Kino Biff: May 2020

Best of 1987

Housekeeping Bill Forsyth
Full Metal Jacket Stanley Kubrick
Evil Dead 2 Sam Raimi
Empire of the Sun Steven Spielberg
Law of Desire Pedro Almodovar
High Tide Gillian Armstrong
Under the Sun of Satan Maurice Pialat
Radio Days Woody Allen
The Good Father Mike Newell
Near Dark Kathryn Bigelow

Honorable Mention

White of the Eye -- Cammell,

The Cry of the Owl -- Chabrol, No Way Out -- Donaldson,

Family Viewing -- Egoyan, Sign 'o' the Times Prince, Magnoli

Films I Enjoyed

Rouge, Raising Arizona,

Roxanne,

Withnail and I, Someone to Watch Over Me,

Broadcast News, The Stepfather,

The Bedroom Window, House of Games,

Innerspace, Hope and Glory,

Candy Mountain, Maurice,

Black Widow, The Princess Bride,

Tin Men, The Untouchables,

A Nightmare on Elm Street, Porterhouse Blue,

Adventures in Babysitting, The Last Emperor,
Robocop, Pelle the Conqueror,

Dirty Dancing, The Dead,

Nadine, Wall Street,

Prick Up Your Ears,
The Hidden, Moonstruck,

China Girl, A Prayer for the Dying,

Stakeout, Overboard

Below the Mendoza Line

Extreme Prejudice, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid,
The Witches of Eastwick, Angel Heart,

Epidemic, Street Trash

Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Straight to Hell,
Gardens of Stone, Baby Boom,

Cobra Verde, Ishtar,

The Believers, Barfly,

The Lost Boys, Spaceballs,
That's Life, Fatal Attraction,

Three Men and a Baby, Summer School
Prince of Darkness, The Running Man,

La Bamba, Lethal Weapon,
Throw Momma From the Train, Predator,

I Was a Teenage Zombie,

Hellraiser, Good Morning Vietnam

Yorgos Lanthimos' filmography is a dread bestiary filled with human seeming creatures vying for dominance. Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara's script for The Favourite, detailing the rivalry between Sarah Churchill and Abigail Masham for the favor of Queen Anne of England, is an ideal fit for the director. The script makes no pretense of historical accuracy. the plot is merely a pretext for a very modern tale of power and sexual one-upmanship; a la The Scarlet Empress.

The costumes, dances, revelry and sexual intrigues are exaggerated to the point of grotesquerie. Lanthimos emphasizes the baroque aspects of the monarchial splendor and debauchery. Fisheye lenses and low angles are utilized to show off the voluptuousness of Queen Anne's palace, nearly the sole setting in the film. The still center of the film is Olivia Colman's bloated Anne, both a voluptuary and a prisoner of her appetites. Her unchecked power coupled with her unrestrained appetites cause her to be possessed by her need for comfort. Her neediness overwhelms her, much as her pet rabbits overwhelm the frame at the film's conclusion. Lanthimos keeps a still camera on the Queen, the cynosure of her Court. He uses tracking shots of the rivals as they scurry in and about the palace. Lanthimos views them as worker bees busily serving the arbitrary dictates of their queen.

Lanthimos has such a distinctive eye that he has not gotten enough credit for the handling of his players. Emma Stone would seem to be an odd choice for Abigail, a role tailor made for a young UK thespian like Florence Pugh or Saoirse Ronan. However, Ms. Stone nails her character's desperation and ambition and doesn't overdo the accent. Olivia Colman offers a warts and all performance of a beleaguered Queen that has been justly lauded.

Rachel Weisz's performance is the emotional center of the film and reflects her rapport with Lanthimos. The audience's initial sympathy is with the scrappy outsider, Abigail. Weisz and Lanthimos stress the iron resolve and brusqueness of Sarah. However, by the film's end when the tables have turned and Sarah has been cast out, Lanthimos provides a dash of sympathy for Sarah. The shot of Sarah in darkness holding a candle while beseeching her Queen reflects the notion that Sarah, alone at court, is willing to speak unpleasant truths to her friend and ruler. This is counterpointed by a very bright shot of the obdurate monarch overwhelmed by the baroque splendor of her chamber.

