Is this a joke? Martin Scorcese, Quentin Tarantino, and Edgar Wright claim they are fans of this movie, according to IMDB. Gary Larson apologized for a cartoon of a video store in hell in which every tape was "Ishtar". And thus another one of those details that make "Ishtar" interesting in its irresolute awfulness. Don't believe the revisionists: this is easily the worst major movie of its era, perhaps of all time. Apparently, Hoffman only signed on because he was grateful for Elaine May's rewrites of his "hit" "Tootsie", a film of a certain type that Hollywood mistakes for fun and entertaining. Hoffman and Beatty, who were both 50, playing roles that were obviously far more suited to twenty-somethings, play Chuck Clarke and Lyle Rogers, a pair of unmitigatedly bad singer-songwriters, who imagine themselves as the new Simon & Garfunkel, who end up headed to Morocco (a nod to the Hope road movies) to play a gig and get side-tracked into a ridiculously unfunny subplot involving the Emir of Ishtar and a CIA plot to forestall a revolutionary uprising against him. The hair-thin plot is an excuse for almost two hours of awful, self-indulgent, self-unaware mugging by Beatty and Hoffman who, miraculously, imagine themselves to be incredibly amusing. Stunning 30-year-old Isabelle Adjani (Beatty's girlfriend at the time) plays one of the revolutionaries, which is like having caviar with your Big Mac. What the hell? Why on earth did she sign onto this? Oh yeah... Almost every sequence is poorly imagined, poorly constructed, and poorly executed. Two helicopters, for example, attack our "heroes" in the desert. I kept trying to think of some aspect of this scene that could be changed to make it amusing and failed. They shoot at Lyle and Chuck; Lyle and Chuck shoot back. Shirra arrives. They fire some rockets. The helicopters retreat. They trade the secret map for CIA promotion of a live album of their performance in Morocco which is not remotely close to anything that could be called parody. (See "A Mighty Wind" or "Spinal Tap" for how it could be done). It appears that one avenue of humor, their emulation of Simon & Garfunkel, was not available to them and I'm guessing that Simon wouldn't give permission for his songs to be used. Instead, they have utter dreck from Paul Williams (with May writing at least some of the lyrics). There were three editing teams working on the final cut: Beatty's, May's, and Hoffman's. The studio finally agreed to fire May but then Beatty lobbied for her to stay because he didn't want to be seen as having a woman director fired on his watch. This film is a repulsive, tedious, bore.
Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin, Jack Weston, Tess Harper, Carol Kane, Aharon Ipale
Two Supreme Court justices are assassinated within a short period of time, creating two openings for President Nobody (not named, and not specifically identified with either political party) to fill. Presumably with conservatives who are unfriendly to environmental issues. A law student, Darby Shaw (can you spell 'spunky'?) uncovers some information that hints that they were killed to prevent environmental activists from slowing or stopping resource development in an ecologically sensitive area off the Louisiana Coast. Hence the name: an endangered species of pelican lives there. One could probably deduce the "revelation" with some common sense. But this is an above average thriller, trying diligently to be credible, and succeeding to some extent. Is it just believable enough to hang in there to the end? Probably. Grisham specifically wanted Julia Roberts for the part of Darby but, in his book, Darby and hunky reporter Gray Grantham (Denzel Washington) have an affair. Washington, however, pulled a Cosby and wanted it out of the film, so it went out. He was afraid, apparently, that black women, in particular, would not approve.
Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sam Shepard, John Heard, Tony Goldwyn, James Sikking, William Atherton, Robert Culp, Stanley Tucci, Hume Cronym, John Lithgow, Anthony Heald
Ani is a stripper at "Headquarters", a strip club in New York. One night, a young Russian named Ivan asks if there is a stripper who can speak Russian (he speaks English but not very well) and she is steered to him by the manager. Ivan really likes her and invites her to come to his house after hours, which she does. She discovers he is incredibly wealth-- well, his father is-- and the house is astoundingly lavish. They hang out, go to clubs, party, travel to Vegas, and he suggests they get married. Ani embraces the idea but we're never quite sure if she wants his money or his charming, impulsive, adolescent personality. But a man named Toro, an Armenian priest, is supposed to be protecting Ivan from doing anything too stupid and when he finds out he married a stripper, he blows his stack and sets out to undo the marriage, with the help of two rather incompetent henchmen, Garnick and Igor. The scenes in which the henchmen try to subdue Ani are among the best in the film-- absolutely riveting, captivating, absurd, and hysterically funny. Ani screams and kicks and bites and the two men are at a loss. They don't want to hurt her, but she won't calm down or cooperate. Ivan's parents are summoned and confronts Ani who is beginning to realize she has a losing hand. Frenetic and absorbing, dark, erotic, and provocative. Among the best movies of 2024, which doesn't mean it will be the most well-liked movie of 2024. Mikey Madison seems a shoe-in for best actress, but Mark Eydelshteyn as the idiot Ivan is brilliant at times, and the supporting cast is exceptional. Shot with subdued hand-held camera at times, without the annoying quick-cuts favored by many Hollywood directors lately. "Anora" is a kind of dissection of the lassitude and corruption of the super-rich and their children and their crowds. What does Ani realize in the end? Perhaps not that money can't buy love so much as that bought love is not as good as respect.
Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Paul Weissman, Lindsey Normington, Emily Welder, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Yura Borisov, Darya Ekamasova, Aleksey Serebryakov, Anton Bitter
Odd confection, based on a true story, about a woman, Susette Kelo, fighting to keep her house when a local New London entity- created to facilitate the acquisition of properties for an expansion of a Pfizer facility- tries to buy her home and, when that fails, uses the power of eminent domain to seize it. The argument is rigged: Susette and her compatriots are shown as hard-working, wholesome, pleasant people, while Charlotte Wells (in charge of the acquisitions) and her colleagues are shown as callow and condescending and mean. We are supposed to be moved, I suppose, when Susette breaks into tears at the demolition of a neighbor's house. We're supposed to believe she is attractive in some way when a local antiques dealer comes calling. The case goes to court where she loses and then the Supreme Court where it becomes a national controversy, and where she loses again, 5-4, with the liberal judges voting against her (!). Why? Because the issue is not what it seems here, thought this instance was badly corrupted by the sweetheart deal given to Pfizer (big tax abatements and subsidies from the state). --< First of all, Kelo was offered generous compensation for her home by the New London Development Corporation. She was not about to be impoverished by the transaction. Secondly, the idea of expropriating some homes for the sake of a larger good: a development that encourages investment and tourism-- is not all that bad. The development promised over 1,000 good jobs. <-- This movie is not going to introduce to you to any of those job- seekers. 'Little Pink House' does a disservice to the issue in this respect. In respect of art, Keener as Kelo is abrasive and whiney and charmless. Perhaps Keener was admirably trying to deglamorize the character. The movie also doesn't do a great job of explaining the issue of 'public use' vs. 'public purpose' which was the center of the legal issue, the ruling on which provoked most states to pass new laws to prevent this type of property seizure from happening again (in which an organization uses eminent domain to seize a property from a private citizen and then give it to another private citizen, or company in this case). It was the four conservatives on the Supreme Court, incidentally, who ruled in favor of Kelo: O'Conner, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas.
Catherine Keener, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Callum Keith Rennie, Colin Cunningham, Giacomo Baessato, Jerry Wasserman, Aaron Douglas, Garry Chalk
There are a few touching moments, and a few sequences that seem inspired, and then a lot of drek-- actors who appear to be improvising lines, Alex Wolff's incredibly awful singing (how is it possible he sings worse than the limited Cohen himself), Thea Naess's sophomoric reading of Marianne, and the jerky hand-held camera work. One must retreat to something like "not all bad". We see Cohen discover Hydra, an incredibly cheap place to live in the early 1960's, and meeting Marianne in the middle of a terrible marriage to writer Axel Jensen. The series actually follows Marianne as much or more than Cohen, driving down from Norway to Greece in a VW Beetle, having her appendix out in Romania, discovering that Axel is a womanizer and would rather spend evenings at the local pub than with her, and so on. Cohen steps in as a rather decent person to her, and a good babysitter. But he brings her to Montreal and she doesn't take. She returns to Oslo, and then to Hydra, where he joins her, then he doesn't, and she is left emotionally isolated and bereft while beats out his frustrations in Montreal and New York. We meet Judy Collins and Lou Reed and Warhol makes an appearance. Even Janis Joplin obliges with her famous elevator ride. But some scenes are so bad, one thinks they are intentional. And while Alex Wolff can play guitar, which is nice, his singing is a parody: are they intentionally signaling Cohen's limitations in exaggeration? Even when he is shown recording in the studio for Albert Hammond, his phrasing is off and his pitch is awful. If there is any value in this debacle, its in the evocation of the period, the beatnik era on Hydra, the lost artists, singers, and writers who sought a bohemian lifestyle but ended up in broken marriages and addictions. The series doesn't allude to the abandonment of Axel by his mother and Cohen when he was shipped off to a boarding school at seven. (He later had a disastrous LSD experience with his father and was institutionalized for years in Norway.) Nor is it flattering to Marianne, except for her beauty, which Thea Sofie Loch Naess exceeds. She comes off as a bit of a naive, self-centered, teenager, and didn't bring out the picture of grace and charm we might expect. It should be noted that Charmian Clift did not commit suicide until July 1969, stretching the timeline substantially. Irving Layton as portrayed by Stormare, is a bust: he was far more self-serving and bombastic than shown here, basically to encourage Lenny.
Alex Wolff, Thea Sofie Loch Naess, Anna Torv, Peter Stormare, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Noah Taylor, Simon Loof, Macha Grenon, Sophie Simnett
At times the series became so much like soap opera that it caused me to seriously re-examine my high esteem for the original novels by Ferrante. Follows the lives of two young women, Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo, from grade school to married life, in a small community in Naples that is corrupted by gangs and rotting cultural traditions. Elena somehow manages to overcome enough obstacles to continue school and become a writer, but Lila is hamstrung by her family and by the local culture that she is unable to realize her potential-- until she does, in business, so murkily described I can't elicit the details. They have affairs, marry, have children, and experience the crushing disappointments of being insufficiently appreciated by the people around them. Elena in particular becomes rather self-pitying, while Lila lashes out, even at her best friend. The drama is seriously undermined by having Elena constantly return to associate with people, including Lila, who behave monstrously to her. Lila even seduces the man Elena has the most pure affection for-- just to spite her, out of jealousy of her success and her achievements. The strengths of the series, the recreation of urban life in the 1940's and 50's and beyond, and the fascinating glimpses of real feminist issues, become over- shadowed by the sometimes weird filming strategies: long, lingering close-ups of faces at times demanding exposition instead, repetitious narrative arcs, and illogical plot twists. It became annoying and I began to look forward to just finishing it and getting it over with. Is it true that most "feminist" fiction is really just another genre in which women mostly write about themselves and how they can't understand why the wider world just doesn't give them enough love and appreciation, let alone respect? The one strength of this series that survives is the cynicism about every character (perhaps Enzo is the only really likeable one). The characters are mostly appallingly awful people and the longer it goes on the less fun it is to watch them.
Elisabetter De Palo, Irene Maiorino, Fabrizio Gifuni, Alba Rohrwacher, Daria Deflorian, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Ludovica Rita Di Miglio, Alessio Galati, Pio Stellaccio
Percy Becker's parents are very concerned: he is about to go to Princeton University but he seems to have no friends, no social life, and no sexual experiences. On Craig's List, they offer a Buick to any woman who can bring him out of his shell. They are aren't shy about the point: yes, this includes sex. This is Hollywood so, convenient to the plot, Maddie has just had her car towed away and is about to lose her house because of overdue payments of taxes. Losing the car is a real blow: she makes extra money as an Uber driver. She takes the job and hilarity allegedly ensues. Actually, what we get are lot of sophomoric jokes and situations, and Jennifer Lawrence mugging and hamming it up, even wrestling some people naked (after skinny dipping in the ocean). And of course we get the inevitable Hollywood tripe of sincere feelings emerging -- after an obligatory misunderstanding. Lawrence's face, by the way, seems weirdly tight, as if she had some surgery there. She is much older than Percy, which generated some faux controversy (it is very rarely unusual for the male to be that much older than the female in this kind of romance). Dialogue is banal, action is banal, filming is banal. The only mild spark comes from the snappy dialogue between Maddie and Percy, at least, when they aren't making vulgar double entendres.
Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Matthew Broderick, Natalie Morales, Scott MacArthur, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Kyle Mooney
From book by Robert Harris. The keystone of this film is a speech by Cardinal Lawrence about it being essential for the next pope to believe in uncertainty, and how certainty itself is a vice, a danger to the community and the church. Cardinal Lawrence is the Dean of the conclave, akin to Speaker of the House. When the Pope dies, it is his job to muster the Cardinals to Rome and manage the sequestered conclave as they vote on various nominees to be the new pope. The front-runners are Cardinal Tedesco, a rabid conservative who wants to role the church back to before Vatican II, Cardinal Adeyemi, a black African Cardinal who is generally progressive but not on homosexuality, and Cardinal Trembley, a possibly corrupt moderate. The liberal ranks are represented by Cardinal Bellini who wants the church to welcome diversity and inclusion. A wildcard emerges as Cardinal Benitez, the Cardinal of Kabul, about whom little is known. Lawrence himself also receives some votes though he claims to have no interest in the job, though Bellini eventually persuades him to admit that he has imagined what name he would choose (John) if nominated. There is some conniving going on, secrets that are revealed in convincing, compelling fashion, and wonderful music and cinematography-- how did they recreate the Sistine Chapel?-- and excellent crowd scenes of the Cardinals in their robes marching around the Vatican on their way to meetings and dinners-- served by nuns, of course. Some reviewers clearly thought Tedesco's positions were caricature: they were not. And the film wisely avoids excessive probing into the attitudes of the college-- they are a bit of mystery in real life too. A lavish film with one or two dubious twists at the end but it is a measure of the quality of the rest of the production that I was willing to forgive them.
Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Lucian Msamati, Jacek Koman, Bruno Novelli, Isabella Rossellini, Sergio Castellitto, Carlos Diehz
Is Trump really upset about his portrait in this rather anodyne take on his early career as a Real Estate Moguls in New York? Why? "The Apprentice" is so benign that it might well have been authorized by Trump. Sure, it acknowledges some of the rascally elements of his career, but always in a likeable roguish perspective. We see Trump struggling to keep the family business afloat in the face of the Justice Department cracking down on their discriminatory practices. Then Donald meets Roy Cohn who encourages him to double-down, always attack, deny, deny, and claim victory even in defeat. Cohn becomes a mentor to Trump as, in this take, he goes from a well-meaning dolt to a cynical, hard-driving entrepreneur. "The Apprentice" acknowledges his misjudgments and personal cruelty without really grasping him. It actually becomes quite boring and flat after a while, particularly in his pursuit of Ivana, his venal and acquisitive first wife, and his betrayal of Roy Cohn-- the film asks us to be sympathetic to Cohn (who acquires AIDS while denying his gay) after witnessing just how ruthless and cynical he is. A film that is not really worthy of its subject.
Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Catherine McNally, Charlie Carrick, Ben Sullivan, Mark Rendall, Bruce Beaton, Valerie O'Connor
Brilliant play about Arthur Miller's directorial debut in Beijing of his own masterpiece, "Death of a Salesman". The actors deal with their own goblins of the cultural revolution while Miller struggles to resolve the cultural divide, and the to find ways to connect Chinese audiences who have never heard of such a thing to a play about a traveling salesman.
Adrian Pang, Tom McCamus
Another of Kaurismaki's odd, linear, deadpan, off-beat comedies, about a shoe-shine man, Marcel Marx, in Le Havre who sees a boy on the run from immigration authorities (the police) and decides to help him get to England where his mother lives. Meanwhile, his wife has incurable cancer which the doctors lie about to Marcel. Kaurismaki makes a virtue of the shabby, the colorless, the drab environs of Le Havre, and the ragged people who occupy it, including shop-keepers and bar customers, who all seem very congenial in this world, helpful, and loyal (except for neighbor who sees the boy and reports Marcel to the police). Marcel has friends also in the harbor who are willing to bring the boy out to sea to meet up with English smugglers who require 3,000 Euros to carry out their side of the deal. So Marcel calls on friends to put on an amazing benefit concert, which requires him to reconcile two lovers have had a squabble. There is Laika the loyal dog who also provides crucial help at times, and a small twist at the end that echoes "Casablanca". A charming, shamelessly liberal film, with compassion for its characters.
Andre Wilms, Blondin Miguel, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Kati Outinen, Kati Outinen, Kati Outinen, Evelyne Didi, Elina Salo, Dung Quoc Nguyen, Laika Laika, Bob Little, Pierre Etaix, Jean-Pierre Leaud
From the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Timely story (at the time) about the first woman nominated to the Supreme Court, not surprisingly, a conservative. Walter Matthau plays Dan Snow, an incorrigible liberal inspired by William O. Douglas-- "liberal" for the time-- who is discombobulated by the appearance of conservative Ruth Loomis (Jill Clayburgh) as the latest justice. They immediately butt heads over a pornography issue (Snow refuses to even watch it because, in principle, he opposes any censorship), and the case of a powerful corporation suppressing patents because they threaten the automobile industry. Snow keeps referring to a perpetual motion engine that nobody today would believe exists. No Democrats or Republicans were harmed in the making of this film-- they are never referred to, as the film-makers follow the "lowest common denominator" principle. Still, it's by real writers and it has some good moments of dialogue and an interesting trajectory that, unfortunately, never seems to reach a peak or a resolution. The ending is rather sanguine. There is an implicit argument that the court is best served by the representation of opposing viewpoints. Not very notable in any respect.
