reviews

Director friend who finally saw Parasite two or three days ago: “I thought Parasite started off quite well. It was intriguing, darkly comedic, and well-paced. Even when it got into the house for an extended period of time, I never felt bored.

“As I was watching the film, I started wondering ‘where have I seen this kind of film before?’ Where have I seen the class struggle play out in this kind of suspenseful fashion? I thought first of Akira Kurosawa’s kidnapping drama, High and Low. The rich old man on top of the hill overlooking the squalor down below and the kidnapper who resides there, who infiltrates his life sanf wants to take away his spoils…but that was much too serious a film while Parasite was definitely more satirical and comedic.

“Then it hit me…of course, Bunuel! The great Don Luis was always mocking the upper classes using his acerbic wit and absurdist point of view.

Here are some Bunuel homages/references from Parasite:

1. Viridiana. To me, this is the most obvious one. The Mother figure, like Viridiana, is described as “simple” and also “gullible”. The most visually telling scene is when the rich family goes camping leaving the servant family to the house where they of course make a mess of things. This is shown in Viridiana when the peasants take over the household of the dead Uncle and begin to defile it (with the infamous Last Supper scene).

2. Exterminating Angel. The husband kept in the basement seems a very strange plot device but that’s what sets in motion the entire second half of the film. In Bunuel’s film it’s the bourgeoise and upper class folks who can’t find their way out the house and soon begin to resort to their basest natures. This is what happens to the poor husband who seems to accept his place in the house and can’t leave either (though he’s more restricted by his prison-like existence). When he does “escape” at the end it’s to wreck vengeance but not on the wealthy patriarch (who he seems to strangely worship) but on the conniving family members.

3. Diary of a Chambermaid. Although less known as his more audacious films, this one has a direct plot parallel with Jeanne Moreau as the lower class maid taking a job with a rich family to manipulate her way to a higher station in life by working for a wealthy family of “hypocrites and perverts” (not my quote).

4. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. This would be a comparative film in overall tone before it goes off the rails in the final act. I suppose just as Bunuel couldn’t help himself with his subversive atheistic jabs at the Church, Boon Jong Ho can’t help himself but to revel in gory confrontations.

I will agree that the one sloppy bit of plot construction is letting the fired maid back in the house during the rainstorm. That could’ve been fixed very easily but without it there would be no third act…still, could have been an easy fix.

Catholicism and the Pope are concepts that millions still cling to worldwide. Because they offer a feeling of steadiness and security in a tumbling, tumultuous world. Included among the faithful, one presumes, are thousands of movie-worshipping Catholics, and so Fernando Meirelles and Anthony McCarten‘s The Two Popes (Netflix, 11.27) is, not surprisingly, faring well as a potential Best Picture nominee. The fact that it won the Audience Award at the 2019 Middleburg Film Festival is an indication of this.

I saw The Two Popes for the second time last night, and I felt slightly more charmed and moved than I did during my initial viewing in Telluride.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for the film, and particularly for McCarten’s script (which is based on McCarten’s 2017 play, The Pope). In my humble opinion McCarten should definitely be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. And it seems increasingly likely that Jonathan Pryce‘s performance as the future Pope Francis (aka Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio) will be Best Actor-nominated as well.

But honestly? I still feel emotionally removed from The Two Popes (as I wrote in my 9.1.19 Telluride review). Because I don’t feel any sort of kinship, much less a profound one, with the Catholic Church. I never have and I never will.

I don’t believe in holiness. I don’t believe in the Vatican carnival. I don’t believe in robes. I don’t believe in red shoes. I believe in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes and in Charlton Heston‘s performance in The Agony and the Ecstasy, but I haven’t the slightest belief in those Vatican City guard uniforms or the mitre or the scepter of any of the theatrical trappings. I believe in humanity and simplicity. I’m not exactly saying that I believe in Pope Lenny more than Pope Francis, but in a way I kind of do. Almost.

I don’t believe in the Bible…not really. I certainly don’t believe in celibacy for priests, and I despise the thousands of priests who’ve molested children worldwide and the countless bishops and cardinals who’ve protected them from the consequences. I believe that women should definitely be admitted into the priesthood. And while I understand and respect the fact that millions believe in the Catholic mission and its hierarchy, I myself don’t. Catholicism is more against things than for them.

