A 2010s List for Those That Couldn't Wait

[Michael Kerpan]

I love all of Kore'eda's films -- but Shoplifters strikes me as one of his most effective (and devastating). The (seemingly under-appreciated, in the West, at least) Third Murder is also pretty amazing -- and just as ferocious a takedown of Japan's criminal justice system as Shoplifters is of its social welfare system (Nobody Knows really focused on the individual perspective, not the social system that could allow the story to happen).

[bamwc2]

Thanks, Michael. It wasn't on my radar, but it looks like Amazon has The Third Murder for free for Prime subscribers. I'm working my way through my Hulu queue right now, but will check it out in a few days.

[Michael Kerpan]

I'll be interested in what you think. I feel that, despite having a very different theme (and story), these two Kore'eda films share a strategy of repeatedly throwing viewers off-balance, lulling them into feeling they are starting to comprehend, and then totally disorienting them again (both in terms of the story and in terms of what one thinks about the characters).

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Bombshell (Jay Roach, 2019): It may come as a surprise to no one, but Fox News chairman Roger Aisles was not a good person. Here we see him played John Lithgow as a lecherous creep eager to sell his conservative policies by having them read by leggy blondes. Anyone who paid attention to his downfall already knows that Aisles was ousted after more than twenty women came forward with stories of sexual harassment. The film tells the stories of three such cases, starting with Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) who's fired for bucking both Aisles's talking points and advances. Next up is network superstar Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) who typically toes the conservative line, but has recently earned the ire of Fox viewers for asking Trump a question about his treatment of women. Finally, there's Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie), a heterofexible "composite" several real-life women, who is forced to hike her skirt up and show her panties when she tries to sell herself to Aisles as an evangelical conservative commentator. I'd never seen any of Jay Roach's serious films, but really haven't been a fan of his comedies since I caught Austin Powers in high school. What's more, the press around the film was fairly negative, so I was more than a little surprised when I didn't hate it. It's far from a perfect film--it's overly cutesy moments like breaking the fourth wall are distractions at best--but it's not as bad as its reputation. The film perfectly recreates the toxic stew of Rupert Murdoch's second floor, and Theron (who should have taken home the Oscar last year) gives an uncanny portrayal of Kelly. However, I don't understand why screenwriter Charles Randolph felt the need to include Robbie's fictional character, when there was plenty of real-life grime to carry the picture. The film doesn't break any new ground--I hope that we all already knew that sexual harassment is bad. But it tells its story competently enough for a mild recommendation.

Gemini (Aaron Katz, 2017): Lola Kirke stars as Jill LeBeau, the personal assistant to movie star Heather Anderson (Zoë Kravitz). Childish and reckless, Heather is friendly with Jill, but relies on her to constantly clean up her messes. With both anonymous threats coming in and an encounter with a stalker named Sierra (Jessica Parker Kennedy), whose physical similarities to Heather are jarring, the two decide to get a gun. About thirty minutes into the film, the gun goes off and changes the already Dashiell Hammett-esque feel into a full-blown neo-noir. Jill is the prime suspect for a crime she didn't commit and falls under the surveillance of John Cho's Detective Edward Ahn. Attempting to clear her name, Jill goes on a quest around LA to find the truth. This is my first film from Katz, and he does some really impressive things here, both visually and through the construction of mood. Unfortunately, there are too many logic holes to keep the film afloat, and the ultimate resolution of the crime is just silly. This one had so much going for it, but it needed a lot more script work before shooting.

High-Rise (Ben Wheatley, 2015): Screenwriter Amy Jump, who's 2011 crime-horror hybrid Kill List is a lock for my list, adapted J.G. Ballard's novel of the same name in this trippy tale of the devolution of society. When the film begins, we see M.D. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) wandering about a formerly posh/now completely trashed series of apartments. Garbage is everywhere, he cooks a dog, and a corpse is posed with a television over its head. We then flash back to the beginning of the story where the tidy high-rise building is run by Anthony Royale (Jeremy Irons) and his wife Ann (Keeley Hawes). The film communicates a foreboding vibe as Robert goes about his work and romances single mom Charlotte Melville (Sienna Miller). Parties eventually turn into hedonistic excess and the revelers trash Royale's pad. Once the Bacchanalia begins, it's not long before anarchy breaks out and full out warfare between the floors begins. The hour or so of utter madness is interesting, but rather draining. The film maintains its intensity for so long that I just wanted a reprieve. There's also the question of the point of the whole exercise. Although I've never read the novel (I'm shamefully never read anything by Ballard), I would be surprised if it were as empty and nihilistic of the film. If seeing an hour of glib debauchery is your bag, then by all means check it out.

Little Men (Ira Sachs, 2016): With Little Men serving as my introduction to Ira Sachs, I really wasn't sure what to expect. The imdb description wasn't exactly inspiring, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a heartfelt and well-crafted drama about the friendship between two boys and the business dispute that comes between their parents. At the center of the story are Jake Jardine (Theo Taplitz) and Tony Calvelli (Michael Barbieri). Jake, the son of store owner Kathy (Jennifer Ehle) and small-time actor Brian (Greg Kinnear), is a white transplant to a mostly Hispanic neighborhood. However, he finds a natural companion in Tony, who dreams of becoming an actor himself, but must make do with the modest income that his mother Lenore (Paulina García) makes off of her dress shop. Brian's father owned the building that Lenore occupies, and would let her skate by on rent because of their close friendship. When he died, Brian took over the space, but finds that with his own meager income and badgering from his sister, the family needs the full rent to keep Kathy's store afloat. Unable to pay, Lenore faces eviction. A lesser film would use the power of the boy's friendship to bring the parents to an amicable resolution, but Sachs's script recognizes that there are no easy answers in the adult world. Told with an unflinching realism, the film traces the journey that Jake and Tony take from innocent boys to the little men of the film's title. While the adults uniformly deliver good performances as acrimonious, but fundamentally good people in an intractable situation, it's the young actors that carry the film. The scene of Tony's acting class was one of the most powerful cinema moments of 2016, and displays what a talent Barbieri has at such a young age.

