* Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein, 2023): 3.5/5

A funny and rollicking good time. Get ready for five more. 

 

Babylon (Damien Chazelle, 2022): 4/5

I really liked the opening dance party, a high-energy 30-minute set piece. Then I loved the next 25 minutes, a “shoot five silent films at the same time plus Spike Jones and Brad Pitt on set” set piece with amazing rhythm and pacing and a climax of emotion. Probably the best hour or film of the year. After that it’s diminishing returns. Snake sequence is disastrous. 

 

Women Talking (Sarah Polley, 2022): 3/5

I appreciated the formal choice of keeping the men off the screen for the whole movie. The drama is strong, but it’s obvious from the beginning what these characters should do, and the rest is just the audience mentally yelling at the characters to do it. And I’m sorry but Rooney Mara, Clair Foy, Jessie Buckley—this the acting B-team for sure. Ben Wishaw’s character is so weepy and wimpy he was more like a “chick” than the rest of them put together (surely the point). 

 

L’Intrus (Claire Denis, 2004): 3/5

Elliptical, even for Denis. Shares with its protagonist a feeling of displacement. “Where am I and why am I here” is the movie’s heartbeat, from France to Switzerland to Hong Kong to Tahiti. I have some guesses about who the main character is and what his relationship is to other people on screen, but guesses would be all they would be. A puzzle movie, and which inspires some contemplation/construction after the movie is over. 

 

7 Women (John Ford, 1955): 3.5/5

Has a very similar structure to Stagecoach, with a cast of characters passing through danger while playing out their emotional arcs. This is the same but instead of the stagecoach moving, it’s different scenarios sweeping through an American convent in China. Anne Bancroft, as the new doctor, is surely the hottest and most bad-ass woman in Ford’s oeuvre. 

 

Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, 2000): 3/5

“It’s hard to be a human, all these years.” My problem is that I find Andersson’s movies nightmarish. I realize that this feeling is supposed to be balanced by humor, but this doesn’t tickle my funny bone. So it’s just a despairing ghoul fest.

 

Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002): 3.5/5

Ozymandias, the movie. Like Jancsó’s great Electra, My Love, it’s a time-slippery, dreamy musical and dance celebration about the events of the 19th and 20th century in their nation/country. This one is staged in the State Hermitage Museum instead of in a scrabbly field—but I prefer the ecstatic, joyous and folkloric tone of Jancsó’s over the officious, decorative and grand scale of this one. This same movie, tripping balls through the Smithsonian while recounting 250 years of American history might be my favorite movie of 2024. 

 

The Sun (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2005): 2/5

Following Hirohito in the final days of WWII, this is comparable in theme to Downfall and Altman’s Secret Honor. Resignation, defiance, anger, fear, denial, old grudges, personal indulgences and reveries arise. Tone is play-like, airless and soporific.

 

Multiple Maniacs, rw (John Waters, 1970): 3.5/5

An amateurish and hilarious parade of disgusting and mocking perversion. Devine’s best performance. The main weasly but refined bad-guy scumbag has a great poster for Losey's Boom! (as well as a print of Warhol's Jackie O) on his wall—more of the best kind of bad taste. I love the list of people they can’t wait to murder: Ann Margaret. Trisha Nixon. Shirley Temple. The Pope. Ronald Reagan and his family. Barbara Streisand. The lobster scene still shocks!

 

Necktie, 2 mins (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2013): 3/5

Two 10-year-old girls have a duel in a forest.

Nimic, 12 mins (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2019): 3.5/5

An eerie and amusing short about being easily replaced. Staring Matt Dillon: so Drugstore Cowboy was his peak? If so, I’ll take it.

 

Rose Hobart, 20 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1936): 4/5

A Lynchian interaction between two (or more) tones/dramas. Had anyone before “sampled” previous footage and recontextualized it? We will never know. Why aren’t we getting 10 of these a year—short films that just use footage from Top Gun 2 to tell a woman’s drama, shit like that? At the film’s premier in 1936, Salvador Dali knocked the projector over with his umbrella half-way through, yelling that he had long wanted to make a film identical to this and how it must have been stolen from his dreams. A+ monkey performance. 