“Robe, Mitre, Scepter,” posted from Telluride on 9.1.19:

Fernando Meirelles‘ The Two Popes is an interesting, mildly appealing two-hander as far as it goes. I had serious trouble with the refrigator temps as I watched, but I probably would have felt…well, somewhere between faintly underwhelmed and respectfully attentive even under the best of conditions.

It’s a wise, intelligent, non-preachy examination of conservative vs progressive mindsets (focused on an imagined, drawn-out discussion between Anthony Hopkins‘ Pope Benedict and Jonathan Pryce‘s Pope Francis a few years back) in a rapidly convulsing world, and I could tell from the get-go that Anthony McCarten‘s script is choicely phrased and nicely honed. But I couldn’t feel much arousal. I sat, listened and pondered, but nothing ignited. Well, not much.

Possibly on some level because I’ve never felt the slightest rapport with the Catholic church, and because for the last 20 or 30 years I’ve thought of it in Spotlight terms, for the most part.

I love that Pope Francis (formerly or fundamentally Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina) is a humanist and a humanitarian with simple tastes, and I was delighted when he jerked his hand away when Donald Trump tried to initiate a touchy-flicky thing a couple of years ago. And I’m certainly down with any film in which two senior religious heavyweights discuss the Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby” and Abbey Road, etc.

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Yesterday afternoon I finally saw Craig Brewer and Eddie Murphy‘s Dolemite Is My Name (Netflix, currently streaming). Loved it, very cool, super-likable, at times hilarious. Call it a reconsecration of the Larry Karaszewski-Scott Alexander brand, and a definite bounce-back for Brewer and especially Murphy.

Let’s clearly understand that first and foremost this is a Scott and Larry film, and is basically a blaxploitation version of Ed Wood — same spirit, same or similar arc for the main character, same pluck and never-say-die determination, same indifference to (or an inability to recognize) the basic concept of quality, same naive but dedicated crew of co-conspirators.

The difference between Ed Wood and Dolemite is that a sizable African-American audience responds with enthusiasm and joy to the crappy cinematic creations of the real-life Rudy Ray Moore (played by Murphy) while nearly everyone despised Plan 9 For Outer Space (except for purveyors of camp a decade or two later).

The slight downside is that Dolemite Is My Name doesn’t have its own Bela Lugosi character, much less someone like Martin Landau portraying him, and it doesn’t have a facsimile of that gay Bill Murray character.

Then again Ed Wood didn’t have the open-hearted Lady Nancy Reed (played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Dolemite is My Name is a tribute to tenacity and one man’s relentless belief in himself, despite his utter lack of talent and/or inspiration, and especially his absolute lack of respect for the craft of cinema, let alone any artistic potential.

Shitty, low-rent filmmaker makes good because he won’t quit, and because people with no taste ** like what he’s selling!

The funniest scene, for me, is when Rudy and his Dolemite homies are reading the initjal reviews. One critic, Earl Calloway of the Chicago Defender, wrote that “Dolemite is not fit for a blind dog to see…it’s coarse, bold, crude, and rude.” For whatever reason I started laughing uncontrollably when I heard this, and I’m what you might call an LQTM type.

Another critic called it “Dull-emite.”

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Posted 4 and 2/3 years ago, on 4.1.15: Alex Gibney‘s All Or Nothing At All (HBO, 4.5 and 4.6), the two-part, four-hour doc on Frank Sinatra, is an intimate saga of an artist with a profound vocal gift, a legendary sense of style, a swaggering ego, an open heart when it came to friends and family, a lust for the ladies, a chip on his shoulder and a street attitude that led to certain feelings of kinship and camaraderie with mob guys.

It’s quite the loving valentine, and it makes you feel like you’re in Sinatra’s home corner every step of the way, and in this sense it’s unique — there’s never been this much love and understanding shown to Sinatra and his legend from a polished, first-class doc by a world-renowned director. It’s Gibney’s trick, of course, to make you feel that you’re not being egregiously lied to. Which of course the doc is definitely doing by omission.

