by ·Comments Off on Ferrari (2023, Michael Mann)

Biopic-ass movie about a businessman, joining BlackBerry in the ranks of corporate cinema. I do like watching the little cars zip around. His racing team gets a new driver (Gabriel Leone, star of Julio Bressane’s Kid of all the damn things) who’s dating a celeb (Cronenberg regular Sarah Gadon) – or maybe a different driver is dating her. When I realized how many drivers there were, I stopped looking them up. A scene where he introduces them all made me think this is like The Right Stuff from VP Johnson’s POV. Of course you gotta keep replacing these guys – the notorious crash scene in the climactic cross-country race shows a Ferrari car blowing a tire and hurtling through the air into a whole line of CG spectators. Among the mismatched performances I did appreciate how you get used to seeing grey-haired Adam and grim/pissed Penelope, then the flashbacks of happier days when their son was alive really pop.

I’ve seen twice as many Driver films as Cruz films, I’m doing something wrong. Weirdly, my second 2023 Patrick Dempsey movie this week. Bilge and Preston liked it. I need to rewatch some* by Mann, but… Heat* > Vice > Blackhat > Ali > Thief > Mohicans > Collateral* > Insider* > Enemies* > Manhunter > Ferrari > Keep.

by ·Comments Off on It Is Night in America (2022, Ana Vaz)

Long pan across a blue-tinted skyline… slow, fast, then way too fast. From the city streets to individual animal portraits at a rescue/rehab/zoo. Back to human landscapes, then close focus on animals – including wild monkeys and hawks, back and forth. What sound like distant processed animal calls over the city scenes… long takes of traffic and a waterfall. I can’t tell if all the fidgeting with focus is meant for artistic effect, or if they just can’t keep it stable. We see a fox rescue operation, and learn that otters make awesome sounds and that anteaters are cool in general. Between Bestiaire and Sr and this, sometimes you gotta watch slow arthouse zoo films.

Love the credits, which scrolled top to bottom:

by ·Comments Off on Poor Things (2023, Yorgos Lanthimos)

It’s not shocking that I, a habitual enjoyer of Yorgos movies, greatly enjoyed the one where Emma Stone plays a grown woman with a baby brain raised by a chopped-and-sutured Willem Dafoe then taken into the world by a ham-comic Mark Ruffalo. Doesn’t quite track as an On The Count of Three reunion – Jerrod Carmichael is an intellectual friend of Hanna Schygulla – in different scenes/country from Chris Abbott: Emma’s former husband, “The General,” who they lobotomize so everyone can live together happily.

The critics are mostly angry over the fisheye lens. Also: “the movie’s provocations are all at the level of its ghastly aesthetic, which feels like a prank on the viewer” per Brendanowicz, it’s “infantilizing and visually one-note” per Josephine, and I dunno what Ali and Jon‘s issues are. Movie funny, movie good. Some people get it.

by ·Comments Off on Strange Way of Life (2023, Pedro Almodóvar)

On Valentine’s Day I watched the Ethan Hawke gay cowboy movie. He’s a lawman, and says his old flame Pedro Pascal’s no-good son killed someone, so Pedro shoots Ethan so the son can get away. Pretty good sketch of a movie, not as fully-formed as The Human Voice. Cheap digital cinematography, “maybe an ad for something” I wrote, and I think it’s the clothes – costumed and produced 15 years posthumously by Yves S/L, whose Bonello biopic I should watch one of these days.

by ·Comments Off on Club Zero (2023, Jessica Hausner)

Mia Wasikowska is new at boarding school, teaching “conscious eating” to five students, either because they’re weight-watching or environmentalists or looking for an easy grade. It’s a culty class, but everything in these kids’ lives is culty. She has them eating less and less, then nothing. “You could be among the few who could actually live, when the rest of the world is going under.” She’s fired for associating with a pupil in private, because she took Fred to the opera, not for endangering their lives. Some kids take the course more seriously than others – environmentalist Elsa loses her mind completely – and at Christmas break four of the kids disappear.

Great soundtrack. My first Mia movie since Piercing, but that’s on me for missing Bergman Island. Funny to watch this right after Thanksgiving – both movies feature a trampoline and electric carving knife. That movie had more horrific deaths but this one has more disclaimers in its credits. Blake took it seriously in Filmmaker.

