Beltmann

Netflix's The Good Nurse offers proof that sometimes good performances aren't enough. There's nothing wrong with the way Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne bring to life the true crime story of a night nurse who suspects that her new coworker has poisoned a patient. But we all know from the headlines that serial killer Charles Cullen confessed to dozens of murders at several hospitals and most likely killed hundreds more, which renders inert the movie's main dramatic gear: Will Chastain elicit a confession from Redmayne? There is no edginess, no suspense as the answer evolves. I was interested in The Good Nurse mostly for director Tobias Lindholm, who located real tension in A Hijacking and internal complexity in A War. Unfortunately, that urgency completely escapes him here. The listlessness is exacerbated by the monotonous cinematography that turns every shot into dull, colorless, murky sludge. This commonplace visual design stopped looking like an aesthetic choice a long time ago--now it just looks lazy, cheap, and ugly.
 

22 hours ago, calvino said:

Yesterday, I watched Slacker  (Linklater's 1990 movie)

Slacker always peters out for me, but I've seen it countless times and keep going back to it. It's one of those early '90s movies that proved extremely formative and inspiring for this burgeoning cinephile, pushing me deeper into movie love.

On 2/24/2023 at 10:10 AM, TCP said:

However, Singles was a cinematic masterpiece compared to another movie I also watched on the same night:

So true. Singles hasn't dated well, and Empire Records has always been total cringe. I rewatched the latter not too long ago just to see if I had been unfair way back when. Nah.

I enjoyed Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes, which opens with a couple arriving at a mysterious German castle. What begins as a funny pastiche of '60s Eurohorror splinters into something entirely different, and the result becomes a meta experiment that blurs the line between reality, make-believe, the supernatural and movies. The introduction of a second couple creates thematic ripples between the various layers. All that doubling plays simultaneously as a parody of European art cinema and a sincere replica. There's also a practical gore effect that memorably exists, um, in the realm of the senses.

It’s been nearly 30 years since I last watched Ace in the Hole, which stars Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, an unprincipled journalist who exploits Leo, a local man stuck in a collapsed cave, for self-serving headlines. It's no surprise to see that Billy Wilder's 1951 film noir has lost none of its cynicism, savagery, and relevance. This time around I was especially struck by how the pocket-sized hole that traps Leo is used in relation to other locations in the film. The movie opens by placing Tatum in his own parallel series of claustrophobic spaces, including a broken convertible, a modest newsroom where he begs for a job, another car that obviously travels only via rear projection, a narrow mountain tunnel where he searches for Leo, and a small, empty diner where he calls his editor, seen through a window that frames him as a tiny, conniving man.

At the 55-minute mark, however, there’s a closeup of Tatum that slowly fades to black. What follows, I think, is perhaps the most pivotal shot in the movie. Positioned on the top of the mountain, the camera at first captures only a hulking drill grinding its black gears, but when the camera pans toward the steep slope, a much larger crew of workers is revealed. Then, startlingly, the camera refuses to slow, and we glimpse a massive pipe being hoisted up the mountainside. Below, at the base, there is a parking lot crowded by vehicles, moving trucks, and rows of congregating people. Without cutting, the camera tilts to reveal the sheer scale of the gathering, with tents, buses, and humming roadways in the distance. In this moment, the film broadens its visual canvas, replacing tiny spaces and rear projection with real locations, wide vistas, and a towering mountain. In this moment, the desperate, scoop-hungry Tatum is freed from his confined cell of obscurity and the effort to rescue Leo explodes into a large-scale, frenzied spectacle that will prove fruitful for the media, the capitalists, the politicians, and the crowd. Meanwhile, Leo’s cramped hole never changes. The exploitation keeps expanding, but we keep returning to that airless cavity, and that juxtaposition only becomes more conspicuous--and clarifying--as the story marches toward its inevitable conclusion.
 

29 minutes ago, chuckrh said:

Not bad. Mindless entertainment but pretty well done. Just the thing for a stormy day.

