Power (Doc, 2024) - Featured Film of Interest - Recommended

"Frederick Douglass said, 'Power concedes nothing without a demand.' And the power that is American policing hasn't conceded anything. If anything, it's doubled and tripled down on that power."

Links:

Roger Ebert.com Review

Watch Power - Trailer and Film

IMDb - Power (2024, Documentary)

White God (Fehér Isten) - Retro Film of Interest - Highly Recommended

White God (Feher Isten), written and directed by Kornel Mundruczo - Winner of Un Certain Regard, 2014 Cannes Film Festival.  

Harsh imagery and elements of realism meets horror fantasy, the impact is intense, raw and cringe-worthy at times - and worth every moment.  This is an extraordinary, soulful film.  It's not a flawless film, but I love everything about it and would not change a thing. 

Highly Recommended to say the least.

Links:

White God Official Site - Magnolia

RogerEbert.com Review

Cannes Un Certain Regard, 2014

The Velvet Underground (Doc) - Featured Film of Interest - Highly Recommended

Todd Haynes creates an artistic homage/documentary hybrid that challenges the genre, easily could have gone off the rails, but instead hits on every note.  Quite appropriate.  I think Mekas and the gang would approve.  As a long time invested fan of the band, I couldn't be more appreciative that this material fell into responsible hands and that this gritty, beautiful, beat film is the result.

Links:  

The Velvet Underground (Documentary, 2021) Official Site

The Velvet Underground (band)

Lou Reed Official Site

The Northman - Featured Film of Interest

Like so many, I'm intrigued by Robert Eggers' young career and curiously anxious to see what comes next.  I'm not even sure how much I like his films, or if I'm just utterly fascinated by them (I mean this as a compliment).  He is highly original, skilled, and visionary as a filmmaker, unusually restrained 

and refined for early career, and utterly confident in fulfilling his independent aspirations for each film. The Lighthouse is an exceptional piece of work, and unapologetically arthouse in form and function. His films push art cinema onto the mainstream screens.  I'm not quite sure how he has gotten away with it, but I'm glad he has.  Up to this point, with a little help from A24, he has been very good for independent cinema at large.  

The Northman is no doubt a step toward larger budgets, hence higher commercial expectations from all the wrong people, and no more sweet indie home with A24 (this one is Focus Features Films). 

This makes the film particularly interesting and relevant in the context of his filmography.  So far it has garnered mixed and extreme responses from critics and audiences alike, which just adds to the mystique and lure for me.  

Below the trailer is a link to an engaging and smart critical review with a perspective that I appreciate. I have seen The Northman but am intentionally withholding my response until a second screening - well, because I honestly don't know what I think yet, other than visually spectacular.

Link:  Variety - Is ‘The Northman’ a Failed Art Film, or Is It Robert Eggers’ Stolidly Successful Blockbuster Audition?

Popcorn Perspective: '“The Batman,” Reviewed: Eh, It’s Fine'

Striking photography throughout - by Greig Fraser.  

A review of The Batman, by Richard Brody of the New Yorker.  This is not a film critic that I regularly read, but tend to respect.  In this case, it damn near parallels my thoughts and notes exact, and I don't have the energy or desire to write a review of my own.

I screened The Batman recently at Alamo Drafthouse, Charlottesville.

"The Batman," Reviewed:  Eh, It's Fine | The New Yorker

by Richard Brody

"It’s cause for modest celebration that “The Batman” achieves, for much of its nearly three-hour running time, a baseline of artistry: it’s eminently sit-through-able. There’s a category of movie that used to be the Hollywood stock in trade, which a dear departed relative used to call “brain cleansers”—one kicks back, the time passes with some rooting interest, some excitement, some curiosity about what’s coming next. For its first two hours or so, “The Batman” largely fulfills the commitment to be engaging and clever; its deftly inventive director, Matt Reeves (who co-wrote the script with Peter Craig), conveys the impression of substance where it’s hardly to be found. The movie is good with an asterisk—an asterisk the size of the financial interests at stake in the franchise’s intellectual property. As free as Reeves may have been to make the film according to his lights, he displays an element of custodial, even fiduciary, responsibility. It may well win him favor with the studio, with the ticket-buying public, and with critics who calibrate their enthusiasm to box-office success, but it gets in the way of the kinds of transformative interpretations of the characters that would make the difference between a baseline movie and an authentically free and original one.

