by ·Comments Off on Booksmart (2019, Olivia Wilde)

I had low expectations because of Olivia Wilde’s tiresome Regal Cinema shorts, which I’ve started using as an opportunity to check twitter before the feature begins, to make sure we haven’t gone to war, or that someone in the movie I’m about to watch hasn’t been caught sexually harassing anyone. But this was good!

It’s not perfectly realistic (WAY too woke, per letterboxd), but is Better Off Dead realistic? Granted, Booksmart is no Better Off Dead – it’s just a version of the only high school movie plot that screenwriters can think of (loser has limited time to get a date with crush) but it’s girls this time, one of them is gay, and they end up with different people than they intended. It’s supposed to be extra-funny that the shitty villain from Colossal plays their principal, but I’m not sure why – Katy says he’s married to the director.

Writers include David Mamet’s PA, the creator of a TV show where Kyle MacLachlan plays “Dr. Frost,” the writer/director of The Spy Who Dumped Me, and the writer of the upcoming Tom & Jerry reboot, which I dearly hope will look like that Lion King remake.

by ·Comments Off on Berlin and Opus I-IV (1920’s, Walter Ruttmann)

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)

Opens with exciting abstractions, sunrise and shapes seen through blinds, then we catch a
train into Berlin and it chills out for a while, the depopulated city reminding me creepily of In My Room before people start to wake up and head to work (more trains), then the movie amps up again, the mass production lines looking very much like the ones I see on the Machine Pix twitter feed 100 years later. This movie probably works better as a city-story than Man with the Movie Camera does, though I love the fanciful effects and meta-scenes of the latter.

German Harold Lloyd:

In act II, telephone users and operators are compared to chattering monkeys and fighting dogs. I’d noticed a brief animal comparison in act I and shrugged it off, since a “symphony of a great city” wouldn’t do that to its people? Lunch, siesta, play – then hurry back to work, with a focus on newspapers. Motion of the day is exaggerated by strapping a camera to a rollercoaster.

Ruttmann died in WWII. He worked with Lotte Reiniger and Leni Riefenstahl, apparently knew Oskar Fischinger, and made a dream sequence in Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen. Music by Eisenstein collaborator Edmund Meisel, cinematography by Murnau’s DP Karl Freund, conceived by Caligari writer Carl Mayer – everyone in silent cinema knew each other.

I also watched Ruttmann’s earlier Opus series…

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Opus I (1921)

Ghostly motion blobs against a dirty dark background
About four different motions, mirrored, colored and repeated
A third of the way through, new shapes and variations, and more at a time
Next part adds dyed searchlights and sun pendulums and tumblecubes
The shapes never quite interacting, just almost

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Opus II (1921)

The same shapes on more charcoaly textures, and with more interaction between shapes
Black and white with some soft blue and a shock of red towards the end

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Opus III (1924)

Some new cube overlays and color pulsations look almost 3D
Factory-machinery rectangles then a blue field with 3D blob rotation in the center
The same Red ending as II

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Opus IV (1925)

Pulsing horizontal blinds with walking verticals mixed in later – faster and faster till pale purple blobs take over, then the traditional red ending. More advanced music on this one, by Helga Pogatschar – I hadn’t noticed that each film has a different musician. Rewatching the opening of Berlin, there are the blinds and the blobs, like a mini Opus V.

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 The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018, Terry Gilliam)

“Try to keep up with the plot.”
“There’s a plot?”

Sure it’s been a while since I watched The Fisher King, but this seems like a semi-remake. Disillusioned former artist comes across a man whose life he’d inadvertedly destroyed some years ago, follows that man on adventures into a dream life inspired by ancient literature and legend? Fisher King was from the writer of The Ref, and this one by Gilliam with his Tideland cowriter Tony Grisoni. Dedicated to two late Quixotes, Jean Rochefort and John Hurt.

Adam Driver is an arty director on a chaotic ad shoot, having an affair with Olga Kurylenko, wife of his boss Stellan Skarsgård, but once he was an idealistic young filmmaker, in fact he made his Don Quixote student film over there, right over that hill, with local Spanish shoemaker townsperson Jonathan Pryce, wonder what happened to that guy. Turns out Pryce still believes he’s Quixote, and when he sees Adam again, he dubs him Sancho and they go on Adventures.

“A good host looks after his hostages. Is that the right word?” The movie has some good writing, and unbelievably, in 2018, Terry Gilliam made a feature film in which the Spanish Inquisition arrives unexpectedly, and this didn’t blow up the heads of every Python-quoting 50-year-old in the English-speaking world. Maybe that was Gilliam’s intention, but alas, the movie remains underwatched. It will age well, as Star Wars fans discover Adam Driver’s peerless pronunciations of swear words, and they will gravitate, one by one, towards this unrated cornucopia of profanity.

Okay, the last hour is weird and didn’t work for me, but that leaves a solid 75-minute movie, and also Rossy de Palma is in there.

by ·Comments Off on Synonyms (2019, Nadav Lapid)

Yoav’s orange coat won the big prize at Berlin this year. We’re still catching up with the year in fests – after this, we saw Honeyland (Sundance) and Atlantics (Cannes), and I hold out stupid hope for Vitalina Varela (Locarno) to play in this town. Too bad that Venice voted to give no awards this year, guess I’ll have to run with critical faves About Endlessness and Cold Case Hammarskjöld.

