Kino Biff: February 2020

Best of 2016

The Handmaiden Chan-wook Park
Nocturama Bertrand Bonello
Elle Paul Verhoeven
Toni Erdmann Maren Ade
11 Minutes Jerzy Skolimowski
Love and Friendship Whit Stillman
American Honey Andrea Arnold
Indignation James Schamus
Blood Father Jean -Francois Richet
Moonlight Barry Jenkins

Honorable Mention

Hell or High Water-- Mackenzie, L'Avenir -- Hansen-Love,

Manchester by the Sea -- Lonergan, OJ: Made in America -- Edelman,
Tower -- Maitland, Don't Breathe -- Alvarez, Silence -- Scorsese,

Paterson -- Jarmusch, Julieta -- Almodovar

Movies I Enjoyed

Train to Busan, Colossal,

Everybody Wants Some!!

Café Society, Kubo and the Two Strings,
I Am Not a Serial Killer, Kedi,

Author: The JT Leroy Story, Embrace of the Serpent,

Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Cameraperson,

Well, The Founder,

The Love Witch, Dreamland,

Death of Louis XIV, Hacksaw Ridge,
A Bigger Splash, Deadpool,

The Edge of Seventeen,

Certain Women, Men Go To Battle,

Free Fire, Detour, Kill Your Friends,
Nocturnal Animals, Jackie,

10 Cloverfield Lane, Hail Caesar!

Below the Mendoza Line

La La Land, Doctor Strange,

Antibirth, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children,

Anthropoid, The Void,

War on Everyone,

Goldstone, Dog Eat Dog,

Loving, 31,

Sully, The Nice Guys,

Captain Fantastic, Creepy,

The Lost City of Z, I Olga Hepnarova,
I Am the Pretty Thing..., Midnight Special,

Army of One,

Killing Poe, Terrifier,

The Shallows, The Neon Demon,

Arrival, Slack Bay,

The Magnificent 7, BFG,

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,
Neighbors 2, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,

Yoga Hosers,

Sausage Party, Bad Santa 2

Cave Videntium

Cell

Bell, Book and Candle

Kim Novak puts a spell on Jimmy Stewart, note dorsal view

I found Richard Quine's Bell, Book and Candle to be a bit of a trudge. A rote theatrical adaptation, the film lacks visual dynamics with too many stationary dialogue scenes. There are some fun moments: Jimmy Stewart's double takes and some nice pantomime in a beat club. The cast is exemplary: Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, Elsa Lanchester and Hermione Gingold do their best.

James Wong Howe's photography is appropriately fanciful, but Quine's camera placement is uninspired. Kim Novak and Stewart do have a nice rapport. It is interesting to contrast this with the contemporaneous Vertigo, the advantage is all to Hitchcock. However, the film contains gorgeous dorsal shots of Ms. Novak that compare to those of Kay Francis in her heyday. Unfortunately, Bell, Book and Candle is more laborious than spritely.

Child's Play Versus Border

Looks are deceiving

Lars Klevberg's Child's Play is an uninspired reboot of the "Chucky" franchise. Direction and acting are competent enough, but the film is toothless. Instead of reveling in Chucky's raging id, we are treated to middlebrow critiques of capitalism and media violence. An utterly forgettable film.

On a much higher plane of cinema is Ali Abbasi's unsettling Border. Border is equal parts horror film, fairy tale, allegory and romance. The plot requires a total suspension of disbelief and contains elements bound to alienate some. Its bravery cemented my admiration. Abbasi plunges wholeheartedly into his outrageous premise, but realizes the shocks of his scenario need no visual pyrotechnics. Instead, the focus is on his performers and his two leads, Eva Melander and Eero Milonoff, offer two of the most compellingly romantic performances I've seen. The detonate erotically despite, or is it because of, their Neanderthal like appearance. They embody opposing responses to human culture: female accommodation versus masculine rascality. A memorable film that is best not spoiled to the uninitiated.

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

A poetic digression in An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

Terence Nance's An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, from 2013, is delightful mix of postmodern structure and romantic ache. The arch academic tone of the narration cannot erase the visual splendor of youthful passion. The multiple narrators hint at a world where love is chimerical and there are infinite variations on the theme.

Nance juxtaposes two versions of his film by pausing and popping in and out different VHS tapes. Form dictates the shape of content and Nance's poetic digressions are portrayed by animation. The score by Flying Lotus tickles the synapses and helps Nance avoid art house cliches. The film always threatens to topple over into solipsism, but its bold stylishness engages the senses.

Happy as Lazzaro

Wide eyed sheeple lurk amidst the undergrowth in Happy as Lazzaro

Alice Rohrwacher's Happy as Lazzaro is a droll, Bunuelian comedy of class, time and memory. Lazzaro belongs to a family of exploited sharecroppers toiling on a tobacco farm in rural Italy during the 1980s. Lazzaro is akin to Bresson's Balthazar, an all innocent, all suffering beast of burden who uncomplainingly toils. He falls into a kind of friendship with the landowner's son, Tancred. There is a note of chivalry in their relationship, but Tancred, no Prince of Galilee or leader of the First Crusade he, is more interested in extorting money from his mother by staging his own kidnapping than in bonding with Lazzaro.

Like Rip van Winkle, Lazzaro falls out of sight for thirty years or so. When he returns, he seek out his family fervently. Adriano Tardiolo, who plays Lazzaro, is reminiscent of Ellijah Wood in his wide eyed intensity. As the film moves from rural poverty to urban dislocation, Lazzaro stands as a repository of lost knowledge. A bravura pan shot spans three decades conveying the fleeting glory of Lazzaro's quest.

Rohrwacher has a distinctive eye, she even gives communication towers a magical glow. Happy as Lazzaro is a complex fable that focuses on the ambiguity of man's nature. Rohrwacher's finale, with Lazzaro as a Christ-like figure confronting moneylenders, falls flat, but she has deftly created a world where men exist as wolves and sheep, predators and prey.