Monos (Alejandro Landes, 2019): When Alejandro Lande's Monos begins, Mensajero (Wilson Salazar), a member of an unnamed paramilitary group, brings eight child soldiers a cow and a hostage to look over. They keep the two in a remote mountainous area located somewhere in Columbia’s jungle. The teenagers--six boys and two girls--explode in unsupervised revelry the moment Mensajero departs. Firing their guns in the air and engaging in pansexual antics, the children quickly defy their orders and slaughter the cow for food. Unable to understand her terror, they treat their hostage, an engineer that they refer to simply as doctora (Julianne Nicholson) that the group wants to ransom back to her family, as a fellow playmate until she makes a desperate escape attempt into the jungle. Initially playing out like a bizarre melding of Lord of the Flies and Porky's, their hedonistic existence eventually comes to an end thanks to the violence of the terror group that they operate under. The film does a superb job of demonstrating the ways that their teenage selves come through even when they've been conscripted (by force? The movie never answers that question) as child soldiers. Though it initially focuses on the debauchery you'd find leaving any group of horny teens to themselves, once the violence begins the film turns into a shocking tale of survival. Perhaps too much time in spent on doctora, the only non-brown character, to better sell the film to a white audience. But ultimately this is a minor complaint as Landes emerges as a powerful voice from South American cinema.

The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul, 2019): Clocking in just shy of three hours, the film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel of the same name tells the story of a young Jewish boy in a picaresque quest to avoid the Nazi death squads that seem to follow him wherever he goes. Our protagonist, the silent Joska (Petr Kotlár), is deposited at his aunt's modest country home in a futile effort to avoid the SS. When the aunt dies of natural causes, a shocked Joska accidentally burns her house down and aimlessly walks away. Thus begins his adventures as he meets up with various people, most of whom meet with inglorious ends. Stories about the experiences of Jewish youth during Second World War have been told frequently over the intervening 75 years, but the poetic realism, evocative of other Eastern European masters, adds fresh life to a well-trodden path. Shot in gorgeous black and white, the film recalls Ivan's Childhood as the young boy struggles for survival. The story also takes unexpected turns including forays into pedophilia and bestiality. Thankfully, none of it is graphic or lingered on to the point of exploitation. This is a wonderful film, but my only gripe are the strange cameos the pop up for no discernible reason throughout the film. Including actors like Barry Pepper and Julian Sands felt gratuitous, and took me out of the film.

Thelma (Joachim Trier, 2017): Eili Harboe stars as Thelma, a troubled college freshman with a mysterious history of tragedy. Leaving her parents, Trond (Henrik Rafaelsen) and Unni (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), behind in their rural Norwegian home, the highly religious Thelma finds her beliefs challenged for the first time in her life. Experimenting with (what she thinks is) marijuana, and more profoundly, starting a lesbian relationship with her fellow undergrad Anja (Kaya Wilkins), Thelma experiences guilt and condemnation from her parents. Soon she begins experiencing seizures, but her doctors can't figure out why. In the second half of the film Thelma begins to realize that she has strange powers that her parents have tried to repress since her early childhood. Part horror film, part fantasy, Trier's film, which he wrote with frequent collaborator Eskil Vogt, features some of the most haunting imagery in recent memory. Resisting easy answers, Trier and Vogt never attempt to explain Thelma's powers, but let them play out to their tragic ends. This is my first experience with Trier's work, and I can't wait to check out more of his films.

[therewillbeblus]

High Rise is an involving book, and a terrible adaptation. I don't want to say it's "easy" to adapt that kind of building disintegration of ego functions and social norms, but there are enough physical shifts clearly laid out in the text where a competent director could pull it off. Wheatley botches the job and somehow takes a barely-200-page novel full of memorable setpieces and characters and transforms it into a boring, choppy shrug of a movie. About a decade ago, Wheatley seemed to be a promising filmmaker on the rise, but this film really deflated that track. The book is worth reading tho, and it's a breeze to get through.

Also just a word of warning, Joachim Trier's other work is not like Thelma, but Oslo, August 31st is solid.

[John Cope]

I finally saw High Rise after avoiding it for some time. I was, however, actually actively looking forward to it as it adapts my favorite Ballard. I tried coming to terms with Wheatley as director even though I don't generally like his work. I really did have a relatively optimistic attitude about this going in, thinking that it may be the one Wheatley I would actually like. Well, no. Ultimately I hated this. I hated it enough to make me start wondering whether the book was any good and when an adaptation manages that it's some kind of accomplishment, just not a good one. Given how much I do admire the book though I can't help but think the fault lies squarely with Wheatley (which doesn't shock me). Kept thinking throughout, but especially during the last half, how much improved all this would be if only it was Gilliam or Greenaway doing it. I think they would get it, they would know how to pull it off. This starts well enough and looks good and obviously the performers are adept and game but boy do they ever get stranded midway through. For one thing, Wheatley uses too many lazy crutch montages for too easy transitions. And that contributes to the biggest problem here: I don't buy what happens and you really need to on some level or it simply doesn't work; I didn't buy this or believe it on any level. Too bad because it has it's moments but if Wheatley can't make the slide into chaos and barbarism convincing than what we're left with is mostly just obnoxious noise.

