tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65470476942171335702024-03-15T03:37:02.123+13:00second sight: film blogPhilip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comBlogger970125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-9485797105087792542023-12-18T12:08:00.012+13:002023-12-18T12:09:53.020+13:00The best of 2023<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2f_MpQbpYgYfcqAUHygIZ25HMM5ypO97Rr4tN7INZJi6HOQu-N1YemHFizF4hgR_Sfg9iAub0cLk-zCuId_N2B9gw9GX345D1IK884Q39kNBk7GTAT_VLSYw5qfvSFu8o0P1ywQD3PmPIunI_Sgapv1LHPd9bn4fQI5hlqEubOOUiiQja5oMfDDYQ5d8/s1200/Tar_FocusFeatures.0.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2f_MpQbpYgYfcqAUHygIZ25HMM5ypO97Rr4tN7INZJi6HOQu-N1YemHFizF4hgR_Sfg9iAub0cLk-zCuId_N2B9gw9GX345D1IK884Q39kNBk7GTAT_VLSYw5qfvSFu8o0P1ywQD3PmPIunI_Sgapv1LHPd9bn4fQI5hlqEubOOUiiQja5oMfDDYQ5d8/w640-h426/Tar_FocusFeatures.0.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">T<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; white-space-collapse: preserve;">he top ten, in no particular order.</span></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-37a63e45-7fff-2f17-4848-791c48062ee4" style="font-size: medium;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>TAR (Todd Field, 2022)</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">A contemporary masterpiece from Todd Field, driven by a powerhouse of a performance. Cate Blanchett as conductor Lydia Tar is difficult, prickly, ambitious, charismatic and hyper-intelligent, an alpha being in the rarefied world of classical music, as it operates at its highest, global level. Initially, it is hard to get a handle on her. When we first see Lydia, on a </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">New Yorker</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> stage with Adam Gopnik, Blanchett’s acting seems, unusually for her, too much like acting, too performative, too mannered – eventually we realise why, and we come to see how sharp that and other early scenes were. The performance is nuanced and finely calibrated, and Field takes his time to deconstruct her, and reveal her weaknesses and flaws, or her complexities, while also telling us about the world we are in now, both at its most basic and inane and its most esoteric. In that way, it’s a culturally topical thriller. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>OPPENHEIMER (Christopher Nolan, 2023)</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Or, how I built the bomb and learned to start worrying. This is the kind of movie Hollywood doesn’t make much anymore: a topical and intelligent mainstream blockbuster about the contradictions and hypocrisies of American life that assumes some prior historical knowledge (see </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Insider</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, for example, or </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Right Stuff</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> or even </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">JFK</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">), only it’s in the hands of a film-maker as concerned with how time can be depicted, and whether every story is a mystery to be solved, as he is with the social and political or even the basically human. It means his stories have to conform to his preoccupations, and yet he pulls it off and the result is a visionary, intricate work that hints at a kind of terrible awe. The things that seemed gimmicky in Nolan’s work before now seem like mature, necessary choices. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>BARBIE (Greta Gerwig, 2023)</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Funny and topical, frivolous and meaningful. There are many essays online about Barbie theology, arguing that Greta Gerwig is retelling the story of Adam and Eve and the discovery of human experience and death. It pans out. You could also say this is a better film about nagging death anxiety than Noah Baumbach’s </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">White Noise</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, where that anxiety was embodied by Gerwig herself. Like that movie, this also has a dance sequence (two in fact) but not in a supermarket. You could even say it’s </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Don’t Worry Darling </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">with an extra act. Ryan Gosling is superb, but the Mattel board scenes add little, other than to stress they’re in on the joke, just like the Lego people were. It gets to have its political cake and cash in too. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>KING LOSER (Cushla Dillon and Andrew Moore, 2023)</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">This starts out as a chaotic and funny story of rock’n’roll mistakes and shambolic touring – </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Spinal Tap</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> is almost inevitably referenced – and ends where you don’t expect, as a sad and sympathetic account of addiction and mental illness, leavened by the camaraderie and excitement only rock music can offer as a relief, an escape and a source of identity.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>ANATOMY OF A FALL (Justine Triet, 2023)</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Literature on trial. You may also think of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Tar</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>AFTERSUN (Charlotte Wells, 2022)</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The careful reproduction of a memory, with all its pain and intimacy, as well as its unapproachable distance. Devastating. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>GODLAND (Hlynur Palmason, 2022)</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">A story told in two languages, Icelandic and Danish (and even titled in both). A priest is sent from Denmark to build a church in a remote Icelandic settlement — the difficult trek might initially suggest stories like </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Silence</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Mission</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> and some films by Herzog, but this is more wistful, at times beautiful, and appears almost resigned to its characters losing a battle against nature.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>AFIRE (Christian Petzold, 2023)</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Not quite peak Petzold but there’s still that mysterious quality, that mix of the plain and the dreamlike, the mesmerising Paula Beer, these quiet, rural German settings. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Martin Scorsese, 2023)</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">“You’re next,” the seriously ill Mollie Burkhart says as her husband injects her with what is supposed to be insulin. Her feckless husband (Leonard DiCaprio) looks terrified in that moment, as he should. Fires are visible in fields through the windows as if DiCaprio is in hell, as he was in the much less subtle </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Shutter Island</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">. This late-career masterpiece in the sombre, painstaking vein of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Irishman</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> and </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Silence</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"> is a film in which Lily Gladstone’s Mollie is the stand-out, the wise moral centre. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>TALK TO ME (Danny and Michael Philippou, 2022) </b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">This is a teen horror movie from Australia that has an air of reality about it. Not in its plot, of course, but in its mood. In the suburbs of Adelaide, parents are absent or negligent (Miranda Otto has a funny bit as an inappropriate mother), and the teenagers are unsupervised and daring each other to play a terrifying supernatural game. The violence is brutal and genuinely shocking, but there is a pervasive melancholy behind it all, embodied by talented young actors like Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen and Joe Bird. </span></p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">BEAU IS AFRAID nearly made it. Same with Wes Anderson’s marvellous Roald Dahl shorts</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">. </span></span>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-15817674224210324492023-02-03T10:55:00.012+13:002023-02-03T10:58:55.791+13:00Kindness and depravity<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: 700; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjH55F70qZKaZ4iEHCyvv9KuyfUF4jF_54KX5Rb5cVba6WLjg38Fa7dTZBVt44u7rvTXpapC-KLc82EMju1QdhK9H2fk60FySYt2fFX8HUyb_l7gzHeOhf5bZVHmb68oR7UozLTDglq1744A9q_f9zlTkiHP-Ayd5xn_fZDY1FGIM9uo3JX7nTL1jPE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="434" data-original-width="997" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjH55F70qZKaZ4iEHCyvv9KuyfUF4jF_54KX5Rb5cVba6WLjg38Fa7dTZBVt44u7rvTXpapC-KLc82EMju1QdhK9H2fk60FySYt2fFX8HUyb_l7gzHeOhf5bZVHmb68oR7UozLTDglq1744A9q_f9zlTkiHP-Ayd5xn_fZDY1FGIM9uo3JX7nTL1jPE=w640-h278" width="640" /></a></div><b><br /></b><span id="docs-internal-guid-b364fa9d-7fff-6f96-e150-de786f1380e6" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Elephant Man</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (David Lynch, 1980). Lynch’s most emotionally affecting film (is <i>The Straight Story</i> second?) creates such a stark contrast between good and bad, human kindness and human depravity. Both are in abundance in this story, which is only lightly surrealised (if that’s not a word, it should be) by Lynch in dream-like opening and closing segments that hark back to <i>Eraserhead</i>, as does the near-permanent industrial ambience and a sense that the world of factories is making everyone sick, but is otherwise played fairly straight. John Hurt’s performance as Merrick remains startling, even shocking, in its vulnerability and humility, no matter how much time passes or how often you see it.</span></span><p></p>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-61235598804876719962022-12-21T21:21:00.031+13:002023-02-03T10:44:41.570+13:00The best of 2022<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-R8HBaMlduMx_B281cD-KydtVuWLO6E5DhAFk6citKZMq2umcGYSokdCfqTSaXe_aQDMkCxcGNcnzo0jmw5t9UBo8I6g-cse3eOrav5KZsB2VxbHUd9NHyEve9otNbpqVPky1nQiB1UWflcxhdiO6ZXvHNxG-4FcC_9izy1HfUtaET4wux_6XuC1i/s2000/CF%202-2000-2000-1125-1125-crop-fill.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="2000" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-R8HBaMlduMx_B281cD-KydtVuWLO6E5DhAFk6citKZMq2umcGYSokdCfqTSaXe_aQDMkCxcGNcnzo0jmw5t9UBo8I6g-cse3eOrav5KZsB2VxbHUd9NHyEve9otNbpqVPky1nQiB1UWflcxhdiO6ZXvHNxG-4FcC_9izy1HfUtaET4wux_6XuC1i/w640-h360/CF%202-2000-2000-1125-1125-crop-fill.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Top 10 films, in no particular order:</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-fe25222c-7fff-e527-caee-aea56d671cde"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Crimes of the Future</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Decision to Leave</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Bones and All</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Benedetta</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Northman</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Avatar: The Way of Water</i> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>You Won’t Be Alone</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Moonage Daydream</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>This Much I Know to Be True</i></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Honourable mentions: <i>Parallel Mothers</i>, <i>The Card Counter</i>, <i>RRR</i>, <i>The Stranger</i>, <i>Athena</i>, <i>Licorice Pizza</i>.