jkeen

I finally saw this movie last night nearly twenty years after I first heard of it. It's one of Ramin Bahrani's earliest features, very neo-realist. As other reviews have noted, there's only a modest plot and key aspects of protagonist Ahmad's back-story remain murky. As a consequence, by the end of the movie I found myself becoming emotionally disinvested in Ahmad's plight. However, the movie does offer us glimpses of class differences and conflict within immigrant communities -- something too often glossed over.

What I did appreciate was the movie's feel for the New York in the early 2000s. (9/11 was not alluded to.) No iPhones! People still used landlines and flip phones! My neighborhood subway station before it was renovated and renamed! Coffee at 65 cents a cup!

Among Bahrani's later work I can strongly recommend Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo, 99 Homes and The White Tiger.

I've had Chop Shop on my watch list since 2008 and finally saw it tonight at the Museum of the Moving Image (in Queens, just 3 miles away from the film's location). Other reviews correctly describe the film's lineage from Bicycle Thieves, but I was also struck by the way several climactic plot points are not shown on camera. The director clearly indicates what's about to happen, then cuts to what happens after the plot point. In this he recalls the way the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu would handle many plot transitions. I can recommend Goodbye, Solo; 99 Homes (great performance by Michael Shannon as villain); and The White Tiger by Ramin Bahrani.

Nope is another ambitious movie from Jordan Peele. I did not enjoy it as much as either Get Out or Us, however, because I don't think it was as well executed as it could have been. Much of the lead characters' dialogue is presented at low volume and was difficult to understand. Much of the cinematography is dark and muddied; we don't get to see really good closeup work by Daniel Kaluuya -- one of the strengths of Get Out -- until two-thirds of the way through the film. None of the lead characters' roles is written very symphathetically. At a certain point the artificiality of the special effects comes to dominate the film.