A bit too precious for it's own good, but likeable, comedy about a man with Down's Syndrome who decides to "escape" his home and become a professional wrestler. Zack Gottsagen plays himself, kind of, and Dakota Johnson the inevitably beautiful caregiver contrived to pursue him. He meets another man on the run, Tyler, who, of course, helps him after the expected resistance stage. The contrivances are many: the pseudo imprisonment of Zak, the inevitable attraction between Tyler and Elanor, the grizzled but feisty old people, the rough and tough wrestler with the heart of gold-- but it remains likable for the authentic portrayal by Gottsagen and the moderately fresh attitudes that try to avoid condescension.
Zack Gottsagen, Dakota Johnson, Bruce Dern, Shia LaBeouf, Thomas Haden Church
Combination of live action and animated animals. Moving story about a pig and a spider who tries to help the pig avoid the usual fate of livestock on a farm. The story does not shy away from telling us that Wilbur is due to be slaughtered and "cured" (as Templeton, the Rat makes clear). So Charlotte, the spider, tries her best to convince the farmer that Wilbur is a special pig, more valuable to him alive than dead. Like many, many films should have stopped ten minutes before the last round of thickly applied sentiment, but generally a good film that is less icky and contrived than the usual children's fare. Wilbur is not really all that appealing: he's very earnest and polite, and Charlotte is played poorly by Julia Roberts as smug and a bit too solicitous of Wilbur's welfare. Templeton, however, livens the proceedings up with his frank self-interest and greed. The other animals are more or less bit players and background.
Pixar's exceptional animated story about... wait for it... a PRINCESS!! Princess Merida, living in medieval Scotland, is to be betrothed to one of three numbskulls who contend for her hand. Her mother is determined to see it through in spite of Merida's wish to do whatever she wants-- a somewhat anachronistic idea in this context. Unfortunately, while seeking a magic spell to make her mother more compliant, Merida causes a disaster and must use all of her manly skills to undo it. Disney purchased the film with Pixar and that's why it's a relatively fresh spin on the Princess conceit, with less emphasis on costumes and handsome princes (the princes are morons). And there are bums! (Merida's three brothers, released from a spell, run naked to their mother). More about mother-daughter relationships than romance, with a slight edge. And witty at times, with a decent cast, and with lively animation.
Astounding 4 hour film about four individuals in a medium-sized industrial town in China who are all at a moment of crisis. Bu, defending a friend he thought was innocent of stealing a cell phone, accidentally pushes Shuai down a stairs. Ling's caustic mother is riding her for growing sexual awareness, unaware of her affair with a married teacher. Cheng, Shuai's older brother, is reluctantly pressed to seek revenge for Bu's attack, and causes a friend's suicide by having sex with the friend's girl. Mr. Wang's children are pushing him out of their apartment and into a ridiculously dreary nursing home. They interact with each other, indirectly at first, then more immediately. Their worlds are explored with long steadicam shots over their shoulders, watching and seeing what they see, and long steady close-ups of their faces showing their inner turmoil and despair. All of them become aware of a legendary elephant at a zoo in Manzhouli, who sits still watching the world with calculated indifference. Everything unfolds in one day as each of them tries to get a ticket on the train to Manzhouli. There are absolutely wonderful "pay-off" scenes: Ling eating (really eating) while her teacher-lover explains why he hasn't left his wife for her yet; Cheng trying to decide whether to finally take revenge on Bu when he has him helplessly (and decidedly passively) in his sites; Mr. Weng touring the old age home. The film asks, what are we all doing here? You wonder about your own marvelous luck, living in Canada, prosperous, secure, in a world that is eternities removed from the world of these characters who seem to have no hope of any pleasure, other than seeing the elephant sitting still and contemplating his posture of resignation and observation. The film-maker, Hu, tragically took his own life shortly after the film was completed.
Important and reasonably deft study of attempts by the Senate Intelligence Committee headed by Dianne Feinstein to uncover evidence of torture by the CIA, and of the ineffectiveness of the program after it was invoked by the Bush Administration on the legal advice of John Woo (if we don't mean to inflict suffering just for the sake of suffering, it's not torture). Unfortunately, marred by Driver's self- righteous portrait of Daniel Jones. Like many movies-- and West Wing, at times-- loves the drama of an underling angrily lecturing the boss about what should be done, in a way that I don't believe occurs in real life. People always know who holds the purse strings, and the people with the purse strings don't tolerate the kind of abuse Jones hurls at Feinstein. Well, it's Jones' book, and he never tires of reminding us of just how courageous and determined and dedicated he was (apparently, he never went home when there was work to be done). Everyone also acts as if they are shocked that this took place-- yet most of the principals were deeply involved in intelligence matters and couldn't have been so naive as to not believe abuses were taking place. Not kind to Obama, or Denis McDonough-- or even Feinstein, really-- who clearly couldn't stomach the idea of actually holding people accountable for what were clearly criminal activities. It's too bad the story didn't get the kind of artistic representation it deserved.
With the incessant fabrication of hyped details of so-called "true stories" and the absorption of these myths into popular culture, does it matter any more what "really" happened? When Tarantino mythologizes a real event, is he simply reflecting our culture back at us-- this what we really think or wish happened, so does it really matter if it didn't? Oddly enough, there are enough accurate details in "Once Upon..." to make Tarantino's effort more interesting than you might think. Tarantino smartly starts with a more prosaic tale about actor Rick Dalton whose career is in the process of being washed up and out, and his relationship with loyal stunt double and aide Cliff Booth. Dalton desperately wants a big film role again but is only offered major roles in Italy, in spaghetti westerns. Booth sees the end coming to his own employment but is stoic about it. Dalton lives next door to a real director, Roman Polanski, and his beautiful, pleasant wife, actress Sharon Tate. But the movie is about movie culture and kitsch and the relationships between the actors and agents and money and their audience. These characters actually watch tv- something hardly anyone ever does in any Hollywood film though it is something most Americans spend hours doing every day. They bump into Manson's tribe and Booth remembers working for George Spahn, the owner of the ranch that Manson has infiltrated with his acolytes, and looks him up. Tate goes to see her own film, and smiles with delight at her own performance.
Kim Ki-woo is a poor college student who has a valuable friend, Min, who has a good gig tutoring Park Da-hye, the daughter of a rich, upper-class family in Seoul. When Min decides to go overseas for a time he offers Kim the job on condition he ensure that Park is available for dating to him once she reaches college age. Kim is resourceful and quickly seizes the opportunity to persuade the gullible Mrs. Park to hire his sister (concealing the relationship) as a tutor for their younger son, Da-song. Then the father is brought in as a replace for the driver, and the mother is brought in to replace the maid after they convince the Parks that she has TB. All goes well for the Kims until the maid, Moon-gwang, returns once rainy night and begs to be let in to retrieve something she forgot. Soon after, all hell breaks loose. It is Da-song who first suspects something is up when he notices the same smell-- of poverty-- hovering around the new tutor, the new maid, and the driver. But these are not the virtuous, humble poor: the Kims are ambitious, greedy, and sometimes ruthless in exploiting the situation for their own benefit. Director Joon Ho chose this story line, he said, because it was one of the rare possible avenues through which an upper class Korean family might actually encounter someone from the lower classes with any kind of intimacy. "Parasite" has an uncommonly clever plot, striking sequences (particularly the search for wifi at the beginning and the flood at the end), and a subtle message about the social pathology of inequality.
Cynthia and Evelyn study butterflies and moths together, and Cynthia is a lecturer at the Institute, before all female audiences who revel in the arcane details of insect life. But they are also lovers in a strange relationship: Evelyn role-plays the maid and Cynthia requires her to clean and wash, to her "strict" standards, and punishes Evelyn when she falls short. It becomes apparent that this is really Evelyn's show-- she gets off on being dominated and commanded. Until she doesn't-- as when Cynthia, at one point, becomes genuinely angry with her and forces her to bake her own birthday cake. The flaw in this film is that we don't know what to make of this scene-- isn't this exactly what Evelyn likes? How does she know the difference between a requested humiliation and one that is unexpected. She even complains to Cynthia that it is all not as exciting for her when Cynthia only carries out these procedures at Evelyn's request. There's a fascinating ambiguity there that is left unexplored. We do become aware of how Evelyn is really the dominant partner, demanding that Cynthia fulfill her fantasies at the expense of personal comfort and the more casual pleasures of companionship. All of this is set in a magnificent old house, and wonderful scenes of butterflies, pinned-- like Cynthia-- and moths and sunlight and forests, and strong, atmospheric sounds and music. Does it all actually work? Partly.
Reasonably accurate dramatization of the famous sequence of events that led to Ford winning the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France, after Ferrari brushed off Ford's purchase attempt in 1963. Carroll Shelby, the premiere race car builder of the era, is recruited by Ford and given carte blanche to create a car that would beat Ferrari at Le Mans. Using a British design and a Ford engine, Shelby sets out on the task and recruits racing driver Ken Miles to drive it. (Shelby, for health reasons, had ceased racing years before.) But Ford isn't fond of Miles-- he doesn't seem "the Ford type" and try to remove him from the team. Bale's portrayal of Miles is vivid and convincing, and Tracy Lett's performance as Henry Ford II is brilliant. The racing sequences not so much-- too much quick cuts to foot on accelerator (were they really not pressing it all the way down before?), low angle shots of the cars, and drivers' faces (gazing at each other as they pass-- seriously). Mangold didn't seem to know what to do when Mile's Ford had to gain two laps to retake the lead, or give up two laps as a strategic move late in the race. It is an artistic problem he did not solve. And a bit too much of the old "I'm an asshole but I'm great so you have to keep begging me even though anyone with any sense would have given up long ago" when Miles is recruited. And does Enzo Ferrari really celebrate leading after just one lap? He's never been to Le Mans before? Refreshing: Mollie Miles likes racing and speed and supports Miles without reservation. Still, more accurate than most Hollywoodizations and Bale's performance carries a lot of the film.
Scorcese's giant reputation keeps him going and keeps drawing the big money for epic productions like this. Has his skills as a director kept up? Not in all respects. There are still some brilliant shots and some exceptional sequences, but there are also moments of sloppiness and carelessness that seem to suggest that he has admitted to himself that mass audiences just don't care about careful scene development or well-rehearsed actors. With "The Irishman", he doesn't seem to care about the credibility of the story either, defending his production with the classic, lame, "it's just fiction, after all, as if it was only coincidence that all of the characters are named after real people. The real people are described in Frank Sheerhan's (De Niro) book and most crime writers and police and the FBI don't believe it. Sheerhan claims to have played an outsized role in Hoffa's career, and even claims to have pulled the trigger on a number of famous murders, including Hoffa's. Scorcese chose to jump back and forth in time and here comes the first serious problem: it is apparent that the actors, 76-year-old De Niro and 76-year-old Pesci, played their younger selves. Scorcese used CGI to "de-age" them, but he couldn't de-age their strides or bodies. As a result, they look just plain weird, as when Sheerhan strides over some rocks on a shoreline to dispose of a gun. And if De Niro found his character to play, I couldn't identify it (though Pesci is quite good). Pacino similarly brings his loud bigness to the role and brings up something of a Hoffa, but his reputed charm is more creepy than seductive. It's a veritable swamp of over-aged actors trying to play their younger selves and most of it just looks bizarre. Scorcese's judgement also seems untethered in the editing of the film-- there are three or four repeats of scenes (like Sheerhan trying to convince Russell Bufalino that Hoffa won't give in reclaiming leadership of the Teamsters) that don't advance anything. This is sometimes the result of a director having total control-- a smart producer would have caught the problem and snipped it. In short, "The Irishman" doesnt' deserve 209 minutes, and Scorcese doesn't deserve a nomination for best director that many critics seem to assume is his birthright.
