A 2010s List for Those That Couldn't Wait

[bamwc2]

I didn't mean to start a war over the the Strickland. I really liked The Duke of Burgundy on my first viewing, and included it on my top ten of the year. I haven't revisited it since I caught up with it about two years ago, but the more I thought of it, the more I realized that it was all kink and no kick. Like In Fabric, it's a meticulously crafted and aesthetically daring film, but it also struck me as hollow. The film spent its runtime building up atmosphere and showing what it can do...without really doing anything.

[knives]

knives, if you would like to offer a tangible reason to challenge the position, say in the form of an example of a good movie Ferrell was in, I'll gladly seek out said film if I haven't seen it already

bamwc2, that's true, I wasn't counting The Lego Movie

I was just being silly.

[Mr Sausage]

Drinking Buddies (Joe Swanberg, 2013): Drinking Buddies is often held up as the Swanberg film for people who hate Swanberg films.

I wasn't aware of that, but it was the first Swanberg I saw and the only one I really like a lot. I always chalked that up to relating strongly to the material and it being the first, before I delved deeper into his filmography and soured to most of his style. It's a great portrayal of functional alcoholics just 'being' without defaulting to diagnostic melodrama, and has a nice lived-in feel due to the characters picking their own wardrobes etc. and creating authentic people who are both banal and interesting (the latter quality absent from most of Swanberg's work) within that familiarity. I also saw this at the very end of my drinking career, when I was a part of that circle of craft beer aficionados, so it served to both romanticize and de-romanticize different aspects of the lifestyle, with honesty to each shade in slowing it down, and I greatly appreciated that balance. I wonder how it'd play for me today.

My first Swanberg as well, and I was impressed at how it traced a very specific complex relationship without resorting to theatrics or melodrama. Its low-key exploration of a charming but slightly fraught emotional space was refreshing. And not that I wasn't expecting otherwise, but Olivia Wilde was terrific in it. I enjoyed it enough to immediately seek out Digging For Fire, a movie with a fascinating premise, but it had none of Drinking Buddies' strengths. It just meandered around without finding anything to glue the disparate parts together. The movie needed to be worked out in advance; it wasn't the kind of thing that can be found in successive improv sessions. It needed thematic and structural cohesion to work.

I still might check out Win It All. Seems like it might play to Swanberg's strengths.

[therewillbeblus]

I was just being silly.

Damn, I was hoping one of his critical stinkers was actually an overlooked comedy to give me a needed laugh this week

I still might check out Win It All. Seems like it might play to Swanberg's strengths.

I was also looking forward to Win It All, thinking he'd bring some pared-down authenticity to gambling addiction's prosaic side, but instead of being quietly interesting it was just dull. Maybe you'll get something more out of it.

Ditto on Digging For Fire's letdown for similar reasons, plus how can you miss so hard with that cast? I think Happy Christmas was okay, but for the love of god don't see his pre-Drinking Buddies work.

[knives]

I was just being silly.

Damn, I was hoping one of his critical stinkers was actually an overlooked comedy to give me a needed laugh this week

In that case I do recommend Casa de mi Padre as a fun goof that effectively replicates a certain kind of singing cowboy melodrama. While I only would place The Legomovie as great I enjoy a few of his movies from the past decade.

[Maltic]

Brian -- Not really certain that Turkey is still a genuinely secular nation -- too much control has passed to religious fundamentalists. Mustang made me profoundly sad.

Nebraska, especially Dern's performance, seemed incredibly "real".

Bruce Dern was on Joe Dante's podcast the other day. Fun anecdotes, bits about Nebraska too.

[therewillbeblus]

I do recommend Casa de mi Padre as a fun goof that effectively replicates a certain kind of singing cowboy melodrama.

I totally forgot about Casa de mi Padre- I was really looking forward to that one actually, following it during production. it's a really good idea for a movie, but I felt let down by it. I should give it another go one of these days now that expectations are nullified.

[therewillbeblus]

Since we're sorta on this topic, I'm going to make a plug for my favorite Dumb Comedy of the decade: MacGruber. It takes a short while to get going but ventures to some really creative places and only gets better with repeat viewings.

SpoilerShow

KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392KFBR392

[DarkImbecile]

I didn't mean to start a war over the the Strickland. I really liked The Duke of Burgundy on my first viewing, and included it on my top ten of the year. I haven't revisited it since I caught up with it about two years ago, but the more I thought of it, the more I realized that it was all kink and no kick. Like In Fabric, it's a meticulously crafted and aesthetically daring film, but it also struck me as hollow. The film spent its runtime building up atmosphere and showing what it can do...without really doing anything.

I would really recommend revisiting Duke, because as Tommaso describes, underneath the kink, surreal imagery, and stylish affectations are plenty of trenchant observations about relationships more generally, and I’ve only grown to appreciate the two lead performances more each time I’ve seen it. It’ll rank highly on my list as well.

