A 2010s List for Those That Couldn't Wait

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (Bruno Dumont, 2018): Director Bruno Dumont brought back pretty much the entire cast of 2014's Li'l Quinquin for this made-for-television sequel. Although only four years passed between productions, the kids from the first one all look unrecognizably older here. Coincoin (nee Quinquin) (Alane Delhaye) has given up the worst of his childish antics in favor of a job on a local farm along with his longtime friend Eve (Lucy Caron) and her lesbian girlfriend Jenny (Alexia Depret). The bumbling Captain Van der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) is back with his constant facial tics and strange inflections too, as he and Carpentier (Philippe Jore) investigate a strange black oil that falls from the sky, and usually on someone's head. Soon duplicates of the town's residents begin popping out of their host's anuses, and wacky hijinks ensue. Playing like one of The X-Files comedy episodes, the gang eventually realize that they're battling an alien invasion with the potential to wipe out the human race. Every episode is full of highly repetitive absurd humor that

Spoiler

culminates in a stand-off between the humans and aliens. Instead of being resolved, it ends in a musical number with everyone dancing.

User mileage may vary based on how tolerant you are of Dumont's unique brand of humor. Some of it got grating after a while, but enough worked for me for a mild recommendation.

Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard, 2014): Aside from a number of shorts, Parisian provocateur Jean-Luc Godard released three features in the last decade. After catching up with 2014's Goodbye to Language, I've now seen them all, and like the other two, find them to defy description. As best as I can discern, the film tells the story of a dog as it wanders in and out of the countryside. There's also a couple of humans here. Played by Héloïse Godet and Kamel Abdelli, the two spend almost the entirety of their screen time naked. They also discussion how the fact that everyone shits makes us equals. Other things happen, but I'm not going to pretend to comprehend them. Defying any classic approach to film criticism, the movie exists as a kind of abstract artifact to Godard's embrace of his reputation as cinema's enfant terrible. Many of the reviews I've read praise the film's use of 3D technology. Sadly, the stream I watched it on was very much two dimensional. I'd love to catch it the way that it was meant to be seen, but I doubt it'd aid my comprehension of it.

Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman, 2018): The press surrounding this film states that it was made in an attempt to understand Donald Trump's 2016 win. I've lived in Illinois for the vast majority of my life, and have spent a lot of time with relatives in rural Indiana. I currently reside a short distance from the titular city, and its world of pancake breakfast fundraisers and public prayers is about as familiar as my own backyard. While the Midwest's small-town conservatism may have befuddled those unfamiliar with the terrain, there's much that they can learn from the film. As the camera pans from rustic houses to dilapidated store fronts, Wiseman captures the community's commitment to traditionalist Protestantism and communitarian politics. Whether its tracing the city's meat from farm to slaughter house to grocery store, or showing a city council meeting that blurs the line between church and state, everything here recalls the summers I spent along the Kentucky border.

Rat Film (Theo Anthony, 2016): Opening with a creation myth about a rat releasing the universe by nibbling into an egg, Theo Anthony's penetrative documentary is one of the most insightful looks at modern urban racial dynamics ever made. Ostensibly about the city of Baltimore's war against the titular pest, the film does spend a large amount of its time recounting the history of rat poison, following around city employed exterminators, and showcasing residents that seem far too gleeful in killing them. Some time is even spent on those that keep rats as pets. However, the main thrust of the piece revolves around the redlining that maintains racial and economic boundaries to this day. Perhaps the most powerful moment in the film comes when Maureen Jones narration explains the overlay of maps showcasing the parallel between rat infestation in Baltimore, decreased life expectancy, and other injustices that the city's poor live with. The film should be essential viewing for anyone working on economic and racial history.

See You Next Tuesday (Drew Tobia, 2013): Featuring a cast composed of mostly indy unknowns, writer/director Drew Tobia's first foray into feature filmmaking tries to find the humor in miserable people living miserable lives. The film's main protagonist, the emotionally stunted and socially awkward Mona (Eleanore Pienta), lacks not only a plan for what to do after her late third-term pregnancy ends, but also basic hygiene (at least year-old used tampons are found on her bedroom floor when she moves out of her apartment). After an attempt to move in with her recovering alcoholic mother (Dana Eskelson) ends in public histrionics, Mona attempts to insert herself into the living space of her sister Jordan (Molly Plunk). Jordan, an equally incompetent and unemployed loser, engages in drunken hipster racism and leeches off of her more successful girlfriend Sylve (Keisha Zollar). Sylve is the only remotely competent or likable character in the entire film, but it fits in well with the loser NYC zeitgeist that pop culture endlessly recycled in the early 2010s. The film does an excellent job at making us cringe at Mona's personality disorder driven antics, but has little else to say beyond "look at how fucked up these people are".

Synchronic (Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, 2019): With the modest success of The Endless bringing some attention to the filmmaking duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, the two finally get a chance to make a movie with a known star on a modest budget. Steve (Anthony Mackie), who has an inoperable tumor on his pituitary gland, spends his nights responding to emergency calls with fellow paramedic Dennis (Jamie Dornan). Their normal routine is soon interrupted, however, by a series of strange calls: a junkie with a sword wound clutching a gold doubloon in his hand; a woman on the second story of a hotel bitten by a snake that was driven out of their home base of New Orleans a century ago. In each of their stops they find a synthetic drug called Synchronic. After experimenting with the drug, Dennis's teenage daughter Brianna (Ally Ioannides) disappears, sending Steve on a quest to figure out what happens. The film has a fairly inventive take on time travel that makes for some interesting cinematics. Watching Steve experiment with the drug and deduce the rules of its seven-minute effects is compelling, but

Spoiler

the film's ending with Steve sacrificing himself to save his friend's white daughter had some unpleasant racial dynamics. What's more the handshake at the end between Dennis and the temporally displaced Steve was laughably over the top.

Put another way, it felt like they shot and early draft of the screenplay that needed a better ending.

The Untamed (Amat Escalante, 2016): Amat Escalante's erotic sci-fi/horror mashup begins with Verónica (Simone Bucio) moaning in ecstasy as a tentacle from an unseen creature penetrates her vagina. The weirdness ends there, and doesn't pick back up until we're about 2/3 of the way through the film. Instead, we're treated to a rather traditional melodrama about a failed marriage and repressed homosexuality. Alejandra (Ruth Ramos) lives with her machismo driven husband Ángel (Jesús Meza) and her openly bisexual nurse brother Fabián (Eden Villavicencio). Unbeknownst to her, Ángel and Fabián have sex with one another when the rest of the family is not around. However, when Verónica falls for Fabián, Ángel's jealousy becomes unbearable. Eventually their fates collide with the alien being that exists in a remote forest cabin, bringing release to some and death the others. Dedicated to director Andrzej Zulawski, the film bears an undeniable debt to his Possession. Like that film, once the weirdness begins, it transforms into a dreamy horror film that defies logic. It's an interesting journey, but I felt kind of lost during the final third of the film.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2011): Dubbing himself "Mount Blanc" (Aris Servetalis) as a way to conceal his identity, the character, referred to as "stretcher-bearer" in the credits, begins a mysterious group called "The Alps" which offers the bereaved actors to play their lost loved ones. Attenberg star Ariane Labed plays the role of a substitute rhythmic gymnast whose cranky coach lobs abusive threats at her when she repeats the original's request to perform to pop music instead of Orff. Lanthimos regular Angeliki Papoulia plays "Nurse", and has sex with a middle-aged man looking to reenact the cunnilingus he gave his dead wife, before going on to obsessively relive the life of a comatose car crash victim with her parents. I didn't realize it until a few minutes in, but I had already watched the movie at some point in the previous decade. I was glad to revisit it since I only had scant memories of the original viewing. Like the rest of Lanthimos's work, its darkly comic with tragic overtones. As with his previous film Dogtooth (which would be my number one choice if we were using US release dates), it's about families with the emotional inability to accept reality. I don't think that Alps is quite as good as that film, but it’s certainly worth seeing (in my case, more than once).