The male players are largely superfluous to the drama of The Favourite, but they are all fine; especially Nicholas Hoult. It will be interesting to see how the success of this film will alter Lanthimos' career trajectory. The Favorite is his most accomplished film to date, but Lanthimos always verges on artistic overreach.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

One wholesome, unassuming icon plays another in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Tom Hanks or rather his persona is the embodiment of the All-American hero of his generation. Wholesome, unassuming, with little of the repression, anger or smugness of Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford or Kevin Costner. I recall Life magazine, in its death throes in the 80s, pairing old and new Hollywood stars of like temperament for dual portraits. Bette Davis was a good match with James Woods. Hanks was posed with Jimmy Stewart and that seemed to cement his American icon status. When Hanks has gone counter to this image, the results have been disastrous commercially, and often, artistically: The Ladykillers, The Road to Perdition, The Terminal, The Bonfire of the Vanities. All deservedly forgotten.

Happily, Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood gives him a role that allows him to inhabit that persona, but also allows him to play with it as Fred Rogers did with his persona. Heller opens the film in a more square aspect ratio, mimicking watching the image on television. She, like Fred Rogers, utilizes miniatures. In Heller's case, as settings for establishing shots in her tale of a New York journalist's life changing interviews with the oracle from Latrobe. The action shifts back and forth between Pittsburgh and New York, each identified by a Lego like simulation. As the relationship between the two deepens and the journalist reconciles with his father and becomes a more empathic partner to his wife, the mise en scene reflects this by portraying the journalist's life in miniature as if it has merged with Mr. Rogers fantasy world. This reflects the philosophical effect Mr. Rogers has had on the journalist with his message of healing and love.

That Ms. Heller conveys this without me feeling I've fallen into a tub of goo is a singular achievement. This is her most accomplished and effective film, thus far. Hers tracking shots and pans not only convey emotional states, but provide comprehensible transitions. In the movie business, it is always on to the next scene or show.

The film's major flaw is the one note characterizations handed to the actors playing the journalist and his wife. Matthew Rhys gets to be emotionally constipated for ninety minutes and Susan Kelechi Watson gets to look concerned. Chris Cooper is good as the reprobate Dad, but the film is only aloft when Hanks is onscreen. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood shows off his vocal and physical dexterity better than any film since Cast Away.

When I was young, I wondered why Mr. Rogers kept his tie on after he had entered his house and "changed". Not even my principal did that! The answer was that Fred Rogers knew he was in the business of show.

Best of 1988

Dead Ringers David Cronenberg
Red Sorghum Zhang Yimou
Wings of Desire Wim Wenders
A Short Film About Killing Krzysztof Kieslowski
A Taxing Woman Juzo Itami
Ariel Aki Kaurismäki
Hairspray John Waters
Alice Jan Švankmajer
Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Pedro Almodovar
The Vanishing George Sluizer

Honorable Mention

A Fish Called Wanda --Crichton, Who Framed Roger Rabbit -- Zemeckis

Talk Radio -- Stone

Films I Enjoyed

Achik Kerib, Tales from the Gimli Hospital,

Bird, The Bear, Medea,
A Short Film About Love, Chocolat,

High Hopes, My Neighbor Totoro,

The Last Temptation of Christ, Monkey Shines,

Betrayed, Married to the Mob,
Beetlejuice, They Live,

Babette's Feast, The Accused,

The Beast, Big,

Bull Durham, Biloxi Blues,
The Accidental Tourist, Eight Men Out,

The Naked Gun, Child's Play,
Die Hard, Colors,

Pumpkinhead, Mystic Pizza,

Patty Hearst, Heathers,

Jack's Back, The Moderns

Below the Mendoza Line

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Dangerous Liaisons,

Heart of Midnight, Baron Munchausen,

Gorillas in the Mist, Track 29,
Cocktail, Tequila Sunrise,

Tucker, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,
Midnight Run, School Daze,