Startlingly raw and intense study of a divorce gaining emotional momentum when the woman, Nicole, consults a ruthless lawyer. Nicole and Charlie seems like an utterly compatible couple: he's a play director and actor, and she's an actress, and they live together in New York enjoying a vibrant social and artistic life. But something rekindles Nicole's desire for an independent career, in television, in Los Angeles. That last aspect is telling: we're familiar with the well-known perceived cultural rift between the coasts. When Charlie goes West to visit Nicole and their son, Henry, he immediately encounters the kind of shallow, flaky people we've been trained to expect. The couple meets with a mediator who asks them each to write down a list of the things they loved about each other when they first met. But Nicole doesn't want to read it. "Marriage Story" is bitterly even-handed. We never get that release, that absolution of finding out, dammit, that one of them is right or just or more fair or virtuous than the other. Just many close-ups-- like Bergman-- of characters speaking their minds. Neither of them turns into a monster. Neither of them forgives. Along the way, Laura Dern does present a villain, and a slithery one at that, whose work is so subtle and couched in pleasantries you almost never see the stiletto. Charlie at first tries for an expensive, cool, cynical lawyer, Jay, but is repelled by his rough suggestions, and his fees, and ends up going with Bert Spitz, the most unexpected character in the movie. Recommended by Nicole's mother, of all people, he is a former criminal lawyer who may have been "demoted" in some way to family law. He openly and shamelessly contradicts himself, telling Charlie, at one point, to take Henry back to New York to fight for custody, and then acknowledging that that would be a bad idea. Alan Alda's best performance-- perhaps, ever. But it is when "Marriage Story" gets into the increasingly desperate, even savage arguments between Charlie and Nicole that it becomes most searing. They hold nothing back, Nicole telling Charlie how repelled she was by even his skin, and Charlie accusing her of frigidity and hypocrisy-- of using him and his stage success to build credibility as an actress (though she was famous before she met him). Baumbach's gift to us is that they never become inhuman to each other: they back away, they seem conscious of their own dishonesty and cruelty, and seek tiny gestures of reconciliation. This is a heartbreaking film that borders on the territory of art that tells you what you may, finally, realize that you don't want to know. Incidentally, Johannson plays a role here that would perfectly complement, and bookend, her role in "Ghost World" when she was 16. She was a young, naive, but worldy and somewhat cynical adolescent trying to find some value in her prospects, for love and marriage and a career. In "Marriage Story", it credibly tells us where Rebecca ended up.
Elton John produced his own biography and the result is entirely predictable. What is most surprising is that Taron Egerton, who plays John, was permitted to do his own weak imitation of John's voice on the songs. The inadequacy is quite stunningly apparent-- and I say this someone who never was a great fan of John's music. Fletcher was assistant director on the equally mediocre "Bohemian Rhapsody", and it shows. Direction is random, illogical, and dull, and the dance sequences are miserably pedestrian, substituting rapid cuts for interesting dynamics. Please note: Elton John's mother and father were both deceased by the time the movie was made and so, conveniently, are not around to contradict the rather harsh portrait of them. Other family members dispute particularly the portrait of his father and claim he did, in fact, attend many of John's concerts. His father, in fact, bought him the piano he learned on. Richard Madden and Stephen Graham are fictionalizations with different names from the persons who allegedly inspired them. Taron Edgerton acknowledges that they were "creative" with those depictions. Regardless of the cheating, this is a weak film that simply rewarms the tired old trope of the poor suffering artist driven to addiction by his deprived childhood and the pressures of being rich and famous. Note John ingesting cocaine right after a bitter dispute with his manager, and Taupin's decision to retreat to his farm. "Rocketman" is just plain boring. On the plus side, the film generously leaves out his horrible re-write of "Candle in the Wind" for the only British celebrity more narcissistic than he was.
Original and odd story about a group of America students who decide to accompany a friend, Pelle, to a small northern town in Sweden about to have a "once in a lifetime" festival. Dani and her boyfriend, Christian, were about to break up when Dani's sister committed suicide taking her parents with her. Dani, seeking a healing experience, insinuates herself into the group. The festival is being celebrated by a commune in an isolated village, and the creep is attenuated by many sequences of seemingly normal interactions. Aster has the good grace not to telegraph events in the script that only the writer should know. Inch by inch, the community insinuates itself into the visitor's interactions with each other, dividing them, sometimes offering help that isn't helpful. Florence Pugh as Dani carries the film brilliantly, convincingly expressing change and confusion and disorientation, as she becomes more and more absorbed into the rituals. The actions of the community, horrifying as they are, are absorbingly compelling, gradually making you wonder if all religions don't ultimately consist of arbitrary, seemingly absurd rituals. Powerful and haunting.
Should be quadruple featured with "Heavenly Creatures", "Ghost World", and "Book Smart", as films of different eras that feature adolescent girls who develop a passionate, secretive relationship of fantasy and adventure, and whose misadventures provoke crises among the adults who care or don't care so much for them. Fourteen-year-old Marian and Valarie (actresses real ages: 15, 16) meet at school and quickly establish a rapport based on the fact that they both have braces and both hate the same teachers. Valerie's parents are married but rich father Frank travels the world on behalf of his business and his faithless wife Isabel appears to be having an affair with a pianist. Marian's parents are divorced and she barely knows her father. Her mother lives with friend "Boothy" and they look after Marion. The two girls embark on harmless misadventures until Val begins to fixate on a concert pianist, Henry Orient, who is himself trying to seduce a very nervous, very reluctant Stella. Orient notices the girls spying on him and becomes paranoid, while Stella is irrationally fearful of her husband catching her-- and doesn't seem all that interested in the actual sexual aspect of the affair in any case. Henry Orient gives a concert for which Marian's mother buys tickets and takes the girls. He gives a sloppy performance-- in a lingering, remarkable scene-- of an avant garde concerto that bewilders most of the audience. Complications develop when Val, angered by her mother reading her personal tribute book to Orient, disappears one night. Val's father, Frank, and Marian's mother, Avis, are both enlightened but not too enlightened, and they step in at the right time to resolve what can be resolved. Very well-written (back when they bothered with good writing), adeptly filmed and directed, and generally well-acted. Sellers in particular is very good as Henry Orient, though his accent wanders, and Paula Prentiss is very funny as his girlfriend. The young actresses are decent if not quite remarkable. It's a film from a very different world and time and some of the social behaviors would cause one, nowadays, to suck in a breath. The resolution is a bit Hollywood happy-- Frank resolves to be a better parent-- but not too jarring.
Funky, lively, profane and irreverent look at two girls and their attempt to live low on the last day of their high school careers, before heading off to college or Botswana. They are smart and extremely diligent, but when Molly (Beanie Feldstein-- Jonah Hill's sister, 26 and looks it) discovers that some of their classmates have achieved as much as they have while still partying and having fun, she becomes determined to crash a party and indulge. Amy (26-year- old Kaitlyn Dever)is not thrilled but they are loyal friends so she tags along. They have a series of misadventures that are all reasonably fresh and amusing, before ending up at Nick's party where Molly hopes to attract Nick's attention while Amy has the hots for a skateboarder named Ryan. Is this about where the producers intervened, demanding a more predictable, big finish? It is at the moment Amy and Hope fail to consummate their passion, and Amy decides to distract the police on behalf of the other party-goers that the film suddenly turns dishonest and cloying. Who rigged it? It is quite discernible. A film that had spirit and funk suddenly becomes dispiritingly predictable. Why is it part of the hidden moral code of films like this, and "Superbad", and most of John Hughes' films, and many others, that the main character must be preserved in a virginal state for the resolution of the film? And why is Amy arrested at the end? For being at a party? The sudden relationship with Hope gave me hope, that we were not going to be subject to the usual core of moral hypocrisy (audiences want to be titillated but don't like it when the character actually consummates our wish) but Wilde gutlessly pulled the string. A far more satisfying ending was offered in "Ghost World" which stayed true to it's premise, when Enid beds Seymour, and then waits for the end of the world at the phantom bus stop, while Rebecca detaches and moves on with her life in a more constructive direction. Poignant and heart-breaking. But Wilde didn't have the courage to give this story the ending it deserved. Because she and the producers know that the American audience is childish and can't bear too much reality. That, presumably, is also why both Dever and Feldstein are almost ten years older than their roles,
Fascinating documentary about the Barkley Marathons, a 60-hour 5-loop 100 mile race through the Frozen Head State Park in Wartburg, Tennessee, through the wild mountains near the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Inspired by the story of James Earl Ray's escape from the penitentiary (he lasted three days and only got 8 miles from the prison), Gary Cantrell designed a course, selects 40 participants, and charges $1.60 and a license plate, and shirt or hat or something, to enter the race. Contestants rarely finish: the hills are full of rock, streams, bracken and thorns. Taps is played for everyone who drops out. The race starts when Cantrell lights a cigarette. Whacky and intriguing, and dramatic as you get to know some of the determined contestants, and anchored by interviews with Cantrell and the contestants, "Barkley" is always entertaining and sometimes moving.
Julie is a film student in London in the 1980's. She meets an odd, attractive but moody gentleman named Anthony and strikes up a friendship: he has just been booted out of his marriage and needs a place to stay. In one of the most telling scenes in the film, he and Julie chastely share a bed. It's such an unusual scene-- you won't see it in a Hollywood movie without a lot of tittering or comedy about it-- that it has to be based on fact, and it is. Their relationship eventually develops into intimacy and the naive Julie suddenly learns one night that Anthony is a heroin addict. And from there, we get the drama of struggle and redemption and tragedy. Julie is played by Tilda Swinton's daughter, and Swinton plays her mother. Much of Julie's dialogue is improvised and the movie carries that improvisational tone very well. The conversations sound real and the characters seem authentic. Is that enough? We learn about a couple of interesting personalities (the story is closely based on Hogg's own real experiences), but the film rarely rises above a simmer. I liked it, but I'm not sure I could recommend it.
I cannot think of another film like this, though "Remember My Name" is not without flaws. It's greatest asset is Crosby himself-- no fucks given-- telling us all--without self-pity-- about how he deserved to be hated by his former band-mates and lovers. That's him on the couch, and in a limo, touring the faces and places that played a role in his career, particularly as part of CSN and then CSNY. He's old and cranky now and has 8 stents in his heart, and takes insulin because he's a serious diabetic, and still touring-- by himself-- because he needs the money. (Among others, he takes you to the house depicted in Nash's "Our House", which is kind of moving.) He's still a bit manipulative and never really not self-serving, but it is deeply refreshing to see the focus on an artist who was part of a group that produced real music-- not light shows, not dance, not theatrical bs-- and still, to this day, sticks to that ethic. There was one really amusing moment: CSN playing "Silent Night" for the White House, Christmas, and seriously, horribly botching it.
Barbara is an East German physician who did something bad, and thus has been demoted from a prestigious university hospital in East Berlin to a small town near Torgau, a youth prison. She trusts no one around here, suspecting them all of being Stasi agents, and secretly plans with her West German lover to defect across the water to Denmark. There are complications, and the ending, unfortunately, is quite preposterous. And I mean, really preposterous. The more you think about it, the less believable it is. Her colleague, Andre, who came off to me as rather creepy, is supposed to be the wholesome love interest, and he himself can't understand why she doesn't fall at his feet, even though she correctly suspects he is an informant for the secret police. She cares deeply about her patients-- we are told-- but still decides to leave them, until it is inconvenient for the plot. As if it had not occurred to her that defecting to Denmark means her patients would no longer be cared for by her. It's a lightweight story that feels like it thinks its much deeper, but really comes off as rather sophomoric with sophomoric ideas about heroism and self-sacrifice. Nicely filmed, and acted with dignity: except that characters not directly involved in the action appear to be standing around waiting for lines, instead of having something to do, as they would in real life. In fact, almost all of the practical details are obvious and superficial, especially in the hospital.