...The Batman describes his uneasy role as an avenger—indeed, he says, as vengeance itself—in a voice-over that holds out hope that the superhero will be endowed with at least an average level of subjectivity and mental activity. No such luck: that voice-over might as well be a part of the explanatory press notes for all the insight it offers into the protagonist’s thoughts."

Links:  

The New Yorker:  "The Batman," Reviewed:  Eh, It's Fine

The New Yorker:  "The Batman" is a waste of Robert Pattinson

Nightmare Alley - Featured Film of Interest - Highly Recommended

Nightmare Alley is fantastic filmmaking, fantastic film viewing, and visually spectacular.  Guillermo del Toro does film noir with a carnival backdrop, and it's everything you would ever hope.  He utilizes his seemingly hand picked cast to exhilarating levels with performances that match the elite storytelling and visual style.  Guillermo and his special brand of magical realism at its finest.  Any questions?

Links:

DelToroFilms.com - Official Fan Site

Nightmare Alley Official Site

Titane - Featured Film of Interest - Winner of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or

Titane, directed by Julia Ducournau and winner of the 2021 Palme d'Or at Cannes, is my most anticipated film of 2021.  Though it was released in October, I have yet to see it due to zero opportunity.  I'm hoping for a local theater screening in the upcoming months (Violet Crown, please), but have yet to see notice of one.  I do not think it is yet streaming, but if it is, I'm pretty certain that I will hold out for the big screen.  I may have to travel a bit, Richmond/DC style.  For those of my friends and colleagues in major markets and larger cities that have had the chance to see Titane, well, keep it quiet - you already know I'm jealous.

Director Julia Ducournau after her win

'Titane - an outlandish film packed full of sex and violence - has won the top award at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

Director Julie Ducournau is only the second woman to receive the Palme d'Or and the first female to win it alone.'

Links:  

- BBC - Cannes Film Festival:  Titane wins top Palme d'Or prize 

- The Guardian - Julia Ducournau:  "Women Kicked serious ass this year"

MLK/FBI - Featured Film of Interest - Highly Recommended

I had the privilege of attending an early screening of MLK/FBI at one of the urban drive-ins of the Virginia Film Festival, 2020.  Highly recommended.  It is currently streaming on Hulu.

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."  

- Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

Link:  MLK/FBI official site (IFC Films)

Red Rocket - Featured Film of Interest - Highly Recommended

Red Rocket, another intriguing film by Sean Baker, and another deep dive into a perpetual cycle of human suffering under the weight of stagnant, never-ending "same."  Yet somehow, the film itself is anything but stagnant, pulling the audience into the interior madness and motion of the insular reality. This time there is a bit more humor and potential relief up front, but consistent with the style, evolution and filmography of the budding auteur.  This is absurdist cinema at it's finest ("Cinema of the Absurd"- copyright me, 2021 - insert crooked grin here).

Personally, I think it is a fantastic film, and I was fully enthralled throughout the screening at this years Virginia Film Festival, but I feel that way about most of his work.  I have no doubt that many contentious discussions will be held around this film, and likely have already begun.  There is plenty of room to explore here.  The nature of vérité, subject matter, ethics and exploitation are all ripe and appropriate for discussion, which just makes it all the more fascinating.  Nothing like a film that spawns passionate and differing perspectives.  

C'mon C'mon - Featured Film of Interest - Highly Recommended

This film is absolutely endearing.  Directed by Mike Mills and integrating unique modes of production, aesthetics, and documentary-style inserts, it manages to maintain an intimacy tilting between unavoidable sadness and joyous hope, while never forgetting itself and never losing it's heart.  Yes indeed, this one hit just right.  

