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

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

 

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

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

 

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

Eager to entertain, but broad and facile as satire.

 

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

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

 

Pearl (Ti West, 2022): 4/5

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

 

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

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

 

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

Dreamworks goes Into the Spider-Verse.

 

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

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

 

Vagabond, rw (Agnès Varda, 1985): 5/5

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017): 3.5/5

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

Peckinpah Film Fest

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

Taiwanese and Chinese Film Festival

Is it racist to group these together?

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

Election (Johnnie To, 2005): 3/5

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

 

Exiled (Johnnie To, 2006): 2/5

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

 

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

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

 

 

Guy Maddin Film Fest

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

Shorts worth watching: 

How to Take a Bath (2009)

The Hall Runner (2014)

Cold (with Evan Johnson) (2014)

Elms (with Evan Johnson) (2014)

Colours (with Evan Johnson) (2014)

Puberty (with Evan Johnson) (2014)

 

Shorts not worth watching:

Sissy-boy Slap Party (2004)

My Dad is 100 Years Old (2005)

Nude Caboose (2006)

Spanky: To the Pier and Back (2008)

Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair (2009)

Sinclair (2010)

Lines of the Hand (2015)

Accidence (2018)

The Rabbit Hunters (2020)

Skinamarink (Kyle Edward Ball, 2022): 4/5

An immersive lo-fi microbudget horror and largely experimental art film that taps into the primordial fear of the unknown and of being a child having to go to the bathroom at 3 a.m. with a gnawing feeling that there's someone/something waiting for you in the shadows. Kyle Edward Ball’s debut Skinamarink tells the story of two small children who wake up one night to discover both of their parents are missing and all of the windows and front/back doors in their house have inexplicably disappeared, leaving them trapped inside with a malevolent supernatural entity. The film grain in Skinamarink is a character in itself. It perfectly recreates that sense of hallucinogenic darkness where your eyes create shapes out of the nothingness and see things that aren’t there, except, in the case of Skinamarink, something is definitely lurking in the darkness. Maybe it has always been there. To experience the true terror of this film, watch it on the biggest screen you have, kill the lights, turn up the volume, switch off your phone and commit to no distractions for 100 minutes. Pure nightmare fuel. The amount of tension and dread that builds is nothing short of suffocating.

Histoire(s) du Cinema (Godard, 1989): 2.5/5

Godard’s rambling and echoing voice, repeating phrases, words and names without really connecting them. The staccato of his electric typewriter which is nice and annoying at the same time. It’s more often than not difficult to follow this, it appears like demented jabbering that occasionally amounts to some coherence and (sometimes even poetic) poignancy. It’s like a bad dream really, Godard spitting this chewed up pulp in our faces.

Nazarin (Luis Bunuel, 1959): 3/5
Based on Benito Perez Galdos' distinguished eponymous novel, Nazarin follows the excursions of Father Nazario (Francisco Rabal), a priest who experiences several episodes that echo incidents in The Gospels. The film, which was awarded the Palme d'Or and denounced by the Pope, strikes a restrained yet profound tone and is certainly sober by Bunuel standards; nevertheless, the film illustrates the catholic education he rejected, the imprint of which never left him.


El (Luis Bunuel, 1953): 3/5
Like an early Hong Sang-Soo exploration of wounded masculinity with the cruelty button pushed to the max. Arturo de Cordova performance has the unlikely perfect mix of funny and tragic. Recommended double bill: this and Akerman’s La Captive.

Mephisto (Istvan Szabo, 1981): 3/5
Or, THE FAUST AND THE FURIOUS
You could totally remake this film just set in the Trump era with one of those token hack right-wing "I'm one of the good ones" grifter YouTube personalities like the Candace Owens, Dave Rubin, Blair White types.

Judgement at Nuremberg (Stanley Kramer, 1961): 4/5
‘Iconic actor gives an all-timer monologue’, but make it every other scene. A reconciliation of the unanswerable.


Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige, 1984): 4/5
A masterpiece that I am ashamed to have not watched earlier. Yellow Earth is a film that drips aesthetically with slow sorrow, regret, and barrenness. A bright, young communist soldier goes into a village to collect information on rural folksongs. He meets a young girl who despises the idea of arranged marriage but does not know any alternatives - until she meets him. Inspired by his ideas of gender equality and free love, her life is reinvigorated. But alas, changing the landscape of a barren yellow earth is much harder than one thinks...

