Retro Active: The Best Non 2019 Films I Saw in 2019

10. Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?  (2017) - Documentarian Travis Wilkerson's explorations into history and first person involvement are dry yet highly involving stories. His latest film, "Did You Ever Wonder Who Fired the Gun?" lays bare his own family's sordid past with his great grandfather's possible involvement with a racially motivated murder in the mid 40's. In tracking every possible lead, no matter how tangential, Wilkerson has created an intimately epic incision about a host of ideas, made all the more uncomfortable because it involves people in his own family. How he weaves together home video footage, first person interviews and stately images of long-forgotten graveyards not only speaks to the grace with which he tackles the project, but his honest intentions of not wanting to forget anymore.

9. Split Image (1982) - Seeing this just a few weeks after Ari Aster's "Midsommar" and the resemblance of mind control and the grueling battle for what some people believe are good for them are surprisingly similar. Directed with bare-bones clarity by Ted Kotcheff, "Split Image" is about a young man named Danny (Michael O Keefe) who falls under the spell of a woman (Karen Black) and the religious organization she's a part of led by domineering hippie Peter Fonda. The entire second half of the film involves Danny's family and their attempts to pry him away from the clutches of the group. Enter a live-wire character played to the extreme by James Woods and "Split Image" becomes a ferocious examination of power and influence on both sides, with a question clearly asking which one is better, if either? I"m not sure why this one isn't mentioned more often. Perhaps with the recent passing of Fonda, people will seek it out.

8. The Mayo Clinic (2017) - Long being a fan of Ken Burns and his exhaustive forays into the various corners of our culture, society and locales, his ode to the magic, faith and science of the revered Mayo Clinic falls perfectly in line with his enduring vision. While he always finds nuggest of humanity and wisdom in each of his documentaries, this one wades into the emotional deep end as people are literally going to this place in order to save their lives. The way the film switches back and forth between realized history and the history being made in current patients is, at times, overwhelmingly heartfelt. Burns, next to Frederick Wiseman, remains the greatest documentor of our lives yet.

7. Honeysuckle Rose (1982) - Expecting any real narrative drive from a film featuring Willie Nelson and The Family dealing with life touring on the road and avoiding their expected duties at home would be quite inane. Directed by Jerry Schatzberg with the same sun-drenched rural panache that made his 1973 film "Scarecrow" so marvelous, "Honeysuckle Rose" is really just an excuse to luxuriate in the cosmic cowboy lifestyle singer-songwriter Nelson made popular with his music and attitude. Portraying a cipher of himself, the film observes the band's bus-driven tour across stadiums and honkeytonks while Nelson slowly falls in love with new guitarist Amy Irving. The problem? He's also married to Dyan Cannon. All of that romantic intrigue is secondary to the film's shaggy dog aesthetic and footage seemingly assembled from B-roll of the band horsing around and smoking pot on the bus. All in all, it's a wonderful and ramshackle portrait of aimless stardom and hangover sunrises.

6. The Seventh Code (2013) - It's still so disappointing that after about 2008 and "Tokyo Sonata", the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa have become increasingly tough to see commodities here in the states. Sure, they may get a token NYFF premier, but then they vanish to the heap of bit torrent sites when their import DVD's hit the overseas market. "The Seventh Code" is one such casualty, but oh so good for the way Kurosawa manages to cram so much genre into an hour long piece made as an Asian pop star vehicle. As the young girl abandoned in a Russian landscape after her one-night stand boyfriend deserts her and tries to go out about his spy-selling secrets mission, pop singer Atsuko Maeda is perfect as the wide-eyed scraggly dog constantly popping up to interrupt his affairs. Swerving from romance comedy to apocalyptic thriller with ease, "The Seventh Code" remains proof that Kurosawa can electrify no matter how thin the premise feels. It even makes room for a music video before the explosive finale.

5. My Night At Maud's (1969) - Coming of cinematic sensibility and lumped in with the French New Wave of the 50's and 60's, filmmaker Eric Rohmer always seemed to stand a bit outside of the group.... partly due to the decade he had on the others in the movement, but mostly because his films were stylistically simpler and thematically denser than his counterparts. I don't mean that as a slight against the others, but his are simply more delicate. A fine case in point is "My Night At Maud's", one of his six "Moral Tales" films completed over the course of a decade that made waves on both shores of the Atlantic. Eschewing the cinematic language tricks that defined the work of Godard, Truffaut and Eustache, Rohmer's tale even dispenses with the lovelorn cad of a male character, opting instead for Jean-Louis Trintignant's devout Catholic thinker who gets a beautiful woman (the titular Maud, played by Francoise Fabian) throwing herself at him, and all he can do is lament about the deeper things in his life. The conversation that Jean-Louis and Maud have in her apartment- after she ushers out her lover and Jean-Louis' friend who brought him to her apartment in the first place- is the throbbing heart of the film. Running in real time for approximately 25 minutes, their conversation is playful, intellectual, flirtatious. It's a one-night stand, but Rohmer doesn't make it feel cheap or dirty. Or, in the case of the French New Wave habits, something of a prerequisite conquest that encompasses most of the basest male elements. This is a film attuned to the spirit and humanity of love in all its intellectual messiness and ill-timed fortunes.

4. Dishonored (1931) - After watching "Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story" and getting to interview filmmaker Alexandra Dean last year, I made it my mission to seek out as many Lamarr and Marlene Dietrich films as I could- both females stars who swayed the popular culture of film in its infancy and broke down barriers of intellect and sexuality like no other. In her collaborations with Josef von Sternberg, Dietrich made a host of films that are alternatively lurid, wild, thrilling and thinly tied to that word known as genre. Their best partnership, I feel, was perhaps the one that gets the least amount of ink. That being "Dishonored". Essentially a spy thriller in which Dietrich is dispatched to gather intel on Russian soldier Victor McLaglen, the film is basically a series of tableaux as Doetrich completely owns each and every frame with her eyes and movements. It's stunning to see how far this film goes in mordant humor and delicate plot twists that drive towards a fatalistic denouement quite unlike any film dared by Hollywood. I recommend seeing all the films in this boxset, but "Dishonored" should be seen and savored for a partnership of artists pushing everything to the edges before there even were edges.

3. The State I Am In (2001) - Home. It's a concept rarely explored in Christian Petzold's filmic universe. He's often content to trace the tumultuous lives of his characters through high-rise glass windows and non-descript roadways around his beloved Germany. And when the idea is touched upon- be it the destructive flux of post-war Berlin in which Nina Hoss tries to re assimilate in "Phoenix" or the simmering bedrock of boredom and jealousy that erupts in "Jerichow"- the violence and deception that erupts from such a simple construct such as "home" becomes like a mythical creature hellbent on pushing everyone out into the open. Such is the case with "The State I Am In" (2000). Actually his fourth film but the first to be released internationally after a trio of made-for-TV products, the film is perhaps the best example of the scenario I've described above. Following a mother (Barbara Auer), father (Richy Muller) and 15 year old Jeanne (Julie Hummer), the film begins with Jeanne at a seaside resort where, although sullen and withdrawn, she befriends a local surfer boy named Heinrich (Bilge Bingul). With the machinations of a coming-of-age story set in motion, the rug is pulled out from underneath us when it's revealed the family is on the run. The nervy and jumpy father isn't just jumpy and nervy because his daughter may be falling in love with the type of boy all fathers fear, but because he and the mother are wanted for crimes against the state as part of their actions in a terrorist group years ago. In fact, young Jeanne has never known a normal life, which makes the abrupt tear away from her newfound love even more confusing and frustrating. The rest of "The State I Am In" details the furious tug of war between Jeanne's blossoming womanhood being stifled by her parent's compulsive need to stay one step ahead of the authorities. Filming in his usual brisk, clipped style that rarely tells more than it needs to, one gets the feeling this is as close to a spy-thriller Petzold will ever get. One scene in particular in which the family are stopped at a red light and believe the police to be closing in features a wordless series of edits that punctuates the silence of what it may feel like when one understands and even acknowledges the inevitable is situated in front of them. Petzold has again crafted a mysterious and intriguing exploration of a life in constant flux.

