An effective, if unintentional, prequel to No Other Land, with the British, instead of the Jews, dispossessing Palestinians of their homeland. Well made, with appealing characters, and although one-sided in its history it didn’t come across as propagandistic. Unfortunately, there is no happy ending.
A new take on the Lone-Samurai (ronin) character familiar from Yojimbo and Sanjuro. The bustling 18th-century setting is fun, but Kurosawa and Mifune are missing, and missed. The role of go was a bit hard to swallow, but worse was a lack of subtlety, more expected in a film from 1970 than 2024.
Four characters and their permutational relationships is the essence, indeed almost the totality, of this film. After all the bluff and bluster of American cinema, it’s refreshing to return to a European film, this directed by the German auteur Christian Petzold, with no special effects, hardly any scenery, no dramatic soundtrack, just real people coping. Paula Beer and Barbara Auer are quietly magnificent and inscrutable as the psychodrama gradually releases its information, leading to a surprising, but comforting, ending.
Took advantage of my wife’s absence to catch up on two critically lauded (Washington Post maybe?) films from the last two years and was glad she was away. Both were unwatchable, if for different reasons. In Peter Hujar’s Day nothing happens, which is intentional, but in the day he describes nothing happens, too. And for some inexplicable reason, it takes a full day, in the movie, for him to recount his yesterday. Ben Whishaw is charming as Peter Hujar, but I learned nothing about the character from the 75-minute conversation. (Then again, I didn’t like My Dinner with Andre either.) Eephus purports to film a rec league baseball game, but unless it is a metaphor for something or a dig at New Hampshire I have no idea what it is about. If you aren’t a baseball fan the movie would be incomprehensible. If you are a fan, like me, the representation of baseball is offensive. Bill “Spaceman” Lee makes a walk-on to pitch an inning, further muddying the opaque waters. What were they thinking–and how did this get a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (or Hujar a 91?)
Who needs good acting when you know where the Colleen Hoover formula plot is going. Maika Monroe is easy on the eyes, but the premise she embodies is wobbly: who sends a young woman with no record to jail for seven years when the car she’s driving hits a rock, rolls over and her fiance in the shotgun seat is killed? And why is her five-year-old daughter portrayed as a three-year-old?
Sometimes you just long for an old-fashioned movie with a linear plot, dialogue you can understand, a satisfying story arc and a character or two you can like or even connect with emotionally. Instead, Kristen Stewart’s first directorial effort seemed designed to establish her bona fides as an artsy auteur with the portrait of an abused, sex-crazed, irresponsible poet of no discernible talent who somehow survived to write the memoir on which the film was loosely based. Imogen Poots remarkably kept the film, and her head, above water.
If a comedy, not funny. If a drama, not dramatic. If social commentary, no comment. After an hour we looked at each other, mouthed the word “stupid,” and departed. The culture gap between us and this Korean Oscar submission must have been too wide.
A one-note dramatization of a real call from besieged Gaza was short on modulation, and how one responds to the lead character’s conduct will depend on the viewer, but any film that humanizes Palestinians deserves celebration.
What a feel this movie gives for Brazil in 1977 – its people, its culture – in just its first 40 minutes! In the hands of a master filmmaker, I sat back, eager for the ride, with Wagner Moura as the easygoing lead. Then the plot happens and muddies the picture. People are enemies of the state for reasons unknown, a hairy leg attacks people enjoying commercial sex, heads get blown off, and researchers 45 years in the future piece together the puzzle for, again, reasons unknown. Perhaps familiarity with Brazilian history and politics would have kept us better glued for the following two hours.
Remarkably filmed sub rosa in Iran, Accident told a story of torture and revenge with compelling directness and lots of close-ups. Some of the set pieces went on too long, which drained some suspense, but that may have been Jafar Panahi’s intention. (Would the Golden Globes consider this a comedy?) A bit threadbare for Best Picture, but politically daring and in every way commendable.
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