What matters is that Gibney’s accumulation of lies are, at day’s end, artful. Because the doc is filled with bedrock emotional truths and echoes.

And you can’t beat the first 56 years of Sinatra’s life (’15 to ’71) for sheer emotion, Shakesperean drama, urban pizazz, ups and downs, top-of-the-world success and down-in-the-gutter career blues…a saga of an all-American, knock-around life that spanned most of the 20th Century, and one that became less and less interesting when Sinatra turned smug and gray and more-or-less Republican in the late ’60s until his death on 5.14.98 at age 82.

I was quite moved and charmed by much of it, but this is a family-approved doc that’s basically about re-igniting commercial interest in Sinatra product (CDs, films) by way of celebrating his 100th birthday, which is actually not until 12.12.15. That means it’s really friendly…a doc that is always looking to show love and understanding or at least muted affection…a highly skillful handjob as far as classy, high-end biopics go. No judgment, no impartiality…every well-known or rumored-about negative in Sinatra’s bio is finessed or explained away in some first-hand, no-big-deal fashion by Sinatra himself or by a friend, or otherwise brushed off.

In no way, shape or form does Gibney’s doc approach the tone or the attitude or the sometimes cutting observations in Gay Talese‘s “Frank Sinatra Has A Cold,” a landmark 1966 profile of the then 51-year-old singer at a vaguely downish stage in his life.

And in no way does Gibney’s doc try to get into a thumbnail view of Sinatra that author Nick Tosches ascribed to Dean Martin — “A half a mozzarella who never grew up.” All or Nothing At All is about kind, understanding thoughts and contemplations. I wouldn’t even call it “forgiving” because accusations are really never heard. But it’s quite skillful and heartening and…what, calming? Gentle, intimate, stirring…always a sense of Sinatra’s sadness and vulnerability. I’m actually thinking of watching Part One all over again.

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The night before last I was watching the first three episodes of the second season of David Fincher‘s Mindhunter. Not at home but on a large Hollywood Arclight screen, and it was quite the odd feeling — curious but so pleasurable — to watch a quietly chilling procedural that’s mostly about dialogue, dialogue and dialogue.

But always dry and succinct. Cunning and crafty and joined with a visual palette that tells you that something wicked will eventually this way come. Or is actually happening right now but hard to get the goods on, much less stop.

At first I was saying to myself “God, here I am in a mostly full theatre and we’re all just listening to razor sharp dialogue, and it’s so great to be doing this…to be part of what amounts to an almost surreal viewing experience by today’s standards.” Not just dialogue, of course, but Erik Messerschmidt‘s muted, shadowy cinematography along with some wonderfully fleet cutting by Kirk Baxter. But the talk is just wonderful — taut and crisp and on-point.

But the main element, as with season #1, is an inaudible hum of some kind…something strange and unsettling that you can’t quite put your finger on, but is there in spades every step of the way. It’s “normal” seeming but at the same time spooky. This is a signature Fincher thing, the same quietly throbbing undercurrent that made Zodiac such a deliciously creepy sit.

All nine episodes are currently watchable…binge-able, I mean…on Netlix as we speak. The first three were directed by Fincher, episodes #4 and #5 by Andrew Dominik, and #6, #7 #8 and #9 directed by Carl Franklin. The screenwriters vary from episode to episode, but the principals are Courtney Miles (credited with story or teleplay credits on seven out of nine episodes), Josh Donen (story credit on seven) and Liz Hannah (co-teleplay credit on #4, full teleplay on #6).

A Netflix rep just asked me what I thought. “Brilliant, haunting, masterful,” I replied. “Never poking or jolting viewers with conventional thriller or horror moves, but at the same time throbbing with a certain kind of under-the-surface tension.”

All you know for sure is that Fincher and colleagues won’t be resorting to the usual cops-vs.-serial killers razmatazz, and that you’ll believe absolutely everything they show and convey and fill your head with.

I love that Mindhunter #2 has been shot with a 2.2:1 aspect ratio (standard widescreen 70mm a.r., used for 70mm screenings of Apocalypse Now), and that the camera was a Red Xenomorph Dragon, and that it was shot in Dolby Vision 6K.

