by ·Comments Off on The Sparrow in the Chimney (2024, Ramon Zürcher)

The Girl and The Spider and Trauma, or, The Dead Little Cat. The sparrow escapes in first few minutes and doesn’t return – and good for it, given the violence and bad vibes that ensue. Family get-together for someone’s birthday, and everyone’s happy to see each other but also on edge, then the kids start taking turns telling the mom they hate her, escalating aggressions until the movie breaks with reality when the cat is found dead in the washing machine and mom has a freakout and maybe the house burns down, everyone smiling pleasantly at each other about it. Played Locarno last year, so I watched during this year’s Locorazo.

Vadim Rizov:

Sparrow begins by once again demonstrating the brothers’ John-Carpenter-level facility with weaponizing off-screen space, leaning into meticulously locked-off interiors that are repeatedly unexpectedly disrupted, often by animals … Part of what I liked most about Strange Little Cat was the ways it generated surprise from both its framing and unexpected structure, low on overt incident but subtly discombobulating; that the Zürchers’ subsequent films have leaned into greater degrees of melodramatic hyperbole isn’t where I want them to go.

The mom starred in at least two Angela Schanelec movies, her husband in All Good and Bloodsuckers, and her sister in Schwentke’s The Captain.

by ·Comments Off on Secrets & Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)

After her foster mum’s death, Marianne Jean-Baptiste consults compassionate social worker Lesley Manville about finding her real mum. Lesley gives her some options, says this should be handled delicately, and of course don’t just show up at mum’s doorstep, but Marianne is out of patience and does exactly that, getting to know Brenda Blethyn (Keira K’s mum in Pride & Prejudice and Keira’s boyfriend’s mum in Atonement) and remaining her “work friend” to the rest of the family until all the titular secrets get blurted out at a birthday party.

Brenda’s brother is Timothy Spall, his wife who nobody likes is Phyllis Logan, and mum’s other daughter (and birthday girl) is Claire Rushbrook of Adler’s Under the Skin, who brings along her boyfriend Paul. Poor Paul seems nice enough, has nothing to do while caught in this massive unloading of grudges, and when the fourth family secret within 15 minutes drops, he makes a facial twitch that justifies his entire existence in the film. As for Blethyn, she and the movie won top prizes at Cannes in a stacked year (Crash, Fargo, Breaking the Waves, Three Lives, Drifting Clouds). She’s excellent throughout, but one line delivery in particular, which I won’t detail here because I’m trying to stop thinking about it, had me upset all week. I planned to catch up on a few Mike Leigh films – maybe Meantime or High Hopes – before watching MJ-B’s comeback Hard Truths, but maybe stacking these in a single month would be overwhelming.

Josh Lewis: “So funny to make a movie as nihilistic and troubling as Naked and then immediately follow it up with Timothy Spall in this who is a contender for the nicest, warmest character in the history of movies.”

by ·Comments Off on A History of Violence (2005, David Cronenberg)

Opens with Stephen McHattie’s young partner Billy killing a kid. These actors would reunite in Tarsem’s Immortals with John “no relation” Hurt.

Their fatal visit to Viggo’s diner plays hell on the family. Son Jack (a punk drummer in the Germs biopic) goes from self-denigrating violence-avoidance to kicking asses in the school halls. You don’t see wife Maria Bello much even though she gave the best performance of 2005… she was in Prisoners and some recent crappy horrors.

Ed Harris shows up the very next morning calling Viggo “Joey,” stirring up trouble that’ll get him and his boss (oscar-nom William Hurt) killed. Not pictured: Sheriff Peter MacNeill, one of the Crash-ers.

by ·Comments Off on It Runs in the Family (2022, Victoria Linares Villegas)

The director investigates her Uncle Oscar, her fellow gay filmmaking family rebel, digging up all she can find on him, which isn’t much. Oscar had been repressed by Trujillo, which inevitably brought to mind Oscar Wao. Lots of design and performance in this movie, bringing in more family members for interviews and to adapt Oscar’s screenplays. Sometimes feels slight, but I’m interested in the idea of families erasing their memories, whether on purpose as a destructive act, or accidentally through forgetting. Also sometimes feels awkward, like when two people face each other on a large stage reading aloud emails that they’d sent each other. Some of the less stagy bits outshone these setpieces, like after her tortured attempt to gently bring up to an elder family member the idea that Oscar may not have been entirely straight, when she finally arrives at her point he says “oh yes I knew.”

World premiere by our second punk filmmaker of the day, wearing band t-shirts whenever she’s on camera. Angel Bat Dawid didn’t have time to play all of the 20 instruments she’d brought along, but she made the strongest first impression of any T/F musician, coming out singing from the back of the bar and leading a call/response on her way to the front.

by ·Comments Off on Marrowbone (2017, Sergio Sanchez)

This actually ended up being worse than Serpent and the Rainbow, an achievement. Mom moves the four kids to her childhood home in America so “they” will never find the family, then the kids meet Anya Taylor-Joy, who will “change their life – forever.”

This ghost-child is foreshadowing:

A year later the mom dies and they become increasingly secluded, barely seeing Anya, who’s being pursued by local realtor Tom. When Tom’s new job offer turns out to be a scam he extorts oldest son Jack for their killer dad’s stolen money, which Jack has to retrieve from the haunted attic, and spawns all sorts of flashbacks and revelations – the dad found them and killed everybody, and Jack locked him in the attic and has been pretending the others are still around.

