* Shazam! Fury of the Gods (David F. Sandberg, 2023): 3/5

Teenagers with superpowers, monsters, dragons, unicorns, a labyrinth, little blood or exposition, a couple of potty words. Seemed like a winning formula to me, but the film underperformed. I’m actually liking these Marvel-ish movies more than in the past, just as audiences are liking them less. Shrug.

 

* The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Michael Jelenic, Aaron Horvath, 2023): 3/5

I have almost no memory of this. 

 

The Outwaters (Robbie Banfitch, 2023): 4/5

I have heard this described as part of a wave of art-horror movies, along with Skinamarink, that foreground the art over the horror. Still, this one, about a camping trip to the desert gone horrendously wrong, scared the living shit out of me. Apparently, your milage may vary.

 

Enys Men (Mark Jenkin, 2023): 2.5/5

A folk horror movie with precious little horror, just gradual mental disintegration, as memory and trauma are re-experienced after months of solitude on an island. We’ve been here before. 

 

Sick (John Hyams, 2023): 1.5/5

Classic post-Scream slasher. Not my favorite genre, with all its “women in peril and being stabbed” vibes. The film’s choice of antagonists, once revealed, disastrously ruins whatever fun we’ve been having so far. 

 

Armageddon Time (James Gray, 2022): 1.5/5

I watched this on the plane ride back from Hawaii, but even the oxygen-rich environment couldn’t make it anything more than an after-school special. Also, it’s really weird that it’s filled (very) non-Jewish actors Jewing it up. Anthony Hopkins? Anne Hathaway???

 

A Dog’s Life, 34 mins (Charlie Chaplin, 1918): 3/5

The best bit is when The Tramp has knocked out one of two thieves sitting across from one another at a table, but he’s hiding behind a curtain behind the unconscious one and has stuck his arms through the unconscious guy’s underarms. The business pretending to be the guy’s hands and arms amply demonstrates Chaplain’s genius. 

 

Possibly in Michigan, 12 mins (Cecelia Condit, 1983): 3.5/5

A funny, weird and horrific feminist musical on primitive video. 

 

Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005): 3.5/5

An entertaining, beautiful and extremely faithful adaptation of this book, which I just read. 

 

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann, 1927): 3/5

Would make a hell of a double bill with Germany Year Zero, just 21 years later.

 

My Friend Ivan Lapshin (Aleksey German, 1984): 2.5/5

A chaos of characters, situations and emotions—open ended and ambiguous episodes, enacted upon icy landscapes. Possibly we are following a collective of ex-soldiers who are now police? 

 

Khrustalyov, My Car (Aleksey German, 1998): 2/5

More interminable tracking shots through absurdity. We’re gliding through a village. One guy is singing, one twirling. One saying he’s a bed bug. One crashing a car into a tree. One kicking another. One climbing up and over a fence. It’s nonsense, and it goes on and on. At least this one has a kind of main character sometimes, a doctor who eventually oversees the death of Stalin himself, so I suppose we’ve discovered the root of all the ridiculous rot. 

 

Hard to be a God (Aleksey German, 2013): 2/5

Mud, shit, snot, blood, spit, toe jam, wine, urine, donkey dicks, vomit, dwarves, intestines. A tiresome series of steady cam shots creeping through chaotic and repulsive tableau. The idea—that our protagonist is an enlightened scientist from another planet who nevertheless has pledged to not interfere in the actions of these disgusting and cruel citizens—is a potent analogy to God but goes complexly unexplored in favor of disgusting sensation.

 

 

A Mostly Early Ernst Lubitsch Film Fest

The earliest film here, from 1925, is Lubitsch’s 47th film.

 

Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch, 1925): 3/5

A set of Three’s Company-like misunderstandings among the very rich, leading to a tragic and ironic sacrificial act by one of the main characters. Not a witty and enjoyable romantic comedy. 

 

The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927): 3/5

A witty and enjoyable romantic comedy. Loved the scene of their first kiss, on a large set with a sky full of stars and a hillside with white flowers blowing in the wind of feeling between them. 

