Reviews

All That Money Can Buy sits as a wonderful sort of accessible middle ground between the ultra German Expressionism of like Murnau's Faust (you reading this might go, a silent film, heck I need sound in my cinema movie) and something a little more like a Fairy Tale as a piece of Gothic Americana like Night of the Hunter. While I'm not sure I could argue this film being greater than either of those, this is worth watching still to this day for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the world of Folk Horror. I wont claim to be an expert on that sub genre, but this definitely feels like it has an essential place in that pantheon.

Probably that's because of how rich and starkly the filmmaker William Dieterle takes the sides of Good and Bad, and how easy it is for a man to go towards corruption because of money, sure, but also influence and power and just stuff in general. We see naive and stalwart Jabez (Craig, who looks so All American as they can get I wouldn't be surprised if he was an understudy for Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper at one time or another) fall prey to Mr Stitch (Walter Huston in his second greatest work after Sierra Madre), who promises him riches for seven years after Jabez has a dire moment in his barn over giving up his soul for two cents.

He gets riches but he also loses all the heart and love that he has with his true love, Mary (Anne Shirley, quite good in a tricky role where she puts up with a lot and really tries to understand Jabez even, specially when, he turns even more foolish and pals around with the maid-cum-harlot Belle), and with his mother (Darwell, fresh off the Joad farm and so pure in her line readings and performance you hang on every syllable she's that good) doubting his bad ways most of all. There is a lot of speeches and clunky dialog in the middle of the film that date things a little much and I was worried that the movie would possibly get bogged down in exposition over Jabez's blasted soul and the sides of bad and good.

I was still with the film though and always impressed by the emphasis on shadows and almost early film-noir level Expressionism in the lighting and framing if many scenes - like Night of the Hunter it's a film that straddles the line between Noir and Horror like any piece of Folsky Americana, though this is New England vs the South - but then Edward Arnold as Daniel Webster, Man of New Hampshire, comes more into focus and comes to the defense of our poor lead, and the film clicked into a stronger place. Some may even make the criticism I just did that the final monologue is just one overlong speech, but Arnold at that defense in the court is so powerful because he is speaking to what is in the proverbial National Character and he's got dialog that you want to believe in.

Is it possible to be too cynical and on the side of Mr. Scratch? Sure. But that's what the movie is at heart about; being tested and really facing the fact that without a soul life has little meaning, past the shallow facade of things and immediate wants and gluttony, is a challenge and one that many are going to face in their lives, and the opening text speaks to that (more for men than women but likely them sometimes too). It's easy for Devil and Daniel Webster to turn into sentimental tripe, but Dieterle latches on to something that, and I'm sure Darwell being there isn't all a coincidence, John Steinbeck did as well in Grapes of Wrath: men who work the farms and plains and spend their lives having to work for a living will be tempted by sin, maybe have to be, and some are also going to fail. Will someone come back from it?

This is classic Gothic Americana and I'm glad I finally got around to it, up to an including that Bernard Herrmann score (won the Oscar for that instead of Kane, which is funny as some of the themes are slightly, if you listen carefully, just like the eerie tones from Kubla Khan... don't forget it isn't a trick to make money if all you want... is to make money).

Black Bag is a sleek and inscrutable Espionage Thriller with such a tried and true idea at the center - John LeCarre of course cooked this up, but so did the franchise writer Koepp was involved in at the start, Mission: Impossible, which is: someone has this list, someone has this special formula that will tear apart this or that country and what will become of the operatives, who will turn on who - that the filmmakers understand and take full opportunity that this set up really is an excuse to get some great actors some sharply written characters.

It's also a crackling-good example of how Hitchcock did it to the point of a whole type of film being named after him: what *that* part of the story is about isn't anywhere near what the audience cares about - it's about what, say, Grant and Bergman are going to do talking around it and in kissing one another until, ok fine, back to the story and the MacMuffin or whatever it's called. Black Bag has one of those, and it has oodles of style, but more than anything it has a terrific - but execution-dependant - script, a game cast, and a director returning to and finding new life and ideas in material he's explored before, chiefly: how does a marriage work when put under the strain of trust?

And it's interesting to see that Soderbergh wasn't sure initially how to pull off two very long and essential dinner set pieces hosted by the main married couple, George and Catherine (Fassbinder and Blanchett, as playful and deadpan and funny and deathly serious as they've ever been, and romantic to boot), who are spies in an agency where one may watch the other and the other watching them, but now that it comes down to this all-sacred Lives at Stake list, their marriage will be tested.

Those dinner scenes could be stock and dry in another or lesser director's hands. What Soderbergh shows and how he rises to the challenge there, as throughout this quite talky but always engaging story, is to ask himself and then answer through camera and editing just this: what is the scene about, yes, but what is this next moment or exchange about (Burke and Marisa Abela, wow), who's point of view do we need to recognize now, and what will become significant so that if we return to it later it's not just repeating for the sake of it all? There are plenty of quiet moments here too, times where it's Fassbender thinking on a lake with his fishing line, but even there notice when he cuts back to the fishing line, the subtle ways to give Mary Ann Bernard what she needs on the edits.

And then there are those Polygraph scenes late in the film. By the time we get to those beats between Fassbender and the other actors, Soderbergh and Koepp have set everything up with these players (not counting Catherine, who George of course is not including in the lie detection test because, after all, they're even tighter by that point than ever), it's all so masterful and delightful because it's less about story and more about behavior. Did I also mention much of this is as funny as anything in an Ocean's movie, albeit at a dry-as-sandpaper level? Even a shot of a live fish about to be cut open feels like a set up to something that is paid off seconds later.

I could perhaps presume, as with Soderbergh's long-ago debut film, Sex Lies and Videotape, that there's something personal being worked out in this story, or just something the director sees in this material on some deeper level that hasn't been explored through this genre in such this way (having Fassbender in an icy-cool manner through much of this is meaningful too, especially because there are times that his George does get unnerved and uneasy and even scared, maybe at himself and how he may react more than his fears over Catherine).

I think sensing that personal touch, especially when it comes to what one holds in and holds back and then let's out emotionally, in Black Bag is enough and what is so awesome is because of what the script has to say about a marriage, how much trust is bent in one way and then comes right back around the other way. It's a story of X chemical winding up in Y's hands (though even here there is some taut and relevant political commentary as well visa vi Russia and its war in Ukraine with barely showing more than... two Russians?) And we are riveted because on one level Page can deliver exposition like nobody's business as well as Harris can give a good diagnoses and all these characters form this set (Side Effects comes to mind too).

It's also about how compelling a dynamic is between a couple and anyone who has been together long enough know how strong that dynamic has to be to endure. Or, to put it in my own way, when you're married you'll understand the importance of giving/receiving a back scratch. So, do come to Black Bag for what we come to hope Soderbergh/Andrews/Bernard will deliver on stylistically (wonderful score too, by the by, taut and clever on its own), but stay for a sharp and biting and ultimately really heartfelt examination of how to be in a relationship and how the act of spy-craft itself becomes a sort of metaphor for that.

As the kids say, a "Banger."

My first hot off the stove take is that while I could never say truly that this is a greater film than The Searchers, I will put forward that it has a better balance between the drama - which is often quite sad and disparities and sometimes quite harrowing - and the comedic bits, which flows mostly from the timing of Willis Bouchey of the court martial and his "water," which is certainly not that, and from his interactions with Billie Burke. My second hot take is the reveal in the climax of this is... really wild.