Blaze Versus Come and See

Hippy teddy bear versus dazed youth

Ethan Hawke's Blaze is such a resounding dud that it is almost comical. A seamy, sarcastic performer, Blaze Foley, is reduced to a hippy teddy bear. Only Charlie Sexton as Townes Van Zandt emerges with dignity. Better to seek out Foley's recordings or Gurf Morlix's tribute, Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream.

Elem Klimov's Come and See, from 1985, follows the traumatic journey of a Belarusian youth during the Nazi invasion of 1943. Alternately lyrical and vulgar, Come and See always retains a crude power thanks to its fine cinematography and propulsive drive. Klimov largely shifts between two different kinds of shots: dollies that follow movement and front on close-ups (see above) that highlight the shock and fatigue of its subjects.

Parts of Come and See resemble propaganda films of the Great Patriotic War. The more interesting moments resemble the black wartime humor of Kubrick and Kusturica. Things don't always jell, but Come and See has a visceral impact as it catalogues the horrors of war. (6/30/19)

Climax

Gaspar Noe scratches wax beneath le drapeau tricolore on the set of Climax

Liberty, equality and fraternity become the objects of religious zeal only to destroy freedom, justice and fellowship. Their earthly reality is precisely Nothing, and the spirit of nihilism blows through them with a force that is all the more mysterious in that we the worshippers provide it.
"Man's Second Disobedience: A Vindication of Burke" -- Roger Scruton RIP

Gaspar Noe's Climax is among his more successful efforts, certainly a bounce back from the listless Love. The film is largely limited to one set, an abandoned school where a dance troupe is holding a rave in 1996. After a prologue and an opening dance number, Noe offers a series of two shots as a way of introducing his cast and their travails. Someone spikes the sangria with acid and events, as they usually do in Noe's films, turn ugly. This leads to Noe engaging in some self indulgently transgressive moments: a pregnant woman is kicked in the stomach followed by a character's hair catching fire, at which point I wanted to yell at the screen, "Gaspar, you don't know when to say No(e)."

However, the film is always a pleasure to watch and listen to. Nina McNeely's choreography gives the flick a shot of joie de vivre usually absent from the dour Noe's work. He is certainly in his zone illustrating the effects of LSD. Climax captures the agony and ecstasy of acid: where one can grasp eternity in a moment, but also where one is too blotto to negotiate a flight of stairs. In all its zonked out glory, Climax is a landmark of the new psychedelic cinema. Only Mandy is at its elevated level.

The meaning of Climax is another thing entirely. The presence of the tricolor behind the DJ stand seems to indicate that it is an allegory about the new, multicultural France. Peut-etre. That an abstemious Muslim is first blamed for spiking the punch seems to indicate a lack of fraternity and equality among French youth. Noe illustrates that the liberty they have is both a blessing and a curse. Meaning seems a bit beyond him, but Climax is such a riot of sensation, both good and bad, that the viewer can grok it as pure cinema.

6 Underground

Ryan Reynolds brings his good looks and snark to 6 Underground

Michael Bay's 6 Underground is a kluge cobbled together with spare parts: The Dirty Dozen (in this case, a half dozen), Oceans 11, The Italian Job, exhaust fumes, ad nauseam, etc. A belated endorsement of regime change in Syria, 6 Underground weds Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool snark with Bay's explosions and carnage. It moves along and is Bay's best film since The Rock. which is saying little since he has produced such lumbering mastodons as Armageddon, Transformers, Bad Boys 2 and Pearl Harbor in the interregnum.

The Indian Fighter

Kirk Douglas and Elsa Martinelli ponder jumping the fence in The Indian Fighter

Andre De Toth's The Indian Fighter, from 1955, is a superior Western, relatively thoughtful and sensual for the period. The film is of a liberal and tolerant bent, reflecting the persona and avowed commitment of its star, Kirk Douglas. The story was concocted by a blacklisted writer and ends as a paean to miscegenation. Douglas woos Indian maiden Elsa Martinelli with Cro-Magnon fervor. Their mating is evoked with liquid imagery. Martinelli is introduced skinny dipping and soon she and Kirk are having their first tryst in the same river. They grapple violently and Kirk, as was his want, gets as naked as Elsa. They have chemistry whether or not anything was going on offscreen. They end the film swimming together, love having triumphed over greed.

This sense of fluidity extends to the casting: Hank Worden and Harry Landers both play dual roles: injun and paleface, brothers under the greasepaint. The villains are whites lusting for gold, Lon Chaney Jr. and Walter Matthau, before Hollywood figured out to do with him. The Bend, Oregon locales are gorgeous, though I wish cinematographer Wilfred M. Cline would have slowed down some of the pans. This is De Toth's first Cinemascope feature, there are parades and snakes, and while he had worked with a rectangular frame before, The Indian Fighter feels clunky at times. However, De Toth's pessimism seeps through. His characters here, to paraphrase another De Toth film, play dirty. The venality of men lurks beneath the Technicolor surface of The Indian Fighter.

The Future

Nestled but unsettled: Hamish Linklater and Miranda July in The Future

Miranda July's The Future, from 2011, is narrated by a maimed, feral cat. That should tell you all you need to know about the plot of this late Obama era comedy of awk, twee, twerks and quirks. Happily, Ms. July's cinematic chops have improved since her debut. The interiors of The Future are well observed and the magical realism of this yarn is wholly suited to Ms. July's offbeat gifts. The Future is tonally provocative with colors coded as emblems of contentment, fertility and desire.

Ms. July's character is in a symbiotically slack relationship with Hamish Linklater. July plays a frustrated dancer and gets to show off a few Chaplinesque dance moves. The couple hopes to break out of their torpor by adopting a cat from a shelter. Needless to say, things do not go as planned. The scale of the film is appropriate to its modest themes of compassion and mindfulness. Mr Linklater and Ms. July keep up a dignified demeanor amidst surreal and silly settings.