Walter Matthau, Jill Clayburgh, Barnard Hughes, James Stephens, Jan Sterling, Joshua Bryant, Wiley Harker, F. J. O'Neil, Wiley Harker, Charles Lampkin
Amazing, quirky, funny story about a man who is travelling to Helsinki and is set upon and beaten by three hoods causing him to lose his memory. He is helped by various denizens of the a warehouse yard, including a guard, who finds him a shipping container for a home (after its last resident died) and lets him have his "killer" dog for company. A Salvation Army group provides a meal or two as a band plays-- he persuades them to broaden their musical influences, and begins seeing one of the volunteer women. He goes to a bank to try to set up an account and gets caught in the middle of a robbery. The police arrest him on suspicion of being uncooperative because he won't give them his name. His net effect on most people seems to be affirming and healing. Conversations are so obtuse and weird that one suspects they are intentionally funny, or just part of a culture we don't understand. Everyone is very dry, very sardonic, but Kaurismaki has hit on a winning formula here that was very enjoyable.
Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Annikki Tahti, Juhani Niemela, Kaija Pakarinen, Sakari Kuosmanen, Outi Maenpaa, Esko Nikkari, Matti Wuori
Well, at least there was a writer, and it shows. David and Diana Murphy (an architect and real estate salesman) own a nice piece of land on the coast but can't afford to keep up the payments on the house they are building there or the land, when the recession hits. They go to Vegas with their last $5,000 and hope to gamble their way to $50,000. One wonders just how dumb these people are. I mean, it's possible, but both of them are educated enough to at least acknowledge they might just lose it all. Which they do. But Diana catches the eye of billionaire John Gage, (Redford playing someone who probably should have been a lot younger than 57-year-old Redford). He courts them, flirts with Diana, then offers them one million dollars to let him sleep with Diana for one night. Up to this point, the movie handles a challenging plot fairly well. The discussion between David and Diana is reasonably believable. But we know that Redford insisted that John Gage must be likeable if he is going to play him, and the film slides downhill from there, and from the point at which David changes his mind and desperately chases Gage's helicopter leaving with Gage and Diana for Gage's yacht. Then we have to believe that neither both Diana and David, after some tension over the night, willingly forgo the money, out of principle. Seriously-- now, they suddenly have principles. The loves scenes between David and Diana are pretty raw and convincing, and the actors aside from Redford are pretty good, but the film's contrivances overtake any interesting drama here.
Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Robert Redford, Oliver Platt, Seymour Cassel, Billy Connolly, Rip Taylor
Controversial monumental mishmash by Francis Ford Coppola who repeats the cardinal mistake of James Cameron: I can write this shit. No you can't. Ostensibly about an architect, Cesar Catilina, (without any discernible insights into architecture, unless you call the weird, ugly constructions in CGI "architecture) in conflict with a mayor and gangs of fascists over his vision of a future city that is something but we're not sure what. Coppola fails to convince us that there is something beautiful or wonderful or even desirable at stake here. He just piles on striking images and sequences alluding to Greek and Roman myths, Shakespeare, and Donald Trump. A third party is mega- millionaire Hamilton Crassus, who marries Wow Platinum, a celebrity journalist, and who might just finance Catilina's vision. Meanwhile, Clodio, a Trump-like character, is looking to pull a coup. Coppola gives considerable screen time to the love affair between the Mayor's daughter, Julia, and Catilina, but it fizzles. She is apparently inspired by her vision of his ability to stop time. The stopping time thing is supposed to resonate in some way but it doesn't. Coppola also had the actors improvise a lot of the time and you notice the odd clunker of a line coming out of their mouths. There is a sequence of a video of the vestal virgin having sex with Catilina and everybody reacts like its 1950-- no one assumes it is fake? It is supposed to ruin the careers of Catilina and Vesta Sweetwater but Julie quickly finds a birth certificate proving Vesta was 23, not 16, and that the video was fake-- but really? Terrible plotting. Or that it doesn't really matter? There's a narcissistic element here: the artist (Catilina) like Coppola, suffers the outrageous slings and arrows of critics and ungenerous financiers.
Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace Vanderwal
Andrew Steele was a former head writer for Saturday Night Live, and Will Ferrell, of course, one of it's stars. They were also close friends. But Andrew harbored a deep dark secret: he was a woman. After he decided to transition, Ferrell proposed a cross-country road trip (something Steele had done several times before) to visit places he was familiar with and... well, in spite of all his assertions to the contrary, this documentary inadvertently exposes the truth about Steele: he doesn't want to become a woman. He wants to confront people with his act of transition and defy them to disapprove so he can shed tears about non-acceptance, and Will Ferrell can shed tears about acceptance. At no point does Steele really attempt to be what he claims to be: a woman. He doesn't identify himself as a woman. He doesn't really seek acceptance as a woman. He and Ferrell tell everyone he is a man transitioning and because he has suffered so long as a woman in a man's body he must now be praised and adored because he had the "courage" to wear a dress and look awful with long stringy hair. At a Texas bar they get the desired result: hateful texts, twitter, and emails, giving him an excuse to be a martyr. He is surprisingly accepted in a bar at Oklahoma-- but where's the fun in that? And it is clear that the enthusiasm of many of the people they meet is the result of meeting Will Ferrell, not the transgender Steele. Steele is not an anomaly: many transgender persons seek attention or coyly pretend to keep it secret only to let it slip. And a "woman" would feel free to wear slacks or cut her hair short. Steele claims he was depressed and suicidal at times as a man, but we don't really know if his obsession with transitioning to a woman is the cause or result. It is entertaining, occasionally fun, and always a more than a little pointless.
Will Ferrell, Andrew Steele, Kristen Wiig, Will Forte, Molly Shannon
Blatant rip-off of "Blair Witch Project" but far less clever or interesting. An erstwhile film-maker, Gavin York, happens to find a box of tapes labelled "don't watch" in his mother-in-law's house, hidden away in the basement. He plays them all and discovers that another documentary film-maker, Feldman, was doing a film on a local urban legend about a "peeping tom" (one begins to wish is was a more traditional peeping tom) who appears if you stare into a railroad tunnel long enough. Each time you blink, he gets closer. Feld discovers that his video camera can substitute for a human eye: the peeping tom begins to appear whenever he starts filming, and each time, he gets closer. Gavin hires a film crew to make a documentary about him finding the documentary, but more and more people involved grow skeptical about the authenticity of the found footage. This is supposed to be an interesting twist: it's not. In the end, there is murder. There is also an appearance by Eduardo Sanchez, the director of the "Blair Witch Project", who also agreed to produce the film after he was given the concept. Why soil your reputation? The essential fault in the film is summed up by the scene where they first see the peeping tom man in the video, and no one seem to draw the obvious conclusion that it's fake, or an anomaly, or an actor, or whatever. Everyone immediately accepts that they finally got it, proof that the peeping tom man actually exists. There is a dumb comment about the mini-dv tape's meta data showing that it wasn't fake. What? Tiresome and boring. Why bother with this film when you can see the original?
Rachel Armiger, Reed DeLisle, Matt Lake, Eve Young, June Kelsey Swann, Seth Adam Kallick, Eileen del Valle
Mighty impressive but flawed series based on the brilliant novels by Italian writer, Elena Ferrante, about her childhood and youth in Naples. Unusual style which takes back some of what it offers in stilted, somewhat static sequences and frequent staring contests. What is most refreshing about it is the un-Hollywood way in which feminist issues are handled-- instead of wallowing in victimization, Ferrante asks, essentially, why don't you just tell him to fuck off? When, for example, Elena gets off a bus after being groped, she yells at the men and storms off. The story follows two girls, Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo, who are both very smart. They both want to continue school but only Elena is able to do it thanks to the intervention of a teacher and reluctant support of her family, especially her father. Lila secretly studies anyway and acquires some guerrilla knowledge, but Elena becomes more broadly educated, receiving accolades where-ever she goes, and eventually even publishing a book. Lila, meanwhile, is trapped among the feuding families of Naples, including a criminal family, and marries, and has a child, and affairs, and regularly pops up seemingly to taunt Elena about her pretentiousness. There is a MAGA dynamic here. In Elena's newfound world of education, affluent friends (a boyfriends mother actually sees to it that her book is published), she is a star, a brilliant scholar. In Lila's world, she is bullshit, a member of the establishment that thumbs there noses as people like Lila. In a scintillating sequence, Elena takes Lila to a party of her people, and one can almost hear Lila's sprawling humiliation at her inability to take part in an intellectual conversation, and her burning resentment. Afterwards, she insults Elena so viciously that one is almost astonished that their relationship can even continue. There is indeed a bit of soap opera here, but the issues raised are so raw and so central to our cultural history, that the series vibrates with life and relevance.
, Margherita Mazzucco, Giovanni Amura, Gaia Girace, Francesco Serpico, Luca Gallone, Annarita Vitolo, Alessio Gallo, Antonio Buonanno, Ulrike Migliaresi, Bruno Orlando, Matteo Checchi
Lesser Ozu. A rather dysfunctional family in portrait. Kikuko is married to Shuichi and lives with him in his father's house. Shuichi is cheating on her with several women, one of whom is forced to get an abortion. Kikuko only gets along well with her father-in-law, Shingo, for whom she provides devoted service, cooking, repairing his clothes, etc., though his wife is present. There is a daughter, Fusako, whose husband is also cheating on her. The family struggles to find some kind of comfortable place with each other, unsuccessfully. Shuichi shows no signs of giving up his womanizing, and Fusako's husband might be involved in crooked business deals, helped with money Shingo provides to Fusako. The only healthy relationship is the one between Shingo and Kikuko, and, in the cultural environment of this story, not much is going to be expressed there. They take walks, and talk and give everyone baleful looks. Even in the penultimate moment, nobody hugs or embraces or shouts or lashes out. All is restrained and repressed and, truthfully, a bit boring. To me, the story suggests that society works against the most natural and valuable relationships: custom and tradition suffocate real emotions.
Setsuko Hara, So Yamamura, Ken Uehara, Yoko Sugi, Teruko Nagaoka, Yatsuko Tanami, Rieko Sumi, Chieko Nakakita
Not THAT Bill Waterson. Obviously. Lame fantasy involving a cardboard maze. And that's about it. Not particularly engaging or imaginative, really. Dave builds a maze in his apartment while his girl is out of town. But he can't escape it. She comes in looking for him along with his friends, including a film crew, and they are also trapped. Apparently the maze can kill people: at least two of his friends "die" (meaning paper blood is splashed around and they disappear). But the film doesn't even have its own inner logic. There's no particular reason for them to go here or there or to move at all, or anything. Even the slightly fresh idea of using cardboard (even when they turn into puppets) is only slightly fun.
Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Nick Thune, Adam Busch, James Urbaniak, Frank Caeti, Scott Narver, Stephanie Allynne, Kirsten Vangsness
A Danish family, Bjorn, Louise, and daughter Agnes, are on vacation in a lovely resort in Italy, and meet a Dutch family, Patrick, Karin, and son Abel, who has trouble talking due to a birth defect: he has no tongue. They get along well and the Dutch family invite the Danish family to their farm house in rural Holland for a stay. They accept the invitation but, from the moment they arrive, things are a little off. We are clued into the incipient horror with a bombastic and sinister music score that seems completely out of tune with the visuals: a car driving through a pastoral setting. Mostly, their sense of polite deference is constantly challenged, from when Agnes is forced to share a room with Abel, to Patrick entering the bathroom for a piss while Louise is in the shower. Patrick and Karin repeatedly offer Louise food with meat though she has told them she is a vegetarian. They play music really loud in the car. They stick them with the bill for an expensive meal at a local restaurant (consisting of boerenkool stamppot, of all things). Bjorn and Louise finally decide to leave in the middle of the night but, in an ridiculous turn of events, are forced to return for Agnes' stuffed rabbit, Nina. At this point, the story becomes fable, when it is clear that Patrick and Karin are taking advantage of Bjorn's and Louise's politeness to bully them into preposterous situations and an even more horrifying abuse. The story feels rather sadistic and cynical by the time you realize what director and writer Christian Tafdrup is up to.
Morten Burian, Sidsel Siem Koch, Fedja Van Huiet, Karina Smulders, Liva Forsberg, Marius Damslev, Hichem Yacoubi
Seen at Princess Twin. Unusual film about a group of male, mostly black inmates at Sing Sing Prison in New York who form a drama group and stage a major production every six months. The actors (mostly) are former prisoners who participated in the program. Everyone involved was given a relatively equal share in the equity of the film investment. The film follows a new production, a whacky combination of Shakespeare and Egyptian mythology and action heroes and more. The production was written by Paul Raci, probably incorporating a good deal of improvisation and invention by the actors. The theme is one of self-validation in the oppressive soul-sucking environment of a notoriously unpleasant prison. The productions look interesting but we only see very short clips of fragments. We also get no explanation as to how or why several women joined the production. Or who the audience was. Or even where it was rehearsed and produced (one might deduce that it was a local high school). What we do see is a lot of passion and dynamism, and the charisma of Paul Raci, the director, and Colman Domingo, the lead organizer. There is some contrived conflicts that undermines the flow a tad. But it's really quite good, quite affirming of human value even among incarcerated individuals with issues, and the healing power of art.
Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin, Sean San Jose, Paul Raci, DAvid Giraudy, Patrick Griffin, Mosi Eagle, James Williams, Sean Dino Johnson, Brent Buell, Sharon Washington
Ridiculous story about a nerdish boy, Arnie, who buys a car, 1958 Plymouth Fury (thanks for not making it generic!), that seems to have a mind of it's own. In fact, it has supernatural powers of regeneration. He and his friends discover that the car played a mysterious role in the deaths of previous owners. Sure enough, Christine has a malevolent soul. After four hoods break into the garage where it is stored and smash it, Christine regenerates and seeks revenge, running them down, bursting into flames after bursting a gas tank on another car, frying one of the hoods, and eventually going after Arnie's girlfriend, Leigh, and his best friend, Dennis. Should settle once and for all just how deft Stephen King is as a writer-- which is, not at all.
Keith Gordon, Alexandra Paul, John Stockwell, Harry Dean Standton, Harry Dean Stanton, Robert Prosky, Robert Blossom, William Ostrander, Malcolm Danare, Kelly Preston, Robert Darnell, Richard Collier
One assumes, from the title, a delicate, sensitive study of social alienation, a lost boy or girl who connects with nature and established a healing relationship with a boy or a horse or God. One gets a group of "misfits" at a "Cowboy Camp", mocked and ridiculed by the other boys (one is a bed-wetter, one a comedian, one thinks he's General Patton, a pair of siblings-- one clinging to a security pillow, the other insanely jealous of his younger brother) who set out to free a herd of buffalo from a hunting camp. This is intended as an act of redemption, giving them credibility in their own eyes, and standing in the world. There are a few moments of touching drama (as when Goodenow is in a lake-- for unknown reasons-- and is invited to join the misfits by Cotton) but there are many sloppy, contrived scenes that are worse than implausible. They look as if the director had no idea of what to shoot and let the actors improvise, badly. The most interesting thing in the movie are the shots that look dangerous being filmed, as when they are driving a rickety old pick-up truck down the highway, or when Shecker's dad whips through the camp in a Rolls Royce. Bill Mumy contributes a song but the title song is by the Carpenters, and a lot of the incidental music is dreadful. Do not bother. Incidentally, a piece of music called "Cotton's Dream" will be familiar: it later became the theme of "Young and Restless", the soap opera. And it is very hard to rationalize that director Stanley Kramer previously directed "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", "On the Beach", and "Judgement at Nuremberg".
Bill Mumy, Barry Robins, Miles Chapin, Robert Jayson Kramer, Darel Glaser, Marc Vahanian, Jesse White, Ken Swofford, David Ketchum, Elaine Devry
In this bleak, harsh Western, Tommy Lee Jones plays George Briggs, a broken down old coot who is left on a horse with a rope around neck to punish him for allegedly taking some property. But Mary Bee Cuddy needs someone to help her take three broken women east to be cared for by a pastor and his wife in Iowa. And, predictably, Briggs is her man. Less predictably, Mary Bee is looking for a husband and wants desperately to bear children, but the rather rude men (including Briggs) she meets dismiss her as "plain" and "bossy". The journey has all the usual predictable elements and it was never quite believable to me that the three women really were so disturbed they had to be moved east- they tended to behave pretty well throughout most of the film. Arabella kills a man trying to prevent Briggs from taking her back-- and it appears that all concerned have faith in obscurity and no legal actions or other consequences are anticipated. Then he kills some more men. In a scene unworthy of some of the rest of the film, Briggs burns down a hotel in the middle of nowhere when they refuse bed and board for the women for a night. This is the first time the issue of food supply is raised and it seemed very gratuitous. Suddenly, he entourage is so exhausted and hungry that we are supposed to him on when he murders the hotel owner? And it would have taken a viciously malicious man to deny aid in the frontier, and we aren't shown that. Jones is directing himself here, and Swank is co-producer, and it shows, though some genuine effort to be authentic and raw also shows, and the landscapes are gorgeous.