Working Girl, Red Heat, Camille Claudel,
Young Guns,

Alien Nation, Cinema Paradiso,

Amsterdamned,

Rain Man, The Prince of Pennsylvania,
Coming to America, Bright Lights, Big City,

Beaches, Willow,

Frantic, High Spirits,
Scrooged, The Blob,

Ironweed, Au Revoir Les Enfants,

Edge of the Axe, Mississippi Burning,

Stand and Deliver, The Great Outdoors,
Bloodsport, Cry Freedom,

The Night Before, Hellraiser 2,

Blood Delirium, The Phantom Empire

Errementari

A blacksmith and a demon bond in Errementari

Paul Urkijo's Errementari, his premier feature, is a colorful fable of a struggle between a demon and a blacksmith in early 19th century Spain. The first film I've seen in the Basque language, Urkijo's supernatural narrative evokes Frankenstein, Faust, Beauty and the Beast and Pan's Labyrinth. Well shot, performed and constructed, Errementari is the best debut feature I've seen since Columbus.

Urkijo is greatly helped by the puckish performance of Eneko Sagardoy as the demon. This shape shifting devil steals the show as an imp who forms a strange bond with his tormentor, a stoic blacksmith. The fate of an orphan girl bonds the two and they forsake their eternal struggle for a greater goal. They have to go to the gates of hell to save the orphan, but the tone is entertainingly sly. Urkijo's film is a rejection of Catholic Manichaeism in favor of a more nuanced view of the balance of good and evil within us. An assured debut and one of the more underrated films of the last few years.

Love, 24 Frames

Two is company...in Love

Gaspar Noe's Love is overlong, self-indulgent and indifferently acted, but retains enough traces of Noe's artistry to maintain my interest throughout. The narrative, as before in Noe's work, is told largely in flashback, so we only learn the backstory of the imploded romantic triangle after the fact. Murphy is a would be American filmmaker who falls for Electra and moves into her Paris apartment. There, they act upon a mutual fantasy by seducing a young German girl, Omi, who lives in an adjoining flat. Murphy has a further dalliance with Omi, unbeknownst to Electra, and impregnates her. Electra dumps him in a fury and he moves in with Omi. A son is born named Gaspar (cough, cough), but Murphy's self-absorption and indifference leads to a parting of the ways with Omi. When Electra's mother calls and says she has been missing for some time, he realizes that it is Electra he truly loves.

Love, which was released in theaters in 3D, is notable for its lengthy, almost monotonous sex scenes. Nevertheless, as Prince sang, there is joy in repetition. The sex scenes are shot with the lovers foregrounded with the bed clothes as a canvas like backdrop.This painterly technique drains these scenes of the messy tumult of passion; unlike in, say, Fleabag. Noe uses this technique in other intimate scenes, notably Murphy playing happily with young Gaspar. The sex scenes have the sensual, aesthetic and transgressive qualities that Noe sought, but lack emotional impact because his characters aren't fleshed out. Noe has always been an indifferent director of actors. Klara Kristin and especially Aomi Muyock do well enough with their under drawn parts, but Karl Glusman is a washout as Murphy.

Noe stresses Murphy's emotional isolation by filming most of the exterior scenes with tracking shots focused on the back of his head. I also suspect this made post-production looping easier. Noe himself plays a gallery owner, amping up the self-reflexive nature of this postmodern and ponderous work. Film references abound: 2001, The Birth of a Nation, M, etc. The confessional nature of the film suggests Noe is making amends for his callow youth, when, as with most males, the pleasures of the flesh held more allure than empathy.

I think Love is Noe's worst film, but still found it diverting and provocative. Love functions more as an art project than a film narrative and I certainly could have done without the money shot. Climax would have been a more suitable title to this film than Love, but Noe saved it for his next, better film.

Abbas Kiarostami's 24 Frames is a suitable valedictory to a singular career. Like Love, it is more of an art project than a narrative film, but I found it much more engrossing. 24 Frames consists of 24 short films that animate photos and, in the initial short, Brueghel's painting Winter. The camera is fixed, usually on a natural setting, as creatures enter and leave the frame. The shorts are all about five minutes long and they all fade to black.

