The Souvenir – 5; Photograph – 7.5

Both these movies, which we saw back-to-back one afternoon, are primarily about a relationship: a callow and sneakily beautiful young woman falls in love with an older, more experienced and perhaps inappropriate man. Except one relationship is toxic, while the other is sweet. Needless to say, the latter movie, Photograph, is the enjoyable one.

The Souvenir moved with the pace and misdirection of Last Year at Marienbad. Maybe there weren’t dream sequences or movies-within-the-movie, but I never knew for sure what was going on. All I knew for sure was that the male love interest, “Anthony,” was thoroughly despicable, on the surface and below. Yes, we know love may be blind, but we still won’t enjoy its making a fool of someone, in this case the wonderful Honor Swinton Byrne. Hearing he had died of an overdose was the only happy moment of the two-hour slog.

By contrast – restoring our faith in movie-going – Photograph was easy to follow, with a plot you’ve seen many times before. The film admits as much when, in the last scene, the lovers walk out in the middle of a movie and the man says he knows how the story ends, even though he hasn’t seen that particular film before. We are left to wonder whether this story, against all odds, will have that predictable happy ending, but ultimately we don’t care. We like the characters so much – they are both so thoughtful, with just the right amount of spunk and a palpable connection – that if this flirtation turns out to be just one bright, shining moment in otherwise humdrum lives we are grateful to have shared it with them. Even India, for the moment, doesn’t seem quite so grim.

Non-Fiction – 7

If your idea of a good French movie is lots of intellectual conversation, some red wine and multiple affairs, then Non-Fiction (or more to the point, Doubles Vies, its French title) is up your alley. And if, like me, you think anything Juliette Binoche does is worth watching, then this is time well spent. It does goes slowly, though. The characters are convincingly real, and the issues they bring up – mostly about the future of publishing – are good teases.

Movie Butts

Why does almost every movie have to have a scene, or more, of characters smoking? At one point I used a cigarette rating at the end of every review, to comment on how extensive or unnecessary the smoking was – e.g., obviously a film taking place in the 1930s had more reason to show smoking than a movie taking place today – but that became tiresome and distracted,  I admit, from more important critical judgments.  I have decided, therefore, to set up this separate post as a resting place for my comments about smoking in films, as I see them.

Long Shot. Set in modern-day Washington, apparently, there is no reason to have a character smoke; yet Secretary of State Charlize Theron spots a pack of Gauloises in the Situation Room and bums a fag from one of the Chiefs of Staff to smoke while negotiating a hostage release on the phone with a Middle East leader. Would a Federal building, let alone the War Room of the Chiefs of Staff (or whatever it was), not be a No-Smoking area?

The Souvenir. This may set the mark for 2019 for constant, distracting fagging. The loathsome male lead apparently can’t breathe without a cigarette in his hand or his face. Plenty of others indulge, too, to show that this is all taking place in the distant past of 1983.

Non-Fiction. Here, at least, the characters are slightly guilty about their cigarettes – making apologies and stepping out-of-doors to light up – and usually not doing much more than that. Of course, why even that is necessary to the plot or the characterizations is not evident.

Gloria Bell. Julianne Moore becomes a chimney half-way through the film. At least she looks uncomfortable holding her cigarette.

Late Night. Cigarettes appear wildly out of the blue on two occasions: late in the game when Emma Thompson’s three-year-old affair is revealed, she lights up in bed; and in a meta moment, Mindy Kaling’s colleague has a smoke on the street while she tells him of a benefit for lung cancer she is about to emcee.

Yesterday. This film pulls off the cleverest obligatory but gratuitous  smoking reference: when the lead character, out of the blue, says if he smoked he’d need a cigarette, his companion expresses bewilderment because cigarettes, like Coke, Harry Potter and the Beatles, were erased from human consciousness during a global 12-second electric grid collapse.

Wild Rose. Just two shots, I think, enough to check the box. The neighbor on her porch next door is puffing away, and our heroine lights up once, for no obvious reason.

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Brad Pitt and Leo DiCaprio are smoking cigarettes pretty much the entire movie. Sure, we have to know it’s a time past – but even in 1969 most of my acquaintances weren’t smoking – and Pitt and DiCaprio have to look “cool.” But that’s my problem. How can having two of Hollywood’s leading heartthrobs looking cool with a cigarette in their mouth not have an effect on a teenager today? When Tarantino accompanied the closing credits with DiCaprio’s character filming a commercial for Red Apple cigs, I was hoping it would turn into a public-service disclaimer, but no, the character just dumped on the brand.