Best of 2017

Zama Lucrecia Martel
Twin Peaks: The Return David Lynch
Columbus Kogonada
A Quiet Passion Terence Davies
Good Time Benny & Josh Safdie
Lady Bird Greta Gerwig
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Martin McDonagh
Phantom Thread Paul Thomas Anderson
Marjorie Prime Michael Almereyda
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) Noah Baumbach

Honorable Mention

The Skin of a Wolf -- Fuentes, I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore -- Blair
Raw -- Ducournau, Claire's Camera -- Hong Sang-soo,
The Killing of a Sacred Deer -- Lanthimos, The Other Side of Hope -- Kaurismaki
Get Out -- Peele, Personal Shopper -- Assayas

Movies I Enjoyed

Brawl in Cell Block 99, Long Strange Trip,
The Florida Project, The Invisibles,

All the Money in the World,

Logan Lucky, The Shape of Water,

Hitler's Hollywood,
Thor: Ragnorak, Split,

The Greatest Showman, Lady Macbeth,
Oh Hello, On Broadway, Baby Driver,

Good Manners, Better Watch Out,

Dunkirk, Trainspotting 2,

Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back,
Okja, Last Flag Flying,

Sweet Virginia, John Wick 2,
Let the Sunshine In, A Ghost Story,

Lemon, War Machine,

Wind River, Cargo,

Small Town Crime, The Endless,

Mr. Rudolpho's Jubilee, Absurd Accident,

Ingrid Goes West, The Hippopotamus

Under the Mendoza Line

Mother!, Loveless,

Mad to Be Normal, Brimstone.

The Changeover, Darkest Hour,

68 Kill, Maria by Callas,

Battle of the Sexes, It Comes at Night,

Kodachrome, Humor Me,

Downsizing, Lost in London,

Wonder Woman, Star Wars: The Last Jedi,

Call Me By Your Name, Cult of Chucky,

Terrified,
Death Race 2050, Detroit,

I Tonya, The Polka King,

Suburbicon, Permission,
Alien: Covenant, Beauty and the Beast,

Queen of the Desert, The Night Watchmen,

Valerian, The Beguiled,

Molly's Game, Eat Locals,

Atomic Blonde, Mom and Dad,

Blade Runner 2043, Guardians of the Galaxy 2,

Sleepless, The Trip to Spain,

Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman, The Little Hours, It

Cave Videntium

The Snowman

Casa de Lava

Reclining in warm ash: Casa de Lava

Note the goat above. Pedro Costa's Casa de Lava, from 1994, transposes the premise of I Walked with a Zombie to Cape Verde. Costa retains and expands upon the colonialist tensions that made the original so palpable. Emmanuel Machuel's cinematography makes the most of the island as a setting for the chthonic and uncanny. Costa's expressionism, derived partially from John Ford's use of color, casts an aura of unease that meshes with this murky zombie ode.

Costa is among those modern filmmakers who eschew montage effects for long, deliberate takes. Camera placement is Costa's primary means of expression. His closeups lop off parts of his players' bodies and creates a false sense of intimacy in an alien setting. The juxtaposition of a crumbling, half-completed modern infrastructure with the grandeur of a volcanic island creates an environment where nature predominates over the feeble veneer of civilization. Yet, color, humor and song exist to make the film more tonally varied than the original.

Costa also opens up the erotic possibilities of the story. Cape Verde itself seems to compel couples to fall into an embrace. There are a bewildering number of erotic alliances during the course of the film. Costa cuts away from the lovers before their trysts because he is more interested in the forces that bring people together than in their actual coupling. It is as if the warm ash at the base of the volcano and the cool sands of the island compels the characters to drop their inhibitions and surrender to their passions.

Casa de Lava is too focused on sensual splendor and dread to appeal to those looking for a good yarn or a tidily constructed narrative. It will excite those willing to search for new horizons in the cinema.

Us, The Dead Don't Die, The Irishman

One long death rattle: The Irishman

Jordan Peele's Us is an overly mechanical successor to Get Out. In Get Out, the subtext of racism often threatened to overwhelm the narrative, but Peele provided enough characterization for his supporting cast to distract the audience from his machinations. Here only Lupita Nyong'o emerges with a rounded character or two. Once our heroine's family is confronted by sinister dopplegangers, the action descends into Whack-a-mole.

Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die suffers from a similarly rote feel. However, Jarmusch's deadpan style is better suited to his material than Peele's clenched hysteria. Jarmusch's sense of locale is also better. The film is marginal, but does not suffer from pretension despite its attempts at topicality.

Martin Scorsese's The Irishman is leagues above such ephemera. A meditation on toxic American masculinity and its decline, the film is among Scorsese's most nihilistic works. America's facade of democratic civility is shown to mask a murderer's row. Light resides only in infinite darkness.

Parade

Once a hoofer, always a hoofer: Jacques Tati bends shoe leather in his Parade

Jacques Tati's Parade was reviewed as a feeble array of circus and music hall acts when it was released in 1974. I found the film to be a near masterpiece, almost on par with Playtime. Tati was using the film to preserve a record of his music hall pantomimes that brought him to fame in the 1930s, but it is most striking today as a playful example of structuralist cinema. Tati mixes videotape, 16mm film and 35mm film to blur the boundaries between audience and performer. He shapes live and studio performances from different venues into an organic whole where, as the song goes, life is a carnival. The onscreen audience is stocked with ringers who interact within the circus ring: we are all players in life's passing show in Tati's view. Backstage activity is not hidden from the viewer, but is part of the show. Sometimes the humor is as tired as the whoopee cushion gag in Playtime, but Tati's visual wit never flags. I though in my youth that Tati lacked the Dionysian fervor of a major artist, but his Apollonian architecture is delighting me in my dotage. The circular structure of Parade is the work of a modernist chafing under the structures of modernism while celebrating color, movement, and humanity.

Midsommar

Heralding the inevitable sacrifice in Midsommar

Ari Aster's Midsommar has many of the strengths and weaknesses of his debut film, Hereditary. Aster combines a sure grasp of cinematographic framing and production design, as in his previous film, which serve to heighten a sense of dread and horror. Midsommar's plot is weak, a rehash of The Wicker Man set in a Swedish commune. Aster does wring a sense of dislocation and unease utilizing bright midsummer lighting and the sparkling white costumery of his cast. He gets more out of subtle undulations and diffusion techniques than Aronofsky did with his exertions in the similarly psychedelic Mother.

