Linoleum (Colin West, 2023): 2/5

An adolescent and dumb script slams together Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jones, Donnie Darko, Garden State. I prayed for it to be over, despite its short length, but also got pretty emotional once the film revealed all—and hated myself in the morning. 

 

No One Will Save You (Brian Duffield, 2023): 2.5/5

I really enjoyed Spontaneous, the other movie by this writer/director, but the best thing about this sci-fi horror film is its commitment to having no dialogue whatsoever. In theory, this is something I would love, and I did! But the action was uninspired, and I did have some questions about the narrative that certainly could have been cleared up with a couple of brief sentences exchanged between characters.

 

Chelsea Girls, 3h30m (Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey, 1966): 3/5

Gummo (Harmony Korine, 1997): 3/5

Killing time with trashy misfits. I think what the audience is feeling here (or wanting to feel) is simply an encounter with the real, in all its grotesque boredom. Which makes me think about a third title…

Champions (Bobby Farrelly, 2023): 3/5

The Bad News Bears, but basketball and starring developmentally disabled young people. I always enjoy developmentally disabled performers. Their line-readings are often unstable, and they’re not exactly acting—but rather, at best, being themselves, being real. Indeed, isn’t that what all the best acting is (and other profound thoughts about documentary vs. fiction).

 

The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Jean Renoir, 1936): 3/5

Strange structure. For 98% of the film, it’s just the story of a guy writing western tall tales for a magazine and falling in love. Then in the last 8 minutes, out of nowhere, he is driven to a crime. The end. 

 

French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1955): 3/5

A broad, colorful and silly bonbon packed with singing, dancing, light romance, charming sets recreating a dream Montmartre, and Jean Gabin acting out the very definition of savior faire. It’s full of unusual, surprisingly adult emotional moments. Still, the glib and cartoonish surface is quite a turn-off. Ends with 20 minutes of performance within the Moulin Rouge, which I was little amused by.  

 

The Devil, Probably (Robert Bresson, 1974): 3/5

Existential French hippies, full of anhedonia. “I don’t want to die. I hate life, but I also hate death. I find it appalling.” This is so clearly in the Bresson/Schrader wheelhouse—as if the priest from First Reformed had all the suicidal ideation and none of the lust or environmental activism.

 

Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1967): 3.5/5

Ridiculously entertaining and well-paced tale featuring a series of escalating sword fights, one on one, one on six, whatever. Lots of expert bad guys and good guys (including a hot, bad-ass woman). Stillness within fights reminds one of—and is possibly influenced by?—Leone. 

 

Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003): 3/5

If Dragon Inn is one of Taiwan’s great action movies, Goodbye Dragon Inn is one of its great in-action movies. The cruising men (and one handicapped woman) shuffle through the aisles, hallways, balconies and bathrooms of a rundown movie palace playing King Hu’s Dragon Inn. They seem like ghosts, haunting the theatre and perhaps the film itself—extending the metaphor to include all of us spectators, peering passively at films all day and night. No matter how much you lust after them, they just stand there, smoking their cigarettes. Only three lines of dialogue but each of them nails the themes of the film. Contrasts between the two Dragon Inn films are relevant: teamwork v. solitude, day v. night, fast v. slow, triumphant v. elegiac.

 

Rififi, rw? (Jules Dassin, 1955): 3.5/5

We are told (in song) the title means “rough and tumble,” and indeed this heist movie lacks the elegance and savior faire of the Oceans movies (for example). These are petty, sweaty and mean people. In fact, with its street photography and its tragic irony, this has a lot more in common with The Killing. 

  

Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998): 3/5

Middlebrow story of an older lady accompanying a recently orphaned nine-year-old boy to find his estranged father. Are Hou Hsiao-hsien movies (and other recent slow cinema) turning me off of routine plot beats?

 

Mother and Son, 1h5m (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1997): 4/5

Intimate and surprisingly sensual portrait of a son taking care of his dying mother. Distorted lenses and vivid colors make for an unusual, artificial, storybook-like and often ravishingly beautiful experience. Hypnotic and hallucinatory. 

 

Stars in My Crown (Jacques Tourneur, 1950): 4/5

Really the story of a whole town, with four or five narrative threads playing out in a proto-Altman, Winesburg Ohio way. A preacher and a doctor are slight rivals in a good-hearted small town with occasional greed and racism. Sob sob sob at the beautiful sincerity about the value of community at the climax, akin to the bank speech at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. 

 

Xala (Ousmane Sembène, 1975): 2.5/5

Begins with satiric scene where African businessmen kick out the French off the board of the African national bank with a speech about the African future of Africa—but the French immediately give each of the businessmen a suitcase of cash and remain standing in the back of the room. The movie proceeds to follow one of the businessmen’s marriage to his third wife (a status symbol) and subsequent impotence. A cure for the impotence is pursued at such length that one forgets the first scene until the final scene where it comes around again. In the end, the whole film just comes down to the first and last scene—with quite a bit of tonally shaky and questionably essential material between.  

