Oslo August 31st

Anders Danielsen Lie

Joachim Trier's Oslo August 31st is framed as the last day in the life of a suicidal heroin addict. When we meet Anders, he is finishing up a long stint in rehab. On leave from the clinic, ostensibly to attend a job interview, Anders tours the titular city trying to make amends to the lovers, friends, and relatives he neglected as he spiraled out of control. He is continually rebuffed after tentative overtures. His parents are vacationing in Nice, his sister won't meet with him, and his ex won't take his calls. Anders returns to the poppy and succumbs after an injection.

Trier based his 2011 film on Pierre Dieu La Rochelle's 1931 novel Le feu follet. The novel is also the source of Luis Malle's 1963 film, The Fire Within. Trier's film places many demands on his leading man who the the focal point of the film and is in every scene. Happily, Anders Danielsen Lie is up to the challenge. He nimbly displays how seclusion has made Anders gird the protective carapace of his psyche, ensuring his further isolation.

Besides Lie's outstanding performance, the film greatly benefits from Trier's portrait of Oslo. As in The Worst Person in the World, Oslo is the major supporting character in the film, brought to life by overheard conversations and reveries of times past. This elegiac ode to a city helps prevent Oslo August 31 from succumbing to the torpor of its morbid focus.

Aftersun, Return to Seoul

Paul Mescal

I'm late to the party on Charlotte Wells' Aftersun, but was relatively knocked out by it. The film is centered around an ill-fated vacation at a resort in Turkey taken by eleven year old Sophie and her troubled father. This sun-kissed holiday is set twenty years previously. We see glimpses of Sophie's life in the present day and how fragments of the trip have filtered into her memory. Wells' narrative travels back and forth in time. This obfuscates the events of the film, but prevents the tragic denouement from seeming overly morbid.

The acting has been justly praised, particularly Paul Mescal's Dad. His interactions with Sophie, played by the young Frankie Corio, are pleasurably natural and unaffected, as is Wells' portrait of the father's depression. What really stood out to me was Wells' spry use of different visual fields to convey the past as it is viewed Sophie's mind's eye. Aftersun is a film that reflects how the past is always present in memory. One of the more rewarding features of 2022. 

Conversely, I didn't like Davy Chou's Return to Seoul as much as many did, but Ji-Min Park's performance as the protagonist, Freddy, alone makes the film worth seeing. Park plays a twenty five year old Korean born woman whose parents gave her up for adoption to a French couple. Freddy's trip back to Korea seems spontaneous, but it is clear she has, at the very least, an unconscious desire to reunite with her parents. The film takes several leaps in time, though not back and forth like Aftersun, until Freddy finds closure. Freddy is imperious and untrustworthy, but it is a tribute to Ms. Park and Mr. Chou that they have collaborated on creating a fully fleshed out character, warts and all. 

However, the edges of Return to Seoul are not as interesting as its protagonist. Freddy's biological father proves to be a one dimensional caricature, as are a number of the supporting characters and Korea itself, as shown in the film, exudes little of its flavor. Return to Seoul is recommended, though, primarily because of Ms. Park.

Ji-Min Park

Inside

Willem Dafoe surveys the interior with a Maurizio Cattelan print in the background

Vasilis Katsoupis' Inside has drawn more abuse than praise and I can understand why. However, the film has stuck with me and I am willing to give it a somewhat guarded defense. The film pictures a burglar, played by Willem Dafoe, breaking into a luxury penthouse in order to steal some Egon Schiele paintings from the massive art collection of its owner. Thanks to an unforeseen snafu, the burglar becomes trapped in the unit for months, struggling to survive. The very nature of the film makes it a tough sit, I enjoyed the film more in retrospect, but Inside has its rewards.