 

Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931): 4/5

Admittedly everyone is playing it the “popinjay” dial turned up to 11. Still, it’s clever, and full of fun uses of music to underly the actions (like, say, violin pizzicato at each footstep up a stairs) almost like a cartoon. I realize this is “pre-code,” but I’m still shocked and delighted by all the fucking in this movie. In the first 5 minutes a woman enters a man’s apartment. We watch the hall lamp slowly burn down and out. Then the woman leaves. Cut to the man in bed in his pjs clearly enjoying post-coital bliss. Claudette Colbert, doing her best Betty Boop, is likely 27 at the time of filming, three years before It Happened One Night (1934). She was born in 1903 and died at 93 years of age in Barbados.

 

One Hour with You (Ernst Lubitsch, George Cukor, 1932): 2.5/5

An operetta of sorts, with songs but also lyrical passages where people speak dialogue in rhyme. It’s a failed/dead-ended genre, as filmmakers tried to figure out what the audience might want/accept from a sound movie. Surprisingly cynical: our protagonist doesn’t really want to have an affair, but does anyway, with a shrug: “What would you do?”

 

Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932): 2.5/5

Not a Lubitsch, but it borrows his operetta genre, his two stars (Maurice Chevalier and sex-pot Jeanette MacDonald) and tone from One Hour with You. 

 

Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch, 1946): 3.5/5

A witty script and a funny performance by Jennifer Jones make this a delight. Gently skewers pretension both upstairs, downstairs and among the intelligentsia.

 

 

Erich von Stroheim Film Fest

A big differences between Stroheim and Lubitsch is that Lubitsch characters fuck but Stroheim characters FUUUUCK. What’s remarkable about Stroheim’s work is its scale and ambition. What’s difficult about it is its turgidness, its slowness, each moment a potential reverie. What’s odd about it is its self-criticism. Stroheim himself consistently portrays a shallow, sadistic, weak, unlikeable, officious liar with false and grandiose pretentious of nobility, all of which VS himself demonstrated in spades. "And this is why Stroheim is the most important, more important than Griffith or Ford...that everything you show is both magnificent and the opposite must be felt.” - Jean-Marie Straub

 

Blind Husbands (Erich von Stroheim, 1919): 4.5/5

Stroheim takes such obvious and simple pleasure in presenting himself as a real asshole. As always, he here plays a seduction machine with a crisp uniform—mutually eye-fucking all on-screen females, especially vulnerable maids and waitresses. He’s an Atheist to boot: “To me,” he retorts to all the talk of the Spirit of the Mountain, “mountains are lifeless rocks. My pleasure has always been to master them.” Witness as two men free-climb a giant phallus (thrillingly) while the woman they both “love” sits in her dark room at the inn. 

 

Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim, 1922): 3.5/5

Stroheim portrays a con man in Monaco who smokes cigarettes fully 10 inches long and pretends to be a nobleman in order to seduce a young American. At one point, he manipulates his maid (whom he has previously seduced and promised to marry) until she begs him to accept the little money she has carefully saved up. 

 

The Merry Widow (Erich von Stroheim, 1925): 5/5

The director credit reads “Personally Directed by,” and he’s not kidding. Lingering shots of shiny boots, an under-the-table footsie-cam, caviar served from a giant bloc of ice, blindfolded musicians in the prince’s apartment, and lots of other elaborate production design as well as sadistic and fetishistic behavior. In both this movie and Lubitsch’s The Student Prince, a prince falls in love with a commoner and is then forced to break off the engagement because of princely duty. In Lubitsch the girl meekly and tragically accepts her fate, but here instead she becomes rich then returns to the prince as a kind of sadomasochistic avenging angel. To Jerry’s point from August 17 of 2021, the size and complexity of the sets and crowds—as well as the emotions—makes Stroheim’s version a comparatively tough sell for the studios. 

