Ghostlight (Alex Thompson, Kelly O’Sullivan, 2024): 4.5/5

Very Ordinary People. Middlebrow, but lots of sobs from me throughout and one of the best versions of Romeo and Juliet I’ve seen. Has a main character that I somewhat resemble (father of a teenage daughter), and whom I definitely recognize among my acquaintance group. And when I realized the connection between our protagonist and Romeo—and what he is deliberately putting himself through, I lost it. Keith Kupferer lands on my best actor shortlist.

 

Aggro Drift (Harmony Korine, 2024): 4/5

Deeply psychedelic and stunningly original, visually (but God save the poor sons of bitches trying to trip to this dumb, gross and violent narrative content). A movie unlike any other, and very vivid—with killer music.

 

The Animal Kingdom, (Thomas Cailley, 2024): 3/5

A freeform metaphor for racism, adolescence, gender, transition, class divide, educated vs non-educated. Pairs with Brewster McCloud: Two movies about pre-adult boys longing to turn into birds (and escape, be free, be unique, be themselves).

 

Longlegs (Osgood Perkins, 2024): 2.5/5

An incoherent blender of emotional situations and horror genres, in which the title character plays no important role beyond star power. Both The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House do more with (a lot) less.

 

Maxxxine (Ti West, 2024): 2/5

Half-asses its way through several horror genres with vague 80s framing and lighting, with lots of actor stuff, but to what end? I never thought I would write this sentence, but: The Neon Demon is better.

 

Rocco and his Brothers, rw (Luchino Visconti, 1960: 4.5/5

Epic filmmaking, with many scenes (such as those in a boxing arena) that involve hundreds of extras. Delon gives a sensitive and emotional performance akin to Dean or Clift. So much Raging Bull (and Scorsese in general) flows from this, although Delon’s character is even more obviously Coppola’s sensitive Michael, ground down by his family’s brutality and corruption that he takes on as his burden and destiny. And indeed, the irony of the conclusion, with simultaneous ascent and descent, rivals The Godfather’s in its algebra of what is won and lost in its story of a family trying to move up in the world.

 

A Woman Under the Influence, rw (John Cassavetes, 1974): 5/5

Reminds me of those Jafar Panahi movies where the women are driven crazy by all the random rules of behavior and comportment developed by men (and society, e.g., men). What IS the greatest performance by a woman in a film (if not this)? RIP to a queen.

 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, rw (Céline Sciamma, 2019): 5/5

Exquisitely moving and beautiful movie with two great performances and a knockout ending. I can’t believe I forgot to mention this one when recently enumerating movies about the making of a piece of art (see La Belle Noiseuse, Victor Erice’s The Quince Tree Sun and Mamoulian’s Song of Songs, below.) If you go to Letterboxd, you will see that for this movie alone, they have changed the little stars in their rating system to little fires—and, honestly, fair.

 

Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine, 1958): 3.5/5

To my great relief, the lonely, disabled incel at the heart of this story is not just punished sadly over and over by fate (looking at you The Cloud-Capped Star, etc, etc.)—but rather is a creepy murderer! This genre energy greatly enlivens this large-casted portrait of all kinds of people in and around the train station in Cairo.

 

Wings (Larisa Shepitko, 1966): 3/5

A plotless character study of a woman who was more important, powerful, useful and free in the Soviet system in the past and who is trying to figure out her role and realizing her former behavior patterns are no longer relevant.

 

Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, Carl Froelich, 1931): 3/5

Everyone in the girl’s school loves pretty and kind Miss von Bernburg, especially the new girl—whom Bernburg kisses on the mouth and makes her the gift of her underwear. Originates (?) some women-in-prison tropes, including a cruel headmistress and (a quick but joyously received) spanking.

 

Eraserhead, rw (David Lynch, 1977): 4/5

The sound design is a marvel of mood, and all the details are plainly homemade in a very “from one person’s mind” way. My favorite bit is when the mound of dirt topped with a small plant (an image that has recurred throughout the movie) slides into the room with the black and white checkered floor and initiates the whole “yep, he’s an Eraserhead alright” sequence.

 

The Elephant Man, rw (David Lynch, 1980): 4/5

Lynch amply displays his ability to make a traditional movie with interesting characters and full of emotion. Although really it’s the numerous odd touches and between-plot weirdnesses that are exciting, including an astonishing, audacious, disorienting and deep first three minutes of dreamtime. The more you zone in on the sound design, vivid and dreamy references to the industrial age, and set design the more you see what a miracle this movie is.