Listen, at one point while watching Plane I shouted "Holy BALLS!" with a big smile on my face except it wasn't "balls" it was something else and I don't know what more we need from a January action movie but now I'm mad that I didn't get more popcorn.

Today I saw Knock at the Cabin Door. There's pleasure to be had in watching M. Night Shyamalan direct the heck out of this genre exercise--look at that rack focus!--but all that technical mastery is at the service of something both phony and overly simplistic. The changes made to the ending of the source novel signal just how far Shyamalan was willing to go to remove any kind of ambiguity, moral inquiry or philosophical wrangling. But it's worse than that. To keep this spoiler-free, I'll merely add that on an allegorical level, what this reactionary movie says about marginalized folks, obedience, faith, and sacrifice is risible, at least to these eyes.

After revisiting Everything Everywhere All at Once, I remain impressed, exhausted, and little unsure. It would be glib to say the movie heralds a new kind of leading-edge cinema, one that reflects the age of inexpensive technology, digital ingenuity, multitasking, gaming, the Internet, and short-burst content like TikTok videos liberated from the usual constraints of composition and narrative. After all, we’ve been headed down this path for 25 years; the forward march contains works as disparate as Run Lola Run, Jackass, Requiem for a Dream, Tarnation, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Unfriended, Athena and Bo Burnham: Inside. Unlike the advent of sound, this technical shift has been gradual rather than abrupt, but it has proven to be equally seismic. What might be new is the arrival of an entire generation of young creators for whom this rethinking of film grammar is no longer new. They were raised on it, so it’s how they are hard-wired. By speaking this new film language more eloquently than its predecessors--it locates substance in its style--Everything Everywhere All at Once may one day be recognized as a turning point, the moment when the new ways of thinking began to coalesce into a prevailing aesthetic. Will it prove to be a revolution or a devolution? Time will tell.

At the risk of recency bias, I’m going to declare Mohammad Reza Aslani’s Chess of the Wind one of the greatest movies ever made. Too bold? Maybe. Might the latest Sight & Sound poll have me overthinking what it means to belong to the canon? Perhaps. But my mind can’t stop replaying this forgotten Iranian marvel that now has an epic reclamation story to join its towering artistic ambition. Brazenly sabotaged by rivals upon its 1976 release, and then banned after the ‘79 Islamic revolution, the movie was believed lost forever. Then, in an impossibly Hollywood-like twist, Aslani’s son chanced upon the movie’s reels in a junk shop in 2014. After a long restoration process, the movie finally received international recognition in 2020. I saw it thanks to its inclusion on Criterion’s most recent installment of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project.

Set inside a sprawling mansion in 1920s Tehran, the story is easy to follow: After the estate’s matriarch dies, her oily husband Hadji believes he is the rightful heir to the family fortune. But her ailing daughter Aghdas, mourning from the confines of a large wooden wheelchair, rejects Hadji as both a member of the family and as the estate owner. What ensues is a series of usurping plots that involve Hadji, Aghdas, and several other schemers. The seductive drama--greed, parlor intrigue, secret lovers, murder--plays out like Shakespeare in miniature, but what elevates the melodrama is the way Aslani uses it all to forge a powerful, allegorical critique of the cultural hierarchies and collapsing values of Iran in the Seventies.

Meanwhile, Aslani commands the medium like a master (think Kubrick, Visconti, Bresson, Bergman). The film is a stylistic triumph filled with gliding cameras, ravishing compositions, elegant symmetries, striking set designs, expressive aural choices and rigorous symbols--in particular, the mansion’s central staircases tell us who intends to ascend or destroy the hierarchy, and Aghdas’ wheelchair might be a throne that each character, in turn, longs to make their own. The luxurious beauty of the estate is depicted in familiar ways, including heavy candlelight, but there’s real shock when the movie leads viewers to the mansion’s dungeon-like lower levels and Aslani unleashes a fiery, hellish vision of reds and blacks, underscored by the same sinister music that had been warning viewers of impending calamity but now goes further, suggesting there are demons in the shadows. For a movie that has come back from the dead, speaking to us from beyond, this otherworldly metaphor could not be more fitting.
 