Niko depends on his father's largess to pay his rent and food but doesn't tell him that he dropped out of university two years ago. When his father finds out, he cancels his bank account. Niko sets out to get a cup of coffee and runs into various people, including an old school classmate who remembers how he used to insult her, and has various misadventures. He has a no-good, rotten day. He really doesn't have any drive or vision of his own future, or even the next day. His former school-mate seems interested in him and invites him to a performance of a play she is in, but he is late, and the thuggish director attacks him as a poseur. Another friend is in a movie about Nazis. Neither Niko nor his closest friends seem ready to be adults or to take any responsibility even for their own lives. Is that because the adults around them are all absurdly self-absorbed and uncool? As in "Head-on", we are led to believe that there is something inauthentic or worse about the lives of his father, or the neighbor with the meatballs, or the people with jobs at the cafes he goes into in his for coffee-- at a reasonable price. The film has a redemptive moment: in a bar, a very old man criticizes the younger generation for their aimlessness-- and falls ill outside. His charge is eloquent and obviously ambiguous: he clearly served in German army during the war. But here the artistic weakness of the film is also illuminated-- the nurse who comes to tell Niko about the old man's condition clearly has nothing to do except look compassionate and give her lines. She simply has no weight as a nurse, no duties, no history, no memory: just the lines. It gives the ending an unfortunate tone of contrivance. It would have been wonderful and raised the film a notch if she had been a tad impatient to get back to her work.
Cahit and Sibel are both party animals, but Sibel is the oppressed daughter of a strict moslem Turkish family, and Cahit is also Turkish, but a drinker and wastrel. He lives in a filthy apartment and cleans tables for a restaurant, but mostly he drinks. When he crashes his car into a wall without living skid marks, he is briefly institutionalized where he meets Sibel, who has tried to commit suicide. Sibel sees marriage to Cahit as a solution to her family's control of her life. She doesn't expect to actually consummate the marriage or spend time with Cahit: she just wants out of her family. They marry and misadventure follows as Sibel parties on while Cahit begins to rethink the relationship. What is the point? At one point, the film suggests that Sibel lives a more authentic life than her achievement oriented sister who is on the managerial track at a hotel in Istanbul. That's a cheap point, because this film is not going to take a moment to show any pleasure or satisfaction in her sister's life. Like "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and other movies about derelicts, there's a point at which the director seems clueless about just how boring drunks and drug addicts are, but they do know that most critics won't roast them for that indulgence lest they appear to be prudish or contemptuous of authenticity. But there are a few points made about religion, captured in the exchange between Cahit and Sibel's brother, where he proposes they go to a brothel, and Cahit suggests they all go home and fuck their wives, and Sibel's brother's friends are enraged: you don't "fuck" your wife-- you fuck a whore. Every college sophomore now gets this film.
Well-written and witty but predictable. Phoebe Frost, a Congresswoman from Iowa, arrives in post-war Berlin to assess the morale of the American troops there-- and check on their behavior. Captain John Pringle receives a birthday cake from her, from one of her constituents, his girlfriend. The she ends up in a cabaret (guided by two unknowing GI's who think she's a German) where she sees Erika Von Schluetow perform and is convinced she is a Nazi and recruits Pringle to investigate. Unknown to her, Pringle is having an affair with Erika. So we have the circumstances of comedy-- in post-war Berlin, among the ruins of buildings and lives, and the moral compromises of the black market. Frost is naive but not stupid, and she is tempted by Pringle, and begins to reconsider her prissy sense of propriety. Erika wants to retain her conduit to black market goods. The humour makes like of what are really very grim circumstances, but the actors do well with the material and Wilder is a crisp, efficient director. Intriguing for the dated attitudes towards women and the Germans and war (for a film that must have been quite progressive in its day). Dietrich for me has always been an unlikable, sly character, and here that's an asset. It's a pity the ending, unlike, say, "The Third Man", goes for the compromise, Hollywood resolution.
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Amateurish but interesting, and sometimes moving, documentary about the decades-long relationship between poet, novelist, and song-writer Leonard Cohen and his muse, Marianne Ihren, during which the song "So Long Marianne" is never played through. Not once. Director Nick Broomfield knew Marianne before Cohen did-- and claims to have been her love for a short time-- and he inserts himself into the narrative a few times, and much of the footage seems like b-roll, and some of the interviewees have questionable pedigreed. But we kind of stroll through the free-spirited '60's in all its glory and weirdness and destructiveness; we find out that Axel, Marianne's son by her first husband, did not handle it all very well (Marianne sent him to a boarding school when he was seven and seems to have neglected him) and we find out that many couples did not stay together for very long. We hear a lot of rationalizations for why Cohen, an inveterate womanizer, deserves our indulgence, a standard I'm not sure most people would apply with consistency. There are interviews with Ron Cornelius, which is illuminating, and Aviva Layton, which is not much. There is a feel for the tragic in "Marianne and Leonard" that comes from the material, not from the particular skills of the documentarist.
Absolutely disgraceful realization of the brilliant diary of an anonymous woman (a journalist who spoke Russian) living through the first months of the Russian occupation of her part of Berlin. I could not figure out what the editing and filming techniques were intended to convey: they were jarring and disordered and aesthetically violent. The handsome Russian Major who was intended to provide a virtuous counterpoint to the marauding soldiers was taciturn to the point of absurdity-- you started rooting for him to get knocked off or arrested or something. But the massive failure of this film lies in it's perverse conviction that this was a romance, a story like "Doctor Zhivago", about trying times that conflict with the natural expression of love for poor Nina Hoss as "Anonyma", the unknown German woman who wrote the book. (She is now known: her name was Marta Hillers.) The book itself is full of fascinating details about day to day life under a hostile occupying power, of interactions with soldiers who have seen their own loved ones slaughtered mercilessly by the German army, and now loot and destroy at will in revenge, to the indifference of their own commanding officers. The German publisher said, "The author's attitude was an aggravating factor: devoid of self-pity, with a clear-eyed view of her compatriots' behaviour before and after the Nazi regime's collapse, everything she wrote flew in the face of the reigning post- war complacency and amnesia." And in the face of the feminist ideology which embraced the book, probably because it documents bad behavior by men. Anonyma realizes her best chance of survival is to cultivate the patronage of a ranking officer, and she succeeds, and he provides her with food and cigarettes in exchange for sex. The feminist spin lies in the way her declaration that she will take control over who rapes her is presented as an emblem of empowerment and liberation, when it's really a rather pathetic denial of capitulation. In the book, she is sanguine about the circumstance, acknowledging that, considering the German part in the war, self-pity and self-righteousness would be out of place. She finds a way to accommodate herself to the stressed circumstances. The movie, however, sees this as a tragic romance, and treats the rapes as if they didn't occur in the aftermath of brutal invasions, genocide, mass murder, and occupation. Nobody in the film is convincing in their roles, though Nina Hoss is adequate and restrained. There are lots of soldiers in costume, and the ravaged streets, but the most compelling details in the diary, like the work details she was forced to undergo, are absent from the film.
yesh yeah hey
"My job is very boring I'm an office clerk" could be the soundtrack to the fate of young Domenico Cantoni who is applying for his first job at a faceless corporation in Milan. The slow-paced, neo-realist gem from Olmi takes a humanistic interest in Domenico's feelings of anticipation and dread and shyness as he enters the adult world, accepting and compliant, but also filled with some wonder-- and finding modest delight, for a time, in his reciprocated attraction to Antonietta Masetti, and adorable young woman who also takes a job with the corporation. The work is shown to be drudgery, and the workers petty and conformist, and but its a world we rarely see in film: a man gets up and goes to work and accepts his pay and bears up with it all. Most peoples' lives.
Just a test entry. Mediocre suspense film about an old woman who doesn't respect boundaries.
Interesting weird drama set during World War II but set during modern times. George is on the run, trying to escape the Nazi's, but he holds off boarding his ship in Marseilles in order to develop a relationship with the wife of the author whose manuscript he has been entrusted with, and whom he knows to have died. Complicated plot of relationships on a thread, under the stress of persecution, and how the human need for love or to be loved takes precedence over safety and escape.
This is not, I repeat, not a "documentary". It's a puff piece about a farm, "Apricot Lane", that adopted a "biodynamic" model of farming and thrived, we are told. It focuses on John and Molly Chester, a film-maker and a chef, who decide to go farther than organic. They buy 200 acres of distressed land and bring in chickens and cows and pigs and ducks and go to it, using animal waste to replenish the soil, cultivating earthworms, and finding predators for the predator insects and groundhogs that prove to be pests. The coyotes are different problem: they shoot one, and train dogs to defend the chickens against the other. They are advised by Alan York but relationship in this film are not described or evoke: is he a paid consultant? There are a lot of workers and it is not clear if they are paid or not. There are investors: who is on the board? Who manages the entire enterprise? And why are problems presented, solved, then discarded so frequently? Did they really only discover that ducks ate snails after the snails began destroying the leaves of their fruit trees? Did the ducks really take care of enough snails to solve the problem? The trouble is, there is no trustworthy source within the film, and the frequent edited mini-dramas (showing a rooster having a deep relationship with a pig, we are led to believe), raise suspicions about just how honest Chester is being. It works for them: 3 of the people I saw the movie with bought it all, including the rooster's friendship with the pig, and the idea that the pig's litter was huge (I thought it was about average myself), and that Emma (the pig) was resuscitated from near death by being reunited with her piglets. I would wager that there were other things going on that the film-makers didn't show us that contributed the most to her rejuvenation. It just didn't look convincing at all. And the rather heavy-handed musical score doesn't help: it plays like a Disney film at times, or a Vivaldi program. We are told what to feel. There is no doubt that the film-makers held back on details of their biodynamic beliefs because a lot of it would sound cultic and weird.
The artistic version of D-Day: a very thoughtful, meditative, reflective stroll through the call-up, training, and deployment of Tom Beddoes, a typical English lad who ends up among the thousands on the beach of Normandy. We see him leave his home and his father and mother who keep stiff upper lips, arrive at training camp, meet a girl at a dance (after taking a prostitute out to a movie), and get moved around a lot while waiting for deployment. Some scenes are dreams of hallucinations; there is a lot of historical footage in the first half, battles, buildings burning, ships at sea. Then everything scales down to one man who is resigned to his fate-- we hear the phrase "cannon fodder". No false heroism here. At one point, he receives some birthday cards. A mate quietly asks if he would mind if he had a look at them. So much expressed in one moment, and it captures the essence of "Overlord": the human at the centre of it all.
Perplexing drama about a group of criminals sent into space as a kind of experiment, to see if a black hole could be used to generate energy. They are all supposed to be celibate with each other, but there is a room with some kind of mechanical simulator for gratification. Eventually, most of the crew are killed or die off, leaving a father and daughter to confront the mysteries of the black hole together. Denis never over explains or illuminates many of the mysteries of human existence: she just dramatizes, which can be entrancing and little confusing. Pattinson-- whatever Denis regard for him-- really can't act, and Binoche reveals in this movie that she is becoming somewhat one-dimensional (she plays a heavy). And in spite of the ban on sexual relations, the movie is very much obsessed with bodily fluids, blood, saliva, sperm-- and how they modulate our physical relations with each other.
