"Ferrari" made many year-end top-ten lists. I don't know why. The story, about Enzo Ferrari's "struggle" to build a great race-car and defeat his arch-nemesis, Maserati, is conventional, devoid of real drama, and just not very compelling, as told in this film. Even worse, the actors seem to be straddling the English with Italian accent mode-- Shailene Woodley seems to speak just plain English, but Adam Driver wanders a little, and other characters are definitely doing the accent. The film alternates between Ferrari's work on his company, trying to raise money, recruiting drivers, and his troubled relationship with his wife Laura, who also manages the business. He has moved on from Laura to his mistress, Lina Lardi, with whom he has had a child. He had a child, Dino, with Laura but he died at 24 of muscular dystrophy, in 1956. In the film, Laura sometimes blamed Enzo for this death. Ferrari founded his company at the end of World War II and dominated racing for many years afterwards. This is a clumsy film. Yes, the racing footage is spectacular, but weirdly edited (cuts to feet on pedals, driver's POV, cars side by side) and the climatic accident scene doesn't seem powerfully connected to the rest of the story. It was, in short, boring at times. And we don't get any revelatory sequences about how Ferrari exactly built his cars, what he stole from Alpha-Romeo (his previous employer), and his relationship with his mechanics and engineers.
Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley, Giuseppe Festinese, Derek Hill, Penelope Cruz, Giuseppe Fonifati, Gabriel Leone
Louis XIV is dying. He is surrounded by doctors and advisors and state officials all of whom carefully, delicately try to persuade him to issue commands, come out to play, or eat or drink, but he is in the last stages of gangrene from a wound in his leg (of unknown cause) and increasingly disinterested. That's all there is to this meditative, quiet, intriguing film about departure. Louis spends most of the time reclining in his bed or being helped to a wheelchair, and asking to be put back in bed, and being offered water, food, mass, or dubious medicines. His face is grim but barely demonstrative. He doesn't sulk or declaim in bitterness at his fate, or whine or cry-- which makes it so much like deaths that I know of, of people in the terminal stages of illness. "The Death of Louis XIV" invites to watch closely, to stare, to examine the face of a man (convincingly, brilliantly played by Jean-Pierre Leaud) who is dying and knows it. There is no attempt to really instruct us about what we are seeing-- just the invitation to watch and consider. There is one particular long continuous shot of Louis, the "Sun King", the definitive absolutist ruler, staring at someone, seemingly without expression. Yet his face is actually powerfully expressive. The longer the stare the more we see how his condition has framed his life for him: no exit, no escape. He had actually outlived most of his potential heirs and at one point offers advice to his five-year-old great grandson and heir. Really a remarkable film for anyone patient enough to watch it.
Jean-Pierre Leaud, Patric D'Assumcao, Marc Susini, Bernard Belin, Irene Silvagni, Jacques Henric, Vicenc Altaio, Alain Lajoinie, Olivier Cadiot, Francis Montaulard, Paul Menand
Also written by Emmanuel Bourdieu. Very confusing film about a family comprised of toxic, hateful, or clueless members, assembled for Christmas on the occasion of the mother's diagnosis of leukemia and her need for a bone marrow transplant. Elizabeth is the eldest and seemingly most responsible but she nurses a passionate hatred for her brother, Henri, for reasons never clear to us. A brother, Joseph, died when he was seven, of leukemia, because no-one in the family was a suitable donor. Next is brother Ivan who is married to Sylvia who, as it were, was once involved with his cousin Simon and is surprised to discover that she was "passed" on to Ivan from Simon and Henri because they thought he really wanted her. It emerges that Elizabeth's son, Paul, is also a good candidate for the bone marrow transplant and she is annoyed that Henri has offered first. The family bounces through the days of the Christmas gathering (they are all staying at their parents' house) drawn by petty grievances and mischief and the struggle to contain Henri's bile and Simon's drinking and violence, while waiting for approval for the transplant-- and for Junon to decide if she even wants to go through with it. As with "Kings and Queen", a previous film by Desplechin, it is hard to assess "A Christmas Tale". It has some of the hallmarks of a serious, literate film, but also seems broken and unfocussed and occasionally pretentious. I also never believed that Junon and Abel had any real affection for each other-- the actors never seemed to establish that kind of easy rapport of long-married couples. Catherine Deneuve also seems to have insisted on always looking glamorous --even in bed-- and her character is supposed to be critically ill. Refreshingly, "A Christmas Tale" suggests that family can be debilitating as well as enveloping, and there is no magical Christmas touch that resolves longstanding grievances, jealousies, and wounds.
Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny, Chiara Mastroianni, Melvil Poupaud, Emmanuelle Devos, Hipplyte Girardot, Laurent Capelluto, Emile Berling
Long regarded as the definitive "Christmas Carol" for good reason. Alistair Sim is the curmudgeonly old Scrooge and, together with the sterling supporting cast, delivers an absolutely wonderful, performance. Each supporting actor has a starring sequence, the charwoman selling Scrooge's bedclothes, the undertaker waiting for Marley to kick off, Bob Cratchit, the ghosts, Fezziwig-- all wonderful, memorable, funny, and evocative. Sure, it's kind of soap opera and melodramatic, but melodrama is rarely done to this level of acuity. What remains incomprehensible is how a society can so embrace a message that it disregards in "real" life at the first opportunity. "Virtue that sleeps, awakes refreshed".
Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns, Hermione Baddeley, MIchael Hordern, John Charlesworth, Francis De Wolff, George Cole, Brian Worth, Ernest Ehesiger, Glyn Dearman, Roddy Hughes, Olga Edwardes, Carol Marsh, Michael Dolan, Patrick Macnee, Rona Anderson, MIles Malleson
Some great films are oblique but not all oblique films are great. Gorgeous video here, nature, volcanos, explosions, animal sacrifice, marriages, and naked primitive humans whose genitals have been digitally removed. It's that compromise that, sadly, defines Malick's relationship to this film. When you work on this level of obscurity, of suggestion, I imagine it might be easy for the artist to believe that the audience will get the allusion and fill in the parts left empty by your creative failure. It just doesn't work. It's gorgeous, but reminds me of the Cinesphere film I saw as a teenager: just scenery.
Cate Blanchett
Challenging and impressive biopic on Leonard Bernstein that oddly lacks a centre of gravity. Bernstein is shown from his early years, his famous debut (replacing Bruno Walter at the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall), and various conducting engagements around the world. The problem with a film like this is that those of us not deeply enmeshed with classical music have only a passing familiarity with what it is exactly a conductor does and why he is important. I suspect that the weight of Bernstein's accomplishments eludes me. We have a better idea of artists known for compositions, for singing, for instrumental performances, or acting. What, exactly, is so great about a great conductor? We are also presented with Bernstein's bi- sexuality, his infidelity to Felicia, his wife and mother of his three children, and his exploitation of his privileged position to proposition young men, particularly at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer academy. "Maestro" doesn't raise issues of exploitation and probably shouldn't but I would think that if the genders were different it would. He composed music for a stage production of "Peter Pan"-- which strikes me as appropriate-- and for a stage production of "On the Town", though the movie substituted other music for his. He married Felicia Montealegre while writing an opera about a troubled marriage. He wrote the music for "West Side Story", stage and film, which won awards for everything but the music. Cooper is energetic as Bernstein and it's hard not to imagine his is exaggerating his mannerisms until you see some film of the real Bernstein. Cooper says she studied Mahler's 2nd Symphony for six years, for the scene in which he conducts it (10 minutes long) at Ely Cathedral. I admire the daring decision to show ten minutes of a classical composition-- note that it is not Bernstein's-- in a popular movie. And I note that several children of established Hollywood actors got plumb secondary roles. That's what we mean by "establishment". On the whole, the movie left me slightly indifferent to Bernstein. I don't remember any piece of his that I ever wanted to hear again.
Carey Mulligan, Bradley Cooper, Matt Bomer, Brian Klugman, , Sarah Silverman, Zachary Booth, Maya Hawke, Sam Nivola, Alexa Swinton
Notable as one of the first major Canadian independent films, produced by the NFB. Peter is an annoying, rebellious 18-year-old nearing the end of this last year in high school. He skips school regularly to spend time with Julie, his girlfriend. He has ATTITUDE. He questions why anyone would want to finish college, get a job, work at a job he doesn't enjoy, just to get money. At the same time, he demands money from his parents for his own immature aspirations. His girlfriend has a bit more sense than him-- she's pregnant and wants some stability and security. A lot of the dialogue is obviously improvised, if rehearsed. The acting is a mixed bag. Many ancillary roles appear to be played by amateurs-- perhaps even real police officers, but John Vernon, who went on to some renown, plays a shady parking lot owner. That said, there is an earnest attempt to dramatize real generational conflict, and the hubris of a privileged teenage boy. Obviously very low-budget; a curiosity worth having a look, but that's about it.
Peter Kastner, Julie Biggs, Claude Rae, Toby Tarnow, Charmion King, Sean Sullivan, John Vernon, Norman Ettlinger
Based loosely on James' "Turn of the Screw". Well acted and directed but dated production that meticulously defers the question of whether or not the ghosts are real or the product of Miss Giddens' fertile and repressed imagination. This is a gothic horror story that is smartly written (Truman Capote had a hand in it) and filmed but, well, it is gothic. It's all a bit "Wuthering Heights" but much smarter. I say dated, but there is one element you won't see often in a current film: a young actor, Martin Stephens, kisses his governess on the mouth, with a bit of mustard. Unfortunately, with the producers of the film with that regrettable obsession with bankable stars, recruited Deborah Kerr, then 39, for the role, when it should have gone to someone much younger. Imagine Natalie Wood or Tuesday Weld in the role. Anyway, governess Giddens is hired by the orphaned children's uncle, in London, to assume full control over the children and the estate while engaged, so he won't be bothered with them, something young Miles observes acutely at one point. Miss Giddens is effusively pleased and impressed with Flora-- a warning sign-- she doesn't know anything about her yet-- and also Miles when he arrives at the estate after being expelled from boarding school. She soon discovers eccentricities in the children's behaviors and becomes obsessed with details about the previous governess and her relationship with the valet. Remember: this was made in 1961 about a story that took place in the 19th century. Miss Giddens comes to believe that the ghosts of the valet and previous governess are trying to recreate their relationship through the children. If that isn't alarming enough, Miss Giddens decides that the children need to confront the truth about this fact, and she becomes so obsessed with the issue that she expels Flora and sends her with the maid to London to see the uncle, so that she alone can confront Miles about the issues that got him expelled-- with tragic results. If there is a message here-- and I take it there is-- it's that the perverse sexual attitudes of excessively repressed adults have destructive effects on children who really are innocent. Thought of that way, the film actually rises a notch, in spite of the dated horror tropes.
Deborah Kerr, Peter Wyngarde, Martin Stephens, Pamela Franklin, Michael Redgrave, Clytie Jessop, Megs Jenkins, Isla Cameron
I guessed as I was watching yet another brain-numbing section of dialogue that this piece of whimsical indulgent Fellini-esque rip-off was written by the director. I was correct. Lavished with extensive sequences of debauchery at parties and battle scenes at work-- this is Hollywood in the heyday before the Hayes code-- nothing quite connects with anything else or with any real idea about what it all means. The dead give-away is when Jack, still rich, or at least living the rich life-style, commits suicide because his career is over, in a lavish hotel. The real consequences of his alcoholism and undisciplined career choices are glossed over in favor of what the director assumes the audience will believe is the real trauma: he's no longer a star. And when Nellie LaRoy similarly loses her career (and she also loses her money), she doesn't cosmetically look very worn or exhausted as real people in that kind of dire predicament would look. One assumes the actress would never have it, the way Lucille Ball ridiculously refused to look like a "bag lady" while playing one in a film. When she shows up at Manny's door to beg him for money to cover her bad gambling debts (the mobsters threaten her with acid), there is no sense of history or baggage-- Manny behaves like Ricky confronted with another one of Lucy's predicaments. When Manny walks around near the old studio where he used to be a power, I couldn't figure out if he was nostalgic or sad, regretful or bemused. I think the director/writer projected his own self-infatuation onto the story. It's mostly amusing and busy and mostly derivative and unoriginal. Pitt is not at his best, though Robbie is courageous and spectacular-- by why the body double for the exposed breast? Possibly the most over-rated film of the year. Best scene was a dramatization of the early struggles to record sound, and how it strait-jacketed movement and action; the sequences with the band liked by Palmer were also impressive as was the music. Does Jovan Adepo really play? He learned how to for the movie and does pretty well (I assume it's not actually him playing on the soundtrack).
Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Jean Smart, Olivia Wile, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo, Anfsford Prince
Bitter-sweet story about a couple of child brokers, Ha Sang-hyun and Dong-soo, in South Korea who divert babies left for a church into a private business, selling them to couples who, for various reasons, can't conceive their own. The story gets complicated: the mom returns for one of the babies. The brokers contact her and explain that they can give the baby a better life than she could, and criticize her for abandoning him. Gangsters, trying to extort money from Sang-huyn's laundry business, and a pair of female police officers are attempting to catch them in the act of child trafficking. A young boy from an orphanage also joins the mix. They become a sort of family, with the mother, Moon So-young, becoming impressed with the Sang-huyn and Dong-soo's skills at child-care, and even the police begin to soften their attitudes to the mom and the brokers. "Broker" thankfully resists the temptation to go maudlin on us leaving us with a taste of bitterness and taste of human kindness, affirming that life's consequential choices can lead to either.
Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Bae Doon, Lee Ji-eun, Lee Joo-young, Seung-soo Lm, Lee Moon-saeng, Yoo-Bin Sung
Ostensibly about Kurt Cobain (Van Sant says it is a fictionalized tale inspired by him), our anti-hero, Blake, is a rock star beset by ennui. He shrugs off the imprecations of his manager and mumbles and wanders his isolated property in bleak Novemberish weather, strumming a guitar and singing, avoiding the friends who share the house with him and don't seem too concerned about his demeanor, and handling a shotgun. He receives a yellow pages salesman and converses with him, and then hides from other visitors. The housemates dance, listen to Velvet Underground, and go out for dinner. Bleak, austere film that effectively captures a mood of washed out despair and insular frustration. Courtney Love apparently objected to a biopic but she and Van Sant were on good terms and he decided to do "inspired by" instead.
Michael Pitt, Asia Argento, Lukas Haas, Scott Patrick Green, Ricky Jay, Nicole Vicius, Thadeus A. Thomas
Writers Sandra and Samuel are going through some struggles in their marriage. His ambitious novel is stalled, he is distracted by financial pressures, as well as the task of converting a lovely mountain top cottage into an attractive B and B. Sandra is having more success. He is jealous, perhaps, and feels threatened by Sandra's bisexual interest in a young student who is writing about her. Samuel falls from the third floor (attic) balcony and is killed. Or was he pushed? "Anatomy of a Fall" dissects the progress of investigation by officials who strongly suspect Sandra attacked him with an unknown weapon. Complicating the issue is young Daniel, their ten-year-old son, who was out walking the dog during the incident and discovered the body. Daniel is partially blind stemming from an accident that may have been Samuel's fault when he was six. Daniel is conflicted. All the major characters behave like adults in "Anatomy of a Fall". They don't feign surprise when the obvious is expressed, that Sandra is a suspect, that she has had affairs, that she might influence Daniel's testimony. We are given a searing portrait of a conflicted relationship (Sandra and Samuel) and the tensions that may or may not have led to murder. Compelling and powerful.
Sandra Huller, Arlaud Swann, Milo Machado Graner, Antoine Reinartz, Samuel Theis, Jehnny Beth, Anne Roger
The story of Carlton Pearson, a charismatic black Pentecostal preacher who, after considering the starving, dying children in Rwanda, re-examined his belief in hell and began preaching that all people are saved. He found bible verses that seemed to imply this conclusion while his congregation, and other church leaders, were appalled. His large, growing church soon lost most of its members, including almost all of its white members, and Oral Roberts, his mentor and father figure to him, repudiated him. Credit the film-makers with the wisdom of making Roberts and other leaders and rejectionists well-rounded personalities: they are not bigoted or cruel in "Come Sunday". And Pearson is not without flaws. Most interestingly, his wife is ambivalent. She doesn't seem to disagree with him though she regards his actions as foolish at times. Inspired by an episode of "This American Life" called "Heretic" in which he was interviewed by Ira Glass. Rather than a diatribe about close-minded, hateful bigots, "Come Sunday" is a compassionate and nuanced portrait of a conflicted pastor. For example, while he rejects the idea of eternal damnation, he still tells a gay musician in the church that his lifestyle is a sin. Far more interesting and affecting than I expected.
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Gerard Catus, Jason Segal, LaKeith Stanfield, Stacey Sargeant, Dola Rashad, Danny Glover, Martin Sheen, Dustin Lewis
Blah blah blah.
Waldo Whippee
Blah blah blah.
Wally Walloon
Scorcese, as if compensating for his recent subprime work and striving for legacy, has put together a nearly flawless adaptation of a true story. One could almost forgive him for casting Leonardo Dicaprio in the lead. The story is about a native Indian tribe, the Osage, who, after being deprived of their lands and forced to move to a reservation, discover oil beneath their new home, and become fabulously rich. One is amazed that the government didn't just drive them off the land, but they didn't, and the Osage became, per capita, the richest people on earth. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is about the corruption that ensues, and the wicked attempts of whites to seize that wealth for themselves, by infiltrating the tribe, even marrying members of it. This is the kind of movie in which we realize that Mollie, the woman Earnest marries to steal her oil titles, isn't unaware of Earnest's motives, and accepts him for her own unexpressed reasons. There are a number of remarkable faces in the supporting roles-- they look lived- in, and corrupt, and prematurely aged. I fully expected something of a diatribe about how ill-treated indigenous peoples were, but this film is better than that: we see how some of them were complicit in their own mis-management.
