotonous ugliness, sophomoric humor, sociopolitical preoccupations, and absurd non-sequitur -- fits into it snugly, for good or ill. 

 Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979): 3/5

Lol there was a whole scene of men pretending to be women pretending to be men. Classic.

 rewatched Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000): 3.5/5

This one reminds me a lot of Tokyo Story, a movie I admire immensely but can't quite bring myself to love: both are wise, moving, intelligent, beautifully acted, formally impeccable...and so relentlessly sedate that I inevitably find myself hoping for the introduction of some ridiculously contrived plot device that might shake their expertly drawn characters out of their stupor.  Its three hours fairly zip by (especially considering how little is "happening" by Hollywood narrative standards) and there's much to treasure -- sharp performances (Issey Ogata manages to kick ass despite performing all of his scenes in English, a language he's clearly learned as an adult), telling compositions (Yang more than makes up for the keep-your-distance aesthetic with his masterful use of windows, repeatedly juxtaposing interior and exterior within a single shot), thematic richness (the multigenerational structure allowing Yang to examine the arc of a life from several different perspectives at once). If only it took a few more risks, burst out of its measured bubble once in a while, I might feel something stronger than placid admiration.

France (Bruno Dumont, 2021): 2.5/5
Lea Seydoux here possessing a commandeering on-screen presence and almost hypnotic magnetism not unlike a modern-day Marlene Dietrich. She carries the film: Her bifurcated personality—the “her” that everyone sees vs. the “real her,” when the cameras stop rolling and her cronies aren’t around—dissolves into a muddled, incomprehensible mess with such conviction and grace that my heart aches just thinking about what a performance this strong could’ve done inside anything other than a rudimentary lampooning of current events. All she wants is transparency, but her celebrity lifestyle simply won’t allow it. Wish Dumont could’ve structured the narrative around her psyche instead of doing the exact opposite. I don’t need yet another source telling me how often and to what extent I’m being exploited. Let me experience the rot from the inside out, please.

 Liberte (Albert Serra, 2019): 1/5

A compelling argument for the restriction of personal freedom by the state. 

 A White, White Day (Hlynur Palmason, 2019): 3/5 

I have a weak spot for neo-realist humanist films with a cold clinical grip over their tone and material, also this was a beautiful film to look at, the land of fire and ice is truly breathtaking.

 Sundown (Michel Franco, 2021): 3/5 

A strange film insofar as its fragmented, low-exposition opening feels like it's going to be quite ambiguous, but in the end the only major ambiguity is how you feel about the protagonist's decisions. That's not a complaint; it's rolled around in my mind more than any other film as of late.

 Dottie Gets Spanked (Todd Haynes, 1993) (30 mins): 4/5 

 Positively bruised by the sensitivity of this kid's world - perhaps THE text on foundational worship and obsession of female icons for gay children and how they can liberate the range of expressions trapped inside them, often through destruction. 

 Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (Lili Horvat, 2020): 2.5/5  

Petzold and Kieslowski team up for Before Sunset. It's an elusive film that leaves major parts of the character and plot shrouded in ambiguity. Engrossing and compelling up until the unsatisfying ending. 

  

Skinamarink (Kyle Edward Ball, 2023): 3.5/5

Anxiety and fear, conjured with the most basic tools: silence, darkness, whispering, little children, and the anticipation that something horrible is juuuuuust about to be revealed. And, yes, it did give me ample time and opportunity to consider my own childhood relationship to fear and to my parents. Very original and very, very unnerving. 

 

* Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Peyton Reed, 2023): 3/5

Even more than Avatar 2, this 3D movie eschews the real world altogether and takes place completely in an artificial (let’s say animated) environment. Still, Paul Rudd’s relaxed charm is the real special effect. 

