by ·Comments Off on Nana (1926, Jean Renoir)

Everyone loves actress Nana (the Whirlpool of Fate orphan, and the director’s wife), including Count “Dr. Caligari” Muffat, horse breeder Count “Robert Macaire” Vandeuvres, and Macaire’s useless nephew Ray (The Three-Sided Mirror). Nana, in turn, likes whoever she can use to get ahead, and that’s Muffat, who gets her the starring role in a play but can’t stop her from being laughed off the stage. In the end, everyone in this movie who acted normal about anything was spared – unfortunately that’s nobody.

Nana with her Count:

Somehow Nana is even worse as a courtesan, needing to ham up every interaction as if she’s still onstage. If you watched this and The Odyssey back-to-back, you’d have to conclude from the crowds of suitors that all men except Matt Damon are pathetic. Nana’s three suitors are in a desperation spiral, and it’s tough to keep track – you tell yourself at the beginning “the Count is the guy with the preposterous mustache,” but there are multiple Counts and a preponderance of bad mustaches. The horse breeder tries to throw a race to gain enough cash to win the girl. When that fails he drinks poison then falls down, starting a fire that burns up his horses. The nephew is overwhelmed by how pathetic this all is and unalives himself with Nana’s scissors. Muffat’s wife left him long ago, is now depressed about her life with an annoying playwright. Finally Nana gets smallpox and I lost track of whether she took the count with her.

Nana with Horse Guy:

Based on a Zola novel that gets remade every decade or so. The Silent Film Music Shuffle Mix was played, and Dirty Three’s Ocean Songs came out the winner.

Nana with the annoying nephew:

by ·Comments Off on Marnie (1964, Alfred Hitchcock)

Normie-me often lets down cinephile-me. I’d love to feel the same ecstasy as the people with the five-star reviews blathering about “bodies in motion through space” or analyzing the use of color, but all I can see is Hollywood discovering psychology, Tippi Hedren’s childhood trauma prefiguring a million more tedious psych-dramas.

Tippi gets office jobs then robs the office and moves to another town. It’s a sweet gig until she’s recognized by Sean Connery, who has business with two of her employers. After two hours of Sean trying to figure out her deal with theft and horses and the color red, we’re rewarded with a flashback of her killing her mom’s abusive boyfriend Bruce Dern with a fireplace poker.

Connery’s sister Diane Baker starred in Strait-Jacket the same year, and in the mid-90s would play mother(s) to Matthew Broderick and Sandra Bullock. Tippi’s judgemental mom Louise Latham was in Sugarland Express. The mom’s neighbor girl Kimberly Beck would grow up to appear in a few Friday the 13th sequels, while Young Killer Marnie played in late-70s thrillers The Car, Piranha, and The Fury.

by ·Comments Off on Gaucho Gaucho (2024, Dweck & Kershaw)

From Long Island car people to Italian dog people to Argentine horse people, Dweck gets around. Real beauty in every moment of this, and I’m not just saying that because my cinephile senses are stimulated by the black-and-white photography, but maybe just a little bit. The gauchos try to keep juvenile cows safe from the hated condors, teach their kids the skills, excel at rodeo competitions, fight against the school dress code, and reflect on their cool lives.

by ·Comments Off on Some Pre-1908 Cinema

Films Chronophotographiques (1889-1904, Étienne-Jules Marey)

I, who am easily amused, spent a Saturday night watching 1890s motion tests while listening to the new Maya Shenfeld album. After dropping cats from a height to see how they land, it focused on naked musclemen walking and jumping and doing olympic sports, which was less of interest. I felt like rewatching Nope, Katy brought up All Light, Everywhere. The editor saved the best for last (birds).

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The Little Match Seller (1902, James Williamson)

Like how adding film grain helps digital compositing look more natural, falling snow makes the dreamy matchlight photo effects hold together. The actor’s gesture – hands reaching out to the phantom roast turkey to hands over face crying – is really good. Even shorter than other versions I’ve seen.

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The Big Swallow (1901, James Williamson)

Early meta-film, guy with appallingly large collar gets agitated and swallows the camera and crew, beautifully done.

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Something Good: Negro Kiss (1898, William Nicholas Selig)

Something good: the woman has crazy shoulders on her dress, resists his advances for a few seconds then gets into it.

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The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906, Georges Méliès)

Alternating between sepia-toned and hand-tinted, a proto-Monty Python comedy – this is a movie that opens with an ass-kicking machine. Trick props and sets, a phantom carriage, everything transforming then demons coming out of nowhere. I put on Stereolab’s “Soop Groove #1” into “Metronomic Underground”, opened my eyes wide, and lost my mind completely. No idea what Satan is up to here, then it ends abruptly.