Characterization, as in Hereditary, is a problem and Aster has a blander and less effective cast here. Florence Pugh is somewhat miscast, she is too substantial a screen presence to play a buffeted waif, but she and Vilheim Blomgren are the most watchable thesps onscreen. The supporting characters are all one note roles that exist to expand the body count and sense of trepidation. As in Hereditary, family trauma serves as a sawhorse to support the flimsy narrative. Aster's plot and characters are half baked, but his visuals are provocative. In an age where character and narrative development are best being investigated by television and streaming shows than can spend countless hours pursuing this direction, perhaps Aster's talents are best suited for what is left of cinema. Midsommar has traces of visual splendor and unconscious passion, if not coherence, to say the least. The apposite smile of Ms Pugh at the film's fiery conclusion, which signals a purgation of her trauma, makes me eager to see Mr. Aster's next effort.

King and Country

Tom Courtenay and Dirk Bogarde are trapped like rats in King and Country

Joseph Losey's King and Country, from 1964, is a First World War court martial film with Dirk Bogarde defending Tom Courtenay, who has been charged with desertion. The tragic denouement is predictable, as is condemnation of war with a capital W and the indifference of upper crust officers. Whereas Kubrick, in the similar Paths of Glory, pictures soldiers as sacrificial pawns amidst an indifferent universe, Losey is more interested in picturing the squalor of life in the trenches. The prevalence of vermin, mud, and puddles reduce the troops to the level of the scurrying rats that plague them, searching for warmth or comfort where there is none to be found.

Instead of opening up the play upon which it is based, Losey closes up and confines the action of King and Country to stress the claustrophobia of trench warfare. Visual memories of home and family are inserted, but only to emphasize the characters' isolation. King and Country is a minor triumph, its pessimism and anti-establishment tone a good match for the tortured psyche of Losey.

Blood Tea and Red String

A 16mm stop action animation film from 2006, Christiane Cegavske's Blood Tea and Red String is a marvel of imagination and aesthetic reach. Her fairy tale world is phantasmagorical with dialogue banished and narrative secondary to spell conjuring. The film's visual texture and splendor rival Bunuel and Svankmajer. There are aspects of the film that resemble American surrealists such as Anger, Lynch and the Quay brothers, but Cegavske is her own animal. She populates her film with creatures from the dark woods of fables. The result is a kaleidoscopic wonder of unbridled unconsciousness.

Too kinky and gory for the kids, Blood Tea and Red String, as the title implies, is awash with undigested clinical material. Mice drink and argue over cards, wings are clipped and all creatures struggle against bondage. A perverse little masterpiece. Ms. Cegavske's website, www.christianecegavske.com , is well worth a gander.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood versus Toy Story 4

Which twosome is more dimensional?

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood strikes me as his best since the Kill Bill films, but I have caveats. Principally, the film's meandering pace. I don't mind Mr. Tarantino going long, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown are almost as long, but this film feels slack at times. Mr. Tarantino wants to evoke LA in 1969, so there are endless shots of Brad Pitt driving past advertisements for McKenna's Gold and such with KHJ blaring on the soundtrack. Mr. Tarantino is overly drunk on the visual past and the film is a hall of mirrors of 60s film and television.

Mr Tarantino seems to me unduly fond of barbecuing the Manson family for emotional payoff in the film's climax. Far be it from me to extol the flower children and their sinister offshoots, but the shooting ducks in a barrel moral stance is the same here as when Mr. Pitt was carving up Nazis in Inglorious Basterds. Mr Tarantino will never have the moral probity of a Bresson or even a Preminger, but he does hit upon a theme in his wheelhouse here: the career anxiety of a middle-aged male actor.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt are both superb as a perhaps fading star and his stunt double. Di Caprio has more range, but Pitt's casting is spot on and he has never been better. Tarantino, as usual, provides enough clever dialogue and arresting situations to give the cast ample opportunity. Mr Tarantino is the most gifted Hollywood writer and director for actors of this era and the cast is full of standouts: Margaret Qualley, Bruce Dern, Dakota Fanning, Damian Lewis, Nicholas Hammond, Julia Butters, Timothy Olyphant, Kurt Russell and Rebecca Gayheart all offer memorable bits. Once Upon a Time... is self indulgent, but Tarantino has earned his rueful reverie as time marches on for us all.

What Tarantino lacks is what Josh Cooley's Toy Story 4 has in spades: a dynamic visual style and three dimensional characterizations. "Forky", a spork really, shows more development and complexity, as do Woody and Bo Peep, than even the characters Tarantino takes from real life; especially Sharon Tate. Toy Story 4 is overwritten and over plushed, but it is also a humanist masterpiece. Randy Newman's score is his best and contributions byTom Hanks, Annie Potts, Keanu Reeves and Christina Hendricks are priceless. (11/2/19)

From the Journals of Jean Seberg

Mark Rappaport and Mary Beth Hurt get meta in From the Journals of Jean Seberg

Mark Rappaport's From the Journals of Jean Seberg, from 1995, deftly interweaves and juxtaposes clips from Ms. Seberg's films with fellow Iowan Mary Beth Hurt's dead on screen narration and commentary. Rappaport's cinephilia suffuses the film, as he provides a meta commentary on Seberg's career and those of her peers in the industry such as Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. The only sour note is Rappaport picturing Seberg as a victim with big bad wolves such as J Edgar Hoover, Otto Preminger and Clint Eastwood abusing St. Jean. Of all the rogues that plagued her, her mate Romain Gary seems the most culpable. His cinematic collaborations with Seberg, psychodramatic portraits of their troubled union, certainly border on abuse. By casting her as a victim, Rappaport robs Seberg of her agency and leaves big questions about her political thought and activity unanswered. Still, despite my petty carping, From the Journals of Jean Seberg is a treat for film lovers.