2. Union Station (1950) - One of my favorite chase scenes in all of cinema resides in William Friedkin's "The French Connection" (1971). No, it's not the very muscular and chaotically choreographed car chase under the subway system, but a game of cat-and-mouse-hide-and-seek that pits Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his fleet-footed attempt in keeping up with his target (Fernando Rey) on the hectic streets and (eventual) busy New York subway system. It's a masterclass set-piece of editing and sound that strikes at the heart of two people trying to out duel each other. So imagine how crestfallen I was- and alternatively thrilled- while watching Rudolph Mate's "Union Station" (1950) a few months ago when the same type of criminal versus cop chess appeared in this aces crime thriller. I may need to go back and see if Friedkin lip services Mate's film in any way, but "The French Connection" is undeniably indebted to "Union Station's" crisp, boldly edited chase scene that features a cop following a suspected criminal around and about, ending up on a subway car where the tables are suddenly turned. In fact, pretty much all of Mate's masterpiece is a brilliant study of bodies in motion and the logistics of men standing, watching, waiting.... something that's been the machismo hallmark of current directors such as Michael Mann and Johnny To for decades now. One of those men standing and watching is William Holden, the cop of the film's train station title who's drawn into a web of tension when a group of kidnapping suspects use his train terminal to do their extortion and bidding. Partnering with the New York police, Holden initially helps them identify the criminals (with the help of beautiful Nancy Olsen), and from that point on, "Union Station" realizes several sequences of paranoid stake-outs, double crosses and electric action scenes that sets the film apart from the rudimentary film noir efforts the film is often associated with. Coming at the beginning of the 50's when noir was beginning to metastasize in other things (i.e. the hard boiled cynicism of Robert Aldrich and Cold War metaphors), "Union Station" is so thrilling for its simplicity and its attention to form. None of this is surprising since the director, Mate, came from the ranks of celebrated Hollywood cinematographers (and had already helmed two highly regarded noir classics "D.O.A." in 1949 and "The Dark Past" in 1948). What is surprising, however, is that "Union Station" is a largely forgotten relic of the noir wave that deserves its place in the pantheon of hard boiled cinema.

1. Model Shop (1969) - One of the best films of the 60's (and current recipient of a mint Blu-ray treatment by Twilight Time), Jacques Demy's roving Los Angeles character study about a layabout as he cruises around the city trying to collect money from friends is, ultimately, about so much more than that. The man, played by a somewhat vapid Gary Lockwood, soon turns his frustrated attention to a beautiful "model shop" model (Anouk Aimee) he runs into and the film becomes a somewhat tender, momentary exchange of ideas and feelings between the two. It's also an amazing illustration of Los Angeles in the 60's. From the opening shot that doesn't just establish the quaintly ramshackle abode of Lockwood, but starts at one house next to an oil pump and then slowly tracks down the entire beach-side street eventually pivoting to its main location, Demy is hell bent on essaying the sparkling terrain of- as one character says- the "baroque geometry" of all Los Angeles. Receiving some resuscitated screenings earlier this year around the country as an obvious influence on Tarantino's latest project, "Model Shop" is an extraordinary piece of cinema that deserves every bit of reclamation. And that ending. Gah! Love it so much.

Very Vinyl: My Favorite Music of 2019

Definitely growing stronger as it goes along (ending with the haunting cosmic jazz of the song featured above), Bon Iver's "I,I" isn't an extremely welcoming project on first listen. But, like all of his layered songs, Justin Vernon's unique ability isn't in arranging tidy lyrics inside your head. His music etches little specks of melody in your soul, accumulating into a warm explosion as the songs bleed and morph against each other. I've listened to this album more than anything else this year. Just magical.




With "The Eraser" and now "Anima", Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has crafted two individualistic albums that feel, at once, apart of the Radiohead soundscape and wholly different. Perhaps its Yorke's reliance on more electronic beats (rather than Greenwood's thumping guitar), and "Anima" pushes his propulsive experimentation to dizzying heights.




Not only did we get a new The Natioanl album this year, but a stellar black and white short film (starring Alicia Vikander) that dispenses all the heartache, joy and crushing humanity that spills out through every lyric of their songs. I hope this band continues to make music for decades.




Emerging on the scene only a few years ago, New York rock band Big Thief have a legitimate claim to band of the year. releasing not one but two splendid albums. Hailed by fellow artists like Phoebe Bridgers as something amazing to see live, Big Thief are poised to be the indie darlings for years to come.




A commentator on YouTube said that the next decade belongs to Weyes Blood. I wholeheartedly agree. Natalie Mering has been making music for more than 8 years, but with "Titanic Rising", her cosmic pop sound combining church music, 70's Linda Ronstadt and lilting melodies culminated in a near perfect confection of mood and energy.

Moral Relationships: Eric Rohmer's "My Night At Maud's"

Coming of cinematic sensibility and lumped in with the French New Wave of the 50's and 60's, filmmaker Eric Rohmer always seemed to stand a bit outside of the group.... partly due to the decade he had on the others in the movement, but mostly because his films were stylistically simpler and thematically denser than his counterparts. I don't mean that as a slight against the others, but his are simply more delicate. A fine case in point is "My Night At Maud's", one of his six "Moral Tales" films completed over the course of a decade that made waves on both shores of the Atlantic.

Eschewing the cinematic language tricks that defined the work of Godard, Truffaut and Eustache, Rohmer's tale even dispenses with the lovelorn cad of a male character, opting instead for Jean-Louis Trintignant's devout Catholic thinker who gets a beautiful woman (the titular Maud, played by Francoise Fabian) throwing herself at him, and all he can do is lament about the deeper things in his life. The conversation that Jean-Louis and Maud have in her apartment- after she ushers out her lover and Jean-Louis' friend who brought him to her apartment in the first place- is the throbbing heart of the film. Running in real time for approximately 25 minutes, their conversation is playful, intellectual, flirtatious... and one that does end with both of them in bed together. It's a one-night stand, but Rohmer doesn't make it feel cheap or dirty. Or, in the case of the French New Wave habits, something of a prerequisite conquest that encompasses most of the basest male elements.

Entering Jean-Louis' life around the same time is Francoise, a young blonde he spies in church one night and then continually runs into around town as she zips to and fro on her bicycle. After leaving Maud's, he begins a relationship with her that will transform into a stunning years later coda that trembles with anticipation and peaceful resolve as the three meet on French beach. Each one has gone their disparate ways in life, and Rohmer handles the run-in with complete care.

"My Night At Maud's" is aptly titled because, like so many moments in life, the short time Maud and Jean-Louis spent together seemed to define them for the rest of their lives, like an intersection that yields both ways and allows the driver to swerve whichever direction they want. And of his Six Moral tales, the film is tender not only for the attention to body language, but the refusal to treat his men and woman as anything other than on-screen playthings.

On "The Irishman"

With his previous film "Silence" (2016) and now "The Irishman", Scorsese has certainly entered his pensive period and, as a filmmaker whose lifelong investments have been people struggling with the cause and effect of inner turmoil (both spiritually and non), "The Irishman" may be his crowning reflection on the matter. As a sweeping tapestry of mid-century gangsterism and unionist history, it's a completely enveloping recreation of the stalwart loud mouths (Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa) and powerfully quiet sea changers (Joe Pesci as mob boss Russell Bufalino) who had their fingers on the pulse. And as a character study of one man (Robert DeNiro as Frank Sheeran) along for the turbulent and violent ride, it's a meditative masterpiece that ends on such a somber, devastating image that even after 3 and a half hours, I was still stunned it was over.

Bringing together his most star-studded ensemble yet, part of the film's magnificent poise about guilt-ridden existence long after the dust has settled lies in the etched faces of icons Pacino, DeNiro and Pesci. It succeeds not only in their wondrous interpretation of Steve Xaillan's screenplay, but in the very history of their iconic status. In a climactic scene between Pacino and DeNiro (which has been foretold as truth by one party and unilaterally denied by about every other camp in the world), Scorsese makes sure to slow things down to a crawl.... focusing on eyes, bodies and sideways glances that exudes serene betrayal at every moment. I don't imagine it working quite so brilliantly with any other actors in the world.

However, though the underlying emotions of the film speak loudest, "The Irishman" is, after all, a Scorsese gangster picture where the violence is swift and damning and the camera a secondary floating character to the action of men going about their routine business of killing. Bringing together disparate technical forays of his previous films (tracking shots, freeze frame light bulb clicks, text on the screen that plays with the existence of time), it's also an effort that feels at home in its place of a canon started back in the 70's with "Mean Streets" in which masculinity, religion, self esteem and consequences are wound up tight in a universe spun from the creative Scorsese mind. The only difference is that now, these men are left sitting alone, abandoned by everyone, wondering if their lives were worth the fuss. If it can't be answered now, at least part of the unique joy in cinema has been watching Scorsese and his crew of actors beg the question.

The Current Cinema 19.6

The Current War

Broaching a subject matter close to my heart (just try and tear me away from gilded age history books and my 4 different Tesla biographies), Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's "The Current War" is a fleet-footed and propulsive tear through the divisive birth of modern electricity and the men who harnessed its infancy. Each character- Edison played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Tesla by Nicholas Hoult and Westinghouse by Michael Shannon- is given equal weight as each man delineates his earnestness to the cause, a couple led by their intelligent mechanical brains and the other through his keen awareness of currents as currency. With a pervasively restless camera and a sharp script that breezes through history while still finding time to shine on the ruminative moments of its prescient world-builders, "The Current War" is also a complete surprise because of its rumored checkered history For a film that languished on the shelf for more than a year, Gomez-Rejon's work emerges unscathed as a genuinely brash resurrected entertainment. It also features a killer soundtrack by Saunder Jurriaans and Danny Bensi.