The Assistant (Kitty Green, 2019): Julia Garner gives a tour de force performance (Oscar, are you listening?) as Jane, a bottom of the ladder employee at a Tribeca based film production company. She wakes up long before dawn to be the first one at the office, where she makes the coffee, lays out the breakfast, and accomplishes an untold number of thankless tasks before anyone else arrives. Jane dreams of working her way along her career path until she becomes a producer, but her dreams are put to the test when doe-eyed innocent Ruby (Makenzie Leigh) arrives from Idaho on the invitation of her Harvey Weinstein-like boss. Jane drops Ruby off at a swanky hotel which her boss soon visits, and it's a simple matter of deduction that he intends to have sex with her in exchange for a job. In a particularly brutal scene, Jane presents her case to her HR rep, who gaslights her and then twists the situation around into a threat against Jane. The reviews for the film almost all refer to it as a film for the "me-too era", but the dynamic at play here extends much further back than that as women have long had to decide between their careers and speaking out against sexual harassment. Garner doesn't make any judgments about Jane's complicity in the system. She, like all women in the corporate world, are in a double bind where there simply is no right answer of what one ought to do.

Ex Libris: New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman, 2017): Wiseman's 2017 documentary is a love letter to the New York Public Library (which, as my son reminded me while I watched this, is best known to the younger folk for a fight scene in John Wick 3). Like all of his works of this era, the production team recorded months’ worth of footage and condensed it down into a 3 to 4 hour agglomeration of greatest hits. Wiseman seems particularly drawn to the celebrity speakers at the institution, showing everyone from Richard Dawkins to Elvis Costello to Ta-Nehisi Coates discussing their works. Mixed in, however, are lesser-known authors who present on topics like early 20th century Jewish meat companies, and Karl Marx's theory of capital. Also included are compelling musical performances, and even some humorous interludes like an operator who has to explain to a caller that unicorns are fictional. Like his other works this decade, particular attention is paid to the behind-the-scenes operation of the library's bureaucracy. Unsurprisingly, that material is among some of the least compelling moments of the documentary, but rarely bogs it down. Over all, it’s another beautiful work from a director that isn't afraid of presenting big ideas to his audience. As usual, this is another strong recommendation.

Girlhood (Céline Sciamma, 2014): Director Céline Sciamma, who is known for her frank examinations of gender identity and same-sex attraction between women, takes a change of pace from her traditionally all white and queer subjects to present us with a story of Parisian girls of color navigating their blackness as well as their burgeoning sexuality. As the film begins, we're treated to a high-school game of American football (something which I actively believed did not exist in France), but are surprised (or at least I was) when the helmets come off and it's revealed that the players are all female. Among them is Marieme (Karidja Touré) a lonely teen girl who lives with her younger sister. Starved for friendship she begins hanging out with a trio of girls that lead Marieme down a path of violence and drug dealing. Out of all of Sciamma's works this one feels the most problematic. She does an excellent job portraying the lives of queer women, but there are some unpleasant racial dynamics at play in her writing a group of black teens as violent criminals.

Go for Sisters (John Sayles, 2013): John Sayles, who hasn't made a film since this was released eight years ago, gives us at least one last entry into his oeuvre with this story of how far a mother will go to save her child. Bernice (LisaGay Hamilton) is the mother in question, a no-nonsense LA parole officer whose otherwise straitlaced ex-Army son gets mixed up with human traffickers south of the border and is held for ransom by a Chinese gang operating there. In her quest to get him back, Bernice enlists the aid of her high school friend Fontayne (Yolonda Ross) who has recently re-entered her life after appearing before Bernice for running afoul of the terms of her probation. Realizing that they're in over their heads, the two also recruit Freddy Suarez (Edward James Olmos) an over-the-hill half-blind ex-cop who left the force in disgrace. The three of them traverse the border, but can they survive a cartel that would rather see them dead than give up their knowledge? Like my previous complaint, there's something a little troublesome about a white screenwriter portraying minorities as criminals, but at least the three main characters are fully fleshed out individuals. Most reviews of the film praise the interaction between Bernice and Fontayne, while lamenting the film's turn into what they take to be a retread of previously covered tales of Mexican drug cartels. I agree with them that the interactions between the women are the high point of the picture, but I'm a bit more forgiving of its turn into a thriller. If this turns out to be Sayles's final film, then at least he'll have gone out on a high note.

Relaxer (Joel Potrykus, 2018): Indy writer/director Joel Potrykus returns with another bizarrely sardonic take on slacker culture. Buzzard star Joshua Burge also returns as Abbie, a bullied and aimless 20-something who spends the months leading up to the start of the 21st century performing challenges bestowed on him by his ostensible "friend" Cam (David Dastmalchian). After Cam forces Abbie to sip milk until he pukes, he tells the gamer that he's not allowed to get up from the couch until he reaches the fabled 257th level of Pac-Man, a feat that they believe will net them $100,000. Unable to stand up for himself, Abbie acquiesces and takes Cam's demands literally despite the latter leaving the department for the next several months. A few people enter Cam's apartment early in the challenge, but he soon finds himself in a mad quest for survival when his food and soda supply run out. I've seen some refer to the first 75 minutes of the film when the shirtless protagonist lounges in the same exact spot as an endurance test, but Abbie was given enough variation of acts that it never felt tedious to me. In fact, it felt like a very accurate representation of the slacker malaise that many men go through in their early 20s.

Spoiler

The film changes course, however, when, after several months of playing, the near-dead Abbie completes his quest only to have the collapse of civilization caused by the Y2K bug leading to Abbie finally getting up in a hilarious act of revenge.

Burge shows his range by playing a character that's completely different from his previous collaboration with Potrykus, who himself deserves praise for his original and often hilarious script. As the reviews show, the film is not for everyone, but as someone who was almost 20 when the events in the film took place, it was like a welcome flashback to my younger years.

Saint Maude (Rose Glass, 2019): Despite only receiving its official release this year, Rose Glass's psychological horror thriller first made its way around the festival circuit in 2019 and bears that year as its imdb release date. Maud (Morfydd Clark), whose fanatical devotion to her Roman Catholicism leads her to reject the life led by other girls her age in exchange for selfless devotion, is a psychological mess leaving the audience free to form their own interpretation of the events that unfold. The pious Maude is matched with Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a booze swilling hedonistic artist whose life is coming to an end thanks to her late-stage cancer. Challenged by Amanda's secularism, Maude retreats into her own religiosity through prayer, acts of penance, and self-flagellation in response to her own missteps. As Maude becomes increasingly convinced that she's at the center of a battle between good and evil, she puts herself on a path with shocking consequences. While this is only Glass's first feature after a string of shorts, she proves herself as an adept practitioner of the psychological horror that more seasoned directors get wrong. Clark does an excellent job as the tortured lead, and she's buoyed by some of the creepiest set design in recent memory. Over all this is an extremely impressive debut, and I can't wait to see what Glass has to offer next.

[therewillbeblus]

Glad you liked Saint Maud and also read the narrative communicating intentional ambiguity, which I think is what elevates it to greatness. Hopefully more members get around to seeing it soon

[Mr Sausage]

She does an excellent job portraying the lives of queer women, but there are some unpleasant racial dynamics at play in her writing a group of black teens as violent criminals.

