The Father: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An astounding performance from Anthony Hopkins and skilled storytelling make this movie an arthouse gem.

The Father, written and directed by Florian Zeller (based on his stage play Le Pere), tells the story of Anthony, an aging man suffering from dementia. The film stars Anthony Hopkins with supporting turns from Olivia Colman, Imogen Poots and Rufus Sewell.

Anthony Hopkins has long been one of the very best actors on the planet. Ever the consummate craftsman, Hopkins has throughout his career managed to conjure remarkable performances in roles as dramatically diverse as Hannibal Lecter, Richard Nixon, John Quincy Adams and Pope Benedict, not to mention his measured and constrained brilliance in The Remains of the Day, Howards End and Shadowlands.

Now at age 83, Hopkins surpasses all of his previous brilliance in The Father.

Hopkins is not going to win the Best Actor Oscar this year solely because the late Chadwick Boseman is such an overwhelming sentimental favorite, but that doesn’t mean Hopkins’ loss will not be a travesty.

As the dementia-addled Anthony, Hopkins brings all his astounding talents, skill and craftsmanship to bear for what might be his final piece of artistic genius. Hopkins’ performance is utterly astounding and is an exquisite masterclass in precision, detail and specificity.

Hopkins’ Anthony is a modern day King Lear filled with a ferocity and fear that gives him a sharp edge and a pulsating fragility that is never flamboyant or showy, just devastating.

Hopkins has always been a master of placing emotional circles within physical straight lines, this is how his Hannibal Lecter is so frightening and his Nixon so compelling. It is the vibrant inner life within the controlled and contained outer facade that gives Hopkins his power as an actor, and in The Father, that power goes supernova.

Aiding Hopkins is Olivia Colman who is stellar as Anthony’s daughter and caregiver Anne. Colman too gives Anne a pulsating inner wound and emotional vibrancy that makes her a complicated, compelling and captivating In some ways screen presence.

Imogen Poots and Rufus Sewell bring their considerable talents to bear on smaller roles, but elevate them and the film considerably.

In some waysThe Father feels like a horror movie because it so viscerally immerses the audience into the terror of life with dementia. The disorientation Anthony and the audience experience is unnerving and leaves you praying that this movie is the closest you will ever come to that level of dreaded disorientation.

The credit for that experience is first time feature film writer/director Florian Zeller. Zeller is a playwright of some renown and The Father is his major first step/leap into the art of filmmaking. Zeller’s wonderfully constructed script and deft direction magnificently flesh out the intricacies and insanities of Anthony’s dementia-addled mind. His storytelling is confident and seamless, and his ability to never rush, push or over-explain, turn The Father from a potential movie-of-the-week afterthought into an arthouse masterwork.

With The Father Florian Zeller is declaring himself as a filmmaker to watch going forward, while Anthony Hopkins is simply proving he is one of the greatest actors of his generation. We should appreciate him while he is still with us.

If you have ever known or cared for someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s, The Father will be a difficult but worthwhile watch, as art of this caliber can be greatly cathartic. For lovers of great acting and storytelling, The Father is definitely for you, and I highly recommend you seek it out.

The Father is currently in theatres and on VOD.

©2021

Exterminate All the Brutes: A Documentary Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!! THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A pretentious disappointment.

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it feels like to be stuck on a four-hour flight sitting next to a rambling, drunken college student who just read their first book about colonialism, genocide and white supremacy and mistakenly thinks they have some profound insights, have I got a documentary series for you…

Exterminate all the Brutes is the new unconventional, four-part docu-series from filmmaker Raoul Peck now available on HBO and HBO Max that explores the vast history of colonialism, genocide and white supremacy from a non-white and non-European perspective.

The documentary is based on the books Exterminate all the Brutes (Sven Lindqvist), An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) and Silencing the Past (Michel-Rolph Trouillot), and chaotically mixes documentary footage, home movies, popular films, animation, and fictional scripted scenes to create a sort of experimental, impressionistic cinematic essay instead of a straight forward documentary.

Exterminate All the Brutes, a phrase which comes from Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece Heart of Darkness, highlights the greatest hits of horror in the history of humanity and is divided into four parts titled, “The Disturbing Confidence of Ignorance”, “Who the F*ck is Columbus?”, “Killing at a Distance”, and “The Bright Colors of Fascism”.

From Europeans explorers, to the plundering of Africa and the slave trade, to the eradication of the Native American population, to Hitler, the Holocaust and the bombing of Hiroshima, the documentary leaves no stone of brutality, barbarity and white supremacy left unturned.

The series attempts to tie together the genocide of the American Indians, slavery and the Holocaust in order to expose the unique evil of white supremacy and its impact on modern Western civilization.

The writer and director Raoul Peck, who’s documentary on James Baldwin, I am Not Your Negro, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2017, should be applauded for his ambition on Exterminate All the Brutes, but certainly not his execution. Ultimately, in his attempt to create a profound, personalized poem, Peck instead produces a painfully pretentious polemic.

The series is not so much thorough as it cluttered, and while it has a specific topic, it is devoid of a distinct thesis. I would probably agree with Peck’s argument regarding colonialism if I could actually discern what exactly it was. As a result of this lack of a detailed thesis, the documentary comes across as a distracted, incoherent, stream of consciousness diatribe fueled by an adolescent, if not infantile, intellectualism. It feels more like a tantrum resulting from deep frustration and helplessness than a dissertation born out of intense study.

Peck’s journey into the heart of darkness of colonialism, slavery and genocide may very well be a noble venture but it is also egregiously narcissistic. Peck not only tells you what he knows but endlessly recites how and from whom he came to know it.

Peck also vents his rage at individuals he dislikes, like Donald Trump, and groups he despises, like the Scots-Irish…boy does he have a bug up his ass about the Scots-Irish.

Peck’s anger also distorts his argument as he makes contradictory statements regarding his flawed premise. For instance, he brushes aside the “Guns, Germs and Steel” hypothesis and calls early Europeans backward and uncivilized, but then describes that Europeans came to dominate African peoples simply because they were able to create advanced technology and weapons that Africans could not.  

The greatest flaw of the documentary though, and there are many, is that as it guides viewers through the history of white European atrocities, it never breaks new ground or reveals unearthed truths. Anyone with half a brain in their head is aware of the horrors of colonialism, slavery and genocide by now. The fact that the U.S. was born on the back of African slaves and the genocide of American Indians isn’t exactly breaking news. But as Peck himself states in the film, “it is not knowledge that we lack”, which begs the question…if we don’t lack knowledge then what is the purpose of this four-hour monstrous mess of a docu-series?

Peck is also his own worst enemy as a storyteller as he narrates the series and his voice-over is, without exaggeration, the worst in the history of the spoken word. Never has someone talked so much (and so inaudibly) and said so little. Peck’s droning, garbled voice isn’t helped by the insipid platitudes he mutters like “neutrality is not an option” and “there are no alternative facts”.

That sort of overwrought emotionalism and intellectual vapidity is the life-blood of Exterminate All the Brutes. This is most evident in the cringe-inducing and laughably ludicrous scripted dramatic scenes haphazardly inserted throughout the series.

Actor Josh Hartnett is tasked with playing the embodiment of white supremacy and white privilege throughout history in the series of amateurish scenes, and his performance entails shooting a lot of brown people in the head and looking menacingly at the ones he hasn’t killed.

These scenes, and the scenes from Peck’s earlier dramatic films also shown, reveal the director to be a middling-at-best filmmaker, and Exterminate All the Brutes seems to be a case of an artist and pseudo-intellectual biting off considerably more than he could ever possibly chew.

In conclusion, I watched Exterminate All the Brutes so that you don’t have to. And trust me…you don’t have to…you really don’t have to.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Sound of Metal: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An insightful and captivating drama that boasts a simple but layered narrative, a fantastic performance from Riz Ahmed and some exquisite filmmaking craftsmanship.

Sound of Metal, written and directed by Darius Marder, tells the story of Ruben Stone, a drummer in a heavy metal duo that loses his hearing. The film stars Riz Ahmed as Ruben, with supporting turns from Olivia Cooke and Paul Raci.

Sound of Metal was released on Amazon Prime streaming service back in November of 2020. I would see the advertisement for it whenever I went online but was always hesitant to watch it as it looked like a rather predictable movie on its surface. I finally made the plunge last week and watched…and boy am I glad that I did.

Yes, Sound of Metal is about a drummer who loses his hearing, but it is infinitely more than that.

For some viewers, the premise of the movie and the opening scenes may be a hurdle, but I wholly encourage you to stick with the movie because it is a multi-layered, dramatically precise, profound and powerful piece of cinema well worth your time.

Director Darius Marder apparently developed this story for over a decade, and successfully navigated the minefield of Hollywood to get it made the way he wanted it made…and it shows.

Marder’s confidence as a filmmaker (this is his first feature) oozes through every scene of the film. The movie never takes the easy or predictable route in storytelling, and every time I thought I knew what was coming I was wrong. Marder’s refusal to rely on conventional narrative arcs and story turns makes Sound of Metal very compelling viewing.

The technical proficiency on display in the movie is impressive, as the film’s use of sound to propel the narrative and heighten the drama is masterful. The way the movie allows the audience to experience Ruben’s hearing loss creates a visceral intimacy that is captivating, jarring and mesmerizing.

The film is nominated for six Oscars, two of which include Best Sound and Best Editing and it should win both awards. The sound design on this movie is exquisite and is a pivotal part of the storytelling. The editing is seamless as scenes are never rushed nor linger too long and the film is perfectly paced.

The cast are terrific. Riz Ahmed is just one of those guys…he is an exceptional actor who has an innate presence to him that is compelling and undeniable. Ahmed is able to draw viewers into him rather than needing to be showy to attract their attention. His work as Ruben is specific and complex, and he never falls prey to the desire to overly emote. This role in lesser hands could have been a great deal of volcanic histrionics, but with Ahmed it is an exquisite exercise in subtlety and nuance.

Ahmed is nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance and while be probably won’t win, he certainly deserves to.

Paul Raci plays a counselor named Joe and is outstanding. Raci is a knock around type of actor who has been nibbling away at the periphery of the business for decades. This is the most prominent role in his career and he makes the most of the opportunity. Raci is so grounded and genuine as Joe I wasn’t sure he was a professional actor when I was watching him. I don’t say that as an insult, I say it to highlight how real he comes across and how devoid of performance his work truly is.

Olivia Cooke also acquits herself quite well as Lou, Ruben’s girlfriend and bandmate. Cooke is an intriguing screen presence and she makes the most of the small role she is given.

What makes Sound of Metal so profound is that it is extremely accurate and insightful when it comes to the issue of drug and alcohol recovery. The film expertly maneuvers through the choppy waters of recovery and never flounders.

Director Marder connects the audience to Ruben and we too fall under the spell of his unseen wound and issues. He seems fine to us because we want him to seem fine. When the reality of the situation is revealed it is a breathtaking moment and a staggeringly well executed piece of cinema.

I loved Sound of Metal because it’s a “simple” bit of filmmaking that makes use of the craft and skill of moviemakiing to create a piece of cinematic art. Obviously, just because something is simple does not make it easy. For instance, if you are an addict the simple solution to your problem is to stop using…but that ain’t easy.

The beautiful simplicity of the storytelling and filmmaking of Sound of Metal is why this movie is so impressive and this type of moviemaking so exceedingly rare.

I also loved Sound of Metal because of Riz Ahmed’s heartfelt and absurdly well-crafted performance. This is Ahmed at his very best and it is glorious to behold.

