Lilya 4-Ever (2002)
From the height of the handheld conceit, faux verite days. Moodysson manages to be more traditionally kitchen sink, or realistically realistic here, and this is more involved with the plight of the impoverished and exploited.

Oki's Movie (2010)
The first thing Sang-soo Hong's movies debunk is the director himself. Little wonder that anyone else would be taken down with him. This one plays another variation on variations, posing as different short film versions of the same material, possibly the entries at a contest. The filmmaker in this film appears drunk at a Q&A session, and says this:

I just made the film. It wasn't with any theme in mind. My film is similar to the process of meeting people. You meet someone and get an impression, and make a judgment with that. But tomorrow, you might discover different things. I hope my film can be similar in complexity to a living thing. Starting with a theme will make it all veer to one point. We don't appreciate films for their themes. We've just been taught that way. Teachers always ask, "What's the theme?" But before asking, aren't we already reacting to the film? It's no fun pouring all things into a funnel. That's too simple."

Chess Fever (1925)
Before video games ruined relationships, there was chess, especially in Russia. Great fun short by Pudovkin with an appearance by Capablanca himself.

The Boys Are Back (2009)
With the right material, Clive Owen can even show how he can make the material better.

Showgirls (1995)
Cocktail (1988)
From the special laboratories of Movie Brains comes the amazing discovery that Showgirls and Cocktail are the same strain of high concept sensational milieu exploitation and have many other remarkable similarities, not just Gina Gershon in common. We recommend watching either of these movies with safety precautions against immersion, with large doses of skepticism, irony and plenty of riffing and pshawing. If you watch them together, wear HAZMAT suits.

The Thin Man (1934)
Among other things, this makes a nice alternative Christmas movie. Have some gangsters over for your dysfunctional (murderous) family party or dinner, and plenty of cocktails (and drinking jokes while you're at it). See more comments here.

Proxima (2019)
Nice change of pace on space movies, this is about a woman astronaut preparing for a mission, how she and her daughter cope with it. The closing credits include dedications to the many real-life examples. Make sure you have subtitles, as this is unflaggingly multi-lingual, jumping from English to German to Russian, but mostly in French.

Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Despite getting bogged down in plot, this is still the best of Tim Burton's gothic fairy tales. What stands out now is using less as a production design choice: the sparseness in the suburban subdivision.

Trapped in Paradise (1994)
You have to put up with a lot of It's a Wonderful Life (bank in a small town), wonderment music and hijinks style contrived chases to get a few choice droll lines. Example, Nicolas Cage saying, "Anybody who moves will get shot, as will the person next to you. It's a two-for-one thing."

Mank (2020)
Despite good performances by Gary Oldman and Tom Burke (as Orson Welles), this movie is like the material from DVD extras and commentary crammed into a script, and most of that material has been delivered in better ways (see Pauline Kael's Raising Kane). The too-slick music and the too-dark black and white photography don't give a 30s/40s feel.

Tenet (2020)
Tenet makes The Dark Knight look like Inception's bitch. Kenneth Branagh shows up as a Russian. At least he can do the accent better than John Malkovich did in Billions. The lit-fuse style is so -- um -- thick? -- you can barely understand what they're saying. Movies are now made for not paying attention.

Ava (2020)
Did you want to see Yoda fight with a light saber? Well then you may want to see aging John Malkovich and Joan Chin having commando martial arts fights. This is moody, brooding atmosphere with commando martial arts fights.

The Blues Brothers (1980)
This movie is a demonstration of The Accursed Share, the part conspicuous consumption, and expressly as destruction, plays in American culture. Alongside showcase numbers for James Brown, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, there is destruction of more police vehicles than in perhaps all the 70s Walt Disney movies combined. And if you haven't seen it lately, check out the opening (see link below): did Ridley Scott rip this off for Bladerunner?

Blues Brothers opening on YouTube.

Diego Maradona (2019)
And then there's this more typical documentary about the career of Maradona, with much more coverage of the whole Naples period. This documentary uses lots of footage with voiceover rather than talking heads, but is also nicely patient in places and avoids many of the cliches of current documentaries.