That’s a pretty reductive assessment. You make them sound like gangbangers out of The Wire when they’re less violent and criminal than the characters in Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story.

[bamwc2]

She does an excellent job portraying the lives of queer women, but there are some unpleasant racial dynamics at play in her writing a group of black teens as violent criminals.

That’s a pretty reductive assessment. You make them sound like gangbangers out of The Wire when they’re less violent and criminal than the characters in Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story.

I definitely could have phrased that better. I didn't mean to make them sound like gangsters, but the characters did engage in a fair bit of violence (beating a girl and cutting off her bra for instance). People of African descent face racism every day in France. I doubt that that's the kind of representation most Black French people would like.

[Maltic]

It seems the alternative would be to ignore the problems queer women might face growing up in a rough neighbourhood in the suburbs of Paris. Or to not make a coming-of-age drama about them in the first place. You could argue De Palma could've easily changed the setting for his crime thriller without losing the essentials (cf. your Domino write-up), which is a harder case to make with Sciamma's film.

I like your capsules, btw. Keep them coming.

[Mr Sausage]

She does an excellent job portraying the lives of queer women, but there are some unpleasant racial dynamics at play in her writing a group of black teens as violent criminals.

That’s a pretty reductive assessment. You make them sound like gangbangers out of The Wire when they’re less violent and criminal than the characters in Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story.

I definitely could have phrased that better. I didn't mean to make them sound like gangsters, but the characters did engage in a fair bit of violence (beating a girl and cutting off her bra for instance). People of African descent face racism every day in France. I doubt that that's the kind of representation most Black French people would like.

I just find this response to the movie inadequate. This is a complex, multifaceted portrait of young, disaffected women from a low socio-economic background, but all your response can focus on is the few moments of violence and petty theft, none of which would be out of place in your average movie about disaffected youth (just look at 13). The movie doesn’t define these girls by their negative behaviours—some of the most indelible images and moments are ones of joy, camaraderie, and sadness—so why does your criticism seem to define them that way? Surely your response ought to weigh all the elements in balance, the way the film does.


I can’t speak to the French black community at large, but I would think young black girls from working class households would want to see themselves and their lives represented accurately, warts and all. Is there anything in the representation here that was untrue or inaccurate? I didn’t think so. I thought the behaviours quite recognizable, given the characters’ ages and position in society.

But I can’t imagine you’re terribly happy with the argument ‘French black people face racism, therefore showing French black people committing crimes or violence is bad. ‘ It’s not great logic and it leaves no room for nuance.

And I think that is what pisses me off about your response the most: there’s no nuance. And this film deserves, indeed demands nuance. It does a lot of work to show you why the characters make the choices they do and what that means to them, what they hope to get by it. When a character beats up another and cuts off her bra, it’s not motiveless, it’s not mere shock. The film works hard to show the precise emotional space that leads to this: the fear, the sense of powerlessness, the need to regain some control, and the need to redeem a friend whose earlier defeat brought serious consequences in her home life, consequences that remind the lead character of her own powerlessness both at home and elsewhere and which she sought to redress by joining this outsider group in the first place.

There’s a lot going on, but all your post registers is black + violence = bad. It’s so inadequate. You haven’t engaged with the film. You’ve just registered what happened and then judged it.

[bamwc2]

Mr. Sausage, you're right. My criticisms are more metacommentary than actual engagement with the film itself. I think that Céline Sciamma is a talented filmmaker who made a film that concerned me for reasons other than its artistic merits. I accept that need to let storytellers tell their stories unencumbered by the liberal hand wringing I've engaged in.

[Mr Sausage]

That’s...a very gracious response. I went at you rather hard, but I hope it reads more as having strong feelings about the movie than as personal disrespect. I have long respected you as a member.

[bamwc2]

That’s...a very gracious response. I went at you rather hard, but I hope it reads more as having strong feelings about the movie than as personal disrespect. I have long respected you as a member.

No worries. I appreciate the kind words, and have always enjoyed your commentary as well.

[senseabove]

FWIW, I had a similarly defensive initial reaction to bamwc2's review. I think Sciamma's particular genius is showing the emotional necessity behind how people choose, from among the limited opportunities they have, to exert some will, for myriad reasons good, bad, defined, vague, whimsical, or deeply felt. And as with Sciamma's other films, Girlhood's strength is how it insinuates that vague, internal nuance into its lead's actions*. But my defensive reaction aside, gentle googling turned up reviews from several black female critics that give some substance to bamwc's feelings. Unfortunately they're all fairly short and don't get into too much detail—that last link goes into the most detail, and at least glances off a few of Sausage's points.

*Nuance enough that—unless I'm forgetting something more explicit? I'm terrible at plot recall so it's entirely possible—I'm even hesitant about reading too much into her as a "queer woman" just because she sometimes wears baggy clothes and was written by a lesbian. Much like in Tomboy, the lead's actions feel like a function of difference and exploration (wherein gender plays a major part) as opposed to a coherent identity statement.

[Shrew]

[FYI, looks like I was doing the same thing senseabove was at the same time, though I tried to find some French sources]

From a quick search and google translating the French wikipedia article on the film, it seems like Girlhood drew complaints about the accuracy of the depiction from French Africans, but it certainly wasn't universal. Here's a link to a negative contemporary review from a French African female critic (paired with a positive one from a white man) that includes quotes from tweets about how the film reinforces stereotypes about black women being "loud and wild" and how the bra-cutting scene in particular and dialogue were not true to the groups depicted. However, most complaints seem focused on the character of the brother (who frankly doesn't get a lot of nuance) and on a "white gaze" bound up in the camera's focus on the girl's bodies, both of which I think are more valid points. I agree with Sausage that the petty crime the girl gang gets up to is fairly mundane compared to a lot of adolescent films (though probably more violent than most films about teen girls). And it should be noted that the more serious crime the heroine gets into--drug dealing--alienates her from her old friends.

I do wonder if there will be more hand-wringing over this film in the future as more French African filmmakers are able to put their own stories out there and there's more competition/debate over representation. Here's another critical article written in 2019 from someone who frankly seems angry that the film initially seduced her with its aesthetic qualities and only realized its more problematic aspects later. Even the positive review I mentioned above seems to point toward this; it argues that the film is not realistic and instead embraces a stylized aesthetic while drawing out universal truths about humanity and femininity from the specifics of these black girls' lives. I think that's a fair and generous reading, but I can also understand people getting upset that the film doesn't portray French African women realistically and instead imagines them through the lens of a white woman. I imagine similar critiques could be made about Tomboy, which did feel to me very much like someone imagining what it might be like to be transgender (and perhaps wallowing a bit too much in the misery of it), though I admit I'm not sure how much Sciamma really means for that character to be trans.

[Shrew]

Rat Film (Theo Anthony, 2016): Opening with a creation myth about a rat releasing the universe by nibbling into an egg, Theo Anthony's penetrative documentary is one of the most insightful looks at modern urban racial dynamics ever made. Ostensibly about the city of Baltimore's war against the titular pest, the film does spend a large amount of its time recounting the history of rat poison, following around city employed exterminators, and showcasing residents that seem far too gleeful in killing them. Some time is even spent on those that keep rats as pets. However, the main thrust of the piece revolves around the redlining that maintains racial and economic boundaries to this day. Perhaps the most powerful moment in the film comes when Maureen Jones narration explains the overlay of maps showcasing the parallel between rat infestation in Baltimore, decreased life expectancy, and other injustices that the city's poor live with. The film should be essential viewing for anyone working on economic and racial history.