I love these episode summaries: (a) “The investigation zeroes in on a prime suspect who proves adept at manipulating a volatile situation to his advantage”, (b) “Bill’s devastating family situation spills over during his interview with Holden’s holy-grail subject: Charlie Manson. Wendy’s new romance heats up” and (c) “Hitting a dead end, Holden suggests a bold plan to draw the killer out. Bill’s family faces more scrutiny. Wendy chafes as her job begins to shift.” I eat this shit up.

Things begin almost immediately in the wake of season #1’s final episode, when Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) lost his composure and possibly some of his mind in the too-creepy-for-words presence of serial killer Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton). This feeds into the threat of recurring anxiety attacks plus a new Xanax prescription, which leads into Holden’s Behavioral Science Unit partners, Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) and Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), quietly worrying about his ability to handle high-stress situations.

We learn early on that BSU boss Robert Shepard (Cotter Smith) is “retiring” under duress, and that his replacement Ted Gunn (Michael Cerveris) understands the methodology and is particularly supportive of Holden, who isn’t exactly a by-the-book type and is occasionally given to following his instincts.

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Until last night I was under a vague impression that general regard for Robert Altman‘s Nashville had been sinking, and that other Altman classics — McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Player, California Split, The Long Goodbye, M.A.S.H., Thieves Like Us — had gathered more admirers. The results of Matt Zoller Seitz‘s twitter poll differ with that view. Odd but there it is.

“Withered Nashville,” posted on 12.14.13:

Two nights ago I watched the Criterion Bluray of Robert Altman‘s Nashville (’75). And guess what? It doesn’t hold up. It’s earnestly dislikable. I wanted to shut it off after the first half-hour.

It’s a typical Altmanesque grab-bag of this and that, but it’s mainly a social criticism piece about Middle-American politics, patriotism, pettiness and celebrity. The specific focus is the banal eccentricities and pretensions of the country-music industry, but for the most part the film is snide and misanthropic. Sorry, but I’m removing it from my Altman pantheon. I loved it in ’75 but I’m pretty sure I’ll never watch Nashville again. It’s failed the test of time.

In basic construction terms Nashville is about a troupe of eccentric, improvising actor-hipsters leaning on their default Left Coast impressions of Nashville’s sophisticated-hick culture and dispensing variations on a single dismissive theme: “These people are small and petty and lame and delusional.”

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Before Parasite, I’d seen four films by respected Korean director Bong Joon-ho — The Host (’06), Mother (’09), Snowpiercer (’13) and Okja (’17). My reactions were the same all along — I admired the craft and energy, didn’t believe the stories. To me it seemed obvious that Bong was more into high impact movie-ness than establishing at least a tenuous relationship between his scenarios and the terms and conditions of real life.

The darkly humorous Parasite, which I saw three weeks ago, is different. For the first time Bong allows you to half-invest in the story (co-written by himself and Han Jin-won), which offers a satiric portrait of South Korea’s haves and have-nots. Up to a point, the world of Parasite actually resembles the way things are, or at least could be. But it still feels more movie-ish than persuasive.

There’s no believing that the desperately poor Kim family (mom, dad, son, daughter), each having wangled jobs from the rich Park clan, could successfully pretend over the long run to be non-related strangers in the eyes of their employers. It’s completely reckless and stupid for the Kims to gorge on fine food and get drunk while the Parks are away on on a brief vacation, and it makes no sense to admit a resentful former employee into the home while they’re bombed. And the violent ending is absurd. But I liked it better than the previous four Bong flicks, and that’s not insignificant.

U.S. and British critics have been creaming over Bong Joon-ho films since The Host. They’re invested in this history, and will never modify their enthusiasm. All this trailer does is pass along the ecstatic Cannes reviews.

The first quarter of 2019 ends on Sunday, and I’m telling you straight and true that Kent Jones‘ Diane (IFC Films, 3.29) is easily the fullest and finest commercially released film I’ve seen so far this year. The most restrained and fittingly modest. Certainly the most recognizably human.

