film reviews

Close-up (1989)

Abbas Kiarostami is interested in how we construct stories. Close-up is perhaps his most direct interrogation of the topic, and interrogation it is: Kiarostami is relentless. We the viewers are faced with a shifting artistic arsenal—grainy documentary footage, reenactments by the real-life parties themselves, (possibly) fictionalized scenes—and always-hovering questions: who’s telling this story? Who gains or loses in the telling? Are the reenactments more or less “true” than the courtroom documentary pieces, in which roles are assigned by a justice system and not a director? Just like the accused Sabzian, we’re the better for running Kiarostami’s gauntlet. And there’s much more here beyond the meta-questions. Sabzian’s testimony, for example. His words—and also his haunted, nervous face during the reenactments—call up accusations of much greater import than fraud: of what the rich do to the poor, of the available means for revenge, of how every day we augment the possibility that the millennia-old drama of human inequality ends in horror. Hossain Sabzian died of a heart attack at age 52, seventeen years after the filming of Close-up. Kiarostami’s gift, which is a gift of deep mercy and not merely justice, remains. 10 ↑ ↓

Close-up, directed by Abbas Kiarostami, Celluloid Dreams, 1990. Reviewed February 13, 2024.

Seven Samurai (1954)

The farmers are hungry. The samurai are hungry. The bandits are hungry. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is widely regarded as one of the most influential movies of all time for many reasons—the “avengers assemble” trope, frequent shifts in pacing, a deft use of humor to lighten the load. Less frequently discussed is the movie’s central philosophical theme: the nature of violence. In one of Seven Samurai‘s most striking scenes, the samurai, having agreed to protect a hamlet from bandits, learn that the villagers have a cache of armor pillaged from other warriors they’ve hunted and killed. The samurai are horrified and the bargain seems on the edge of collapse. Then Kikichuyo—the misfit, the orphan, the farmer’s son fleeing misery to face the cause of misery—speaks. “Who turned them into such monsters?” he asks in a rage. Kurosawa doesn’t provide pat answers, but he does implicate us—all of us, without exception—in asking the questions. Is there such a thing as honorable violence? If so, how do we make sure claims of honor don’t creep past their assigned boundaries? If not—if we act as though all violence is dishonorable—will the cruelest among us fill the power vacuum? What’s the cost of ignoring such questions? 9 ↑ ↓

Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa, Toho, 1954. Reviewed February 12, 2024.

The Hours (2002)

Streep, Moore, Kidman: the best of the best are assembled here. At times, the acting firepower is to the film’s detriment. The trio is so magnetic that one is aware, in moments, of weak dialogue being resuscitated by force of will. One wonders how the movie would have felt with a capable but less imposing cast (and a less overbearing score). Still, The Hours does its job—sketching intersections of gendered repression, mental illness, the judgment of mental illness—passably well, and there are scenes of genuine and indelible power, especially involving Moore. Suicide will always be worth investigating, but so too are the decisions that people make to save their own lives, even at the cost of the respect of others. 7 ↑ ↓

The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry, Paramount Pictures, 2002. Reviewed January 21, 2024.

Kanehsatà:ke (1993)

All film—and all history—manufactures, not reflects, reality. It can’t do otherwise. Logistically, every human viewpoint can’t be included, much less critically analyzed, rebutted. (And even if that were possible, pines and stones and seagulls wait in the green room). Documentaries are falser than other art forms in lulling the audience into forgetting the act of construction. Alanis Obomsawin doesn’t care: Kanehsatà:ke revels in its subjectivity. For centuries, the privilege of contrivance has rested with colonizers. The narrative imbalance has reached such heights of absurdity that a nine-hole golf course on top of a burial ground seems like an idea worth discussing. It’s not. Kanehsatà:ke is aesthetically rough and highly partisan, but if one judges art by how close it comes to its goals, then Obomsawin’s work has few peers: it, and more broadly the Kanehsatà:ke Resistance, inspired land revolts across North America. This is artistic politics, not political art, and the difference clarifies the work of artists and politicians both. 7 ↑ ↓

Kanehsatake, directed by Alanis Obomsawin, ACPAV, 1993. Reviewed December 31, 2023.

A Ghost Story (2017)

Imagine holding a filmstrip. Every moment of a story—beginning, middle, end—is simultaneously in your hands. In this meta-scene, time, which will feel so essential to the film’s viewers, is close to trivial. One merely has to snip here, insert there, and a new universe is created. We are the ghost in David Lowery’s Ghost Story: a mute, confused, increasingly desperate presence trapped inside an illusion made of desire. Time is emphatically not—as far as Einstein’s theory of special relativity suggests —a property of physical reality. And yet it dominates us. Grief is made of time. Fear is made of time. Jealousy is made of time. We might work our whole lives to let go of the illusion, but upon victory would our bodies collapse like a deflated ghost? And is this preferable to a more delusionary but at least corporeal fate? The sages and saints assure us that there is something awaiting us beyond time. Not heaven, mind you—the afterlife should truly be an afterthought: thanks, Mr. Lowery, for the pitiful ghost in a sheet—but a form of belonging far beyond the petty desire to exist. I would only ask: if we must dispense with Gabriel, is Bird Parker blowing his horn on that other shore? I believe he is. If so, I can learn to dig the caveats of immortality. 9 ↑ ↓

A Ghost Story, directed by David Lowery, performances by Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, A24, 2017. Reviewed December 25, 2023.

Chungking Express (1994)

Six years after Chungking Express, Wong Kar-wai would make In the Mood for Love, a quiet, bracing exploration of doomed passion. All the elements responsible for the latter’s greatness—vibrant visuals, faith in the viewer’s patience and intuition, a prioritization of sensation over narrative—are here. And yet Chungking Express doesn’t reach those heights. The quirkiness of the characters feels purposeless instead of endearing, the unconventional atmospheric choices—staccato action scenes, pop hits stuck on repeat—irritating instead of innovative. Part of the process, I suppose. 5 ↑ ↓

Eliza’s take: The film is split in two— two stories, two casts, two romantic arcs. A diptych prompts a search for parallels and contrasts across its parts. Here, the Femme Fatale exists in one pane, the Pixie Dream Girl in another. Both women are left 2-D as cardboard cut-outs. You, viewer, could pop out another dimension as you stand these two tropes against each other and see how they relate— but is the depth you’ll find there worth the architectural work? 5 ↑ ↓

Chungking Express, directed by Wong Kar-wai, performances by Brigitte Lin Chin-Hsia, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Faye Wong, Jet Tone Production Co., 1994. Reviewed December 24, 2023.