I agree with most of this and think Rat Film is well worth a watch, but I wanted to note one thing. The "rat-fishing" scenes (presumably the "far too gleeful residents" bamwc mentioned) are actually staged with actors and are based off an urban legend. I only know that because I was at a Q and A with the filmmaker; frankly, there's nothing in the film to indicate that they're false. Now I'm fine with docs incorporating re-enactments and actors and getting a little fanciful (The Arbor is probably going to make my list this decade, and My Winnipeg definitely will for the 2000s), but only when attention is drawn to that fact. The revelation really soured the film for me, as I think the scenes imply a level of "degradation" in Baltimore that doesn't actually exist.

[bamwc2]

Shrew, I had no idea. That's very disappointing to hear.

[bamwc2]

Sorry all. This wasn't the first time I stuck my foot in my mouth, and I promise it won't be the last.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Anomalisa (Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman, 2015): Another mind bender from the king of them, Charlie Kaufman's first animated feature stars David Thewlis as Michael Stone, a LA based customer service expert (he literally wrote the book on it!) who travels to Cincinnati to deliver a keynote address at business conference. The pudgy middle-aged Michael stumbles through life in an unhappy marriage with frequent feelings of existential angst. He tries to connect with an ex-girlfriend in the city, but it goes down in flames. Michael has a miserable time in his hotel room until he meets a pair of women there to see his talk. When he asks one of them, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), to go back to his room with him, she's befuddled. Believing that she's unworthy of Michael's attention, the two have one of the most realistic and heartbreaking conversations that I can remember seeing in any film. Kaufman does a wonderful job translating the philosophical notions of absurdity and authenticity to the big screen. Michael came off as self-absorbed at times, but Lisa was an amazingly well fleshed out character whose arc I was emotionally invested in throughout. Kaufman is one of the greatest artists of his generation. We're lucky that he makes such cerebral and emotionally real cinema.

Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman, 2010): Wiseman's 2010 documentary, follows the ins and outs of an Austin, TX boxing gym. We're treated to a plethora of footage of both the young fighters who want to break into the scene, and the middle-aged veterans who are scraping by as best they can. There are a few interesting diversions from the theme, such as a mother who has to interrupt her time in the ring to take care of her crying infant daughter, but otherwise it's pretty repetitive. This was the final Wiseman film of the decade that I hadn't seen, and it's also the one that worked the least well for me. We all bring our own prejudices into our viewing experience, and I've never seen the appeal of boxing. While I can appreciate it as a storytelling element, actual boxing is of no interest to me. As a result, I just didn't care for this one.

Free Solo (Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, 2018): Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi Oscar winning documentary charts the exploits of Alex Honnold, a rock climber who specializes in free solos, climbs without equipment like ropes or harnesses. The first two thirds of the film's runtime focus on biographical background. We learn who Alex is, and meet his girlfriend Sanni McCandless, a fellow rock climber who still fears that her partner will be hurt. The final act, however, is what the film is famous for as it condenses a 3.5 hour free solo climb up El Capitan into an exhilarating half an hour journey up the mountain. I can't remember the last time I felt so nervous from a documentary sequence. No spoilers here--the film's marketing made it abundantly clear that the Hinnold survives--but its nail biting to see the actual ascent. I have to admit that I didn't understand what would compel someone to do something this dangerous, and I still didn't when it was over. Regardless of comprehending motivation, watching Honnold do what he does makes for some compelling viewing.

Happy Christmas (Joe Swanberg, 2014): In her second film with mumblecore maestro Joe Sawnberg, Anna Kendrick stars as Jenny, a heavy drinking mess of a twenty-something who moves in with filmmaker brother Jeff (Swanberg), his writer wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) and their two-year-old son Jade. Despite her irresponsibility, the couple let her into their home and even entrust their boy to her care along with her high school bestie Carson (Lena Dunham). Eventually the film develops some heartfelt moments between the three female leads, leading to unexpected depth. Though I'm largely unfamiliar with Swanberg's output, I thought this one was passable. The dialogue, which was largely improvised, felt natural, and the performances were strong. There's a lot of hate directed toward Swanberg that I don't get. This is the fourth film I've seen by him. While I don't think that his work is revolutionary, it is at least competent.

Let the Fire Burn (Jason Osder, 2013): In 1985 a Black radical group called MOVE in Philadelphia had a standoff of a few men in their inner-city compound against hundreds of police officers there to serve arrest warrants. After the police fired over 10,000 rounds into the building, they flew a helicopter above their compound and dropped two bombs on it. Eleven people, including five children were murdered by the action. The fire department intentionally waited an hour to fight the resulting fire, and as a result 61 houses in the neighborhood burned down. Not a single person was ever charged in this act of state terrorism. I was alive (though young) when this happened, but am not the least bit surprised that I have never heard of this before given the way we treat our racial history in this country. The film, which is composed entirely of contemporary news footage with occasional explanatory text and chapter heading, is a powerful and angry indictment of this fatal incident. Without overtly editorializing, director Jason Osder makes a damning case against notorious racist mayor Frank Rizzo and the others complicit in this heinous incident.

Lucky (John Carroll Lynch, 2017) Using a screenplay written by Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja, veteran character actor John Carroll Lynch made his directorial debut with this quite but powerful meditation on a 90-year-old facing his own mortality. Harry Dean Stanton gives the performance of his career as the titular Lucky, a hard drinking, chain smoking senior whose longevity baffles his doctor (played by Ed Begley, Jr.). The film is relatively plotless. There's no antagonist or problem that must be solved. Instead, it's merely about Stanton's character bouncing from one damn thing to the next in his days. It is, perhaps, an apt depiction of life in this sense. Films often focus on the spectacular events in life, while editing out the mundane tasks we go through from one day to the next. John Carroll Lynch finds poetry in the banal as a man in his last days deals with his own impending demise. The movie also sports an excellent supporting cast, including David Lynch as the mournful Howard who has a hard time getting over the loss of his beloved tortoise. Though it wasn't Stanton's final appearance (that honor belongs to 2018's Frank & Eva), it nevertheless feels like a fitting capstone on a brilliant career.

White Lily (Hideo Nakata, 2016): Kaori Yamaguchi stars as Tokiko, a forty-ish master ceramist who takes in ingenue Haruka (Rin Asuka) as her apprentice. After Tokiko's husband dies unexpectedly, the two women begin a torrid love affair, which, given that this is part of the Roman Porno Reboot, we see in detail. While it's a passing fancy for Tokiko, Haruka forms an intense obsession for her mentor that turns dark when her attention turns to Satoru (Shôma Machii) a young man that Tokiko accepts as a fellow student. Satoru eagerly becomes Tokiko's boytoy despite having a girlfriend Akane (Kanako Nishikawa). As Hakura's jealously boils over, the various affairs threaten to explode into shocking violence. The actors do the best with what their given, but the script is perfunctory and fails to rise above its softcore trappings like its fellow Roman Porno Reboots Antiporno and Wet Woman in the Wind so effortlessly did. I say skip it.

[therewillbeblus]

Believing that she's unworthy of Michael's attention, the two have one of the most realistic and heartbreaking conversations that I can remember seeing in any film. Kaufman does a wonderful job translating the philosophical notions of absurdity and authenticity to the big screen. Michael came off as self-absorbed at times, but Lisa was an amazingly well fleshed out character whose arc I was emotionally invested in throughout. Kaufman is one of the greatest artists of his generation. We're lucky that he makes such cerebral and emotionally real cinema.

knives and I had a really nice conversation on this one in its dedicated thread, but like most of Kaufman's strongest work, what feels so authentic here is that he's pulling no punches on the (self-)flagellation and also treating that character with compassion. Michael is blatantly self-absorbed, but not as a conscious choice and yet the consequences are consciously felt, so instead of chastising him we empathize with his failure to simply get out of his own way- because it's not a "simple" process in the least. I don't know if I'm alone here (at least Charlie's got my back), but I can strongly identify with the experience of wanting so desperately to fall in, or remain in, love with a person who loves me, and yet in spite of that deep desire, powerlessly and soberly feeling the attraction elusively slipping away - whether it's spiritual incompatibility of my own character defects blocking my ability to access that love, I don't know, but it's a tragedy all the more painful because there's no apparent logic or solution to it, and because self-awareness is no match for the nebulous forces that divide the union.

