Saint-Narcisse (2020)

Saint-Narcisse is sexy and unhinged in a perfect Bruce La Bruce way. A man searches for the mother he never knew in a town called Saint-Narcisse. She's living in a lesbian relationship with the daughter of her former lover who is also her doppelgänger. The daughter is, of course, immediately attracted to the son. But more complications ensue, and there is yet another doppelgänger out there: the man's twin brother. What's a narcissist to do? 

I wouldn't call this a good film, per se, but I sure did enjoy myself, and I'm glad I watched it.

Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)

Caesar and Cleopatra is honestly terrible. It’s Shaw, so it’s talk talk talk and not much else. Obviously the costumes are gorgeous—it’s ancient Egypt in the Roman period—but there’s just nothing to this. It’s allegedly a kind of adventure-intrigue sort of thing about Caesar and Cleopatra but it’s not the least bit interesting.

Les Cinq Diables (2022)

Les Cinq Diables is so clever and intriguing! It’s also very mysterious and queer and a lot of other things. Léa Mysius's film is a kind of time-travel story like I’ve never seen before. I’ll be thinking about this for a long time. It’s really haunting. And, as I think I've said before, having Adèle Exarchopoulos on my screen is always a gift.

My Little Sister (2020)

Schwesterlein (My Little Sister) is about ten minutes too long, but it’s an absorbing drama, and it stars Nina Hoss, so it’s obviously worth watching. She’s electric, as always, and the film is deeply invested in her every move. I also loved that this film starred Thomas Ostermeier basically as himself. It was such a fun, weird, cool choice and it made absolutely perfect sense.

Wild Is the Wind

George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind is a pulpy melodrama that is wonderfully enjoyable, honestly. Anna Magnani and Anthony Quinn are what you’d expect. They give fire and fire. They fight and yell and chew the scenery like method actors in the 1950s ought to do. Anthony Franciosa is honestly even more wonderful in this. He is a sort of villain here who gives a nuanced, delicate performance that I loved. But of course Magnani and Quinn are the stars and they’re absolutely magnetic. Cukor’s direction leans full into the melodrama. And that song. It’s haunting and great, and there’s a reason it’s still a favorite.

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

Desperately Seeking Susan is written to be a kind of sex–crime–comedy film in the vein of Something Wild and Miami Blues. This is the PG-13, unfunny version of those movies. The script is actually great, but the director doesn’t seem to know this is a comedy. This really could have been hilarious, but it isn’t. Still there are a few highlights: Giancarlo Esposito has a great cameo, Aidan Quinn is gorgeous, and Madonna is perfectly dynamic and sexy and fun (without being funny, because, as I think I’ve noted, this movie is bafflingly unfunny).

Turtles and Ooze

Meh. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a movie for children. I was bored. It really had no surprises in terms of the teenagers and their characterization either. Leo, Mikey, Don, and Raph are exactly what media always tell us teenage boys are like. The animation is definitely cool, but it was also a bit too chaotic for me.

Passages (2023)

For me, Ira Sachs' new drama didn’t really work. It’s an intriguing enough story, but it has a very big execution problem. The movie is supposed to be about Franz Rogowski's character's journey, his attempt to try a different thing and make it work, and Passages is designed as a character study. The movie is not written as a melodramatic narrative; it’s not designed to be plot-driven. But then… we get almost no access to this guy’s feelings. The camera doesn’t spend time with his face the way it should, and we don’t know why he makes the decisions he does. And so, eventually, the film really doesn’t have much to say. One important example of this are the much-touted sex scenes in this movie: in none of them do we have access to Franz Rogowski's face. This makes no sense. The sex is central to the character, his development, and his choices, and yet we don't know what is going on with him at all! Instead, the camera hangs out with asses or the face of his partner! I don't get it. The story feels like it's just not told well.

One thing that is important to say, however, is that we are all blessed by having more Adèle Exarchopoulos on our screens.

Oh, PS: This was officially "unrated" since the MPAA gave this movie an NC-17 rating. Why? Who knows. Actually, I know. Homophobia.

Lies My Father Told Me (1975)

Lies My Father Told Me was not for me. It’s one of those told-from-a-child’s-point-of-view things, but this child is especially annoying. This film also involves way more yelling and screaming than I enjoy. These folks yell at each other the entire movie up until the very last moment. I was exhausted.