</span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First viewings and discoveries: <i>Saint Maud</i> (2019), <i>Les Misérables</i> (2019), <i>Apostle</i> (2018), <i>At Berkeley</i> (2013), <i>Earth</i> (1930), <i>Be Here to Love Me</i> (2004).</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK4fze5j1uxWgX3tiOIq2RVMUHNL7enqwmuXq8-2_XGCH7k-2tCJJ9NkPrM4ERiQ2AEepSWrxYAhEbIf9ww16UKrZxwwtEpkF0FxwtcQyye5m-ClPaBtzxbckLzHatOdLshS-WABQsYT1F3ZblaQX1Y4FLlIp6ekhK8hozzeWn1zMQNvgQeol94PMF/s3000/kim.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1687" data-original-width="3000" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK4fze5j1uxWgX3tiOIq2RVMUHNL7enqwmuXq8-2_XGCH7k-2tCJJ9NkPrM4ERiQ2AEepSWrxYAhEbIf9ww16UKrZxwwtEpkF0FxwtcQyye5m-ClPaBtzxbckLzHatOdLshS-WABQsYT1F3ZblaQX1Y4FLlIp6ekhK8hozzeWn1zMQNvgQeol94PMF/w640-h360/kim.png" width="640" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"><p dir="ltr" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;">Television of 2022, in no particular order:</span></span></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Better Call Saul</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, season 6. Farewell Jimmy, so long Saul. But I could have handled another couple of years of Kim in Florida and Gene in Nebraska. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The White Lotus</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, season 2.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Staircase</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Be sure to watch the original documentary series (same title) soon after. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Barry</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, season 3. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Pistol</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The irony is that John Lydon avoided this retelling of the Sex Pistols myth, yet, as played by Anson Boon, his Johnny Rotten was the most compelling character in it, an angry child or ragged urchin disgusted by the world he lives in. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Borgen: Power and Glory</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. From Scandi idealism to compromise. As ever, the NZ parallels are eerie. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Andy Warhol Diaries</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>No Māori Allowed</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. An extraordinarily well-told documentary about a shocking, little-known era in recent New Zealand history (still available on TVNZ+).</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>TraumaZone: Russia 1985-1999</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Adam Curtis is more restrained here (no ironic music, no voice-over) but this material doesn’t need those tricks. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 2022 Fifa World Cup final. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3b397a63-7fff-69bd-5eb7-cca713287555"></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, a late-in-the-year rewatch of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Sopranos</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> convinced me it remains the greatest TV series ever made. </span></p></span></div>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-2610093034926267212021-12-19T23:21:00.003+13:002021-12-19T23:22:02.732+13:00The best of 2021 <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEibSfIcqUeOWhfU7QUcLmhDpqiLomqewBJCC-z68yvZa-P5UR7zu-HGq-StLgDpwMXO-4aLdsGm0nn-ttkQUa23rzNnqbumfuuQM8m-I5mrnW3W4IR-3usnaPwiHbOLLiHEOpc4KTdZZeKzBFBfVv5C6qdvMmXurFtVsr3gYGVoQppvTRpwa7V-QLep=s1200" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEibSfIcqUeOWhfU7QUcLmhDpqiLomqewBJCC-z68yvZa-P5UR7zu-HGq-StLgDpwMXO-4aLdsGm0nn-ttkQUa23rzNnqbumfuuQM8m-I5mrnW3W4IR-3usnaPwiHbOLLiHEOpc4KTdZZeKzBFBfVv5C6qdvMmXurFtVsr3gYGVoQppvTRpwa7V-QLep=w640-h334" width="640" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"><p>
<span style="font-size: medium;">2021 was a pretty awful year for almost everything, but somehow a good one for movies, even if it wasn’t always a great year for seeing them (two of these didn’t have a release or festival screening in New Zealand but went straight to streaming). What do these have in common? Three feature very strange children. Allegory was big this year too, it seems. Realism wasn’t a thing: even some of the films that seemed realistic (<i>Undine</i>, <i>Petite Maman</i>) had a mysterious, even mystical dimension.
Nothing else stood a chance against <i>Memoria</i>, a movie experience unlike any other. <span id="docs-internal-guid-ab666b07-7fff-9f65-fa96-3e38316f322f"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Forget the word “movie” in that sentence. <i>N</i></span></span><i>itram</i> was an unexpectedly moving prologue to the Port Arthur massacre, driven by four very strong performances, including by Essie Davis, seen locally in <i>The Justice of Bunny King</i>. It also showed, once and for all, that a responsible film about the Christchurch gunman could probably not be made. </span></p></span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-d929e96f-7fff-fcca-4e7d-16ed891b9a71" style="font-size: medium;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. <b>Memoria</b> (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. <b>Nitram</b> (Justin Kurzel, 2021)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. <b>The Power of the Dog</b> (Jane Campion, 2021)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4. <b>Titane</b> (Julia Ducournau, 2021)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5. <b>Petite Maman</b> (Celine Sciamma, 2021)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6. <b>Dune </b>(Denis Villeneuve, 2021)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7. <b>The Velvet Underground</b> (Todd Haynes, 2021)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8. <b>Undine</b> (Christian Petzold, 2020)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9: <b>Lamb</b> (Valdimar Johansson, 2021)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10: <b>The Green Knight</b> (David Lowery, 2021)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Runners-up: <i>Annette</i>; <i>The Father</i>; <i>The French Dispatch</i>; <i>Minari</i>. </span></p></span>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-61239053589540720202021-12-14T12:38:00.011+13:002021-12-19T23:23:02.623+13:00The best of 2020<p><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">A 2021 best-of list will be here in a week or so. Which reminds me I never posted the 2020 best, which ran only on Twitter. So, belatedly: </span></p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhkwWsGk9-YQeVZuj1EEA6BllBCpkjpPsAnTsOLz4404Yh9mcCubJFE_-4hLpOZVr8VunMPp26XhUv_S6z7qG8jZbwZodIi7yNZyn3VXLyZqnbg4qwtR3E8KX3j5YHAlEinliAE_R0191nbVVff4xEgBjw-VsPpgeuMEw43E6Z_lsmuFr3990pvEm8_=s700"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="700" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhkwWsGk9-YQeVZuj1EEA6BllBCpkjpPsAnTsOLz4404Yh9mcCubJFE_-4hLpOZVr8VunMPp26XhUv_S6z7qG8jZbwZodIi7yNZyn3VXLyZqnbg4qwtR3E8KX3j5YHAlEinliAE_R0191nbVVff4xEgBjw-VsPpgeuMEw43E6Z_lsmuFr3990pvEm8_=w640-h384" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;"><p><span>1. <b>Borat Subsequent Moviefilm</b> (Jason Woliner, 2020)</span></p></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. <b>I'm Thinking of Ending Things</b> (Charlie Kaufman, 2020)</span></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. <b>Last and First Men</b> (Johann Johannsson, 2020)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">4. <b>A Hidden Life</b> (Terrence Malick, 2019)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">5. <b>Da 5 Bloods</b> (Spike Lee, 2020)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">6. <b>True History of the Kelly Gang</b> (Justin Kurzel, 2019)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">7. <b>The Invisible Man</b> (Leigh Whannell, 2020)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">8. <b>Sound of Metal</b> (Darius Marder, 2019)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">9: <b>Atlantics</b> (Mati Diop, 2019)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">10: <b>1917</b> (Sam Mendes, 2019)</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Runners-up: <i>Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace</i>, <i>The Lighthouse</i>, <i>Relic</i>, <i>The Trial of the Chicago 7</i>.</span></p>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-15893520203309651672020-09-15T15:22:00.001+12:002020-09-15T15:35:03.883+12:00September 2020: masked and unmasked<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0LlrH5ISqUazeu18YZnia6Yrg-ENyZhtsg7B17uQFYAD9wVhc6XV3cGsrwWBlG5nENgs10kQrWo_MrPeiJxrtaBIZtKSqhFm0HhmljpoXK4GfJywIExuvf1YgG6uAsvUhICh6IF2vm-4/s681/tenet-movie-warner-bros.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="681" height="439" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0LlrH5ISqUazeu18YZnia6Yrg-ENyZhtsg7B17uQFYAD9wVhc6XV3cGsrwWBlG5nENgs10kQrWo_MrPeiJxrtaBIZtKSqhFm0HhmljpoXK4GfJywIExuvf1YgG6uAsvUhICh6IF2vm-4/w781-h439/tenet-movie-warner-bros.jpg" width="781" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>1 </b><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Tenet</b> (Christopher Nolan, 2020). The big action scene that is also somehow a trick, a deception, designed to play differently to audiences on and off screen, or those who are in the know and those who are not, is a classic Christopher Nolan manoeuvre and it’s at the heart of how he sees films operating on their viewers, and protagonists interacting with other characters, and perhaps even how he sees reality operating — it’s no surprise that one of his best films, <i>The Prestige</i>, is about the tricks of illusionists. <i>Tenet</i>’s opening heist in an opera house is one such stand-alone set piece; the best action scene here is a spectacular car chase in Tallinn. And yet the central gimmick of the story, about reversing time, is never properly developed and doesn’t amount to much, other than being one of several ways in which Nolan seems to be trying hard to make his film as inaccessible to those not in the know as possible (others include the sound mix). So the question is: do you prefer avant-garde James Bond bullshit or straight-forward James Bond bullshit? Still, in a Covid world, it’s interesting to see a story in which beautiful people slip easily from one country to another without ever appearing to travel. </span></span></p></span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-c87409fd-7fff-9749-c799-ef2b5e749509"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>2 Cuties</b> (Maimouna Doucore, 2020). In this strange year, <i>Tenet</i> has become more than just a movie — it’s a flag planted in the ground for a return to cinemas and out of Covid restrictions, which is a lot for even a film as grandiose as that one to carry. (And, as some say, if it underperforms commercially, that may push the unfortunately-titled real Bond film, <i>No Time to Die</i>, back even further.) <i>Cuties</i> also became more than just a movie </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> —</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> this French coming of age drama (original title: </span><i style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Mignonnes</i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">) was dragged into a US pre-election culture war in which nameless internet hordes suspect liberal elites of organising vast, secretive child abuse networks, and maybe it doesn’t help that Netflix, which initially promoted Maimouna Doucore’s mostly impressive debut film with an unfortunately provocative image, has recently signed deals with liberal heroes like Barack Obama and Meghan Markle. The battle lines seem clearly drawn. An inevitable #cancelNetflix hashtag was deployed by those who hadn’t seen <i>Cuties</i>, and have no plans to, but who definitely know a Hollywood paedophile ring when they see one. These fantasies seem like this era’s version of the fanciful cult abuse claims about US pre-schools in the 1980s and 90s and <i>Cuties</i> is simply collateral damage. But then again, is all publicity bad publicity? With a different title (perhaps the original, French one) and a more suitable poster image, would anyone have watched Doucore’s well-meaning story about an 11-year-old Senegalese immigrant (the exceptional Fathia Youssof) who is trying to navigate between two equally constricted ways of being a young woman? And yes of course it’s uncomfortable to watch 11-year-old girls twerk and talk about porn — that’s the entire point. </span></span></p></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>3 I’m Thinking of Ending Things</b> (Charlie Kaufman, 2020). A meet-the-parents dinner to rival <i>Eraserhead</i>’s for awkwardness or even horror is only the start of it. Charlie Kaufman’s first movie since the relatively minor <i>Anomalisa</i> confirms him as a master of film surrealism, put in the service of an enormously neurotic interiority. The doubts, the gaps, the tricks with time, the monomania, the sense of being stuck inside a story no one can ever escape — this is the Kaufman feeling, familiar from his masterpiece <i>Synecdoche, New York</i>. With Jesse Plemons in a part that might once have been Philip Seymour Hoffman’s, this sad and anguished film easily rivals that one. Jessie Buckley is superb as Lucy (or is she Ames?), especially during her performance of a Pauline Kael review inside a car during a blizzard. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>4 Campaign</b> (Tony Sutorius, 1999). Tony Sutorius’ entertaining documentary has almost legendary status as an inside view of New Zealand politics. The campaign in question was for the Wellington Central electorate during the first MMP election in 1996, and the film is justifiably famous for scenes in which National candidate Mark Thomas realises he is a patsy, an errand boy or MMP’s first sacrificial victim, thrown under the bus by Prime Minister Jim Bolger so that Act leader Richard Prebble could win the seat and bring in another six MPs and guarantee National a partner. Thomas, Labour’s Alick Shaw and the Alliance’s Danna Glendinning were still playing by the old political rules; Prebble and NZ First’s Sarah Porter, who says nothing at all except that voters should not vote for her but her party, had already grasped the new rules. And while Thomas’ disbelief and disappointment remains memorable, so too are Glendinning’s candid revelations of the harsh personal toll of politics. Crying on camera, she has to pull herself together to take yet another phone call. There is plenty of historical wit in the editing: who wouldn’t enjoy the moment when Thomas’ campaign manager comments that loyalty to leaders goes both ways, when we know that Bolger was taken out by a coup only a year later? It all comes to a gothic end on a suitably dark and stormy night in Wellington. </span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>5 The Invisible Man</b> (Leigh Whannell, 2020). Universal’s attempted reboot/cash cow production line of its old monsters — the Mummy, Wolf Man, Frankenstein etc — relaunched into a Marvel-style cinematic universe died as soon as Tom Cruise’s <i>The Mummy</i> crashed, but this one slipped under the fence, happily devolving from a big-budget Johnny Depp vehicle (can you imagine?) into a $7 million horror-thriller about toxic masculinity that is entirely dependent on the haunted gravitas of Elisabeth Moss. Her foe is her controlling ex-boyfriend, a millionaire tech developer with a remote mansion and an invisibility suit in the basement. He’s like the dark side of a Tony Stark-type figure, funnily enough. </span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>6 Terminator: Dark Fate</b> (Tim Miller, 2019). As an attempt to reboot a moribund franchise, a la <i>The Force Awakens</i> or <i>Jurassic World</i>, this is a failure. But it sheds some weird light on the times: can you believe that in 1984 and 1991 we thought that the idea of machines taking over and wiping us out, seemed (a) far-fetched and (b) like it might be a bad thing? </span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>7 Movies in books, an occasional series</b>. <i>Apocalypse Now</i> appears as a reference or a landmark several times in Patti Smith’s fascinating Sebaldian dream-book, <i>Year of the Monkey</i> (2019). Each time, the focus is on Martin Sheen. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I turn on my small television, careful to avoid the news. On the screen, a blond Aurore Clement is whispering in French as she packs the bowl of an opium pipe.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“— There are two of you, she says, drawing closer to Martin Sheen, one who kills and one who doesn’t.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“ — At last I feel sleep closing in, saying good night to the sailor and Captain Willard and the French Girl with the opium pipe.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“He began talking as if picking up in the middle of a former conversation, something about the opening scene of <i>Apocalypse Now</i>.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“— Martin Sheen drunk out of his mind, an act of pure bravery, the bravest thing on film, baffling that they pulled it off. The broken mirror and all that blood. Not movie blood. Martin Sheen blood.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The conversation resumes on the next page:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I wonder how Joseph Conrad would like <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, I said, mostly to break the ice.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“ … He suddenly leaned towards me.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“— Who had the darkest heart? Brando or Sheen?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“— Sheen, I said, without hesitation.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“— Why?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“— He still wanted to live.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unrelated but somehow related: Maurice and Charlie, two ageing Irish criminals are in hospital in Kevin Barry’s novel <i>Night Boat to Tangier</i> (also 2019), bonding over their teenage viewings of <i>Rumble Fish</i> (“Francis Ford Coppola’s finest hour”):</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“They had watched it when they were sixteen or seventeen, until the tape had worn thin on the VHS and the footage went snowy, a monochrome dream of violence, death and helpless brotherhood, the Motorcycle Boy and Rusty James, and the lights of Tulsa were coldly burning, and their own world could be redrawn to its dimensions.” </span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Tenet was in cinemas, Cuties and I’m Thinking of Ending Things were on Netflix, Campaign was on NZ on Screen, The Invisible Man was on DVD and Terminator: Dark Fate was on Neon. </i></span></p></span></span>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-56355096258679602882020-08-20T21:42:00.001+12:002020-09-15T15:36:03.665+12:00August 2020: distant future<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidpakrUg04CGWIwb_dAOi37VKCrtmzrDxDwNDrUfDHNIaiYpmlYK6VANzrjsI94m7g3a8pT9iESFGRVoILRVOz4kgVR_o8PD3vZ-GhLqYCq_tj5ish_cv_DSopcIpPSMZsmtrAbB1Muk8/s1800/last-first-men.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1012" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidpakrUg04CGWIwb_dAOi37VKCrtmzrDxDwNDrUfDHNIaiYpmlYK6VANzrjsI94m7g3a8pT9iESFGRVoILRVOz4kgVR_o8PD3vZ-GhLqYCq_tj5ish_cv_DSopcIpPSMZsmtrAbB1Muk8/s640/last-first-men.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></b></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></b></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>1 Last and First Men</b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Johann Johannson, 2019). “This is the last office of humanity,” warns Tilda Swinton’s unnamed narrator or messenger, but calmly, from the very distant future. Composer Johann Johannson’s first and last film is a sci-fi meditation that plays like Bela Tarr directing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Arrival</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Sturla Brandth Grovlen’s cinematography matches Johannson’s glacial soundtrack, meditating in black and white (complete with scratches, as though the film has been lost for decades) on futuristic-brutalist sculptures that represent something terrible and eerie about humanity’s hopes and its eventual demise. “We the last men earnestly desire to communicate with you,” Swinton’s highly advanced being informs us. The sculptures, which exist somewhere in the Balkans, are scrutinised and shot from below as if they are the pyramids or Stonehenge or some other ancient monument that is directed towards the stars. It’s as though we’ve always dreamed of endings and have always dreamed of leaving. </span></span><div><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>2 True History of the Kelly Gang</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Justin Kurzel, 2019). “Such is life.” (See earlier comments <a href="http://secondstogo.blogspot.com/2020/07/dressed-to-kill.html">here</a>.)</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>3 Relic</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Natalie Erika James, 2020). “It’s not her anymore!” The ultimate horror is the disintegration of the self. In this women-centred domestic horror <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">—</span> post-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Babadook</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, post-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Hereditary</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">—</span> dementia is both metaphorical and real, embodied in the sometimes vulnerable and sometimes terrifying face of the great Robyn Nevin as Edna, whose daughter and grand-daughter come to care for her. The scene-setting is too slow and maybe too sparse, until all hell starts to break loose with about 30 minutes to spare. Opinions are divided on the meaning and effectiveness of the ending (I liked it). </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>4 Bohemian Rhapsody</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Bryan Singer, 2018). “I’m a performer, darling, not a Swiss train conductor,” says Freddie Mercury (Rami Malik) to one of the boring bandmates who complains when he’s late. We know that the film aims for the showbiz-mythic not the documentary-real, which becomes even more obvious on a second viewing, but this line is so unusually sharp, you want to believe it was really one of Mercury’s, rather than one created by writer Anthony McCarten. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>5 The Dead Don’t Die</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jim Jarmusch, 2019). “Nothing is happening normally right now,” says Bill Murray, a master of deadpan understatement, as a small-t0wn cop in an apocalyptic zombie comedy by Jim Jarmusch. But we’re a long way from </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Dead Man</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jarmusch’s best film, now 25 years old) and Jarmusch in the past decade has started to seem like an older, slacker Wes Anderson. They share some actors <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">—</span> Murray, Tilda Swinton <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">—</span> but where Anderson creates intricate worlds from his eccentric interests, Jarmusch’s films can come across as frustratingly underpowered and obvious. This meta-horror doesn’t just reference George Romero <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">—</span> it tells you it’s referencing George Romero. Where Romero’s undead wanted to shop in malls, these ones want to know the wi-fi password. Early on, the sense of cosmic wrongness <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">—</span> something about polar fracking has caused time to go wonky and the dead to rise from their graves <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">—</span> feels apt and even familiar a year later, during the era of the pandemic, but as the film goes on, you note that Jarmusch isn’t bothered with the cathartic horror language of build-up and violent release, and the killings come to seem so … ordinary, so downbeat. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>6 Mavis!</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Jessica Edwards, 2015). I heard “Sit Down Servant”, Bob Dylan says, and I couldn’t sleep for a week. So you need to hear it again, straight away. But the film is quotidian, mostly <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">—</span> too many interviews in the backs of cars. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Last and First Men, True History of the Kelly Gang and Relic were at nziff.co.nz, Bohemian Rhapsody and The Dead Don’t Die were on Neon, Mavis! was on Beamafilm. </i></span></p></div>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-50919026848359437852020-07-29T10:23:00.001+12:002020-09-15T15:36:17.617+12:00Dressed to kill <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo1MvIOsTnCe1eSH6MlgiNNG3Kb7oZVkWWvOcWjxrD7DrzMGxW-bel7XLxReFnWhiUdmzbzx87AHENTvIW9kvjZpSlj7MHngRRDGWlJPdhSPEzNprUMWunOtg15OlaXpmvc8CCfEqV9Cc/s1600/THOTKG_8.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo1MvIOsTnCe1eSH6MlgiNNG3Kb7oZVkWWvOcWjxrD7DrzMGxW-bel7XLxReFnWhiUdmzbzx87AHENTvIW9kvjZpSlj7MHngRRDGWlJPdhSPEzNprUMWunOtg15OlaXpmvc8CCfEqV9Cc/s640/THOTKG_8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-1b8229a2-7fff-3da9-4a6d-f5ca176a9c6c" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>True History of the Kelly Gang</b> (Justin Kurzel, 2019). At times this feels like the <i>Trainspotting</i> Ned Kelly </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> choose death, choose guns, choose madness and violence </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with George MacKay’s Ned as a hurt, sensitive, gentle kid, a blameless innocent and romantic driven to drastic actions by the simple fact of being Irish in 19th century Australia (below the English, but above “the blackfellas”). The tone is both savage and tragic, the blasted landscapes look like Sidney Nolan’s terrain after a nuclear war, and there is a belligerent, punk defiance among Kelly’s gang, including his troublesome younger brother Dan, played by Earl Cave, whose grandfather once wrote the introduction to a book called <i>Ned Kelly: Man or Myth</i> and whose father wrote murder ballads, as well as a transgressive decadence and a cultivation of the wild and irrational (“Nothing scares a man like crazy”). The only outposts of civilisation in this primal Victoria seem to be prisons and brothels. An amusing, warm Russell Crowe as Kelly’s benefactor Harry Power softens the high seriousness of Kurzel’s unrelentingly pessimistic worldview. Nicholas Hoult and Thomasin McKenzie are also impressive. </span></span>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-71598340701577889702020-07-19T11:37:00.001+12:002020-09-15T15:36:36.590+12:00July 2020: fathers, sons, daughters <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_jqr1iJ_L-umxFG_oUSWTcI59oT5bMbzUe2FG8islIqx3rOZr7lxXPLcGPpbDNvU9Ngv5o3kbWefcZZrtKzhA7EpNYOZfuDMyp33fsaVLJTQ0Su88m5983uCcEw89cAVf2u4a62BJsrY/s1600/firstreformed1.0.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_jqr1iJ_L-umxFG_oUSWTcI59oT5bMbzUe2FG8islIqx3rOZr7lxXPLcGPpbDNvU9Ngv5o3kbWefcZZrtKzhA7EpNYOZfuDMyp33fsaVLJTQ0Su88m5983uCcEw89cAVf2u4a62BJsrY/s640/firstreformed1.0.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>1 First Reformed</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Paul Schrader, 2017). On a second viewing, you notice, again, the remarkable subtlety of Ethan Hawke’s acting, and the clear sense that for all the talk about God, all the deep knowledge of religious history and religion’s social purpose that’s on display here, there is no indication at all that God is listening. Increasingly alone and increasingly isolated, Hawke’s Reverend Toller has two questions: “Who speaks for God?” and “Will God forgive us?” Not only are there no answers but most of the people around him – churchgoers, church managers – act like he’s speaking a foreign language.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>2 Come to Daddy</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Ant Timpson, 2019). From a deep, dark forest to a 1960s house by a beach to a torture basement to a sex motel, and back to the beach at daybreak, this comedy-horror thriller is a symbolic journey for both the hapless Norval Greenwood (played by friend of New Zealand, Elijah Wood) and his creator, producer-director and impresario Ant Timpson. The acting sells it: not just Wood, but Martin Donovan and Stephen McHattie as good and bad variations on dad. It’s surprisingly sentimental in the end, and the title you thought was sinister is sincere. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>3 The War at Home</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Glenn Silber and Barry Alexander Brown, 1979). History repeats or rhymes. Here is an activist in Madison, Wisconsin, reflecting on anti-war protests and actions a decade earlier, which means about 50 years before now: “It was inconceivable that we could turn this many people out onto the streets, night after night, take the campus apart, and it wouldn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t in some way change the course of history.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>4 Wasp Network</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Olivier Assayas, 2019). If only all of Olivier Assayas’ Cuban espionage film </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Wasp Network</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was as clear and gripping as the stand-alone seven-minute sequence about one and a half hours in when the patsy </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raul Cruz Leon (played by Nolan Guerra Fernandez)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is recruited, acts and is then arrested for the Havana hotel bombings of 1997. But Assayas doesn’t really figure out how to tell the rest of it. Perhaps he needed more time; the five and a half leisurely hours of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Carlos</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> series would have done it</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>5 Death Bed: The Bed That Eats</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (George Barry, 1977). A lost film for decades, this bargain basement surrealist horror has a flat nightmare texture, a series of anonymous non-actors, ultra-cheap effects and disembodied narration from a poet trapped behind a painting who communicates telepathically with the carnivorous bed of the title. Made over five years in Detroit and shot on 16mm, it’s a true original or outsider art film just as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Eraserhead</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was, except that it didn’t launch a career. But a small cult was created decades later, thanks largely to horror specialist and musician Stephen Thrower whose band Cyclobe added music to the eventual release, along with credibility. <a href="https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2014/10/worst-movie-ever-death-bed-debuts-stage/" target="_blank">The story of its discovery is arguably more interesting than the film</a>, with the long-retired George Barry unaware that his movie even had viewers until he stumbled on a film discussion on the internet late one night</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>6 Chinatown</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Roman Polanski, 1974). I’m reading Sam Wasson’s fascinating </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Big Goodbye</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a book about </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Chinatown</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, so a rewatch was inevitable, and always welcome. This film about power and corruption is as close to perfect as any film gets. Jake Gittes: “There’s something black in the green part of your eye.” Evelyn: “Oh that. It’s a flaw in the iris.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: medium; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>First Reformed and Wasp Network were on Netflix, Come to Daddy was on Beamafilm, The War at Home and Death Bed were on Kanopy, Chinatown was on DVD. </i></span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-36531119371305989092020-06-15T09:34:00.002+12:002020-09-15T15:37:01.515+12:00June 2020: Tulsa, Vietnam, Norway<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>1. Watchmen</b> (created by Damon Lindelof
for HBO, 2019). It’s clear that Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul” is emerging as
the song of the year. Released on the eve of the pandemic lockdown, its mood of
historically-aware doom actually prefigured something more – the protests over
the death of George Floyd and a Black Lives Matter movement that went global.
There is a deep-rooted sense of pain, of shared trauma. Dylan’s lyrics widen
from a description of the JFK assassination into a litany, or a liturgy, of songs
and references. “Take me back to Tulsa to the scene of the crime,” he sings or
perhaps drawls. He’s nodding at the old Bob Wills song “Take me back to Tulsa”,
but perhaps he’s also talking about the Tulsa massacre of 1921 – the crime –
when up to 300 people were killed and the most prosperous black businesses in
the US were razed. That largely forgotten history was the starting point of
Damon Lindelof’s ridiculously prescient adaptation of or brave yet reverent
riff on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1980s superhero deconstruction, <i>Watchmen</i>.
By creating a kind of sequel, Lindelof found a fresh way in and it’s all here:
white supremacist militia, racist cops, even people in masks. Like “Murder Most
Foul”, it is both an intellectual puzzle and a tragedy about American life, and
nowhere more so than in a stunning episode – the sixth of nine – about the
backstory of the superhero Hooded Justice that moves seamlessly across decades
and points of view (the narrative is lumpier in other episodes, however). And
now, thanks to a TV superhero series and maybe Bob too, at least everyone knows
about Tulsa. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>2. Da 5 Bloods</b> (Spike Lee, 2020). Another
film of the moment, so topical it could have been edited yesterday. Lee’s
Vietnam war action-comedy is book-ended by montages of historical footage,
largely concerned with black opposition to the war – not just Muhammad Ali’s
famous line about the Vietcong never calling him “n---” but also Angela Davis
warning about “full-blown fascism” and Bobby Searle on “racist police
brutality”. You feel the ironic sting that these comments were sourced from
around 50 years ago. After that introduction, the film that follows might
initially feel slight – a playful buddy movie about old veterans returning for
the remains of a fallen friend and the treasure they buried, and Lee’s
meta-cinematic signals refer to <i>Apocalypse Now</i> and <i>The Treasure of Sierra
Madre</i>, plus, less seriously, <i>Rambo</i> and Chuck Norris’ <i>Missing in Action</i>. There
is a lot of kidding around until suddenly there isn’t. You can tell that Lee
and writer Kevin Willmott (<i>BlacKkKlansman</i>) took over an existing screenplay
that could have played more like <i>Last Vegas</i> or <i>The Bucket List</i> had they not
made the veterans black and introduced Trump-era topicality. As such, it’s a
work of mainstream entertainment with some genuinely incendiary messages about war trauma
and racism (Delroy Lindo is outstanding as the damaged, Trump-supporting Paul).
