I knew nothing about Gallaudet University, a liberal arts college in Washington DC for the deaf and hard of hearing; nor was I familiar with the 1988 eight-day, student-led protest against the appointment of a non-deaf president instead of two other deaf candidates. Going in cold to a story like this is obviously the most effective way to experience it but the retelling of this incident is so well-crafted that it has that rare potential to enlighten possibly even those who lived it first-hand.
Co-directed by model/activist Nyle DiMarco, who is deaf and David Guggenheim (WAITING FOR SUPERMAN), who is not, DEAF PRESIDENT NOW! similarly feels like a bridge made to represent the deaf community and educate everyone else. While the filmmakers are privy to and make good use of an excess of archival footage of the protest (which occurred at a time when camcorders made such widespread documentation possible), it’s the modern-day interviews with the four student protest leaders that add context and resonance. Some may question the addition of voiceovers accompanying the subjects’ signing to the camera when subtitles are also present for a non-signing audience but as a concession to making a more accessible film for that very audience, it’s not a distraction; neither is the elaborate put-a-hearing-person-in-a-deaf-person’s-ears sound design. More important is how the film details this community coming together, especially viewed at an age this removed from an era in which said community was viewed much differently and often detrimentally from the outside.
This is the rare feel-good documentary that’s genuinely inspiring without coming off as cloying while also being informative and entertaining. I don’t often give films 5/5 but by successfully achieving what it wants to do and also through sheer goodwill, this one earns it.
SORRY, BABY
Movies about trauma are tricky to pull off for obvious reasons: how does one express such discomfort, anger, sadness and fear to an audience without alienating them or coming off as a weight that’s too much to bear? Eva Victor, a 30-year-old actress best known for the TV series BILLIONS takes on this challenge not only as a writer/director in her feature debut but also as its star. She plays Agnes, a college professor in a small Maine town (but mostly filmed near Ipswich, Mass.) recovering from a traumatic event whose details are only gradually disclosed. To make such a scenario digestible, Victor infuses the film with a near-caustic humor, dividing in into sections with whimsical titles, gently satirizing such events as an HR meeting with deadpan punchlines and overall gifting Agnes with a persona that leans towards the comedic self-deprecation of a humorist writer like Sloane Crosley or Jessi Klein.
As an actor-turned-filmmaker, Victor is not a revelatory talent such as Greta Gerwig or even the Jesse Eisenberg of A REAL PAIN. Her use of humor doesn’t shy away from the pain Agnes experiences but the muted tone with which she often approaches it doesn’t fully register at times. SORRY, BABY works best when she has a simpatico screen partner to play off of, particularly Naomi Ackie who as best friend Lydie brings warmth but also energy whenever she’s onscreen or the great character actor John Carroll Lynch whose one sequence in the film leaves such an impact one can sense the potential of an entire ancillary feature about his character. The missing-in-action-as-of-late Lucas Hedges also has a small role seemingly crafted to display his natural charm as Agnes’ neighbor. As for Victor, this is a good first effort that mostly works but maybe doesn’t fully live up to the buzz it has received so far. 3.5/5
PEACOCK
Matthias (handsome beanpole Albrecht Schuch) has a most unusual job “renting” himself out to temporarily be whomever one needs him to: whether a friend, son, father or dinner-date companion, he’s a willing blank slate, a cipher who can fulfill any need or role. A great idea in theory but one that has serious complications for his personal life as he can’t stop being whomever anyone wants him to be even when he’s not being asked to perform.
As a zany comedy by design, PEACOCK works best whenever it’s funny; when it tries to aim for something deeper such as pathos, it’s a little wobbly, not fully pulling off the tonal shifts needed to add depth and nuance to Matthias’ plight. Happily, it just ramps up the absurdity in its final act, arriving in a place not far off from Ruben Ostlund’s THE SQUARE, only arguably more inspired (give this to Schuch, he totally commits to the bit.) This won the audience award for Best Narrative feature at IFFBoston this year, which I did not expect but can see why: for all it does to explore the consequences that come from being a likable cipher, the film’s likability (and humor) is perhaps its greatest asset. 3.5/5
HAPPYEND
A terrific sight gag and a newfangled high concept alone do not make for a wholly satisfying narrative from writer/director Neo Sora (RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: AN OPUS). Set in the near-future (though low budget enough that one may not discern this from sight alone), high school students are subject to a Big Brother-esque AI surveillance following a prank that happens to coincide with a series of minor earthquakes portending fears of an upcoming major one. The quieter, more casual moments between childhood best friends Yuta and Kuo suggest Sora has at least learned something from the films of Kore-eda, if not how to economically tell a story. Albeit an interesting mix of humanist drama and slightly absurdist satire, HAPPYEND is less notable for its accomplishments (the sight gag is pretty inspired, after all) and more for what it could have been. 3/5
Another IFFBoston, another eight movies seen. My reviews of the first four.
CAUGHT BY THE TIDES
Jia Zhangke (MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART) will never run out of ways to explore rapid change in 21st Century China or roles for his muse Zhao Tao to excel in, thank god. His latest partially distinguishes itself from previous efforts by literally going back to them, incorporating scenes and outtakes from UNKNOWN PLEASURES (2002) and STILL LIFE (2006) along with newly-shot footage to track how much China and, in particular, the Northern city of Datong has reconstructed itself between then and now in part due to the Three Gorges Dam project that the 2006 film centered on.
Using the same actors (Tao and Zhublin Li) and reediting the earlier footage (with help of some intertitles that refashion the earlier stories to relate to the current one), CAUGHT BY THE TIDES is stitched together in a way that often brings attention to its manipulation of time and space for those familiar with the earlier work, although those new to the director’s oeuvre may not even pick up on this. It’s an approach that risks confusion, but that actually might have been Zhangke’s intention. After all, time rarely travels in a straight line; the immersive, collage-like soundtrack which spans copious genres and traditions (East and West) amplifies this sense of impermanence and might be the director’s most ambitious and striking use of music to date. I now want to go back to revisit his strange, rich filmography to see how he arrived here and ponder where he might go next in detailing this world forever in flux. Rating: 4.5/5
PAVEMENTS
Where to begin with PAVEMENTS? Is it a vehicle meant to document the famed 1990s indie-rock quintet Pavement as they reunite and rehearse for a 2022 tour? A biopic of the band casting the likes of Joe Keery and Nat Wolff to play lead singer/songwriter Stephen “S.M.” Malkmus and guitarist Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, respectively? A behind-the-scenes account of the making of said biopic? A look at a stage musical about the group from its conception to its premiere? Footage of the opening of a halfway-reverent museum exhibit of copious artifacts/detritus related to the band?
Of course, the resultant ambitious collage is all of these things and many more. Supposedly, when director Alex Ross Perry (with his first feature since 2018’s HER SMELL) signed on to make a movie about the band, he was given carte blanche to do what he wanted and encouraged not to make anything resembling a traditional overview. He certainly understood the assignment as the final product is equal parts THIS IS SPINAL TAP and SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, but that dual-comparison only scratches the surface of everything going on here.
This isn’t an approach one could use for every musical act but it is the exact right one for Pavement, who arguably never became household names because they were just too sardonic, too drenched in irony, too much willing to be a shambles rather than a dependable, accessible outfit (all of this in the long run benefiting them artistically if not commercially.) There’s footage of Malkmus referring to the band as “the slacker Rolling Stones of the ’90s” at that time, which ends up more apt a description than I could ever come up with. Appropriately, as a genre-bend, PAVEMENTS is a bit of a shambles and ideally for those-in-the-know. Still, there’s so much that’s inventive and exciting about it (especially in how it captures the band’s time and more importantly, how it shows their impact reverberating over time) that it at least gives off the impression it’s willing to reach for the unconverted in spite of itself. 4/5
COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT
Documentaries where the subject is terminally ill are always a tough sell; the people behind this one, chiefly director Ryan White (ASK DR. RUTH) seemingly go out of their way to dispel this impression, highlighting the film’s humor in the face of impending tragedy. Of course, with a subject like poet/activist Andrea Gibson, it would be disingenuous to oversee or even ignore how funny they are in day-to-day life, an intriguing counterpart to archival footage of them intensely performing in poetry slams and one-person shows onstage. It’s not a disconnect but more of a revelation as to how our public and private personae inevitably contrast with and also complement each other.