Wonderful performance, cinematography, and ugh, the music .

rewatched Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972): 5/5
A bunch of idiots go to South America and pack the wrong clothes.

rewatched Double Indemnity (Billy Wylder, 1944): 5/5
“I wonder if I know what you mean.” “I wonder if you wonder.”

I too would kill Barbara Stanwyck’s husband if she asked me to.     

When You Finish Saving the World (Jesse Eisenberg, 2022): 3/5

A Noah Baumbach adjacent dramedy about a mother and son failing to connect with one another. Extremely cringe and annoying but it's got Julianne Moore so I kinda enjoyed it.

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

Script would have been better if ChatGPT wrote it.

Jacob's Ladder (Adrian Lyne, 1990): 3/5

Purgatorial languishing and the search for solace in death. What Jacob’s Ladder lacks in structure and coherence, it makes up for with jarring visuals, a potent commentary on PTSD and unethical military experimentation, and a riveting central performance from Tim Robbins.

River of No Return (Otto Preminger, 1954): 3/5

A western directed by Otto Preminger, and starring Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum? Sure, why not! It's actually at its best, ironically, before the wilderness adventure commences, with Preminger's mobile camera expertly prowling the cramped settlement; the precise choreography involved when Mitchum circles the stage as Monroe performs is breathtaking. Process shots predominate on the river, for obvious reasons, and the story gets a mite soggy as well, though the two leads are well paired in the sense that his nonchalance offsets her effusiveness. Not thrilled that the romance flirts with both rape and abduction, but the times, etc.

Some Came Running (Vincent Minnelli, 1958): 3.5/5

I totally thought this film was going to be a lark, a pleasant pick-me-up on a day I needed one. Instead, it's eviscerating. And great.

Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1955): 3.5/5

Devastating in so many ways, largely because there’s nothing quite as soul-crushing as a completely lopsided rendition of love. And not even love really, just the remaining fragments of something that was once considered “love,” loosely resembling it but void of any other vital signs -- like how a firefly’s abdomen stays illuminated for a while after it’s dead.

See the Sea (Francois Ozon, 1997): 3/5

Creeping sense of dread for the win, but it feels incomplete and lacking any real meat to the story. Still shows off the exciting young talent that Ozon clearly was with this debut feature.

Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg, 2023): 3/5

Just weird, horny vibes throughout. Trauma is just a small price to pay to be dominated by Mia Goth.

Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli, 2022): 3/5

Petition to swap titles with The Worst Person In the World.

A dark, nasty battle between two narcissists, one of whom is an absolute psychopath. Kristine Kujath Thorp is really fantastic in this movie. The lengths that she goes to for attention are absurd, yet they also feel so familiar in our current cultural economy where attention is the primary currency and people will do stupid dangerous shit to earn it.

I'm not sure the film itself ultimately says much about these issues, but it's an extreme and entertaining depiction of pathological narcissism anchored by a memorable lead performance.

Dinner in America (Adam Rehmeier, 2020): 1.5/5

This cruel, charmless suburban satire sacrifices warmth, depth, and coherent storytelling in favor of provocative gross-out gags and empty shock value. One of those Sundance comedies that attempts to pass itself off as “quirky” and “different” when it’s really just a big ‘ol dumpster fire with half-baked ideas all cluttered together. Already one of the worst movies of the year but definitely the best movie of 2003.

Detainee 001 (Greg Barker, 2021): 2/5

Fascinating subject; terrible documentary.

You know there’s an issue with a documentary when the Wikipedia article you Google on the subject in the middle of the film gives you more background and insight than the documentary itself. Showtime continues to have a weird way with documentaries. While the core, middle section of this doc is worthwhile for its detailed information and perspectives of the timeline surrounding the prison uprising, it is bookended on both sides by a terribly unfocused introduction and an end that is lost with where to take this information. So much surrounding it is powerfully unnecessary and confuses the narrative even more while also messing up any sense of pacing.

The Pale Blue Eye (Scott Cooper, 2022): 2.5/5

Quoth the raven, "What a bore."

Extra half star for my dear Gillian Anderson.

The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022): 2.5/5

I'm just completely immune to McDonagh's charms. Well acted, but apparently people are finding this riotously funny and despairing instead of schematically yoking a character-based concept that seems pulled from a cocaine-dusted yellow pad of log lines from the post-Tarantino 90s. Combined with McDonagh's earnest conviction that people repeating things to each other is automatically funny and Farrell/Gleeson can't save things for me. But seriously, ignore me, I didn't even like IN BRUGES.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford, 2022): 3/5

This and Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) have the same plot.