How topical is it? Even that problematic symbol or political souvenir of 2020 –
a Make America Great Again hat – makes an appearance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>3. Monos</b> (Alejandro Landes, 2019). High
in the mountains and then deep in the jungle: Alejandro Landes’ fantastically
vivid teenage guerrilla film is an immersive trip away from civilisation into
savagery, inspired by such precursors as <i>Heart of Darkness</i> and <i>Lord of the
Flies</i>. It is specifically South American, and concerned with Colombia, but it
is also universal and even primal, as a story of adolescent rebellion and
wildness. The wild kids are given nicknames (Smurf, Big Foot, Wolf, Rambo), they carry
guns, and their back stories are never revealed, as though revolutionary
activity is about recreating yourself from scratch as well as recreating the
world. The specifics of politics and even gender start to disappear. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>4.
Night Tide</b> (Curtis Harrington, 1961). Innocence finds itself deeply drawn to
weirdness in this poetic oddity that harks back to Edgar Allan Poe and must
have influenced David Lynch’s <i>Blue Velvet</i> – a shy, boyish Dennis Hopper is
Johnny Drake, a sailor on shore leave who meets Mora (Linda Lawson), a mermaid
in an amusement park on the Santa Monica pier. They court like children – both
have lost their parents – but he dreams of monsters and is warned by others to
stay away. Yet, like Lynch’s Jeffrey Beaumont, he thinks he can help. Innocence
is American and weirdness is European, as Mora tells Johnny after she’s briefed
him about her past: “Americans have such a simple view of the world. They think
that everything can be seen and touched and weighed and measured. They think
they’ve discovered reality. But you don’t even know what it is.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>5.
The Ninth Configuration</b> (William Peter Blatty, 1980). This bizarre farce about
military insanity plays as though <i>M*A*S*H</i> has relocated to a Gothic European
spa a century ago and added jokes about Kafka and <i>Hamlet</i>. The non-stop quips of
the mad are thrown around like Marx Brothers lines, although the mood becomes
less busy and more philosophical in the second hour, as Stacy Keach’s morose psychiatrist
and Scott Wilson’s scared astronaut debate the meaning of God, sacrifice and
suffering, before a berserk bar room fight breaks out with some local bikers.
While it’s only really an <i>Exorcist</i> sequel in Blatty’s imagination, the
astronaut is apparently a link back (meaning he listened to Regan’s warning
about dying in space), as is the fantastic Jason Miller – Father Karras there,
Shakespeare nut Frankie Reno here. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>6.
The House That Jack Built</b> (Lars von Trier, 2018). After von Trier’s sex film
(<i>Nymphomaniac</i>), here’s his death film, tracking a serial killer partly modelled
on Ted Bundy and played as a fastidious, dead-eyed creep in a red van by a
never less than dedicated Matt Dillon. Picking serial killers as a subject
seems unusually commonplace for von Trier, and may even be disappointingly relatable
in a time of Bundy documentaries and <i>Mindhunter</i> on Netflix, but he isn’t
interested in the police work or the stories of victims – it’s much more
solipsistic as Dillon’s Jack struggles with the idea that his killings are art
and wonders whether each work can somehow top the last. Of course, it’s easy to
see the killer as analogous to the filmmaker, out to confound and impress with
his erudition but also to provoke or shock with his vulgarity. Yet, in the end
this lacks the humanity of <i>Melancholia</i> and <i>Breaking the Waves</i> and the
metaphysical heaviness of <i>Antichrist </i>– at least until Bruno Ganz appears on
screen and the story burrows underground. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><b>7.
Lords of Chaos</b> (Jonas Akerlund, 2018). </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">“The churches are oppressing us with their kindness and goodness,”
complains Varg Vikernes (Emory Cohen), notorious white-supremacist and
black-metaller, but his real beef is with liberalism, tolerance and democracy.
This sometimes gory but mostly goofy dramatisation of the infamous Norwegian
black metal scene of the early 1990s misses the opportunity to connect to a
bigger picture. About a decade and a half after Vikernes murdered bandmate Euronymous
(Kieran Culkin) in Oslo, white supremacist Anders Breivik murdered 77 people in
the same city and on a nearby island (see Paul Greengrass’ far superior <i>22
July</i>) and Breivik has since inspired others, all fed by the same ahistorical
ignorance about race and religion, including in this part of the world. What is
it about Norway? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>8. Her Smell</b> (Alex Ross Perry, 2018). Here’s
another rock ‘n’ roll monster. Everyone assumes that <i>Her Smell</i>’s
self-destructive Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss) was inspired by Courtney
Love, and the resemblance is obvious, but writer-director Alex Ross Perry,
working with Moss for the third time, has instead suggested Axl Rose. Either
way, Becky is a grunge-era black hole of extreme unwellness and emotional need.
Perry stages five long scenes in real time, set in the less glamorous side of
the business – three are backstage, one is at a fraught recording session and
the fifth is in a quiet house in the country – as Becky runs riot with a guru
in tow while long-suffering bandmates, managers and family members are both
unable to intervene and afraid to walk away. Perry goes for a spiky,
uncomfortable realism – if Becky is going to suffer then you should too – and
Moss’ commitment to her highly unlikeable role is deep and profound. It makes a
refreshing change from the tired conventions of the rock biopic. Terrible
title, though. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Watchmen and Her Smell were on Neon. Da 5
Bloods was on Netflix. Monos was in cinemas. Night Tide, The Ninth Configuration
and The House That Jack Built were on Kanopy. Lords of Chaos was on Amazon
Prime.</i></span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-68737926165449947812020-05-15T15:22:00.002+12:002020-09-15T15:37:23.110+12:00May 2020: Medieval homesick blues<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>1. The
Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey</b> (Vincent Ward, 1988). “It must be God’s city.
There’s so much light.” So says a 14<sup>th</sup> century Cumbrian miner
climbing out of drains beneath an Auckland hill – possibly Mt Victoria in
Devonport – and looking across the city at night, to the lights beyond the flat,
still harbour, the lit-up homes and the commercial office buildings. I started
but didn’t finish James Meek’s plague-era novel <i>To Calais, in Ordinary Time</i> and
instead rewatched Vincent Ward’s masterpiece, set in the same grim year – 1348.
<i>The Navigator</i> occupies a strange position: very fondly recalled in New Zealand,
but perhaps less than a cult film elsewhere. It’s more like a secret film,
known only to an informed few. It had been ages. I’d forgotten how effectively Ward balances
wonder, suspense and comedy, all that humour confusing the sacred and the profane,
as in the quote above. I’d forgotten how daring and original this was – so much
so that Ward’s name swiftly became a byword for the ambitious or borderline impossible
(see the Tarkovskian shot of a horse standing in a boat rowed by men in cowls,
transplanted to the Waitemata Harbour). And of course, in 2020, Ward’s fantasy
is as accidentally topical as Meek’s novel: hoping to avoid the Black Death, a
group of miners tunnel through the earth to the city of the future, which they believe
is the site of their medieval pilgrimage. They are led by one of the gifted
outsider children Ward built his sometimes surprisingly personal stories around
(Griffin here; Toss in <i>Vigil</i>; Avik in <i>Map of the Human Heart</i>). And I’ll probably
have another go at James Meek before the pandemic’s over. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>2. The Last Movie</b> (Dennis Hopper, 1971). Dennis
Hopper’s infamous South American folly asked if Hollywood productions
could be seen as a kind of colonialism. What happens when Hollywood goes home but
the sets and the memories of the production remain, to be reoccupied or repurposed for
ceremonies of some kind? (The natives “reshoot” a Billy the Kid western using
cameras made of wood.) Maybe there is something of <i>The Navigator</i> in
particular and Ward in general in this relationship between the past and now,
us and them, cultural misunderstandings and new forms of thinking. Hopper, who
nursed this project, starred in it and then spent months editing it into
incoherence, had the nous to recognise Hollywood’s dangerous mythology
and the cost it inflicts on its creators. You can see it as an <i>Apocalypse Now </i>precursor, especially if you imagine Hopper was left babbling in the jungle between this film and that one. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>3. Ex Libris: The New York Public
Library</b> (Frederick Wiseman, 2017). This feels like civilisation condensed into
three and a half elegant hours. What are libraries for? What does public
information do? You didn’t expect the answers to be so invigorating, so
optimistic. In a time of lockdown, it could even have made you homesick. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>4. Time of the Wolf</b> (Michael Haneke, 2003). Michael
Haneke is a tough moralist who often puts his middle-class characters through
hell, but one of the surprising things about this otherwise harrowing disaster
story – Plague? Terror? War? Famine? He doesn’t say – is that he doesn’t seem
to despise Anne and Georges and their children Eva and Benny. Instead, there is
a kind of pity in his pessimistic view of how fast and how far society will break
down into violence, danger and superstition. And there is also, just as
surprisingly, hope emerging from that superstition: “And water will flow in our
mouths with roast pigeons and maybe the dead will come back to life.” That was
Ward’s theme too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><b>5. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story</b> (Gareth
Edwards, 2016). As we noted <a href="http://secondstogo.blogspot.com/2019/12/emperor-of-senseless.html" target="_blank">a few months back</a>, about <i>Rise of Skywalker</i>, those
responsible for the <i>Star Wars</i> universe have a real problem with killing people
off and leaving them dead. “The dead speak!” the opening crawl said. Big deal.
They’ve been speaking since day one. They’ve been ghosts, visions, clones,
voices in someone’s head and whatever Palpatine was in the last, ill-fated
instalment. You can’t shut them up. Which only makes you admire <i>Rogue One</i> even more.
On a recent rewatch we counted 10 characters who were introduced only to be
killed: characters played by Diego Luna, Felicity Jones, Forest Whitaker, Ben
Mendelsohn, Mads Mikkelsen, Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen among them. On the other hand, the two digital resurrections – of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher – were easily the worst
thing about it, worse than you remembered. But you can also see that <i>Rogue
One</i>’s more subversive sensibility survives in <i>The Mandalorian</i>, a series that
offers something to <i>Star Wars</i> fans that <i>Rise of Skywalker</i> couldn’t – hope.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, The
Last Movie and Ex Libris were on Kanopy. Time of the Wolf was on DVD. Rogue One
and Rise of Skywalker were on Disney Plus.</i></span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-58339031548762104772020-04-16T16:54:00.003+12:002020-09-15T15:38:29.032+12:00April 2020: Murder in Dallas, ghosts in the fog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: medium;">Along
with boredom and fresh air, blogging has been revived by the Covid-19 lockdown.