Chef among them is Mr. Dafoe's performance. Dafoe can be a very controlled, almost mechanical actor, but is given a chance here to cut loose. His burglar, Nemo, gets pretty buggy after a few months alone in the condo and Dafoe responds with a Wooster Group intensity. The film suffers from the artificiality of the set-up and one's credulity is sorely tested, but Dafoe keeps the film grounded with his tactile immediacy.

The film could be read as an allegory about art or religion. I thought the symbolism got out of hand at times, the wounded pigeon on the balcony being the obvious example, but Katsoupis milks more interesting effects from the enclosed space than I would have thought possible. Nemo deconstructs the space in an attempt to break free. This can be looked on as the plight of an artist reconfiguring the work of his forebears in order to forge his own artistic identity or that of a spiritual seeker denying the material world in order to transcend it; or both. Eventually Nemo is able to ascend to his own reward. 

The credo of the film is Nemo's oft repeated mantra, the gist of which is that attachment to fellow creatures and objects is transitory, but that art remains eternal. Perhaps. Certainly, Nemo's isolation rekindles the artistic spark that lies within him. He sketches portraits of the buildings staffers that he spies on the apartments CCTV feed and creates murals on the apartment's walls that reflect his disoriented state. Inside is only a mixed success, but there are enough interesting threads in it that balance out its more soporific moments.

The Lost King

Sally Hawkins and Harry Lloyd in The Lost King

Stephen Frears' The Lost King tells the tale of Phillipa Langley's crusade to uncover the unmarked burial site of King Richard the 3rd of England and gives his remains a proper entombment. The film is a formulaic underdog story, Langley is constantly having her heels nipped at by academics and bureaucrats, redeemed by good acting and Frears' usual grasp of the undercurrents of relationships. 

The very Britishness of the subject makes this flick alien to most Americans who won't know what a wellie is, much less the intricacies of the Wars of the Roses. Still, it is that sense of Britishness, UK heritage, and English eccentricity that gives the film some sense of individuality. Langley is a divorcee living in Edinburgh with her two sons when, after seeing a production of Shakespeare's Richard III, she becomes obsessed with the life of the last Plantagenet king. She becomes convinced that Richard's has been unfairly besmirched by Tudor apologists like the Bard of Avon. Emboldened by members of the Richard III society, Langley endeavors to find the King's remains. In this she is helped greatly by the support of her ex-husband who is played by Steve Coogan, one of the writers of the script along with Jeff Pope.

Phillipa herself is played by Sally Hawkins. Hawkins is a superior player, but I'm not sure she is right for the part. Langley has chronic fatigue syndrome and the screenplay stresses her suffering in an attempt to engage our sympathy and heighten our appreciation of her struggle against the odds. Hawkins is often cast as a beleaguered and lonely outsider (because she is not a glamor puss or sex bomb), but I felt that her casting overemphasizes her character's underdog status. Similarly, Coogan's ex seems too good to be true. He moves back in with Phillipa after she quits her job to devote herself to her quest. This he does with a bare whimper of disapproval, something that stretches the audience's credulity with the usually cantankerous Coogan.    

Frears is so drawn to the warm ties that exist between the two exes that what is on the periphery of The Lost King, one dimensional villains and the slightly batty supporters of Richard, feels sketchy. Also, the appearances of Richard's ghost to Philippa never make an impression. Frears, a psychological realist, has no feel for the supernatural. Philippa's interactions with the apparition of Richard are awkward and sterile. There is little sense of an engagement of history as a living legacy, perhaps because the makers didn't want to get bogged down in historical detail.

My slight disappointment in the film is colored by my own interest in the topic. Ever since reading Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time decades ago, I have been interested with how Richard III's reputation has changed with the ebb and flow of history. Frears is more interested in people than history so The Lost King must be accepted on its own terms, but I found it to be a nice film and nice is a limiting adjective. Early on, Frears gave a little teeth to such dramas as The Hit, My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. His recent films haven't been completely toothless, but Philomena, Victoria and Abdul, The Queen, and now The Last King seem a bit complacent in their regard for English heritage. 