And finally, I loved Sound of Metal because it dramatically presents the important truth about the intricate process of recovery, one with which I am all too familiar and which America needs to learn in a hurry…that returning to normal isn’t the panacea the addicted mind thinks it is. Becoming sober doesn’t mean your life is perfect and you are instantly happy, it means life is still suffering but now you have to feel it because you aren’t drunk or high.

Recovery doesn’t end with sobriety, it BEGINS with sobriety. Once sober, you can start the journey of self-discovery to find the wounds that cause the pain you’ve been trying to self-medicate away. Returning to normal for the addict isn’t a return to a good place, it is a return to the place that instigated the drug and alcohol use in the first place (An example of which is establishment liberals wanting to ‘return to normal’ after the nightmare of Trump - well…the pre-Trump normal is what got us Trump!). Those in recovery must discover a new normal, one that is based on integrity and isn’t self-deceptive or self-destructive.

If you’re in recovery, Sound of Metal holds important lessons for you. If you love someone in recovery and want to understand what it is like, Sound of Metal is for you too. If you just like exceedingly well made movies, then Sound of Metal is for you too. Sound of Metal is just a terrific film and I highly recommend it.

©2021

Minari: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An over-hyped venture that ultimately underwhelms.

Minari, written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, tells the semi-autobiographical story of Chung’s South Korean immigrant family as it tries to achieve the American dream in 1980’s Arkansas. The film, which stars Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Youn Yuh-jung and Will Patton, has received six Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Yeun) and Best Supporting Actress (Youn).

Having survived the slog of cinema that was 2020, where even the very best films of the year like Mank, Nomadland and Judas and the Black Messiah are not great films, I held out hope for Minari to ride in on a white horse and save this year of cinema from death by a thousand mediocrities.

Unfortunately, Minari is not up to the task.

Minari is not a terrible movie, but it is not a very good one either. It suffers from many flaws, most notable being it doesn’t know what it is or what it wants to be and therefore ends up being a whole lot of nothing.

For example, in theory it has all the trappings of an arthouse movie but is so painfully conventional in execution it becomes devoid of interest and artistic credibility.

Minari is sort of like a working class Korean immigrant version of Marriage Story mixed with a culture clash/fish out of water/American Dream story, but it never successfully or even adequately tells any of those stories, preferring the approach of throwing everything into the stew yet creating no flavor.

A major flaw with the storytelling approach of Minari is that it has a generalized perspective, so there is no one particular protagonist to lead us through the story. Since Chung is writing auto-biographically, it would have been interesting to have his childhood perspective lead the way. But Chung seems incapable of the skill that would require, and therefore he halves the baby and spreads perspective around which saps the story of dramatic power.

Chung is also a rather unimaginative visual stylist, as Minari is a painfully flat film with sub-par framing and composition as well as a dull and stale color palette.

There are some interesting performances in the movie, most notably by Yeun and Will Patton of all people, but Chung’s lackluster direction is unable to contain these performances and therefore the drama dissipates even when the actors are running on all cylinders. Chung’s inability to break through the conventional leaves viewers detached and disinterested in the plight of these characters despite some skillful acting work.

Chung’s biggest failing though is as a writer, as he is incapable of trusting his audience with a pure arthouse experience and therefore sprinkles in narrative arcs and beats that are cookie-cutter conventionalities that fall dramatically flat. The contrast of this conventional story being wrapped in the deliberately paced trappings of an arthouse movie creates a frustrating movie decidedly at cross purposes with itself.

Ultimately, with the generalized perspective, the conventional narrative arcs and the tedious visual aesthetic, Minari feels like a bad tv drama more than a serious piece of cinema and Oscar contender.

As evidenced by the plethora of Oscar nominations and a stunning 98% critical score at Rotten Tomatoes, Minari is being lauded as a phenomenal film. But it seems to me that this is wishful thinking rather than accurate analysis of the film on screen.

In the wake of last year’s stirring success of Parasite, a spectacular piece of filmmaking by Korean director Bong Joon-ho, Minari has no doubt been given a boost among the critical elite in the hopes of bolstering “diversity and inclusion” and recreating Parasite’s stirring success.

In the flat earth society that is our culture, Parasite and Minari are in the same category despite having nothing in common except that they share the same language and ethnicity of director. This is absurd, but it is how our culture thinks and works, especially in the era of identity politics.

If Minari were the same story but centering around the struggles of some white family, critics would rightfully ignore it for the uninspired, middling movie that it is. The fact that mediocrities like Chung and Minari are nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay speaks to how precipitous the decline in the art of cinema has become and to the hyper-delusional nature of a film business glorifying “diversity and inclusion” instead of talent, skill and craftsmanship.

In conclusion, there is absolutely nothing interesting or remarkable about Minari. It is an underwhelming and instantly forgettable film that is not deserving of any accolades or praise. If you want to see a mundane, middle-of-the-road movie, Minari is definitely for you.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 31 - Nomadland

On this weeks episode of everybody's favorite cinema podcast, Looking California and Feeling Minnesota, Barry and I hop in a van and hit the road with Chloe Zhao's film Nomadland starring Frances McDormand. This episode contains discussions on grief and the meditative nature of the film, the required arthouse mindset, and the power of non-actors on-screen. Also featured are scintillating conversations about Jeff Bridges' Snicker bar diet, Chocolatey Chocolate Balls, Amazon's nefariousness and a live blow-by-blow account of a Wild Kingdom moment in Mike's backyard.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 31 - Nomadland

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Nomadland: A Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An exquisitely crafted film that boasts a powerful yet grounded performance from Frances McDormand.

Oscar front-runner Nomadland chronicles the working class despair wrought by American capitalism, but still manages to kiss Amazon’s ass.

The film gives a gritty glimpse into the struggle of the working poor but genuflects to corporate power instead of exposing it.

Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand and written and directed by Chloe Zhao, tells the story of Fern, an older woman who lives in a van and survives as a seasonal worker in various locales across America.

The film, which is currently in theatres and streaming on Hulu, is based on the non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century and uses some of the real people from the book to play themselves in the movie.

Nomadland is fantastic and an Oscar front-runner, but it’s not for everybody as it’s an arthouse, verite style film with a loose narrative structure that lacks predictable dramatic beats. It is less a straightforward story than it is a melancholy and mournful meditation.

It is the topic of that meditation - American capitalism, impermanence and grief that makes Nomadland such an intriguing piece of cinema.

The story begins with Fern being forced to leave her long time residence in Empire, Nevada after the town’s US Gypsum plant closes and the once bustling area is abandoned.

Fern then takes to the road to run from her grief over losing Empire and her husband and travels throughout the west searching for seasonal employment.

She makes friends with fellow travelers, all suffering in similar circumstances, as she lives out of her van while working menial jobs in Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Chloe Zhao’s deft directorial touch gives the film a looser pace which results in a narrative with great space to breath. Zhao allows space, silence, framing, lighting and a very effective soundtrack work in unison to finely cultivate the drama instead of imposing it upon viewers.

The sense of isolation and desperation felt by Fern is heightened by cinematographer Joshua James Richards’ gorgeous panoramic shots of the vast and beautifully bleak western landscape.

Like the desolate landscapes, the deep lines in McDormand’s gloriously cinematic face also tell the story of all the hardships and heartbreaks throughout the years that have brought Fern and her working class kind to the brink of extinction.

Speaking of extinction, the film repeatedly refers to dinosaurs, and the sub-text is clear, the meteor of globalization, financialization and anti-unionism has hit and Fern and the working class in America are dinosaurs destined to aimlessly walk the darkened earth searching for scraps until they drop dead from exhaustion.

The film also frequently references carnivores, the symbolism of which is that American capitalism eats up and spits out working class people like Fern. In one scene Fern is horrified watching a crocodile in a zoo devour skinned rabbits for lunch, her primordial horror is driven by the fact that American capitalism is the crocodile, and she and all the poor people she loves are the rabbits.

Fern and her friends all bought into the lie that is the American dream, and now they find themselves older with dwindling energy and resources, alone and vulnerable living out the American nightmare. They’ve worked hard their whole lives and have nothing to show for it except for the existential terror of life without any safety net.

Despite the finely crafted filmmaking, McDormand’s powerfully grounded performance and the film’s chronicling of the wandering underclass and rightfully bemoaning the Titanic-esque economic state of America, it disappoints because it refuses to name or chastise the corporate villains hiding in plain sight.

For example, Fern works every Christmas season at an Amazon warehouse. The film actually got permission to shoot in a real Amazon fulfillment center, and that undoubtedly compromised its integrity.

The Amazon related scenes seem as if they were scripted by the company’s human resources and marketing departments as they’re basically shameless ads for the corporate behemoth.

Fern is shown leisurely meandering down vast warehouse walkways smiling and waving to other employees, and having fun in the break room with new friends, and telling others about how much money she makes and how the company covers the cost of her long-term van parking while she is an employee. The reality of employment at Amazon is much different, as the union busting, worker exploiting Bezos beast brutally cracks the whip on its employees like a frantic pharaoh building a pyramid one box at a time.

On its surface Nomadland is a descendant of the Sean Penn directed film Into the Wild and John Ford’s famed adaptation of Steinbeck’s working class masterpiece Grapes of Wrath.

Fern is somewhat a cross between Into the Wild’s free-spirited protagonist Alexander Supertramp and The Grapes of Wrath’s Tom Joad. The problem though, as highlighted by Nomadland’s shameless acquiescence to Amazon, is that Fern is Supertramp without spirit and Joad without spine.

Maybe the film’s lack of testicular fortitude in regards to Amazon is just another piece of sub-text, surreptitiously alerting viewers that the real problem is the modern demonization of masculinity and the feminization of America. In this way Fern is a castrated Tom Joad, not only unable, but unwilling, to fight against oppressors, instead preferring to collaborate in her own exploitation and denigration. 

More likely though is that the film’s Amazon ass-kissing is a function of that corporate monstrosity’s massive influence over Hollywood. Amazon is now a major movie and tv studio, and the suck ups and sycophants in Hollywood know that to get on Amazon’s bad side is a potentially fatal career move…so they pucker up and play act at caring about working class concerns rather than actually doing something about them.

Nomadland will probably win a bunch of well-deserved Oscars, but unfortunately the film is The Grapes of Wrath without the wrath, as it ultimately genuflects to the corporate power that created the working class tragedy it masterfully chronicles.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Promising Young Woman: Review and Commentary

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. This flawed, very dark comedy has a certain cinematic vitality to it that is compelling, and it also features a stellar performance from the beguiling Carey Mulligan.

Promising Young Woman is a #MeToo revenge fantasy that is both galling for its hatred of men but glorious for its artistry

****This article contains spoilers for the film Promising Young Woman****

Sometimes a movie says something you intensely dislike, but it says it so well you have to tip your cap. A case in point is the darkly comedic #MeToo revenge fantasy Promising Young Woman,

The film, written and directed by Emerald Fennell, tells the story of Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a med-school dropout consumed with grief and anger over her best friend’s rape and death.

In search of cathartic revenge, Cassie spends her time trolling bars pretending to be drunk to the point of incapacitation so that predatory men will attempt to prey upon her. Once they try and take full advantage of her she transforms to reveal herself to be a sober social vigilante shaming men for their repulsive behavior towards women.

Not surprisingly considering the subject matter, Promising Young Woman seethes with vicious misandry that is as disturbing as it is relentless. The film is an unabashed girl power polemic and propaganda piece that espouses the imaginary boogeyman of a pervasive “rape culture” that has only ever existed in the warped minds of Woman’s Studies majors and feminist fanatics. 

The film’s approach re-imagines the misogynistic tropes of Hollywood’s old male dominated storytelling by replacing it with an aggressive man-hating that manifests itself as every male character in the film being an utterly irredeemable predator, a sniveling coward, or both.