The Wonder (Sebastian Lelio, 2022): 3/5

Nurse Lib Wright (Florence Pugh) is called to a rural village to observe Anna O'Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy), an 11 year old girl who it is claimed hasn't eaten for 4 months. Her skepticism encounters resistance from the community that wants to believe in a miracle. Flounders a bit in its execution, but an interesting central mystery and great performances help elevate the material above your standard dreary period-piece enigma.

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

The supervising sound editor on The Menu is named Rich Bologna, which is also a pretty good way to describe this movie.

M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone, 2022): 2/5

LET M3GAN SAY FUCK.

Anyway, 'classic pawn your orphaned niece off on the AI doll you created' story. I wish Matthew Broderick did the voice of the doll.

This Place Rules (Andrew Callaghan, 2022): 2.5/5

A YouTube video essay that was distributed by A24 for some reason. Empty entertainment that doesn't add anything new to the Jan 6th conversation. Also hated the random zooms every 5 seconds keep that shit on tiktok.

To Leslie (Michael Morris, 2022): 3/5

A fairly standard indie plot (alcoholic comes home to try to put her life back together, meets some wacky characters along the way who become her found family and help her redeem herself) elevated by another great performance from Andrea Riseborough and a ridiculously stacked supporting cast.

Starfuckers (Antonio Marziale, 2022, 14 mins): 3.5/5

More like WhattheFuckers! No wait, more like GAYvid Lynch! All kidding aside, Antonio Marziale: you have my attention.

 

December 2022: A 3.5/5 Fest

Damning with faint praise.

 

The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022): 3.5/5

“Well, maybe I’m not a happy lad, so.” Best ensemble acting of the year, and just go ahead and give the supporting nod to Barry Keoghan. A literate and “written“ script (a la Mamet). Priest: “Do you think God cares about miniature donkeys?” Colm: “I fear he doesn’t, and I fear that’s where it’s all gone wrong.” And later: “If punching a policeman is a sin, we may as well just pack up and go.” Ultimately, I think it’s about how artists are depressed narcissist.

 

The Fablemans (Steven Spielberg, 2022): 3.5/5

Tony Kushner can really write, and I found it conventionally entertaining: funny and full of emotion. But damn the direction and tone are so broad and cartoonish. For a movie that seems to be based on real life, everyone comes off as a “character” instead of a human. Look at poor Michelle Williams’ bowl cut for Christsake!

 

Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron, 2022): 3.5/5

For the first hour, I was sorely disappointed in the visuals—for me, the high frame-rate stuff was absolutely disastrous. The underwater second act works much better, and the third act is a solid hour of cascading action sequences, masterful and overstuffed. The movie is finally redundant to the original, not bringing much new to the table in terms of image, tone and strategy. I was surprised to realize that Avatar (and this one) is actually a war movie—a fact had eluded me until now. I always remember the beauty and calm, but this one really ratchets up the sadism, complete with torture and whale-massacre, somehow making me like the original a little less. 

 

Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund, 2022): 3.5/5

Östlund’s broadest and most traditionally entertaining. But I missed the squirmy discomfort that comes from the feeling that the movie is taking aim at me and people like me. In this case, the film is at the expense of “the other” (extremely rich folks and influencers, the easiest possible target).

 

White Noise (Noah Baumbach, 2022): 3.5/5

Only about half of it works but that half is pretty good. Funny and permeated with DeLillo-recognizable observations and tone—satiric and somehow flat & torrential at the same time. Like Amsterdam, the third act threatens to burn all the (tentatively granted) goodwill earned thus far. 

 

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, 2022): 3.5/5

Lots of hot sex—always very welcome. I understand it diverges from the book, which I haven’t read. 

 

Athena (Romain Gavras, 2022): 3.5/5

If you watch, say Intolerance, you soon get the idea that cinema is about movement—about men and women (or groups) running from left to right and right to left. Here is a movie that harnesses that basic power in a riot situation, with multiple long-ass tracking shots involving huge crowds, fireworks and movement from room to room, situation, mood to mood. Loads of help from CGI I’m guessing. If not, a massive accomplishment. Either way, engrossing and ambitious. This is the action-packed movie I think I want while watching, say, Aftersun. But while watching this one, I missed the cogency and thoughtfulness of most adult movies. Shrug emoji.  

