Films Watched

Films Watched, August 2021

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to watching 12 Angry Men. Perhaps I’d seen it used so much as a cultural reference point that I felt like I didn’t need to see it—after all, one could easily summarize the plot in a sentence or two, tops. Sidney Lumet’s a filmmaker whose workmanlike agility I’ve always felt more admiration than passion for, but his first feature film conveys a mastery of pacing, blocking and framing to transform what is essentially a single set play into cinema, albeit one best viewed as a period piece that intrigues most when it offers occasional glimpses of self-recognition. Either way, as essential as you’ve heard it to be.

With all his shorts expiring on Criterion at the end of the month, I took a semi-deep dive into Georges Méliès, the first filmmaker to utilize optical effects and thus take serious advantage of what one could do with the new medium. Every cineaste knows A Trip To The Moon (especially the two that made this music video 25 years ago), but follow-ups like The Impossible Voyage and The Merry Frolics of Satan are even better, experimenting with textures and a fine-tuned whimsy. They are records of Méliès exploring film in real time, trying out new techniques and occasionally finding magic in them.

Not much new stuff to write home about (apart from Annette, reviewed here), with re-watches mostly confirming first impressions: Elliot Gould still iconic as a 1970’s Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, Point Blank still pretentious but oddly fascinating, etc. On the other hand, Limbo feels more like a future classic the second time around and Pink Flamingos proves far more watchable with John Waters’ predictably entertaining, motor-mouthed commentary track.

On that note, I’m taking a break from these watchlist essays after 18 straight months of doing them in order to focus on other writing (including this series) and some new endeavors. However, I’ll still be posting (mostly short) reviews of everything I see on Letterboxd.

Films viewed in August in chronological order, with director, year of release and my rating (out of 10); starred titles are re-watches:

The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018) 8

Joan of Arc (Georges Méliès, 1900) 7

The Dead (John Huston, 1987) 8

Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950) 7

Fully Realized Humans (Joshua Leonard, 2020) 6

Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)* 7

The Hot Rock (Peter Yates, 1972) 8

The Kingdom of the Fairies (Méliès, 1903) 8

12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) 10

Style Wars (Tony Silver, 1983) 6

The Dig (Simon Stone, 2021) 7

Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)* 10

Limbo (Ben Sharrock, 2020)* 9

Wild Mountain Thyme (John Patrick Shanley, 2020) 3

Tower (Keith Maitland, 2016) 8

A Trip To The Moon (Méliès, 1902)* 8

Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981) 7

Hotel New York (Jackie Raynal, 1984) 6

Never Gonna Snow Again (Malgorzata Szumowska, Michael Englert, 2020) 8

The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)* 10

Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967)* 8

Moneyball (Bennett Miller, 2011) 7

The Witch (Méliès, 1906) 7

Sylvia Scarlett (Cukor, 1935) 6

Annette (Leos Carax, 2021) 9

Undine (Christian Petzold, 2020) 7

Muppets Most Wanted (James Bobin, 2014) 6

The Impossible Voyage (Méliès, 1904) 9

The Merry Frolics of Satan (Méliès, 1906) 8

Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2013)* 8

Films Watched, July 2021

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment
O Fantasma

No film festivals or reoccurring themes this month, unless you count two starring Veronica Lake (the silly one’s much better than the serious one) and another two with Gena Rowlands (though her role in Mazursky’s forgotten, half-misbegotten modern Shakespeare riff is relatively tiny.) I did celebrate Independence Day weekend with two concert films: Summer of Soul is one of the best in years, adding incisive context to its rare footage with a “can you top that clip” momentum that never lets up; Monterey Pop, on the other hand is more noteworthy for its historical value than anything Pennebaker adds to it, although the lengthy Ravi Shankar number at the finale could be an excellent short in itself.

Caught up on a few new-ish acclaimed titles, including the polarizing Promising Young Woman (thoroughly entertaining, pulls few punches but I don’t think I could sit through that scene again), Minari (more than adequate but only exceptional when Youn Yuh-jung’s onscreen) and the recently re-released Between The Lines, which intrigues for its depiction of a circa-1977, pre-gentrification, pseudo-bohemian Boston, even if it feels a little sitcom-y at times. Also finally saw A Quiet Place: wasn’t expecting Krasinski to meld Raimi-esque sci-fi/horror onto what could almost be a more commercial version of Malick, although I still do not have high hopes for the sequel (which I’ll likely watch in August.)