The lack of drama and "action" works to open the viewer up to gradations of light, the choreography of movement and the intensity of sounds. Rarely has the soundtrack of a film been utilized with such sensual intensity. Each grain of sand or coo of a dove radiates and reverberates.

The film shows how digital technology can be used for more than bells and whistles. Kiarostami is more akin to Godard than the Hollywood CGI of comic book colors, easter eggs and explosions. If there is something to be drawn from 24 Frames besides its visual splendor, it would be its meditation on nature's predations; a fitting epitaph for an artist facing his mortality.

One of the 24 Frames

Best of 1989

Sweetie Jane Campion
Johnny Handsome Walter Hill
Histoire(s) Du cinema Jean-Luc Godard
Monsieur Hire Patrice Leconte
Drugstore Cowboy Gus Van Sant
Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen
The Little Mermaid Ron Clements and John Musker
Glory Ed Zwick
Enemies: A Love Story Paul Mazursky
Dead Calm Philip Noyce

Movies I Enjoyed

The Fabulous Baker Boys, Valmont,

Kiki's Delivery Service, Baxter,

Black Rain (Imamura), Do The Right Thing,

The Unbelievable Truth, Born on the Fourth of July,

The Killer, Twister (Almereyda),

Black Rain (Ridley Scott), Santa Sangre,

Jesus of Montreal, Sea of Love,

Blue Steel, The Rainbow,

Road House, Henry V,

Sex, Lies & Videotape, My Left Foot,

The Abyss, Mystery Train,

Kill Me Again, See You in the Morning,
The Music Box, New York Stories,

When Harry Met Sally, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,
Uncle Buck, Say Anything,

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Weekend at Bernie's,

Intruder

Below The Mendoza Line

The War of the Roses, Steel Magnolias,

Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Pet Sematary,
Batman, The Burbs,

Honey I Shrunk the Kids, A Dry White Season,

Driving Miss Daisy, Lean on Me,
She Devil, Parenthood, Always,

Major League, Tango and Cash,

Out Cold, License to Kill,
Dead Poets Society, Back to the Future 2,

Lethal Weapon 2, Turner and Hooch,
Harlem Nights, Field of Dreams,

Chattahoochee, Casualties of War

Westbound

Virginia Mayo and Karen Steele face off in red and pink in Westbound

Budd Boetticher's Westbound, released in 1959 though it sat awhile on the Warners' shelf, has more the feel of a routine programmer than his collaborations with Harry Joe Brown and Burt Kennedy. Still, this Randolph Scott vehicle zips along the course of its 72 minutes. Set unconvincingly in the Civil War era, Scott plays a stagecoach manager responsible for trucking bullion back east to finance the Union effort. Confederate allies Andrew Duggan and Michael Pate stand in his way.

The WarnerColor photography is startlingly intense, especially for a B. Boetticher expertly frames the magnificent vistas and stages the action scenes for maximum impact. Scott is usual sturdy self. He is one of the better riders in Hollywood and adds a dash of physical grace to the Western genre. Virginia Mayo and Karen Steele are both more than fine. Westbound is more attuned to the emotional barometer of women than most oaters. Mayo was supposed to be the female lead, but roles were tweaked, probably due to Steele's dalliance with the director. Michael Dante and Duggan are less satisfactory. Duggan, a lumbering presence, always sticks in my mind because of his star turn as George Washington in the theatrical production of Paul Green's We The People. This production was supposed to be (my home state) Maryland's contribution to the Bicentennial in 1976, but it turned out to be a fiasco that closed after a few performances at Merriweather Post Pavilion. I remember hearing about the production and thinking, yeah Andrew Duggan, that'll pack them in. Kathleen Turner, who graduated from UMBC in 1977, was also in that ill-fated production.

