Paula Beer is in a car crash, losing her family, in front of the house of a family who lost their daughter/sister, so she naturally falls in with them.
If I was properly caught up with my Petzolds I’ve have seen the mom in Yella and The State I Am In.
Babybel:
Regular family guy Josh O’Connor, haunted by his past life as an art thief in La Chimera, and in love with Arthur Dove, puts together a halfassed plan to steal four paintings from a local museum. All three of his accomplices turn on him (one drops out, one goes to the cops, and one goes to the mob, who re-steal the paintings), he borrows money from his parents that he can’t pay back, his wife is mad at him, the friends he’s staying with kick him out, he finally robs an old lady to afford a border crossing then gets randomly arrested while laying low in a protest march.
This has more of a commercial period genre feel than Reichardt’s other crime movies (Night Moves, First Cow, River of Grass) but with a pleasingly soft grainy look, and requisite time spent on important details (Josh laboriously negotiating a barn ladder while stashing the paintings). Rob Mazurek contributes the best score of the year.
Josh’s mom Hope Davis:
Robert Rubsam in Defector is really good.
The Mastermind is Reichardt’s third film in a row about a frustrated artist … These are lonesome characters, isolated by their means and their practice, persistently frustrated by the knowledge that they could accomplish something great, if only their true labor held any temporal or monetary value … Yet when it comes to his own heist, he’s more than happy to shunt the labor to his fuck-up friends, keeping his hands clean of criminal drudgery. You get the sense his career probably foundered long before the work dried up.
He seems infinitely more comfortable when stashing away the stolen goods than he does relating to his kids or pleading with his wife. Swaddled in the loving embrace of family and suburbia, he acts like a man living hand-to-mouth, creating new problems so that he — and the women in his life — can solve them. Like a cornered animal, he must do something, or die. It’s not so much a high-wire act as a slow ascent up a shaky ladder with no way to climb back down.
So soon after Train Dreams, here’s another new movie people are attacking for botching its adaptation of an original work (in this case the Korean movie Save The Green Planet!) but which I watched in blissful ignorance of the original work and greatly enjoyed. Theoretically not a fun movie, as a conspiracy obsessive and his dim relative kidnap and torment a businesswoman into confessing that she’s a space alien, but I cackled more than once, then floated away happily after she escapes to her ship and kills all the humans.
Stone and Plemons and his cousin Aidan Delbis are the whole show, though Stavros Halkias shows up as a perv cop just long enough to get murdered by bees. Not until after the kidnapping and head-shaving does Jesse let us know that he thinks she’s an alien. More of his craziness is gradually unveiled (he’s a loner whose mom told him about mind control, he tells Stone “everybody denies it at first” revealing she’s not his first victim, she runs the major company where he works a menial job) and he seems to be making up space alien stuff as he goes along, so all his stories being true was the only decent twist the movie could have. I guess he and the cousin didn’t have to have their heads blown off after Jesse is tricked into murdering his comatose mom, and Stone escaping from an ambulance and running back to the crime scene seemed like padding, but the payoff is worth it.
Jesse flashes his tascam, pretty sweet:
Not all life! Just the humans:
Actress is on a soundstage recreating a lost film with Cociña and León, in which everyone but her is replaced by puppets. She ends up entering a spreadsheet cheat code, entering the hollow earth, and arguing with the Hitler-worshipping filmmakers. I don’t know what it all meant for Chile or for cinema, but I enjoyed every scene. After The Wolf House and Los Huesos, dudes are on a roll – and I’ve just learned that they did effects for Beau Is Afraid.
Antonia Giesen and her rock & roll patient:
Shooting a flower-creature shadow with a camera-laser:
The “directors”:
Pampered internet-famous masochist flies into a murder-suicide rampage after discovering that she might suffer a consequence for past actions. However, the makeup woman knew what was going on, and shouldn’t have stood under that piano. Adele Exarchopoulos is up for anything, as usual – her little speech mannerisms are the whole movie, more or less. Her long-suffering assistant is comedian Jerome Commandeur, and their blackmailer is Sandrine Kiberlain, who just wants an interview with the press-averse star, who would rather die than participate. Happy ending for the bird, at least! Nothing inventive here from Dupieux, just a misanthropic little comedy.
End-times movie, as our characters drive through the desert of Morocco from one rave to another while WWIII appears to be starting offscreen. The main Spanish guy (from Pacifiction and Pan’s Labyrinth) loses his son while searching for his daughter, movie randomly ends up in a minefield where we lose half the remaining characters. Filipe calls it stupid and evil, I rather liked it but couldn’t figure out its point.
Mostly it’s a casting triumph – they take inventory of the new-wavers with onscreen labels whenever somebody shows up. I could say that this doesn’t have much value if you’re not already a Godard/Breathless fan, but I suppose in that case why would you be watching movies at all? It’s not the first Linklater movie that’ll mess you up with its postscript text. Everyone looks like they had fun – that’s what is important.
Ethan Hawke showcase, playing a songwriter whose partner has found success with a different partner. He flails around his favorite bar, chatting with bartender Bobby Cannavale and random patron EB White, waiting for Margaret Qualley to show up (script is based on letters they wrote each other), but she mostly wants to meet ex-partner Rodgers, the man of the hour. Feels more filmed-theater than Nouvelle Vague, besides whatever effect they used to shrink Hawke so everybody will dwarf him, but I had a better time with this one.