Ever since a little film called Thumbsucker popped up in the mid-2000's, I've been waiting to see just how good Mike Mills can be.  Thumbsucker was an excellent little indie film, original and quirky, that to some degree got overlooked, though well received by many critics and festivals.  Though it wasn't a film without missteps, it showed enormous hope for his future projects.  Then I just lost track of him, and he didn't quite garner the attention that I expected... until now.  The way I stated it to a close film ally and friend immediately after leaving the theater was, "Any critic that slams or disregards this film has no soul."

In large, C'mon C'mon is a film of raw honesty that serves as an ode to the intellect and awareness of young people, and the adults that so earnestly stumble, and at times transcend, to guide and raise them in this absurd world.  It is shot in pristine black and white that rivals the visual likes of La Haine, and the cinematographer and production designer take full advantage. It's a beautiful film inside and out.  

I would be remiss to end comments without noting the performances.  To no surprise, Joaquin Phoenix and Gaby Hoffmann gave invested, intimate performances while seeming effortless.  Woody Norman could not have been better in a youthful performance for the times, because it just didn't seem like a performance at all.

I had the privilege, and I do mean privilege, of screening C'mom C'mon at the 34th Annual Virginia Film Festival in my sacred, intimate film fest context.  Though there was some intensely quality competition in feature length narrative fiction, and admittedly a tough call for me, this film is indeed my favorite of the 2021 VAFF.

Link:  C'mon C'mon Film Review (2021), Roger Ebert.com

A Very Brief Analysis: The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson

VAFF Opening Night Film:  The French Dispatch

My One Line Review of The French Dispatch (because I just don't care enough to give it more):  

That was the most skillfully made TERRIBLE film that I have possibly ever seen.  

Just absolutely a terrible mumbled pretentious indulgent mess (woops, that was two lines.)

I saw some fantastic films at this year's VA Film Festival, possibly a couple that were truly great, and I'll be posting about many of them shortly. However, to my surprise, the Opening Night Film, Wes Anderson's "The French Dispatch," was definitely NOT one of them.

*I take no pleasure in critiquing a Wes Anderson film so harshly, as he has made a few that I adore, but I speak my truth and stand behind it.

The Card Counter - Featured Film of Interest - Highly Recommended

No American filmmaker embraces Robert Bresson's innovative mode of cinema, both theoretically and artistically, more than Paul Shrader.  He at times leans into near visual and stylistic replication while somehow maintaining earnest originality, no doubt due to his inimitable talents for screenwriting, original narrative concept and character.  He delves the same deep seas of human suffering, redemption and existential contemplation that Bresson navigated, yet never seems a parody.  He explores similar protagonists, utilizes minimalist visual strokes and seems to adhere to the sacred oath of obstructions, yet I would never argue Shrader anything less than an integral auteur of his own making.  He has had a writers hand and a filmmakers voice in the new wave and evolution of contemporary American cinema as much as anyone of the era.  

The review below takes an approach and tone worthy of the material, demonstrating a critical manner reminiscent of Bazin, particularly in considering the film within the context of Shrader's body of work and artistic nature.  Shrader is apparently not slowing down or falling under the weight of age anymore than Bresson did.  I could argue that this film coupled with First Reformed, his last directorial/writing effort, represent some of his finest accomplishments as an auteur.  As someone that holds Bresson's films, Notes on the Cinematographer, and the Taxi Driver script as sacred precedents of filmmaking, may I say, extraordinary work, sir.  I look forward to what comes next.

"For Schrader, French filmmaker Robert Bresson is the inexhaustible fount. He’s one of the three filmmakers treated in his thesis-turned-seminal-film-text Transcendental Style In Film: Dreyer, Ozu, Bresson and the one Schrader cribs from almost obsessively. (I’m not saying that like it’s a bad thing, honest.) Schrader calls “The Card Counter” one of his “a man sitting in a room” or “man at a table” films; that man originated with Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest.” That priest was a diarist, and his writings were reinforced with the words read aloud in voiceover. Schrader made Travis Bickle a diarist, and specified the same kind of voiceover, which “Taxi Driver” director Martin Scorsese buttressed with some visual cues out of Godard, who was well influenced by Bresson himself."  