Tommy Lee Jones, Hilary Swank, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, John Lithgow, Caroline Lagerfelt, James Spader, Hailee Steinfeld, Jesse Plemons, Meryl Streep
Very long, very slow-moving odyssey of the journey undertaken by Thien to find his brother after his sister-in-law dies in a motorcycle accident leaving seven-year-old Dao in the custody of his uncle. Thien first delivers the mother's body to her family's town for an elaborate funeral over several days. Then he continues on to seek his brother, while dropping Dao off at an orphanage, coincidentally staffed by a woman he was formerly interested in. There is a long scene with an old man, Mr. Luu, who recounts his personal history of serving in South Vietnamese army during the war. There are numerous very long, static shots, and lot of dreary rain-soaked ruins, decaying buildings, crumbling walls. We obviously at times enter dreams and abruptly exit them. Thien dreams that the woman he was formerly interested in courts him (in the ruins). He dreams he meets his brother's wife, and their newborn son. It's all very quiet and meditative and, actually, boring at times.
Le Phong Vu, Nguyen Thinh, Vu Ngoc Manh, Nguyen Thi Truc Quyn Quynh, Nguyen Van Lu'u, Phi Dieu, Phan Ti My Duyen, Nguyen Han
Hello. What is the problem here? Basically a Dutch "Dallas". Poorly acted, poorly written, and poorly filmed. About a corrupt Dutch real- estate mogul, Huub Couwenberg, whose partner and brother has been ripping him off. When the partner dies under murky circumstances involving Couwenberg's son, and his other son begins an affair with the wife of a state prosecutor, all drama breaks loose! And it seems that everybody is corrupt, including the ones who seem the most outraged at the shenanigans going on with the other characters. I never bought the passion we are supposed to believe between Willem and Iris, nor the ridiculously complicit behavior of Pepijn's superiors at the offices of the prosecutor (Pepijn's wife having an affair with the son of a suspect in a murder investigation doesn't seem disqualifying to them, though they complain about it).
Sylvia Hoeks, Fedja van Huet, Kees Prins, Ramsey Nasr, Buido Pollemans, Rifka Lodeizen, Sigrid ten Napel, Jeffrey Hamilton, Kuno Bakker, Trudy de Jonge, Elisa Beuger
Todd Burpo, played with exquisite blandness by Greg Kinnear, goes a psychologist-- we are supposed to believe-- to seek a natural explanation for why his son, Colton, thinks he was in heaven during surgery for appendicitis (thought he was never, at any point, technically dead). He describes the situation and I thought how wonderful it might have been if the psychologist had nodded and smiled and said, "And?". As in, is there a problem? There isn't, even to an atheist psychologist (a member of the educated elite, one must suppose). She didn't ask one question related to mental health-- just went into the straw-man contrivance. Instead, the psychologist becomes the avatar for doubters everywhere and lists numerous natural explanations for why Colton might have thought he was in heaven. We can't wait for Colton to prove these idiots wrong. He suddenly seems to know about a miscarriage his mom had (nicely playing into the anti- abortion implication) and that his grandfather is in heaven. There's a childish belief at play here, in heaven as a location, in the clouds, with-- I kid you not-- choirs of angels, and angels with fluffy white wings, and Jesus in a robe just like he was probably wearing in ancient Palestine, and looking relatively Anglo Saxon. The film is reassuringly badly directed, badly acted, badly written, and badly filmed. Set in a reassuringly rural community with the largest number of token blacks seen anywhere recently, it appears that some "conflicts" were made up and installed to keep it from being too exceedingly dull, but this leads to the contrivance of a minister and his Christian congregation seeming to want to deny that there is a heaven until Colton proves it to them. But, oh, that might be too much for skeptical audiences, so it ends in kind of a muddle, with no one really reflecting deeply on this astounding revelation. It might have been more fun if Colton had found out that everyone in heaven wears plastic Groucho Marx glasses and moustaches, or travels on scooters, or carries guns around, or if they owned all things in common, or anything, please, interesting. Or how about, as in "The Adding Machine", it's all just a delightful carnival? This story got the rendition it deserves here. This piece of shit actually made over $100 million at the box office. The book sold over ten million copies.
Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Thomas Haden Church, Connor Corum, Lane Styles, Margo Martindale, Nancy Sorel, Mike Mohrhardt
Johanna and Lucas and their five-year-old son, Kai, are cruising the Atlantic, four hours south of the Azores. While occupied with mundane tasks aboard their sailboat, they suddenly notice that Kai has disappeared. At first, they think he is playing a game, hiding in one of the many compartments. Gradually they come to the horrifying realization that he has fallen off the boat. They turn around and begin to search, unsurprisingly, to no avail. Kai is lost. "Sea of Time" takes off from this basic incident (not much else in the movie is based on fact) and explores the impact on the marriage and the lives of the two parents. The film is uneven. I never found the scenes on the boat after Mikel disappeared to be convincing, and the dialogue in particular was pedestrian. But one scene lifted the movie significantly: Johanna suggests to Lucas that they have another child and he is firmly opposed (in real life, she was pregnant at the time they lost Mikel and they had two daughters together before separating). Lucas becomes abrasive, insisting that another child would "break" him. Johanna says a plaintive "I hear you" as her face breaks. She looks, for all the world, like a woman suppressing, as well as she is able, her tears. That face and that moment was mesmerizing. As they continue talking, she glances at Lucas briefly, and then away. As I watched it, I told myself that it was the most convincing breakdown into tears I have ever seen in a film. Forty years go by and Lucas has written a play-- it actually appears to be an opera-- about Mikel, including photos of Mikel projected on a screen behind the actors. Johanna hears about it and arrives to tell Lucas she is angry. They agree to talk about it. So we are asked to believe that for 40 years, Lucas had no idea of where she was. Yet, when she arrives at his fabulous apartment to talk about the play, she almost immediately engages warmly with him about watching videos of Mikel. It is telling that all of this never happened: it plays like it is the concept of an immature imagination rather than a rendering of real events and emotions. One thing that really did happen is that Johanna consulted a "clairvoyant" who assured her that Mikel had merely fulfilled his destiny, and remained at sea, where his energy continued to reach out to her. Arthur simply lost himself in work. But we also learn about a bombshell that does work and pitches an emotional wallop by the end of the film. Those tears were about more than Lucas' tantrum. It was refreshing, by the way, to see a film set in Holland with familiar details of Dutch life in it, from boiled potatoes to biscuit tins, and the dreary, foggy weather around Lucas's cottage in Zeeland.
Sallie Harmsen, Reinout SCholten van Aschat, Elise de Brauw, Gijs SCholten Aschat, River Osterink, Barbara Sobels, Koen Franse, Mienke Bakker
A catholic boarding school for orphans some time in the past, during war. A group of girls are ruled harshly by a mother superior but Serafina is a bit disobedient. When a radio accidentally switches from war news to a Bing Crosby tune -- "Kiss my Little Mouth" and the girls begin dancing and singing alone, Serafina is the only one who didn't sing, but she has the tune in her head and diligent Mother Superior tells her she is wicked. The girls put on an extraordinary tableau, angels, Mary and Joseph, and baby Jesus. Peasants from the town arrive to ask them to pray for their sons and fathers, and an elegant woman arrives asking that they pray for an unfaithful husband. She rewards them with a lavish cake-- made from 89 eggs!-- a wild extravagance. Mesmerizing performances by the girls, beautiful cinematography using 16 and 35mm film, and wonderfully directed. A peach of a story.
Alba Rohrwacher, Greta Zuccheri Montanari, Carmen Pommella, Febe Sapia, Melissa Falasconi, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
Very unusual documentary about three men who donate their sperm through personal contacts through the internet to various single women. They don't use the usual technologies: they just masturbate in a bathroom or other location and hand over their sperm in plastic injectors to the women. Ari maintains relationships with over 100 of his progeny, and the mothers, while the other two men keep their distance. Steve does have a romantic interest in one of his customers but she does not reciprocate though they have a pleasant friendship throughout (and she visits him to watch movies and swim in his pool). Fascinating look at people who are somewhat disconnected but who badly want children. Rachel has serious health issues and probably would not be eligible under any formal program to provide this service. The landscape of this film is somewhat bleak, darkly nocturnal at times, and fairly raw, but the subject material is fascinating and compelling. One begins to feel disoriented as these subjects present a radically alternative vision of parenting and conception.
Atasha Pena Clay, Tyree Kelly, Ari Nagel, Rachel Stanley, Steve Walker
'Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal was very pleased with the film.' And why wouldn't he be? As portrayed by Robert De Niro, he is an elegant, rational, patient, polished man, a contrast to the temperamental, vicious Nicky Santoro (Pesci). And he's just trying to make a living, running a casino for the Chicago gang, skimming from the profits, and dealing with people who try to cheat the cheaters. Sam Rothstein is the real brains behind the Tangiers Casino though he can't hold a license officially because of a criminal record. So he keeps applying and changing positions knowing that it can take a year or more for the gaming commission to process his application (and, in the meantime, he can keep running the casino). The mob profits by skimming off profits from the money processed in the "count room". Nicky Santoro is sent to Vegas to protect Rothstein's position and act as an enforcer. On his own, he forms a gang that robs business and hotels. Rothstein marries a former showgirl, Ginger McKenna, who is still in love with a pimp, Lester Diamond. Santoro also makes a move on Ginger. All of this takes place as the government intensifies investigations of the mob's role in the casinos (leading to a dramatic takedown in the 1970's and the demolition of several casinos and the take-over of Las Vegas by corporations using hedge funds). Based loosely on a book by Nicholas Pileggi (who wrote "Goodfellas"), it hews close enough to the facts to hold some fascination in that respect. Santoro has been accused of more than 20 murders, and Rothstein himself confirmed aspects of the story (if you want to believe a member of a criminal organization). The heart of the story, in any case, is Rothstein's frazzled relationship with Ginger, lavishing money and jewelry and furs on her only to discover her giving money-- and affection-- to her former lover Lester Diamond. She feels neglected and never loved Rothstein to begin with and threatens to take their daughter and flee to Europe. Meanwhile, Santoro becomes increasingly violent and audacious and the sponsoring mob in Chicago become alarmed. Yes, it is partly a rehash of "Goodfellas" (especially Pesci and De Niro) and I found it difficult to believe in any real chemistry between Sharon Stone and De Niro, but the details about the casino operations, the intimidation, the cheating, the callow shabby culture of Las Vegas is interesting, and some of the performances by comedians Tom Smothers, Alan King, and Don Rickles are pretty good. Stone gives it her all, the soundtrack is very expensive (a lot of Rolling Stones and other period music), and the casino scenes are thrilling.
Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, James Woods, don Rickles, Allan King, Kevin Pollak, L.Q. Jones, Dick Smothers, Frank Vincent, Vinny Vella, Frankie Avalon
Mostly bullshit, of course. The penultimate sequence of the film, J. D. racing home to help look after his mother and then racing back to Yale for an interview for a summer internship, is pure bullshit. Vance didn't go home until after he had graduated. Lindsay looked after Bev while she was on heroin and then checked into rehab. It is indicative of the attitude of Ron Howards that meticulous attention was made to Glenn Close's makeup, to make her appear as physically similar to Mamaw as possible, while the acting performances seem superficial and rote, and the action sequences look juvenile. A ridiculous sequence of the Vance kids playing touch football is emblematic of the problems here: J. D. runs back for a catch towards the house in a space that makes no sense for a game of touch football but provides us a picturesque view of the house. Most of the dialogue sounds very much like a mediocre talent (Vance) writing what he wished he sounded like at the time. There is a lot of hectoring platitudes about working hard and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps-- not a bad message, in itself (and obviously congenial to Vance's republican sympathies)-- but little or no insight into how, for example, Mamaw actually gets J. D. to do his chores and homework. Mamaw seems caricatured, which is a pity because she is a potentially interesting character. As for Bev, let me say that until this movie I have never seen Amy Adams give a mediocre performance. What was she even doing in this film? (Glenn Close, incidentally, gave a performance that earned a rare double: an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, and a Razzie for worst supporting actor. The Razzie was deserved.) We are given scenes of Vance being disrespected because he went to a State school, or because his family was from rural Kentucky, and so on, always in a way that is subtly self-pitying and coy.
Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Gabriel Basso, Haley Bennett, Freida Pinto, Bo Hopkins, Owen Asztalos, Jesse C. Boyd, Stephen Kunken, Keong Sim
Henry Stamper runs a logging operation in Oregon. The other loggers in town have gone on strike and they resent the Stamper family for continuing to supply logs to the mills during the strike. Hank, Henry's son, runs the operation along with son-in-law, Joe Ben (married to Jan, with two children), several stringers and, when he suddenly returns home from somewhere, his step-brother Leeland. Hank's wife, Viv, is not very content with her life at the big house shared with Henry and Joe Ben, though this part of the story is seriously under-developed (one senses that the book may have developed it but the film is stuck with her later actions without the ground-work). Joe Ben and his wife, Jan, are fundamentalist Christians. There is lots of great footage of the logging operation showing the technical side of the work, and Newman obviously did a lot of his own physical work in the film. There are tragic outcomes here but no one learns a lesson from them; we are left with a portrait of a domineering father (Henry) and his loyal son and his discontented son (who has a scandalous story of his own to tell). They endure because they do what they have to do every day.
Henry Fonda, Paul Newman, Lee Remick, Michael Sarrazin, Richard Jaeckel, Linda Lawson, Cliff Potts, Sam Gilman, Lee De Broux, Roy Jenson
Compelling in spite of it's flaws (poor performances by everyone but especially Kerry Washington and Wendell Pierce), retelling of the sensational confirmation hearings for Judge Clarence Thomas before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the sequence of scurrilous tactics (mostly by Republicans) that led to most Americans believing Thomas over Hill (though this tended to be reversed a few years later). Thomas was a mediocre jurist with about 1 years experience as judge but the dynamic of the situation caused many Senators to judge him based on their belief or disbelief in Hill's allegations. There were at least 4 other women who were willing to testify in support of Hill but a last minute back- room connivance by the Republicans with Joe Biden's assent prevented them and left the public with the impression that it was merely her word against his. Why, if Thomas was telling the truth, did he feel the need to impute shady motivations to Hill in his biography? Why would a successful college professor like Hill come forward with the allegations if they weren't true (she didn't fit the profile of a needy "victim")? A disgraceful epic of American public life that makes you think politicians are mostly scurrilous and dumb.
Kerry Washington, Wendell Pierce, Greg Kinnear, Jeffrey Wright, Eric Stonestreet, Bill Irwin, Zoe Lister-Jones, Grace Gummer, Treat Williams, Dylan Baker, Alison Wright, Peter McBride, Malcolm Gets
Elegant, quiet portrait of Afghan refugee Donya who works in San Francisco at a Chinese fortune cookie plant. She is very reserved and repressed and has trouble sleeping and when a psychiatric appointment for a friend becomes available she inserts herself into the session and asks for sleeping pills. The psychiatrist is subtle and obtuse and tries to persuade her to talk about her experiences in Afghanistan. He reads to her from "White Fang", leading obliquely to further engagement, but Donya, while not exactly withholding, is hesitant to express herself. When she inserts a fortune into a cookie asking anyone interested in dreams to contact her and leaving her number, her boss, by coincidence, sees the message. His wife wants to fire her but when her husband, a very congenial boss who wants his workers to experience joy, refuses, she undertakes to manipulate the situation which leads Donya to what Ebert calls a "meet-cute" with Daniel. A very understated, dignified, remarkable film. Beautifully rendered, striking music, including a delicately beautiful theme song, "Diamond Day", that is sung by her friend and plays over the credits.
Anaita Wali Zada, Gregg Turkington, Jeremy Allen White, Hilda Schmelling, Avis See-tho, Siddique Ahmed
Shayda is a young Iranian mom living in a women's shelter in Australia with her young daughter, Mona. Her abusive husband Hossein is granted visitation rights (half day on Saturday) with Mona. Shayda wants a divorce but Hossein refuses and threatens to take custody of Mona and move back to Iran if she persists. The movie almost works like a thriller, with strong tension, mainly because the characters are not types (it is based on a "true" story) and the low-key approach to anodyne daily activity belies an undercurrent of suspense. There may be a bit of idealization of Shayda's relationship with her daughter (dramatized with a rather idyllic and suspect perfection of maternal love) and Hossein is definitely shown as creepy, but easily within the bounds of realism. He's not a monster: just a male immersed in Islamic culture. He even promises Shayda she wouldn't have to wear a burka if she comes back to him. I suspect the Islamic aspects were underplayed, perhaps for political reasons. And, oddly, Zar Amir Ebrahimi appears to be less attractive than the real woman the story is based on. But Selina Zahednia as Mona is entrancing, with a compelling face and even more compelling performance, avoiding the trappings of cuteness and vulnerability one might expect from the Hollywood version.