 

Perfumed Nightmare (Kidlat Tahimik, 1977): 3/5

A warm, idiosyncratic, childlike and colorful bit of autobiographical ethnography, overdubbed in English (!), where you’re hanging out in a small village 15 miles from Manila—like a slightly more documentary Pather Panchali, but for the Philippines. Our protagonist is excited and inspired by the American military, American cultural imperialism, and especially the American space program—but when he moves to Paris, his views on progress, technology and capitalism become more ambivalent.

 

Masculin Féminin, rw (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966): 4/5

“Man’s conscience doesn’t determine his existence. His social being determines his conscience.” It’s semiotics—examining where we get the words we use, the thoughts we have, and our ways of living (spoiler: from our environment). Plus, a temperature-taking of socialism in France (Not great: “Give us a TV and car, and deliver us from liberty.”) Demands re-invention of the medium at every level and “down with the republic of cowards.” My good friend once told me it was his favorite movie of all time, and it’s interesting to think this could be anyone’s Apocalypse Now.

 

Hitchcock/Truffaut (Kent Jones, 2015): 3.5/5

A poppy talking-head review of AH’s biggies. Linklater, Fincher, Scorsese, James Gray and Desplechin (!!) weigh in, plus 30 percent AH talking about himself during the Truffaut interview. Lots of footage of amazing cinema, if that’s what you’re into. Fincher gets down to basics, saying: “Directing is really three things. You are editing behavior over time. And then controlling moments that should be really fast and making them slow. And moments that should be slow and making them fast.”

 

Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948): 3.5/5

A supernatural romance between Joseph Cotton and Jennifer Jones, with some painting-related techniques I haven’t seen before. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode, but one of the sentimental ones in the season when all the episodes were an hour long. It’s about the nature of artistic inspiration, but what distinguishes it from Portrait, La Belle Noiseuse, and The Song of Songs (see below) is its complete lack of lust (unless one counts dreaming of lighthouses, which probably one should). She’s always a ghost, so the connection (to art and love) remains spiritual (and grandiloquent). The emotional climax is tinted an ecstatic green and then red (in technicolor no less), a technique I’ve not seen outside of earlier silents.

 

Pas de deux, 13m (Norman McLaren, 1968): 3/5

The people who made this may or may not have taken the LSD on one or more occasions.

 

Ballet Mécanique (Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy, 1924): 3.5/5

I bunch of smart kids fucking off, pushing the limits of these primitive cinematic tools. Almost meaningless today but brilliant in its time/context, one can almost feel.

 

Fuses, 29m (Carolee Schneeman, 1964-66): 3/5

Stan Brakhage makes a porno. Degraded and chaotic images make the viewer ask, “Is that hot or disturbing?” A: Why not both? The Guardian says, “Fuses succeeds perhaps more than any other film in objectifying the sexual streamings of the body's mind,” and I couldn’t have said it better/worse myself.

 

Vive le Tour, 18m (Louis Malle, 1962): 3/5

It’s easy to imagine Wes Anderson watching and loving this CBS Wide World of Sports segment of a movie about the 1962 Tour-de-France.

Crazeologie, 6m (Louis Malle, 1954): 3/5

Malle’s surreal and comic student film.

 

 

Rouben Mamoulian Film Fest

An extremely reliable (and, I’m told innovative) genre director. Here we have a gangster movie, a historical romance, a rom-com, and a swashbuckling adventure—all elegantly entertaining. Also famous for horror (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.) and musical (the Lubitch-indebted Love Me Tonight.)

 

City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931): 3.5/5

An early Gary Cooper performance pits his typical homespun, honest, innocent character against the Chicago mob circa 1930. Also gives him a girl who loves him and understands the world better than he ever will.

 

Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933): 3.5/5

Garbo is strong and sexy as the queen of Sweden who tires of the cold and isolation of her position. In film studies, much is made of her dressing and passing as a man for one long sequence at an inn as well as for a couple mildly flirtatious interactions with some women—but the fact remains that she is very much in love with a man. Their Roman Holiday-like affair is the warm and funny heart of a movie that features rather too much court stuff and speechifying.

 

Song of Songs (Rouben Mamoulian, 1934): 3.5/5

A horny rom-com. Marlene Dietrich is the innocent young girl, new to Berlin, who shyly agrees to serve as a model for the handsome sculptor across the street. She stands in his studio naked, and obviously we only see her face. But her nude sculpture is standing right there between her and the artist, and he’s rubbing his hands all over it (although not the breasts). Hot stuff! Put this one on the list of movies about the making of a piece of art.