Leonardo DiCarprio, Robert De Niro, LIly Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, Janae Collins, Louis Cancelmi
One suspects Louis Malle is more than a little still "in love with his sins" in this quirky quasi-reminiscence exploration of adolescent sexuality. Laurent has two obnoxious older brothers eager to initiate him into the mysteries of sexuality, and a beautiful unfaithful mother who indulges him at every opportunity. The boys are all undisciplined and rambunctious, the maid is stiff and appalled at times, the father is distant and clueless except in the way fathers can be complicity with their sons' transgressions. Laurent contracts scarlet fever which leads to the penultimate situation: sharing a hotel room at a kind of treatment centre because of a misunderstanding with the reservations. There is drinking and partying and a girl or two (his own age). Laurent writes an essay on Camus and is reading Proust while recovering from his fever. Malle claims the film mocks bourgeois tastes and that it does but almost every scene also touches on Laurent's sexuality, including when a priest makes an inappropriate gesture (how timeless!) and when a nurse douses him with a hose, or when his mother bathes him. The mother is more like a sister in many ways, immature, playful, and endlessly indulgent of the boys' mischief. Benoit Ferreux (Laurent) was not an actor and it shows-- he's not particularly good, but Malle works him into the scenes with spirit and he must have been a great sport at times. In the end, Malle extends his blessings: Laurent finds a girl appropriate to his age and his mother puts the shocking event into a kindly perspective-- it was pleasant and beautiful and will never happen again. For the record, Malle did not deny that he thought that, under certain circumstances, the taboo could be wholesome.
Lea Massari, Benoit Ferreux, Daniel Gelin, Michael Londsdale, Ave Ninchi, Gila von Weitershausen, Fabien Ferreux, Marc Winocourt, Corinne Kersten, Francois Werner
Made in 1970 and, terms of social-sexual issues, shows it. Mike Vecchio and Susan Henderson are engaged but already shacking up. Mike has doubts about the commitment and Susan, with panache, fields his ambivalence and stylishly steers him to the event. The film is episodic: Bea and Frank (Mike's parents) are dealing with another son's divorce-- something still scandalous and unacceptable back then for a good Italian, Catholic family. Jerry is trying to seduce a "good" Jewish girl, Brenda, who is "hip" but unconventional. Wilma can't get Johnny to put out enough for her needs-- is he gay? Unusually frank, topical discussion of sexual issues for the day, and kind of cute to watch now. Mike, for example, and Susan, have to lie about living together (both have fake room-mates, to their families). Brenda wonders if Jerry will "still love me tomorrow". Frank tells his sons that marriage is terrible but necessary and is something you just do and put up with. Ritchie's soon-to-be ex-wife (Diane Keaton's first major role) is perhaps the most prophetic character: she wants something more out of life than a marriage she plunged into when she was very young. A flawed movie that compensates with its unusual candor.
Gig Young, Bonnie Bedelia, Bea Arthur, Richard S. Castellano, Joseph Hindy, Diane Keaton, Cloris Leachman, Anne Jackson, Harry Guardino, Anne Meara, Bob Dishy
Atlantic City is crumbling under the delusions of it's own aspirations: hotels are demolished and neighborhoods decay. It's a reflection of the characters in "Atlantic City", Lou, a small-time bookie with delusions of grandeur, Sally, an aspiring croupier stuck shucking oysters at a bar, and Chrissie and Dave, Sally's sister and ex-husband, who have stumbled into a packet of cocaine they lift from mobsters in Philadelphia (who, of course, are on their trail). Guare's story is filled with revelatory detail and nuance. It's a clever narrative, and Lancaster and Sarandon and McLaren bring his characters to vivid life. They each provide each other with support and deception; nobody is virtuous here, on the surface or deep down, but Lou and Sally find a space in which they can pretend and possibly really care for each other.
Susan Sarandon, Burt Lancaster, Hollis McLaren, Michel Piccoli, Robert Joy, Al Waxman, Moses Znaimer, Wallace Shawn
Seen on Youtube (for pay). Interesting if familiar (to me) account of the genesis of the Satanic Ritual Abuse cases, the book "Michelle Remembers" by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist (who married her!) Lawrence Pazdur. When Michelle was in therapy with Pazdur, she began to "remember" incidents of her torture and abuse at the hands of a coven of Satanists, in collaboration with her mother. Pazdur, inspired by the success of "Sybil", co-wrote a book about it with her which became a sensation. He left his wife and married Michelle and they toured North America creating numerous converts to the cause of saving children from the widespread activity of Satanic cults. Making lavish use of tapes and images and television broadcasts, "Satan Wants You" brings in Pazdur's ex-wife who, remarkably, set out to discredit Michelle's claims on her own, while major TV networks and hosts like Oprah and Geraldo Rivera swallowed the story whole. She uncovered proof that Michelle was in school during the time of the alleged kidnapping and abuse. But there is really not much debate about the veracity of her story and even Pazdur eventually admitted that the essence of the story might not be in whether it really happened or not (?!). Not a brilliant documentary in the mode of Frontline or Errol Morris but compelling enough, and wisely connects with the current rash of conspiracy theories about a worldwide conspiracy of child abusers and Satanists that has a lot of currency now among the MAGA folk.
Kenneth Lanning, Blanche Barton, Charles Ennis, Charyl Proby-Austman, Elizabeth Loftus
No, this is not a documentary. This is a vanity project by a close friend and we only learn about the sins we already know, and we get to see Joan Baez dancing badly and feeding her elderly mother though we can't be sure her elderly mother would want the world to see her at this stage of her life. And we get to hear that Joan Baez and her sister Mimi have allegedly "recovered" memories of sexual abuse by her father (safely dead -- and Pauline has no such memories). And we won't be allowed to doubt that every one of her farewell tour concerts is sold out, and we get to see the audience cheering and Bill and Hillary, Baez's wonderful spread out in California. We don't get to hear how she would attend concerts in small venues as a young woman and jump up and sing along with the performer whether they wanted her to or not. We do get to see her upstage her sister Mimi, with whom she had a troubled relationship (she doesn't talk about her suspicion that Richard Farina was using Mimi to get connected the most famous folk singer of the day, Joan). I've always found something bullying her style of performance, as if she was entitled to your attention and appreciation whether you think "We Shall Overcome" is a great hymn or not.
Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, David Harris, Mimi Farina
Pointless horror story about a girl, India, whose father dies leading to the surprising appearance of a brother, whom India was completely unawareness. We are supposed to feel creepiness and dread about the brother which the film falls over itself to convey without conveying any actual creepiness or dread. All of the scenes are tropes, cliches of the genre, all surfaces and no depth. Nicole Kidman gives us her worst method-acting whispers and Mia Wasikowska, who used to be a promising actress, is so glum the viewer wants to send her off to military college on behalf of the mom, and every other viewer. Anyway... Charlie, the uncle, has obviously offed his brother and the maid and the aunt, one must conclude, and seems intent on the obvious: marry India and take the fabulous house. I would guess that the director thought the scene in which Charlie and India play a duet on the piano, a Glass composition, a sort of duel of spirits, is so baseless and pointless that it washes like dish-soap over the disagreeable contrivances of the plot. Obviously owes something-- I'm not sure what, other than the most conspicuous plot tricks-- to "Shadow of a Doubt", a far superior film. But Chan-wook wanted India to be more of an predator, jealous of her mother, drawn to her increasing awareness of Charlie's criminal nature. The final revelations, about Charlie and Richard's childhood and the lost brother, are more macabre than sinister.
Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Dermot Mulroney, Peg Allen, Jacki Weaver
Xochitl and her friends have personal reason for opposing carbon emissions: they have suffered personally, health-wise, or lost family or friends to illnesses they perceive as caused by carbon emissions. They organize a complex and sophisticated plan to blow up a pipeline in Texas that they hope will obstruct more emissions and, more importantly, start a movement to attack the oil industry and oil consumption. They openly declare that, yes, they are terrorists, but they are determined not to take human life, or cause an ecological disaster with their actions. Their argument is dicey: that property destruction is justified in the "pursuit of environmental justice". When you think about it, it's quite striking that a film that advocates such actions can be produced and distributed in North America. It's not particularly distinguished by its artistic merits-- it's okay, but not great. But the idea behind it and it's whole-hearted commitment to its values is compelling, and there are a few intriguing plot twists. It is also striking that each of the conspirators is motivated by slightly different reasons and has distinct characters, like the Christian land-owner who fought eminent domain, and the lesbian lover of a women with terminal cancer. One of them is really just a thuggish punk. Refreshingly, the old Hayes-code era of Hollywood is blatantly ignored.
Ariela Barer, Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage, Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane, Jayme Lawson, Marcus Scribner, Jake Weary
I suspected immediately that this was a project of a young male writer. Chris Pratt is a man with a troubled past. Once a promising skater on his high school ice hockey team, he was at the wheel with the lights out on a high speed run down a highway when his car hit a combine killing a friend and crushing his girl-friend's leg. He himself suffers a severe concussion causing him to forget day to day tasks, though he is helped by his blind room-mate, Lewis (Jeff Daniels) who is himself a bit of a jerk. He works at a bank as a janitor with ambitions of being a teller but he is recruited by a criminal gang with plans to rob that very bank. Chris is a class-a jerk who committed a terrible crime but "The Lookout" wants you to like him and to see his suffering as some kind of redemption-- a frequent motif for young males who know just how much of a jerk they really are and want to construct a reality in which they can be loved and admired in spite of the moronic things they have done. He can even kill someone-- again-- and be the hero. We are astonished that he never served any time in prison for his reckless act in the car, and (spoiler alert) even more astonished when his involvement in the bank robbery goes unnoticed or disregarded and he gets to be a teller after all, even if it seems obvious to the viewer that he has no qualifications for it at all. When Chris tries to turn the tables on Gary by hiding the money, it seems obvious to the viewer that Gary has no reason to free Lewis and Chris and go off and fetch the money-- he would have no way of knowing if Chris was lying about where he hid it, or if Chris would call the police. Chris was smart enough to put a shot-gun in the loot bag, but not smart enough to realize the conundrum he placed himself in? But the biggest sin is that I just didn't find Chris interesting in any way. He remained, to me, the jerk who killed his friends in a massive act of stupidity, has delusions of abilities beyond realistic expectations, and no interesting aspirations or relationships.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher, Carla Gugino, Bruce McGill, Sergio De Zio, Greg Dunham
A British Actress is recruited by Mossad to try to bring down a top Palestinian terrorist named Khalil by infiltrating the organization through a constructed association with a captured younger brother of Khalil. Martin Kurtz is the leader of the Mossad team but Gadi Becker is the one who is most closely tied to Charlie, strategically and emotionally. This time, the sophisticated evocation of spy tropes seems a bit tired and perfunctory, as if le Carre knows that we know where his awareness takes him. Instead, we are invited to see the tragedy of Charlie's romantic feelings about Gadi and then about Khalil and then about living humans. For instance, le Carre reminds us that every terrorist that is killed is replaced by three, four, five others-- it's a game of diminishing returns. But nothing in the story really gives that knowledge an impact. That said, we definitely get more than token call-out to the Palestinian cause, when it is enunciated in detail just why the Israeli's are co-responsible themselves for that eternal thorn in their sides. Not up to "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". Well acted, except for Skarsgard's earnest mumble core. And that disturbing romantic scene near the end that reminded me of a boy-scout seducing your mom.
Florence Pugh, Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Shannon, Kate Sumpter, Lubna Azabal, Charles Dance, Charif Ghattas, Ricki Hayut
Anchored by Carol Kane's brilliant performance as Gitl, tells us the story of a Jewish immigrant to New York who wishes to assimilate himself into the hip culture of the Jewish diaspora in Lower East Side Manhattan. But his wife, who arrives later, with his son, Yossele, does not wish to adapt. She wishes to continue to wear a wig and practice the customs of her native Polish Jewish community. The conflict plays out. Gitl comes part way but begins to realize she doesn't really love Jake anymore and is attracted to a boarder, Bernstein. A beautiful, touching film.
Carol Kane, Steven Keats, Dorrie Kavanaugh, Mel Howard, Doris Roberts, Paul Freedman, Zvee Scooler
Excellent biographical study of Siegfried Sassoon who served in the British army in World War I while developing a reputation as a leading poet of his era. He was radically opposed to war and when he filed for "conscientious objector" status, the army administration sent to a sanitorium for therapy instead of court-martialing him. There he met a sympathetic (also homosexual) psychiatrist, and another leading poet, Wilfred Owen, who was sent back to the war and was killed. Brilliantly acted and film and deeply moving. The portrait of Sassoon is by no means that of a saint. He could be arrogant and intolerant. He married but ended up alone in the care of his son as his faculties declined. Davies mixes in extensive newsreel footage of the war, including the disfigurement, the bodies lying dead in the trenches, along with music from the era (as always in a Davies film). It closes with Owen's heartbreaking, powerful poem "Disabled". A really wonderful film.
Jack Lowden, Thom Ashley, Geraldine James, Simon Russell Beale, Richard Goulding, Peter Capaldi, Julian Sands, Matthew Tennyson, Kate Phillips, Gemma Jones
Shockingly mediocre mini-series based on the premise that diner contains a portal leading back to a specific date in 1960 to which a person can travel for the purpose of trying to prevent Kennedy's assassination. I am baffled by the positive reviews of this series (IMDB gives it 9.1). The acting is mediocre. The filming is all banal angles, affectations, and actors invading each others' spaces. The writing is absolutely terrible: the dialogue is ridiculously inane. Jake Epping's friend Al Templeton owns a diner which has a magic closet through which he is able to go back in time to 1960. You can stay as long as you like but it is always 2 minutes later if you come back through the portal. Al has tries several times to stop the assassination of Kennedy on the assumption that it would rewrite history favorably-- no Viet Nam War. (Probably, no Civil Rights legislation either, but that goes unremarked). Obviously, Al, and Jake, missed the important Star Trek episode which made it clear that the slightest alteration of the past could and probably would have a "butterfly effect" resulting in catastrophe. That's the first blunder. The second is the way several people in the past readily believe Jake is from the future instead of just writing off what is obviously a delusion. Thirdly: Jake makes bets on various sporting events and is too stupid to be discrete, and when he isn't, the bookies come after him, because everybody knows that's how bookies stay in business: by beating up clients who win bets. Fourthly, Sadie spends all of her time adoring Jake to the point of nausea. Fifth, Jake tells Bill Turcotte all about his plan, which is neither believable (that Bill would believe him) nor necessary. Sixth: Jake plans to murder Oswald when all that's necessary is to steal his gun or make a false report to the police or any of a dozen other options to prevent him from his date with destiny. And so on and so on. Reminds me of the same flaws of "Shawshank Redemption"-- it's just a bunch of tropes that are easily referenceable by mass audiences but don't produce anything really interesting or compelling.
James Franco, Sarah Gadon, Cherry Jones, George Mackay, Daniel Webber, T. R. Knight, Josh Duhamel, Chris Cooper, Leon Rippy, Gil Gellows
Catherine Sloper is supposed, in the original story, to be "plain", or "homely" so we have to overlook the fact that Olivia de Havilland is slumming herself here. Catherine is the daughter of Dr. Austin Sloper, a very rich medical doctor living in Washington Square in New York. He is rather contemptuous of her and when a suitor, Morris Townsend, comes calling-- for the first time ever-- he immediately suspects a gold-digger. He can't understand that any man would be attracted to his plain, charmless Catherine. It is a tribute to the sophistication of this story that Catherine's aunt Lavinia, watching events unfold carefully, argues that even if he is a gold-digger, it may all well be for the best for Catherine. Remarkably, Morris is quite open about his prospects. His isn't dishonest, really, at least not about his situation. But her father will have none of it and threatens to disinherit Catherine if she marries Morris. The give and take between her and her father and Morris on the subject is entrancing, subtle, open, suggestive, nuanced. There is a scene in which the father tells Lavinia and her sister that he has concluded that Morris is unworthy just as Catherine enters from upstairs: it is riveting, brilliantly acted, and powerful. Made in 1941, this film strikes many feminist tropes with acuity and wit, way before it became a fashion. Extremely well written and very, very well-acted by the three principles, especially Clift.
Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins, Vanessa Brown, Betty Linley
The strength of this documentary on cross-dressing men from the 1950's and 60's is the drama of the interviews with interesting, self-aware subjects, the rhythm, the tempo of their expression, they way they relate the past to their present. They discuss the secret culture they embraced, their relationships with wives and children (when one of them revealed his fetish to his grown daughter she responded with relief: is that all it is? She thought he was having an affair). Susanna was a transwoman who provided a resort in the Catskills where transvestites could meet in safety, party, dance, put on shows, and circulate, without fear of discover (the doc reminds us that not only was cross-dressing not accepted in that time: it was illegal). Some had the surgeries. Most, apparently, were not homosexual, unless you count the ones who remained married to women (who sometimes accepted them as they were, after the initial shock), and had sexual relations with them. Some had children. A touching, tasteful, even-handed treatment of an issue that is even more sensitive today. Note that virtually all of them felt the urge when they were very young, not after they were influenced by other cross-dressers or anything else.
Betsy Wollheim, Gregory Bagarozy, Katherine Cummings, Diana Merry-Shapiro
Fascinating, odd, dark animation of the Munchausen story, with a combination of live actors, artificial backgrounds, and animations. Beautiful sets, cleverly intermixed with actors and animations of bird and soldiers and horses. Begins in modernity with an astronaut, Tony, landing on the moon, meeting Cyrano De Bergerac and Baron Munchausen, among others, and embarks on an amazing journey, to a Sultan's palace where Munchausen slaughters tens of thousands of the Sultan's army, to the inside of a whale, to a fortress at which he rides a cannonball, and so on. Milos Kopekcy is actually quite engaging as the Baron, Rudolf Jelinek rather banal but serviceable as the astronaut, and various other actors effect as various friends of the Baron. Terry Gilliams take obviously owes much to this version, the shape of the whale, the cannonballs, even the reference to ladies undergarments-- but he could rest assured that almost nobody else will have seen it.