Spoiler

Michael's behavior the next morning and Lisa's voice fatalistically changing into Noonan's is one of the most piercingly relatable and devastating climaxes in any movie. Just thinking about it leaves me in awe of how Kaufman essentially describes my challenges with human connection effortlessly in its most naked and simplified form... and then he shifts into serving the polar opposite platter of goods for his next and most recent film, digging up all the overcomplicated yet authentically complex dissection of every anxiety's nook and cranny in a mirror image of my brain's schematic processing (but that one is not eligible for this list, and thank god, because this is easily the toughest decade for me as I begin narrowing down).

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Assassination Nation (Sam Levinson, 2018): Odessa Young stars as Lily, and 18-year-old high school senior who, along with her three best friends, live in an age where anyone's digital history can be shared by an unscrupulous hacker. First the town's mayor is exposed as a closeted cross dresser, then the high school principal is accused of being a pedophile for having pictures of his young daughter in the bathtub. All hell breaks loose, however, when half of the town gets their hacks posted online and the victims go on a violent search for the person who did it to them. When a local computer geek is threatened, he names Lily as the perpetrator and the four girls find themselves in a fight for their lives. I thought that this was a very smart movie with a lot to say about both the gen-z outlook on life and the erosion of digital privacy, but the last third turned into a shoot 'em out. I still liked the final act, but it didn't break any new ground. The four leads all turn in believable performances, and there are some very impressive camera moves/visual effects. It was also refreshing to see a transgirl accepted by her peers without any reservations, and a straight boy unashamed of being with her.

The Bay (Barry Levinson, 2012): Barry Levison isn't the first person I would think of to direct an ecological horror film, but he does a superlative, if underrated, job helming 2012's The Bay. The film is presented as an assembly of found footage compiled by Donna (Kether Donohue), a college intern who began her day reporting on Claridge, Maryland's Crab Fest. In the late morning things start to get weird. A few town residents exhibit a strange rash, the crab eating competitors engage in uncontrollable vomiting, and a pair of badly mutilated bodies show up. Initially the town thinks that a murderer is on the loose, but soon it becomes apparent that the town is in the grip of parasitic isopods that were rapidly mutated by the dumping of hundreds of thousands of pounds of factory farming runoff into the bay. As the next 18 hours or so unfold, the majority of the characters we're introduced to die one by one. I was utterly enthralled by this one, and consider it one of the most effective horror films of the decade. The origin story of the killer is all too believable, as is the response to cover it up so as to protect the industrial farming industry when the day of death is over (no spoilers, we're told about it at the beginning by Donna). The found footage horror film has been done to death since The Blair Witch Project pioneered it over twenty-years ago, but it works particularly well here as omnipresent recordings document the horror that unfolds.

Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, 2013): Gloria (Paulina García) is a post-fifty Chilean divorcee with a grown daughter, a thankless corporate job, and a complete dud of a love life when the film opens. Hungry for second chance at romance, she puts herself into the senior singles scene where she meets the recently divorced Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández), a retired Navy veteran with his own two adult daughters. With their shared love of dancing, the two begin a whirlwind romance, but soon his doting attention to his needy daughters causes friction between them. I had previously seen Sebastián Lelio's 2018 English-language remake of his film, and was surprised to find that the two are overwhelmingly identical. I enjoyed the Julianne Moore vehicle, and thought quite highly of the original version as well. Gloria is a lovable protagonist, and García does an outstanding job of bringing her to life. I've already seen the director's similarly good A Fantastic Woman, and look forward to exploring more of his filmography in the future.

Mud (Jeff Nichols, 2019): I was a big fan of writer/director Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter, but was a little let down by his 2016 Midnight Special. Consequently, I didn't what to expect from the film he made between the two. I'm pleased to say that it was pretty good as well. Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are a pair of 14-year-old latchkey kids who live in the Louisiana bayou. One day when exploring an isolated island, they come across a ramshackle shanty housing Mud (Matthew McConaughey). Initially the boys are apprehensive to engage with Mud, but gradually become enamored with the killer on the run. Mud's girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) shows up in town, and the three of them launch a plan for the lovers to escape the country. At the same time both the police and a squad of goons intent on killing him close in on Mud. McConaughey does his usual shtick as a smooth-talking southerner that he has down pat at this point. Artfully displaying both menace and desperation, he still makes the audience care about his plight. It's easy to see how the two teenagers come under his thrall. Filmed in both the lush Louisiana landscape as well as the poverty-stricken hovels that surround it, the film is quite effective in its evocation of a part of the country that I know very little about.

Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood, 2019): Paul Walter Hauser gives a tour de force performance as the officious wannabe cop Richard Jewell, who's obsessive need to follow protocol as a security guard leads to him saving hundreds of lives at a 1996 Atlanta Olympics celebration. Early on the film showcases Jewell's sometimes irksome penchant for hidebound dedication to the letter of law, and how it causes him to face constant demotion from police officer, to campus security, to independent security guard contracted for the Olympic ceremonies. During one late night celebration he finds a suspicious backpack tucked underneath a bench. Though the police are initially reticent to do anything about it, Jewell insists that they examine it. After they discover three pipe bombs, Jewell and the rest of the security push back the crowd as much as possible. When it explodes only one person dies. Despite becoming a media darling, the following morning Jewell becomes the center of the FBI investigation because he "fits the profile" of an attention seeking hero. Despite not working in criminal law, former co-worker Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) comes to Jewell's defense and does an admirable job shielding Richard and his mother Bobi (Kathy Bates) from both the media onslaught desperate to paint him as a villain and the FBI agents who use deceit to try and elicit a confession. Hauser is excellent as the trusting Jewell with his childlike naivete that the feds are on his side because "I'm law enforcement too". Much has been made of libertarian Clint Eastwood's political motivations in making the movie with neither the FBI or the media coming off particularly well, but the truth is that both railroaded an innocent man. Regardless of political leanings, that's something that everyone one of us should be concerned about. Less forgivable, however, is the well-known liberties that screenwriter Billy Ray took in its portrayal of Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs. Reading up on the film, her coworkers had nothing but praise for the writer, but here she's portrayed as an unethical cutthroat who sleeps with Jon Hamm's FBI agent composite character in exchange for information. Though she's dead and can't respond to the alleged incident, everyone who knew Scruggs swears that she never did this. However, aside from a few hackneyed moments (I nearly did a spit take over the terrible dialogue as the law enforcement squabbled over who was in charge of the investigation), the film does an admirable job in telling its story of investigative overreach. Hauser puts everything into his performance, showcasing Jewell as both a hero and sometimes a guy that's hard to like. Though he had some real winners in the '10s, this might be Eastwood's best of the decade.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata, 2013): One day while plying his trade, a middle-aged bamboo cutter in feudal Japan comes across a blooming flower that opens to reveal a young magical being inside of it. Soon she transforms into an infant that he brings back to his rustic cabin where his wife is shocked that she's suddenly able to breast feed to girl. Growing at a starling rate, they name her Princess Kaguya, yet the boys that live around them call her Little Bamboo. She lives an idyllic life playing with her friends in the countryside, but the greedy bamboo cutter believes that he can leverage her mysterious allure into wealth and titles in the kingdom. He drags their family there where she grows up into a woman who attracts the attention of several royal suitors. Uninterested in any of them, Kaguya yearns for a return to her pastoral surroundings, but a stray thought of hers puts it all in jeopardy. Isao Takahata's script could easily be mistaken for an adaptation of a Japanese fairy tale, but it is, instead, his own creation. Takahata does a wonderful job using the tropes of traditional Japanese folklore, the film's simple animation style belies a complexity of ideas that evokes both joy and sorrow. I don't think that it's quite as good as Ghibli's top tier works, but it is a delightful film that I'm glad to have finally seen.