Watching Sergeant Rutledge so soon, like within days, of also seeing Judge Priest is quite the study in contrasts while being from the same artist and filmmaker - and these both being stories that end up as courtroom sagas may be a coincidence but I have to wonder if it occurred to Pappy Ford (albeit he did his own sort of remake of JP as The Sun Shines Bright, his own personal favorites of his work before this). They are set in different parts of America and one is much lighter and more irreverent in tone, but Rutledge in particular is distinguished not just for the filmmaker specifically but for the time itself that a Black man is in a story about identity and dignity and how quickly judgment is passed because, you know, it was a different time.

It's frankly a good thing that someone like Ford, who was very much into traditions and such when it came to how familys and communities come together and thrive and the poetry to be found in behavior, could change with the times; the Ford who had Stepin Fetchit chucking and jiving and mumbling through his role is not the same Ford who puts Woody Strode, who never had a real leading role like this before and is performing this much closer to someone with Actor's studio intensive training (he was an athlete before being an actor and his physicality on screen is impressive), front and center with as much if not more screen time than his white co-star Jeffrey Hunter (who is pretty good, if a slightly greater star was in the role this could be almost up there with Liberty Valance as a major late work).

There is also the complexity in the fact that Sergeant Rutledge, which is told in flashbacks and there are points of view that jump around in not quite entirely a linear manner (making this almost Ford's Rashomon, kind of, maybe AK was an unlikely but surefire influence), shows Rutledge and a troop of other Black officers in the cavalry, the "Buffalo Soldiers" as they were called, and they too are written and played to be full of dimension and vitality and sadness and when one of them dies in Rutledge's arms it's a real tragic moment... while at the same time showing the Apaches as vicious and the ones we are supposed to root for being gunned down, regardless of what their function in the story as being obstacles and threats.

Those images can't ever not be loaded with their own context - and this is still not that far removed from the towering ultra-complicated work of The Searchers and there is more humanity even as they're the antagonists of that story given to them there than here - but that's not a hindrance to finding so much to admire and like here.

The court-martial scenes are thrilling and engaging and, yeah, sometimes disarmingly funny and that juggling of tones is wonderful to see Ford able to pull off (kudos to Carleton Young who I think may be underrated here), and the scenes where Hunter and Strode have face to face conversations in the flashbacks and they are especially strong together. Constance Towers may just be more okay in her role compared to the men, but even she gets a few moments to show some deeper contemplation about how rough things have been for her and what she's lost.

This is all to say that I was hoping for this film to be a good Ford Western and, to be sure, you have those shots in Monument Valley where it's half the location and more this uncanny poetic sensibility that the director has in putting figures and shapes in those spaces that always feels so special; I was more amazed by the depths of humanity that Ford and the writers strip bare for us to see in this story, how much race and perception and how twisted around masculinity gets when it's threatened by this "other" race especially when it's clear that hate is and always will be an excuse. Ford could get pulled into more conservative ideals in his work, but this is powerful and moving since it has a dedication to the dignity of representation without being preachy.

Buchanan Rides Alone seems like a somewhat straightforward story of men and money and what may be actual but is really so-called "justice" when the screws are turned, as a man rides into a town, Agry (one letter off from that mean old emotion that many in the film seem to get to being) and is framed for a killing he didnt do. He and a Mexican man are charged and while Buchanan is found innocent the young Mexican is about to be hanged. But can this young man be saved this fate since, it seems, the man he killed was the son of an extremely cold and brutal town power-broker? More dangling chances for money, and for Buchanan to get the money back stolen from him, is played out over a couple of tension and action packed days.

Budd Boetticher and his writing team - Charles Lang credited but Boetticher regular Burt Kennedy did work on the adaptation as well - pack a lot of twists and turns, and yet like the best of their collaborations in this creatively fertile period it's less about the impact of the action and the violence than the choices leading up to it and as a study of what it means to stand up to corruption when everything is against the "good" guy. All Buchanan wants to do is get his money and go to his ranch, and when he first comes in to town he's not some gloomy drifter but genuinely all smiles (he even seems to be taken aback at himself when he punches a man out in the bar in the opening scenes, leading up to his wrongful arrest).

What was always special about these Westerns Boetticher made with Scott, and this despite what seems to be largely stage-bound and fairly mid-tier choices in casting (though a young LQ Jones as Pecos, the young gunslinger who does the right thing in a tense moment when things could be all gone for Buchanan, and Barry Kelly and Tol Avary as two of the Agrys, sheriff and the stern faced judge respectively, are stand outs for some fury and tensions played out in their performances), is the care put into the characterizations.

You're seeing a system of power being challenged head-on and all because one guy simply says and demands (sometimes by gun point but other times through ingenuity) that this town isn't big enough for the ruthlessness... and, equally, a lot of the tuens come down to the more lug-headed deputy. This makes it all sound more talky and heady than it is, as ultimately Buchanan Rides Alone is an entertaining romp with a lot of good action in the climax, a sublimely staged stand-off involving a saddle-bag full of lots of money, with the darker shades of morality tempered by some shafts of humor.

The Michael Haneke 2008 American near shot-for-shot remake was my first experience with the filmmaker back in my earlier film-buff sort of days, and at the time I recall that I found the experience equally enthralling and frustrating. I came out feeling soured on the film in large part because of the remote control gimmick (I know, you'll say in the back, what about all of the Fourth Wall Breaks and such, well, aside from those like two times the film is presented about as starkly and strictly as Haneke's real hero's work, Robert Bresson), and as if Haneke was leaving us all like "well, didn't you enjoy that, you *sicko* hmm?!"

I think coming now many years later to the original, it's not as if anything substantive in what the story is exactly has changed- though for the life of me I really did not remember (or blanked out) on everything that happened with the son character at around an hour and fifteen minutes in, without going into spoilers, so how Haneke shows and shoots that here in that long take really gripped me and involved me just in a "how long can he keep this agony going" sense (albeit much of the film is like that).

This isn't to say there may be some personal preferences in casting - I think Lothar and Muhe are equally more sympathetic and grounded than even Watts and Roth, and I believe Friesch more as this stone cold grinning cartoon character than Michael Pitt (Corbett about on par).

What has changed though is, in some part, myself and how much I've seen of the world's young jerk preppy monsters - are they a bit of the Menendez boys or Harris/Kleibold, the latter kind of prescient creepily enough- and just how Sociopathy plays out when these "games" are all about control and how to keep it up, which is more of the thrill than even the violence for them.

I also wonder if there was something with Haneke commenting not so much on the big catch-all term "Media Violence" than just how he was seeing it becoming "Hip" on like festival circuits and such (I have to wonder if casting Roth was a coincidence or a subtle comment on Tarantino and his early work, which also emphasized long unbroken takes, though of course Haneke is like the guy at the table going "I'll raise your 3 minutes for 6 and a half hah!")

The point is, I think I just responded to the film better a) knowing some of the major turns that were coming, mostly the bit with the remote control (I'm not angry about it like I was the first time so this time I could just enjoy it on more of an intellectual level than an emotional one) and b) for the fact that some of the tension and suspense is kept at a level where he is still, despite what may be him moralizing or being a Troll to his audience (be they art-house snobs, gorehounds, or both), expertly crafting shots and cutting, like when the boy is in the house trying to evade Beavis (or is it Butthead).

