Archive for category: Spotlight

Writer/director/actor Jesse Eisenberg has crafted a charming short story of two cousins on a Holocaust tour of Poland, not a minute too long or too short. Unfortunately for one’s viewing pleasure, Kieran Culkin’s neurotic, or “unfiltered,” character is a real pain, albeit not the one alluded to in the film’s title (or is it?). Hearing Eisenberg interviewed by Roger Durling gave me additional appreciation for Eisenberg’s restraint in filming a concentration camp, his use of Chopin for the soundtrack, and his carefully calibrated mix of humor and anguish. This very “indie” film reinforced my theory that the film industry can survive, and thrive, with a new economic model. And blessedly, no one smoked a cigarette in the movie, just a little weed.

Unfortunately, I’m a little Glen Powelled out after Anyone But You, hot on the heels of his flyboy roles in Top Gun: Maverick and Devotion. The various disguises he put on for his hit man job didn’t hide the pretty-boy charm that seemed his main contribution. Adria Arjona was new and good, and the supporting cast was fine. The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction plot was a stretch: even if there were that many losers in one city looking for a hit man to solve their problems, what are the odds they’d all find the cops? And missing the film’s first five minutes, I never understood how Gary Johnson, an intellectual college professor, wound up with this side job.
And one more thing: the plot didn’t lead to a happy ending, but the filmmakers tacked one on, knowing that people aren’t watching movies to get more depressed. This is even truer for The Idea of You, which tacked on an unlikely and gratuitous “five years later” coda to warm our hearts.

An artwork by master director Wim Wenders about the unique and overwhelming art of Anselm Kiefer, for my money the greatest living artist. The 3-D projection floats us into the world of Kiefer’s sculpture, architecture and deeply perspective paintings. We see hints of his artmaking technique: slabbing on paint (or tar?), pouring lead, blowtorching vegetal matter. There is little information about how he can produce so much large art: a library of lead books, an acre of leaning towers, enormous paintings that fill the walls of the Doge’s Palace, etc., etc. Through recreations and archival footage we see the younger Kiefer challenging Germany’s WWII amnesia. Best of all, we see Kiefer in the long halls, the stubbled fields and the sunflower patches that become subjects of his art. The camera never moves outside his art. It rests when Kiefer does. This is a definitive, even essential, document.

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.

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.