Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

31 March 2021

Love and Monsters (2020)


I really liked this script. It's very funny, and the monsters are really cool and cleverly imagined. Dylan O'Brien is, of course, the perfect actor for this. He's always compelling when running, and he's an excellent doofus action hero with a lot of feelings. He's great in this. I just really enjoyed this whole thing. I loved the dog. I loved how perfect this was at speaking for pandemic life. I loved the characters. I laughed a lot. Yeah. One of the year's best comedies.

29 March 2021

Minari


Minari
is a lovely movie, and it ends absolutely perfectly. Isaac Lee Chung's film is a kind of slow burn that sneaks up on you even if it doesn't have many surprises up its sleeve. I really liked this, and the performances and filmmaking are topnotch. There's a little too much god in it for my taste, but hey, one of the main characters is kind of a crazy person, so that explains it a bit.

28 March 2021

Project A (1983)


Project A
(A計劃) is so much fucking fun. Jackie Chan apparently directed this back in Hong Kong after his first film failed in the United States. It's a blast.

26 March 2021

Mulan (2020)


This is still so cartoonish. It is unable to transcend its source material. And of course the PG-13 (or is it PG?) rating doesn't help at all. This is a film about a warrior that literally has no blood in it except a few drops falling from Li Gong's hand. Also: Li Gong!! It was so good to see her in this, looking gorgeous as always. In fact, this thing was kinda cool. It was just cheesy. The costume design and production design are gorgeous. I just wish it weren't so fucking twee.

I watched Mulan on Disney+.

25 March 2021

The Way Back (2020)


So much of The Way Back is done so well. The music is great, the acting is great, the camerawork is great; the editing too. The script, however... can't see its way out of every other movie you've seen just like this where a curmudgeonly coach with secret pain lets the kids down and lets himself down but has been inspiring and amazing if only he could see that

To be honest, I found this affecting enough, and I liked it quite a bit – I even love Ben Affleck – but the screenwriter really took the lazy road in act three. It's just all so predictable.

22 March 2021

The War of the Worlds (1953)


The War of the Worlds
is silly fun for a while, and I was quite enjoying myself. Then it takes a very weird god turn that makes no fucking sense.

Also, this film has nothing at all to do with Orson Welles. I really did not realize that before I watched it.

O Fantasma (2000)


Sexy and weird, O Fantasma is a story of a young man's desperation as it grows and grows to a breaking point. It's about obsession and confusion and terror. This is a tragic film, but also so strange that it is constantly intriguing. The final act of this film manages to be both heartbreaking and bizarre. I really, really liked this.

I've been watching João Pedro Rodrigues's films on the Criterion Channel, since they're about to leave. The first film of his I saw was The Ornithologist, and it's so intriguing and surreal and wonderful. O Fantasma is really a masterpiece, though. I look forward to watching both Odete and To Die like a Man. I expect very queer things.

The Chambermaid (2018)


La Camarista (The Chambermaid)
is a tough film about a maid at a very expensive hotel in Mexico City. We spend our time with her as she cleans hotel rooms, makes friends, tries to get her GED, hopes to get transferred to a better-paying job, and calls her young son on the phone. It's a very, very good film and even enjoyable. But it's a film about a very difficult life, about a woman who has very few pleasures.

21 March 2021

Strike Up the Band


This is so cute and so much fun. It doesn't feel like a Busby Berkeley movie for most of the running time, and then there is the film's final, glorious sequence; it's Berkeley all over.

Fun fact, when Rooney and Garland produce a show in act two, at the end of it the curtain comes down and it says Next Week: East Lynne. This was a common thing producers put at the end of a bad show; East Lynne could always be counted on, and audiences loved the show. This is a kind of theatre joke in Strike Up the Band that most people would understand. Anyway, it reminded me that I had never seen East Lynne, so I finally decided to watch it.

I watched Strike Up the Band on DVD.