 

The Wedding March (Erich von Stroheim, 1928): 4/5

The director credit reads: “In its entirety an Erich von Stroheim creation.” Compared to the contemporaneous work of some of Stroheim’s peers (I’m thinking primarily of D.W. Griffith or Lubitsch), the dramaturgy here is slow. Scenes are long and contain way more redundant shot/reverse shots than is typical. On the other hand, with this technique he often finds eddies of unusual beauty and ugliness. During the meet-cute, our protagonist (possibly) intentionally injures Fay Wray just so he can go visit her in the hospital to begin his seduction. And soon after we have a gorgeous and transcendent scene where he seduces Wray under a glowing white apple tree with blossoms falling around them like burning snow. 

 

 

Robert Siodmak Film Fest

Mostly twisty, glittering, deep-focused, Wellsian/Kubrickian noirs.

 

People on Sunday (Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann, 1930): 3/5

Combines the style of a poetic documentary such as Berlin: Symphony of a Great City with a sparse narrative in very naturalistic style, using real people and a pseudo-Bressonian lack of affect, plus sequences that serve no purpose other than to be a brief reverie of beauty. Malick and the Renoir of A Day in the Country are fellow travelers. Siodmak’s 1st feature.

 

Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak, 1944): 4.5/5

It’s a cliche but true that what is not shown can be more powerful than what is (amply demonstrated in Succession, S3 E3 as well). For example, as the police wheel away his dead wife, the camera moves along in the place where the body would be, and our protagonist looks at “us” and says with anguish: “Look what they’re doing. Her hair along the floor.” Wow. Then later, when his verdict is being read, we are instead focused on a woman in the audience choking on an apple and we don’t even hear the words guilty or not guilty. In the last hour, Ella Wallace becomes our tenacious (and stunning) detective protagonist. She is made to innocently cuddle up with the man we know to be the killer—and is put through multiple woman-in-peril sequences, including a stark and soundless showdown in a locked, white apartment. Siodmak’s 28th feature in 14 years.

 

The Suspect (Robert Siodmak, 1944): 3/5

Hard to think of a more sympathetic double-murderer in the history of cinema. Charles Laughton is, of course, a great pleasure to watch. Elements of Crime and Punishment and Rope. 

 

The Killers, rw (Robert Siodmak, 1946): 4/5

Siodmak gets the short story down to 13 minutes, stepping around the N-word, but of course adds another hour and a half of backstory—comprised of Citizen Kane-ish skipping backwards and forwards in the Swede’s life, circling ever closer to the moment where he “did a bad thing.” Includes boxing, poker, piano-singing parties, and a heist depicted in one long and multilevel tracking shot. However, its Byzantine narrative strategy eventually exhausts and can only fully satisfy the very clever (i.e., me in my 20s). I don’t love Edmund O’Brien, “insurance detective,” but here he is in The Wild Bunch. 

The Killers, 19 mins (Andrei Tarkovsky, Aleksandr Gordon, 1956): 3.5/5

They faithfully shoot the short story as if it’s a script, which: good idea. The story is an ur-text for all the existential, dead-eyed, derby wearing killers that would soak through noir. This version films it about as well as it could be done, with all the narrative concision of the story itself. 

 

Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949): 3.5/5

Ya like a heist, a femme trés fatale, choice footage of the Angel’s Flight area of downtown L.A., and lotsa voiceover about fate? Then have I got a movie for you. Lancaster, Yvonne DeCarlo and Dan Deryea (giving off serious James-Spader-in-the-80s vibes) are all good. Soderbergh remade this as The Underneath (leading to his first career-doubting breakdown). Here's (the great) Deryea:

 

Victor Sjöström Film Fest

Each of these feels very different from one another, but whether it’s a woman’s picture, an action movie, a lovers-on-the-run, or a literary adaptation, there is an intensity, a swiftness, and a pictural power and clarity.

 

Ingeborg Holm (Victor Sjöström, 1913): 3.5/5

No close-ups but still manages to be among the saddest and grimmest movies I’ve ever seen. The 20-minute passage where Ingeborg has to give away her children to foster homes, one by one, crying and waving: whew! Bergman is famously indebted to Sjöström (using him as an actor twice, including as the lead in Wild Strawberries), but this movie is much closer to Lars Von Trier's work, where he runs a woman through a grinder.