Here's my problem with the ending of Emily the Criminal: It's the ending of a much dumber movie than the one it purports to be, and a much dumber movie than the one we've been watching. Let me dive into the weeds simply by asking some questions. Spoilers ahead.

Why does Emily not at least tie up Khalil before leaving the premises? Why does she simply leave Youcef to die in the car? Just moments earlier, she chose to leave a phone for her injured enemy Khalil to call for help, so why doesn't she also give the same grace to her beloved partner? The scene doesn't work as a wrenching either-or scenario; Emily has options to help Youcef, including using the payphone that she sits near.

Why do the police raid her apartment with guns drawn? To their knowledge, they are investigating a non-lethal burglary, not a hardboiled Colombian drug lord.

At which bank can you empty a multi-million dollar bank account in cash withdrawals overnight? We'll have to ask Khalil.

How does Emily escape to what appears to be Ecuador with nothing but a bag of cash? How does she set up the fraud ring with almost zero local connections? How would this even work? All of her stolen credit card numbers are American and will invite scrutiny. How is she getting more numbers? Youcef never taught her that part of the business and his link-up is surely on the run now that the business has been blown up and is being investigated.

Why is Emily paying her South American employees the same rate that was offered to criminals in Los Angeles? How many stores in a picturesque seaside town are selling upscale HDTVs? How many buyers for stolen high-end TVs are there in such a town? How, exactly, does this business plan make sense?

If it were a worse movie, that ending might be forgivable. I mean, it is indeed cool. But what made Emily the Criminal better than average was its interest in carefully elucidating the procedural details of Emily's new career. That's why it's so jarring, and disappointing, to witness the movie throw that attention to detail aside to deliver a cool ending that better suits a direct-to-DVD enterprise.

Happy New Year, everyone! What are your most anticipated movies for 2023? Me, I'm eager for the new Scorsese.

Last week I showed Kelly Reichardt's "Wendy and Lucy," which is heavily influenced by Italian Neorealism, to my film students. High schoolers always find this minimalist movie challenging, for obvious reasons. I'll never forget the day, though, when one of my quietest students lingered after class to tearfully thank me for showing it. She told me that "Wendy and Lucy" was the best movie she ever saw, because it was the first movie that truly understood her life and her family's challenges. She didn't know such movies even existed, and she was grateful to be seen in a way that once seemed unthinkable. Some teens have lived experiences that lead them to, say, John Hughes. They can use him. Other teens have lived experiences that lead them to Kelly Reichardt. They need her.

Perhaps you must have personal experience (like my student, I was raised in abject poverty) to grasp how this masterpiece acutely conveys the fears and vulnerabilities associated with feeling that you are perpetually near a precipice.
 

After a quick glance, I see that Cruel Country has placed on the year-best lists for the outlets listed below. Any others out there?

Ultimate Classic Rock (#6)

Uncut (#6)

Variety - Chris Willman (#10)

I'm normally willing to go to great lengths to suspend disbelief, but the ending of Emily the Criminal zooms way past my breaking point. It's a crock. Which is a shame, since the rest of this low-key thriller, carried exclusively by Aubrey Plaza's terrific performance, bitterly conveys something true about the traps of modern-day American capitalism.

I found Neptune Frost rather insufferable, but I’m still forever grateful for these words of wisdom: “One who swallows a whole coconut trusts his anus.”