 

L’Amour Fou, 4h12m (Jacques Rivette, 1969): 1.5/5

A young, callow theatre director is in the middle of rehearsals for a production of Racine (basically the French equivalent of Shakespeare), but his girlfriend feels neglected, bored and empty and occasionally expresses suicidal and murderous thoughts. There’s some fun in connecting this drama to that of the play that is being rehearsed, but mostly it’s a long, long slog. 

 

Abraham’s Valley, 3h32m (Manoel de Oliveira, 1993): 1.5/5

Ema grows up, gets married, takes lovers, and engages in tedious, self-satisfied philosophic and poetic conversations full of epigrams that remain completely out of my grasp. Here’s an example from the narration: “Ema had the extraordinary power to make a radiant desire run like a bush fire over corpses of legendary virility, stubborn virility.” Uh huh. It’s based on a book by Portuguese writer Agustina Bessa-Luís, whose work (which Oliveira adapted four times) is described this way: “notions of time and space become vague, and planes of reality flow together, dimming the sense of a logical order of events.” Uh huh.

 

The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965): 4.5/5

The first hour and a half is perfectly perfect perfection. The last hour is a completely different film, often beautiful and gripping but slower, more serious, more internal. Actual sex and violence is heavily implied. It’s a kids movie! 

 

Il Grido (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1957): 3/5

A man’s wife leaves him, and he begins to wander from town to town, job to job, girl to girl, never finding anything of value. Five Easy Pieces vibes, but even more mud, fog and meaninglessness.

 

Jurassic Park, rw (Steven Spielberg, 1993): 4.5/5

More brutal than a typical modern action movie (cow v. dinosaur is especially upsetting, then and now) and completely effective, with one action set piece after another, cascading. Effects still mostly good due to high practical content. 

The Last Run (Richard Fleischer, 1971): 3/5

George C. Scott takes one last gig as a getaway driver—and it’s a death trip, baby! 

 

The New Centurions (Richard Fleischer, 1972): 3.5/5

An L.A. cop story, with the verisimilitude that Joseph Wambaugh brings to the table, but shaggy and in an episodic CHiPs mode (but a billion times more cynical and suicide-ish). It even features a young Eric Estrada, but the real draws are George C. Scott and Stacy Keach, both excellent. 

 

Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975): 4/5

One of the most lurid and upsetting movies I’ve ever seen—and, taken on its surface, one of the most racist. The slaveowner protagonists spend most of the movie enacting the most degrading slave dramas on the black characters, reminding me of 12 Years a Slave or even Salo at times. It takes a shocking amount time for any of the black characters to demonstrate a personality or a desire for agency. The second half of Django Unchained seems to be an explicit corrective.

 

Navajo Joe (Sergio Corbucci, 1966): 3.5/5

Outstanding double feature with Mandingo, both very much on the side of their non-white characters while still prominently featuring a lot of upsetting racism (among the characters coded as bad). I can’t help but appreciate and admire how front and center the confrontation and discussion of the reality of actual horrible racism is (it’s just the depiction that is rough). This film is the one Burt Reynolds made with the second-best spaghetti Western director as his TV work was drying up, just like Rick Dalton! And Reynolds is great here, in a feral, physical and acrobatic performance.

 

The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1967): 4/5

The best non-Leone spaghetti western I’ve seen (which admittedly isn’t saying much). Clever plot has Lee Van Cleef—grey-chest-haired but steely eyed—pursuing a bandit accused of a horrific crime (but innocent). The gag is that Van Cleef keeps catching him (like five times or more) but the smart and likable bandit keeps escaping and otherwise wriggling out of it. Traditionally entertaining. 

 

Coogan’s Bluff (Don Siegel, 1968): 2/5

Almost no police work is on display here. Mostly it’s a grotesque, comic fish out of water where a rapey/traditional-values Arizona lawman is confronted with a bunch of acid-soaked New York hippies. Whoever wins, we lose. 

 

 

Hou Hsiao-hsien Film Fest

Hou’s movies don’t really have plots, whether they take place over a summer or over most of a century. Nor do they have much non-diegetic music nor real closeups. They can feel more like flipping through a book of photos, but the photos are complicated and, in their own way, emotional (like looking at emotion through a telescope). His most revered work (and subsequently the ones I had seen before this deep dive, here represented just by titles and previous score) are his most glacial, ponderous and monotonous. But his early works are more traditionally eventful, and his 2000s run beginning with Millennium Mambo are gorgeous and modern-feeling films about young people—and a great pleasure. Nothing from Hou since 2015, but Letterboxd includes this description of an upcoming, undated) project called Shulan River: “Taking place in modern-day Taipei, Hou Hsiao-Hsien focuses on a lonely river goddess whose waterways have now been covered by modern roadways.” I’m in.