Zar Amier Ebrahimi, Selina Zahednia, Mojean Aria, Eve Morey, Osamah Sami, Jillian Nguyen, Rina Mousavi
Based on "Much Ado About Nothing", using an outline of the plot and fragments of dialogue. The Shakespearean part-- specifically, the complicated plot of role reversals and "disguises" almost redeems this movie from the mediocre acting and direction. And I mean mediocre. Comedy is not an excuse for the slack, under-developed, lame excuse for character-- Ben has none-- and the inexplicable sequences in which characters react to something the audience may not have absorbed from the action. When Bea leaves Ben in the first sequence, with no explanation, and then Ben tells Pete that she was nothing, a disaster (which Bea overhears), one wonders WTF-- why? Apparently, he was offended that she left without saying anything. But why were they sleeping, fully-clothed, on the couch? They didn't have sex? They were so bored with each other that they actually fell asleep? Most of the supporting cast are bland or lame or both, including the telegenic couple (Ben's best friend's sister, Claudia, is dating Bea's sister, Halle) whose marriage arm-twists the cast into flying to Australia, where at least we get scenery. There's a bit of fun in Ben and Bea deciding to pretend to be enamored of each other in order facilitate each of them provoking jealousy in their supposed real love interests, and there's a bit of wit in the way they overplay tropes of the genre (friends pretending to talk in private while knowing they are overheard by Bea or Ben, and Bea or Ben pretending to not know, and then the others pretending to know they knew), and all of it in the hands of some genuine comedic talent might have stimulated at least a semblance to Woody Allen on a good night. But the rescue scene and the helicopter and the wedding all seem rote and Bea's complaint about her parents being controlling (she has dropped out of law school without telling them) seems pathetically weightless (were they paying for it? Did they get their deposit back? Did she have an alternative?). The parents are too bland to have any impact on that issue. And the horrible sequence at the end to "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield. Actually, it's used horribly several times throughout the film, most cringingly when Ben and Bea are being hoisted out of Sydney Harbour by helicopter. Is the original any good? No, it's just as horrible, and Natasha Bedingfield is crushingly auto-tuned. Not surprising: other parts of the film are lifted from "Love Actually", mostly, and other romcoms. What's left is the enjoyment of young people looking and finding romance in the reassuring embrace of family, in exotic locations, in lavish, luxurious settings.
Sydney Sweeney, Glenn Powell, Alexandra Shipp, Mia Artemis, Gata, Hadley Robinson, Dermot Mulroney, Rachel Griffiths, Charlee Fraser, Bryan Brown, Darren Barnet, Michelle Hurd
Tolik and Irka live in the eastern part of Ukraine, the Donbas, an area of conflict between separatists who support Russian annexation (while pretending they want independence) and those who wish to remain in Ukraine. Irka is pregnant-- about 7 months, and she and her brother support Ukraine. Her husband, Tolik, is an separatist though not quite part of the paramilitary organizations in the region. One day, Sanya, a separatist, steals or borrows Tolik's car, though Tolik is on his side. Tolik wants it back but is agreeable to supporting the separatists, even to the point of killing his milking cow for food for them. While this conflict plays out, flight MH17, a Malaysia airlines flight out of Amsterdam, is shot down very near the farm. Pieces of the fuselage are scattered in the area and the separatist, we learn later, are very concerned about the black box and who might have seen the source of the missile that took it down. All of the action takes place in and around Tolik and Irka's house in a remote area away from the nearest village. Irka's brother, Yaryk, urges Irka to leave Tolik and go to the west with him, to Kiev. This is an ugly story about an ugly situation, without much of an upside for anyone. While Irka has the greatest human need among the cast, she is the one expected to clean and tidy up after a friendly fire incident, and to provide food to people she despises, even after she goes into labour. This is an oblique, mysterious film, slow to explain developments or characters, and often obtuse about what and who are responsible. It works. It rightly, I think, channels the fog of war into a very particular, very specific situation, that is, to me, completely believable. The cinematography has a bit of a chill cast to colours and tone, though the slow pans and long, lingering takes work well. The music is compelling, dramatic, without telling you what to feel; the acting performances are very strong.
Oksana Cherkashyna, Sergey Shadrin, Oleg Shcherbina, Oleg Shevchuk, Artur Aramyan, Evgeniy Efremov
Haider is a young married Pakistani living in a house with his wife, Mumtaz, father Aman, brother Saleem, sister-in-law Nucchi, and Saleem and Nucchi's two young daughters. Mumtaz works in a salon while Haider stays home and cooks for his father and does housework. When Haider is offered a job by friend Qaiser at a local theatre, Mumtaz is compelled (by Haider's family) to quit her job and stay home and (Haider's family hopes) get pregnant. Mumtaz is resentful of this development. Haider discovers that the job involves dancing as part of a troupe that supports transgender performer Biba. Biba likes Haider a lot and Haider likes her, leading to the crisis at the heart of the film. Is the actress, Alina Khan actually trans? In a puzzling scene, we are not sure where on the wheel of gender and sexual orientation she sits. As for Haider, he is obviously regarded with contempt by his father and older brother. He can not bring himself to slay a goat for a festive dinner (Mumtaz must finish it for him) and both his father and Saleem question his manhood. As well they might: he is gay, though he gets Mumtaz pregnant. He discovers that he likes dancing (no one is to know what he actually does at the theatre, for fear of disgrace). He wanders at night mooning for Biba. The movie meanders a little, losing focus, perhaps, but developments are unexpected. There is a touching flashback at the end that evokes the ambiguousness at the heart of Haider's disastrous foray out of his comfort zone. It's a tragedy about inhibitions and repression, of Haider's sexuality, Mumtaz's desire to have her own life, and Biba's desire for self-expression. Malala Yousufazai, the well-known activist, was a producer of the film.
Ali Junejo, Rasti Farooq, Alina Khan, Sarwat Gilani, Salmaan Peerzada, Sohail Sameer, Ramiz Law
Looks like fun but isn't: Babe has to save the farm by going to a sheep-herding contest with Esme after Arthur falls down a well and can't work. They never get anywhere near the contest because Esme is suspected of transporting drugs and Babe is kidnapped by a strange clown to work in his animal act. Various predicaments ensue featuring hostile animals, a really hostile chimp, the comical side-kick duck, and a friendly capuchin monkey. The misadventures are familiar-- the scene of Arthur getting hurt in the well is ripped straight from somewhere-- I can't remember where-- and there are riffs on "A Streetcar Named Desire" with pink poodle and various gangster films-- most of which are not particularly funny. The penultimate scene of Esme swinging from the ceiling over a crowd of aristocrats at an event is stretched out and stretched out as if additional length might actually make it funny. It's not. It's not inventive or clever or witty. And children might not like it because it's quite scary at times or creepy (Thelonius).
Magda Szubanski, Elizabeth Daily, Mickey Rooney, James Cromwell, Mary Stein, Danny Mann, Glenne Headley, Steven Wright, James Cosmo, Stanley Ralph Ross, Russi Taylor
A young woman, Jina, who works at a credit card call centre is mysterious lonely and isolated even though she is beautiful. Well, that's the ambivalence I feel towards films like this, in which the hero or heroine is remarkably attractive yet can't seem to make friends or strike up intimate relationships. I mean, it is believable, but always just a bit of a stretch. There is neighbor who likes to smoke on a balcony next to her apartment. She studiously ignores him, though he shows her a trick with a matchstick and a cigarette. Later, she finds out he was crushed to death by a stack of porn magazines. Her landlady accuses her of being insensitive because she didn't respond to the noise. When she is assigned a new recruit, Sujin, at the office, because Jina is the best at her job, she tries to avoid the task, and then is rude to her. She likes to smoke alone, or eat alone at a small restaurant. She is very distant to her father, viewing him through a monitor, watching him meeting with fellow church members or practicing his dance moves. They have a fight and he blocks her phone, then, later, unblocks her. This is a quiet, interesting movie about social dysfunction and solitude and distance. It doesn't offer any resolution, half-hearted, or otherwise, and that's to it's credit.
Gong Seung-yeon, Jeong Da-eun, Seo Hyun-woo, Park Jeong-hak
Tom Cruise turns one of the most interesting and complex individuals of Nazi Germany into an action hero with his glib, pious rendition of Claus Von Stauffenberg. This is the Hollywoodized version of the story, though the support cast is much better than Cruise. Points for having everyone speak normal English instead of with accents-- other than the tripe with having some with accents (and Roland Meisner of the People's court does have a German accent). Reasonably accurate at times (some of the weirdest stuff-- like Von Haeften stepping in front of Stauffenberg as the firing squad prepares to shoot him, and the bomb for the plane being retrieved after it failed to go off-- really happened. And the gist of the confusion and reluctance of high ranking conspiracists to commit to the event is accurate. The film does not, however, make clear that most of the conspirators were not democrats or liberals by any stretch: they wanted to restore authoritarian government to German but with allied help, negotiate a peace with the U.S. and Britain, and then persuade them to join the war against Russia. A lot of this was never going to happen, and the majority of Germans, for years after the war, were against the conspirators: they were not heroes to the rank and file who apparently believed that only Hitler could save them, in spite of the obvious fact that it was Hitler who destroyed them and Germany. With all the quality invested in this version, it is an enormous pity that a mediocre actor like Cruise was given the most important role.
Tom Curise, Bill Nighy, Carice Van Houten, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Thomas Kretschmann, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, Christian Berkel, Jamie Parker, David Bamber
Vivid, powerful documentary of the people involved in the January 6th, 2021 attack on the capitol by the MAGA crowd, focused on the chief of the Metropolitan Police, a police officer, a black photographer (who, hilariously, found himself in the middle of a riot largely driven by white nationalists), a communications staff person with James Clyburn, and several police officers, who all soberly reflect on the events of that day. In particular, they detail the brutal violence and hatred spewed by Trump's acolytes as they stormed the House and Senate and attempted to restore Trump to the presidency.
Robert Contee, Mel D. Cole, Daniel Hodges, Erica Loewe, Jamie Raskin, Christina Laury, Michael Fanone
Allegedly based on a true story: Gary Johnson is a college philosophy professor (very unconvincingly) who occasionally works for the police on technical issues. One day, he is asked to step in for an undercover agent who responds to people seeking a "hit man" (which Cary tells us do not really exist) to rub out a spouse, rival, partner, whatever, for money. The suspect is recorded and then arrested if Gary can get them to verbally implicate themselves. When he meets a woman he is attracted to who wants him to kill her husband, he talks her out of it and then proceeds to have a relationship with her. Unfortunately, the man Gary replaced as an undercover agent, Jasper, is back and wants his job back. There are lots of twists and turns that grow increasingly inventive in a narrative sense. It's a smart movie: Gary isn't stupid about what Jasper knows or doesn't know, and Jasper isn't stupid about what Gary is up to. Well, not totally stupid. It also seems extraordinarily convenient that Madison is not interested in a relationship beyond having sex at her apartment. Most of this part of the story is, of course, made up. The problem is that unlike "Bernie", a similarly weird story, the "true" part of this tale isn't all that entertaining. Linklater films it in a kind of flippant style that glides past a host of potentially interesting facets of this identity casting activity. Was Linklater in a hurry? Or was he aiming for mainstream success? Either way, I didn't find that part compelling. Even worse, the romance with Madison doesn't breathe very much. It's more what Linklater thinks we think will be sexy than it is really sexy. And Gary's college professor sounds exactly what a college drop-out might think we think a college professor would sound like. Seriously? Linklater couldn't have consulted a real professor or spent a few days in an actual class room? Gary as the professor sounds like it's his first day forever: he's friendly and demonstrative and cordial in a way nobody who does this every day will ever be.
Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao, Molly Bernard, Evan Holtzman, Gralen Bryant Banks
Why did this get on my list? Rather predictable, if slightly fresh, love story about a man who objects to his mother marrying a convict, and is drawn into some of this criminal activities along with his girlfriend. Even while innovating nominally on the formula, it feels like it's really just substituting one familiar trope for another. Abel is annoying, hectoring his mother about her new boyfriend, and being openly hostile to the boyfriend, and blithely ignorant of the torch his friend, Clemence, carries for him (Clemence, played by Noemie Merlant, is the best thing in the movie). There is a charming scene in which Abel and Clemence try to rehearse an emotional fight intended to distract a truck-driver while his load is being lifted, and the role-playing spills over into real feelings. It is a little redemptive. We are reminded of the Hayes code in which all movie heists (until the 1970's) had to end with the money being lost or returned or recovered by the police, in order to show impressionable children that crime doesn't pay. The lesson in "The Innocent" is about Abel learning to accept and receive love. It doesn't work much for me.
Louis Garrel, Roschdy Zem, Noemie Merland, Anouk Grinberg, Jean-Claude Pautot, Yanisse Kebbab
Tomas is a young German movie director, living in Paris, and married to Martin. At an after party for his most recent production, he meets Agathe and they are instantly stoked for each other. Tomas returns to the apartment he shares with Martin, who is clearly unhappy with him. and tells him about Agathe and believes that Martin should find it interesting that he was so attracted to a girl and able to be aroused by her. One asks, where are we going from here? Tomas is not very likeable as a protagonist. He is obviously self-centered and insensitive to the needs and feelings of others, including Martin and Agathe. Martin wants to split from him. Agathe's parents are not happy that their daughter is dating a man who was married to a man. They are not confident he will look after her, after she becomes pregnant. This is very much a film that wants to show you people behaving the way they do without much of a moral angle to it. You are left to judge people by the unalloyed encounter with their actions, which don't always make sense to them or to us. But we are convinced by Tomas' selfishness and cruelty, and Agathe's vulnerability, and Martin's desire to be rid of Tomas and start a new relationship with Amad. The sex, both gay and hetero, is unusually rousing, if not exactly explicit. Films like this, to me, provide an important service. They give you an encounter with believable people in believable situations which remind you of yourself (at, least that age, where you are forming strong relationships and exploring your sexuality). The story is somewhat grim, and sad, and moving.
Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, Adele Exarchopoulos, Erwan Kepoa Fale, Caroline Chaniolleau
Let's clear up one thing: Gadd has stated that though this is a "true" story, he has taken steps to mask the identities of the real people (other than himself) in the story. Coincidentally-- ha ha-- the characters do not feel real to me. Right from the first episode, I had a feeling that Gadd was hedging, holding something back, not for dramatic purpose, but to conceal something he doesn't want us to know about the real story. Because without some hidden explanation, the story doesn't make sense. Gadd claims he was violently raped by a mentor years before his encounter with Martha, but of course, he doesn't identify the person, and it is interesting that this person does not interact with any other character in the story. I mean, maybe that's the way it was, or maybe it conveniently allows Gadd to say anything he wants about him. Gadd also portrays himself as rather stupid in the way he handles Martha which causes the smart viewer to wonder if he really had such poor judgement or if he's just fibbing. At one point, he tries to persuade Martha to send an explicit email offering or suggesting rough sex in order to provide the police with evidence of harassment. Martha tapes the conversation and traps him. Seriously? On the other hand, a woman, Fiona Harvey, says she was the inspiration for Martha and is suing. She says most of the details about Martha are not true. Now, first of all, if she really wants to claim defamation, you would think the last thing she would want to do is publicly sue Gadd. (In fairness, it appears that some viewers identified her from details of the program). Secondly, if most of those details are not true and she is not identified by name-- does she have a case? Harvey does not have a single criminal conviction on her record, unlike Martha in the Netflix version. Just as, if Gadd was so traumatized and humiliated by the alleged rape he experienced, you would think he would not want his humiliation to become a central set-piece in a Netflix drama, in the most repulsive, most feminine scene in the series. This is when he is given the final slot at a finals contest for comedians and, sensing that he was falling flat, opts to sit on a stool and give a long, tedious confession to the crowd, of how he hated himself, and how his victimization led him to his failure to stop Martha from harassing him and his family, and how his low self-esteem, his self-loathing, sabotaged his relationship with his one true love, Teri (the only really enjoyable character in the series). It all reeks of bad therapy, and contrivance, in that he sets up the scene to provide a large live audience for his self- immolation (and then reveals that it leads to success). It is telling that the "success" seems transitory and ephemeral-- he ends up going back to his abuser, Darrien, who now-- weirdly-- offers to pay him for his work. Gadd plays himself in the series, based on a one-man show he debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe, which made me wonder if the real- life person was as unappealing as Gadd. Well, he must have been-- it's himself, right? And when did he discover he was gay? He dates a transgender woman (Teri), though he previously dated a woman named Keeley (who set him up to continue to live in her mother's house after they split!). It does not surprise me that Gadd made pretty explicit claims about the "truth" of the story before it became successful and then, with the new, higher profile it gave him, began to hedge. He says, "If I had wanted the real people to be found, I would've made a documentary", and "it is emotionally true", which is a clever way of saying "I may have lied; I juiced the story to make it better and didn't expect people to start poking around". All of that aside, the acting is quite good and the music is interesting (mostly pop songs, many from the 1960's or 70's), and the characterization of Martha, fictional or not, is quite riveting at times, as is the unexpectedly droll characterization of Derrien. Gadd's early comedy routines are amazingly banal, tawdry, and dull. The question is why would he think he could be a comedian? Later, he doesn't seem much funnier, but audiences are shown laughing with him, at first because Martha is there and laughs first. The bottom line: Gadd is confronted with the consequences of the poor choices he made and instead of acknowledging his own character failures and inadequacies, blames them on an alleged rape by a television industry insider who promised him fame and riches and coked him on drugs before taking advantage. Let me add: some reviewers have suggested that "Baby Reindeer" is a powerful revelation of how trauma can cause emotional dysfunction and self- sabotage and so on. That's a very fey, ridiculously facile way of looking at it.