Black Mass

                     
Scott Cooper's Black Mass is a fairly routine crime saga detailing the career of Whitey Bulger. Johnny Depp, as he was in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, is miscast as a psychopathic tough guy, but manages a relatively convincing performance. The supporting cast, especially Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Sarsgaard, are more than adequate under Cooper's restrained direction, but the script fails to flesh out Bulger's criminal enterprises and the film lacks dynamism. This is a fascinating true life story, but is rendered wanly here. Indicative of the film's timid reach is the vague portrait of Bulger's relationship with his brother, who was President of the Massachusetts Senate while Whitey was the crime lord of South Boston. An OK flick, but, given the material, it should have been a much richer film. (11/21/16) 

The Milky Way

Alain Curry in The Milky Way

Luis Bunuel's The Milky Way, from 1969, is regarded as a minor work in the master's canon and was received indifferently by American critics when it trickled into release in the states in early 1970. Even a Bunuel booster like Andrew Sarris chided him for the film's lack of structure and rated it below masterpieces such as Viridiana and Belle de Jour.👓Pauline Kael was even less enamored with it, though she praised the grace of its execution, and wrote that it was "a trifle wearisome."⏰ Tristana released later that year garnered more spots on year's end best lists than The Milky Way. The lack of a central figure, particularly a beauteous actress like Catherine Deneuve, makes The Milky Way a hard sell, as does its exploration and burlesque of Catholic doctrine. 

The film's two impoverished protagonists Pierre (Paul Frankeur) and Jean (Laurent Terzieff) are on a pilgrimage from Paris to Santiago de Compostela. The action alternating between the revelation of Christian mysteries and debates about heresy is not centered on the two, but ping pongs around them. Similarly, the film is not set in one era, but bounces back and forth between the epoch of Christ, Medieval times, the Enlightenment, and modern times. We, and sometimes the protagonists, encounter a gaggle of disparate figures: including Jesus (Bernard Verley), the Virgin Mary (Edith Scob), the Devil (Alain Curry), the Marquise de Sade (Michel Piccoli), and a prostitute (Delphine Seyrig). Jean-Claude Carriere, the co-scenarist and collaborator with Bunuel on all his films made in France, stated that they were attempting a film in a picaresque style and this explains the shambolic narrative form of the film.

Carriere, in an enlightening interview with Lawrence French, traces the genesis of the film to Bunuel overhearing a group of waiters discussing football in a Madrid bar. Bunuel, with his typical perversity, thought it would be amusing if he made a film in which everyday people would debate Catholic doctrine with the fervor they use when discussing sports. On the surface level, the debates about doctrine in The Milky Way lampoon the circular logic of Catholic dogma. As a recovering Catholic, I found this amusing, but recognize it is not going to mean much to those not hip to the intricacies of Jansenism and Priscillianism. However, the tone of this film is much more serene than Bunuel's earlier jibes against the Church. There is a love for the loonies and rigid clerics no matter what arcane jargon they spout that was not present in the work of the younger Bunuel. Part of this is the mellowing of Bunuel in his dotage. Part of this is due to Carriere's Buddhism. Buddhism posits itself as against belief, a point of view somewhat akin to Bunuel's nihilism. If all beliefs are illusory, then all are equal in the eyes of man and God. The acceptance of this makes The Milky Way, as Sarris put it, "...a cacophonous symphony of spiritual pluralism."

The grace and serenity of The Milky Way is exemplified by the luscious color photography of Christian Matras, which is unfortunately not apparent in the washed out print streaming on Tubi, and the luxe, for Bunuel, production values of the film. The commercial success of Belle de Jour enabled Bunuel to leave behind the ramshackle production values of his Mexican films. The Milky Way is Bunuel's most handsome picture and feels out of step with the mod cinema of the era, to its credit. This is not to say that the spirit of 1968 is absent entirely from the film. The two pilgrims, one older and one younger, could be taken as stand-ins for Bunuel and Carriere. It is significant that it is the younger of the two that dreams of revolution in a sequence that climaxes with the execution of the Pope, played by Bunuel himself. The alpha is one with the omega, the lion has laid down with the lamb, and the old revolutionary firebrand can now identify with the forces of power he hoped to upend. The Milky Way is in a minor key, but it is not a minor film. It contains multitudes.