Maradona by Kusturica (2008)
In case you didn't know, director Emir Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies, Underground) also made this about Diego Maradona. It's a scrappy encounter style movie, similar to some of Werner Herzog's, in which Kusturica includes himself trying to meet, keep up with, and then hang out with the world footballer and discuss his many amazing ups and downs.

Belushi (2020)
Voiceover rather than talking heads used with animation and footage provide a fairly involved portrait. The best insights, worth making more widely known, are about the contribution of National Lampoon that Lorne Michaels doesn't acknowledge, the reduced role or view of John Belushi we actually got from SNL and Animal House, and about his problems coping from fellow Lampoon alum Harold Ramis and fellow addict Carrie Fisher.

The Ice Storm (1997)
On revisiting, I think the cast may be the best thing about it. It's probably Sigourney Weaver's best role (check out Cedar Rapids for another one much like it), and maybe Kevin Kline's best, too. The problem is still there, about whether love and consideration encompass sex or leave it to a kind of moral retribution.

The House of Yes (19917)
Starts out guns a blazin', with two members of the Kicking and Screaming cast in promising form, but very quickly falls into stage contrivance, which makes for even worse movie.

Krisha (2015)
Some good bits but not proportion. The pithier observations about a family member out of favor can't overcome the amateurish feel of the whole presentation.

Cromwell (1970)
Inadvertently humorous effect: it's as if someone decided to imitate Shakespeare using Cliff Notes. "To oppose the king is treason. What has he done? I hate the king! We must oppose him." The compression was apparently in favor of the battle scenes, but despite the impressive lengths gone to for formation, the action is none too spectacular either. But Alec Guinness is fun as always in his sly composed way, his ill-fated King Charles suggesting the aristocrats he played in Kind Hearts and Coronets, for more than one reason.

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
Revisited this odd mess made from a John Updike book directed by Mad Max's George Miller with Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer. But despite the moment in his career when Nicholson is literally going through the roof, it's Veronica Cartwright who steals the show, even though her scenes are just as hyperactively disconnected as the rest.

A forthcoming print version of my writing on movies will feature a study done the year of its release.

Red Ant Society

Pasolini (2014)
It would be impossible to cover the complexity of Pasolini in a feature length film, so rather than biopic, this opts for a portrait study in the events of a day, which happens to be a significant one. Another piece of fair work from Abel Ferrara, along with Welcome to New York of the same year.

Breaking In (1989)
Then, following Housekeeping, it's back to the soft-shoe humor for Bill Forsyth, though still in America, with a fine performance by Burt Reynolds against the grain of his younger stuff even before Boogie Nights.

Housekeeping (1987)
This somewhat lost American project of Scottish director Bill Forsyth is now available from Criterion as part of a special with his more well known Gregory's Girl and Local Hero. (His Comfort and Joy, though not as well known as that latter, is the peak of his sleepy drollery and hands down the best circuitously Christmas movie.) This is a much more somber version of Forsyth's approach, with an echo of Days of Heaven, and especially during quarantine it might strike even sadder. Great role for Christine Lahti.

The Onion Movie (2008)
Explains why people move from San Francisco to Iowa, enacts the fantasy of how to deal with Microsoft, casts Steven Seagal as Cockpuncher, and shows you how to deep fry kittens. Something for everyone from the people with the fingers on the pulse of our nation.

A Dangerous Woman (1993)
The performances of especially Debra Winger and Gabriel Byrne, but also David Straithairn and Chloe Webb, and the studious direction of Stephen Gyllenhaal keep this feeling not quite as silly as it is when you take a step back. But since the ending is possibly the most inapt use of freeze frame ever, it's hard not to be jarred back to sobriety. Or at least just have a good laugh. You can find Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal in there, too.

Tempest (1982)
Revisted this little oddity I saw when it first came out. My review at the time for The Oklahoma Daily will be included in a forthcoming print version of my writing on movies.

Red Ant Society.

Contagion (2011)
The Oceans 11 of pandemic movies. Soderbergh's take on the idea starts off much more sophisticated, but about the time the HAZMAT suits show up, it's pretty hard to avoid the same disaster movie inflated cheap feel. Even the hip techno soundtrack turns into a ticking bomb cliche by the end.

King of the Gypsies (1978)
Lots of interesting stuff with mainly the interesting cast, but sprawls all over the place and comes up with less.