This is a cold and brutal film about cold and brutal young people, and for all of the Meta flourishes that don't quite click or, more than that, aren't done quite enough to make a larger impact, when it comes to how Haneke is showing us this dire situation play out it is captivating simply on that level of it being about how the Social Contract - ie won't you just let me have some eggs because so and so down the block asked - should maybe have some more scrutiny. Oh, the violence in entertainment argument part of it? Well, ironically enough, I'd say that in sum I don't think Haneke shows as much or as little Violence *on screen* as Tarantino did. The difference comes down to Haneke being his own kind of Intellectual smart-aleck post-modernist vs Tarantino, who was more about the movies of his life.

I'm glad I saw this once and don't have a desire to again. No remote needed.

Look it, as a stealth sequel to one of the bottom of the barrel MCU movies (curiously enough the... second one they did of these 17 friggin' years ago), it's perfectly... okay. As an actual in-spirit follow-up DC political thriller in the tradition of *Winter Soldier* then yes it is definitely far more Cookie-Cutter by comparison (or just on its own), and with a plot that is easy to see what will happen as soon as that attack happens at the White House point by point.

There is the kind of Exposition-packed scenes that I have to wonder that is part of the whole Second Screen thing, and would it surprise you to know there's a Manchurian Candidate-lite story device involving flashing lights from a phone and a song to cue up people to kill?

So why do I give it the mildest of "it's not that bad" kind of statements? Anthony Mackie is still doing solid work as Sam and Harrison Ford is the Pathos of this thing. His President Ross is on the surface the typical gruff Ford a-hole, but he does have an arc to play and some regret to go through and he is really going for all of it. He is probably my favorite thing about the movie, and every moment he's on screen and especially when he's getting angry is a lot of great fun.

Most of the actors on the sides are doing good and natural work here too, like Haas (remember her from Orthodox, wow) and Lumbley (the latter who first made a great impression on Falcon and Winter Soldier and is the second best thing here), and I even got into a few of the action scenes.

The lackluster parts of the script are hard to ignore though, and everything that makes it very simplistic - downright like a Saturday Morning Cartoon and I mean that in more of the belittling sense than as a positive - is what brings it down to mediocrity.

It's a movie sort of coasting on the goodwill of many years and now dozens of movies in these cycles, but when it is trying it still works... kind of. And, again, better than the 08 Hulk movie (and ironically not a Banner in sight!)

I know a lot of what happens in marriages are weird, but to have a story where the husband continually as a sort of running gag puts a gun to his head and "pretends" he's going to shoot himself to control his wife or make her comply with him as he laughs his ass off, only for her (in her abject misery) finally just loads up the gun (it's usually blank) when he's not around is uh... jeez.

Thankfully, Dermoz gives an astonishing performance as maybe the first truly naturalistic depiction or a miserable feeling sort of wife, like it feels more modern than what was likely being done in the Silent era (nothing histrionic or melodramatic, just someone who looks so sad, even when she can cuddle with her cat), and Arquilliere as the husband is a brilliant scumbag.

I'm not sure what else I should take from this, aside from how the old phrase Something's Got to Give and that this coming from a female perspective gives it an extra charge of necessary vitriol. But there are some fascinating dreamlike visuals of the wife picturing her husband as a sort of laughing demon in her home, and how director Dulac has Dermoz brush her hair with such melancholy in front of the three mirrors are inspired.

Sure, come for Marlene Dietrich being her gorgeous and confounded and overwhelmed and over-stimulated royal self, stay for Sam Jaffe as what may as well be Harpo Marx's wide-eyed blue-blooded "Imbecilic" (the movie's word not mine) Russian Grand Duke cousin clown in a toweriny display of how much rampant stupidity and evil is in royalty, and especially secret MVP Louise Dresser in every scene as a total there-never-was-any-over for an over the top level pissed-off Empress performance (but then again the film itself and Sternberg of course International the whole concept of tops or going over them - for this filmmaker, even going into outer space with the opulence and flagrant style).

The last say like twenty or even thirty minutes of this may seem like it's rushing through so many events that bring Catherine the Great into her full title status, which also includes a military take over and a murder or two or three, but then again I don't think the filmmaker behind this is that concerned with "story" exactly. I mean, there is one, but this is really just a means to make his camera and cast and wonderfully extravagant production design and costumes so full and lively that it almost doesn't matter as long as it can get to that ecstatic finale (just look at Dietrich's face as all the bells are ringing and that classic music you've heard a hundred times plays at full volume). It's almost like how else can this possible come to a close except through the Mania of Empire?

What marks The Scarlet Empress though the most, for a lot that is more entertaining than not, is that it's shot as the Most Silent-Era of the new 1930s Sound era, from the face/body expressions meant for mountains and the various title cards. What this means is that Sternberg is of course working from a script that has dialog and a planned soundtrack with composition (one of the violin tracks he did personally himself according to his memoir), but this makes even Modern Times look simple my comparison as far as someone more concerned with a heightened image than anything with the soundtrack. This is a world of intrigue, deception, double crossing, clandestine meetings in dark hallways and rooms, time to blow out the candles and come to bed (know what they mean even pre-code right), and Sternberg leans on every skill he developed before the advent of synch sound to shoot this with the full blood of opera and melodrama and extends that out to his cast and crew.

This also means the film is not that substantive, but mostly that's ok. I'm not sure I feel much exactly for the characters, or to the extent I do in Sternberg like with Shanghai Express or The Blue Angel, and except for Dresser everyone is playing such TYPES, even for Dietrich who does change from a wide-eyed naive waif into a wide-eyed obsessive with her power. At the same time, once you get on to its wavelength early on it makes for an engrossing watch even at home; I'm sure in a theater with excellent sound this would be even stronger as a kind of cinematic tonic.

John Ford's penultimate cinematic epic that is made by someone who has spent many years and many millions of feet of film creating art and iconography (for better and worse for a medium and how so many have had their views of Native Indian nations shaped in the public consciousness) based on the staggering White patriarchy of America that took and took - often with the help of the media (note that number that is really 9 dead in an attack that magically goes to 29 in print them to 56 and up and up till OMG Indians are attacking agh agh agh), and rarely if ever did they gave back.

It is drama and action and reckoning with it all in a story that's about unbelievable courage and resilience, about how some men charge ahead without thinking and wind up with dumb injuries and others (like Widmark) learn and change over the course of time and experience. And one might think this could have the danger of being the equivalent of the "Are we the bad guys" meme, but Ford packs it with breathtaking visual sweep and memorable characters, such as Karl Malden's drunken Lieutenant who goes mad over his orders, Carrol Baker as the sympathetic and compassionate White lady who sees something much pain in the last hour she seems drained dry, and characters brave and cowardly and simply defiant of the usual ways things ought to be.

It is certainly a little totally not all of a piece, and since the version on video has the Dodge City Wyatt Earp stuff one has to contend with a shift into a comedy set piece with James Stewart that wouldn't have been far off from his own Destry Rides Again decades earlier (but, and I know I'm an outlier here, I found this section more hilarious than not even as it comes at an odd place in the story), and there is a little too much narration.