[colinr0380]

I think it was a tonal thing more than anything. It all felt like a bit of a hedonistic lark, or a party that went too far, in the film whilst the book takes events much more seriously as an organised class war, albeit with an edge of black humour. You just need to clean up the mess and bag up all the bodies in the film to get things back to normal after a middle class equivalent of a gap year, whilst in the book the high rise building is the epicentre of a virus that is only going to get more contagious. Its why I still think Cronenberg's Shivers/They Came From Within is probably better to see rather than the official Ballard adaptation. It even features a real 1970s aesthetic rather than an ersatz one!

But whilst I generally share the disappointment (almost made worse by the extremely well-chosen casting in all roles) there is one part of the film of High-Rise that I think is absolutely wonderful: those brief scenes of Stacy Martin's character as the bored supermarket cashier who gets a book of French literature lobbed onto her conveyor belt during one of the earliest riot scenes, and who we come back to later on as everything descends into chaos and now appears to only be able to speak French!

[therewillbeblus]

Sadly I don’t have any recollection of that bit Colin (and I have no desire to sit through this movie again to find it) but that’s a very creative use of Martin considering her background and even reading your description of the gag gave me a good laugh!

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

All is True (Kenneth Branagh, 2018): In 1613 The Globe Theater burned to the ground, and William Shakespeare never wrote another play. Kenneth Branagh's (who also plays the aging Shakespeare) film picks up in the years after this tragedy to imagine what the Bard's final years were like. Returning to his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon after more than twenty years in London, Shakespeare intends to live out the rest of his days surrounded by his wife Anne (Judi Dench), and daughters Judith (Kathryn Wilder) and Susanna (Lydia Wilson). Also looming large over the surroundings is Hamnet, Susanna's twin brother who died when he was 11. As Ben Elton's screenplay presents him, Shakespeare was a quick wit eager to drop bromides and barbed tongue insults, but we never really get beyond that. There's no window into the mind of Shakespeare, and the result is about as interesting as watching your dad sit around the house during his retirement. Branagh, who made a great Shakespearean adaptation (Hamlet) and a pair of good ones (Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing) finally got his chance to play the Bard himself. Unfortunately, he wastes it on this uninteresting and ponderous exercise. I know that it's fashionable to hate it, but Shakespeare in Love showed that great biographies of Shakespeare are possible, but this ain't one.

Little Joe (Jessica Hausner, 2019): In her English language debut, Austrian auteur Jessica Hausner directs Emily Beecham as Alice, a botanist who engineers a new hybrid flower using off limits gene lines. Named Little Joe after her own tween son Joe (Kit Connor), the CGI flowers seem to have a mind of their own as they bloom and bend based on the presence of people in their lab. Recalling Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the film dabbles in light horror and sci-fi as the pollen from the flower causes bliss in those who sniff it, but also seems to put them under mind control where they seek to expose others to Little Joe's scent. Alice slowly realizes what's going on, but is it too late for her to stop it? I reviewed a few of Hausner's works from the '00s during my time at DVDBeaver, and didn't think that they were anything special (Her 2014 film Amour Fou has gotten some great reviews, but I've yet to see it). I liked this one about the same as her German language works, with is to say, it’s just okay. Her screenplay (co-authored with Géraldine Bajard) does a fine job of ratcheting up the tension as more and more characters come under the flower's influence, but it never seems to amount to much. The special effects on the flowers are a little sketchy, but I suppose it's the best that the filmmakers could do given their budget.

The Lodge (Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, 2019): As Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz's film begins, soon-to-be divorced mother of two Laura (Alicia Silverstoone) kills herself in the family home. As the film fast forwards roughly a year in the future, her former husband Richard (Richard Armitage) is now engaged to Grace (Riley Keough), the sole survivor of a fundamentalist Christian cult who committed mass suicide à la Heaven's Gate when she was a child. Richard's children Aiden (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) despise Grace since her relationship to their father began before their mother's suicide. The family lives some distance from civilization, and when the father leaves for a several day business meeting in town, Grace and the kids are left on their own in the midst of a snowstorm. As the snow comes down, a psychological horror descends upon the house leading to shocking acts of terror. This was a very, very effective thriller that I somehow missed when it came out last year. I spent a while guessing at what was going on before it was finally revealed, and the directors do a magnificent job of keeping the tensions high as Grace slowly gives in to her psychosis. A special shout out to Keough, who has become the new queen of the indies as she's given some of the strongest performances of any actress over the last five years. I'm excited every time her name comes up on a new film.

Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013): Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn followed up his success with 2011's Drive with another hyper violent, heavily stylized thriller starring Ryan Gosling. This time he plays Julian, an American drug dealer operating out of Thailand. When Julian's brother is killed by the father of a teenage girl he rapes and murders, Gosling's character decides to spare his life. However, his mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), flies in from the states and demands bloody vengeance for all those involved in her son's death. This includes not only the man that hacked him to death, but also Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), the seemingly superhuman police officer that runs the illegal operations that got Billy (Tom Burke) killed in the first place. With his toxic mother's demands looming over him, Julian is drawn into a world of violence that he cannot hope to survive. Looking over the forum's discussion of the film (including some comments that I don't remember making eight years ago!), I wasn't surprised to see how polarized the reactions are. There is no doubt that Refn is a master aesthetician, but the seemingly endless extreme violence may appear pointless to some. While I don't think this one is as good as Drive or Refn's follow up The Neon Demon, it has a unique vision that kind of worked for me. Pansringarm is terrifying in his role as the film leads up to a showdown between Chang and Julian.