 

The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983): 3/5

Hou called this his “first real film” (it was his fourth), and indeed it already pokes at Hou’s lifelong interests in rural vs. urban life, the passage of time, and how our lives are shaped by the larger-world events we are caught up in. It was also the first of his films written by Chu Tien-wen (a woman), who will write or co-write nearly all of the rest of Hou’s works. The first half hour is like Fellini’s I Vitelloni, with four restless post-high-schoolers fighting, gambling and drinking in a tiny fishing island off Taiwan. Then they decide to move to the mainland, where they each pursue different paths. The last half hour is a romance involving the most thoughtful of the lads, until the girl moves to Taipei—setting the Hou archetype for Taipei representing a different, dreamed of, life. 

 

The Sandwich Man (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983): 3/5

Hou directed the first part of this triptych of three separate stories set in Taiwan in the 60s; his section is entitled “The Son’s Big Doll." It’s a simple, almost neorealistic story of a young father who must dress up as a clown and wear a sandwich board to earn his money. Indeed, it’s hard to make money and retain one’s dignity. 

 

A Summer at Grandpa’s (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1984): 4/5

Anecdotal but still compelling thanks to plenty of incident, a gentle tone, and serene landscapes. A small boy and his little sister visit the country and are confronted with a world that is more complex than previously imagined—and which they don’t really quite understand or have agency in—including a couple of inconvenient pregnancies, developmentally disabled young people, crime and, uh, hemorrhoids. Similarities to My Neighbor Totoro, including setting, tone, sick mother and the ages of the children, can’t be a complete coincidence. 

 

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

 

Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986): 3.5/5

A boy and girl growing up in a mine town kinda like each other. They both move to Taipei to get nothing jobs, and their affection grows. But when he’s drafted, she marries a postman. As is typical with Hou, the characters are always being told by older people how much better they have it now, but in all times, the fates of these characters remain determined by the movements of history that flows around them. 

 

Daughter of the Nile (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1987): 3.5/5

Like the story of The Godfather if Connie was our protagonist. Her brother and husband are both criminals, increasingly, then whacked. As in Mean Street’s our protagonist is kind of a peeper, the drama unfolding just beyond her ken. Narratively, it’s a bit outside—and merely in the current of—the essential drama of the situation. Relatively light in tone. 

 

A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989): 2.5/5

The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1993): 3/5

 

Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1995): 3/5

The final film in Hou’s “Taiwan Trilogy,” along with the above titles. In a way this is a microcosm of Hou’s entire project—contrasting the sacrifices and hardships of Taiwanese young people in the past century with the idleness and narcissism of today’s young people, wasting their lives on trivialities. On the other hand, the modern characters and scenes are so much more vibrant and interesting than those in the past, which Hou shoots in an ugly, grey-green monotone. 

 

Goodbye South Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1996): 3.5/5

A small-time hood and businessman pulls one job involving 3,000 pigs but mostly gambles and hangs out, occasionally dreaming about moving to Shanghai and opening a restaurant. Reminds, again, of Mean Streets, right down to the wild-card younger character, here named Flathead or Flatty.  

 

Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998): 2.5/5

 

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001): 4/5

A beautiful, narcissistic young couple go to clubs, have sex, do drugs, fight—to a techno beat. Jaw-dropping compositions and colors, especially blues and oranges. Our first encounter with the ravishing Shu Qi, Hou’s later-day muse who also stars in Three Times and The Assassin.

 

Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003): 5/5

Simple half-story (she’s pregnant) beautifully told, featuring lots of long, long hang-out scenes over meals, etc., highlighting group dynamics and ensemble performances. It’s set in Japan and is supposedly a tribute to Ozu. Indeed, family dynamics are gracefully portrayed, and our protagonist is a daughter in relationship with her (here amazingly silent) father—not to mention all the trains. But what Hou really gets right about Ozu is his tranquility. 

 

Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005): 4/5

Three stories: one in the 60s, one in the 1910s, and one set in the “present”—each told referencing typical kinds of “love” stories of the time as well as the film styles of the time (the 1910 story is silent (except for music), with intertitles). There’s more vibe than dialogue, so it’s all about the graceful visual storytelling—with a tendency for reverie or to just hunker down and calmly watch how all the characters interact. And then there’s those next-level visuals: The dark green pool table, her sea green pants and olive checked shirt, the lime green sliding doors, the plants seen through the window.

 

Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2007): 4.5/5

 

The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2015): 2.5/5

I have no idea who anyone is in this movie nor why anyone acts the way they do. The colors are pretty, but I have the same problem with this movie that I do with Hou’s much-lauded Taiwan Trilogy: once the film decides it’s just about the display of the very limited behavior allowed by custom, it feels stuffy and dead to me.

 

 

 The Adults (Dustin Guy Defa, 2023): 3/5

Having siblings as an adult is really weird. You used to grow up together. As kids you share so many experiences, create your own little games, have secrets, look up to each other, shape each other as a person. But as soon as you become an adult to find your own way of life this intense connection quickly disappears. Now you only see them maybe once a year, rarely text or talk, and although you still love them you don't even really know them anymore. And whenever you do get back together it is so hard to share your actual feelings and problems. Instead you just start acting like the goofballs you were as little kids. You just stop being that person you have become.