 

The Mark of Zorro (Rouben Mamoulian, 1940): 3.5/5

Ridiculously fun Sunday morning Family Film Festival vibes. A virtual remake of Robin Hood, from two years earlier. Basil Rathbone returns as the heel, and gruff-voiced Preston Sturges regular Eugene Palette plays Fray Felipe/Friar Tuck. This is my first Tyrone Power movie (not counting against-type Witness for the Prosecution), and I’m impressed. He’s handsome and graceful.

 

Blood and Sand (Rouben Mamoulian, 1941): 3/5

Reunites Power with Linda Darnell (also stunning in My Darling Clementine) for a bullfighting rags-to-riches drama (that spends too much time on the routine story of Power loving two women). Why does the artificiality of the set and lighting please me so much here, when it turns me off in (say) Lang’s corny Moonfleet and The Tiger of Eschnapur? The only answer is tone. This feels light, romantic and graceful—and beautiful, bathed in soft purples and yellows.

 

 Thelma (Josh Margolin, 2024): 3/5

A gentle geriatric heist flick, playing out as a low-stakes Mission Impossible exactly as directly parodied throughout the film. June Squibb is equally adorable, capable, and intelligent as Thelma, carrying the whole story on her seasoned shoulders. But it's light on laughs and needs more effort from the supporting cast to get them. Harmless overall.

The Strangers (Bryan Bertino, 2008): 0.5/5

Am I the only one bothered by the fact that, at one point, they note it's around 4 am or so, and the timeline of the movie easily traverses several hours, and yet it remains dark for SO long? Anyway, a dismal experience with little to no reward as a viewer.

Eternals (Chloe Zhao, 2021): 0/5

Not just “not cinema”, but the result of the gradual and meticulous wearing down of the human spirit disguised as pop art. China was 100% right to ban this.

Procession (Robert Greene, 2021): No rating

Been avoiding writing about this one because I really struggled with it and most of the ways I struggled with it made me seem like a bad human being.

Here's the question: who is this film for? I would say it is principally for the six men who are its subjects, all who have suffered abominable sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, none of whom deserve to have their mode of therapy subverted for the purpose of improving my entertainment experience (to the extent you can say any film involving this subject matter is "entertainment", but I am using the term very loosely here). Procession relies broadly on its subjects creating film scenes that help them come to terms with their trauma, a process that is clearly and evidently helpful for them and also one that does not result in film scenes that are very good.

Let me be perfectly clear, lest I seem dismissive: the stories of these men are moving and horrific, and you would have to be made of sterner stuff than I not to feel empathy for them. We often say "you can only wonder what someone's going through", but we mean that to say that we can't truly understand their pain. Six horribly damaged people have had a chance to bring attention to injustice and heal from their trauma. And I have no idea how many stars of criticism that's worth.

Ragtime (Milos Forman, 1981): 3/5

Ragtime represents a lost era of American film: a sprawling big studio historical epic that brings up some of the thorny social issues of the day. This was Milos Forman’s follow up to the disastrous Hair and while this is a step up, there’s something about Ragtime that just doesn’t quite work. Perhaps it’s the fact that while the direction is perfectly serviceable, it feels like the work of an anonymous journeyman. Of course we can see the plight of Howard E. Rollins Jr.’s Coalhouse Walker appealing to Forman and his love for doomed rebels, but it’s pretty astonishing that the man who made Taking Off just 10 years ago had been so sanded down to dull smoothness due to success, an Oscar, and a flop. That said, it’s a shame there was no 40th anniversary re-release for the film in 2021 as its bleak depiction of race and the fate of a Black man who refuses to accept racist bullying would resonate with audiences in the Black Lives Matter era. Maybe that is precisely why the studio probably doesn’t want to revive it.

In a Violent Nature (Chris Nash, 2024): 3/5

Some creative and brutal kills. Yoga girl has one of the craziest deaths I’ve seen.

House of Wax (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2005): 0.5/5

I actually don't fully hate this because there’s a scene from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane.

White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Ambercrombie & Fitch (Alison Klayman, 2022): 1/5

Netflix proudly presents: Another Wikipedia Article In Motion

Also, I have officially never felt older than when talking heads had to explain the concept of magazines or that malls are like physical versions of learning fashion trends through social media influencers. Time really does come for us all.

Morbius (Daniel Espinosa, 2022): 0.5/5

Morbius more like Mor bs…all that’s missing is i and u <3

MaXXXine (Ti West, 2024): 2/5

If I was tepid on milquetoast Ti before, now I'm stone cold. A flaccid climax that suffers even more acutely in the wake of Pearl, which set up Mia Goth as a screeching, pickled and dimpled hagseed starlet worthy to wrest the axe from Joan Crawford...and then throws a wet blanket over thermite by giving her zilch to do here.