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

A man looks desperately around the open-air marketplace for his stolen bike. His eight-year-old son, drenched and miserable, follows. The drizzle becomes a storm. They run to find shelter under the eaves of a nearby building. The boy, holding his jacket above his head, trips on the cobblestones. He picks himself up and goes to his father’s side, furiously wiping dirt off his body. The man barely notices. The boy looks upward at his father’s lost and haggard face and in that brief moment he realizes—and we realize with him—that he’d better grow up more quickly than planned. Had Vittorio De Sica’s entire career consisted only of this two-minute, five-word scene, it would have been a life well-lived. Bicycle Thieves is a meditation on worry and love and worried love. Each of these forces exercises great power over human affairs; twisted together, they are as a god, unsparing, relentless. Volumes have been written about the choices that sum to De Sica’s masterpiece: the casting of non-professional actors, on-scene shooting, the neorealist commitment to life as it is, with its ambiguities and unspoken words. These are all interesting and important, but nothing is more important than the absence of suffering. Sit, watch, and then remember until the end of your days the person who sits there, watching a boy and his father walk into the distance. 11 ↑ ↓

Bicycle Thieves, directed by Vittorio De Sica, performances by Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola, Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche, 1948. Reviewed November 6, 2023.

Being There (1979)

Being There is a single joke. Peter Sellers, in the last role of his career (let’s forget The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu ever happened), plays that joke brilliantly in scene after scene, but even the most pleasant note, held too long, is a drone. Jerzy Kosinski’s script and Hal Ashby’s direction flutter around some clever ideas—the pretense of political life, our desperate need for saviors, the mind’s desire-fueled reordering of reality—but they don’t pursue these ideas any credible distance. That’s okay. It’s hard to judge a honest day’s satire too harshly. Walking on water isn’t easy even if you stick to the shallows. 6 ↑ ↓

Being There, directed by Hal Ashby, performances by Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine, United Artists, 1979. Reviewed November 6, 2023.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

There is a moment in No Country for Old Men when the demigod is, briefly, defeated. His hangdog face freezes in frustration. His dark eyes grow darker. The accusation of agency is what wounds him: that he has a choice to be something other than a killer. And then a thought saves him—and, very incidentally, dooms another—a thought about origins and causality and the consequent dissolution of free will. Cormac McCarthy, for all the spareness of his prose, does not traffic in light philosophical themes. The Coen brothers do more than simply capture McCarthy’s style and substance. They transpose one art form into another with such skill—emphasis here, restraint there—that meaning is not only replicated, but revealed. (Courtney Love recalled, a few months after her husband’s death, how she hated the Meat Puppets’ second album until Kurt Cobain played it for her in “his voice, his cadence, and his timing.”) McCarthy has few equals in using scratches on a page to force us to look upon the violence and stillness of planet earth, and the Coen brothers, with their own gifts, are right there with him. Their desert is as sharp and redeeming as a blade’s edge, and the worn timbre of a decent man’s voice still contains the germ of an affirmative religion. 10 ↑ ↓

No Country for Old Men, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, performances by Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin, Miramax, 2007. Reviewed November 4, 2023.

North by Northwest (1959)

Alfred Hitchcock was at the top of the film world in 1959. Vertigo was released the year before, and Psycho would be released the year after. The director seems to have thought of North by Northwest as something of a parody, a cinematic bucket list—a killer crop duster! a chase on top of Mount Rushmore!—emptied onto an unremarkable screenplay and mashed into coherence by the force of Hitchcock’s will. The film is indeed gripping and beautiful: it’s hard to turn away from the screen, and that’s number one on the list of action movie desiderata. But North by Northwest is also very, very hokey. The plot has more loose ends than a carpet of rabid kittens; the acting is eye-rollingly predictable. Spy-thriller parody is no excuse: the script and performances slip into parody of parody. Cary Grant would be well-cast as a pompous ad executive falsely accused of murder if in the end—spoiler alert—he didn’t get the girl, which would be some kind of statement on the limits of handsome unctuousness. You’ll have a good time watching North by Northwest, but don’t feel guilty if you find yourself rooting for the bad guys. 5 ↑ ↓

North by Northwest, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, performances by Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1959. Reviewed October 16, 2023.

The Act of Killing (2012)

Of the 20th century’s many mass murder events, the hunting of Communists and other political undesirables by Suharto in 1960s Indonesia is relatively little discussed globally, despite the enormous death toll (a million dead, and probably more). For that reason alone, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a welcome project. The documentary’s near-universal acclaim spurred new conversations about the murders, including in Indonesia itself, where the political descendants of Suharto still rule. Oppenheimer’s central device—giving a small band of killers, now old men, the cinematic tools to tell their own story—is also original and (presumably) effective. But the chosen narrative of hidden demons rising to the surface feels forced, too neat. I don’t quite believe that what happens on screen is a simple consequence of preparation and luck and not a psychological arc orchestrated and edited into existence. Perhaps Oppenheimer would have done better to focus on why murderers and politicians can’t resist an interview. 6 ↑ ↓

The Act of Killing, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, and Anonymous, Det Danske Filminstitut, 2012. Reviewed September 25, 2023.

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)

The original Dragon Inn remains one of the most famous examples of wuxia, a storytelling genre set in ancient China featuring martial artists. Tsai Ming-liang intersperses scenes from the 1967 film into a narrative about the last night of a grand old movie theater. “Narrative” might be too strong a word: nearly the entire running time is composed of wordless long shots. This inversion of the wuxia style reveals how we weave emotion out of sequences of events, and how we identify change at all. A sword enters the belly of an attacker; blue dots play over the enraptured face of a young woman. Both, somehow, are dizzingly action-packed. Archers lurk behind the ruins; men urinate close to one another. Both events create unbearable tension, the latter even more than the former. A loved one dies; a steamed bun, a gift, is left uneaten. The two quantities of grief are strangely equivalent. No rain falls; rain falls. The difference is unclear. I can’t say what the plot of Goodbye, Dragon Inn exactly is. But there is a scream in Tsai’s silence, and finally some comfort under the umbrella. 8 ↑ ↓

Goodbye, Dragon Inn, directed by Tsai Ming-liang, performances by Lee Kang-sheng, Chen Shiang-chyi, and Kiyonobu Mitamura, Homegreen Films, 2003. Reviewed September 23, 2023.