Parasite

Although it's not quite a horror film, one of the most horrific moments of the year on-screen happens in Bong Joon Ho's "Parasite" as a set of crazed-white eyes slowly peers up from the darkness from a set of basement level steps, igniting a child's nightmarish imagination and sending the second half of the film into a frenzy of drastic action and numbing consequence. It's what Joon Ho does best- wringing recognizable genres until they twist into a morass of social commentary and obfuscated styles. What begins as ant act of greedy infiltration by a lower class family into the personal spaces of the upper class starts out simply enough before the screws are tightened and every shot, feeling and mood is controlled masterfully by Joon Ho. There are stretches in this film where I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity, hoping I'd soon be given permission to breathe. Caustically funny and whip-smart tense, "Parasite" is a master firing on all cylinders.

Beanpole

Kantemir Balagov's World War II drama doesn't deal with the fighting itself, but the lacerating impacts that linger long after the war has ended. Young Iya (Viktoriya Miroschnichenko) stumbles through post war Leningrad as a nurse, still seeing the effects of war on her patients and struggling with her own PTSD disorder wherein her body locks up and she goes comatose. Earning the nickname Beanpole for her unusual feminine height, her terrible mistake during one of these freezed emotional states early on in the film sets the stage for a bleak relationship with her best friend (Vasilia Perelygina) in which the moral stakes of both women are pushed to the brink of normalcy. Deliberately paced and effectively acted, "Beanpole" is probably most remarkable for taking a harrowing subject and creating an almost somnambulist drama where high emotions are registered in blank stares and the seething hatred of the upper class towards the lower class is shrouded in politely jagged dinner conversation. It's a film I admired more than fully liked, but I look forward to whatever Balagov does next. 

Motherless Brooklyn

I have to begin by asking why it's taken someone 20 years to allow actor Edward Norton to write and direct again after his sweetly affectionate and witty debut film "Keeping the Faith". I fell in love upon seeing it in the theater all those years ago and it remains one of the best films of the 90's. A far cry in mood and tone than that previous ode to Lubitsch-like romance-comedy, his latest film, "Motherless Brooklyn" still retains his affection for people and relationships even when said relationships involve extortion, bribery, corruption and murder in 50's set New York where the sky's the limit for powerful men slicing up chunks of the city. Trying to unravel the mystery is Lionel (Norton), the adopted associate of a slain snooper (Bruce Willis) whose nose gets them all involved in some hefty affairs. Complicating maters is Lionel's tourette's disorder, which serves more as a compass for the nervousness he feels when things get heady, calmed only in moments after Laura (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who may or may not be fully involved in the affair he's investigating. While the narrative of "Motherless Brooklyn" ultimately leans into noir-tinged familiarity, what's not pedestrian is Norton's supreme handling of the film's pace and composure. Lots of secondary characters (played by famous faces from Willem DaFoe to Michael K. Williams) provide a sprawling canvas of depth, but they're never allowed to overwhelm the carefully constructed atmosphere. Attuned to the beauty of the world around his concrete-bound characters, Norton continually cuts to things around them as they talk, such as golden blades of grass or the sun-lit dusted items on a bedroom dresser. For a film often caught inside the scrambled head of a man desperately trying to fit together the disjointed pieces, "Motherless Brooklyn" is a magnificently contemplative work.

Shock and Awe: Images From Some Good and Not So Good Halloween Viewing

Mirror, Mirror (1990)

Rainbow Harvest is the main reason to see "Mirror, Mirror", a 1991 horror effort about a mirror that houses the gateway to some murderous demons. The real horror here is that Harvest effectively vanished from Hollywood after this film (although some say she still works as an editor in television?)

Paperhouse (1989)

The best chiller I've watched so far this October is Bernard Rose's "Paperhouse". More of an atmospheric coming-of-age fantasy than a horror film (and oh boy did the 80's do those better than any other), the film manages to be terrifying one minute and then emotionally draining the next as children try and make sense of senseless adolescent growing pains.

Book of Blood (2009)

Based on a Clive Barker story, "Book of Blood" mixes together alot of horror elements- paranormal investigation, body horror, metaphysical excess- and blends them into a fairly compelling tale that's also quite gory. It also features a denouement that's pretty great considering how many years we've been telling ghost stories. I've never seen one spitball the phenomenon like this one.

Witchboard (1986) 

I think there's like 78 more of these "Witchboard" films and after seeing the first, I can't bring myself to watch anymore. But hey, Tawny Kitaen.

Inner Space- On "Ad Astra"

Even though it resides in a loopy science fiction template that features ghost ships, nerve-jangling space walks and knife fights inside a cockpit, James Gray's "Ad Astra" is a lot closer to his morose studies of male psychosis and obsessive choices than it first appears. In fact, it makes for a nice double feature with his previous masterpiece "The Lost City of Z" in which pioneers of terrain and courage venture farther out into the unknown than anyone before them. In "Ad Astra", that explorer is astronaut Brad Pitt, chosen to travel to Mars (a planet that houses the last stable outpost of humanity in near future of colonization) in order to hopefully coax his lost father (also an astronaut) to stop sending chaotic micro bursts of energy from a failed mission decades ago. I know, it does preposterous when explained, but Gray manages to create a moody and introspective work of art that challenges science fiction conventions in its quiet remorselessness.

In between the bursts of action- probably maintained to keep the interest of those audience goers enticed into the theater looking for the spectacle of a big budget Star Trek- "Ad Astra" is especially intense in its introspection. From the voice-overs of Pitt that question everything from his masculinity to his accepted mission, "Ad Astra" lives in the margins of second guessing. It's also a film that lingers on choices. The sadness of watching a nonfunctioning life vessel slowly melt away into space or the vastness of black that engulfs a floating figure moment later are given much more prominence than other films that deal with characters in space.

Director Gray has been creating impressionistic films for more than two decades now and while "Ad Astra" is certainly his most adventurous trip to (inner) space, it's also a complimentary work that falls into his glorious landscape of psychological exploration.

The Current Cinema 19.5

Official Secrets

Filmmaker Gavin Hood's leftist politics have finally found a shrewd, crackling home in this tale of a British whistle-blower (Keira Knightley) and the investigative/legal melee that erupts around her after she leaks a damning classified document to the press. I can't say it surprises me that the British government was just as morally corrupt and blinded with land-grab avarice as the U.S. in proclaiming a war against Iraq, but "Official Secrets" does maintain some levels of genuine intrigue even if we know how the based-on-true-events eventually plays out. Half investigative procedural as the Observer staff (strong performances by Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode and Matt Smith) stagger to fit the pieces together to mold a believable story and half moral legal drama as Knightley deals with the personal consequences of her stubbornly realized actions (including the presence of a great Ralph Fiennes as her lawyer), the film juggles all of this with confidence, even if the narrative beats feel a bit hemmed from the start. Regardless, it's a film that rewards the viewer with intelligent conversations and mounting drama without patronizing.

Brittany Runs a Marathon

Paul Collaizo's "Brittany Runs a Marathon" was snapped up by Amazon Studios fresh out of this year's Sundance, and it fits their middle-of-the-road expectations perfectly. It's not a bad film, by any means, it's just a safe, audience-friendly slice of self-help intervention that breaks no rules or extends beyond its pat circumstances. As the woman who decides to change her life and begin running, Jillian Bell is admirable, flashing streaks of warm humanity within a narrative that rarely paints outside the lines and its cast of secondary characters (such as Michaela Watkins) often threaten to become more interesting than anything else. 

The Goldfinch

Far from the disaster that's been plastered on this film for several weeks now, John Crowley's "The Goldfinch" is more of a gilded whimper than anything else. Adapted from a well loved novel of the same name, the film hints at greatness through the machinations of a teenager's growth into adulthood after a shocking act of violence alters his course. Like life itself, "The Goldfinch" is messy with subplot and supporting characters..... replete with missed connections, lost attachments and personal tragedies... that dot the landscape of his lost compass path. Sometimes, this jagged journey can be mythical and immensely moving. Unfortunately, the journey here feels much too earnest to allow anything to sink into one's bones. Performances by Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman, especially, feel overly internalized and oddly suffocating. Only when the film breaks away from their posh New York lifestyle and journeys to the desperate ends of the earth (literally a decrepit housing division at the edge of Las Vegas) does it ever really come alive with conflicted characters and energized emotions (courtesy of young Oakes Fegley and Finn Wolfhard). 

Out of the Past: On "Union Station"

One of my favorite chase scenes in all of cinema resides in William Friedkin's "The French Connection" (1971). No, it's not the very muscular and chaotically choreographed car chase under the subway system, but a game of cat-and-mouse-hide-and-seek that pits Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his fleet-footed attempt in keeping up with his target (Fernando Rey) on the hectic streets and (eventual) busy New York subway system. It's a masterclass set-piece of editing and sound that strikes at the heart of two people trying to out duel each other.

