1. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) - I went into Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's "Everything Everywhere All At Once" skeptical of the adoring buzz, but after the first hour, I began to feel myself crumbling to the film's sweet energy before collapsing into an emotional mess at the finale. This is an exuberant celebration of family, inclusion,and film genre itself as it marches forward with it's head spinning tale of multiverses and hot dog fingers. Led by the amazing Michelle Yeoh (with heartbreaking supporting turns by Ke Huy Quan and Stephanie Hsu), The Daniels have created a modern answer to the iconic, trippy, and melancholy past works of Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") or Julio Medem ("Lovers of the Arctic Circle") with a film that stretches the concept of love and acceptance across a spectrum of space and time.... and come out the other side with a beautiful rendition of what makes us human.
2. The Lodger (1927) - Early Hitchcock that, while it features the pregnant ideals that would mature in most of his best thrillers, that's the most interesting thing about it.
3. Uppercase Print (2020) - "The perpetrator may live close by. Or they may live far away".
Taken from transcripts of the Romanian Securitate as they investigated the sudden appearance of chalk graffiti around the city in mid 1981, Radu Jude's "Uppercase Print" is an intellectual examination of both a time and place where liberty needed to be called upon as a dying idea. Interspersing governmental films, weird musical interludes and VHS images of the country (complete with bad VCR tracking issues!) amongst a theatrical reading of the now released investigation notes of the graffiti that eventually ruined the life of a young student, "Uppercase Print" begins as a dryly humorous effort before shifting into an especially acrid portrait of oppressive nationalism. The above quotation is from the crack investigative reports of the secret police and Jude's film initially seems like a comedy of communistic generality. Needless to say, things turn very dark, formally assured and completely heartbreaking by the end. I haven't seen a few of Jude's other pointed mixed-media documentaries about his home country, but after this one, I look forward to diving into them.
4. The Long Haul (1957) - Diana Dors. Wow. Not sure that her attraction to Victor Mature is warranted, but this is a sharp (and under seen) Brit noir, part fatalistic drama and one-third "Wages of Fear".
5. Satan's Brew (1975) - Probably one of the more 'extreme' Fassbinder films where a creatively blocked poet murders people, screws any woman who moves and lives with his screaming wife and dead fly collecting brother. For Fassbinder characters, its his most exaggerated clique and one that I found to be repellent and compulsively watchable at the same time.
6. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) - Sure, Nicholas Cage pokes lots of fun at himself and that's enjoyable in small measures, but this action comedy bored me more than anything else. I kep hoping it'd turn into a "Bowfinger" like commentary on itself.
7. Ambulance (2022) - Garret Dillahunt, awesome. Everything else, not so much, I understand going in that it's Michael Bay, and there are some gloriously conceived tracking shots, but please let the logistics breathe a little. Still, that's obviously not his style.
8. Law of Desire (1987) - Digging into some of Almodovar's early film output, and this is his best so far. Kinky when it needs to be, immensely funny at other times and a fantastic finale. Don't we all wish Antonio Banderas kept making Almodovar films?
9. Codename Cougar (1989) - Zhang Yimou's debut film (co-directed with Yang Fengliang) is a minor thriller about a hijacked plane that's forced to crash land in between two non-communicative governments (Taiwan and China) and the military action to free its hostages. Most notable for a young Gong Li and the final fifteen minutes that serve as a beautifully rendered precursor to Yimou's next decade of filmmaking and his elegantly composed images and color.
10. All the Old Knives (2022) - A subtle spy thriller throwback with conversation rather than commotion. Reviewed here.
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