All my re-watches this month hold up nicely, especially Altman’s gambling picture, which gives a most vivid sense of its time and place and The Conformist, which offers a dazzling simulation of its time/place that could only exist in the mind but resonates strongly anyway. This also marks the first time I’ve made it through Fallen Angels without having to look up (much of) the plot online and the first time I’ve seen American Movie since it was in theaters—as a native, I can’t say it’s the best Milwaukee movie, but it’s certainly the most.

Standing out from the remaining hodgepodge of mostly middling titles new and old (though Mandibles is almost genius in its relentless stupidity) are two highly recommended first-time watches. O Fantasma brilliantly navigates a stunning turn in its third act from agreeably kinky to deeply unsettling, making me want to watch everything else Rodrigues made between it and The Ornithologist, while during the first ten minutes of It’s A Beautiful Day I thought, “Is this all Hertzfeldt can do?”, only to conclude by the end, “No one else has ever done this.”

Films viewed in July in chronological order, with director, year of release and my rating (out of 10); starred titles are re-watches.

The Blue Dahlia (George Marshall, 1946) 5

Wildwood, NJ (Ruth Leitman, Carol Weaks Cassidy, 1994) 8

Sweet Thing (Alexandre Rockwell, 2020) 7

Land (Robin Wright, 2021) 5

Summer of Soul (Ahmir-Khalib Thompson, 2021) 9

Monterey Pop (D. A. Pennebaker, 1968) 7

A Story of Children and Film (Mark Cousins, 2013) 7

Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020) 8

It’s Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt, 2012) 9

All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)* 10

The Perfect Candidate (Haifaa al-Mansour, 2019) 6

Minari (Lee Isaac Chung, 2020) 8

Labyrinth of Passion (Pedro Almodovar, 1982) 7

California Split (Robert Altman, 1974)* 9

Between The Lines (Joan Micklin Silver, 1977) 7

The American Sector (Pacho Velez, Courtney Stephens, 2020) 6

Tempest (Paul Mazursky, 1982) 5

Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959) 7

American Movie (Chris Smith, 1999)* 8

Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2018) 6

Lisztomania (Ken Russell, 1975) 4

O Fantasma (Joao Pedro Rodrigues, 2000) 9

A Running Jump (Mike Leigh, 2012) 6

Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai, 1995)* 8

The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)* 10

A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018) 7

Minnie and Moskowitz (John Cassavetes, 1971)* 9

Obsession (Brian De Palma, 1976) 6

Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Bunuel, 1964) 6

I Married A Witch (Rene Clair, 1942) 8

Mandibles (Quentin Dupieux, 2020) 7

Incoherence (Bong Joon-ho, 1994) 6

Films Watched, June 2021

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment
A Bread Factory

Another month, another online film festival. While I’m yearning to go back to such things in person and could’ve feasibly done so for the 23rd Annual Provincetown International Film Festival, other travel plans and some lingering trepidation (I haven’t yet set foot in a theater) left me opting for the virtual edition, itself actually pretty fulfilling: a ten-day window to watch most of the fest’s titles (save for things like Opening Night selection In The Heights) anytime, anyplace. My favorites included Sundance winner CODA (coming to theatres and Apple+ later this summer), charming dating app doc Searchers, filmed-in-lockdown two-hander Language Lessons and profiles on Aussie diver/marine life activist Valerie Taylor and the aftereffects of a fifty-year-old stunt pulled by wealthy hippie weirdo Michael Brody Jr.

However, June’s best first-time viewing was A Bread Factory, Patrick Wang’s two-part, four-hour dramedy about a struggling arts organization in small town upstate New York, with an ensemble led by Tyne Daly and mostly unknowns plus a few ringers (Glynnis O’Connor, Janeane Garofalo, James Marsters). It received a miniscule release in October 2018 (I don’t think it played Boston) but came to my attention via rave reviews from critics Matt Zoller Seitz and Jonathan Rosenbaum. Wang’s humaneness may initially seem at odds with his occasional absurdist slant, but he’s crafted a universe that, as finite as it physically appears, just continues to expand without ever obscuring the constants that embody and define it. Available to view on Kanopy and a must watch for any devotee of American indie cinema.