In this way it is like a feminist dark comedy version of an old Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sly Stallone, Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood movie where one identity group, be it blacks, Mexicans, Russians or Arabs are reduced to stereotypes and are all the bad guys, except in this movie every guy is the bad guy.

Another movie that I kept thinking about while watching Promising Young Woman was Falling Down, the flawed but intriguing 1993 Michael Douglas film directed by Joel Schumacher. In Falling Down Douglas plays William Foster, a rampaging regular guy who keenly feels that modern life is unjust toward him. Promising Young Woman is the #MeToo version of Falling Down in that it takes a person’s frustrations at perceived injustice and pushes it to absurd extremes.

Besides finding all men deplorable, Promising Young Woman film does have some other flaws. For instance it runs about a half hour too long in an attempt to find a satisfying conclusion, but the ending is ultimately unsatisfying because it tries so hard to be satisfying. 

The film’s yearning for ultimate girl power catharsis also transforms it from biting satire into pure revenge fantasy, which ironically ends up neutering the film’s feminist/anti-male social commentary. 

When Cassie finally gets her revenge at the end of Promising Young Woman, this actually proves the alleged problem of a dominant patriarchal rape culture is just an imaginary dragon slain by Cassie in a Quixotic fantasy. But if the film had stuck to its artistic guns and let Cassie fail and be left to stew in her rage, fury and failure until the end of time, then the movie would’ve succeeded in highlighting the prevalence and power of the patriarchal rape culture its premise so adamantly claims.

It may come as a surprise after reading what I’ve already written that while I found the cultural politics of Promising Young Woman to be as repulsive as the film finds my gender, I also found that the movie possessed a rage-fueled vitality and artistry that at times was intoxicatingly entertaining, which is a credit to first time feature director Emerald Fennell.

My appreciation of the film is also a testament to the beguiling work of Carey Mulligan. Mulligan gives an incisive and insightful Oscar-worthy performance that is stunning to behold for its dynamism and detail. Mulligan masterfully imbues Cassie with a seething and righteous fury that animates her every action and it results in a gloriously magnetic performance.

Supporting actor Bo Burnham is also terrific as Ryan, a man with a crush on Cassie. Burnham, a comedian and director himself, is compelling as he tries to be both charming and passive in Cassie’s presence. The chemistry between the two actors comes across as grounded and genuine, and it elevates the film considerably.

It may seem odd that I am praising a film that has such a pronounced cultural and political perspective that I find distasteful and with which I vehemently disagree. But unlike so many writers and critics of today who find it impossible to tolerate anything or anyone in life that doesn’t agree with them fully, I am not only able to tolerate things I disagree with, I can actually appreciate them.

Promising Young Woman is both a testament to the worst totalitarian and draconian instincts of modern feminism and the #MeToo movement but also a glorious monument to Emerald Fennell’s bold direction and Carey Mulligan’s mesmerizing acting.

I recommend you see the film and judge it for yourself, and even though it viciously judges all men, audiences should have enough integrity to honestly judge it on its merits, not just on its pernicious cultural politics.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Pieces of a Woman: Review and Commentary

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. After the first thirty minutes the film isn’t very good but Vanessa Kirby is very good in it.

Pieces of a Woman is a story of forgiveness… so why is Netflix so keen to cancel its star, Shia LaBeouf?

Pieces of a Woman, the new arthouse film starring Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf that is garnering some Oscar buzz, premiered on Netflix on January 7.

The film, written by Kata Wéber and directed by Kornél Mundruczó tells the story of a Boston couple who suffer a traumatic home birth of their daughter. 

The film’s theme is the power of forgiveness, even for the most egregious of injuries. This would seem a prescient and poignant lesson in our current age of relentless cancel culture and shameless embrace of victimhood. Unfortunately, while that is a theme we need right now, this muddled misfire of a movie is not an adequate delivery system.

Pieces of a Woman starts off spectacularly, with a masterfully executed, compelling and captivating opening thirty minutes. But after that it quickly deteriorates into a maudlin, melodramatic exercise chock full of every dramatic cliché imaginable.

On the bright side, the film is an actor’s showcase and the luminous Vanessa Kirby makes the very most of the opportunity. Kirby, best known for her work on Netflix’s The Crown, gloriously transcends the mundane script and middling direction by giving a subtle, specific, dynamic and magnetic performance as the grieving yet resilient Martha.

Netflix is pushing for Kirby, already a Best Actress winner at the Venice Film Festival, to get a much-deserved Oscar nomination.

Netflix is also promoting the rest of the cast to get awards consideration… well, almost all of the rest of the cast. Every cast member is featured on Netflix’s “For Your Awards Consideration” webpage, except for Shia LaBeouf.

Why has LaBeouf, the main supporting actor in the movie who some critics – not me – claim is “remarkable”, been excluded from Netflix’s awards consideration material?

The answer is that LaBeouf’s former girlfriend, singer FKA Twigs, filed suit against him in December of 2020 for past sexual, physical and emotional abuse. In the wake of this lawsuit other women, including singer Sia, have come forward making varying claims of mistreatment.

In response LaBeouf wrote to the New York Times, “I’m not in any position to tell anyone how my behavior made them feel. I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years…I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I'm ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt."

He later stated that many of the allegations were not true but that he owed the women “the opportunity to air their statements publicly and accept accountability for those things I have done.”

He added that he was “a sober member of a 12-step program” and in therapy. “I am not cured of my PTSD and alcoholism, but I am committed to doing what I need to do to recover, and I will forever be sorry to the people that I may have harmed along the way.”

So, in a surreal twist, LaBeouf’s character in Pieces of a Woman is an at-times abusive alcoholic and in real life the actor is now accused of being an abusive alcoholic.

This is obviously a complex situation, one that requires a foregoing of our culture’s compulsive and muscular Manichaeism. But it would seem Netflix has not absorbed the nuanced message of forgiveness highlighted in Pieces of a Woman and are, ironically, purging LaBeouf from promotional material for a film about the power of radical forgiveness.

LaBeouf is not alone in being tossed into the memory hole by Netflix over allegations of past misdeeds. Johnny Depp recently lost a libel case against The Sun whom he sued for calling him a “wife beater”. In response, Netflix removed all of Depp’s films from its service.

It’s important to note that neither LaBeouf nor Depp have been proven to have committed any crime, they’ve only been accused. And yet Netflix didn’t hesitate to swiftly punish them anyway.

It’s also curious that Depp’s former wife and alleged victim, Amber Heard, has also been accused of abuse (by Depp) but has faced no public consequences from Netflix or anyone else.

Another indicator of our culture’s victimhood bias is in nearly every internet article I’ve read detailing FKA Twigs’ lawsuit against LaBeouf and Netflix’s punitive actions, there was a notice informing readers of specific resources available to them if they ever “experience domestic violence”.

This is a commendable public service, but it’s striking that despite these articles also referencing LaBeouf’s alcoholism and mental health issues, none of them ever direct readers suffering from those conditions to equally helpful resources.

The reality is that these notices and Netflix’s punitive disappearing of LaBeouf and Depp are simply exercises in virtue signaling and pandering to the online outrage mob.

LaBeouf and Depp may be terrible people who’ve done terrible things, but dispensing punishment and condemnation before accusations are proven is unwise and unhealthy. Even after findings of guilt, we should attempt the difficult but imperative task of foregoing vengeance and victimhood in favor of cultivating repentance and forgiveness, which would have longer lasting effects and be a path to a more decent, kind and compassionate culture.

In conclusion, Pieces of a Woman doesn’t live up to the stellar work Vanessa Kirby does in it, just like Netflix doesn’t live up to the enlightened principle of forgiveness at the heart of the film.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 26 - Mank

In this episode of everybody’s favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I debate David Fincher’s polarizing new film Mank. Topics discussed include Gary Oldman’s brilliance, Fincher’s frustratingly complex genius and an obscure old movie named Citizen Kane.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Ep. 26 - Mank

Thank you for listening!

©2020

Mank is a Tale of Old Hollywood - and of our Corrupted Modern Age

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 42 seconds

Hollywood loves stories about Hollywood but Mank doesn’t glamorize Tinsel Town’s golden age but rather reveals the wound festering beneath the mythology…the same wound inflicting modern America.

On its surface, Mank, the new film by esteemed director David Fincher, chronicles the life and times of famed screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, most notably his struggle to write the Oscar winning screenplay for Citizen Kane.

Just below that gloriously photographed black and white surface though, a complex story of class struggle, financial control and political corruption lives, and it is that narrative that makes Mank a story for our time.

Herman Mankiewicz a.k.a Mank, brilliantly portrayed by Oscar winner Gary Oldman, is a disheveled drunkard and degenerate gambler with an undeniable roguish charm. A brilliant wordsmith, Mank’s quick and erudite wit gets him in the good graces of the media mogul William Randolph Hearst, and by extension, the Hollywood heavyweights at MGM, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg.

It is from this privileged perch at the luxurious dining tables of W.R. Hearst and in the offices of L.B. Mayer and Thalberg, that Mank is shown the diabolically deceptive practices and devious machinations of those in power. Mank’s growing discomfort and disgust at the charade of these powerful but hollow men eventually manifests in some alcohol-fueled, but extremely insightful diatribes.

But Mank, ever the slave to his own destructive impulses, is impotent to do anything about these men…until the opportunity to write a screenplay for the “boy genius” Orson Welles comes along.

With Citizen Kane, Mank uses his mighty pen to embarrass and eviscerate the all-powerful Hearst while also extending a middle finger to the repugnant Mayer.

Mank resonates in our current time because like Hearst and Mayer in the time of Citizen Kane, the new generation of decadent robber barons from Wall Street to Silicon Valley (Netflix – the film’s producer and distributor, prominent among them) wield their financial, cultural and political power to dominate and control society from their gilded castles while the rest of us scratch and claw just to stay alive.

In Mank there is a terrific scene where Louis B. Mayer tearfully speaks to a collection of MGM workers, whom he calls family, asking them to take a 50% pay cut in order to save the company. Mayer’s performance in that meeting is better than any acting he financed during his long reign at the movie studio, as he gets the workers to give up their money while he walks away giving up nothing.

That scene speaks to the nefarious political and media narrative of the last forty years since the Reagan (and Thatcher) revolution brought us the unmitigated horrors of financialization and trickle-down economics cloaked in the waving flag of an empty patriotism. It also perfectly encapsulates America since the financial collapse of 2007-08, where a plethora of too big to fail corporations with big bosses receiving huge bonuses got bailed out while working people picking up the tab got financially beaten down and will never recover.

It is the anger over that blatant economic unfairness and injustice that fueled movements as disparate as the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders and even Trump’s rise to power. But as Mank shows us, the game is rigged, as the propaganda mills promise to strangle any working class movement in its crib.

As the last two presidential elections proved, oligarchs and their media minions will relentlessly wield identity politics like a cudgel to bludgeon the working class and cease any chance at any economic change. Divide and conquer has never been so easy as in our current age of manufactured victimhood.

The character Mank embodies the impotent confusion of so many American voters. He is a compulsive contrarian and as much as he loathes the malignant management class he is also wary of labor unions. Intuitively a man of the left, Mank is still clear-eyed enough to see that both sides of the duopoly are thoroughly compromised.

The devil’s bargain Mank makes with the power structure costs him his soul, and Citizen Kane is his attempt at personal redemption and revenge for the little guy. Like the rest of us, all Mank is able to do is take pleasure in his small and ultimately inconsequential victory.

Mank’s triumph with Citizen Kane is public but completely personal, as it garners him an Oscar but leaves the power structure that so infuriates him, unbowed, unbent and unbroken…even to this day.