20 March 2021

Zero Focus


Zero Focus
(ゼロの焦点) is a very good mystery film about a newly married woman whose husband disappears under mysterious circumstances during the winter in Kanazawa. She slowly solves the mystery as the past is told in flashback for us and she treks around Japan trying to figure out what happened to this man that she doesn't even really love but to whom she is tied.

I am still working through this Japanese Noir series on the Criterion Channel.

19 March 2021

Songwriter (1984)


Songwriter
is a great time with some great songs. It's ridiculous country music fun for most of its running time, and Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson are a delight. Lesley Ann Warren is in this too, and she gives a truly fantastic performance. She's funny and sensitive and just delightful, although I can't say I care much for her singing. I liked the script too! This is an unjustly ignored little comic gem. It's sentimental in all the right places and even occasionally serious, but it doesn't take itself too seriously. I had a great time.

I watched this on Amazon Prime and it was the last film that I hadn't seen from the 1984 Oscar cycle. (This was the year Amadeus won Best Picture. The year of Beverly Hills Cop and War-Time Romance and Sesión Continua and El Norte and Footloose.)

18 March 2021

Minbo (1992)

Minbo or the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion
(ミンボーの女) is a hilarious Itami movie about the yakuza. In it, the yakuza are thugs, bullies, extortionists, and most importantly, afraid of actually being confronted. This was a pleasure from start to finish. It's a little long for a comedy, but it's delightful all the same.

16 March 2021

Deux (2019)

Contrary to synopses of this that you might read on the Internet, Deux (Two of Us) is not a sweet movie about love that's been tested. It's nowhere near some kind of sugary, sentimental film. Filippo Meneghetti's film is a thriller. It feels dangerous throughout, and I spent most of the movie very scared for the two main characters. The opening of Deux is mysterious and troubling, with a little girl's screams covered by the cawing of birds. And the rest of the movie continues from this tempestuous opening. This is a very good movie with an excellent central performance. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed it, but it's very good.

Deux was France's submission to the Academy Awards' International Feature this year. The nominations came out on Monday, though, and Meneghetti's film was not included among the nominees.

Yellow Rose


Yellow Rose
is good. I liked the music a lot, and I really enjoyed most of the performances. The screenplay is a little clunky at times (do we need to be told four times that the immigration lawyer is Elliot's cousin?), but I really liked the story, and I found this affecting.

12 March 2021

Over the Moon (2020)


Over the Moon
is cute. I love the little boy. But the animation isn't great. Even the parts on the moon occasionally felt not completely drawn.

This movie was directed by Glen Keane, who made the wonderful short film Dear Basketball in 2017. Over the Moon is a very different movie, and it jumps between styles in a way that is interesting. But this is a kid's movie. It is not really for adults at all. You can watch it on Netflix.

11 March 2021

The Loveless (1981)

Atmospheric and slow. The Loveless is very Florida. But it weirdly just never gets interesting. The acting is bad across the board. The directors are more interested in a kind of faux-fifties style than in anything else, and worst still, the men grope each other and stare at each other but never actually fuck. It's like this weird American version of Fassbinder's Querelle but with a strict disavowal of homoerotics, even though the entire film is shot from a homoerotic perspective. I didn't like this at all.

10 March 2021

Best Actress 2020+

My top choices in the order I would place them on my Academy ballot if I were allowed to vote. In other words, this is my top five, but I acknowledge that this list is already influenced by awards buzz. They are not in order of my preference. Instead, the actors whom I think would theoretically benefit the most from my vote are at the top.