The Grand Illusion (1937)

If Grand Illusion were made in 1927 or 1947, the stakes would not be so high. But the year was 1937 and Jean Renoir was trying to stop a war. Two decades prior, the Great War had killed forty million people, and that’s not counting the conflict-facilitated flu epidemic of 1918, which killed dozens of millions more. The war was stupid and unnecessary, the consequence of prideful generals and anachronistic battlefield strategies made horrific by new technolofies. In contrast, stopping Hitler was a global moral imperative; but in 1937 Renoir saw only the prelude to yet more butchery, millions of lives slipping away. So he made a movie about the pathetic nostalgia of officers for ‘honorable’ war—a world that never really existed—and the cost of this nostalgia for soldiers and civilians on both sides. Grand Illusion is obviously stylistically dated, its melodramatic score and stilted dialogue easily mocked (although many of Renoir’s formal choices were indeed innovative). But nearly a hundred years later, its message, as blunt as it is, continues to be ahead of its time. 7 ↑ ↓

The Grand Illusion, directed by Jean Renoir, performances by Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, and Pierre Fresnay, Réalisation d’Art Cinématographique, 1937. Reviewed September 20, 2023.

Hannah Arendt (2012)

Making a film about the unfolding of a thought process can’t be easy. For the most part, von Trotta succeeds, even if she doesn’t quite capture the force of Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Sukowa is riveting in a way that’s oddly warm for a movie about ideas, but there is too much of the hero in her portrayal of Arendt, who was at times trapped by her own comfortable illusions (see, for example, her views on the 1957 Little Rock desegregation crisis). Von Trotta also replicates Arendt’s real-life error of showing too little intellectual sympathy for the ‘other side’ and its defensible position that justice—even theatrical justice as staged by Ben-Gurion and the Zionists—is at times a higher truth than understanding (which is, after all, only a form of mercy). Still, Von Trotta’s film will entice people to revisit the work of Arendt and her detractors about the question of popularly sanctioned evil, one of the most important debates of the 20th century, philosophical or otherwise. That’s worth the price of admission. 7 ↑ ↓

Hannah Arendt, directed by Margarethe von Trotta, performances by Barbara Sukoma, Janet McTeer, and Klaus Pohl, NFP Marketing & Distribution, 2012. Reviewed September 19, 2023.

Turn Every Page (2022)

Eliza’s take: I remember learning about the chemical makeup of water, maybe in 10th grade high school. Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen components, polarized. The molecules at once lean towards each other and push each other away. That essential fact of water, its simultaneous attraction and repulsion, lies at the heart of water’s power: ocean waves, drops falling from a leaky faucet, ripples that spread out from a pebble dropped in a pond, all result from this core dynamic.

By the close of Turn Every Page, it doesn’t feel like so much of a stretch to call the relationship between Bob Gottlieb and Bob Caro as complex and maybe even impactful as the two-ways dance between water molecules. For five decades, Gottlieb has been the editor of Caro’s work on power and politics in the USA. As editor and writer, the two are in a relationship that is at once interdependent and combative. For most of the movie, we learn about this relationship from each Bob independently (they refused to be interviewed together), as well as the family, friends, critics, fans who surrounded the Bobs. We get a sense that writing and editing is an act of burnishing, smelting— the books are completed, and are marvels, but they don’t come through without some bruising and battle scars for the stubborn writer and equally stubborn editor.

At the film’s close, we finally glimpse the dynamic in real time. We have Lizzie Gottlieb, filmmaker and Bob’s daughter, to thank for this. Her persuasion made possible in 2021 what was inadmissible to the men when filming began in 2016: Bob and Bob agreed at last to be filmed (though without audio) during an editing session. The two men hunch over a stack of papers, reaching past each other’s arms to point out a sentence or scratch in a margin note, blinking at each other as they listen, shaking their head to deny a point. Turning away from each other, but also, always, turning back to the page. Oxygen and hydrogen, opposed and attracted, held together by mutual belief in the power of the work. Together creating something that we hope carries the power of a waterfall, a tidal wave, a stream that cuts a canyon. A (Bapu’s take: 8)↑ ↓

Turn Every Page, directed by Lizzie Gottlieb, performances by Robert A. Caro and Robert Gottlieb, Sony Pictures Classics, 2022.

Women Talking (2022)

I’d be lying if I didn’t confess to some trepidation in reviewing Women Talking. I identify as a cisgender male, and the themes in Sarah Polley’s film are so important and so true—and the film made and acted with such obvious commitment—that any criticism seems to miss the larger point. Polley skillfully uses the story of a single Mennonite community to explore the moral and political questions that arise from the incalculable pain inflicted by men on women across thousands of cultures and thousands of years. Is mercy—in this case, mercy in the form of forgiveness—a prerequisite to justice, or the other way around? When do we let go of our sons and brothers and fathers, acknowledging that they can’t be saved? Having attained liberty, what becomes of anger? Yes, the film’s dialogue is occasionally stilted and polemical. Some of the characters are too saintlike. Emotions defer too much to ideas. These would be bigger problems if Women Talking trumpeted its significance. It does not. Like its protagonists, the film attests to a horrific fact and then—courageously? naïvely? who gets to decide?—rejects revenge for deliberation. 9 ↑ ↓

Women Talking, directed by Sarah Polley, performances by Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, and Jessie Buckley, United Artists, 2022.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front was published in 1929 to wide acclaim and quickly adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. Less than a decade later, a large fraction of the world was immersed in one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, which makes you wonder about the purpose and power of art. Edward Berger’s 2022 remake is poignantly shot, scored, and acted. No one will accuse the film of being either trifling or vainglorious with respect to war. It is unflinching and true. But what the movie does is overshadowed by what it doesn’t do: investigate with conviction the political foolishness that killed needless millions. World War I’s catalytic event—the killing of Franz Ferdinand—is as random a start to a major conflict as history offers, but the persistence and toll of the Great War was not at all random. Blundering generals, sanctioned by their civilian bosses, deployed 19th-century battlefield tactics with 20th-century weapons—barbed wire, machine guns, mustard gas. The predictable butchery that followed didn’t stop them from doubling down on their mistakes, blinded by patriotic fervor and personal ambition. Remarque himself denied any specific political views on the European conflicts. He wanted to write a book about the soldier’s life. Berger’s film flirts with politics but, aside from side plots involving an unconvincingly tortured bureaucrat and a cold-blooded general with daddy issues, stays loyal to that boots-on-the-ground spirit. In 1930, that would have been a sufficiently remarkable artistic achievement. But the bodily feeling of blood and suffering is no longer enough. (Kurt Vonnegut, in another little book about war: “Everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers Karamazov…But that isn’t enough any more”). Take us disappearing, auteurs and pacifist revolutionaries, through the smoke rings of our minds. 7 (Rekha’s take: A) ↑ ↓

All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Edward Berger, performances by Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, and Daniel Brühl, Netflix, 2022.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Eliza’s take: To Mr. Kubrick—

“What the hell?” is what comes to mind first. But in the process of watching your film, I also thought “is anything in life truly so wondrous?” and “if you knew you were going to die, might you put aside the fear and take a moment to talk to God?” And of course— life is so wondrous, and I do know I’m going to die. So, God, let’s talk, and thank you Stanley for the reintroduction.