👓The Village Voice, 1/29/1970, pg. 51

⏰Deeper Into Movies, pgs. 128-9

Wham!, Listening to Kenny G

Wham!

Chris Smith's Wham!, streaming on Netflix, is a pleasing, yet superficial look at the career of the 80s pop duo. Smith's film is a fan's scrapbook of the band. All the band's career highlights are covered, but any sense of context or critical analysis is absent. Wham! wanted to shift the pop pendulum away from the alleged seriousness of post-punk and the New Romantics with a synth heavy sound that mashed The Human League with Grandmaster Flash. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and, as George Michael's songwriting matured, he relied more on the influence of contemporary R&B. However, this documentary views Wham more as stars in the pop firmament than musical artists, so little screen time is spent on their music except for an interesting segment chronicling Michael's rejection of the Jerry Wexler produced version of "Careless Whisper".

Despite their status as heartthrobs, Wham's music was solidly constructed pop and earned grudging respect from the critics of the time, something that can't be said of the man and music phenomenon known as Kenny G. The smooth jazz saxophonist, whose popularity crested in the late 80s and early 90s, not only elicited brickbats from the critics throughout his career, but also drew barbs from more respected musicians such as Pat Metheny and Richard Thompson. Penny Lane's Listening to Kenny G, streaming on Max, not only chronicles his career as musician, but also wrestles with the adoration and revulsion his music inspired. Credit goes to Mr. G for cooperating with Ms. Lane, but also to Ms. Lane for not responding to the project with total irony and giving screen time to both those who love and hate Kenny G's music. Certainly there are ironic touches, how could there not be given the subject, but Ms. Lane tries to be even handed throughout. This yields rewards as we not only get to see Kenny meticulously constructing one of his musical atrocities, but also Clive Davis pretty much admitting that payola helped grease the wheels of his protege's success. I value Wham's music more than Kenny G's, but Ms. Lane's profile of her subject is the more searching film. 

Stuck

Stuart Gordon's Stuck is a thoughtful B picture from 2007, if one can suspend disbelief at its outrageous premise. Stephen Rea plays Thomas Bardo, a newly homeless denizen of a anonymous, mid-sized urban center. While groggily navigating the town's streets he is hit and wedged into the window of a car by a lit and harried nurse named Brandi. The nurse, played by Mena Suvari, drives to her garage where she discovers to her growing horror that the man she hit is alive and stuck in her windshield. She enlists her drug dealing boyfriend Rashid, well played by Russell Hornsby, to help dispose of her problem, but Bardo does not go quietly.

The title refers to the basic premise of the film, but also to its subtext. Thomas and Brandi are stuck in life by an economically deterministic system that provides little in the way of true choice. Three times, before the collision, Thomas is given a choice that is no choice, merely the best deal he can get from those who wield power over him. Brandi has a host of unpleasant chores at the assisted living facility, but must hew to the course set by management even if means working Saturdays. They are both trapped by circumstances in a number of ways. 

All of this would seem like overload for a 82 minute exploitation film, but Gordon does wonders with his two leads, giving their plights an extra dollop of desperation. The hangdog Rea is ideally cast as one of life's victims. He is more than up to the demands of the body horror and action sections of the film. The surprise is Suvari who had a brief vogue after embodying an object of desire in American Beauty. She has never made much of an impression on me, how could one in films as execrable as the American Pie series, but Gordon unveils heretofore unseen acting chops. An unadorned performance of a woman overcome by events.

