Two nights ago and for the sixth or seventh time, I re-watched ‘s Moonlighting (’82). Not on Bluray but on the Criterion Channel. Excellent HD. I regard this 41 year-old film as a total comfort watch. It gives me just as much pleasure as, say, the first 45 minutes of The Guns of Navarone, which I never watch beyond the 45-minute mark, or past the point of the team scaling the 200-foot cliff in the driving rain + Anthony Quayle breaking his leg + Anthony Quinn saying “one bullet now — better for him, better for us.”

Four years ago (4.16.19): Moonlighting (’82) is a finely chiselled, dead brilliant drama about four Polish guys (led by Jeremy Irons‘ “Nowak”) renovating their boss’s London flat during the time of the Solidarity crackdown in Poland.

Very matter of fact, very specific and situational but at the same time a political allegory that sticks the landing. As perfectly made as this kind of thing can be.

I love that moment when Jeremy Irons is lying on his bed and staring at a photo of his girlfriend / wife (Jenny Seagrove) and suddenly she seems to come alive within the frame, very slightly and somewhat erotically.

In a four-year-old riff I repeated the old saw about the world being divided into two camps — those who hear Moonlighting and think of Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd, and those who think of Skolimowski and Irons and Jenny Seagrove and that ending with those shopping carts crashing and sliding downhill.

There were 31 comments from the HE community; 27 were about how cool the TV show was. I rest my case.

“Well, what was your latest ‘preneur’”

“She threw up in her mask. Now cut the bullshit, please. Just say it. She threw up in her mask.”

“Don’t be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked, but never common.”

“Now, very simply, is he there or is he not fucking there?”

“I’m Shiva, the god of death.”

“There’s nothing like a love song to give you a good laugh.”

“”You don’t understand. There’s nothing…there’s nothing there. There’s nothing there.”

“You’re greedy, unfeeling, inept, indifferent, self-inflating and unconscionably profitable. Besides that, I have nothing against you. I’m sure you play a helluva game of golf.”

/

Legendary dp Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, The Conformist, The Last Emperor) is deploring a recent decision by Cannes topper Thierry Fremaux to not present Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off two weeks hence. Storaro shot Allen’s French-language film last year in Paris.

The quote comes from Jordan Ruimy’s World of Reel by way of Italy’s quotidiano.net.

“I am scandalized and indignant that Cannes has chosen not to present [Woody’s] latest film, all because of the accusations made by his wife Mia Farrow and her daughter Dylan,” Storaro said. “Need I remind everyone that Woody has already been acquitted of these charges twice? This #MeToo obsession continues [to our general misfortune]. Yes, it is bringing real systemic issues to light, but it’s also doing a lot of unjust damage. It’s a witch hunt that goes beyond the bounds of common sense.”

Storaro emphasized that Allen “deserves the Croisette” and would be there imminently if not for Fremaux’s political squeamishness.

2023 is one-third over, and so before Cannes begins and especially before the summer months bring their usual empty-gas-tank feeling, it’s time for HE’s list of the year’s finest and fullest films so far — The Covenant, Air, Close, Beau Is Afraid, The Lost King, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Palm Trees and Power Lines and The Son.

Yes, I’ve chosen only eight — four or five that really make the grade and three or four that deserve to be called respectably sturdy.

The overall tally could actually be nine if I include Paul Schrader‘s reasonably decent Master Gardener, which I saw last September during the ’22 New York Film Festival. (I’ll post my review sometime before the end of next week.)

1. I’m surprised to be saying that HE’s choice for the most engaging film of 2023 is Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (MGM, 4.21), especially given my consistent, less-than-adoring opinion of Ritchie over the last 20-odd years, and especially given his descent into the slick hack realm after Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (’98). Here’s my Covenant review, posted only a couple of weeks ago.

2. My second favorite is Ben Affleck‘s Air (Amazon), which I reviewed on 3.22.23. Okay, I should’ve given it an 8 grade rather than an 8.5 or 9. I re-watched it a second time in a local theatre and was still satisfied. I’m planning to watch it again tonight with subtitles.

3. In my mind Lukas Dhont‘s Close, a masterfully finessed adolescent love tragedy, is a 2022 film, as I first saw it a year ago at the Cannes Film Festival. I reviewed it on 5.27.22. It technically opened on 1.27.23.

4. I caught Ari Aster‘s Beau Is Afraid (A24) on 4.12.23, and I came away convinced that it’s a loopy knockout — one of the most refreshingly surreal and Fellini-esque crazy films that anyone’s seen this century. I understand why some might hate the fact that Beau doesn’t reassure or fill in the gaps and motivations or explain itself much, but it’s definitely a serving of a goblet of fine madness. HE’s review ran on 4.12.23.

5. Stephen Frears‘ The Lost King (IFC, 3.24) was, for me, a delightful surprise, given the 78% Rotten Tomatoes score. It made me feel engaged, moderately aroused and well taken care of. My review ran on 3.24.23.

6. Steven Soderbergh‘s Magic Mike’s Last Dance felt like another welcome surprise. My review hit on 2.12.23.

7. Jamie Dack‘s Palm Trees and Power Lines is one of bravest, chilliest and most carefully rendered sexual horror films I’ve ever seen. Not an easy sit but coldly riveting, especially during the second half. I first saw it in January ’22 under the aegis of that year’s Sundance Film Festival. HE’s review appeared on 3.2.23.