The thing about this film is that it moves slow. I mean, literally, the bodies in each shot move across the frame of the picture like the air is viscous. But it’s not just the shots, it’s the scenes, too— long minutes held on a passel of humans dressed up like chimps, asleep. It’s the acts— when you get to The Mission and realize you’ve been watching an hour of prologue. All that unaccustomed time churns up questions: would I leave the space pod? Would I kill the computer? Is anything in life so wondrous? Where is my father? Have I frittered away my 20s? And so on. A part of you longs for the zip and whizz and distraction of Star Wars. A part of you wonders if things just moved slower in 1968.

And then— a bone flips in an instant to a spaceship. One mission taps out, replaced by another that begins 18 months later. The achingly slow pursuit of a dead friend becomes a corpse in a space pod’s robot arms in a moment. The 7-minute delays between question and reply to and from Earth to Mission are edited out (in a clever and understated move, we are told this directly, the earth reporter narrates that they’ve edited the gaps out. The astronauts respond as if they were meters, not light-years, from the question. And somehow, the very completeness of the gaps’ absence leaves a stranger feeling than if we had never been clued into the delay at all).

So, okay, okay, we’re messing with time, in space. We’re crunching viewers’ expectations up against the film, we’re slowing down and zipping on. It is the message in the noise of a wandering mind let free to roam as this movie plays out. I get it. I get it as Dave hurtles through the neon streaks of hyperspace at a gazillion terrifying and beautiful Gs. I get it as even the neon space scene itself, moving so fast, still moves so slow. Wonder prolonged begins to look like monotony. And when you come at last to the final scene, horror, amazement, eternity, and instant all crowd in together even though there’s plenty of space (what else!) in this echoing house. Dave, a young man, is — click— an aged man, is — click — elderly, is — click — the very frailest of the ancient — in bed stretching a skeletal finger out towards enlightenment. Michelangelo and God reach for each other on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, and of course you reach to God at the moment of death, but this distance between supplicant and granter will always be eternity. How can we see what you’re reaching for, from here, Dave? Where do we stand to see what you see? Star baby fixes us with a gaze as unwavering as Hal’s and knows something we absolutely do not.

“Happy birthday, Dave,” his parents had said from lifetimes away. “Do you like your cake?” A (Bapu’s take: 10 )↑ ↓

2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick, performances by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968.

Adaptation (2002)

Originality must tiptoe on the edge of banality, and not only because we live in a media-saturated 21st century. Even Gilgamesh, the oldest known book in human history, trod on ground well-traveled by oral tradition. It must be so: art that’s too far away from everyday experience is too alien to feel original. Adaptation dances lightly around its central conceit, a screenwriter writing of his own struggles with creativity. Do we want to watch an ordinary schmoe’s anxiety? It’s undeniably a banal premise. (But cue the alligators). Didn’t Fellini pull this same trick in 8 1/2? (But cue the loss of something much bigger than oneself). Adaptation is a brave movie, and the only way it could have been braver is to allow itself to be more boring—to truly allow itself no exits, as Fellini indeed dared. 8 ↑ ↓

Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze, performances by Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper, Columbia Pictures, 2002.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Stillness, in the right hands, is a weapon. As are dresses and curtains. In the Mood for Love is one of the finest films about love ever made—love, a subject that should have been artistically exhausted several millennia ago. Wong’s trick is to stop time and space within a moving picture—a picture expected to move—and then expose all of the possibilities of love contained therein. The standard consummation of romantic love diminishes, in art and real life, its importance. But love without adjectives—not (only) romantic, not only any single species of love—can inhabit the moment eternally, motion be damned. A woman leans her head on a man’s shoulder in the back of a taxi, and woman, man, and world are all saved, the past redeemed and the future, no matter how apparently tragic and futile, justified. 10 ↑ ↓

In the Mood for Love, directed by Kar-Wai Wong, performances by Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, Block 2 Pictures, 2000.

Glass Onion (2022)

A fun, disappointing time at the movies. Glass Onion has a capable cast and attractive cinematography, and its broadsides against the faux genius of tech billionaires are amusing, if predictable. The problem is that none of its characters, except maybe Janelle Monáe, are likable, and the plot, for all its twists and turns, feels forced. We are left feeling like spectators to a game of Clue, sadly. Hard to criticize capitalist “disruptors” when the vehicle is a sequel with a sequel’s lazy heart. 4 ↑ ↓


Kaden’s take: A film striving to be complex that ends up as transparent as the glass onion itself. Had Johnson invested in making us care about the characters, I might believe that he made this film for reasons other than cash. Gimme some real disruption! C+↑ ↓

Glass Onion, directed by Rian Johnson, performances by Daniel Craig, Janelle Monáe, Ed Norton, and others, Netflix, 2022.

Inception (2010)

Ludicrous and admirable, which might be an adequate description of every Christopher Nolan movie. Ludicrous for decisions like spending ten minutes to describe a sedative…while entirely omitting an explanation of how exactly one enters another person’s dreams. Admirable because Nolan blows up a germ of a concept—how to plant an idea in someone’s subconscious?—into a universe with new physical laws. The emotional core of the plot, Cotillard’s agony over the inescapability of reality, has promise, and she and DiCaprio do their best to convince. This is not deeply thought-provoking or affecting entertainment, but it’s entertainment nonetheless. That’s a victory. 6 ↑ ↓

Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan, performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, and Elliot Page, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2010.