Solid new titles included the economical fractured marriage story of The Killing of Two Lovers, the thoroughly entertaining Some Kind of Heaven, which examines a fascinating example of artifice made “real” via a ginormous Florida retirement community and Slow Machine, a baffling but never boring pretzel-twist indie full of shifting identities and people playing versions of themselves. Paper Spiders, on the other hand, is fully skippable despite the ever-great Lily Taylor in a rare leading role.

Gypsy 83 was nearly worth a twenty-year wait (kept waiting for a theatrical release back in 2001!) and about as good as director/writer Todd Stephens’ latest, Swan Song, noteworthy for its tour de force work from the inimitable Udo Kier. House of Games was worth watching for Joe Mantegna’s barked-out reading of that old phrase, “Thank you sir, may I have another?” in its climax. Burn! was worth seeing for Marlon Brando donning an English accent and having it come out sounding like Michael Caine.

Perhaps Cruising was the worthiest screening of them all—not really a “great” film as it was neutered by its studio to get an R rating, but intriguing as a record of pre-AIDS Manhattan gay fetish bars. Also, it has undercover cop Al Pacino being asked by his boss Paul Sorvino if he’s ever been “porked”.

Films viewed in June in chronological order, with director, year of release and my rating (out of 10); starred titles are re-watches.)

A Sunday in the Country (Bertrand Tavernier, 1984) 8

Iris (Albert Maysles, 2014)* 8

Sordid Lives (Del Shores, 2000)* 6

Jerichow (Christian Petzold, 2008) 6

Cruising (William Friedkin, 1980) 6

The Killing of Two Lovers (Robert Machoian, 2020) 8

The Lost Boys (Joel Schumacher, 1987) 6

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask Isaac Julien, 1995) 6

Four Roads (Alice Rohrwacher, 2021) 5

Gypsy 83 (Todd Stephens, 2001) 7

A Bread Factory Part One: For The Sake Of Gold (Patrick Wang, 2018) 10

A Bread Factory Part Two: Walk With Me A While (Wang, 2018) 9

The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, 2011)* 8

Paper Spiders (Inon Shampanier, 2020) 4

Halston (Frederic Tcheng, 2019) 6

Some Kind of Heaven (Lance Oppenheim, 2020) 9

House Of Games (David Mamet, 1987) 7

Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (Russ Meyer, 1970)* 9

Slow Machine (Paul Felton, Joe Denardo, 2020) 6

Shall We Dance (Mark Sandrich, 1937) 8

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (Jim Mallon, 1996)* 6

To Sleep With Anger (Charles Burnett, 1990) 8

The Big Picture (Christopher Guest, 1989) 7

Burn! (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1969) 8

PIFF 2021:

Beans (Tracey Deer, 2020) 7

Breuer’s Bohemia (James Crump, 2021) 6

Ailey (Jamila Wignot, 2021) 7

Searchers (Pacho Velez, 2021) 8

Swan Song (Stephens, 2021) 7

CODA (Sian Heder, 2021) 9

Dear Mr. Brody (Keith Maitland, 2021) 8

Being BeBe (Emily Branham, 2021) 5

Language Lessons (Natalie Morales, 2021) 8

Sublet (Eytan Fox, 2020) 6

Mogul Mowgli (Bassam Tariq, 2020) 5

Playing With Sharks (Sally Aitken, 2021) 8

Potato Dreams of America (Wes Hurley, 2021) 7

Yes I Am: The Ric Weiland Story (Aaron Bear, 2021) 4

Films Watched, May 2021

Chris Kriofske3 Comments

I planned on seeing 4-6 movies at this year’s virtual edition of IFF Boston; I ended up watching 13, enough for a separate post about the festival, I guess. Regardless, even with slim pickings due to the crazy year we’ve just had, I saw some gems. My favorite was Strawberry Mansion, a deeply surreal but charmingly handmade film where dreams and reality overlap and coalesce but with a sustained gentleness that sets it apart from the work of Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry. It led me to co-directors Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney’s previous film, Sylvio, a similarly unique study of viral fame and audience perceptions.