Vox Lux (Brady Corbet, 2018): Told in two jarringly distinct fragments, Brady Corbet's film begins with a terrifyingly realistic school shooting. A teenage gunman enters a music class, and after shooting the teacher in the head, forces the class to lineup against the wall. When Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) offers to pray with him, he shoots her in the neck before mowing down her classmates and taking his own life. Celeste recovers from her spinal injury and sings a song of her own writing at a memorial service. As Willem Dafoe's narration tells us, after changing the pronoun 'I' to 'we', the song becomes a hit in a national reeling from the killings. Celeste is soon signed to a record contract and begins touring Europe with her older sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin). Eleanor introduces her sister to alcohol (along with the obligatory vomiting that shows up whenever a teenager tries it for the first time in a movie), and she loses her virginity with an older rock star. The segment ends with their shocked reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks. Terrorism opens the second half of the film as well, when a group of shooters tear up a beach with automatic weapons while wearing masks featured in one of Celeste's most famous videos. Natalie Portman now takes over the role of Celeste after she is transformed into an abrasive diva with a drinking problem on the cusp of being a has been sixteen years later. Cassidy returns, but this time she plays Celeste's teenage daughter Albertine. Whereas the first half of the film covered a sprawling couple of years, the second half is told in a single whirlwind day as Celeste's team grapples with the tragedy of the shooting while preparing for a performance. I read over the forum's thread on the film to help me compose my thoughts on it, and was unsurprised to see the radical division of opinions. As for me, I generally enjoyed the first half. I thought that the opening sequence was very well executed, and though it's been done a million times before, was happy to follow Celeste's rise in the music industry. Any goodwill I had for the film, however, came to a screeching halt in the second act as Portman gives a wildly over-the-top performance with an inexplicable Long Island accent that she picked up somewhere in the interregnum. Portman is a talented actress who's delivered some fine performances in her career, but this borders on parody, and the film's ultimate failure rests on both her shoulders as well as the weak second act written by Corbet and his partner Mona Fastvold. Sia's flat pop songs don't do the film any favors either, though to be fair, I'm a middle-aged curmudgeon who has hated just about all popular music since the early 90s. I really, really hated this one. If you want a better film from the decade that tracks rises and falls in the movie industry, then check out Bradley Cooper excellent remake of A Star is Born.

[therewillbeblus]

Glad you liked Assassination Nation, even if we totally disagree about the last act's function breaking new ground -though I don't think we are supposed to take it on a surface level of even exaggerated satire. It's more of an externalization of the emotional experience otherwise forcibly suppressed or ignored by a society, that must turn violent to be meaningful, or noticed.

It was also refreshing to see a transgirl accepted by her peers without any reservations, and a straight boy unashamed of being with her.

Well, Hari Nef is accepted amongst her closest peer group, but there are absolutely reservations from the boys

Spoiler

the "straight boy" was incredibly ashamed of being with her, which is depicted in a long drawn-out sequence where the camera refuses to leave Nef's heartbroken reaction after he runs away telling her she can't tell anyone about the sex, and then the entire last act's arc with him and her is based on that info getting out to his friends (who shame him for sucking Nef's dick) and how it turns him into a hiveminded supporter in the killings. He almost kills her!

Also comparing A Star is Born with something as enigmatic as Vox Lux is like saying not to bother watching Godard's Breathless because Out of the Past will do. I totally respect and expect people to dislike Corbet's film, but if Cooper's film is your point of comparison you're not really attempting to meet the film on its wavelength

[Never Cursed]

Assassination Nation (Sam Levinson, 2018): ...I thought that this was a very smart movie with a lot to say about both the gen-z outlook on life and the erosion of digital privacy...

If you are at all interested in more on this topic from the same writer/director, please seek out Euphoria, for my money the best single filmed work about Gen Z, post-haste. There's a very good chance it would top my iteration of this list if it were eligible.

[bamwc2]

Also comparing A Star is Born with something as enigmatic as Vox Lux is like saying not to bother watching Godard's Breathless because Out of the Past will do. I totally respect and expect people to dislike Corbet's film, but if Cooper's film is your point of comparison you're not really attempting to meet the film on its wavelength

The tone and the styles are completely different! I merely meant that they both deal with the same general subject matter. I didn't mean to make any comparison beyond that!

As for Assassination Nation...

Spoiler

Yes, Diamond took part in the attempted lynching of Bex, but only because he was bullied into it. Eventually he had a crisis of conscience and refused to cooperate. When the leader of the jocks attempting to murder her said something like "She embarrassed you", Diamond replied with "She didn't embarrass me. You did." (paraphrasing from memory)

[bamwc2]

Never Cursed, thanks. I know of the show, but haven't watched it. I had no idea that Sam Levison is behind both of them!

[therewillbeblus]

As for Assassination Nation...

Spoiler

Yes, Diamond took part in the attempted lynching of Bex, but only because he was bullied into it. Eventually he had a crisis of conscience and refused to cooperate. When the leader of the jocks attempting to murder her said something like "She embarrassed you", Diamond replied with "She didn't embarrass me. You did." (paraphrasing from memory)

Spoiler

Right, but that 'revelation' took a metaphorical Hobbesian apocalypse to reach, which is the point of the last act: The strength of our "progressiveness" is a facade, and feels totally regressive, aggressive, and alienating to these youth- so only by shedding all in absolute regression of our complacent hivemindedness can we a) get a sense of what their experience feels like and b) actually engage self-reflectively and motivate ourselves to actualize an authentic progressive stance that includes true empathy.

Diamond 100% felt ashamed after the sex, ignored Bex at school, etc. before the film had to literally descend into allegory to achieve character development. Levinson's camera dwells on Bex's face for painfully long after he drunkenly has sex with her, and a point is made that he needs to be drunk in order to allow himself to do it. I agree that it's cool that a transwoman is somewhat accepted in the gen z popular clique, but the shame the boy feels for being with her is unambiguously clear, and this helps feed the themes of the film.

Unrelated, but I also get a kick out of how the story takes place in Salem as a cheeky nod to its examination of the postmodern witch trials occurring ubiquitously across affluent liberal sections of America.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Beast of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012): Nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis racked up an Oscar nomination for a preternaturally precocious performance few children her age could carry off. She stars as Hushpuppy, a latchkey kid who spends her days running through a portion of the Louisiana bayou known as The Bathtub. Cut off from the rest of civilization, Hushpuppy lives in a ramshackle hovel along with her ailing father Wink (Dwight Henry) who effortlessly shifts from physically abusing her to displaying his paternal love. Like their neighbors, the two have no money, no electricity, and live on the edge of precarity as the constant rise in water levels threatens to wash them away. However, like other kids her age, Hushpuppy lives a life of fantasy, imagining her dead mother and the giant aurochs that she learned about early on in the film. Though its heavily steeped in the magical realist tradition, some have criticized the film for an unrealistic portrayal of rural Louisiana. While it may not reflect the reality of the people living there today, it does tell a rich and rewarding story with powerhouse performance from its two leads and poetic direction from Zeitlin in his feature debut. I can certainly understand why the film proved divisive among cinephiles, but I thought highly of it.