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The Mysterious Retort (1906, Georges Méliès)

Quite short, and I was still recovering from the satanic spell cast by the previous movie, I have no recollection of this. A lab experiment gone wrong?

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The Witch (1906, Georges Méliès)

I don’t like to say “that artist crazy, he on drugs,” I like to respect the creative process, but Georges Melies crazy, he on drugs. Lovely coloring, I dunno what to say about story – I looked up from typing that last sentence and everyone had turned into frogs or snakes.

by ·Comments Off on Nope (2022, Jordan Peele)

Very satisfying twist surrounded by a bunch of strangeness I’m still figuring out. Daniel Kaluuya underplaying as the stoic cowboy, while sister Keke Palmer and everyone else around him is so animated. Keith David (The Thing) is their dad who dies from a quarter in the brain. Brandon Perea is the Fry’s Guy who’s somehow allowed to keep coming over. Steven Yuen the neighboring child-star monkey-survivor who accidentally turns his amusement park into a suicide cult. Michael Wincott (talkative bounty hunter in Dead Man) the cinematographer they hire to document the alien. Nobody knows who played the TMZ Guy, or why he’s in the movie at all. The main hope is this starts a trend of movie characters wearing vintage 1990’s alt-rock t-shirts.

Favorite article: Walter Chaw in Film Freak Central, locating each Jordan Peele movie along “the Shyamalan self-delusion timeline.”

by ·Comments Off on The Death of Dick Long (2019, Daniel Scheinert)

I didn’t notice until the end credits that only one of the Daniels participated, and there’s a new writer. I’d been thinking of this as the followup to Swiss Army Man and didn’t know what it’s about – if advertised as “the horse-fucking movie from one director of the corpse-farting movie,” I would’ve skipped. In the end it’s trying to be an Alabama misadventure incompetent-crimes comedy (Matt Lynch called it “Dipshit Fargo“) and also a sad story about friends + wife dealing with Dick’s untimely death, and none of it worked for me, except some of the jokes (trying not to swear in front of a kid: “the S has hit the fan… the S! the fuckin S!”).

Our heroes:

After a long night of drinking and fire, Dick is fatally hurt in back of a car for reasons unknown until later, gets dishonorably dumped at the emergency room and picked up by Roy Wood Jr., the dialogue so far down there with Super Dark Times. Dick’s friends, who have been fooling around with the horse for years, do a hilariously poor job at covering up, telling conflicting stories to an inquisitive minor and accidentally getting cops involved. Owner of the car Zeke is a Jeff Nichols regular, his dense vaping buddy played the asshole friend in Relaxer, the lead cop was in Mascots and the widow starred in Chained for Life.

by ·Comments Off on The Tale (2018, Jennifer Fox)

“This was important to me and I’m trying to figure out why.” Heard there was an overlooked Laura Dern trauma drama this year, so obviously I’m all over it. Premiered in competition at Sundance, with Blaze, Blindspotting, and Sorry to Bother You. A quarter of my top twenty movies of the year played there, but it’s still a scattershot festival so it’s hard to trust it. Hard to trust this movie too, when we’re already seeing flashbacks to earlier in the movie at the 18 minute mark.

Present Jenny + Past Jenny = the poster image

Dern is as good as expected, and Elizabeth Debicki (lately of Widows) is perfect as her riding instructor/molester, with handsome rapist husband Jason Ritter (Jeb in Oliver Stone’s W.). Documentary filmmaker Jenny’s mom Ellen Burstyn finds a disturbing story Jenny wrote years ago, wants her to come home and figure some things out, so we hang with Young Jenny (Isabelle Nélisse of both Mama and Mother) for half the movie and watch how she got into a relationship with a sexy attractive couple, which would be cool if Jenny wasn’t 13 at the time. Ends with Present Jenny talking with Past Jenny (given away by the movie poster). This is based closely on the filmmaker’s life, but The Rider it ain’t – the writing is obvious, and despite all the professionalism on display, it feels like a TV movie that scored a great cast.

Lovely, wholesome molesters:

by ·Comments Off on Sorry to Bother You (2018, Boots Riley)

As cynical and absurd as Idiocracy (and even featuring Terry Crews). Lakeith Stanfield finds something he’s good at (selling awful things to rich people) and forsakes his awesome girl Tessa Thompson and his unionizing coworkers for a taste of fortune and power. He realizes the error of his ways, but also gets turned into a horse.