A Serbian Film (Srdjan Spasojevic, 2010): Milos (Srdan Todorovic) is a retired porn star that struggles to uphold his comfortable life for him, his wife Marija (Jelena Gavrilovic), and their son. When an opportunity to make enough money to cover them for the rest of their life, Milos finds the promise too good to turn down. Vukmir (Sergej Trifunovic), the film's director tries to pass himself off as a pornographic artist who needs Milos to agree to daily shoots without knowing what will happen. Initially things are off-kilter, but not particularly violent. However, as the days go by, Milos's experiences ramp up until they culminate in a drugged-out Milos committing every atrocity imaginable at Vukmir's command. I've long known about the film's reputation, and had a general idea about the acts committed in it, so I found it less shocking than tedious. The film clearly does not take the side Vukmir, as its protagonist is horrified at what he does under his control. At the same time, Spasojevic's claim that this is an artistic statement on Serbia strikes me as a hollow justification for showing gratuitous scenes of extreme horror. Ultimately, I found this boring. Perhaps it’s because I knew everything was simulated (the newborn was obviously fake), but it didn't affect me nearly as much as the documentary The Killing of America did. I don't mean this as an endorsement of the latter--indeed, I think that it's exploitative trash--but the fact that all of the horrors chronicled in it are real, makes it far more disturbing to me than Spasojevic's film.

Shelley (Ali Abbasi, 2016): Director Ali Abbasi wasn't on my radar, but when I learned that Thelma's Ellen Dorrit Petersen (whose 2014 film Blind has a shot at making my list) starred in a film about an evil fetus, I knew I had to see it. Whether it's Rosemary's Baby or House of the Devil, I'm a sucker for a good natal horror film, and this one was pretty decent. Petersen plays Louise and new agey believer who lost her ability to have children in an accident. The Norwegian Louise and her husband Kasper welcome the Romanian Elena (Cosmina Stratan) into their summer home, and eventually invite her to act as a surrogate child bearer for the couple. Elena agrees, but soon regrets it. Once she gets pregnant, Elena begins experiencing a series of nightmares that give rise to disturbing behaviors. I won't go any further into the plot, but things get very dark. The three leads do a terrific job of changing from happiness to terror, and co-writer/director Abassi proves himself to be adept at horror. It's certainly recommended for fans of the genre.

The Third Murder (Kore-eda Hirokazu, 2017): Another film that wasn't previously on my radar, I ended up watching Kore-eda's courtroom drama (though to be fair, a large part of it takes place before the trial begins) at the advice of Michael Kerpan. Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama) is a jaded defense attorney who, along with his partner Settsu (Kôtarô Yoshida), has been assigned the thankless task of defending confessed murderer Misumi (Kôji Yakusho). Initially cool, but seemingly unstable, Misumi gives his lawyers an account of the crime that perfectly matches up to the one outlined by the police, but their own investigation into the evidence soon shows holes in the official story. The scenes between the lawyers as they investigate the case work quite well, but the film began to lose me when

Spoiler

Misumi recanted his confession, saying that he only did it because he was told it would spare him the death penalty.

While there are plenty of real life cases just like this, its overused in fiction to the point of being hackneyed. It's still a good movie, but I wish that Kore-eda had gone in a different direction in the film's final act.

[knives]

Dumont’s Jeannette is easily my favorite of the films I’ve seen for this list. It uses Dumont’s limitations in a pretty hilarious way, that dancing, while retaining a powerful dramatic force, head banging for the lord as a means of accepting the sword, that perfectly sums up the current moment of young women, even children, moving the world in the face of an inert old guard.

[Michael Kerpan]

I love the fact that Kore'eda's murderer tells a different story every time he speaks -- and we never know for sure just why he did (and, possibly, even IF he actually did commit the murder). So we never know for sure whether the lawyer's reading of what happened is correct. In any event, I thought it was pretty remarkable that the selfish and cynical lawyer we saw at the start was willing to accept the negative attitudes of the court and colleagues (etc) in order to allow his client to take the action he wanted to take. I found this film got more and more complex with repeat viewings (and pondering on what one saw/heard).

[therewillbeblus]

bamwc2, I'd be really interested in your thoughts on our conversation of The Lodge in its dedicated thread, considering your occupation. I think it's one of the more effective challenges of our philosophies of responsibility and hierarchies of empathy, portraying the situation in a way that allows them to land in places they wouldn't have if the story was described with more objective distance (and this is why I endlessly debate the topics I do from a humanistic, not-knowing angle)

[bamwc2]

I love the fact that Kore'eda's murderer tells a different story every time he speaks -- and we never know for sure just why he did (and, possibly, even IF he actually did commit the murder). So we never know for sure whether the lawyer's reading of what happened is correct. In any event, I thought it was pretty remarkable that the selfish and cynical lawyer we saw at the start was willing to accept the negative attitudes of the court and colleagues (etc) in order to allow his client to take the action he wanted to take. I found this film got more and more complex with repeat viewings (and pondering on what one saw/heard).

Thanks, Michael. Maybe my judgment was too harsh. I'm kind of like Pauline Kael in that I don't often view movies more than once--there's so much to see and such little time to see it--but I'd be willing to give this another go.

[bamwc2]

bamwc2, I'd be really interested in your thoughts on our conversation of The Lodge in its dedicated thread, considering your occupation. I think it's one of the more effective challenges of our philosophies of responsibility and hierarchies of empathy, portraying the situation in a way that allows them to land in places they wouldn't have if the story was described with more objective distance (and this is why I endlessly debate the topics I do from a humanistic, not-knowing angle)

Thanks. I'll check it out, but I think at this point I'm going to have to call it my former profession. I haven't taught for a year-and-a-half, and just got another rejection today. The job market cratered when I was in grad school with the 2008 recession, but since Covid hit, it's been the Mariana fucking Trench in the humanities. I have seven years of visiting professorships under my belt, but it'd take a miracle for me to get anything full time next year.