Gibson’s ovarian cancer diagnosis in their late 40s provides the premise for White following them and their partner, Megan Falley, mostly in and around their cozy Colorado home. Laugh-out-loud conversations about such not-profound activities as fingering and obscure word choices (“octopoidal”?) are given the same weight as the spectre of death that can’t help but color everything; to do so with such intimacy and candidness endears Andrea and Megan to us considerably. Their portrait is one of life not as a series of big moments but as something given inspiration and meaning by all the random, casual ones that naturally occur in the act of simply living. While a little slick for my taste at times (particularly the score and some editing choices), I can’t deny how genuinely effective and moving this is as a whole. 4/5
THE KINGDOM
Opening with a scene so shocking and visceral that you’re best off not expecting the filmmakers to even try topping it (and they don’t), this story of a Corsican crime family set in 1995 is business-as-usual as these things go–lotsa scenes of attacks, retaliation and hiding out from both the enemy and the police. At the center is 15-year-old Lesia (Ghjuvanna Benedetti) who has mostly been shielded from the action until she’s reunited with her crime boss father, Pierre-Paul (Santucci). This relationship is the only interesting facet here and the film’s second half is better for devoting more focus to it (particularly in some tender, nuanced exchanges between Benedetti and Santucci.) Alas, the rest is mostly unmemorable, though I did note that when Benedetti cut and bleached her hair to disguise herself, she suddenly, uncannily resembled a young Aimee Mann (but without the braid.) 3/5
Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) clearly belongs to an extended lineage of Alain Guiraudie protagonists: craggily handsome, somewhat sexually ambiguous, a laconic wanderer, an irritant to many who come into contact with him. However, unlike the others, he’s not as passive or seemingly befuddled—rather than letting everything happen to him, he takes a decisive action that carries real consequences for his surrounding community even if the person most deeply affected by it ends up being himself.
Returning from the city of Toulouse to an isolated forest village for the funeral of a baker he once worked with, Jérémie’s invited to stay on by the baker’s wife, Martine (Catherine Frot), much to the consternation of her married son, Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) and something approaching indifference (but not entirely) from neighbor Walter (David Ayala). It takes time to figure out how everyone knows each other with only traces of what their past dynamics were. About a half-hour in, Jérémie takes that decisive action; from there, the film turns into essentially a dark comedy as he repeatedly makes up stories about what happened, only for other characters to do the same including an older priest (Jacques Develay) whose motives to protect Jérémie are, shall we say, less than pure. It all becomes a sort of “Looney Tunes RASHOMON”, to borrow a phrase from Errol Morris’ 2010 documentary TABLOID.
As usual with Guiraudie, the environment influences the tone (in this case, the autumnal hues of a forest that manages to seem both inviting and quietly menacing.) The film’s rhythms also develop organically with a heightened focus that looks like a course-corrective to the everything-and-kitchen-sink approach of his inferior last feature, NOBODY’S HERO (2022). While not as ingenuous as STAYING VERTICAL (2016), this is funny and surprising enough to render any claims of Hitchcockian influence irrelevant (if anything, it’s closest to an atypical film from that director like THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY.) In the end, it’s less important whether Jérémie gets away with what he’s done and more how it shifts our perceptions of those around him. Also, look up the meaning of the film’s Latin title and ponder whether or not it’s meant to be ironic. Rating: 4 (out of 5)
I could write an entire book about why 1980 stands out as a fascinatingly strange year for pop culture—below is something I first posted on Thanksgiving 2013, along with some 2025 footnotes.
1980 was a weird year for pop culture: it desperately tried leaving the 1970s behind though was still not entirely transformed into what we now recall as “Eighties”. It did produce as much great, timeless art as any year: Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, Airplane!, Nine To Five, this playlist, etc., Still, one generally senses a temporary lapse in good taste. If you disagree, well, take a look at the following five clips:
1. XANADU
I won’t argue that Xanadu is as “great” a film as, say, The Shining, but compared to the other stuff on this list, it’s fairly benign unless you HATE Olivia Newton-John and roller disco and ELO and Gene Kelly (and would you really want to spend time with someone who hates two or more of those things?) It’s rife with contradictions: a futuristic extravaganza somewhat beholden to ’70s aesthetics and a commercial flop that produced a hit soundtrack. I think what sinks it for some is that it takes itself just a little too seriously while still reveling in its own bad taste.*
2. THE JAZZ SINGER
This “very special happening” (quoted from another trailer I can no longer find) is the one thing on this list that I haven’t seen.** Apparently, film studios of that time were desperate to turn pop singers into movie stars, via Bette Midler in The Rose (if you need another example of a flop, there’s Paul Simon in One Trick Pony.) In theory, the gloriously hambone Neil Diamond should have made the transition as easily as Midler. Unfortunately, he chose what looks like a real stinker, a preposterous, anachronistic remake no one was asking for with a wooden female lead, gratuitous blackface (!) and a rube of a main character who doesn’t know what palm trees are. Oh well, as with Xanadu, at least the soundtrack was a hit.
3. PINK LADY AND JEFF
Long an easy punch line for the inquiry, “What’s the worst television show ever made?”, Pink Lady and Jeff*** has an egregiously bad premise: a variety show starring a female Japanese disco duo (each of whom speak precious little English) and an unctuous American comedian sidekick (who sadly talks too much.) Brought to you by those crazy czars of bad 70s TV, Sid and Marty Krofft, whose Brady Bunch Variety Hourfrom three years before is officially the Worst Variety Show of All Time. In comparison, this one was almost The Carol Burnett Show, but instead of an ear tug and “I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together”, each episode ended with a hot tub party–this clip features a pre-senility Hugh Hefner; I’ve seen another with Larry Hagman and Teddy Pendergrass in the tub, whom with Jeff unintentionally resemble the “stars” of our next selection…
4. CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC
Grease producer Allan Carr’s^ “musical extravaganza that launched the ’80s” (Carr biography Party Animals is a must-read, BTW) takes the rock-star-into-movie-star approach of The Jazz Singer and lets it run rampant like a bratty child on a sugar high (or an indulgent auteur with unlimited access to cocaine.) The Village People were obviously past their prime by 1980, and you can practically taste the flop sweat dripping off this trailer. The whole project’s inexplicable, really–watch Steve Guttenberg as the band’s Svengali, a pre-Kardashian, pre-trans Caitlyn Jenner decked out in a teeny tiny t-shirt and daisy dukes and special guest stars Tammy Grimes, June Havoc and The Ritchie Family, all of it directed by Rosie the Bounty Paper Towel Lady. That Can’t Stop The Music got made when disco was already “dead” is a testament to Carr’s chutzpah. Still, it’s almost Cabaret compared to…
5. THE APPLE
The Apple defies any notion of good taste and all logic, for that matter. Like Brian De Palma’s infinitely superior Phantom of the Paradise, it’s a rock-and-roll take on the legend of Faust, only this one’s set in the oh-so-futuristic-dystopia of 1994 and contains more sparkly sequins than even the opening credits of Can’t Stop The Music can manage. There are few words for how awful and bizarre this film is. You won’t know whether to laugh, cringe or hurl stuff at the screen (like audiences supposedly did at a preview screening with copies of the soundtrack album) when viewing any of the musical numbers (thankfully, most of ’em are on YouTube.) Instead of the trailer, I’ve singled out perhaps the film’s most demented (and that’s saying a lot) sequence. “Speed” (or rather, “SPEEEEEEED!”) pushes 1980’s questionable aura to an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink extreme and comes off like an unholy combination of Billy Idol video directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Richard Simmons workout. It could be a lost musical number from another infamous motion picture of 1980, Cruising.^^ In the decades since my first viewing, nothing else I’ve seen has topped it in sheer WTF-ness.