MaXXXine betrays no interest in any of the movies it lazily cobbles into a hollow vinyl shellac, a retro fetishistic facade as flimsy as a VHS cardboard slipcase, and seemingly no desire to pick at the cracked, gritty zirconia of celebrity, or what breeds in the scuzzy groin of Hollywood, porn, video, and true crime. Suffused in surfacestatic, and as idle as lint.

Glad to see Kevin Bacon had fun for a weekend, though.

A Quiet Place: Day One (Michael Sarnoski, 2024): 2.5/5

Three whole movies and somehow no one died from the aliens hearing them fart

The Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie, 2005): 0/5

rob you're from fuckin' Massachusetts, calm down

Meet Me in the Bathroom (Will Lovelace, Dylan Southern, 2022): 2.5/5

This should've been a 10-episode docu-series for HBO but instead they smashed it all into one 105 minute documentary.

Also, Julian Casablancas is a dull and charmless frontman.

The Garfield Movie (Mark Dindal, 2024): 3/5

The G in LGBT stands for Garfield.

The Garfield Movie presents a multifaceted narrative exploring the profound psychological impacts of abandonment, the search for identity, and the moral complexities of crime. This film centers on Garfield, an orange tabby cat abandoned at an early age by his criminal father, Vic. Garfield is found on the street and adopted by Jon, but his constant fear of abandonment causes him to obsessively overeat. The arrival of his biological father and the involvement of Garfield’s loyal adopted brother, Odie—a dog—further intensify the narrative, culminating in a heist orchestrated by Jinx, Vic’s vengeful former partner in crime. This heist tests familial bonds and personal resilience, ultimately revealing deeper truths about loyalty and redemption.

Longlegs (Osgood Perkins, 2024): 3/5

Above Average Legs. I do like it, but I'm not sure it's good. Good creeps, definite tone and imagery. ESSENTIAL Cage. This one goes on his Mount Rushmore. I hesitate to say anymore, but he is OUT THERE, and he absolutely makes this movie, on whatever level it succeeds. (Cage claims he's playing his mother, but, come on, he's 100% playing Travolta.) Keeping him out of frame for so long, in the movie and in marketing, is the most effective thing about it. It gives it exactly the atmosphere you came in hoping for.

The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, 2024): 3/5

A better, more grounded version of Cloud Atlas—a tale of intergenerational trauma, connecting across eras, with excellent set design. Intelligent and “romantic,” with some striking images and narrative gambits, but emotionally distant. Léa Seydoux is beautiful and an excellent actress.

 

Gasoline Rainbow (Turner Ross, Bill Ross IV, 2024): 3/5

The Rosses follow up their seedy and empathetic portrait of drunks (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets) and lyrical and empathetic portrait of three brothers wandering around New Orleans (Tchoupitoulas)—with an American Graffiti / American Honey end-of-summer episodic road trip that extends their use of documentary styles but sadly is inferior to both. The teen characters are a bit vague, dumb, and uncharismatic (realistically so), although most of the locals they encounter are authentic and interesting. What I wouldn’t have given for the charisma of a Shia LaBeouf or even a young Richard Dreyfuss.

 

Ferrari (Michael Mann, 2023): 2/5

Just a strange decision to make this movie all about Ferrari’s wife and mistress. The Ferrari character could have been a cobbler. What’s more, much of the dramatic crux of the story takes place before the film opens, and all we get are people talking about it—making this perhaps the most cerebral racing picture of all time. No matter how good Adam Driver is (he’s fine), why select such a young actor for the role and then deny (for the most part) the flashbacks that would be age-appropriate and illustrate the key moments in this character’s internal life?

 

Variety (Bette Gordon, 1983): 3.5/5

A woman who likes to watch men watch women. A film made by women about women and for women—about desire and 70s NYC Times Square. Offers a long, gender-swapped version of the Vertigo following-and-watching sequence. The female gaze?

 

The Timekeepers of Eternity (Aristotelis Maragkos, 2021): 3.5/5

Perfectly exemplifies the truism that most movies should be one-third the length and a lot more experimental. But elucidate for me: why this text? There is a trivial paper-tearing connection—and since the tears are often around the characters in frame, something about isolation. But many texts would benefit from this treatment, and should get it.

 

A Portrait, 2m (Aristotelis Maragkos, 2014): 3/5

An unsentimental biography of the artist’s grandfather, animated with elegant single-line drawings.

 

Allison, 7m (Paul Brickman, 2012): 2/5

Exceedingly minor except that, curiously, it’s the only thing Paul Brickman directed other than Risky Business and Men Don’t Leave.