Misbehavior (2020)
Rousing and all by virtue of its subject, but too schematic and applied in a cable biopic sort of way. No real interesting take.

Outbreak (1995)
The pandemic festival continues. Outbreak is enjoyably ridiculous on a big movie scale. It's like a parody of the pandemic, including helicoptero a helicoptero action. They only missed out on having a sphincter mouth shitbag for a president, which if they had put in then, would've seemed even more outrageous for a movie.

Of Time and the City (2008)
Terence Davies's ode to Liverpool and things and styles aged and bygone.

Alone (2020)
Good to see a sparse, boiled down thriller, even better to hear it: great sound design.

The Argument (2020)
A great idea, good stuff, but all the jauntiness somehow loses a point or an edge.

Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (2019)
Werner Herzog's elegy to Bruce Chatwin, author of In Patagonia and The Songlines, among others. Interesting consideration of Chatwin's ideas about nomad culture, for which Herzog of course has affinity.

Totally Under Control (2020)
The story of the dismantling of the pandemic response, told by insiders, and in comparison with the response by South Korea.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020)
Though not as profound or dramatic as something like The Florida Project, this is a nice effort at similar documentary-like or unforced portrait.

The Andromeda Strain (1971)
Halloween's date may have passed, but if you want to continue Halloween close to home, or have an idea for the future, or fight back against Christmas's war on all the other holidays, here's a list of movies for an infection festival:

Warning Sign
Carriers
The Andromeda Strain
Blindness
The Crazies (1973)
The Crazies (2009)
The Thaw

Love and Monsters (2020)
Quarantine double feature, show #2: And not much has changed in 20 years, speaking of time capsule. A schlemiel comes out of an underground shelter to go find his love. Some cleverness with the post-apocalypse monsterscape fizzles pretty quickly, although here it's not even really the romance stuff to blame. But it's always nice to see Michael Rooker.

Blast from the Past (1999)
Quarantine double feature, show 1: A 60s family hides in a fallout shelter for 35 years and then returns to the modern world, time capsule like. The premise is mostly wasted on goofy romance comedy contrivances -- we don't even get to see Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek in this bit -- but even in that Dave Foley stands out.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)
Not as uproarious as the first one -- something I don't count as a loss -- and it droops just from the stretch (it's a bit or skit premise made feature length). But Sacha Baron Cohen gets some good ones in, particularly a setup for a misunderstanding with a "Christian" non-abortion pregnancy counselor that demonstrates the absurdity of "God doesn't make mistakes" (not difficult, but still shrewdly done here) and getting QAnon type conspiracy nuts to disabuse him of absurd notions. This is part of the larger scheme of showing the modern U.S. in light of a superstitious, regressive, undeveloped -- "shithole" country. Also good moves are the twist of having to disguise Borat, and the female sidekick, the latter mostly because the Bulgarian actress is so good.

The Fool (2014)
And then a more sober view (see Investigation of Citizen Above Suspicion) of the situation in contemporary Russia, where corruption is thoroughly instituted, without the communist stamp. The difference, however, is that the earnestness leads to sometimes too obvious message movie statements that don't accomplish what dramatization or provocation do, or are even counterproductive.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)
Like a Pirandello version of The Killer Inside Me or Pop. 1280. The manic, almost comic tone tilts toward the absurd -- expressed also by Morricone's score -- but that only expands the serious consideration of the problem of power. When the cop flaunts his authority to get people to deny bald facts, this 1970 Italian movie hits chillingly close to the current U.S. But then it's just one of many lessons, by no means the biggest -- you know, like a world war -- ignored to get here.

The Pledge (2001)
Another one with lots of people -- Nicholson, Benicio Del Toro, Robin Wright, Mickey Rourke (again, see below), Vanessa Redgrave (!), Aaron Eckhart, Sam Shepard, Michael O'Keefe, Harry Dean Stanton, Patricia Clarkson, Tom Noonan -- that somehow slipped by. And directed by Sean Penn! An interesting twist on serial killer fare before it exploded into series and doc series, closer to No Country for Old Men in the theme about the haunting of the law. Well done, despite some heavy-handedness with the direction by Penn, a bit too closely observed as he gets carried away with the close-up.