Citizen Kane (1942)

A man destroys everything in his path, including himself, in the search for love. That’s it; that’s Citizen Kane. Welles’ cinematographic repertoire is revolutionary, yes, and the endless disagreements about the movie’s capital-G Greatness illuminate, at a minimum, the march of art history—what, for example, each generation considers effective or overblown storytelling technique. These are important topics, but in a few centuries we may regard them as trivialities. We will never regard the hopeless search for self-love as such. The irony is that our love is better reserved for the toys of our childhood than the holographic and ephemeral self, a thing that can’t be held in either hands or memories, not even for an instant. Oh, the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane! The drama does not ultimately derive from hubris or lust or cruelty. The drama is about self-consciousness, the raising of the question: if I can’t feel love, here and now, then who am I? 10 ↑ ↓

Citizen Kane. Directed by Orson Welles, performances by Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, and Dorothy Comingore, RKO Radio Pictures, 1941.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Haven’t I seen this talking monkey before? I don’t know how such a visually arresting movie manages to be very boring, but here we are. The choice of a nearly all-white voice cast performing a folk tale set in ancient Japan is also questionable, but the story isn’t good enough to begin chatting about the racial politics. 3 ↑ ↓

Kubo and the Two Strings. Directed by Travis Knight, performances by Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, and Matthew McConaughey, Laika, 2016.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

“All of humanity’s problems,” Blaise Pascal wrote, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Man’s inability, indeed. All of Chantal Akerman’s daring choices—the loyalty to right angles, the refusal to cut away from the most quotidian tasks, the casting of potatoes and dish soap in lead roles—serve a message, a response to Pascal’s challenge, that can’t be transmitted any other way. If viewers are bored or frustrated, then all the better: we feel a sliver of Jeanne’s bottomless pain. The critics of Sight & Sound‘s prestigious 2022 poll elected Jeanne Dielman the greatest film of all time, a victory widely celebrated and widely criticized. But this is a film to mock lists. The source of Jeanne’s quiet desperation, to steal another philosopher’s phrase, is the mass of men who can’t bear to be with themselves and themselves only. Jeanne dares just this. Who can judge the consequences? 10 ↑ ↓

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Bruxelles. Directed by Chantal Akerman, performance by Delphine Seyrig, Olympic Films, 1975.

Beau Travail (1999)

We have an urge to annihilate the forces that clarify us. Vision is excruciating. Like Billy Budd, Herman Melville’s unfinished 1888 novella on which Beau Travail is based, the fear of love is at the core of the film—queer love, almost certainly, but also love of oneself. Our failure to acknowledge the overwhelming power of shame corrodes our lives and the lives of others. Occasionally saints appear before us offering a (sanctified) hangman’s rope, a chance for salvation by way of rejection of the ravaged self. Few among us see the enormity of the gift. The final scene in Beau Travail is a masterstroke—a portrait of liberation that, a century later, completes Melville. All is never lost. The saint still wanders the parched wilderness or haunts the nightclubs or lies full fathom five, waiting for disciples. 10 ↑ ↓

Beau Travail. Directed by Claire Denis, performances by Denis Lavant and Grégoire Colin, Pyramide Distribution, 1999.

Tokyo Story (1953)

Life is painful and (worse) boring: a series of misunderstandings brought about by selfishness. Life is rapture: an unspeakably glorious gift, every moment a kingdom beyond any Kingdom. Ozu is not asking us to take sides. He’s not making any demands at all. Each scene is a mirror, a ringing bell that calls memories forth—of the time we impatiently ended a call with our mother, of an ocean horizon that we know will be the last thing we remember before we die. Motion pictures are remarkable. Consider the still image in this review. The various expressions convey each person’s feelings towards death and family: anger, shame, guilt, confusion, immature resolve, breathless grief. But the still image only has power because of the movement that precedes and follows. “Each time the wave breaks/the raven/gives a little jump” wrote the senryū poet Nissha. All of the actors in Tokyo Story except one, the smallest child, are dead now. The tides roll in, the tides roll out, and the raven keeps watch. 10 ↑ ↓

Tokyo Story. Directed by Yasujirō Ozu, performances by Setsuko Hara, Chishū Ryū, Chieko Higashiyama, and others, Shochiku, 1953.

Vertigo (1958)

“Why do we always invite Gabe to the neighborhood Thanksgiving party?” I asked a friend. Gabe is inoffensive enough, but not someone you want to talk to for more than five minutes. “Because we’ve known Gabe for a long time,” my friend replied, “and there’s something valuable in not choosing who you’re going to walk through life with, imperfections and all.” Vertigo‘s plot is riddled with holes, the acting is often stilted, and the whirling bouquet cartoon is entirely too much. Reviewers called out the film’s flaws immediately upon its release. Yet Vertigo is also frequently named one of the greatest films of all time. That may be too much praise, but Hitchcock’s commitment in scene after scene to “pure cinema”—telling the story through images without over-reliance on dialogue—is indeed overpowering. That power would not be as evident in a more perfect film. How strange. What’s on your mind, Gabe? Pass the stuffing! 7 (Rekha’s take: A)↑ ↓

Vertigo. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, performances by James Stewart and Kim Novak, Paramount Pictures, 1958.

I am Mother (2019)

I’m glad that it’s financially possible to make a film as unremittingly dreary as I am Mother. I’m also glad I’ll never have to enter its world again. The movie asks many important questions. What makes a good mother? Would we accept eugenics if the survival of a species depended on it? Should differential parental investment be judged wicked, or is denying its reality a hypocrisy of modern culture? Great science fiction uses distant dystopias to bring here-and-now questions into focus. But I am Mother falls short of the standard: as compelling as its questions are, the characters are unrealistically inhuman, very far away from the us who inhabit the here-and-now. Darkness with just a pinpoint of light wavering in the distance is terrifying; but complete darkness is merely disorienting. I am Mother disorients but does not frighten. The credits roll and the questions roll away. 4 ↑ ↓

I am Mother. Directed by Grant Sputore, performances by Clara Rugaard, Hilary Swank, and Rose Byrne, Netflix, 2019.