The film climaxes in a series of explosive spasms with violence begetting violence. This is according to the Old Testament dictates of the genre, but I was impressed throughout by how well Gordon integrated his artier aspects within the film's exploitation tropes. One of the dictates of the exploitation genre, often required specifically by the producer, is female nudity. When Brandi and Rashid make love, the obvious reason in terms of the film's production is to show off Ms. Suvari's charms. However, Gordon provides Brandi a motivation which unsettles the rote nature of the scene. Brandi is schtupping Rashid to please him and soften him up so that Rashid will be more willing to dispose of her problem, Thomas. It is more an act of manipulation rather than love and the notion is planted that the same could be said of the film as well.  

Gordon worked at the fringes of the industry for decades churning out a disproportionate number of solid B Films. Stuck, his final feature, shares many of the same attributes and limitations as his other urban decay flicks of the 21st Century, obscure titles like Edmond and King of the Ants. Those ignorant of his filmography are urged to seek out earlier triumphs such as Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dolls, and Fortress. Gordon was more technically accomplished, imaginative, and vital than most A directors of his era. He is missed, but most of his pictures I have cited, including Stuck, are available to stream on Tubi. 

The Neon Demon

Elle Fanning in The Neon Demon

I enjoy being a contrarian, but Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon is as bad as advertised; an complete waste of celluloid. Refn's previous film, Only God Forgives, was also a failure, but, at least, had some semblance of an artist's quest in it: that of dismantling the heroic mythology Refn had built around Ryan Gosling in Drive. Here, for the first time, a Refn film has a female protagonist and he is utterly at sea. He is unable to get a convincing or interesting performance out of his mostly female cast. Bella Heathcote and Abbey Lee are predictably awful, but when talents like Elle Fanning and Jena Malone don't register, you know the hand on the wheel is shaky. 

The Neon Demon looks nice. The make-up, costumes, and décor are all arresting, but the story is total hooey. Fanning is a homeless waif who comes to LA to seek her fortune. She is an instant success as a model, but all that glitters is not gold, there is more to the picture than meets the eye, and there is no place like home. By picture's end, she is lying at the bottom of a pool and is down for the count. Part of the problem is that Refn takes his horror tropes too literally. When Fanning's fake fashion friends turn on her, their vampirism seems silly, not scary. Compare what Lynch, in Mulholland Drive and Cronenberg, in Maps to the Stars, did with this premise and you can see how short Refn has fallen. (10/28/16)
 

Skinamarink

                   
Kyle Edward Ball's Skinamarink has been hailed as this decade's The Blair Witch Project, but, you can't fool me, Skinamarink is an art film rather than a horror film and all the better for it. The plot, like the cinematography, is murky at best, but Mr. Ball's use of negative space gives the film a palpable feeling of claustrophobia. Some sort of foreign entity is bedeviling the lives of a young couple and their four year old son (and there seem to be other domestic inhabitants of some kind). The film is entirely within the confines of their home. Portals and items in the house disappear and then reappear. Mom has been zombified and Dad is conspicuous in his absence. The film is not dynamic enough to be terrifying, but gives off the uncanny sense of unease found in other sick house horror works like The Fall of the House of Usher and The Shining. 

Set in 1995, Skinamarink has a purposefully distressed look to it. Video snow is a feature of the film just as it was with the scrambled broadcast feeds of UHF channels during my childhood. This fits in with the film's theme of obfuscation. Point of view is scrambled and unclear in Skinamarink and one's bearings are lost within the labyrinth of the house (or houses). Some of this is done to disguise the ultra low budget nature of the film, but it also reflects the helplessness of a young protagonist without a proper frame of reference. 

A number of video screens appear during the course of the film adding to a sense of apprehension. Public domain cartoons sometimes play on the television, ironically commenting on the vulnerability of the house's inhabitants. Sometimes the screens project an artificial and piercing white light. There is no natural light in the film, no light from windows or skylights. This heightens our sense of the house being a monstrous cage with no access to the outer world. The house seems controlled by forces beyond the ken of its inhabitants.