For proof of this one need look no further than the recent election. Americans were forced once again to choose between two vacuous avatars for the same oligarchical ruling class.

Even in the midst of a pandemic and government forced shut down resulting in an economic holocaust for working class people, both parties in Washington steadfastly refuse to consider universal healthcare, universal basic income, or even stimulus payments but are united in their insatiable desire to fellate the corporate class. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, same as every boss we’ve ever had.

As for Mank, it is a slightly flawed, but thoroughly worthwhile, art house film that boasts some A-list talent, chief among them Fincher and Oldman. For those with the patience to stick with it, Mank does what very few movies attempt to do, never mind accomplish…it tells the uncomfortable, complicated and ugly truth about America and Americans. Bravo.

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A complicated film that pulls no political punches. Gary Oldman and David Fincher flex their consider artistic muscles in this challenging but worthwhile drama.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Vast of Night: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A well directed film that starts slow but once it gets going is well worth the wait.

The Vast of Night, written and directed by Andrew Patterson, is the science fiction story of two teenagers, Fay and Everett, and the very strange night they experience in New Mexico in the 1950’s. The film stars Sierra McCormick (Fay) and Jake Horowitz (Everett).

I had not heard of The Vast of Night until my podcast co-host Barry told me to give it a watch. I had no expectations and even less information about the movie before I watched it on Amazon Prime streaming…but boy am I glad I did watch, as it is a little gem of a movie.

To be clear, The Vast of Night isn’t going to change your life, and it isn’t a perfect movie…but it is an exceedingly well made one that highlights a confident filmmaker with a distinct vision and the skill to pull it off.

The movie is set in a small town in 1950’s New Mexico and perfectly captures the rhythm and pace of that time and place. One of the struggles of the film is that the pace of the first half hour is very deliberate, and that may be off-putting to some viewers conditioned on the more frenetic style of modern day entertainment. I would recommend viewers who feel this way stick with the movie…it ends up being worth it.

Speaking of the modern day, the movie is very effective in re-creating the sense of community but also the palpable isolation of the 1950’s, particularly in a rural area, due to the lack of technology. Patterson plays up this dearth of technology by having Fay work the switchboard in town and preferring to run from place to place rather than drive. She also reads science magazines with predictions of the future’s technology (where is my flying car by the way?) and has an acute interest in tape recorders - which seem horrifyingly primitive to us iPhone addicted fiends but that were marvels in their time.

Part of what makes the The Vast of Night so compelling is that it is visually so striking. It is absolutely stunning that this film was made for $700,000, as it looks like it has a budget a hundred times that.

They used a small town in Texas to shoot the film and it is just the perfect set, and the costumes and the props are equally fantastic as every detail in the film is deliciously specific.

The film also looks more expensive because of the clever and courageous Andrew Patterson uses complex camera movements and extended scenes that are remarkably well-done. In multiple sequences Patterson does extended and elaborately choreographed camera movements that cover vast swaths of ground and large numbers of actors and movement. It is really something to behold, and anybody who has ever worked on a movie will appreciate the extraordinary technical difficulty of what Patterson pulls off.

Patterson also extracts outstanding performances from his cast of unknowns.

Sierra McCormick in particular is outstanding as the switch board operator Fay, who is plugged into the town and maybe the truth. McCormick has some extended scenes where it is just her in a close up talking on the phone…and they are mesmerizing. She is able to perfectly embody the clash between the innocence of 1950’s youth and the burden of adult responsibility thrust upon her.

Jake Horowitz plays Everett, the hot shot radio guy, and does terrific work as well. There is one scene in particular, which I won’t give away, where he enters the scene with one distinct expectation and then you watch him transform as his expectation is met, yet he is left unsatisfied. It is a stunning scene to watch and he is complex work in it is outstanding in it (you’ll know the scene when you see it).

Gail Cronauer has a small, but pivotal, role and she is utterly magnificent. Cronauer (and Patterson) make the wise choice to embrace a centered stillness in her scene, and she fills this stillness with a vibrancy and dynamic inner life that is palpable.

At times this movie felt like a gloriously bizarre amalgamation of The Last Picture Show, a Robert Altman movie and a Twilight Zone episode. That cinematic stew was mostly well executed, but there were a few minor bumps. For instance, the Altman-esque scenes of overlapping dialogue were done with aplomb but the dialogue in them was not as technically crisp (in part due to Horowitz having a cigarette in his mouth) as it needed to be and thus was a bit muddled. Also, The Twilight Zone part of the this cinematic science fiction concoction was a storytelling device that Patterson uses throughout, that frankly I felt didn’t work particularly well and could have been eliminated entirely.

That criticism though is just splitting hairs, as once the movie got rolling it was entirely engrossing and really a joy to behold as Patterson uses multiple savvy maneuvers to wring as much tension, suspense and drama out of his story as possible.

Andrew Patterson is obviously a director to watch, and could very well be the next big thing. If he can pull off what is essentially a stage play, in such a visually intricate and dynamic way with such a tiny budget, then goodness knows what he can do when Hollywood opens the coffers for him.

One can’t help but worry though that he will get sucked into the Hollywood machine and end up swimming up stream in a river of shit on some big budget Jurassic World sequel or something, where the studio suffocates his creativity while filling his pockets.

My hope is that Patterson will, like Darren Aronofsky before him, turn his small budget success into a mildly larger budget, with bigger names, for a film that still speaks to his vision. Aronofsky followed up his indie hit Pi, with Requiem for a Dream. Requiem for a Dream wasn’t a box office smash, but it was a cinematic statement that cemented Aronofsky’s status as an artistically powerful filmmaker who told original stories in a unique way. I hope Andrew Patterson is a similar type of creative force with an equal amount of artistic integrity.

In conclusion, The Vast of Night was a glorious little cinematic surprise to stumble upon in these dark days of retreads and repeats. The movie is not perfect, and its slow opening pace may feel impenetrable to those not accustomed to it, but it is well worth the wait if you can stick with it. If you are desperate to escape the suffocating madness of our current moment and want to go to a seemingly simpler time that wasn’t quite as simple as we think it was…then you should escape to 1950’s New Mexico via the delightfully intriguing The Vast of Night.

©2020

Mr. Jones: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****

My Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Not worth paying to see, but the striking and unnerving scenes of the Holomodor are worthy of your time to watch when it comes out on Netflix or cable.

Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland and written by Andrea Chalupa, is the true story of British journalist Gareth Jones as he discovers and then reveals the horrors of Stalin’s genocidal famine in Ukraine in 1933. The film stars James Norton as Jones, with supporting turns from Vanessa Kirby and Peter Sarsgaard.

Agnieszka Holland is an interesting cinematic figure. In 1990 she wrote and directed Europa, Europa, a staggeringly brilliant film about the remarkable life of Solomon Perel during World War II for which Holland garnered a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Ever since Europa, Europa though, Holland has churned out absolutely nothing of note.

The tepid mediocrity of Ms. Holland’s filmography from 1991 to present day may explain why I had never even heard of Mr. Jones until I was assigned to watch it and write about it.

That said, as a big fan of Europa, Europa, Vanessa Kirby and Peter Sarsgaard, as well as being a Russophile and an admirer of good journalism, I thought Mr. Jones might just hit my sweet spot and be a new cinematic feast amidst the current coronavirus movie famine.

Sadly…while there were certainly some powerful sequences, overall the lackluster direction and script left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

The biggest problem with Mr. Jones is that it is wildly uneven, with a devastatingly poor narrative structure.

The first half of the film plays out like a PBS melodrama…and not a very good one. Holland attempts to give a stylized view of the suffocating conformity of the British establishment, and then the debased debauchery of Walter Duranty’s Moscow, but is never quite able to adequately pull it off.

Another major structural issue is Holland’s choice to weave George Orwell’s writing of Animal Farm into the story. Shockingly, Orwell actually opens the movie and is used as a landmark throughout the narrative. The snippets of Orwell are at best frivolous and do nothing more than distract from the main dramatic thrust of the story.

The second half of the film is much, much better than the first. Midway through the film shifts to the devastation in Ukraine, and this is where Holland finds her footing. The scenes of starvation and desperation are exceedingly well-done and uncomfortable to watch. There is one sequence that is so brutal it left me unnerved for days. Holland’s use of the bleak and foreboding Ukrainian winter exquisitely conveys the existential depth and expanse of the ocean of suffering that was the Holomodor.

The problem though is that Holland failed to adequately build a dramatic foundation upon which to lay the tragedy of the Holomodor. I think the film actually would’ve been better served if it started with the trip to Ukraine, as that approach would have emphasized the brutal nature of the topic at hand from the get go. It also would have given context to Jones’ struggle and maybe even better fleshed out his character, which is remarkably paper-thin in the film.

Make no mistake though that Gareth Jones’ story is compelling and definitely worthy of a major movie, just that Ms. Holland is unable to tell the story with enough dramatic vigor or cinematic verve to do it justice. I couldn’t help but think that Gareth Jones life was worthy of an HBO or Netflix mini-series, as there is awful lot of meaningful story to tell.

In terms of the acting, the cast all do solid, if unspectacular, work.

James Norton brings an every man sort of energy to his Gareth Jones, which makes sense, but he definitely suffers from a charisma deficit, makes is a hindrance to his carrying the entirety of the movie. Norton never commands the screen or demands the audience’s attention, which at times undermines the film’s dramatic power.

The luminous Vanessa Kirby plays Ada Brooks, a sort of love interest to Jones. Kirby is an alluring and at times intoxicating screen presence, but is vastly misused and under utilized in Mr. Jones. Kirby is blessed with a striking screen magnetism but never gets to put meat on the bones of her character, which is a terrible waste of her prodigious talents.

Peter Sarsgaard is always an intriguing and emotionally complicated actor, and his morally compromised and diseased Walter Duranty is no exception. Sarsgaard has minimal screen time but makes the most of it as he limps and slithers through the scenery like the devil with whom Duranty made his deal.

Mr. Jones premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival back in 2019, and debuted for British audiences in February of 2020 and was scheduled to be released in the U.S. in April of 2020…but coronavirus rudely intervened.

The film was then released for purchase (but not for rent!) on streaming services in mid-June…and since I was hired to write about it, I reached into my expense account cookie jar and bought the movie for $14.99. Maybe it is my coronavirus budget talking but even though $14.99 is basically the price of a movie ticket here in the City of Angels, I found that price to be excessive.

My recommendation regarding Mr. Jones is not to purchase it…the cost is too high and it simply isn’t worth it. But I do think it might be worth watching for free on Netflix or cable when it comes out. The scenes of the Holomodor alone are worth the investment of time.

The bottom line is this…Mr. Jones is a great story (and Gareth Jones was a great man) but not a great film.

©2020

Top 5 World War II Films of All-Time

IN CELEBRATION OF THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF V-E DAY, HERE’S THE DEFINITIVE LIST OF BEST WORLD WAR II FILMS OF ALL TIME.

Some of the greatest films ever made have been about World War II, so narrowing it down to a top five wasn’t exactly storming the beaches at Normandy, but it also wasn’t easy.

75 years ago the Allies officially defeated the Axis menace in Europe. To honor those who sacrificed and made that momentous victory possible, I have decided to do something ridiculously less heroic…rank the top five World War II films of all time.

Without further ado…here is the list.

5. Europa, Europa (1990) – Based on the autobiography of Solomon Perel, the story follows the travails of a German Jewish boy who in trying to escape the Holocaust goes from being a hunted Jew to a Soviet orphan to a German war hero to a Nazi Youth. Perel runs from Germany to Poland to the Soviet Union then back to Germany, but no matter where he goes the war relentlessly follows.