So imagine how crestfallen I was- and alternatively thrilled- while watching Rudolph Mate's "Union Station" (1950) a few months ago when the same type of criminal versus cop chess appeared in this aces crime thriller. I may need to go back and see if Friedkin lip services Mate's film in any way, but "The French Connection" is undeniably indebted to "Union Station's" crisp, boldly edited chase scene that features a cop following a suspected criminal around and about, ending up on a subway car where the tables are suddenly turned.

In fact, pretty much all of Mate's masterpiece is a brilliant study of bodies in motion and the logistics of men standing, watching, waiting.... something that's been the machismo hallmark of current directors such as Michael Mann and Johnny To for decades now. One of those men standing and watching is William Holden, the cop of the film's train station title who's drawn into a web of tension when a group of kidnapping suspects use his train terminal to do their extortion and bidding. Partnering with the New York police, Holden initially helps them identify the criminals (with the help of beautiful Nancy Olsen), and from that point on, "Union Station" realizes several sequences of paranoid stake-outs, double crosses and electric action scenes that sets the film apart from the rudimentary film noir efforts the film is often associated with. Coming at the beginning of the 50's when noir was beginning to metastasize in other things (i.e. the hard boiled cynicism of Robert Aldrich and Cold War metaphors), "Union Station" is so thrilling for its simplicity and its attention to form. None of this is surprising since the director, Mate, came from the ranks of celebrated Hollywood cinematographers (and had already helmed two highly regarded noir classics "D.O.A." in 1949 and "The Dark Past" in 1948). What is surprising, however, is that "Union Station" is a largely forgotten relic of the noir wave that deserves its place in the pantheon of hard boiled cinema.

On "Transit"

As stated on this blog before, almost all of filmmaker Christian Petzold's films are about people and places in literal flux. I don't think he's ever broached the subject quite as literally (in title or theme) as he so assuredly does in his latest feature, "Transit". Not only is his lead character Georg (Franz Rogowski) stuck in an amalgam of time that fuses the pervasive fear of German Nationalism encroaching across Europe in the 1940's with today's climate of fear mongering intolerance about immigration, but the people embodying this terrifying space of inquietude are locked in limbo as well, unable to advance one way or the other. Even with the papers of a dead man emboldening his trek across Europe in the hopes of gaining passage to somewhere safer, Georg is a haunting figure in a long hall of mirrors where everyone is seen over and over with the same hopes of salvation. It's a daring and formal enterprise, made all the more searing by Petzold's usual clean aesthetic that refuses to advance the narrative into anything resembling a happy ending.

In it's brisk but packed 100 minute running time, "Transit" gets right to the punch early, unspooling so much information in its first third that it feels like Petzold's most complicated film yet. The aforementioned Georg meets a friend in a bar who asks him to deliver a message to a quasi famous writer stashed away in a local hotel. Dropping us into a Europe where forces of police-attired military units are sweeping across the landscape and rounding up anyone without the proper ID papers, George accepts for the little money offered. Realizing the writer is dead upon arrival, Georg swipes his manuscript and ID and submerges himself to Marseille in hopes of contacting the writer's wife Marie (Paula Beer) and securing transport papers in a town where the oppressive government haven't quite reached yet. Through an unidentified narrator (at least until the final few minutes) and Georg's own improvised persona, "Transit" becomes both a mystery and a political thriller in how it dispenses (and withholds) crucial information until its ready to burst.

Finding the elusive Marie, however, soon becomes a secondary concern to simple survival for Georg. Actually, Marie finds him, running into him on the street several times as she mistakes him from behind thinking he's someone else. This motif of confused identity and amnesiac scope becomes one of the many telling hints of bureaucratic malaise and mask-wearing Petzold chooses to wash across the film.

Adapted from a novel by Anna Seghers, "Transit" is a masterwork adapted (and updated) by Petzold from its original intentions of Seghers World War II experiences into the sleek and metropolitan anti-thriller in which the vehicles, dress and locale are today juxtaposed with the occupational fears of yesteryear- although some would argue the occupying forces are stronger and more insidious than ever. And, like Petzold's previous film "Phoenix", he gets to play with the notions of a society simultaneously crumbling and rebuilding at the same time, leaving the inhabitants to pick up the personal pieces in its wake. And like "Phoenix", Petzold fashions a final scene so ripe with meaning and so crushing in emotional complexity, it only further solidifies the fact that he's one of the two or three best filmmakers in the world today.

The Current Cinema 19.4

Booksmart

About two-thirds of the way through- and once the film's teenage friends played wonderfully by Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever finally make it to the graduation party they so desperately want to attend- "Booksmart" finds its footing and attains something quite terrific. The film's patchwork assortment of outrageous characters and high school crudeness coalesces into an achingly honest and masterful examination about the crushing facade of teenage life and its very thin margins of identity/acceptance. First time actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde balances the pieces together brilliantly, manifesting all the strengths of her film in one long shot that turns a shattering underwater discovery into an equally shattering composition of two young women trying to compose themselves in the uncertainties of adulthood. Just a great film all around.

Brightburn

While the idea of an alternate history story of a young Superman-type kid falling to Earth and being raised by Midwestern farming parents (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman) sounds novel, David Yarovesky's "Brightburn" falters in execution. Relying on one too many horror tropes and scare beats, this is a film that telescopes pretty much every plot twist and drains the life out of (already) cardboard characters. 

Rocketman

Although I wasn't quite prepared for the straight musical narrative Dexter Fletcher unspools in telling the meteoric rise and drug-addled plateau of rock 'n' roll icon Elton John, the fluid camera work and choreography are the best things about the effort. It's when people begin having conversations that the film's weakness becomes glaring. Taron Egerton portrays John with swagger and verve, but its a performance that still comes off as pantomime rather than true character excavation. 

An Appreciation: Federico Fellini

Variety Lights (1950) *** - A perfect distillation of the type of film Fellini would strive to make for the duration of his career- a wandering sense of the journey being more important that the destination.... a focus on common creative types (this time a traveling, scrappy troupe of performers).... and the ever present tug of respectability and higher class threatening to soil the salt-of-the-earth facade of his men and women. Co-directed with Alberto Lattuada, "Variety Lights" is a neat encapsulation of Fellini's unique vision.

The White Sheik (1952) *** - In one scene that takes place on a beach as runaway wife Wanda (Brunella Bova) sees her starstruck dreams towards handsome actor Nando (Alberto Sordi) fade away, the wind sounds just like it does a decade later in "81/2". And that's the most interesting thing about "The White Sheik". It is a delicate and often very funny comedy, but it's also an illuminating blueprint for so many themes and motifs that would dot the Fellini landscape for years to come. Not to mention, it introduces us to Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) who would later get her own (sorrowful) account of life in Rome.


Love In the City (1953)  **- For his part in the omnibus film about a swath of people living and loving in Italy, Fellini's portion is nowhere near the best. Anyone matched against Antonioni usually loses in that regard. In fact, after seeing it last week, I can barely remember what his was about outside of a few long tracking shots.


I Vitelloni (1953)  **** -  An episodic film about friends living on the edges of crime, poverty, adolescence and developing macho swaggering, "I Vitelloni" feels like the type of film everyone from Martin Scorsese to John Singleton has emulated decades later. Fellini makes it appear pure and effortless. It's the best of his 1950 era output.


La Strada (1954) *** - I"m not as enamored of this film as many, but it's hard to deny the great performance of Giullietta Masina portraying the downtrodden protagonist that Fellini would return to over the decades. Opposite her, Anthony Quinn as the brutish surrogate father/boss/lover is also perfect.


Il Bidone (1955) ** - Fairly one-note exploration of redemption as a trio of con men receive their comeuppance due to family ties.


Nights of Cabiria (1957) ***1/2 - Actress Masina is back for more brutality by Fellini as a woman dealing with a very harsh Rome. Her subtle reactions and facial expressions- as the neon glitz world around her pushes onto her shoulders- are small revelations in a character study that dares to examine the falsehood of the culture around the character rather than the character herself.


La Dolce Vita (1960) **** - One of the formative films of my young movie-watching life (when I was 15) in which I realized foreign films just have the pizazz and life that American films often don't deliver. The careening moods and audacious sentiments that barrel off the screen felt (and still feel) like someone striving for a complete abandonment of realism and simply exploring whatever wistful memory or thought springs before them. One of the seminal films.


8 1/2 (1963) **** - Much like "La Dolce Vita", the first time I saw "8 1/2" I recognized this as something completely "anti" of everything I'd seen up to that point. Remarkably lucid about mining the depths of sinking creativity and a visually dazzling film whose main concern is to disorient as much as enlighten, these two films deserve to be studied as masterpieces for centuries to come.


Juliet of the Spirits (1965) *** - I imagine this is as close to a straight up horror film that Fellini would ever make. One can only drool over the possibilities. His first color film, Fellini held nothing back in contrasting colors and images and the final delirious parade of images (as the habitats of Giullietta Masini's head come pouring onto the screen) feature some absolutely creepy incarnations. If it feels like a feminist version of "81/2", so be it. It does lag in portions, but the overall scope and image-making are wondrous.