*****
*And yet, my personal rating of Xanadu rises just a bit on every rewatch—a time capsule for sure, but an intriguing one.
** Still haven’t!
***For more on Pink Lady, check out this Decoder Ring episode.
^ Also infamous for the 1989 Snow White/Rob Lowe Academy Awards fiasco, Carr’s delirious if dubious legacy is further preserved by the 2017 documentary The Fabulous Allan Carr.)
^^ I’ve since seen Cruising, and it is definitely worth seeing if only for Paul Sorvino asking Al Pacino if he’s ever been “porked”.
As usual, I go by what was released theatrically in Boston and/or made available to stream in the US in 2024 even if I saw at least two of my top ten at TIFF 2023 (which also played at least four others that I couldn’t score tickets to then.)
1. DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD
I know, most viewers might not have the patience for a 163-minute, mostly black-and-white Romanian film about a production assistant (Ilinca Manolache) expending copious effort on a myriad of lowly tasks for what amounts to a public service announcement, spliced in with scenes of a 1981 film about a female Budapest taxi driver. But you should—a satire and a critique of film production, social media and Romania itself, Radu Jude’s singular achievement (and this is the man whose previous feature was called BAD LUCK BANGING, OR LOONY PORN) is to wickedly utilize humor as a balm in expressing outrage at a world gone off the rails.
2. PICTURES OF GHOSTS
Kleber Mendonça Filho (BACURAU) utilizes the essay film to both celebrate and scrutinize his coastal hometown of Recife, Brazil. Abetted by his own narration, the film is a marvel of editing as the present day often mirrors and occasionally contrasts with archival footage he and his family shot of his home, the cinemas he once worked in as a projectionist and other imagery of Recife throughout the past five decades from a cornucopia of sources—all the way to a playful finale that not only re-emphasizes the meaning of the film’s title but also comes to life with an unlikely but evocative needle drop for the ages.
3. ROBOT DREAMS
From the Spanish director of TORREMOLINOS 73 (of all people), this animated feature adapted from a graphic novel is an unexpected gem. Telling of the fractured friendship between a Dog and a Robot (no other names are given and/or needed), its whimsy and warmth is sharpened by real emotional stakes and conflict, offering up a fun-house mirror version of the world where animals and machines are able to form deep, vulnerable connections. Sweet, funny and unexpectedly one of the best ever films about friendship (and New York City), I can’t even imagine a feature-length version of BOJACK HORSEMAN turning out this well.
4. PERFECT DAYS
An unexpected late-career triumph from Wim Wenders; that it’s simply a character study about Hirayama (a superb Kōji Yakusho), an aging man who cleans Tokyo public toilets for a living only adds to its allure. This might be the closest Wenders has come to successfully making “slow cinema” with scene after scene of Hirayama methodically doing his work with pauses for bicycling, picking up paperbacks from his favorite bookstore, and listening to music on cassette tapes while driving through greater Tokyo. I’ve rarely seen such an extensive depiction of a character’s relationship to music and how it informs and fortifies his well-being and also his environment.
5. HARD TRUTHS
Welcome back, Mike Leigh. His first contemporary film since 2010’s ANOTHER YEAR is also his most brutal since ALL OR NOTHING and maybe his most aptly titled since BLEAK MOMENTS. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, rudely snubbed of an Academy Award nomination gives a towering performance as one of the rudest, most irritable, broken and heartbreaking characters since maybe Jane Fonda in THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? It’s hilarious, then harrowing; when it nearly gets to be all too much, it offers not so much relief as it does perspective and something approaching grace without pulling any punches.
6. THE BEAST
The first Bertrand Bonello film I’ve loved is very loosely adapted from a Henry James novella pairing Gabrielle (Lea Seydoux) with Louis (George MacKay) across three time periods: 1904 France, 2014 Los Angeles and a near-future heavily shaped by artificial intelligence. They inhabit different personas (Mackay especially effective as he transforms from a European aristocrat to a 21st Century incel) but can never fully connect with each other for reasons not fully apparent until the end of the film. A real strange trip rewarded by multiple viewings, I would’ve never previously thought to compare Bonello to David Lynch (RIP) but here we are.
7. JANET PLANET
Pre-teen angst has served bespectacled, mousy 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Zeigler) well, or at least to the point where she has her single mother (Julianne Nicholson) delicately wrapped around her finger during a pivotal summer in her life. Set in 1991, esteemed playwright Annie Baker’s directorial debut inevitably feels like it could be autobiographical but what’s striking is how it uncovers so much nuance in its internal, seeking, near-deadpan approach. Little about the film feels forced or false and yet it doesn’t feel like many other films, allowing for hints of magical realism deployed with an unusually subtle touch.
8. FLOW
I don’t recall having two animated features in a year-end top ten before (although ROBOT DREAMS, a 2023 film received a delayed release); like #3, this Latvian production has no dialogue, conjuring a world out of movement, facial expressions and textured sound. Still, I was not expecting the full, expansive and wonderfully bizarre journey this goes on. As a flood sweeps through the landscape, a lone cat and various other animals fight to survive and encounter near-spiritual and metaphysical realms. Stirring and just a little trippy, it deserves to become this generation’s FANTASTIC PLANET.
9. BIRD
Andrea Arnold (AMERICAN HONEY) returns with what feels like an ideal of homegrown, personal cinema: searching, dreamlike, wild, a world in perpetual motion that’s chaotic and sometimes dangerous yet yearning for and occasionally capable of beauty. Brashly combining kitchen-sink realism with that of the magical kind is a new wrinkle for Arnold; some would argue she really goes for it and not all will know what to make of the Franz Rogowski’s character. Fortunately, her cast is up to that challenge—in particular, real find Nykiya Adams, as idiosyncratic and fully developed as Katie Jarvis was in Arnold’s FISH TANK.
10. EVIL DOES NOT EXIST
So, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, what are you doing now after all that acclaim for DRIVE MY CAR? A study of an environmental threat towards a remote community where a corporation wants to open a glamping (i.e., glamorous camping) site, you say? Far more Tarkovsky than Kore-eda, this is leisurely paced, visually stunning and in the end, near-impenetrable. Still, arguably no other filmmaker would so totally depict the utter futility of “information meetings” where the concerns of said community are both heard and blithely dismissed or take two characters who initially seem buffoonish and unexpectedly flesh them out until they’re nearly as sympathetic as the two protagonists.
11. THE FEELING THAT THE TIME FOR DOING SOMETHING HAS PASSED
The peculiar way writer/director/often-naked star Joanna Arnow views the world will inevitably seem off-putting to some but enchanting to others for how she finds the humor in absurdities and indignities without taking herself too seriously or losing focus of what makes them seem so real. After all, who can’t relate to the mounting pressure of being asked to bring an unwanted piece of fruit home with them?
12. THE OLD OAK
Ken Loach’s supposed final film is one of the more socio-politically relevant titles you’ll see in these challenging times, taking a fairly straightforward premise (clash between natives and Syrian immigrants on the eve of the Brexit vote) and suffusing it warmth and pain and seemingly every other emotion in-between.