 

EO (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022): 2/5

I realize this movie is not Au Hasard Balthazar. I do. Still, Balthazar exists, so it’s hard not to compare the two, which makes the choppy and in-your-face style of this movie immediately upsetting. The dignity of Balthazar is expressed in his being, something that can only be felt by sitting there, calmly, and existing with the beast: the persistence of being. This is accomplished in Andrea Arnold’s Cow and, say, In Vanda’s Room but not here. And Balthazar doesn’t lament or pine; he is impassive and accepting (outside of the very occasional pained braying). He certainly doesn’t escape and run to save the girl as does this anthropomorphized creature. 

 

Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg, 2023): 3.5/5

“Q: do you fear you have just witnessed your own demise? A: I can only hope.” Full of original images and ideas (both sci fi and philosophical), but a bit of a mess. Moves from being a vampire movie about a new vampire who is in denial about his new situation, to being a movie about white privilege and its consequences, including alienation and a denial of control and self-control, to being a movie about how growing older and more resigned/accepting means killing your former self over and over until you get used to it. Cool synth music by Tim Hecker. 

 

You People (Kenya Barris, 2023): 2/5

I laughed about 10 times in the first 20 minutes. Let’s not speak of the rest… We, as a nation/media landscape, are not ready for the conversation about the conversation about race. 

 

A Love Song (Max Walker-Silverman, 2022): 3.5/5

Good acting, beautiful location, lots of soul, short (!), but really just a fart in the wind. Since we know so little about these characters, it’s pretty arbitrary whether it will end well or badly for them and their love.

 

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

Surprising number of laughs for me. 

 

George & Tammy (Abe Sylvia, etal, 2023): 3.5/5

“George, why do you keep driving by my house?” “Just to see if I’m really gone.” Career-best performances from Chastain and Shannon, and of course great music well performed. But it suffers from dramatic redundancy: George gets drunk and lashes out violently, Tammy leaves. George apologizes; Tammy comes back to him. This happens in a majority of the episodes—and twice in one of them! Of course, that’s what happened in real life, but that’s no excuse. 

 

Soft & Quiet (Beth de Araújo, 2022): 2/5

This cheapo horror movie one is a oner, which is fun. But as soon as the group of white Karen protagonists start spouting racist talking points, I’m pretty much out. It’s satire, don’t you know.

 

Deadstream (Joseph & Vanessa Winter, 2022): 2.5/5

In this cheapo horror movie, a guy livestreams himself attempting to spend the night in a haunted house. The first half is pretty fun and scary, but the second half gets silly in an Evil Dead 2 sort of way that is awfully familiar.

 

A Wounded Fawn (Travis Stevens, 2022): 2/5

The second half of this cheapo horror movie is so confused, it made me long for the first half, which was just about the cliché of toxic masculinity. 

 

All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022): 3/5

Since it all seems so familiar, I found myself outside of this drama, which seems arranged and decorative. But, unexpectedly, watching the 1930 version made me like this one better. I could see it as a cover version—and I liked the way it handles certain scenes compared to the first one, which was obviously required to be restrained in so many ways. 

 

All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930): 4/5

An astonishing level of filmic sophistication and intensity for a 1930 movie. The long battle scene at about the 45-minute mark can stand with any ever filmed (or at least those not scored by Wagner). 

 

The Task (Leigh Ledare, 2017): 4.5/5

“I resent you saying ‘we.’” Committee Meeting, The Movie. As close to my own experience with groups at USC as any movie I’ve ever seen. A filmed workshop wherein nothing is ever, ever, ever accomplished or decided, as everyone interrupts any train of thought by asserting their own identity and needs, denies any attempt to summarize, and displays a deep anxiety about authority and guidance of any kind. I was slightly disappointed to find out that the participants were charged with "the task" of “taking note of their participation in the situation as it develops in the moment.” So, in a way, they are performing their task adequately. Still, the experience of it is brilliantly and recognizably frustrating. Sicinski sums it up: “It is maddening and perfect, a social object snugly disappearing up its own ass.”