Deerskin (Quentin Dupieux, 2019): Coming down from both a divorce and the loss of his job, Georges (Jean Dujardin) undergoes a psychotic break that begins with him spending his life saving on a deerskin jacket from a seller eager to unload it. Holding up in a hotel he cannot afford, Georges meets aspiring film editor Denise (Adèle Haenel) in its bar and concocts a fake story about being a filmmaker working with producers in Siberia. That night he has a conversation with his deerskin jacket where the two decide that there should be no other jackets in the world. Georges offers Denise a job on his non-existent project, and initially gives her footage of him posing in his jacket in front of the mirror. However, it soon turns into staged footage where he tricks local actors into giving up their jackets, before moving on to outright murdering random jacket wearers on the street. Having only seen one film by Quentin Dupieux prior to Deerskin (2010's Rubber, a middling comedy about a killer tire), I wasn't really sure what to expect from this one. I was very pleased to find that it fit into the tradition of pitch-black French absurdism in films like Buffet Froid. Dujardin is much better here than he was in the vastly overrated The Artist, and Dupieux's script effortlessly combines both terror and humor.

Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief (Alex Gibney, 2015): Alex Gibney's made-for-HBO look at the Church of Scientology charts its rise from APA rejected treatment to multi-billion-dollar business empire. The documentary begins by looking at founder L. Ron Hubbard's days as a Navy reject turned sci-fi author with a penchant for grifting and spousal abuse. Haunted by alleged mental illness, the film makes the case that Hubbard penned the pseudoscientific Dianetics as a way of exorcising his own demons. At the same time Hubbard found that there was money in the self-help industry, and turns his lower-level followers into virtual slaves, suckering them out of every penny he can. After Hubbard's passing, David Miscavige emerged from the power vacuum and doubles down on the Church's abuses and secretiveness. There's little new ground broken here. Ex-members of the Church have long made public both the horror they suffered on Sea-Org, and the eccentric teachings about Xenu revealed only to those who pay to reach Scientology's upper echelons. However, it does a good job of gathering the various disparate threads floating in the ether into one powerful and coherent case against the Church. Tom Cruise, who rose from celebrity convert in the 80s to the number two man in the religion, comes off particularly bad here. The documentary supposes that he's fully aware of the abuse, but chooses to overlook it as he's continually placated with expensive gifts and phony awards.

Hotel Mumbai (Anthony Maras, 2018): Director Anthony Maras made his feature debut with this 2018 ripped from the headlines account of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel terror attacks a decade before. Also co-authoring the script, Maras posits the existence of a cleric named The Bull (the name is made up, but was later revealed to be Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who received a five-and-a-half-year sentence for his role in engineering the attack that took 160 lives). The film shifts narratives frequently, telling the stories of wealthy Westerners staying at the hotel (Armie Hammer's David and his wife Zahra played by Nazanin Boniadi), the mostly unexplored terrorists themselves, and the overly dedicated staff who stay behind to save their guests (Arjun (Dev Patel) and Bollywood legend Anupam Kher as Oberoi). The film has been criticized for spending too much time focusing on its white characters while having nameless brown bodies slaughtered left and right. While I could have definitely done with less Armie Hammer, several Indian characters are given significant screen time with character arcs displaying their heroics. Less forgivable, however, is the film's relentless focus on bloodshed. Once the killing starts a scant few minutes into it, it carries on virtually uninterrupted for the film's two-hour runtime. As a result, it feels less like an attempt to understand the struggle for survival than it does a cynical attempt to elevate what is basically an exploitation film into Oscar bait.

Life of Pi (Ang Lee, 2012): Based on Yann Martel's runaway bestseller by the same name, director Ang Lee's 2012 adaptation tells the story of Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma), a young Indian who loses his family as the ship they attempt to transport their zoo animals on sinks during the journey to Canada. Pi initially finds himself on a lifeboat with an injured zebra, an orangutan, and a drugged-up hyena. After the hyena comes to and slaughters the other two animals, a tiger named Richard Parker suddenly appears from beneath the boat's fabric awning to kill it. Although the tiger initially poses a mortal threat to Pi, the two eventually learn to live with one another as they drift through sea until they reach civilization (no spoiler here as the story begins with a middle-aged Pi recounting his story on dry land). The ending feels like a major copout as we learn that...

Spoiler

it was all a magical retelling of the actual events as a French cook murdered the other survivors on the boat until Pi killed him. Pi was the tiger the whole time. Deep, huh?

It's hard to think of a director as hit or miss for me as Ang Lee. He's made some truly great films, but some real stinkers as well. Unfortunately, this falls into the latter category. It's a visually lush film with gorgeous colors, but that's about all it has going for it. The basic premise of the story is just plain dumb. The fact that the book was so popular doesn't speak well for humanity.

Midnight Family (Luke Lorentzen, 2019): With fewer than fifty ambulances owned by the state throughout all of Mexico, private ambulances race through the streets of Mexican cities competing for emergency calls like the camera wielding vultures in Nightcrawler. The documentary follows the family operated first responder team of Fernando Ochoa and his sons Juan and Josué. Eternally strapped for cash, they slave away every night to make enough money for gas to do it again the next day. The trio aimlessly drive around the streets of Mexico City until they receive a call, averaging about three clients a night. Director Luke Lorentzen edits out the hours of downtime to mostly focus on several weeks of action condensed into a mere 81 minutes. There's a fair bit of sadness here as we see people at their most desperate. A girl who fell four stories clings to life as her desperate mother sits in shock in the front of the ambulance. Others haggle over prices or balk at the prospect of hospital choice. We do have quieter moments as well, such as the family getting breakfast after a night at work, or Juan scrubbing down the vehicle after a bloody call. Telling the story of a family's constant struggle for survival, the film was never boring. In fact, it provided a remarkable look into a side of Mexico's medical industry that I knew nothing about. It's not going to reveal anything profound, but it makes for an interesting watch.

Vice (Adam McKay, 2018): Taking his second foray into prestige pics (full disclosure, I still haven't seen The Big Short), director Adam McKay returns with an irreverent biopic of war criminal Dick Cheney. Christian Bale does a remarkable job disappearing into his role as Cheney, matching both his voice and his mannerisms to an uncanny degree. Amy Adams, who plays his wife Lynne, sticks by her man from his days as a drunken college dropout to vice president under George W. Bush. The film charts the entire course of his rise to power starting with his days as Donald Rumsfeld's congressional intern through his apparently cynical rise to the top (the film posits that he had no real political philosophy when he got his first job--he just went where the power was). This might well have been the most polarizing film of 2018. Those who liked it seemed to think that it was just okay, while its critics hated it with a passion usually reserved for the most viscerally repugnant films ever made. Going in I didn't expect to enjoy it, but I kind of did. I could have done without McKay's more irreverent flourishes (e.g., the narrator, the faux credit sequence), but it does a pretty good job of telling Cheney's story warts and all. It's nothing great, but just good enough for a mild recommendation.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

'71 (Yann Demange, 2014): Set only a few years into The Troubles, a British regiment is sent into Belfast to capture a Nationalist terror suspect. While there two soldiers get separated from the rest, and one is shot in the face by a gunman. When the gun jams, the other, Pvt. Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell), flees leaving his rifle behind. After a desperate chase, Hook finds himself alone in a city with an armed militia hunting him. Eventually Hook finds his way into Unionist territory, and gets passed around as they try to protect him. However, with neighbors killing neighbors, Hook finds himself in a constant struggle to survive until the military can rescue him. Though the story of Pvt. Hook is fictitious, the backdrop of The Troubles is very real. Setting an action thriller against real-life tragedies runs the risk of exploitation. Films like Hotel Mumbai fall on the wrong side of the divide, but this one skirts some of these troubles by showing both sides in the wrong. Early on the British and their cheering Unionists are seen as an oppressive colonial force, beating women and violently fending off a crowd angry at their presence. The Nationalists too are killers willing to bomb or shoot anyone who gets in their way. But at the same time, not everyone on either side fits neatly into this narrative. Hook, a newbie on the force, finds a counterpart in Sean (Barry Keoghan), a teen who buys into the Nationalist talking points, but has a hard time with their violence. Stewing in its own moral ambiguities, Yann Demange's directorial debut does a competent job of showcasing the violence in Northern Ireland.