VASILISA PERELYGINA, Beanpole (Дылда)

BARBARA SUKOWA, Deux (Two of Us)




FRANCES McDormand, Nomadland

Also loved:
Tsai Chen, Lucky Grandma (幸運的奶奶)
Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Beanpole (Дылда)
Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman
Yuliya Vysotskaya, Dear Comrades! (Дорогие Товарищи!)
Evan Rachel Wood, Kajillionaire
Wu Ke-Xi, Nina Wu (灼人秘密)

Apologies to:
Itsaso Arana (The August Virgin), Pamela Mendoza Arpi (Song without a Name), Radha Blank (The Forty-Year-Old Version), Carrie Coon (The Nest), Zahia Dehar (An Easy Girl), Clara Riedenstein (The Portuguese Woman), Ia Sukhitashvili (Beginning), and Abigél Szőke (Those Who Remained), whose films I have not yet seen.

Related:
My Best Actress picks from past years (2004-2019)
My Best Actor picks from 2020+
My Best Supporting Actress picks from 2020+
My Best Supporting Actor picks from 2020+

09 March 2021

Nomadland

I loved Chloé Zhao's Nomadland. It's so smart and sensitive and generous. The photography is gorgeous. The musical score is beautiful (it's not original). The performances by Frances McDormand and David Strathairn are great. One of the best movies of the year. 

I was surprised that I loved this so much. I didn't really care much for Zhao's last film, The Rider, even though almost everyone else seemed to love it. I just am not very interested in her use of non-actors. 

And, I have to say, I really didn't like the non-actor aspect of Nomadland either. It's not that I don't think they're interesting people – they are definitely that – it's just that non-actors don't open up very well to the camera, and so they don't let the viewer have access to them in a way that an actor usually would. I find this a frustrating movie-watching experience. If I'm honest, I would just prefer that everyone in the film was an actor. For me, the sequences that worked best in Nomadland were all of the scenes with actors.

But honestly this bothered me a lot less in this movie than it did in The Rider, and Nomadland is a wonderful film. I recommend it to everyone.

Tabu (2012)


Weirdly, I started watching this film when it was released in the U.S. in 2012 but stopped after an hour for some reason or other, so I missed the last half of this film, which is... superb. I loved this film. It's weird and atmospheric and rich and smart. Its links with the original F.W. Murnau Tabu are rather tenuous, but this, too, is a black-and-white film about colonialism. (I clearly really love black-and-white films about colonialism – Vazante, Embrace of the Serpent, Roma. I probably ought to give this some thought.)

08 March 2021

One Night in Miami... (2020)

I like Regina King, but One Night in Miami... is a boring, talky, plotless mess of a film. Kingsley Ben-Adir is excellent as Malcolm X – actually everyone is technically good in this movie, but Kemp Powers' screenplay is an utter disaster. There is literally no plot. This, to be fair, isn't a problem for a different kind of film. But One Night in Miami... is a character study without any study. It puts four famous men in an unattractive hotel room to talk about (Kemp Powers' ideas about) Blackness and the United States and the future. It's a film with characters but no plot. This film never stop feeling like it's a play. And if it were a play – and it was one – I'd say that it's not theatrical; it's just a bunch of talk. I don't like plays like this. They lack dynamism to me. They're more interested in their writers' ideas about some topic or other than they are in entertaining their audience or doing something cool with the medium.

Worse yet, One Night in Miami... insists on treating Malcolm X and Sam Cooke with the writer's own pop psychology. Malcolm's only doing what he's doing because he's trying to prove something to Black folks, it is posited. And Sam Cooke is only what he's doing because he's too invested white people's approval. This seems... lacking in nuance, let's say. But the film doesn't leave space for things to get richer. Characters are given space to air their opinions, but we never really get anywhere. All four of the characters, as it turns out, are right (except for Jim Brown, who appears not to have many opinions). It's just such a frustrating bit of writing. And I am not sure I understand, either, what the point of it all is. One Night in Miami... feels designed to confirm the viewer in our own ideas rather than to challenge them at all. It doesn't ask us to change; strangely enough, this film asks its characters to change. And this seems to me like an odd request.

The costumes are good, and I expect Leslie Odom Jr., who plays Sam Cooke, to get an Oscar nomination, but I wouldn't recommend it.