I wouldn’t call Diane trying or dreary — it’s not — but it certainly reminds you that life can be that from time to time, and that you really need to be tough and sharp just to survive in a rudimentary fashion, and that’s not even counting the guilt that’s been weighing you down for decades or your dicey, no-account, drug-addicted son who…no, wait, he’s a Jesus freak now. Never mind.

Comparing Diane to HE’s other big favorite, Dragged Across Concrete, is nonsensical as the cards they deal couldn’t be more different, but Jones’ film is still two or three notches ahead.

It’s one of those modest, drill-bitty, character-driven films that just reaches in and flips your light switch. It makes you feel human; it makes you care. I knew it was a keeper less than five minutes in. It has a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score, but why not 100?

The Oscar situation is always weighted against intimate, small-scaled films that open in the spring, but at the very least Diane is a guaranteed Gotham and Spirit Awards contender for Best Picture. And I can’t imagine Mary Kay Place, who plays the titular character, not being an all-but-certain contender for a Best Actress Oscar nom. Unless SAG and Academy voters take leave of their senses. Which is always a possibility.

Diane is really and truly the shit. Even if you’re a GenZ or Millennial who doesn’t want to think about what life will be like 35 or 40 years hence, it’ll still sink in. There are those, I’m presuming, who’d rather not settle into a simple Bressonian saga about the weight of responsibility and life being a hard-knocks thing a good part of the time. Or who’d rather not consider the existence of a 70-year-old New England woman who lives alone but has good friends, and who drives carefully, tries to do the right thing, works part-time in a homeless soup kitchen and has been coping with certain dark recollections for decades.

Diane is certainly a rural New England mood trip. Wake up, make the bed, shovel the snow, prepare the coffee, tidy up, get it done, visit your bum son. Late winter, melting snowdrifts, real world, limited income, older person blues, “being 70something is no picnic”, enjoy a drink now and then, my friends are dropping like flies.

All through Diane you can sense tragedy waiting to pounce, and you’re constantly preparing for a shock of some kind. Including the simple kiss of death. But it goes in a different direction.

I know that Place has been working all along, but the last time I said “whoa, she’s extra-good in this” was when she played Orson Bean‘s hard-of-hearing secretary in Being John Malkovich, which was 20 years ago. Before that it was her Meg Jones performance (i.e., the no-boyfriend single who wants to get pregnant) in The Big Chill. She’s certainly never played a lead role as substantive as Diane. So there’s your Best Actress narrative — MKP played supporting characters all her life, and then fortune smiled when Kent Jones came along.

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I was half-mesmerized by Julis Onah‘s Luce, a tautly written, convincingly performed domestic drama about racial agendas, attitudes, assumptions and expectations. Set in an affluent Virginia suburb, the film explores a racially mixed group of characters and asks what their core-level attitudes or assumptions about “Luce” (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), an adopted, African-born high school student, might be. But what it’s really doing is asking the audience these same questions.

Based on J.C. Lee’s 2013 play of the same name and co-adapted by Lee and Onah, it’s basically about uncertain or ambiguous attitudes about Luce, who may or may not be as bright, likable and reassuringly well-behaved as he projects himself to be. Or maybe the real problem is in the eyes of certain beholders.

(l. to r.) Tim Roth, director-cowriter Julis Onah, Naomi Watts, Kelvin Harrison, Jr., Octavia Spencer.

The trouble starts when Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer), a vaguely huffy, side-eyed teacher, assigns Luce to write about a historical figure but with a special encouragement to “think outside the box.” When Luce writes about a ’70s activist who flirted with terrorism, Harriett bristles and even freaks a bit. For whatever reason the notion of Luce being some kind of closet radical alarms her, and so (this struck me as weird) she decides to search his locker for possible evidence of subversion. She finds a paper bag filled with illegal fireworks.

Harriet meets Luce’s adoptive mom Amy (Naomi Watts), shows her the essay and bag of fireworks. Amy tenses about violating Luce’s privacy, but at the same time is grappling with concerns about her son, who was reared in a war-torn African nation during his first ten years, and the kind of person he may be growing into. Or perhaps is hiding behind a veneer of charm and good cheer.