A magnetic lead performance from Marco Hofschneider and skilled direction by Agnieszka Holland make Europa, Europa a must see for World War II cinephiles.

4. Downfall (2004) – Set in Hitler’s bunker during the final days of the Third Reich, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film focuses on the Fuhrer’s struggle to maintain his delusions of grandeur as the cold hand of reality closes around his neck.

The glorious Bruno Ganz gives a transcendent performance as Hitler descending into the grasp of a mesmerizing madness.

Downfall masterfully reveals Hitler’s bunker to be the maze of his mind, and a prison to those who fully bought into his cult of personality.

3. Dunkirk (2017) – In Christopher Nolan’s perspective jumping cinematic odyssey, we are taught the hard but important lessons that survival is not heroic, but rather instinctual, and that it is in defeat, and not victory, where character is revealed.

Dunkirk is a visual feast of a film, exquisitely shot by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and magnificently directed Nolan, that boasts a stellar cast and terrifically effective sound design, sound editing and soundtrack. 

Dunkirk succeeded not only as a pulsating World War II masterpiece, but upon its release in 2017, also as a deft metaphor for Brexit.

2. Das Boot (1981) – A taut and at times terrifying, psychological thriller set on a German U-boat, U-96, as it wages war in the Atlantic.

Like a sea serpent , Wolfgang Peterson’s film dramatically wraps itself around you and then slowly constricts, leaving you gasping for air.

Das Boot is as viscerally imposing a war film as has ever been made as Peterson’s directing mastery makes U-96 feel like a claustrophobic, underwater tomb.

1.The Thin Red Line (1998) – After a 20-year hiatus, iconic director Terence Malick returned to cinema with this staggeringly profound and insightful meditation on war.

Unlike Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, which came out that same year and was a highly popular, flag-waving hagiography to the Greatest Generation that focused on the physical toll of war, Malick’s masterpiece concerns itself not with physical carnage, but the emotional, psychological and spiritual cost of war.

The Thin Red Line isn’t so much about fighting a war as it is about how living with war ravages your soul. This is exemplified by the most heroic act in the movie being when a soldier risks his life to administer morphine to a wounded comrade just so he could die more quickly.

The Thin Red Line is unconventional in its storytelling approach, and refuses to conform to the strictures of Hollywood myth making, preferring instead to force audiences to confront their own complicity in the evil insidiousness of war.

In the movie, Private Edward Train eloquently gives voice to the film’s philosophical perspective with the following monologue on the inherent evil of war.

“This great evil, where's it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doing this? Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might've known? Does our ruin benefit the earth, does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?”

The Thin Red Line is the best World War II film ever made because it is the most poignantly human World War II movie ever made. 

As you may have noticed, my list leans more toward modern cinema, the reason being that the art and technology of filmmaking have advanced enormously over the last 75 years.

I also favor more serious fare over populist entertainment, so terrific movies like The Dirty Dozen or Inglorious Basterds, fail to make the cut.

Classics like Casablanca and From Here to Eternity were left on the cutting room floor because they are more set in WWII than about WWII.

Movies like Schindler’s List weren’t considered because I somewhat irrationally consider them to be “Holocaust films” rather than “WWII films” – which may be a distinction without a difference – but it is a distinction I make.

The Bridge on the River Kwai, A Bridge Too Far, The Enemy at the Gates, Stalingrad (1993), Patton, and The Great Escape, all just missed the cut and had to settle for honorable mention even though I love them.

In regards to my definitive list I will quote Nick Nolte’s bombastic Lt. Col. Tall from The Thin Red Line, “It's never necessary to tell me that you think I'm right. We'll just... assume it.”

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Portrait of a Lady on Fire: A Review

***THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Cinephiles sholuld see this in the theatre and marvel at director Sciamma’s confidence and cinematographer Mathon’s deft touch. Regular folks should at least see it on Netflix or cable if not in the theatre…and should stick with the movie even when the pace is slow…as the ending is worth it.

Language: French with English Sub-titles.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, written and directed by Celine Sciamma, is the story of Marianne, a portrait painter in late 18th century France, who is hired to paint the enigmatic aristocrat, Heloise. The film stars Noemie Merlant as Marianne and Adele Haenel as Heloise.

February is typically a pretty barren time of year to go to the movies as the big blockbusters haven’t started their early Spring blossoming and the prestige pictures of Autumn are a long way away. That said, this time of year is usually pretty good to catch foreign films from last year that are just now getting released in the U.S. And so it was with me and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a French film and while it was adored by critics it failed to be France’s choice to represent the nation at the recent Academy Awards, with the choice being the rather middling cop drama Les Miserable instead. After seeing Portrait of a Lady on Fire I have to say I am genuinely shocked at what a poor choice it was by France to over look it for the Oscars.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a strange film, at times beguiling, at other times boring, and sometimes both of those things at once. It is above all else a very French film, as its pacing is very deliberate, and may be too slow for American audiences weened on more frenetically driven films and narratives.

What is truly amazing about Portrait of a Lady on Fire is that while the first hour and a half can be slow going, maybe too slow, the last twenty to thirty minutes of the movie are absolutely exquisite. I cannot remember a film in recent memory that so effectively elevated itself by crafting a perfectly sublime final few scenes.

Without giving anything away I simply say that everything is beautifully tied together in the last few scenes, and the ending scene is as subtle, well-acted, poignant, insightful and dramatically palpable as any you’ll come across.

What makes the final scene so good, and the rest of the film bearable, is the acting of Adele Haenel as Heloise. Haenel is a mesmerizing and intriguing screen presence. Her eyes radiate a vivid and vibrant inner life that her stoic face beautifully restrains. She is an actress who conveys an ocean of turmoil beneath a porcelain veneer of detached cool.

Sadly, what makes the film at times a difficult slog, is that Haenel and her co-lead, Noemie Merlant, do not have the least bit of romantic chemistry. As magnetic as Haenel is on screen, Merlant is just as anti-charismatic. The two of them never seem to fully coalesce as romantic equals, and the film does suffer for it.

Unlike Haenel, Merlant is a bit dead-eyed, and does not convey any sense of an inner life or much life at all and is a bit of a dramatic dullard. All of the dramatic imperative of the film is conjured by Haenel and her desperation and desolation, and thus Merlant is left being more an observer than an active participant.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is the story of forbidden love between two women, and the narrative places a plethora of powerful obstacles between the two protagonists. In this way, it is somewhat reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain…it isn’t as good as Brokeback, but it is in the same ball park thematically. It is miles and miles ahead of say, Call me By Your Name, which was an abysmally awful piece of pandering garbage that posed at being drama, but never actually was.

The cinematography on Portrait of a Lady on Fire by Claire Mathon is spartan and austere but extremely well done to the point of being elegant. Mathon uses minimal camera movement, fantastic framing, and natural and low light to not only paint a pretty picture that could easily hang in the Tate Gallery, but also buttress and enhance the emotional narrative of the movie.

Director Sciamma makes some very bold choices throughout the movie, most of which work extremely well. Fore instance, Sciamma’s decision to use no music and only natural sound (for the most part), is extraordinarily effective.

Sciamma’s writing is top-notch as well, as she is never in a rush and with her ending, forces viewers to re-evaluate in hindsight everything they just saw…and leave the theatre pondering the depth and breadth of it all.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is undeniably a feminist film, in terms of its politics, but it never panders or takes the easy road. In one scene, which I won’t spoil, Sciamma directly addresses a very controversial topic and does so with remarkable artistic, dramatic and philosophical courage. I thought this scene (you’ll know it when you see it), and the ending, were absolute proof that Sciamma is an artistic powerhouse.

I think that cinephiles will enjoy Portrait of a Lady on Fire, especially if they adore French cinema. I think regular folks might find the pacing to be a bit too slow and thus may find the film impenetrable. I would say this though, I wholly encourage people to give this film a try, either in the theatre or on Netflix/cable, and stick with it to the end…as you may find yourself liking it more in retrospect than you did in the moment…I know I did.

For an in-depth discussion of Portrait of a Lady on Fire…with spoilers…check out episode 9 of Looking California and Feeling Minnesota.

©2020

Les Miserables (2019): A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!1 THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Not worth seeing on the big screen but if you stumble across on Netflix you can give it a shot.

Language: French with English subtitles

Les Miserables, written and directed by Ladj Ly, tells the story of a police officer’s tumultuous first day on the job with an elite street crimes unit in a Paris slum. The film stars Damien Bonnard along with Alexis Mantenti, Issa Percia, Djibril Zonga, Al-Hassan Ly and Steve Tientcheu.

After seeing the trailer for Les Miserables (2019), which is not to be confused with the 2012 Hugh Jackman movie musical of the same name based on the famous Victor Hugo novel, I was indifferent about seeing it. The trailer was a bit visually flat and did not capture my interest or imagination, but since the film is nominated for Best International Feature at the upcoming Academy Awards, I decided to roll the dice and check it out.

Les Miserables is not a bad movie, but it also isn’t a great one either. The film is named Les Miserables because it is set in the section of Paris where Victor Hugo wrote his famous book, and also because the movie highlights the same powder keg of revolutionary ingredients that are primed to combust now just as they were in Hugo’s time.

The film opens with the streets of Paris filled with celebration over a World Cup victory for France, but that unity quickly dissolves and battle lines are drawn between cop and criminal, blacks and whites, Muslims and non-Muslims, immigrants and natives.

Les Miserables is a rather conventional narrative that chronicles a day in the life of a bad neighborhood riddled with crime and injustice of all types. Police are thuggish bullies, warring factions of ethnic and religious gangs carve out small fiefdoms through brute force and intimidation, and children and young adults just try to survive in the suffocatingly tumultuous urban jungle they call home.

Director Ladj Ly’s script does a decent job of highlighting the factionalism that runs rampant in the slum. The Muslim Brotherhood looms large as an imposing and moderating force in the slums, and as a counterbalance to dueling ethnic drug gangs and the authoritarian police.

The slum is even divided by age as the children and teens of the housing projects resent the grown men who make deals with the police and each other in order to rule their kingdoms and line their pockets. This corruption of both cop and criminal turns the children of the slum into potential radicals eager to burn the whole rotten place to the ground.

Where Ly’s script stumbles though is in piecing together a coherent narrative that can drive the story from beginning to end. While the movie is filled with multiple interesting characters, such as “the Mayor”, a terrific Steve Tientcheu, or Salah, the formidably captivating Almamy Kanoute, they aren’t utilized well enough or often enough for the tale to be thoroughly compelling.

Ly’s direction and storytelling are both ambitious and admirable, but ultimately the film’s political and social sub-text feels a wee bit heavy handed and too on the nose to be artistically satisfying. The lack of subtlety regarding the film’s social commentary reduces the power and impact of it, and makes it all seem very trite. The film may very well be politically prescient, but that doesn’t make it dramatically potent.

This sort of obviousness regarding social and political commentary all feels very “French”, and the French-ness of the story and setting, such as the way Paris cops operate, their rules of engagement and all of that, reduces a great deal of tension, especially for American audiences. As I watched some pivotal scenes I couldn’t help but see it through my jaundiced American eyes and wonder why the hell these cops were behaving the way they were. To put it mildly, American cops would behave very differently when threatened. This disconnect, right or wrong, definitely had a negative effect on the dramatic impact of the film and the believability of the story.

As for the cast, Bonnard does really solid work as Pento, the main protagonist. As previously mentioned Steve Tientcheu and Almamy Kanoute are terrific, as is Issa Percia in a very difficult role.

In conclusion, as a calling card for director Ly, Les Miserables is a solid first feature film and it makes me intrigued to see what he does next, but in terms of being worthy of an Oscar nomination for Best International Film….not at all.