Other festival picks: The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, an Argentinian tale which rivals Strawberry Mansion in its unique approach to narrative; I Was A Simple Man, a Hawaiian film about mortality that’s soothing and unsettling in equal measure; Luzzu, Maltese neorealism about adapting to and reconciling a changing world; and Holler, which attempts to do for industrial small town Ohio what Winter’s Bone did for the Ozarks and has fine performances from Jessica Barden and Becky Ann Baker (more ferocious than you’d ever expect from her work on Freaks and Geeks and Girls.)

I had to ramp up my Preston Sturges re-watch because all his films left Criterion Channel at the end of the month. While The Lady Eve (see my April 2021 entry) is still his peak, The Palm Beach Story, with its madcap travails and characters nicknamed “Captain McGlue” and “The Weinie King” is not too far behind. Sullivan’s Travels remains an interesting experiment more than a realized apotheosis; the later Eddie Bracken films aren’t perfect, but their wartime reverie connects more than the internal fantasies of Unfaithfully Yours (still better than I was expecting, thanks to a perfectly-cast Rex Harrison.)

The rest is typically all over the place: a new Roy Andersson film that, while pleasant, continues the diminishing returns of his last few features; The In-Laws, whose late scenes with Richard Libertini as a deranged dictator made me laugh harder than anything else I’ve seen during this goddamned pandemic; and Francis Ford Coppola’s cult passion project, which feels quaint in a “Let’s look back at the 40s in the 80s” way but gets by on Vittorio Storaro’s streamlined, transcendent camerawork.

It was a treat to see both Tom Noonan’s Sundance-winning, one-of-a-kind first date film What Happened Was… and Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H again after twenty-odd years. The former resonates far more deeply with me now (my own dating experience back then was pretty scant); the latter, while not on the level of McCabe & Ms. Miller or The Long Goodbye nonetheless feels almost casually miraculous a half-century on, not so much tapping into the zeitgeist as corralling it and formulating a new way to see and partake in it.

Films viewed in May in chronological order, with director, year of release and my rating (out of 10); starred titles are re-watches. Titles with a ^ are selections from IFF Boston 2021.)

Dolemite Is My Name (Craig Brewer, 2019) 7

The In-Laws (Arthur Hiller, 1979) 8

The Heart of The World (Guy Maddin, 2000)* 10

About Endlessness (Roy Andersson, 2019) 7

Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)* 8

High Society (Charles Walters, 1956) 5

What Happened Was… (Tom Noonan, 1994)* 9

Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996)* 10

The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet (Ana Katz, 2021)^ 8

A Reckoning In Boston (James Rutenbeck, 2021)^ 6

Holler (Nicole Riegel, 2020)^ 7

Thunder Force (Ben Falcone, 2021) 3

I Was a Simple Man (Christopher Makoto Yogi, 2021)^ 8

We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun, 2021)^ 5

The Palm Beach Story (Sturges, 1942)* 9

Dream Horse (Euros Lyn, 2020)^ 6

M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970)* 8

Strawberry Mansion (Kentucker Audley, Albert Birney, 2021)^ 9

Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliche (Paul Sng, Celeste Bell, 2021)^ 6

Luzzu (Alex Camilleri, 2021)^ 8

Marvelous and The Black Hole (Kate Tsang, 2021)^ 6

Last Night in Rozzie (Sean Gannet, 2021)^ 6

The Woman In The Window (Joe Wright, 2021) 5

Weed & Wine (Rebecca Richman Cohen, 2020)^ 7

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Sturges, 1943)* 7

How It Ends (Zoe Lister-Jones, Daryl Wein, 2021)^ 4

Chinese Portrait (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2018) 7

Love Is Colder Than Death (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969) 6

The Fall (Jonathan Glazer, 2019) 7

Fantastic Planet (Rene Laloux, 1973) 8

Hail The Conquering Hero (Sturges, 1944) 8

Sylvio (Audley, Birney, 2017) 8

Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)* 9

Unfaithfully Yours (Sturges, 1948) 7

The County (Grímur Hákonarson, 2019) 6

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (Francis Ford Coppola, 1988) 7