[Lemmy Caution]

Katalin Varga is terrific. I think swo and I were the big booster of that film on this board.
Berberian Sound Studio just didn't hold my interest. While Duke of Burgundy doesn't sound like my kind of film (but who knows?) But I'll definitely try to get hold of In Fabric.
But I found Katalin Varga very powerful and mesmerizing. And have meant to keep tabs on Strickland.

[swo17]

So actually Duke of Burgundy is the Strickland that's resonated with me the least. Katalin Varga and In Fabric are my favorites (and I have MichaelB to thank for his enthusiastic review of the former, turning me on to Strickland in the first place). I should probably rewatch all of them in short order for this list

[therewillbeblus]

I'd put Berberian Sound Studio last, but otherwise Katalin Varga and In Fabric are easily my favorites, for entirely different reasons- though they both do something very.. different. Strickland's explanation for his artistic intent in Katalin Varga is incredibly mature, and clearly defined without being didactic, but I believe that film is not eligible for this list

[swo17]

Yes, Katalin Varga is from the prior decade. And actually, I just rewatched BSS and had forgotten how fun and masterfully assembled it was. Definitely a contender!

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

The Challenge (Yuri Ancarani, 2016): Ostensibly a documentary about the exploits of Qatar's ungodly rich and apparently interminably bored ruling class, Yuri Ancarani blends conventional cinema verite with artistic videography to create a hybrid product unlike anything I've ever seen before. The film opens with a static long shot of an aerodrome with dozens, if not hundreds, of falcons in it. No explanation is ever given for it as the camera lingers on the unedited footage for several minutes, but one can assume that it’s the repository for the birds we see auctioned off later in the film. As it turns out, falcons are perhaps the overriding theme in the work as we see them throughout. Aside from the aforementioned scenes, there's one man who decided to spend his wealth on equipping his private jet with five perches for his birds to travel with him in style. There's also footage--some of the most unique imagery in a film composed almost entirely of unique imagery--of shots captured from a falcon's point of view. They aren't the only animals to show up though. One man races through the desert with a cheetah seated next to him in his Lamborghini. Later we see the two reclining on a couch while a second man takes snapshots of them. If you ever wanted to see opulence taken to absurd heights, then this is the movie for you. As we learn, even the head of the nation's Hell's Angels chapter is able to afford a gold-plated Harley Davidson. One of the things that separates this from traditional documentaries is its lack of dialogue. We don't hear anyone speak until about halfway into the film, and there's exceedingly little speech after that. This is my first experience with the work of Ancarani, and I found it exhilarating. I look forward to tracking down his other films.

The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra, 2016): New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as the aging 17th century monarch who returned from a hunt with leg pain that ultimately led to his demise. The title is truth in advertising as we trace King Louis's final days when he goes from moribund ruler who's still able to give lengthy monologues to near death when he can do nothing but moan and gasp for breath. We also see doctors make futile attempts to treat him and bureaucrats wring their hands over what his passing will mean for France, but that's about it. This chamber piece is almost exclusively limited to a single room, with its main character lying supine in bed for its duration. It doesn't exactly sound like thrilling cinema, but if we're able to detach ourselves from the thrill-a-minute pacing of the modern Hollywood blockbuster, then it's possible to appreciate what director Albert Serra does here. Like most members of modern society, I'm fairly far removed from death. I've never seen anyone die in person, largely due to the fact that the dying are segregated off into hospitals or home hospice care. Perhaps that's why I found Allan King's documentary Dying at Grace so unsettling. Even fictional expressions of the dying process that are as drawn out and emphasized as it is here can be unsettling.

The King (Eugene Jarecki, 2017): Starting in Tupelo, MS, the town where Elvis Presley spent the formative years of his life, documentarian Eugene Jarecki begins his work with the restoration of the musician's 1963 Rolls Royce. The film consists mainly in the use of archival footage and a procession of interview subjects, many of whom, for some reason, are interviewed while cruising around in The King's car. Some of the subjects like Chuck D, who penned a notoriously caustic but apt line about Presley in Fight the Power, feel like natural choices. Others, like James Carville or Alec Baldwin, might leave you scratching your head. There's a moment in this big, bright, and colorful exploration of The King, when a member of the crew asks Jarecki why he's making the film. It's a fair enough question given the fact that we aren't exactly lacking in examinations of Presley's biography. The answer, it would seem, is that in a way the story of Elvis is the story of America itself. Starting off as a dirt poor laborer, Presley seemingly fulfilled the mythical American Dream in true Horatio Alger fashion, by building off of the one talent he had in life. However, as several of the commentators duly note, what got him there wasn't natural ability alone, but his affinity for and reappropriation of Black music. Our country's history is one of a lengthy horror committed against people of African heritage. This mistreatment gave rise to many things, including the unique arts that Presley liberally borrowed from. Even Presley's time as an Army private stationed in Germany is used to reflect on American imperialism. While Elvis was both an individual person and a cultural phenomenon, Jarecki attempts to make the case that he's all of us as well.