Evan Hansen is bullied at school, particularly by one Conner Murphy. When Evan, at the direction of his therapist, starts writing encouraging letters to himself, Conner finds one in a printer tray and, mocking Evan, takes it. When Conner commits suicide later, his parents find the letter and come to believe that Conner wrote it, to Evan. So he wasn't such a bully after all. Conner's hot sister, Zoe, is at first reluctant to believe it but Evan, invited to the Murphy house for dinner, eventually convinces her that her parent's misunderstanding is true, that Conner really was a friend to Evan. He goes so far as to persuade his friend, Jared, to help him convince faked emails to "prove" his story, and helps Alana start a foundation to build a park in memory of Conner. And Evan clearly enjoys being the center of attention, all the while protesting that he doesn't, really, seriously, not at all. A lot of "oh no-- I can't believe you noticed me. Oh my god, what am I going to do now! I'm so embarrassed." The important thing to understand about "Dear Evan Hansen" is, firstly, that Evan is a lying, self-pitying narcissist with whom we are expected to sympathize. He abuses the trust of the Murphy family. He is not so much clueless about the damage is doing as so self-centred that he doesn't care. The second is that Evan is obviously gay, though the musical doesn't acknowledge it, and, in fact, pretends that he really has the hots for Zoe. He clearly talks gay, acts gay, and demonstrates almost no convincing heterosexual interest in Zoe. At one point, Conner's parents even wonder if he and Conner had a sexual relationship, but this being 2018, that is treated as something not to be embarrassed about. His interest in Zoe is a device to make you feel sorry for him in spite of his self-pitying and his narcissism. The low point in the trajectory of this story is when his mother blames herself for Evan's incredibly damaging prevarications: because she didn't give him enough attention. No heterosexual male relates to his mother this way. There is nothing attractive about this bumbling, self-centered, pathetic whiner. And Zoe is most attractive when she disbelieves him, and becomes progressively weak as a character when she subverts her instincts to provide a convenient plot point for Evan's complete emasculation.
Lionel is a widower who has raised his daughter, Josephine, alone; they are very close. When a close friend of Lionel's retires from the transit job they both have, he begins to contemplate the inevitable separation from Josephine. There is a clue here about film history: at one point, Lionel, after dinner, takes two apples from a bowl in the kitchen, a direct allusion to the inspiration for this film, "Late Spring" by Ozu. In another gesture of rich allusion: Lionel buys Josephine a rice cooker, just after we see her purchase the same thing (but a different model) on the same day. Later we see her at night contemplating the unfortunate coincidence with a smile, and the two appliances reappear meaningfully at the very end. But Denis does more than acknowledge or imitate: she sets her story among the African immigrant community in the suburbs of Paris, in a large apartment building, where two other residents, Gabrielle and Noe, carry torches for Lionel and Josephine, respectively. They are the external vibrations affecting the relationship between Lionel and Josephine, with good and bad results, and it is clear that both Lionel and Josephine don't want them too close. Does Denis even draw either conclusion? Lionel watches carefully when a colleague, Rene, retires, feeling lost, believing that his life is now pointless. Later, he rides with Lionel in the cab of a train and Lionel tells him that whenever he feels depressed he thinks about his daughter. But he also tells his daughter, in a profoundly intimate moment, that she must feel free to go if the time comes. What Denis achieves in this film is to reveal nuances in relationships that we are only dimly aware of normally, but immediately find revealing when we see them, specifically, the flaws in Gabrielle and Noe that create annoyances for Lionel and Josephine-- annoyances, and yet with the heartbreaking character of failing relationships. At times, there are flashes of cruelty and indifference. In a compelling sequence in a bar late night, the horizons for them is invoked in a lyric, "Night Shift", by the Commodores: "You found another home, I know you're not alone, on the nightshift". Yet it would be a mistake to see that as closure: nothing is closed at the end. We are left with sadness for the human condition. One of Denis' finest films.
Dreary alleged parody of Hollywood movies, method acting, agents and producers, with an anemic Tom Cruise as the producer and Matthew McConaughey even drearier as a ruthless agent. This is all supposed to be fresh and amusing but the targets are obvious and the humour isn't subtle. A desperate director dumps his cast into the middle of the jungle in Viet Nam in order to film an "authentic" version of the adventures of grizzled Viet Nam veteran Four Leaf Taybak. They stumble into a genuine opium operation who mistake them for actual American soldiers. But while giving us extravagant violence (including disembowelment, decapitation, and other delights), and mocking method actors, agents, and producers, Stiller doesn't see the worst cliches of Hollywood action films right in front of him. Re-enacting a cliche is not parody, though I suspect he thinks it is. It's just boring, as one cliff-hanger after another, after another, and another, is executed exactly the way the target films would execute them. And do the actors really believe that the director has placed cameras in the jungle to film their aimless wandering? It's not funny if it doesn't seem as least a little believable. Best thing in the film is Robert Downey Jr. in blackface, playing a method actor who won't give up his character-- until, in a somewhat repulsive moment of faux sincerity-- he learns to "be himself": a sequence that is neither sincere nor funny.
Sometimes acerbic, generally fresh, and moderately entertaining, "Bring it On" is to cheerleading what "Smile" was to beauty pageants. Except that "Bring it On" can bear its own implications: that cheerleading really is a trivial, bizarre, smarmy pursuit that should never be taken seriously be anyone. And Missy Pantone, the gymnast transfer who is forced to settle for cheerleading because Rancho Carne doesn't offer gymnastics, has it right with her contempt for the activity at the beginning. But almost no Hollywood can escape those steps in the production process that result in wholesome endings, family values, virginity, and antiseptic morals. Torrance Shipman-- inadequately played by a genuine teenager, Kirsten Dunst-- is made captain of the cheerleading squad and uncovers a scandal: all of their routines were stolen from the East Compton Clovers. Challenges abound as she tries to acquire new, original routines, and obtain buy-in from the squad, all while responding to the interest of Cliff, brother of Missy, and her boyfriend's lack of faith in her ability. Worst lines of the movie have to do with "I believe in you" and "you believed in me" and "he didn't believe in me", and other well-worn tripe. Still, wittier and more fun than most. Incidentally, high school cheerleading competitions do not allow bare midriffs, or tosses of the height shown in this movie. And, of course, all teams would have a coach.
Moody, slow-paced drama that is essentially an exploration of what it might have been like for a woman accused of witchcraft in the 15th century. Focused on the psychological pressures, the sometimes terrifying environment of dark forests and creatures, and the visceral hostility of the Christian community to women suspected of witchcraft. Albrun's mother is the accused; her 10-year-old daughter watches intently. When the mother gets the plague Albrun has a terrifying encounter with her own mother's madness and terror. She grows up, living on in her mother's isolated cabin, keeping goats. A village woman named Swinda seems to reach out to her, but her motives are suspect. In these circumstances, Albrun's mental stability is stressed to the breaking point. "Hagazussa" plods along slowly, indulging in deep atmospherics, and ponderous close-ups of hands and faces, but without any narrative drive or real suspense. I respect it's careful, contemplative style, but, unlike "The Witch", it doesn't really build to anything very satisfying. Very well acted-- the dedication of the cast is conspicuous-- and beautifully filmed.
Thoughtful, prosaic portrait of a woman who spends almost all of her time helping others, including her addict son, but realizes very little satisfaction in her own relationships. Her husband died long ago, and her son is nasty to her and resents her intrusions into his life. She is not a saint, and that's what makes her such a compelling character: she betrayed her cousin, and her own son, and a lot of her interactions with those two rub a wound that is still raw. Is she compensating? Sometimes, she seems to wonder if she is really as kind and generous with her time as she herself hopes she is. The narrative covers a lot of time-- sometimes, clumsily so-- as people she knows and cares about die and deteriorate, she herself grows older, and her son changes, partly for the worse, and the film courageously lets her be a real person, without great moments of realization or emotional satisfaction. It is a rare film: a realistic portrait of the kind of life most of us could expect to lead, and in that vein it is, at times, very moving, and powerful.
Searing, unpleasant-- at times-- portrait of a repressed piano teacher in Vienna who lives with her domineering mother and teaches piano at a conservatory while secretly indulging is masochistic, fetishistic fantasies and pornography. She even wanders a drive-in once to view couples having sex. When a handsome, brilliant young pianist asks her to train him to the next level, she feels a deep, disturbing attraction towards him, and towards his performance of Schubert. She rebels against this feeling and as she encounters the student, Walter, in various inopportune moments, translates her feelings into perversity, teasing, provocation, and offers of submission. She conveys to him a masochistic fantasy that he finds repellent; then, when does express domination, she is repulsed. The narrative is confusing-- you almost expect that at some point Walter will indulge her and she will find a perverse comfort in being "punished" for the feelings that she cannot control. But that is her fantasy and the partial reality doesn't translate into what she expected. Which is, I suppose, the point. In the end, we leave with the unpleasant implication that she is simply psychologically ill, an obsessive perfectionist, who mirrors the most unpleasant characteristics of her mother. Brilliantly acted and film-- especially the musical parts (the scenes of the actors playing brilliant piano pieces are almost seamless). Based on a novel by Jelinek (screenplay by Haneke) that is said to be autobiographical.
If you love Aretha Franklin's music, or gospel music in general, you will love this film. Not a fan-- the film is impressive and has some wonderful qualities, but I didn't enjoy hearing "Amazing Grace" dissected into fragments in order to flaunt that magnificent voice as much as possible. In my opinion, the song comes to a sagging halt, choked by Franklin's flamboyant phrasing and whiplash vocal styling. Still, it's a rare glimpse of a real music movie, which is extinct now. The audience was not coached, the singer not cosmetically enhanced, the choir not arranged to make the most scenic impression, the building not digitally enhanced. It's as real as you are going to get. The audience doesn't even rise to its feet on cue to clobber the audience over the head with how much enthusiasm they need to show. Mick Jagger is glimpsed but not interviewed. The gospel tunes chose are not the most obvious for a mainstream audience but they suit Franklin. The film was held up for years by technical difficulties and lawsuits from Franklin.
Better than expected thriller about a Viet Nam vet living in his parents old house in a small town somewhere who wakes up one day to find the body of a beautiful woman, dead, in his back yard. The fun in this film is the insidious police attempts to implicate him in her death, even though evidence later shows she died of a drug overdose. The acting is quite good but it's all marred by a rather fabulous ending that seemed far tidier and schematic than the rest of the script. As I say, very well acted, for the most part, even beginning with the bad singing performance of Carlee Avers as Diane.
A compelling story made into a second-rate movie. Gary Hart was the "prohibitive" favorite to win the Democratic nominee for president in 1988 (to run against George Bush Sr.) but scandals about his adulterous affairs exploded into the news and he withdrew quickly (then later tried to resurrect his candidacy). But "The Front Runner", in an effort, I presume, to be balanced and realistic, leaves the actual salient matters ambiguous: both Hart and Rice insisted, to this day, that there was no affair, which makes it puzzling as to why he would act as if there was. Either there was no affair or it was nobody's business. Hart, in this movie, doesn't act as if there was no affair-- he acts as if he was caught, while insisting, then and later, that there was nothing to catch, in this particular instance. Then we are introduced to evidence of previous affairs, but "The Front Runner" makes no effort frame this context intelligibly. It also tries to have it both ways: the press are demonized (with some exceptions) for behaving like The National Enquirer, but we are invited to judge Hart for the affairs and for his resistance to that sensationalism. The Washington Post scenes seem sophomoric-- surely Ben Bradlee and E. J. Dionne would have given far more intelligent explanations-- agree or not-- of why they pursued the story than is given here. Factually, polling suggested that most people were on Hart's side, but additional stories, not dramatized in the movie, emerged about bad campaign debts and dogged his attempted re-entry. He never regained substantial support again and withdrew after "Super Tuesday". Lee Atwater, apparently, later claimed that he set up the Donna Rice incident but the Miami Herald reporters deny this. "The Front Runner" is not well acted or directed or film; it's not trying to be overly artistic, so it actually fails at what should be it's strength: telling an exciting story with clever dialogue and a strong narrative dynamic. Still, very interesting for the history side of it, and reasonably accurate.
