By: Henry J. Fromage –
Post-film festival gluttony, I return to watching 2021 new releases- the market is really starting to heat up!
497. The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
This 45 minute short about, well, the closing of a GM plant in Ohio was documentarians Steve Bognar & Julia Reichert’s first date with Oscar- in the Documentary Short Subject field before breaking through with a win for American Factory. It’s hard not to get swept up in the emotions of these hard-working folks and their town who were told they had a career and a future only to have it ripped away. Two Beers.
498. The Amusement Park
Thought lost for years, this early George Romero film was commissioned by The Lutheran Society to shine a light on the plight of the elderly in modern society, then shelved when George A. Romero delivered them… wait for it… a horror film. The thing is, he and lead actor Lincoln Maazel deliver beautifully on what they were asked to do – evocatively putting you in the shoes of a harried, abused, misunderstood, and ignored elderly person in a carnival of quotidian horrors. Hell yes, it’s disturbing, that’s the point. Two Beers.
499. Caveat
This horror, also coming soon to Shudder like the previous, does have one thing going for it- it nails a creepy atmosphere, starting with that unnerving little fucker in the picture- a drumming rabbit doll that seems to be semi-sentient and only starts rat-a-tatting seemingly when something dark and awful is near. The story may be too in love with twistiness to really satisfy, but if general creeps are your thing, this’ll get the job done. Three Beers.
500. The Woman in the Window
The original novel of the same name was reportedly written expressly to capitalize on the success of similar-named unreliable narrator murder mysteries like The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl, and like those two, it attracted some A-list talent and a director who’s flirted with Oscar. This time it’s Joe Wright and Amy Adams, and like Tate Taylor and Emily Blunt before them, they fail to make something compelling from airport page-turner material. Shamelessly derivative, the only real mystery here is how someone like Amy Adams thought this was worth wasting her time on. As an at times flashily-shot crime film that won’t strain your brain, though, there’s worse out there. Four Beers.
501. French Exit
Practically the only film even scratching at the margins of the Oscar race last year that I missed seeing, last week it finally hit streaming. Michelle Pfeiffer is indeed a deliciously arch force of nature in this, and Azazel Jacobs shows a wittily verbose new directorial voice that I’d love to see more of. The story does tend to go off in odd directions that lean more silly than intriguingly bizarre, but the end result is fun enough to recommend. Three Beers.
502. High Ground
Aussie oaters tend to be a bit more hard-edged and bloody than their American counterparts, colored by their own shameful history with the continent’s Aboriginal peoples. This film is a beautifully shot yet brutal example of the form, about a young man (Sean Mununggurr) who agrees to join the man who saved him as a kid (Simon Baker, gruffer than you’d imagine) in tracking down an aboriginal man on the warpath who he has a history with. Not nearly as good as, but a very interesting companion piece to The Nightingale. Two Beers.
503. The Magnitude of All Things
I skipped this at DocLands, only to see it win top prize there, so when it showed up on the slate of another film festival I could nab tickets from (hint: Eventive is the platform underpinning most regional film festivals out there), I did. Jennifer Abbott combines and intertwines two great griefs in her life- the loss of her sister to cancer and the ongoing loss of our planet to climate change, examining in particular how raw the latter also is for interviewees from Greta Thunberg to the former Prime Minister of Tuvalu, which is slipping beneath the sea by the day. Accompanied by stunning imagery, this all works better than perhaps it should, particularly on an emotional level. Two Beers.
504. The Church Forests of Ethiopia
This short coupled with the above film is about another environmental subject- the titular church forests of Ethiopia, once part of rolling hillside country replete with forest and now little oases in vast drought-prone farmland. They remain because Ethiopian Orthodox churches must be surrounded by forest, but as agriculture advances many have turned to fencing not the church itself, but what remains of the forest around it- a fortress of greenery in a vast plain of brown. Two Beers.
505. Skull: The Mask
Shudder has just started sending me screeners, and I watch most of ’em, even though I’m a subscriber as well (as a 5 buck a month add-on, it’s a no-brainer). Well, they ain’t all winners, and even though this Brazilian horror has a catchy premise that ensnared me in the first place- a Pre-Columbian eldritch monster possesses people via a freaky skull mask and sends them after fresh, delicious hearts- it’s mostly just an excuse for faux-grindhouse aesthetics and non-stop gorehounding. If that’s your bag, though, then you may dig this. Four Beers.