Menashe (Joshua Z Weinstein, 2017): Set in the insular Hasidic community of Brooklyn, Joshua Z Weinstein's film tells the story of Menashe (Menashe Lustig), an underemployed widower who is looked down upon by members of his community and feels suffocated by some of the most rigid norms that govern his community. Menashe's marriage was an unhappy and unloving one that was arranged by his and his bride's parents. The only good thing to come from it is the birth of their son Rieven (Ruben Niborski). Unfortunately, according to the rules of Hasidim, a boy cannot attend a yeshiva unless he resides in a household with two parents, so Rieven spends his days living with his hectoring uncle Eizik (Yoel Weisshaus). Unhappy with the arrangement, Menashe appeals to the community's rabbi and is granted a week with his son. Menashe is clearly a loving father, but also sticks out like a sore thumb in his community. Nowhere is this better observed than in the scene where Menashe entertains Rieven during the boy's Torah study by bringing a passage to life with animal noises. Despite Menashe's issues of assimilation, it would be quite mistaken to think that the film is overly critical of the Hasidic community. Instead, it seems to have a more humanistic message about letting people live their lives as they see fit. The scene between Menashe and his Hispanic coworkers is a truly beautiful demonstration of this. I thought that Lustig did a phenomenal job in the title role, and looked him up to see what else he was in. I was shocked to not only see that he's a non-professional actor, but also that the film is a fictionalized account of his own story! Lustig has a few subsequent roles. I hope that he keeps up with acting, because he's terrific here!

Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016): I first encountered Bertrand Bonello's work at the outset of the project when I caught up with Zombi Child on the Criterion Channel. I liked it, but it didn't prepare me for this. Nocturama begins with nearly 25 minutes of its characters silently moving about the streets and subways of Paris. We don't know why at the time, but we later learn that they're part of a terror cell composed of bourgeois students. We never really learn their motivation for the bombings they're about to commit outside of some vague allusions to Pinochet and the CIA. We get the impression that this is a form of play acting for the majority of those in the group. Lead by the inchoate ideas of leader David (Finnegan Oldfield), the rest feel a general dissatisfaction with the French political system for reasons that they can't quite articulate after being raised on a diet lionizing radicals. Most of the members seem to go along for the ride more out of a fear of rejection than any actual political commitments. Their immaturity becomes even more pronounced when, in the second half of the movie, the surviving members of the crew hole up in a department store overnight. Set to the beat of diagetic pop songs, the kids go wild stealing clothes, playing with toy guns, gorging themselves on wine, and generally just having a good time. I was a bit confused by the film's ending though,

SpoilerShow

when a team of French police retake the store, killing everyone. Most of the teenagers make an attempt to surrender, but are still shot anyway. Why? Is this standard procedure in French policing? Do they really not take any prisoners when it comes to terror suspects? Not only is that a gross violation of human rights, it also is terrible policing since you can't interrogate them to find out if any more attacks are forthcoming!

Both brutal and sardonic, this is an unforgettable film.

Pasolini (Abel Ferrara, 2014): Abel Ferrara's retelling of the last day in the life of Pier Paolo Pasolini (Willem Dafoe) was stuck in distribution hell for several years. It wasn't the strongest inductive inference, but I was worried that it was a sign that it wasn't very good. Now that I've seen it, those fears were mostly misplaced. It's no masterpiece, but it is one of Ferrara's better films. Having the American Dafoe play the Italian Pasolini may seem like a strange choice at first, but he does bear an undeniable resemblance to the director. For some reason, Dafoe speaks most of his lines in English while the rest of the cast gives their performances in Italian. Hearing Dafoe play the Bolognese Pasolini in his own midwestern accent is a very strange choice, made even more bizarre by the fact that Dafoe does give some lines in Italian. I doubt its very good Italian (though I'm certainly in no place to judge), but it shows that he's more than capable of preforming in the correct language. A little consistency would have been nice. The film progresses from his giving an interview, going through edits of Salo, working on his unfinished novel Petrolio, dining with underage prostitute Pino Pelosi, and his murder on the beach. The imagining of a scene from Petrolio is some of the best filmmaking Ferrara has ever done. It was also great to see Ninetto Davoli again. I guess he's kept himself busy in Italian cinema, but I haven't seen him in anything since Arabian Nights. He was still instantly recognizable.

Right Now, Wrong Then (Sang-soo Hong, 2015): This is the third film of Sang-soo Hong's I've watched for the project, and the third that's about a movie director and the time he spends with an attractive woman. I might just be grasping at straws, but I feel like there might be a pattern here. This time the film is divided into two separate stories with the same initial structure, individually entitled "Right Then, Wrong Now” and “Right Now, Wrong Then”. Both feature director Ham Chun-su (Jung Jae-young) who travels to Suwon to present a screening of one of his films. Arriving in town a day early, he meets professional artist Yoon Hee-jung, played by Hong regular Kim Min-hee. She recognizes his name, but is unfamiliar with his work. The two hit it off, and spend all day together having a good time. The two segments diverge from there. I have to admit that I knew nothing about the film before I began watching and was very confused when the second segment began, but just like his In Another Country, Hong proves adept at playing with structure. Also like that one, this is also a fascinating experiment that plays around with possibilities that most American movies won't ever consider.