This is the one I should be using. The Category should be Science Fiction.
Epic story of a young boy in Nazi Germany whose beloved aunt Elizabeth is deemed a psychological defective, incarcerated, and killed. She likes "deviant" art and showed young Kurt how to look, to see, to experience life in its fullness, before becoming a victim of a regime that did not tolerate that kind of embrace. The man responsible for Elizabeth's fate does a big favor for a Russian general who protects him from prosecution after the war. Eventually, Kurt meets and falls in love with his daughter Ellie and complications ensue. Von Donnersmarck tries hard to draw out some brilliant poetic idea here, about truth and beauty and justice, but when Kurt finally reaches his artistic apotheosis and is asked what he means by his art, he claims it means nothing-- he has no political message. But please pay attention to me. This is emblematic of the fundamental flawed dynamic of the film: we are supposed to empathize with Kurt but what he does is honorable only if he really doesn't want our empathy. The other great problem is that Ellie really doesn't come to life: she exists only as a flattering reflection of Kurt's virtue, but his relationship with her is so undeveloped that we almost wish he would have an affair or come out of the closet or something, anything, to add some dimension to his character. This was nominated against "Cold War" and "Capernaum" and "Roma" and "Shoplifters" for best foreign film Oscar; it did not belong in that class of film.
Contemptible revisionist history of Bonnie and Clyde which, seeking to correct the glamorization of the original film, fabricates a fable of upright and courageous and incorruptible Frank Hamer taking on the cold-blooded rogues. On their mission, they dramatize Bonnie brutally murdering a downed police officer and laughing-- a story that was widely debunked at the time. They have another problem: the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde didn't match the mythology of the bold and courageous Texas Ranger taking on the deadly killers face-to-face. It just don't look good. So they had Hamer step out into the road and demand that Bonnie and Clyde surrender first. That did not happen-- one of the agents shot Clyde in the head killing him immediately and the rest of the shooting-- over 150 bullets-- were the expression of terrified police shooting wildly at now helpless targets. Leaving that aside, this film is reassuringly bad: poorly acted and filmed, ridiculous at times, and dull. This is a Trumpian version of the story: the government (Kathy Bates doing her role by rote as corrupt governor Ferguson) is evil, representing the elites and the establishment. It takes a rogue former Texas Ranger-- a real "man" by the film's cultural touchstones-- to take on the remorseless evil of a gang of robbers who simply refuse to be taken. The screenwriter, John Fusco, spent time with Hamer's son to make the story as "accurate" as possible: that's a pretty shameless claim, asking us to assume that Hamer's son would give us an objective account of his father's career defining moment. (Hamer, incidentally, stole Bonnie and Clyde's weapons as souvenirs of the ambush.) Clyde may have had good reason: he was brutalized in the Texas prison system as a young man caught stealing turkeys and vowed he would never, ever go back and never be taken alive by the authorities. In the end, they began to lose public sympathy and their deaths marked the end of "public enemy No. 1" era in the history of American law enforcement.
Welles reputation as a director is the main thing "The Stranger" has going for it, because the script and story are pedestrian, predicable, and sophomoric. A stranger in a small Connecticut town marries the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice, just as an investigator for war crimes arrives looking for an escaped Nazi. The escaped Nazi is said to have been the brains behind the holocaust. Orson Welles mugs his way through looking so sinister and wary, you can't help but wonder why his bride doesn't flea the room immediately when he walks in. Edward G. Robinson does a fine job of looking svelte, adult, and mature-- this is the fun part of the movie: America's self image in the 1950's. Anyway, Konrad Meinike is the only one in the world who knows where Franz Kindler is hiding, so they allow him to escape prison so he will lead them to Kindler. He arrives in a small Connecticut town and thinks he has killed the detective following him. Then Charles Rankin realizing that fanatic Meinike has now become a religious fanatic and there is a danger that he will be exposed, murders Meinike. Rankin also loves clocks and spends a lot of time in the clock tower. And he initially sets Mr. Wilson, the detective, off in the wrong direction by criticizing Germany in the second world war, as ruthlessly determined to conquer the earth. Oh well-- a former Nazi in hiding would never say that! One entertaining sidelight is the performance of Billy House as Mr. Potter, the local apothecary and checkers aficionado. He steals every scene he's in.
Zain, at 11, belongs to the worst family in film. We meet him in court where he suing his parents to prevent them from having any more children. He isn't allowed to go to school but has to work at local shop and his parents are ready to auction off his 11-year-old sister, Sahar, to a local merchant. Zain tries in vain to prevent them from completing the deal; when he fails, he leaves the home and ends up on the streets of Beirut ("Capernaum" is a symbolic name) until he meets Rahil, an Ethiopian woman who is in the country illegally and must raise money to pay for a work permit from a counterfeiter or face deportation. She has a young son, Yonas, for whom she cannot afford a babysitter: Zain and her quickly develop a mutual arrangement that is disrupted when Rahil is arrested. All of the situations and predicaments are "real" in the sense that director Labaki met people with those exact predicaments during her research for this film. The title "Capernaum" or Capharnaum" means "Chaos", and that's what it dramatizes, from Zain's life on the streets to his incarceration, and Rahil's predicaments. Most of the characters are played by novice actors who live in the environment she dramatizes. Yonas is a remarkable presence: you can't help but think about the fact that he is a real toddler and the interactions with Zain are not CGI. Remarkable, powerful film that brings an important story to the screen that is representative of refugee predicaments all over the world.
There is a wedding in a small town and the family and friends arrive from afar; we are introduced rapidly to numerous relationships, all of which hover over a backstory, a family controversy that simmers underneath, and which explodes when the relationships are suddenly put under enormous pressure when Laura's vivacious daughter, Irene, disappears from her room after taking sick the night of the wedding. Paco, a former boyfriend, steps in do what he can since Laura's husband, Alejandro, is still in Argentina. He is believed to be rich and the target of the kidnapping but we find out his status is not what it seems, and we also find out that Paco and Laura used to be in a relationship. We have been trained by most movies to expect a hero, and violent revenge: we get nothing of the sort. And we find out the movie is less about the kidnapping than it is about the relationships between all of them. The remarkable thing about Farhadi's films is the way tensions illuminate the past and the way each character's choices reveal something about secrets and lies and hidden grudges and outright deceit. In the end, we are left with a resolution of the machinery of the story and the messy detritus of scattered relationships.
Compelling, long term documentary (12 years) about three skateboarders, Keire, Bing, and Zack, who grow up or don't in a small town in middle America (Rockford, Illinois). They each have issues, and one them is a father, and they move, and look for jobs, but their real passion is always skateboarding. What distinguishes this film is that it was made by one of the youths who got into film-making early on and kept an ongoing record of the lives of the three as they grew older. The lack of a agenda or over-arching theme generally benefits "Minding the Gap"-- the structure is freer, more intriguing in many ways, and often diverts into interesting side trips, as when Bing explores why his mother didn't split with an abusive husband. Bing obviously had resources-- he travels to Colorado for some segments-- and he has a crew for some sequences, as when he interviews his own mother. Never dull, and not as self-serving as most.
Fabulous documentary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, from launch to return, using 65 and 70 mm films shot at the time for a documentary that was never made, and extensive audio that has been cleaned up and clarified for archival purposes. Wonderful footage especially of the launch, and post-return-- the footage in between is less entrancing, due to the quality of the originals, and the film flags a little during that mid-section. The film leaves you feeling two things about Apollo: one, that, as Frank Borman observed, it wasn't that big of a deal. The moon has nothing; this was all just an extension of flight, and mostly intended for the propaganda value of beating the Soviets in space, and, two, that the trip itself was remarkable, dangerous, and visually stunning. Really, three men in a tin can on top of a million tons of explosives, launched an unimaginable distance from the earth and returned safely.
From the novel by Harry Mulisch. Very poor realization of the dramatic novel by Mulisch detailing a morally compromised assassination of a Dutch collaborator by the Dutch underground in the waning stages of World War II. Ploeg was responsible for much evil, but much evil results from his death. In the middle of the night, the neighbors, immediately after the assassination, sneak out into the street and drag Ploeg's body in front of the Steenwijk's house. The Steenwijks see this and the hothead older son decides to drag it back, but the police arrive and he is killed. The Steenwijk family, except for Anton (who is only 12) are also executed and the house destroyed. The film follows the life of Anton as he deals with the repercussions and lives his life as an apolitical responsible man who marries, has children, divorces, remarries, and regularly and improbably bumps into people involved in the assault. (I say "improbable" not because such meetings are improbable, but because the movie does a poor job of staging them.) As he meets and talks with this people-- or they talk with him-- he discovers unknown details of the incident, leading to his own growing awareness of the necessity of political involvement. Unfortunately, the actors give you what they think is your reaction to the revelation, rather than a convincing expression of their own feelings about it. Everyone is moved and tearful and feeling profound for the audience and the result is a schematic rendering of what should be a powerful story.
Predictably inaccurate and surprisingly dull biopic of the famous comedy duo on their declining years, touring Britain and playing small theatres (in real life-- a very successful tour; here, starts pathetic and surges). The tension between the two is forced, focused on Hardy continuing to work with Hal Roach while Laurel was negotiating a new contract with a rival studio. Just not funny, not interesting, not particularly well-acted or directed, except for Shirley Henderson as Hardy's wife, Lucille. Laurel, unbelievably, decides to hide the fact that no financing for a new film has been found; Hardy improbably chooses to continue doing the physical comedy after his doctor has warned him he will die from it. Kind of cringy in the way they reconcile in the end, and Laurel climbs into bed with Hardy-- though that almost seems more likely to be true than most of the other action in the film.
Rigged bio-pic of Freddie Mercury and tireless excuser of contemptible, self-centered, destructive behavior. If you are a popular artist, you can be as big of an asshole as you want-- you're still adorable! Especially if your bio-pic is going to be controlled by the people with the greatest interest in padding and cleansing the story. The very odd thing is why was this nominated for an Academy Award for best picture, and why on earth was Rami Malek nominated for best actor when he couldn't even squeeze any feeling out of a scene in which Mercury informs his band that he has AIDS? This is truly a very bad film, poorly acted and directed, about a mediocre band whose very success was mediocre and ridiculous. The studio--apparently--spared no expense in trying to train Malek to imitate Mercury's exact physical style. And ends up draining his performance of any life. Singer does well to avoid drawing any invitation to compare them with the Beatles or Stones, while tirelessly implying that they did incredible things-- like Donald Trump-- that nobody has ever done before: the biggest audience! The longest song! The most passionate followers! And the most idiotic earworms in pop music history, songs of such pedestrian construction and texture that almost any other band could have made them but never would have out of sheer embarrassment.