As usual in a Boetticher film, there is more going on than in your standard B. Boetticher uses the color red to symbolize the vanity and hollow materialism of Duggan and Mayo's characters. Steele is mostly in soothing blues, greens and pinks. When she dons red it signals a rise in her material fortunes: when her farm is expanded into a way station and when her husband teaches her bookkeeping. The film functions as a critique of materialism. The setting is, significantly, Julesberg, Colorado. When the bad guys force a stage to tumble into a ravine, killing women and children, the first words out of their mouths is "Let's get the gold." One wonders if Sergio Leone saw the film. Duggan's office and home, ornate and festooned with red velvet, resemble the gaudy lairs of Leone's villains in films where the materialist critique was amplified by Marxism.

Caravaggio, Face to Face

Poses and folds in Caravaggio

Derek Jarman's Caravaggio, from 1986, is a meditation on the artist and his work. It is not a narrative bio-pic, but it is, if accepted on its own terms, a fitfully arresting art film. A series of vignettes unfold in flashback after we meet the dying Caravaggio being attended by his mute servant. The plot is a fanciful, bare-bones rendering of the tortured artist's life: he finds a patron in Cardinal Del Monte, portrayed by Michael Gough, but gets caught up in a tragic love triangle with Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean. The plot, while not entirely historically accurate, does show how the artist mingled with both high and low society, often using rent boys and girls as models. Most of the film has Caravaggio dashing off a masterpiece while his companions pose and party on.

I am a big Caravaggio fan and have read more about his life and work than is perhaps recommendable. I may be harder to please than most regarding works about the master. I wholeheartedly recommend two books concerning Caravaggio: Peter Robb's half biographical, half speculative M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio and Alvaro Enrigue's phantasmagoric novel Sudden Death. Both are superb. Jarman's conception of the artist doesn't jibe with mine. Nigel Terry is a fine and sensitive actor, but he is too fine and sensitive to play Caravaggio. Caravaggio was a lout, forever getting into drunken scrapes. A young Oliver Reed would have been ideal casting. Jarman pictures Caravaggio as a champion of the downtrodden and there is truth to this notion. However, I think Jarman errs by eliding aspects of Caravaggio's personality. He is portrayed generously taking a mute out of charity as his assistant. Their relationship is sweet, but that is the problem with the film: its Caravaggio is more sweet than transgressive. Caravaggio's actual model and companion, Cecco (aka Francesco Boneri, aka Cecco del Caravaggio), is most vividly displayed in Caravaggio's own Amor Vincit Omnia. The element of pederasty might have been too transgressive for Jarman to tackle.

Sandy Powell's costumes are splendid, as is Simon Fisher-Turner's music. Jarman was reacting against the bombastic Hollywood soundtracks of the day, wanting to create "an area of silence amid the hubbub of modern entertainment." Here, and especially in Blue, he succeeded. Sean Bean and Tilda Swinton are also assets to the film. Swinton has an especially nice moment as a hardened whore driven to rapture by being able to wear an expensive frock. She would never look as joyous and youthful again. Still, Jarman's awkwardness in his handling of group scenes, when his actors are not posing on their marks, marks him as a minor director. This was driven home to me watching Face to Face, Ingmar Bergman's 1976 effort. Bergman's tableaus are every bit as artificial as Jarman's, but, because of his dramatic and cinematic rigor, they throb with lived in intensity. When Erland Josephson comforts Liv Ullmann in bed, the sheets and blankets create intense folds that highlight the intimacy of a scene, like a Pieta. Jarman, aping Caravaggio's baroque detail, uses fabric similarly, but the effect is self-conscious and superficial.

This is not to say that Face to Face is a flawless masterpiece, but it is one of the better films he made after the spasmodic breakthrough of Persona in 1966. Bergman could never do mod, so a gay party scene early on falls flat. The intensity of Ullman's performance transcends any clunky moments. Portraying a woman losing her grip on sanity as dark visions erupt from her unconscious, Ullmann is scarifying in her vulnerability. An abortive rape hurtles her into a downward spiral that resonates even more today in a world rife with PTSD. This is Ullmann best performance because it is her least vain and self-aggrandizing one. When her character, recovering from a suicide attempt, is chided by her daughter for her insensitivity, Ullmann's ruefully acceptant reaction not only embodies her character's masochism, but underlines Bergman's notion of family dynamics as an endless cycle of abuse and recrimination.