8. Florian Zeller‘s The Son (Sony Pictures Classics, 1.20.23) didn’t exactly knock me out or rattle my soul, and it certainly has a problematic ending, or so I decided as I was driving home. Directed and co-written by Zeller with Christopher Hampton. Hugh Jackman‘s brief scene with his cold bastard of a dad, played by Anthony Hopkins, is the standout. Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Hugh Quarshie.

[Spoken on 9.30.62 in response to the James Meredith situation at the University of Mississippi / 1:24 to 2:20] “Even among law-abiding citizens, few laws are universally loved.  But [among a decently behaved Democratic citizenry] they are uniformly respected and not resisted. 

“Americans, in short, are free to disagree with the law, but not to disobey it.  No man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law.

“If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men, by force or threat of force, could long deny the demands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors.”

After debuting at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Christian Mungiu‘s R.M.N. is finally starting to play commercially. It’ll open Friday (5.5.) at HE’s own Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, where I’ll be catching a 7:30 pm show.

From HE’s paywalled review, “Do Bears Shit In the Woods?“, posted on 5.22.22: The meaning of the title of R.M.N., the latest film by the great Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu, is never revealed, or it wasn’t to me during last night’s Salle Debussy screening.

The Wiki page says that Mungiu “named the film after an acronym for rezonanța magnetica nucleara ** (‘nuclear magnetic resonance’) as the film is ‘an investigation of the brain, a brain scan trying to detect things below the surface.'”

So the film is basically about scanning the small-town minds of the residents of Recia***, a commune located in Transylvania, which most of us still associate with Dracula.

But the underlying focus isn’t vampires but racist xenophobes who fear Middle Eastern immigrants and more specifically two gentle fellows from Sri Lanka who’ve been hired to work at a local bakery.

It takes a while for the racism to emerge front and center, but a metaphorical representation is the nub of it — a phantom that lurks in the surrounding woods and more particularly within.

The phantom manifests three times — (a) in the opening scene in which the small son of Matthias (Marin Grigore), an unemployed slaughterhouse worker, is spooked by its off-screen presence while walking in the woods, (b) in the third act when a significant characters hangs himself (also in the woods), and (c) at the very end when four or five bears are spotted by Matthias after nightfall (ditto).

R.M.N. is a meditative slow-burn parable that you’ll either get or you won’t, but there’s no missing the brilliance of a one-shot town hall meeting in which the locals are demanding that the Sri Lankans be expelled from the community.

The shot lasts for roughly 17 minutes, and it’s all fast, bickering dialogue, simultaneously burrowing into the ignorance of the townies while building and deepening and man-oh-man…it’s so fucking great that I said to myself “this is it…this is what my Cristian Mungiu fixes are all about, and thank the Lords of Cannes for allowing me, a traveller from the states, to absorb this in my well-cushioned theatre seat.

The build-up narrative is about Matthias and his mute son Rudi (Mark Blenyesi), his resentful ex-wife Ana (Macrina Bârlădeanu) and Csilla, a passionate, kind-hearted bakery manager and cello player (Judith State) whom Matthias has an undefined sexual relationship with. He never says he actually “loves” her although he keeps returning to her home for solace and whatnot.

Secondary characters include the bakery owner, Mrs. Denes (Orsolya Moldován), and the local priest, Papa Otto (Andrei Finți), and a sizable gathering of anxious, agitated citizens who are basically the local reps of the Mississippi Burning club.

I was going to throw a little snark by alluding to Gene Wilder’s description of the townspeople of Blazing Saddles — “Simple people, people of the land, common clay…you know, morons.”

A certain summer film that I won’t identify has sparked an “uh-oh” research screening reaction. I’m posting only to repeat a reader’s reaction to same. Here’s how the reader, a careless writer and clumsy phraser named “Sandy“, expressed himself:

“I think [for the] first time in my life I am going to do this. If this film gets good reviews, I’ll skip it in theatres and maybe catch it on streaming later. But if it gets [really] bad reviews, I might go to watch it in a theatre just to see how cringe it is.”

Caveat emptor comment from website host #1: “All I know is that the tide has slightly turned. I’ve been noticing more negative reactions than [ones from] the initial first screening back in February. That’s not necessarily saying much as these screenings tend to not always be accurate about a film’s quality. Also, critics and audiences don’t always agree.”

Those last seven words say a mouthful, you bet. These days critics and audiences rarely agree when an allegedly daring, imaginative, high-concept movie comes along. While Joe Popcorn types will say what they say without much pretension or equivocation, Maoist foo-foo critics almost always drop to their knees in praise of the audacity of the creator…the expanding of cinematic or stylistic boundaries, oh joy!

Has there been a time like this since the launch of commercial feature-length cinema 108 years ago? I wonder. The vast majority of professional critics these days (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic) have shown themselves time and again to be tongue-bath whores. 85% or 90%, I mean.

Caveat emptor comment #2: “I’ve noticed, based on these last two reactions I posted, and other people I’ve spoken to, that the film’s progressive themes are layered on a tad too thickly. This is part of the reason why I believe [Maoist] critics might be kind to this film, no matter how messy it turns out to be.”