Richard Gadd, Jessica Gunning, Nava Mau, Tom Goodman-Hill, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Thomas Coombes, Nina Sosanya, Mark Lewis, Amanda Root
Jem Starling is a 17-year-old girl living in a tightly bound evangelical Christian community in Kentucky. She is part of a liturgical dance troupe in her church, and the responsible older daughter in a family that relies on her to help with household chores and care of her siblings. Her father decides-- on the advice of God, personally-- that it is time for her to be "courted" and Ben Taylor, younger son of the minister, aspires to court her. But she is more intrigued by his older brother, Owen, who has just returned from the mission field in Puerto Rico, with his wife, Misty. Owen is kind of cool, the hip young assistant pastor who is more worldly and sophisticated than the average congregant. Ben is inarticulate, conformist, and tries to chat with Jem about chickens with diarrhea. Owen responds Kim and their covert relationship eventually unspools into disaster for her, if not so much a disaster for Owen since, in this community, it is the woman of wiles who is responsible for the fall from grace. What is remarkable about "The Starling Girl" is the intimate knowledge of how the Christian community in these backwoods towns works, it's culture, its values. How the traditions and beliefs of the church work to control women, and punish them for expressing their will. Director-Writer Parmet made a point of giving every character depth and dimension, so that while it is obvious that Owen is exploiting Jem's naivete, he is also himself constricted by his community's values and beliefs. Jem's mother, Heidi, is a bit of a martinet but she is the one who finally assails Owen. Jem's dad is a recovering alcoholic but he also gives her a glimpse of alternative experiences that she may want to have, outside of the rigid church community she tries to please. At a pivotal moment, even the church community is shown as mixed bag, of the self-righteous and unforgiving and the compassionate and forgiving. This is an utterly unique outsider exploration of issues that are often ridiculed and glossed over. Jem is a richly realized, and miraculously vivid portrait of a young woman with faults (she lies sometimes and does give herself the most prominent role in her liturgical dance) encountering the sometimes jaded world of adult sexuality. She never quite transcends the hypocrisy of her own community (she accedes to the demand to confess her sins publicly) though she tries to escape it.
Eliza Scanlen, Lewis Pullman, Jimmi Simpson, Wrenn Schmidt, Claire Elizabeth Green, Austin Abrams, Jessamine Burgum, Tyler Secor
Stunning depiction of the increasing mental imbalance of a young woman, wife, and mother, stressed by a semi-abusive but loving husband and oppressive parents and in-laws. Mabel is flighty and unstable right from the beginning, bizarrely guiding her mother as she drives off with the children for the day so Nick, her husband, can have a romantic evening with her. But he is held back at work, which begins her decline. She is irrational, spontaneously exuberant, overly friendly, then distant, flirty, then distant, angry, then happy, and so on. When a friend drops off his children for a play date with her children, he is so disturbed by her behaviour that he takes his children away, interrupted by a very angry Nick. Nick often explodes into anger and even strikes Mabel two times. A doctor comes to visit and tries to inject a sedative but Mabel fights him off. She is institutionalized for a time and when she returns, Nick invites dozens of friends over until he realizes it is a bad idea and makes almost everyone leave-- except her parents and his parents and the doctor, who oppress Mabel with expectation until she begs them to leave. The interactions with the children in this film are utterly extraordinary, bizarre at times, and makes the viewer wonder for their physical and emotional safety (some of the child actors were children of the other actors). The film makes you wonder if any film that showed life in such a raw, undeveloped way is even bearable. Similar films, including brilliant ones (by, say, Bergman) still maintain a kind of coherent framework, but, after watching "Woman Under the Influence", you wonder how really evocative of real life that is. That is not say that "Woman Under the Influence" is entirely authentic. There are mistakes, mis-judgments, and some scenes that are actually implausible or disconnected-- as when Nick attacks the doctor he brought home to assess Mabel, or when Nick drives a pick-up truck to his workers at some kind of mining site and screams at them to mind their own business. Brilliantly acted, raw, powerful, and indispensable.
Gina Rowlands, Peter Falk, Fred Draper, Lady Rowlands, Katherine Cassavetes, Matthew Labyorteaux, Matthew Cassel, Christina Grisanti, George Dunn, Mario Gallo, Eddie Shaw
Note: director Andrzej Munk died in a car accident before he could finish the film. Very unusual film actually shot in Auschwitz! The mud and other conditions were far more accurate than most more recent movies set there. (That said, some sequences are not accurate: men, women, and children did not walk into the gas chamber together, as shown here). Those were the conditions! Furthermore, it is told from the POV of a female German guard, who seems distressed at the lack of gratitude shown her by a Polish prisoner named Marta whom she "saved" by employing in the warehouse where stolen goods are sorted. Marta is insouciant and continues her love affair with a male prisoner, sometimes even when Liza, the German guard, can see them. The story is framed by Liza's ocean cruise, after the war, with her husband. As they dock in England she spies a woman she thinks is Marta on the gangway. This prompts her to tell her husband about her wartime experience-- she wasn't a prisoner, she admits, but a guard. But she tells one story first, of her being kind to Marta, and then another story, the "real" story, that is less favorable to her. It's hard to sort out what is actually going on because the film was never completed (it's only 62 minutes in this form, with some photographs and narration used to pad it). But what is there is spectacular-- large crowds, the camp itself, the warehouse and barracks used for filming. Remarkable.
Aleksandra Slaska, Anna Ciepielewska, Jan Kreckzmar, Marek Walczewski, Irena Malkiewicz, Janusz Bylczynski, Barbara Horawianka, Andrzej Krasicki
A drifter, Michael (Nicolas Cage) drifts into a small town called Red Rock and is mistaken for a hit man hired by the sheriff, Wayne, to kill his wife. He needs the money so he plays along, takes the advance payment, and then warns the wife that her husband is trying to kill her. Meanwhile, the real killer arrives. And the wife's boyfriend is shot. And so on and so on. Had the Marx Brothers taken it on, this could have been a fun story, but this version is mediocre at every level, script, acting, cinematography, concept. It's dull and rote and banal. I cannot remember how this ever got on my list. However, the musical sound track is pretty good-- until the end, when it becomes faux classical-- and Dwight Yoakam is entertaining as a truck driver who picks up Michael at one point.
Nicolas Cage, Dennis Hopper, Lara Flynn Boyle, Craig Reay, J. T. Walsh, Dwight Yoakam
Powerful dramatization of the case of the Central Park Five, the five black youths (some as young as 14) that were rounded up in the aftermath of a terrible sexual assault in Central Park during a night of random vandalism and assault in the park. Three of the suspects were arrested in the vicinity of the park about an hour after the assault; two were arrested the next day after being identified by other boys arrested in the park. Korey Wise simply decided to accompany his friend to the police station, but the police decided to interrogate him as well. The fact that they were able to extract a confession from him, though he clearly was never identified as being in the park that night, should have immediately raised red flags. But the city was in a massive uproar about the rape and assault and the police obviously felt enormous pressure to get something, anything, done. (Be it noted: a black woman was similarly raped and assaulted and pushed off the fourth floor of an apartment building the same night: there was virtually no media coverage of that incident). Testing of DNA recovered from the victim showed that none of the suspects were a match but the police misrepresented the results as "inconclusive". After hours of interrogation without the presence of parents or lawyers -- two of them were 14!-- and lavish promises of release if they only said what the police said they did-- the boys all recorded statements admitting guilt. But the police couldn't even manage the entrapment very well and the stories were inconsistent and contradictory, except for some other incidents in the park. And of course, the magical matching hairs allegedly found in one of the suspect's underwear. All of the suspects recanted the confessions, even when later offered a plea deal. Donald Trump infamously purchased a full-page ad in all the major newspapers advocating the death penalty, expressing lavish praise on the police. The press broke standard practice by publishing names of the under-aged youths; the New York Times did publish an editorial noting that most of them came from relative stable homes and were regarded as well-adjusted. They were all convicted and served their sentences before the real culprit, Matias Reyes, voluntarily confessed to the crime after meeting one of the boys (Wise) in prison. His DNA matched evidence from the victim including semen and fingernail scrapings. He described the circumstances accurately including details that none of the convicted youths appeared to know. Incredibly, officials in the District Attorney's office continued to insist that the five were guilty and suggested that they may have come along after Reyes and assaulted her again without leaving a trace of evidence. Just astonishing-- at least, if you don't begin to understand human nature and the lengths to which a person will go to deny being part of a shameful act. In any case, a superbly filmed and acted series, well-balanced (it would be hard to argue it was unfair to the prosecution considering how much space and time they gave for their argument), and compelling.
Blackk Asante, Caleel Harris, Ethan Herisse, Marquis Rodriguez, Stephanie Marsha Blake, Kylie Bunbury, John Leguizamo, Niecy Nash, Suszzanne Douglas, Michael Kenneth Williams, Jharrel Jerome, Aunjanue Ellis-TAylor, Felicity Huffman, Len Cariou, William Sadler, Alexandra Templer, Vera Farminga, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, Justin Cunningham
The highest grossing movie in U.K. history. The only thing more depressing is watching it. From the initial concept to lip-synched execution, absolute dreck. Most of the actors did their own singing because... it's not fake? Even though all the singing is done in a studio and then dubbed? And the singing is really terrible but what makes it all so offensive is this trope that emerged from the film that, wow, those actors can sing! No, they can't. Even if you cut them some slack for the fact that they are not musical actors, the singing is terrible because they are trying to replicate those antiseptic pop vocals that made these songs famous in the first place-- among those a taste for inane pop songs. Actually a remake of "Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell" (which sounds like it is far edgier than "Mama Mia"), dominated by women (director, writer, stars), who don't do much here to dispel the notion that women don't produce great films. Aside from the awful singing, the plot is insipid, clicheish, and banal. Sophie and Sky have a "fight" that is so disposable it could be contained in a gum-wrapper, supposedly over Sky's suspicion that she agreed to a wedding only to find out who her father is. There is a scene in which Tanya is pursued by numerous men who we are supposed to believe find her lavishly sexy-- the actress must have loved the part, just as Streep must have loved the contrived adulation she receives from the three possible fathers. The setting is idyllic which only makes the movie even less relevant to anything, and the actors moves and the dance sequences are sophomoric. Other than that, yes, it's a fun movie.
Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgard, Nancy Baldwin, Colin Firth, Rachel McDowall, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper
Spectacular but dramatically contrived three-part drama about five German friends (two women and three men) at the outset of World War II pledging to meet again shortly after entering service in the military or nursing (or entertainment). Controversial for the discernibly favorable treatment of the German soldiers (who seem to have been bullied into furthering the aims of the Third Reich) and the very negative portrait of Polish Partisans (even if essentially accurate). Wilhelm Winter is a Lieutenant in the Wehrmacht who initially accepts the aims of Hitler. His younger brother Friedhelm Winter is skeptical and rebellious. Charlotte (Charly) is in love with Wilhelm and becomes a nurse and is probably the most favorably depicted, though she also betrays a Jewish nurse at one of the mobile hospital units. Greta is a diva and wants to be an entertainer and is willing to indulge in an affair with a German Officer to advance her career. Oddly, Viktor Goldstein, one of the five, is Jewish. He is in love with Greta who arranges for him to leave Germany-- she thinks. She has been tricked by her German lover who betrays Viktor into a train to Auschwitz. Nobody has any gravity in this story: they all react as if they had been floating through this fairy-tale of World War II and discovered the horrors, even when they obviously have experienced every horror your could imagine before that moment. When Wilhelm is ordered to shoot a Russian prisoner in the back of the head, it feels like this is the first time he has encountered such an outrageous demand, when obviously he would have seen dozens and dozens of similar outrages by then and would likely have a hardened attitude. I didn't mind the outrageous coincidences as much as some critics-- though the numerous meetings of the principles during this massive historical event is truly preposterous-- but it does get soapy and melodramatic many times. That said, the costumes, the sets, and cinematography, and the music are all exceptional, especially in the beautiful hi-def version I was able to find. The acting is meh. The dialogue is banal. But it does give you something of an epic view of a horrible period in history and- - a rarity-- acknowledges the rapid antisemitism among some non- Germanic peoples in Europe at the time, specifically in the Ukraine and Poland.
Volker Bruch, Tom Schilling, Mariam Stein, Katharina Schuttler, Ludwig Trepte, Mark Waschke, Alina Levshin, Gotz Schubert, Maxim Mehmet
Arthur Parker is a music salesman in the 1930's in Chicago, meaning he sells mostly sheet-music as well as some recordings. His wife, Joan, is kind of frigid, shy, embarrassed by sex. Tired of rejection, Arthur courts a school teacher named Eileen, and gets her pregnant and then abandons her for a time. Her career in ruins, Eileen turns to prostitution. A young girl is murdered and Arthur is innocent but his shoe print and finger-prints are found at the scene. It's all a little bizarre because gritty, dark sequences are blended with period musical segments, with Arthur and Eileen lip-synching to the recordings. It's not really a musical so much as fantasy combined with film noire. It was a passion project for Steve Martin who adored the Dennis Potter production-- thought it was greatest stage show ever-- and was able to raise the money for extravagant dance sequences, and Gordon Willis to the do the beautiful cinematography, including a particularly lovely evocation of Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks". Walken and Martin trained and trained for the tap-dancing numbers and they are impressive-- if you think tap-dancing is an art. Does it work? Not really. It also bombed at the box office. Yes, it's very daring and original, and it is adult in the good sense-- dealing relatively forthrightly with adult issues like adultery and abortion and prostitution-- but the narrative arc is diffuse and undermined by the musical interludes. And tap-dancing is a bastard art no matter how accomplished the performances.
Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Jessica Harper, Christopher Walken, John McMartin, Vernel Bagneris
Surprisingly affecting portrait of Paul Simon in his dotage-- well, his old age-- looking back on his career, on the decisive moments, the frustrations and the breakthroughs. Art Garfunkel is a ghostly presence, speaking in old clips from the 1960's. Simon surprisingly ends with a categorical statement that he never wishes to see him again. Simon was obviously irked that Garfunkel decided to pursue an acting career to occupy his time between albums, and Simon even kind of alludes to the fact that his resentment was not entirely justified. We see him working on his latest-- probably his last-- album, "Seven Psalms", with a perhaps unspoken allusion to Cohen's last album which also turned a spotlight on spiritual concerns. Simon doesn't buy in or buy out of the religious issue but reflects articulately on possible meanings. The sequencing is a bit baffling but not unpleasantly so. We are left with an impression of a conscientious artist who did produce some great music, isn't too full of himself, and has reached a stage of life in which he can contemplate death and meaning with a relatively clear-eyed view of where his career has brought him.
Paul Simon, Wynton Marsalis, Art Garfunkel, , Edie Bricknell
Cameron is a gay high school student under a guardianship after her parents died when she was young. Her guardians are very conservative Christians and when she is caught with a lover in a car at the High School Homecoming dance, she is sent to a Christian residential school called "God's Promise" run by the austere management of Dr. Lydia Marsh, to be "cured" of her iniquities. There is a lot of familiar elements to the story, from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Saved". Cameron, well-played by Chloe Grace Moretz, isn't really convinced she needs any fixing though the film is coy about the issue. To sustain the drama, she plays it as if she thinks she might be wrong, until the moment when she can lay into Dr. Marsh after a fellow student, Mark, tries to commit suicide after receiving a harsh letter from his father and having a break-down in group. This manipulative element appears to stolen lock stock and barrel from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Dr. Marsh is a more anodyne Nurse Ratchet. Makes a nominal attempt to give a dimensional picture of the leaders of "God's Promise" and Cameron's Aunt Ruth. The characters who accept their homosexuality are all depicted as wholesome and happy while the ones who wish to be "cured" are all neurotic or oppressive. There is one shattering scene in which Cameron realizes who really betrayed her, and that her aunt won't bring her home.
Chloe Grace Moretz, Steven Hauck, Quinn Shephard, Kerry Butler, Dalton Harrod, Sasha Lane, John Gallagher, Emily Skeggs, Forrest Goodluck, Owen Campbell, Jennifer Ehle
Spectacular visualization of the Kipling novel about two rogue British soldiers, Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan, who set out to make themselves kings of a tribe in Afghanistan. Kipling himself is a character-- he strongly advises them not to make the attempt. But Daniel and Peachy are convinced of their own superiority. No western human has been there before-- so they take rifles and their training and expect to dominate the natives with their power of advanced civilizations over any primitive culture. After an incredibly arduous journey through the mountains, during which they kill some men for their mules, they encounter a primitive tribe in the foothills, under attack by a band of renegades. They use their rifles to drive them off. Fortunately for them (and for the entertainment business side of it) they find a friend, whom they call "Billy Fish" who speaks English and the language of the native tribe they first encounter. They demonstrate the superiority of their technology-- rifles-- and train their men to handle them and soon they dominate the nearby tribes and establish a sort of kingdom. Daniel is mistaken for a descendent of Alexander the Great, and a kind of god, and is given control of a fabulous cache of gold and jewels. Up to the point where Daniel lets his power go to his head and decides to marry (challenging the natives belief that a god does not have physical needs) the story is compelling and relatively credible. But when his bride bites him and he bleeds, the crowd is immediately convinced he is a fraud and attacks the two men. This scene was a bit too simplistic-- Daniel makes no attempt to do the obvious (wipe the blood off his face or conceal the wound), and the crowd turns on them rather uniformly when one would think some would simply be confused. It all barely survives plausibility. They also choose a rather obtuse way to take revenge. These developments make more sense if the story is seen as a parable or metaphor for British dominance of India and other so-called primitive cultures, and the delusions and hubris connected to it. Well acted, and beautifully filmed (in Morocco) with spectacular crowd scenes with hundreds of extras, as well as the mountainous scenery.
Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Saeed Jaffrey, Christopher Plummer, Shakira Caine
It is said that Arthur C. Clarke collaborated intensively with director Hyams on this film. That would lead one to wonder if the real intelligence behind "2001: A Space Odyssey" was Kubrick. The sequel is sophomoric, contrived, and fairly pedestrian. The poetry is missing, and the mystery, the allusiveness. Worst of all, HAL is now treated like a person, with real feelings, and the ridiculous Dr. Chandra is emotionally involved and very sad and insists that HAL be treated like a person. Wait-- even worse than that- Roy Scheider's Dr. Floyd is kind of Popeye from the French Connection, a re-imagining of that tired American trope of the can-do, no-nonsense, damn the torpedoes kind of guy who yells "screw the government -- just do it". We also get the kind of pat progressivism Kubrick would sure to have been suspicious of: the intelligence behind the monolith only has mankind's interests at heart and this is made far too explicit, and the humans comprehend this massively mind-blowing relationship too glibly: they are shown with beatific smiles as they realize just how smashingly nice the aliens are, and how this solves the political tensions back at home. Interesting trivia: Kubrick had all the sets of the original destroyed upon completion of filming. They all had to be reconstructed for the sequel. Apparently, that was not uncommon practice for the time. Kubrick did, apparently, give his blessings to Hyams to make the sequel. The plot concerns a joint mission by Russia and the U.S. to travel to the Discovery (the spaceship in the original) to determine what happened and why. In the meantime, political tensions on earth are building, between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and this briefly leads to some complications in the relationships on the Russian space ship, the "Alexey Leonov". As they approach Jupiter, the last known location of the Discovery, they encounter the monolith, now gigantic, and attempt to revive HAL to find out what happened. The monolith warns them away (through HAL) and there is a crisis as they try to figure out how to leave safely (the original plans called for a strategy that did not require as much fuel). Meanwhile, the original Dave (Keir Dulleau) reappears to his aging wife and his dying mother, and to Floyd (to repeat the friendly warning to leave). And during a stressful space maneuver, in a strikingly gratuitous, sophomoric scene, sexy Irina cuddles up with the manly Dr. Floyd-- does one assume the Russians weren't manly enough for her-- and then kisses him chastely for holding her tight during that scary moment. Seriously? The Russians and Americans learn to love each other, in peace, and in the preservation of their precious bodily fluids. All mocking aside, it's a film that tries to be serious-- it's earnest-- and well-meaning, but boring.
Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen MIrren, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, Doublas Rain, Elya Baskin, Saveliy Kramarov, Natasha Shneider
Not sure what to make of this somewhat sour but literate story about a woman, Mavis Gary, approaching middle age who decides to leave the city (Minneapolis) and return to her small town of origin to rather shockingly try to snag a former boyfriend from his current wife and new-born daughter. She is thoroughly unlikeable, rude, mean, and crude, and selfish. Her former boyfriend, Buddy, has turned into a relatively decent husband and father, and his wife, Beth, is more than decent to the miscreant Mavis. A more interesting character is Matt Freehauf, another former classmate, who was beaten and disfigured by a group of jocks who thought he was gay (he isn't) and now walks with a crutch. They form an unlikely companionship (it might be too much to say they are "friends") and he is probably the most grounded of the major characters-- though he spends his time moonshining bourbon. We are surprised when Mavis' mom spots her on the street and wonders why she didn't even bother to call on them-- though not surprised Mavis doesn't seem to care about familial connections.
Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser, Collette Wolfe, Jill Eikenberry, Richard Bekins, Mary Beth Hurt
Well, gosh, it's a Stephen King story, so it must be great, right? And it's filmed in my home-town area, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Orono, and Niagara Falls, and environs. It's an early take on King so maybe not so much. Johnny Smith (yes) is a high school teacher with a lovely, devoted girlfriend, Sarah. When he is in a very serious accident-- with a milk truck (in a Volkswagen), he falls into a coma for five years and Sarah marries someone else. When he returns to consciousness, he discovers he has the power to see visions of the future involving people he physically touches. In a clumsy, under- developed sequence, word spreads, and the police ask him for help in identifying a serial killer. He also realizes he can change the future-- when he sees a tragedy involving a group of boys, he is able to save the life of one of them by warning him about it. He also encounters a politician-- in a neat twist, being promoted by Sarah's husband-- and learns that he is a reckless egoist who will destroy mankind if he wins election, and becomes determined to stop him. One can see the appeal of the story to popular audiences (and the clever title), and the connection to his former lover is clever, but many sequences reek of amateur hour, and Walken is nearly comical as Mr. Smith and his brooding interpretation-- almost everything he says, even the most anodyne, sounds creepy-- became a favorite of parody on SNL and elsewhere.
Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen, Nicholas Campbell, Jackie Burroughs, Sean Sullivan, Simon Craig
Unusual, compelling documentary consisting of a long sequence of shots of various locations in Amsterdam from which Jews were removed during the Nazi occupation with a narrative about them, their fates, and the subsequent history of the location. Beautifully filmed with music to accentuate the restrained, contemplative mood. Sometimes we are taken inside the buildings, to the lives of the current occupants, and sometimes we just view people conducting their lives, shopping, walking, sledding, or demonstrating against climate change. There is a Bar Mitzvah. A woman doing her exercises. Elderly people, young families, children. It seems to be a powerful counter-punch to the story of Anne Frank which many Dutch people took to heart as emblem of their imagined resistance to Nazi atrocities. But, yes, there area also stories of heroes, who hid Jews or helped them. And then of the collaborators who betrayed them. A sad, powerful statement about how people actually behave during times when their ethical compass is willingly or not distorted.
Melanie Hyamas
Three young British girls travel to a Greek island, Malia, for the vacation of their lives, a week of drinking, dancing, and partying. Taz is shy, reserved, and a virgin; Skye is harder, more worldly-wise, and a bit of a provocateur, who sometimes regards Taz as a spoilsport; Em is bisexual, more empathetic to Taz, tall and exotic. They meet some guys including Paddy and Badger. Paddy is the kind of boy feminists hold up as an example of toxic masculinity. He wants sex but won't even bother to walk with the girl after having it. Badger is kind of clueless, nicer to the girls and more sensitive. The others are all busy being teenagers, horny, drunk, impulsive, and rather mindless. The film at first is bacchanal and I almost turned it off. But those long scenes of partying and dancing and the three girls screeching in mock delight at the reveries to come (and clearly clueless about it all) serve to stage the sobering developments as Taz finds out she is not so sure she is ready to lose her virginity, or whether she has a choice, or just how romantic and satisfying the moment will be, while Skye assumes everyone will be happy just to get laid. It's all a bit shabby and depressing. After the bacchanal, the film begins to slow down, lingering over wordless companionship between Taz and Badger, who seem to find a real connection, as opposed to Paddy's exploitive attitude. In the meantime, the girls receive their GCSE results, and not everyone is getting in, and the friendship, you sense, between the three of them has suddenly become very fragile. "How to Have Sex" is an ironic title: it's really about how not to have sex, and how the casual indignities young people inflict on each other can sting and will, we know, resonate long after they happen. Walker should be honored for never cheapening the questions about consent and manipulation for effect, or for cheap moral platitudes: one is moved by the complexity of what feels like lived experiences.
Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake, Enva Lewis, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Laura Ambler
Based on the novel by Evan Hunter. Two teen-aged boys, Peter and Dan, meet a young woman, Sandy, on a beach, where she is fascinated by a wounded seagull. She persuades them to help her rescue it and they become friends and begin hanging out, drinking, experimenting with marijuana, and flirting. A fourth teenager, Rhoda, tries to join them, and is partially accepted, and partially rebuffed. Sandy clearly resents Rhoda's prudishness and self-righteousness-- she judges the three, while simultaneously craving their friendship. By the same team that did "David and Lisa", "Last Summer" explores teenage psychology, the desire for acceptance, the lure of impulsive recklessness, the braggadocio. It is a puzzling mix, moving from clumsy, amateurish sequences to sequences of daring bravado. Very uneven. At one point, Sandy runs to get bandages for the wounded bird but one cannot imagine how they could possibly be used. The audio is clearly looped. The characters are recognizable, dimensional, and as puzzling as any adolescent would be.
Barbara Hershey, Richard Thomas, Catherine Burns, Bruce Davison, Ernesto Gonzalez
True story-- ha ha-- of the creation, marketing, success, and then collapse of the Research in Motion "Blackberry", the first cell phone with internet features (texting, messaging, emails), focused on it's wooly-headed founders (Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin) and its shark CEO or Co-CEO Jim Balsillie, who realized the value of the product Lazaridis and Fregin were developing and brought it to AT&T and other cell phone vendors to start it on the road to an insane but brief popularity (President Obama loved his, but wasn't allowed to use it). Apparently not a reliable re-telling. Of course some persons don't recognize themselves quite as depicted in the film. And not a great film on any level artistically, though it does have that feel of a cheap rush as you watch them succeed and then fail. Very little on their personal lives, but some detail about the technologies involved and how they hacked the towers to get it all to work. And that penultimate moment of doom when Apple announced their iPhone!
Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Matt Johnson, Saul Rubinek, Cary Elwes, Mark Critch,
Akhavan believes that men can't or shouldn't attempt films on female sexuality-- at least, not lesbian female sexuality-- so here's her own take on the subject. Mostly about how poor little Shirin has suffered so much, is so lonely, and unappreciated. The fact that she can be quite annoying, narcissistic, and self-centred is, to Akhavan, beside the point. Her parents are shown to be well-meaning and kind but disapproving (she hasn't come out to them). So "Appropriate Behavior" is occasionally funny, and sometimes witty (I immediately suspected that Akhavan was at least a part-time comedienne), and always centred on what Shirin wants and desires and how she's not getting it. I found value in the expression of hook-up culture at this time and place, attitudes, and values, and what is perceived to be cool and appealing. And the sequences of Shirin trying teach film-making to a groupd of five-year-olds (not the "advanced" film-making five-year- olds) was amusing. A lot of it is Woody Allenesque (lesser Woody Allen). Maxine strikes me as bit of a revenge character-- Akhavan says the film is not biographical but, yeah... She shares some of the Amy Schumer tropes about "how dare you not find me attractive when I know I'm not but how dare you". Well, she's not: we thought she might be transgender for a while. She's also just plain mean and rude. Is it fun? For a while. Boring? Yes. Being obsessed with your own dissatisfactions is not social activism. Listen to this shit, about the film "Pariah": "Dee Rees's gorgeous directorial debut stars Adepero Oduye as Alike, a Brooklyn teenager who comes to terms with her own sexuality and puts the comforts of friends and family at risk as she discovers how to express her identity." Always a victim and the story is not about how a person is fulfilled by love or generosity or compassion or intelligence or art. It's about how a person is fulfilled when the world arrives at her knees in worship, and the centre of the world is the miasma of disapproval for sexual diversity. Yes, by all means, demand the right to be yourself, but stop demanding the whole world worship you.
Desiree Akhavan, Rebecca Henderson, Hailey Feiffer, Ryan Fitzsimmons, Anh Duong, Hooman Majd, Arian Moayed, Justine Cotsonas
Frederique Benoit (AKA "Freddie") is a young Korean adoptee who has lived in France with her adoptive parents for most of her 22 years. She arrives in Seoul as a result of happenstance and decides to seek out her birth parents. The entire exercise is fraught with raw, scabrous emotional risk, for her and for her biological father, mother, grandmother, and step-siblings, and an aunt who translates (Freddie speaks French and some English). Some of the other characters speak English or French as well, including Andre, an arms dealer who eventually hires her. She also acquires a friend, Tena, one of the most emotionally attractive characters you will ever see in a film, and the voice of judgment at times, of Freddie's impetuousness and rudeness. Freddie is impulsive, sometimes mean, sometimes reckless (she hooks up with several men), and not afraid to offend people who dislikes. She is clearly bitter about having been abandoned no matter how sorry her biological parents are, or how reasonable (or not) their explanations are. She is scarred, wounded, somewhat self-pitying, in sum. But we also see that her father is needy and clingy and feels he has authority over her, his abandoned daughter. The film had me on edge throughout, because of the powerful performances, the authentic feel (it is indeed based closely on the real experiences of co-writer Laure Badulfe-- a Korean adoptee). It stimulates feelings about family, love, attachment, the scars that we nurse and the scars we hide. This is a remarkable, beautiful film.
Park Ji-Min, Oh Gwang-Rok, Guka Han, Kim Sun-young, Yoann Zimmer, Louis-Do Lencquesaing, Jin Heo, Ouk-Sook Hur
Fanny Price is the poor girl-- humble and self-effacing-- sent to live with the rich snobs, her uncle Sir Thomas, his wife and four children, and destined to find true love with kind of a step sibling. Every argument that women write fiction as good as men seems to rely on writers like Jane Austen and books like "Mansfield Park" that are actually soap opera. It's all about relationships. It's all about how worthy little me-- without manipulation or deceit-- has to fend off the desires of bad men (pretty well all of them except the gayest character, Edmund). Every interaction is fraught, with lingering, meaningful looks, and the heroine's joyful masochism at being made to suffer by less worthy people. Fanny obviously loves Edmund-- it's kind of incestuous since they are brought up together-- but Henry Crawford, who is rich, wants her and Sir Thomas agrees to the match over her objections. Not a single scene involved in this transaction is compelling or nearly as interesting as Rozema, I think, thinks it is. Shot after shot seems poorly judged, reading after reading seems wrong, sequence after sequence seems abrupt or misplaced. There is a hint that Fanny's father is sexually abusing her or Sue, but no further reference to this occurs. But in Rozema's world, pretty well all men are predators, and they are shown to be so in "Mansfield Park". Sir Thomas is revealed by his son's drawings to also be violently abusive of his slaves (beyond the mere fact of owning them) so he can be conveniently villainized, while noble Fanny raises objections to the idea of bringing a slave over from the colonies to serve in the house. The entire dialogue between Sir Thomas and Fanny over her refusal to marry Henry is just plain stupidly film and processed. Edmund sees extremely gay for a romantic lead-- which makes sense given Rozema's own orientation. And when Fanny is recalled from her maternal home to care for Tom after an accident, she doesn't really seem to have anything to do, and certainly doesn't actually care for him other than holding a cloth to his head. What is this crap? Well, it's Rozema reading anachronisms into Austen, who was never as a great a novelist as people think anyway. And what the fuck: where did Henry bedding Mrs. Rushworth come from? It aint in the book.
Frances O'Conner, Jonny Lee Miller, Alessandro Nivola, Lindsay Duncan, James Purefoy, Harold Pinter, Victoria Hamilton, Hugh Bonneville, Justine Waddell, Embeth Davidtz
Carla Nowak is a teacher of 12-year-olds at a small German school. She is a Polish immigrant, a bit of an outsider. When the school becomes plagued with small thefts (pencils, and some money), suspicions are aroused and she and the school administrators make a number of questionable assumptions and take actions that reverberate through both the staff and student bodies. There is the taint of racism involved in the questioning of Ali, an Arabic student, and Carla uses her laptop camera to surreptitiously record activities in the staff lounge arousing some resentment among her colleagues. The student paper publishes an interview with her that raises questions about fairness and integrity, and a cheating student, and the child of an administrative staff member suspected of a theft, create a volatile mixture. Do students at German schools have the freedom to publish that these students seem to have? And why doesn't Kuhn explain whether she was even in the staff lounge or, if she was, that she just happened to walk by the jacket (we don't see unambiguous footage showing the actual theft). But then, this film is about people lacking good sense. Perhaps one of the best films in terms of an authentic depiction of a classroom and teaching in general. The tension is utterly compelling as we watch events lead to more and more antipathy and hostility and we sense an impending explosion. All of this accented by a musical score that, like "Psycho" and "Jaws" winds the tension ever tighter and tighter. Well acted and filmed if not entirely satisfying. The ending? No simple answers, except for the most important one, that poor judgement and weak character can lead to disaster.
Leonie Benesch, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Rafael Stachowiak, Michael Klammer, Eva Lobau, Kathrin Wehlisch, Canan Samadi, Ozgur Karadeniz, Leonard Stettnisch
Utterly compelling and convincing dramatization of the famous crash of a flight from Uruguay to Chile in 1972 in the Andes mountains. Unable to locate the missing turbo-prop plane, the searchers gave up, leaving about 27 survivors on their own in unspeakable conditions of cold and starvation. In desperation, most of the survivors began to eat from the bodies of the dead. Eventually, two of them succeeded, after 10 days, in contacting a muleteer in Chile who notified the authorities who ten rescued the remaining survivors. The survivors did not initially disclose the cannibalism but after questions arose, they held a press conference and admitted to it. "Society of the Snow" is brilliant filmed in real mountains, in Spain, Uruguay, and, of course, Chile (and Argentina, in the Andes). The mountain scenes are utterly spectacular. The make-up and physical condition of the actors is remarkably convincing. The special effects, the crash, the avalanche, and so on, are all quite good. The film takes you on a journey with these young men and you will be carried along through the horrific ordeal and the emergence to joyous rescue.
