Julianne Nicholson (La Doctora in Monos) has a weird daughter, tries dating Will Patton (last seen as a religious nut in Minari) then Sophie Okonedo (oscar nominee, had hands-for-feet in Aeon Flux) then Elias Koteas (pride of Canada, last and probably next seen in Crash). Janet breaks up with the first two, Elias vanishes mid-picnic. The writer/director was the daughter’s age in 1991 when the movie is set, what a coincidence.
Fanny and Alexander (1982, Ingmar Bergman)
Watched the miniseries version, which lived up to its high reputation. Kids grow up in wealthy theater household, where everyone’s got their eccentricities and all the husbands are sleeping with the maids. Theater owner dad (Allan Edwall, who bought a theater after appearing in this) has an episode during a rehearsal and dies, then after a year, mom Ewa Fröling marries bishop Jan Malmsjö (Scenes from a Marriage) and moves the kids into his severe, forbidding household.
Family members have been pathetic or horrible, but mostly in an entertaining way, while the new stepdad is horrible in a horrible way. Knowing how Bergman loves mixing religion and punishment, I figured this would be the bulk of the movie and lead to everyone’s ruin, but the kids’ grandmother and her friend Isak (Erland Josephson, Hour of the Wolf baron and Nostalghia madman) plot a successful rescue operation.
L-R: the bishop, uncle Jarl Kulle (guy who loves dueling in Smiles of a Summer Night), uncle Börje Ahlstedt (I Am Curious x2)
“I don’t understand why I always have to see dead people,” says Alexander, ahead of his time. In addition to theater, there are ghosts and dreams and stories and magic in every episode. In the last half hour, instead of simply wrapping up, the movie introduces trans psychic Ismael, giving the sense that the kids’ lives will stay richly weird for a while longer.
El (1953, Luis Buñuel)
Mustache Man/Land Baron Francisco spots hot girl Gloria during foot-fetish church and chases her relentlessly, firing everyone in his path, breaking up her engagement with construction guy Raul, winning the girl through sheer force.
Soon he’s going off on Gloria in jealous rages, while fighting for some property he claims was stolen from his ancestors. When they meet hunky Ricardo on their honeymoon he goes insane and attacks the guy. Back home, he gets a conspiracy against his wife between her mother and servant and priest, then shoots her with blanks as a threat to stop talking. She finds Raul and flashbacks half the movie, while Francisco finally loses his mind completely in public.
I’m surprised Bunuel worked with this cinematographer again – he appears to have lit the scenes with a searchlight positioned behind the camera, so everyone has a shadow right behind them. Also surprised the letterboxd crowd hasn’t declared this and The River and Death and Archibaldo de la Cruz a trilogy since Carlos Baena plays priests in all three. Don F is best known for The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales, Gloria was an Argentine film star, and the servant was a work boss in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Sense and Sensibility (1995, Ang Lee)
Sisters Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet are very cute but not rich, and after ditching fake friend Greg Wise they end up happily with Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman, respectively. Beautiful movie, if not quite as thrilling as Gemini Man.
Dahomey (2024, Mati Diop)
Really is a doc about artworks being repatriated from France to Benin. The conceit of having the ancient artworks do the narration and the responses from modern museum attendees made this more interesting than it might’ve been.
The Shop Around the Corner (1940, Ernst Lubitsch)
Besides Jimmy Stewart the main thing I love about this movie is that they kept the Hungarian character names and signage when adapting for Hollywood. The boss thinks Jimmy is sleeping with his wife and fires him, but fellow salesman Joseph Schildkraut was the cheater, and the boss’s suicide is foiled by the errand boy. This all leads to some holiday season personnel-shuffling in the shop, and in the final couple seconds, romantic penpals Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy finally get together. The boss was the actual Wizard of Oz the year before, the cheater won an oscar for The Life of Emile Zola, and the errand boy followed-up with Ford and Hitchcock movies.
Daaaaaali! (2023, Quentin Dupieux)
A goof on Salvador Dali (who is played by multiple actors wearing the same mustache), and another meta-game after The Second Act. Journalist (Bird People star Anaïs Demoustier) repeatedly schedules interviews with a preposteous, self-obsessed Dali, and he keeps walking out. Even more Buñuelian than the last Dupieux/Demoustier movie Incredible But True, the action loops and rewinds, roles swap, there’s Black Lodge reverse motion, and it ends with everyone watching the interview film which was never made.
The Second Act (2024, Quentin Dupieux)
Meta-movie where the actors keep “breaking character” between takes because they are playing actors who are appearing in the first movie directed by AI (represented by a button-down man in a white void on a laptop screen). Louis Garrel is meeting Léa Seydoux for a date, she brings her dad Vincent Lindon, Louis brings his friend Yannick, who he’s hoping Léa can date instead. Manuel Guillot the waiter can’t handle the performance pressure and kills himself in his car (in character), then after the shoot he kills himself in his car. As a final meta-touch, it closes by showing us the extremely long track setup for the opening tracking shot. Filipe: “It does not really have much to say about AI or industry, but as a vehicle for a terrific group of actors who are as usual all-in in the filmmaker’s concept, this a very good time.”
The Human Surge 3 (2023, Eduardo Williams)
I’ve been liking the still with the parrot from this movie all year – turns out that is its one really cool image, from a rare time when the image mutates and deforms its subjects into digital moosh. Roving fisheye handheld through city streets, following people (are they characters, or just people?). The camera isn’t sure either, and wanders off. Once it stood between two people talking and just spun in circles – Katy hated that. I guess it’s innovative(?), and the cinema contains multitudes, but it’s pretty harsh to watch this the same week as Days of Heaven.
Our people are kids with nothing going on, so it’s not clear why we want to listen to them talk for ages. But then sometimes one of them can fly, and sometimes the camera gets lost or glitches way out. I think I figured out that it’s a spherical google-maps lens, when the kids roll it down a hill at the end – Williams apparently framed the shots in post with a VR headset.
Michael Sicinski calls it:
a film so aggressively forward thinking that it leapfrogs over the concept of a second installment — features characters who enter stations in Peru and exit in Taiwan or Sri Lanka. In addition to creating a world of travel that moves at the speed of thought, an almost physical remapping of the planet, The Human Surge 3 dispenses with ordinary zones of dramaturgy, instead staging lengthy sequences in the middle of the water or on an arduous hill. As Williams melds different space-times into single scenes, even the basic rules of gravity are up for debate. Like living clip-art, people occupy the same location, but cannot possibly share a contiguous environment.