13. BETWEEN THE TEMPLES
Although firmly set in the present, this feels more like a throwback to shaggy ’70s New Hollywood style but the humanity with which Nathan Silver depicts his two main characters (Jason Schwartzman and national treasure Carol Kane) is lived-in and not hackneyed (which also goes for their chemistry).
14. HERE
In Belgium, as a Romanian construction worker and a Chinese doctoral student (specializing in the study of moss) circle around each other, it’s not so much a trajectory of gaining momentum as it is becoming attuned to one’s environment, going with the flow and savoring each step at a time.
15. THE BRUTALIST
A Great American Epic like no one makes anymore, only it’s about weirdos, probably made by a weirdo himself. When you consider all the art that reflects the triumphant, the noble, the mainstream, it’s thrilling to see something so deeply felt and also transgressive in its furthest-reaching moments when it continually threatens to come undone.
16. INSIDE THE YELLOW COCOON SHELL
Chill-out Cinema: beautiful, languorous, not altogether impenetrable but mysterious, serene without seeming blank. Seven months later, I can’t entirely recall everything that happened within its 179 minutes but I would gladly watch it again.
17. HIS THREE DAUGHTERS
This evolves from pretty ordinary to something unexpected and deep but not without lightness or lyricism. A real breakthrough for filmmaker Azazel Jacobs, though he might not have pulled it off without such a strong cast, especially Natasha Lyonne in a role both seemingly written for her and in the end, unexpected.
18. ANORA
Sean Baker’s films tend to thrive on his direction and the performances rather than the screenplays, so ignoring a few structural faults is easy enough. Reserve most praise, however, for Mikey Madison who not only tackles a challenging role, her gloriously profane, full-bodied bravura turn has nearly no precedent.
19. CHALLENGERS
Welcome back, Luca Guadagnino, though I don’t think this audacious, excessively entertaining triangle film might’ve worked as well with anyone other than Zendaya.
20. CROSSING
Levan Akin showing that AND THEN WE DANCED was no fluke with Mzia Arabuli giving off some rare, prime Suzanne Pleshette energy here.
ALSO RECOMMENDED:
A Real Pain, About Dry Grasses, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, Close Your Eyes, Flipside, Ghostlight, Good One, Hundreds of Beavers, Indigo Girls: It’s Only Life After All, La Chimera, Late Night With The Devil, Mother Couch, Rumors, Seagrass, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Sugarcane, The Bikeriders, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, The Seed of The Sacred Fig, The Teachers’ Lounge, The Taste of Things, Thelma, This Closeness
Of the hundred-plus older films I watched last year, the two standouts were titles I hadn’t viewed in over two decades. Seconds, John Frankenheimer’s 1966 oddity about a middle-aged businessman who undergoes mysterious reconstructive surgery and wakes up in the younger, glamorous body of Rock Hudson now scans like something Charlie Kaufman might’ve written had he been a member of that generation (and an early partaker of LSD.) Rewatched on The Criterion Channel, I’d clearly forgotten how INSANE it was, as much a middle-finger to middle-class conformity as The Swimmer two years later only zanier regarding the genres it attempted to deconstruct (horror and absurdism in contrast to the later film’s melodrama.) Featuring dialogue-free sections as expressive and engrossing as the best silents, Seconds is also notable for Hudson’s out-on-a-limb turn—there’s a reason why nearly every clip reel for the man includes the incredible final scene of this.
The year’s other eye-opening rewatch was a 35mm print of the 1955 film Pather Panchali at the Harvard Film Archive (my first visit there since pre-pandemic.) I previously saw it in a film class in the late 1990s, but it made little of an impression, blurring together with all the other cinema I was consuming then. Now, I can appreciate how special and genuine it is. While rural India in the early-20th century remains as foreign a place imaginable to me, director Satyajit Ray’s humanism marks such barriers as irrelevant. Anyone tuned into what it means to be alive should relate to his depiction and understanding of family dynamics, community and how we all contain multitudes—Ray even allows the petty, antagonistic neighbor woman to later exude a hidden depth and empathy for others.
Happy Hour
Ten Favorite First Time Watches:
1. HAPPY HOUR – This 2015 feature from Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) about a quartet of thirtysomething female friends stood out—not just for being over five hours long (I watched it over three nights) although that length is key, for the amount of time spent with the characters is crucial as we witness their mundane lives and gradually comprehend how much they are like our own.
2. VENGEANCE IS MINE – An unearthed 1984 made-for-television production from Michael Roemer (Nothing But a Man) was particularly notable for how its messiness nearly felt like a Cassavetes film in spots, with Brooke Adams’ lead performance as complex and iconic as any she ever gave.
3. AMADEUS – In my attempt to watch every Academy Award winner for Best Picture, this is possibly the best one of the 1980s; rarely has the opulence and spectacle of it all had such a solid, nay, sobering philosophical foundation: What makes art great is that not everyone is capable of such greatness.
4. MAHLER – My recent Ken Russell kick led to his typically bonkers and visually beautiful revisionist biopic of the composer which, as an added bonus portrays the wackiest conversion to Catholicism ever.
5. WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES – I still may never watch Satantango, but I finally saw my first Bela Tarr film, which lived up to its hype of this director rewriting the language of cinema and also provided this takeaway: It’s the end of the world as we know it, and János is decidedly not fine.
6. POSSESSION – This inexplicable psychological horror still invades my thoughts three months on. That subway corridor scene is like a Cassavetes joint if Gena Rowlands (RIP) had literally gone stark raving mad and John decided to film it.
7. THE PHENIX CITY STORY – Surely a seedier and more believable view of small town 1950s Americana than anything else I’ve encountered. Also, it felt far less like a time capsule than it should have.
8. THE GO-BETWEEN – I admittedly watched this to see if I recognized the score pilfered from it for May December (and boy did I ever); however, talk about a slow burn that absolutely sears once it reaches its boiling point (Margaret Leighton’s determined frenzy here makes for one of the most visceral scenes, ever.)
9. TWO LOVERS – Flush with lyricism in constructing a realistic love story, this is the first James Gray picture I’ve unreservedly loved. Perhaps he was at his best when not-so-high-concept, or maybe just Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow were unexpectedly, perfectly cast together.
10. SHOCK TREATMENT – Thrillingly anticipates this century’s escalation of consumerism and access-to-instant-stardom, not to mention Richard O’Brien’s songs which nearly rival the more iconic ones of its predecessor The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Honorable Mentions:
Crossing Delancey, Fear of Fear, A Master Builder, My Life As A Zucchini, The Plot Against Harry, The Selfish Giant, Starship Troopers, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Tales of Hoffman, Twentieth Century (1934), The Verdict, Young Soul Rebels
Favorite Re-Watches*:
All of Me, The Devils, The Lady Eve, The Last Detail, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Opening Night, Pather Panchali, Ratcatcher, Seconds, Still Walking, Times Square, The Virgin Suicides
At 15, I wasn’t ready for David Lynch, who passed away at age 78 last week. Forced to watch The Elephant Man in an English class called “Modes of Literature” (film I suppose being one of the “modes”), it thoroughly freaked me out, not in a scary-horror way but as art then-waaaay beyond my comprehension. My response was that of an average adolescent: condescending disbelief to its merit, later earning easy laughs at a party with my lazy John Merrick impression. Twin Peaks first aired the same year; maybe I knew that it was co-created by the same person who directed The Elephant Man, but it was off my radar, only witnessed through media sound bites and Kyle McLachlan’s hosting stint on Saturday Night Live featuring the obligatory parody of the show.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me would end up the second Lynch feature I saw at the urging of a girlfriend; having not seen the show, it didn’t resonate with me at all. That same year, when Lynch appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone to promote Lost Highway, I had no idea who this odd, middle-aged, wavy-haired man was standing off to the side and behind a particularly dopey-looking Trent Reznor, composer of the film’s score (the latter would go on to do much, much better work of this sort.)