06 March 2021

East Lynne (1931)

I've been told that there is only one copy of Frank Lloyd's East Lynne and that it is housed at UCLA. I sort of despaired of ever seeing this movie, particularly since I don't live in Los Angeles anymore, but I found a bootleg DVD online and thought I'd see what that held for me. The actual movie is something like 104 minutes long, but the DVD doesn't include the last real of the film, and I was only able to watch about 92 minutes of East Lynne. But I feel pretty sure I got the gist.

I was pleased to find that this film starred Ann Harding, who was nominated for Best Actress this same year for her brilliant performance in Holiday. She is definitely charming in East Lynne, but they chose correctly by nominating her for Holiday.

East Lynne is yet another Oscar-bait, woman-sacrifices-her-child picture, though I will say that I think Lloyd's film is different in some ways from the usual tropes these movies employ. In the first place, literally everything that happens in this film is the fault of a man and absolutely never the fault of the main character, Isabelle. And the film makes no bones about this. The men in this movie are terrible, terrible people who throw this woman away and treat her like shit.

I'm gonna write a little synopsis because there aren't any accurate ones on the internet. Isabelle marries this suburban, neo-Puritan dude and leaves the gay life of London to go stay at this giant manse in the country called East Lynne. She's super excited about it and loves her husband. But as soon as she gets to East Lynne she finds that the place is run by her husband's dour sister in law, who actually hadn't even come to London for the wedding. She badmouths Isabelle immediately, and it's clear she's going to muck things up somehow. The film skips all of the microaggressions we can be sure this old bat perpetrated, and we advance quickly to three years later with a title card. Isabelle has changed visibly. She no longer wears any pretty dresses, she's stifled in this house, and she also has a little boy. Her husband is mean to her; the sister is mean to her. It sucks. Then one of her former suitors comes to visit.

The suitor declares his love for Isabelle. Then he kisses her. She runs up to her room and is like no, dude. Leave me alone. But the evil witch of a sister-in-law lies and tells Isabelle's husband that she and the guy are having an affair. Finally Isabelle loses it: tells the sister-in-law off, accuses her of lying. But the husband takes her sister's side. Isabelle says, OK, then, I'm out of here. I won't stay in this house another minute because you don't actually love me. Well, that's all good and well, but this man will not let her take her son. She says, I won't leave without my son, but he says, Actually yes. You are leaving anyway. There's a lot of crying at this point. I was surprised she didn't burn East Lynne to the ground or throw the old lady down the stairs. Those responses would have been appropriate.

New title card. Three months later. Miss thing is on the boat to Paris. She does have a rich father, at least, who loves her. The suitor who kissed and caused (some of) this trouble is on the boat with her and offers to give her all the things she's been missing: fun and food and dresses and champagne. This gay life lasts awhile, but then as it turns out he was swindling the English government, so he gets fired from the diplomatic service, and the two are reduced to penury and to hanging out with (gasp!) Bohemians.

Then the Franco-Prussian War begins. Apparently it's 1870 (which I hadn't actually realized) and Paris is under siege. Miss thing is like I just really miss my son, perhaps my asshole ex-husband has come around and is not being such an asshole anymore. (We see in a few scenes back at East Lynne that he has most definitely not stopped being an asshole, though he has remarried.) But Isabelle's current boyfriend, who was swindling the British government, is now a full on jerk. She says I'm getting out of Paris and I'm going back to London to see my baby. This is crazy. Paris is under siege. A building falls on both her and her man. The man is killed and she somehow has some illness where she's going to go blind unless she has complete rest and, like, sits in a dark quiet room or something. But Lady Isabelle will not listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene, and she refuses to trust the science. She says, Listen, if I'm going to go blind I need to see my babychild one last time. So she goes back to East Lynne in the dark of night.