Who green-lighted this piece of dreck? Ridiculous cliche-ridden story about a woman handcuffed to a bed whose husband overdoses on Viagra and dies of a heart attack on top of her. Chastely filmed to the extent that nothing even remotely unchaste appears on the screen, and unnervingly sophomoric-- seriously? No nudity but we get to see someone gouge the skin off her hand? This is Stephen King? Well, actually, there is nothing in King's previous work that indicates anything deeper than this in his oeuvre. After her husband dies, a dog enters the house and begins eating his corpse. Yes he does. Jessie, the woman, is unable to break out of her handcuffs even though the wooden bed posts don't look all that intimidating. Nor does it seem likely that she couldn't have wiggled around enough to move the bed closer to the cell phone sitting on the dresser, or the key to the handcuffs on the bathroom vanity. But that's small potatoes compared to the inane discussion she has with her husband, and the ridiculously cliched side trip to her childhood in which she recalls her father masturbating while holding her on his lap. None of the conversations sound like anything other than sophomoric soap. Repeats the error that memories of abuse can be repressed and then accurately recovered. And nobody, I hope, goes wow when they discover the secret of the moonlight man. But I can only hope that others will find King's pervasive references to his own previous novels annoying and obstructive: if you're not a King fan, I guess you miss out on all the fun.
Remarkable fable about a young man, Lazzaro, who is so purely good and well-intentioned that he is not for this world. He grows up among an extended family of sharecroppers who don't know that their way of life has been abolished and remain exploited by the Marquise de Luna. Lazzaro is asked to do everything and he does so without complaint. When the son of the Marquise, Tancredi, finds him, and uses him for his own ends, he starts a chain of events that lead to the family being expelled from their exploitative sharecropping lives to an exploitative urban existence. Not politically correct by any means: the peasants are mean and petty and unethical and foolish in the way they have absorbed the order of things and become complicit in them-- even offering the bankrupt Tancredi their expensive pastries after he has stiffed them for lunch. A fable in the tradition of magical realism, slow-moving but beautifully filmed and acted.
What is family? A couple, Osamu and Nobuyo live with his mother, and a boy, Shotu, and a niece, Aki. They work at low-paying, temporary jobs, and live in a small apartment, and shoplift to make ends meet-- but only from stores that are not going bankrupt. Osamu has trained Shotu on the art of shoplifting. One night, as they are return with their loot, they spot a young girl on a balcony shivering in the cold. They deduce that she is neglected or abused and take her home for some food and warmth. Then they decide to keep her. They already host a niece whose parents think she is away at school-- she actually works as a kind of sex hostess. There is nothing sentimental about this portrait of arrangements, for that is what is: the authorities expect family and respect family as the ordering principle of society. But the Shibatas and their guests challenge that orthodoxy: in a way, the arrangement meets the most important needs of everyone in the family: love, acceptance, nourishment. It is only when society's rules intrude on their accommodation that a tragic situation ensues. Even so, Koreeda doesn't want you to believe that all would be bliss if the family was left alone: when Shota is caught shoplifting, they make a decision that proves that they are completely loyal to each other after all. This ambiguity serves the movie well-- there will be no fantasy of the underdogs winning in the end. Just respect for the struggles ordinary people take on just in order to get by.
Earnest, well-meant dramatization of the last period of Van Gogh's life, in Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise, as his mental state deteriorated and his art flourished. Marred by "hand-held-camera" syndrome and what looks like improvised scenes with Willem Defoe lapsing into sophomoric paeans to "the gesture" and painting fast and all that tripe about showing the world "how to see". For all that, surprisingly badly acted, even with this stellar cast. Lovely shots of the fields and trees and characters that Van Gogh painted and not too deliberate about showing his inspirations. Good scenes of Van Gogh actually painting-- Schnabel himself is an artist and trained Dafoe. Strong musical score suggesting impressionist feeling about the landscapes and states of mind. Dafoe insists the film is not an interpretation, but I think he actually means that that is exactly what it is, with interactions made up of whole cloth, such as the school children running away from their teacher to mob Van Gogh while he was painting a landscape. Dafoe is also about 25 years older than the character is playing and, yes, it matters: Dafoe is more wizened-looking than an intense 37-year-old artist on the verge of madness would look.
Earnest, well-meant dramatization of the last period of Van Gogh's life, in Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise, as his mental state deteriorated and his art flourished. Marred by "hand-held-camera" syndrome and what looks like improvised scenes with Willem Defoe lapsing into sophomoric paeans to "the gesture" and painting fast and all that tripe about showing the world "how to see". For all that, surprisingly badly acted, even with this stellar cast. Lovely shots of the fields and trees and characters that Van Gogh painted and not too deliberate about showing his inspirations. Good scenes of Van Gogh actually painting-- Schnabel himself is an artist and trained Dafoe. Strong musical score suggesting impressionist feeling about the landscapes and states of mind. Dafoe insists the film is not an interpretation, but I think he actually means that that is exactly what it is, with interactions made up of whole cloth, such as the school children running away from their teacher to mob Van Gogh while he was painting a landscape. Dafoe is also about 25 years older than the character is playing and, yes, it matters: Dafoe is more wizened-looking than an intense 37-year-old artist on the verge of madness would look.
Somewhat fawning tribute to Mr. Fred Rogers and his tv show, and his sanguine, open, calm, sedate approach to children's programming. Rogers is a genuinely decent man, though his rambunctious crew could get into some mischief. Notes his trailblazing step of having a black police officer on the show, and talking about "assassination" on the day after Robert Kennedy was killed. I would have been interested to hear more about what his audience did after they outgrew "Mr. Rogers"-- did it influence their choice of tv entertainment later in life? Or other attitudes? The "Mr. Rogers" show was also not innovative or creative at all in their story segments, continuing to use fixed plastic puppets well into the age of "Sesame Street" and "The Fraggles". Okay-- point taken. There should be place for old-school traditional children's programming, but I also believe that Rogers-- ironically-- may have underestimated the ability of children to appreciate original, creative entertainment modes.
Somewhat fawning tribute to Mr. Fred Rogers and his tv show, and his sanguine, open, calm, sedate approach to children's programming. Rogers is a genuinely decent man, though his rambunctious crew could get into some mischief. Notes his trailblazing step of having a black police officer on the show, and talking about "assassination" on the day after Robert Kennedy was killed. I would have been interested to hear more about what his audience did after they outgrew "Mr. Rogers"-- did it influence their choice of tv entertainment later in life? Or other attitudes? The "Mr. Rogers" show was also not innovative or creative at all in their story segments, continuing to use fixed plastic puppets well into the age of "Sesame Street" and "The Fraggles". Okay-- point taken. There should be place for old-school traditional children's programming, but I also believe that Rogers-- ironically-- may have underestimated the ability of children to appreciate original, creative entertainment modes.
I'm not convinced "Burning" deserves the running time of 148 minutes- - there is a lot of mystery without solution, or even interesting clues. Lee Jong-su is wandering downtown somewhere when he catches the eye of a pom-pom dancer for a department store, Shin Hae-mi. She recognizes him from her childhood-- they grew up in the same rural area near the border with North Korea, Paju. She claims he once called her "ugly" but she has had surgery. She asks him directly, "am I beautiful now?" Lee is not very articulate or extroverted and allows her to drive things for a time. They make love and she persuades him to look after her cat-- which he never sees-- while she travels around Africa. When she returns with a new man, Ben, a suave, rich, indolent playboy, Lee declares his love. She revels in her freedom to spend time with whomever she chooses and this offends Lee, who, in turn, offends Shin Hae-mi with a remark, causing her to cut him off. And then the mystery deepens. Shin Hae-mi is a remarkable character, charming, funny, expressive. She raves about her experiences in Africa convincingly, telling a gathering that it was about "the meaning of life". She does a kind of dance about small hunger and great hunger-- the hunger for meaning. She talks to Jong-su about pantomime, about the secret of refusing to believe that the pantomimed orange is not there.
Lisa Spinelli is a kindergarten teacher, married, teenage children, who writes poetry on the side. She attends a creative writing class led by Simon, but does not have much confidence in her own work. One day, one of her students, Jimmy Roy, mutters a poem while pacing back and forth in the class waiting for her nanny to pick him up. Lisa is gobsmacked-- a perhaps a little too easily, and quickly-- and is convinced she has a young literary Mozart on her hands. At first, she passes his poems off as her own at the creative writing class, but that's not her real game. She wants to be little Mozart's guardian and promoter and nurturer and is prepared to take drastic measures to make it happen. She's the opposite of Salieri: she recognizes that Jimmy's gift is greater than her own and regards it unjust that his father and nanny don't recognize his genius. Her obsession begins to wear on her family as well, and her children are not appreciative of her elitist views. But Jimmy is no fool either and initiates a surprise or two of his own in the haunting ending. Well-acted and never cheap or contrived, and genuinely interested in the idea that our culture is the enemy of real art and real beauty. The scenes of Lisa interacting with her class are beautifully done and convincing, and Parker Sevak as the boy is very good. And we don't those horrible contrived scenes of the entire class suddenly raving about the brilliant poems-- Colangelo has a sure touch for understatement and restraint. But the direction and cinematography are somewhat pedestrian and never quite match the ambition of the film.
Superb drama about a French family owning and managing a coffee plantation in an African country in the middle of a revolt. Maria Vial is a daughter, sister, ex-wife, the most active manager of the estate. When her employees flee the oncoming rebels, she tries to insist on normalcy, hiring more workers, processing the coffee beans, while hiding the leader of the rebellion in one of her buildings. We follow her activities with dread as the violence and terror spreads around her, and her own family proves to be her deadliest foes. Claire Denis was born and raised in French Colonial Africa and it shows in her detailed knowledge of processes, habits, gestures, and the reserve on the faces of the people around Maria as they contemplate her mad determination to endure in the face of frightening circumstances. Her husband has the sense to know it's time to get out; her son is lazy, self-centred, and unexpectedly takes surprising actions. Her father-in-law is ill and seems anchored to the farm. The rebels include insolent child-soldiers, fascinated by the tokens of wealth-- the "White Material"-- owned by the Vials. There are no platitudes, this is not a fable about white domination or oppression or justice: it's a portrait of a woman trying desperately to maintain control while trapped by circumstances beyond her control. This is a mysteriously entrancing film, resonant beyond the surface facts: it's the dilemma of white colonial Africa, in which the whites manage a society designed to service their needs and ambitions and in which the baffled natives know they are being exploited but are not quite sure what to take away from the privileged class. Huppert, incidentally, wanted to play the lead role in a film version of "The Grass is Singing" by Doris Lessing, a novel that echoes some of the themes of "White Material".
Superb drama about a French family owning and managing a coffee plantation in an African country in the middle of a revolt. Maria Vial is a daughter, sister, ex-wife, the most active manager of the estate. When her employees flee the oncoming rebels, she tries to insist on normalcy, hiring more workers, processing the coffee beans, while hiding the leader of the rebellion in one of her buildings. We follow her activities with dread as the violence and terror spreads around her, and her own family proves to be her deadliest foes. Claire Denis was born and raised in French Colonial Africa and it shows in her detailed knowledge of processes, habits, gestures, and the reserve on the faces of the people around Maria as they contemplate her mad determination to endure in the face of frightening circumstances. Her husband has the sense to know it's time to get out; her son is lazy, self-centred, and unexpectedly takes surprising actions. Her father-in-law is ill and seems anchored to the farm. The rebels include insolent child-soldiers, fascinated by the tokens of wealth-- the "White Material"-- owned by the Vials. There are no platitudes, this is not a fable about white domination or oppression or justice: it's a portrait of a woman trying desperately to maintain control while trapped by circumstances beyond her control. This is a mysteriously entrancing film, resonant beyond the surface facts: it's the dilemma of white colonial Africa, in which the whites manage a society designed to service their needs and ambitions and in which the baffled natives know they are being exploited but are not quite sure what to take away from the privileged class. Huppert, incidentally, wanted to play the lead role in a film version of "The Grass is Singing" by Doris Lessing, a novel that echoes some of the themes of "White Material".