Enzo Vogrincic, Augustin Pardella, Matias Recalt, Esteban Bigliardi, Esteban Kukuriczka, Valentino Alonso, Blas Polidori
But be warned: this is an 8 out of 10 that includes many bonus points for principals. "Fallen Leaves" is about two very average, very believable people, who are both working class, poor, and falwed. In fact, everyone in the film is very shabby looking-- Kaurismaki has made an art out of it. It's part of what he calls his "proletariat" series. So many people will not enjoy it. The backgrounds are shabby, the foregrounds are shabby, the homes, the tables, the restaurants, the bars: everything is shabby and world-worn and everyone's expression is depressed. Yet it is a remarkable film because the concerns of the two main characters are so elemental and compelling. All they want to find a lover, a companion, someone who makes them feel good about themselves. So Ansa clings to the flowers Holappa brought to their first date, and so Holappa decides to give up drinking. The cinematography is very basic and it's obvious that no sets were built, and the clothing could be what the actors wore to the set that particular day-- if they didn't have any money. But the performances are very good, and the guest appearance by Finland's own "Spice Girls" (Maustetytot) is delightful, funny, and wonderfully weird.
Alma Poysti, Jussi Vatanen, Janne Hyytiainen, Nuppu Koivu, Mia Snellman, Mikko Mykkanen
Uneven and sometimes surprisingly candid documentary about the recording of "We Are the World" in January 1985, on the same night as the American Music Association's annual awards. Lionel Richie gets most favored subject status here and I suspect he had some inside relationship with the producers. Michael Jackson is also treated with kid gloves, but Stevie Wonder is revealed to have been annoying and Prince a no-show and Cyndi Lauper lobbied for special treatment. Others, like Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, and Huey Lewis, showed up, did what they were told without complaint or self-promotion, and left the room with a good vibe. Dylan was shown as awkward during the choral parts-- because that's not really in the scope of his performance skills. Some started asking for autographs from their fellows, which was kind of cool, I suppose. Quincy Jones must get credit for treating the group, at times, like disobedient school children. Not a bad documentary, not too overly self-serving, and generally favorable to those who showed up and humble performed as asked for a good cause.
Lionel Richie, Harriet Sternberg, Wendy Rees, Harry Belafonte, Ken Kragen, Quincy Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Huey Lewis, Smokey Robinson
There is some rumbling out there about this film not being nominated for an Academy award. Why? Because the director is a woman (who undeservedly won for her screenplay for "Promising Young Woman")? Like "Promising Young Woman", "Saltburn" promises far more than it delivers, with the embarrassing exhibitionist performance of Keoghan who also wrote the screen play. Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, a student at Oxford who sics himself on the good graces of Felix Catton whose family is incredibly wealthy and dysfunctional and owns a lavish estate called Saltburn. Oliver cleverly-- well, not so cleverly, really-- insinuates himself into Felix' family for the summer, where he succeeds in showing mayhem only because the Catton family is either unbelievably stupid or merely mechanical devices of the plot. Keoghan is rather charmless, which really stretches the credibility of the plot, and Jacob Elordi as Felix is not much better. Felix' sister, I suspect, is also supposed to be at least a little seductively desirable but isn't. It is unclear at times what the viewer is supposed to think of the shenanigans other than isn't Keoghan so naughty and sexy and shocking and hilarious. He is not. A reviewer in the New York Times tried to rescue the film as satire, or pastiche, or a commentary on the commentary on "Brideshead Revisited" but if it was, it is tragically unfunny, and scenes like the one in which Oliver sips at Felix bathwater (after he has masturbated into) are less stunning than banal, and his fornication of Felix's grave (which Keoghan improvised) is as entrancing as sophomore's vomiting after a party. So what? This action doesn't fit into a depiction of his passion for Felix or even a parody of his passion for Felix but it doesn't really connect to anything we know about either Felix or Oliver. It does connect to Keoghan who insists to the audience that he is just so, so, so interesting.
Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Richard E. Grant, Rosamund Pike, Archie Madekwe, Saide Soverall, Reece Shearsmith, Paul Rhys
In 1946, the Revised Standard Version of the bible, a new translation at the time, chose to translate two obscure Greek words into "homosexual". Lesbian Sharon Roggio decided to make a film about the efforts of Kathy Baldock and others of the gay community to track down the source of the translation and the dubious claims made about the meaning of those Greek words. Unfortunately, they essentially try to sustain a literal interpretation of the bible-- just not your literal. The most interesting part of this film is the relationship between Roggio and her father who stubborn insists on his own reading of the literal bible while maintaining deep respect and love for his daughter. He's kind of admirable, for his principles, if not his intellect. The rest of the film is a lot of pseudo suspense and cheap effect, tracking down a theology student who questioned the original interpretation and noting that the RSV subsequently back off their original interpretation while the derivative translations, including the NIV and Good News, did not. The problem is the real issue is whether the gospels are cultural limited. There is very little discussion of the fact that there are many other prohibitions in the bible that even conservative Christians ignore today, while insisting that they and they alone adhere to a the "literal" word of god. Aside from the issues, it's just not a very interesting film in most respects. It's an affirmation of the idea that homosexuality should be accepted by Christians while striking a tone of reserve and respect for those who have trouble accepting it.
Kathy Baldock, David S. Fearon, Sharon Roggio, Ed Oxford, Salvatore Roggio
Augusto Gongora was a well-known Chilean journalist. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2015 and this is a documentary about his struggles as his mental acuity declined and the loving, supportive relationship with his wife, actress Paulina Urrutia. Audiences are said to have wept at the Berlinale film festival. We see clips of him in younger days, though conspicuously omitted is any reference to first wife, Patricia Neut, the mother of his two children, Javiera and Cristobal. Given the somewhat self-serving tone of the film, lavishing shots of Urrutia bathing and caressing Gongora, one wonders a little. Yes, her devotion is touching and inspiring but one cannot and should not overlook the extent to which the presentation is manipulated. We are given a moving portrait of a great mind being lost, the sadness that entails for himself and his loved ones, and the frustrations. I also considered the issue of whether Gongora could consent to a film like this. Perhaps it should not be an issue; perhaps it should be. I'm not sure that, in the same situation, I would approve for myself. Some of the film is obviously shot by Urrutia herself, possibly with a cell phone. I didn't mind-- the rawness and honesty of those clips outweighed the technical limitations.
Augusto Gongora, Paulina Urrutia, Gustavo Cerati, Pedro Lemebel
Adam, a gay man living in London, lost his parents to an auto accident when he was twelve. He is very sad. Sad sad sad. He even rebuffs Harry, a fellow inhabitant of the apartment building he lives in, at first. After looking into a box of personal memorabilia he decides to visit his home town. There, in fantasy or dream, he encounters his dead parents, alive, and apparently aware of life after they left the earth. He is able to talk to them about his childhood, his failure at masculine games and traits, and his sense of shame and lack of acceptance. Both of his parents seem amenable to revising their attitudes towards his homosexuality and wrapping him up in love and acceptance. Or do they? It's not clear what relationship the fantasies have to reality in this story. He's not dreaming-- is he? They are not ghosts, except, perhaps, of his consciousness of them. And we don't really get a strong sense of trauma or suffering. Add to that, the horrible music track, barely a note or two, surging, then receding, all through the film.
Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy,
Wenders seems to have enduring fascination with the lives of people who just get buy. They don't commit terrible acts, they don't achieve spectacular things, they don't even really have family drama. Hirayama-- as if to drive home the point--cleans toilets for a living. He has a partner of sorts, Takashi, who seems to be an employee, but, when he quits, seems to have been a colleague. Hirayama drives around Tokyo servicing some of the most elegant public toilets you will ever see anywhere, designed by celebrated architects, including Shigeru Ban, and maintained at the expense of civic-minded corporations. And that's pretty well the story. Hirayama lives in a modest apartment, eats regularly at a local bar, eats his lunch in park under lovely trees that he loves to stare at, and takes picture on an old film camera. He doesn't have a smart-phone and doesn't know what Spotify is: he listens to music on cassettes, mostly alternative music from the 70's and 80's including Lou Reed, but also some Van Morrison, Nina Simone, and Patti Smith. Oh, at one point, a daughter, Nico, appears from nowhere, as does her mother, in a limousine with a driver. Then he sees a man meeting his ex-wife in a bar and discovers that he is dying of cancer-- a subplot that doesn't really resonate with anything, except perhaps the Ozu film "Ikiru", which Wenders admires. "Perfect Days" is emphatically about the normal, the banal, the mundane life of a very average if lonely man. Or is he lonely? He seems pleased enough with his routine, with the leaves, with his music on cassettes. He hardly speaks to anyone. So "Perfect Days" is unique, and fascinating in its own way, but you do begin to wonder if there isn't a good reason why films and stories are usually about something. And perhaps you begin to challenge Wender's implication that we should regard a passionless, quiet existence as some kind of admirable model of how we should live. In "Wings of Desire", the same idea works better because of the shocking decision of one of the angels to give up immortality in order to enjoy those same common things, a coffee, a cigarette, a shabby little circus, and the companionship of a lovely acrobat. "Perfect Days" is almost a sequel: this might be what Damiel experiences after his transition. Does it work? Perhaps not quite. Hirayama seems to have no friends and his family, former wife and daughter, seem very distant even with the warm, brief interactions we see. It is hinted that he does miss them, that he does feel lonely, and, perhaps that he feels he has nothing to offer either of them, for which he weeps. There is a reference to Faulkner and I thought of his comment at the end of "The Sound and the Fury" (I think), to the effect of "they endured". To that point, "Perfect Days" is service to mankind. It may not be a great film, but it fills an important niche and offers us consideration of the importance of the banal, the everyday, the rhythm and routines of the average life, and how they endure. Ebert comments on an Ozu film ("An Autumn Afternoon"): We are here, we hope to be happy, we want to do well, we are locked within our aloneness, life goes on.
Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Hakano, Yuriko Kawasaki
Sixteen-year-old Seydou and his cousin Moussa decide to leave Senegal and try to make it to Europe where Seydou is convinced he can become a professional musician. When Seydou broaches the topic with his mother, she pours cold water on the idea, so he sneaks off with Moussa without telling her, embarking on a long, terrible journey, an odyssey of horrors, as they cross the dessert, are nearly abandoned in the dessert, captured by Libyan hoodlums, threatened with torture, murder, or extortion, but eventually make their way to Tripoli where they find a boat to take them to Italy. This is an important film, the vivid background to so many news stories, compassionate and detailed and compelling. The acting is not intense, thought the crowd scenes are very effective, especially on the boat, and the cinematography is pretty but not striking, but the story itself is so important and so well told that the film deserves to be widely seen. The music is of note: a synthesis of acoustic guitar and African beat with some vocals. One is also astonished at the crowd scenes on trucks and on the boat and wonders how they did it without endangering lives-- if they didn't endanger lives.
Seydou Sarr, Moustapha Fall, Issaka Sawadogo, Hitchem Yacoubi, Ndeye Khady Sy
Emma Stone plays Bella, a Frankenstein's monster to Dr. Goldwin Baxtor, whom she calls "God" and whose own face is a patchwork of brutal scars. Baxter invites Max McCandles to intern at his lab and study Bella's progress, as she has an infant's brain implanted into her deceased adult body (she drowned herself in the Thames). McCandles falls in love with her and they are engaged but as Bella's brain develops, she strains against her restraints and eventually leaves the lab with Duncan Wedderburn, who clearly has nothing but ulterior motives. They travel to Lisbon, on a boat, then to Paris, as Bella becomes increasingly intelligent, and while she exercises her outsized sexual desires on Duncan and, maddeningly to Duncan, others. Stone is hilarious at times, with her googly walk, her bad table manners, her lust, but it begins to wear. After an hour, she actually became kind of boring. This is a film with 40 minutes of ideas stretched out to 140 minutes of run time, which begins to consist of repetitive fits by Duncan, more of Bella's sexuality, and spectacular if increasingly banal CGI effects. There is a great scene of dancing in a ballroom, but the visuals tail off from there. This is the kind of work that reminds me of a less coherent Terry Gilliam. When Bella spouts fundamentalist feminist dogma at times, you realize it's not part of the story: just a trope dropped in for relevance. Her desire for new experiences is funny once or twice. Her stint in a bordello almost shouts "empowering" even as she realizes that it devalues her sexuality. The ending, including a gratuitous act of revenge upon her first husband, her marriage to Max, and Baxter's terminal cancer, strikes me as capricious and narratively flippant. I suppose it was all meant to be some kind of statement about men and science and women and exploitation but none of it resonated with the rest of the story.
Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine, Christopher Abbott, Hanna Schygulla
Well, surprise, surprise. This story, written by actor and star Alan Alda, is far better than one expects. Joe Tynan is the young, charismatic Senator from New York, married to lovely, loyal Ellie, father to Janet and Paul, and devoted to his job and his career. We get a surprisingly sophisticated look at the strains on a public figure's family, the pressures, and temptations. In this case, while working on research into a prospective Supreme Court Justice, Joe spends a lot of time with married aide Karen Traynor. They feel a mutual attraction-- the "seduction" of the title-- or it is the seduction of political power at the expense of family? Ellie comes to bitterly resent Joe's regular absences, especially when she intuits that he is having an affair with Karen. Joe's daughter has problems of her own (she shocks the family with a tattoo). No quick resolution here, no pat answers. Joe follows his ambition but makes a course correction seemingly on time. An interesting complication in his life: Senator Birney, a long-time mentor (sort of) is show signs of mental decline and begins to lapse into French when challenged. (There is some suggestion that he is based on Edward Kennedy). Alda is actually pretty good in the role --though he really doesn't sound like a politician during his speeches on the floor of Senate and at news conferences or rallies-- the political transactions are credible, and the emotional issues are presented and treated as adult issues. We quietly get an acknowledgement that Joe is a Democrat but otherwise "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" follows that contemptible tradition of not identifying any specific religion or political party in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Of note: the rally scene near the end, for penultimate speech, was convincing-- one is impressed at the number of extras, the elaborate set preparation, and so on.
Alan Alta, Barbara Harris, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Kimbrough, Carrie Nye, Blanche Baker, Adam Ross
Leon is a writer working on his second book who accepts an invitation from his friend, Felix, to a remote cottage on the Baltic where he expects to find peace and quiet so he can fine-tune his manuscript while Felix works on his photography portfolio. Unfortunately, Felix's cousin's friend has also been invited to use the cottage. Nadja, a friendly, gregarious young woman, is elusive at first, sleeping and working and having sex with Devid, a lifeguard (or "rescue swimmer" as he calls it). She disrupts Leon's concentration. She is also clearly interested in him and invites him to join her at the beach and persuades him to let her read his manuscript. But Leon is an ass. He is narcissistic and rude and finds her annoying-- because he is also attracted to her and jealous of the attention she generously lavishes on others as well. We expect them to eventually hit it off, have sex, and transform Leon into a caring, empathetic person. But nothing is quite as expected. This is a simple, low-key film, focused on personality, conspicuously bereft of effects and action and jumpy, showy camera work. I admire the concentration on character and ideas but, that said, there are no really great ideas at work here. It's a fine film.
Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Enno Trebs, Uibel Langston, Matthias Brandt
Stunning, unique exploration of the contrast between the anodyne domestic bliss of German officers and their families and their unspeakable acts as mass murderers and torturers. Rudolph Hoss was the commandant of Auschwitz - Birkenau at the time that the crematorium and "showers" were constructed, and he managed the transportation and execution of over 400,000 Hungarian Jews. But "Zone of Interest" is primarily about his family life, his lavish home and gardens, his children and wife, and his Jewish servants, all conducting their daily chores and meals within earshot of thousands of Jews being shot, beaten, tortured, and executed. How does one manage the moral ambiguity? Or, to the point, what does it say about humanity that such a paradox can exist? As I have remarked on before, Hannah Arendt was essentially wrong about Eichmann and his "banality" of evil. She thought Eichmann wasn't really evil-- just subservient and conforming. In fact, his diaries later showed that he was, in fact, and enthusiastic mass murderer. "Zone of Interest" invites us to consider the same question, and recoil in amazement that humans capable of apparently wholesome familial relations can get on a horse and ride next door and oversee the execution of more than a million Jews. "Zone of Interest" is beautifully filmed in long, static shots, wonderfully acted, and, most importantly, accompanied by a disturbing just distant soundtrack of shots, screams, and indescribable sounds of suffering and anguish. The characters hear these sounds, choose to disregard them, and carry on-- except for Hedwig's mother, who is so disturbed by the outside noise she quietly leaves without even saying goodbye. The children play with teeth with gold fillings, Hedwig (Rudolph's wife) tries on a fur coat, and lipstick. Rudolph has a romantic moment with his horse-- and then something more carnal with a Jewish prisoner after which he carefully washes his genitals in a basement sink. The power of this film likes in it's ruthless examination of evil-- far more ruthless than "Schindler's List" because it doesn't remove the viewers complicity by caricaturing the lives of the perpetrators: they are so much like us, so "normal", no pedestrian and banal, and so capable of monstrous acts as, we wonder, are we.
Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller, Freya Kreutzkam, Ralph Herforth, Imogen Kogge, Luis Noah Witte, Johann Karthaus, Nele Ahrensmeier, Martyna Poznanski
Amusing story about an African-American writer who discovers that novels that feature clichéish jargon-ridden portraits of black Americans sell very well, compared to his own honest literary works. So he rewrites one of his books to pander to that perception only to discover that he is suddenly rich and famous (under a pseudonym) with enlightened, progressive white critics falling over themselves to praise his work. He even passes himself off as a criminal which leads to one of the more hysterical scenes at the end. Funny, witty, lively, and tasteful. Not sure what conclusion, if any, it offers us, but it is provocative and fresh.
Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Rose, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Adam Brody, Issa Rae, J.C. MacKenzie, Michael Cyril Creighton, Keith David, Leslie Uggams
Another "documentary" produced by close associates of the subject, Jon Batiste. I can't tell you if Batiste's music really is special, from this documentary, which is more devoted to developing a brand than art, but I can tell you that his music-- allegedly inclusive and exotic and eclectic-- is essentially mainstream snuff. In "Soul", the film that scored him an Oscar for God's sake, he provided music that sounded and looked like jazz to anyone who doesn't know what jazz is, but protectively insulated itself within so many layers of pop kludge that it was unrecognizable. Batiste's wife, Suleika Jaouad, is suffering from leukemia and a fair bit of time is given to her treatments and consultations, along with Batiste's Grammy nominations and wins, and his work on a big production at Carnegie Hall of his "American Symphony". Many segments just show Batiste doing nothing, really, except contemplating just how fascinating he is. Most viewers, probably, will believe that the focus on his awards and fulsome praise from other celebrities is the choice of an objective directory who decided that this was important information for the viewer to have, when, in fact, it is essentially Jon Batiste, through his proxy, bragging about himself. I found it tiresome. I also found it offensive that anyone thought his thoughts on the nature of music, “it’s playing the thing that we all know is unfolding whether we want to accept it or not. And it’s there always. We just need to harness it. Be open to it.” was deep in any meaningful way. It's fucking banal. It is facetious: Batiste knows full well that viewers don't have the remotest idea of how to compose or sing or suck up to white audiences who can't stand rap. The Guardian nicely quipped: Scenes when we're at this bedside, curiously watching him struggle with sleep in the presence of cameras or on speakerphone discussing his anxiety with his therapist, come off like curated intimacy." Exactly. Well, you could also call it phony. Except, the Guardian reviewer, Radheyan Simonpillai, is a fan, and actually thought Batiste's lavishly over-wrought performance of "Freedom" at the Oscars was a "show-stopper". The longer I watched, the less interesting I found him. Then, for some reason, they showed him doing covers of several songs, including "Let it Be", which puzzled me. In the sequences in which he works on his symphony, I began to suspect that the symphony was more a product of his ego than an actual musical development. Near the beginning, Batiste several times claimed that "nobody had ever done this before". I can't remember what it was he was referring to, but nothing about Batiste was unfamiliar. The film was produced by Barack and Michele Obama. I don't think that matters. It's classic Obama: inoffensive, mainstream, and safe. It was also produced by Jon Batiste, which tells you, as I said, what kind of self-serving product this is.
Jon Batiste, Lindsay Byrnes, Stephen Colbert, Suleika Jaouad
Original and fresh story about a 12-year-old girl whose mother dies of some undefined illness. Georgie, the girl, decides to conceal her mother's departure and continue in on her own, inviting friend Ali for sleepovers, stealing bicycles for spending money, and avoiding nosy neighbors. Her plans are upended when her dad, Jason, who she thinks abandoned her after she was born, shows up. She resents his intrusion and tries to lock him out of the house but eventually grudgingly accepts his presence as regrettably necessary, until they begin to develop a relationship. Not a brilliant movie by any stretch (poorly shot, generally, for one thing) but fresh and original and Lola Campbell is actually pretty brilliant as Georgie. She is quirkly and sassy but not in a way that is too coy or contrived. In one transcendent scene, she and her dad make up a conversation a couple on the other side of the train platform is having, and it becomes a delightful, trippy sequence in which you can't tell which part is made up and which part is Georgie speaking to Jason. The two, incidentally, obviously have a strong rapport that works well here. There are also amusing riffs by characters addressing the camera in commentary on Georgie's behaviour and situation. The story wanders at times a little close to precious, but remains safely a step away, as when Jason suggests a hug at one point. Enjoy this warm-hearted film guilt-free.
Lola Campbell, Alin Uzun, Cary Crankson, Harris Dickinson, Freya Bell, Aylin Tezel, Olivia Brady
The first thing to know is that Nevil Shute was appalled by the direction taken by the movie producers and director and quit the project in a huff. The second is that neither Gregory Peck nor Ava Gardner was remotely suited for or successful in their leading roles. Peck is a very nice actor with high personal principals and a limited range. Gardner at 37 was obviously too old for her part. That said, this version has merits. Peck is Commander Dwight Lionel Towers, an American submarine commander who is tasked with travelling to Alaska to check if the radioactive fall-out from a massive nuclear war is really going to persist and kill everyone, including all those in Australia where he is now based. He picks up some Australians to take with, a Lieutenant and a scientist. They confirm the degree of contamination and return. But the film is really about human relationships: how do you handle love, family, and life itself when confronted with inevitable death? Towers meets Moira, a woman who has slept in a lot of beds, we are told. The Australian lieutenant is Peter Holmes and we see him try to explain to his wife why she and their young child will have to take a pill that will kill them rather than die slowly, painfully, of radiation sickness. There is some discussion of causes (in the book, Albania-- yes-- attacked Italy first, provoking a cycle of attack and retaliation leading up to NATO, the Soviet Union, and China-- in the movie it's kind of nobody's fault and everybody's fault). A scientist decries the use of the bomb because, he insists, he and the other scientists never thought mankind would be so stupid as to every use it. There are touching, melancholy, poignant moments. There are archaic sexual attitudes (both Towers and Holmes slap women on the bum). But for the most part, it's tasteful and sad and very thoughtful. It's a relatively sincere film about an important subject. It has some other virtues: appears to have been shot on a real submarine (close in, wide-angle shots), with a real sub in the external shots. Some care is taken to show actual functions aboard the sub. And Shute obviously researched what the effects of radiation would be on the civilian population. But there are no bodies anywhere in view, nor physical destruction. The lack of destroyed cityscapes-- okay-- but it's hard to rationalize that there would not be numerous bodies in the streets and buildings. The accents are terrible, if even attempted (clearly not in most cases), and the drama itself is starchy, old-school stagey (Peck and Gardner kiss like high school seniors in "Oklahoma".) I still like it for what it is attempting and I note that Kennedy reportedly saw this film and was moved by it and it influenced his attitude towards the Soviet Union. Oh, and "Waltzing Matilda" may be the worst choice for theme of a serious movie ever.
Gregory Peck, Ava Garnder, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire, John Tate, Donna Anderson, Harp McGuire, Lola Brooks
At Barton boarding school, someone, a teacher, has to stay over Christmas for the students who have no place to go or can't return home for Christmas for various reasons. This year it's not Paul Hunham's turn but the real designate claims his mother has lupus. So Hunham is stuck with six students in the company of cook, Mary Lamb. This is an unacknowledged remake of "The Browning Version" though-- see the real thing. Hunham is very strict, very traditional, and very repressed. Angus, one of the students, is extroverted, rich, rebellious, and rude. Of course they end up spending a lot of time together (the other boys are shuffled off to a ski-trip with one of the other rich boys' father). And of course, Hunham learns to be less repressed, and Angus learns something about life. It's all very fresh and intriguing for the most part, well-acted, and evocative. Until... was this ending pasted on? It seems out of character with the rest of the story. It seems contrived. There's still a bit of fun, as in the way Angus plays along with Hunham when he meets a fellow Harvard alumnus. But the scenes with Angus' parents are not fun at all: too predictable and, as I said, contrived to provide some punch to an ending that threatened to merely end elegantly. Not as radiantly awful as "Dead Poet's Society" but still a kludge. All the more pitiable because "Holdovers" has elements of a fine film and a good character study. And I have endless appreciation for the fact that it was filmed after a real snow storm at Fairhaven High School in Massachusetts. Yes, the snow is real, and it looks it: beautiful. The soundtrack is also exceptional, featuring nary a single hip-hop or rap song. Mostly guitar-based folk, including a Cat Stevens tune.
Paul Giamatti, Joy Randolph Da'Vine, Dominic Sessa, Carrie Preston, Brady Hepner, Ian Dolley, Michael Provost, Jim Kaplan, Andrew Garmen
The character of Frank Horrigan, at the end, walks a gauntlet of admiring, cheering, adoring political aides, reporters, hotel staff-- everyone-- with gestures of just how much he rejects this tripe. But the character of Frank Horrigan is created by Clint Eastwood and Wolfgang Peterson and they, while outwardly seeming to admire his modesty, have conspicuously staged this scene in order to have it both ways. We heap contempt on your cheap adulation but we make sure everyone sees it and knows it's there. You would think, that by 1993, the ridiculous mechanism by which Frank is the one who saves the president, requiring a massive pretzel twist to an already strained plot, would be too much for audiences but no, here it is, in it's full perverse glory. Because everyone else minimizes the risk to the president, because everyone else doesn't believe in the reality of evil, because everyone else doesn't have hornet in his crotch that Frank has. On the plus side, there is some fun with the assassin: he's wordy and smart and plays sophomoric mind-games with Frank. That fun is undermined at every turn with the even more tired cliché of the hot, smart, sexy Secret Service agent (Rene Russo, 39) who falls for the 63-year-old washed up Secret Service agent (mandatory retirement age: 52), Frank (who is famous for failing to protect President Kennedy in Dallas - he was in the follow-up car). And here is another "having it both ways": the movie makes it clear that, in fact, Frank could not have prevented Kennedy's assassination in any case. Thus we get the drama of Franks self-castigation and his search for redemption, plus we don't have to actually believe he did anything to deserve it. And that's what makes him so appealing to younger women, I guess. More bad news: the Secret Service "offered its full cooperation" in the making of this movie. Because they wanted to ensure factual accuracy, I'll bet.
Clint Eastwood, Rene Russo, John Malcovich, Dylan McDermott, Gary Cole, Fred Thompson, John Machoney, Jim Curley
In the late 1990's a schoolteacher, Mary Katherine Schmitz Letourneau, famously was charged and convicted of 2nd Degree Rape for a sexual relationship she had with an eighth grade student, Vili Fualaau. Fualaau always-- until after Letourneau's death from cancer in 2019-- insisted the relationship was consensual, but, under the law, it is technically rape, and no regard is given to the genders of the couple. "May December" is not a depiction of that event but it is clearly inspired by it, using the device of having an actress, Elizabeth, come to visit Gracie and Joe in order to absorb details about Gracie to be incorporated into her performance in a movie about the scandal. As Roger Ebert observed about a particular film, everyone in this story has a personal agenda, things they wish to conceal, and things they wish people knew about them (whether true or not), and that includes Elizabeth who is hardly a reliable observer. She follows Gracie around for a few days, meets with her father and with other individuals involved in the story (sometimes to the discomfort of Gracie), and seems rather indifferent to any impact the movie might have the lives of the real people it portrays. When challenged, especially by Gracie and Joe's daughter, Mary, about the harms the film might do, she responds with the usual Hollywood canard about people having the opportunity to tell their story, so people can learn something about life. But she is also smart enough to avoid a head-on confrontation over the issue. It is clear that she is more interested in improving her own performance than in any consequences the film might have. As in real life, as he gets older, Joe has mixed feelings about the relationship with Gracie, and begins to realize how manipulated he may have been. Gracie, who seems utterly blind to the element of exploitation, demands of him, "who was in control?". She claims that he seduced her! This film is remarkably smart about the issues involved, and how the fundamental good sense we have about these relationships can prevail even when the flawed people involved seem, on the face of it, to insist otherwise.
Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Chris Tenzis, Charles Melton, Andrea Frankle, Gabriel Chung, Elizabeth Yu, D. W. Moffett, Christopher Nguyen
We have the oddly authentic recreation of a period, with lavish costumes and props and crowds, but with a ridiculously uneven hodgepodge of dramatic expression. At one moment, Joan is a millennial, struggling to articulate her feelings, weepy and shy and upset at her friends who send armies to her campaigns anymore. Other times, she tries to be the devout, head-strong agent of God's judgement upon the English, raining fury upon the insolent armies that defile her hold France. Is it Milla Jovovich's completely misjudged rendering, or Besson's absurd but daring concepts that misfire here? Hard to tell. What we have is a spectacular misfire, with scenes of power and magic and then unbelievably bad scenes of banal conversations and unhistorical incidents. The major plot points acknowledge the historical record and then proceed to make shit up whenever it suits the film-makers to do so, to jazz up the action. To begin with, Joan's sister was not raped and murdered by Burgundian soldiers, and Couchon was not nearly as generous to her or genuinely concerned about her well-being as portrayed here. But some of the battle scenes are compelling, and Joan's interactions with her captains and Charles have life to them because the roles are generally rich in dimension-- even if some of the French ridiculously speak English with a French accent. But then there is Dustin Hoffman playing some kind of imaginary mentor or "conscience" who argues with Joan about the validity of her mission, and whether the voices she hears were really from God and not from her own delusions. Hoffman is terrible and he makes Jovovich look terrible and the dialogue is terrible. Whatever is compelling about that moment-- and it is potentially extremely compelling-- it all melts away in the face of Hoffman's flat, mumbling, platitudinous hectoring and Jovovich's mumbling, self-pitying response, which just doesn't resonate with anything we know about Joan.
Milla Jovovich, Dustin Hoffman, David Baille, David Barber, Christian Bergner, Vincent Cassel, Faye Dunaway, Christian Erickson, David Gant, Michael Jenn, John Malkovich, Carl McCrystal, Richard Ridings, Timothy West
Arthur Miller directs movies more like television shows than any other director of his era. "The Out of Towners" is quintessential. It is well-lit, smoothly presented, and efficient, and not really very film- like. It has a lot of aesthetic of a sitcom. George Kellerman has an important appointment with the New York office of his company which he anticipates will lead to a promotion to Vice-President of Sales. The position will provide him with lavish benefits and doubled salary. His wife accompanies him on a flight to New York which can't land due to heavy air traffic and then bad weather conditions: they are dropped in Boston from which he would be able to access train transportation to New York, if he can get to the train station on time. What he doesn't know is that public services in New York, including transportation and garbage collection, are all on strike, and he neglected to request that the Waldorf-Astoria hold his room after 10:00 because he was late. He and Gwen are tricked into a robbery, hi-jacked in a police car, robbed again in Central Park, mobbed by protestors, and so on: just one horrible incident after another, all while George takes names and threatens to sue everyone he blames for their circumstances. Lemmon is hilarious as George, hyper-driven, outraged, determined, and clearly neurotic. Sandy Dennis plays Gwen, his wife, as patient and loyal, but to a limit. The fun is in the relative believability of all this misfortunes that befall them, and the credible performances of the various hotel clerks, transportation staff, police, and crooks they encounter along the way. Neil Simon is Neil Simon but I give the movie extra points for at least being written by a real writer who builds a character and writes witty, interesting dialogue, and I note that it was written for the screen, not adapted from a play, and it shows.
Jack Lemmon, Sandy Dennis, Anne Meara, Ann Prentiss, Phillip Burns, Ron Carey, Carlos Montalban, Robert Walden, Paul Dooley
The projectionist, having lost his girl after being blamed for a stolen watch, fantasizes becoming a great detective and projects himself into a film about a great detective. Typically (of Keaton), the story is a set-up for many fantastically inventive routines of silent film, mostly structured around a chase. Yes, Keaton gets a bit predictable in that sense, but his stunts and sequences are so beautifully realized-- and often stunning-- that you forgive the repetitive modes. There is no doubt as well that a good deal of fascination is due to the fact that all of the stunts are "practical"-- they are real, and dangerous, and magnificent. Of course he is proven innocent, and of course he gets the girl, but that's all beside the point. No current digital extravaganza can match the entrancing experience of watching real actors and real trains and cars and so on executing brilliantly choreographed sequences like this. I do note that Chaplin was better at integrating a compelling storyline ("Gold Rush", "City Lights") into his films than Keaton.
Buster Keaton, Joe Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Erwin Connelly, Ward Crane, Jane Connelly, Kewpie Morgan, Ford West
Trudy Kockenlocker-- out of heartfelt generosity and patriotism-- decides to spend a night out dancing with the boys who are about to be sent overseas. But her dad, the local constable, disapproves, so she sets up her friend and hopeless suitor Norval to say he is taking her out to the movies and lend her his car so she sneak to the dance. She bumps her head and gradually discovers that she is married-- but can't remember to whom. Worse, she discovers that she's pregnant. This unleashes a wild sequence of events that eventually involve the entire town, and more, at a time when an out-of-wedlock pregnancy was a huge scandal, especially in small-town America. Relentlessly paced, funny, and crisp, "Miracle of Morgan's Creek" is an oddity. It's profoundly irreverent and occasionally dark, cynical, and sometimes broad (no shortage of pratfalls) but always funny. And sometimes surprisingly transgressive. At one point, Kockenlocker thanks someone for a favor with "that's awfully white of you". If you haven't seen some of the other films involving the principals, it's also pretty fresh.
Betty Hutton, Diana Lynn, William Demarest, Eddie Bracken, Porter Hall, Emory Parnell, Julius Tannen, Victor Potel, Julius Tannen, Brian Donlevy
All Contents Copyright Bill Van Dyk 2017 All Rights Reserved
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