However, the last time I tried to talk philosophy in here, sometime almost a decade ago, I didn't make any friends. I come from a heavily analytic background, while the film studies folk here know a lot more about Continental philosophy than I do. I was overly hostile to it at the time, as we were trained to be by the old guard in the discipline. Fortunately, working with and talking to practitioners of the other side has warmed me up to it quite a bit. I still know very little about it, but see it as much more valuable than when I trashed theory here in my early 30s. My main areas of research have been in philosophy of language and epistemology, though I'm currently working on a number of projects on the topic of sex work. I'm not sure if anyone here is interested in those topics, but I'd be happy to have a discussion if you are.

[Michael Kerpan]

The closer one looks at Third Murder, the further it gets from "ordinary".

I'm definitely the polar opposite of Kael in my movie viewing behavior (for anything I find intriguing).

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (Salvador Simó, 2018): Aside from a brief scene of Luis Buñuel as a child, Salvador Simó's animated biography picks up with the premier of the surrealist masterpiece L'Age d'Or where a riot famously caused the director to flee for his life. Over the course of the next few weeks, Buñuel found every avenue of funding cut off from him because of the condemnation of the Catholic Church. Even his collaborator Salvador Dalí refused to advance him the cash for his next project at the advice of his fortune teller. Luck comes when his friend Ramón Acín wins the lottery and fully funds what will become Tierra sin pan. Juxtaposing footage from the actual short, the film meticulously recreates how some of its most famous shots were made. As someone concerned with animal welfare it was a little hard to watch, but the material is pretty fascinating. A lot of the reviews complain that the animation should have been as surreal as the artist himself, but that ignores a ton of surrealist imagery (giant elephants, Buñuel in a nun's habit, the director fondling the breasts of a Marian apparition, etc.) Fans probably won't learn much new from it, but I still found it entertaining enough to recommend it.

The Chambermaid (Lila Avilés, 2018): Eve (Gabriela Cartol) is a 24-year-old single mother who supports her young child by working at a fancy hotel in Mexico City. The only glimpses we get of her life outside of her work is when she attends a GED education course. Instead of learning about her personal life, long stretches of the film simply chronicle Eve's almost mechanical tidying from one room to the next. Avilés film resembles Akerman's Jeanne Dielman insofar as both are stories told by women that focus on women doing domestic chores with somewhat surprising scenes of sexuality. The analogies stop there, as class plays a central role in Avilés drama. A wealthy lighter skin woman played by Agustina Quinci expects Eve to watch her infant son as she prances around the hotel room in the nude pre and post shower. Eve, who we're told is too poor to have a shower in her house, spends her days catering the whims of those that treat her as a mere object for their use. Despite the repetitive nature of the film, like Akerman's, it's a wonderful examination of women forced into lives of domesticity.

Dior and I (Frédéric Tcheng, 2014): Beginning with archival footage of Christian Dior explaining his fashion philosophy, Frédéric Tcheng's documentary quickly moves from the past into the present where we meet Raf Simons, the new creative director of the Dior Fashion House. Untested, Simons is something of an unknown quantity. Though he has a past in design, this is the first time put in charge of one of the world's top fashion lines, and he has to prove himself by completing his vision in time for a major fashion show. Like I said in my earlier review of Boxing Gym, your enjoyment of the movie will depend on your interest in the subject. I can only speak for myself here, but I'm not exactly fascinated by haute couture. Despite the drama of Simons's work, I really wasn't in to this. On another note, I can't figure out why this was rated R. According to imdb, it earned it's rating for "some language", but I don't remember a single swear word in it. The only thing that someone might find offensive is the shirt worn by one model in the final show. It's semi-transparent, and you can kinda sorta make out some nipples. There's no reason why this shouldn't be PG at most.

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (Paul McGuigan, 2017): With her best days behind her, Gloria Grahame (Annette Bening) takes a leave of absence from her New York home for an extended stay in Liverpool. There she picks up some stage work, but more importantly a young lover in the form of Peter Turner (Jamie Bell). Unwilling to admit that she's past her prime (Grahame was in her mid-50s when the film begins), she acts like a Hollywood ingenue who thinks that she's the same age as Peter. The health crisis that preoccupies the second half of the movie is revealed in the opening scene, so viewers aren't surprised when Grahame is diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. I don't know much about the film's central character's later life, so I can't say how faithful the film is in its adaptation of Turner's memoir. Despite the film's central May-December romance, there's nothing very offensive or, for that matter, interesting here. McGuigan plays with the structure using some flashbacks, but doesn't try to do any fancy camera work. If you're interested in Hollywood biopics, the you could do worse than this. You could also do a lot better.

Frankie (Ira Sachs, 2019): Speaking of terminally ill actresses, Isabelle Huppert plays the titular Frankie, French superstar looking to exit the world on her own terms. Serving as the matriarch to her family, Frankie gathers her closest associates for a weekend celebration in Portugal. She, of course, has ulterior motives as she attempts to create a relationship between her adult son Paul (Jérémie Renier) and her hairdresser/confidant Irene (Marisa Tomei). Frankie's effort is complicated both by Irene's boyfriend Gary (Greg Kinnear) and Paul's own desire to keep his meddling mother out of his affairs. After seeing Sach's impressive Little Men, I was eager to see more work by him. Unfortunately, I can't help but feel let down by his 2019 follow up. The individual performances are all competently done, but the film feels like less than the sum of its parts. I'm still interested in seeing more work from Sachs, but my expectations are more tempered after Frankie.