 

Hit the Road (Panah Panahi, 2022): 3/5

Moves gradually toward the cosmic, but doesn’t quite achieve the outer atmosphere.

 

Kimi (Steven Soderbergh, 2022): 2/5

A calculated nexus of hot button issues from techno-paranoia, to COVID-induced isolation sliding into agoraphobia, to MeToo-style believe-her virtual-signaling. Zooey Kravitz is not even close to being good. Written by David Koepe, an extremely successful screenwriter who has never once written a good movie—look it up!

 

Atlanta, seasons 3 & 4 (Donald Glover, etc., 2022): 4/5

Super-creative and ever-evolving. I never once got the feeling that they were just doing the easiest thing. Always going for it. There seem to be a lot of complaints about the scatter-shot and anthology-ish third season, but I loved never knowing what to expect next.

 

 

Sight and Sound Rewatch Party

I had previously seen all but two movies on the new list(s), so I knocked those out first. Overall, none of the movie’s ratings moved more than a half star one way or the other—rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. 

 

Daughters of the Dust. #60 (Julie Dash, 1991): 1.5/5

Amateurish and of little value beyond the anthropological. 

 

Histoire(s) du Cinéma, 266 mins, #84 (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988-1998): 3/5

In strategy and effect, this feels like all of Godard’s later, essayistic works. This one (besides being quite a bit longer) just uses images from cinema instead of cruise ships or a 3D dog on a shore. As in all these works, he proclaims stuff (using voice over or text on screen), some of which is pretty interesting and some of which doesn’t make much sense to me. For example, we get this nice image: “For nearly 50 years in the dark, moviegoers burned imagination to heat up reality. Now reality is seeking revenge.” But then later, this: “Only the hand that erases can write.” (?)

 

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, rw, #1 (Chantal Akerman, 1975): 3.5/5

I just don’t understand this character. What more does she want? She has a nice apartment, nice wallpaper, nice yellow tile, a nice tub and sink, a nice son with an interest in literature, nice dishrags and stiff green dish-scrubber, nice hallways and light switches, a nice hair style, nice potatoes and meatloaf, a nice blue smock and a really nice seagreen housecoat to wear over her sweater because it’s cold. I know this movie is supposed to be boring—and it is, it is. But I couldn’t help also thinking that it’s more interesting even on a basic pitch level than, say, Endgame which such a nil. Let me add that Matthias Müller’s Home Stories is also great, and only six minutes long.

 

Close Up, rw, #17 (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990): 5/5

Setting aside the casually brilliant formal choices, the film’s protagonist powerfully expresses his own humanity, suffering, and love for art. And it’s perhaps this directness and eloquence that raises the movie to greatness.

 

Daisies, rw, #28 (Věra Chytilová, 1966): 3.5/5

Like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, these two women step outside not just the mores of their time but the outside the frame itself. Full of crazy bits, of which the scissors thing is probably my favorite. 

 

Mirror, rw, #31 (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975): 3.5/5

Remains opaque for me. Much of it is obviously about his childhood on some level and his mother in particular—but why we are shown certain things, I have no idea. Contains a handful of breathtaking cinematic images—the shot of a single wave of wind moving towards us across a great field of grass is an all-timer.

 

Bicycle Thieves, rw, #41 (Vittorio De Sica, 1948): 4/5

Marxist not only in its critique of capitalism but in its reverence for work and all it provides. Lack of work can’t be soothed by family, friendship, religion, food, music, sport or the law. 

 

The Battle of Algiers, rw, #45 (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966): 4/5

Extremely contemporary concerns, including colonialism, terrorism, and being an Arab who wants something that Europeans don’t want them to want. Still amazing to discover a movie where our protagonists are Muslim people who murder innocent Europeans (although not pointlessly). The filmmaking is shockingly realistic-feeling and on a huge scale. Stanley Kubrick: “All films are, in a sense, false documentaries.”

 

Ordet, rw, #48 (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955): 5/5

Its power is obviously borrowed/used by Silent Light and Breaking the Waves but also by Tarantino in Inglorious Basterds and Once Upon a Time, where faith (in the power of cinema) can change the past and raise the dead. The square compositions, glowing white light, and slow and hypnotic line-readings and movements are not only beautiful but entrance the viewer in a way that surely was not lost on (late) Kubrick. 

 

Sans Soliel, rw, #59 (Chris Marker, 1983): 5/5

It has no strong thesis, but instead presents a steady flow of engaging and worthwhile images, observations and reveries.  

