As a True/False auteurist, this felt more Maing than Story. Since the successful Staten Island union organizing captured in the film, the teamsters have joined up and founder Chris Smalls has lost his subsequent election. So it goes.
Tag: 2020s
The Temple Woods Gang (2022, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche)
Local gang carjacks some valuables from a Saudi prince who likes to dance incognito at grungy clubs. The gang is friendly with Mr. Pons, whose mom just died, and they seem like good-natured dudes, hanging out feeding the pigeons, but the prince’s guy hires Elite Jim, who suspects these guys straight away, and quickly hunts/kills them all. Mr. Pons is an ex-army sniper, which means he’s got a long gun wrapped in a carpet hidden in a storage locker somewhere, and out it comes for some fast revenge. I wouldn’t have started watching if I’d remembered Rabah made the decently forgettable South Terminal, but this one’s better: a grounded version of the crime/revenge movie.
The Shadowless Tower (2023, Zhang Lu)
I thought this would be more mysterious and experimental… I think I heard about this movie around the same time as John Smith’s Black Tower and got them mixed up?
Xin Baiqing is a Beijing food critic who is just like me: a middle aged guy who likes to drink and is pretty boring but with a few quirks that only make him seem offputting to people. He has a sister and a daughter and an estranged dying wife and an ex-con dad (Horse Thief director Tian Zhuangzhuang) who the family pretends doesn’t exists but who bikes 300km to see them in secret on their birthdays. Xin hangs out with food photographer Huang Yao, plays at being her boyfriend, then her father.
Megalopolis (2024, Francis Ford Coppola)
Once again an online review affected the viewing experience, and I spent much of this movie giggling at its “Cheesecake Factory aesthetic.” I had a good time watching this with my bottle of Coppola wine, and since it is (more or less) the American Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, I’m going to use the same approach and just post the notes I took while watching it:
Julia out partying, someone who isn’t her dad picks her up, Claudio is hanging round her, ah her dad is Mayor Cicero, she can see Adam’s time stoppage
LOL at the dialogue
Laurence tells us an empire begins to die when its people no longer believe in it, uh oh
Rich banker Crassius’s son is Claudio, those girls are his sisters the Claudettes, he’s hot for ’em
Mayor’s daughter Julia is a big part of this
Vesta wears invisible dress Cesar invented
Doddering super-rich uncle Voight is marrying Wow, is Cesar’s uncle
Shia is good in this, schemes to show vid of Cesar in bed with girl singing about her purity pledge, she might be good singer but you gotta be a good lipsyncer to be in a movie
No characters in this movie, just narrators – the dialogue is all terrible but the lighting is very good, so we’ll call it even.
During Driver’s scandal he loses his time control
He gets new girl preg, he’s married to Sunny
Only Shia and Adam are thriving here
Mayor will confess to hiding Cesar’s wife’s body if Cesar leaves the preg daughter
Tattoo guy sends a 12-yr-old to assassinate Cesar for Claud
Wow and Shia plot to take over the bank from Voight
So the movie is about rival family members of the world’s richest banker both trying to become populist revolutionaries
Movie bad.
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024, Soi Cheang)
I think the notes I took while watching this can stand on their own:
Girl Fishball’s prost mom gets beaten to death
He’s trying to save up for a fake ID but gets into gambling with the boys
Music is too big but maybe that’s the 1980s setting
This is 1986?
Raymond is the “employed cop” (?) of Detective vs. Sleuths
Cyclone’s doctor is looking for dead Jim’s son to kill his whole family
Chau is the doc, Lui killed his family, Jim was Lui’s killer who seems modeled after Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of NY
Jim is Koo’s Throw Down costar
Boss Tiger lost an eye to Jim, Boss Chau his family, and Cyclone killed Jim
Cyclone was secret friends with Jim and smuggled his family out of town after killing
Our guy is Jim’s son, whitehair doc Chau is pissed
They spent a billion dollars recreating the neighborhood for this film, but needed these guys to play different ages in the 1960s and 1980s and threw some talcum in their hair
Gravity-defying fights, not going for realism despite the kowloon recreation
AV is guy with underwear mask
It uses the godzilla (??)
They all butcher each other while Lok is incapacitated
Some of the goofiest action moves since Dragon Inn
Almost everyone is dead and the cops have Lok
Sammo’s sunglasses guy King uses this fight to move in and take over
King kills his boss Sammo after killing Cyclone
King’s deal is that he is physically indestructible
The action is too choppy, but decently cool
I saw a lady for a few seconds, must have been a mistake
A Different Man (2024, Aaron Schimberg)
Watched this because I wondered if it had the same plot as The Substance – not really! Sebastian Stan is an Adam Pearson-looking pathetic guy with a tentative friendship with hot playwright neighbor Renate Reinsve, then gets revolutionary medical treatment causing him to look like Sebastian Stan, changes his job and identity, then tries to get cast as his former self in the play Renate wrote about her ex-neighbor’s life. This is going fine for Stan until the real Adam Pearson shows up oozing charisma and steals his role and his girl. Plot hole: Renate doesn’t recognize Adam despite having a Chained For Life poster in her living room.
The Substance (2024, Coralie Fargeat)
Dumb Mulholland Drive. Even more gleefully artificial than I Saw the TV Glow, its length allows more emphasis and repetition than is really needed – I keep remembering how much Body Melt accomplished in 80 minutes, while after all the buildup, only a couple bodies melt in this one.
After Demi is fired from a TV network for being too old, she gets the inside scoop on the substance, which creates a younger you from the current you, and the two yous alternate weeks of consciousness. Her first day as Qualley she gets her old job back from squishy boss Dennis Quaid, then Demi wastes her own weeks eating junk food in her apartment, then the second week she starts stealing extra youth time, which causes Demi to age rapidly/erratically. It’s a huge problem that neither of them has self control. They start videodroming (Q pulls a chicken leg out of her bellybutton) then body-melting (Q gets the idea to substance herself, then drops a boob out her eyehole on live TV).
The Damned (2024, Roberto Minervini)
Civil War union boys attempt to patrol out west. Non-period-accurate dialogue, the actors apparently just told to say whatever’s on their minds, it loses me whenever they speak religion or philosophy. I wondered with a half-hour left where this is all heading, and decided it’s heading nowhere and will have an open non-ending, and yup.
As far as movies where women don’t exist, this isn’t as good as Chevalier. The DP (who also wrote the music) uses some unusual lens, dark on the edges with blurry backgrounds, editor also works with the Dardennes.
Gush / Guts & Glitz (2023, Fox Maxy)
Plentiful digital crud here but also so many creatures. Tyra Banks is in more scenes than you’d expect. Constant music flow, all voices have been processed. Composed tripod shots cut rapidly with scraps of handheld phone videos (terrific editing).
Milisuthando vibes, but not as bad. This is the most-halfway I’ve half-watched a movie all year, the TV seeming to demand “do not turn me off, nor give me your full attention.” Maybe generation gap or general blues, but I just sat transfixed by two Twin Peaks episodes so it’s not a lack of attention.