 

Jack’s Dream, 6 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1938): 2/5

Storybook puppets, a sinking ship, a sea horse—all with a watery wave.

The Midnight Party, 4 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1938): 3/5

More reappropriated cultural detritus, including seagulls and high-contrast circus performers.

Thimble Theatre, 7 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1938): 2.5/5

Manipulated shots from old movies, especially those featuring animals.

By Night With Torch and Spear, 8 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1942): 2.5/5

It’s fun to watch silent films backwards, upside-down and in negative. A smelting plant, primitive tribes, a caterpillar.

Centuries of June, 12 mins (Joseph Cornell, Stan Brakhage, 1955): 2.5/5

A change of style: This film and the rest I watched use original footage. Look at the exterior of this old house. And here are some kids, possibly playing King of the Hill. A memory piece.

Angel, 4 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1957): 3/5

Trees reflected in the still and lightly waving water of a fountain. Leaves float on the surface, and an angel statue presides over all. Lovely.

Nymphlight, 10 mins (Joseph Cornell, 1957): 2/5

Bryant Park. A beautiful blonde in blown-out light and so, so, so many pigeons. In a couple of years, it will be as if I’ve never set my eyes on these films.

 

A Portrait of Ga, 4 mins (Margaret Tait, 1952): 2/5

Arial, 4 mins (Margaret Tait, 1974): 3/5

Colour Poems, 12 mins (Margaret Tait, 1974): 3/5

Poems interested in water, grass, trees, birds, dirt, rain, light in Ireland. “All the color and all the dreams in the beam.’

 

Begone Dull Care (Evelyn Lambart, Norman McLaren, 1949): 3/5

Expertly integrates/originates the styles of several familiar color blotch and scratch films over too-frenetic music. 

 

Shoes, 52 mins (Lois Weber, 1915): 3/5

Focus is on two poor shopgirls surrounded by predatory and creepy rich (compared to them) men. Chabrol would approve of this portrait of these bonne femmes.  It 1915, isolated, solitary close ups have become so routine that this one throws in a close up of our disintegrating protagonist in a cracked mirror. Nice. For the want of a shoe, the war is lost. 

 

The Smiling Madame Beudet, 42 mins (Germaine Dulac, 1923): 4/5

Reminds me of Mrs. Dalloway (published two years later) in its interest in a middle-aged woman bored with her domestic life, with a focus on her thoughts, dreams and desires, especially her feelings of her being imprisoned by her marriage and house. 

 

The Seashell and the Clergyman, 41 mins (Germaine Dulac, 1928): 3/5

It’s surrealism so it’s hard to remember all the random parts. There’s a priest who seems to be repeatedly killing the same clergyman. One time he throws him off a roof. Suddenly we are in an interior space with smoke and a body falling through a dark void, then we’re back outside and the camera pans up up up the cliff, and finally there’s a long shot of the sky. So repeatedly the opposite of expectations. 

 

The Circus, rw (Charlie Chaplin, 1928): 4/5

Some killer bits, especially the concluding tight wire act involving a hidden harness to hold him up (which slips off halfway through), plus monkeys. The last five minutes provide a surprisingly satisfying emotional grace note reminiscent of The Searchers. 

 

 

Chantal Akerman Film Fest

These movies are slow and emotionally emptied out, but I’m appreciating the experience of getting on their wavelength.

 

Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1978): 3/5

“I think I should try to fix things, a better life and all of that. But if you ask what a better life would be, I can’t even imagine it. It’s not just about food for everyone. We know that’s not it (although it’s a start).” Lots of time is spent watching micro-twitches of amusement or at least interest play across Anna’s mostly inert face as the (mostly) men in her life monologue, often about their piteous love lives. “You’re born. You eat. You drink. You screw when you can. And you die.” 