Before the viral apocalypse, bloggers had been rendered as archaic as chimney sweeps
or clockwinders. Now here we are again, after the great leap backwards. This blog
will post every month from April 2020, with five or more films to talk about. Except
that this time, we don’t start with a film.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b>1.
“Murder Most Foul,” by Bob Dylan</b> (2020). Released last month but recorded when?
Last year? A decade ago? It’s unlikely to be older than 2012’s <i>Tempest</i> (whose
title track, an epic song about the Titanic, moves between history and myth in
a similar way to this), and it sounds closer in style to Dylan’s trilogy of
albums from the Great American Songbook (2015-17) or the piano-lounge narration
of his Nobel Prize speech (2018). As ever, we look for clues left behind by Mr
Inscrutable. Can you play “Mystery Train” for Mr Mystery? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">We’ve
read the interviews, and reread them, and then we read them again. Read them 20
times, 33 times, maybe more. When I first heard about “Murder Most Foul”, a haunting
song about the JFK assassination, the American loss of innocence and the growing
darkness, that starts in realism and nostalgia and ends in a long eulogy for
American music with a list of songs and names seemingly pulled out of thin air
but making perfect sense, and saw that people were talking about Don McLean’s
song “American Pie”, I thought of that 2017 interview in which <a href="http://www.bobdylan.com/news/qa-with-bill-flanagan/" target="_blank">Bill Flanagan says to Dylan</a>, “</span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In Don McLean’s ‘American Pie,’ you’re supposed to be the
jester.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And then Dylan replies: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Yeah, Don McLean, ‘American
Pie,’ what a song that is. A jester? Sure, the jester writes songs like ‘Masters
of War,’ ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,’ ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ – some jester. I have
to think he’s talking about somebody else. Ask him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">That was the exchange in its entirety. </span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Could “Murder Most Foul” be an answer song to
“American Pie” in much the same way that, say, “Fourth Time Around” was an
answer song to “Norwegian Wood”, according to the Dylanologists? Why else was
Flanagan asking Dylan about “American Pie” in 2017? Given that these interviews
are works by Dylan just as much as the songs are, it’s not impossible that he told
Flanagan about some questions he should ask.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“American Pie” was roughly topical at the time.
Two years earlier, in 2015, the manuscript of McLean’s lyrics had sold at
auction for US$1.2 million and stories appeared in the press in which the never
particularly obscure lyrics were finally decoded like some cryptic utterance from
ancient history (“Enter Bob Dylan, the court jester who becomes the
revolutionary leader of the 60s generation …” the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32196117" target="_blank">BBC announced in its story</a> </span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“What do American Pie</span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s lyrics mean?</span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">). You
can imagine Dylan waiting to respond to stuff like this.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; tab-stops: 216.0pt 432.0pt;">
<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: medium;">The author of “Murder Most Foul” isn’t exactly
a jester, either. The song’s wry in places, but you won’t laugh much. Like
“American Pie”, the Dylan song is written in a mood of spiritual desolation, as
though the death at the heart of the story, Buddy Holly in one, Kennedy in the
other, has ushered in the Biblical end times.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Here’s Don McLean: “</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And the three men I admire most / The Father,
Son, and the Holy Ghost</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> / <span style="background: white;">They
caught the last train for the coast …”<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Here’s
Dylan: “The day that they killed him, someone said to me, ‘Son /</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> <span style="background: white;">The age of the Antichrist has
just only begun’.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: medium;">(The
numbers might tell another story: at 16.56, “Murder Most Foul” is almost
exactly twice as long as “American Pie”, which comes in at 8.33. This is the
kind of thing Dylanologists pay attention to.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">But McLean’s song is maudlin and self-pitying,
a lament for his youth and the teenage girlfriends he lost or never even had
(“I saw you dancing in the gym”), a sentiment that isn’t hard to relate to even if McLean was only 25 when he recorded it but comes across like a man of 50. The
tone is one of quiet reverence for McLean’s own sadness. By contrast, Dylan’s
lament isn’t personal, and if listeners connect emotionally, it’s to the otherworldly
mood of the song as much as the story it tells. Dylan removes himself from the
picture, shifting points of view between a narrator and the dying Kennedy, and
perhaps even Oswald as well (“</span><span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I’m just a patsy like Patsy
Cline /</span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> <span style="background: white;">I never shot anyone from in
front or behind”), as the president’s black limousine goes through an invisible
wall in Dallas and heads straight into the afterlife. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; tab-stops: 216.0pt 432.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b>2. The Green Fog</b> (Guy Maddin,
Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, 2017). Another American monument is deconstructed,
but playfully. Guy Maddin very generously put <i>The Green Fog</i>, his collaboration
with Evan and Galen Johnson, online for free last month <a href="https://vimeo.com/356966508" target="_blank">at Vimeo</a>. It’s a
hilarious, paranoid, found-footage remake of <i>Vertigo</i> made out of excerpts from
films and TV shows set in San Francisco that creates some unexpected loops and
coincidences: watch the Michael Douglas of <i>The Streets of San Francisco</i> admire
the older Michael Douglas of <i>Basic Instinct</i>, itself a paranoid <i>Vertigo</i> remake. But
most of the time, as in a dream, people are muted the second they try to speak.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; tab-stops: 216.0pt 432.0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b>3. Atlantics</b> (Mati Diop, 2019).
A love story, with zombies. But these are relatively benign zombies – young
women occupied by the restless spirits of young men who drowned trying to sail
to Spain from Dakar in search of a better life. Mati Diop’s first feature, a
decade after a documentary short of the same name, is a strange and
hallucinatory experience that’s powerfully imagined, impressively performed but
with a narrative that keeps eluding your grasp. Apichatpong Weerasethakul is an
obvious influence, but so is the more experimental end of Michael Mann (<i>Miami
Vice</i>, <i>Public Enemies</i>). It’s on Netflix.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><b>4. A Hidden Life</b> (Terrence Malick, 2019). Before the viral
apocalypse closed cinemas, the latest Terrence Malick played for a week – just
one week – at Christchurch’s <a href="https://lumierecinemas.co.nz/" target="_blank">Lumiere cinema</a> (the Bardot room, but the Bardo room would have been more apt). If you felt that the Malick films
were coming to seem increasingly alien, as </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">the spiritual
journeys of narcissists or the ennui of the beautiful and the bored in pristine
Californian settings, this biography of Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic farmer
who was put to death for refusing to support Hitler, raises the stakes and asks
deeper questions about the meaning and application of faith in difficult times,
under abhorrent leaders. Malick’s familiar camera and acting direction still creates
rhapsodic scenes, but his style is attached to a more urgent storyline. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="background: white; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><b>5. Children of Men</b> (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006). Still
the best film you could watch about the viral apocalypse and the disruptions it
creates. See also <i>Time of the Wolf</i> (Michael Haneke, 2003) and even <i>The Turin
Horse</i> (Bela Tarr, 2011). You have plenty of time, after all. </span></span>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-60143354035699691972020-01-23T16:03:00.002+13:002020-01-23T21:06:32.081+13:00In that bright land<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzHJxBC6KgcY94DH0MzdBzMHoO9ufXRXIOzGIByDp7lsEmQX69I21Kn05W43KnM7OZ9MD649bNhAysz7QiQ6c57RmXPcdGQVyg25TcHOQkHc7jQXRFqB02DufBWKk4Sj-1IujdU2lGPoE/s1600/1917.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzHJxBC6KgcY94DH0MzdBzMHoO9ufXRXIOzGIByDp7lsEmQX69I21Kn05W43KnM7OZ9MD649bNhAysz7QiQ6c57RmXPcdGQVyg25TcHOQkHc7jQXRFqB02DufBWKk4Sj-1IujdU2lGPoE/s640/1917.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></span>
<br />
<b><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">1917</span></i></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="float: none;"> (Sam Mendes, 2019). The technical marvels involved in
Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins</span></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’ simulated one-take through World War I don’t create realism but the
opposite: the film feels artificial and dreamlike. The messenger Schofield
(George MacKay) is forever moving through the war or past it, rather than being
directly within it. He is an observer, a witness. In this war dream, he dies
and comes back to life, survives rivers and fires, meets a woman and a baby in
a basement and eventually follows the sound of singing to a forest, where
soldiers listen to a rendition of </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="float: none;"> “Wayfaring Stranger”, a song about dying that becomes
especially ghostly in this context</span></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. </span>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-2998248372396789052019-12-31T14:03:00.002+13:002019-12-31T14:03:47.835+13:00The best of 2019<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">1.
<b><i>Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood</i></b> (Quentin Tarantino, 2019) </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">2. <b><i>The Irishman</i></b> (Martin Scorsese, 2019)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">3. <b><i>Portrait of a Lady on Fire</i></b> (Celine Sciamma, 2019) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">4. <b><i>Marriage Story</i></b> (Noah Baumbach, 2019)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">5. <b><i>High Life</i></b> (Claire Denis, 2018) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">6. <b><i>Midsomma</i></b>r (Ari Aster, 2019)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">7. <b><i>Ad Astra</i></b> (James Gray, 2019)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">8. <b><i>Under the Silver Lake</i></b> (David Robert Mitchell, 2018)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;"> 9. <b><i>Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story</i></b> (Martin
Scorsese, 2019) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">10. <b><i>Avengers: Endgame</i></b> (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, 2019)</span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-30443874126037505072019-12-24T13:26:00.000+13:002019-12-24T13:26:00.958+13:00Emperor of the senseless <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWmdDn__WyeKaz4TN8XCVQGLZFzyDl47_VWuk52nJcOMilE5IQKnB-mjLhW-w90FOSrEKgWAKxsH6LFW9awyF6gwamR-N4RaczhW7IQLNWRdpB7LKXwybAxVJfFXUKSMSFoZj8m5pwFRk/s1600/star.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="739" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWmdDn__WyeKaz4TN8XCVQGLZFzyDl47_VWuk52nJcOMilE5IQKnB-mjLhW-w90FOSrEKgWAKxsH6LFW9awyF6gwamR-N4RaczhW7IQLNWRdpB7LKXwybAxVJfFXUKSMSFoZj8m5pwFRk/s640/star.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><b><i>Star
Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker</i></b> (JJ Abrams, 2019). The dead speak? Of
course they do. They’ve been speaking for 42 years, since the very start of this
franchise. They haven’t shut up, dying yet somehow living, appearing as ghosts
or flashbacks or their younger selves in prequels, even resurrected in the
backstory when death turned out to be, well, a narrative dead end (“from a certain
point of view”). Being dead has never been much of an obstacle in <i>Star Wars</i>.