I moved to Boston for film school later that year and finally saw Blue Velvet on a rented VHS tape. By then, I was ready. While not as life-changing as other cinema masterworks I was regularly exposed to at the time, this was the first Lynch I appreciated and at least thought I understood even as it exposed me to ideas and types of characters I hadn’t seen before (I mean, where did Dennis Hopper’s unhinged but also ultra-specific monster come from?) Two years later, I also rented The Straight Story—perhaps the most anomalous Lynch feature, but effective in conveying how many different shades he could paint in while still resembling no one else.
Another two years after that, Mulholland Drive cracked open my world. The first Lynch I saw in a theater, it was such a visceral, spellbinding experience that I watched it again at a second-run house three months later and bought the DVD upon release. I’ve written extensively about it here and will add that it not only transformed the way I viewed Lynch’s art, it was also one of those “life-changing” movies I referred to earlier; some days, it is my favorite film of this still-young century.
Viewings of Eraserhead and the first season of Twin Peaks followed (like many, I drifted through the second season save for the startling finale), along with a rewatch of The Elephant Man at age 30 (this time in a cinema) which moved me profoundly. Not everything Lynch made was golden (Lost Highway feels like a failed attempt at what he’d perfect with Mulholland Drive), but my increasing familiarity with his oddball perspective, the sometimes-bizarre cadences his characters would speak in, and his use of the surreal not as a means to an end but a portal into the previously unimaginable all rendered him more essential in my mind. His work was the artistic expression of a mind that had little precedent, which is what all great, groundbreaking art aspires to.
He kept pushing boundaries: Inland Empire, a deep (and deeply weird) down-the-rabbit role psychodrama and a vehicle for everything Laura Dern could do as an actress and a muse; and Twin Peaks: The Return, a radical reboot that subverted expectations and further expanded the original series’ mythology while also wildly turning it inside out. Most of us hoped Lynch would make another feature or perhaps even more Twin Peaks, but The Return is almost a perfect career apotheosis, its final words (“What year is it?”) a question one could apply to the ever-shifting worlds his art delved into.
I did see Lynch in person at the Boston premiere of Inland Empire at the Brattle Theater. During a Q&A following the screening, Lynch was sui generis, refusing to provide concrete A’s to any of the audience’s Q’s. Towards the end, while conversing back-and-forth with a woman unable to clearly articulate what she wanted to ask him, he affably but firmly (and loudly) asked her in his inimitable, flat near-drawl, “WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?” Regardless of whether one loved or hated Inland Empire that night, those three words in that voice made the evening transcendent.
1. I had to go beyond the local multiplexes or, in fact, any theater to stumble across a movie that, for the first time, expanded my idea of what one could be and also feel like it was somehow made just for me.
2. A glimpse into another world: a bridge between what I liked in my youth and what I would love as a grownup when I eventually worked at a cinema myself.
3. I left the movie feeling blown away by the story, thinking I had never seen anything like it before; now I understand that it was the depiction of a foreign culture that was new to me.
4. Itmade a seismic impact on my taste and notion of what the world had to offer to someone my age. I was getting closer to leaving those suburban multiplexes and my heretofore provincial worldview (mostly) behind.
5. This notion of a fine line separating life and art was on my mind as I prepared for a major change in my own life and the role art would play in it.
6. It was a film asking its viewers to consider whether the desire to be “safe” was to simply crave comfort or inevitably give oneself over to fear.
7. The thrill of discovery, of opening those new doors encouraging me to pursue Film Studies, vindicating that leap of faith I took in making film central in my life.
8. No matter who or what we are, we look for representation in popular art, to see people onscreen who are recognizable, even similar to us, finding someone we can relate to and that the rest of the culture can also see.
9. I still fondly recall how I got to see itfor the first time, but what’s important is not how I saw it, but that I saw it and can still watch it again and again, no matter where I can find it.
10. What if, like real life with all of its nuances and contradictions, a work of art subsisted somewhere in between fiction and nonfiction? What about those filmmakers whose work tends to fall into such margins?
11. How nearly overstimulated yet satiated I felt while piecing together images and sounds, the ways they informed and occasionally contrasted against each other and how tension accumulated throughout, reaching a breaking point only to find an unlikely release at the end.
12. A panorama to fearlessly explore connections between dreams, reality and the movies, not to mention all of the wicked, sublime and terrifying possibilities that surface as they overlap.
13. We revisit films for the pleasure they provide. Occasionally, we also have a sixth sense, an inclination that there’s more to glean from them than what we can discern after a single viewing.
14. For those receptive to such stillness, it can be like sitting on a bench or standing next to a wall, simply observing life play out before one’s own eyes no matter how little action occurs.
15. The question “Does anyone change?” lingers in their pauses between conservation; as much as either one would like to deny it, their body language often says otherwise.
16. That sense of camaraderie and support is really what the film is all about; it’s also what I craved and then experienced once I found my people at the movies—on both sides of the screen.
17. This past as remembered from adulthood is so colorful, vibrant and real one could almost step into the frame and feel what’s it like to be an active part of it.
18. “What is a city without its ghosts?” the director’s narration asks and it’s the film’s central thesis, lending weight to what simply could have been a kooky look at a quirky childhood.
19. Whenever I watch a film for the first time, I keep in mind how it makes me feel; the best films, however, also form a deeper connection, one that not only changes our literal view of the world but also challenges it.
20. It’s deeply affecting for it reminds us not what the story is or necessarily how it was relayed, but why it was told.
21. Whatever our aspirations may be, humans as individuals are subject to a continual evolution without end; as couples, an end only arrives when one participant or in some cases, both are no longer willing to evolve.
22. Have you ever left a movie in a daze, almost as if your entire world has shifted? Often, when the lead character has been through something over the course of the film, so have we.
23. Through all of this previously unfathomable change, films remained my refuge, my constant, my church. None of us had any idea when or even if theatres would ever reopen; streaming and physical media would have to suffice until they did.
24. Some of the best films tend to recognize this sense of a world in flux no matter how contained the narrative; the very best of them also offer new ways of viewing and comprehending it.
On September 11, 2021, walking up the stairs from the Brattle Theater’s lobby to its auditorium, I felt cautious, perhaps also a spark of excitement. I knew these stairs intimately, having walked them hundreds of times since moving to Boston nearly a quarter-century before. It was my first visit to this single-screen (with balcony seating!) Harvard Square institution since Varda By Agnes on December 11, 2019 (exactly twenty-one months!) and my first movie in a theatre since Covid shut them down eighteen months before. I was there with a good friend and fellow film enthusiast to watch Eyimofe (This is My Desire), a new Nigerian drama and the directorial debut from twin brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri. Today, I don’t remember much about its particulars, only that the Brattle screened it on 35mm film, certainly an incentive for my return to the movies.
Theaters started reopening months earlier as Covid vaccines became widely available. Around the time I was inoculated, the Coolidge Corner Theatre (until the previous December my longtime employer) resumed business; the Brattle soon followed suit, as did The Somerville, Landmark Kendall Square, AMC Boston Common and most suburban multiplexes. I did not yet feel comfortable returning to the Coolidge; despite being vaccinated and masked, the notion of sitting in packed interior space also intimidated me. I eased back into the world gradually, flying to South Carolina that June to see my parents (for the first time in nearly two years), staying at a Maine hotel over an August weekend, going out to favorite restaurants more and ordering takeout less.
Viewing Eyimofe (This is My Desire) marked both a homecoming and a new phase. Altered circumstances meant I would not go back to the movies as often or conveniently as I had for most of my adult life. Potentially large crowds deterred me from seeing anything at IFFBoston’s Fall Focus that October, but that month I did buy a Brattle membership (and have maintained one ever since.) The friend I saw Eyimofe with once again became a consistent moviegoing companion; together, we returned to the Brattle for Tsai Ming-liang’s Days, then met up at the Legacy Place Showcase Cinemas in Dedham for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. Weeks later, we even saw a limited run of The Power of The Dog at the Coolidge—I could’ve waited another two weeks to watch it on Netflix but Jane Campion’s best film since possibly The Piano on the Coolidge’s glorious, giant main screen was worth the trip.