I stress that the film is an art film rather than a horror film because I think it will bore most fans of commercial horror films. There are no jump scares and no sense of narrative drive or character development. The film has its longueurs and could have been cut by twenty minutes or so to no ill effect. The camera focuses on walls, ceilings, furniture, and Legos rather than on human beings. Yet, Skinamarink excited me more than any first feature has in some time. Like a lot of avant-garde directors, Ball is a little too enamored with banality for its own sake, but Skinamarink shows he can create a cinema of intellect and feeling out of the barest means possible. Skinamarink, like Eraserhead before it, will give its maker entrée into Hollywood on talent alone. Whether Mr. Ball can make the necessary compromises to be a force in commercial cinema remains to be seen. 

India Song

Michael Lonsdale and Delphine Seyrig

Marguerite Duras' India Song will aggravate all but the most hardened art film addicts. I am ambivalent about it, but the technical aspects of the film, particularly Bruno Nuytten's cinematography, enable me to give it the most tentative of recommendations. Any sense of linear narration is absent. There is no dialogue between the six actors on screen, what we hear are offscreen narrators, including Duras, who provide dialogue, comment on the inaction, and give us a backstory. The tableaux we witness are not presented chronologically, the only mark of the passage of time are the changes of Ms. Seyrig's hairstyle.

The film is filled with enervating languor. The camera rarely moves, the film begins with a nearly five minute fixed shot of a sunset, and when the camera does, it is the slowest of pans. The film is supposedly set in Lahore in 1937. The action is limited to the interiors and grounds of the French embassy. There are only six characters and four of them are interchangeable. The nexus of the film is Seyrig, the wife of the counsel, who juggles four young lovers over the course of the movie. The odd man out is a disgraced vice-consul played by Michael Lonsdale. He gives the only touching performance in the film perhaps because the lifelong torch he held for the obdurate Seyrig is reflected in his character. Throughout the film, the heat of what was then India is stressed, as is the inability of the French to deal with it. The characters can only throw off their torpor at night to dance and listlessly make love. Rot is festering amongst the colonials, what one character calls a "leprosy of the heart". The vice-consul eventually flips out and starts taking pot shots, offscreen of course, at random lepers.

A good deal of the visual set-ups, like the one above, involve a full length mirror. This is apt for what is essentially a memory play. India Song indeed did begin its genesis as a play. The mirror gives us a more than one view of a scene, as do the offscreen narrators. What we see on the screen and in the mirror reflect the past, the lived moments of the present, and the future memories of those lived moments: all at once. However, India Song is so overloaded with distancing techniques and clutter that it is as suffocating as the lives of its character. The film is color coded and uses music to comment on the West's appropriation and incomprehension of the Far East. All valid artistic strategies, but ones that are guaranteed to banish fun from the chateau. Speaking of which, India Song was shot entirely in France. The exteriors and most of the interiors were filmed at the disused Chateau Rothschild. This gives the film an added layer of artificiality for both good and ill. It makes the characters seem like hothouse flowers, but destroys any sense of the characters living in and for the moment.

There is much to chew on in India Song, but I can't swallow everything. A good point of comparison is another art film from 1975 starring Delphine Seyrig, Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman.... Seyrig's performance in that film is a titanic one, the base on which the film's edifice sits. It is a very lived in performance, we feel the monotony of Jeanne scrubbing the tub and other aspects of her daily routine. The point of the monotony is to help us empathize with Jeanne's plight and understand why she breaks. Seyrig could be anybody in India Song, she is not really a specific character, because she is a meat puppet, albeit a delectable one, in Duras' symbolic strategy. India Song has lots of interesting ideas, but very few are expressed by the camera. I suspect Duras, like Norman Mailer, will be remembered as a fitfully interesting filmmaker whose true métier was literature. 