As for my recommendation regarding this movie…I think that cinephiles might find it to be a bit too conventional and politically obvious and regular cineplexers will find it frustratingly obtuse and a bit dull. The best bet is to wait for it to come out on Netflix or Amazon and then check it out there for free…because it simply does not rise to the level of being worth seeing in the theatre.

©2020

Hollywood's Arrogant and Ignorant Pandering to Chinese Audiences

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 42 seconds

Hollywood shamelessly panders to China to make money, but they are absolutely terrible at it.

Hollywood thinks that by telling Chinese stories they will woo the Chinese market they so crave…they couldn’t be more wrong, as the failure of The Farewell amply illustrates.

This past weekend The Farewell, a critically adored American film which tells the story of a Chinese-American woman who returns to China to visit her dying grandmother, opened in China.

Due to The Farewell being written and directed by a Chinese American woman, Lulu Wang, and starring Chinese-American, Golden Globe winning actress, Awkwafina, as well as the film’s dialogue being mostly spoken in Mandarin, Hollywood’s expectations were that the movie would be well received in China.

Those expectations proved to be very misguided. The Farewell has been largely ignored by Chinese audiences as evidenced by its embarrassingly dismal take at the Chinese box office of just $580,000.

The Farewell’s failure is reminiscent of the poor showing in China by another Asian themed Hollywood movie, Crazy Rich Asians, which was a break out smash hit in America in 2018, bringing in $174 million at the U.S. box office. American audiences cheered Crazy Rich Asians largely due to its Asian cast, which was deemed a great success for representation and diversity for Hollywood. In contrast, China, which has plenty of its own movies with all-Asian casts, had no such love for the film as proven by its tepid box office receipts.

Crossing the cultural divide and tapping into the Chinese market has long been the Holy Grail of Hollywood, as every studio executive in town is constantly trying to crack the Chinese code in order to fill their coffers. Of course, studio executives are not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, so the only plan they’ve been able to come up with thus far is to pander. Not surprisingly, Hollywood’s ham-handed attempts to cater to Chinese audiences have consistently backfired.

Disney thought Asian representation would attract Chinese audiences when they cast Asian-American actress Kelly Marie Tran in a major role in the most recent Star Wars trilogy. The problem was that Ms. Tran (who is of Vietnamese descent) did not conform to classical Chinese standards of beauty and thus Chinese audiences never warmed to her.

Chinese audiences have voiced similar complaints regarding Akwafina, with some Chinese people on social media going so far as to call her “very ugly”, which may be one of the reasons why The Farewell is doing so poorly. And this is before we get to her Mandarin, which was widely considered laughable for a first-generation immigrant, even one who left China early, according to the plot (the actress herself did not speak Chinese fluently before the film).

Another example of this cultural divide is Simu Liu, a Canadian-Chinese actor who was recently cast in the lead of the upcoming Marvel movie Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Liu is considered handsome by Western standards but some Chinese people say he is “not handsome by Chinese standards”, which means Shang-chi might face an uphill battle at the Chinese box office when it comes out. 

Hollywood has had some success in China, for instance, of the top 15 highest grossing films in Chinese box office history, four are Hollywood productions. They are Avengers: Endgame, The Fate of the Furious, Furious 7 and Avengers: Infinity War. It seems Hollywood has not learned the lesson of their Chinese successes though because unlike Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell and even to a certain extent the poorly received latest Star Wars trilogy, the Hollywood films that have found success in China are gigantic franchises telling American stories filled to the brim with spectacle and movie stars…and none of those stars are Chinese.

In 2020 Disney is once again making a major attempt to court the Chinese market by releasing Mulan, a live action adaptation of the 1998 animated film of the same name. While Mulan is based on the Chinese folk story “The Ballad of Mulan” and will boast a very attractive cast of Asian actors, including star Liu Yifei, that is no guarantee of box office success. The 1998 animated Mulan financially flopped in China and one wonders if the live action version is just another culturally tone deaf attempt by Hollywood to try to tell and sell a Chinese story back to the Chinese.

Hollywood’s misguided belief that Chinese audiences want to see Hollywood make Chinese themed-movies with Chinese stars seems to be staggeringly obtuse. China has a thriving film industry all its own and Chinese audiences don’t clamor to see Chinese stories told from Hollywood’s perspective (even if they’re made by Chinese-American artists) anymore than Americans yearn to see American stories told by foreign artists. The bottom line is this…Chinese audiences want to see American movies from America, not Chinese movies from America.

At its best the art form of cinema is a universal language that speaks eloquently across cultural boundaries. For example, American audiences this year have embraced the South Korean film Parasite. Parasite didn’t try to tell an American story with American actors in an attempt to cash in with U.S. audiences, instead it tells a dramatically and artistically profound Korean story about family and class that connects to people of all cultures. Hollywood would be wise to emulate that approach when trying to woo Chinese audiences.

And if it does want to make what it thinks are “Asian” stories, it should be culturally humble enough to know that it’s making them primarily for the art house cinemas in Brooklyn, rather than the multiplexes in Beijing.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Pain and Glory: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. If you adore director Pedro Almodovar’s work, then you’ll love this movie. For everyone else, wait to watch it for free on Netflix or cable.

Language: Spanish with English subtitles.

Pain and Glory, written and directed by two-time Academy Award winner Pedro Almodovar, is an autobiographical drama that tells the story of a director looking back upon his life’s journey. The film stars Antonio Banderas, who has been nominated for Best Actor at the this year’s Academy Awards, with supporting turns from Penelope Cruz, Asier Etxeandia and Leonardo Sbaraglia.

Pedro Almodovar is a master filmmaker who has made such classics as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, All About My Mother, Talk to Her and Volver. This past September Almodovar turned 70, and much like others entering the final stretch of their existence here on earth, he is now contemplating his life and trying to make sense of the patchwork of memories that inform his identity. Pain and Glory is Almodovar’s attempt to understand himself and the long and winding journey that brought him to his current destination.

I am pretty neutral when it comes to Almodovar’s films. I respect and admire his artistry and his artistic insights, but I have never deeply connected with his subject matter or his characters. That said, I have always found Almodovar to be an interesting filmmaker almost solely because he seems to be an interesting person. Whether blatantly or covertly, Almodovar’s films feel both joyously and painfully autobiographical, and Pain and Glory is no exception.

Pain and Glory is, like many of Almodovar’s works, filled with the usual fond remembrances of a golden, sun-drenched youth, where Almodovar’s admiration of women and attraction toward men is born. In Almodovar’s cinematic adulthood, as strikingly evidenced in Pain and Glory, there is a recurring theme of a complicated, near self-pitying relationship with other men, himself and his work.

I wouldn’t say I enjoyed Pain and Glory, but it is certainly interesting, if a bit self indulgent. Almodovar’s autobiographical movie suffers because it is, like his memory, unfocused and fuzzy. This is accentuated by numerous journeys down differing narrative paths that never quite come to any logical or dramatically satisfying conclusions. Much like real life, Pain and Glory’s themes are clear and precise but its narrative structure and dramatic specificity are not, thus making it somewhat less emotionally coherent than it needed to be to be a completely successful cinematic endeavor.

Like most of Almodovar’s movies Pain and Glory is visually lush and vibrant, with a crisp cinematic style that is very appealing for its dynamic simplicity. Almodovar and his cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine, use a striking palette and color to great affect, most notably red and white. As always, Almodovar, a Spaniard, is able to convey love, be it familial or romantic, by using the all encompassing visual warmth of the Spanish sun. Almodovar sublimely paints the objects of his affection in his memories to great affect with that appealing solar warmth.

In terms of the acting, Antonio Banderas does solid work as Salvador. Like Almodovar, Banderas is on the downside of his career and life and he brings that reality to bear on the character. Banderas wears the weathering of Salvador’s existential strain on his formerly pristine face and it gives him a gravitas he has not always possessed. It is a compelling performance and Banderas imbues Salvador with a complexity and intentionality throughout the film that is the driving force of the narrative. Where Banderas stumbles just a bit is in embodying the physical suffering that is Salvador’s constant companion. Banderas is just a little too spry and fluid to be believable as someone suffering from the multitude of ailments of which we are told Salvador suffers.

Penelope Cruz, as she often does, embodies the Anima for Almodovar. Cruz portrays Salvador’s mother, Jacinta, and gives an earthy and grounded performance. Jacinta is the Mediterranean mama incarnate, a hard-working, no nonsense family leader whose calloused yet gentle hands scratch even as they soothe.

Asier Etxeandia and Leonardo Sbaraglia have pivotal roles as Salvador’s estranged artistic and romantic partners respectively. Both do terrific work, particularly Etxendia, who never falls into stereotype when portraying both an actor and a junkie.

In conclusion, Pain and Glory is a very Almodovar film, and if you love Almodovar you will love Pain and Glory. If you are indifferent to Almodovar, I think, like me, you’ll find the film interesting but somewhat lacking as it never quite completely captivates or has the courage of its cinematic convictions or artistic ambitions. My recommendation is to skip Pain and Glory in the theatres but definitely check it out when it hits Netflix or cable in the future. It is worth seeing, just not worth paying to see.

©2020

Marriage Story: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A vacuous, vapid and phony film riddled with mannered and manufactured performances that are so grating as to be repulsive. This interminable mess of a movie is an art house poseur and critical fool’s gold.

Marriage Story is written and directed by Noah Baumbach and is his pseudo-autobiographical tale of the Barbers, a married couple with a young son going through a divorce. The film stars Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson with supporting turns from Laura Dern, Ray Liotta, Alan Alda, Julie Haggerty and Merritt Weaver.

Marriage Story has marketed itself as a dramatically potent and poignant domestic drama, which is a genre that, when properly executed, appeals to me greatly. Due to its marketing campaign and the overwhelming amount of critical acclaim Marriage Story has been receiving, I was very excited to watch the movie over the Christmas holiday. Thankfully the film is currently streaming on Netflix which meant I wouldn’t have to trek out the theatres to catch it, but I would have to find two hours and sixteen minutes of my life to dedicate to watching it uninterrupted…no small task. Last night I finally got the chance to see it…and to say it was a let down would be the understatement of the new decade…and maybe the last one too.

The bottom line is this…Marriage Story is awful. It is really, truly awful. The acting, which has gotten resounding praise and is generating very loud awards buzz, is abysmal. The directing and writing is utterly atrocious. I am genuinely shocked and appalled that serious people think this mess of a movie is a serious film.

Marriage Story is supposedly loosely based on writer/director Noah Baumbach’s own divorce from actress Jennifer Jason-Leigh in 2013. Like Baumbach, the lead male character Charlie is a director and New Yorker, and like the female lead character Nicole, Jennifer Jason-Leigh is a Los Angeles born and bred second generation actor (her father was Vic Morrow), and like Baumbach and Leigh, Charlie and Nicole have a young son caught in the middle of their divorce.

Writing about yourself, even under the guise of slightly different characters, is standard operating procedure for artists, but in Baumbach and Marriage Story’s case…it feels like some pretty toxic narcissistic behavior. The reason for this is that the film unabashedly holds Charlie in the highest regard and can’t stop saying what a genius he is…going so far as to bestow upon him a MacArthur Fellowship Grant. Charlie’s greatest fault is that he cares about his art too much and is too dedicated. Baumbach seems to be using Marriage Story as some sort of art house fake out in order to humble brag.

The issues with Marriage Story are numerous, and one of the most glaring is the acting. The film is a sort of character study with the character being a married couple played by Scarlett Johannson and Adam Driver. The acting approach deployed in this film by the vast majority of the cast is a heightened, very theatrical style. The end result of this acting approach is that the characters all all feel incredibly phony and manufactured…like something you’d see in any acting class on any night of the week in New York or Los Angeles. I have lived my entire adult life in the New York and Los Angeles acting world and I can tell you that none of the characters in Marriage Story even remotely resemble real people. Marriage Story is populated by hyper-shticky, sitcom level cardboard cutout characters.