But resurrecting a dead character has never seemed quite so desperate and unnecessary
as it does in <i>The Rise of Skywalker</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Spoilers?
We all know who we mean (who or “what” – that thing had a family?). The problem
with this reanimation is that it undermines one of the genuinely fresh ideas in
the latest trilogy, which is that bloodlines and names don’t matter so much. A
hero could be anyone at all, not a hidden leader (an Arthur, a Moses) but an
ordinary person – the kid with the broom at the end of <i>The Last
Jedi</i> made that clear. But it seems that JJ Abrams, revising an earlier revision,
has cancelled that point in episode 9. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Both
Rian Johnson’s <i>The Last Jedi</i> and Gareth Edwards’ <i>Rogue One</i> got out from under
the long shadow cast by the original trilogy – a shadow <i>The Force Awakens</i>, <i>Solo</i>
and <i>The Rise of Skywalker</i> couldn’t escape (in its more playful, casual approach,
<i>The Mandalorian</i> has escaped it too). Both <i>The Last Jedi</i> and <i>Rogue One</i> had fresh,
even subversive perspectives on the old history, the existing lore – they considered
what everyday life might be like in these stories, and what kind of damage the
endless wars leave behind. Even, in the case of <i>The Last Jedi</i>, who profits from
them. They moved past childish stories about the lives of the gifted and elite. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">They
also escaped the impostor syndrome that Abrams’ two films and Ron Howard’s <i>Solo</i>
were afflicted by, which hummed like a baseline anxiety. It was there on screen
as new characters worried about whether they measured up to the original models:
could Rey ever be as powerful as Luke? Would Kylo Ren ever be as scary as his grandad?
Would Poe and Finn ever get to be as interesting as Han Solo? (Giving them girlfriends
doesn’t count.) Objects from the earlier films appear as fetishised relics: the
old light sabers, Darth Vader’s battered helmet. How apt that in the last (they
promise!) episode a duel between good and evil and a reconciliation with the
past should be staged on the sinking ruins of the Death Star. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">There
is one more, problematic way in which the dead speak. The storytellers work
with fantasy – they can bring dead characters back whenever they want. But they
can’t bring dead actors back and there is no way to avoid the fact that the reanimation
of Carrie Fisher here is just as creepy as the digital reanimation of her (and
Peter Cushing) in <i>Rogue One</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">There
are good things, though. The space wars from that Death Star scene onwards are
staged with an impressive sense of awe – the same awe we felt looking at two
suns and giant star destroyers in 1977. And Daisy Ridley’s Rey does finally
emerge as a character worthy of all this storytelling – Ridley carries the
movie. But endings will always be a problem. Each new sequel kicked the can further
down the road, until it could be avoided no longer. Ultimate evil had to be
confronted, and it had to be terminated with extreme prejudice. Long before he
made <i>Star Wars</i>, George Lucas was going to direct <i>Apocalypse Now</i>. It’s well-known
that Vietnam seeped into <i>Star Wars</i> – the rebel alliance against an empire, even
the Ewoks as a kind of Viet Cong – and now, finally, Abrams has to write the
<i>Apocalypse Now</i> ending, and he can’t rely on poetry books. What happens when you
finally have to face the villain you’ve built up for so long? What do you say to it? What does it say back? </span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-2774980963845456872019-12-02T10:21:00.000+13:002019-12-02T10:21:28.295+13:00Decades: 2010-19 <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHLiID_Xs7BD5sreuYqs8L0rNWW9vGoHKrlziO2X2au0lY6Bzv3HSNVnJoKlIgz-j0nWd-jSJNDkIxzsaNhs2exmRq7difO8la0sP0kk1-AoYRA_iQVhmN4SHa04hzJXEi6lk6AKf1Jiw/s1600/tree.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="287" data-original-width="550" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHLiID_Xs7BD5sreuYqs8L0rNWW9vGoHKrlziO2X2au0lY6Bzv3HSNVnJoKlIgz-j0nWd-jSJNDkIxzsaNhs2exmRq7difO8la0sP0kk1-AoYRA_iQVhmN4SHa04hzJXEi6lk6AKf1Jiw/s640/tree.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Movies
changed a lot in this decade, the meaning of them, the place they occupied, what they even were.
That’s what this list tells me, anyway. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">1
<b><i>The Tree of Life</i></b> (Terrence Malick, 2011)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">2
<b><i>Under the Skin</i></b> (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">3
<b><i>The Master</i></b> (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">4
<b><i>Margaret</i></b> (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">5
<b><i>Melancholia</i></b> (Lars von Trier, 2011)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">6
<b><i>The Neon Demon</i></b> (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">7
<b><i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i></b> (George Miller, 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">8
<b><i>Silence</i></b> (Martin Scorsese, 2016)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">9
<b><i>Roma</i></b> (Alfonso Cuaron, 2018)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">10
<b><i>The Turin Horse</i></b> (Bela Tarr, 2011)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">11
<b><i>Arrival</i></b> (Denis Villeneuve, 2016)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">12
<b><i>The Witch</i></b> (Robert Eggers, 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">13
<b><i>Toni Erdmann</i></b> (Maren Ade, 2016)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">14
<b><i>Nostalgia for the Light</i></b> (Patricio Guzman, 2010)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">15
<b><i>Phantom Thread</i></b> (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">16
<b><i>A Ghost Story</i></b> (David Lowery, 2017)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">17
<b><i>Winter Sleep</i></b> (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">18
<b><i>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</i></b> (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">19
<b><i>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood</i></b> (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">20
<b><i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i></b> (Martin Scorsese, 2013)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">21
<b><i>The Death of Stalin</i></b> (Armando Iannucci, 2017)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">22
<b><i>Arabian Nights: Volumes 1, 2 and 3</i></b> (Miguel Gomes, 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">23
<b><i>mother!</i></b> (Darren Aronofsky, 2017)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">24
<b><i>Drive</i></b> (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">25
<b><i>Phoenix </i></b>(Christian Petzold, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">26
<b><i>The Image Book</i></b> (Jean-Luc Godard, 2018)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">27
<b><i>First Reformed</i></b> (Paul Schrader, 2017)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">28
<b><i>Mandy</i></b> (Panos Cosmatos, 2018)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">29
<b><i>What We Do in the Shadows</i></b> (Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">30
<b><i>BlacKKKlansman</i></b> (Spike Lee, 2018)</span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-70804089216446475262019-11-29T19:16:00.000+13:002019-11-29T19:16:41.953+13:00In the still of the night<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmZ3bkQiY7Xf_YEUuPEF1wSjx0T3A80x2mzcOaUKFO_pYuOpAc-Sk_GRZ4yiFgKdIYiycz0VwgOqxtUEUb1HKr4rINfRwA3-ZpBLLhrIvsf193PXPpRXNcEMNxJHrWMbwboBmDgs63phw/s1600/irishmannetflix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="753" data-original-width="1440" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmZ3bkQiY7Xf_YEUuPEF1wSjx0T3A80x2mzcOaUKFO_pYuOpAc-Sk_GRZ4yiFgKdIYiycz0VwgOqxtUEUb1HKr4rINfRwA3-ZpBLLhrIvsf193PXPpRXNcEMNxJHrWMbwboBmDgs63phw/s640/irishmannetflix.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The song, “In the Still of the Night”,
why is it featured in <i>The Irishman</i> and why does it work as it does? What is its
mysterious power? Martin Scorsese explained, in an interview with Spike Lee: </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, serif;">“It’s the still of the night, the executioner.
Death in the still of the night. Catholicism, too. When I was growing up as an
altar boy, it was all they talked about. The old Italian priests got in the
pulpit and talked about ‘like a thief in the night, it will come. Be ready.’ I
was an altar boy at the dead masses, every Saturday morning, 10.30. The
flowers, the funeral parlour, the wakes.” As the third of a loose trilogy –
<i>Goodfellas</i>, <i>Casino</i>, now this – it is the wind-down, a slow-moving reckoning with death, with all that space for memory, if
you’re lucky enough to outlive everybody else and die naturally.</span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-14276856610531103682019-11-20T19:17:00.000+13:002019-11-20T19:17:20.943+13:00Tunnels beneath Los Angeles <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIDbmd_CGuc3OAsHXMS4ck14Euw79lv8_IQKCNvVe-8GHwdGw2svN8TO_AWsEkZG1U2ZBXROC5OZcCOiat6u-By-CbOAo3dKgQ3U02gzxtCiR1wbVqHdwx5iMAEyYVIF-abe97RgfgeqY/s1600/lake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="620" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIDbmd_CGuc3OAsHXMS4ck14Euw79lv8_IQKCNvVe-8GHwdGw2svN8TO_AWsEkZG1U2ZBXROC5OZcCOiat6u-By-CbOAo3dKgQ3U02gzxtCiR1wbVqHdwx5iMAEyYVIF-abe97RgfgeqY/s640/lake.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><b><i>Under
the Silver Lake</i></b> (David Robert Mitchell, 2018). REM’s <i>Monster</i> has come back.