The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1967)* 8

Films Watched, April 2021

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

With respect to howlin’ wolf Frances McDormand in Nomadland (itself a deserving Best Picture winner) and all the other Oscar acting honorees this year, none of them gave as fierce and harrowing a performance as Jasna Đuričić in Quo Vadis, Aida? I would’ve also picked it for Best International Film over the affable if gimmicky Another Round—as a depiction of an interpreter desperately navigating the 1995 Bosnian genocide, it’s a nail biting, feel-bad movie that’s really good.

A few other significant discoveries this month: Sean Baker’s Starlet, which preceded Tangerine and affirmed his finesse with unknown actresses (including Ernest Hemingway’s great-granddaughter!) to be already fully intact; En El Septimo Día, a return-to-form (and feature-making) from Jim McKay, another director who excels with non and semi-professionals; The Treasure of The Sierra Madre, a classic I’d been meaning to see for years and well worth the wait (not least for Bogart at his most depraved); and The Watchmaker of St. Paul, my first Bertrand Tavernier (RIP) film and certainly not the last.

Re-watches offered few surprises except renewed confirmation that The Lady Eve might be my favorite Preston Sturges film (and the best screwball comedy ever next to Bringing Up Baby) and that Drugstore Cowboy (which I barely remembered from my last viewing decades ago) has Matt Dillon’s best, most sympathetic performance. Thrilled to see Shiva Baby receiving such a robust reception in its theatrical/VOD release—it was one of my faves at virtual TIFF last September, and I look forward to people discovering fellow newly released festival alums Limbo and The Disciple as well.

Somewhat let down by Sunset Song (the closest Davies has ever come to seeming banal) and a trio of inessential shorts that brought Maddin Mondays dribbling to a close (save for one Criterion is finally adding in May.) Really let down by The Staggering Girl, a high-pedigree pseudo-art-commercial with so much talent and so little substance. On the other hand, Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar delightfully turned out more acid trip-y than expected and underground queer classic Pink Narcissus, while dutifully rough around the edges, answered a question that had previously never occurred to me: “What if Kenneth Anger had an ass fetish?”

Films viewed in April in chronological order, with director, year of release and my rating (out of 10); starred titles are re-watches:

The Treasure of The Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948) 9

En El Septimo Día (Jim McKay, 2017) 8

Cowboys (Anna Kerrigan, 2020) 6

The Hall Runner (Guy Maddin, 2014) 6

Sunset Song (Terence Davies, 2015) 6

Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, 1971) 8

Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present (Matthew Akers, 2012) 7

To Live (Zhang Yimou, 1994)* 10

The Fever (Maya Da-Rin, 2019) 7

Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar (Josh Greenbaum, 2021) 7

Starlet (Sean Baker, 2012) 9

Lines of the Hand (Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, 2015) 5

Family Romance LLC (Werner Herzog, 2019) 6

Ashes (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2012) 7

Always Shine (Sophia Takal, 2016) 6

No Fear, No Die (Claire Denis, 1990) 7

Come Back To The 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Robert Altman, 1982)* 8

Quo Vadis, Aida? (Jasmila Zbanic, 2020) 10

Pepi, Luci, Bom (Pedro Almodovar, 1980) 6

Spanky: To The Pier and Back (Maddin, 2008) 6

In The Soup (Alexandre Rockwell, 1992)* 7

Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932) 6

Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai, 1990)* 8

The Watchmaker of St. Paul (Bertrand Tavernier, 1974) 8

Shiva Baby (Emma Seligman, 2020)* 9

The More You Ignore Me (Keith English, 2018) 5

Nenette and Boni (Claire Denis, 1996) 7

Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant, 1989)* 8

Blonde Venus (von Sternberg, 1932) 7

The Staggering Girl (Luca Guadagnino, 2019) 4

The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)* 10

The Man Who Sold His Skin (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2020) 6

Films Watched, March 2021

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

A few 10s this month, including one first-time watch, A New Leaf. Elaine May’s 1971 directorial debut, it has the ideal casting of Walter Matthau as a middle-aged trust fund playboy who has spent all his money and must find a wealthy wife in order to continue his accustomed lifestyle. Enter May’s daffy heiress, a klutzy botanist who genuinely (and literally!) falls for Matthau’s scoundrel. I’d heard for years how great this acerbic neo-screwball comedy was; now streaming on Criterion Channel, it did not disappoint, from opening car gag to deliriously wet finale. It also coincided with my reading of Mark Harris’ great new Mike Nichols bio, which naturally delves into his professional relationship with May, who is also deserving of such an extensive overview.