Nothing on screen in this movie is genuine, grounded or even remotely interesting. Due to the acting in Marriage Story getting so much acclaim, I have a genuine fear that this movie will set back the art and craft of acting decades, if not millennia…and if there are any aspiring actors out there, please listen to me now, do not try and emulate the style of acting on display in Marriage Story as it is the polar opposite of what you should be trying to do.

Now, to be fair, the two main characters, Charlie and Nicole, are a theatre director and actress, so I understand somewhat the theatrical flair on display, but the tone-deaf, over-the-top nature of the entire cast is so pronounced that no one and nothing in this world rings true. The lack of genuine characters and situations drains the film of all potential drama and emotional impact, thus rendering the film entirely impotent.

Adam Driver is getting serious Oscar hype over his performance as Charlie, the esteemed theatre director. Driver’s work in Marriage Story barely rises above being not-embarrassing, and should never in a million years be considered Oscar worthy. Driver tries to push and prod himself to give his performance depth and meaning but he strains so hard against the flaccid script it is like watching a constipated dog trying to take a much needed dump. Regardless of how hard he is working, the end result is the same as the dog…an itchy case of hemorrhoids and/or a stinky mess on the carpet.

Scarlett Johansson play Charlie’s wife and one-time theatrical muse, Nicole. It is difficult to put into words how repulsed I was by Johansson’s performance. At one point Johansson does an extended monologue that is so mannered and forced I felt like I was watching a high school drama student rehearse her audition for the school play in her bedroom mirror. It was at this point that I turned to my movie watching companion, an actress of some note who shall remain nameless, and asked, “is the acting in this movie as bad as I think it is?” She turned to me and in the most droll way possible simply replied, “yes…it most certainly is.”

Laura Dern plays Nora, Nicole’s divorce attorney, and she one ups Johansson in acting awfulness. Dern’s performance is so relentlessly fabricated and false it actually made my stomach hurt. I consider myself a fan of Laura Dern but her work in Marriage Story is excruciatingly vacuous and fraudulent.

By far the worst performance of the film is Julie Haggerty as Nicole’s mother, Sandra. Haggerty’s work in Marriage Story would be considered ‘too big’ even if she were wearing a red nose and big shoes center stage at a circus. Haggerty is not quite matched in acting awfulness by Wallace Shawn, but he does give it the old college try.

The only quality performance in the entire film is delivered by none other than Alan Alda. Alda plays Charlie’s lawyer Bert, and does such subtle and grounded work it is remarkable, especially considering the shitshow of acting going on around him. Alda’s Bert is the only character in the entire film who even remotely seems like a real person living in a real world. I found Alda’s performance, which is not very big, to be the most profound and poignant in the whole movie.

As for the direction and writing of the film, Noah Baumbach gets to take all the blame. Baumbach is obviously trying to pay a little bit of homage to movies like Scenes From a Marriage and Kramer vs Kramer, but he is simply in way over his head in trying to make a movie of any meaning or worth. Marriage Story proves, without question, that Baumbach is no Bergman (Scenes From a Marriage), hell, he isn’t even in the same class of movie makers as Robert Benton (Kramer vs Kramer).

It is Baumbach’s fault that the film is disjointed dramatically and entirely devoid of any notable craft or skill. Baumbach’s writing rings completely false and is akin to a really bad stage play for its artistic bombast, faux sincerity and grandiosity. In addition, all of the film’s characters are cutesy caricatures that bear no resemblance to any normal human being, they are one-dimensional props in Baumbach’s autobiographical fantasy. The film even has a couple of musical numbers that are so trite and contrived they made me throw my shoe at the television in frustration. Nothing in this film is believable, no dramatic notes ring true, none of the settings or characters feel in any way, shape or form, to be genuine. The entire film is a fraud and at best a farce.

The visual style of the film is flat and dull, which only emphasizes the absurdity of the performances and writing. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan, whose most notable work was on The Favourite, is filming a serious and gritty domestic drama (which is what the film is marketing itself as), but Baumbach and cast are making a farcical, near-absurdist comedy, and the mismatch is painful to watch.

I am not a superfan of Noah Baumbach, but I have enjoyed some of his other work. I thought The Squid and the Whale, another but much better “divorce movie”, was excellent, and was even pleasantly surprised by While We’re Young. But beyond those two films, I find his work to be strikingly sub-par. Other critics absolutely adore Baumbach…but I have yet to figure out why that is. My best guess is that, much like Van Halen front man David Lee Roth once said about critical adoration of Elvis Costello, maybe critics like Noah Baumbach so much because they look so much like Noah Baumbach.

Another theory I have as to why Baumbach is a critical darling is that critics are desperate to fill the Woody Allen void now that the old pedophile is radioactive. So critics have chosen Baumbach to be the perpetual winner of the Woody Allen Memorial - Critical Darling For Writing Hackneyed Shit Award. Woody Allen’s critical success has always baffled me, as his movie’s cinematic value are minimal at best, and it seems I will have the same relationship with Baumbach going forward. In my opinion, Noah Baumbach is not much of a serious director but is instead a cinematic charlatan, a maker of vacuous and shallow films who is incapable of creating anything of much artistic significance or dramatic profundity.

Marriage Story is nothing but vacant critical hype and, as a friend said to me after I saw it, is akin to a “Hallmark movie for hipsters”. The film is nowhere near worthy of your time or attention and should be avoided at all costs. Besides Alan Alda’s Bert, I had a visceral hatred for every single character in this movie, even the little kid, so much so that at one point Charlie walks into Nicole’s house and asks if anyone is home and is met with eerie silence and I said out loud “God I hope there was a gas leak that killed every single one of them”. Sadly, there was no gas leak, in the movie or in my own house, to end the suffering that was my experience of Marriage Story.

In conclusion, do not wed yourself to Marriage Story, instead run as fast as you can from this piece of fraudulent phony baloney. There are other cinematic fish in the sea besides this movie, and I promise that there is no possible way they will stink as much as Marriage Story.

©2020

Top 10 Films of the Decade - 2010's Edition

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes 24 seconds

Much to my surprise, I have been seeing a large number of writers putting out their “Best of the Decade” list in recent weeks. I was surprised by this because I had no idea the decade was ending. At my very best I barely know what day it is nevermind what month or year. Just this morning I saw a headline declaring the best movies of 2020 and had to stop and think about it a few moments and then eventually check my iPhone and make sure our current year wasn’t 2020 (the article was predicting what will be great in 2020).

Once I discovered that the 2010’s are actually ending just next week, I figured it was my duty to put together my own cinematic retrospective on the decade. In compiling my list I was wary of recency bias and tried to keep films from this year at arm’s length…but the problem is that 2019 is easily the best year for movies in the decade and thus far in the millennium…so my list simply HAD to reflect that.

So sit back, relax and enjoy my Best of the 2010’s movie list. As always, keep in mind my list is THE definitive list, and all other lists are incredibly, incredibly stupid and worthless.

BEST ACTION MOVIE OF DECADE

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) - I was never much of a Mad Max fan at all. Mel Gibson was someone I never appreciated as an actor or action star (or a director for that matter), and the Mad Max phenomenon just passed me by when it was at its height in the 80’s. I missed seeing Fury Road in the theatre out of sheer disinterest, but stumbled upon on it one night on cable television and thought I’d give it a shot because I had no other options. I was ready to bail on the movie pretty quick but it totally hooked me and left me mesmerized to the point of being slack jawed.

Director George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is insane. It is basically a violent, beautifully shot, continuous car chase. The film is supremely crafted and the long chase is exquisitely conceived, blocked and executed. I am so mad at myself for having not seen Fury Road in the theatres as I can only assume that the spectacle of it all was even more spectacular on the big screen.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a stunning spectacle to behold, a crowning achievement for the action genre and the best action movie of the decade.

BEST FRANCHISE OF DECADE

Planet of the Apes Trilogy - In a remarkable upset I went with Planet of the Apes over the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel had a great decade, no doubt, and dominated at the box office for the entirety of the 2010’s, but the best franchise in terms of quality was Planet of the Apes.

The first film of the reboot, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, came out in 2011 and I thoroughly expected it to be awful. Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes film of 2001 was an absolute catastrophe that, being a huge Planet of the Apes fan since I was a kid, scarred me deeply. When I saw that James Franco was the lead actor in the 2011 reboot I figured this was nothing more than a vacuous money grab by producers trying to cash in on the glory of the older movies. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Rise was a stellar origin film that appreciated, correctly understood, and properly connected to the mythology of the earlier films from the 60’s and the 70’s, and was followed by the equally fantastic Dawn and War. The CGI now available to filmmakers elevated the myth and material at the heart of the story and turned Planet of the Apes into the top-notch franchise it was always meant to be.

Great performances by Andy Serkis and the rest of the CGI ape-actors turned these films, which could have been a punch line, into a compelling and profound series that is better than anything Marvel, or anyone else, has put out this decade.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF DECADE

A TIE!

Ladybird (2017)- Ladybird was the Greta Gerwig directed coming of age story set in Sacramento that critics absolutely adored (it has a 98% critical score at Rotten Tomatoes). I found the film to be little more than a sloppily slapped together mish-mash of trite SNL sketches completely devoid of insight, profundity or original ideas. Director Greta Gerwig is the darling of critics because she is the manic pixie dreamgirl of arthouse poseurs…this is only heightened by the fact that she married an arthouse poseur - Noah Baumbach! Look no further than the glowing adoration of her newest beating a dead-horse film, Little Women, for proof of my thesis.

Get Out (2017) - Critics loved Get Out because they were looking for a black director to be their messiah in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite nonsense. Get Out was a flaccid and forced piece of banal nothingness that exposed the bias of critics and the power of white liberal guilt. For proof of my thesis look no further than Peele’s second film Us…which is a total mess of a movie but which critics adored anyway.

WORST FILM OF DECADE

Detroit (2017)- Detroit attempts to tell the story of the Detroit race riots of 1967 but is so ineptly directed by Kathryn Bigelow that she should have her Oscar (for The Hurt Locker) retroactively revoked for setting the art of filmmaking back four decades. As anyone who has ever been to Detroit can attest, it is easily the worst place in the universe, so maybe Bigelow was doing some meta commentary by making the worst movie ever with the title Detroit to match the awfulness of the city with that moniker…who knows. Regardless, Bigelow’s directorial incompetence is remarkable in a way, as it seems impossible to make a film as dreadful as Detroit. That said, Tom Ford gave it a run with his abysmal Nocturnal Animals, but still fell short. better luck next time Tom.

BEST FILMS OF DECADE

10. Hell or High Water (2016) - Hell or High Water could have been named “Revenge of the Working Class”, as screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s script accurately captured the desperation of those of us living under the boot of the cancer of American capitalism that is devouring its own. Top notch performances from Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster, Chris Pine and Gil Birmingham (as well as the local hires and those with smaller roles) turn Sheridan’s script into a resonant and powerfully insightful commentary on modern-day America in the forgotten fly-over country.

9. The Big Short (2015) - Adam McKay’s cinematic adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book of the same name, is miraculous. It artfully tells the intricate and dazzlingly complex story of the 2008 housing meltdown with comedic aplomb and dramatic power. A great cast and stellar direction make The Big Short not only one of the best, but one of the most important film of the 2010’s.