Spirits of the Dead (1968) ***1/2 - Fellini's portion of this compilation film (liberally borrowing from an Edgar Allan Poe short story) "Toby Dammitt" is essentially a 40 minute mental breakdown of a British actor (Terence Stamp) visiting Italy and falling into the throes of alcoholism, depression and manic paranoia. It's certainly a Fellini vision, swirling with garish colors, clownish characterizations and evil incarnate in a pale-faced nymph kicking a ball around. Describing it just doesn't do it any justice.


Satyricon (1969) ** - I think this could've only been made in 1969. Based on ancient short stories, it's really a film of Fellini gestating his urges and visual delights onto the screen in what would mark his more ribald period of heightened mood, artificiality and visualized dream-states. The story, to speak of, concerns a young man's search for his child lover through a landscape of highly designed sets with all sorts of grotesquery and embedded mythical figures. It doesn't make much sense, but I get the feeling its meant to be ingested rather than enjoyed.


The Clowns (1970) *** -  It makes sense that Fellini would begin the 70's with a rollicking (faux) documentary about the life of circus clowns, represented both in real life and obscure, unearthed silent films. Since most of his later films resemble the carefully controlled anarchy of the antics inside a circus ring applied to his beloved Italian hagiography real and imagined, it's an apt metaphor for everything that would follow in his career. It's also a diverting, charming effort that ends on gracious melancholy.


Roma (1972) **** - It's difficult to call "Roma" episodic. It's a film that doesn't follow a true narrative arch and although its mostly rudderless, it does feature two anchors that continually pop up throughout the film to provide some semblance of characterization. One of them is a young man who gets to observe the chaotic assembly of people eating dinner in the town square or the unusually deconstructive nature of how brothels in Rome work... the first for the lower class and the second for more 'monied' men. The second (sometimes) constant piece of "Roma" follows a camera crew as they film around the city, providing two of the film's most stunning technical achievements including a hectic film shoot along a rain-soaked Rome highway and the other a mystical, transfixing venture beneath the city where a construction crew accidentally discovers centuries old artwork. Of course, their presence and the exposure to air subsequently destroys the work and casts a rapt commentary on so many things at once. Everything else in the film plays as if the city itself belched up its own memories, feelings and ideas mixed with the circus-like atmosphere of a filmmaker of Fellini's attention. It's at once wondrous and frustrating and maniacal. It's also one of Fellini's best.


Amarcord (1974) ** - Attempting some of the same distillation of nostalgia and memory that glittered so vibrantly in "Roma", Fellini's follow-up "Amarcord" falls short due to its less-than-memorable set pieces and chaotic nature that feels, well chaotic and encumbered by an overall sense of trying too hard.


Casanova (1976) *1/2 - Orgiastic pageantry aside, Fellini's interpretation of the legendary Casanova is quite the bore. As the leading man, Donald Sutherland feels miscast and the film's feeble attempts to solicit any character arch are just as cartoonish as the overall tone and tempo. Points do go for the genius set design, though, in which gently ruffled tarps serve as swooning oceans and one scene involving candle-lit chandeliers being rotated and expunged.


Orchestra Rehearsal (1978) *** - Hinged somewhere between his usual manic exploration of society and the acidic explosion of absurdity borrowed by current filmmakers such as Yorgos Lanthimos, "Orchestra Rehearsel" begins as a faux documentary about a day in the life of various musicians at practice and then turns chaotic. The orchestra revolts. The conductor begins speaking German. People lash out. All in the name of magic realism/fascism, "Orchestra Rehearsal" may not completely gel as a whole, but its fascinating to see Fellini try.


City of Women (1980) ** - A bit embarrassing at times for the way it attempts to reconcile the gender divide and ends up purporting the worst cliches of both sides, "City of Women" is ambitious and self-reflexive, which gives it some chutzpah. But not much else.


And the Ship Sails On (1983) ***- Fellini characters cloistered together on a cruise ship... meaningful siphons of the country itself.... a ragged and busy aesthetic. "And the Ship Sails On" seems to inhabit the best and worst of Fellini's career.


Ginger and Fred (1986) ** - A way to look back on two of the stars Fellini spent his youthful days with (Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina), "Ginger and Fred" concerns itself with a once popular dancing duo making a comeback 40 years later on a variety TV show. Lots of backstage conversations and blustery emotions are on hand again, but this time, the film feels flat and tepid. The chemistry (or lack thereof) between the ace duo is also disconcerting.


Intervista (1987) **1/2- Partly generated to celebrate the anniversary of Cinecitta, Fellini's faux documentary glides across the back lots of the famed studio where lots of pandemonium ensues. It's a film that sounds more interesting than it really is- juggling a Japanese documentary crew's wide-eyed enthusiasm, a naive reporter experiencing all the chaos and Fellini dipping into past glories (Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg) to create a sweet but at times overbearing reverie.


The Voice of the Moon (1990) *1/2 - Not quite the magnanimous way we hoped Fellini would go out, his final film (starring Roberto Beningi as yet another male protagonist slipping through the currents of Italian memory and time) is a confused, fairly oafishness take on many of his previous (and better) films. Beholden to a variety of characters- often following them for long stretches of time with lots of talk going on- "The Voice of the Moon" staggers and replays so much of Fellini's oeuvre that it becomes a cliched mess.



Unable to view:  Boccaccio '70

The Current Cinema 19.3

Bolden

The life of Buddy Bolden is the stuff of mythic folklore. Regarded as the inventor of jazz music, whose only supposed recording has been lost to the ravages of time, and confined to a Louisianan state mental hospital where he died in anonymity at the age of 54 are the facts that most published history know about him. Trying to elasticize his life and music, filmmaker Dan Pritzker's "Bolden" takes an especially fragmented approach to things. Recalling major events in the musicians life (played by Gary Carr), the film opens with Bolden hearing a Louis Armstrong event wafting through the vents of his asylum home, which cause him to frustratingly recollect the events in his life, from his childhood to the exploitative brushes with (white) New Orleans society and his depression into alcohol and drug use. Assembled with minimal care for a cohesive narrative, "Bolden" shoe-horns so much manic energy into its 90 minutes, it's one of the few times I've yearned for a more conventional biopic. There are moments of tenderness, though, such as the idea that as a young boy his malleable mind would turn the thuds and swishes of his mother's line factory into a crescendo beat or the way he coaxes a unique rhythm out of one of his band's early rehearsals. But these asides are few and far between the bursts of darkness that begin to creep into Bolden's personality or his many dalliances with women outside his marriage. It's a shame the film is far more intent on the destructive rather than the creative.

Red Joan

In Trevor Nunn's somewhat diffuse spy thriller "Red Joan", it's no surprise the venerable Judi Dench comes away mostly unscathed from the ordinary plot machinations that sinks a good portion of the rest of the film. As the aged woman arrested in the film's opening scene for treasonous acts committed 50 years earlier, her weathered face wrings out the emotions that stirs the film's flashback approach and just how it all went down. As young Joan, Sophie Cookson (aka the actress I kept mistaking for Keira Knightley) carries the brunt of the film and just how such a brilliant young mind was manipulated by a dashing communist (Tom Hughes). It's in the past where "Red Joan" often falters, turning the true story of British war time subterfuge into a series of love interests and staid conventional storytelling. This should have been the most compelling portion. Instead, the few moments of Dench reacting to the accusations of the past become standouts in a film too wrapped up to excise generic war-torn lust rather than honest regret.

At Dallas Film Now check out new reviews for other currents such as "Long Day's Journey Into Night", and Zhang Yimou's wonderful "Shadow"

The Current Cinema 19.2

Climax

Gaspar Noe's latest is a delirious concoction of New Wave musical and Euro-freak out horror film, fire-branded by his swerving aesthetic and provocative sound design that feels more like an assault than a viewing experience. Broken into three parts- including an opening of each character talking from a television set that serves more as a nerdy namedrop for the influences of Noe via the spines of books and VHS tapes cluttered around the image rather than a proper introduction- "Climax" then morphs into a punishing segment of carefully choreographed dance numbers interrupted by the young dancers' vulgar and misogynistic conversations about their carnal desires.... which serves as an apt reminder that Noe once made a film titled "Carne". From there, the film really goes off the rails as someone spikes the communal punch with LSD and the cloistered dance performers each burrow down their individual holes of tormented hell. Some screw the night away. Others fight. Others wander the neon-lit lodge their locked in like specters haunting the corridors of uninhibited youth, all captured by Noe's now trademark long takes that plunge us in, out, and around the confusion and bad trips. It's an unsettling portrait of modern youth, and one of Noe's best films that continues to pursue his aggressive vision of wasted society.