With five of them falling in March, Maddin Mondays continued strong, split between four re-watches and three new-to-me shorts. Regarding the former, the two early-aughts features impress slightly less now, if only because they precede what would prove Maddin’s most fertile period (which My Dad is 100 Years Old definitely belongs to); The Forbidden Room, on the other hand, proves enriching to revisit, almost as if by design. As for those shorts, Only Dream Things is the prize and easily the closest the filmmaker has ever come to David Lynch-ian dreamscape fantasia.

Many terrific re-watches beyond Maddin this month, from the still-startling movie that killed Michael Powell’s career to Los Angeles Plays Itself, a three-hour-long film history lecture that hasn’t lost any of its power since I last viewed it sixteen years ago. More revelatory, however, was my first viewing of The Grand Budapest Hotel since its theatrical run in 2014. As with The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson’s jewel box perfection resonated more at home for me than it did on a very large screen; it’s now ahead of The Life Aquatic and Fantastic Mr. Fox (but still not Moonrise Kingdom) in my ranking of the director’s features.

Elsewhere, with his classic run of eight films in the ‘40s now streaming on Criterion, my Preston Sturges watch has begun with The Great McGinty and Christmas In July; a month-long subscription to Disney+ for WandaVision allowed me to catch up on some Pixar features, including a rewatch of The Incredibles in preparation for the slightly inferior but still very good sequel; the absolutely deranged The Legend of the Stardust Brothers, which I may watch again in April before my MUBI subscription runs out; and The Movie Orgy, a pioneering found footage collage curated by a young Joe Dante, four-plus hours of it currently available to stream on Archive.org and essential for connoisseurs of trashy 50s/60s movies and TV.

Films viewed in March in chronological order, with director, year of release and my rating (out of 10); starred titles are re-watches:

Only Dream Things (Guy Maddin, 2012) 8

A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971) 10

The Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold, 1959) 7

Sylvie’s Love (Eugene Ashe, 2020) 6

Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003)* 10

The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges, 1940) 7

Black Bear (Lawrence Michael Levine, 2020)* 8

Soul (Pete Docter, Kemp Powers, 2020) 8

Keep An Eye Out (Quentin Dupieux, 2018) 7

Glorious (Maddin, 2008) 6

Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary (Maddin, 2002)* 7

The Rabbi Goes West (Gerald Peary, Amy Geller, 2019)**

The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)* 9

Gutterbug (Andrew Gibson, 2019) 5

Stray (Elizabeth Lo, 2020) 6

The Last of Sheila (Herbert Ross, 1973) 8

Farewell Amor (Ekwa Msangi, 2020) 7

Coming 2 America (Craig Brewer, 2021) 5

Inside Out (Docter, 2015) 8

The Movie Orgy (Joe Dante, 1968) 9

The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)* 9

Sinclair (Maddin, 2010) 6

The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)* 9

Boy Meets Girl (Leos Carax, 1984) 7

The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952) 7

Christmas In July (Sturges, 1940)* 8

Incredibles 2 (Bird, 2018) 8

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)* 10

My Dad Is 100 Years Old (Maddin, 2005)* 8

Cowards Bend The Knee (Maddin, 2003)* 7

The Legend of The Stardust Brothers (Makoto Tezuka, 1985) 8

Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)* 10

The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili 2020) 6

Slim Aarons: The High Life (Fritz Mitchell, 2016) 4

As Tears Go By (Wong Kar-wai, 1988) 7

The Forbidden Room (Maddin, Evan Johnson, 2015)* 9

Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker, 1976) 7

The Color Wheel (Alex Ross Perry, 2011) 5

(**not rated, because I know the filmmakers personally!)