 

Brewster McCloud, rw (Robert Altman, 1970): 3.5/5

A heady and silly archetypal tale. Bud Cort is a pure, virginal Kid who with the help of an Angel is building actual wings so he can “escape.” Sex with one of his temptresses (played by classic sex-pot Shelley Duvall) causes the Angel to retreat and “Icarus” to fall. All the bird stuff is silly until Bud Cort tests his Angel-less wings. The film pads out its run time with a parody of police drama, especially Bullet, including a pretty decent car chase. I would say Altman sees himself as the naive artist who just longs to fly (but whose appetites mean he is destined to be brought to the ground).

 

Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, 2005): 3/5

Not great but not deserving of the reviling it has received. The always great Kristen Dunst plays a classic manic pixie dream girl (a year after Garden State) to the blank but serviceable (and certainly extremely handsome) Orlando Bloom, dealing with a huge professional setback as well as the death of his mostly estranged father. Crowe’s dialogue occasionally shines, but like later Tarantino, he seems to have some trouble distinguishing his wheat from his chaff.

 

 

Jafar Panahi/Iranian Film Fest

Over and over Panahi makes the viewer ask: how much of this is real and how much fiction? I believe it is always the latter, but the ambiguity is powerful—a Schrödinger's drama, always real and always manufactured. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that, since his ban, “Panahi” has entered his own fictional universe as a character—intelligent yet slightly befuddled, indulgent to follow a tangent, quietly persistent, amiable, always watching and present, thoughtful about the damage his camera is doing.

 

The White Balloon, rw (Jafar Panahi, 1995): 3/5

An epic tale, confined within three city blocks. Compares unfavorably to the occasionally magic Where is the Friend’s House? Penned by Kiarostami, with whom Panahi served as Assistant Director (on, say, the previous year’s marvelous Through the Olive Trees).

 

The Mirror (Jafar Panahi, 1997): 4/5

A five-year-old girl wanders the busiest street in Tehran, trying to get home. Then there is a radical, metaphysical shift at the halfway mark that changes everything and nothing. The actress wakes but finds herself in the same bad dream anyway—this female in Iran who can’t even use the same bus doors as men.

 

The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000): 3/5

Pahani’s most anxious and despairing film, lacking his usual humanism, warmth and flashes of beauty. Follows a roundelay of women, Slacker-style, each desperately hemmed in by the rules regulating women’s rights and behavior.

 

Crimson Gold, rw (Jafar Panahi, 2003): 4.5/5

An anomaly in Panahi’s work. Whereas most of his films are family melodramas concerned with women and children, this one is concerned with class, criminals and even specific acts performed by government agents (arresting people for dancing). Impressionistic and largely plotless, it does show Panahi typical willingness to enjoy an exchange of ideas between two people, thrown together briefly. 

 

The Accordion, 8m (Jafar Panahi, 2010): 3.5/5

An emotional act of radical empathy, a spin-off of two characters that show up on the “fictional” bus in The Mirror. Basically, a terrific scene Panahi left on the cutting room floor to ensure that 1h30m runtime that I love so much. At that length, I forgive all.

 

Where are you, Jafar Panahi?, 20m (Jafar Panahi, 2016): 3.5/5

Autofiction video document features Panahi and fellow director Majid Barzegar on the winding road that leads from Tehran to Kiarostami’s relatively new grave, talking about why they make art, the responsibilities and the dangers. For a fan of Kiarostami, the gentle sway of the winding roads is its own pleasure.

 

3 Faces (Jafar Panahi, 2018): 4/5

Gracefully and warmly celebrates rebellious young women, emotional actresses/people, and longstanding war horses of beautiful resistance à la Nina Simon. Full of the intrusive kindness of village life—and people asking him to take an oath saying he is telling the truth.

 

Hidden, 19m (Jafar Panahi, 2020): 4/5

A documentary retelling of 3 Faces, extending and deepening the original themes of mistrust between reality and fiction.

 

Life, 19m (Jafar Panahi, 2021): 2/5

Home movies of the Covid era don’t connect (yet?), like someone recounting a dream.

 

No Bears (Jafar Panahi, 2022): 5/5

“You know very well that villagers are different from city people. Town people have problems with authorities. Villagers have problems with superstitions.” “There are no bears. Stories made up to scare us. Our fear empowers others. No bears!” Equivalence between moviemaking and escaping across some border. Equivalence between both the city and village governments in their passionate interest in an image—and wanting to take it away. And most powerfully and blasphemously, equivalence between a camera and the Koran. The final third perfectly expresses how the “goodness” of the ruling body corrupts even the most innocent interaction between good person and good person.