Meanwhile, her child is sick with consumption and he needs complete rest and things are touch and go, and he cannot possibly be disturbed at all at least for this one night. But this is the night that Isabelle has sneaked in to see him. (She can still see.)

And then the film cuts out.

Unfortunately, this is a ridiculous melodrama. It's so divorced from any reality and takes itself so seriously, that I just couldn't come around to enjoying it, even with Ann Harding in the lead role. 

I actually don't know what happens at the end, and I think the film is so different from the original novel that there are no clues even to be found there. Every synopsis online gets things so wrong that I don't think they can be trusted here either. Does she shake the crib and he dies in her arms or something like that? That seems about the speed of this movie. Perhaps one day I will find my way to UCLA to see the final reel. Hopefully I can watch just the end by itself, though, without having to rewatch the rest of this mostly tepid melodrama.


05 March 2021

La Llorona (2019)

Jayro Bustamante's La Llorona (not to be confused by The Curse of la Llorona) is really excellent. It's a kind of horror film but not really. It's a movie about the haunting of a genocidal murderer and the way his family begins to reckon with what he has done. What he's done is horrible, but the film deals with this in fascinating ways that double back on themselves. It's an interpretation of history – a kind of alternate history where Efraín Ríos Montt's family metes out justice for the Indigenous people he murdered. But it's also a reinterpretation of La Llorona herself, who no longer screams mis hijos but now screams for her children in the Mayan Ixil language. This is very, very well done, and the acting is superb.

03 March 2021

Holiday (1938)

I honestly had no idea at all that this 1938 Holiday was a remake of the 1930 Holiday, written by Philip Barry and Horace Jackson and directed by Edward H. Griffith. But it's the same movie, just 8 years later. It even has Edward Everett Horton in the same role he played in the original! The script is a little better this time, and I think it resonates more with contemporary politics. And this one, of course, has Cary Grant, who is much much much funnier than Robert Ames. In fact, the whole movie is funnier than the 1930 version, especially Lew Ayres, who plays the brother of the family. He's delightful! But... the 1930 version has Mary Astor where the 1938 version has Doris Nolan (who?), and the original has that brilliant performance by Ann Harding. Katherine Hepburn is fine in that role in 1938, but it is impossible to do what Ann Harding does in the original. Anyway, this is fun. But it doesn't have Ann Harding and I missed her the entire time.

I watched this classic on the Criterion Channel as part of their series of Cary Grant's comedy turns.

Best Supporting Actress 2020+

My top choices in the order I would place them on my Academy ballot if I were allowed to vote. In other words, this is my top five, but I acknowledge that this list is already influenced by awards buzz. They are not in order of my preference. Instead, the actors whom I think would theoretically benefit the most from my vote are at the top.

MARGARITA KÉNEFIC, La Llorona

KATIANA MILFORT, Zombi Child

KSENIYA KUTEPOVA, Beanpole (Дылда)
 
ESSIE DAVIS, Babyteeth
 
YOUN YUH-JUNG, Minari

Also loved:
Haley Bennett, Hillbilly Elegy
Olivia Colman, The Father
Aleksandra Konieczna, Boże Ciało (Corpus Christi)
Rodica Lazar, La Gomera (The Whistlers)
Teyonah Parris, Twelve (Charm City Kings)
Alysia Joy Powell, Judas and the Black Messiah
Gina Rodriguez, Kajillionaire
Talia Ryder, Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Amanda Seyfried, Mank
Julieta Szönyi, La Gomera (The Whistlers)

Related:
My Best Supporting Actress picks from past years (2004-2019)
My Best Actress picks from 2020+
My Best Actor picks from 2020+
My Best Supporting Actor picks from 2020+

Dear Comrades!


Andrey Konchalovskiy's Dear Comrades! (Дорогие Товарищи!) is really good. This film is beautifully acted and a good companion piece to this year's films about police violence in the 1960s.

Dear Comrades! is the Russian selection for the International Film Oscar, and it made the 15-film shortlist announced last month. You can watch it on Hulu.