All this noted, Cheyenne Autumn feels like a film that was made because this story felt necessary to tell at this point in Ford's life, and the sincerity is matched by a wealth of talent that is ready to go in front and behind the camera, with some solid action, great horses, and some of the most compelling and bittersweet images of Indians in any Hollywood film (I'm thinking not so much of the shots of the Cheyenne walking in Monument Valley, beautiful as those are, rather when they're held captive in that warehouse in the sub freezing cold and how those images of light in the night shine through.

These are the kind of sights one makes not simply through a life of confidence in knowing what to shoot but why something should be shot like someone hasn't seen before. Cheyenne Autumn is far from perfect or even great, but you're left in awe sometimes by the stark, sad poetry on display.

On the one hand, Anne Bancroft is so cool in this movie that even her deliberate chain smoking is really terrific and her performance gives this film a necessary injection of modernity into the proceedings. Every moment she has is fresh and lively and full of the sort of electric charge that is definitely closer to Ford's closest Guy-Auteur ally in American Classic Cineaste circles, Howard Hawks, though she may remind one of some of the tougher dames played by Maureen O'Hara here and there. She's the reason if nothing else to watch the film even if you aren't a Ford die hard (and if you are she is the most ideal casting).

On the other hand, once the Mongolians come in to the Mission then the movie turns into the most hoary old tropes and downright campy over-dramatic stuff that if this did not have Ford's name on it I can close to guarantee everyone would be laughing at it (yes I see you too, Sarris acolyte in the back). I do enjoy the other "Women" performances here as some fine not just at a Melodramatic pitch but at a histrionic Soap-Opera level. I'm looking at Leighton in particular, though in her case it's sort of complicated because there are scenes in the first half where she does so some subtley and nuance and some kind of, how do you say, yearning for something that God may not be giving her.

But once we get into that second half it is full blown Exploitation camp in the guise of an A list prestige drama. And you know... that's fine. I enjoyed this at points as a legitimately engaging and sort of thoughtful drama about conflicting perspectives on how to treat people, though women in particular, between the Cartwright and Andrews characters, and Sue Lyon and to an extent the storyline with Betty Field's Florie and her pregnancy brings up a lot of drama that is worth exploring. At the same time the women get stripped of their depth once the major outsider conflict comes in, and there is this friction between high flying action camp (is this what The Conqueror is like, still gotta see that speaking of Wayne) and some unintentionally funny bits (ie the Thanksgiving turkey dialog, wow).

If you genuinely love this film and find that it's a masterpiece, more power to ya. When it comes to the works that make up Ford's grand Canon though - Searchers, Grapes, Clementine, Informer to an extent, Quiet Man, Liberty Valance, maybe Valley if we are kind - one should be honest about whether this truly stands up with those.

I think it may be a little more honest to say one enjoys this because Ford at this stage of his career knew he could take things to such high dramatic points, not to mention about the religious connotations of the story ("it's a sin against God" is said more times than I've had a hot lunch), and he knew what he was doing here... or did he... nah he did. Or, if you loathe the terrible China-oriental depictions including Woody Strode in Asian-face, I get that as well for sure.

My point is, 7 Women is entertaining in ways that I found involving and also in ways that had me laughing my tuchus off; it features themes he'd dealt with his whole career, including the power of a group against a seemingly unstoppable force, the sacrifices in heroism, and leaning into harmful stereotypes because hey it was a different time. The ending is also truly wonderful in one of those awesome payback ways (oh the way that character just keels over, perfection so that helps. But, and maybe I'll change my mind on a rewatch years from now, not one of Pappy's best, and that's ok!

This is an observational, practically plot-less film where Naderi follows a young boy as he is experiencing things that may be exotic or unfamiliar to Westerners - well, not the praying, that should be familiar, but other things like the gathering in the streets that involves ritualistic self-flagellation to music (that was... wow ok) - and the air of mystery snd revelation is what is so fluid and engrossing here.

I don't think Naderi wants us to understand everything that this boy is seeing and experiencing, but what's important is that he simply is in this world and doesn't turn a eye from the mant birds in his world, the man with the giant hand on the pole he holds up high, the praying, the chanting, everything that he is still trying to figure out. And all the while is that bowl with the ice that is melting ever so slowly (and will he yo get more)?

There's a poetic flow to these observations, even though it is so observational that your mind will wander through the scant 47 minute run time. What carries it is Naderi is concerned with images- especially that one small cat that keeps scampering around - and that concern meaning to make things vivid and vital based on his point of view. I'd also strongly advise watching this after The Runner (you're probably coming to this since its on the Criterion release anyway) as you'll appreciate how much Naderi was already intuitive in framing and cutting.

SotSF is pretty great until near the end when the tension started to dissipate (or maybe it is because if you show a gun for that long, the anti-climax of it *not* going off should be earned and I am not convinced this did). Maybe it was seeing so many putting this in the top, top pantheon of the year's films; not only it's Oscar nomination, but the nature of how it was basically smuggled out of the country to be Screened at Cannes (itself a bold and inspiring story to get to where it found distribution for much of the world) brings an expectation, not to mention the run time. The fact that it is really really profound and strong in the ways that matter counts though, especially as a film about family dysfunction and how the roles they've been put into are disastrous.

I loved how the mother was not that sympathetic to the daughters early on, and yet there were more than a few wrinkles in what the filmmaker shows us of the distance between husnand and wife - all those nights where he comes home and she at first stays up but then falls asleep as he is out longer and longer (and to look back after the film is done at those scenes and to understand *why* he was out so long having "meetings" at work adds to the chilling nature of his response) - and that if it wasn't for this missing gun something else was going to break in this family some way. And this is a time period that is not some far off context but a society that is actively in religious oppression and armed to the teeth.

Some of the film is shot fairly standard, coverage being largely shot reverse shot and so forth for dialog, but what's impressive to me is when Rasoulof breaks from this, like when the girl's friend is at the house with the battered face and the mother takes time to pick out the pieces of weaponry from her wounds. That is the most upsetting part of the whole film if I take stock of it all, in how carefully she takes in picking out those pieces, and it's also from here that the mother Najmeh may not say it outright (and she still has a lot of motherly consternation for her daughters after this, especially in the "it'll upset your father" realm, Golestani is in like 6 dimensions with her performance), but she is changed and has to see things differently now. Or will she, is a key question.

It does lean more into a Genre/Thriller kind of story in the last half hour - almost like something out of the Shining if one were to say more like a Horror film (only our dad/husband just has his own maniacal paternal paranoia and self hatred to blame) - and that isn't quite as absorbing as just seeing this family at home. But we do need that moment where the two people following the family on the road confront the dad, for us to see just what extent they are at now in the story, and that it almost has to unravel from there with what the gun is really all about. And all of this with the immediate and harrowing backdrop of the protests and demonstrations of the period, it makes for an extremely satisfying film.

To Sleep with Anger is probably the most low-key kind of film that is about a man with a malevolent spirit about him who turns a fairly average middle class African American family's lives upside down. Charles Burnett means to show a sort of story of how folklore is manifested in a sort of realistic setting (this is in a sense the same LA that he shot Killer of Sheep, only now shot in color instead of black and white, though it still looks really good), and I think I was struck by how this is, even with the appearance of Harry (Glover, in a great performance mostly for how subtle he largely is), and slice of life about this family's familial and relationship issues.

There is some surreal and abstract imagery notably in the opening where we see a cursed man on fire without his "Tobey" (that's the good luck charm of a sort, which is what makes Gideon in trouble for much if the film), but it is mostly a fairly typical family drama and it isn't a bad thing but I perhaps expected a little more out of the film. Maybe it comes with that expectation of something a little more special from Burnett, or (and this is my problem not yours) I just wasn't in a great headspace for something as nuanced as this.

