by ·Comments Off on Rumours (2024, Maddin/Johnson/Johnson)

A different sort of thing for Maddin, his most restrained feature. More Bunuelian perhaps, tricking viewers with a political arthouse drama with Cate Blanchett then gradually accumulating unnatural quirks until the giant brain in the woods is only a distraction from whether sentient pedo-hunting AI has Lawnmower-Manned all communications in an apparently depopulated Germany. Seven world leaders were in a gazebo hard at work crafting the most bland and vague statement they could, when they found themselves cut off from outside contact. Each one gets their standout moment, but Canada (the most emotional and least respected) steps up during the crisis, triumphantly editing and reading their final statement aloud to the masturbating bog people.

Germany is the Australian Blanchett, Canada is Roy Dupuis (I think he’s the woodsman who yells “strong men!” in Forbidden Room, which also features a giant brain). UK is late Shyamalan fave Nikki Amuka-Bird, USA is the inexplicably British gent Charles Dance (who I just saw in The First Omen). Then there’s Italy (I got nothing on Rolando Ravello), France (Denis Ménochet, the violent PTSD guy in Beau Is Afraid), and Japan (Takehiro Hira of the new Shogun). They come across two suicidal European Union workers: Zlatko Buric of Triangle of Sadness, and Alicia Vikander, subject of the best joke in the movie (they think the brain’s influence has got her speaking in ancient lost languages, but it turns out to just be Swedish).

by ·Comments Off on Tár (2022, Todd Field)

Mostly set in Berlin. Lydia’s former protege Krista has killed herself and “grooming” accusations have been made, wife Sharon is leaving and taking their kid, new cellist Olga might live in a crumbling ghetto or be a ghost. This joins Nope as a movie less satisfying in the moment than thinking about afterwards (and I’ll bet Nope would be more fun to rewatch). Really enjoyed the Dan Kois article in Slate. Shout out to Caroline Shaw!

by ·Comments Off on Nightmare Alley (2021, Guillermo del Toro)

On the run after killing his dad, Bradley Cooper wanders mutely into a carnival needing work and food and gets shown around by Willem Dafoe. Ron Perlman is there of course, typecast as a strongman. Cooper’s talents are gradually put to use until he runs off (openly, not in secret) with Rooney Mara to run their own upscale act stolen from mentalist Toni Collette and her late partner David Strathairn.

A couple years later in the plotty, less compelling back half of the movie, the spook act impresses Mary Steenburgen and he’s set up with haunted and dangerous Richard Jenkins. Psychologist Cate Blanchett gives him inside dirt on Jenkins then swindles him, Rooney dislikes his turn to crime-laced trickery, and after it all goes wrong he leaves town in a chicken car, wounded, with nothing and nobody, and comes crawling to new circus master Tim Blake Nelson.

It’s convenient when you’re a circus psychic that everyone in the 1940’s had the same backstory. The movie is as obvious as I’d guessed from the trailer, but the actors and the look of the thing make it completely worthwhile.

by ·Comments Off on Voyage of Time (2016, Terrence Malick)

Years after not being able to see this because we don’t have an imax theater, I realized it had been quietly released on blu-ray. Watched the 90-minute Cate Blanchett version after revisiting The Tree of Life. I’d heard this was a feature-length version of that movie’s merciful dinosaur scene, but it’s a blend of natural hi-res photography and computer trickery – not always easy to tell these apart – and low-grade social-unrest scenes. After a long prehistory, early man leads quickly to huge modern cities.

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“What lasts?”

by ·Comments Off on Thor 3: Ragnarok (2017, Taika Waititi)

I lose track of who’s supposed to be dead at the end of the previous movies, but Loki is alive all through this one, Odin (Anthony Hopkins with an eyepatch) dies here, unleashing Thor’s evil sister Cate Blanchett from interdimensional prison, she’s presumably dead at the end of this since she gets her power from the planet and it’s destroyed by Ragnarok, and Thor is ok at the end, with a new hammer, now wearing an eyepatch like his dad, but they also said his power comes from the planet so I dunno if that’ll be important in later movies. Almost everyone on Asgard dies, including the warrior who becomes a lackey for Cate (Karl Urban: Bones in the new Star Treks), but Idris Elba and some refugees make it onto a spaceship.

So, Thor gets stranded hammer-less on a planet run by game-show-master Jeff Goldblum, teams up with a reluctant Tessa Thompson (the last Valkyrie) and a reluctant Loki, and a very reluctant Hulk, who somehow also ended up here, to steal a ship, fleeing an army led by Rachel House (social services in Hunt for the Wilderpeople) and return to Asgard to fight the rogue sister.

Other highlights: Bruce Banner wanders around confused in a Duran Duran t-shirt, the director plays a hilarious rock monster, Hopkins is entertained by a royal play starring Luke Hemsworth, Matt Damon and Sam Neill as Thor/Loki/Odin, the fun bright colors, the makeup and headgear and some mythic shots that are composed like religious paintings. Mostly we came for Guardians-style entertainment, and this totally delivered – seems like the most rewatchable of the Avengers movies.

Sam Neill as Anthony Hopkins:

by ·Comments Off on Manifesto (2017, Julian Rosefeldt)

I knew this was a new feature edit of a multi-screen installation piece in which various Cate Blanchetts recite historical manifestos, but didn’t realize it would have such terrific photography and production design, or be entertaining and engaging enough to captivate a huge, packed theater at 10:00 AM. Cate solemnly recites the dada manifesto at a funeral, prays one at the dinner table, spits and curses one as a bearded homeless man, performs one as a puppeteer, sneers one as a backstage rock star, bounces one between a pair of newscasters (with a twist artifice-revealing ending) and teaches a few I recognized (Brakhage, Herzog, Von Trier) to schoolchildren.