506. Marighella
Brazilian actor Wagner Moura (mostly known for Spanish-language roles like Narcos ever since his Elite Squad breakout, strangely) gets in the director’s chair for the first time in this story of Revolutionary Carlos Marighella. He creates a film of epic scope befitting its subject- a thinker, writer, politician, and proponent of armed insurrection who fought against the 21 year Brazilian Military Dictatorship that ousted the democratically elected government in a 1964 (U.S.-backed, of course) coup. Musician and actor Seu Jorge is tremendous in the title role, and Moura directs with confidence and muscle- a promising debut. Two Beers.
507. Riders of Justice
Mads Mikkelsen reunites with his Men & Chicken director Anders Thomas Jensen in another deeply black comedy in an entirely different register. You’d be forgiven for not thinking this is a comedy at all with its Eurorevenge plot setup, and then forgiven again for not being able to forsee the ultimately quite different film it becomes, but it’s worth taking the ride along with it (and don’t worry, it’s far better than Men & Chicken, if that suddenly made you take pause). Mikkelsen as always is tremendous as well. Two Beers.
508. The Interviewees
This Korean indie from last year is the result of a wide sweep I did for Korean films at the beginning of this one, and it’s been a pretty mixed bag as you’d expect when your only requirement for watching a film is the language it’s in. This one is set in 2220 Seoul, a future in which synthetic clones are a reality, covered by your standard insurance, and soaking up jobs from an already overstretched job market. This is as indie as it gets, interpolating what appear to be both fake and real interviews on various philosophical subjects with the main plot, which is basically just relayed via conversation by the two clearly pro actors in the cast. Four Beers.
509. Butter on the Latch
The Criterion Channel has a Josephine Decker retrospective going this month, which basically includes everything she’s done, including shorts, except for Madeline’s Madeline, which I’ve heard great things about, and Shirley which I’ve written great things about. This is her feature debut, an odd mix of psychedelic and mumblecore about two friends who have a falling out on a camping trip when a man gets in between them. It really hits at times, but doesn’t come together into anything that makes a whole lot of sense. Three Beers.
510. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely
This fellow barely over an hour feature from the next year was packaged with it on release, and showcases more polish and straightforward (although far more fucked up) storytelling. A city-slicker signs on as a farmhand for a disrespectful farmer and his adult daughter with a whole breadbasket of undoubtedly DSM-defined issues that brought the yes, I know, un-PC yet I think fitting phrase “violently retarded” to mind- or maybe “retardedly violent”- in any case she has a blood lust that is all mixed up in just plain old lust. Flick sure looks good and never loses your attention, though. Four Beers.
511. Flames
A few years later Decker collaborated with her then-boyfriend Zefrey Throwell on a documentary about their relationship, which ends up about as well as you expect it will. It’s also literally as revealing as you can imagine- literally- which put me off for the first third plus until things start to hit the rocks and get interesting. By the end you feel like you’ve been through the ringer, too, and it saves its best, most meta touches for last. Altogether as brave and fascinating as perhaps they thought they were being in the beginning. Three Beers.
512. Squeezebox
Decker’s first short (in the collection at least) is very much a whatsit- Criterion’s description is “A girl experiences a strange and surreal encounter in an accordion shop.” and that’s about right. The accordion material almost feels like a documentary, or family film footage, and when it gets weird it keeps that homespun feel. Four Beers.
513. Me the Terrible
The next short in the collection headlines a young girl pirate who takes her trust teddy bear and sets out to conquer the island of Manhattan. Decker goes with full-on Sweding here, filling the runtime with inventively low-rent and high-effort animation and special effects to reflect her little pirate’s perspective. Imaginative and fun. Two Beers.
514. First Day Out
Decker then applied that same imaginative, perspective-driven fantasy spectacle to a much different subject- prisoners recounting the stories of their first days out of prison- that brief period of pure joy in between inhumanity and the harsh realities of rejoining society. The mix is a beautifully realized example of how to marry form and function in unexpected ways. Two Beers.
515. The Mask Task
The final short in the collection is nearly fully documentary, although Decker does mix things up in her typical artsy fashion. The premise is a childhood developmental study that entails putting on various masks and seeing how children react to them. That in itself is oddly fascinating even without the Japanese masks and choreography that zazzs things up a bit. Two Beers.
516. The Mystery of the Leaping Fish
Another short film, this one hies from all the way back in 1916, but as you can see from that big ‘ol honking can labeled “COCAINE” above, druggie humor wasn’t invented by Cheech and Chong. The whole premise is “What if Sherlock Holmes, but fueled entirely by cocaine plus whatever drugs he stumbles across in the course of his investigations?”. Yeah, it’s great. Two Beers.