Amy discusses her worries with husband Peter (Tim Roth). But when Luce comes home from school, she doesn’t speak her mind. There’s a “vibe” at the dinner table, but nobody mentions the elephant.

This is when I dropped out of Luce, and why I was only half-mesmerized. What kind of adoptive mother wouldn’t trust her son enough to be upfront about the content of a school essay or a certain paper bag, and the possible implications of these? Her reluctance to speak her mind (or uncomfortable suspicions) told me that she’s less loving and perhaps a bit more racist than even she realizes.

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A couple of days have passed since I caught Mads Brugger‘s Cold Case Hammarskjöld, and the more I think about it, the more impressive and arresting it seems. It’s actually one of the most original-feeling investigative docs I’ve ever seen.

It begins as an investigation into the 1961 plane-crash death of UN General Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld, which happened, we gradually learn, at the hands of colonialist bad guys. The film is about how Brugger, who casts himself as a kind of whimsical, not-quite-Hercule-Poirot-level investigator, and colleague Goran Bjorkdahl gradually uncover what happened, not just to Hammerskjold 58 years ago but also…actually, I’d rather not divulge.

Suffice that Brugger comes to believe (and in fact persuades) that Hammarskjöld’s plane was shot down by Belgian-British mercenary pilot Jan van Risseghem, who was apparently doing the bidding of some ghastly ogres who were angered by Hammarskjöld’s sympathy for African nativist independence movements.

But that’s hardly the end of it.

For Cold Case Hammarskjöld is anything but a straightforward, hard-hitting, get-to-the-truth doc. In fact it represents a kind of sideways shuffle approach to discovering long-buried bones and nightmares. It is, in fact, an eccentric film, and yet the things it discovers are beyond ugly.

It’s the mixture of curious whimsy and malevolent apartheid schemings (practiced decades ago by rightwing fanatics) that gives Cold Case Hammarskjöld a tone of spooky weirdness.

I haven’t time to write a longish review (a 3:30 pm screening of Luce is bearing down upon me) but Cold Case Hammarskjold is quite a stand-alone achievement. I intend to see it again at the first opportunity.

For bit by bit, testimony by testimony, Cold Case Hammarskjold uncovers a demimonde of racist, colonial evil that feels stranger and wilder than any work of espionage fiction. In part because the doc uses a mixture of evidence, memory, facts, personality, deadpan humor and conjecture to uncover what actually (or most probably) happened.

Cold Case Hammarskjöld director-writer-star Mads Brugger (l.) and investigative colleague Goran Bjorkdahl (r.).

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Like Scott Burns‘ The Report, which was acquired by Amazon after debuting in Park City two or three days ago, Gavin Hood‘s Official Secrets (Entertainment One) is a fact-based whistleblower drama about exposing shifty, lying behavior on the part of the Bush-Cheney administration in the selling and prosecution of the Iraq War.

The Report is about Senate staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) investigating, authoring and releasing a massive report on CIA torture; Official Secrets is about real-life translator and British intelligence employee Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) revealing a U.S. plan to bug United Nations “swing”countries in order to pressure them into voting in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which of course was founded upon a fiction that Saddam Hussein‘s Iraqi government was in possession of WMDs and represented a terrorist threat.

The difference is that while The Report is plodding, sanctimonious and a chore to sit through, Official Secrets is an ace-level piece about pressure, courage and hard political elbows — a grade-A, non-manipulative procedural that tells Gun’s story in brisk, straightforward fashion, and which recalls the efficient, brass-tack narratives of All The President’s Men or Michael Clayton.

Official Secrets is exactly the sort of fact-based government & politics drama that I adore, just as The Report is precisely the kind of self-righteous, moral-breast-beating drama that I can’t stand.

The performances by Knightley, Matt Smith (as Observer reporter Martin Bright), Matthew Goode (as journalist Peter Beaumont), Rhys Ifans as Ed Vulliamy, Adam Bakri as Yasar Gun, and
Ralph Fiennes as British attorney Ben Emmerson are excellent fits — as good as any fan of this kind of thing could possibly hope for.

Hood’s Eye in the Sky was one of the finest and most gripping films of 2015, and here he is again with another winner. Hats off to a good guy.

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