[therewillbeblus]

Definitely return to Right Now, Wrong Then after consuming more Hong- it can be viewed as a thesis for his worldview, or more aptly his most passionate and confident swallowing of his personality- contradictions, flaws, and all- but helps if you have more chronological markers and also know the significance of the film reflecting his personal life at that time

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:

30/30 Vision: 3 Decades of Strand Releasing (Andrew Ahn, et al., 2019): In 2019 independent movie distributor Strand Releasing celebrated their thirtieth anniversary. Known as much for their commitment to LGBTQ filmmakers as they are for their imports of directors like Manoel de Oliveira and Lino Brocka, a project was commissioned to mark this milestone by asking thirty different directors to shoot shorts averaging about a minute runtime. Unsurprisingly the filmmakers taking part are a scattered mixture of the big names of queer cinema, international arthouse directors, and even some US directors working on the fringes of the indy scene. Most of the shorts have nothing to do with Strand itself, with the exception of John Waters (introduced here as "Lars von Queer") who presents his updated Dogma '19 Manifesto for turning the company into an arthouse porn producer (as if Puzzy Power had never existed!). Like all omnibus films, there are high and low points, though I think that none of the shorts reach greatness. The best are the hilarious aforementioned Waters monologue, and a tender segment from Catherine Breillat whose stroke left her without the use of one hand. Her segment is merely her narrating in English as she holds her camera toward the window. At just over an hour, it's worth your time if you can spare it. Don't expect anything wonderful and you won't be disappointed.

Bellflower (Evan Glodell, 2011): Made by Evan Glodell, a first time filmmaker with a side gig as a pyrotechnician (!), Bellflower is a technically impressive debut with some truly confounding choices made throughout. Glodell stars as Woodrow an aimless 20-something California transplant who LARPs about with his best friend Aiden (Tyler Dawson) as the two make plans for their Mad Max style gang that they want to be prepared for should the apocalypse ever hit. One day at--I shit you not--a cricket eating contest, the buds meet Milly (Jessie Wiseman) and her best friend Courtney (Rebekah Brandes). Woodrow and Milly hit it off and decide to go on a date the following night. She requests a greasy spoon, and he tells her that the only one he has in mind is in Texas...so they drive from California to Texas on their first date, trading in his car along the way for a beat up motorcycle that better fits his post-apocalyptic chic. So far, the film seems like a quirky indy romance starring insect hungry and propane tank shooting protagonists, but it takes a turn into left field when

SpoilerShow

Woodrow catches Milly cheating on him. They break up, and he starts sleeping with Courtney on the rebound. Milly and the dude she cheated with bonk Woodrow over the head and tattoo a mustache on him while he's unconscious. Woodrow responds by breaking into Milly's house the next day and raping her. When he emerges covered in blood Courtney sees him and responds by blowing her brains out with the gun in her purse. Just then Milly--who I assumed was also dead--emerges from the house and hugs Woodrow. Scene.

I can't decide if this is a brilliant piece of art, or a better acted and more technically proficient '00s version The Room. Serving as his own editor, Glodell shows himself to be able to put together a really good looking film, but it just so bonkers that I don't know what to make of it.

Field Niggas (Khalik Allah, 2015): Khalik Allah's Black Mother is one of the best films of 2019 and a lock for my final list, so when a friend told me that one of his earlier works was even better, I knew that I had to check it out. While I ultimately disagree with his ranking, this is still a phenomenal film. Allah made it by shooting random people at night at the Harlem intersection of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue. Instead of conducting standard interviews, the film's soundtrack is composed of speech entirely disconnected from the slowed down assemblage of images that it plays over. We might see a scene of police officers crowded around a police car while a city resident talks about incarceration. Other topics of discussion include robbing vagrants who have just cashed welfare checks, and the use of the synthetic drug K2. Unlike Black Mother, Allah is occasionally a character in his own film, as we hear his voice ask questions (he's dubious of a three-year-old's claim to be one) or assure his subjects that he's a neutral presence. Existing somewhere near the intersection of a documentary and an art film, Field Niggas only cements my previous judgement that Allah is one of the most daring and exciting filmmakers of his generation.