Buffalo '66 (1998)
The people who show up -- Anjelica Huston, Ben Gazzara, Rosanna Arquette, Mickey Rourke, Jan-Michel Vincent (!) -- and even Christina Ricci in her major role can't stop Vincent Gallo's project from being anticlimactic in an uninteresting way despite the artsy flourishes.

Withnail & I (1987)
Another entry in the Handmade Films festival: Slice of life in the good sense even of literary, two mates in indigence try to escape for the weekend at the end of the 60s, in more ways than one. But this down and out in town and country works for any era, the 80s in which it was made or the 30s, expressing anyone running counter to culture, however ideological or inadvertent. Smashing film debut for Richard E. Grant.

Gloria (1980)
The cuteness of the vehicle is a counterpoint with John Cassavetes. It keeps the movie from the heavy or reachy improvisatory excesses of some of his other work, and he keeps this from being too cute. Even better than the script, it's in the little things of the directorial touch, the elaboration of the scenes, the way it's all watched and shown, the mise en scene, the choices of camera placement and movement, the editing. And of course it's a showcase for the irresistible Gena Rowlands.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
Muriel Spark's interesting character study of a particular type of Romantic idealist was given a theatrical treatment by Jay Presson Allen, who wrote the movie script, too, and the direction follows that, somewhat too faithfully. The observations of the novel are boiled down and presented, in school essay fashion, in a climactic dialog scene, which is counter to the better depiction before. But Maggie Smith's performance is still amazing, even through the theatrical indulgences. The infatuation with fascism is unfortunately a lesson we didn't get.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)
Special notice for a work that is the most counterproductive to the purpose of moving pictures -- being seen -- I have yet encountered. As if any one of these weren't enough: darkness, speciously moving "handheld" camera, rapid editing -- this movie is the extreme of all of them together. It's as if speeding weren't enough, you had to be on coke with an inner ear infection. Others attest to this exemplary obfuscation:

One Too Many Cuts: Resident Evil The Final Chapter

This viewer counts for us 117 cuts in a minute. That's half-second shots! At one point while "watching" I saw three cuts while counting one Mississippi.

Mona Lisa (1986)
Probably Neil Jordan's best, and Bob Hoskins's performance is as good as or better than that in The Long Good Friday. Stands up well with time because of the frankness and not trying to be too gritty or too feel-good. And how about going back and seeing Clarke Peters after we know him from The Wire and Treme.

Also in Film / Script as a study.

A Private Function (1984)
Written by Alan Bennett, this gives a snide twist to cheery presentation, a social comedy that would pair well with Whisky Galore. In a cast that includes Michael Palin, Pete Postelthwaite and Bob Patterson, Maggie Smith and Denholm Elliott are especially good.

The Missionary (1982)
More from the Handmade festival. Michael Palin extends the Sir Galahad gag to an entire movie. Some good laugh moments, like a butler who can't find his way around the palatial estate, and a retired military man asking how to spell "embedded" and "skull."

Thoroughbreds (2017)
More work of director Finley (see Bad Education), but this one is an odd mix that's hard to tell whether it's black comedy or just macabre.

Quest for Fire (1981)
A documentary about the discovery of the missionary position by some cavemen who refuse to run on the sabbath, made by the Canadian Board of Caveman Studies.

Tattoo (1981)
And then Handmade did things like this. Jumpy thriller with Bruce Dern playing another oddball and Maud Adams trying to prove beyond Bond films just how badly she really can act.

The Long Good Friday (1980)
Handmade Films' first big success, especially in the U.S., and the film that put Bob Hoskins on the map, and helped with Helen Mirren, too. And if you haven't seen it lately, you might be surprised to note early Pierce Brosnan in an intriguing small role.

Bad Education (2019)
Though not as arch in black comedy or social satire manner as, say, Election or Fargo, it shows director Corey Finley similarly deft at unfolding things. Great job by the ensemble cast, and good roles for Jackman, Janney and Romano.

A Sense of Freedom (1979)
Handmade Films' second feature, although The Long Good Friday was actually made before, by the same director, John Mackenzie. This one first aired on Scottish TV. David Hayman is great in the role of Scotland's most violent criminal (see An Accidental Studio and Bronson below).