Best of 2018

The Favourite Yorgos Lanthimos
Cold War Pawel Pawlikowski
The Other Side of the Wind Orson Welles
24 Frames Abbas Kiarostami
American Animals Bart Layton
Mandy Panos Cosmatos
Shirkers Sandi Tan
Shoplifters Hirokazu Kore-eda
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Joel and Ethan Cohen
Birds of Passage Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego

Honorable Mention

Les Garcons Sauvage -- Mandico,

Support the Girls -- Bujalski, Madeline's Madeline -- Decker,

Happy as Lazzaro -- Rohrwacher, Berlin Babylon -- Tykwer, et al,

A Simple Favor -- Feig, Jeanette -- Dumont,

You Were Never Really Here -- Ramsay, Border -- Abbasi,

Errementari -- Alijo, Sorry to Bother You -- Riley,

The Wolf House -- Leon and Cocina, This Magnificent Cake -- De Swaef & Roels

Movies I Enjoyed

The Little Drummer Girl, Hereditary,

Burning, Miss Stevens,

The Rider, Game Night,

Nuestro Tiempo, Grass, A Quiet Place,

Outlaw King, The House That Jack Built,
The Image Book, Bergman: A Year in a Life,

Ready Player One, Unsane,

Roma, Annihilation,

Did You Ever Wonder Who Fired the Gun?, Donbass,
The Mule, 8th Grade,

The 15:17 to Paris,

Tumbbad, Anon

Sinatra in Palm Springs, Bullet Head,

Winter Flies, Paddington 2,

Greta, Can You Ever Forgive Me?,

In Fabric, Mute,
BlackkKlansman,

Blue Iguana, Green Book

Humor Me, White Boy Rick

Under The Mendoza Line

Puzzle, Lizzie,

First Reformed, Family,

At Eternity's Gate, The More You Ignore Me,

Un couteau de la coeur,

I Think We're Alone Now, Malevolent,
Crazy Rich Asians, Black Panther,
The Death of Stalin, Deadpool 2,

The Sister Brothers, Leave No Trace,

The House with a Clock in its Walls,

Mary Queen of Scots, Supercon,

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, Suspiria,
Damsel, Her Smell, The Spy Who Dumped Me,

An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, Balloon,

Blockers, Blaze,
Mama Mia! Here We Go Again, Benjamin

Cave Videntium

Destroyer

Rocketman, Zombieland: Double Tap

Taron Egerton broods ceaselessly in Rocketman

Dexter Fletcher's Rocketman is a not unwatchable flop. Produced under the auspices of Sir Elton, the film attempts to tell the tale of his meteoric rise in showbiz using showstoppers from the Maestro's songbook. The film favors an MGM musical approach, costumes and makeup are appropriately glittery. There are nice performances, particularly by Stephen Graham and Tate Donovan. Yet, the effect is flat and surprisingly anodyne for the story of a colorful performer. This is largely due to the choice to use his redemption in rehab as a framing device.

The film avoids celebrity cameos, which beggars belief since Elton has hobnobbed with everyone from John and Yoko to the royals. The band members are unnamed and Gus Dudgeon, Elton's producer, does not appear. This is not necessarily a bad approach, Mr. Fletcher said that he was going for an old time musical feel and that jibes with the phantasmagoric universe of John and Taupin. A few of the musical numbers, particularly "Honky Cat", have zip. However, Lee Hall's screenplay portrays little Reg Dwight as emotionally neglected by his parents, a man hopelessly searching for Love. His parents are one dimensional punching bags, a cold fish and a tart. When Elton unloads on the errant duo, saying he has fucked multitudes, taken every drug known to man and enjoyed every minute of it, the effect is ludicrous because we haven't seen him enjoying any such debauch. Just a few scenes of him wallowing in substance assisted misery.

What dooms the film is Taron Egerton's lack of charisma. Even Jamie Bell (Bernie Taupin) and Richard Madden (John Reid) have more of an aura of it here. Rocketman is a sullen disappointment.
To taste the flavor of Captain Fantastic at his peak, it would be more rewarding to view his appearance on The Cher Show in 1975

Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland: Double Tap is an uninventive sequel. When the highlight of the film is Zoey Deutch's dumb blonde routine, you know you are sampling a tired rehash. The returnees phone in their performances and the entire enterprise is eminently forgettable.

Crazy Rich Asians versus Bullet Head

A typical moment of fashion porn in Crazy Rich Asians

Jon M. Chu's Crazy Rich Asians is a pleasant enough romantic comedy. However, what is on the surface a progressive milestone, due to its all Asian cast, is actually a retrograde wallow in materialistic fantasies. The plot would have been moldy in the Victorian era. It could have been made in the 30s with Margaret Sullivan and Henry Fonda. Constance Wu and Henry Golding are New York yuppies whose romantic relationship is reaching the serious stage. He suggests a trip to Singapore to meet his family. Once there, of course, things do not go as well as expected for the duo. The chief obstacle seems to be an unyielding mother, played with stern implacability by Michelle Yeoh. Per formula, true love wins in the end.

Chu moves things along, but the film lacks a firm directorial imprint. There is mild satire of affluent Asians, but this film is too unrelentingly nice to dig deeper. Thus, we join the characters in savoring Singapore's sensual pleasures. Much of the film is a swim in these pleasures: we get food porn, fashion porn, jewelry porn, shopping porn and Singapore skyline porn. I am not using the word porn pejoratively. I am happy to mindlessly wallow in a visual simulacrum of pleasure as anybody. However, when a director celebrates the wonders of the Singapore skyline, the epitome of capitalism on steroids, it is obvious that he is avoiding ironic distance or a critical eye like the plague.

It may seem that I am criticizing a souffle for not being a steak, but I found Crazy Rich Asians to be old hat. A good example is the function of the gay characters, well played by Nico Santos and Awkwafina. They are on hand to provide emotional support for the heroine, offer bitchy comments on their social milieu and provide checks for the production's Woke boxes. Neither has a romantic interest. They might as well be Patsy Kelly and Franklin Pangborn. Still, they are the least bland characters on screen and I suppose that is their function. Crazy Rich Asians serves its function, but has little else to offer.