In 1989, the 15-year-old me loved Jerry Lee Lewis, Dennis Quaid, and Winona Ryder, so I loved this movie, too. The 15-year-old me also couldn't see that the movie's point-of-view, which positions Lewis as a defiant champion of non-conformity, is not just relentlessly cartoonish but also irredeemably uncritical about its main dramatic turn. The movie's bullshit perspective on Lewis' marriage to the 13-year-old Myra Gale Brown seems to think the only great wrong was how this unfettered romantic was so misunderstood by the puritanical public, which tragically damaged the marriage but also unfairly damaged Lewis' career. Presenting Lewis as a victim akin to a Civil Rights martyr--when he drives through town with former fans literally wagging their finger at him, you practically expect "We Shall Overcome" to swell on the soundtrack--is one of the most batshit notions in any biopic ever. Tellingly, the movie ends by celebrating Myra's delivery of their child and then presenting Lewis' triumphant, fiery return to the stage without ever explaining how he survived the scandal or acknowledging that his marriage to Myra would be over by 1970.

That aside, the music slays.
 

I last viewed this playful, ruminative documentary in 2017, before Agnès Varda's death and before I started needing eye injections similar to those Varda receives in the film.

While visiting the grave of Henry Cartier-Bresson, Varda's co-director JR asks her whether she fears death.

"I don't think I'm afraid, but... I might be at the end," the 88-year-old Varda says. "I'm looking forward to it."

"Really, why?"

"Because that'll be that."

I think about this exchange a lot.
 

Right now Decision to Leave is one of my favorites of the year. It surprised me--for a Park Chan-Wook noir about obsession, it is weirdly devoid of cynicism, carnality, and lurid violence--but only in ways that made it better than expected. One of the things that I liked was the constant presence of technology, and how digital devices became inextricably linked to the investigation, the romantic bonding, and the larger ideas related to communication. I also cherished the creative editing, which often generated ingenious, funny transitions. Best of all, though, is how it reaches for deep feeling; these two characters bond on a soul level that creates genuine intimacy and yearning. That's exactly why the overpowering finale, which swings for the fences, earns its tragic poetry.
 

Lots of people seem to be misreading The Fabelmans as Steven Spielberg’s romanticized version of "Here's why I love movies and how making them helped me process trauma." Sure, that's in the movie (and handled well, in my opinion), but what elevates the movie is how it goes far beyond that, interrogating the meaning of movies in a reflective and at times regretful way. There's much more ambivalence, and thought, in The Fabelmans than in just about any other Spielberg movie.

Imagine being the kind of person unwilling to surrender to what Spielberg does here. True, cynicism has no place in this sentimental universe, but Spielberg has always operated in that register at a very high level, and there is virtue in those kinds of stories.

In fact, The Fabelmans is precisely the kind of broad-brush yet acute storytelling that has persuaded generations of moviegoers from the Thirties onward to fall in love with the movies. That’s partially the subject of The Fabelmans, and there is indeed magic in its evocation of how and why art enthralls us and can be significant facts in our lives, but it’s also a movie that reaches deeper: Its real subject is the way using the language of cinema transcends mere entertainment; after all, the recording and manipulation of the moving image carries both power and pitfalls, truth and lies, joys and responsibilities, ecstasy and danger. This is an autobiographical portrait of a family told with an unparalleled technical mastery--some choices made me gasp in pleasure--that is also in constant conversation with itself about how to refract memories in a way that somehow sustains honesty, affection, and entertainment value all at once.

Part of that conversation involves deciding which historical details to include and which to exclude. That ends up raising questions about how truthful Spielberg has been about his mother and father, and for some viewers that central mystery might make or break the picture. For me, though, the answers to those questions are beside the point. What matters to me is that the interplay between memory, forgiveness, and movie love has resulted in one of Spielberg’s most searching and human stories, one shot through with such an abiding sense of empathy that I felt fully invested in these characters and their entanglements. I loved The Fabelmans because, well, I loved the Fabelmans.
 

Agree with much of what was said here regarding Glass Onion, which strikes me as a better, angrier satirical takedown of the super-rich than either Triangle of Sadness or The Menu. It's also spooky as hell: How did Rian Johnson make a movie during the summer of 2021 that is a pitch-perfect allegory for last week's Elon Musk headlines?