Glenn Kenny September 10, 2021

Link:  The Card Counter Film Review (2021), 'Roger Ebert.com'

The Lobster - Featured Film of Interest - Trailer/Teaser

The Lobster (2015)

A new film from the mind of Yorgos Lanthimos, director of Dogtooth (2009) - nothing else need be said.  I'm quite excited about this film and Lanthimos' first stretch into English language cinema. Refer to my posts on Dogtooth (Kynodontas) for further exploration.

Links:  The Lobster Festival De Cannes

            The Lobster IMDB
            Cannes Review

Pixar's Inside Out - Featured Film of Interest - Trailer

Just hoping and dreaming that the sweet beautiful cerebral heart of Pixar from old (ummm, not really so old)  is still beating strong somewhere deep in that Disney machine, and nothing can keep its creative brew from eventually surfacing. From what I am hearing from young and older alike (even from the critics, analysts and media types), my dreams may be reality worthy.  However, the trailers and promotions look fun and interesting but do not yet leave me without some skepticism. Looking forward to it regardless.
It's been too long since Wall-E held me longing for more with full emotional investment thru 30 mins of near silence, or the Toy Story gang pulled my tears on cue as they reached for each others hands while facing fiery certain death, and, of course, Up (all of it). If nothing else, I will enjoy the anticipation of the possibility of that special Pixar magic that reaches the depths of my child's mind and heart, and captivates my adult curiosity.

Trailer:

1. Critic reviews
   A stunningly original concept that will not only delight and entertain the companys massive worldwide audience, but also promises to forever change the way people think about the way people think.

   Peter Debruge·Variety

   t’s not just a brilliant idea, but maybe the most conceptually daring movie the Bay Area animation house has ever produced. And that’s really saying something, what with WALL-E on the books.

   A.A. Dowd·A.V. Club

   As fabulous as the vocal performances are in “Inside Out,” it’s the clever writing and lush visuals that catapult it into greatness.

   Ann Hornaday·Washington Post

   Inside Out, which takes place mostly in the head of an 11-year-old girl named Riley, is a thrilling return to form for Pixar Animation Studios.

   A. O. Scott·New York Times

Links:  Pixar - Inside Out
            Inside Out
            IMDB - Inside Out

First Cousin Once Removed - Documentary Film of Interest - Highly Recommended

First Cousin Once Removed - by Alan Berliner, 2012, USA | 78 minutes

I saw this film at the Virginia Film Festival nearly two years ago, followed by a Q&A with director Alan Berliner.  It is a Poignant, Poetic, Echoing meditation on memory, life, time and the personal, philosophical considerations of existence in the moment and reflections of the past.  Berliner's Q&A was a bonus and privilege - he paralleled the film with thoughtful, generous, sometimes ambiguous and emotionally complex responses and unsolicited shares.

At the time, the film was relatively early-on in it's initial festival run.  I was new to Charlottesville and the VA Film Festival (by which I have become increasingly impressed), but I was aware of Berliner through some of his earlier films, thanks to one of my favorite film professors/friend, which gratefully drew me to the screening.  The film has since received relatively wide critical acclaim, though still remains somewhat obscure.  It is now promoted, distributed and exhibited through HBO Documentaries (well deserved and hopefully opens a wide audience).

Extraordinary filmmaking and still resonating in my head. An honest, personal profile, not only of the life of a brilliant man, Honig (and the duality of that brilliance), in the depths of Alzheimer's, but of life in general.  Alzheimer's is rarely mentioned, but echoes through the film in abstract subtle trembles that are both haunting and oddly elating in life-affirmation. Truly unique, beautiful piece of work and experience, for the filmmaker and for us.  The most effective, expansive and broadly reflective documentary that I have seen in years. Highly recommended, to say the least.

Continue reading for complete Synopsis, Review and Trailer.

-Synopsis:
"Sometime in the new millennium, Edwin Honig—the distinguished poet, translator, critic and university professor—began showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease, which gradually but inexorably brought on the loss of his memory, command of language and relation to the past. Filmmaker Alan Berliner—for whom Honig was a cousin, a friend and a mentor—documented their meetings over five years; his new film chronicles the steady decline of Honig’s mind and body, but also the strength and stamina of his spirit, as well as his innate charm and wonderfully playful way with words and sounds. Occasional moments of lucidity offer an insight as to the ways in which Honig attempts to make sense out of what is happening to him. First Cousin Once Removed is an unflinching essay on the fragility of being human, and a stark reminder of the profound role that memory plays in all of our lives."