Eyimofe (This is My Desire)
My theater visits might have trickled to one or two films per month (still higher-than-average than the public at large) but it didn’t feel like much of a loss. I did appreciate each movie I saw outside the house far more now, whether it was a brand-new flick from a favorite director (Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza in 70mm at the Coolidge) or a beloved classic I hadn’t seen on the big screen before (a scratchy 35mm print of Stranger Than Paradise at the Brattle.) I made time to see Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul’sfollow-up to Cemetery of Splendour) because I knew it was only screening theatrically—to this date, it has not been available to stream; I also set aside an evening to catch Terence Davies’ ambitious, ingenuously shot and edited Benediction at the Kendall Square, grateful that I did after it ended up the director’s final film. The following April, I attended IFFBoston’s first in-person festival in three years, catching six movies over four nights including A Love Song (starring singular character actress Dale Dickey), charming Finnish coming-of-age feature Girl Picture and the Hawaiian indie Every Day In Kaimuki.
My viewing at home, however, only flagged slightly from the amount I consumed during lockdown. A new job with a hybrid schedule (two days/week onsite, three days at home) allowed more time to stream everything from Elia Kazan’s Splendor In The Grass to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Pigsty than when I had been commuting to the Coolidge Monday through Friday. While ideally I would have seen such titles on the largest screen available, I had acclimated to a sort of hybrid schedule for movie watching in general. I’ll always recommend seeing a movie in a theater with an audience when possible or feasible but it’s also advantageous to consider any alternative. Streaming schedules are as fleeting and variable as theatrical release windows: titles come and go all the time and while how one sees a film can enhance the experience, what’s more important is just seeing the film, period (often by any means necessary.)
Where I saw movies had shifted as did how I approached them. Writing from a distance of not even five years, I believe we’re all still processing a world radically transformed by the pandemic and lockdown via enormous and obvious changes (such as those hybrid work schedules), but also more infinitesimal ones. I’ve mentioned that studying film had an effect on how I see both the world and my own self but this did not end when I finished school. Since then, I’ve watched movies that continually expand and sometimes challenge such perceptions. When considering something as global and consequential as Covid, one is reminded that the world is always changing. Some of the best films tend to recognize this sense of a world forever being in flux no matter how contained the narrative; the very best of them also offer new ways of viewing and comprehending it.
In Aftersun, the debut feature from writer/director Charlotte Wells, a father, Calum (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio) are on holiday at a Turkish resort. Both hail from Scotland but Calum (who had Sophie when he was barely 20) no longer lives with her and her mom but in another unidentified country. On the surface, this is a fairly unremarkable vacation with the two mostly passing the time lounging by the pool, swimming in the Mediterranean Sea and partaking in other tourist-friendly activities; the application of suntan lotion before and after such endeavors is the most literal reference to the film’s title. Throughout, audio clues such as a late 90’s-heavy soundtrack (Blur, The Lightning Seeds, even that once-ubiquitous dance craze “Macarena”!) and subtler visual ones (clothing styles and the absence of smartphones) reveal the time period—not coincidentally, it’s when Wells herself would’ve roughly been Sophie’s age.
Gradually, one sees Calum and Sophie’s relationship as not necessarily estranged but certainly influenced by the time they’ve spent living in separate countries. There’s a longing from each of them towards the other that also seems tentative due to how they’re placed in frame—often at opposing angles, they come off as abstractions as the camera focuses on their backsides or close-ups of body parts (like the cast Calum wears on his right hand for the film’s first half.) It’s not as reductive as telegraphing distance by placing them poles apart in the mise en scene, but the sense persists that something’s left unsaid. The closest Sophie gets occurs when she says to Calum, “I think it’s nice that we share the same sky.” He asks her what she means, and she adds, “I think that the fact that we can both see the sun, so even though we’re not actually in the same place and we’re not actually together… we kind of are in a way, you know?”
Wells organizes this story not merely as a period piece or even fully a memory piece but almost as the act of someone sifting through their own memories (themselves fleeting things that one doesn’t always recall accurately) and reconciling them with actual remnants of the past—in this case, footage shot by Sophie and Calum of this trip on their camcorder. The film opens with Sophie (heard but not seen) recording Calum standing on their hotel room’s balcony; his back is to the camera through sliding glass doors as he smokes a cigarette and sways a bit, as if casually dancing or perhaps practicing Tai Chi (which he does throughout the film.) The act of recording someone is a motif many other films have utilized (increasingly so given that anyone can now record a video on their phone); in Aftersun, it’s enhanced by scenes of characters watching said footage. Both Calum and Sophie take time to view what they’ve recently recorded of each other; Wells occasionally introduces an additional layer by showing both what’s filmed and who’s watching it simultaneously in the frame. In one instance, Calum turns the video off and we’re left with his reflection in the TV screen. Gradually, one notices reflections of both characters, together but mostly separately in numerous surfaces ranging from the obvious (mirrors all over the place) to the more subtle (the polished surface of a dining table.) The effect jars a little but it also intrigues as both video and reflections sometimes reveal facial expressions and other body language Calum and Sophie might not be consciously aware of coming from themselves.
After that opening camcorder footage, Wells briefly and abruptly cuts to an adult woman in a darkened club, staccato flashes of white light momentarily illuminating her, as if at a rave. She then rewinds back to the beginning of the vacation with Calum and Sophie on their bus from the airport to the resort. Subsequently, the film unspools in more or less linear time but Wells occasionally returns to the rave where we can begin to make out Calum dancing in the crowd. The next time arrives not long after Calum casually confides to another man at the resort who assumes Sophie is Calum’s sibling, “I can’t see myself at 40; surprised I made it to 30.” Later, following an intimate conversation between Calum and Sophie partially about why the former no longer lives in Scotland, the music slows down like a cassette player running out of battery power as Wells returns to the rave. She soon edits in a curious, never before and never again seen image of Calum’s backside as he stands on a railing, possibly the one on their hotel room’s balcony.
Like so much else in this film, it’s purposely abstract and not entirely knowable. Is it a flash-forward to a later scene or perhaps a flashback to a memory? The next time it happens offers some clarity. One evening at the resort, Sophie signs the two of them up for karaoke but Calum flat-out refuses to participate and she performs a charmingly tuneless version of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” by herself. Afterwards, they argue a bit; Calum announces he’s going back to their room. Rather than join him, Sophie stays behind and pals around with some older teens plus one boy her age, Michael with whom she shares her first kiss. Meanwhile, in their room, expressionless, Calum watches one of their videos and then goes back out, gets drunk and walks towards the sea. In a chilling, static long shot, he literally walks right into the sea until he disappears (one could say Calum himself becomes an abstraction.) Locked out of the room, Sophie asks a receptionist to let her in. Upon her return we see Calum, no longer in the sea but lying naked, face down on the bed. His heavy breathing fills the soundtrack and then we’re back at the rave. One begins noticing that these rave scenes seem to arrive at moments of Calum’s heightened anxiety. This time, however, there’s a cut from the rave to black and then a slow rising pan revealing the adult woman we saw in that first brief rave scene. She’s in bed with another woman and one can hear a baby (presumably her daughter) crying in the distance. The other woman says to her, “Happy Birthday, Sophie.”