Kindly reviewed film about Lisa who is having a really bad day-- she is the manager of a Hooters-style restaurant, existing in the uneasy truce between titillation and family values. Someone has tried to break into the restaurant and one of her kitchen staff may be complicit. One of her waitresses can't find a babysitter for her son and brings to the restaurant. The satellite feed is down on the day of a big game. A customer calls one of her waitresses fat. Her waitresses are required to display their assets but she is fiercely protective of them and insists on the strict rules being followed-- as if that makes it all wholesome and nice. Her boss, Cubby, the owner, is an ass, and she not only protects her staff from the customers who want to grope or insult them, but from her boss who has no compassion for them. It's a fascinating slice: what do women in these kind of jobs think? Maci is the most charismatic, and she is actually having a fling with an elderly customer. Janelle is suspect: she puts too much into a car-wash to raise money for Lisa's daughter, whose abusive boyfriend ran up some hospital bills on her. "Support the Girls" is well-liked by reviewers for sentimental reasons, I suspect. It's not very well-acted or filmed, it doesn't really have an interesting story to tell, but nor does it fall into standard feminist tripe.
Guido Anselmi is a famous Italian movie director besieged by actors, agents, producers, production staff, wife, mistress, and dreams and visions. He has a kind of breakdown and checks into a spa where the crowd of needy people follows him and interrupts. His producers and production staff beg him for an idea of what kind of film he is going to make, who is going to be in it, what story it is. He invites his wife to come and join him even though his married mistress is also at a nearby hotel. He seeks approval from the church and fends off needy, aging actresses who crave a prime role. Yes, all a little narcissistic but Fellini is never dull, and never takes half-measures. Entertaining and confusing and rich in character and drama. Beautifully filmed and directed, though the dubbing is sometimes clumsy: all of the sound was dubbed afterwards so Fellini could shout directions at his actors during filming. In fact, he would even change the dialogue afterwards.
The trouble with parables and analogies: the semi-naturalistic interactions of the major characters undermines the metaphorical richness of the rest of the story. Why would we find those interactions believable? Why should we? If we do, then we're out of the parable and into a drama, but then the elements of parable become absurd-- like the army intruding on the riot intruding on the fans at the end. Aronofsky insists this is a film about nature and God and creation, and it works with that obvious analogy, though it also strongly suggests an analogy about the creative artist, with Him as the artist's ego-- publicity-seeking, craving approval, welcoming any intrusion-- while Mother represents the creative mind. (Note to self: why do so many films about art and artists and women feature so much physical and emotional suffering? It's a kind of aesthetic masochism). It was reported that, to keep Lawrence calm during filming, a tent was set up with "Keeping up with the Kardashians" playing on an endless loop. The pleasure is not in the decoding of this film: it's in the visceral presentation of the symbol act of despoiling the earth, creation, humanity. All the ugliness in human culture intrudes on the beautiful (creation) house made warm and inviting by Mother. So God is stupid and rude and spoils it all by inviting man in, and then inflicts infinite suffering on Mother to pay for his poor judgement. Symbols are weak tools of drama and you can see why judgement on this film is so divided: it was simultaneously booed and applauded at some screenings. Even if you succeed in decoding everything you see on the screen, it remains unsatisfying, inadequate, and unfeeling.
Based on the book by James Baldwin, but not, I trust, completely faithful to it. Tish and Fonny grew up together and have become lovers. They encounter discrimination as they try to find an apartment together, particularly once the landlord becomes aware that Tish is not moving in alone, and that she is not a prostitute. A man inappropriately propositions Tish and Fonny shoves him into some packing crates arousing the ire and suspicion of Officer Bell. When a Latino woman is raped in a far away borough, while Fonny, Tish, and his friend Daniel are having dinner, Officer Bell claims to have seen Fonny fleeing the scene and he is arrested. We discover that Tish is pregnant with Fonny's child, a development Fonny's family embraces. The alleged victim flees to Puerto Rico but when confronted by Tish's mom, has a breakdown. This is the real thing-- not a white saviour dish, like "Green Book". The black constituents of "Beale Street" encounter racism on a routine, daily basis, and they are the protagonists of this drama-- not some enlightened white Skeeter. And they are three-dimensional: Fonny's mother is a devout church member and condemns Tish harshly, and insists she has corrupted her son. The fathers of both Tish and Fonny realize they need money for his defense and indulge in some larceny to find it. But this is Baldwin: we're not going to get a fairy-tale ending. This is a substantial story and an important one-- and more relevant than Jenkin's last film, "Moonlight"; but he also has chosen a bit of melodramatic tone at times, and the romance between Tish and Fonny is almost idealized. The audio mix we heard at the Princess Theatre was somewhat harsh and muddy-- which could be attributable to the sound system at the Princess-- but the music itself was striking, mostly orchestral, strings, sometimes a quartet-- along with occasional radio play of soul music. Regina King was superb, as were the fathers, but the rest of the cast was not as convincing.
Well, it was intriguing at first: a 9-year-old girl named Ellie has some amazing telekinetic powers and is seized by some kind of military-intelligence body, after she murdered her mother. They intend to kill her. That's fresh. But Sarah believes she may have a redeeming character trait or two and recruits her former lover (had to be a former lover), Fonda, to assess her. Amazingly, he will be able to do this in one short day. There is no serious effort made to work out the mechanics of how this all is processed: who has authority here? Are government officials seriously planning to murder and dissect a 9-year-old girl? Didn't she have a lawyer? And is this military or the police? And do they really allow Fonda to unbind her even though we are given to understand she has amazing powers-- that can only be expressed through her hands? Preposterous from start to finish, but, if there is one redeeming factor, it is the relation that develops between Fonda and Ellie, as she demonstrates an ubermensch facility with manipulation and defiance. At one point, Fonda considers that Ellie may be deliberately sabotaging her own case, which is interesting for a minute.
Will and his daughter Tom (short for Thomasin) live in a forested park off the grid, near Portland, Oregon. We don't know why exactly, and we don't know what happened to Tom's mother, though we learn that Will is a veteran, and he has a problem dealing with people, any people. When Tom is spotted by a jogger one day, local social services, with police help, intervenes, for unclear reasons. It's a weak spot in the film: are they arresting them for trespassing? Is the issue Tom being out of school? Are they breaking the law in some other way? Why does Will respect their direction when there is no clear legal reason why he should? They are moved to a rather generous house owned by a nearby tree-farmer who just wants to be kind to them (and "encourages" them to go to church with him). But Will clearly wants to get back into the woods. The question is, is it time for Tom to consider her options? A maturing teenager, does she want to spend the foreseeable future living off of wild mushrooms and canned soup? There are several weak spots in the film-- you don't ever feel that they've really been living in the wild for a long time, and we never find out really why Will is so hostile to social life, even when it is a kind of funky, outlier community. The weather changes so quickly, it's hard to explain what time of year they are in. And conversations with outsiders start with this clear awareness of the story-- the woman who helps them after Will is injured, for example, seems instantly to ask questions you would ask if you are the audience and you know about their past. But the movie is fresh and sensitive and unexpected and there is very touching, very real emotion at the end... and sadness. Granik, who directed "Winter's Bone", as a great sensitivity for people living outside of the mainstream, and sympathy for their reasons, and their states of mind.
Zula is a young girl who auditions for a special choir in Poland just after the war. Wiktor is the choir director and pianist of the Mazurek school. Together with his wife partner, a musicologist named Irena, they manage this artsy school that produces an impressive company of dancers and singers-- and the director does not stint on the production quality of the sequences showing them. Real productions, real audiences. Zula, it is rumoured, murdered her father after he attempted to abuse her (she claims he was only wounded). She is attracted to Wiktor and they begin an affair that stretches through the 50's in Poland, Germany, Yugoslavia, and Paris. Kaczmarek represents the company and sells them out to the propaganda machinery of the Polish Communist Party, where they are forced to endure absurd presentations of abject worship of Comrade Stalin. They are separated and reunited, and intruded upon by the political imperatives of the Soviet Block, and by Wiktor's dubious judgment of career strategies. The ending is a bit abrupt: I didn't totally buy it. But the story is exquisitely filmed in black and white in 4-3 ratio, beautifully composed and lit, and marvelously well-acted. The musical performances by the choir are outstanding. Inspired by the life story of Pawilkowski's real parents. Pawilkowski also made "Ida".
Delightful, weightless documentary filmed by Agnes Varda on her small digital camcorder, investigating the question of gleaning, of collecting discarded food. She looks at "professionals" who are legally entitled to salvage potatoes and other foods from the farmers' fields after harvest, to collectors who repurpose discarded furnishings into art.
Perhaps one of the worst movies I've seen in ages. Benjamin is a sci-fi fan who writes; at a workshop for aspiring writers, he submits a manuscript which is then cribbed by a famous writer, Chevalier, with writer's block. Meanwhile, a girl he meets there persuades him to sell his manuscript to Lonnie who wants to make a movie from it. It's really about self-mocking ironic conviction here: do all your absurd lines straight and hope they bounce. They don't. Hess directed "Napoleon Dynamite" which depending on a very subtle, very delicate balance of the absurd and the pedestrian to work, and it had more appealing characters. "Bronco" doesn't have anyone interesting or appealing in it: Benjamin is too vanilla, Chevalier is just plot leverage, Judith is kind of pathetic, and Lonnie does this weird thing with his lower lip which just makes you worry that it might be permanent. The special effects are deliberately cheesy, I must assume, in the hope that no one will hold their defects against the director.
Hello. This is a test. I chose comedy; is that what was chosen.
Wonderful, moody look at the city of Los Angeles as depicted in movies, and how it's locations are used for movies, with an unerring eye for the revelatory moment, the insinuation, the political and social angle. Surveys movies from the earliest days of Hollywood to recent films like "Killer of Sheep" and "L.A. Confidential". Examines how myths and legends come to expression in films like "Chinatown", and looks at the real stories behind them, and how Los Angeles consistently rejected public transit and housing in favor of the massive freeway system and new, expensive towers, and how its architecture reflects its obsession with the trivial and superficial instead of the potential richness of history and beauty. Anderson examines the mythology of the police department and the violent confrontations with blacks and Latinos.
Joan Archer is a brilliant student whose English professor, Joe Castleman, encourages. Incredibly, famous alumni Elaine Mozell tells her not to write-- women are treated unfairly and not read. I hope she had the grace to tell Doris Lessing, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, Flannery O'Conner, Francoise Sagan, Agatha Christie, Sylvia Plath and others. But, never mind. Even though we are told she falls in love with professor Joe, we don't see the slightest indication of her find anything attractive about him: Runge wants nobody to second guess the idea that he is a creep. Then we are to believe that she would tell him that his writing was worthless, and he would react as if his life was over (not as if he needed any other opinions, or wasn't surprised, or anything more believable than this) and that she could take his "ideas" and rewrite them and submit them as if they were his for 50 years or so and then shockingly realize that this was a bad deal for her. This is soap opera, from the very first moment to the last, and limp-wristed soap at that. We have Christian Slater constantly leaning into everyone's space-- I could almost smell his gnarly breath through the screen-- and Joan and David utterly clueless about dealing with him (sure, let's have a drink, maybe I'll spill you something scandalous). Nathaniel is a repellent character and Slater acts him repellently. We are invited to snarl at Joe because he doesn't praise his son's writing. Really? The son wants his dad to praise his writing? Does no one find it uncomfortable that a son would find validation in his dad's approval of his writing? Maybe he can get published some day-- maybe his dad will give him a few names. We are invited to find Joan praiseworthy because she constantly nags Joe about food in his beard, eating too much greasy food, and not taking his medications on time. Then, when Joe nags David, we are invited to find him repellent and offensive. There is supposed to be Oscar buzz for Glenn Close. Oh God, no. And if you thought winners of the Nobel prize for literature were thoughtful, smart people, of emotional depth, who were not likely to be cheaply seduced by glistening objects, and might feel ambivalent about large, famous awards, you're at the wrong movie.