Captain Marvel

Anna Fleck and Ryan Boden's "Captain Marvel" looked like the right amount of brazen levity and lighthearted action compared to the brooding populism of other Marvel properties. And it is. Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson inhabit their roles with gusto and as an origin story (for not just Larson's Captain character), the film takes some refreshing asides, especially in the cascading/shifting allegiances and plot twists. 

Reviewed at Dallas Film Now:

Dragged Across Concrete- It doesn't quite earn its expanse run time, but the pulp machinations are brutal.

Ash Is Purest White- Even though Jia Zhangke is repeating himself in theme and form somewhat, it's still a great film about the clash of the personal against the cultural. 

Pomp and Circumstance: Josef von Sternberg's "Dishonored"

Of the half dozen Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich vehicles I've seen, "Dishonored" is perhaps the least mentioned of their collaborations but the one that feels most honed into the exuberant, twisted path they would travel over the next few years together. Filmed in 1932 (immediately after their breakthrough "The Blue Angel" and the quite mellow "Morocco" both in 1930), it's a film that exists just to see how many lurid poses and buoyant backdrops Dietrich can be placed within. And did I mention it's also a spy thriller? A film of many themes, insinuations, and fait accompli acceptance, "Dishonored" makes the buried sadomasochism of "The Devil Is a Woman" look like child's play for the way Dietrich bends men to her will, even at times of outright war.

After picking her up on the street as a prostitute, Dietrich becomes X27, a secret agent for the Viennese government trying to ensnare a high ranking officer (Warner Oland) from passing secrets to the Russians. After (somewhat) accomplishing this mission, she's given the task of finding this officer's other informant, played by the staunch-jawed Victor McLaglen. Their relationship becomes a coy, shifting perception of allegiance that finds X27 disguising herself even further and tracking McLaglen to a country estate as the war limps to its finale.

Though the plot machinations are firmly intact, von Sternberg and Dietrich lace "Dishonored" with a positively loopy sense of humor and visual flair. The New Year's Eve party attended by X27 and McLaglen is so cramped with graffiti and streamers (coupled with each of their diabolical costumes that feel like something out of a Kenneth Anger picture of the radical 60's), that the scene threatens to be overrun by the background of pomp and circumstance. It's downright delirious and remains my favorite scene of the von Sternberg canon. And when the film does kick into gear towards the end with sleight-of-hand spy skulduggery and flared-up sexual tension, "Dishonored" becomes just as fascinating for the tempestuous betrayals that lead to a crushing finale.

It's tempting to not judge "Dishonored" on its own, but instead as a cog in the majestic wheel of an actress-and-director spinning a maelstrom of ideas, images and perfected glances outward from a burgeoning Hollywood studio system that wasn't quite sure what it had. They just knew Dietrich sold pictures and von Sternberg was adept at making them. "Dishonored" proves both of these points and then goes beyond to reveal the duo were probably having more fun skewering the genre into their own perverse plaything. Yes, this was 1931, but it feels like 2031.

The Current Cinema 19.1

Destroyer

There's a trend in modern crime films I like to call "New American Miserablism". I suppose the grandfathers were David Fincher and Michael Mann, now carried forward by any young filmmaker treading into the noir tinged waters. Even the small screen isn't immune, specifically behind the grandiose darkness inherent in Nic Pizzaloto's "True Detective" series. Granted, even I'm worn down by the heaviness permeating these efforts. So why is Karyn Kusama's "Destroyer"- a crime film especially miserable, right down to the grizzled makeup coated across Nicole Kidman's face to exemplify the haggard weight of her world bending upon her- different? Well, it is and isn't. The film trades in so many themes and situations that have dotted the noir landscape in the past, however Kusama and screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi resuscitate their effort into something special because of the layered storytelling whose timelines slowly reveal a painful tendency to protect only the best things from a very bad time. In addition, Kusama's crisp style renders a ubiquitous Los Angeles with new eyes, portraying viaducts and side street banks with just as much underlying ferocity as many other films have treated the beaches and Pacific Palisades mansions. "Destroyer" is a tough, meandering and ultimately a fragile personification of 'miserablism' done with grace and, well, heart.

Cold Pursuit

Mildly watchable, Hans Petter Molland's remake of his own 2014 film simply substitutes Native Americans for Serbs and Colorado mob bosses for Norwegian thugs. He does keep the same name, Nils, for Liam Neeson as the affronted father seeking cold-blooded retribution for the death of his son however. Gussied up with some stylish visuals, "Cold Pursuit" still manages to sabotage itself at every turn. Intermittently enjoyable for spurts, it then proceeds with some offhanded bigotry or scene-chewing just for the sake of chewing scenery and immediately re-asserts itself as the worst type of pop culture tinged thriller that loves itself for switching from a groovy 70's tune to Aqua's Barbie Girl song.

Alita: Battle Angel

I like my science fiction a little goofy and innocent, unlike the usual dark, brooding affairs we generally get (Denis Villeneuve's "Bladreunner 2049" being the exception). Which is why Robert Rodriguez's "Alita: Battle Angel" is a pure delight. Not only does his cowboy aesthetic fit perfectly within a startling neo-punk framework, but the story of a robot (Rosa Salazar) loving brought back to half-life by a surgeon (Christoph Waltz) is chock full of imagination and heart. And for once, I don't mind a franchise-establishing cliffhanger ending. I can't wait for more.

On Christian Petzold's "The State I Am In"

Home. It's a concept rarely explored in Christian Petzold's filmic universe. He's often content to trace the tumultuous lives of his characters through high-rise glass windows and non-descript roadways around his beloved Germany. And when the idea is touched upon- be it the destructive flux of post-war Berlin in which Nina Hoss tries to re assimilate in "Phoenix" or the simmering bedrock of boredom and jealousy that erupts in "Jerichow"- the violence and deception that erupts from such a simple construct such as "home" becomes like a mythical creature hellbent on pushing everyone out into the open. The road movie again. However, like his fellow countryman Wim Wenders, who established a career with a host of 'juke-joint soundtracked' road films (and ones that announce themselves as such very early on in their running times),
Petzold's films sneak up on the viewer and rarely telegraph their free floating ambitions until they're halfway over. We know we've been watching a succession of motels and hotels and little relation to anything other than bodies in motion, but the idea of it being a road film is obscured partly behind character motivation and mostly because of Petzold's intentions to keep us guessing.

Such is the case with "The State I Am In" (2000). Actually his fourth film but the first to be released internationally after a trio of made-for-TV products, the film is perhaps the best example of the scenario I've described above. Following a mother (Barbara Auer), father (Richy Muller) and 15 year old Jeanne (Julie Hummer), the film begins with Jeanne at a seaside resort where, although sullen and withdrawn, she befriends a local surfer boy named Heinrich (Bilge Bingul). With the machinations of a coming-of-age story set in motion, the rug is pulled out from underneath us when it's revealed the family is on the run. The nervy and jumpy father isn't just jumpy and nervy because his daughter may be falling in love with the type of boy all fathers fear, but because he and the mother are wanted for crimes against the state as part of their actions in a terrorist group years ago. In fact, young Jeanne has never known a normal life, which makes the abrupt tear away from her newfound love even more confusing and frustrating.

The rest of "The State I Am In" details the furious tug of war between Jeanne's blossoming womanhood being stifled by her parent's compulsive need to stay one step ahead of the authorities. Filming in his usual brisk, clipped style that rarely tells more than it needs to, one gets the feeling this is as close to a spy-thriller Petzold will ever get. One scene in particular in which the family arestopped at a red light and believe the police to be closing in features a wordless series of edits that punctuates the silence of what it may feel like when one understands and even acknowledges the inevitable is situated in front of them.

Yet outside of the thriller aspects in which Petzold seems to go out of his way to deflate, such as a pivotal bank robbery only shown in surveillance monitor recaps after the fact, "The State I Am In" remains grounded in Jeanne's perspective. Her parents may provide the tension that has put her on the lamb with them, but it's ultimately her picture and one that continually sees her flee their clandestine lifestyle and retreat into the arms of Heinrich where she can exist as a normal teenager. Again, the idea of home (or even a fabricated sense of being safe with someone) becomes a trap in Petzold's world and creates a fateful finale.

This being the last of Petzold's films I needed to see (outside of his various short films in the late 80's and his upcoming "Transit" set to be released this spring), I''m still content as ever to define him as one of the great filmmakers working today. And if the synopsis of "Transit" I've read holds true, his anticipation of home being a rudderless and dangerous place that his characters are desperate to flee from has only gotten more venomous over time.

Moments of 2018

Inspired by the now defunct Film Comment "Moments Out of Time" series and the great Roger Ebert's year end recap, this Moments of the Year list (now in its twentieth edition!)) represents indelible moments of my film-going year. It can be a line of dialogue, a glance, a camera movement or a mood, but they're all wondrous examples of a filmmaker and audience connecting emotionally.



