by ·Comments Off on Four Roald Dahl Shorts (2023, Wes Anderson)

narration: Swan > Henry > Rat > Poison
visuals: Henry > Rat > Swan > Poison
story: Henry > Rat > Poison > Swan

The Swan:

Poison:

Richard Brody:

Anderson has long mastered the lesson that Godard delivered from Breathless onward: that viewers can remain deeply engaged in the events of a drama even while being pulled outside of that drama by fillips of form or fourth-wall-breaking winks and nods. Here he stands that notion on its head; he never breaks the framework of classically realistic drama because he never establishes it in the first place. It is not a question of characters breaking the action to address the camera but the reverse, and, for this reason, the direct address comes off as natural and central, and the acted-out drama as strange and supplementary. Ever since Rushmore, Anderson’s work has been an ongoing reproach to the unquestioned dramatic realism of even most of the great filmmakers of the time, and these four new shorts both heighten the audacious inventiveness of his wondrous artifices and sharpen their powers of critical discernment to a stinging point.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar:

The Rat Catcher:

by ·Comments Off on The Green Knight (2021, David Lowery)

Dev Patel’s finest role, in a pleasingly confounding movie. Mostly grey-brown tale of a knight trying to prove himself by journeying to fulfill a bargain with an immortal. I didn’t realize how much of the movie would be the journey, since you only hear about the bookending scenes.

Dev P.

There’s silver plate photography, giants, a digital-ass fox. The king and queen are played by Prometheus costars Sean Harris and Kate Dickle, and his witchy mum is Mississippi Masala star Sarita Choudhury. Barry Keoghan ambushes him and steals his horse. There’s a whole ending where Dev becomes king, but he also died earlier, so I lost track of what’s real.

Barry K.

Adam Nayman in The Ringer calls out “its self-aggrandizing style and prepackaged gravitas.”

Lowery’s fable about a half-human, half-arboreal creature patiently cultivating a lethal debt against a crumbling civilization vibrates with a certain apocalyptic anxiety, one that’s been color-coded for maximum effect. Stoic, implacable, and only resigned to defeat in Round 1 because he knows his revenge is impending, the Green Knight … terrifies as a figure out of a woodcut … but he’s also an avatar of climate change.