Grass (Sang-soo Hong, 2018): Grass sees director Sang-soo Hong strip down the motifs that have preoccupied him throughout the decade--filmmakers, relationships, coffee--into their most elemental form. Shot in black & white and clocking in at a breezy 66 minutes, the film stars frequent Hong collaborator Kim Min-hee as an unnamed writer who works on her latest project in a cafe. However, writing proves more elusive than anticipated as conversations abound. And that's kind of it. Kim's character observes the conversations going around her, before offering some internal dialogue about what she heard. There's a lot of drama in these conversations, including characters who trade blistering recriminations over the death of a third party. We do get a reprieve or two, such as when a less talented male colleague begs Kim's character to collaborate on a book with him, or when she meets with her brother and his fiancé. Every vignette ends in aporia. Nothing is resolved, and we don't have much of a clue on the impact that this has on our eavesdropper. There's a lot of static shots here with little edits, but Hong's camera does occasionally move, such as a pan away from conversants to their shadows on a wall. Though we don't get an inebriated director flirting with a conventionally attractive woman this time around, Grass is unmistakably a Sang-soo Hong film in its willingness to approach familiar themes with an unconventional touch.

Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012): Back when I reviewed for DVDBeaver I covered many of the region B releases including everything put out by Artificial Eye. Sadly, I had to step down from that post over a decade ago to get over the final hump in finishing my dissertation, but still tried to keep up with the boutique releases as best I could. I had planned to hold off watching Leos Carax's Holy Motors until I picked up the AE blu-ray, but when I learned that it was streaming for free on ShoutFactoryTV yesterday it proved too tempting to pass up. I'm familiar with and am a fan of Carax's previous features going back to Boy Meets Girl, but was too busy with my career to pay too much attention to the buzz around Holy Motors upon its release. Consequently, I had no idea what to expect going in, but I don't think that anything I might have read could have prepared me for it. Denis Lavant plays a chameleon of a man ushered around in a limousine where he applies prosthetics and makeup to transform himself into a variety unsettling characters from an elderly female panhandler to a cannibalistic troll that refashions Eva Mendes's designer gown into a burqa while nude (and erect!) himself. The film aims at being some kind of late Buñuelian statement on cinema, but whatever message Carax had in mind went right over my head. I suppose that we need to give credit where credit's due as Carax and Lavant put everything they have in this film. The duo swing for the fences, but this is a misfire of historic proportions. Every character that the film introduces is so grotesquely off-putting that anything Carax had planned for them is rendered moot by the horror of their very existence.

Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont, 2017): Like I said the other day, the more I see of them, the less of a fan I am of the broad comedies that Bruno Dumont has cranked out this decade. I really dreaded seeing what he was going to do with a musical about the early years of Joan of Arc, but was pleasantly surprised with the results as weird as they are. The majority of the film revolves around the frustration that eight-year-old Jeannette (played by Lise Leplat Prudhomme. We do get some scenes toward the end where an early-teen Jeannette is played by Jeanne Voisin) feels over her country's occupation by British forces. What better way to give rise to this anger, the film asks, than through anachronistic musical numbers? In fact there's very little spoken dialogue in here, with most of the film's message conveyed through rock opera style songs. The music, as it turns out, is charmingly amateurish, as is the choreography. That's certainly what one would expect from a performer of Prudhomme's age. There are, after all, only a handful of Broadway prodigies out there, with most kids under ten acting like they’re in their elementary school Christmas pageants. However, the beyond rough edged performances extend to the adults in the production as well. While the clunky rhythms and comical hoofing might turn some off, I found it delightful and not even in an ironic way. The songs--especially the ones that feature Jeannette and her nun friends headbanging to heavy metal--are goofy fun. For the first time in this project I look forward to seeing how Dumont follows this up.

Life Without Principle (Johnnie To, 2011): I've seen a few of To's action films in the past and was expecting more of it here. That's why I was shocked when the first hour was pretty much all setup. Inspector Cheung Jin-fong (Richie Jen) is a dedicated police officer, but in need of cash. His wife Connie (Myolie Wu) wants to purchase a new apartment as an investment, but can't afford it on her husband's salary. She goes to banker Teresa (Denise Ho) looking for a loan, but the unscrupulous money lender won't approve it without her boss's assent. Unfortunately, the collapse of the Greek economy suddenly wipes out the fortunes of many of Connie's investors, including subordinates of Triad leader Panther (Lau Ching-wan). Unwilling to let the stock crash excuse the debt owed to him, Panther demands that his men start paying him back, leading to violent consequences. The fates of all of these seemingly disparate individuals intertwine in unexpected ways. I really was thrown for a loop for the first half if the film as its centerpiece is a protracted sequence where Connie delves deep into the weeds of her country's banking regulations. It pretty much destroys whatever pace the film previously established. Fortunately, once the stocks crash, things pick up quickly. It's still a sore thumb in To's works judging from what I've seen, but I liked it enough for a mild recommendation.

[senseabove]

Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016)

I think one of the interesting things about Nocturama is how all of their motivations are quite clear on repeat viewings, actually.* They're mostly implicit and Bonello effectively buries them with the extended collapse of the second half so that they recede in importance

SpoilerShow

just like Greg (who is the ringleader, committing the only planned murder and sourcing the explosive; not David), but whose more overt activism and apparent significance to the cause and to the group are diminished when he does not make it to the mall.