 

I’m Hungry, I’m Cold, 12 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1984): 3.5/5

A surprisingly Godardian lovers-on-the-run movie. Proof that Akerman could (1) move fast (2) be fun (3) play with genre. What to do with this object that is “entertaining” and “funny”? Do I rate it high because it matches my traditional movie-going expectations or low because it fails to express CA’s “authentic voice” as I’ve come to understand it?

 

Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels, 60 mins (Chantal Akerman, 1994): 2.5/5

Logorrheic young people obsessed with analyzing and confessing their own feelings and contradictions—Indebted to Eustache and pointing the way to Before Sunrise.

 

The Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000): 3.5/5

in many ways this is what a relationship feels like. A really nice and sensitive person loves you and wants the best for you and needs to know everything about you and all your thoughts and where you are at all fucking times. Has the most traditional look and feel of all the movies I’ve seen of CA, complete with a thriller-sounding score. 

 

No Home Movies (Chantal Akerman, 2015): 3/5

Recreates the home-as-prison vibes so often found in her work, this time as a documentary about her mom. The green tile in the kitchen, the puttering about, the sweaters indoors. Here the home extends to be correlative to consciousness itself—as her mother’s condition worsen, the rooms themselves darken to the point where the mother disappears from the screen.

 

 

D.W. Griffith Biograph Short Film Fest

Since so much plot is happening in such a short amount of time, plus small moments of tremendous beauty—primitive, universal and otherwise—these shorts demand your attention almost like little emotional puzzles. I was interested to realize that DWG very rarely used titles for dialogue, just as chapter headings. After watching all of these, I was amazed to discover, searching this site, that I had watched a bunch of them already, back in 2012, the same week I watched Kes, which I remember like it was yesterday.

 

The Lonely Villa (06.10.1909): 3/5

Pretty intense home invasion story, but no real cross cutting. Key image: Marion Leonard cowering together with three curly headed daughters, while thieves smash the door down. 

 

Those Awful Hats (10.25.1909): 2.5/5

A three-minute doodle making fun of women at the movies. Thought to be a sort-of public service announcement instructing the ladies in how to comport themselves. Key image: those awful hats.

 

The Country Doctor (07.08.1909): 3.5/5

Slightly ironic tale of a doctor’s ailing daughter. Key image: the sick daughter herself, with black-circled eyes and a thousand-yard stare. 

 

They Would Elope (08.09.1909): 3/5

A short (8 mins) comedy where a couple’s elopement is thwarted as their carriage, auto, and canoe all fail. Key image: the would-be groom pushing Pickford in a wheelbarrow. 

 

The Sealed Room (09.02.1909): 3.5/5

DWG loves Poe. Key image: The mad aristocrat building a wall, shutting in Marion Leonard and her lover. 

 

The Mountaineer’s Honor (11.25.1909): 5/5

The original filmic manic pixie dream girl, as Pickford flits around like a bird and immediately makes the solitary dreamer fall in love with her. Remarkable how much of this is shot outside in beautiful, deep landscapes. There is more focus on character and performance here. Key image: The anguish on the grandmother’s face (in medium shot) when she realizes she must shoot her grandson. I could not predict how this one would play out. 

 

A Corner in Wheat (12.13.1909): 4/5

So much happens in only 13 minutes. It outlines the fates of two families, rich and poor while sketching the trap of a whole society. Contrasts the animation and rigor of the rich against the immobility and languor of the poor. Key image: a hand grasping up through falling wheat.

 

To Save Her Soul (12.27.1909): 3/5

God’s Lonely Priest charges into the room to save innocent Pickford from the decadence of the entertainment industry and soon is waving a gun around. Very unsatisfying ending for this modern audience member. Key image: A terrified Pickford writhing on the floor and pulling open her top of her dress dating him to shoot her bare chest. 

 

The Unchanging Sea (05.05.1910): 3/5

A sailor is lost and sea, leaving behind his wife Linda Arvidson and daughter. Turns out he’s alive but has lost his memory. Twenty years pass, and another accident brings him back to his family. Key image: the wife’s back as she gazes out into the rough and overwhelming sea. 