Rashomon (1950)

Consciousness—and thus the recounting of experience, which is derived from the memory of being conscious—is uncomfortably groundless. Never has a film more brilliantly made this point, a philosophical point with the deepest of emotional implications, than Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. The woodcutter’s story, the final story, would provide release, but the woodcutter also can’t be trusted: that’s clear by the look of utter confusion on his face throughout the film. “I just don’t understand,” he says, in despair. The mind road leads to a cliff, and the only way to see what’s at the bottom is to step over the edge. But that ends the self, and thus any hope of communication to others. The final scene contains a puzzle: Kurosawa’s films feint with cheap sentiment, but his purpose is never complete release into a naïvely hopeful view of human nature. So who is that baby at the end of the movie, and what would it mean to take care of it, to raise it? 11 ↑ ↓

Rashomon. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, performances by Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, and Takashi Shimura, Daiei Film, 1950.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Wakanda Forever is a fine movie. Director Ryan Coogler has transformed the grief of Chadwick Boseman’s passing into a meditation about loss, growing up, and unconquerable Blackness. The visuals and choreography, especially in the opening funeral scene, are soul-stirring. The elements for a masterpiece are all here—an utterly magnetic cast; the theme of fraught alliance between Black and Brown peoples; an anti-hero worthy of the Panther—but by that (unfair) standard, the film falls short. Coogler, unwillingly or not, pays too much attention to the needs of the Marvel narrative and not enough to the potential of his characters. Still, the first two Black Panther movies have raised the bar for superhero entertainment. Power is not power; having something to say is power. 6 ↑ ↓

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Directed by Ryan Coogler, performances by Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta, and Angela Bassett, Walt Disney Studios, 2022.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Right now, in every quiet corner of the world, someone is doubled over in despair. Maybe they can’t make sense of a painful past, or maybe they feel a monstrous future approaching. Those that love them grow increasingly confused, hurt, angry. The Banshees of Inisherin is concerned with the depths of grief, and as such is filled with acts of desolation and senselessness. To argue that the film is ultimately redemptive surely reflects the needs of the viewer more than McDonagh’s intentions…and yet. I can’t (today?) stop myself from interpreting the drift of Pádraic’s hand to Colm’s shoulder as instinctive love. I can’t suppress the laughter. I can’t but believe that their final words to each other are a purer expression of their desires than are severed fingers or burning eaves. All of this is admittedly a subtle redemption, but if redemption on this strange planet exists, surely it must be subtle. McDonagh, Farrell, Gleeson, and rest of the cast have created a timeless work of art—but even more importantly, they’ve pushed us beyond the art to consider the magic of the person sitting next to us: our lover, our friend. “There ain’t no answer,” Gertrude Stein is supposed to have said. Yes. But there may be someone willing to ask the questions with us. That’s enough, most of the time. 11 ↑ ↓

The Banshees of Inisherin. Directed by Martin McDonagh, performances by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, Searchlight Pictures, 2022.

Passing (2021)

With full information, would every choice be understandable? The choice to assimilate and grab a piece of your oppressors’ wealth and power, for example; or the choice to give refuge to a desperate friend and then throw that friend to the wolves when the burden grows too great. But even if everything is understandable and understood, the hard work of living with oneself remains. Passing is based on a 1929 novella about two light-skinned Black women tiptoeing the edge of the color line, one by passing as white and the other by holding on to a slippery ideal of dignity. Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson play the lead roles with force and delicacy, their expressions (and lack of expression) conveying as much as actions or dialogue do. Rebecca Hall choreographs their liminal dance with a light touch, arranging the stage and then letting Harlem do the work. My only quibble is that the touch is sometimes too light, the possibilities of film not fully exploited. This version of Passing probably could have been staged in the theater equally, or more, effectively. 7 ↑ ↓

Passing. Directed by Rebecca Hall, performances by Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, Netflix, 2021.

Burning (2018)

“Standin’ on shaky ground too close to the edge/Let’s see if I know the ledge,” Rakim rapped in 1992. All of us are always too close; it’s just that some of us know it. These are the unlucky ones, the people who can neither escape the world’s injustice nor bear to turn away from its beauty. Lee Chang-dong’s film is about two, and maybe three, people like this. The screenplay is based on Haruki Murakami’s spare, menacing short story “Barn Burning,” itself a reference to William Faulkner’s story of the same name. There are two major themes at the center of all of these works. The first is inequality: the frivolous sadism of the rich and the fury of the poor. The second is incoherence: recognition of the glory of being alive but surrounded by terrible fathers and husbands, jobs that steal your body, coldly incompetent bureaucrats. Inequality and incoherence meet at the dusty crossroads, a devil standing there, tempting you to revenge yourself on the ugly country. They meet in the moment when the last piece of the sun dips away from the spinning planet and your ecstatic dance collapses, body deflated. Lee (and Rakim) shows us the price we pay, moment after moment, for our blindness. But what would we do with sight? 9 ↑ ↓

Burning. Directed by Lee Chang-dong, performances by Yoo Ah-in, Steven Yeun, and Jeon Jong-seo, CGV Arthouse, 2018.

Dune (2021)

Full disclosure: I hadn’t yet read Frank Herbert’s classic novel when I saw this film. Maybe lack of expectations was a boon going into such a massively hyped movie, but I also felt unequipped to judge the challenges that director Denis Villeneuve faced. The philosophical subtleties and psychological struggles that make the novel so famously hard to film occasionally reveal themselves to the naïve viewer, but I suspect that Villeneuve’s struggle is known to him (and David Lynch) alone. With those caveats, Dune is…pretty good. The world-building is bold, the visuals spectacular, the performances curiously disciplined for such a high-wattage cast. I’m worried about the coming denouement, though. Villeneuve has made such a point of emphasizing racial politics—a putative white savior, Zendaya as love interest, people of color comprising a large fraction of the supporting cast—that a major plot twist seems inevitable in Part Two. A statement about the passing of the age of heroes, perhaps. If not, the film will feel like a misbegotten attempt at cardboard diversity. For now, the tension of the holding pattern is a win. 6 ↑ ↓

Dune. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, performances by Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, and Rebecca Ferguson, Warner Bros., 2021.

The Green Knight (2021)

Sir Gawain, on his knees and terrified, a monstrous axe poised above this head, asks: “Is this all there is, then?” His would-be executioner, the Green Knight, pauses, bemused. “What else ought there be?” This may be the most powerful moment in the film, but it’s surrounded by an array of mysterious and gorgeous vignettes. The sum is a masterpiece. The source material, a British medieval tale, is a straightforward story of chivalry. David Lowery has completely upended that moral. This is a film about the vanity of quests, about finding a middle road between the foolishness of honor and the fear of death. The Seventh Seal, cinema’s most famous meditation on death, features a knight that spends his life running from the Reaper, finally realizing that while there’s no way out, there is a way home. Dev Patel’s charming, bumbling Gawain runs towards death, but escape—from our fears, our desires, our self-doubt—can’t be found in that direction either. This is all there is, and it has to be enough, even if it lasts for only one more moment. 11 ↑ ↓

The Green Knight. Directed by David Lowery, performances by Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander, A24, 2021.