Like <i>Friends</i>, it just turned 25. I was in a supermarket last night and “Bang
and Blame” came on; I went home and watched <i>Under the Silver Lake</i>, which
features two more <i>Monster</i> songs: “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” and “Strange
Currencies”. This doesn’t really mean anything but it’s the kind of coincidence
that would appeal to Sam (Andrew Garfield), the Philip Marlowe/Lebowski-ish
figure in David Robert Mitchell’s grungy (in the 90s sense) morbid-funny
paranoid-LA noir. It’s a story as old as the hills, this idea that the pleasant facades of Los Angeles
are hiding something, a buried network of money, sex and showbiz power,
where the strings are pulled by a cadre of sinister, rich old men, and some
important history about the city has disappeared from view, been suppressed or
covered up. It’s the city as a death cult that always needs fresh (female) bodies. In
different ways, it’s in <i>Chinatown</i>, <i>Mulholland Drive</i> and <i>Inland Empire</i>, <i>Inherent
Vice</i>, <i>In a Lonely Place</i> and other key noir films, and recent glosses like
<i>Los Angeles Plays Itself</i> and Robin Robertson’s book-length poem <i>The Long Take</i>.
It’s all in here, too, and Mitchell is both cine-literate and playful: a
driving scene out of <i>Vertigo</i>, nods to Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison and James
Dean. There is a kind of ancient Gnostic demiurge at the heart of all, a sick
creator – he’s a laughing old man playing piano in a mansion in one of the film’s wildest
scenes. Do you know this song? How about this one? It’s a paranoid medley. <span style="font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-91595889173696283842019-11-05T10:47:00.000+13:002019-11-05T10:51:42.818+13:00Couldn't get ahead <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZE1hvv9V__gTLBt5RffNSxkjkeBvUmKDlj5WFXTfI8R0gW62Pr7iAO6FrDaEsKpAZy7zR8oAxPZI4fulLnCCwmaHX5rf13VIR_X8L0vP202spMkeUo3WyXnc6tl6lJ1snMsnmnjuISRc/s1600/Downsizing.0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZE1hvv9V__gTLBt5RffNSxkjkeBvUmKDlj5WFXTfI8R0gW62Pr7iAO6FrDaEsKpAZy7zR8oAxPZI4fulLnCCwmaHX5rf13VIR_X8L0vP202spMkeUo3WyXnc6tl6lJ1snMsnmnjuISRc/s640/Downsizing.0.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><b><i>Downsizing</i></b>
(Alexander Payne, 2017). What will the end of the world look and feel like?
Probably more like this sad, sweet, weirdly overlooked and freakishly topical fable about money,
selfishness and charity than any number of high-concept disaster movies. The ingenious, speculative premise feels like something Yogos Lanthimos might come up with, but it is gentler, less cruel. A
middle-aged Matt Damon has grown into the part of the ideal melancholy American everyman.</span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-75618243300333501032019-10-12T16:49:00.000+13:002019-10-12T16:49:46.256+13:00God's lonely comedian<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil17T6mSz_4a-SAtX_n8aUHgGn4o5pmqgu2JjGgzrg4vJeknG-q4gOzicH2mu9jLz0rMr8aN0InXsb6mPHERNRfAgmxUDXtrP1xaBYepEHoakXhNdsGmWWhyphenhyphensIXR62giq0rnWP2uXxN5k/s1600/Brody-Joker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="530" data-original-width="727" height="466" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil17T6mSz_4a-SAtX_n8aUHgGn4o5pmqgu2JjGgzrg4vJeknG-q4gOzicH2mu9jLz0rMr8aN0InXsb6mPHERNRfAgmxUDXtrP1xaBYepEHoakXhNdsGmWWhyphenhyphensIXR62giq0rnWP2uXxN5k/s640/Brody-Joker.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 107%;"><b><i>Joker</i></b> (Todd Phillips, 2019). Watching <i>Taxi Driver </i>again, a couple of
nights after watching <i>Joker</i>, I noticed something I don’t think I’d paid
attention to before, something that hadn’t ever been important: a few lines
from one of the other drivers in the all-night diner about midgets being funny. Did Todd Phillips pick that up and make it a <i>Joker</i> plot point? His <i>Joker</i> is almost an essay about <i>Taxi Driver</i>, its effect and
afterlife, its reputation and its seductions, its status as a museum of 70s
attitudes and New York as its seediest, its unusual place on the border between fiction and real-life violence. <i>Taxi Driver</i> famously inspired a would-be
assassin (John Hinckley Jr) as well as being inspired by one (Arthur Bremer).
Phillips is clearly aiming to place his film in a transgressive tradition of young male
alienation cult films – see also: <i>Fight Club</i>, <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> – and like Zack
Snyder’s <i>Watchmen</i> a decade ago, his <i>Joker</i> is nostalgic for the 70s/early 80s
New York of garbage strikes and porn cinemas, rundown apartments and tough cops.
It slums in a precise recreation of that New York of <i>Taxi Driver</i>, slightly
time-shifted to about 1981, while borrowing the showbiz delusions of <i>The King of Comedy</i> – and the star of both movies is of course in a significant
support part. I kept waiting for Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck to tell us that
loneliness has followed him everywhere, his whole life – that he’s God’s lonely
comedian. The Scorsese debts are so obvious they put <i>Joker</i> closer to a remake
than a homage, although Phillips doesn’t know what to do with the racism that would
have been much more overt in the era the film recreates. In other words, there
are inevitable complications in using a period film to comment on and springboard
into the very different politics of right now. On the other hand, there’s
something fascinating and impressive about sneaking a big budget riff on the 70s
exploitation film into multiplexes disguised as a superhero origin story – and
if all the kids turning out in droves for <i>Joker</i> want to see Phoenix do the vigilante
act again, only in something much tougher and darker, and beefy not thin but still saddled with a mother, they can watch <i>You Were
Never Really Here</i>.</span>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-34178244934685286212019-10-10T20:57:00.000+13:002019-10-10T20:57:47.150+13:00Other life<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil2mXxHrkWWZtf3m0rwuVY6x6QyVbbpnN1PsuV4Y3IKbOSOFarvucCpVizn37YPwx8-0c3glNvC8HfO3KTxDX2P0VqfuZdKm0hf-Wt1FkJE_rVzMzcoOjVUt8phCcGAXRryfHLGBoe0Gc/s1600/Ad_Astra_INLINE_Web2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="625" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil2mXxHrkWWZtf3m0rwuVY6x6QyVbbpnN1PsuV4Y3IKbOSOFarvucCpVizn37YPwx8-0c3glNvC8HfO3KTxDX2P0VqfuZdKm0hf-Wt1FkJE_rVzMzcoOjVUt8phCcGAXRryfHLGBoe0Gc/s640/Ad_Astra_INLINE_Web2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><b><i>Ad
Astra</i></b> (James Gray, 2019). There are some films that can even be improved by
their implausibility – their imperfections, if you like, even their flaws. So
it is with <i>Ad Astra</i>, an intimate, moody and utterly sincere space opera that
could be glibly summarised as <i>Apocalypse Now</i> meeting <i>Tree of Life</i> round the
back of the planet Neptune. Does that suggest both the scale and the intimacy?
Gray’s vision of space is hypnotic, dreamlike, quiet – the journey of Brad Pitt’s
Roy McBride is both exterior and interior, a personal resolution. This film looks
fantastic (mood rooms on Mars, jeeps on the moon) and sounds even better – the score
is by Max Richter. Also, Pitt is having a hell of a year.</span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-4558109901448447582019-10-02T18:10:00.004+13:002019-10-02T18:10:42.888+13:00Summer nights <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><b><i>Midsommar</i></b>
(Ari Aster, 2019). Aster’s post-Bergman/post-<i>Wicker Man</i>/post-American-fratboys-in-Europe
pagan horror is not as emotionally heavy as <i>Hereditary</i> (which was crushing), not
as dark in all senses – the permanent daylight of a Scandinavian summer creates
a sleepless hallucinatory world, eerily bright and cheerful, where the plants
breathe and the slight into dread is slow, steady, beautiful and yet inevitable. Some obsessions
recur: grief, cults, the sudden horror of being set on fire. </span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-41539118329208844712019-09-28T12:32:00.003+12:002019-09-28T12:32:23.901+12:00How does this world organise itself? <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpVkL29zwH3eHgUW-a7g_uAOjGvBg_UgENDDKHyt8C61pVHXh3tiyxernDjIqGt-DAKR6mj_ENuKt_9KGC8bGTY9QbVHoIKyqJBTRQj1rzHa-ExulbbKyqi-ZY3BdZ0BukIaPJlOZuuxc/s1600/kidman.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="780" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpVkL29zwH3eHgUW-a7g_uAOjGvBg_UgENDDKHyt8C61pVHXh3tiyxernDjIqGt-DAKR6mj_ENuKt_9KGC8bGTY9QbVHoIKyqJBTRQj1rzHa-ExulbbKyqi-ZY3BdZ0BukIaPJlOZuuxc/s640/kidman.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Nicole
Kidman in <b><i>Destroyer</i></b> (Karyn Kusama, 2018). Half dead already, she moves through the film like a
vengeful ghost.</span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-23289272767714122502019-09-18T21:25:00.002+12:002019-09-18T21:26:01.701+12:00Colder still<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b style="font-family: georgia, serif;"><i><br /></i></b>
<b style="font-family: georgia, serif;"><i>Disobedience</i></b><span style="font-family: georgia, serif;"> (Sebastian Lelio, 2017). Or: grey is the coldest colour. </span>Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547047694217133570.post-20336030098668244802019-09-16T21:56:00.003+12:002019-09-16T21:56:54.264+12:00Edge of the desert<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><b><i>Lucky
</i></b>(John Carroll Lynch, 2017). All of his past comes back to him. Some of it is mined
from the actor’s own life (WWII stories). Other parts are encounters with
friends (Ed Begley Jr, David Lynch), loosely presented as dramatic scenarios but barely fooling anyone.
At other times, it’s <i>The Straight Story</i> without the journey but with the
close-of-day pathos. As in <i>Twin Peaks: The Return</i>, Harry Dean Stanton is
treated by both film-makers and audiences as a revered object; the smile at the
end floors you.</span></div>
Philip Matthewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03235628499602822563noreply@blogger.com