Very still, very quiet movie about a family under stress for the most natural, plausible reasons. Jerry Brinson is fired from his job at a golf course because he is too friendly with the customers. When they offer to hire him back, out of spite, he refuses. And he refuses other jobs as beneath his dignity. His wife, Janette, at first loyal, becomes increasingly distressed with his lack of initiative and is disillusioned with him when he takes a job fighting forest fires. But "Wildlife" is mainly about Joe Brinson, their son, and we see the marriage through his eyes. Jeanette looks for an alternative support and doesn't bother to conceal it from Joe. This small very believable tragedy of a broken relationship unwinds slowly, elegantly, with moments of brilliant clarity accentuated by the tasteful music. Exceptional performances from the three leads, and exquisite direction by Paul Dano.
Beautiful, sensuous scenes of nature and urban environments, and people, almost exclusively in slow-motion or time-lapse, accompanied by the exquisite music of Philip Glass. Swooping cameras dive over mountains, fields, canyons, and then the mountains of skyscrapers and canyons of Manhattan and Los Angeles and other locations, including the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe, the misconceived housing project in St. Louis that was torn down in 1972. It sometimes fixes on people, on their faces staring back at the camera, not speaking or gesturing. The film was cut to the music, not vice-versa as would be expected. It is claimed to suggest that man is dislocated in this world now because of technology, but it certainly doesn't expend much film in an effort to diagram it. It's more impressionistic, and the effect is of an overview, a stepping back and looking at our lives and our planet and our cities.
Impressionistic wash of images from Japan and Africa (Guinea-Bissau) and Europe narrated as a kind of poem about cultural and personal memory. Marred by seriously amateurish film (the cameraman actually walks around objects or persons at times for a "steadi-cam" take), long sequences of gimmicky serigraph images, and music that sounds like it was background for a video game. Is it really about death and spirit and humanity? Or just a series of touchstones that doesn't really dig deeply into it's subject?
Let's get this out of the way: brilliant, wildly inventive animation, fast-paced, funny, witty, psychedelic. The voice-actors are okay, particularly Lily Tomlin. The concept is interesting: quantum physics splashed into a kaleidoscopic frenzy of various spider-men and women and intersectional cosmic villainy. The evil guy, Wilson Fisk, is pretty amusing. So why, with all this investment in cleverness and technical innovation, do we still have so many cliches: the family reunion, the unnecessary conversation with the down and out hero which leads to his escape, the sexless flirtation, and the inevitable dreary repetition of climatic fights (at least 3) which invariably produce the same result with the obligatory escapes to facilitate the next climatic fight scene? For god's sake, I don't care who it is, finish him off and let me suspend my disbelief. The worst moment here is when Fisk has Miles down and out and just stands there oblivious to the fact that a cliche is about to revive and bite him. The problem is that this not the product of a writer creating an interesting, original story: it's clearly a corporate product, including call-outs to sponsors and affiliated movies and characters, and the various plot elements are fragmented and disconnected. After seeing Miles acquire the skills to steal the USB key and escape with the original Peter Parker, we suddenly have him rejected by the group as incompetent-- that's a different story line inserted at a random point. We have the betrayal of Uncle Aaron. And the weepy scene when they realize the SP//dr is broken: it's just a damn machine. We have Aunt May suddenly prescient about Miles' transformation into an effective spider thing. If they would have brought half the inventiveness of the technology to the story, it would have been better than War and Peace. I do not buy the defense that this is a children's movie: the idea that movies need to be dumbed down and that all genuinely tragic elements need to be removed is bs. When Uncle Aaron dies, I take it the film-makers thought this would be a tragic moment, but it's just stale and arid and bland. Peni was originally going to die, but it was felt that that would be too harsh for the target audience. They are wrong.
Wonderful collection of film shot in 1929 in three cities in Russia, wallowing in the magic of imagery, the cleverness of editing, the dynamic of movement. "Man With a Movie Camera" introduced audiences to double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, split screen, jump cuts, tracking shots, animation, and backwards tracking shots, and reversed footage. Shot in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkiv over a period of three years by Dziga Vertov. Long regarded as a milestone in the evolution of cinema, and as one of the greatest films ever made, it holds up well as curiosity, though some of the jump-cut sequences are more annoying than stimulating now. Occasionally suggests a rote story-- by jump-cutting from an action to reaction shots-- but often in love with its own technique, barreling down the road in a car, filming a camera-man filming the camera-man on another car, trains, fire-engines, street-cars.
The third installment of Whit Stillman's trilogy on young preppies in New York struggling to define themselves, hold jobs, find love, and amuse themselves, is probably the weakest ("Metropolitan" is the strongest), but it has its charms, including the usual snappy, witty dialogue (including a hilarious dissection of "Lady and the Tramp", and how it affirms stereo-types and prepares young women for the dissatisfying life male exploitation). Life centers around the the disco, and getting into the disco, and getting fucked afterwards, and getting home, or getting a home to share. Des McGrath is a manager at one of the hottest clubs with the godlike power to grant or deny passage into it's beautiful, cavernous vault. But his boss doesn't like advertising men so he has trouble getting his friend, Jimmy, and his friends, in. Two Hampshire College grads, Alice and Charlotte, do get in and meet men, rejecting Harvard grads because ... well, just because. They work for a publisher, that will be acquired by another publisher. Alice gets into trouble; Charlotte thinks she is in trouble. They are not sure they are even really friends though they have moved into an apartment together. In the end, Disco ends, and so does their carefree lives of self-indulgence. In a pretty hilarious speech at the end, Ted declares that disco will always live on because it was the greatest music and greatest life ever. Not particularly well-acted, and not particularly artistic from a cinematic point of view, but it has something valuable in it in the way it reveals the mindset of 20-somethings on the cusp of serious adulthood, in the middle of a culture that doesn't know what to do with them.
The third installment of Whit Stillman's trilogy on young preppies in New York struggling to define themselves, hold jobs, find love, and amuse themselves, is probably the weakest ("Metropolitan" is the strongest), but it has its charms, including the usual snappy, witty dialogue (including a hilarious dissection of "Lady and the Tramp", and how it affirms stereo-types and prepares young women for the dissatisfying life male exploitation). Life centers around the the disco, and getting into the disco, and getting fucked afterwards, and getting home, or getting a home to share. Des McGrath is a manager at one of the hottest clubs with the godlike power to grant or deny passage into it's beautiful, cavernous vault. But his boss doesn't like advertising men so he has trouble getting his friend, Jimmy, and his friends, in. Two Hampshire College grads, Alice and Charlotte, do get in and meet men, rejecting Harvard grads because ... well, just because. They work for a publisher, that will be acquired by another publisher. Alice gets into trouble; Charlotte thinks she is in trouble. They are not sure they are even really friends though they have moved into an apartment together. In the end, Disco ends, and so does their carefree lives of self-indulgence. In a pretty hilarious speech at the end, Ted declares that disco will always live on because it was the greatest music and greatest life ever. Not particularly well-acted, and not particularly artistic from a cinematic point of view, but it has something valuable in it in the way it reveals the mindset of 20-somethings on the cusp of serious adulthood, in the middle of a culture that doesn't know what to do with them.
Stillman, a preppy himself, specializes in wistful comedies about young men and women forging identities and character in that cauldron of simmering emotions and impulses of the early 20's college grad unmarried milieu. They are articulate, educated, generally well-mannered, and physically attractive because they are young, not because they are selected from a pool of models. They are unusually conscious of their own consciousness, acknowledging verbally what other characters might leave implied. They squabble, brag, experiment with attitudes, and are not particularly loyal to their group: they know they are all moving on. In this case, a group of preppies generously take in a young man, Tom, who happens to be standing near a taxi they want. They invite him to a party, and the girls like him, so he is invited to more parties. Nick, the leader of this group-- or what passes for dominance-- realizes he's not of the same class as the others and helps him acquire a tuxedo for some of the deb balls and dances he is invited to. He doesn't know it, but Audrey, a relatively self-effacing girl in the group, has developed a rather passionate interest in him, and he inadvertently slights her several times, almost breaking her heart without even trying. These debs and courtiers unselfconsciously discuss Fourier and Marxism and class and the bourgeoisie because they want to be cultivated and smart and respect education and anticipate becoming full members of the moneyed class -- if it isn't doomed.
Ted and Fred are cousins. Ted is a salesman living Barcelona while Fred is military, and advance man for the fleet which is headed to Barcelona. Fred arrives unexpectedly and expects to stay with Peter for an indefinite period. They go out, meet girls, talk about love and politics (how the Europeans mock and ridicule America) and religion. Their dialogue is extraordinarily self-conscious, witty, and deliberate. The girls are impeccable: smart, beautiful, charming, and sexually available (Ted tells Fred that the sexual revolution hit with more force in Europe, and did not retreat). Ted is attracted to Aurora because she is not attractive, but she retreats from his interest and he develops a relationship with Montserrat, who doesn't necessarily feel she should give up her boyfriend. Fred hooks up with Marta, who also has her own agenda. Stillman has a gift for allowing debates to run their course without seeming to be invested in either side. The characters in "Barcelona" are exploring, themselves and others, and meandering among the possible outcomes of relationships and interests. Entertaining, witty, and sometimes mesmerizing. The flattering portrait of the women is no accident: Stillman met and fell in love with a woman in Barcelona and married her.
The story of Dick Cheney, from his early days as a heavy-drinking lineman in Wyoming, to the Vice-Presidency under George Bush, and his pinnacle of power and influence. His wife, Lynne, in this version, straightens him out after he makes a habit of drinking too much (and accruing 2 DYI convictions), and he wins an internship with William A. Steiger and eventually worms his way into the Nixon White House. He runs for Congress himself, wins, and and then is appointed Secretary of Defense under Bush Sr. "Vice" is a chronicle of the development and expression of his hawkish foreign policy views, and how he came to dominate Bush Jr. as VP and pushed for the Iraq invasion and aggressive surveillance policies as part of the "Unitary Executive", which, in his view, had almost unlimited power and authority. Also shows him as a devoted family man, supportive of gay daughter Mary until Liz, running for Congress in Wyoming, has a political need to campaign against gay marriage. "Vice" is a bit of advocacy: some of the Republican policies (like calling the "Estate Tax" the "Death Tax" are not directly attributable to Cheney. And McKay gives Cheney a chance to directly address the audience in the last frames, making the old "you can't handle the truth" argument for his ruthlessness. I protect you by taking on the ugly tasks that you can't bear to handle for yourselves. I felt ambivalent about that postscript, but it undoubtedly leaves an impression of fairness to the character. But the film loses a lot of marks because of Bale's irrational and bizarre obsession with his version of "method acting", which generally consists of hoarsely whispering his lines.
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