An Accidental Studio (2019)
Retrospective of the company, Handmade Films, that was formed by George Harrison to help Monty Python make Life of Brian. It worked well enough, so they went on to help others see the light of day, like The Long Good Friday, Time Bandits, A Private Function, Mona Lisa, Withnail & I. This is a good reminder of a vein of 80s/90s movie history, somewhat like the Ealing of its day.

First Cow (2019)
Quaint little indie period piece about oily cakes in the fur trade days. Just when you think it's going to be real-time camping, it gets kind of suspenseful thanks to Toby Jones. But it's still lots of long takes with acoustic guitar.

The Big Ugly (2020)
Boorish attempt at brutish thriller. Lots of of dialogue scenes drag out slowly as if someone were way more impressed, and the action is all amazingly anticlimactic.

The Last Wave (1977)
Despite sensationalizing its subject matter, it still manages to be ambling and vague.

Bronson (2008)
Very showboaty for writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn and lead actor Tom Hardy. The story is remarkably similar to that of Jimmy Boyle, see A Sense of Freedom.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
The lastest Charlie Kaufman entry is based on a book by Iain Reid, with the full Kafuman tilt on imagination, idealization, derivation, and this more through time and aging. Great performances by Buckley, Plemons, Collette and Thewlis.

And if you're interested, if you like this kind of stuff, you might like mine. This has particular similarities to Bad Dreamers and Wishing Madness.

Sometimes Always Never (2018)
Its quaint artsy direction and formalism is too thick at first, but when you get more into the script it gets interesting. It seems mostly about Scrabble, but all that goes on around that makes for a witty take in other ways.

Archive (2020)
Moon meets Ex Machina and several movies and series and stories about uploading someone's mind/soul, sprinkled with some Bladerunner and -- what's that corporate Empire/SS costume, Fahrenheit 451? Despite all the derivation, they do a decent job, and the last twist makes it all more interesting, though that's not original either.

The Commitments (1991)
Maybe Alan Parker's 2nd best (after Shoot the Moon). Follows the feel good formula, using exuberance as the major key, but actually troping every step of the way, and it's carried off much more deftly and offhand, not sugary showy. It's about how things don't come off, even when they do, especially where that is collective or art. It's even a celebration of that as much as a sobering observation. You could stack it up with Irma Vep in that respect.

True Confessions (1981)
Revisted this, I think the first time since it came out (reviewed it for The Oklahoma Daily). Strangely listless, despite the material and talent involved, not just Duvall and De Niro, but Kenneth McMillan and Charles Durning, and the script by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. Why is every movie about the Black Dahlia murder not about the Black Dahlia murder?

Swallow ()
Precious in the indie artsy way, and how that can still be melodramatically schematic, but it gets more interesting as it gets into the subject of this bizarre control compulsion. Surprise inclusion on the soundtrack was nice, though:

The The - This Is the Day

This is a bit late, but it's also in honor of Matt Holsten.

Linda Manz, Young Star of Days of Heaven,' Dies at 58

Topsy-Turvy (1999)
Still a joy to watch, Mike Leigh and his actor ensemble doing an amazing job, just the right pitch, and surprisingly great match: his kitchen sink style and period piece. The historical material seems to give Leigh a track, if not a guardrail, and he keeps the period stuff from showroom reverence.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
Powell and Pressbuger are always interesting if weird. After a mile a minute barrage which made me laugh bringing a Monty Python skit to mind -- "Sorry, I don't get your banter" -- this completely reverses the tactic of a cartoon character it only really refers to with the title. An entry in the discussion of whether we should make visions of what is or what we'd like to be, a la Benjamin, and the difference between message movies and Archie Bunker (or even how that character was transformed in the whole run of the series) -- and this becomes progressively more starchy and speechy for that discussion.

Piccadilly Jim (2004)
Strange updating of the 20s from a story first serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916, but looks like a glossier version of the 70s. Too much jitter and presumed effect, somewhat like Altman's misses. But Sam Rockwell, Tom Wilkinson and Allison Janney do their best to make it interesting.

The Booksellers (2019)
Bittersweet look at a dying trade. Best of all is Fran Leibowitz, especially a post-credit scene about lending a book to David Bowie. Includes the Strand in NYC. Parker Posey is a producer.

