[2819]
Filippo Scotti, Toni Servillo, Teresa Saponangelo, Marlon Joubert, Luisa Ranieri, Renato Carpentieri
"Bacurau" is an action-adventure film. At it's heart, it's about good guys with guns against bad guys with guns. It's a thousand cliches but with enough fresh turns to be entertaining and diverting and, of course, a comment on humans and violence. Perhaps it's claim to fame is that the bad guys are mostly Americans who have paid (presuming they have paid) for the privilege of attacking a remote village in Norther Brazil and getting to kill as many people as they like. They are playing games. They have no regard for human life, and, in the end, no one has any regard for their lives. Filmed with mostly amateur actors in a real small town in a real Brazil with a few political touchstones (the corrupt, rich mayor is stealing their water and charging them for a truck to deliver it to them), Bacurau moves along briskly with the texture of a Mexican "B" movie and the personality of a well-traveled, colorful, and vulgar Uncle. Enjoy. [2714]
Barbara Colen, Thomas Aquino, Silvero Pereira, Thardelly Lima, Reubens Santos, Udo Kier, Sonia Braga
A profound film about loneliness and social isolation that often rises to the level of poetry, and sometimes mystery. Jake and his companion, who is given several names, are travelling through a bleak winter landscape on their way to his parents' rural home. They have a long conversation, about physics and art and literature, and love, all while she keeps thinking she means to end the relationship. Their encounter with his parents is odd and awkward and uncomfortable-- but never flippant. They have dinner but nobody eats. She wants to leave but his parents are suddenly elderly and need his help. They leave and stop at a ice cream stand in the middle of winter, for two large helpings, which neither wants, and he takes a side road to find a place to dump the containers, but ends up at a large high school where they meet an old janitor. Spoilers: the janitor is him. The girl is also his imaginary construction of what might have been had he, the lonely janitor, ever had the courage or wherewithal to initiate a relationship. And he understands that a real girl would never have found him a good companion and would have wanted to end it, to get back to the city and away from him. And thus some scenes from Oklahoma clearly implying that he too wants to end things. Terrific performances and daring sequences. [2708]
Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, David Thewlis, Guy Boyd, Hadley Robinson, Gus Birney, Abby Quinn, Oliver Platt
Two hours of exquisite banality that will break your heart. The Mamiya family in Tokyo gets by, thanks to Noriko's income as a clerical worker, and her brother's income as a physician. The household consists of Noriko, father Shukichi and mother Shige, sister-in-law Fumiko, brother Koichi, and her brother's two young spoiled sons. Noriko is 28 and the pressure is on, from everybody, to accept an offer. Her boss knows a director of a company, Mr. Manabe, who is well-off but is 12 years older than Noriko. Noriko is not sure she wants to get married in any case; in friendly banter with married friends, she lauds the single life, and her independence. But just as the pressure increases to accept Mr. Manabe's offer, she impulsively accepts an offer from Kenkichi Yabe's mother, to marry her widowed son, a life-long friend of Noriko's, and move to a rural area in Northern Japan. The family is shocked and very disappointed. Without her income, they will have to move to a rural home with Shukichi's elderly brother. They take a family portrait together-- one last time that they will be together before Noriko's departure. Regarded as one of Ozu's greatest films, and one of the greatest films, period, "Early Summer" is touching, sensitive, beautifully composed and paced, and heart-rending in the delicate revelation of attachment and separation, of subtle jealousies and resentments, and the emotionally devastating consequences of seemingly momentary life decisions. One cannot ignore the reverberations of war on the family dynamic either: Shukichi, at one point, alludes to a son who he does not think is ever coming back, though his mother persists in believing he is alive somewhere. Was there ever a more delicate, perfect suggestion of "haunting"? Noriko, in the end, seems to be the only one optimistic about the future, possibly because she has exercised real agency over her future, though it's not clear if she does this to forestall the arrangement with Mr. Manabe, or because she has decided, after all, that she would be happier with Kenkichi. [2695]
Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, Chikage Awashima, Kuniko Miyake, Ichiro Sugai, Chieko Higashiyama, Haruko Sugimura, Kuniko Igawa, Hiroshi Nihon'yanagi
Relentless test of actors adding. More and more. [2651]
A rustic farmer named Wilbur Tennant from Parkersburg, West Virginia strides into a high-powered law firm in Cincinnati demanding to see lawyer Robert Bilott. He claims that Dupont has been poisoning the drinking water and creeks around his farm and insists that Bilott, whose grandmother referred Tennant, take the case. And so begins the long, long journey of seeking justice. Of course, Bilott is reluctant to take the case. Of course at one point his obsession with it threatens his marriage. Of course we see montages of him working day and night, totally devoted to the cause. Of course we see him spooked in a parking lot-- maybe Dupont planted a bomb in his car? He discovers that Dupont has been using a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA-C8) that never disappears from a human body that has ingested it and is known-- through Dupont's own studies-- to cause birth defects and cancers. Workmanlike film, cliche-ridden (come on-- Todd Haynes?) and predictable. [2642]
Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, Bill Pullman
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