Irrational Man (Woody Allen, 2015): Woody Allen has made some real stinkers in his day, but his Irrational Man might be the worst of them all. The film portrays one of the most ludicrously wrong depictions of academic philosophy I've ever seen. When the film begins, we see a trio of co-eds giggling about newly hired Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), a rebellious philosophy professor with a penchant for sleeping with his students. IF a professor isn't fired for having sex with a student, then there is zero chance of another department ever hiring them. I've known three professors who lost their careers over this. As long as his new department had a whiff of impropriety, there's no way Abe would have been hired. When we first see Abe in a classroom, he lectures on Kant's murderer at the door thought experiment, but the very next time we see him there he talks about Husserl. What class would cover both of these topics? Ethics and phenomenology? The only way that they'd be mashed together would be in an intro class, but I've never heard of someone teaching a text as inaccessible as Husserl’s work in introduction to philosophy. The only other times we see Abe in the classroom are brief clips of him dropping names of philosophers without context, or throwing shade at analytic philosophy (grr). Early on he goes to a house party at the invitation of his student Jill (another no-no) played by Emma Stone. He then proceeds to put a bullet in a revolver, spin the cylinder, place it against his temple, and pull the trigger four times before Jill grabs the gun from him. He tells the students there it's "an existential lesson better than you'll get in any textbook."!!! If his dean ever heard about this, and students have loose lips, he'd be immediately put on leave, and, pending investigation, fired. The movie gets marginally less stupid when Abe decides to pull a Raskolnikov in order to feel...something as if he were a protagonist in a Camus novel. Murder even magically cures his impotence! Allen has plumbed the same themes of this movie to much greater effect in both Match Point and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Go watch those instead. Oh, and what's with the imdb listing this as a comedy? There wasn't a single joke in here.

The Trump Prophecy (Stephan Schultze, 2018): Fire fighter Mark Taylor (Chris Nelson) is haunted by the image of a young boy that he couldn't save from a blazing inferno. Suffering from PTSD, he and his wife Mary Jo (Karen Boles) decide to take early retirement. At night Mark has visions of horrendously rendered CGI demons that he defeats by tracing scripture in the air with his magical sparkling finger. One night while dosing on his easy chair God tells him in his sleep that "You're hearing the voice of a president". When he wakes up, Donald Trump is yapping about something stupid on the TV. Allegedly occurring in 2011, Mark calls this "The Commander-in-Chief Prophecy". At the recommendation of his GP in 2015, Mark goes to Dr. Don Colbert (Don Brooks) a fad weight loss doctor (the movie prominently places his weight loss books and powders in every scene in Don's office). Instead of diagnosing Mark with PTSD induced psychosis as he should have, Dr. Don and his wife Mary (Paulette Todd) decide that he's a prophet and she writes a book about his vision. Mary organizes an evangelical prayer bomb to get Trump into office, and convinces people all over the world to blow shofars in support of their effort (I'm sure that totally happened). With the polling against them, Mark worries that his prophecy has gone wrong. When Trump wins the election, it's presented as a miracle from God. You'd think that conservatives who are so concerned with election integrity would be against God rigging this one, but no. We then get a musical montage of people holding up pictures of family members who served in the military, and, uh, astronauts. What does this have to do with the preceding 90 minutes? Absolutely nothing. The last half hour of features figures like Gen. Boykin, Michelle Bachmann, and a litany of preachers extolling the holiness of Trumps actions and God's approval of free market capitalism. The film was produced and financed by Liberty University, using their theater department to predictably terrible results. Nelson is a theater professor there, but if I were one of his students, I'd ask for a refund on my tuition, as he is an objectively terrible actor. In fact, there isn't a single actor here that deals a performance that even borders on competent. The real-life Taylor, whose prophecies you can find on YouTube, is deeply steeped in conspiracy theories. He rants about weather control technology, Bill Gates depopulation efforts, the Illuminati, Frazzledrip, and as of a video made at the beginning of March still insists that Trump will be sworn in as president and execute everyone in the "deep state". This is the single greatest movie ever made.

[therewillbeblus]

I appreciate how you could dislike wrong depictions of philosophy prof life, for similar reasons as I am sensitive to portrayals of therapy on film, but I don't think Allen is trying to tell a realist tale here in Irrational Man- the philosophy/psychology conflict is present to service larger themes not to be taken at face-value (actually, as I wrote up already, I think Allen is specifically skewering this kind of overly-cognitive personality). I love this film, and it may be my highest ranking Allen for this list project, but I'm def in the minority.

[domino harvey]

Sounds like someone’s bitter for not getting invited to all of the cool student house parties and Russian Roulette fests your peers are attending, bamwc2

[bamwc2]

I'm definitely not cool enough. I was once invited to play Cards Against Humanity by a group of undergrads, but figured I probably shouldn't.

[senseabove]

The Chambermaid (Lila Avilés, 2018)

Seconding this one, a festival favorite of mine the year it made the rounds. And not to belabor the Akerman comparisons—which are undeniable but I worry won't do it any particular favors—it's also striking for its formality, using the anodyne interiors of a modern hotel to dwarf the lives of the people who, in effect, actually live in it. And that's the peculiar fascination here; notably, that GED course bamwc2 mentions takes place in the hotel basement, meaning we never see anything of life outside—literally—the hotel. Contrary to Dielman's mechanistic opaqueness, though, The Chambermaid develops both an intimacy with its shy lead character that puts an entirely different spin on the oppressive feel of its formality, and a mischievousness that makes it significantly less punishing, if not much more hopeful.

[colinr0380]

Loving your reviews Brian! I sort of bracket Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool with that earlier My Week With Marilyn film as bittersweet tales about a young British guy having glamorous but troubled Hollywood actresses throw themselves at them!