From: New York Film Festival (2012)

-Review:  

Devastating and Philosophical, Alan Berliner's Alzheimer's Portrait 'First Cousin Once Removed' Is His Best Movie

By Eric Kohn

Documentarian Alan Berliner is frequently the focus of his movies, but his intentions extend beyond his neuroses. Rather than the star of the show, he's a vessel for bigger ideas and evades the perils of self-indulgence that could result from putting himself in front of the camera.

That tricky balance is on display better than ever in the stirring "First Cousin Once Removed," which deepens an oeuvre that has already dealt with the tender issues of father-son relationships ("Nobody's Business") and insomnia ("Wide Awake") by exploring his fears of senility to devastating effect. Using a powerful focal point to manifest the movie's central concerns, Berliner makes his interest in the topic relevant to everyone.

His case study is Edwin Honig, the first cousin of Berliner's mother, a bond that gives the movie its title. But there's more about Honig -- once a world-class poet and founder of Brown University's creative writing program -- that has been removed beyond his relationship to the filmmaker. Suffering from Alzheimer's disease before the movie begins, Honig has lost grasp of his identity or any firm understanding of his relationships to those around him. Still haunted from his own father's death from the disease, Berliner sets out to understand the nature of Honig's increasing frailty by working to unlock the older man's dwindling memories.

Equal parts psychological mystery and lyrical treatise on the passage of time, "First Cousin Once Removed" predominantly centers on Berliner's interrogation of Honig in his Rhode Island home during various stages of his condition (the specific chronology remains unclear). From the outset, Berliner utilizes an aggressively fractured narrative that replicates his subject's state of confusion by showing the filmmaker arriving at Honig's home several times in succession with various results: Sometimes Honig recognizes his relative, and other times Berliner only gets a blank stare. But in even when he lacks complete lucidity, Honig still has the capacity to grapple with his deteriorating state. "I know there's a past and I know that I lived it," he said, leaving much else up for discussion.  
Continue reading:  Indiewire Review

-Trailer:

White God ("Fehér isten") - Featured Film of Interest -Trailer

Trailer for White God (2014), a Hungarian film directed by Kornel Mundruczo, and recipient of the prize Un Certain Regard 2014 at Cannes.  I am thoroughly intrigued by the concept and visuals, and in bewilderment that they were successful in wrangling so many dogs for the film.  Nearly none of the animal shots were CG, and it seems as if great care was taken to assure ethical conditions for the furrier performers - very aspiring accomplishment.  I look forward to screening it soon, hoping for a big screen opportunity.

Relevant Film Quote/ Highly Recommended Film of Interest - Moonrise Kingdom, by Wes Anderson

Suzy:  "Was he a good dog?"
Sam:   "Who's to say. 
             But he did't deserve to die this way."

Moonrise Kingdom, written by Wes Anderson

Link: http://www.moonrisekingdom.com/#home            

The Master - Featured Film of Interest - Trailer

The recently released trailer for The Master, PT Anderson's most recent work (starring Philip Seymour Hoffman) - I am quite excited about this film.

Follow the Link:  Village Voice - The Master Trailer

Take Shelter by Jeff Nichols - Featured Film of Interest

Jeff Nichols is a rising independent filmmaker (something we don't hear enough of in recent years) based out of Austin, TX - our home town. His first feature film, Shotgun Stories, was shot in the true paradigm of early 90's independent cinema, sweat and tears and penniless scraping with a lot of gumption, and it is a truly impressive accomplishment as well as a thoughtful, cinematically intelligent, and all around excellent first feature.  Take Shelter, Nichols' second feature (budgeted at quite a bit more than his first but still relatively minimal) has received accolades and awards throughout its festival run, including quite a bit of notoriety at Cannes. It is now set for an American release and it is receiving predominately rave reviews and positive response.  This is certainly one of my top films of interest set for release, and not just for local loyalty - the possibility of honest, interesting storytelling with high cinematic awareness is very promising. I encourage all to look up the release dates in your city or area (September 30 in many places) and check this one out - I'm pretty sure it will be worth it. Below is a review by David Edelsten for NPR Movies.