Milos Kopecky, Rudolf Jelinek, Jana Brejchova, Karel Hoger, Eduard Kohout, Jan Werich, Rudolf Hrusinksky, Zdenek Hodr, Nadezda Blazickova
Famous film about life for British family in India in the 1940's (probably 1946), focused on three young women how are infatuated with an American soldier who lost his leg in battle who arrives for a visit to their British neighbor (who was married to a Indian woman who died). Lovely depiction of customs, culture, and work life of Indian Hindus who mainly harvest jute for the British, without the slightest modern consciousness of exploitation of oppression. These workers seem to love their work, while the white characters loll around reading or flirting or holding long, thoughtful conversations. The girls are all very young and probably, today, would never be shown to be so infatuated with an older man, who does, indeed kiss two of them. There is some subtle character revelation, and some sophistication in the narrative, but the style is resolutely stiff and theatrical, and many of the actors are not professionals. That adds a certain charm to the proceedings but does weaken the story aspects. There are some scenes that seem odd-- like Bogey's playmate running off after the cobra incident, leading Harriet to discover her brother. The film reminds me of Ozu's best work: observation rather than statement, a consciousness of time passing, or cycles and patterns in our social behavior, and deep sensitivity to the concerns of "average" people. Renoir is the son of the painter, and his nephew was a camera operator on the film. Satyajit Ray was an assistant to Renoir on this film, launching his career.
Patricia Walters, Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields, Suprova Mukerjee, Thomas E. Breen, Radha Radha, Adrienne Corri, June Tripp, Nimai Barik, Richard R. Foster, June Harris
Dismal, cloying, pretentious drama about a rich executive (whose Daddy is giving him $178 million) who likes being dominated by a beautiful young woman but, now that he is about to appointed to some executive position, wants to end the sessions. She doesn't want them to end. A lot of psychobabble ensues about why he likes being dominated and why she likes to dominate him, most of which is either incomprehensible, weakly characterized, or the worst form of sophomoric psychology. Shamelessly steals from "The Conversation" and "Fatal Attraction". At one point, Hal agrees to pay Rebecca half of his $8 million salary because she threatens to blackmail him and claims she recorded their sessions with a hidden camera. He doesn't ask her to prove she has any video: he just tears the place apart like Harry in "The Conversation". Just plain dumb.
Margaret Qualley, Christopher Abbott
Sophomoric hodgepodge of ugly fantasy sequences and contrived, disconnected, superficial feminist tropes, and yes, it really is a 2 hour advertisement for Mattel's Barbie. Enlivened periodically-- but rarely-- by actual funny sequences and dull, cliche-ridden dance sequences, "Barbie" follows the misadventures of the famous doll when she has to leave her home in "Barbie-land" and discover why her feet are flat. Castrato Ken sneaks along, discovers patriarchy, and imports it into Barbieland where he and the other Kens seize control. Apparently, Gerwig and Baumbach, can't conceive of any particular reason the Kens would do that since they don't do anything anyway, and it would spoil the delicate web of conceit that only women do anything worth doing in this universe. And I can't figure what Ken is supposed to be anyway. The pathetic attempt to baptize him with "just be yourself" at the end is absurdly unsatisfying. But it's not ideology that sinks this film: the last twenty minutes in particular are a crushing bore, a sequence of hectoring speeches about empowerment and having it both ways: I don't want to be judged by my looks but aren't I absolutely gorgeous? It's wrong to stereotype women, but okay to stereotype men. The tackiest strategy is to have an adolescent girl make a rigged speech about how she hates Barbies (never really enunciating the real issues) and then have her convert and endorse the "new" Barbie. And the absolutely shameless "you got this" when Barbie is dropped off to see her gynecologist at the end. Seriously? "You got this"? Was Noah Baumbach really involved in writing this script? Margot Robbie is okay; Ryan Gosling is terrible-- really terrible. Kate McKinnon is lame. Michael Cera has nothing to do (it appears that no one involved had to guts to make him explicitly gay). Rhea Perlman is inexplicably juiceless as Ruth, the inventor of Barbie. Will Ferrell seems left to his own devices and his own devices were not impressive. I note that all the Mattel executives are men and two are black. It seems transparent to me that Gerwig probably didn't want to have any black men in this crowd but couldn't be too ridiculously one-sided as to leave black men out of the reverse-sexism trope. And I will admit it: given my distaste for Gerwig after she jumped on the bandwagon to beat on Woody Allen, I was relieved that her film is a colossal bore and her film-making talents have been exposed for what I thought they were after seeing "Lady Bird": mediocre.
Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, America Ferrera, Ariana Greenblatt, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell
Beautifully realized story about a smart, rational young woman, Leila, who desperately tries to manage her four brothers out of poverty by convincing them to invest in a shop at a local busy mall. The trouble is, they need the 50 gold pieces that dad has been clinging to in order to buy his way into the honorific of "family patriarch" (by making a lavish gift to his cousin's family at a wedding). Brother Alireza seems to have enough good sense to sway the others, but he is also deeply loyal to his father (though we learn that his father blocked his potential marriage to a young woman he cared about). When Leila makes a decisive move to obtain the mall slot, a major humiliation results in some intense family conflicts, and potential financial disaster. The fulcrum of the drama is the fact that Leila has no power of her own in Iran, and the brothers and father-- who do have the power are essentially fools. The father may be more than a self-centred fool: he may also be a liar. Absolutely fascinating story, an incisive look into a rich, exotic culture with many values and conventions foreign to us. The wedding scene is spectacular, beautifully realized, and entrancing. Impressive scenes with large crowds, at the factory, and the wedding.
Saeed Poursamimi, Taraneh Alidoosti, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Payman Maadi, Farhad Aslani, Nayereh Farahani, Mehdi Hosseininia, Mohammad Ali Mohammadi
Ann Lake drops her daughter off at a new school in a new country one morning. In a hurry, she tells the cook where her daughter is waiting and leaves, but when she returns to pick up Bunny, she is missing, and the cook has quit and disappeared. Ann's brother Steven steps in aggressively, accusing the school of negligence and demanding that the police find the girl. But no one except the mother and Steven report having seen the girl and the police begin to suspect that Bunny Lake may not even exist, especially after various allusions to the mental health of Ann come to light. The viewer doesn't know either. There are red-herrings here and subtle suggestions about what is really going on but the film does a decent if not impeccable job of holding its cards close to the chest. Well-acted, especially by the principals, and well-written: the dialogue is sharp and witty. The ending is not too surprising and there is an unfortunate dive into specious psychological complexes that don't necessarily sustain credibility. Incidentally, the film violated the United States Production Code when Ann openly refers to having considered the possibility of an abortion, and uses the word "abortion".
Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Laurence Olivier, Martita Hunt, Anna Massey, Clive Revill, Finlay Currie, Lucy Mannheim, Noel Coward
We are very accustomed to movies that show the police as capable, courageous, smart, and having perfect aim. It is very refreshing to watch a movie that shows just how stunningly inept the police can be in situations in which they confront a determined armed criminal. In "Patriot's Day", the police twice confront the two suspects and in both cases fire their weapons wildly with almost no effect, and even at their own men. "Patriot's Day" is a relatively frank look at the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath, with sometimes amusing sequences showing the younger brother as inept and clue-less, the police as dangerously impulsive, and competitive with each other, and the hysteria that overtook the politicians as they shut down the entire city because one teenage miscreant was on the loose (one wonders how many more dangerous miscreants are ever on the loose at any given moment in any large city). Poorly written and poorly acted, it does have some riveting action sequences once it gets on to the meat of the action, and it has one very intense and compelling scene: the interrogation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's widow by an intelligent, shrewd female agent of the "High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG). Katherine Russell defies her, asks for a lawyer, correctly asks if she is under arrest and, if not, can she please leave. (They refuse, under the so-called Quarles" interrogation rules, applied when there may be an imminent threat to lives. None of the information obtained under the Quarles rule can be used in court against the subject.) We also see David Ortiz of the Red Sox say "fucking" in a public speech at Fenway at a day honoring the police (for their brilliant marksmanship?) The FCC declined to prosecute the broadcaster for allowing it on the air. The subplots showing the experiences of victims of the bombing are not too, too cringy, if not too inspiring either.
Mark Wahlberg, J. K. Simmons, Michelle Monaghan, John Goodman, Dicky Eklund, Rachel Brosnahan, Melissa Benoist, Alex Wolff, Therno Melikidze, Kevin Bacon
Intelligent, conscientious film about three veterans of World War II, one working class, one middle class, and one upper class, returning to their homes in Boone City, a fictional mid-west American city. One of them, Homer Parrish, has lost his hands in an accident on a ship. One, Fred Derry, a bombardier, has nightmares, and also has to deal with a wife he married shortly after meeting her and just before going overseas. Al Stephenson, a banker, has to reconcile his loyalty to his fellow servicemen and desire to help them to his obligations as a loan manager at a bank. The three of them struggle with the adjustments, learning to socialize with civilians again, getting used to the pedestrian realities of post-war America. Homer, in particular, struggles with a relationship with his high school sweetheart who, he is convinced, will not really want him with his disability. Fred's wife wants to go out and spend money he doesn't have, and she is used to a lively social life he doesn't approve of. Smart film that pays attention to details and is relatively realistic and honest, and gives us complex characters who are neither all wrong or all right. Well-meaning in the best sense of the word, yet somewhat dated in style, a bit theatrical, discernibly schematic, but often very moving, as when Fred's parents read his military citations that he hasn't bothered to show them. Fascinating shots of a real airplane graveyard showing the massive numbers of aircraft being dismantled to be converted into prefab housing. Hoagy Carmichael makes an enjoyable appearance as Homer's "Uncle Butch", the piano-playing owner of a tavern. And we meet what must be one of the earliest conspiracy theorists, who tells Homer that his sacrifice was a waste, and that the war was a conspiracy among European powers to serve the interests of the (presumably Jewish) leaders of France and Germany.
Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Fredric March, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, Cathy O'Donnell, Hoagy Carmichael, Harold Russell, Gladys George, Roman Bohnen, Ray Collins, Minna Gombell, Walter Baldwin, Ray Teal
Absolutely extraordinary animated tale about a wolf who haunts a child's dreams-- though one shouldn't impost too strict a narrative on this free-form, wildly imaginative, remarkable piece of animation. Norstein is famous for his utterly uncompromising approach to animation, to the point of animating individual rain-drops, and fingers, and eyes. The tone of the animation is bleak, dark, brooding, as was Norstein's childhood in a crowded boarding house without plumbing and with one light bulb for five families. Beautiful and austere and delightful at once. Some have creditably named this one of the greatest animations of all time. One should not over-look the technical limitations of the era, but they are more than made up for with the sheer meticulousness of Norstein's work. Norstein's own story is tragic: he was offered help by other more prosperous animators, including Nick Park and Hayao Miyazaki, but declined it, as if it would impinge on the purity of vision. A shame because his current project is Gogol's "Overcoat" and he's been working on it for 40 years and is only 1/3 done-- and he's over 80.
Disturbingly quirky film about two sisters, Kay, who is shy and receding and uncomfortable with herself, and her sister, Sweetie, her dad's darling, an obese, disagreeable woman who fancies herself as talented, with a future in entertainment (she attaches herself to a "producer" how is going to promote her). When Kay's mother leaves her father, a trial separation of sorts, she is stuck with Sweetie, and her dad, and one of the pleasures of this film is a journey to visit the mom at her new job as a cook for a group of "Jackaroos" (farmhands, of sorts), where they dance and generally act strange. Another charm is the number of scenes that probably no Hollywood production would have allowed to filter through, the frontal nudity, the child flopping into a pool, the car driving into a crowd. Over the top at times (as when Kay tries to revive Sweetie with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation), unpredictable, and confusing. One assumes it is about family, specifically, sisters, and the dysfunction of one member can ripple through the entire web of family relationships, but it might be more correct to assume it is about nothing in particular-- just a story about a the quirky lives of quirky individuals and how random elements can have a disproportionate effect on relationships and personal complacency.
Genevieve Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom Lycos, Jon Darling, Dorothy Barry, Jon Darling, Andre Pataczek
Documentary made by Iranian woman (Farugh Farrokhzad) about the Bababaghi Hospice, a leper colony located in East Azerbaijan in Iran. Graphic depictions of the consequences of leprosy, the stunted arms and legs, skin peeling away, eyes, nose, mouth disfigured. Frightening if you are easily distressed by frank depictions of disfigurement and suffering, especially of children. Yet also shows joy, of the children playing with a ball and running and shouting, and people gathering for worship (Muslim), and sharing food. Shows sufferers being treated, waiting to be served food, returning their tin bowls, playing checkers, and so on. Haunting. Said to have stimulated the development of Iranian cinema.
"The film works with a simplistic and reductive "Freudian scheme of revelation of trauma followed by instant catharsis and cure: a pattern familiar from many Hollywood films of the post war period. Marnie defends herself against Mark's controlling attempt: it brings under control the dangerously independent stance of both mother and daughter who articulate hatred of men, who despise sex, and want to live without men." (From E. Anne Kaplan: "Motherhood and Representation" in "Psychoanalysis and Cinema"; 1990.) And sums up the film's literary personae and it's major short-coming. The psychological aspect is antiquated and rather quaint. The rape scene is definitely as politically incorrect, by modern standards, as you can get, though she does, after all, attempt suicide afterwards. Marnie is a kleptomaniac, a stunningly beautiful woman (Tippi Hedren in her prime), who insinuates herself into a company's employment and then raids their safes (back then companies would keep considerable cash on hand). Mark recognizes her when she takes a job with his company (he was a client of a previous company she robbed) and decides to hire her anyway and attempt to cure her. It isn't as obvious as it perhaps should have been that he finds her sexually attractive-- or perhaps that is assumed. In any case, they play psychological games as he uncovers more about her past history and she asserts her determination to live without a man-- ever. The backstory to this is simplistic and unsatisfying, as is the implied cure. The acting is stiff and theatrical (long shots of characters 'thinking' or perceiving something), and some scenes, like Marnie riding a horse, are flatly ridiculous by today's standards. You might excuse these elements as hallmarks of early cinema but some movies, like "The Third Man", don't look as ridiculous. At the same time, some of the anachronisms and literary affects do make the film interesting on a different level, as a bit of an artifact, and as the product of real writing. Characters are complex, sophisticated, and there are a number of subtle and not so subtle scenes rich in suggestion. It is also overly long and a bit dull at times.
Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Martin Gabel, Louise Latham, Diane Baker, Alan Napier, Milton Selzer, Mariette Hartley
Based on the book, "American Prometheus", by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, a riveting, exciting, noisy, intense take on Oppenheimer the man, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. Cillian Murphy is exceptional as the title character, though he occasionally descends into mumblecore, along with Downey Jr. as Strauss, as the film follows his trials and triumphs, the success, and the tragedy of his monumental career. Never one of the sharpest minds on physics, it was his management of the Manhattan project that brought him fame, and his association with admitted communists that brought his downfall, and his character that ultimately vindicated him. There is a long list of supporting characters, uniformly well-acted, and a lot of special effects that are balanced nicely with thoughtful, lingering sequences extracting the issues involved. Some critics have complained that the film doesn't dumb the issues down-- but that would only be at expense of the drama: people don't, of course, in real life, explain everything to an imaginary tv viewer. I cannot fault much about the film-- perhaps too much music (over almost everything) and the sound mix, particularly dialogue, was a bit strange (a deficiency I also noted in Nolan's "Tenet").
Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Conti, Josh Hartnett, Florence Pugh, Jefferson Hall
Mediocre film about a very serious topic: false confessions induced by a conscious method of psychological pressure applied by detectives to a naive suspect. Michael Crowe's 12-year-old sister, Stephanie, was murdered one night on January 21, 1998, stabbed at least 8 times. No evidence of forced entry, bloody clothes, murder weapon, or any other evidence was found. A schizophrenic transient in the neighborhood who had been knocking on doors that night (looking for a former girl-friend) was suspected at first but there was no evidence he ever entered the house. Police then focused on the only other plausible suspect- in their minds-- 14-year-old Michael. After hours and hours (20+) of intensive interrogation Michael gave a half-hearted hypothetical "confession" and police and the District Attorney were convinced they had their killer. When traces of Stephanie's blood was eventually found on the shirt belonging to the transient, the District Attorney dropped charges "without prejudice", meaning they could be brought again, if they felt like. The transient was charged and convicted but his conviction was eventually over-turned by a higher court due at least partly the absolute absence of any evidence of forced entry, fingerprints, and because the DNA evidence from the blood drops found on his shirt were suspect (the DA asserting that they might have been from cross-contamination, or even planted by the defense team). The Crowe family eventually sued and won. (Two other boys were charged with Michael, and also sued). The movie itself is schematic, perfunctory, and dull, though the scenes of the police interrogation are worth a visit for how well they illustrate the specific questioning technique (called the "Reid Method") that led to Michael's confession. Incidentally, the first person convicted using the "Reid Method" recanted and was eventually proven innocent. Nobody seems to have cared and the methodology has been widely adopted by police departments in the U.S.