Don’t Look Up (2021)

A movie about the planetary cost of distraction is, in a sense, immune to criticism: surely we should reserve our quibbling judgments and pay attention to the catastrophe at hand. That’s admittedly a brilliant play. The uncomfortable flip side is that art and science are the catalysts of culture change. If culture, and the politics that flow from that culture, is failing to change, then artists are partly to blame. McKay’s Big Short was powerful and infuriating; Vice was tepid, giving Dick Cheney more historical attention than he’s due; and Don’t Look Up is just plain bad, a mangled pastiche of celebrity posturing and loud clumsy storytelling dotted with a chuckle here and there. Give the people only what they want and we get saccharine, soul-destroying pop. Give the people only what they need and the crowds roll their eyes, bored. Successful art finds the balance. This is not successful art. 2 ↑ ↓

Don’t Look Up. Directed by Adam McKay, performances by Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, and Cate Blanchett, Netflix, 2021.

Summer of Soul (2021)

How footage of Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, Gladys Knight, B.B. King, Mahalia Jackson, and Mavis Staples together in the same concert gets lost for half a century, I don’t know. Watching Summer of Soul is like finding a previously unknown work of Shakespeare in your mailbox: you’re befuddled at its existence, entranced by its power, and a bit worried that you’re dreaming. And is it possible that Questlove, the beating heart of the world’s greatest hip-hop band, is just as good at directing films? The rhythm of the movie is both controlled and unpredictable: Mahalia Jackson in full rapture, quiet moments with concertgoers remembering a summer day in Harlem fifty years ago, an irrepressibly joyful Stevie Wonder drum (!) solo, a furious montage of lunar landings and earthly indignation, an indomitable Nina Simone. It all coheres into something larger than a concert documentary; the film is a declaration of the power of Blackness, and even more broadly the power of art. Music like this is the best of who we—not just Americans, but humans—are. The species can groove, and that may just save our cruel, confused nation-state creations. 9 ↑ ↓

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Searchlight/Hulu, 2021.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

Up until the moment of his massive stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby had the most fortunate of lives, and indeed nearly every character in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly seems to reside in a materially comfortable world populated by beautiful people. That he, and they, are not immune to tragedy is at the film’s emotional core, but one has to buy into the characters’ relatability for that message to feel moving, or even original. I’m saddened by the real-life Bauby’s fate and admire what he did with his days: through the anger and despair, without the benefit of speech or hands, he wrote. If the film could admit that its subject is randomness—a small sliver of randomness—it would have done justice to the courage and tenacity of Bauby’s story. As it is, the implicit argument that we all share the same kind of suffering and grief is unconvincing. We don’t. Most of us won’t feel anything close to Bauby felt, and most of us won’t walk the red carpet at Cannes. 4 ↑ ↓

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Directed by Julian Schnabel, performance by Mathieu Amalric, Pathé/Miramax, 2007.

C’mon C’mon (2021)

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A conventional precocious-child-wins-over-crusty-adult tale packaged in an unconventional visual and narrative format. The choice of black-and-white, along with the way Mills hangs on moments and faces, is effective in pushing everything but the dialogue—and the subtle body movements that support the dialogue—out of focus. The real-life interviews with children interspersed throughout are less successful: they are moving, but have the effect of making the fictional happenings feel trivial. These kids are real, trying to figure out some hard stuff. Dumpy ol’ Joaquin and his boy wonder nephew seem melodramatic in comparison. Which isn’t to say that their performances aren’t excellent. They are. But what happened to Devante? And why? 4 ↑ ↓

C’mon C’mon. Directed by Mike Mills, performances by Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffmann, and Woody Norman, A24, 2021.

Black Widow (2021)

It got me through the last two hours of a sixteen-hour flight, I’ll say that much. A girl-power revolution has great promise for Marvel storytelling, but that angle is mostly left unexplored. Johansson brings her typical charisma and the rest of the cast is solid too, although the mediocre accents are distracting—surely Shortland could have found Russian actors for these roles? This is not a film that will become part of you, but 23rd-century archeologists rummaging through the wreckage of our civilization won’t be entirely disappointed. We were trying to have fun and chat a bit about our traumas. 4 ↑ ↓

Black Widow. Directed by Cate Shortland, performances by Scarlet Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, and Rachel Weisz, Marvel/Walt Disney, 2021.

Harold and Maude (1971)

You gotta give Ashby credit for making this plot work, and there are moments of astounding originality throughout. An all-Cat Stevens soundtrack is also cool in principle, although one imagines that licensing issues must have influenced the execution—“If You Want to Sing Out” is lovely, but a half-dozen times? Overall, though, the movie’s charm has worn thinner over the years. Harold’s right: life can be a bummer. It’s nice to have a Maude around, and she’ll be missed, but sadness and forgetting are part of wisdom too. 5 ↑ ↓
Harold and Maude. Directed by Hal Ashby, performances by Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort, Paramount, 1971.

Housekeeping (1987)

It’s a rare movie that works while staying true to its source book. Transmuting the spirit of writing into the spirit of film is hard. Much of Robinson’s wonderful novel is not filmable. Instead of forcing the issue, Forsyth instead imbibes the sweetness and callousness, the good intentions and disastrous results, the impregnable mystery of people that Robinson is so brilliant at portraying, and then lets it all leak out through the quiet, marvelous performances of the three lead actresses. Christine Lahti, especially, is excellent. Sylvie is doing everything she can to stay alive and keep her nieces alive. The enormity of her courage will save Ruthie, a conclusion that the novel didn’t and couldn’t arrive at without undermining its first-person narrative power. 8 ↑ ↓

Housekeeping. Directed by Bill Forsyth, performances by Christine Lahti, Sara Walker, and Andrea Burchill, Columbia, 1987.

Interstellar (2014)

The nature of time, the meaning of home, the tension between personal and collective interest: Nolan isn’t afraid to swing for the fences. If you can forgive the cloying arguments for the power of love and the quasi-scientific down-talking (no one bothered to brief McConaughey on what a wormhole is before leaving Earth?), it mostly works. But would a four-dimensional species be quite so…interested in others? I fear not: if they know all, they would also know the smallness of death, theirs and ours. Well. Here’s hoping deep benevolence is a more proximate stage of human evolution than interstellar travel. That might be the only chance for this breathtaking planet of ours. 7 ↑ ↓

Interstellar. Directed by Christopher Nolan, performances by Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine, Paramount, 2014.