If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018): Writer/director Barry Jenkins followed up his Oscar wining debut Moonlight with a film every bit as powerful and beautiful in its exploration of the Black experience in America. Adapting James Baldwin's novel of the same name (I've never read it, so I can't speak to issues of faithfulness), Jenkins gives us the story of Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) and Alonso “Fonny” Hunt (Stephan James), a pair of young lovers whose lives have been torn apart by racism and Fonny's false imprisonment. Though Jenkins's script plays loose with chronology, the film begins with Tish discovering that at 19 she's pregnant with the baby of the man who has been her best friend since childhood and is now in prison for a rape he did not commit. Tish's parents are quick to embrace her, though Fonny's mother Adrienne (Ebony Obsidian) greets her with condemnation and recriminations. Ostensibly the film is about Tish's pregnancy and her family's attempt to exonerate Fonny, but below the surface are profound reflections on the nature of race, justice, faith, and family. Told with a poetic realization that few outside of Terrence Malick could pull off, If Beale Street Could Talk cements what Moonlight hinted at: Barry Jenkins is one of the most exciting young filmmakers working today.

Gemini Man (Ang Lee, 2019): Director Ang Lee cut his teeth on intimate dramadies like The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman. Showing his versatility, he demonstrated that he was equally skilled in other genres. That's why it’s so disappointing to see his devolution into big, but empty CGI spectacles. His latest failure stars Will Smith as Henry Brogan, the world's most deadly assassin, who retires after facing a moral reckoning. Unwilling to keep their eyes off of him, the unnamed government agency Henry used to work for sends Danny Zakarewski (a mostly wasted Mary Elizabeth Winstead) that he magically identifies as a spook in their initial encounter. After Henry's old team gets wiped out in a series of simultaneous attacks, he and Danny go on the run only to encounter a CGI construct of a young Will Smith straight out of the uncanny valley named Junior. Although Junior is supposed to merely be a 25-year-younger clone of Henry, he possesses superhuman fighting abilities. Henry, for that matter, is a human born of a woman, and can still do things like leap four feet of the ground while lying flat on his stomach like an invisible spring projects him into the air. As ridiculously silly as the poorly executed action scenes are, they are by far the best element of the film. The script, an unholy concoction made by David Benioff, Darren Lemke, and Billy Ray, reads like the way a dumb person thinks secret agents talk. There's no line too cliched for them to utter. There's no pseudoscientific explanation too preposterous to give. Smith gives into all his worst instincts as an actor as he speaks lines that are beyond parody. Lee is currently in preproduction for a film about the Thrilla in Manila, but for the love of God, I wish he'd just retire instead of churning out the garbage he produced this last decade.

Judy (Rupert Goold, 2019): Renée Zellweger won an Oscar for her boozy portrayal of Judy Garland delivering her London shows. As it turned out, these shows would be the last ones Garland performed before an accidental overdose claimed her life six months later. While the film spends most of its time focused on the nervous wreck that Garland became later in life, there are flashbacks starring Darci Shaw as a young Judy that attempt to explain her behavior as a result of the incredible traumas she suffered as a teen from Louis B. Mayer. Shaw is, perhaps, the best thing that the film has going for it as she delivers a fine performance as the tortured teenager reduced to a liquid diet. While Zellweger does a good job of catching the mannerisms and intonation of Garland (including some decent covers of the singer's most famous works), there's something that feels rote and manufactured about it. She spends all of her time on imitation instead of fleshing out the character beyond the merely superficial/ That the film collapses under the failure of her performance. Of course, it's exactly the sort depthless of paint-by-numbers performance that the Academy loves to award.

Loving Vincent (Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, 2017): Speaking of all hat, no cattle, Kobiela and Welchman's gorgeously rotoscoped film took a hundred animators to produces thousands of hand-painted frames in the post-impressionist style of its titular subject. The end result is a breathtaking image that belies an ultimately hollow experience. Postman's son Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth) has had in his possession a letter written by Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo for the last year. After numerous attempts by Armand's father, he tasks the young man with tracking Theo down, who, unbeknownst to either of them, has also died. Arriving in Auvers-sur-Oise, Armand meets a handful of people that knew Vincent. They tell him their stories of the troubled painter, as he searches for a suitable individual to deliver the letter. The film wants to be a Citizen Kane-like attempt to piece together the mystery of a man's life, but it often feels like a lazy assembly of anecdotes with the depth of a Wikipedia article. It also, shamelessly, posits that Vincent may have been murdered before walking it back. My fifth-grade son recently wrote a five paragraph essay on the life of Thurgood Marshall with about the same level of insight as Loving Vincent.

Shoplifter (Kore-eda Hirokazu, 2018): Osamu (Lily Franky) and Nobuyo Shibata (Sakura Andô) work odd jobs, but live in extreme poverty that sees them share their one-room shack with his mother Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), their teenage daughter Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), and their young son Shota (Jyo Kairi). At the beginning of the film Osamu takes Shota to a local market where he assists the boy in hiding groceries in his backpack while the father purchases a few things to avoid suspicion. On their way home they encounter a five-year-old left outdoors in the night. Hungry and cold, they bring Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) back to their place to share in their meager dinner. However, when they later return to the spot where they found her, Osamu and Nobuyo hear her mother curse Yuri before her partner beats her. So they bring her back, and integrate Yuri into their family. In practical terms, this means that they teach the young girl how to steal and scam like them. I've seen most of Kore-eda's output from the 90s and 00s, but this is the first film of his I've seen from this decade (as I mentioned here in the past, I have some pretty extreme gaps in my '10s viewing since I was more focused on my career than film during that decade). Fortunately, this work is every bit as good as the films that first brought him to my attention. Franky and Andô are terrific as both petty criminals, and later as something more sinister. The family dynamic works very well as Kore-eda develops a sense of community in the household that feels more real than most dynamics in depictions of traditional families. Especially noteworthy, however, are the turns by Kairi and Sasaki. The nearly mute child with a flat affect perfectly conveys the trauma we're invited to imagine Yuri surviving, and Kairi is excellent in his transition from jealous kid to protective older brother.

The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard, 2018): Early on a sinister figure known only as The Commodore (Rutger Hauer) hires Eli (John C. Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix) to track down Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), an inventor who is alleged to have discovered a chemical that makes gold glow in the water. The Commodore had previously sent bounty hunter John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) to take Warm in, but instead the two team up for reasons that are hinted at being more romantic than they are financial. As the brothers make their way across the Oregon wildlands, we learn about the troubles that the reckless and frequently drunk Charlie causes, and see the messes that Eli has to clean up. The dynamic plays out in a shocking act of stupidity close to the end, but I won't spoil it here. Going in I thought that this was going to be a comedy (while Audiard is not known for directing comedies, he has written a few in his days), but was surprised when it turned out to be more of a traditional western with some dark comic overtones. It works well in this regard, particularly the scenes of the Reilly and Phoenix interacting. Ultimately, I think it'll be remembered as a minor work in Audiard's canon, but one that is still worth checking out.