Bonnello's obsession in his films (this decade, at least) is overlaying globalized capitalism and the kinds of social interactions the former leads individuals to: YSL with his muses and his lover/business partner, the legacy of colonialism in Zombi Child, the prostitutes of L'Apollonide among themselves and with their rich clients), so here, the validity of their individual motivations is less important than that they were motivated and that they joined together in spite of their social and ideological disparity. The immaturity or sophistication of their motivations is not really Bonello's concern.

I also think it's hard to catch them on the first go-round because it's unusual for emotions we typically treat as youthful excess to lead to something as non-trivial as terrorism, but one of the movie's pivot points is what we treat as habitually trivial and what we don't. Bonello renting a theater to show the cast and crew Clarke's Elephant—no context, no explanation, just brutal, relentless, outright political murder—is telling. So I think the diversity (and paucity) of causes among its characters is actually why the movie works: the vapidness of it all in response to the vanity (in the art-historical sense) of it all. Is becoming a terrorist to impress a revolutionary crush more asinine than, oh, interning at Haliburton? If they play video games and wear a Nike Swoop t-shirt, does that negate their political concerns, however inchoate? Does it make them more or less valuable to society than, to pull a name out of a hat, Bob Iger? I'm shooting very, very wide of the mark with those, intentionally, but they're questions being forever dragged into the black hole at the heart of the movie.

As for the ending, I don't think it's a depiction of how things would actually happen so much as a representation of the response to their varied, "youthful" concerns—get a job or die already—while underlining the futility of all of the laborious effort we witness. Think of it as a Gen Xer's sympathetic take on the Millenial inheritance of the Boomer legacy. Their actions, like yet another school shooting in the US, will have little to no practical effect on anything except maybe a few dozen lives shattered by grief and loss. They are led to drastic, communal action by wildly varied, dubious feelings, and what do they become but another spectacle, wrapped in plastic, steel, and glass, under computer-controlled energy-efficient lighting, with toys for their enrichment while we watch and wonder how and when they're going to die?

Anyway, if you liked this at all, definitely give L'Apollonide a go, and I'd say Saint Laurent (which I wrote up up-thread) as well, since it seems you're on a bit of a biopic kick.



*Just for the sake of getting it out of drafts, this has been languishing in a write-up I've been tinkering with for literal years now, because I find this movie endlessly fascinating and too knotty to coherently explain why every time I try to. At the time I got tired of seeing people dismiss it for a lack of clearly-stated motivation and so wrote a pithy summary—which is not to say that you dismissed it, but your observation was a common cudgel—and since I doubt I'll whip that write-up into shape between now and the end of the month, I'll just plop that bit here, its vintage clear six words in:

SpoilerShow

Greg is a politically aware Occupy acolyte, to give it a familiar name, fuming over headlines about banks lying through their teeth with impunity; André is an educated anarchist who thinks that if the government can use violence to achieve its goals in other countries, maybe the people should use it to achieve their goals in their own; David, awed that no one remembers it only took 40 years to need the Second French Revolution, thinks rather vaguely that it might be time for another; Samir is exactly what he'd be profiled as—after all, his mother found something that upsets her on his computer and we all know where teenage Muslims boys are radicalized; Sabrina, his sister, worships him, and so follows his direction while Mika, a neighborhood kid, is in love with Sabrina, and hopes to impress her by following hers; Yacine is in love with Samir, though it’s not clear whether he knows it and hates the world, or is unconscious of it and hates himself; Fred, after looking for a year, can only find work as a parking garage security guard, and even then his key card doesn’t work; and Sarah, with a permanent scowl, is uninterested in the plans laid out for her future and disgusted by pretty much everything else, so why not burn it to the ground.

[bamwc2]

Thanks for the helpful thoughts, senseabove! I wouldn't say that I'm seeking out biopics right now though. I have "to see list" composed mainly of best of the year votes from sites like Slant, AV Club, etc. I've just been going through what I can find on streaming services from those lists. I'm also checking out things that look interesting or get recommended to me along the way.

Since you've clearly thought a lot about the film, do you know why

SpoilerShow

the police just shoot everyone in the mall instead of letting them surrender? That still really bothers me, and I haven't seen the question addressed in any of the reading I've done on the film.

[senseabove]

I throw some ideas about its thematic purposes at the wall in my last paragraph, but I admit that it didn't trouble me much narratively because...

SpoilerShow

well, police unnecessarily escalating to deadly violence is not something I find especially hard to swallow, and I don't think Bonello's aiming for realistic or practical at the point anyway. To give a very simplified, abstract reading, it's the state's swift retribution for these self-selecting individuals' attacking, to varying degrees of literalness, its self-image (state buildings and statuary), machinery (military, government, and banking), and property.