Fred, Ragna, Helen, Elsa, Ben:

by ·Comments Off on Thanksgiving (2023, Eli Roth)

Lotta characters in this – at least the third feature film based on joke Grindhouse trailers – but what’s important is that the survivors of a black friday riot are being hunted, captured, and posed at a private “turkey” dinner by bereft psycho cop Patrick Dempsey, who loved riot victim Gina Gershon. The killer hides behind a pilgrim mask until the climactic parade, when he swaps out for a killer klown mask. Lotta nastiness – one girl gets corncob holders in the ears then chucked into a table saw. Enough victims and false leads to get over the 100 minute mark. A gross good time, but not substantially better than the two-minute version. I’ve skipped everything by Roth for sixteen years – since Hostel 2 he’s done a couple TV things, a shark documentary, a remake, a kids movie, a cannibal horror, and a Keanu Reeves movie I watched the last ten minutes of.

When you’ve been facially mutilated and cannot call for help:

by ·Comments Off on Army of the Dead (2021, Zack Snyder)

A hornt-up married couple cause an army transport to lose its unstoppable bulletproof kung-fu super-zombie cargo. A discordite said Snyder’s title sequences are always tops – agreed, even the font is nice, but it’s all downhill pretty soon.

Las Vegas quickly falls into a contained Resident Evil situation (aka a Doomsday scenario), which the President is gonna nuke on independence day (obvs. a Mr. Show “America Blows Up The Moon” reference). Before that happens, rich guy wants Dave Bautista to put a team together (you sonofabitch) and heist some money from Zombie Vegas. The only actor worth mentioning is chopper pilot Tig Notaro, and even she runs out of good quips in the second half. The team get picked off by zombies and/or by Sunglasses Dillahunt, sent along by the sinister rich guy, Bautista has meaningful conversations with his large-eyed daughter Ella Purnell, and it all goes on for a real long time.

Z Royalty:

Z Tiger:

by ·Comments Off on I Get Knocked Down (2021, Bruce & Robinson)

Hybrid doc at the start, with Chumba Dunstan angry at home, a washed-up ex-punk. Without any musical outlet, they try reenacting scenes from other movies where people are angry. Then he calls up the rest of Chumba one by one and starts excavating the band’s roots. Mekons’ “Where Were You” represents the advent of British punk as he moved to Leeds. “We wanted to shout like Crass, and then we wanted it to sound like The Beatles,” referencing the band’s blend of anger, cynicism and fun. They re-enact band arguments about signing to a major label. Finally all band members together, or as many as he could find, they watch their notorious Brit Awards performance together, where they changed the lyrics and dumped an ice bucket on a politician. It gets a bit too promotional on Dunstan’s new band Interrobang, but I’ll check them out. Some words of hope from Penny of Crass and Ken Loach, last-minute inclusion of They Might Be Giants’ “Tubthumping” cover, overall not bad.

by ·Comments Off on Rotterdance 2024 shorts

Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma (2021, Topaz Jones & Rubberband)

Alphabet of sketches, like The ABCs of Death, but of Black culture in Montclair NJ. Each letter-sketch is a different approach, from wordless avant one-shots to interviews about reframing slavery, food apartheid, code switching, therapy or owning your own work, with home movies and music videos in between letter segments.

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The Driver Is Red (2017, Randall Christopher)

Animated thriller about spy stuff in 1960 Argentina, self-drawing sketches upon papery background with unstable color, covered in faux film grain. Our narrator/hero has tracked and identified Adolf Eichmann, then takes the time to explain some details of the holocaust, in case we haven’t heard. Back to 1960, he calls in his mates and they successfully abduct the guy and bring him to trial, back when Isr**l had a sense of proportion.

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A Short Story (2022, Bi Gan)

This whimsical fantasy AFX-composited sci-fi short incongruously proves that the director of An Elephant Sitting Still had a shot of helming a marvel movie. I guess a cat dresses as a scarecrow and visits three “weirdo” beings who might have some precious thing he can give a girl for her birthday.

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The Rifleman (2021, Sierra Pettengill)

The guy who shot Ramon Casiano later became head of the NRA, mutating the group’s mission from hobbyist sports towards political lobbying. The Drive-By Truckers song is better than this movie (archival footage with strange music), but both are enlightening.

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Rubber Coated Steel (2016, Lawrence Abu Hamdan)

An Isr**li bodyguard killed two kids in the W*st B*nk, and a forensic audio analyst (the director himself, if I didn’t misunderstand the credits) explains in court how it was done. Visual is a long take, roving around a shooting range, the mechanical target holders bringing forth pictoral representations of bullet sounds. For a movie about sound, the audio track is pretty useless – words from the trial are subtitled, including lines stricken from the official record, then the end credits are spoken.

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Goodbye Jerome! (2022, Farr/Selnet/Sillard)

Jerome goes to heaven to find his true love, she breaks up with him, so he suicides and is rebuilt by ants. Really nice animation.