517. The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Phil Lord & Christopher Miller strike again, this time from the producer’s seat, on this animated film that Netflix snapped up from Sony. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that nobody’s super interested in rolling the dice on original properties right now, but it’s Sony’s loss, as this is every bit as funny and unexpectedly poignant as we’ve come to expect Lord & Miller projects to be. All the internet stuff may already be aging poorly as we speak, but when you couple it with good characterwork and an anarchic comic sensibility, this will be worth all the rewatches the kids will likely demand as well. Two Beers.
518. Army of the Dead
Zack Snyder pivots from the what might have been dourness of his DC comic universe to a Las Vegas-set property he saw fit to plaster with neon pink titles while a zombie apocalypse descends on ‘ol Sin City. That’s just the credits, though, as the main course is an Oceans Eleven/Wild Bunch heist film with, yes, zombies, but also some new lore that folks will either hate or embrace and an ensemble as adept at comic asides as brawny action. It doesn’t necessarily break any molds, but it’s a damn fun time at the movies, courtesy, again, of Netflix. Two Beers.
519. The Unthinkable
This is another disaster film with a budget that punches way above its belt, this time from Sweden. The subject, however, is a series of mysterious attacks that may be terrorism or the advent of something more widespread and conventional. Director Victor Danell keeps the perspective strictly on what his characters can observe themselves, which is both transporting and occasionally frustrating. It doesn’t help that the young man whose family drama is supposed to ground things is such a complete Men’s Rights-lookin’/actin’ asshole. Three Beers.
520. Les Mistons
This short (I’m not picking out shorts to watch on purpose, promise) is Francois Truffaut’s self-described “first real film”, a fairly straightforward story of a group of early teenage “mischief makers” and the young woman they’re obsessed with, to the prank-driven detriment of her summer romance with a dashing bad boy. It was an early look at Truffaut’s mix of Gallic cool and neorealist predilections. Two Beers.
521. Amistad
Yes, I’ve never seen this all the way through, so I finally gave it my full attention and found it to be an excellent (and rewardingly surprising- don’t look up the history first if you were ignorant to it like me) epic tale of a country and its ideals on trial. Spielberg himself has done it better elsewhere- there’s some Hollywood here for sure- but there’s no denying the power of the performances, particularly Djimon Hounsou, and the history is something that everyone should know. Three Beers.
522. Mainstream
Gia Coppola follows up the quite good Palo Alto after 7 years with this film about a wanna-be social media content producer (Maya Hawke) and the possibly homeless weirdo she finds that becomes her uninhibited star (Andrew Garfield), before that usual fall after the rise due to overinflated hubris occurs. In other words, the ingredients are there for an incisive satire of internet culture, including even one of those Paul brothers, but Coppola whiffs embarrassingly hard at every single pitch besides casting a perhaps overly game Garfield to star. Too bad. Five Beers.
523. The Badger
This Iranian thriller from the Maryland Film Festival (Eventive, I’m telling you, folks) tells the story of a harried mother whose young son is kidnapped and ransomed at the rate of 10 Bitcoin- which she doesn’t even know what that is, but knows how to Google the exchange rate- which she needs to get together by that evening. The people who may have enough scratch to contribute to that sum she has extreme reluctance to turn to for various reasons, but we watch those barriers be beaten down (perhaps too reluctantly considering the circumstances, frankly) as the clock ticks inexorably on. It’s also got a killer twist. Three Beers.
524. Gun Crazy
This 1950 thriller is about a, well, gun-crazy young man who was sent to a reform school after stealing a gun from a store window, then returns years later post-Army discharge to fall in love with a trick shot specialist at a travelling carnival. When the carnival owner with his own designs on the lady finds out, they find themselves jobless, and with only the way of the gun to live by. Joseph H. Lewis directs with a relentless forward momentum and an eye underplaying but never ignoring the salacious that Arthur Penn would make explicit 17 years later in his clearly indebted Bonnie and Clyde, kicking off New Hollywood in the process. Two Beers.
525. The Damned
Criterion is rotating out two Luchino Visconti classics this month, and he’s a director I’ve yet to give the shrift he deserves by reputation. This 1969 film follows a German industrialist family on the eve of Hitler and the Nazi Party’s seizure of power, on through a degradation of both their family and their nation as evil twists and perverts them. This is one of those better in theory than in practice loglines, though, as there’s no character you can empathize with from the outset, so instead of arcs we get (likely truer to life, frankly) flat lines of evil that become a slog to follow to the inevitable conclusion. Four Beers.