All at once, one understands Aftersun as adult Sophie looking back on this holiday with her dad when she was 11. The viewer doesn’t know where Calum is now, only that he’s not present, just someone we see in Sophie’s past. When the film returns to the morning after Calum’s walk-into-the-sea (or did he?), the holiday continues. Calum apologizes for accidentally locking Sophie out; they visit some mud baths and practice Tai Chi together over a scenic view. It’s also Calum’s 31st birthday and Sophie cajoles the rest of their tour group to surprise-sing “He’s a jolly good fellow” to him. He watches them, caught off guard, positively bewildered while Wells slowly cross fades to him from presumably the night before, sitting on the hotel room bed, head bent over, deeply sobbing. It’s the closest she comes to revealing that there’s something going on with him. Maybe he suffers from depression although she leaves things open enough that it’s possible he’s just having a bad day, just as it’s possible he could still be part of adult Sophie’s life or still alive, even. However, the film’s somewhat wistful, mostly melancholic tone portends otherwise.
The rave is a space where adult Sophie can coexist with the Calum of twenty-odd years before. At the film’s climax, the actual “rave” is shown to be a brightly lit outdoor space at the resort. Calum leaps onto the dancefloor, boogieing to Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” while a bashful but amused young Sophie watches him in wonder. As the scene continues, it shifts back and forth between the actual space and the rave with adult Sophie, the latter as usual rendered in darkness with flashes of white light. The song, one that could potentially suffer from forty years of overexposure is not a random choice. As Bowie and Freddie Mercury fervently sing “This is our last dance” repeatedly, the music becomes isolated, the rhythm section dropping out from this particular mix, the words and vocals urgent, echoing and taking on almost a spectral presence.
As the song climaxes, young Sophie and Calum hold each other on the resort’s dancefloor in one moment, while adult Sophie and Calum do the same at the rave. Then, there’s a cut to camcorder footage of young Sophie waving goodbye to Calum at the airport. A slow pan to the right ends with adult Sophie sitting on her couch, watching this footage on her TV. Another pan shifts the action back to the airport, only from Sophie’s point of view as Calum films her. In this final shot, he stops his camera and stares into Wells’. He then slowly walks away from us down a long corridor. He exits through doors at the corridor’s end into the rave, briefly visible until the doors close and he disappears from Sophie’s life perhaps temporarily, possibly permanently.
I watched Aftersun in a theater on the basis of glowing reviews and also Mescal’s presence. His breakthrough role arrived two years prior with the television miniseries Normal People. Over a dozen half-hour episodes, one witnessed him transform from everyone’s favorite new internet boyfriend into potentially one of the better actors of his generation. Following roles in God’s Creatures and The Lost Daughter, Aftersun gave him ample space to build upon this promise and depth and it earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Lead Actor. However, it also announced a significant new talent in Wells. She could have chosen to tell this story rather conventionally with a more explicit flashback structure, voiceover narration, title cards to place us where and when, etc. Instead, she forged her own cinematic language of sorts, not necessarily telling the whole story of Calum and Sophie but a story nonetheless utilizing different means of disseminating information through words left unsaid, glances and movements, shaping of time and place and presenting images from multiple and often simultaneous perspectives. By the film’s end, one could sense in her a vision as deeply felt as Miranda July’s, a direction of actors as masterful as Wes Anderson’s and as innovate a storyteller as Todd Haynes or Abbas Kiarostami.
Years ago in film school, attending the now-defunct Fine Arts Theatre in downtown Chicago (for a screening of the Jane Horrocks vehicle Little Voice), I saw inscribed on the venue’s lobby wall a quote from French writer Theophile Gautier which I think of often: “All Passes; Art Alone Endures”. Industry strikes and shortfalls in funding aside, people continue making movies and sorting out ways for others to see them. Like all art, cinema will never “die”, just as we haven’t run out of stories to tell or paintings to draw or music to make, etc. Multiple times in this project, I’ve mentioned the notion (possibly now a cliché) or never possibly running out of movies to watch. The thought provides deep solace and stimulation for me, not to mention a sense of fulfillment whenever I see a new film as original, compelling and resonant as Aftersun.
On March 13, 2020, the new film First Cow both opened and closed in Boston, where I worked at a non-profit arthouse theatre that screened it. As was my custom on Friday afternoons, I snuck away from my desk to catch the 2:00 show. I suspected it might be my last chance to see it for a while (at least in a cinema); my fears were affirmed directly afterwards when, over a conference call with other staff and a few board members, we decided to shut down operations as of 6:00 that evening with the intent of possibly reopening by month’s end. This meant First Cow would receive one more screening, the last of three overall—the shortest theatrical “run” I can ever recall at this theatre. What was an anticipated and buzzed-about release of the latest feature from acclaimed independent director Kelly Reichardt ended up almost entirely derailed by COVID-19.
Over the next few weeks, then months, I was increasingly grateful for seeing First Cow when I did—not only for the opportunity to do so theatrically but also in that it was the last cinema screening I would attend for another eighteen months. At the time, I didn’t know that one of my favorite leisure activities would be involuntarily put on hold for so long. In the past two decades, I had watched an average of 75-100 movies in cinemas per year (working at one made this convenient), sometimes more (126 in 2005!). The only time I went more than a week or two without going to the movies was the month I got married and honeymooned in Santa Fe in 2013. Filmgoing was but one of many things the pandemic abruptly changed.
Upon lockdown, I was initially thrilled with all that extra time to catch up on movies at home (along with the privilege of working my mostly administrative job remotely.) With streaming more dominant than ever, I had no (and four+ years later, still have no) shortage of films to pick from. I made a watchlist that I’ve added to and checked off from ever since and used the two+ extra hours in my day (reclaimed from my back-and-forth commute) to begin a valiant but ultimately impossible task in whittling it down.
During those first weeks, I caught up on classics I hadn’t seen (Atlantic City, A Place In The Sun, Czech surrealist piece Daisies) and revisited other ones for the first time in decades (The Swimmer, now resonating more with me after having absorbed seven seasons of Mad Men.) I watched a few relatively recent titles (Mississippi Grind, which I dug and Hale County This Morning This Evening, which I found a slog) and others that I’d been meaning to check out such as The Myth of The American Sleepover (David Robert Mitchell’s pre-It Follows feature), The Last Waltz (I can still picture Van Morrison’s sparkly outfit!), Le Bonheur (an early Agnes Varda narrative that’s nearly as essential as Cleo From 5 To 7) and Day For Night, whose making-of-a-movie narrative struck a deep chord and encouraged me to check out other Francois Truffaut films I had missed (including, eventually, the entire Antoine Doinel cycle post-The 400 Blows.)
Day For Night
By mid-April, it was obvious lockdown wasn’t going away anytime soon. I began anticipating the first of each month mostly to see what new titles had been added to The Criterion Channel (along with what would expire at the end of said month, prioritizing my watchlist so as not to miss anything.) I’d leap from genre to era depending on what was available and what struck my fancy on a particular day. I fell in love with first-time watches like It’s Always Fair Weather, Private Life, High and Low and The Best Years of Our Lives. I revisited comfort food favorites such as Waiting For Guffman, Moonrise Kingdom and The Out-of-Towners (original Lemmon/Dennis recipe) and headier stuff such as My Own Private Idaho, Derek Jarman’s The Garden and Scenes From a Marriage (Bergman version, naturally.) I’d devour curated series on Criterion such as early Martin Scorsese shorts (Italianamerican a must-see for anyone who adored him mom in Goodfellas), Abbas Kiarostami’s “Koker Trilogy” and Atom Egoyan’s pre-The Sweet Hereafter oeuvre, which I hadn’t watched since the late 90s.