 

Wilful (sic) Peggy (08.25.1910): 3.5/5

A lord falls in love with wild peasant-girl Pickford, who has some problems fitting into high society. As in The School Teacher and the Waif and Mountaineer’s Honor, Pickford excels at playing a wild, untamed, feral girl. Key image: after violently fighting off a would-be suitor, Pickford’s garter breaks and she takes it off and throws it on the ground. When she goes inside, the lord runs up and grabs it greedily. 

 

When a Man Loves (01.05.1911): 3/5

A comic romance wherein irresistible Pickford is again desired by two men. Key image: the last shot which manages to strike a tone surprisingly close to the ending of Some Like it Hot. 

 

The Lonedale Operator (03.23.1911): 3.5/5

Immediate difference in how objects are arrayed on screen. We see Blanche Sweet in the foreground and a horse and carriage moving deep in the background, then later she walks toward the camera, coming very close and then walking past it. Early use of close-up (or, really, an insert) to reveal she has held off the thieves not with a gun but with a wrench. Key images: cross-cutting between thieves breaking into her office with train charging to the rescue. 

 

The Mender of Nets (02.15.1912): 4/5

A tragic romance, showing off Pickford’s acting chops, her expressions and body language expressing melancholy, love, horror, sorrow. Key image: the opening shot of serene Pickford posed in front of—and almost overwhelmed by—a rugged coastline and raging sea. 

 

A Lodging for the Night (05.09.1912): 3/5

Presents a kind of “magic white male” character who is able to cut across conventions in Mexico, solving father /daughter conflicts and buddying up with local authorities to thwart thieves. Key image: the look on the face of our ingénue when she sings to the moon to bring her a lover and the writer protagonist shows up. She takes a moment to thank the moon and sanctify the relationship. Innocent and beautiful. 

 

A Beast at Bay (05.27.1912): 3.5/5

Another cross-cutting exhibition, where boyfriend and police pursue, in train and car (!), a kidnapped Pickford. See a car do a small (but very real) jump over bump! Also benefits from the increased stakes of the boyfriend being humiliated at the beginning and needing to prove himself. Key image: Creepy first shot of an escaped prisoner emerging from some fluttery bushes.

 

The School Teacher and the Waif (06.27.1912): 3/5

A somewhat disturbing story about what happens when teenage Pickford is forced to go to school for the first time. She’s humiliated by the students and the teacher. Later the teacher saves her from the predatory behavior of a traveling fake-medicine salesman (and his blackface-wearing companion) and still later the teacher creepily kisses her hair. Also her father drunkenly locks her outside in the rain and later beats her with a strap. Key image: Pickford forced to wear a literal dunce cap in front of the class. 

 

Friends (09.23.1912): 5/5

Irresistible (sex worker?) Pickford is left by her prospector boyfriend and falls in love with and marries his friend. How will the boyfriend react to the news? Beautiful emphasis on depth of field and filled with bits of business far behind the main characters in the foreground, including people doing jigs, chopping wood etc. I love the scenes in the Old-West town, where all the townspeople appear to be drunk off their ass. Pickford reportedly says this movie contained her first close-up (with DWG saying “Come on, Billy [Bitzer], let's have some fun. Move the camera up and get closer to Mary.”) Key image: a spectacular shot at the edge of a wild river, with the river flowing deep into the distance. 