I watched this – in theaters, no less – but couldn’t fathom what to write about it. Then I read Theo’s review, which is perfect. Tom Mercier made an impression as our French-obsessed Israeli, will appear in the next Luca Guadagnino joint. The beautiful rich boy he fortunately runs into is Quentin Dolmaire (My Golden Days), and his girl is Louise Chevillotte (Lover for a Day). My first Nadav Lapid after meaning to catch up with Policeman then The Kindergarten Teacher all decade.

by ·Comments Off on The Movie Year/Decade in Review, 2019

Happy New Movie Year!

I’ve been doing this all decade (Rubber was the 3000th post!), and previous lists are here, so I don’t need to make a best-of-decade list. Of course I’m paying attention to other people’s year-end and decade-end lists, but not finding a ton of movies I missed that weren’t already on my radar, since I paid close (maybe too close) attention all year to what played where.

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I did make this letterboxd list of all the must-see movies released in 2019.
As of now, I’ve watched about a third of them.

Tried to make a companion list of must-see movies that played 2019 fests or NYC and still haven’t been released here, but it’s hard to track down reliable reviews of all the fest movies, or to know what’s coming and what’s going to die on streaming. But here are a few, a top-ten of 2020 hopefuls:

What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?
First Cow
Deerskin
Bacurau
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Vitalina Varela
Fourteen
Zombi Child
Joan of Arc
Varda by Agnès

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Besides the above, I’m currently looking forward to NOT catching up with the consensus faves, but trying some new directions. When I constrain myself to some project or another, like the movies from Rotterdam I watched in January, I end up seeing more unusual and exciting things than usual. My “favorite older movies” list this year was SHOCKtober-heavy because that’s the only time I focused on pre-2010’s movies. I could stand to do that more often… while trying in vain to keep up with the new films of 2020, naturally. There’s only so much time in the year for moviewatching, and I don’t want to be someone who didn’t make time for The Irishman or Parasite or Knives Out because I’d talked myself into only watching more obscure stuff. So I’ve come up with a bunch of possible viewing projects for next year, but I already embarrass myself enough with this blog, so let’s not list them.

by ·Comments Off on 2019 Favorites: Recent & Older & Shorts

Favorite movies from the last five years, first watched this year:

1. The Wolf House (Joaquín Cociña & Cristóbal León)
2. Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno)
3. The House That Jack Built (Lars Von Trier)
4. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski)
5. The Shallows (Jaume Collet-Serra)
6. Casting JonBenet (Kitty Green)
7. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont)
8. Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-Eda)
9. Kaili Blues (Bi Gan)
10. Tokyo Tribe (Sion Sono)

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Favorite older movies watched this year:

1. Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film (2012, Hanly Banks)
2. The Church (1989, Michele Soavi)
3. The Lair of the White Worm (1988, Ken Russell)
4. Election and Election 2 (2005-2006, Johnnie To)
5. The Red Chapel (2009, Mads Brügger)
6. The Invisible Man (1933, James Whale)
7. Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, John Huston)
8. Trial of Joan of Arc (1962, Robert Bresson)
9. Khrustalyov, My Car (1998, Aleksei German)
10. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927, Walter Ruttmann)

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Favorite shorts watched this year:

1. Four by Bertrand Mandico (2012-2018)
2. Essanay shorts (1915, Charles Chaplin)
3. Shake! Otis at Monterey (1989, D.A. Pennebaker)
4. Trees Down Here (2018, Ben Rivers)
5. Filmstudie (1926, Hans Richter)

by ·Comments Off on Favorite 2019 Movies

1. A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick)
2. Transit (Christian Petzold)
3. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
4. Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (Bruno Dumont)
5. Cold Case Hammarskjöld (Mads Brügger)
6. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
7. The Mountain (Rick Alverson)
8. Climax (Gaspar Noe)
9. High Life (Claire Denis)
10. Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhang-Ke)
11. The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack)
12. Bodied (Joseph Kahn)
13. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
14. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
15. Knives Out (Rian Johnson)
16. One Child Nation (Nanfu Wang & Jialing Zhang)
17. Up the Mountain (Zhang Yang)
18. Us (Jordan Peele)
19. Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt)
20. The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers)
21. Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell)
22. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Terry Gilliam)
23. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)
24. Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez)
25. 24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami)

by ·Comments Off on 24 Frames (2017, Abbas Kiarostami)

Happy to see that much of the motion in these motion-paintings involves snow or animals – in fact, when there are humans in a scene, they’re the only things that don’t come alive. The visuals sometimes remind of The Mill and the Cross, and sometimes you can’t tell they’re based on still photos at all.

Here’s me, pointlessly taking stills of motion versions of stills:

Crows are prominent. Rare is the scene without any birds in it. The movie is as attuned to outdoor bird behavior as I am, always wondering what the crows and ducks and sandpipers are up to. Whenever there are birds seen through a window we hear opera. Not all the animals survive… tense music in frame 5 before a deer gets shot, and there are more bird fatalities in this than in The Lighthouse. In the most narrative scene, a seagull gets shot and another mourns him. Great ending: a Disney-sounding song, a sleeping motion designer, a classic film on an iMac rendering at about 1fps, the wind in the trees outside.