In contrast, Paul Solet's Bullet Head is an unpleasant stew of violence, crime and animal cruelty, yet it has more of a moral commitment to its themes than Crazy Rich Asians does. Adrien Brody, John Malkovich and Rory Culkin are crooks who hide in an abandoned warehouse after a botched robbery. Soon they discover the warehouse is a site for dog fights, masterminded by Antonio Banderas, and they must contend with one very angry canine.

Solet chooses to flesh out his film with flashbacks from the dog's point of view. This gamble, which flirts with ridiculousness, works because Solet uses this device to chronicle cruelty and not to wallow in its effect. Most of the violence is implied. He gives each character a memorable soliloquy and flashback and grounds their memories in their current plight. All of the actors shine and Brody gives his best performance since The Pianist.

Bullet Head's moral is similar to that of "Androcles and the Lion". A karmic payback brings a sliver of light to these proceedings. Bullet Head is too dark for most people, but I admire its gravity.

Brody and Malkovich provide gravitas in Bullet Head

Madeline's Madeline, Nightmare Cinema

Helena Howard makes an impressive debut in Madeline's Madeline

Josephine Decker's Madeline's Madeline is a provocative character study. Helena Howard plays the title role, a bipolar and biracial teen who finds her niche working with an avant-garde theater troupe. Its director, played by Molly Parker, becomes a mother figure to Madeline to the chagrin of her addled Mom, played by Miranda July. Ms. Decker's direction of her players is impressive. Ms. July and Ms. Parker, two performers prone to fussiness and tics, provide disciplined turns. The revelation is Ms. Howard who displays impressive range in her film debut.

Ms. Decker's script provides a multi-dimensional framework for her portrait of her protagonists, or rather, antagonists. Her exploration of the power struggle between the three leads enact a welcome engagement with her characters' virtues and flaws. Each woman displays vulnerability while searching for a meaningful existence, but also solipsism, narcissism and cruelty. Decker touches upon a host of issues: mental illness, the emotional suffocation of family relationships, the search for sexual solace and identity. Yet, Madeline's Madeline never feels overstuffed or pretentious.

Decker utilizes a hand held camera to convey not only immediacy, but also the subjective mental state of his troubled protagonist. Madeline's Madeline is one of the more accurate portrayals of mental illness because it has the feel of a fully rounded portrait and not a case study.

Nightmare Cinema is a better than average horror anthology. I sought this out because Joe Dante directed one of the segments, but his is only a middling effort. The standouts are Alejandro Brugues' "The Thing in the Woods" and David Slade's "This Way to Egress". Fans of Black Mirror should check it out.

Shadow, The Others

Yin and Yang in Zhang Yimou's Shadow

Shadow is easily Zhang Yimou's best film since House of Flying Daggers. Like that film, Shadow is a wuxia drama, the director's commercial haven since 2002's Hero. Yimou has suffused the film with feeling and ambivalence. The white and black color scheme calls attention to the film's depiction of the interplay between yin and yang. Ultimately though, it is the grey area of the characters' motivations and allegiances that is the focus of this tale of an ongoing cycle of vengeance. Shadow is that rare wuxia film where the drama is as engrossing as the spectacle. I felt that the first third of Shadow dawdled in its exposition, but that feeling might dissipate upon a second viewing; which Shadow demands. A masterwork.

Alejandro Amenabar's The Others, from 2001, is a dull horror film. An amalgam of The Turn of the Screw, The Shining and The Sixth Sense, The Others strands Nicole Kidman and Christopher Eccleston in a retread with a predictable twist. Fionnula Flanagan has a few nice turns, but the film feels embalmed rather than directed.

Arctic

Mads Mikkelsen suffers stoically in Arctic

Joe Penna's Arctic is a well told survival tale. Mads Mikkelsen stars as a downed flyer, stranded in the Arctic Circle with minimal tools for survival. The story has its twists and I will not give them away. Artic is more craft than art and all the better for it. Why resort to metaphors and such when one has a canvas as compelling as the icy majesty of the Arctic and the primal theme of man versus nature. Penna occasionally lacks crucial exactitude in his direction, particularly when Mads has to pry a boulder off his leg, but displays a gift for unfussy narrative drive.

Mr. Mikkelsen has risen to star status despite or perhaps because of a creepy onscreen persona. His performance is remarkable and lifts Arctic above the workmanlike. He is a restrained presence, compare his Hannibal to Brian Cox's and Anthony Hopkins' estimable efforts. Here the show is all his. He displays his usual stoicism, but also tenderness with adroit majesty.

The Witches (1967)

Toto enlivens The Witches

Dino De Laurentiis' The Witches is a five part anthology film with sequences directed by Visconti, Pasolini, De Sica, Rosi and Mauro Bolognini. The film is a showcase for Silvana Mangano who was married to the producer at the time and appears in each of the segments. The Witches is part of a wave of anthology films from Europe during the 60s that included Ro.Go.Pa.G and De Laurentiis' later Spirits of the Dead.

Despite the title, the common theme between the short films is not the supernatural, but parody. Each of the segments burlesques different film genres. The results are generally uninspired, especially in relation to each director's best work. Visconti's segment just might be his least interesting film despite a game effort by Annie Giradot to enliven the proceedings. Helmut Berger appears in a small role, billed as Helmut Steinburgher. Rosi's segment, barely as long as a trailer, is a forgettable spoof of revenge melodramas. De Sica's segment parodies white telephone movies, 'women's pictures' and Juliet of the Spirits. Clint Eastwood appears as a staid husband whose indifference to Mangano forces her to seek refuge in flights of romantic fantasy. There are eye popping sets, costumes, hair and makeup, but comedy is not De Sica's forte.