Family Portrait:

Sledgehammer Realtor:

Jack was just one of the leads in 1917, and the realtor dude was in Poldark. Other son Billy got to hang out with Anya again in The New Mutants, and daughter Mia Goth woukld reteam with Anya in Emma. From the writer of The Orphanage, which I fully intended to watch this month but after this, I’m gonna push it till next year.

by ·Comments Off on Knives Out (2019, Rian Johnson)

So many details to talk about in this movie, but the main thing I’ll remember is, after the whole twisty, backstabby mess, when Chris Evans has been taken away for murder (one provable, two attempted), that final shot of Ana de Armas (the hologram-girlfriend in Blade Runner 2049) with the “my house/my rules” mug. The nazi child was Jaeden Martell of Midnight Special – so the second time he’s played Michael Shannon’s son. The silly-ass state trooper is Noah Segan, a Rian Johnson regular since Brick. Murdered Fran is a Groundling, Shannon’s wife is from Garfunkel and Oates – lot of comedians in the cast, but most everyone plays it straight against eccentric detective Daniel Craig.

by ·Comments Off on Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho)

The entire basement-dwelling Kim family gets jobs under fake names working for the rich Park family. At first it’s easy – the son is given an introduction from the Park daughter’s outgoing tutor – but they have to get increasingly deceitful to gain each position, and getting the longtime housekeeper (Jeong-eun Lee of The Wailing) fired so momma Kim (Hye-jin Jang of Secret Sunshine) can take her job causes unanticipated consequences, since the former housekeeper’s husband is living in a hidden dungeon beneath the house. In the end, one member of each family is stabbed to death, along with the displaced housekeeper and husband, and daddy Kim hides out in the basement, possibly forever.

The last two Korean movies I saw in theaters end with the poor male lead murdering the rich male lead – something’s going on in Korea. The son wielded a baseball bat in zombie thriller Train to Busan… the dad stars in The Host and Memories of Murder (and Chan-wook Park’s little-remembered vampire movie Thirst)… rich dad is in a pile of Hong Sang-soo movies! I knew his deep voice sounded familiar. I noticed in the credits that the son’s friend (who gets him the tutoring job & gives him the rock) had a special cameo appearance credit separate from the rest of the cast list… but he doesn’t seem like anyone special.

“Bong majored in sociology before he pursued filmmaking” – the Cinema Scope writeup from Cannes is good, but this long Slate article/interview is the one everyone’s talking about.

Parasite‘s Cannes competition included the Tarantino, The Lighthouse, that Portrait of a Lady on Fire I keep seeing trailers for even tho it doesn’t open until February, the upcoming Terrence Malick war movie, the Almodóvar, the Takashi Miike I missed at the Landmark a few weeks ago, and the upcoming (hopefully?) Zombi Child and Bacurau.

by ·Comments Off on Shoplifters (2018 Hirokazu Kore-eda)

Spends a significant amount of time with a makeshift family who adopt/kidnap a neighbor from an abusive home. Their daily life and care for each other is seen up close for the first hour, until just like in yesterday’s movie Too Many Husbands, the decision of how to arrange their own family is taken out of their hands when the Morality Police show up and straighten it out according to the Law. Suddenly each member of our close movie family is revealed as a low-class criminal, reduced to a mugshot and named by their crime (thief / murderer / kidnapper / fraudster). It’s an extremely effective sympathy tactic – a moving film even though I could see the gears turning.

The first Kore-Eda I’ve watched since Nobody Knows, 15 years ago, even though the eight he made in between were variously acclaimed, making top-ten lists and Criterion blu-rays… I guess the Palme d’Or finally got me. Sakura Andô (Love Exposure) won Japan’s top acting award as the mother. One of the final films by Kirin Kiki (Suzuki’s Zigeunerweisen and Pistol Opera) as the grandma.

by ·Comments Off on My Happy Family (2017, Nana Ekvtimishvili & Simon Groß)

Manana is tired of her family, and one day walks out and gets her own apartment. Everyone tells her this is unacceptable and ridiculous and she’ll come crawling back, but she does not. She still sees her husband and kids and parents, reluctantly, but mostly keeps to herself even when home. Remarkably, the movie allows this to happen, doesn’t condemn or destroy her.

Michael Sicinski on letterboxd:

Nana & Simon’s choice to spatialize Manana’s rebellion allows them to literalize her movement away from the fold, a break which is then compromised by her older brother’s insistence that some dumb lugs in her building “keep an eye on her.” Unbeknownst to Manana, the patriarchy is everywhere. This is made even clearer, in far harsher terms, when some old friends of Manana’s divulge a secret about her past, something that she herself did not know.

That something is that her husband Soso (“ironically but accurately named”) had a long-term affair, something her friends assume Manana already knew, because why else would she have left. In fact, he has a son with this woman, and Manana meets him under the pretense of checking their gas meter. Meanwhile life goes on in the family she has left – one kid has a breakup, the other has a new (pregnant) girlfriend, and Manana’s parents and brother can never stop meddling.

Bilge Ebiri, whose review got me watching this in the first place:

The film unfolds as a series of long takes, as we follow characters in and out of rooms, staying close enough to register individual experiences while always making sure to keep the rest of the world in focus. But the camerawork isn’t that rough, handheld, vérité style we’ve become so used to; it’s fluid without being showy, immediate without being unbalanced.

Codirectors Ekvtimishvili and Gross made a previous feature called In Bloom, which is also about females in Georgia escaping their families. Soso starred in Aleksey German’s Under Electric Clouds, and I have no idea where Manana (Ia Shugliashvili) came from.