Dark Skies: Jeff Nichols' haunting Take Shelter centers on an Ohio man (Michael Shannon, with Tova Stewart) plagued with nightmares about a coming apocalypse.

An Atmospheric 'Shelter' For Era Full Of Foreboding

by DAVID EDELSTEIN

It's easy to giggle at the hero of Jeff Nichols' second feature, Take Shelter. Michael Shannon is Curtis, a crew chief for an Ohio sand-mining company who's ravaged by apocalyptic visions and nightmares. He's wiggy to start with and increasingly more unhinged, on a switchback track to madness that threatens to devastate his family. Curtis sees funnel clouds, locusts, even people staggering through the night like zombies. He knows it might all be in his head: His mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia at about the same age he is now. But in the end, he follows his dreams. He devotes his hours — and the family's little money — to enlarging the storm shelter in his backyard to prepare for whatever's coming.

Curtis is losing it big time — yet his anxieties mirror things in the air right now, from fear of unemployment and tenuous medical coverage to ever more floods and hurricanes. It's a movie for an era in which the Book of Revelation has made a comeback.

The danger in casting Shannon, with his haunted eyes and history playing demented characters in such films as Bug and Revolutionary Road, is that his latest unraveling might seem like déjà vu. But the actor is a truly anguished presence, and director Nichols makes sure what's eating Curtis is eating you, too. He breaks down scenes into images of destruction — not just obvious ones, like funnel clouds and spiderwebs of lightning across the Ohio fields, but chains and valves and shovels scoring the earth. In many scenes, Nichols and his cinematographer, Adam Stone, evoke the feeling of being inside a house staring out at a deluge — the kind of will-it-never-stop rain that makes even home sweet home seem like an emergency shelter.

Take Shelter would seem as obvious as its title if the early scenes weren't so tenderly directed. Curtis' tireless wife, Samantha, who sells homemade crafts at flea markets, is played by Jessica Chastain, a vivid actress who made a huge impression in Jolene, and who does marvelous work inThe Debt and even The Tree of Life, where's she playing a symbol. The couple have a deaf little girl, Hannah, played by Tova Stewart, who's in a lonely world of her own and has a quietly beseeching presence. When Curtis pens the family dog, Red, in the back after a bad dream and puts the money for his daughter's cochlear implant at risk by enlarging that shelter, Samantha finally turns on him.

"Explain that to me," she rages. "Please. Tell me something that helps me understand why you're being like this."

"There's nothing to explain," he says.

Take Shelter didn't come from nowhere. Jeff Nichols' doomsday view was on display in his 2007 movie, Shotgun Stories, which few people saw but I put on my 10-best list. That film, which also starred Shannon, took place in the South and centered on a tragic feud between two sets of half-brothers. It captured the connection between fatherlessness and the impulse to wreak vengeance like no American film I've seen.

Nichols' feelers are supernaturally acute, but I'm ambivalent about the end of Take Shelter. I found the movie scarier when it was vague, amorphous — a horror film without a literal monster. But this is still a terrific piece of work. Nichols has composed nothing less than a symphony of modern American bad vibes. (Recommended)

For more info and to listen to the story, follow the Link:  NPR Movies

American: The Bill Hicks Story - Highly Recommended Film of Interest - Trailer

Link:  American: The Bill Hicks Story
- an extraordinary documentary of Bill's life, professionally and personally (really one in the same). The filmmakers utilize and interweave multiple filmmaking techniques including animation, still image manipulation, and other experimental modes as well as plenty of traditional interview footage and, of course, live stage footage of Bill. It received endless interest and acclaim on its film festival run, was picked up for a limited release, and is now being distributed on dvd. It can currently be viewed on Netflix Instant Play. I will be posting more about the film and the particularly interesting screening that I had the privilege of attending here in Austin with the filmmakers (Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas)  in attendance as well as an extra treat for the audience. Highly recommended.