 

The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998): 3.5/5

Two 11-year-old girls have literally been locked in their house their entire lives (a metaphor for all women in Iran). A social worker frees them and tells them to go make friends, and we follow them for an afternoon of buying apples and playing in the park. Their maladroit antics are reminiscent of Gummo in their aimlessness and grotesqueness. The film also shares Gummo’s ambiguity between documentary and fiction, since it uses all the actual people involved in this actual incident.

 

Salaam Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1995): 3.5/5

Makhmalbaf puts a small ad in a newspaper looking for actors, and thousands of passionate cinephiles show up—so he decides to interview a number of them, investigating the nature of acting and cinema itself. As with a lot of Makhmalbaf, there is a sense of the director being a very alive presence—awake and open to the emotion and drama of the situation as it is actually evolving.

 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller, 2024): 4/5

Consistently delivers horrifying WTF moments, but no matter how grotesque and sadistic script is, the filmmaking is joyful and the tone is light and melodramatic. The camera movement in, around, under, over, and through the tanker in the central action scene is thrilling over and over. There are also bold monochromatic passages in orange and blue, and I’m reminded that Miller released a b/w version of Fury Road, although here he integrates it into the storytelling. Does Anya Taylor-Joy ever blink? Every bit as good as Fury Road.

 

I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024): 3.5/5

Heavy Lynch vibes. A feeling of unease and that everything is unreal slash assembled from our past media experiences. Our protagonist is frustrating because he never lets us travel down the yellow brick road, but maybe it’s better that it all vibrates just outside explanation. It’s tempting to see this autobiographically as a trans text, but I think it works for all kinds of repression/confusion. I’m really glad people are digging on this, and I’m in on the next movie, with hopefully a budget larger than a half an episode of House of the Dragon—although personally I was hoping for the slightly creepier vibes of World’s Fair.

 

* Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann, 2024): 3.5/5

The new “emotions” don’t add much, and the adventures of joy, anger, fear, envy and sadness across an abstract inner landscape are not exciting or new. But when we’re in the real world with our 13-year-old protagonist, the film works gangbusters. I related heavily to the girl growing up and becoming more complex, and tears came early and often.

 

Hit Man (Richard Linklater, 2024): 2/5

Hegel says it’s OK to kill the police officer that is trying to arrest you for your crimes. Glen Powell is going to be a huge star.

 

Civil War (Alex Garland, 2024): 2.5/5

The film remains apolitical, but when people were shooting at one another I wanted to know who is fighting who for what. That’s drama. Without that, it’s just guns, gear and fear with little meaning. The movie tries to settle for a story about noble and important war photographers, but I find it hard to believe that little black and white images do shit.

 

The Garfield Movie (Mark Dindal, 2024): 2.5/5

Better than it had to be, but mostly because it places Garfield in a traditional adventure plot such that it could have been any character at all.

 

Baby Reindeer, 7 eps (Richard Gadd, 2024): 2.5/5

Stalking: fine. Trans issues: Oh, I see. Rape: uh oh. Sexual abuse in the church: you gotta be kidding me. Just a lot to put yourself through. Too much.

 

Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023): 3.5/5

Breathtaking special effects, especially when Godzilla walks into Tokyo for some good old-fashioned building-smashin’. The monster here is the physical embodiment of our protagonist’s shame at failing in his kamikaze mission, which is interesting, but the rest of the relationship drama at the center of the film didn’t interest me much. Not as good as Shin Godzilla.

 

Bambi (David Hand, 1942): 3.5/5

The most arty and abstract of Disney movies (setting Fantasia aside). Also, the most adult, frankly addressing aging and death. No plot, no conflict, little dialogue and none of it expository—just a circle of life through the seasons and on through the phases of life. Echoes through Lion King and Pocahontas but also Miyazaki’s close attention to nature. Brief but lovely songs. Why can’t more songs be 45 perfect seconds, then we move on?

 

Raw Deal, rw (Anthony Mann, 1948): 3.5/5

Extraordinary direction and cinematography/lighting courtesy of John Alton, although the script and acting are just OK. John Ireland, always my favorite gunsel, is the exception.

 

From the East (Chantal Akerman, 1993): 2/5

It’s madness that 12 contributors to the latest Sight & Sound poll put this vacation footage from the Eastern Bloc on their top 10 favorite movies list.

 

Tout Une Nuit (Chantal Akerman, 1982): 2.5/5

A series of romantic intrigues in a variety of tones. Slowly arcs from the bar to the street to the stair to the bed to aftermaths.