 

Mala Noche (Gus Van Sant, 1986): 3.5/5

A young gay man in Portland (on 6th street) falls in love with two poor Mexican transients. Erotic, tender, languorous, and full of longing. Looks great. More interested (blessedly) in pricks and cocks than privilege and consent. Genet and Rechy’s City of Night are (likely) references. 

 

Streetwise (Martin Bell, 1984): 4.5/5

Hanging out with a group of young runaways and other kids on the streets of Seattle. Nihilists all, they all basically all sound like Linda Manz in Days of Heaven. The last 20 minutes are a beautiful and grotesque parody of adulthood played out by dirt-poor and completely uneducated 14-year-olds.

 

Minding the Gap (Bing Liu, 2018): 2.5/5

Mostly just normal, boring kids doing routine stuff. The basic idea is: “My dad punished me physically so I was a skateboarder, but you have to grow up sometime.” Suffers greatly from the existence of Streetwise.

 

The Mechanic (Michael Winner, 1972): 3.5/5

What if an aging Le Samurai decided to take a (very hot and Delon-like) Jan Michael Vincent under his wing? Near the end of this movie, a tractor driven by Charles Bronson shoves a car off a rocky, rolling cliff, and we watch a real car tumble over and over and down, bending and breaking everywhere and ending in a heap. No CGI, just production values. 

 

Death Wish (Michael Winner, 1974): 3/5

At first, it hems and haws about the morality of Bronson’s actions, but then a newscaster (the ultimate trustworthy authority figure in the age of Cronkite) says proudly: “The actions of the vigilante, as lawless as they may be, seem to be giving others new attitudes about crime in the streets. Instead of helplessly allowing themselves to be mugged and robbed, a few are fighting back.” Death penalty for all muggers! 

 

Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977): 3/5

A revenge tale with a good, tight-lipped performance by William Devane, who gets his hand put down a garbage disposal and runs around the rest of the movie with a big fuckin’ hook at the end of his arm. Cool!  One of QT’s favorite films. 

 

Jane Eyre (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2011): 3/5

I just read this book (very entertaining!), and this is an extremely faithful and basically satisfying adaptation. I was actually surprised by all the kissing between Jane and Rochester. It's obvious, but Brontë doesn’t mention this act explicitly (or even hinting at it using “embrace” or something like that), and it never occurred to me. 

 

Hardcore (Paul Schrader, 1979): 3.5/5

“At least you get to go to heaven. I don’t get shit.” George C. Scott explains Calvinism to a sex worker. “They believe in the TULIP. T stands for Total Depravity. All men, through original sin, are totally evil and incapable of good. ‘All my works are as filthy rags in the sight of the Lord.’ U stands for Unconditional Election. God has chosen a certain number of people to be saved, the elect, and He has chosen them from the beginning of time. L is for Limited Atonement. Only a limited number of people will be atoned and go to heaven. I is for Irresistible Grace. God’s grace cannot be resisted or denied. And P is for the Persistence of the Saints. Once you are in grace, you cannot fall from the numbers of the elect.” “So it’s fixed.” “More or less.” “Whew, I thought I was fucked up.” “Well, you have to try to look at it from the inside.” “Well if you look at anything from the inside, it makes sense. I mean, you should hear perverts talk. A guy once almost had me convinced to let his German shepherd screw me.” “It’s (long pause) not quite the same thing.” Essential text for understanding Taxi Driver, First Reformed, etc. Like Ozu, Shraeder is telling variations on the same story as if every outcome is equally true. 

 

Thunder on the Hill (Douglas Sirk, 1951): 3/5

Very much a woman’s picture. One rainy night a nun (Claudette Colbert) tries to clear the name of a woman accused of the murder of her own brother and scheduled to hang the next day. 