THE ADULTS perfectly brings that experience to the big screen, creating funny, but also cringey and emotionally heartbreaking scenes that hit almost a little too close to home. Seeing those fictional characters makes you think about your own siblings. Maybe you should call them some time. Wonderfully gentle, autumnal US indie about three siblings maneuvering adulthood and letting go of past slights. Perfectly cast.

Cobweb (Samuel Bodin, 2023): 1/5

Like cobwebs: full of holes, thin, and more clichéd than scary.

Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito, 2020): 3/5

Though her life generated voluminous literature, most people ignore the fact that iconic deaf-blind author Helen Keller was one of the most passionate socialist advocates of her time. John Gianvito resurrects Keller's radical views, which have been largely suppressed or sanitized over the years. In HER SOCIALIST SMILE, he researches how, beginning in her early 30s, the pioneer leftist thinker fervently and eloquently spoke out on behalf of many progressive causes, from the rights of women and the disabled, to international socialism and world peace. Gianvito combines onscreen text taken from her most memorable public appearances, recorded voiceover by politically engaged poet Carolyn Forche, and quiet images of nature, creating another unique blend of activism, historical analysis and poetry. Reminding us that leftist struggles are inseparable from disability advocacy, Keller's words remain remarkably pertinent today.

rewatched Flirting with Disaster (David O. Russel, 1996): 3/5

Good old Ben Stiller! Always the most neurotic and unlikable one.

Also, I wanna be friends with the Richard Jenkins/Josh Brolin FBI power couple so bad.

Inventing the Abbotts (Pat O'Conner, 1997): 2/5

A post-war tale of young love crossing class boundaries, set in a patriarchal all-white, all-heterosexual 50’s where everyone looks like models. It’s almost as horrendous as it sounds, as taken straight from some nostalgic postcard of a time that never was. The plot doesn’t engage, the direction is uninspired, and the premise ideologically suspect and conservative. The film’s only selling point seems to be that it’s full of pretty people. And well, they are very pretty, I’ll give the film that. Too bad that the only one who impresses not only with looks but also with her acting (Jennifer Connelly) disappears halfway through, leaving the rest of the cast just as confused as the narrative is meandering.

The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997): 3/5

Like EXOTICA in its carefully concocted structure, Atom Egoyan plays doctor once again, surgically incising a straightforward throughline and splicing it meticulously back together non chronologically to produce an entirely different narrative that becomes not so much about the tragedy of losing someone, but the anguish of living without them (there’s a small, but very clear distinction). The story is fed to us little by little, fragmented not for showmanship, but with a purpose; the precise sequencing does not follow Time, but Emotion—it’s not so much about an accident as it is about coping with things we cannot change, for better or for worse. There’s a staggering depth to THE SWEET HEREAFTER, a film that continues to peel itself back like an onion, layer by layer, only there’s no real core to grab onto in the end; the “resolution” is murky at best, but not in a pompously evasive way, rather it mimics true sentiment in that there’s no clear-cut right-or-wrong way to handle such hefty baggage.

The Starling Girl (Laurel Parmet, 2023): 2.5/5

A perfectly adequate indie coming-of-age drama centered around a daughter stuck navigating the religious zealotry and hypocrisy of her own religious morality. It places a special emphasis on escaping that community and the perils of staying.

It’s a sturdy movie, but suffers from hitting too many of the same beats in too similar a way as a hundred other movies just like it.

rewatched The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda, 2000): 3.5/5

Could be considered a self-portrait, even though Varda never exposes herself as a gleaner per se. She becomes a gleaner of images, video, and experiences.

La Cienaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001): 2.5/5

I'm sorry, this just didn't work for me. Abstractly, I get it -- careful and exact observation, check. Organizing metaphor, check. I'm even down with the Chekhov comparisons, up to a point. But the inert, apathetic deadness of all these characters just left me inert, apathetic and half-dead; the happiest moment of my viewing was when I realized it was a half hour shorter than I expected.

The Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955): 3/5

Fundamentally a functional b-movie crime film, The Big Combo is elevated by its style. The sultry jazz score, the inky visuals, razor sharp dialogue and measured direction. On the other hand, the plot lacks some credibility and Cornel Wilde is typically one dimensional.

Insidious: The Red Door (Patrick Wilson, 2023): 1/5

Doesn't deserve a scathing review from me, because nothing happens in this movie to warrant it. In fact, nothing really happens in this film at all. 107 minutes are spent wallowing from scene to scene with surface level explorations of a fragmented father-son relationship and the trauma from previous installments. This repetitive plot jump-scare reliant ass franchise has finally ended which means at last the true evil has been defeated.