02 March 2021

Best Supporting Actor 2020+

My top choices in the order I would place them on my Academy ballot if I were allowed to vote. In other words, this is my top five, but I acknowledge that this list is already influenced by awards buzz. They are not in order of my preference. Instead, the actors whom I think would theoretically benefit the most from my vote are at the top.


JOSH O'CONNOR, Emma.


BRIAN DENNEHY, Driveways

PAUL RACI, Sound of Metal

Also loved:
Carlo Cecchi, Martin Eden
Bruce Davis, The Vast of Night
Ferdinand Kingsley, Mank
Ben Mendelsohn, Babyteeth
Josh O'Connnor, Hope Gap
David Strathairn, Nomadland

Related:
My Best Supporting Actor picks from past years (2004-2019)
My Best Actress picks from 2020+
My Best Actor picks from 2020+
My Best Supporting Actress picks from 2020+

Calm with Horses


I am actually not sure why I found Calm with Horses so boring, but it just seems to cover ground I've seen rather a lot of times. I adore Cosmo Jarvis, and I love Barry Keoghan, but this movie just doesn't have anything new going for it.

Calm with Horses was being called The Shadow of Violence for like two weeks, and although you can watch it on Netflix under the title Calm with Horses, the title that flashes on the screen is, indeed, The Shadow of Violence. Neither of these titles is really very good, but, then that begs the question of what title this film ought to screen under at all. There really isn't anything distinguishing this violent story of a heavy who works for a drugrunner from any other story of a heavy with a heart of gold who works for a crime racket.

This film does have Cosmo Jarvis and Barry Keoghan, but it isn't enough.

01 March 2021

Best Actor 2020+

My top choices in the order I would place them on my Academy ballot if I were allowed to vote. In other words, this is my top five, but I acknowledge that this list is already influenced by awards buzz. They are not in order of my preference. Instead, the actors whom I think would theoretically benefit the most from my vote are at the top.



ROB MORGAN, Bull

LUCA MARINELLI, Martin Eden


RIZ AHMED, Sound of Metal

Also loved:
Ben Affleck, The Way Back
Bartosz Bielenia, Boże Ciało (Corpus Christi)
Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Pierfrancesco Favino, Il Traditore (The Traitor)
Anthony Hopkins, The Father
Hu Ge, The Wild Goose Lake (南方車站的聚會)
Delroy Lindo, Da 5 Bloods
Mads Mikkelsen, Druk (Another Round)
Dev Patel, The Personal History of David Copperfield
LaKeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah
Toby Wallace, Babyteeth

Apologies to:
Pete Davidson (The King of Staten Island), Armando Espitia (I Carry You with Me), Jude Law (The Nest), Juan Carlos Maldonado (The Prince), Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (Farewell Amor), Tahar Rahim (The Mauritanian), and Christian Vazquez (I Carry You with Me), whose films I have not yet seen.

Related:
My Best Actor picks from past years (2004-2019)
My Best Actress picks from 2020+
My Best Supporting Actress picks from 2020+
My Best Supporting Actor picks from 2020+

Sound and Fury (1988)

No no no. I don't know what this movie is trying to do, but it's not managing it. De Bruit et de Fureur (Sound and Fury) is poorly directed, and it's a downer to boot. It's in fact so much of a downer that it starts to become laughable. 

We watched this as a part of my unseen movie club, and I don't know how my friend Greg got ahold of it, but I think we were all a little embarrassed by it. Greg protested that the director, Jean-Claude Brisseau, was something of a phenom when Sound and Fury came out and that Sound and Fury itself was a Cannes darling back in 1988. I think all of us were skeptical, and then, I'm not kidding, the day after we watched this, MUBI had another Brisseau movie as their film of the day.

Greg later told me, "Well, he did call it Sound and Fury, after all."

"Signifying nothing?" I said.

"Exactly," replied Greg.