But for practical justifications, with the caveat that I haven't watched it in a while so the specifics of the last act are fuzzy and I'm using the Wikipedia summary to refresh my memory: we don't know for sure what happened to Greg or Fred. We hear Fred confronted by someone followed by the sound of a gunshot and a body falling; it's seems likely he's been shot, but we know he's trigger happy, and even if he has been shot, he may not be dead. Greg is last seen walking down the street with his gun out, and Mika has a dream/vision wherein Greg tells him he committed suicide because he forgot to hide his gun, but it's only a dream. It's not unreasonable that at least one of them was actually taken in alive, and so the police know—or maybe even just assume—that there is more explosive in the building, so they're taking no chances that they'll blow up the department store as they work their way through.

I do think it's important that this is all kept purposely vague and duplicitous (i.e. we know Mika's dream is half-true), just like their motivations, though, because to fuss over practicality and specify, e.g., that the police captured Greg etc. would turn it into a procedural and shift the focus to who's justified in doing what and the practicality of their actions, which is not Bonello's interest.

FWIW, you're at least not alone in disliking the ending. I knew I remembered someone had disliked it but it took some Googling to figure it out.

[senseabove]

Elle (Verhoeven, 2016) Revisiting this, I'm pleased it's no less thorny than I remember, just as fascinating, and it comes together beautifully after all the double-takes of the first go-round. Elle, Michelle, monstrous by history and association, consorting with fictional monsters created and consumed by nascent monsters, mischievously takes the opportunity, when an actual monster presents himself, to get familiar with actual monstrosity. As always, Verhoeven's knack for playing the received, generic assumptions against themselves is crucial: in this case, the bitch boss femme fatale castrating everyone in sight, because that's what everyone expects of her. And so we spend two hours and change eating a salty meal comprised of what makes us monstrous, what is perceived as monstrous, what fascinates and repulses us about monstrosity, balanced with a little comedic acid of just how stupidly earnest we can be, even in our minor monstrosities. That last scene where Michelle is thanked is equal parts bone-chilling and generous, each because of the other, and single-handedly makes me immensely curious about Verhoeven's long-rumored Jesus movie.

[colinr0380]

Will Ferrell didn't make any good movies during this decade, so that should help the confusion

Ferrell didn't make any great movies this decade, but I thought that The Other Guys, The Lego Movie, and The Campaign were all minimally decent.

The Lego Movie goes to 11 when he eventually arrives in non-brick form!

Ferrell has always been great at doing parodies that are too loving to really fully be considered to be satires poking fun at their subjects. Which makes me want to mention, simply because the sight was so bizarre, the experiment(?) of Ferrell and Kristen Wiig starring together in Lifetime TV movie A Deadly Adoption, which gets at the heart of the bizarre paranoid nature of all of these TV movies by playing it all totally straight, as just another addition to the genre. (Its also the chance for Ferrell and Wiig to do a Hand That Rocks The Cradle-style thriller in the only medium that still produces those kinds of stories)

Also, while I am on the subject of Will Ferrell, I saw Daddy's Home 2 recently and whilst it was enjoyable enough (anything with John Lithgow in it is already a must see) I have questions about the coda to the film, which I will spoiler tag:

SpoilerShow

I loved the surprise final cameo from a certain 'real life hero' at the end as Ferrell's character's new stepfather! But I seem to remember from the Clint Eastwood film made about this character's life story that he was married? Is Daddy's Home 2 implying that Sully divorced his wife to start dating Will Ferrell's mom in this coda? The implications from this, both within the film and meta-cinematically, became rather dizzying to contemplate!

I think I was probably just thinking far too much about a cheesy throwaway gag that was probably only there to tie in to a currently en vogue film, but it really was the best part of the entire movie and was more than enough to bump the film up an extra half star on my Letterboxd rating!

[Tommaso]

I'd like to at least mention some of the films that I have rather high on my list. I fear they will get orphanised, because they are too obscure or too difficult to see, but I won't give up hope yet...

Chamissos Schatten (Ulrike Ottinger, 2016): With almost 12 hours "Chamisso's Shadow" is even longer than Ottinger's "Taiga" documentary, but it is at least as impressive. Following the route of German author Adalbert von Chamisso who accompanied a Russian expedition to the Arctic in the years 1815-18, Ottinger visits the thinly inhabited places in the very North of Russia and Alaska, documenting the daily life, the nature, and the cultural traditions of the people living there today. Quotations from Chamisso's report of his travels and indigenous folk tales further help to complete the picture. Absolutely stunning cinematography: as always with Ottinger, she gets the framing right like hardly anyone else, and it's really made to be seen on the big screen (I had one of the rare chances to see it in a cinema, distributed over four days). Sometimes you may think you're watching an installation rather than a conventional 'movie', but the slow pace allows you to thoroughly discover the details of what is shown and let them sink in. I never imagined that a twenty-minute sequence showing the gutting of some fish could be this captivating...
Unusually for Ottinger, this was released on a real label in Germany and thus had an affordable price point (about 40 Euros for a four-disc-set). It even comes with English subs. It seems to be OOP, though, but if you can get it, don't hesitate to watch this masterpiece.