Lost River (Ryan Gosling, 2014): 2.5/5

Ryan Gosling in his directorial debut shows an aptitude for constructing moody imagery and soundscapes, but I had a hard time following the narrative, which at times seemed to disappear in a daze. Like a pilfered, Fabergé egg, it is a sight to behold but completely hollow beneath its bejeweled veneer. Favorite aspect of the film is easily that luscious Chromatic score.

House by the River (Fritz Lang, 1950): 3/5

In spite of being a part of Fritz Lang's fascinating shift from Nietzschean supermen to everyman protagonists suddenly pitted in a situation of life and death, House By the River is a mere exercise for him. He makes little use of the limited abilities of the cast, the setting, the story and even lets the film fly with a particularly shabby ending. The film remains enjoyable for the most part as a thriller about an unhinged central character, a guilt- consumed accomplice, a terrible crime, and the symbolic shift of fate caused by the nearby river.

On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981): 2.5/5

Sort of works as an elegy of Old Hollywood. Two of its biggest stars get one last chance to dominate the screen and they do. It's got lots of eye-rolling moments to spare but luckily it's still got a few scenes of genuine warmth and earned sentimentality to go along with it. The actors featured in the film are some of the finest on screen talents of the 20th century, it's just too bad they couldn't find a director capable of matching their talents.

One thing that really irritates me about On Golden Pond is that it contains an overly orchestrated score that underscores every emotion on screen to the point of parody.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton, 2007): 3/5

Musical about baking pies and slaughtering the cast of Harry Potter.

 

Barbenheimer

Barbie and O both feature protagonists who are disconcerted by their own centrality to their own universe—and tormented by their calling to potentially blow it up. But let’s also throw Asteroid City into this discussion—another very constructed universe where (like Barbie) thick layers of artificiality mask strong and direct emotions and satire. All three are seemingly Covid movies, with people in isolation/quarantine. And Asteroid City features the atomic bomb on the way to the idea that maybe everything everyone does in the whole movie (as in Barbie and in the second half of Oppenheimer especially) is just to distract them from the fact of the bomb/death.

 

Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023): 3.5/5

The colors, set design and basic exuberance are whatever for me, but the satire of the patriarchy is completely on point. And as a man who adores the Godfather and has shown it to various women, has been learning French for a decade, and plays acoustic guitar, this movie made me feel seen. 

 

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023): 3.5/5

Excellent acting at every level, but the movie … ahem … climaxes with the first A-bomb explosion and is quite flaccid afterwards. Fails to meaningful engage with the central question of Oppy’s life, which is “Did he do the right thing in developing this bomb.” The final third could have spent some time illuminating the ethical and moral factors/factions in play but instead is more interested in legacy. In an otherwise blameless universe, Oppy is singled out because he dares to ask aloud, “Hey, does anyone else think about death?”

 

Elemental (Peter Sohn, 2023): 3/5

The storytelling is clunky and amateurish, but the Romeo and Juliet story works once again (of course)—and after much eye rolling, the final act was full of near-sobs from both Jack and me. 

 

They Cloned Tyrone (Juel Taylor, 2023): 3/5

A funny and loose first half (where Boyega and Foxx shine) is swallowed up by a bombastic second half. Still, all-around a fun head trip.

 

How to Blow up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber, 2022): 2/5

A group of lovable moppets on an Ocean-11 project. Colorful backstories abound. Like Guy Richie going “political.” Jejune. 

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Jeff Rowe, 2023): 3.5/5

Takes the best possible lesson from the Spiderverse movies, meaning it doesn’t look or feel like them but it does have a comparatively new, beautiful and very comic-book-ish look and feel. 

 

Return to Seoul (Davy Chou, 2023): 3/5

I like the way it gets right into the plot: by the half-hour mark, we are on the road with dad and 15 minutes later we have lived with him for 3 days and pretty much understood his scene. No waiting around for cutie-pie reveals. However, in the second half, I stood outside the drama, which never quite resolves. 

 

No Hard Feelings (Gene Stupnitsky, 2023): 2/5

I loved seeing J.Law again, and there are a couple of riotous scenes, but otherwise this is a disaster. I think the movie is really about how one can’t make a sex comedy anymore because younger generations are so much more prudish and hung up on strict consent. That pie never agreed!

 

The Romance of Aniceto and Francisca, 51 mins (Leonardo Favio, 1967): 5/5

A simple story told with the utmost beauty, including radiant B&W cinematography, stunning narrative elisions, new-feeling editing rhythms, and lots of gorgeous silence. I’d never heard of this movie, but 33 Sight and Sound voters put it on their list (that’s a lot!)

 

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov, 1965): 3/5

Significantly more narrative than The Color of Pomegranates (here: man meets girl, man loses girl, man meets another girl, the couple encounters a sorcerer) but still much more concerned with the pictorial aspects, which luckily are unusual, beautiful and emotionally intense. 