What does make this remarkable then? How about some excellent supporting work from Carl Lumbly, Vonetta McGee and Sheryl Lee Ralph (the latter in one of those hair styles that says 1989 and I love that about its specific time and place), or how Burnett adds some mystery that keeps you guessing in a good way about how pervasive Harry will make his influence on the family. I most appreciated that there wasn't one particular thing that made him seem so sinister, it's more like not even a passive-aggressive tone but a sort of simple way of commenting to the characters about this or that, the insinuations that tradition should be paid heed. But when it comes time to have a big drink of some really hard alcohol? He's first in line to pour out to all the house guests around.

If I'm honest with myself, I found some of the interactions midway through sort of dry, this despite there being some conflict involving the parenting (or lack thereof) with some in this family, which leads to a boiling point in the last act. Another positive is that it also comes together as the conflicts come to a head, and the sinister influence of Harry is finally too much especially for Suzie (Mary Alice, also quite moving in her subtle way).

There's a fantastic pay-off involving some items that the boy had earlier, and it shows that Burnett understands giving an audience some conventional pleasures even as he is mostly content to have us hang out with the characters. At the same time, this could improve for me on another viewing (or in a theater with no distractions where Burnett's blues guitar and the lightning effects pay off), and it's certainly a unique effort for its time or any time.

That Lucille Ball... hot stuff? Absolutely - and a darn good actress in this role to boot. She stands more than toe to toe with Maureen O'Hara, who has to navigate the cold and cruel world of both only mean men but some true low self-esteem.

Dance, Girl, Dance has the skeleton and structure of a sure-fire B movie with a character named "Bubbles" the Gold-digging Burlesque star who taps more artistic-aspiring Judy to be her "stooge" on stage to get all of the laughs and jeers while she gets the hoots and hollers. But what puts it a cut above the rest is that Arzner is much more interested in people than many other journeyman or more common carpet-bagger level craftsman would be (nothing inherently wrong with those directors, just nothing memorable either), and she has a keen attention to pacing and to making dynamic set pieces.

So when Judy sees, for example, the dancers who are putting on a rehearsal in Ralph Bellamy's studio and it makes her feel down - like "those are the *real* dancers, I can't do that" - your heart kind of falls for her because Arzner wants us to care about her and asks O'Hara to show more of her soul to us than someone else would ask for. Also, when we see her and Bellamy walking and talking in the rain it is quite charming and natural, and even with the lesser Hayward there is time taken in their scenes so they develop as a couple... which makes their fall-out also all the more sad.

It doesn't mean she neglects what makes this kind of picture crackle and pop, and Ball is there to remind us every chance she gets how much of a total STAR she was even in 1940. It is a showy role and we should know from minute one things aren't going to go down well between the two women, but there's still some humanity and understanding for Bubbles so that there is a lot of laughter to be had once Arzner shoots their tussle on stage in fast-speed. That big speech Judy gives may be grand-standing, and the applause she so quickly gets maybe contrived, but it is a good and worthwhile speech and is delivered with so much bile and spittle. The one truly silly WTF bit? What happens to poor old Ouspenskaya's character... that's just laughable.

The bottom line is, Dance Girl Dance is a wonderful movie of its type, driven by an actual vision and point of view, however much it may have dated in some respects. Also, the *other* 1940 classic that has a character wish upon a star and do the whole "star light star bright" bit, though I'd like to think becoming a real boy is easier than becoming a great professional dancer.

What is the value of a life? Will you only want to remember things from childhood - before things got bad - or will you just want to remember that time you went to Disneyworld? What if you aren't sure your life had much worth remembering? And, most importantly of all, how can memories be rendered through the artistic process of filmmaking? Kore-eda is out to explore all of these questions and more in After Life, which is a film that has many people talking about their lives and dreams (and at one point someone asks if a Dream can be filmed instead if a memory, and that raises another question... is that cheating? Eh, let it slide, perhaps).

Why this film is so unique is because of the simplicity and low-key nature that Kore-eda films his actors - and some are not professionals but just regular people who tell of their memories and I almost wish this was remade by Errol Morris to use the Interrotron and his own method of recreations, but I digress (but not really, just think about it) - and that it's not all that fantastical a presentation. I love how these buildings and office rooms are fairly ordinary seening, and the Memories of these dead people are on videotape (how were their lives filmed isn't worth mentioning), but the people who are working in these positions writing down and planning and filming these One Time Memories for these folks is also fascinating.

We get to learn something about a few of them, as they are dead as well (one of them says he is the same age as a 75 year old, even as he looks 22, and he died in the war - funny that that he can remember that but perhaps that's his one memory), and Kore-eda is playful with the nature of cinema in the second half and how everyone comes together to create these little mini-films very quickly. Kore-eda asks for you to pay attention and that does slowly pay off.

You think watching the first half this might be dry at first, just all these talking heads shot very simply, but like any awesome film of this sort you can picture things when these people describe their memories that they want to film and Kore-eda understands and has empathy for these folks and how, like all of us, we are not always packing some incredible memory of this or that, and maybe the one we'd want to keep with us is the most ordinary sort.

Then when it gets time to film these memories, theres this wonderful sort of meta-commentary baked into everything; there's more detail the more they get into the filmmaking process, Kore-eda utilizes hand-held and documentary realism, and even something seemingly minor like the older woman describing the mosquitos is vivid. The longer the Filmmaking days scenes went on I thought a bit about Kiarostami's work and how he sort of interrogates reality and cinema and how we reconstruct moments in a life and the process of filming it and making it Cinematic has to change it.

After Life is disarming in its low-key, quiet sort of way, and I easily forgot at times "oh, yeah, they are all *dead* here and in a limbo where everyone has wonderful filmmaking equipment even as these buildings are precisely drab and non-descript." If it's not my favorite Kore-eda (I still give the edge a little to Shoplifters), this has many beautiful compositions and passages, and if it's ever playing at a revival house near me I'll go see it again.

The Colors Within is tender, mostly adorable, and quite modest compared to other Anime films I've seen over the past several years; even compared to other coming of age stories tinged with longing and/or lots of vibes, what's striking about Yamada's direction is how she isn't forcing you into feeling a certain way through an abundance of style. The colors that Totsuko sees are fantastical but lightly so, and once it's established as a sort of "quirk" you can sink into the story of these three sorta-outsider-ish teens that form a band and who either don't fit in (for Totsuko because of her color sights and also because she can't stay on a bus without getting carsick) or just don't like school so they drop out.

It's a movie based more around vibes than a really propulsive narrative, like the major conflict comes about that Totsuko and Kimi hang out overnight in the dorm and have (checks notes) lots of snacks and listen to that one song from the Trainspotting soundtrack (which becomes the basis of one of their three songs they work on and perform in the climax). But these are vibes that are vulnerable, or it's about how young people have so much vulnerability and social awkwardness until opening up, and there's no one here who stands out even as a threat or close to an antagonist.

And sometimes that's... fine, especially if it's a squishy sort of coming of age story that (a semi running theme for this director after A Silent Voice) is about the effort in apologizing; in this case there's also the fact that it's about the art that can come out of that emotional register, and that's kind of cool. Some of it is so pleasant feeling that it may be easy to nod off (or it was for me), and yet that isn't a problem for me either because you click back in to it once Totsuko dances and that big performance climax comes and it all fits.