Happiness (1935)

Aleksandr Medvedkin's Happiness is a rural slapstick comedy that has the distinction of being the last silent feature made in the Soviet Union. This 1935 film stars Pyotr Zinovyev as Khmyr, a hapless farmer who can't seem to make a go of it whether he is under Imperial or Communist rule. Under the Tsar, Khmyr is beset by the usual Communist bogeymen: the aristocracy, the kulaks, the military, and the clergy. Whatever bounty he harvests is picked at by these vultures of society and Khmyr and his wife barely subsist. Things do not improve for him after the revolution despite the presence of tractors and a cadre of helpful Party members. Rejected by his long suffering missus, Khmyr descends into despair, but fate intervenes. He spies a disgruntled Kulak committing arson and saves the day, finally acknowledged by all as a valuable comrade in the struggle to achieve a more perfect Soviet farm collective.

Luckily for the viewer, Medvedkin seems to take nothing, not even Stalin's agricultural policy, too seriously. Where in 1929's The General Line a tractor ballet was featured, in Happiness the viewer is treated to a tractor running amok. There are plenty of pratfalls, visual gags, and an array of surrealistic moments: nuns wear see through blouses, soldiers wear identical masks, and dumplings fly. The tone is more absurdist than Marxist. Medvedkin's style is out of date for the period, but charmingly so. Medvedkin was profiled in Chris Marker's 1992 film, The Last Bolshevik. Happiness is streaming on Kanopy and is recommended to fans of Soviet cinema, slapstick, and Surrealism.

Marlowe

Diane Kruger and Liam Neeson in Marlowe

Neil Jordan's Marlowe, based on and quite faithful to John Banville's novel The Black-Eyed Blonde, is a mystery story centered around Raymond Chandler's greatest creation, the private detective Philip Marlowe. The film is a handsome period piece with Spanish exteriors ably filling in for Los Angeles and Tijuana. The film's hair and costume designs are spot on and David Homes' soundtrack is an asset. There are also some interesting performances on the periphery of the film by Colm Meaney, Alan Cumming, and Darrell D'Silva.

However, much of Marlowe leaves one with a hollow feeling. Part of this can be traced to the source novel which feels both tossed off and ersatz, a facsimile of Chandler. Liam Neeson is better than any previous Marlowes when fisticuffs are involved, but is too stolid a presence to conjure the insolence at the core of the character. This would be not be lethal to the film if there was a fiery femme fatale to draw sparks off Neeson's flint. Unfortunately, Diane Kruger is not that actress. Kruger is fine in light roles or as a German, but here seems neither American nor devious enough to fit the part. Among the leads, only Jessica Lange is ideally cast as Kruger's film star mother. She would have made an ideal femme fatale if Marlowe had been made in an earlier era.

Asteroid City

Staying within the frame: Scarlett Johansson and Jason Schwartzman in Asteroid City

Wes Anderson's Asteroid City may not be in the upper echelon of Anderson's work, but few other films released in 2023 are as rewarding visually. Easily dismissed as twee and artificial, certainly I have dismissed his lesser films as such, Anderson's films always offer up enough references and Easter eggs to keep a passel of PHD candidates busy into the next century. Asteroid City is no exception, pivoting back and forth from color to black and white. The black and white sections are focused on the fictional play that is the basis for the film we see in the color sections. The black and white sections are in the 4:3 aspect ratio and resemble television's Playhouse 90 or The Twilight Zone with Bryan Cranston filling in for Rod Serling as our host. The color segments are in widescreen with vivid pastel colors. The décor is full of Populuxe furniture and gadgets. As in all of Anderson's later films, we have departed from the mode of realism. 