 

Strangers When We Meet (Richard Quine, 1960): 2.5/5

Man-splaining, Howard Roark-ish Kurt Douglas has an affair with cuck-wedded Kim Novak (never better). Made during the tiny window of American culture when, if you wanted to signal that your characters are supposed to be world-changing men of the highest and most revered caliber, and you make them an architect and a novelist.

 

The Secret of the Grain (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2007): 3/5

A family drama set in an Arab community in Séte, in the far south of France. Lots of arguing, complaining, badgering, and backbiting, always shot a little closer and longer than is comfortable. Builds to a feature-film-length dinner—a grand opening of a restaurant that represents a lot of hopes and dreams, but they’ve mislaid the couscous, and the tension is excruciating. Won the Caesar for Best Picture.

 

Lovely and Amazing (Nicole Holofcener, 2001): 3/5

Of course, I could not relate quite as well to these people who—even though they are the same race and economic status as me—are younger, have even less self-esteem than me, and have not really figured out their lives. Do better, younger versions of me!! 

 

The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1993): 3/5

A biopic of the titular artist (as well as the country of Taiwan) across 80 years, including occupation by the Japanese, and the Japanese surrender and withdrawal from Taiwan. Drawn with almost exclusively deeply saturated greens, reds, yellows and the occasional brown or blown-out white; blue and purple are completely withheld except for one ravishing night landscape. Much time is spent watching puppet performances and some of the story is told directly to the camera by the puppeteer himself as an old man. Slow moving but definitely narrative—and extremely lovely. 

 

October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov, 1927): 2.5/5

Intertitles like this get in the way of my enjoyment: “The Smolny agitators found their way into the Winter Palace to the Cossack battery.” What?? Must I know what any of these things are to support the (eventually extremely deadly and corrupt) revolution? Or can I just enjoy the faces on display and the people running from right to left then from left to right? 

 

The Fifth Seal (Zoltán Fábri, 1976): 4/5

I frequently grouse about genres/plots I am NOT drawn to, including Lovers on the Run, infidelity dramas, and courtroom dramas. But here is one genre I do particularly like: when a variety of characters deal with ultimate issues (a favorite of Bergman’s as well). Here, the characters contemplate a philosophic game asking whether they would prefer to be an oppressor who feels no guilt or a horribly oppressed person who is satisfied with the idea that they have done nothing evil. Each of four characters chooses the same answer (there’s really only one) but with varying levels of clarity and certainty. Then in the second half, the characters are given the chance to prove it.

Repo Man, rw (Alex Cox, 1984): 5/5

Raw, anti-consumerism, anti-parent and anti-law in general, shot in LA, and ushering us into a subculture with its own rules and ethos. Satiric, philosophical and silly, with a great soundtrack. I watched this movie approximately a million times in 1985, the year I started at UCLA—so for me it represented the freedom to reject all the things around me that revolted me.  

  

To Live and Die in LA, rw (William Friedkin, 1985); 5/5

I adored this at 18, and I still appreciate the jagged energy and cool behavior (especially from baddie Willem Dafoe, the first time I had ever laid my eyes on him). The last half hour rips, with its all-timer car chase and other shock tactics.

 

Deep Cover, rw (Bill Duke, 1992): 3/5

I remember liking this one upon release (I was 25 And should have known better), and it does contain two good/enjoyable performances from Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum—as well as a gonzo, b-movie, go for broke attitude. But it doesn’t make much sense, especially emotionally and has a terrible love interest role. Bill Duke’s second-best-rated movie on Letterboxd (after this one) is Sister Act 2.

 

The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo, 2011): 3.5/5

An enigmatic film, filled with repetition, variation, twinning, contradiction and parallels. Every girl is the same girl, every bar the same bar. Gentle Bunuel-ish surrealism utilizing just actors and a script. 

 

In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo, 2012): 3.5/5

Three stories taking place in the same house and beach area and each portrayed by the same group of actors. Therefore: repetition, variation, twinning, contradiction and parallels. Hong Sang-so’s thoughts about meaning and character: “Why do I lie?” “Because you lie.” “Why am I so afraid?” “Because you are afraid.” 

 

Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dušan Makavejev, 1967): 3/5

Once we’ve heard brief lectures from a sexologist and a criminologist, we know much of what we need to watch this brief but sensuous tale of a love affair. He’s a Turk who loves the communist government; she’s a pretty, oft-nude Hungarian who cooks blueberry strudel. The troubled ending is inevitable. 

 

WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dušan Makavejev, 1971): 3/5

Kind of an X-rated Daisies, dedicated to radical freedom and liberation, both sexually and from the constraints and oppression of communism. “Communism without free love is a wake in a graveyard.” “Abstinence is unhealthy, inhuman and what’s worse counterrevolutionary.” My favorite edit is from a bright pink rubber penis (that we have just seen being made with a plaster cast) straight to Stalin then to a soldier stroking the stock of his Kalashnikov. 

 

Othello (Orson Welles, 1951): 3.5/5

At a beautiful 1:38 length, this sometimes seems too compressed—like whole monologues boiled down to the best couplet. But once the last act hits, the movie slows down to savor all of the elegantly murderous language. 