 

All I Desire (Douglas Sirk, 1953): 3.5/5

Barbara Stanwyck is a washed up actress who returns to her small town home to see whether she can reintegrate with the family she left as well as the narrow-minded town folk. Sirk-ian focus on female desire (sexual and careerist) and the pressure to conform to community “standards.” Ends with a series of weepy rapprochements with each of her children and then with her ex. 

 

Tarnished Angels, rw (Douglas Sirk, 1957): 3/5

Features four characters who love (and hate) one another, plus a dynamic carnival atmospheric and nifty ariel footage. Still the drama fails to point in any given direction, offering merely emotional soup. 

 

Easy Living (Mitchell Leisen, 1937): 4/5

Screenplay by Preston Sturges. Lots of genuine laffs, yelling, pratfalls, and other inspired chaos. As in Midnight, a woman down to her last penny suddenly finds herself, through mistaken identity, living in the highest luxury. Yep, it’s the depression. 

 

Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939): 3/5

Screenplay by Brackett/Wilder. “From the moment I looked at you I had an idea that you had an idea.” Claudette Colbert’s lies pile up and threaten to topple over. “You’re in a fine mess. You have to get a divorce from someone you’re not even married too.”

 

Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen, 1940): 4/5

Screenplay by Preston Sturges. Begins with a classic screwball concept (New York DA Fred MacMurray gets pretty shoplifter Barbara Stanwyck out on bail and offers her a ride home to Indiana), but instead of getting more madcap, the movie gets more and more real, sincere, warm and lovely (if you go for that sort of thing). As a consequence, it takes seriously the contrasts between these character’s opposing personalities and choices. Has a couple great examples of what’s largely missing from the above, early Sirk movies: weird, sheltered narrative eddies where we exist for a long moment with these characters in deep emotion, longing, loneliness and desire.

 

 

Sight and Sound Top 250 Movies

Watching some of the new additions to the list, etc. (so you won’t have to.)

 

Born in Flames, #243 (Lizzie Borden, 1983): 2.5/5

Low-budget, unfocused and with good and bad ideas flying all over the place—nevertheless a unique object. Angry and revolutionary in intent for the rights of women, but also against “racism, bigotry, nationalism, false religion and the blaspheme of the state-controlled church, environmental poisoning, nuclear warfare, the powerful over the powerless.” Ends with one of the female revolutionaries planting a bomb in one of the Twin Towers.

 

Possession #243 (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981): 2.5/5

An inchoate and hysterical tale of jealousy morphs into a Cronenbergian gross out about devotion. Confusing and unfocused but at least crazy shit is always happening. And there is a remarkably physical scene where Isabelle Adjani freaks the fuck out in a subway tunnel. How did she not pass out? 

 

A Canterbury Tale, rw #243 (Powell and Pressburger, 1945): 4/5

An interregnum and an idyll. Three characters passing a couple of days during the war, with more hardships ahead. A wise, warm and clever script and well-told.

 

Soleil Ô, #234 (Med Hondo, 1970): 3/5

A Godardian movie about the Africa-to-France immigrant experience, using songs, comic and absurd sketches, political theory and loads racism.  My favorite bit is the documentary footage of our protagonist whispering and kissing with a blonde girl on the Champs-Élysées and all the people staring at them in shock and disapproval—all with a soundtrack of pigs, chickens and other farm animals. Says the French government (for example) about their immigrants: “We have no reason to be interested in their personal tastes. We are there to impose what amounts to our happiness, which should then become theirs. Love our uniforms, our Jesus, our culture, our manufactured products. Help us maintain order in your country.”

 

Je, Tu, Il, Elle, #225 (Chantal Akerman, 1974): 3/5

The voiceover almost sounds like a prison narrative: “28th day of captivity…” and in fact the first third depicts a woman who has seemingly self-imprisoned herself in her home. Like all of us, she’s eating sugar and waiting for something. Once she leaves the house, she seems to find some things to like in the world, including sandwiches, beer and wine, Cannon on the TV, hand-jobs, sex with an old girlfriend, etc. An open-ended text, and one interested in duration, to be sure. 