 - The sheer frustration of a woman (Maryana Spivak) tossing her head back on the car headrest, and the abrupt overhead shot as her hair flows wildly in the wind, illuminated on-and-off by the light outside the car as a heavy metal song plays on the radio.   “Loveless”

- The first time Brady rides his horse again and the swell of music….. “The Rider”


- The nose of a dog leading us to a jaw dropping twist of narrative in Steve McQueen's jaundiced heist film "Widows"

- The entrance in slow motion , mouthing the words…..”where’s the biiiigggg felllaaaa?”   “The Death of Stalin”

- In Cory Finley’s restrained ode to psychopathic youth, we’re not quite sure why the camera is being so deliberate, but a long, serpentine stead cam shot as Amanda (Olivia Cook) wanders around a big house, quietly snooping on its surroundings.  “Thoroughbreds”


- Fonny (Stephan James) and Tish (Kiki Rivers) and the bursts of glee as they shout in the middle of the street. Youthful exuberance soon cut short by the inequality of everything.  "If Beale Street Could Talk"

- Expecting his love to be reciprocated, all the man (Nathan Zellner) gets is a rock to the face. So goes the unexpected pathos of the Zellner Brother’s “Damsel”

- Perhaps the shot of the year and one worthy of DePalma- outside a heavily glass windowed exterior, the camera follows action in and around the interior of a house of four girls come under siege from a group of men hell-bent on violence.  “Assassination Nation”

- An explosion of a car observed silently from a lengthy overhead shot, then cut to the abrasiveness felt on the ground. Peter Berg’s editing style may be distractingly overwrought at times, but this moment of extreme opposites works well.  “Mile 22”

- In “Happy As Lazzaro”, the faces of a group of people as they wait on the stairs to be let into a lunch that will never happen

- The faces of Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams as they ride up an escalator and the swell of music that surrounds them, both trying to hide the emotions swirling just beneath the surface.  “Disobedience”

- In Lynn Ramsey’s deliberately fractured masterpiece “You Were Never Really Here”, the first sound of Jonny Greenwood’s jangly, nerve-shredding guitar as a man (Joaquin Phoenix) slumbers down a motel hallway and out the fire exit door


- Playing musical chairs in front of Stalin’s coffin in order to have a conversation.  “The Death of Stalin”

- The first appearance of Emily (Blake Lively) in “A Simple Favor”, complete in pants suit, moving in slow motion through the wind and rain as an umbrella blows by her like a scared puppy.

- Quite the muscular shot in “Adrift“- a man (Sam Claflin) hovers on the edge of a cliff and then jumps into the water below as the camera hovers right alongside him and then follows him sidelong into the plunge

- In “Hearts Beat Loud”, Nick Offerman asking his daughter if her mood swings are because she’s found a girlfriend and the casual understanding between father and daughter not tied to the usual ravages of expectations in most films



- “It’s tough teaching faith to people.”    Jonah Hill in “Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far On Foot”

- In “Assassination Nation”, a girl carries a metal bar as the camera pans along the ground behind her for what feels like an eternity before shifting upside down to observe the blood-soaked carnage said bar just inflicted on another girl

- “Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far On Foot”, the pained, mournful expression on Joaquin Phoenix’s face as he’s flipped over slowly in a bed, perhaps fully realizing for the first time  his confined status in life.

- In Naomi Kawase’s gentle “Radiance”- With traffic lights gently out of focus behind her, Misako (Ayame Misaki) closes her eyes and walks on a path for the blind, partially trying to understand the darkness of those around her and partially to imbue herself with patience.

- “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”- Zan (Elle fanning) belting out an impromptu punk rock song with Enn (Alex Sharp) and the subsequent psychedelic scene that follows

- In “A Simple Favor”, the nervous look over her shoulder Anna Kendrick does when seated at the library looking over old computer articles about Emily (Blake Lively). It’s a film that continually echoes and makes fun of 40’s film noir as if soccer moms ran the P.I. firm.


- "Mid90's" and the fall through a hole in the rough and the shattered 'thud' that presupposes a young man's attempt at skateboarding greatness

- Xavier Legrand's "Custody"... the final ten minutes, which is far more terrifying than any horror film eleased this year.

- The bracing pop of an explosion, then cut to the exterior of a space shuttle where a metal door crumples outward like pop corn.  “First Man”

- The floor level crawl of the camera and a quick pivot onto her when Susie (Dakota Johnson) murmurs, “I’ll do the dance….” and her sinister legacy begins to take shape.  “Suspiria”

- A swift opening of attic doors and the ensuing gatlin gun battle that eats up about 7 minutes of screen time in Jeremy Saulnier’s “Hold the Dark”. Evil is brooding and inbred into every frame of his uneven but memorable violent reverie

- The smile and look Dr. Shirley (Marshala Ali) gives Tony (Viggo Mortenson) after proofreading his fnal letter to his wife, giving it his nod of approval with, Yes, Tony, it’s perfect.”   “Green Book”

- “Panshot!”     “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”


- Organ music that follows a family into the street in “Happy As Lazzaro”.   Ethereal and magical

Faves of 2018

15. 1985

Filmed in inky black and white, Yen Tan’s micro-indie 1985 details the wavering emotions of young Adrian (a sterling Cory Michael Smith) returning home to his Texas family from New York during the holidays. If the movies have taught us anything, Christmas reunions rarely yield better results than familial discord and terrorists taking over Nakatomi Plaza. In this version of a personal holiday apocalypse, Smith portrays a homosexual man, gravely struggling with coming out to his Bible-thumping father (Michael Chiklis) and subservient mother (Virginia Madsen) about his lifestyle.

Couple that decision with the medical epidemic and uncertain furor brewing in America over the AIDS crisis and 1985 becomes a film about a specific place and time that widens into a crushing exploration of identity, acceptance and shifting relationships. It’s a film both immensely sad and heroically delicate, especially when Adrian reconnects with an old girlfriend (Jamie Chung). Tan handles the nuanced emotions masterfully, combining carefully staged long takes with earnest dialogue that never disrespects its characters. And the fact it ends on an especially happy moment in Adrian’s life only compounds the sadness that’s spilled out before.

14. Support the Girls

Andrew Bujalski’s comedy about women working in a Texas sports bar/restaurant sounds inanely tacky. In fact, it’s one of the most humane comedy in years, akin to the light touch of Jean Renoir focused on a milieu of certain people dealing with the trivialities of their everyday.

Starring Regina Hall, Hayley Lu Richardson and newcomer Shayna MacHale, Support the Girls features nary a bit of the mawkish ‘mumblecore’ attributes usually radiated by a Bujalski film. In fact, he saddles none of his characters with anything less than sharp characterizations, sharp humility and a sharp sense of humor … no matter how bad their singular day gets.

13. Madeline’s Madeline

The opening shot of Josephine’s Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline is a weird one. A young girl (Helena Howard) is pretending (?) to be a cat, spouting lines that obviously could only exist within the mind of an overachieving theater playwright. It serves as a shaky, disorienting introduction to a film (and a young female character) that only goes deeper and stranger from there as the lines of reality, play-acting and dominance shuttle back and forth between an experimental teacher, a young girl and her domineering mother.

One of the last films I saw on a particularly long day of movie-watching, I went into it lethargic and emerged frazzled and invigorated for the way Decker re-appropriated everything from narrative form to character development into one free floating experimentation. It’s a trying, manic and overstuffed film that consistently confronts and challenges the viewer on what it is and where it’s headed. We need more like this. Now.

12. The King

Documentarian Eugene Jareki is someone who questions and studies the underbelly of our society through global politics (The Trials of Henry Kissinger, 2002, and Why We Fight, 2005) to the state of our country eroded by our best intentions (The House I Live In, 2012). With his latest effort, The King, he smashes both of those ideals together with a grandiose swing. Taking a variety of famous authors, musicians and just regular folk cross country in Elvis Presley’s coveted 1963 Rolls Royce, following in the master’s footsteps from Mississippi to Las Vegas, the film becomes a progressive rolling roadshow of the halls/faces of America.

Jareki has much more on his mind than ‘celebrity-icon-mythmaking’ enshrinement, however. Hearing Ethan Hawke tell stories about Colonel Tom Parker’s iron fist control of Elvis or seeing John Hiatt become emotional in the backseat because he can feel how “trapped” Elvis must have felt are powerful moments, but Jarecki makes sure to overshadow these louder tales by focusing on the anonymous and common faces of the people he picks up hitchhiking or those who simply wonder aloud why our country has left them so far behind. It’s an amazing feat that cements Jareki’s status as one of the best of the outlaw documentarians, like Bill Morrison, Travis Wilkerson and Adam Curtis.

 11. Widows

Directed by Steve McQueen from a script by mystery novelist Gillian Flynn, Widows is a precise crime film that understands the pulsing heart beneath its genre sheen. With a narrative that sounds like something out of a 1970’s ‘poliziotteschi’ twister, the idea of a group of women taking over their husband’s next heist not only reeks of those Italian exploitation efforts, but plants itself firmly within the current movement of gender reassessment.