The two best sequences are by Pasolini and Mauro Bologni. Both ably utilize the splendid color photography of Giuseppe Rotunno who also lensed the Leopard, Amarcord, and All That Jazz. Bologni, a director I am unfamiliar with, helms a simple chase sequence where Mangano races her car through the streets of Rome to take the injured Alberto Sordi to the hospital. Sordi kvetches to good effect and the segment earns a few laughs.

Italian film legend Toto brings much needed hilarity to Pasolini's effort. I'm mildly ashamed to have not seen any of his hundred or so roles, but he must have been beloved: credits include Toto Le Moko, Toto the Third Man, Toto In Color and Whatever Happened to Baby Toto. His collaboration with the dour Pasolini resulted in a comic book burlesque of neorealism. The setting is a slum filled with dilapidated trailers. Toto is dressed like a silent clown and his trailer even has a portrait of Chaplin. Mangano appears as a mute muse. Toto's pantomime of courtship captures the essence of Chaplin amidst the campily colorful settings. A couple in drag drop a banana peel that causes Mangano to plunge to her death from atop the Coliseum. There are many colorful wigs. John Waters has spoken of his admiration for Pasolini and this segment is the artifact best representing a nexus between the two.

Hustlers

Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez stick it to the men in Hustlers

Lorene Scafaria's Hustlers, from her adapted screenplay, has won praise as a superior Jennifer Lopez vehicle and I suppose it is that. Constance Wu is the nominal lead as a young stripper taken under JLo's wing. The two women and their under drawn comrades soon go out on their own, hustling Wall Street lizards out of their ill-gotten gains. Like Magic Mike, this is a populist stripper movie in which economic desperation drives the dishabille. The slimy business titans are drugged and fleeced by JLo and her crew, but the film acknowledges the victims are not always getting their just desserts. Still, the film revels in these ladies turning the tables on powerful men and in the bling and fineries their crimes bring. The film leans towards populist crowd pleasing rather than grappling with ambivalence.

The main drawback of the film is that it is visually pedestrian. There is an over reliance on closeups that telegraph emotion instead of evoking it. A single tear streaming down Ms. Wu's right cheek becomes a typical signifier. A few of Ms. Scafaria's tracking shots capture the aura of a strip club, but comparing them to similar moments in Magic Mike or even Magic Mike XXL shows the lack of visual rhythm and excitement displayed here. Ms. Lopez gives a committed and gutsy performance. She is a physical wonder at fifty and deserves her plaudits. However, Scafaria's camera works tends to box in her physical prowess instead of letting it explode and expand beyond the frame.

Scafaria displays skill with her players and her screenplay is well constructed. The film's lack of visual snap heightens our sense of its predictability. The crew is brought down by greed and the peccadillos of its weakest link, just like numerous 30s gangster films. Hustlers is above average entertainment, but not much else.

Booksmart

Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever show off their geeky charm in Booksmart

Olivia Wilde's Booksmart is a fine first feature and pleasant coming of age comedy. Critical hype trumpeted this as a distaff Superbad, but I think Booksmart is the better movie. Visually the film is a mix of Portlandia like comic cameos linked with music video segments. Nothing revelatory, yet Wilde brings a sense of delight to a tired genre.

Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein have a nice rapport as high school besties facing graduation and separation. The duo fear they have missed the frolics of youth while toiling on their studies and embark on a last ditch spree. Innocence is lost, horizons are widened and romantic rectangles are reconfigured; thus are the dictates of the genre.

There is an impish esprit in the appearances of the supporting cast. All sparkle for a few moments, especially Jason Sudeikis, Mason Gooding, Skylar Gisondo and Molly Gordon. Billie Lourde is neat fun as a spirit of mischief and chaos. She functions as an imp of the perverse, much like Roddy McDowell in George Axelrod's Lord Love A Duck: an even stranger SoCal teen comedy. Wilde eschews realism with Lourde's buzzed fairy like apparitions. The film has some well written laughs amidst the mild debauchery. I especially enjoyed the animated Barbie sequence. Wilde and her collaborators provide dollops of humor to make the feminism go down in Booksmart.

Bad Times at the El Royale

A weathered and phlegmy Jeff Bridges in Bad Times at the El Royale

Drew Goddard's Bad Times at the El Royale is a tad underrated, I venture. An inventively original screenplay, by Mr. Goddard, attracts a number of noted performers who contribute to a pungent noir. As in The Cabin in the Woods, Goddard brings a lively immediacy to the proceedings.

Bad Times... is blocked overly precisely which, at times, drains the life out of the film. Goddard revels in pop compositions with overly hip, yet arresting, decor. They are presented in a highly physical cartoon style. The cast is often dwarfed by the sets, which contain multiple locked boxes, trap doors and two way mirrors. The plot is clever, perhaps too clever, and the film can't entirely transcend its pulp artifice. Seven strangers converge at a Cal-Neva motel and their numbers dwindle.

Jeff Bridges and Cynthia Erivo are both outstanding as two desperate characters drawn together by fate. Bridges is too phlegmy at times, but it is appropriate for his character. Erivo looks a bit silly holding a gun, but her vocalizing holds together the many musical motifs of the film beautifully. Chris Hemsworth is a physical wonder, but can't animate a Manson manque. Ditto Dakota Johnson as a tough cookie. Jon Hamm gets to play a cartoon version of Don Draper to negligible effect. Lewis Pullman and Cailee Spaeny are both quite good in absurd parts.

The movie seeks to be a paranoid picture of the USA circa 1970. Reminiscent of The Anderson Tapes and The Conversation, surveillance and wiretapping evoke the Nixon era. The twin horrors of Manson and Vietnam are illustrated in flashbacks, which flesh out the back stories of the characters. Bad Times...has been dismissed asa Tarantino rip off due to its structure and whiffs of Jackie Brown and The Hateful Eight, but pulp is a large field and Goddard has borrowed from many sources. Bad Times... swept me along despite my finding its allegorical Americana risible. I did enjoy its depiction of musical devolution from Soul(The Isley Brothers) to Psychedelia(Deep Purple) as an aural portrait of 60s rot. Bad Times at the El Royale has a gutbucket energy which bodes well for Goddard if he can avoid cartoon universes.