526. Death in Venice
This film two years later is based on Thomas Mann’s famous novella about a lauded composer who travels to Venice at the turn of the century in a bid to help cure unspecified ailments. There he becomes obsessed with a blonde, sun-kissed young teen boy while a cholera outbreak rages in the city outside their posh hotel. It all plays quite a bit like Gay Lolita as Visconti treats the material, though (and hearing about the teen actor’s experiences during and after the filming add an extra layer of ick). I’ll have to read the source novel to compare (Kubrick’s Lolita failed to land what made that novel great (despite being even ickier)- these are hard adaptations). Four Beers.
527. Monster
This adaptation of an award-winning YA novel debuted at Sundance way back in 2018, but is just now coming to Netflix despite starring actors on the rise like Kelvin Harrison, Jharrel Jerome, and John David Washington who had buzzy projects that would have been more logical release partners in the last year (not to mention the subject- a mildly twisty narrative about a young black man who is tried as an accomplice for a bodega robbery that resulted in a death). This type of subject has even been done better since it’s original release, but come to watch the across-the-board highly qualified cast (also including Jeffrey Wright, Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Ehle, Tim Blake Nelson, A$AP Rocky, and Nas) do their thing. Three Beers.
528. Georgetown
Speaking of subjects that have been done better earlier, Christoph Waltz stars for, well, himself in his directorial debut as a smarmy social climber who either has lived a charmed life or a life that doesn’t at all resemble the stories he tells, who is implicated in the death of his much older wife (Vanessa Redgrave). Waltz the director plays to Waltz the actor’s strengths, which keeps things engaging, but you can’t escape the feeling that maybe more could have been wrung out of this true story. Three Beers.
529. Cooley High
This 1975 classic from Michael Schultz and Eric Monte as director and writer respectively is a high school dramedy steeped in their experiences growing up in the 1960s Lake Michigan metro area (Schultz is from Milwaukee and Monte is from Chicago, where the film is very specifically set). At turns hilarious and brutally realistic, it set a clear template for the socially conscious black films from Spike Lee, John Singleton, and the Hughes Brothers in subsequent decades. Two Beers.
530. Der Verlorene (The Lost One)
Peter Lorre’s one and only directed stars himself as a Nazi researcher who gets away with killing his wife thanks to his importance to the cause. Post-war, racked with guilt and self-loathing, he wanders the countryside on a serial killing spree. This all sounds like prime Lorre material, but he chooses to render the story in nested flashbacks that make things more confusing than they really need to be without working to hide and reveal information in an attention-grabbing manner. Still, Lorre is spectacular as always. Three Beers.
531. Illusions
Julie Dash made this short film nearly a decade prior to her breakout feature Daughters of the Dust, and just last year it was added to the National Film Registry. Her film here is a period piece set in 1940s Hollywood, an industry busy churning out wartime propaganda and feel-good distractions, but racked by the kind of behind the scenes barriers that force women like protagonist Mignon Dupree to work twice as hard as her male counterparts and a Black singer Esther Jeeter to hider her talents behind white faces on the big screen. Dash packs an awful lot of heady ideas about Hollywood illusions then and today in a scant 34 minutes. Two Beers.
532. Borat: Supplemental Reportings
Amazon saw fit to cobble together, or let Sacha Baron Cohen cobble together, outtakes from the film and group them in two general categories- the several days he spent in quarantine with the passably affable if not clearly far from bright MAGA conspiracy theorists Jim and Jerry, and everything else. All Borat content is worth your time, and the little debunking videos for some of the most commonly spurious things Jim and Jerry utter is a nice touch, too. Two Beers.
533. Dawson City: Frozen Time
In 1978, workers excavating an old swimming pool in Dawson City in the Yukon uncovered 533 reels of film on nitrate stock, dating them to the Silent Film Era. Burying them in the permafrost unexpectedly preserved them for half a century or more, and in this documentary Bill Morrison constructs a primary history of both Dawson City and the world from the news reels and Hollywood films, some thought lost forever, in this amazing cache. It’s not your typical documentary approach, but it’s one that makes the utter most of this stunning primary material. Two Beers.
534. The Columnist
This short and bloody Dutch film is about an internet columnist who starts to let the gibbering apes of the internet comment boards get to her, and decides to do something about it that quickly turns into just straight murder, something she finds she has both a talent and a particular taste for. This had the same sort of almost humorous and unintellectual feel as Dexter, but at 86 minutes vs. 8 seasons, it’s just the right length. Three Beers.