Aquarela. For no reason at all, in the opening scene of Russians pulling a car out of a frozen lake, one of the rescuers lifts his mask to light a cigarette.

Judy.  It’s hard to argue with the profligate use of cigarettes by Judy (and cigar by Louis Mayer), given her general dissolution and similar abuse of alcohol.

Knives Out. For little or no reason, Jamie Lee Curtis lights up near the end: the typical cigarette cameo.

Marriage Story. Ditto above; after not smoking through an immensely stressful story, Adam Driver is seen smoking on the street before we leave.

Hustlers. Almost surprised there weren’t more cigarettes, but again the characters pulled them out well into the movie, after any plot need.

Honeyboy. The constant presence of cigarettes could be justified as emphasizing the low-life character of Honeyboy’s father; but the movie took it farther by having the 12-year-old become a smoker, too.

Uncut Gems. 75 minutes into the film a minor character lights up a cigarette following a seder – no relationship to the plot or a characterization, just an isolated incident of smoking.

Seberg. Period-appropriate smoking, I suppose, by several characters, ramping up as the movie moves along.

Long Shot – 8

Charlize Theron is a 10, Seth Rogen a 6, the funny-smart dialogue an 8, hence the final average. The movie manipulates in all the time-worn rom-com ways, which meant my cheeks were wet for the final 15 minutes. This was pure escapist entertainment, with topical jabs at Trump, Murdoch, Fox News and politics in general, to compensate for the gross-out element that comes with Rogen. (As the New Yorker put it, “a film for adolescents of all ages.”) I’m not sure that making Theron’s love interest be so clueless, untalented and unattractive was necessary for the film to work, but it was a small price to pay for the privilege of watching her for two hours.

Amazing Grace – 5

An unfinished documentary from 1972 about the making of Aretha Franklin’s gospel record, Amazing Grace. The songs weren’t much, at least to my taste, and Aretha’s performance was so charisma-free, you kept wanting the camera to look at someone else, maybe choir leader Alexander Hamilton. The commentary was similarly lackluster. For me, the only positive was seeing the all-black congregation for Day One, with women dressed in their best, and thinking about that community at that time in history in L.A.

Alphabetical List of 2019 Movies

1917
Ad Astra
Amazing Grace
Apollo 11
Aquarela
Biggest Little Farm
Birds of Passage
Booksmart
The Brink
Capernaum
Cold War
Dark Waters
David Crosby: Remember My Name
Downton Abbey
The Farewell
First Love
Ford v. Ferrari
Gloria Bell
Honey Boy
Honeyland
Hustlers
The Irishman
Isn’t It Romantic
JoJo Rabbit
Judy
Knives Out
Late Night
Laundromat
Little Women
Long Shot
Marriage Story
Meeting Gorbachev
Mustang
Never Look Away
The Nightingale
Non-Fiction
Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood
Pain and Glory
Parasite
Photograph
Queen and Slim
Rocketman
The Sound of My Voice
The Souvenir
Transit
Us
Wild Rose
Woman at War
Yesterday

 

 

Mustang – 5

Wonderful acting – by the horses. The opening scene of wild mustangs being herded by helicopter over a Nevada plain is the movie’s high point. The main story – horse tamed by man, while man is tamed by horse – is predictable to the point of cliche, although it may not have seemed so to the Belgian/French filmmakers. The two subplots – drug dealing among the convicts and the family relations of the hero – are too confusing to gain traction. Matthias Schoenaerts is the same bullheaded tough he played in Rust and Bone and Bullhead, but is less convincing when he moves out of character.

Brink – 4

A narrow-scope documentary, showing Steve Bannon at work and at rest, not much else. He can be charming, which is interesting to see, but the film offers little insight into his thinking or relationships (if he has any). The camera is always there when he meets foreign leaders, but pulls away before anything really happens. In trying hard not to editorialize, director Alison Klayman gives us little more than this week’s TIME cover story.

Us – 6

Welcome to Jordan Peele’s gun-free America, where peopled are murdered by shears, baseball bats, putters, fireplace pokers and rock crystals, as far as we could see. Nothing in the movie made sense, up to and including the final plot twists, but I suspect that is not required of a horror flick, so long as it keeps you on the edge of your seat – which Us did, unless like my viewing partner you quickly dismissed the whole thing –  which is why I give it a positive score. I also suspect that the buzz it is getting is due to the cast’s being African-American and Peele’s previous film, Get Out, having long legs.