Ally Sheedy, Mark Rendall, John Bourgeois, Hannah Lochner, Rosemary Dunsmore, Karl Pruner, Christopher Behnisch
To make Eastwood's vision of manhood work, you must create a universe in which the tropes of John Wayne can succeed. Thus, Wales has miraculous shooting prowess, and thus 13 or more Jayhawkers taking on one man miss with all of their shots; thus not one of the other characters-- or even Josey Wales-- has the good sense to look around and notice people sneaking up on them. Thus a Commanche Chief perceives Wales' innate "character" and trusts and respects him (rather than dissecting him). It's all very ridiculous and set in a nearly compelling remake of "The Searchers" with Eastwood as the amazing gunman fleeing Yankees and Jayhawkers. And of course, in this world, Wales never commits an atrocity-- he only murders people who murdered first-- women and children, preferably-- or want to murder him. Some scenes are downright incoherent -- what exactly is Fletcher's view of the whole thing-- why is he participating in the tracking of Wales even though he witnessed the Yankees trick the rebels into surrendering only to massacre them with a Gatling gun? Chief Dan George is terrific, as is Will Sampson as Ten Bears, but, as usual, Eastwood has no idea of how to get convincing scenes out of his actors. The film is vastly over-rated, I think due to the relatively respectful portrait of indigenous folk-- as long as you have no idea of what the Commanche did to their prisoners. And as long as you have no idea of what the real rebels did in retaliation for the roving bands of Yankees committing atrocities in Missouri at the end of the Civil War.
Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Chief Dan George, Bill McKinney, John Vernon, Paula Trueman, Sam Bottoms, Geraldine Keams, Will Sampson
Daniela Vega, a transgender woman, was initially approached as a consultant for the film-makers, but was then offered the role of Marina Vidal, a transgender woman who is in love with Orlando (and he with "her"). Orlando suffers a brain aneurysm while Marina is in his apartment-- in the process of moving in to stay. The subsequent fall- out with his ex-wife and sons and family-- is the subject of the ironically-titled "A Fantastic Woman". Orlando fell down a stairs after suffering the aneurysm which leads the police to investigate: they are openly if discretely hostile to Marina though her behavior towards them seems more directed at eliciting audience outrage rather than believability. She shows no enthusiasm for explaining what did happen as if she would prefer to have a reason to feel victimized. Orlando's family is more directly hostile and dis-invite her to the funeral, though the movie offers a flimsy deus ex machina for her to appear at the memorial service and the grave yard. It is telling that she walks into the memorial service and stands in the middle of the main aisle as if proclaiming, "come, persecute me". It would have worked better for me if she had simply quietly taken a seat in the back, but then we wouldn't get the victimization, would we? Could there be a film of a loving, faithful wife whose life is shattered when her husband throws her over for a transgender woman (is this a gay relationship or not? Does it matter?). And please spare me Vidal singing opera (the actress does her own singing) at the end which was not remotely credible. I give it points for treating a transgender character as a character rather than a crisis: you don't begin to empathize with her, think about her challenges, how does she learn to use a purse, and so on.
Daniela Varga, Francisco reyes, Luis Bnecco, Aline Kuppenheim, Nicolas Saavedra, Amparo Noguiera, Trinidad Gonzalez, Nestor Cantillana
Wonderful, beautiful, charming movie, but I'm not sure it's really great. A play within a play concept, though it doesn't appear to have any kind of rigid structure at all. Various persons converge on Asteroid City where some extraordinary events are about to take place, along with a science contest for young people, atom bomb tests, and possible alien space ships. The anchor family, played weakly by Jason Schwartzman, is headed by Augie Steenbeck, who is delaying informing his three young daughters and son that their mother has died, to the consternation of their grandfather. Scarlett Johansson is a starlet who is attracted to Augie. Edward Norton and Bryan Cranston and numerous others A-listers make guest appearances. It's all very entertaining but not especially inspired or entrancing, as, for example, a similarly imaginative film like Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg". The sets and design, of course, are idiomatically Wes Anderson, startlingly fresh, colourful, and filled with marvels of pictorial charm. If it's all about anything, it's about looking at things we are too familiar with as if it was the first time we saw them and embracing their beauty and worth because they just are beautiful and worthy.
Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Jake Ryan, Grace Edwards, Maya Hawke, Rupert Friend, Liev Schreiber, Ethan Josh Lee, Sophia Lillis, Ella Faris, Gracie Faris, Willan Faris, Matt Dillon, Steve Carell, Bob Balaban, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brady, Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie
Patrick Bateman is a glib, privileged, slick mergers and acquisitions vice-president at Pierce and Pierce, who likes to murder people. He sees himself as an empty space, a vacuum, with no real identity, and essentially admits to himself that he has no human feelings, that he is, indeed a psycho. The most obvious meaning is that the kind of people who manage high-level corporate behavior are like him, psychotic and incapable of genuine empathy. He kills a competitor or colleague at least partly because he has a fancier business card than he does. The comedy here is rather broad and so absurdly satirical that it almost doesn't wash. When he goes on a killing spree in the last act, it seems to lose its ground as satire and descends perilously close to slap-stick. Bale's performance as Bateman though is stunningly clever, insidious, and compelling, especially in the moments he breaks down, shaken by his own excess. Tellingly, Bale based his characterization on an appearance of Tom Cruise on Letterman, in which he discerned "intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes". This is a very smart film, subtle even while indulging in broad spectacle, hilarious, even while immersed in gore. But no one should mistake the satire for anything less than an acerbic comment on American capitalism: Bateman is a psycho who's decisions at Pierce and Pierce do to employees and investors what he does to prostitutes, call girls, and colleagues with nicer business cards.
Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Chloe Sevigny, Reese Withersppon, Samantha Mathis, Jared Leto, Matt Ross, Willem Dafore, Guinevere Turner, Cara Seymour
Nora and Hae Sung are school mates in Korea until Nora's family moves to Canada when they are 12. Years later, Hae Sung, fondly remembering their relationship, looks up Nora, and then video-phones her. They engage in a delicate friendly perhaps romantic relationship via the internet for a time, before Nora decides that she wants to focus on her life in New York and stops the contacts. Years go by. She meets and marries Arthur. Then Hae Sung contacts her again and informs her that he wants to see New York. And a delicate, exquisite dance of friendship and unrequited love ensues. This film took a long time to win me over: the acting is really not very good, and the cinematography is banal. But the film remains authentic and real to its core, never veering into contrivance or melodrama, and the result is a very affecting, nearly tragic sequence of believable steps in the relationships in which someone is inevitably going to not get what he wants. An adult film in the truest sense: adult emotions, realistic dialogue (which sounds quite natural and evocative), and realistic situations.
Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro, Moon Seung-ah, Leem Seung-min
Lizzy is a ceramic artist. Jo is her landlord. Her brother Sean is unstable and she worries about him. Her dad and mom are separated. She works for her mom. She is about to put on a show of her work but is diverted by a pigeon her cat tried to kill. After about an, hour you think, nothing happens in this film. Nothing at all. Yet, I found it mesmerizing, precisely because everything that happens is so real and normal and everyday. No big confrontations. No fights. No big revelations. Just a resolutely determined portrait of an artist and her interactions with family and friends, to whom she is unfailingly short and sometimes rude. The music, which mostly arises from sources within the scene, is outstanding-- all original, unknown pieces. Reichardt says it's a movie that "deconstructs" artistic genius, showing that it is mostly hard work and determination and dedication. It's a film that makes you reflect on what a film should be, and how it should work, and how the simple act of dramatizing real life can have a profound effect on a sensitive viewer. It's about "showing up" to do the work, as she does with her films. For a patient, thoughtful viewer, this, like her other films, is a treasure.
Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, Andrew 3000, Todd-o-Phonic Todd, Lauren Lakis, Denzel Rodriguez, Maryann Plunkett, Heather Lawless, John Magaro
Neither Lauren Hutton nor Richard Gere can really act. They are both model bodies, selected, one suspects, purely for visual appeal. He is a male prostitute, Julian; she is a state senator's wife, Michelle. They are both pretty boring people, actually. The film has the tone and texture of a TV movie. The audio was terrible in the version I watched: you could almost hear the automatic gain sucking in and out. The one clever element in the plot (re-used in "The Bedroom Window" in 1987) is having the protagonist engaged in an illicit affair the night of a murder, and therefore unable to provide an alibi. ("The Bedroom Window" gets more complex than that with the protagonist claiming to have witnesses and attack that was actually witness by his illicit lover who can't let it be known she was in his apartment.) Julian falls for Michelle and Michelle falls for Julian which complicates his life as a male escort. Ebert thought the character was sympathetic but I found him bland, self-centered, and boring. For someone in the business he is in, he also seemed naive and easily manipulated. He is hired one night by a rich man, Rheiman, who wants him to have rough sex with this wife while he watches. The next night, the wife is murdered and the police investigator, Sunday, possibly inspired by Columbo, suspects Julian. When the police find jewels and money with the wife's fingerprints on it in Julian's apartment, he becomes the prime suspect. There is some point we are supposed to grasp when Julian seeks help from Anne, his arranger, and Leon, his pimp, and Michelle, to deflect the police interest. Why and how they could do this is not explained. There is a sophomoric belief that people will tell the truth when confronted about their lies, and that Julian will heroically do the heroic thing when called upon. Best part of the movie: scene in a gay nightclub that jumps for a half minute or so, and Hector Elizondo's performance as the detective, even if it is an echo of Columbo.
Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, Hector Elizondo, Nina Van Pallandt, Bill Duke, Brian Davies, Peter Turgeon
It is telling that famous porn actress Marilyn Chambers, who is quite beautiful and wholesome looking, auditioned for a role as a porn actress and was turned down because she didn't look right for the part. So the director wanted someone who looked sleezy and unhealthy and grotesque, actually. Which tells you who this film was catering to. At the same time, "Hardcore" does us a service by filming in real porn shops, strip clubs, and massage parlors, and the tone of authenticity is indisputable. Too bad Schrader doesn't know how to direct actors. For someone who made his reputation as a writer (of "Taxi Driver"), his writing here is so mediocre it made me think back on "Taxi Driver" and realize that what made that film successful was Scorcese's direction-- not Schrader's script, which was downright melodramatic and contrived. The music in "Hardcore" is worse than mediocre: it is intrusively awful. Schrader can't resist the big bang finish, the violence, that he seems to instinctively believe must be associated with open sexuality. No surprise it was nominated for "Worst Picture" by the Hastings Bad Cinema Society. So Jake Van Dorn's daughter Kristen sets off to a "Young Calvinist Convention" in California. While there, while on an outing to a theme park, she disappears. Jake hires a private detective, Andy Mast, to find her. He fails but he does stumble into an 8mm film of Kristen-- doing pornography. Jake is shocked and perhaps a bit too overwrought by the discovery. When Andy fails to come up with anything (Jake flies to California, discovers Andy having sex in the apartment he apparently paid for, and fires him) Jake sets out to insinuate himself into the porn industry to try to track down the other actors who were in the film with Kristen, and thus, he hopes, Kristen herself. He meets another sometime porn star, Niki, and persuades her (hires her, actually) to help him find "Tod" who was involved in making the film. This leads to the over-the-top conclusion, including Jake's viewing of a snuff film (which Snopes and other researchers insist do not exist) which disastrously distracts the viewer from the only really interesting theme of this film: the confrontation between hard-core worldliness (pornography) and hard-core religious belief. The most unfortunate sequence is when we suddenly discover that Kristen felt unloved at home which strikes one clearly as an afterthought of Schrader's, tucked in conveniently to explain why, after Jake repents of his insensitivity to her, she decides to return home and, bizarrely(!) they get into the back of a squad car. Schrader himself has said he regrets the ending. Penny Marshall once said that Schrader's problem is that he can't resist stepping over the line. On the contrary, his problem is he can't get over the line; he is still trapped in that constrictive, repressed worldview he grew up in, the one in which he believes that snuff films really exist and that porn stars are skinny, unhealthy, and sleazy-looking. Ilah Davis, incidentally, was hired because she was willing to do frontal nudity, not because she could act. Really? Schrader couldn't find a decent actress who would do nudity? "Hardcore" is the only film she ever made and she died of MS at 51 in New York City after living with the Yippies for many years. One must absolutely checkout "Pleasure" by Ninja Thyberg for a more accurate, and perhaps bleaker, view of the porn industry.
George C. Scott, Peter Boyle, Season Hubley, Dick Sargent, Gary Graham, Ilah Davis, Paul Marin
Underrated dramatization of the remarkable story of Ulrich Mott, really Albrecht Muth (who was much younger than Waltz is in the movie), a German immigrant con man and social climber who married a prominent socialite 44 years his senior and tried to leverage her connections into an influential position with the Bush Administration during the Iraq war. The movie starts off with a disclaimer that it is not factually true and then proceeds to tell the story with reasonable accuracy, as far as I can tell. Mott created a fake agency, "Eminent Persons Group" and persuaded George Soros, Former French PM Michel Rocard, the Canadian ambassador, and Robert McNamara to serve on its board. Mott was clearly a disturbed man with delusions of grandeur and it should be admitted that "Georgetown" doesn't really attempt to explain him. What drove him? Where did he come from? But Waltz does elicit superb performances from his actors, especially Redgrave and Benning, and the police interrogation is particularly believable and fascinating. Spoiler alert-- well, no, it's not a spoiler: the movie time-shifts so we know he murdered Elsa Breht, just as the real life Albrecht Muth murdered Viola Drath. The real life Muth and Drath hosted parties featuring Pierre Salinger, Dick Cheney, and Antonin Scalia, who officiated at their wedding.
Christoph Waltz, Vanessa Redgrave, Annette Bening, Corey Hawkins, David Reale, Louisa Martin
An Australian film made by a Macedonian/Australian director set in 19th century Macedonia and based on folk tales heard by Stolevski about witches and transformation. An "ancient spirit" -- or witch--appears after a child, Nevena, is born to a woman in a small mountain village. The woman promises that if the witch leaves her child, she will turn her over when she is 16. The witch agrees but the mother tries to hide her daughter in a cave, in vain: the witch appears as promised and transforms into the mother and then takes the daughter. The daughter becomes a witch and uses her transformative power to take the form of several humans, and animals, including a young man, a woman, and a young girl who falls in love with a boy her age and eventually marries him. And then, of course, the ancient spirit reappears demanding her "due". Sensuously filmed immersed in the homely details of 19th century rural life, the film intrigues even as it mystifies. The hand-held camera work is somewhat annoying but many scenes remain hair-raising, especially when set against the rustic peasant life of the era, managing farm animals, pigs, and sheep, harvesting, and celebrating. The point of all this is a poetic, artistic take on the gradual consciousness Nevena acquires as she begins to understand nature and human society. When her husband attempts sex with her, she is baffled and reacts violently, but later she is entranced with the male's boy, especially as she remembers the boyish form of her new husband. Nevena is barely functional in this society and only gradually learns how to perform her chores and tasks, as she becomes aware of how the men dominate and take what they will when they wish it. The dark, brooding tale eventually resolves into an affirmation of life and love and family, while acknowledging the dark elements that are expressed in Nevena's encounters. I'm not sure it all works. The voice-over narrative is more allusive than suggestive, and often too vague and sophomoric to provide any richness. But the vivid, detailed setting, costumes, buildings, and courageous performances stand out.
Alice Englert, Noomi Rapace, Anamaria Marinca, Felix Maritaud, Sara Klimoska, Carloto Cotta, Arta Dobroshi, Verica Nedeska
Arthur, married to Eve for a long, long time, suddenly announces to his family that he wants to be alone and intends to move out of the family home. His three daughters struggle with the implications, with the devastating effect on his wife, and with their own sibling rivalries and jealousies, and in the cases of Renata and Joey (who is married to a film-maker), troubled marriages. Renata's husband Frederick is depressed about critical reviews of his latest book. Renata wants Eve to accept that Arthur is not coming back. Joey tries to reassure Eve that he might, provoking Renata's contempt. Flyn, an actress, resists Frederick's importunities. They are all deviously privileged, a troubling aspect of the story in the sense that one suspects they all only suffer because they can afford to suffer from these issues, because all of their material wants appear to be lavishly covered. It's Allen trying to be Bergman or Chekhov, of course, (he says O'Neill) and it is an uneasy transition from "Annie Hall" to this kind of melodrama. There are times when one hears Allen's analyst speaking, the lingo and jargon of psychotherapy. And indeed much of the conversation is the very definition of sophomoric, something one imagines a serious college English major would come up with. It straddles the lines uneasily. I give it credit for the brave attempt to be American Bergman, but fault it for not being quite that profound. One odd thing about Allen's take on Bergman: a Bergman (or other European director) would not have shied away from nudity in a film that works this ground. The sexual relationships surely reverberate deeply through the lives of these characters. One can't help but believe the actresses refused, or Allen was uncomfortable with it, or he didn't want an "R" rating, but scenes depicting the trouble intimacies of these characters is MIA.
Diane Keaton, Mary Beth Hurt, Geraldine Page, Kristin Griffith, E. G. Marshall, Maureen Stapleton, Sam Waterston
A famous film-maker attends a retrospective of his work encountering diverse fans and memories of former lovers and strange Felliniesque characters rising from his disturbed imagination. And yes, even aliens. Allen's most impressionistic, art-house take on the role of the artist in society and the role of women in the life of the artist along with the usual Allen tropes (what is the meaning of life? Isn't anyone concerned about the fact that matter is decaying, or that the sun will go super-nova in ten million years? Fans insisting he give them more laughs). Startling depiction of fans, too close to reality to dismiss as parody. They all love all his films, they have ideas for him, they can act, they have a screenplay he should read, they wonder if he is making secret allusions to obscure religious texts, and so on. Ebert says Allen is indicting his fans, and himself in this film. Shrill. Inspired by "8 1.2" by Fellini and "Wild Strawberries" by Bergman, but more caustic and perhaps pointless. Beautifully filmed and directed-- one is impressed at the long, close- in sequences of groups of people, sometimes grotesque people, all begging Sandy to make more funny films or listen to them or come to their charity event. One is always ambivalent (or should be) about works of art that savage the fans of the art, a dilemma faced by Dylan and Kurt Cobain and Picasso, among others. There was a point at which Cobain acknowledged that his fans had become the very people he was singing about in his most caustic songs. Fans famously dug through Dylan's garbage cans. I admit that I found the hostility in these sequences so nasty that I disregarded that tone automatically before realizing that perhaps Allen is as serious about it as it seems. I can only rationalize he probably thinks that its a broader comment on humanity itself and not just his fans. But again, the satire is too close to the bone to dismiss as targeting only the awful fans; it seems to point to any Woody Allen fan. Yet I would argue that both Siskel and Ebert were overly hostile to the film. The cinematography and camera-work alone are worth the price of admission and there really is not a single dull scene. Seen as a comment on fans, yes, its misanthropic, but seen as a comment on the artist, it's far more interesting and rich.