And if Brian's Trump Prophecy comments make it seem astoundingly bizarre but you don't want to legitimise the filmmaker's politics (or perhaps the most upsetting aspect of the film: their soundtrack choices) too much then there's a Cinema Snob video about it here. "Whereas Benjamin Netanyahu is to Israel so shall this man shall be to the United States of America" indeed! Though I get the impression that the filmmakers intended that to be some sort of compliment?

[bamwc2]

The Chambermaid (Lila Avilés, 2018)

Seconding this one, a festival favorite of mine the year it made the rounds. And not to belabor the Akerman comparisons—which are undeniable but I worry won't do it any particular favors—it's also striking for its formality, using the anodyne interiors of a modern hotel to dwarf the lives of the people who, in effect, actually live in it. And that's the peculiar fascination here; notably, that GED course bamwc2 mentions takes place in the hotel basement, meaning we never see anything of life outside—literally—the hotel. Contrary to Dielman's mechanistic opaqueness, though, The Chambermaid develops both an intimacy with its shy lead character that puts an entirely different spin on the oppressive feel of its formality, and a mischievousness that makes it significantly less punishing, if not much more hopeful.

Thanks for the perspective! I hope that it came across that I really enjoyed this one as well. I thought that the GED course took place in the hotel, but I wasn't sure so I didn't say it. I appreciate the confirmation!

[bamwc2]

Loving your reviews Brian! I sort of bracket Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool with that earlier My Week With Marilyn film as bittersweet tales about a young British guy having glamorous but troubled Hollywood actresses throw themselves at them!

And if Brian's Trump Prophecy comments make it seem astoundingly bizarre but you don't want to legitimise the filmmaker's politics (or perhaps the most upsetting aspect of the film: their soundtrack choices) too much then there's a Cinema Snob video about it here. "Whereas Benjamin Netanyahu is to Israel so shall this man shall be to the United States of America" indeed! Though I get the impression that the filmmakers intended that to be some sort of compliment?

Thank you for your kind words, Colin! As you know, I've been a big fan of your posts for many years as well.

Yes, thw Cinema Snob review was where I first learned about the film. I never would have paid to see it, but when I saw it was free with an Amazon Prime subscription, I figured that I had to give it a try. I very nearly referenced that line about Netanyahu in m write up, but couldn't find it through Google and didn't want to rewatch the whole movie to find it. Funny enough, the prophecy could refer to their similar massive corruption or xenophobia as it could their connection to God.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi, 2019): Danish actor Claes Bang, who I previously encountered in this project with another film about art (Ruben Östlund's The Square), plays James Figueras, a narcissistic art critic who thinks he deserves to rise above the pittance he makes writing books and giving private museum tours to tourists. After hooking up with Berenice Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki) at one of his lectures, wealthy art collector Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger) invites them both to his private villa where he gives James an ultimatum: either steal a painting from famous artist/recluse Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland) or he will reveal that James inaccurately authenticated a forgery, thus ending his career. The amoral James agrees to do it, and finds himself increasingly compromising whatever principles he might have had. Like any good thriller, the film keeps us guessing at both motivation and outcome as it ratchets up the tension. With fine performances from all four leads, it doesn't amount to much more than the sum of its parts, but fortunately that's enough for a passing grade. Be warned though, as there are some pretty rough scenes in here of violence against women as

Spoiler

James attempts to drown Berenice, gaslights her about it when she doesn't die, and later beats her to death. It's fairly graphic.

Colette (Wash Westmoreland, 2018): Carrying on the grand tradition of English accents substituting other European languages, Keira Knightley plays Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, France's most celebrated woman author. The story begins with Colette's engagement to literary critic and mediocre author Henry-Gauthier Villars (aka Willy) (Dominic West). Willy's own writings fail to support the pair, so, at his suggestion, Colette begins penning a series of books under her husband's name. Her Claudine novels far eclipse anything Wily wrote in terms of sales and critical acceptance, but he refuses all requests she makes to reveal her identity. Colette finds refuge performing on stage alongside her lover Mathilde de Morny (Denise Gough), a masculine presenting lesbian. Ultimately, the film is about a battle for authenticity as the bisexual Colette vies to regain her identity as both a novelist and independent woman. While the film occasionally falls into the standard biopic cliches, it manages to overcome these stumbles with the razor-sharp barbs the couple trade along with gorgeous set design. After doing some independent reading, I think it's worth noting that the film attempts to shoehorn Colette into a happily-ever-after relationship between her and Mathilde. This isn't the case as Colette had many more lovers throughout her life. She wasn't even a serial monogamist as these affairs tended to overlap with one another. I guess that it's okay to paint Willy as a cad for his philandering, but Colette's is too scandalous to make it to the screen.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (Spike Lee, 2014): Spike Lee's remake of the blaxsploitation classic Ganja & Hess follows the same basic plot as the original with plenty of Lee's unique style on top of it. Archeologist Dr. Hess Greene (Stephen Tyrone Williams) receives a ceremonial dagger from the ancient Ashanti Empire (in my best well actually voice there was a precolonial African empire by that name, but it was in the 17th century. Lee's film tells us that it predated the Egyptians by a thousand years.) Hess takes it with him when he visits Lafayette Hightower (Elvis Nolasco), who, in an apparent moment of psychosis, uses it to murder Hess. Lafayette commits suicide, but when Hess reawakens with his wound healed, finds himself irresistibly drawn to his puddle of blood. The undead scientist goes to any length to procure more blood to satiate his endless appetite, but when he meets Lafayette's widow Ganja (Zaraah Abrahams) he sees someone he can spend an eternity with. Lee is a talented director and does well with the material. In fact, the musical sequence in the Black Church is a masterclass in filmmaking. I'm generally not a fan of remaking already good films, but this is one of the rare ones that's just as good as the original.