 

Going in Style (Martin Brest, 1979): 4/5

A friggin’ delight, both funny and serious. George Burns is great (!)—self-possessed, still and droll. And indeed all the actors are superb. George Burns was 83, Lee Strasberg 78, and Art Carney the baby of the bunch at 61. A sequence in 1979 Las Vegas displays real joy and pure enjoyment, answering the question “What do they want the money for anyway?”

 

Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You! (Charles Roxburgh, 2012): 3.5/5

Magic Spot (Charles Roxburgh, 2022): 3/5

Like a lot of outsider art, these movies are naïve, direct, and grotesquely ignorant of rules. They are incompetent, but the incompetence doesn’t get in the way of them being good. They are not mistakes—the films are just the way the makers want them, the only way the makers could make them. They’re not “so bad it’s good.” They’re just good.

 

Milford Graves Full Mantis (Jake Meginsky, 2018): 3/5

A doc about a far-out drummer with a trippy personality/worldview.

 

Men Don’t Leave, rw (Paul Brickman, 1990): 3.5/5

At 23 I loved this movie, Brickman’s follow-up to Risky Business—which is strange, since it’s so sad. 33 years later, I can connect it favorably to weepy woman’s pictures where the new widow must make her way in the world selling pies and keeping track of her children’s needs as well as she can (ie, pretty badly), especially Mildred Pierce, Imitation of Life, and Stella Dallas. Jessica Lange knocks it out of the park.

 

Birth, rw (Jonathan Glazer, 2004): 3.5/5

A very Kubrick/Lynch experience, where all the characters seem hypnotized, and you become hypnotized yourself, until you’re not really asking ‘why’ the characters are acting the way they do, just following along. Since the movie is about grieving, not birth, it must have started out being called Death, not Birth, right? Kidman astounds.

 

Enough Said, rw (Nicole Holofcener, 2013): 4/5

The acting is stupendous, and I related deeply (still) to the feelings these characters have as their daughters are preparing to go off to college. Unusually large number of scenes in bed between these characters, but it’s realistic: at the beginning of a relationship people have sex a lot (and obviously if you’re lucky, you know, it keeps going…).

 

 

Early David Lean Film Fest

Lean’s first four films were written by Noël Coward, but none is as good as his Design for Living (directed by Lubitsch, obv), but few movies are. This fest was spurred by my viewing of The Passionate Friends, which kind of blew my mind. I watched it twice. Between Brief Encounter and The Passionate Friends, Lean directs two Dickens adaptations.

 

In Which We Serve (David Lean, Noël Coward, 1942): 3/5

Noël Coward not only wrote this but co-directed and starred in it, and he’s a confident performer with a natural gravity. Some realistic war footage, including a pretty harrowing boat-vs-plane battle, with ample flashes back to mundane (or let’s say universal) domestic dramas that brought each man to this point. Good acting and characters, but—it being a war-time production—the upper lips sure are stiff.

 

This Happy Breed (David Lean, 1944): 3/5

Telling the story of an average English family in the 20 years between the wars, this film—like In Which We Serve—is episodic and full of drama of the of most unexceptional sort. This makes the film both dull and, in the end, moving as a portrait of all of England.

 

Blithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945): 2.5/5

A man’s first wife returns as a ghost, and everyone speaks with Noël Coward’s witty dialogue. However, I don’t really know what he’s getting at here. Not really a comment on marriage, and full of shallow and quarrelsome people and ghosts. I happened to see the actual play recently, and at twice the length, it was twice as funny and twice as tiresome.  

 

Brief Encounter, rw (David Lean, 1945): 4/5

A love story that focuses almost exclusively on sadness, anxiety, regret and shame. “If only I could die.”

 

The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949): 5/5

Slots next to Call Me by Your Name and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (and, well, Brief Encounter) as great stories of impossible passions. Ann Todd is amazingly expressive, and Trevor Howard is a charismatic revelation. The cinematography, with all its fluttering shadows, is beyond beautiful, especially in the scene where they take a long gondola ride into crystalline purity of the top of the Alps. I watched this because I had heard that PTA cited it as an influence on Phantom Thread, and indeed there is an extremely familiar-looking New Year’s Eve party here, among other parallels.

 

 

Jean Grémillon Film Fest

Reminiscent of Carné and early Renoir in their moody romanticism. Remorques and Lumiere d’ete were both written by Jacques Prévert, who also wrote Children of Paradise, Port of Shadows, Le Jour Se Leve, and The Crimes of Monsieur Lange. None of these Grémillon films are quite as good as those (though Remorques comes close), but few movies are.

 

Lady Killer (Jean Grémillon, 1937): 3/5

Jean Gabin is a ladies man, who finally falls in love and gets a taste of his own medicine. The film’s climactic meeting between the characters is strikingly shot and charged with emotion—and the outcome works better than it did in Renior’s La Bête Humaine, a year later.