 

Blue, #225 (Derek Jarman, 1993): 2.5/5

“Pray to God to be freed from images.” This has an interesting strategy and reason for being, but the actual thing is a bit underwhelming.

 

Paris is Burning, #196 (Jennie Livingston, 1990): 4/5

I responded strongly to the positive vibes of this movie and scene (shot over 9 years). This is what a revolution looks like, not bombs. Here’s some sage advice from a scene elder: “You don’t have to bend the whole world. I think it’s better just to enjoy it. Pay your dues and enjoy it. If you shoot your arrow and it goes real high, hurray for you.”

 

The India Song, #146 (Marguerite Duras, 1975): 2/5

Reminds me of Last Year at Marienbad with its static tableau, its voiceover obsessed with the past (or a present that it is too late to change), its beautiful architecture, and the feeling that these characters are ghosts, or worse, characters. Similarly stultifying. 

 

The Watermelon Woman, #146 (Cheryl Dunye, 1996): 2/5

The writing, acting, production values and humor is about that of Clerks (not a compliment), but somehow Cheryl Dunye was not able to parlay this into 15 more mediocre movies. I can’t think of a single reason why! I was most interested in the historical film analysis and disappointed by the reveal that it’s made up. 

 

Sambizanga, #136 (Sarah Maldoror, 1972): 3/5

A sober narrative surrounded by vibrant colors and community. The real star is Angola, on the eve of a rebellion against the Portuguese colonists—specifically the people and countryside around the capital, Luanda. 

   

To Leslie (Michael Morris, 2022): 3.5/5

Great, demanding role and performance, more deserving of recognition than cold Cate Blanchette and honorary pick Michele Yeoh. The movie is a bit Sundance, but I admit that after the grim, Sean-Baker-esque first half hour, I was relieved see our protagonist stumble upon the kindly, 12-step-ish Marc Maron character (and the warmer, more confined plot he suggests). No one asked, but Maron also does a terrific job—the Texas lilt gets him right out of his head. 

 

The Menu (Mark Mylod, 2022): 2.5/5

in the 70s the bad guys were the CIA, in the 80s they were Russians, in the 90s they were Arabs, and today they are The Rich. More heavy-handed satire and punishment, but not (even) as good as Triangle of Sadness or Glass Onion. 

 

Glass Onion (Rian Johnson, 2022): 2.5/5

Eager to entertain, but broad and facile as satire.

 

Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook, 2022): 2/5

GTFO. I tried to enjoy all the twists but by the end, I just threw my hands up. They say that it’s better the second time, but I won’t soon find out.

 

Pearl (Ti West, 2022): 4/5

Unlike anything I’ve seen before, exactly, and pretty unnerving. A character study of a young lady who just wants to explore the world without the constraints of her strict and infirm parents and who takes it into her own hands to liberate herself with whatever tools she has on hand. It has been observed that this movie—along with its sequel-that-came-out-before-it, X—is indebted to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and for sure Ti West here tunes into the half-dead quality of a family’s patriarch.

 

Moonage Daydream (Brett Morgen, 2022): 1.5/5

Some cool footage ruined by the addition of a bunch of footage having nothing to do with Bowie. But isn’t it cool, like him?? 

 

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford, 2022): 3.5/5

Dreamworks goes Into the Spider-Verse.

 

Il Buco (Michelangelo Frammartino, 2021): 3/5

A man lays dying while a group of spelunkers penetrate ever deeper into one of the world’s deepest caves. That’s just about it. A disappointment after the great Le Quattro Volte, but true mystery is hard to come by. 