The Well (1951)

The Well is rather an enjoyable melodrama. It’s the kind of story about race that has no idea why a race riot might occur, and it’s also plenty corny in its own way. For some reason it also thinks it’s perfectly ok for police to beat a guy up and treat him unfairly – and for racist cops to go unpunished. But this is a successful little thing, and it’s very well made – particularly in its editing.

I think Russell Rouse, who co-directed this picture, is a pretty good filmmaker. I liked the movie The Thief, which he made the year after The Well: it's a tight, intriguing thing with the gimmick that it contains no spoken dialogue at all. His 1964 film A House Is Not a Home, however, had problems. 

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Did a bot write this? Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised. This was very very silly but not without its charms. I do wish I had seen this on an IMAX screen. It's so dumb that it's main pleasures are watching Tom Cruise run (I'm being completely serious) and the big action setpieces with which the film is littered. This stuff really is good fun, and so one might as well lean into that by seeing this thing on the biggest screen possible. 

There is, however, a paradox in PG-13 films like M:IDR1. They purportedly shield young people (under 13) from seeing too much violence. At the same time, their plots are about saving the entire world from succumbing to violent destruction. And yet they irresponsibly show the most brutal, horrible physical violence as if it has no consequences at all. You can get your face slammed into a stone wall and come right back to fight some more, and you can get your hand stabbed into a table and not bleed a drop. So while PG-13 films such as this (and the ones cranked out by Marvel Studios) purport to be opposed to violence, they make the world more and more violent by pretending that terrible violence does no harm. 

The Goddess (1958)

The Goddess boasts an incredible performance by Kim Stanley, the great method actress who did not make very many films. She rips into this role, which was apparently based on the career of Marilyn Monroe (while she was still working in Hollywood!). The script is also aces, but that’s what we all expect from a Paddy Chayefsky screenplay. In any case, this whole thing is note-perfect. Lloyd Bridges is great. Betty Lou Holland is fantastic. Steven Hill and Burt Brinckerhoff are very good. Elizabeth Wilson is excellent. And John Cromwell’s direction is tight and unsparing.

The Goddess is on the Criterion Channel until the end of August. I haven't seen it streaming anywhere else before this, so it might be a good time to check it out.

Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989)

Eat a Bowl of Tea is a cute idea with a good cast (including my first childhood Hollywood crush, Russell Wong). But the execution is not very good. Wayne Wang's direction is all over the place, making the film feel very disjointed, and the pacing and vibe feel totally off.

Bite the Bullet (1975)

I wanted to like Bite the Bullet. It’s a kind of disaster film mixed with a western mixed with Grand Prix. But also I didn’t care about any of these characters. And interesting characterization seemed to have been the film’s only real raison d’être. So that’s puzzling. Anyway I guess I was kinda bored.

This Is Cinerama

This Is Cinerama is cool for being what it is: the first Cinerama movie. The views of the United States are the best part, and so the second half of the movie is much better than the first. I was also into the Venice sequence. But all of the indoor sequences are really boring, I’m afraid. And this film’s US nationalism is also distasteful. The lengthy Cypress Grove, Florida sequence is another of the film’s fun highlights. 

(As for the movie’s restoration, the work on The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm is far superior to what they’ve done with This Is Cinerama. I’m interested to see what the restoration looks like for South Seas Adventure, which I’ll check out at some point in the future.)

Zardoz (1974)

I’m pretty sure I think John Boorman is obnoxious. Zardoz is definitely obnoxious. I found it outrageously unfocused and wildly sexist. Strangest of all, perhaps, is that even though Sean Connery wears an outrageous red speedo for the entirety of the film, Zardoz just isn’t that much fun, despite being a sci-fi adventure film.

Spring Blossom (2020)

Oh wow! Seize Printemps is just so good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. Suzanne Lindon woman wrote this while she was a teenager and then starred in it and directed it at age twenty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film about love like this one.

For some reason this has a lot of negative reviews on Letterboxd, and I probably oughtn't to have looked at them because, well, people are awful, and, indeed, this is what I found out when I looked. But what I learned on there is that people are actually not interested in how teenagers see the world. The people who disliked the movie were bored or felt the movie was shallow or creepy. I guess I can see not being at all interested in young people and simply deciding that anything young people have to say is not worth listening to, but that's not how I felt at all watching Spring Blossom. This was a fascinating and very sweetly beautiful film.