Ideas about conceptual art, realistic art, the meaning or need for art, the future of art, freedom and dreams, reality and unconscious, truth and imitation and authenticity (thanks to Katy for taking notes) all complement and contradict each other from Cate to Cate. It’s not a 90-minute speech, either – there are moments of silent wonder like this one:

by ·Comments Off on Knight of Cups (2015, Terrence Malick)

Right in between the fade-out of Cannes Month into my Crime & Punishment Marathon, and the kicking-off of Criterion Month, a bunch of last year’s acclaimed auteur art masterpieces became available, so I watched the new Malick, Cosmos, Francofonia and Anomalisa all in the same week. It’s a lot to take in, so I’m thinking it would be wise to watch all four of them again, but I’m probably not gonna do that right now.

Very mixed reviews from my regular critics. It’s telling that the most positive (3.5 stars) review on Letterboxd comes from David Ehrlich comparing it to the Entourage movie. Mixed reviews from me as well. Especially for the first hour, the minute-to-minute thrill of watching a Malick movie is all there, the expressive camerawork and experimental editing. But in the past we’ve had stories to hang these effects upon, and Malick is getting less narrative with every movie. I wasn’t sure that a soul-searching screenwriter played by an expressionless Christian Bale would be the greatest Malick avatar, and I was right. And I had to watch the ending a second time a week later just to make sure I’d even seen it the first time, thinking maybe I’d fallen asleep, but no, it’s just that it doesn’t feel like an end. After Bale is done talking with his father Brian Dennehy he flashes again on his lost loves Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman (even less fleshed-out than the lost loves of To The Wonder), says “begin,” then two shots of cars rushing down highways. Either you just need to be receptive enough to mood and character to properly feel the thing, or I need a long, enthusiastic, well-researched article explaining what I was supposed to get out of it.

Cate at the beach:

Natalie at the beach:

These feel more like symbols, or apparitions, than characters. But then again, so does Rick: As Bale plays him, he alternates between hedonistic abandon and forlorn wandering; we get little insight into his specific needs or worries.

B. Ebiri’s article is helpful, pointing out connections and influences but ultimately saying the surface-level dreamlike seduction of the thing is the whole point. “You don’t reason your way through a film like this.”

Premiered in Berlin over a year ago, with a bunch of interesting looking movies that never played here but are beginning to come out on video, like Queen of the Desert, Eisenstein in Guanajuato, The Club, Victoria, Endless Night and The Pearl Button.

by ·Comments Off on Carol (2015, Todd Haynes)

I knew this was based on a Patricia Highsmith story, but when I saw the opening scene I thought “oh no, is this a remake of Brief Encounter?” Fortunately it goes in a different direction pretty quickly, and while Brief Encounter may have a perfect ending for the 1940’s, Carol has the perfect ending for right now.

Carol (Cate Blanchett) is the interesting rich lady who makes eyes at young department store cashier Therese (Rooney Mara) one Christmas shopping season, and eventually they’re in love, vacationing across the country, not realizing they’re being pursued by private investigators hired by Carol’s husband Kyle Chandler. Not much to say about the movie, plot-wise, since it’s all about perfectly chosen moments and a beautiful visual atmosphere.

F. Zaman in Reverse Shot:

It doesn’t engage with questions of why or how its protagonists are gay, or create simplistic dynamics between homophobic villains and damaged queer heroes. It lets the characters just be, as they are, a defiant act of passive resistance against the assumption that queerness needs to be justified – and that it is the primary quality of the queer person. Just as Haynes is reinvigorating the melodrama genre in films like Carol, Far from Heaven, and even Velvet Goldmine, he is also reframing history to include others — people of color, counterculture figures, queers — in a meaningful way. Carol is also full of visceral pleasures, capturing subjective but universal experiences, like the way the world seems to blur when that certain someone touches your wrist for first time.

by ·Comments Off on Cinderella (2015, Kenneth Branagh)

Part of Disney’s ongoing live-action-remake series. This one adds nothing to the Cinderella story, fails to update or improve it in any way, has no seeming artistic reason to exist. But gee, it’s pretty.

From the director of Thor and writer of Antz, starring cousin Rose from Downton, with Daisy as one wicked stepsister, Cate Blanchett the wicked stepmother, Derek Jacobi (The King’s Speech) the king, Helena Bonham Carter the fairy godmother, Rob Brydon as a painter and a voice actor from the Castlevania games as the prince.

Ouch from Dissolve:

The film just touts, with sparkly but plodding repetition, the outsized, eventual rewards for being a sweet, brave dishrag that causes no trouble and makes no waves. … Asked why she stays on in such a horrible household, she explains that she’s doing it to respect her parents’ memory. By intepreting “be kind” as “be passive,” she teaches herself to be happy with physical and emotional abuse, to accept it as the norm, as the price of respecting her dead family. It’s a grotesque message, presented with perverse cheer, through a character who’s more idealized martyr than relatable hero.

Opened with a short called Frozen Fever, in which all your favorite Frozen characters smile almost nonstop, sing a song, catch a cold and celebrate a birthday. Didn’t hold a candle to Partysaurus Rex.