Woody Allen, Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper, Marie-Christine Barrault, Tony Roberts, Daniel Stern, Anne De Salvo, Leonardo Cimino, Helen Hanft
Some critics absolutely loved this film; some not so much. This is Allen doing Bergman but not so much. There are echoes of "Persona" and "Wild Strawberries" but they remain echoes, without the inner force of the Bergman inventions. A lot of the dialogue is sophomoric, a writer listening to himself instead of the invented characters, as when Marion and Ken return home from a party and Ken explains to the audience first what was said and then gives us a comment on Marion's reaction. The more authentic and powerful way to do that would be to have him begin with that comment: That was pretty mean. What? Yes, what. We are less interested because you have tried to lay it out schematically. One also senses that Allen is playing out Marion, as an avatar of his own romantic interests, as someone who regrets not surrendering to the avatar for Allen, Larry, to his "passion"-- a cliche, yes. Ironically, it is Ken who has the passion for an affair, not Larry. And it's really not very clear what "passion" looks like in this film. And yes, Rowlands can be a brilliant actress, but who forgot to tell her that the scenes with Hackman call upon her to be enticing and alluring. She play those scenes with the same reserve as she does her scenes with her passionless husband, Ken. And the scene when she urges him to make love to her, perhaps on the hardwood floor, has no juice, no energy, no tension. It is as if there is no history there, no weight. I am always uncomfortable with movies that dwell among the elites in a self-conscious way. A character mentions Heidegger. Not a problem, if you didn't suspect that it was name-dropping rather than a serious allusion to his theories about existence, or his links to Nazi Germany. And one realizes that Allen, for his fame as a film-maker, circulates in a society (in New York) that still respects erudition and intelligence. Characters write books. They are professors. They know who Heidegger is. One suspects.
Gena Rowlands, Mia Farrow, Blythe Danner, Ian Holm, Gene Hackman, Betty Buckley, Martha Plimpton, John Houseman, Ogden David Stiers, Sandy Dennis, Philip Bosco, Frances Conroy
David Shayne is a rather narcissistic, self-obsessed, struggling playwright, who explodes when anyone considers tampering with his scripts-- which is why, partly, his plays are not being produced. He and his friend, Sheldon Flender, decry the shallow commercialism of current Broadway. But then a gangster's moll, Olive Neal, begs him to get her into a play so he offers to back a production of Shayne's newest work, on condition he cast her in a major role. The comedy is not that broad: no one expects her to get the lead (except Olive). Olive shows up for rehearsals with Cheech, a bodyguard, who starts giving notes for the production, to the consternation of Shayne, until he begins to realize that the notes are quite good and improve the production. Meanwhile, Shayne begins an affair with a celebrity actress, washed-up Helen Sinclair, cheating on his faithful girl Ellen. The production brings out the worst of everyone-- the lead actor, Warner Purcell, over-eats and gains weight. Another actress, Eden Brent, brings her obnoxious, aggressive little dog. But the production begins to take on life until Cheech realizes that his fabulous improvements are worthless if Olive continues to flounder in her part so he decides to take action. All of it it very funny, very lively, and, actually, rather delightful, even with Cusack's rather lame performance as Shayne. Why him? In another time, it would have been Allen's role. The rest of the film is Allen at his best, working well with good actors, with an interesting story with a heart. Wiest's performance, especially her "don't speak" while covering Shayne's mouth, and her hilarious aspect of constantly playing roles from known melodramas, was acclaimed. By the way, I can't find an online confirmation but I am quite sure there is a Paul Simon cameo in an early scene in a night-club.
John Cusack, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Tilly, Chazz Palminteri, Mary-Louise Parker, Jack Warden, Joe Viterelli, Rob Reiner, Tracey Ullman, Jim Broadbent, Harvey Fierstein, Edie Falco
Oddly likeable attempt by De Niro to further his gangster oeuvre with this slice by Palminteri about his coming of age in Brooklyn in the 1950's and 60's and his encounters with organized crime. In real life, Palminteri witnessed a murder in front of his apartment building but denied he had seen anything to the police. That incident forms the core of this story in which Calogero grows to worship Sonny, the gangster, in opposition to his father who wants him to stay clean, stay in school, and have an honest working life. In this take, Calogero falls for a young black girl which introduces elements of the racial tensions in the city at that time as well, and his attempts to stay out of the gangland violence endemic to it. There is a sweetness and honesty to the story that almost redeems it from contrivance and sophomoric melodrama-- the relationship between Calogero and Jane is beset by obvious, too quickly resolved indecision, and moments that were supposed to be charming or cute end up being forced and clumsy. And a gratuitous scene with Joe Pesci at the end reeks of self-serving projection. But the use of period pop hits and the complexity of the portrait of Sonny goes a long ways towards redeeming it all and I enjoyed it with reservations. Surprising twist: Palminteri, the writer, played Sonny in the film, and some neighborhood folks played secondary characters-- pretty well. That said, De Niro doesn't seem to have a particular touch for bringing out intensity from this actors. The bikers were played by real bikers.
Lillo Brancato, Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Francis Capra, Taral Hicks, Katherine Narducci, Clem Caserta, Alfred Sauchelli Jr., Joe Pesci, Robert D'Andrea, Eddie Montanaro, Dave Salerno, Joseph D'Onofrio
I actually saw most of this years ago and only reviewed it now. Superior (relatively speaking) cold war thriller about a Russian captain of a new advanced typhoon-class submarine who decides to defect to the U.S. after deducing that the new submarine was meant for a first strike. Yeah. The Russians want to sink him; the Americans aren't confident he isn't just a rogue-- another General Ripper-- planning to start a war. Best thing in the movie is Scott Glenn's portrait of Captain Mancuso. Glenn spent time with a real admiral and basically imitated him-- accurately, it appears-- and sounds commanding and authoritative. The Russians alternative speak fluent English with a tiny accent sometimes or fluent Russian in face to face action with the Americans. The underwater shots are not altogether effective (too many wide angle close-ups and murky pastiche) but it's kind of a sound thriller and a bit of fun.
Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, James Earl Jones, Peter Firth, Tim Curry, Jeffrey Jones, Fred Thompson
And here we go. Yet again Schrader works out his courageous defiance of his Calvinist upbringing in order to bring us another angry outsider misfit with deep issues attempt to find redemption by addressing a monstrous evil. In this case, William Tell (ha ha) is the victim of Schrader's neurosis. He served 8.5 years in Leavenworth for participating in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, while the contractors who led the abuse got off with nothing-- specifically, Gordo. A friend of Tell's in the same predicament committed suicide and Tell meets his son, Cirk, who wants revenge. Tell unconvincingly wants to prevent Cirk from making the mistake of killing Gordo in revenge. I don't think that Schrader has any idea of what exists in the center of his narrative once he has established that nothing meaningful exists on the periphery of it. Even the subplot involving a love interest, La Linda, is so banal it doesn't even register, and if her visit to Tell at the end is supposed to indicate something, whatever it is eludes me. Now, you could defend this entire project if the characters were at least interesting, but Tell's obsession with gambling serves the same purpose as a characters addiction might in another story- which is the least interesting thing to dramatize about anyone.
Oscar Isaac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, Willem Dafoe, Alexander Babara
Charming, funny rom-com about Dom, who has just been dumped by his girlfriend Gia (actually, he spies a dick in the background of a video call while waiting for her at the theatre) and is overheard weeping in a bathroom stall by Yas, a vivacious, funny young woman who she says has just dumped her boyfriend. It's meet-cute in spades, and certainly fresher and more original than most. Dom is on his way to his favorite restaurant to meet with Gia and her lover, Eric, to "clear the air". Yas drops in unexpectedly and creates a mini-narrative for Dom that plays well enough to keep them hanging out through a funny sequence of misadventures, meetings with charmingly eccentric, fresh peripheral characters, trying to recover a favorite album of Yas' at her ex-boyfriend's house. Witty, funny, effervescent-- it keeps bubbling along, shamelessly predictable, inventive, and likeable.
David Jonsson, Vivian Oparah, Poppy Allen-Quarmby, Simon Manyonda, Levi Roots, Karene Peter, Benjamin Sarpong-Broni
Marianne is a painter. We first see her in a boat traversing a channel in rough waters against a luminescent blue sky. She has been hired to make a portrait of Heloise who is to be offered in marriage to a Milanese gentleman-- a man with money desperately needed by Heloise' family. But Heloise has already annihilated the efforts of one portraitist by refusing to set still, so Marianne is nominally merely a "companion" for Heloise and must secretly observe her closely and then paint the portrait in her private room. As they engage, Marianne and Heloise fall in love. Heloise resists the idea of marriage though "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" doesn't do much to elucidate that issues for her. Is it domesticity? Submission? She would be moving to Milan which suggests a lavish experience far from her isolated mansion, and opportunities to enjoy the opera and art and to meet others. This is a problem for the film: I think we are supposed to sympathize with her desire for Marianne and rejection the marriage but the contrast between what we imagine her life would be like with a wealth Milanese gentleman and her life on the bereft rocky island with Marianne is not favorable. It is implied that this is Heloise' true love, her real passion, and that her marriage is an act of cruelty. But she is also young and impulsive and it is hard not to imagine that she would be as likely to embrace her new life as not. Beautifully filmed and well-acted though it loses momentum towards the end. One suspects the director (who is a lesbian, who had a relationship with Adele Haenel who plays Heloise before filming) is projecting, especially with the suggestion that Heloise will regret losing Marianne. Very nice period film, if scaled down, and the interplay between the two leads is sometimes entrancing, consistently believable, and always interesting.
Noemie Meriant, Adele Haenel, Luana Bajrami, Valeria Golino
Come on-- seriously? Highly praised by some critics, basically a long chase film with very conventional thriller tropes-- the ravishing deadly beauty, the idealist, the fanatic, the traitor, and so on. Not even all that well acted considering the credentials of this cast. In a nutshell, there is a suitcase (the most macguffin of macguffins here) that an Irish woman, representing unknown unknowns, wants very badly. She has hired the usual rogues gallery to get it. Among them is a suspected turncoat. Maybe she's the turncoat. The NYTimes was appreciative of the action without acknowledging that the third or fourth time the same basic twist is presented, it gets tiresome, and the car chase is boring if you don't really believe anything is at stake, because the minute one protagonist gets what he wants another will take it away and the chase resumes. They even pulled the cheap trick of having apparently dead characters resurrect themselves. This is shitty film-making. I can forgive a film that relies on action if there is a coherent narrative attached, as in "The Bourne Identity" and even "The Terminator", but this is dreck. Some reviewers adore the practical effects during the intense car chase scenes but they are not nearly as good as, say as in the Bourne films, though impressive, I suppose. In the first half, they often take place in empty streets. In the later chases, again which have lost effect, the highways are full and there is some remarkable sequences. Katarina Witt makes an appearance; wisely not much was asked from her-- a bit of skating and an exit. And of course De Niro (55) kisses McElhone (27) and she is depicted as liking it.
Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgard, Sean Bean, Skipp Sudduth, Michael Lonsdale, Jonathan Pryce
Powerful, compelling, flawed fantasy about a man who chooses to be "reborn". An old friend, whom he thought was deceased, contacts him by phone and paper message and puts him in touch with a company that can fake his death for him and, through plastic surgery and a host of arrangements, allow him to start over as a different person. They can even provide him with a profession (in this case, as an artist), a new home, new friends. Emotionally, the story stirs real instinctive sensibilities about being able to go back and revisit your own life and make corrections, to add meaning and coherence to a life that has become tired and boring and empty. Antiochus Wilson is the man, played at first by John Randolph, and, as the reborn Antiochus, Rock Hudson in a daring and audacious turn as an actual actor. Antiochus is a banker with a hobby of painting watercolours, and his wife is caring but distant, and he has lost contact with his only child, a daughter who has moved away with her husband. Antiochus goes through the very painful plastic surgery and physiotherapy (relatively credibly presented) and is shipped off to California to begin his new life. But his adjustment is hampered by a strong sense of ennui and dissatisfaction. He meets a woman, Nora, who takes him to some kind of bacchanal where people strip and have a kind of orgy in a wine vat. We next see him in a relationship with Nora and getting too drunk at a party where he begins to give away his secrets, leading to a disastrous recall. The power in this film comes from Antiochus convincing sense of disillusionment and powerlessness at the start, his temptation, and his slow adjustment to his new personae. At times poignant and genuinely distressing, but confusingly bereft of logic when he begins to regret the change. He says he finds his new friends just as vacuous and trivial as his old friends: acquisitive and shallow and distant. But he doesn't quite seem to want to return to his old life-- he wants a second rebirth. At this point one wonders why he thinks a second rebirth would help, as opposed to, say, moving somewhere else, or taking up a new interest. The movie darkly suggests that you can't escape yourself (he's not the only failure), while, with some power, suggesting that his real failure is the way he failed to live his original life, something powerfully suggested by his wife who comments on his inability to be touched, or to say what it was he wanted out of life. One can also see why the film was hated apparently when first shown at Cannes, and why Hudson (who Frankenheimer sent in his stead to do a press conference) couldn't really explain the film to the critics. Superbly filmed in black and white and impeccably acted (especially Will Greer and Jeff Corey), and written with adult sensibilities-- at first. The last third just doesn't work for me but the it remains a haunted pastiche, something "The Twilight Zone" might have attempted.
Rock Hudson, John Randolph, Frances Reid, Murray Hamilton, Jeff Corey, Will Greer, Salome Jens
Fascinating documentary about Michael J. Fox's struggle with the degenerative Parkinson's disease. Diagnosed at 28, Fox hid the disease for years until the symptoms became pronounced and it became a struggle to play the roles asked of him. Along the way, there is his struggle with pills and alcohol, his period of arrogance after the success of "Back to the Future", and a string of weak films that almost ended his career before a successful run in a second sitcom, "Spin City", and his steady relationship with Tracey Pollan (whom he met on "Family Ties"). What makes it all work and keeps it from being a vanity piece is Fox's engaging face on interviews with numerous quips and asides and a reasonable level of honesty and self-deprecation. On the down side, I am very ambivalent about using clips from his movies to dramatize real events from his life-- they obviously don't bear a close relation to them. Incidentally, he almost echoes Trump's assertion that when you are a star....
Michael J. Fox, Tracey Pollan
Mary's husband Ahmed dies one evening at their home. In the process of sorting out his possessions afterwards Mary discovers a stunning secret: Ahmed, who works on the ferry, has another "wife" in Calais, over the channel. She sets out to meet this woman but is waylaid by a misunderstanding and obtains an opportunity to investigate his life with her by posing as a maid. None of this is executed convincingly (his phone doesn't even have a password, and Genevieve doesn't know he has died, and the maid service-- too conveniently-- never called Genevieve back about scheduling a service, and Genevieve has never seen a picture of his wife though she knew about her, and so on, and so on). And Mary's behavior as a maid is so weird and off-putting (the director's judgement of when Mary's stunned stare is not going to ring alarm bells, about a stalker if not anything else, is way off) that it becomes very difficult to buy into the story. Nor is it well acted or filmed. Points for sincerity and for an interesting story idea but too cringy for my taste.
Joanna Scanlan, Nathalie Richard, Talid Ariss, Nasser Memarzia
Bizarre, long-winded, narcissistic indulgence by Inarritu inspired by Fellini's "8 1/2" and, sometimes, "The Great Beauty" and perhaps even "Leolo". Magic realist in tone, we are subjected to more than 2 hours of Inarritu offering his duality as a Mexican American up for crucifixion, or boredom, as he "explores" the tension between his cultural identity and his transformation of the raw material of his life into film and document and entertainment and jokes. Silverio starts us off in the hallway of a hospital where his son has refused to leave the womb because the world sucks, and he demands that the doctor put him back in-- and he does. We are treated to characters speaking without moving their lips and moving their lips without speaking, to a wonderful dance sequence to an isolated track of Bowie's "Let's Dance", and deserted streets and piles of corpses, and, in a rare coherent moment, masses of people at the border in Mexico. The ambition is there, and no doubt Inarritu is sincerely trying to tell us something important about exile-- or is he not trying to tell us anything because the truth, for him, is meaningless. I dislike films about that tells us there is no point to the film we are watching tell us there is no point to the film almost as much as I dislike films about intoxication or drugs, which make the users sound pointless and incoherent, like many of the pretty sequences in this film.
Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Iker Sanchez Solando, Luis Couturier, Luz Jimenez, Francisco Rubio
Bizarre, very long-winded tribute to ambivalence and narcissistic self-referential ennui.
Fascinating "real time" 90 minutes of tension wracked activity in an expensive restaurant primarily concerned with the stresses on manager/owner Andy Jones. He's got family issues, money issues, and management issues, and he's a drinker and drug-user. His staff are, for the most part, competent and diligent but some are late and some distracted and costly mistakes are made, most disastrously, by Andy. It is, as it usually is, interesting to see a convincing dramatization of real work performed by committed, talented actors. The customers run the gamut from a restaurant reviewer with Andy's creditor, a racist snob, a gaggle of "influencers" and a woman with allergies. You will never feel the same way about a restaurant again.