Heaven's Gate (1980)

When a new, inexperienced administration at United Artists gave the go-ahead to Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, the project, which had been turned down by executives at other studios (and by at least one of the previous administrations at United Artists), was clearly booby-trapped. The new management team, put in position by the officers of U.A.'s conglomerate parent, Transamerica, were aware of the risks, but their predecessors, who had left, en bloc, to form Orion Pictures, jeered at them in the press, and they were overeager to establish themselves by coming up with a slate of films that would confer prestige on them. Proposed at seven and a half millions dollars, eventually budgeted at roughly eleven and a half million, and written off finally at forty-four million, Heaven's Gate brought nothing but torment to the executives of United Artists, which is now virtually defunct. (Transamerica, humiliated by the publicity, sold the company to Kirk Kerkorian's M-G-M, which wanted it because of its distribution apparatus, and dismantled the production side.)

-- Pauline Kael, "Steven Bach's Final Cut," The New Yorker, August 12, 1985

The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
Dreamlike non sequitur makes a great relief from plot predictability, if not narrative generally, but it's hard to keep up in the prosaic manner of just such movies, certainly feature length. Compare to Lynch, particularly Inland Empire.

The Wild Goose Lake (2019)
Somewhere between Jia Zhangke and Wong Kar-Wai, most similar to Ashe Is the Purest White of the former. Some really great stylish stuff to a pretty slim story. It's not the story but how it's told.

Bacurau (2019)
Interesting attempt at a Western and something like The Hunt, that ambles and falls apart like the latter. Sonia Braga and Udo Kier are fun to watch as pretty much always.

The Burmese Harp (1956)
Interesting view of the losing Japanese in World War II, though a bit earnest and stiff for my taste.

The Attorney (2013)
Unmarked goons snatching protesters without process? Why don't you ask the South Koreans what that's like, and what democratic rights are all about. Here's one version of the story, with Bong Joon Ho's favorite actor in a great performance, especially as he doesn't have to be so loopy. It's earnest in the more effusive way, like Hollywood message movies, but the story itself is well more than interesting just now.

The Oyster Princess (1919)
Another kind of Lubitsch touch, it's got this gallivanting style that just keeps it swimming on a surreal edge. In that, it's like Zero de conduite, Duck Soup and Guy Maddin, and maybe even more like Le Million than Trouble in Paradise. The characters have that gossamer effect, typical silent movie sketch style, but here they have a funny toss-off irony. They're all just skipping and dancing through whatever's going on, the situations as absurd as anything else. "That doesn't impress me," the refrain. The restoration version I saw had a great score, done later by Aljoscha Zimmerman and Ensemble, that really followed up and expressed the dreamy flurry, the peak of which is the foxtrot sequence.

I Don't Want to Be a Man (1918)
Another Lubitsch silent but this one is really the tour de force for Ossi Oswalda. Her burlesque of women ("what unsightly creatures") and men ("what coarse folk") is the real show.

Barbara (2017)
Great showcase for Jeanne Balibar, and directed by Mathieu Amalric. The wandering style of one artist ends up being apt for that of another, the singer Barbara, the subject of the portrait. Whether that's well done or slack is hard to tell, feels like either at times, but that's still apt.

The Mighty (1998)
Check out the supporting cast of this little feel-gooder: Gena Rowlands, Harry Dean Stanton, Sharon Stone, James Gandolfini, Gillian Anderson, Meat Loaf, and a (decent) main theme song by Sting. Anderson has the most interesting turn in her role.

The Third Generation (1979)
This is an all-star Fassbinder cast and a sampler of his themes and quirks. The mordant twist of the complicity of capitalist and terrorist, thesis and antithesis, has its best moment in a carnivalesque kidnapping, but Fassbinder's own anti-climactic strokes of banality can feel as slack aesthetically as thematically.

The Eclipse (1962)
Some of the bad and some of the best of Antonioni. The opening scene without context has that groping ponderous feel, but after the stock market scenes -- this is actually one of the best portraits of the madness of the stock market -- there is a context for the ambivalence of the woman and another kind of resistance to meaning. Monica Vitti and Alain Delon -- and an Alpha Romeo Giulietta Spider -- might promise va va voom, but it all gets dumped in the water, and the most beautiful sequence in perhaps all of Antonioni is the ending with none of those (and which confounded American distributors so they just cut it).

