Fallen Leaves – 8.5

/0 Comments/in /by

Spare. Simple. Sweet. Director Aki Kaurismaki’s visual vocabulary sets the mood: images are planar, geometric, frill-less, close-up, held still. There is no recession into space until the final shot. The world is bleak: colors are drab, jobs are mundane, the outside world, via radio, is death in Ukraine. The supporting cast are notably unattractive–overweight, dour, uninspired. But our heroine and hero are so attractive you wonder how they can be struggling so much–in poverty, without good jobs, family or romantic partner and apparently only one friend. They meet and amid the terminal emptiness around them they act out the oldest story in the movies. It’s like a Lower Depths version of Notting Hill. Alma Poysti is sensational: a wink from her is dynamite. Jussi Vatanen is just as good, although he smokes like Leonard Bernstein. Time called this a perfect little movie, and I can’t disagree.

May December – 8

/0 Comments/in , /by

Suspense builds nicely as a TV star played by Natalie Portman, doing research for an upcoming film, visits the home of a former school teacher, played by Julianne Moore, who after an affair with a 13-year-old student followed by childbirth, incarceration and marriage is living unhappily ever after in their Savannah home. As the teacher-student story is based on a notorious real-life incident, we don’t question its plausibility; we grapple instead with the fissures in the relationships between the three principals: who is using whom? who is comfortable in their own skin? Portman is terrific in her role, and Charles Melton is getting awards for his performance as an adult who missed an adolescence. My only qualm was Moore, who is simply too good and glamorous an actress to convince me of who she was supposed to be.

Immediate Family – 7

/0 Comments/in /by

A pleasant, if somewhat self-congratulatory, profile of the four studio musicians who seemingly played on every memorable singer-songwriter album of the ’70s. It also served, incidentally or not, as a promotional piece for their later-in-life tour, appearing at the Lobero on February 14. I don’t know enough to judge the musical chops the film showed, but the caliber and quantity of singers who praised their work–James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Phil Collins, David Crosby, Linda Ronstadt, not to mention Warren Zevon, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young–speaks for itself. And when they went their individual ways they inspired Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, Keith Richards and even Jimmy Buffett. The resulting montage of song clips was nostalgia heaven, although it often left one wanting to hear more than the clip. The film itself was remarkably even-keeled and one-dimensional: no mention of families or private lives, any setbacks or disharmony (in the rock world!?), or musical disagreements. More than immediate, it was one happy family.

The Stones & Brian Jones – 6

/0 Comments/in /by

It’s surprising that it takes a documentary to introduce the founder of the Rolling Stones and lead/rhythm guitarist until he was fired and died shortly thereafter in 1969, well after the Stones were world phenomena. Similarly surprising is that after watching the documentary he is still pretty much a cipher in my consciousness. Bill Wyman says a few interesting things, but otherwise Jones doesn’t emerge from the huge shadow of Jagger and Richards. Jones wrote no songs but fathered children with five different girlfriends, not what we’re looking for. Instead, we get a lot of screaming fans, which could be for anyone. Oh, yes, and his parents didn’t approve.

Priscilla – 7.5

/0 Comments/in , /by

A sad and bizarre story, told with exquisite delicacy and enough pink to tempt Barbie.  I don’t know how accurate the portrayal of Priscilla was (was she really that short?), but since Sofia Coppola’s script was based on Priscilla Presley’s book and Priscilla was an executive producer of the film, I’ll accept it, with some dramatic salt. Jacob Elordi’s Elvis, however, totally met my approval and was worlds better than Austin Butler’s in Elvis, as was the movie itself. Forgoing any Elvis songs, the film rested entirely on the very odd relationship that started when Elvis was 24 and Priscilla only 14. How Cailee Spaeny could play Priscilla convincingly at 14 then all the way to 27 amazed me. Even without Elvis’s songs, the music is very good.

Napoleon – 4

/0 Comments/in , /by

Perhaps Ridley Scott watched The Crown and thought, Hey, I can do this for France. Unfortunately, his swings at royal romance, political intrigue and historical drama were all whiffs. For some reason, Joaquin Phoenix as the lead was made to appear uncharismatic, uncoordinated, a terrible lover, phlegmatic and taciturn – hardly the image of the almost-conqueror of Europe. Vanessa Kirby was at least interesting, while the plethora of courtiers were indistinguishable. As the title proclaimed, the movie was about one person, and he was boring.

Maestro – 4

/0 Comments/in /by

Hard to decide what bothered me more: the bizarre accents and clipped, unintelligible dialogue from Bradley Cooper, especially, and Carey Mulligan; the characters’, especially Cooper’s, obsessive smoking; or the lack of a plot. Rather than care for Lenny Bernstein, I couldn’t wait for this unpleasant person to get off the screen. Sarah Silverman, on the other hand, I liked. I admit to a personal dislike of gratuitous smoking in movies; here there was only one scene in which Cooper wasn’t lighting up: conducting his Mass in a cathedral. The rest of the time, even when conducting, a cigarette was in his mouth or his hand, to dramatic detriment not effect. A very unenjoyable two hours.

The Holdovers – 7.9

/0 Comments/in /by

A throwback movie in every sense from the reliably delightful Alexander Payne, it even made me like Paul Giamatti as the curmudgeonly prep school teacher with a well hidden heart of gold. As someone who spent three snowy Decembers at a boys’ school outside Boston in the ’60s, I felt a certain distant affinity for the Barton class of ’71, but the story told was pretty universal. Beyond thinking, They don’t make movies like this anymore, you felt here is the feel-good Christmas film for 2023.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour – 7

/0 Comments/in , /by

I had to take this in in two sittings, it was so long and so loud (as was the audience of young women). It’s hard to find fault with Taylor Swift, and I couldn’t. Some songs were better than others, but it probably helped if you knew them all by heart, as most of the adoring crowd did. What stood out, beyond her looks, her smile, her engagingly coy cuteness, were the clothes, the choreography, the dancers, backup singers and band, the overall production. Edited down from the live show, when presumably there were breaks for the costume and set changes, the 2:48 film was a nonstop powerhouse of visual and aural delight.

Anatomy of a Fall – 8

/0 Comments/in , /by

A French psycho-drama from Justine Triet and production company “didshedoit.com,” which is the movie’s hook. The director prejudiced the question whether the husband’s fall was a suicide or a murder by making the prosecution witnesses bombastic and the prosecutor smarmy and not good-looking, as against a sympathetic defendant (a measured and marvelous Sandra Huller) and her handsome lawyer with fabulous hair. In the end, one felt the suicide unlikely and the murder impossible. We did feel that the husband’s actions were aimed at his next book, while it was more certain that what transpired would end up in his wife’s. Years of watching Spiral made us comfortable with a trial in which half the “evidence” would not be admissible in a U.S. court. And both 10-year-old Daniel and dog Snoop were used to good effect. Most of all, the film raised questions and begged for discussion afterward, reminding us how rewarding the European (French) cinema can be, without special effects, more than two sets or, presumably, much of a budget.