Stephen Graham, Vinette Robinson, Alice Feetham, Ray Panthaki, Hannah Walters, Malachi Kirby, Izuka Hoyle, Taz Skylar, Lauryn Ajufo, Jason Flemyng, Lourdes Faberes, Daniel Larkai, Aine Rose Daly
More conventional than it looks: about Lynn, a brilliant young woman who is coaxed into a cheating scam with numerous classmates, for money. The scheme becomes elaborate (and the movie spends too much time detailing how she does it, including a clever musical connection) and constantly threatened with exposure. A rival prodigy, Bank, also threatens the scheme until they attempt to recruit him, and then his role becomes ambiguous and surprising-- will there be a romance? Or not. ? Her classmates are richer and more popular than she is and we are unfortunately coerced into a predictable moral conclusion that is as unsatisfying as it is contrived, after a certain amount of teasing about a class war at the heart of the conflict. Not all that well filmed, directed, or acted, but with occasionally punchy flourishes.
Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, Eisaya Hosuwan, Teeradon Supapunpinyo, Chanon Santinatornkul, Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Sarinat Thomas, Pasin Kuansataporn, Ego Mikitas
Unusually tasteful, restrained, and compelling documentary of Canadian folk-singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. What shines most brilliantly is Lightfoot's candor, integrity, and meticulous devotion to his craft. Interviews with Murray McLachlan, Sarah McLachlan, Ian Tyson, Sylvia Tyson, and others pay tribute but also highlight his style of performance and his remarkable song-writing craft-- Lightfoot even writes his own charts composes using notation. He discusses his iconic "For Lovin' Me" with self-deprecating honesty (he has refused to perform it for 20 years) and his period of alcoholism (he eventually quit drinking). He wanders around Toronto with a film crew without any visible handlers or bodyguards. He drives himself, mostly. He clearly loves women and admits he has had multiple relationships (and two marriages, and six children-- that we know of). We learn that "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was, amazingly, recording in one session, the first time performed by the ensemble (he did more takes but they couldn't match that first one). The film scans a catalog of cover versions of his songs, including the weird and wonderful. One of the better musical documentaries out there.
Gordon Lightfoot, Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Geddy Lee, Anne Murray, Murray McLachlan, Sylvia Tyson, Ian Tyson, Ronnie Hawkins, Steve Earle
Screenplay by Craig. When Bob Dylan finally agreed to give the rights to his music to a film-maker he made it clear: do your own thing. I want no voice in this project. The result was the brilliant "I'm Not There". It's a pity Judy Blume didn't follow his example. The ragged quality of this film is a surprise considering Craig's impressive debut with the film "Edge of Seventeen". "But Are you There" is the opposite. None of the scenes are "lived" in; none of the characters have the weight of personal history. My guess is that Blume exerted a lot of control over the shape of the film and forced it to stick to her narrative when it would have been better to let Craig stretch it here and there to give it more cinematic life. The main thing it has going for it is its honesty in depicting adolescent sexual attitudes, periods, breasts, and so on, and that is a considerable strength. My theory is that a woman director feels more free (and more interested) in these issues than a male director who would fearful of being exploitive or crass. There are a lot of laughs of the "Oh yea, I remember that" kind, but not a lot of genuinely funny scenes, and Kathy Bates' turn as the Jewish grandma is a complete dud. When Barbara's parents show up for the first time in 9 years, they are also weightless, just pieces moving along on the schematic of Blume's banal narrative. They even become caricatures of fundamentalist creeps when they insist that Margaret should be baptized. We're supposed to find them nasty and narrow minded when they can't respond to Sylvia's Jewish toast at dinner, but I, instead, found Sylvia boorish. Margaret's parents are supplicants to the child. Everything she feels or thinks or wishes must be bowed to. Mom and dad have no life of their own, no history, no situatedness: they just wait to deliver their lines. And the token black teacher is a huge contrast to the Mr. Bruner of "Edge of Seventeen" how not only has a life and a personality but has individuality and history and weight. Just one example: at the first class of the year the teacher assigns the students to write something (answering questions) about themselves so he can get to know them. They all immediately reach for provided pens and papers and start scribbling. Would it be asking too much to have the teacher tell them where paper and pen could be had, or what paper to use, or how much to write, or anything that would make you believe he actually had any idea of what a teacher does in a classroom? I remember reading Blume's books years ago and finding them really flat and uninspiring at the time. With the Republican rancor towards her books I almost expected to like them but I was wrong. They are still really just average, just adequate, just okay.
Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, Benny Safdie, Elle Graham, Amari Alexis Price, Kathaerine Mallen Kupferer, Kate MacCluggage, Aidan Wojtak-Hissong, Landon S. Baxter, Echo Kellum, Simms May, Isol Young
Charming, honest, nuanced vision of the trials and tribulations of 16- year-old Nadine, focused surprisingly on her anger at best friend Krista who has taken up a relationship with her brother Darian, but diverting into her crush on a buy working at pet food store and her clueless relationship with Erwin, a very likeable, kind boy, who clearly has a crush on her. Smart movie that dodges the obvious pitfalls and cliches. Nadine has a sassy relationship with teacher Mr. Bruner played with elegance and grace and wit by Woody Harrelson. Her dad died of a heart attack with her in the car and she nurses a grievance but she is no innocent victim of a cruel society. Nadine herself is often mean, indifferent, or just plain cruel to others, and always quite self-centred and self-pitying. Thank god. This makes the film far deeper and more affecting than one would expect. Every potential melodrama is quickly skewered with witty exchanges. Resolutions are moderated tastefully. Nadine learns and expands her judgement without contrition or repentance or contrivance. Superbly acted, particularly by Hailee Steinfeld as Nadine, and Harrelson. Reminiscent of "Spectacular Now" in it's sensitive, kind evocation of teenaged angst. Reminiscent also of John Hughes films but without the smarm or the compromises.
Hailee Steinfeld, Haley Lu Richardson, Blake Jenner, Kyra Sedgewick, Woody Harrelson, Hayden Szeto, Alexander Calvert, Eric Keenleyside
Powerful suspense drama about a newspaper journalist and his team (emphasis on team) that uncover a nefarious plot revolving around the death (apparent suicide) of a young researcher for an up-and-coming member of Parliament, Stephen Collins. Collins was having an affair with Sonia Baker and apparently was about to leave his wife for her when she stepped in front of a subway train. But there is a murder of a messenger boy on the same day and a reporter discovers a phone call between the two that leads them to gradually unravel a large story about corrupt influence of a committee studying oil energy headed by Collins. Superbly acted, meticulously detailed and accurate, flawed by a slightly melodramatic ending in which a key figure breaks down and confesses when an astute viewer can perceive a clear path to plausible denial more consistent with the character.
Marc Warren, Shauna Macdonald, David Morrisey, Rebekah Staton, James McAvoy, Kelly Macdonald, John Simon, Tom Burke, Bendict Wong, Bill NIghy, Johann Myers, Polly Walker, Philip Glenister, Amelia Bullmore
This movie is essentially written by 8 actors who improvised their lines after being given general parameters (sometimes, only to individual actors) by James Byrkit, the ostensible writer of the film. So, you have eight non-writers writing the dialogue and much of the sequences of the film. It doesn't really work. It sounds mostly like actors improvising, sometimes to banal effect. The story is allegedly based on the theory of "Schrodinger's Cat", which it seems to regard as a serious paradox of quantum mechanics (yes, we go there). The trouble is Schrodinger's cat was a mockery of the quantum theory that the state of an object at the particle level can be anything until it is known and the act of knowing it changes it so it is no longer what it was or is. Eight people converge for a dinner party one night during a comet's appearance in the sky. The power goes out. Two of them go down the street to a house that appears to have power because one of them, Hugh, needs to call his brother for some mysterious reason (the brother said if things get weird give him a call). Something weird happens and then some more weirdness happens. And here is were "Coherence" falters: everyone accepts immediately the essential weirdness that is happening and they all start theorizing about quantum physics. Does nobody seriously think they are not all hallucinating or over-reacting? Why is there not disagreement on the fundamental nature of what is happening? Why does everyone seem to believe what he sees and hears without seeking questioning the high-concept explanations? The drama adds some inter-personal crises to leaven the science fiction. Someone is sleeping with someone else's girl, and guy shows up with a girl who cheated on one of the other girls. Add to that all the hand-held jittery camera work and the low-budget struggle to depict fantasy elements and you have a film that kind of drops off and just goes nowhere. There are other films with a similar budget restriction who did better.
Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, Micholas Brendon, Elizabeth Gracen, Lorene Scafaria, Hugo Armstrong, Alex Manugian, Laurie Maher
Alex Hughes, an ex-convict, picks up a lovely young nubile hitch-hiker, Vivienne Freeman at a restaurant along the Trans-Canada highway. She is insouciant, a free spirit, bubbly, which is why she is killed soon afterwards in an accident. Alex decides he needs to apologize to her mother even though it wasn't his fault (thought maybe it was-- she distracted him; he shouldn't have let do that). Her mom is a high-functioning autistic woman and we are supposed to be amused and touched by her idiosyncrasies (though this stream of narrative is diminished to no small extent by the similar motif introduced with Vivienne). He stays with he for a few days, meets a lovely neighbor and has sex with her, meets Vivienne's grand-parents who actually raised her, and generally looks for a rationale for the feeble machinery that keeps him in her house so they can ennoble each other. As with many similar stories, we are supposed to find him compelling in some way because he committed a terrible crime and then the movie tells us that his crime wasn't really terrible at all. The neighbor, Maggie, has clearly read the script and starts acting in love the instant she meets Alex. Clyde, the cop, provides token opposition. The truck driver who is faulted for the accident also tries to find grace. Alex seems to wander over to Maggie's without having to explain to Linda where he has gone-- I'm not saying he couldn't-- just that the film doesn't make any effort to show that it's even a problem. Alan Rickman, as Alex, doesn't seem to ever find a tone for his character: he mumbles a lot and appears to be restrained which can be restrained or can be impoverished. There are pluses: Linda isn't really shocked or saddened by Vivienne's death, and her speech during the game of gravel inspires for a moment or two. But the film-making is pedestrian and the music (by Broken Social Scene) is jarring and dull.
Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Carrie-Anne Moss, Emily Hampshire, Callum Keith Rennie, Scott Wickware, James Allodi, Jayne Eastwood, David Fox
In a film with only a glancing familiarity with procedures and details, Inez, who has problems of her own with stability, work, and domicile, kidnaps her own child out of the foster system in New York and sets herself and him up in an apartment with her boyfriend, Lucky, as New York corrodes them along. Terry is quiet, disappointed, thoughtful, and, we learn, a bright child with promise. A teacher wants him to succeed in a better school. Lucky isn't sure he wants to be around him. We get a pretty detailed picture of their harsh lives in the city, their struggles, their conflicts, but it's all a bit self-pitying and occasionally just plain boring. I respect the realism and the restraint, and the solid acting especially by Teyeana Taylor and Aaron Adetola (Inez and Terry), and I feel blessed to get such a patient, conscientious picture of their lives. But that alone doesn't make it interesting, or an artistic success. The music, in particular, is worse than annoying: it is dreary and suffocating at times. The camera work is unremarkable. But the worst flaw is the overwrought surprise developments at the end to which the film does not feel entitled, and which lose their effect because it's hard to still care about the characters by this point. It should have been moving or affecting, but it just isn't.
Teyana Taylor, Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney, Josiah Cross, William Catlett, Terri Abney, Delissa Reynolds, Amelia Workman
Underwritten and ill-conceived thriller about a deaf and dumb writer named Maddie living in a secluded house who is terrorized by a masked man who doesn't seem to have any particular purpose in mind. He killed Maddie's friend, who ran up to Maddie's door and pounded on it in vain-- and then discovered that Maddie was deaf and dumb and decided to have some fun with her. He spends most of the movie pointlessly wandering around outside which leads the viewer to wonder if there is some kind of force field or if the windows are bullet-proof or maybe he just really can't be bothered. The gimmick is fun for about ten minutes and then increasingly pointless. Even worse, we get false-death syndrome which the horror establishment never seems to tire of reanimating, in which villains die and resurrect themselves-- to our astonishment!!-- at least six times. Complete waste of time. Would it surprise you to learn that director Mike Flanagan and "Maddie" (Kate Siegel) are married, and conceived of the film idea together?
Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Trucco, Samantha Sloyan
Jennifer Lawrence, refitting some of her extraordinary original talent and vulnerability, plays Lynsey, an injured (concussed) veteran of the war in Afghanistan, returning to the U.S. for treatment and rehabilitation. The first third of the movie is careful, patient depiction of the process of recovery and rehabilitation with a full-time nurse and various physiotherapists. Lynsey keeps insisting she wants to go back but those involved in her treatment are not so sure. When her funded program of rehab is done, she reluctantly returns to her home in New Orleans and her rather dissolute mother, to work on her own regimen in the hope of passing the fitness requirements for a return to duty. When her pickup truck breaks down, she meets James, a black mechanic who seems able to take as much time off from work as is convenient to the plot, with whom she connects. He has his own tragedy to work through. He also becomes one of the weakest elements of the plot. On the one hand, it is laudable that Lynsey is openly gay-- she tells James this so he won't misconstrue her friendship-- and the film refreshingly acknowledges Lynsey's sexual attractiveness and her own consciousness of it. On the other hand, there isn't much else in the relationship to hold your interest, and nothing is more boring in a movie than characters who drink and drink and drink and a storyteller who begs the viewer to be interested in his characters because they supposedly suffer more than you do. If the thought occurs to me once while watching a movie, I knock at least 1.5 points off. If it occurs twice or more-- at least four times for "Causeway"-- I've lost interest. It's a pity because Lawrence is refreshingly interesting in this film, but the story is a 30 minute plot stretched out to 90.
Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Linda Emond, Jayne Houdyshell
The two best parts of this movie are the long scene of Mamie testifying in court in which the camera simply stays on her face as she answers a series of questions and passionately defends her identification of the battered body found in the Tallahatchie river as that of her son, Emmett. The second best part is that there is no white hero who steps in as the vicarious avatar of the viewer's virtue to bring justice to the situation. The worst parts are the predictable tendency to sanitize and romanticize aspects of the story in way that clearly favors Mamie, the primary source of such details. Her interactions with Emmett before he leaves for Mississippi smack of retrospective idolization, and come off as so perfect and lovely and flattering that one can't believe in it for one second. It is a grievous insult to Emmett and Mamie. It is an insult to the viewer and it degraded my investment in the story. The other great flaw is the unwillingness to grapple with logistical details that do matter. For example, what did Moses do after they took Emmett? Why, in the movie, is Emmett alone in a single bed (he reportedly shared a bed with a cousin). Why are the details of Emmett's father's death (he was court-martialed and executed for murder and rape, in Italy in 1945) omitted? There are fine moments in the film, and some excellent moments, and the music is compelling and evocative. It just doesn't breath at times, smothered by the sense that the actors know the script and invest undue weight to scenes that they should breeze into, and breath into, and only become weighty once your character actually knows that there is a weight. Danielle Deadwyler, incidentally, should have been nominated for an Oscar and it is surprising that Hollywood missed the opportunity to actually make a legitimate nomination of an actress of colour. Also of note: the film acknowledges that some black men appear to have played a roll in the kidnapping of Till. This fact is conspicuously unexplained in almost all accounts of the case.
Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, Whoopi Goldberg, Sean Patrick Thomas, John Dougals Thompson, Tosin Cole, Keith Arthur Bolden, Keith Arthur Bolden
Banal retelling of the story of the tragic accident in 1926 on Balsam Lake near Peterborough. A group of teenage boys were camping out as part of a kind of outback experience, with a pair of adult counsellors one of whom was veteran of the war and was partly disabled. They set out in a war canoe to obtain supplies from a nearby town when disaster strikes. Some accounts insist there was a storm and a freak wave but others disagree implying that the canoe was mismanaged and not suited to the experience level of the boys. The modern consensus seems to be that there was no storm, that the boys were not trained for the handling of a war canoe, and the leaders were incompetent. "Brotherhood" suffers the most from the typical bullshit distortions of history by survivors and families of victims. The survivors say everyone displayed "disciplined heroism" and every boy was brave and uncomplaining. They went to their deaths "without a whimper", "unselfishly" trying to help their fellow. Well, what can you say when you are the co-leader of an expedition that was entirely ill-conceived and that leads to the deaths of 11 young boys? Aside from the that, the film is flat, boring, poorly acted, and diminished in effect. I know that scenes of people in dire straits in water are difficult to film-- even "Titanic" looked borderline silly at times-- but this rendering is particularly unconvincing and actually tedious.
Spencer Macpherson, Brendan Fletcher, Brendan Fehr, Jake Manley, Gage Munroe, Dylan Everett, Sam Ashe Arnold
I am ambivalent about this film. It is brilliant in many ways, beautifully filmed and edited, great music, well-acted. It refreshingly openly embraces it's Toronto (Scarborough) locale. In three out of four major categories, it is exceptional. In one, the story, it fails, because it gets locked into black victimization-- look at me, see how I've suffered, see how the terrible decisions I make are the result of my oppression. When Francis finishes a spice rack in the school workshop (where he has been streamed because he is black, of course), his teacher asks him why he didn't use a level. If the spice rack isn't square, it is a square he needed, not a level. The point is, the scene is not based on some apprehension of a real, believable incident. It is facile and banal. And the teacher is so predictably asinine that the scene fizzles away. And when Francis (who is way too old, obviously, to be in high school) auditions for some white broker of rap DJ artists, we are given to understand that his rejection is unjust in some way, and when he lashes out in response, we are supposed to understand and sympathize. We are manipulated when it is suggested he lashes out in defense of Jelly, because otherwise it would be apparent that he just needs to control his temper. When Michael turns Aisha away because he is too busy suffering with his broken mother, one begins to resent the manipulation, and the diminished character allotted to Aisha whose sole purpose seems to be to empathize with Michael's suffering. In fact, their love-making is one of the most gratuitous aspects of the film, insulting to both the actress and the story. It's too rote and too predictable for what is otherwise a very impressive project.