 

Vagabond, rw (Agnès Varda, 1985): 5/5

“By proving she’s useless, she helps a system she regrets.” I appreciate the comparison to Citizen Kane, but the film also makes me think of Raymond Chandler. Like Marlowe, Mona is able to move freely among all the classes, granting us intimate and colorful sketches of many kinds of people. And like Marlowe, Mona is able to elucidate the mysteries of others but remains mystified as to her own stubborn motivations. As a social-issue movie it is pretty subtle—she is too stubborn and independent to be helped much by a social safety net—but the movie does keep pointing out all the empty rooms all around this homeless character. Original title literally translates to Without Roof or Law.

 

La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001): 5/5

Full of unnerving elisions. A girl jumps into a dirty pool and her friends wait and wait for her to return to the surface. She’s not dead or anything, we are just left hanging. The edit puts her in danger, not the pool. In another example, two kids point shotguns at their little brother. Cut to hills with gunshots echoing. The kid is shown later fine, no biggie. In the end, what impresses is the feeling that death everywhere. Death by glass, by drowning, by gunshot, by machete, by choking, by African rat. Emotionally (and pictorially) it’s a fantastic and intimate swamp. Soft focus and close and cropped framing. Long lenses and flattened space.  

 

The Headless Woman, rw (Lucrecia Martel, 2008): 4/5

When confronted suddenly by her privilege and its anonymity, our protagonist just fazes out—simply forgetting her sins, her burdens, her name. I deeply relate. A mood/tone that crosses both Jeanne Dielman and this one is “vacancy.”

 

Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017): 3.5/5

With all the strange rules, customs, rituals, beliefs and lifestyles on display, this almost has the feel of science fiction. Also, with so much occurring off-screen, so many people filmed with their heads out of frame, so many startling elisions, it’s a Martel movie alright—yet the tone is somehow lighter and wackier.

 

Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949): 3/5

More Grapes of Wrath than Detour. So much human misery and failure over fucking $5,000-worth of apples. If you stop this movie with five minutes left, it’s a great Noir ending: no apples, no money, no honesty, no justice or revenge, no friendship, no respect for the dead, no loyalty, no girl, no future. The last five minutes unfortunately pisses all that away, turning the cops into sympathetic helpers and letting sleepy Richard Conte beat up Lee Cobb for Christsake. 

 

The Breaking Point (Michael Curtiz, 1950): 4/5

“I’d just as soon seen you all with your guts hangin’ out.” Superb, under-seen Noir with John Garfield and (the never-young) Patricia O’Neal. In opposition to the drumbeat that Casablanca recreates North Africa on the Warner Bros lot, this film provides ample authentic-feeling footage of boats off the coast of Southern California.  #WetNoir 

 

Sudden Fear (David Miller, 1952): 3.5/5

Rich and crazy-eyed Joan Crawford marries snake-eyed Jack Palance at the end of act one. What could go wrong? I expected to have to wait an hour for Crawford to find out she is being duped, but, no, she discovers this right away and turns the tables. Crawford is portrayed as too old, really, to be powerful or desired; she was 47 at the time of filming. #FriscoNoir

 

The Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955): 4/5

A cop falls in love with the mob boss’ girl. What could go wrong? The mise en scène is dreamy and constructed—a series of rooms in “New York”—and John Alton ensures that the movie features the darkest, most shadowy police headquarters of all time. I haven’t much love for hero Cornell Wilde or mob boss Richard Conte, but Jean Wallace is a knockout. And as a Noir, it has everything: boxing, the detective character being knocked out cold, a prolonged and intense torture scene, German fallen-aristocrat douchebags, and two eroticized gunsels (Fanty and Mingo) who seem…very close. 

 

 

Peckinpah Film Fest

A bunch of violent dudes. Internecine squabbling, drunken honor and self-mythologizing. Leaders who have been in the game just a little too long. Failure and death. 

 

Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah, 1965): 3/5

Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Tim Hutton, James Coburn, Slim Pickens, Warren Oates and Ben Johnson (among others) are a ragtag calvary squad chasing a renegade group of murderous Apaches and being chased by the French. A surprisingly languorous pace leaves plenty of room for infighting between Northerners and Southerners, black soldiers and white, veterans and rookies, etc. A long concluding battle scene displays only flashes of the chopped-up style to come. 