 

L’Argent, rw, #72 on directors’ list (Robert Bresson, 1983): 4/5

An obsessive interest in hands and feet emphasizes the mechanistic (as opposed to the rational, much less the “soul”ful) nature of existence, calling into question the existence of free will. Using this strategy, the film answers some ultimate questions in a blissfully simple and crystal-clear way: “I expect nothing.” Which is exactly what the next nihilistic five minutes delivers. Still, it’s not our man who commits the terrifying final acts, it’s those hands and feet.

 

Sansho the Bailiff, rw, #75 (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954): 3/5

A simple story of cruelty and misfortune. 

 

Pierrot le Fou, rw, #84 (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965): 3.5/5

Jean-Luc, pitching fastballs—scattershot, funny and casually creative. “It’s a good thing I don’t like spinach, because if I did, I’d eat it, and I can’t stand the stuff.” And: their combined list of what they “like and want:” “Flowers, animals, the blue of the sky, the sound of music, ambition, hope, the way things move, accidents.”

 

Yi-Yi, rw, #90 (Edward Yang, 2000): 4.5/5

Nashville but in Taipei. A huge family, with 8-10 separate emotional arcs, full of drama and artfully handled. The city itself is also a character (cliché be damned), seeping in through windows and reflections, playing upon the characters’ face, and most of all in the signature long shots (in the sense of the camera remaining far back from the characters, ensuring that they are framed and engulfed by their environment.)

 

The Color of Pomegranates, rw, #93 on directors’ list (Sergei Parajanov, 1969): 3/5

Idiosyncratic, beautiful and mysterious—if not meaningful. Symbolic weight imbues each image with great gravity. Is it cultural appropriation if I project this movie on a wall at my next party? (Just kidding, I don’t throw parties). 

 

Throne of Blood, rw, #93 on directors’ list (Akira Kurosawa, 1957): 4/5

Intimate, intense, dreamy, primal and large-scale. A cast of (perhaps) 400, plus 400 horses and 400 fog machines, yet also very interior/psychological—since, for all that we ARE shown, there is still so much that we are not. The killing of the Lordship, the primal sin, is conducted off screen, and the Lady Macbeth character barely moves a muscle, serving as the demonic, paranoid and tempting inner voice of ambition. 

 

While we're at it, I managed to scrape together a top 10 of 2022 list. A much more difficult exercise in its own way given the dearth of good cinema in a single calendar year, but here's what I loved/didn't hate.

 
1. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (Dean Fleischer-Camp, US)
2. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Colombia/Thailand)
3. Tár (Todd Field, US)
4. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, France)
5. Rien à foutre (Julie Lecoustre, France/Belgium)
6. We're All Going to the World's Fair (Jane Schoenbrun, US)
7. Les Olympiades, Paris 13e (Jacques Audiard, France)
8. Official Competition (Gastón Duprat, Mariano Cohn, Spain)
9. Vortex (Gaspar Noé, France)
10. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland)

 

My 2022 Sight & Sound ballot

Late Spring, Ozu, 1949 - Kids/adults grow up/old so fast, part 1.

Au Hasard Balthazar, Bresson, 1966 - The world is just hands doing stuff.

Playtime, Tati, 1967 - If you back up far enough, the chaos of the world becomes graceful. 

Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Herzog, 1972 - You can follow your philosophies and ambitions to their end, but it only ends in a raft-full of monkeys.

Apocalypse Now, Coppola, 1979 - I like my emotions like I like my women: huge, spectacular and confused.  

My Neighbor Totoro, Miyazaki, 1988 - The quiet, innocent, simple moments of life are magical, powerful, and more than enough.

Mulholland Drive, Lynch, 2001 - What will you do to avoid thinking about something you regret? 

There Will Be Blood, Anderson, 2007 - Anger and self, flowing from the core of the earth, shooting into the air, and lying in a thin layer over everything and everyone. 

Silent Light, Reygadas, 2007 - Rapturous beauty, literally.

Boyhood, Linklater, 2015 - Kids/adults grow up/old so fast, part 2.

 

 

Also Good (The Cheat)

The General, 1926

Aparajito, 1956

Through a Glass Darkly, 1961

The Godfather, 1972

The Bad News Bears, 1976

Rivers and Tides, 2001

School of Rock, 2003

Sweetgrass, 2009

Mr. Turner, 2014

Roma, 2018