Lamar Johnson, Aaron Pierre, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Kiana Madeira, Lovell Adams-Gray, Michael Antwi
Fine, tasteful story about the debut of Louise Brooks in New York City in the early 1920's. She is 17, very good, but needs a chaperone and her own mother is unwilling or unavailable or both. "Norma" is in her 50's or 60's and has a hidden agenda: she wishes to look up her birth mother. Norma was adopted years ago as a young child. Her adoptive family was loving and kind but she still wants to know something about her real mother. Louise, on the other hand, is ready to embrace the sensual world. She is insouciant and wise and refreshingly capable. There is no unpleasant moral tale here--until, perhaps, in Brooks' fate after her career has faded. This is a reasonably fresh take on an unusual story, not really based on any facts, other than the obvious ones of Brooks' career. There is a somewhat gratuitous romance involving Norma that makes you wonder if it shouldn't have been played by someone much younger than 60+ Elizabeth McGovern.
Elizabeth McGovern, Haley Lu Richardson, Geza Rohrig, Victoria Hill, Campbell Scott, Blythe Danner, Andrew Burnap, Miranda Otto
One is immediately struck by the writing: this is clearly not some narcissistic director dispensing with the services of a real writer. The dialogue is sharp, witty, incisive, and the characters are fresh and interesting. I gave it an ambivalent 8 out of 10 because I don't think it really works. Charlie is a ridiculously obese English teacher (remotely, though the film is set in 2016 and not during the pandemic). He refuses to turn his camera on so his students can see him, which is the first clue about the film's disingenuousness. American college students would be shocked by obesity? Really? He is also quite ill though the characters are bit glib about how long he has to live. He is attended to by Liz, who, it turns out is not a randomly hired nurse. A ridiculous young man, Thomas (the doubter?) knocks on the door and wants to offer Charlie eternal life with his church (which was originally Mormon but, for some reason, changed to "New Life" for the film). Charlies daughter, Ellie, shows up and boy, is she mad. The most interesting character in the film is bitter, torrentially abusive, selfish, and cruel. The fact that she is mostly believable is a remarkable achievement. Charlie left her and her mom when she was seven for a man-- a point emphasized several times by Ellie-- and apparently never saw her since. The logistics of this are messy and unconvincing. Was he sending child-support or not? Did her mother, Mary, block him from seeing her or not? Did Mary lie about it? Is it really noble in any way for Charlie to sacrifice his health for money, so he could give it to Ellie? Would she really continue to be cruel towards him with that kind of money at stake? Does he really believe that it would make up for anything he did in the past? And what is this about her not "supposed" to be able to see him-- it reeks vaguely of sexual abuse, but it's obviously not that, so what is it? But the fundamental problem is this: is this really any kind of redemption (at one point Charlie pathetically claims that Ellie is the a beautiful, wonderful person, and the only thing he did right in his life, which is more pathetic than dramatic, and sadly out of sync with the rest of the story) for Charlie to break-through to Ellie after the sketchily dramatized abandonment of nine years? It fails, and the movie fails because this equation of contrived and fake. Aronofsky walks a fine line, between contrivance and drama, and doesn't always successfully navigate the shoals. It's too long and ultimately not believable but it is a very interesting failure, and Brenden Fraser's performance is actually remarkable.
Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, Samantha Moirton, Sathya Sridharan, Samantha Morton
From the writer who gave us "Love Actually", a bizarre, hap-hazard comedy about a tall American side-kick to a comedian (Rowan Atkinson) who falls in love with a nurse (Emma Thompson in an early, impressive role). It does feature an absolutely hilarious rendering of a musical version of "The Elephant Man", complete with songs and tap-dancing. It is fun seeing Emma Thompson nude, in her first role, and she is excellent in all respects, steals every scene she is in, and carries every dialogue with fascinating variations of her sophisticated, well-bred character.
Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson, Geraldine James, Rowan Atkinson, Kim Thomson, Anna Massey, Harold Innocent, Tim Barlow
A well packaged piece of shit is still a piece of shit, or infantile shit, as this franchise is. You don't need me to rehash the plot: you've seen it dozens of times. The incorrigible, mavericky, rogue soldier or employee or farmer or whatever breaks all the rules but, by god, he's the best, and he's adorable, so the authorities have no choice but to forgive his trespasses and give him the big assignment which he aces, even if he is 30 years older than his rivals and, in real life, would be crushed by them in a flash. Then add that its Tom Fucking Cruise who is so handsome even some women who don't like action flicks will watch. I will acknowledge that Kosinski doesn't want to be too obviously stupid in this take: Maverick is older, softer, he sheds tears, he actually seems to care about other people. And of course, when he does something really, really stupid, it's because he's thinking of others, not himself, something the real rogues never do in real life. This is the most gay film of the year, bros just hanging out in a bar, bragging, waving their penises in each others' faces, nominally chasing the girl (played by a rather harsh- looking Jennifer Connelly) but we all know they would be after her 17- year-old daughter in real life, when they aren't busy patting each others butts. This is also a horny love letter to McDonnell Douglas and their billion dollar war-craft industry: if I was an executive there, I would gladly have paid the entire cost of the movie. Maybe I would have removed the gayest scene: the beach volleyball, in which the only two female pilots are conspicuously over-dressed. (Actors said that there was a very competitive vibe around the beach volleyball scene.) The producers of the movie bragged endlessly about not using CGI except when they did, and not filming staged cockpit scenes, except when they did. I don't mind that they do but they could spare us all the bravado. They did go through some lengths to actually film the actors in cockpits in real flights, but it remains in the service of a contemptible trope. We are told that Cruise and Connelly actually sailed the sailboat in that scene-- except that they didn't. There was a crew in the cabin. This is a fascinating film-- make no mistake about it-- as a portrait of an increasingly inane, narcissistic, contemptible culture of delusional macho fantasy. The biggest irony? For all the bragging, look through the list of "goofs" in IMDB. It's endless. There is very little "accuracy" in this film.
Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Val Kilmer, Bashir Salahuddin, Jon Hamm, Charles Parnell, Monica Barbaro, Lewis Pullman, Jay Ellis
A well packaged piece of shit is still a piece of shit, or infantile shit, as this franchise is. You don't need me to rehash the plot: you've seen it dozens of times. The incorrigible, mavericky, rogue soldier or employee or farmer or whatever breaks all the rules but, by god, he's the best, and he's adorable, so the authorities have no choice but to forgive his trespasses and give him the big assignment which he aces, even if he is 30 years older than his rivals and, in real life, would be crushed by them in a flash. Then add that its Tom Fucking Cruise who is so handsome even some women who don't like action flicks will watch. I will acknowledge that Kosinski doesn't want to be too obviously stupid in this take: Maverick is older, softer, he sheds tears, he actually seems to care about other people. And of course, when he does something really, really stupid, it's because he's thinking of others, not himself, something the real rogues never do in real life. This is the most gay film of the year, bros just hanging out in a bar, bragging, waving their penises in each others' faces, nominally chasing the girl (played by a rather harsh- looking Jennifer Connelly) but we all know they would be after her 17- year-old daughter in real life, when they aren't busy patting each others butts. This is also a horny love letter to McDonnell Douglas and their billion dollar war-craft industry: if I was an executive there, I would gladly have paid the entire cost of the movie. Maybe I would have removed the gayest scene: the beach football, in which the only two female pilots are conspicuously over-dressed. (Actors said that there was a very competitive vibe around the football scene.) The producers of the movie bragged endlessly about not using CGI except when they did, and not filming staged cockpit scenes, except when they did. I don't mind that they do but they could spare us all the bravado. They did go through some lengths to actually film the actors in cockpits in real flights, but it remains in the service of a contemptible trope. We are told that Cruise and Connelly actually sailed the sailboat in that scene-- except that they didn't. There was a crew in the cabin. This is a fascinating film-- make no mistake about it-- as a portrait of an increasingly inane, narcissistic, contemptible culture of delusional macho fantasy.
Brian Tallerico of rogerebert.com incomprehensibly calls "Sea Beast" 'fun, smart, and sneakily deep'. The Guardian tellingly calls it 'girl-positive'. Oh-- so that's the agenda. The Guardian also gives it 4 out of 5 stars, which makes me question it sanity. Another disastrous product of a director who thinks he doesn't need a writer syndrome. And the animation isn't all that great either. Oh, it's impressive-- the best a computer can do-- but the decision to wallow in that uncanny valley with characters who might as well be lame actors for all the emotion they convey-- unforgivable. Widely praised for some bizarre reason-- some critics even cite its weakest component, the story-- "Sea Beast" is populated by the most politically correct crew imaginable: whites, blacks, indeterminate, which makes it all the more wondrous that Jacob Holland, the main character, is an incredibly bland rip-off of the cookie-cutter Disney prince: hulking, plastic hair-piece, personality of a high school sophomore imitating his own imaginary prince. Even worse, Maisie is a young black girl of no determinate age whom we are supposed to find adorable but actually quickly grows repellent as she lectures Jacob and nannies him into realizing that the monster is actually -- wait for it-- our friend. This concept only flies in this plot because the monster doesn't have anything valuable like a tongue or oil to sell to the people who pay for the ships. It's just some random monster that the sailors kill for fame and glory and the pay of the "royals": your generic fat and ugly queen and king. The plot is worse than stolen: it is hacked from hackneyed. Not one character has an ounce of personality. Not one sequence is suspenseful or scary. The monster is way too large to believe that it is credible that a ship that small with small men on it would ever contemplate taking it on. And the battles show that equation to be absurd. Yes, it's a fantasy, but then why are all the characters in the uncanny valley? Why is the music trying to strong-arm the audience into suspense? None of the characters have any relationship with each other other than the schematic necessity of constructing a scene out of something, anything. Why do the characters have British or Australian accents? I have no idea and I'll bet the Chris Williams doesn't either. But I bet he does know where to look for source material when he can't think of any on his own: "How to Train Your Dragon", "Moana", "Jurassic World", and every other spunky girl movie out there, which is a lot to choose from. As a matter of fact, I'm starting to find the "spunky girl" motif more than just tiresome. It's nauseating.
Karl Urban, Zaris-Angel Hator, Jared Harris, Jean-Baptiste Mrianne, Jim Carter, Doon Mackichan, Zana Tang
Widely praised movie that presents an episodic sequence of mule stories, about EO, who, through adventure and misadventure, ends up travelling through a landscape of human greed, avarice, and cruelty, all with his expressionless eyes and an occasional heel for the people who use or exploit him or others. Perhaps a touch over-rated by critics more receptive to its animal-rights message than I am. Prettily-filmed, but really barebones.
Wojciech Andrzejuk, Isabelle Huppert, Sandra Drzymalska
Based on a book by Frederick Bachman. There may be progress in Hollywood. Chances are if this movie had been made 20 years ago it would have been even more maudlin, unconvincing, and contrived. And perhaps the son of the star wouldn't have received a major part for which he is manifestly unqualified and unsuited. But Hollywood can't resist giving an explanation for every sin. In this case, it's the death of Otto's wife, in a bus crash, after the bus company had ignored warnings about defective brakes. It couldn't have been bad luck or a true accident or a random event: it had to be, for the expected audience, something blameworthy, so you could nod and smack your lips and say, oh Tom Hanks is so fucking adorable when he's pretending to be grumpy. When a young neighbor is kicked out of his house for being transgender Otto, of course, is suddenly a model of considerate thoughtfulness, because no one involved in the making of this movie dares risk giving any real offense to anybody. Otto is safely irascible, never really crossing those borders we expect around our lovable movie grumps. The meet-cute with Sonya, his inevitable wife, is no less than appallingly banal. It is incredibly banal. It is unforgivably banal. She looks at him when he returns her dropped book as if to say, "I read the script and I know that we fall in love and marry and I die tragically so let me give the audience my best exactly what you expected face". She has no existence outside of pretty but vacant face. Marisol, the annoyingly gregarious neighbor, fares better mainly because she is played exuberantly by Mariana Trevino almost rescues parts of the film and can't be blamed for that inexcusably mawkish scene where she bangs on Otto's windows because she thinks he might be ill or depressed or enrolling in an acting class. Everyone else in the movie is just wall-paper, background, cliches and tropes.
Tom Hanks, Mairana Trevino, Rachel Keller, John Higgens, Mack Bayda, Cameraon Britton, Juanita Jennings, Truman Hanks
Exquisitely beautiful story about Italian peasants from Sicily emigrating to America. We follow them from the rugged hilltops where they seek wisdom and advice from an old woman to the town where they sell their livestock to the port where they are herded like chattel into the hold of a steamship all the way to quarantine on Ellis Island. The scene of the ship slowly drawing away from the dock as the immigrants silently stare at their families watching from shore is transfixing, as is scenes of them waiting for their destined marriage partners on Ellis Island. Remarkable large crowd scenes. The faces that are consistenly convincing. In its sheer raw beauty, reminiscent of "The Emigrants" and its sequel, "The Immigrants" with Von Sydow.
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vincent Amato, Vincent Schiavelli, Aurora Quattrocchi, Francesco Casisa, Filippo Pucillo, Federica De Cola, Isabella Ragonese
Documentary about children in Ukraine who have removed from their homes because neglect or custody issues being cared for in a state institution. We meet several of them more intimately and get an overview of the routines of the house, the care-givers, and the negotiations over returning them to parental care. Poignant and even heart-breaking at times as we see some of the children constantly hopeful of a parent picking them up, and one who becomes immediately aware that her visiting mom has been drinking again. Free from contrivance and sentimentality.
Marharyta Burlutska, Anjelika Stolyarova, Olga Tronova
Based on the "acclaimed" novel by Anne Michaels. I haven't read it but I am beginning to wonder about the "acclaimed" part. There isn't a single honest scene in this movie, from the romance with Alex that is cued for doom right from the start to the lovable old Greek guy who rescues a Jewish boy from Poland and doesn't seem even slightly interested in his family, possible distant relatives, or identity papers. In fact, he just picks him up and hugs him right from the very first meeting, and never once seems to require anything of this live-in refugee. Jakob sits against a wall meditating on his suffering not because anyone actually observed the behavior of a child this age after a trauma but because the writer imagines that this is what the audience expects, just as it expects Alex to leave because she is so selfish as to actually want a life of her own when she could just so conveniently re-live Jakob's trauma over and over again with him. We get a pat, contrived explanation of how he was spirited from Poland into Greece, a facile story about the other geologists who worked with Athos being slaughtered or imprisoned-- don't ask why, it's the Nazis! And even less explanation of how Athos was able to take a stray child with him into Canada, and how the boy happened to learn English on the way over. And the right girl for Jakob is identified by the fact that she has no background or history of her own to distract her from reveling in Jakob's narcissistic focus on his own suffering and sensitivities. It is the strategy of the movie to tell you when something is deep or beautiful or interesting instead of showing you. The film made me not want to read the book.
Stephen Dillane, Rade Serbedzija, Rosamund Pike, Ayelet Zurer, Ed Stoppard, Rachelle Lefevre, Nina Dobrev, Robbie Kay, Themis Bazaka
Nope to "Nope". Two hours of suspended suspense, static animation, tease and disappointment. What is the point of this entity bubbling over the Haywood Ranch except to provide OJ and Emerald with photographic proof that will help them sell tickets to their dowdy local attractions? There's no obvious analogy, no obvious threat utter than the possibility this giant alien eufy may accidentally suck them up along with the fiberglas horses and stray cats. The acting is okay. The cinematography is okay. But when Emerald gasps and wails and screams, we don't know what she is really upset about. The scary noises? We don't even know which noises are diegetic and which are from the space being. This is a film about film, about our desire for spectacle and willingness to risk everything to have it. But it doesn't tell us anything compelling about that desire except that exists.
Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott, Steven Yeun, Wrenn Schmidt, Keith David
I can't quite overlook the relative flatness of character development in this otherwise laudable work that patiently lays out the conundrum for Sandra: her father is losing his mental abilities (though it is not specifically Alzheimer's) while she is engaged in a love affair with a married man who vacillates between her and his wife and child. I'm not sure which the makes of "One Fine Morning" thought was the main driver of the film-- perhaps both. Nobody is especially charming and wonderful: everyone behaves believably like real people caught up in the challenges of real life. As such, it has value. Yet I am disappointed particularly in Lea Seydoux's performance. I kept waiting for her to break out at some point, and then I realized she was deliberately underplaying the role. Nobody else stands out particularly, and I suspect it has something to with director Hansen-Love's approach. The same film, directed by Mike Leigh, would possibly be sparkling.
Lea Seydoux, Pascal Greggory, Melvil Poupaud, Nicole Garcia, Camille Leban Martins, Sarah Le Picard
Nancy Stokes is in her late 50's, a former teacher who was recently widowed. She has never had an orgasm in her entire life. So one night she checks into a hotel room and books a male escort, Leo Grande, for an afternoon of carnality and indulgence. Except, she's really not very courageous about getting naked with the handsome, charming, young man who turns up. They talk, a lot, about her self-consciousness, about the weird fact that she has never had an orgasm though married for many years (her husband was very conventional and insisted on the missionary position every time). She wants to know about Leo, how he got into it. She wants to be sure that he is not being exploited or used. He insists, gently, that he's in it for himself, and that he really enjoys making love to the older women who hire him. So far, so good. Emma Thompson is incredibly courageous here, revealing the real body of a real 50-something women, wrinkles and fat and sagging breasts and all. The film tackles the repression she has felt all her life and her difficulty in overcoming it for the sake of her own pleasure. "Leo Grande" is a bold movie that deserves credit for going where no film has gone before. But it is also a bit contrived. The dialogue in the first half is sharp and incisive and revealing. Then there is a desperate shift in tone as the movie strives for SIGNIFICANCE beyond the under-rated significance of exploring female pleasure. Leo, it turns out, has a history. Nancy makes some surprisingly decisions that are plainly out of character (at one point, she identifies Leo as a sex worker to a former student of hers working as a waitress without even asking Leo if that was okay). And Nancy's former student intrudes and complains that she once called a bunch of her female students "sluts" because they were so interested in boys. "Leo Grande" could have been great but it falls short because of the way these plot twists dissipated the focus on Nancy's blossoming sexual consciousness and the refreshing candor with which Leo and her discuss sex. This is clearly not the product of intimate personal experience (Nancy's desire to perform oral sex, for example, is treated with sophomoric indulgence, as if imagined as a plot point rather than a real experience). And after the cleansing apology to the former student, Leo becomes aggressive (Nancy likes it) after the film had carefully established his delicate need for affirmation of every move he makes. (All they had to do to solve this was have him ask her if that's what she would like.) Worthwhile film-- absolutely. A great film? No.
Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack, Isabella Laughland
It starts out well enough. Ove is a curmudgeon, living in a small complex of condominium houses in Sweden somewhere who roams around harassing his neighbors about obeying the rules, keeping things tidy, and, mostly, not disturbing him. A new neighbor arrives, Parvaneh, who ignores his grumpy demeanor and asks him for help and foists her daughters into his care when necessary. We see how he was fired from his job at the railroad and he seems pleased to be done with it. So far, not too bad. Up to this point, "A Man Called Ove" avoids the most obvious cliches and presents a few multi-dimensional characters. Ove's wife died years earlier and he visits her grave regularly and talks to her. His old friend, Rune, is disabled, and the unidentified authorities are scheming to put him in an institution. And then the film falls back into predictable tropes and we are left with a Hollywoodish grumpy old man who has a heart of gold syndrome, complete with charming insinuating children, and a neighborhood that secretly adores him, and big bad evil institutional agents he successfully defies. A big problem is that his long lost wife, Sonja, isn't really spectacularly adorable, and she needs to be to make the rest of the plot work. Even their first meeting is charmless: they so clearly get to work immediately adoring each other without wit or obstacle. They interact with each other over time as if freshly newlywed. There is no nuance or depth to their relationship. And we don't really see how it affected his day to day life, the way an Ozu film shows you with careful detail. Skip it.
Rolf Lassgard, Bahar Pars, Ida Engvoll, Filip Berg, Borje Lundberg
Inexplicably nominated for 9 Oscars, a badly directed 3rd version of the classic Erich Maria Remarque book on the futility and pointlessness of war. Paul Baumer is one of innumerable young men who, in a fit of patriotic enthusiasm, sign up for war against the villainous French in 1917, along with this friends Muller and Albert. The three are very quickly disabused of their notions of nobility and heroism amid the vicious realities of trench warfare, mustard gas, and those newfangled tanks the French throw at them. We see a lot of emphasis on how their own generals pushed them into pointless battles to gratify their own nationalist ideology, or personal egos. Considerable attention is paid to the negotiations to end the war and the complications caused by the collapse of the Germany government as a result of the losses. The problem with this film is the schematic arrangement of a dramatic scenes: everyone go mad with joy. Everyone go mad with grief. Everyone cower with fear. At one point, Paul hears a shot from a forest behind him-- his friend, Kat, has just been shot by a the son of the farmer they stole some eggs from-- so he immediately begins calling his name loudly and runs into the forest. He's a veteran, at this point, not a stupid fresh recruit. Yoohoo-- shoot me too! When tanks go rolling through, everyone reacts as if the tanks are as effective as their designers convinced the government they would be. They are obviously moving faster in this film than they did in real life-- about 7.5 mph maximum. Paul, meantime, has begin to take on the physical characteristics of a badly drawn poster advertising the movie, or Munch's "The Scream". Nobody in this film is convincing in the way they handle machines or action or routine. The men running around in the background of each scene look exactly like actors told to run around in the background of each scene. The film has no gravity.
Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Shcuch, aaron Hilmer, Moritz Klaus, Adrian Grunweald, Edin Hasanovic, Daniel Bruhl, Thibault de Montalembert, Devid Striesow
Cait's family is stressed with dad's drinking and cruelties and mom's new baby coming. They decide to farm out Cait to a cousin for the summer. Sean and Eibhlin take Cait in and treat her better than she's ever been treated before, with respect and dignity, and quiet affection. Nobody in these families is demonstrative or effuse, which sets a trap for the viewer. You are quietly taken in by the pastoral environment, the patient unfolding of character, and the significant but obscure details of everyday life. When a sudden burst of emotion comes, it's almost devastating. Not a brilliant movie-- some of the sequences are schematic and the acting is good but not transfixing. Catherine Clinch as Cait doesn't display a broad range of character but what she has works well in the film.
Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennet, Catherine Clinch, Michael Patric, Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, Joan Sheehy
Rather predictable film-noire stylized story about a detective who falls for the hot widow of the man whose suspicious death he is investigating. Some viewer may find the game entrancing, and it might be entrancing if you haven't seen it play out over and over again in earlier films. Add to that a rather preposterous ending that undermines the dramatic integrity of the story. Someone got overly immersed into the romantic fuzzy zone of imagined passions. But even before then, the premise of the story, the mountain, the inherited wealth, and so on. I found it boring.
Park Hae-il, Tang Wei, Lee Jung-hyun, Go Kyung-Pyo, Shin-Young Kim
Karel Kopfrkingl runs a crematorium in pre-war Czechoslovakia just as the Germans are beginning to press in from the border and elements within Czechoslovakia are allying themselves with the Nazis in anticipation of full capitulation. He has a wife, Lakme, and two children, Mili and Zina. Mili is suspect as he displays few manly characteristics. Zina is a mouse, retiring, submissive. Lakme is half-Jewish, and Kopfrkingl's friend Walter Reinke, is trying to persuade him that his likely advancement under the inevitable Nazi regime will be hindered by the Jewish side of his marriage, and children. Kopfrkingl is shown to be creepily impressionable. He repeats phrases and language that hears from Reinke and others. All the while, he waxes poetic on the beautiful wonders of cremation, how it renders suffering creatures into definitive death and paradise. There are parties and funerals, and Kopfrkingl showing a new employee how to manage the crematorium functions. And an allusive scene in which an authority figure queries Kopfrkingl on the use of crematoria on large volumes of people-- a project that must remain secret. How much of this is meant as fable, and how much as poem? Or is it both? Kopfrkingl is ecstatic at times in embracing death, which is fair way to view the actions of individuals and societies leading up the war: you must love death and destruction, for you have done everything you can to bring it.
Rudolf Hrusinsky, Vlasta Chramostova, Jana Stehnova, Milos Vognic, Ilja Prachar, Eduard Kohout, Jiri Menzel
Lost a lot of points in the final 1/3 because it declined into a metaphorical trope in which the characters-- which, until then, had been living, breathing characters-- became cardboard cutouts forced to deliver the familiar message: workers generate of the world unite! It begins promisingly, with Carl, a male model, and Yaya, a social influencer, arguing over who pays for dinner at a fancy restaurant. She makes more money than him but, she finally admits after a long discussion, she wanted the man to pay. They end up on a very expensive cruise, on a yacht, with a number of other exclusive guests. The food and the service are lavish, detailed, and meticulous. When a crew member takes off his shirt in the hot sun, Carl complains, and, to his surprise, he is fired and taken off the boat. He watches his friends commiserate with him and possibly feels a twang of guilt. Alicia, urged by her manager to do everything possible to please the affluent guests, is asked by a guest to switch roles, and sit in the hot tub, and allow the guest to serve her. She doesn't know what to do. She is adorably perplexed. The boat hits rough seas. Passengers become ill. In a scene reminiscent of "The Meaning of Life", gallons of vomit spew over the beautiful deck. The captain, drunk, argues with a Russian oligarch about capitalism, and then goes on a tirade over the ships' pa system while the crew frantically tries to suppress him. The boat sinks. They end up on an island, and here the story is more than just a little familiar: it's a less successful version of "Swept Away", Lina Wertmuller's classic on the same subject, with the same basic dynamic. Isolated from society, power reverts to the worker, the one who can catch fish. An even earlier version of this story is J. M. Barrie's Admirable Crichton". We are baffled at the caricature of helplessness forced on the male characters. Only the "toilet mistress" has a clue about obtaining food (she catches fish with her bare hands) or making a fire. Our arms are twisted to try to make us believe that the men have no useful function here, a feminist twist that even Wertmuller resisted. Nobody takes a survey of the island until Yaya decides to later, and none of the men, not even Carl, offer to join her. We don't even see Abigail make the fire. What director/writer Ostlund misses is the aspect of brute force. Abigail's power derives from the fish she catches which the other passengers leave in her control in spite of the fact that they could easily force her to turn it over, and to continue catching fish for them. They could also easily have demanded control of the intact life-boat. It's a gaping hole in the premise that is not easily disregarded.
Thobias Thorwid, Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Vicki Berlin, Dolly De Leon, Alicia Eriksson, Zlatko Buric, Sunnyi Melles, Carolina Gynning, Arvin Kananian, Oliver Ford Davies, Amanda Walker
Serviceable but not very compelling documentary about a German couple, Katia and Maurice Krafft, who loved volcanoes. I mean, just LOVED them. They travelled the world researching and exploring various volcanoes, wrote books and made films and photographs, and died, perhaps as they wished, in a massive explosion at Mt. Unzen, Japan, June 3, 1991. The Kraffts rhapsodize about the beauty of volcanoes especially in contrast with a corrupt and frustrating world
Katia Krafft, Maurice Krafft, Miranda July
Ever since James Cameron discovered that a man with exceptional technical skills could get away with writing the story and dialogue too and nobody would notice, we see more and more directors under the delusion. Add Sarah Polley to the list. "Women Talking" is decently directed and the actors try their best but the dialogue and narrative is disembodied. They all sound like a group of social workers attending a feminist workshop in Toronto. There is even a token transgender Mennonite to hit one more progressive button. Nobody sounds like an illiterate Mennonite living in Mexico in a very closed, insular community who is suddenly considering packing up and moving away. Seriously? And nobody ever asked any man to do anything? Not even "pass the salt"? Is it possible that every relationship in this community was like that? There is a token male in the proceedings: August, who is asked to take minutes because not one of the women can read or write. He is presented as an ideal and but he is passive and weak and pliant and really preposterously attractive to Ona. When I was that age, he was exactly the kind of man who would harbour some bitterness because women, no matter how liberated or progressive, were never attracted to that kind of male. Sure, maybe in this case. But by that rationale, every movie is a masterpiece. Polley simply hasn't convinced us. The setup is sketchy. It is loosely based on a real incident in Bolivia. Some of women of the colony reported mysterious happenings at night and would wake up with underwear missing and blood or sperm on their sheets. It took some time but eventually a man was caught. He "confessed" (there is a legitimate question about just how voluntary it was-- it was in the hands of the men of the community who held him for a time) and implicated eight others. The community claims he and the other men used some kind of gas derived from plants indigenous to Bolivia to anesthetize their victims, and purportedly induce amnesia. They were turned over to the police and convicted. All of them now deny the charges. In this retelling, all of the men have gone to town to raise money to bail out the miscreants. The women meet to discuss three options: stay and fight, leave, stay. But the options never seem real to anybody. Leave and go where? Nobody discusses what happens the next day if they leave. Stay and fight? In what sense? Demand equality? I just can't imagine the women of this community envisioning "equality" as defined by the discussion Polley has written. Much of the dialogue seems fragmentary, isolated for it's effect, but not developed into any kind of real conversation. The women seem broken into types, but even then, they seem to change types as the discussion proceeds. One discerns that the women have become mouthpieces for a host of women's grievances towards men, including that they don't do enough housework. In this imaginary bubble, all of the farm work is done by elves while the men are off drinking or smoking or plotting rape. When Salome rages about how she would murder a man to protect her children, you almost want to buy that no woman ever wanted to harm any child ever-- only men do that. It's turned into a sexist rant and it is truly offensive. And that is when the film becomes a feminist screed which Polley tries to cover with the token "decent" man, August, whose personality is so banal he can't even respond when the women tell him to shut-up just because he asked to clarify what he should write. My biggest disappointment is one feminists should sympathize with (but won't: this film is a tract for feminists): there was a hell of story in the real events and a fascinating situation, neither of which are told in this film.
Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, Judith Ivey, Emily Mitchell, Kate Hallet, Liv McNeil, Sheila McCarthy, MIchelle McLeod, Shayla Brown, Ben Whishaw, August Winter
Based on a true story. Leslie is an alcoholic and we are plunged right into the detritus of her broken life, the severed relationships, and the bitterness of former friends and family. Leslie is famous in her town for winning a huge lottery and then squandering all the money in a flash on parties and drink. She has become an alcoholic and has now reached bottom and returns to her home town to look for some place to crash while scratching for her next hit. She visits her son but he's on to her and when she sneaks drink into his apartment, he kicks her out. She tries a friend, Nancy, but she and her current partner, Dutch, have just as little tolerance for her, and are bitter about previous incidents. She ends up at hotel that seems as worn out and exhausted as her, and the compassionate manager hires her as a maid while trying to encourage her to straighten out. She keeps testing his patience with drink and lateness and he keeps giving her second chances. No answers come easy or smoothly here, and nothing is soft-pedalled until, perhaps, the end that injects a bit of constrained optimism into the proceedings. Remarkably well-acted and directed and written. She will be nominated (she is) for best actress but likely will lose to Cate Blanchett for "Tar".
Andrea Riseborough, Allison Janney, Stephen Root, Marc Maron, Owen Teague
Based on book by Jodi Kantor. This is not an aesthetic experience. It's a schematic of a series of transitional points in the development of the story of Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuse of women at Miramax Films, and the pernicious complicity of the company's lawyers. But not-- be it noted-- in this film-- the firm's other employees or associates, except for Lisa Bloom. As such, it reads like a text book on good, ethical, tasteful journalism and the echoes-- we are given no direct dramatizations-- of the abuse, in the lives of the victims. It's not bad. One is intrigued by the issue of where the ethics lie when a woman accepts money to remain silent when she knows other women will be victims, but the film doesn't run roughshod over those issues. It sidesteps them to some extent, but not completely. As such, it's a serviceable movie on the issue but it's not powerful or compelling.
Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Lola Petticrew, Katherine Laheen, Emma O'Conner, Patricia Clarkson, Kelly McQuail, Ashley Judd, Peter Friedman, Angela Yeoh, Peter Friedman
Yes, that's 288 minutes, of short cuts of badly filmed, out of focus, over and under exposed, jittery camera work, captured by Mekas (and friends and family) on a Bolex camera over a period of 30 years. Home movies, basically, with sections of narration, poetry, music, and other sounds, strung together in no particular order or narrative logic. One's patience is tested but the over-all effect is of a shimmering, fragmentary search through memory-- not really nostalgia-- of the mundane incidents of family life, vacations, recitals, weddings, baptisms, snow, and so on. The thing is, film-clips do not constitute memory, which is malleable and contrived, but random film-clips broken into fragments of disconnected streams of images is not reliable either. It is a 70-year-old man offering glimpses of his family life, his wife and daughters, friends and extended family. The effect is sometimes mesmerizing and sometimes meditative. It is a daring experiment that one is hesitant to judge by normal standards. Is it a good movie? Does it offer an experience? Are the thoughts it evokes really just a product of the viewer's own self-referential processing of the experience of watching the film?
Jonas Mekas, Jane Brakhage, Stan Brakhage, Hollis Frampton, Allen Ginsberg, Oona Mekas
Odd film that appears to be a fable about civil war (it is set on an island off the coast of Ireland). Padraic sets out one day to pick up his good friend Colm to head over to the pub for a drink or two. But Colm doesn't answer the door and Padraic later sees him striding off on his own. Why? Because, Padraic's sister says, maybe he doesn't like you anymore. To our surprise, that is exactly what Colm tells Padraic later. He just doesn't like him anymore. He's tired of him, bored, fed up. He doesn't want to set with him and talk anymore-- it's a waste of his precious time. He has important things to think about. This drives Colm to the point of obsession and leads to violence. Padraic is self-pitying and self-righteous and just can't bear the implied judgment and, at times, insists that Colm can't possibly mean it. Colm is just as extreme: he threatens to cut off his own fingers (not Padraic's) if Padraic continues to pester him. And Padraic just can't stop himself. It is like civil war where every insult, every offense leads to the same vindictive self-pitying self-righteous denunciation. Look what they made me do! At that level it's a powerful movie with loads of insight. Without it, it's more than a little baffling: why should we care about these two stubborn, self-destructive men and their petty squabble? Yet it resonates. You think about fights and arguments you've had yourself and how much of the damage is self-inflicted. Brilliantly acted and filmed and definitely worth a look.
Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Gary Lydon
From the book by Don DeLillo. Disappointing aimless parody of consumerism, catastrophe, dissatisfaction, disaffectation, whatever you want to call it. There is a train crash, and explosion, and evacuation orders. Nothing is predictably linear here-- which is good. But the couple at the centre of this matrix of implacably confused miscreants, Jack and Babette, are more concerned with flatlining important questions while being buffeted by circumstance to actually evince anything important or dramatically compelling. They flee. They come back. They exchange banal questions about each other and themselves. They confess to indiscretions and commit more. They even become violent. All of it suggests that catastrophes can strip away the insulation of consumerist gratification and force people to confront their banal selves without reference to any meaningful idea or principle. It's even hard to say if Driver and Gerwig develop any kind of character to their characters. They seem thrown together, trapped with each other, and not sure they should expect anything beyond their own ridiculousness. The quest for a cure for the toxic cloud that may or may not have infected Jack leads to a dubious confrontation with an Elon Musk type pseudo genius who is complicit in the couples' disintegration. They lash out. Why? It's not clear. The only redeeming moment is the long static shots at the end of consumers shopping and dancing in glee at the cornucopia of goods on the store shelves, as if that's all that really matters to the modern American consumer-- and it's the most right thing in the film, but it's the only moment of revelation.
Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, Lars Eidinger, Sam Gold, Kenneth Lonergan, Meggie Loughran
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