8. Phantom Thread (2017) - P.T. Anderson’s collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis is a mediation on control, power and the toxic and intoxicating brew when the anima is conjured. A twisted, lush and vibrant love story that peels away the skin and reveals the wound on the spirit of a powerful man, and the woman who loves him not despite of it, but because of it. A sumptuous feast for the eyes and the soul, Phantom Thread is powered by the masterful work of P.T. Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps.

7. Dunkirk (2017) - Dunkirk is a film of exquisite technical precision, insightful political analysis, heart-stopping action and gut-wrenching drama. Director Christopher Nolan is one of the great artistically populist filmmakers of our time and Dunkirk is his most well-made and daring film yet. leave it to Nolan to twist time and perspective in what could have been a straightforward story of British heroism. A solid cast, which include such surprises as boy band star Harry Styles, give excellent performances that are buoyed by some of the very best technical work cinema has ever seen…or heard to be more exact, as the sound in Dunkirk is amazing beyond belief. The best war film of the decade, and one of the greatest masterpieces of the genre.

6. The Master (2012) - The Master boasts the very best acting captured on film in the last decade…and even further in the history of cinema. Joaquin Phoenix reinvents the art of acting as the literally and figuratively twisted Freddie Quell, a recent World War II veteran with a knack for making delicious, delirious and deadly concoctions from bizarre items. The acting clashes between Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd, are absolute sublime perfection. The Master, like its two stars, is a compelling and combustible drama that elevates acting beyond its previous bounds.

5. The Irishman (2019) - The Irishman is a movie about introspection, retrospection and regret. Scorsese’s three and half hour masterpiece is both a genre and career defining and ending classic. The film boasts a solid performance from Robert DeNiro and two stellar supporting turns from Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, who are at their very best. Just as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven commented on his own career while making his career defining genre, westerns, dramatically obsolete, so does Scorsese have the final word on his career and puts the dramatic nail in the coffin of the genre that, for good or for ill, defined it, the mobster movie.

4. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019) - This is Tarantino’s most dramatically potent and resonant film. DiCaprio and Pitt give two fantastic performances as a fading star and his stunt double and Margot Robbie is undeniably luminous as Sharon Tate. Tarantino transports audiences back to 1969 in order to tell the story of wishful thinking gone awry. A true masterwork from a master director.

3. Joker (2019) - In a decade where superhero movies ruled supreme, the last and final word on the genre was put forth by an emaciated lunatic with a Quaker’s hair cut. Joker has forever altered the current top genre by dragging it through the gutter and being brave enough to tell the actual truth about our time. When Arthur Fleck tells his disinterested therapist that “all I have are negative thoughts”, he spoke for millions upon millions of people living in the spiritual hell that is capitalism in late stage American empire. Joker is the best comic book movie of all time because it takes a chainsaw to the form and shapes it into an incendiary Taxi Driver/The King of Comedy sequel. Who knew that Todd Phillips of all people, had this level of greatness within him? It helps that Joaquin Phoenix, the best actor on the planet, used his formidable talent and skill to morph into the most interesting and human super villain (or hero) to ever grace the big screen. Joker is a game changer for superhero movies, and thankfully, cinema will never be quite the same.

2. Roma (2018) - Roma is a cinematic tour de force that was an exquisitely conceived and executed film of startling artistic precision and vision. Alfonso Cuaron wrote, directed and was even his own cinematographer on the film that catapulted him into the rarefied air of the cinematic masters.

1. The Tree of Life (2011) - The Tree of Life is not only the best film of the decade, it may very well be the best film of all time. Terrence Malick’s magnum opus veered from the present day to the 1950’s and all the way back to prehistoric times. Malick’s experimental meditation on life and loss covered large swaths of history but never failed to be breath-takingly intimate, thanks in part to sublime cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki and grounded and genuine performances from Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. As spiritually, psychologically, philosophically and theologically profound and insightful a film as has ever been made. With The Tree of Life, Malick takes his place on the Mount Rushmore of filmmakers…and atop my Best of the 2010’s list.

Thus concludes my Best of List of the 2010’s…and soon the 2010’s will end too! Let’s hope the 2020’s will bring us some more great cinema!

©2019

A Hidden Life: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT IF YOU LOVE MALICK. This is a deeply profound film but director Terrence Malick can be impenetrable to those with more conventional tastes…so act accordingly.

A Hidden Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick, is the true story of Franz Jaggerstater, a Catholic farmer in rural Austria during World War II who must choose between his faith and pledging allegiance to Hitler. The film stars August Diehl as Jagerstatter, with supporting turns from Valerie Pachner, Michael Nyqivst, Matthias Shoenaerts, Bruno Ganz and Franz Rogowski.

2019 may be the greatest year for cinema of my entire adult life. After a bumpy start to the year, we’ve had masterpieces from major auteurs, like Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood, The Irishman, and Parasite, and we even had the down and dirty genius of the best comic book movie ever made, Joker, brought to us by Todd Phillips of all unlikely people. 2019 even had two stellar, art house science fiction films, Ad Astra and High Life, as well as a bevy of great foreign films, including Transit, Rojo and Bird of Passage. So with the year in cinema going so well I was thrilled to see that one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Terrence Malick, was throwing his hat into the crowded ring of 2019 before the end of the year.

Terrence Malick has long been one of my favorite film makers. His use of religious symbolism and philosophical themes, along with his unorthodox and impressionist visual and narrative style, have made Malick films must see cinema for me. Malick’s work over the last decade in particular, which included films such as Knight of Cups, Song to Song and his epic masterpiece The Tree of Life, has resonated deeply with me due to its intimate and spiritual nature. Maybe it is because I am one of the rarest of creatures in that I am Catholic and a cinephile, that Malick’s work seems to be so perfectly calibrated to my unique interests that it feels like he is making movies just for me.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I headed out to see A Hidden Life. The little I had heard of the film was that it was a return to a more linear narrative structure and was more akin to his magnum opus The Tree of Life than his recent allegedly autobiographical, experimental trilogy (To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, Song to Song). I consider The Tree of Life to be the greatest film of the last decade, and maybe of all-time, so my expectations for A Hidden Life were pretty high.

After seeing the film, I can report that A Hidden Life is not The Tree of Life, but it is a great film that is easily the most profound movie of the year. What makes the movie so profound is that it mediates upon the spiritual struggle inherent when living in an empire. Jagerstatter’s greatest choice was not between his soul and the Third Reich, but rather between choosing to decide or choosing not to decide and thus ignore reality. This is the same struggle Americans face…will we simply accept American empire and all the evils that accompany it, or will we put down our flags, our party affiliations, our identity politics, and instead fix our loyalty to truth above all else?

As for the particulars of the movie, after having seen it by myself I had a conversation with a “lady friend” who was interested in the movie. She asked me “how was it?” and my reply was, “it is very Malick”. Now as previously stated, “very Malick” is right in my wheelhouse…but for others, the more Malick a movie is, the harder it is for them to digest.

By “very Malick” what I mean is that the film is impressionistic in style and meditative in nature. A Hidden Life is definitely linear in structure as it follows a character from point A to point B, but it doesn’t go in a conventional straight line between those two points. The film has a near three hour run time and no doubt less adventurous movie goers will struggle with the film’s meandering pace and unorthodox approach, but if viewers can turn off their conditioning and simply let the film wash over them, it is a deeply moving experience.

Part of what makes Malick such a remarkable auteur is that no other film maker is able to capture the exquisite beauty, the fleeting profundity and suffocating existential angst of life itself. Malick’s masterpiece, The Tree of Life is the pinnacle of this experience, where life and death meet and spirit and soul collide and we are forced to confront and wrestle with our own mortality as we scream into the abyss hoping for an answer. In A Hidden Life as in all of his films, the weight of life and thought are conjured by Malick’s dancing camera and natural light. Jagerstatter is not so much the protagonist of the film as he is a projection of our dreams and a player in our spiritual nightmares.

The cast of A Hidden Life are a who’s who of European acting talent. August Diehl plays Franz Jagerstatter with a very German/Austrian control and stoicism. Diehl is a fine actor (he is spectacularly evil as an SS officer in Inglorious Basterds) but there were times when I felt that he may have been slightly miscast in the role of Jagerstatter, especially in a Malick movie. In Malick films actors must rely on their innate characteristics in order to survive and/or thrive. What that means is that a lot of scenes lack dialogue, or are improvised and are spliced together with perspective shifting cuts, and so the actor’s energy, their physical ease, and their face play big parts in telling the story. Diehl is gifted/cursed with a handsome but somewhat subdued face, which makes his performance at times less empathetic than I wanted it to be.

Franz Rogowski plays a small role as one of Franz’s military friends and I actually thought he would have been perfect in the lead role. Rogowski is like a German Joaquin Phoenix, they actually look quite similar, and he has a inherently empathetic face that is filled with emotion and meaning even when he isn’t speaking or emoting. Rogowski was fantastic in Transit this year, a film I highly recommend, and I think he would have been equally terrific as Franz Jagerstatter.

Other actors of note in the film are the late Bruno Ganz and the late Michael Nyqvist, both of whom have small roles but do spectacular work in them. Ganz and Nyqvist bring an emotional gravitas and fragility to their work in A Hidden Life that is a fitting epitaph for their brilliant careers.

Valerie Pachner plays Franziska Jagerstatter, Franz’s wife, and brings a vitality and earthy charisma to her work. Pachner is both strong and beautiful and her performance is both delicate and complex and gives A Hidden Life an emotional multi-dimensionality.

One of the things I most enjoy about Malick films is the cinematography. For A Hidden Life, Malick’s usual cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, who is one of the greatest cinematographers in the business and maybe of all-time, was absent, replaced by his longtime steadicam operator Jorg Widmer. Widmer is considered by many to be the best steadicam operator in the film industry, and he has worked with Malick in that capacity many times. I wasn’t aware that Lubezski wasn’t working on A Hidden Life going into it, but I immediately noticed that something was ever so slightly off about the cinematography. To be clear, the film is beautifully shot, and is gorgeous to behold, but as I watched it i just noticed things were a bit…different…than when Lubezki shoots a Malick film. Widmer’s cinematography was well-done but it lacked a bit of Lubizski’s precision and power.

The music in the film, by James Newton Howard, is haunting, extremely effective and deeply moving, as is the editing by Rehman Nizar Ali, Joe Gleason and Sebastian Jones.

The story of Franz Jagerstatter is the story of all of us living in the Eden of empire. We may enjoy our time in paradise but eventually, the corruption and spiritually corrosive nature of empire will seep into our Eden, and will soil it and spoil it. Then we will be faced with a choice…we can either decide to tell the Truth, or we can continue to lie, most notably, to ourselves. The road to Golgotha begins in Eden, with a stopover in Gethsemane, and we all eventually make that journey whether we want to or not. The difference between Franz Jagerstatter and the rest of us, is that he maintained his integrity and his humanity while he made that excruciating trip to judgement day. As the film ponders the “comfortable Christ”, a bourgeois creature created by the capitalists class that populates and animates American empire, that gives permission to the masses to live a soft and spiritually lazy existence, I couldn’t help but think to my own slovenly spirituality and its permissive banality. My flaccid Catholic education and the spiritually barren, co-opted by empire, Church that indoctrinated me with it, did not prepare me to live as profoundly and courageously as Franz Jagerstatter, never mind as Christ, so I have no doubt I would fail the same test he faced if put to it.

In conclusion, A Hidden Life, despite its few minor flaws, is must see for cinephiles, cinematically literate Catholics and Malick fans. For those with more conventional tastes, A Hidden Life is probably a bridge too far. I wish everyone would see this movie and could understand this movie as it speaks so insightfully to the time in which we live, but I am self-aware enough to understand that the cinematic language Malick speaks can be impenetrable to many, but glorious to those that can decipher it.

©2019