Films Watched, February 2021

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

I kicked off February with two Sundance titles (courtesy of this year’s virtual festival), both of them documentaries: Edgar Wright’s love letter to the longtime cult band Sparks, and an adaptation of Michael Davis’ excellent book about the creation of Sesame Street. The former is great for fans (I’m one) but perhaps a little alienating to everyone else, while the latter benefits from some fascinating, behind-the-scenes archival footage shot in the early ‘80s; it also helps that it chiefly sticks to an era I have a personal connection with (i.e.—pre-Elmo.)

I followed that two-fer with Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy. I hadn’t viewed Blue or Red since the late ‘90s, and I’d never seen White before, oddly enough. They really do serve as three distinct films not only focusing on different characters but also genres and settings. In short: Blue is painstakingly executed if occasionally dour, White is inventive if often weird and tonally all over the place and Red throws more than a few spinning plates in the air, only to bring the trilogy to a deeply affecting conclusion. Among other re-watches this month: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (classic anarchy, written about in further detail here), After Hours (Scorsese’s best comedy next to The King of Comedy), Solaris (good, if not as transcendent as Stalker) and The Neon Bible (ditto in relation to The Long Day Closes).

If January’s for getting caught up on titles to nominate for Chlotrudis, February’s for watching nominated titles I haven’t seen. Australian indie Babyteeth breathes life into the terminal ill teen romance trope while Peruvian period drama Song Without A Name somehow combines neorealism regarding impoverished indigenous people with a visual palette much closer to expressionism—it doesn’t make any sense on paper, but it’s an arresting contrast onscreen, anyway.

Following Marty (Scorsese) and Marlon (Riggs) Mondays, I’ve moved on to Guy Maddin, for whom Criterion added a treasure trove of features and recent shorts (the latter co-directed by Evan and Galen Johnson) to its lineup this month. Of the three I’ve viewed so far, last year’s Stump The Guesser is the most notable and accessible—like 2000’s five-minute The Heart of The World stretched out to twenty minutes but with an engaging narrative that surfaces through all the faux-antiquated graphics and ephemera.

Finally, a shout-out to my favorite first-time watch this month: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? felt remarkably modern for something set in 1932 and made in 1969, thanks primarily to Jane Fonda’s steel-eyed performance; her Gloria is easily the most irritable and jaded lead character I’ve ever seen in Hollywood cinema.

Films viewed in February in chronological order, with director, year of release and my rating (out of 10); starred titles are re-watches.

The Sparks Brothers (Edgar Wright, 2021) 7
Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street (Marilyn Agrelo, 2021) 8
Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993)* 8
Three Colors: White (Kieslowski, 1994) 7
Three Colors: Red (Kieslowski, 1994)* 9
Marona’s Fantastic Tale (Anca Damian, 2019) 6
After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985)* 9
Two Of Us (Filippo Meneghetti, 2019) 8
Matthias & Maxime (Xavier Dolan, 2019) 7
The Rabbit Hunters (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, 2020) 7
The Tale (Jennifer Fox, 2018) 8
In The Name Of… (Malgorzata Szumowska, 2013) 5
Western (Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross, 2015) 7
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)* 8
Song Without A Name (Melina Leon, 2019) 8
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (Sydney Pollack, 1969) 9
Lucky Grandma (Sasie Sealy, 2019) 7
Stump The Guesser (Maddin, Johnson, Johnson, 2020) 8
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, 1975)* 10
Growing Up Milwaukee (Tyshun Wardlaw, 2020) 6
Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King, 2021) 7
The Neon Bible (Terence Davies, 1995)* 7
Light From Light (Paul Harrill, 2019) 6
Recount (Jay Roach, 2008) 5
Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd, 2008)* 6
Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy, 2019) 8
Nobody Knows I’m Here (Gaspar Antillo, 2020) 4
Walker (Tsai Ming-liang, 2012) 7
Accidence (Maddin, Johnson, Johnson, 2018) 6
Tabu (F.W. Murnau, 1931) 8
I Care A Lot (J Blakeson, 2020) 6
Putney Swope (Robert Downey Sr., 1969) 8
No No Sleep (Tsai Ming-liang, 2015) 5
The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2019) 6
The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953) 7
Saint Frances (Alex Thompson, 2019) 7

Films Watched, January 2021

Chris KriofskeLeave a comment

Housekeeping

For me, January is usually a mad rush of consuming recent titles from my watchlist before submitting my Chlotrudis Awards nominations; despite the pandemic, this year was no exception. In fact, my number of eligible films seen was the highest it has been since 2006, which makes sense given I’ve viewed over 300 titles at home since things first shut down last March.