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

If only the central event wasn’t quite so tragic. I don’t know how many people on the planet have suffered what Lee Chandler has suffered, but the pain is so grievous and arbitrary that it’s difficult for art to honestly capture it. So if Manchester by the Sea fails in any sense—and it does only slightly—it’s hard to blame anyone involved. Casey Affleck’s customary disturbing quietude is maximized here, director Kenneth Lonergan’s script is unaffectedly wrenching (and at times funny), and the rest of the cast is marvelous. Overall, as A.O. Scott noted, the movie convincingly dissects the anguish of white America. There are few non-white characters here, and yet the foolishness of privilege, manifest in unthinking and uncontrollable actions, is everywhere. But the pain is too much to convincingly script. 8 ↑ ↓

Manchester by the Sea. Directed by Kenneth Lonergan, performances by Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, and Lucas Hedges, Amazon Studios/Roadside Attractions, 2016.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)

I really wanted to hate this movie. Indie quirk has now become a genre, which would be fine if the quirkiness wasn’t so homogeneous. And do we need another child cancer tale with a white lead? But goddammit if these characters aren’t charming. 5 ↑ ↓

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, performances by Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke, and RJ Cyler, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2015.

Melancholia (2011 )

Ok, von Trier made a lot of unforced errors here. The physics is atrocious (what about gravity’s effects before the collision?). Justine’s boss is too unremittingly evil to be invited to anyone’s wedding. Visiting America at least once before making a film set (unnecessarily) in America is a good idea. I understand that none of this is central to von Trier’s purpose, but going halfway on surrealism is asking for trouble. And yet Melancholia is a win for the brooding Dane. The juxtaposition of personal depression and planetary tragedy, of (ostensible) triviality and (ostensible) momentousness, is original and revelatory; Dunst is brilliant; and the imagery is spectacular. But let’s bump Dilla rather than Wagner next time the world ends, yes, Lars? 6 ↑ ↓

Melancholia. Directed by Lars von Trier, performances by Kirsten Dunst, Charlottle Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgård, and Kiefer Sutherland, Nordisk Film, 2011 .

Nine Days (2020)

Every actor here is magnetic, Winston Duke most of all. But the theme, a good soul damaged by a cruel world, is played out…by about two millennia. If one is going to go there, then it’s best to talk a little about how such souls get damaged in the first place, and also what dying is. Maybe fragments of the best among us do linger in the air like viruses searching for a way in. Duke has the power to convince us that they do, but he needs a more challenging script. 4 ↑ ↓

Nine Days. Directed by Edson Oda, performances by Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, and Benedict Wong, Sony Pictures Classics, 2020.

The Sea Inside (2005)

“How long does a man spend dying?” Neruda asked. “Does he live a thousand days, or only one?” For three decades, after suffering an accident at age 25 that left him paralyzed from the neck down, Ramón Sampedro fought for his right to assisted suicide. The Sea Inside is visually beautiful and filled with wonderful performances; I don’t think that Javier Bardem’s portrayal of Sampedro can be bettered. But the virtuosity also obscures the pain. I grasp Sampedro’s frustration and I resent the world’s determination to “save” him—a sentiment borne out of both love and, sadly, envy—but I fall short of feeling his anguish, his overpowering sensation of imprisonment, and thus his decision. Maybe this says more about the medium’s constraints than Amenábar’s choices. But the artists will have to figure it out if the voters are ever going to. 6 ↑ ↓

The Sea Inside. Directed by Alejandro Amenábar, performance by Javier Bardem, Warner Sogefilms, 2005.

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

The Sweet Hereafter is one of the best reviewed movies of the last 40 years; it has a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 91 score on Metacritic. The critics gush about its stately pacing, its compassionate portrayal of grief. I agree, but the movie’s striking atmosphere is undermined by acting that alternates between wooden and overbearing. Ian Holm, especially, is doing too much. I also don’t know if the film has much to say, but maybe that’s just the point: that there isn’t much to say in the wake of loss and abuse. We search for answers, take refuge in blame, anger, and vengeance, but there is nothing else to do but draw another breath and try to keep going, hoping that the inertia of grief doesn’t wreck what’s left. 7 ↑ ↓

The Sweet Hereafter. Directed by Atom Egoyan, performances by Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, and Caerthan Banks, Ego Film Arts/Alliance Communications, 1997.

Taste of Cherry (1997)

Roger Ebert famously hated this movie, finding the quietness and pacing affectatious. Roger Ebert also put Gates of Heaven, one of the most strangely quiet and slowly paced films ever made, on his list of top 10 films of all time. The latter is a fine piece of work, and Ebert was a fine critic, but the juxtaposition of these two facts makes me worry about the extreme subjectivity of art criticism. For me, A Taste of Cherry pulsates with sincerity—if anything, too much sincerity. Mr. Badii’s pain in certain scenes is almost too much to bear. Almost: in the end, Kiarostami made me love, not turn away. The final scene, which Ebert found so offensive, is a spectacular response to the demand for answers. We are surrounded by a reality so improbable that it doesn’t feel real. That’s not a reason to live or a reason to die, but what more of an answer could we ask for? 10 ↑ ↓

Taste of Cherry. Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, performance by Homayoun Ershadi, Zeitgeist Films, 1997.

The Thin Red Line (1998)

It would be easier to roll one’s eyes at Terrence Malick’s whispered voice-overs if the cinematography wasn’t so goddamn beautiful. He probably should have cut a sunset here and there, but for every dud of a shot there are ten gaspingly beautiful ones. The acting is fine if unambitious—Jim Caviezel auditioning to play Jesus, Sean Penn with his world-weary sullenness, and a host of other big-name white men playing oddly small roles. The film is a competition between visual marvels and bland, melodramatic philosophizing. The line between praising the glory of God in the shape of all things and New Age blather is thin indeed, especially when the setting is as portentous as war. 5 ↑ ↓

The Thin Red Line. Directed by Terence Malick, performances by Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, and Nick Nolte, 20th Century Fox, 1998.

Wild Strawberries (1957)

The emptiness of a life considered in retrospect is, for understandable reasons, a common theme in postwar capitalist art. But what if the choices that bring desolation—to pursue wealth or fame at the expense of meaning, for example—themselves arise from lovelessness? At what point do we cross the line from blameless children to adults responsible for themselves? Bergman has no easy answers, but I’m glad to have been invited on the road trip to find out. Nearly every character here has irritating personality traits or does irritating things—and like all road trips, conversations get mawkish at times—but every character is also, during at least one moment during the film, likable. That’s a sign of art succeeding in both empathy and realism. 7 ↑ ↓

Wild Strawberries. Directed by Ingmar Bergman, performance by Victor Sjöström, AB Svensk Filmindustri, 1957.