If anything, I find Bergman's "happy" ending to be too pat. Ullmann's character recovers far too easily from her malady after a dubiously cathartic session. Nevertheless, there is much to appreciate here. Most of Face to Face is filmed in two shots with a fixed camera. Pans are used to evoke the mental decomposition of Ullmann's character, most memorably a POV shot of Ullmann's room as she slips into unconsciousness; which Woody Allen echoed in Interiors. Face to Face could very well have been entitled Interiors. There are a few establishing exterior shots, but the majority of the film is indoors. Evan the expanse of Ullmann's unconscious seems cramped in Face to Face.

Cramped quarters in Face to Face

Best of 1990

GoodFellas Martin Scorsese
Miller's Crossing Joel and Ethan Cohen
Metropolitan Whit Stillman
Texasville Peter Bogdanovich
Europa, Europa Agnieszka Holland
King of New York Abel Ferrara
Ju Dou Zhang Yimou
La desenchantee Benoit Jacquot
The Hot Spot Dennis Hopper
Edward Scissorhands Tim Burton

Honorable Mention

Cyrano de Bergerac -- Rappeneau, The Match Factory Girl -- Kaurismaki,

To Sleep with Anger -- Burnett, White Hunter, Black Heart -- Eastwood

Films I Enjoyed

Darkman, After Dark My Sweet,

Miami Blues, Cry Baby,

The Freshman, Total Recall,

Bad Influence, Internal Affairs,

Tune in Tomorrow, The Comfort of Strangers,

An Angel at My Table, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Days of Being Wild,
Men Don't Leave, Quick Change,

Pretty Woman, Tremors, Russia House,

The Godfather 3, Young Guns 2, Presumed Innocent,

Wild at Heart, The Witches,

The Grifters, Pump Up the Volume,

Dreams, Reversal of Fortune,

Henry and June, Archangel,

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Close Up,

Frankenhooker, Postcards From the Edge,

Misery, Joe Versus the Volcano

Under the Mendoza Line

Mountains of the Moon, Quigley Down Under,

The Sheltering Sky, Mo' Better Blues,

I Love You to Death, I'm Dangerous Tonight,

Air America, Back to the Future 3,

The Hunt for Red October, Child's Play 2,

Pacific Heights, Robocop 2, Gremlins 2,

The Exorcist 3, Robocop 2,

Nightbreed, Kindergarten Cop,

Another 48 Hours, Die Hard 2,

Awakenings, Baby Blood,

Jacob's Ladder, Arachnophobia,

The Reflecting Skin, Flatliners,

Dances With Wolves, Home Alone,

Ghost, Dick Tracy, The Bonfire of the Vanities

Living on Velvet

Kay Francis gets down with her bad self (and Warren William) in Living on Velvet

Frank Borzage's Living on Velvet, from 1935, is an entertaining mish-mash: part aviation flick, part love triangle and all Borzage in its dedication to the travails of romantic love. George Brent stars as a flyboy recovering from the trauma of accidentally killing his Ma, Pa and Sis in a plane crash. He wanders the world trying to forget, but things change when he attends a swank gathering at his best bud's (Warren William) penthouse. There he meets Williams' girlfriend, Kay Francis. Sparks fly and soon he and Francis are living on velvet.

The first half of the flick is prime Borzage. The plane crash is well handled, reminiscent of History is Made at Night in its balancing of suspenseful action and character vignettes. The penthouse party is illustrated with graceful pans: Borzage fully at home within the milieu. Brent and Francis share a charming coffee house scene with a counterman, the omnipresent Edgar Kennedy, eager to ditch the late night lovebirds.

Once the twosome are hitched and domestic problems arise, Living on Velvet loses momentum. Nobody wants to see the glamorous Miss Francis reduced to domestic drudgery. Virtually forgotten today, Francis is perfect for romantic fare like this and gets to strut her stuff in some magnificent Orry Kelly outfits. My knees were certainly knocking at the backless number she wore. Borzage was a sensitive director of actors and could even breathe warmth into a cold technician like Helen Hayes. Warren William and George Brent give enjoyable performances here. The stiff Brent is unusually animated. Living on Velvet is slight fare lifted above the ordinary by the Borzage touch.