 

The Wild Bunch, rw (Sam Peckinpah, 1969): 5/5

The movie powerfully uses the iconography of the Western (raw landscapes and men riding horses through rivers, on city streets, off of bridges—an ecstasy of horses) while critiquing what was wrong with past Westerns, providing a more realistic portrayal of outlaws who are indeed outside of the laws of decorum or moral behavior. It strangely also wants to reward these characters with casual and happily drunken sex with one-dimensional Mexican girls (always joyous, naïve and as primal and available as a Gauguin subject)—but this just invites critiques to this critique. The protagonists’ final gesture is the heroic act of someone shooting out the lights—destroying all that is corrupt, including themselves.

 

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Sam Peckinpah, 1970): 3/5

Undeniable influencial on There Will Be Blood. Here, a prospector at the end of his rope discovers…water (which means a new town on the stagecoach line) then hooks up with a “priest.” The resemblance ends there, since Anderson thankfully eliminates the timeworn “civilizing effect of women” part of the equation here, in favor of his pet theme of fathers and sons. The inevitable End-of-West turn comes in the form of an automobile, which requires not water but a different liquid from the ground (see: TWBB). (A pre-Magnolia) Jason Robards is good, and Strother Martin and Sir Slim Pickens are more than welcome. 

 

Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971): 4/5

“Rats is life.” I like the tone of the first half, which is both naturalistic in a 70s way and completely edgy and paranoid…in a 70s way. His and her every move is watched and openly criticized by stupid, snickering, angry ghouls—it’s infuriating. Thereafter follows a sequence that rivals any in cinematic history for its transgression, and that disqualifies it (probably correctly) from representation for its other excellent qualities. That’s entertainment! Some of the most exciting and emotional cross-cutting I’ve seen (outside of Eisenstein). Today it would be her story, not his. 

 

Cross of Iron (Sam Peckinpah, 1977): 3.5/5

Peckinpah decamps to Yugoslavia with a shit-ton of explosives, artillery, tanks, ammunition, sandbags, uniforms and an epic script mostly following one German (!) battalion eventually way behind enemy lines on the Russian front. Guzzling 180-proof Slivovitz, Peckinpah shoots for 89 days before the producers pull the plug. The result is lots of chaotic and rhythmic battle scenes as well as the usual gross ultra-masculine behavior. Pretty good!!

 

The Ostermann Weekend, rw (Sam Peckinpah, 1983): 2/5

When you’ve done so many drugs that you begin to think that all your friends are actually Russian spies: “The truth is a lie that hasn’t been found out.” I remember liking this in the theater, at 16, but now I can’t put my finger on why I enjoyed this semi-coherent barrage of sex and violence. I guess I was into that sort of thing. 

 

 

Taiwanese and Chinese Film Festival

Is it racist to group these together?

 

Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou. 1991): 4/5

Simple mastery of color and composition. Looking down on each wife’s courtyard, the roofs look like legs spread open, leading to the “door” at the top, glowing, glowing. The red of desire and the blue of death. 

 

The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985): 3.5/5

A delicate and ephemeral memory piece with spare compositions and beautiful light, but more traditional than the other films I’ve seen from this director, while still being quite static. Remember when dad gave me the letter and I soaked the stamp off because I collected stamps? Remember when Grandma and I picked a bunch of guavas? It does have a structure, which is expressed in the title, but to say more would be, of all things in a Hou movie, a spoiler. 

 

A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1970): 3.5/5

Surprisingly, even bizarrely contemporary and entertaining for a Chinese film from 1971. Marvel has modeled oh so much from this template of an escalating series of cool fights. Lacks the stultifying and lugubrious pretension of Crouching Dragon while retaining that feeling of grace, beauty and delight when these squint-eyed warriors (male and female) defy gravity. 