 

The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962): 2/5

In the paranoid realm of After Hours, Brazil, Catch-22, Under the Silver Lake, Beau is Afraid, and A Serious Man (although more tiresome than any of those, and that’s saying something). Full of lust and shame. 

 

The Wild Child (François Truffaut, 1970): 3/5

In the realm of The Miracle Worker, The Enigma of Casper Hauser, and The Elephant Man, although, of these, this one is the most intellectual—as if Truffaut is an alien studying child development. And the film only reports on the first nine months of the child’s education, before he learns to speak, so the essential mystery of his difference and his soul—of the effect of “civilization” on human nature—remains wholly unexplored.

 

The Woman Next Door (François Truffaut, 1981): 2.5/5

An ex-lover, now married, moves in next door to now-married Gerard Depardieu. The affair is begun again and soon becomes as obsessional as before. Middlebrow as fuck. Truffaut’s second-to-last film. 

 

When the Day Breaks, 9 mins (Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby, 1999): 3.5/5

A close encounter with death causes a woman (well…a female anthropomorphic pig) to consider how she is connected to the other people-animals living in her city. Uses a variety of lovely hand-made animation styles. 

 

Suspense., 11 mins (Phillips Smalley, Lois Weber, 1913): 4/5

Two years before Birth of a Nation, a female director (who also stars) gives a masterclass in tension-building cross-cutting. Features a real zombie-movie vibe in the scene where she walks around her house to lock all the windows—as well as in an ur-“Here’s Johnny” scene. Highlights the “rapey, knife-wielding, hulking, unkempt, thieving, Weinstein” male/horror archetype as well the “sexless, breadwinning wimp who nevertheless saves the day” male archetype. 

 

Rain/Regen, 12 mins (Joris Ivens, Mannus Franken, 1929): 3.5/5

A waterway, clouds, the storm is coming. Many different perspectives on what rain feels like, in the city. Lovely, impressionistic, various and emotionally resonant. Sort of a reflection on water. Yuk yuk. 

 

 

Maurice Pialat Film Fest

I really like Pialat overall, although I admit that his movies are hard to enjoy, since their subjects and methodology privilege irritation, dissatisfaction and frustration. Shot with a disconcerting naturalism—emotionally intense and jagged. Frames tend to be stuffed, messy and muddy—the opposite of “elegant framing.” 

 

We Will Not Grow Old Together (Maurice Pialat, 1972): 3.5/5

Typical Pialat protagonist: a hairy, rude, brooding, cranky, self-absorbed fuck. As a couple, they don’t quarrel or get annoyed by the other’s silly little quirks. They’re just always making unaccepted gestures, always breaking up—suddenly expressing their revulsion of the other—and then getting back together. The title is the punchline to this unsatisfying anecdote of a movie.

 

The Mouth Agape (Maurice Pialat, 1974): 3/5

Quite a sexy a movie and one that deals with the slow, slow death of the protagonist’s/your/my mother. Similar to Cries and Whispers, but not transformed by the ecstasy of the cinematography nor by flashbacks or fantasies. Becomes a portrait the dying woman’s son: his relationship with his father and the people in his town.

 

Graduate First (Maurice Pialat, 1978): 3.5/5

A group of unstylish high schoolers in the village of Lens in the north of France in 1978—hooking up, breaking up, drinking, ducking come-ons from various parents, smoking dope, wearing ugly clothes and tending their thin mustaches. The title is good advice, but no one takes it. 

 

Loulou, rw (Maurice Pialat, 1980): 4/5

Passionate and dangerous. Isabelle Huppert is again with the typical Pialat protagonist: hairy, angry and quick to give a slap (although this one is educated, with refined taste and his own business). She meets Depardieu (who was 32 at the time), a big sweet goof and occasional thief who doesn’t want much beside to get drunk and fuck, which she likes. Eventually she gets pregnant, which he’s super happy about and will get a job “when the baby comes.” Pialat uses four or five of the same kids from Graduate First and somehow it’s good to see them grown up a bit and living (and thieving) in Paris. Depardieu is fucking great (literally and figuratively). 

 

Under the Sun of Satan (Maurice Pialat, 1987): 3.5/5

Pialat is hardly one for thesis statements, so we have only contradictory views of what’s actually going on with this troubled priest (who flagellates himself and writes in a journal)—although the fact that it involves super-sexy manslaughter-er Sandrine Bonnaire makes it pretty watchable. From a book by Georges Bernanos, who also wrote novels Bresson adapted into Diary of a Country Priest and Mouchette. So…in conversation with Bresson, but also Dryer (and
, if more flinty, mystical and passionately confused in a coo-coo way. Won the Palme d'Or.

 

 

Kenji Mizoguchi Film Fest

Usually, these deep dives increasing my appreciation and enjoyment of a director’s whole oeuvre. Not the case here, thanks to Mizoguchi’s monomaniacal focus on society’s systematic oppression and exploitation of silent, weak, crying, despairing, worrying women. Dramatically this is stultifying and, in fact, deprives woman of agency. 