So, even as this isn't quite a romance, it is about the love that comes with friendship in a sincere way, and I appreciate the total lack of irony and sweetness at its core.

I'm still unsure about my thoughts on the ending, what is revealed specifically after this tumultuous climax and the fact that this moment comes following a slightly stupefying dramatic beat (maybe I'm overthinking it, but I seriously doubt those guys would've stopped chasing after the other guy in that moment). Lots of shots of Apollo 8 I'm also pondering and it's symbolism of a kind I'm trying to figure out.

That last part may be... good, actually, necessary even. I don't need everything to make sense on a first go if something feels extraordinary, and the POV choice from Ross and cinematographer Jomo Frey (just give him the Oscar, easiest choice imaginable) not only worked for me, it took the story into a deeper, more enthralling dimension than if it were told more conventionally (or, of course, more linearly; this latter part is my own mild criticism, but not enough to mark it down from being one of the great films of 2024).

How we see our world and that view is challenger and darkens (how Elwood even gets sent to the reform school in the first place and what the charge was; how we perhaps take what we are seeing at a given point in history and may take it for granted; whether it's the glances of a girl we like or Martin Luther King being on TV (quite the timing for me to see this on MLK Day but I digress); how we react to something that we may (no definitely) become disillusioned to right quick; how the awareness of this place is framed around morality - everyone is complicit because no one says anything and turns an eye and ear, and how abuse proliferates there is an example of how it proliferates anywhere (as Turner says) there's another Nickel school.

Those are the subjects here as much as it is moving story of friendship that is under the most harrowing and saddening circumstances, and about how perhaps the only way to live after something like that is by disconnecting from the point of view that once was there (my reading of the change in future tense scenes). Herisse as Elwood and Wilson as Turner are superb not necessarily for any big moment or acting choice but for how easily they have as a connection as performers, and since this is a prison story as much as it is a story of a "school," Robbins and Freeman in Shawshank comes to mind as a comparison not of specifics but just how we connect with the both of them. And any minute Ellis-Taylor is on screen is so special especially because of the bond she and Elwood have early on that is severed and hard to put back together again.

Nickel Boys may not work for some who might prefer a more traditionally told narrative, but there is something about the perspective that almost works philosophically as well as poetically as a kind of Rebellion against what we expect - and that also serves the story since these characters' bodies are captive but their minds and hearts are not. They can imagine something better for themselves, and Elwood is going for that "5th" way out that may spell his doom in another way (now that I'm sitting here writing it it actually is the less hopeful version of Andy in Shawshank, without giving away anything about the plot).

I'm almost reminded of that Orson Welles quote where he said "A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." This is a camera that is showing us what is literally in the eyes and in seeing the world around us - or sometimes for protection and for self preservation, not seeing and only hearing - and since we have two perspectives there is variety in how we are seeing the world and the possibility of freedom vs total destruction. For as much as that final reveal is still a little too melodramatic given how everything else is more natural feeling, this is exceptional work as an experiment and as the kind of dramatic work that should touch anyone with an open heart.

These are the wordswhich iconoclast filmmaker David Lynch says about what it means to live the'Art Life' of the title. Though Lynch ismostly known for his films and television work (Twin Peaks, conveniently enoughto the timing of this doc's release, returns for the first time in 25 yearsnext month), he's spent his entire adult life submerged as that of the artist,starting as a painter in his teens and making other experimental crafts andworks that led, through an organic process, to find film as an experimentaldirector in the late 60's.

Usually theterm 'Art Filmmaker' may be thrown about at auteurs or the like, but for Lynchthe moniker can be a completely true assessment. It's here too, and the fact that this is a look specifically at Lynch's lifefrom his childhood up to the making of his first feature, Eraserhead, that the filmmakers distinguish this production fromthe other documentaries on Lynch's life.

This is significant because if TheArt Life works it's because it needs to appeal to two groups that will cometogether in a theater or on VoD to watch this film: there will be the ones likemyself who have seen his features and television work as well as the first docfrom 1997 Pretty as a Picture (whichwas about his filmwork with collaborators as the talking heads) and/or the onefrom 2007 Lynch (sort-of about themaking of his experimental epic InlandEmpire and which had the distinction of being the kind of film that thedirector seemed to make a "statement" by calling him/herself blackANDwhite asthe name of their credit).

There arealso those who may come in much colder, having not only not seen those films,but perhaps are only vaguely familiar with the director and his many films(although, thankfully, the IFC Center in NYC is doing a retrospective of hisfilms to coincide with the doc). But thestrength of this particular movie goes deeper than that - it's effective as aportrait of an artist and how he came to be. Indeed, the strength of this is that this could be a good portal into the worldof David Lynch via his life and art and seeing the process first hand (it couldbe shown in an art class in a college just as well, if not more appropriately,than a film class).

We see about hisearly family life, the warm memories of his mother and fair memories of hisfather, and how these early, mostly happy memories left an impact on him. This isn't to say if one knows Lynch's workthere's nothing at all to connect the dots to; one of the anecdotes that makesan impact is about one night when out of nowhere he and his brother saw astrange, naked woman walking down the street in a daze (it made his brothercry, David simply didn't know what to do), and it's easy to see how this couldhave left an imprint that later showed up in memorable scenes in Blue Velvet and the pilot of Twin Peaks.

But, mostly, these stories are about getting to know what Lynch was like thenin those early years of the 50's and 60's, and how different environments could, often, leave an impact - he says living in Boise, Idaho, he associatedwith 'day, sunshine', and in Virginia it was 'night, darkness' - not least ofwhich being his many years in Philadelphia as a painter and making his firstabstract films (look up The Alphabetor The Grandmother when youcan).

The filmmaking method that the three directors behind this go for is wonderful: only once or twice do we seeLynch on screen talking, but his voice is there throughout telling us thesestories while at the same time we see Lynch in present day working in hisstudio (sometimes with his young daughter playing), witnessing the laboriousand sometiems bizarre methods he uses to make his paintings and sculptures andso on, and with full images of his illustrations mixed in with photos andarchive footage.

He's the only one wehear from so it's more personal and intimate, closer in a way to how De Palma or By Sidney Lumet were presented, only the artistic process isemphasized as much (or in sync) visually with the stories he's telling, so forexample Lynch may be telling us about how much he hated briefly attending theBostom Museum School, and the painting in front of us is called 'Things ILearned in School Painting'.

The paintings and art are garish, crude, and, if one didn't know Lynch anybetter, seeming like it could come from some deranged mental patient. That's what's so great about getting to hearLynch's stories and see what his life was like; while he has often been guardedabout where he gets his ideas from in interviews, he has no problem at all intelling stories about his parents or friends or moments that stood out to himin his life (a particular incident involving a Bob Dyland concert and beingstoned stands out as showing how outside the pack he was at the time, or how hefirst met Jack Fisk, future production designer for Mulholland Drive and The Straight Story among other films).

On the contrary, Lynch is an assured, calm racounteur, and seeing hisartistic development in these stories as well as on screen is inspiring. One may never quite know how such gorgeouslygrotesque paintings and unsettling movies come from this man, but the manhimself is a delight to behold as a consumate artist - preferably with thecigarettes and coffee, of course.