Redoubt (Matthew Barney, 2019): An experimental and oblique adaptation of the Diana/Actaeon myth, it seems. I don't fully know what to make of it, but Barney's work with art objects and brilliant use of Idaho winter landscapes, dance-like rituals and sort-of extreme sports make for an experience unlike any other. It's typical Barney through and through, so if you are among those who dislike the man and his work, don't even bother. But otherwise, this may be his best and most concentrated film to date. In any case, I liked it much better than his 2014 "River of Fundament" (which was basically an operatic re-hash of ideas from the Cremaster cycle).

Vergine giurata (Laura Bispuri, 2015): The debut film of a very gifted young Italian director, "Sworn Virgin" portrays a young woman growing up in the countryside of Albania, who, not wanting to be confined to the very traditional gender roles that still seem to prevail there, makes use of an old law that allows her to be a part of the 'male' world by swearing lifelong virginity. Only when she comes to Italy to visit her sister does she begin to re-discover her own femininity. Strikingly acted by Alba Rohrwacher who is undoubtedly one of the best Italian actresses around nowadays, and a thought-provoking tale which however is never preachy. Bispuri's second film Figlia mia also stars Rohrwacher and is equally worth seeing, too.

Mein Bruder heißt Robert und ist ein Idiot (Philip Gröning 2018): Someone at amazon.de tried to be funny by playing on the film's title with the words "The director's name is Philip and he is an idiot", expressing the dislike many people seem to have for this three-hour film about two teenage siblings who spend a summer's weekend in the countryside, discussing philosophy and relationships before committing an act of violence involving the proprietor of a nearby petrol station as if they wanted to emulate "Natural Born Killers". But this outbreak of violence may just be the logical outcome of the intensity and potential destructiveness of the siblings' relationship (we never really know, but some incestuous desires are clearly implied). Great performances by Josef Mattes and Julia Zange (who is ten years older than her part, but you'd never guess this), fantastic cinematography and intense direction by Gröning. In spite of its length and a certain minimalistic approach in terms of characters and locations it didn't feel too long at all and was almost constantly gripping. Certainly one of the few remarkable narrative German films of the decade.

Sleep Has Her House (Scott Barley, 2017): The only full-length film so far of this young experimental filmmaker from South Wales whose work I discovered by chance and which floored me quite a bit. The title may be inspired by the Current 93 album of (almost) the same name, and even if it was not, Barley's film would form an ideal visual accompaniment to the work of C93. Dark and slow-moving landscape images with treated colours, the director asks to watch his films in complete darkness in order to experience them fully. If you do so, the effect is completely hypnotic and like nothing I had ever seen before. Barley made all his shorter films available on his vimeo channel , and while you can't watch Sleep Has Her House there, a look at the other films or the trailer might give you an indication of what Barley does in this one, which is clearly his most accomplished work. Or to simply quote one of the comments posted there: "One of the most beautiful films ever made". Yep, I don't think this is much of an overstatement.

[bamwc2]

colinr0380, I found those live action segments pretty emotional. I'm decidedly not an adult Lego collector, but have had the same fights with my son that Farrell's character had with his. My boy got into Lego at four when someone gave him his first set as a birthday present. It was a fire truck. I put it together for him, but he'd take it apart again and ask me to rebuild it. Eventually he lost some of the pieces, and we couldn't do it anymore, so he did what he called a "free build" where he just connected the bricks however he wanted. He got more sets, I would make them for him, but now he'd intentionally disassemble them just to do free builds. I got mad at him for it. It was years before I started my mood stabilizer, so I got mad easily and frequently. I told him that I wouldn't buy him any more sets unless he stopped taking them apart. He was very sad. The next year the film came out, and I took him to see it in the theater. After it was over, my five-year-old gave me a lecture about how he just wanted to be creative like the boy in the movie when he did his free builds. I dropped any objections after that.

[senseabove]

This feels somehow illegal to ask, but since it's an issue of whether anybody else has even seen a 2.5 hour experimental film cycle that's been shown maybe a dozen times ever and I have a hard time judging whether Dorsky is mainly a local hero or his name might have drawn the likes of us to one of those screenings... dare I hope anyone else is planning on voting for Nathaniel Dorsky's Arboretum Cycle, or should I just go ahead and sacrifice it as an orphan to boost something else?

[bamwc2]

This feels somehow illegal to ask, but since it's an issue of whether anybody else has even seen a 2.5 hour experimental film cycle that's been shown maybe a dozen times ever and I have a hard time judging whether Dorsky is mainly a local hero or his name might have drawn the likes of us to one of those screenings... dare I hope anyone else is planning on voting for Nathaniel Dorsky's Arboretum Cycle, or should I just go ahead and sacrifice it as an orphan to boost something else?

Sorry, but I've never even heard of it. If you know of a place to stream it in the next 1.5 weeks, I'd be happy to check it out.