Synecdoche, New York

Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, from 2008, struck me as an ambitious failure. It is well enacted by a stellar cast, but its direction fails to enliven its jumbled and drug addled narrative. Kaufman tells us all the answers to the riddle of Philip Seymour Hoffman's theater director whose psyche becomes grist for his work, but does not convey themes and feelings through cinematic means. The message is hammered home by conceits, not filmic technique. For example, the insertion of Hoffman in the TV cartoons and commercials that he views. The idea is to convey the onslaught of the media upon fragile psyches, but the technique is so ham-fisted that it distances us from the protagonist. Darren Aronofsky's direction of a similar gambit in Requiem for a Dream is more compelling. The repetitive compulsion of the protagonist's relationships is an interesting theme to explore, but Kaufman's direction muddles the already murky conceits.

Mr. Hoffman's performance is impeccable, but lacks an element of surprise or spontaneity. This is largely due to his character being trapped in an overdetermined plot. The supporting cast fares better because they pop in and out of the murk. The standouts are Tom Noonan and Samantha Morton. Noonan displays an uncanny skill at dialogue that his horror freaks do not let him display. Ms. Morton handles the Joan Blondell role with aplomb. Her dialect as a Long Island chippie is spot on. No other film has brought out her sensuality and strength as well. Despite my caveats, I would not dissuade anyone from seeing Synecdoche, New York. It is overlong and overly ambitious, but it has its moments.

Best of 1991

A Brighter Summer Day Edward Yang
Center Stage Stanley Kwan
Trust Hal Hartley
The Silence of the Lambs Jonathan Demme
Beauty and the Beast Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise
Point Break Kathryn Bigelow
Naked Lunch David Cronenberg
Impromptu James Lapine
My Own Private Idaho Gus Van Sant
What About Bob? Frank Oz

Honorable Mention

The Man in the Moon -- Mulligan, Terminator 2 -- Cameron,

JFK -- Stone, Lovers -- Aranda

Movies I Enjoyed

Cape Fear, Once Around,

Lovers on the Bridge,

Billy Bathgate, The Adjuster,

La Belle Noiseuse, City of Hope,

Soapdish, The Fisher King, Slacker,
A Rage in Harlem, The Last Boy Scout,

The Rapture, Poison, Delicatessen,
Dogfight, The Commitments,

Black Robe, High Heels,

White Fang, Shakes the Clown

Below the Mendoza Line

Night on Earth, Rambling Rose,

Rush, Jungle Fever,

L.A. Story, Hot Shots, Hudson Hawk,
Barton Fink, Sleeping with the Enemy,

Boyz N the Hood, The Doors, FX2,
Backdraft, The People Under The Stairs,

Bugsy, Shadows and Fog,
Fried Green Tomatoes, Father of the Bride,

Hook, Dead Again,
Robin Hood, Doc Hollywood,

Nothing But Trouble, Curly Sue

7 Chinese Brothers

Jason Schwartzman and friend in 7 Chinese Brothers

Bob Byington's 7 Chinese Brothers, from 2015, is an interesting character study that does not drag in the course of its 74 minutes. This is mostly due to the full-bodied and unironic portrayal of the hapless and obnoxious protagonist, Larry, by Jason Schwartzman. The arc of the story, with Larry taking baby steps on the road to adulthood, is slight. Larry is fired from one Mcjob and gains another. He loses his closest living relative, but gains a friend. The template of this Austin based drama is Linklater's Slacker. Indeed, Byington once collaborated on a reimagining of that film entitled Slacker 2011. Like Linklater, Byington excels at coaxing memorable vignettes from his supporting cast. Eleanore Pienta and Stephen Root are particularly sharp. 7 Chinese Brothers knows its limits. It is good, lean indie filmmaking. A termite instead of a white elephant.