 

A Man There Was (Victor Sjöström, 1917): 4/5

An action movie, essentially, where our protagonist is fighting forces bigger than himself—not psychologically deep. Still the second half of the movie contains a tremendous emotional gut punch, real madness, and a harrowing action sequence on rough water. The acting in this sequence makes the connection between the madness of man and the madness of the sea. 

 

The Outlaw and his Wife (Victor Sjöström, 1918): 3.5/5

“The only law for them was their love.” A beautiful lovers-on-the-run movie. And of course, that’s a death trip, baby. The cliffs and waterfalls that make up the lovers’ garden of Eden period favorably compare to the tree house sequence in Badlands.

 

The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926): 5/5

Sjöström comes to America and becomes “Victor Seastrom.” The movie he makes is primal. When our lovers are falling in love, Dimmesdale is posed behind a hedge and Prynne appears to be leaning down to embrace the plants/earth themselves. When she tells him she is married, he is posed over the fireplace, flames licking his face. When he flees and she belatedly runs outside to stop him: nothing but snow. The emotional heart of the story is the public castigation when Prynne refuses to denounce Dimmesdale (no matter how he begs to be exposed), which here is played as a Calvary. The performances are thrilling, especially Gish, who is very still and very fierce. 

 

 Cocaine Bear (Elizabeth Banks, 2023): 0.5/5

Narcos meets Jackass. If this movie had been released on April 1st I might have understood the joke. So sad that it's Ray Liotta's final movie.

 A Man Called Otto (Marc Forster, 2022): 1/5

The 3 worst movie tropes/tendencies:

1. let’s throw everything at you to try to make you cry- no matter how undeserved it is.

2. the “let’s incorporate social media into this movie”

3. clear product placement

This movie nails all three and is a complete hack-y, sitcom-y mess.

 Double Suicide (Masahiro Shinoda, 1969): 2/5

Curious stuff is going on with form in this film, with everything looking intentionally stage bound, down to "puppeteers" in black clothing placing props and moving sets around, even positioning the characters at certain points. While that was a cool wrinkle, I never got terribly invested in this Japanese melodrama about a merchant in love with a courtesan, the two of whom eventually perform the act of the title.

 Devi (Satyajit Ray, 1960): 3.5/5

Not a whole lot to say that isn't obvious: a striking condemnation of religion and patriarchy (and, more interestingly, their intersection) that conveys its points directly and bluntly, but with thoughtfulness and compassion for its subjects.

 A Heart in Winter (Claude Sautet, 1992): 3/5

My critical opinion is that Emmanuelle Beart deserves better than these two dumbass men. Not a great film, but I still found myself engaged by it, its clever subversion of the love triangle dynamic and its low key charm.

 La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette, 1991): 2.5/5

A 4-hour French film praised to high heaven by most critics. A middle-aged painter has not painted in a decade after abandoning a portrait of his lover. Now a new woman has reinvigorated his artistic inclination, but the relationship between artist and model soon turns complex. I would have loved this film in my early 20's. But now I'm very tired of the artist depicted as a tortured genius that must be catered to, and have developed an almost reflexive repulsion for obfuscation, and boy, this plays all the notes.

 Bruno Reidal: Confessions of a Murderer (Vincent Le Port, 2021): 3/5

Adapting the sinister true story of a young seminarian peasant who beheaded a child in Cantal, France, during the first years of the 20th century, BRUNO REIDAL sticks to the point of view of the murderer in an attempt to unravel the mystery behind this elusive and troubled personality, both a mistreated young boy, apparently discreet and puny, and a repressed monster.

Now I know the reason why there is a specific word for the back of the neck in French.

 Law and Order (Frederick Wiseman, 1969): 3.5/5

A vital piece of documentary history, both as an early example of the power of capturing acts of police brutality on video, and as an important stepping stone in the development of a key director's signature aesthetic.