Even for Lynch, this is one hell of a gloomy depiction of dance and, how I see it, someone unfathomable pain and loss. This is so submerged in a darkness that I suspect just off of stage right there's that one desulatory nether-region room from Fire Walk with Me.

You feel like this spirit is out there somewhere that you can't make out and the longer the film goes on, the more this figure becomes out of focus and totally out of reach. An experiment in movement, the eerie continuous rhythm of synthetic music, and a mystery that maybe is so lonely that it will connect with someone ready to receive it.

I don't think I love this as much as some of the more absurdity-packed Lynch shorts, but there's intrigue to be found in such a dense fog and she is a talented dancer.

Fire is an example of why I think many of us might have sometimes taken Lynch for granted. This is ten minutes that is, on the surface, disturbing nightmare fuel.

It's a series of figures who do various things and tasks, starting with something out of a primordial cave drawing as a figure rubs what looks like a stick and starts a fire, and then other figures come in and dance and burn, a few floating figures that have an eyevall and like a sperm tail float around and there's what looks like a donut in the sky overlooking this backdrop that would make Edward Gorey raise an eyebrow, and what looks like a snowman's head melts and then... well, I should not give away the rest.

I think my point in mentioning all of this is that this is not some anomaly, but what Lynch did, as part of his consummate artistic life and process, and was so brilliant at. I have my own sort of interpretation of what Lynch was doing with these images, also via animation by Miyakawa and visceral string accompaniment by Zebrowski (I assume the skipping needle audio was from Lynch, it would track), but you will likely (and should) have your own take on what he and his collaborators are doing here.

It makes some kind of emotional or intuitive sense even as I cannot put into words what exactly it all... *is* and that is fine.

More than fine, this is what art should be where you are confronted with ideas that you have to reckon with, something that is not concrete and is absolutely in the abstract spaces of where we find ourselves not able to bring words that can describe things. That was one of Lynch's few gripes about being an artist, by the way, was the aftermath, having to be put on the spot to explain what he was doing in interviews and such (or as he once put it "the film *is* the talking").

Sometimes a film is not special or important because you can identify all of what is happening but the opposite, where you are drawn in because you are compelled (if you are staying and not just walking up and getting out in a huff of course) to engage with a work that doesn't conform to out expectations.

From that dizzying first shot of Jack Nance's head in space over the title card in Eraserhead to the final screaming image of Sheryl Lee in Twin Peaks the Return, that was Lynch's M. O. (Modus Operondi): you'll have a reaction to it, even if that reaction is bewilderment, excitement, fear, horror, delight, or especially a combination of those things.

Fire is as great an example as Lynch ever drew or directed; you feel as though you are in his world, but it is also your world now, too, because once a work is in the world it also belongs to an audience. Lynch is... Lynchian! How cool is that?

Oddly enough for a film as these two conplicated, loving, screwed up, unsure, naive, angry women, one of the things that makes Career Girls memorable in Mike Leigh's body of work is Ricky. On one hand, why does Ricky have his eyes closed all the time? That is one of those weird tics that just stays weird/possibly mentally afflicted by Something, no matter how you shake it.

On the other hand, Mark Benton is this awkward, charming, tender hearted but all too rare sort of creature in this film though, a much needed counter-point to the other men in this world, who are varying levels of trash. And when it gets to the last fifteen minutes or so and Hannah and Annie see Ricky again and there is this initially sweet and then turns-to-sour conversation, and Leigh contrasts this with the last time years before they saw him and it turned explosive, it gets part of the point of the film.

We have these experiences with people in our lives, especially when we are young and figuring out who we are and what qe want from others, and these others may be totally out of control and Ricky is nothing if not that. But when we see him again late in the film and he's gone through a lot of pain and slights in his life it puts not only him earlier into the focus but these women see themselves in that perspective.

The film in general is rather clever and smart in the way that Hannah and Annie have so much history together and so many good times as well as ones they'd rather forget (but of course you can't) and this is framed around the present day where the ladies are looking at potential flats to rent. While one of these encounters - with none other than a robed, degenerate played with total scummy gusto by Andy Serkis - is just sort of surreal and funny, the other one is with a man they knew years back and one of them dated. That he doesnt even recognize them at first is... telling.

It is easy to come away from Career Girls saying this is a "Minor" Mike Leigh film, but then again that may not be fair. Because of its length and because of its more narrow focus on two characters it may resemble the smaller-scale like his earlier Made for TV productions one might be tempted to say "well, it is this while Naked and Secrets and Lies are THIS GIANT LEVEL." It's still a story grounded to those Little Moments in life like Leigh always is concerned about and interested in where there's comedy to be had through equal parts of cracks in how people do or try to socialize (a scene where younger Ricky tries to say he loves Annie is one), and the drama of someone getting upset or increasingly agitated and the line between humor and rage is a tough one to be on.

Steadman and Cartlidge are very good here, though Steadman (no relation to earlier Leigh thespian champion Allison) does lay on some of the tics in several of the flashback scenes earlier on. It's to the point where I wondered if the idea is that she is so completely socially adroit that she can't help herself and it's just one of those things like when people in the real world have uncontrollable tremors and things. But it is toned down in scenes where she's older, and it is a capital letter Acting Choice that I'm not sure was necessary to add depth or layers of awkwardness to scenes. Then again Cartlidge is always there to balance things out and her tirades make her like a female Johnny ala Naked (only if Johnny... somehow got a roommate har har).

Point is there is a lot to like in Career Girls and it's minor key still shows a wise filmmaker who knows how to let a scene breathe and to let his actors play out something that 99% of other screenwriters wouldn't think of taking a scene or moment. I also think that conversation the characters have over Chinese food about how they used to be and how they did or didn't deal with men in their lives and their fathers brings this up an extra notch and id where this hits more pay dirt as far as pathos goes. In other words, it's a film that just says "spend some time, think about how you had this or that friend or frenemy or outright W word in your life and... you'll leave happy."

The Tin Drum is a truly unique sort of fantastical-metaphorical-satirical epic drama that tells a life story from birth (and it was one where the baby wanted back in the womb but woops too late) to about 21 years old... when the man still looks like a 3 year old boy (or let's be honest he looks more like six or seven to split the difference with then 12 year old David Bennett, more on him in a moment for sure), and it covers a time period that goes from the mid 1920s to the end of world War two on 1945. What a time to be alive and a boy who doesn't know better - except when he does - in the rise of Nazism, right?

The concept of a boy making a very fully formed decision to stop growing by throwing himself from stairs on to his cellar floor doesn't need to be explained. Or rather I should say if it need be explained to you, then this is definitely not the story for you. You have to take the leap into the concept in a way like you would Forrest Gump (also a character who will only grow in a certain way and then not progress despite growing physically normally- maybe this is Forrest Gump in an inverse way, I digress off the stairs again into the cellar, sorry). But there is something subversive not about the concept per-say as it fits into a sort of Magical Realism or Fairy Tale set up that you accept early on, rather it is how everyone eventually accepts and gets used to him in his family and the society - albeit with the occasional extremely harsh Midget/Dwarf comment when someone (if rarely) gets mad at little Oskar.