 

Remorques/Stormy Waters (Jean Grémillon, 1941): 4/5

Like The Deer Hunter, this begins with a wedding where you meet everyone, then the boys all go off on a dangerous mission (here on the ocean) that will change everything. Beautiful 30s shadow and fog cinematography and a leaning toward a documentary feeling when possible, thus poetic realism.

 

Le Ciel Est à Vous/The Woman Who Dared (Jean Grémillon, 1944): 2.5/5

A happy family is made even more happy (then unhappy, then happy again) as the wife takes up flying. A huge hit and a feel-good experience, but a shallow one.

 

Lumiere d’ete/Summer Light (Jean Grémillon, 1943): 3.5/5

Another tale of doomed love from Jacques Prévert. Three flawed men are obsessed with a young innocent, and a nearby dam construction site ensures that there are plenty of explosives, guns and cliffs about. What could go wrong? Made during the Occupation and banned until after the war for its portrayal of very debauched and cruel aristocratic and artistic classes.

 

The King and the Mockingbird (Paul Grimault, 1980): 2.5/5

Jacques Prévert wrote this animated movie as well, and it does tangentially feature two star-crossed lovers. Originally begun in 1952 and eventually completed in 1980, Grimault’s style is close to that of Max Fleischer (such as Gulliver’s Travels).

 

 

Spaghetti Western Film Fest

I’m surprised to find a pervasive theme of armed collectivist revolution and an impulse to lift up one’s poorest compadres once and for all (and get away with the gold) in these anarchic, argumentative, risible, lumpy, cartoonish, emotional, emphatic, new-feeling outdoor adventures (with guns). Not smooth, but full of anti-social crazies, weird corners and directorial whims. A romantic (if “fallen”) vision. Peckinpah is the closest American analogy. “Don’t buy bread. Buy dynamite.”

 

Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966): 3/5

Clint Eastwood look- and sound-alike Franco Nero pits two factions against one another in the quest for gold, with a final shootout in a cemetery. Familiar ground, but this is short and well-told, with a surreal amount of mud.

 

A Bullet for the General (Damiano Damiani, 1967): 3/5

A band of thieves (who want the gold) turns into a band of revolutionaries (who want the gold). The first of Damiani’s so called Zapata westerns. Written by Franco Solinas, who also penned The Battle of Algiers.

 

Face to Face (Sergio Sollima, 1967): 3.5/5

Interesting premise. The bad guy slowly grows a conscience, while our protagonist—a tubercular professor—pulls a Breaking Bad, turning ever more to the dark side. Written by Sergio Donati, who wrote For a Few Dollars More.

 

The Hellbenders (Sergio Corbucci, 1967): 3.5/5

Has a non-spaghetti feel. Joseph Cotten himself heads up a family of murderers to rival the Clantons. Displays of cruelty and rape-iness are at an elevated level, and Cotten wears a level of lipstick that could not be accidental.

 

The Mercenary (Sergio Corbucci, 1968): 3.5/5

I appreciate a universe where (excellent) third-stringers Franco Nero, Woody Strode, Jack Palance (who plays Curly, in a hideous curly-haired wig) cosplay The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Very dynamic camerawork, including rapid editing and a generous dollop of flashy zooms. Chaotic shootouts reminiscent of The Wild Bunch. Full of tough corners for our protagonists.

 

Companeros (Sergio Corbucci, 1970): 3.5/5

A broad comedy adventure with Marxist /Christian revolutionary ideals. Jack Palance wanders around the Mexican foothills in a cape, smoking joints, and talking to his pet hawk, as one does. Also the hawk ate the guy’s hand 10 years earlier, which saved his life. It’s that kind of movie. Plus an explicit plea for non-violence as a solution, making it a welcome response to the myth of retributive violence so routinely championed in cinema. Music by Ennio Morricone. Very recognizable but kind of … broad.  Although let’s face it, he fucking owns whistling.

 

And God Said to Cain (Antonio Margheriti, 1970): 3/5

This straightforward revenge plot is familiar from movies I grew up with such as High Plains Drifter. Makes me consider how few of these Spaghettis have revenge plots. A young Klaus Kinski is used expertly—the angles on his face are sharp enough to cut paper.

 

Keoma (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976): 3.5/5

Tons of cool and outrageous slo-mo death rolls and flips, plus thick layer of nihilism, which here means the near constant threat of rape and death. Many astonishing shots and tricks, pushing gunshot kills into a ballet that exaggerates Peckinpah’s already pretty arch vibe.