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 61st 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 8th century China. Except of course that this film, being a Mizoguchi film, ends in a noose.