What's so impressive about the film, and I would assume as well for the book (I know it's a major work, now on my to read list for some day), is how you get caught up in Oskar's emotional life because he gets to spend so much time looking at and observing others, and this sort of beguiled and innocent perspective is shattered so often, not least of which based on what he sees of his mother and her affair with another man (graphically it would seem) and of the very unsettling fact that the man Oskar thinks is his dad is probably not (little hint, if you know Game of Thrones and the scene where Ned Stark reads that book, you get the idea, and here the "uncle" even says to Oskar "I have blue eyes like you" yikes).

All the while, Bennett is this magnetically compelling and tranfixing presence on screen; there's something about how he listens and watches on camera, since he actually outside of the narration doesn't have a lot of lines on camera, where he is listening and paying attention and then eventually judging that there is a level of growth to his character that is extra remarkable given that, again, he is meant to look the same age from start to end (when for a whole host of reasons that I tried to explain to my wife afterwards, who hadn't seen the film, and I came off almost sounding crazy myself lol). And every time he spits in that girl's hand with the sugar in it... whoa.

You also become immersed into the emotional life of Oksar's mother, played with a gigantic range from tenderness to unbridled rage to hysterical crying to when she eats all those many disgusting cold fish, and also that of Oskar's Dad and then once Maria enters the movie everything with her and how she becomes Oskar's first love. In other words, as far-out as the concept is, not to mention the several times Oskar shrieks and breaks the glass around him and beats that drum to the point where we have to get used to it (and it becomes quiet funny like during that Blue Danube Nazi dance), there is an emotional truth to what is being presented, as melodramatic as some of it gets, and Schlondorff is not only not risk averse to going where the Grass book goes to sexually and politically, the thrill is that it *has* to do that for it to feel as deeply as it does.

If I am a little reserved to call it a total classic of its or any time period, or for that matter worthy of its co-Palm D'or win with Apocalypse Now (also a radical departure and exploration in showing and reckoning with war on the human psyche and heart), it is that the film is so much of a film that it was hard for me not to get bored some of the time or to feel it's length. The film would win me back with a new sequence that would pull itself out of whatever stretch it was in, like how Oskar hooks up with the little person circus and goes to France which is a lot of fun and surreal to watch (almost like if Joseph Heller came in to co writer that or something). Tin Drum is episodic and that is its feature (not a bug), and while something like Apocalypse Now is that as well there isn't any fat on that epic journey. This has some.

To put it another way, this is one of those titles I've had on my To Watch list for many years - it always was there at my local library and my Mom would remind me of it here and there as she was a fan - and then I'd forget about it. Then the 1001 Movies to See Before You Die came rearing it's giant Canonized head into my world and was reminded of it again. It's absolutely one of those you should see or at least reckon with once; its daring is how much Schlondorff keeps you invested in its world, and it is one where the characters are more than fine with the rise of Fascism, and you need the conceit for that to click as well (and the cleverness of at one point the kid becoming a target of the Nazis, though perhaps rather late into the film as more than a story beat, because of his "abnormality" as a boy-man).

Despite its influences and imitators, and its somewhat notorious reputation for its sexual frankness, it is one of a kind and confidently directed for humor and drama (and some great war explosions as well). 8.5/10.

So, has Sam Raimi and/or Robert Tapert acknowledged that The Evil Dead is their uh... "homage" (or to be even more generous their film is like a Critique) of Equinox? There is a five minute stretch where characters are reading from the Book of the De-err-whatever this is called and it explains what the man found in such and such place and wow it is so close in terms of exposition and context. I don't think that's a negative thing though! It's kind of great that this movie served to be an inspiration, if intentional or just coincidence, and I am sure Dennis Muren was inspired by something else along the way to make his story (later made into a B movie Drive-in movie via Jack Harris and Jack Woods... so many Jacks).

This is quality Grade uh B plus Schlock, all about how a dusty old book makes things into madness as monsters from Dr Waterman get conjured, and it is lovingly crafted in all of the stop-motion animation where you can see just how much the effects animators, including and especially Muren, took their love of Harryhausen and the like and just wanted to have their own gnarly creations attacking hapless archeology students in the great wide open.

There's plenty of expositional ballyhoo, voice-over ADR that was recorded on the first or tenth take depending on the performer, there are some extreme close ups and set pieces where characters scream, walk not too quickly through the woods in escape, one of the women has super trauma from being assaulted and then transforms into a crazed killer (look at that raging jawline), and did I mention how many old men in caves get into laughing fits? You may have a slight panic early on due to some sketchy ADR and that one cop on horseback (!) That this could be another Manos! The Hands of Fate, but luckily it never turns quite into *that.*

If you know what you're getting into, it's a fun time, mostly because there is effort put into the parts that we want to see get closest to the scope advertised on the poster. Equinox is a calling-card for Muren and company and it's a wonderful thing that it got picked up by Criterion as a sign that it has even mire legitimacy as an underground sort of cult favorite. You'll find touself laughing and smiling quite a bit, and it is all because it feels like you are in on the joke of what's happening.

This has a large thumping heart deep down, where clearly the Dardennes brothers (Luc and Jean Pierre) want these characters to make it through some how and some way in their dire circumstances. There is (as David Erhlich notes in his review) anger underneath all of this, anger at how embedded exploitation of the undocumented are, how no one (insert meme) will think of the children and so on, how everything comes down to "where are your papers" and an absence of emapathy.

That may be enough for the film to power through in depicting these kids, Tori (Schils) and Lokita (Mbundu), who are exceptional as child/teen performers go for what they're asked to show and embody. This does work as a tension-filled thriller especially in the second half, but compared to some of the other Dardennes films it is almost expectedly sad and, when seeing Lakita in her indentured servitude in the Marijuana farm it becomes even sort of dreary as a stark drama of circumstance and dread.

This isn't to say the film isn't worth seeing because it does keep you absorbed into both of these kid's plight and also how resourceful and quick on his feet Tori is (you think they will be apart for three months but hey not so fast, guys). But once the Dardennes get us to that ending, for all of the film's virtue and how much heart Mbundu puts into her performance in particular, it all feels like "well... that really sucks" and the catharsis isn't as powerful as it should feel.

Maybe that's more my problem than yours, but since everything has been presented at such a Naturalistic slice-of-life key, that moment just feels like it... happens, and it just reminds me why I'll always hold something like De Sica/Zavatiini's Shoeshine - also about kids lost in a prison they can't escape until it is too late - in such higher regard because it goes for real *and* melodrama and feels more ambitious.

Kind of a German "Blast from the Past," only with a coma and fall of the Berlin Wall instead of a Nuclear fall out shelter. Fairly contrived, bordering on a sitcom level of "well have told hide this otherwise she will find out ALL of the end of Socialism and what will happen to her brain and keep it up and hide the Coca Cola banner" shenanigans. Oddly enough, it's a story that sort of means to justify, if at the same time criticize (up to a point), how someone can keep a lie going and going and spreading a misleading beat off like a tree in a world where people should have the truth.

I shouldn't find this as likeable as I do for some overused narration voice-over and how much the film twists itself into some knots logically - or rather how everyone in the little community and friends would go along with it for her and just not let something slip - but Bruhl is quite charming and engaging in the role (when isnt he batting a hundred for what's asked of him though) and Katrin Sass is so terrific and down to earth as the Mother so that you can buy into the premise. Enough. And some later-in-the-movie revelations of some lies from Mother adds a touch if complexity to the proceedings.

I do bristle at the Clockwork Orange homage with thr sped up music and fast-speed though; don't double-dip your Kubrick homage when you already did 2001. That's like putting your entire Kubrick dip!