A note on geishas, which feature in many of Mizoguchi’s works. It seems that a geisha is kind of like a waitress at Hooters. They just try to make their clients at any restaurant feel good and complement them and bring them drinks and generally do what they say. It’s only when a client becomes a “patron,” which is something the geisha agrees to, that she has sex with the client regularly, almost like in a marriage. And lest you think Mizoguchi  geisha-related films are simple “problem movies,” it turns out that Mizoguchi’s sister was a geisha (!), so it’s personal, and something he knows a little something about.

 

Osaka Elegy, 1h11m (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936): 3/5

Mizoguchi’s 61^st film (of which all but three are lost). Set contemporaneously. Father embezzled 300 yen, so older sister finally agrees to an affair (with gifts) with her old, gross boss. Not long after, the brother needs 200 yen to graduate college, so she has an affair (with gifts) with another older executive at her firm. Thereafter she is arrested, then completely rejected by the family she did it for. Money, sex and power—women only have one. 

 

Sisters of the Gion, 1h9m (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936): 3/5

Set contemporaneously. This film contrasts two sister geishas (Gion is the name of the “pleasure district” of Kyoto, a neighborhood that Mizoguchi was intimately familiar with). The older geisha is kind and understanding when her patron goes broke and can’t pay her anymore. The other is young and pretty and treats everyone like shit. Who fares better in the end? Since this is a Mizoguchi film, they both end up quite miserable. “Why do we have to suffer like this? Why do there even have to be such things as geisha? Why does the world need such a profession? It’s so unfair. I wish they never existed!” 

 

The 47 Ronin (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1941): 2/5

Set in 1701. For the first three hours, the film is just slow, measured deliberation and waiting. Then at hour three, the event we’ve all been waiting for occurs. The 47 ronin break into a castle and after a prolonged manhunt find the antagonist and take their bloody revenge. Unfortunately, we are not shown this event—we just see three women reading aloud a letter describing it. Ha! It’s only in the last moments of the film that I realized that the reason our protagonist is so ultra calm and zenned out throughout is that he realizes in the first moments of the film that he will eventually have to commit harikari—he’s a dead man walking, which makes this a kind of passion play. The most chilling part of the whole film is a message at the beginning of the film reading “Defend the homes of those who fight for a greater Asia,” reminding us that the film was made in 1941 and was, in part, meant to remind the Japanese people of the kind of strength, honor and determination that is required in troubled times.

 

Utamaro and His Five Women (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1946): 3/5

Portrait of a (historically real) artist in the 1780s, a free-spirited, hearty bohemian type who gave up his social status as a fine artist and overthrew conventional artistic techniques to become a “common artist,” hanging around in brothels, peeking at “naked” (here meaning wearing simple white camisoles and long skirts) ladies, etc. In the end though, he is only a spectator in the drama (and of course tragedy) of the female characters and their dealings with people other than the artist. (Here's an example of his work, which looks pretty familiar to me).

 

Women of the Night (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1948): 4/5

It’s after the war, and the influence of the Italian New Wave leads Mizoguchi to a greater looseness, including actual (run down) locations and uncontrolled city-scapes in Osaka—as well as noir elements such as urban crime, prostitution, theft, and multiple beatings. And here at least the women shout back at the stupid men who have complete power over them: “We’re not animals, you know. I can’t stand your face!” It also contains the closest thing to a thesis statement/prescription that Mizoguchi offers: “You two must become new women. Don’t just think of your own happiness and virtue. Work on behalf of all women and create a world where their virtue and freedom can be protected.” 

 

Miss Oyu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1951): 3/5

A movie set contemporaneously, with tone and feel akin to Sirk’s melodramas/social critiques. A man falls in love with a woman who is unmarriable because she is a widow with a child. She asks him to marry her younger sister instead, which he agrees to in order to be close to the one he loves. Don’t do this!!!

 

A Geisha (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953): 3/5

Set contemporaneously. The movie is about how, because of debt or relationships that the geisha must retain, it can be difficult for them to ever say ‘no’ to the clients who ask to become their “patron.” In the movie, one tries to refuse but eventually must have sex, to everyone’s great humiliation. 

 

The Crucified Lovers/A Story from Chikamatsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954): 3.5/5

Mizoguchi’s fourth-to-last feature and one of his most contemporary-feeling. Swift and relatively informal before it swoons into an authentic, languorous and moonstruck Lovers on the Run film—and that’s a death trip, baby!

 

Princess Yang (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1955): 3/5

Mizoguchi makes his first color film and it looks and feels similar to The King and I (!!)—a traditionally entertaining (if stiff and costume-bound) drama about a lowly person catching the eye of a pretty cool and soulful king/billionaire in 8^th century China. Except of course that this film, being a Mizoguchi film, ends in a noose.