The Jesus Rolls (John Turturro, 2019): John Turturro wrote, adapted, and stars in this loose spinoff of The Big Lebowski. It's actually an adaptation of Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses who himself brought it to the screen as the 1979 masterpiece Buffet Froid. When the film begins Jesus Quintana (Turturro) is released from prison for once again exposing himself to children (though this time it's not his fault). Friend Petey (Bobby Cannavale) picks him up, and despite the fact that a third felony conviction would land Jesus behind bars for the rest of his life, the two of them go on a crime spree where they pick up Marie (Audrey Tautou) the manic girlfriend of a hairdresser (Jon Hamm) whose car they steal. Tautou's orgasmless Marie is the best thing this disappointing retread of superior material has going for it. Despite being a full-length treatment of a character we only saw for less than a minute before, the only way his character is expanded is the reveal of his bisexuality, the size of his penis, and how effortlessly he slips into a life of crime. Even though it attempts to be a hybrid of Blier and the Coen Brothers, it falls far short of either as the humor unfunny, and the adventures uninteresting. I had such high hopes for this one, but it can't be called anything less than a major disappointment. Go see The Big Lebowski and Buffet Froid, but steer clear of this one.

Krisha (Trey Edward Shults, 2015): Trey Edward Shults wrote, directed, and edited this impressive booze-soaked spin on the themes previously in Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence. After 25 years in the business, veteran actor Krisha Fairchild got her first starring role as the similarly named Krisha, a 60-something middle child to a mother suffering from dementia. After Krisha's substance fueled histrionics caused her family to alienate her for more than a decade, her sister invites the supposedly sober family member over for a reunion with both her mom and estranged son. Things start off alright as Krisha yucks it up with Doyle (Bill Wise) who begs her to cook up the family dogs, but eventually

Spoiler

she finds herself in the upstairs bathroom. She pops a couple of pills, downs a bottle of wine and (might--it's not clear) does some cocaine. Disaster ensues.

Fairchild is excellent in her role, and Shults's innovative camera work and editing keeps the film from ever getting boring. Unfortunately, if it has a weakness, this is it. Shults throws everything he can at the screen with a camera that's in constant motion and other tricks that he lays on very heavily. I'm glad that he toned it down for his next film, but this one works pretty well even with the caveat.

Saint Frances (Alex Thompson, 2019): 34-year-old Bridget (Kelly O'Sullivan) is an aimless slacker who drifts through life without purpose or even a desire for one. She meets Jace (Max Lipchitz) at a party, and the two start a sexual relationship the results in an abortion. At the same time, the penniless Bridget takes a job working as a nanny to a lesbian couple in Evanston, the most affluent city in Illinois. Maya (Charin Alvarez) and Annie (Lily Mojekwu), the interracial couple that hires her, have an infant that Maya looks after while her wife works, but they need Bridget to watch their kindergarten age Frances (Ramona Edith Williams). Much of the film is dedicated to the bond that develops between Bridget and her ward, but there's also a lovely relationship between O'Sullivan's character and Maya that helps to keep the story from veering off into being a film just about a cute kid. With a script also written by O'Sullivan, the film is funny and poignant without ever being cloying or overly sentimental. In fact, it has a lot of intelligent things to say about growing up both as a child, and as an adult. I really look forward to seeing more by these filmmakers.

Sollers Point (Matthew Porterfield, 2017): The title of Matthew Porterfield's film takes its name from a deindustrialized working-class suburb of Baltimore. The previous affluence from its steelworker heyday gave way to crime and urban decay. It's this setting where Keith (McCaul Lombardi) is released from prison to serve the remainder of his sentence for a drug dealing conviction under house arrest. Wearing his ankle monitor, Keith spends his days with his father Carol (Jim Belushi). Carol loves him, but has a hard time relating to his son, and spends most of his days playing cards and shooting the shit with his buddies from the shutdown mill. When Keith's period of house arrest ends, his world opens up, but so do his dangers. He finds himself in friendly territory with a group of black friends, but faces a menace from a white supremacist gang he joined for survival in jail. Even worse are the group of former drug dealing buddies that engage in a constant battle of violent one-upmanship with Keith. Porterfield has made quite a name for himself on the indy scene in the past decade, but this was my introduction to him. I have to say that I'm impressed. Lombardi delivers a matter-of-fact performance that relies on naturalism instead of taking it in a more ostentatious white gangbanger direction. We can sense his desire to do better, but always see Keith fall victim to his own worst impulses. The film does a fantastic job of bringing the neighborhood to life as we feel the sorrow of its dead-end options for people like Keith.

[therewillbeblus]

Krisha

Krisha is certainly an unpleasant watch, but I felt Shults used the medium's more jarring capabilities well to express a narrative of deep-seated emotion and resentment, and it would have been cowardly to avoid the heaviness the material demanded. This is a film capturing the perspective of a woman who cannot stop moving- often in her mind, demonstrated through physical camera movement- and incessantly struggling with hypervigilance. It summarized the acute circumstances of an addict in early sobriety facing their triggers in the most respectful way possible. Shults utilized his skills in stylistic manipulations perfectly in Waves, across a spectrum from similar ways to this during some acute psychological crises but also ethereally during some more spiritual moments of teenage bliss- he's a tremendous talent.

Also, this is a film best experienced with less information, and it deliberately unfolds so as to keep you responding to Krisha's self-consciousness and sensory-overload. You just explained the entire plot of the movie save the last five minutes or so, including relationships that are late-act twists and her

Spoiler

eventual relapse

which is essentially the climax, and should definitely go back and spoilerbox that post...