 

Spring in a Small Town (Mu Fei, 1948): 4/5

A short and melancholy jewel. A love triangle, a handful of locations, lots of silence and so much feeling. Voted by Chinese cineastes as the greatest Chinese film of all time. 

 

Election (Johnnie To, 2005): 3/5

A large and unwieldy cast of characters with names like Big Head, Long Gun, Whistle and Uncle Monk make keeping factions straight almost impossible, for me—leading to a pretty abstract first half. Once the drama focuses on the rivalry quiet Loc and loud Big D, the film delivers some thrills in a unique style and rhythm—realistic and administrative for a genre piece.

 

Exiled (Johnnie To, 2006): 2/5

A very different tone from Election—one that ratchets up the bloody shoot-outs, irony, “coolness,” and tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment that all the posturing is a bit silly. It really is.

 

Drug War (Johnnie To, 2012): 3.5/5

Strait-laced (but increasingly reckless) cop teams up with newly arrested meth-maker looking for redemption (or is he?) to bust people higher up the chain. Blessedly light on shoot-outs, this one offers a steady throb of suspenseful business, until the apocalyptic final confrontation between all the cops and all the criminals, one for the ages. One might marvel at how different in tone each of these movies is, but I also note that To has directed 69 movies to date, many of which seem to be rom-coms, historical epics, family dramas, etc.

 

 

Guy Maddin Film Fest

I never loved Maddin’s earlier works such as Careful, but these later pieces show a director constantly pushing his style forward and finding goodness here and there.

 

The Heart of the World, 6 mins (Guy Maddin, 2000): 4.5/5

I happily watched it four times in a row, trying to grok the dense imagery and reference. I would love to give this a 5 but would feel dumb without having more thoroughly watched the Eisenstein and early Lang it is (probably) parodying. 

 

My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007): 4.5/5

I’m currently re-reading Gravity’s Rainbow, and coincidentally this movie reminds me of it (as well as of Eraserhead and Davies). Quite a lot of dreamy, quirky, funny, ambiguous, poetic, surreal vignettes and strategies—including parodies and homages to melodrama, silent cinema and documentary. 

 

The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson, 2015): 2/5

A crazy and silly series of dreams is told using a very wide array of materials, various and beautiful. Maddin interrogates the feelings inherent in silent cinema with all kinds, two strip Technicolor, animation, and a very free mise en scène. I wanted to like this one, but at this length, the whole thing is tiresome. 

 

The Green Fog, 62 mins (Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson, 2017): 5/5

A loose recreation of Vertigo, using found footage from about 50 movies and TV episodes set in San Francisco—leading to cinematic reveries about running across roof tops, looking at paintings, the hair on the backs of heads, underwater rescue, climbing and falling off towers. As an obsessive cineaste and re-watcher of Vertigo, it was catnip to me. Genius use of all the non-speaking, gasping parts of a conversation in, say, The Streets of San Francisco.

 

Stump the Guesser, 19 mins (Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson, 2020): 3.5/5

Embus silent-film framing with a dazzling animation and effects to tell a story that starts classical then becomes psychedelic, with bursts and surges of quick editing and radical disruption of the frame, etc. I’m surprised this radical style hasn’t been borrowed more by car commercials.

 

Shorts worth watching: 

How to Take a Bath (2009)

The Hall Runner (2014)

Cold (with Evan Johnson) (2014)

Elms (with Evan Johnson) (2014)

Colours (with Evan Johnson) (2014)

Puberty (with Evan Johnson) (2014)

 

Shorts not worth watching:

Sissy-boy Slap Party (2004)

My Dad is 100 Years Old (2005)

Nude Caboose (2006)

Spanky: To the Pier and Back (2008)

Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair (2009)

Sinclair (2010)

Lines of the Hand (2015)

Accidence (2018)

The Rabbit Hunters (2020)