Hopes of my theatre reopening to the public came and went after Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was indefinitely delayed. Gradually, titles that would’ve normally received theatrical releases began showing up directly on streaming services. I watched Josephine Decker’s Shirley the Friday in June it premiered trying to convince myself it was like one of those long-missed opening day shows I’d often attend at work. Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods and Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things followed (even if both were on Netflix where a theatrical release would’ve been limited anyway.) Theatres like mine learned to pivot, providing content for viewers to rent online as did film festivals such as PIFF, where I watched Black Bear (still Aubrey Plaza’s greatest film performance to date) and TIFF, which I was able to procure an industry pass for from work, seeing over 20 titles, Nomadland, Shiva Baby and Another Round among them.
Near summer’s end, a good friend from my film group emailed our discussion list; planning on watching one of these new video-on-demand titles, she asked if we wanted to do the same and then discuss it on Zoom. The movie in question, paranormal love story Burning Ghost was laughingly bad but it did kick off a weekly tradition that endures to this day. Happily, subsequent film picks were far better: South Korean coming-of-age drama House of Hummingbird, low-budget but visionary sci-fi The Vast of Night, ultra-indie gambling thriller Major Arcana and Bas Devos’ lovely work of slow cinema, Ghost Tropic (which could not have been further from Burning Ghost, aesthetically or quality-wise.)
About a month-and-a-half in, we saw a film that has stuck with me arguably longer than any other titles mentioned in the last paragraph. Ham On Rye, the debut feature from writer/director Tyler Taormina was now available to stream through the Brattle Theatre’s VOD service (dubbed “The Brattlite”.) Despite having played the festival circuit in the months leading up to lockdown, it was unfamiliar to me (perhaps IFFBoston might’ve screened it that April.) It had a unique title and intriguing promotional art, however, along with some comparisons to Richard Linklater and David Lynch.
Although filmed in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, the first half-hour could take place in any sun-drenched idyllic suburb. After a pre-credits sequence of abstract close-ups occurring at some sort of family picnic in a park (such as a handheld sparkler’s fuse burning out right after ignition), Ham On Rye resembles an ongoing, somewhat rambling montage of various teenagers doing ordinary things: painting their nails, pulling up their socks, lifting weights and cruising through neighborhoods blasting music (from classic soul to headbanging power-pop) from their car stereos.
Gradually, it shifts into focus that these kids are all in one way or another preparing for some kind of event that evening: a ritual not yet clearly defined for the viewer. Taormina inserts potential clues into nearly every scene: a group of girls gather together in long white dresses straight out of The Virgin Suicides while a gang of their male counterparts walk the streets decked out in mostly ill-fitting suits probably borrowed from their fathers. Maybe they’re all headed to a formal dance, like Prom? Whatever they’re anticipating, it’s still shrouded in mystery but also a Big Deal—when one kid gets picked up, heading off for the event, his dad fervently yells as the car pulls away, “Don’t mess it up! DON’T MESS IT UP!!!”
The grand destination in question for all these youth is soon revealed as Monty’s Deli (“relishing the moment since 1952” reads a sign on its front window.) Suddenly, the film’s title seems slightly less incongruous, although I’ll leave possible allusions to the Charles Bukowski tome of the same name to those more familiar with that literary work. Early on at Monty’s, there’s a jump cut of one of the boys signing some sort of official-looking contract to close-ups of various sandwiches, followed by a dining room exclusively populated by dressed up teens eating silently. Once the food is polished off, music appears (to my ears resembling a pastiche of The Association’s 1960s sunshine pop classic “Cherish”) and the kids get up to dance, again rather casually as if at a house party than anything like a formal event.
All of a sudden, the dramatic 1960s girl group sound of The Teardrops’ “Tonight I’m Going To Fall Again” (note the title) loudly begins and all the kids line up in a circle. Each person takes their turn stepping out of the circle and choosing someone by pointing at them. If the recipient offers them an upturned thumb, they go off and dance together. An array of rapidly edited up-turned and down-turned thumbs follows, heightening the tension. It’s all too much for Haley (one of the girls featured in the lead-up to this sequence), who abruptly breaks from the circle and runs out of the deli. Those not given an up-turned thumb are no longer allowed to participate. The chosen ones, however, remain as couples in the shared circle and begin a procession of sorts, clapping incessantly as a short kid wearing a fez and a modified matador-like costume leads the charge.
The mood turns joyful verging on manic, even as the couples fall into a slow dance and the deli becomes suffused with atmospheric lighting and colors that were nowhere to be seen when everyone was simply munching on their sandwiches. Then, a circle of gleaming, bright light appears above the chosen kids. Each couple kisses and the mood grows practically euphoric. The happy couples all leave the deli and blissfully walk down the middle of the street in the direction of the suburban enclaves from which they came. Gorgeously backlit in silhouette as twilight nears, one by one they begin vanishing into thin air! Hold on a minute—is this the rapture? What was in those sandwiches? (Also, is this similar to what happens to Mormons?)
This entire deli sequence is unquestionably the film’s climax, but it arrives at its exact midpoint—there’s another half-hour to go. Everything that follows is a comedown but by design as we spend time with all those left behind, like Haley, who can no longer reach her presumably raptured best friend by phone. Or the boy in the too-small suit whom we next see sharing a glum dinner with his mom at a fast-food joint. Or another kid who didn’t even make it to the deli because he accidentally fell into a pothole on the way there. A floppy-haired runt of a kid asks his fellow rejects, “Do I get a second chance?” and no one says a word as if to explain how numbingly obvious the answer is to such a question.
Even after the film reveals its “purpose”, it remains not entirely knowable. With an eye drawn towards liminal spaces and ambiguous imagery, Taormina not only relays a strange tale but does so rather unconventionally, favoring mood and texture over logic or any sense of narrative fulfillment. The film’s first half is one of anticipation but also dreamy reverie such as the sun-kissed lighting in nearly every shot and stylized touches like the folky, pan flute-heavy score accompanying the white-sheathed girls as they ride their scooters all around their verdant community. What comes after the deli sequence is relentlessly drab, a bit melancholy and often cloaked in darkness. We see the activities the unchosen partake in for what they are: simply unremarkable, such as a “rager” which consists of burnouts lounging around a campfire, swigging beer and dispassionately playing a hand of Uno.
Between these two poles, the deli sequence itself is a marvel. First encountering it six-plus months into lockdown, I got caught up in its sense of awe and mounting excitement unlike anything else I had recently seen. I didn’t really know exactly what I was watching as the couples vanished into nothing but I didn’t care, feeling nearly as blissed out as they appeared to be. The sobering aftermath for those who remained also resonated—it’s not much of a stretch to say it mirrored my own disappointment with no longer being able to do previously taken-for-granted activities such as, um, going out to the movies. I related all too well to this restlessness brought on by the despair of being stuck in limbo, unable to participate in life outside my house. Taormina could not have had any pandemic-specific ideas in mind when devising this film since it entirely preceded the whole shebang, but this hit differently for me than it might have had I seen it a year earlier.
Following Ham On Rye, our discussion group continued Zooming every week, coming together to dissect and debate more new-ish films like Kirsten Johnson’s meta-doc about her ailing father Dick Johnson is Dead, Miranda July’s typically, delightfully odd third feature Kajillionaire, and the meticulously edited and effective documentary Time. Outside the group, I found even more films to love both new (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets; David Byrne’s American Utopia) and old (Claudia Weil’s pioneering indie Girlfriends; early Laura Dern vehicle Smooth Talk.) Taormina would follow Ham On Rye with a real pandemic project, the Long Island-shot, 62-minute tone poem Happer’s Comet and eventually, a second narrative feature, the forthcoming Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.
As for me, at the end of 2020 I abruptly found myself unemployed for the first time in over 15 years. Naturally, I spent the first 90 days of 2021 watching (at least) 90 movies at home—through all of this previously unfathomable change, films remained my refuge, my constant, my church. None of us had any idea when or even if theatres would ever reopen; streaming and physical media would have to suffice until they did.
Haunted Jukebox 