12 Angry Men was an Election Day choice, watched with my 14-year-old. I've seen this movie countless times, and of course it exists as a veneration of American rational justice and a warning about how that justice is alarmingly fragile. But this viewing is the first time I've felt that the movie's primary value might be in laying bare the channel that exists between white American masculinity and ingrained bigotry.

There’s an unintended value, too, in Argentina, 1985, a courtroom drama about the prosecutors tasked with bringing to justice the civil and military leaders who kidnapped, tortured, and murdered citizens as agents of Argentina’s dictatorship that ended in 1983. This case was known as the Trial of the Juntas, and the movie zips through events via a conventional play-by-play structure. Still, it’s much less showy than, say, The Trial of the Chicago 7, which gives the movie a solemn clarity of purpose. Director Santiago Mitre willingly trades grandstanding scenes for quiet moral rectitude, and the result is both honorable and, to be honest, a little too muted. But watching this story as an American in 2022, it’s easy to find bright, blinking red warning lights in its portrait of a nation grappling with how to drive back fascism in a time of sharp political division and cruel, remorseless leaders with cruel, remorseless followers.
 

I can't explain why I've never seen Valley Girl until now, since it's totally the kind of thing I would have had on repeat as a teen in the mid '80s, rotating between VHS tapes of Better Off Dead and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It arrived on the scene just as the obsession with all things Valley was winding down--that national fever was grody to the max, fer shure--but it was just in time to capture the era's airy, adorkable don't-take-it-too-seriously vibe. Fittingly, Cage's character is way too earnest to really register as an outsider punk; he's basically a heartsick romantic with awesome hair. Chest hair, that is.

Apart from one regrettable song that has, um, not dated well at all, the soundtrack is a trove of bitchin' '80s New Wave and power pop and Coolidge makes a strong case that perhaps every montage in a teen comedy ought to use Modern English's "I Melt with You," even though it's a song about dying in atomic war or maybe precisely because it's a song about dying in atomic war, because there is no better metaphor for teen romance. Adolescence? Gag me with a spoon.

(Watched because I just started reading The Age of Cage, by Keith Phipps.)
 

Clerks III feels like an artist lost inside his own preoccupations; these days, the only subject that seems to interest Kevin Smith is his own past as a filmmaker. How many layers of meta can Smith stack into one movie? That’s probably a question for his therapist, especially given how Clerks III expresses how losing your edge to nostalgia, and converting your youthful cynicism into middle-aged generosity, betrays a deep-seated fear of mortality. The movie is by a wide margin the softest, most heartfelt entry in the series and perhaps the entire View Askew universe, which is not to say it’s a mature work. It’s not. But after spending 28 years with these characters, I’d be lying if I said Clerks III didn’t work me over at times.
 

Rob Zombie's spin on The Munsters is far more watchable than its noxious trailer. He aims for a quirky brew of satire, cracked-mirror sitcom, and affectionate pastiche that takes a while to coagulate. I’m not sure it ever reaches “good,” but there’s no doubt it’s a personal, peculiar work that sometimes feels like the best possible movie adaptation of your neighbor's cheesiest Halloween yard decorations.
 

This morning I revisited Halloween Kills (2021) as a refresher prior to Halloween Ends, and I responded much more favorably, largely because this time I was better able to separate the movie's minor achievements from its major ambitions. David Gordon Green's approach to the franchise has obvious merits--smart casting, superior performances, skillful mise-en-scene--that have made Michael Myers genuinely scary for the first time since 1978. (For me, Rob Zombie's Michael was interesting, but not scary.)

Yet Green also asks his entries to be judged by a loftier measure than whether it outpaces, say, Halloween: Resurrection, which explains why Halloween Kills is finally so exasperating. Green has Statements to Make, but the characters stop being smart, violating everything we've been told about them, and worse, the metaphors stop being metaphors, turning everything into thematic mush. Still, for this viewing I was prepared for that maddening who's-the-real-monster haze, which made it easier to simply concentrate on the slasher mechanics, and on that nuts-and-bolts level, there's a lot to admire. There are moments here that leave a mark, and that's not nothing.