The best of this year’s recently-watched bounty: Kajillionaire (Miranda July, Richard Jenkins, Evan Rachel Wood playing a character named “Old Dolio”—what’s not to like?), Sorry We Missed You (never thought Ken Loach would seem more essential than Mike Leigh at this phase of their careers), Beanpole (Russian miserabilism, beautifully shot and not without humor), The Planters (Wes Anderson-ian in the best ways) and She Dies Tomorrow, which, while imperfect, is at least an original (and timely) take on apocalyptic dread. Also, two titles worth subscribing to Apple TV for: Wolfwalkers, a stirring Irish animated epic and Boys State, an engrossing doc that’s a complete microcosm of modern American politics in male teen Texan form.

A subscription to HBO Max (for Wonder Woman 1984, natch) enabled me to catch Bad Education (if this is the template for Hugh Jackman’s post-Wolverine career, more, please) and much buzzed-about docs on The Bee Gees and Jane Fonda; meanwhile, a deal on a subscription to MUBI, a very different streaming service, gave me an excuse to finally watch The Holy Mountain (exhausting but often inspired madness) and Terrorizers (an Edward Yang film that’s more technically accomplished but less emotionally satisfying than Taipei Story from the previous year) and revisit Terence Davies’ Distant Voices, Still Lives. The latter, which I hadn’t seen in over 20 years, naturally led to breaking out my Blu-ray of The Long Day Closes (last watched about 7 years ago.) One of the most groundbreaking filmmakers of the last half-century, and a reminder that I want to revisit his third feature, The Neon Bible, also on MUBI.

Revisited an above-average amount of films this month, most notably two mid-70s features from John Cassavetes: A Woman Under The Influence (still his masterwork) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, a deep-dive into a very particular Sunset Strip sleaze, tempered by the director’s most heartfelt and elaborate commentary on being part of a cast and putting on a show. From roughly the same period, also watched Chinatown for the first time this century, which holds up nicely as a blend of classic and New Hollywood sensibilities. Gillian Armstrong’s inexplicable New Wave musical Starstruck remains a curio, while Bill Forsyth’s good, underseen adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s great novel Housekeeping should be as renown and beloved as Local Hero.

Films viewed in January in chronological order, with director, year of release and my rating (out of 10); starred titles are re-watches.

Midnight Family (Luke Lorentzen, 2019) 6
Death to 2020 (Al Campbell, Alice Mathias, 2020) 3
A Woman Under The Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)* 10
Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)* 8
Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach, 2019) 8
Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997) 8
She Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz, 2020) 7
The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (Frank Marshall, 2020) 7
Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa, 2019) 6
Make Way For Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937) 8
Kajillionaire (Miranda July, 2020) 8
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)* 10
Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again (Ol Parker, 2018) 3
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe, 2020) 6
Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019) 8
Un Flic (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1972) 6
Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, 2020) 8
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976)* 8
Time (Garrett Bradley, 2020) 7
The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973) 8
Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind (Martha Kehoe, Joan Tosoni, 2019) 6
Boys State (Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss, 2020) 8
Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth, 1987)* 9
Cuties (Maimouna Doucoure, 2020) 6
Bad Education (Cory Finley, 2019) 8
The Forty-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank, 2020) 6
The Planters (Alexandra Kotcheff, Hannah Leder, 2019) 8
Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen, 2020) 8
Terrorizers (Edward Yang, 1986) 6
Starstruck (Gillian Armstrong, 1982)* 7
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1988)* 8
The Long Day Closes (Davies, 1992)* 10
Jane Fonda In Five Acts (Susan Lacy, 2018) 7
Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh, 2020) 6