Australia

Nicole and Hugh looking purty in Australia

If Baz Luhrmann's Australia is not quite as disastrous as its critical reputation, it is still all too jaw dropping for the wrong reasons. Luhrmann is revved here to make an epic, He provides the viewer with lustrously beautiful tableaux no matter whether he is portraying cattle drives amidst the splendor of the Australian outback or the slaughter of innocents during World War 2. Luhrmann films are full of directorial flourishes that fail to hide the vacuity at the center of his work. Australia is nearly three hours long, but there is little to chew on over its long course.

Luhrmann and his numerous scenarists try to address the colonial and racial heritage of their home country. They only feebly address these themes. Jackman and Kidman are unyieldingly professional, though I feel Kidman is miscast as an uptight English aristocrat. The supporting players, a link to Australia's film history with Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, David Gulpilil and Bruce Spence, are pleasant, but cannot save Australia from inanity.

Sergeant Madden

Wet Diaper Alert

Josef von Sternberg's Sergeant Madden, from 1939, is a threadbare B from MGM with a declining Wallace Beery and a rising Laraine Day. The script has a streak of sentimentality that would have had even John Ford crying "Mother Machree". The supporting players are largely unmemorable and the film concludes with a wet diaper joke. Yet, despite these hurdles, von Sternberg fashions a grim fable that attests to his greatness.

The sexual glamour and decadence of his films with Dietrich have obscured the side of Sternberg that is rooted in the realism of writers such as Norris, Crane. and Dreiser and painters such as Edward Hopper and the Ashcan school. A realism that looked beyond the gilded elegance of the rich to the plight of slum dwellers. This is the milieu of Sergeant Madden and Sternberg offers a an effective social portrait of the great unwashed. Stories of those on the margins of society make up Sternberg's The Salvation Hunters, Underworld, The Docks of New York and An American Tragedy; the latter a Dreiser adaptation.

The dark joke of Sergeant Madden is that Beery's titular cop must stop a pathological member of his own force who is also his son. The criminals of this film are portrayed as gauche gargoyles, much as in The Shanghai Gesture. What makes Sergeant Madden so startling is that psychopathology is shown to exist not only in America's evil institutions, but also its supposedly good ones. Sternberg grasps the ambiguities of America and manages to smuggle this vision into mainstream entertainment. A nice trick for a master of artifice and illusion.

Gaylyn Studlar has written perceptively on the theme of masochism that is recurrent in Sternberg's work. It certainly is evident in Sergeant Madden. Madden toils all his life for the police force, but his job is a treadmill. a routine without hope of progression or advancement. Tom Brown's "Al" must repress his love for Laraine Day's "Eileen" because she is married to his psycho brother. Most of all, Eileen represses her wariness about her husband's manic delusion in order to be a supportive mate. She mistakes his psychopathology for ambition and suffers accordingly.

Sergeant Madden is one of Sternberg's least showy films, but when he moves his camera, particularly when he dollies in, it is to heighten an emotional response. A chase through alleys and warehouses is handled with beautiful economy. I have no doubt that Laraine Day was a limited performer, but here Sternberg brings out her winsome charm in a way no other director except Hitchcock did. Day's idealized colleen borders on absurdity, but in Sternberg's hands she becomes a symbol of grateful fidelity. Beery is even better, portraying his simple hero without burlesque or telegraphed charm.

Red Dust

Star Power

Victor Fleming's Red Dust, from 1932, is an effective melodrama that succeeds primarily due the sizzle of its stars. Clark Gable and Jean Harlow headline this pre-Code film that highlights their physical assets and bantering chemistry. Featuring not only Harlow's epochal water barrel bath, but also a sly strip tease by Gable, Red Dust was racy enough to be snipped by censors in the early days of television. The electricity between the two leads does much to enliven the creaky setup of the stage play that Red Dust is based on. Fleming is unable to animate the soundstage settings.

The racism and colonialist slant of the stage play still remain and cast a pall on the proceedings. The rubber tree plantation setting was wisely jettisoned when the film was remade as Mogambo. John Ford was able to imbue Grace Kelly with a sensual charge that is missing in Fleming's handling of Mary Astor. A tracking shot of Gable carrying Astor in a monsoon has an erotic pull that is lacking from her overly pinched performance. Donald Crisp is wasted in a nothing part. Red Dust gives the audience what it wants, Topic A, but when it shines it is due to the power generated by its star voltage.

The Night Visitor

Max von Sydow in his tighty whities

Laslo Benedek's The Night Visitor, from 1971, is a true oddity that never finds its footing as a suspense film. Filmed in English with chilly Jutland as the setting, the cast is split between Scandinavians and Brits. Max von Sydow portrays an inmate in an asylum who escapes nightly seeking revenge on those who framed him for murder. Chief among those is his sister, played by Liv Ullmann and her husband portrayed by Per Oscarsson. Trevor Howard, who appears hungover throughout the film, plays a police inspector investigating von Sydow's crimes. Since this is more of a whydunnit than a whodunnit, psychologically attuned direction is required. Benedek is a a serviceable realist, at best, and the characterizations wither within the frame. Intriguing art direction is largely wasted.

The performances are all over the map. Oscarsson is awful; an ersatz Ibsen husband. Ullmann never seems at ease in English, though she has more to sink her teeth into here than in Forty Carats or Lost Horizon. Rupert Davies (who was a fine count Rostov for the BBC) and Andrew Keir offer nice character turns. It is all Max von Sydow's show, however. After playing mostly stoic sufferers for Bergman and such wild and crazy guys such as Karl Oskar and Jesus, Von Sydow seems liberated here playing a psychopath. The role gives him a chance to display his talents as a physical actor and he races around Denmark in his tighty whities with aplomb. Von Sydow had the intelligence to know when he was playing in pulp and accordingly throws the pit a hint of camp and bravura. As in Flash Gordon, The Exorcist, Needful Things and Dreamscape, Von Sydow often redeems films that verge on trash and does so in The Night Visitor.