 

A Feud in the Kentucky Hills (10.02.1912): 5/5

Something was in the water in September/October of 1912. I can’t do better than Jerry’s review in 2020: “Before she became ‘America's Sweetheart," Mary Pickford was playing characters like “Harum-Scarum” [that’s her character’s name in The Mountaineer’s Honor, but she’s doing a similar bouncy thing here] and driving the peckerwoods wild until they start shooting each other. Featuring crisp on-location photography by Billy Bitzer.” This contemporaneous review is also interesting and accurate: “An unusually tense picture, even for a Biograph. In it, after a few scenes that introduce excellently suggested types of mountaineers and give a few glimpses of mountain life, the action becomes like a whirlwind. It is a one act picture of the almost complete annihilation of a mountain family. A love story softens it some; but it is a hard picture, almost brutal. It is for those who like their pictures fiery. It will surely please the gallery and also, we think, many who arc not in the gallery; but, while we feel sure it will be a success, we cannot commend it wholly; it is likely to offend very sensitive minds, because it is a blood-thirsty picture. - The Moving Picture World, October 19, 1912” Key images: The stirring battle/shoot-out scenes pointing forward to Birth of a Nation.

 

The Painted Lady (10.24.1912): 5/5

I notice that I gave this one 5/5 back in 2012, and I have to agree with my decade-ago self. This is a disturbing story of a traumatic, violent event that causes real madness. Key image: the sexy black shawl that “plain” Blanche Sweet once wore to a clandestine meeting with her only suitor and now will never take off again. 

 

The Musketeers of Pig Alley (10.31.1912): 4/5

Early gangsters. Key image: (this is an easy one) the startling close-to-camera, suspicious regard of the Snapper Kid. 

 

My Baby (11.14.1912): 3/5

Father’s feelings are hurt when his daughter leaves to get married without him and doesn’t talk to the couple for two years but finally realizes he wants to know more about their baby, his grandson. More sentimental than usual.  Key image: the father peering through a window like a burglar to see his grandson. 

 

The Mothering Heart (06.21.1913): 4/5

The other short I gave a 5/5 to in 2012. The child-death conclusion is indeed full of intense emotion. Lillian Gish’s first central performance for Biograph; she was 20. Key image: beautiful round shot (an iris, but of the whole frame) of grieving Lillian Gish whacking the rose bushes. 

 

And one full-length:

True Heart Susie (D.W. Griffith, 1919): 3/5

I honestly don’t know how in six years we went from the wild and exciting exteriors, stark beauty and directness of Pig Alley and Mountaineer’s Honor to this iris-shadowed, medium-shot, verbose interior thing. Gish loves a boy and sells the family cow to send him to college; thereafter she watches his life (and mistakes) pathetically from the sidelines. It occurs to me that the longer form allows a deeper emotional engagement with the characters and gives them time to change. Strangely, Gish’s emotional range in this movie only runs from barely pleased to very sad—she’s fun to watch but isn’t really given that much to do. 

 

 

Overall, I watched 81 2022 movies (so far). I didn’t love a single one of them! (which is rare), but I liked about 20 of them (more than usual). Alpha order. 

Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2022 

Babylon (Damien Chazelle)

Cha Cha Real Smooth (Cooper Raiff)

Cow (Andrea Arnold, released in the US in May, 2022)

Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)

A Hero (Asghar Farhadi, released in the US in January, 2022)

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Dean Fleishcer-Camp)

Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Pearl (Ti West)

Speak No Evil (Christian Tafdrup)

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)

Next Ten, which I enjoyed about as much

Amsterdam (David O. Russell)

The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)

The Fablemans (Steven Spielberg)

Funny Papers (Owen Kline)

Hellbender (Toby Poser, John Adams, Zelda Adams)

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre)

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (Anthony Fabian)

TÁR (Todd Field)

Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund) 

White Noise (Noah Baumbach)

 

And Top 8 TV seasons

Atlanta, seasons 3 & 4 (Donald Glover, etc.)

Barry, Season 3 (Alec Berg, Bill Hader)

Better Call Saul, season 6 (Vince Gilligan)

Euphoria, Season 2 (Sam Levinson)

Love Death + Robots, S3E2, “Bad Travelling” (David Fincher) 

The Offer (Michael Tolkin, Leslie Greif)

The Rehearsal, season 1 (Nathan Fielder) 

Winning Time, Season 1 (Max Borenstein, Jim Hecht)

 

 

 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.