And even both of those analogies feels weak. McQueen has immersed his crime drama with so much overlap: Political corruption. Community gamesmanship. Role reversals. It all blends together beautifully, creating a film that hits on all cylinders with its exact aesthetics, especially one shot that at first feel extraneous, then reveals itself to be a sly commentary on the razor thin divide between the ‘haves’ and the have nots,’ and an uncanny knack for editing.

10. First Man

What was Hollywood golden boy Damien Chazelle to do after scoring massive critical and popular hits withWhiplash (2014) and La La Land (2016)? Make an astronaut movie that defies both of those previous efforts in mood, tone and look, of course. Restrained and prone to almost a mechanical presentation of NASA’s Apollo moon mission, that doesn’t make First Man bad. In fact, I found Ryan Gosling’s interior portrayal of Neil Armstrong as some of the best work of his career.

It’s a film that eschews outward emotion because it dutifully represents the subdued personalities of a group of people struggling to make sense of the scientific advancements they’re risking their life for. And when the film does get personal- especially with Armstrong’s walk on the moon and one brilliantly composed scene of enormous tragedy — First Man — hit me like a ton of bricks.

9. Les enfants du 209, rue Saint-Maur, Paris Xe

Cinema lost an extreme talent in 2018 when filmmaker Claude Lanzmann passed away in July. I would hope he got the chance to see Ruth Zylberman’s documentary, Les enfants du 209, as it feels like a companion piece to Lanzmann’s exhaustive excavations of people, faces and events of the Holocaust. As a piece of anthropological essay, Zylberman’s documentary, which traces the history of a few families at this address during the Holocuast, is immensely moving, breathtakingly humane and tirelessly essential.

While other filmmakers have tackled the same subject at various lengths, Zylberman’s 100-minute documentary captures the power of memory and shared experience of a very dark time in history quite unlike any other. Its faces will linger in your mind long afterwards. The stories they tell will harden into your soul. And although their history is full of despair, Zylberman chooses to end on a family reunion of sorts, and the image of ten and eleven year children walking at the edges of the survivors only strengthens the idea that no matter how determined we are as a race to wipe each other out, the future is unstoppable.

8. Assassination Nation

Like a lurid pop-dream, Sam Levinson’s Assassination Nation is a visually bold and simmering assault on everything from gender equality to the sometimes toxic nature of social media. Appropriating ages-old literature from the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne and our nation’s own descent into supernatural madness with the Salem witch trials (a town which the film aptly mimics), writer and director Levinson has crafted a jaw-dropping tale that takes place in the very current “now” when four teenage girls (played to perfection by Odessa Turner, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef and Abra) become targets, and subsequently are forced to become justice swinging vigilantes, after a computer hacker exposes the town’s deep, dark personal secrets.

Aided by some of the year’s finest cinematography, courtesy of Hungarian Marcell Rev, and a thumping score by Ian Hutlquist, Assassination Nation ascends to wondrous heights in commentary and visual pastiche, masterfully stealing the whimpers that similarly themed films like the egregious Purge series aspire towards. Hopefully, this film will catch onto some sort of zeitgeist on home video, as it came and went in theaters faster than most. I loved every second of it.

7. Loveless 

Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev is a director. Even when it appears there’s not much going on within his films, rest assured, there’s a lot going on beneath the surface. The way his camera lingers over a large plate glass window overlooking a snowy field in between condo housing or the frontal shot of a woman’s distant stare as she runs in place on a treadmill lend his films an authority of presence that’s continually striking. They ask of the viewer much more than passive interest.

Following up 2015’s trenchant Leviathan — a film that angrily dissected the bureaucracy of simply fighting for one’s property — Zvyagintsev drops Loveless. Essentially about the loss of a child and the incrementally studious search for him, it’s also a film about the real casualties of a, well, loveless marriage. And in the hands of Zvyagintsev,Loveless becomes just as trenchant an observation about both of these events as any we’ve seen before.

6. Shirkers

Any true film lover remembers their angst-ridden, teenage experimentation with making their own film. I almost want to forget my very black and white John Cassavetes-like attempt, featuring two friends and an unbroken 20 minute dialogue scene as they played pool … and didn’t sink a single ball. It had its charming moments, too, I suppose. Sandi Tan’s Shirkers is just as painfully awkward a documentation of this experimentation as any, but her story is tinged with the miraculous as well. She and her teenage friends did make a film. Then lost it due to mania and naivete. And then she found it again, albeit in an altered format.

Also titled Shirkers, Tan builds her current documentary around this episode in her young life when she and her friends wrote, directed and financed a film that many regard as something that could have shifted Malaysian independent film for its freewheeling attitude and punk rock aesthetic. Tan uses excerpts from her ‘lost’ film to study the dynamics of her life (especially with older man and mentor Georges Cardona) and her relationship with film history. Part self essay and part investigative journalism, Shirkers is a completely enveloping experience. It’s a shame we won’t ever see her fully embodied film, but perhaps she’s assembled the next greatest thing, which is something couched between reality and the rose-tainted memories of those involved like a faded fairy tale, complete with cinematic heroes and villains.

5. Happy As Lazzaro

Recently, filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher revealed her ten favorite films of all time. It’s no surprise she loves Ermanno Olmi and Luis Bunuel. Her latest film, Happy As Lazzaro, conjures the best of them both, including the breathless mid-century antiquity of Olmi and the slightly absurd parable building of Bunuel. Not content to simply imitate those masters however, Happy As Lazzaro only echoes their influence while establishing her own magisterial voice.

Essentially a film of two halves, it follows a pensive young sharecropper named Lazzaro (a wonderfully cast Adriano Tardilio) and the relationship he forms with the local landowners. Something tragic happens, shifting the second half of the film into an utterly beguiling examination of how time is both uninterrupted and erosive. It’s a film of subtle beauty, whose images and tone continually took my breath away. I dare anyone not to be transfixed by the moment when organ music ethereally follows young Lazzaro into the street and becomes a chorus from the heavens.

4. You Were Never Really Here

Constructed from hard edits of cacophonous city noise, long stretches of tortured silence and a nerve jangling score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here is essentially a straight-to-video revenge flick shattered into a million little avant garde pieces and then reassembled with the intention of leaving most of the important stuff out. I know that doesn’t sound like high praise, but it’s a bold and confrontational film that deftly applies Joaquin Phoenix’s sinewy personality into a character study of a man trying to locate a missing child, and in the process repair some damaged parts of his psyche as well.

Watching the film can be stomach-churning at times, not because of the harsh violence that seems to explode from the corners of the screen, but because it’s such an odd beast of images and sounds that makes the viewer feel just as uncomfortable in their skin as Phoenix’s determined vigilante.

3. Suspiria

Considered sacrilege when director Luca Guadagnino announced plans to remake Dario Argento’s goth-horror classic Suspiria, the results were miraculously undisastrous, managing to foster the original film’s eerie 70s ambiance while creating something wholly different in the process. While the narrative beats — a young American dancer (Dakota Johnson) arrives in Europe to learn in a highly regarded studio that’s also the home to witches — follow the same throughline as Argento’s original, Guadagnino stuffs his version with so much to digest that the horror elements are subdued in favor of a provocative essay about the meaning of identity and repressed guilt.

From its expertly sculptured mise-en-scene to the ruminations about the past and how both worlds (human and sorceress) reconcile their grief and guilt, this latest version is a visual and thematic knockout.

2. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda

Known to Western audiences mostly for his Oscar winning soundtrack to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor(1987) and Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Stephen Schible’s documentary on Japanese musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto is an exhilarating showcase of creativity, resilience and poignant confrontation of the unknown. However,Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda isn’t content just to be a biography of the musician.

In fact, outside of a few snippets of his early career in which he was at the forefront of Japanese pop, electronic and experimental fusions in the late 70’s and early 80’s, there’s virtually no history lesson of the man. Instead, the film remains firmly planted in the here and now, choosing to observe and record how the 66-year-old veteran molds his creative impulses today. It’s a break from traditional documentaries, but one that yields startling results.

1. Gemini

I’m just as surprised as anyone that a modest, low-fi neon noir, barely released and receiving even less buzz, stayed with me as long as it did. But that’s exactly what Aaron Katz’z Gemini has done.

Appropriating the genre into a completely fresh imagining, the film gets lost in a haze of somnambulist Los Angeles glow and carefully orchestrated paranoia as people go missing and others are forced to become junior private eyes, wading through traditional methods of investigation as well as the murky, dangerous wastelands of social media.

Starring a wide-eyed and pitch perfect Lola Kirke,Gemini is a firecracker of a film, confident and memorizing in the way it updates film noir and latches onto something altogether frightening about our modern culture and the need to disappear from its carnivorous nature.

The almost made its. Count these as #16-onward:  Custody, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, How To Talk to Girls At Parties, The Favourite, Mandy, The Death of Stalin, Wildlife, Disobedience.

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