Je t'aime moi non plus (Serge Gainsbourg, 1976): 1/5

This movie in a nutshell:

1. Jane Birkin dresses as a boy. She meets a gay man Joe Dallesandro who's with his boyfriend and they hook up.

2. Gerard Depardieu has a cameo and he shows up randomly from time to time and he's riding a white horse for no reason.

Total garbage.

 Mrs. Hyde (Serge Bozon, 2017): 1/5

A science fiction film of sorts, since it postulates a universe in which Isabelle Huppert is treated not like a goddess walking among us, but as a mousy milquetoast physics teacher who is despised by her inner-city high school students. Nonsensical, pointless, and the tone is too light to be serious but not funny enough to be comic.

 Young Ahmed (The Dardennes, 2019): 3/5

At its worst, it's a slight film about a culture that its filmmakers are pretty clearly not a part of. At its best, it's yet another Dardenne film, full of handheld camera work, "natural" performances and a trademarked abrupt ending. So, yeah, I guess I liked it.

 Chris Rock: Selective Outrage (Joel Gallen, 2023): 2.5/5

Chris loves his repetitive hooks.

Chris LOVES his repetitive hooks.

Most of this was pretty standard Rock material that was fairly funny. I laughed several times, although I’ve seen better sets. As for the Will Smith stuff, I was expecting far worse. Nothing particularly hilarious, but I guess he should get to vent about it once.

Neptune Frost (Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman, 2021): 3/5

Fascinating and densely layered dreamscape sci-fi musical from Rwanda that's equal parts perplexing and intoxicating. Powered by a pounding, churning electronic soundtrack - there's a lot going on, probably some points I missed, but the whole thing pulses with a dream logic that feels right, and a sense of potentiality that's striking and vital.

 Moon, 66 Questions (Jacqueline Lentzou, 2021): 2/5

One of those films that mimics the pain and tedium of passing time with such grim verisimilitude that watching becomes painful and tedious. Total film festival filler.

A Bread Factory: Part One (Patrick Wang, 2018): 3/5

Altman meets Parks and Rec. Sincere and warm, its low budget aesthetic charms probably more for those who have worked in community theaters. 

A Bread Factory: Part Two (Patrick Wang, 2018): 2/5

Why did Wang feel the need to tack on an additional two hours? Contains instances of interesting flair (such as spontaneous tap dancing and jokey musical numbers) that are stretched out far too long or revisited with little purpose. Without the impending approval of the competing arts space that drives the first part, A Bread Factory loses what little steam it had.

All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony, 2021): 3/5

A look at the present and historic role of imaging/perception as an incredibly influential, and violent, force in science, military/policing, and documentary filmmaking itself. One part Adam Curtis-esque cine-essay about filming and seeing. One part structural experiment in the vein of Koyaanisqatsi. And best of all - one part accidental character study of two of the most familiar yet strikingly, uniquely evil conservative capitalists and the companies that make them (or at least they hope will make them) rich. The film occasionally falters under the weight of its ambition, its all encompassing societal and philosophical scope causing the film to feel disjointed. But as an argument against taking the filmed process at face value, and rethinking the ways in which we source information from content, it's an effective doc that can teach you something as well.

The Green Years (Paulo Rocha, 1963): 3/5

My first Paulo Rocha film, a debut that has all the qualities of the cinematic golden age it was made in. The finale shouldn’t be as shocking as it is but we’ve been gaslit by so many films about the redemptive power of love and aggrieved masculinity, it is. Truth doesn’t age.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021): 2/5

Emotionally bland, uninteresting characters with trivial problems and some shoddy dialogue. Hamaguchi tries hard to be Rohmer but fails miserably.

This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, 2019): 3.5/5

A tale of the clash between the old and the new, modernity versus tradition, told in the measured pace of a tone poem. The cinematography here is exceptional, and the experience created is mesmerizing, almost hypnotic at times, absorbing you into its rhythms in a manner akin to slow cinema. And all of this is held together by a quietly resilient performance from Mary Twala as a woman beset by the ravages of time and plagued by immeasurable grief.

 

* 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.