I can't say I was emotionally involved in the film or that it provoked any loud chortles, but I was reasonably engaged and amused. Part of people's problems with Anderson, along with willingness to eschew the canons of realism, stems from his use of large ensemble casts. This approach does not involve audiences emotionally into his films. It is no accident that his two best films, Rushmore and The Grand Budapest Hotel, focus more narrowly on would be lovers and or mentors. There are so many characters in Asteroid City it is hard enough to keep track of them, much less empathize with them. Anderson's tendency of late to base his characters on famous figures also produces a distancing effect. We see up on the screen variations on Marilyn Monroe, Robert Capa, Tennessee Williams, and Elia Kazan. The character don't seem to really exist in the actual fifties, but in a mythopoetic evocation of that era. The characters themselves are mythic figures like the ones immortalized by Greek myths and in Astrology, and Astronomy. It is no quirk or accident that the three daughters of one of the principal characters are named Pandora, Andromeda, and Cassiopeia. Anderson does not seek to make his characters real, to him they serve as symbolic guideposts whether they are arranged amongst the stars or shining on the silver screen. 

Asteroid City, as usual for Anderson, boasts an impressive array of performances. Thesps obviously die to work for the man. not for the money, but for good dialogue and sense of creative bonhomie. Anderson lets some of his old hands do whatever they want as long as they stay in their space within the frame. It is telling that Anderson helped manage as many interesting performances from his rookies as his veterans. I especially enjoyed Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Maya Hawke, Rupert Friend, Adrien Brody, Sophia Lillis, and Jake Ryan. Beneath its sherbet colored visage and its wacky UFO cover story, Asteroid City touches upon serious themes. It explores the split between Science and Religion in the US which has only become more pronounced since the 1950s. The film also opens up a can of worms about how historical representation, modulated by different stylistic modes for different effects, operates in the cinema. That is the topic for a book, but it indicates why Asteroid City, alone upon 2023 American commercial releases thus far, merits a second viewing.

Book Review: Fun City Cinema by Jason Bailey

The final image of Gangs of New York

Jason Bailey's Fun City Cinema: New York City and the Films That Made It is a superior coffee table tome. Bailey takes a decade by decade look at the films that have used New York City as a backdrop or a main character and at the socio-political forces that have shaped and changed the city. He primarily focuses on one film, like King Kong or Taxi Driver, that was emblematic of the way the motion picture industry utilized the city in that decade. He also focuses on other significant films of each decade using sidebars. The large book format limits Bailey's scope, but this is an unusually well researched and thoughtful book of its type. I particularly enjoyed Bailey's sketches of the colorful parade of mayors that have represented the city from Jimmy Walker to Bill de Blasio. A worthy gift item for lovers of film and or Gotham. 

The Founder

              
I had avoided John Lee Hancock's The Founder, from 2016, because I hadn't particularly liked any of the other features he had directed, but I was pleasantly surprised. The flick, a biopic of McDonald's "founder" Ray Kroc, is a slice of Americana suited both to Hancock's rather narrow vision and Michael Keaton's talents. Keaton plays Kroc and his gift for high energy patter makes him a snug fit as the hard charging salesman. Keaton even shows he has some vocal chops as he serenades along to "Pennies from Heaven" with Linda Cardellini as the woman who became Kroc's third wife, Joan.

Robert Siegel's script planes off some of the abrasive edges of Kroc's personality. One wife and a child are eliminated from Kroc's curriculum vitae. Kroc's hornswoggling of the McDonald brothers is included, but the film is largely a celebration rather than a critique of capitalism. Hancock's view of America in the fifties is overly sunny, abetted by Michael Corenblith's adept production design, and confirms his status as a right winger; in Hollywood terms at least. The distaff side of things is neglected. Laura Dern has little to do except look glum as Kroc's neglected first wife. However, the film features a host of good performances from its supporting actors: Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, B.J. Novak, and Patrick Wilson. They are all superbly cast and provide some much needed texture to a formulaic flick. All in all, this is easily Hancock's best film.