Panique (1946)
Companion of Le Corbeau, and something between that and Diabolique. The prosaic makes this slip into a melodrama feel even of a social lesson type, but there's no denying the ironic touch, as with the song at the end. Director Duvivier was reacting to his time in Hollywood as much as to World War II.

Ennio Morricone obituary.

House of Sand and Fog (2003)
Intriguing characters, situation, and even touch by director Vadim Perelman until -- the Shakespeare ending, or endings! Or perhaps parody or Oxygen version of Shakespeare.

21 Bridges (2019)
Hyped-up thriller and Manhattan version of Copland, director Kirk doesn't trust his cast to let us know how intense everything is. Even the lit-fuse plot and automatic weapon fire going off all hours need to have drum bang soundtrack to push it.

The Cameraman (1928)
Not exactly a Keaton version of Man with the Movie Camera, or even the reflexive heights of Sherlock, Jr., but still lots of Keaton fun.

Old Joy (2006)
The ambiguity of reality is more interesting than lots of dramatists seem to think, but this turn from Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy et al.) may be too slack even for the ambiguity.

Black Rainbow (1989)
The range of writer/director Mike Hodges in this movie may be as well suggested by the range of his movies: Get Carter, Flash Gordon, Morons from Outer Space, A Prayer for the Dying, Croupier. Some John Huston-like graininess lurches into pop thriller and preachiness, even if anti-religion.

Into the 8th Dimension (2016)
Extras and making-of docs may be only for the faithful, but more than 30 years on, the esprit de corps of Buckaroo Banzai is still infectious.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
The opening suggests more typical period fare, but the sparseness becomes interesting and then sly wit shows through the somberness to catch you up.

Fast Food Nation (2006)
Typical Linklater: interesting, even inspired stuff that drifts off.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
Another fly-on-the-wall style (see 7500 below), but also a progressive revelation exercise, effective in demonstrating the woman's circumstance a la Unbelievable and The Assistant.

Mulholland Drive (2001)
Time to watch again. The dreamlike, figure 8 fantastic also perpetuates play of meaning, and the way it wraps movies themselves up in that taffy Moebius strip is maybe the best of all.

Extra Ordinary (2019)
Fun drollery with ghosts and Satanic rituals.

The Hunt (2020)
Really not much of anything. Not really satire, not really horror, not really action, not really bad, not really good, not really offensive or provocative.

7500 (2019)
If you like your plot and treatment lean, try this, all the action in the cockpit in pretty much real time. No garish movie effects, like, say, a score. Nice exercise by director Patrick Vollrath and especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whom I haven't been much impressed with before.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962)
Version of the tall tales with that placid loopiness of the 60s Czech films, and great animation, live action mix techniques that suggest George Melies and Gustave Dore.

Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
Metacritic score of 13, better than Screwed. Confirming that rule of theater: if there's a horse cock in the first scene, the elephant cock will go off in the last.

The Return (2003)
Zvyagintsev's first feature length film. This is similar to Loveless in the theme of relationship of parents and children. Two boys, brothers, have their unknown father walk back into their lives and take them on an obligatory vacation trip.

Daniel (1983)
Uneven work especially from Doctorow and Lumet, maybe too ambitious for a feature length movie, but, dang, what about Timothy Hutton? Did I just miss how good he was? Maybe I gave up on him because of stupid ol' Ordinary People. And where'd he go?

The Hidden (1987)
Interesting 80s undercard fare, fun role off of Blue Velvet for MacLachlan, aliens and cops idea in thin plot banging off the gappy ambiance of LA with soft lighting, bad 80s music (sounds like they didn't want to pay too much for rights) and some kind of statement by someone, director or art director, about some kind of aqua mint green.

Buffaloed (2019)
Silver Linings Playbook marries The Big Short but has Fargo's love child.

The Way Back (2010)
Peter Weir treatment of escape legend that hasn't quite been confirmed. Good role for Ed Harris.

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945)
Like a one-act play (only an hour long) from kabuki and Noh, this test of wills has interesting twists in last two scenes.

Exorcism at 60,000 Feet (2019)
Limp even for fun bad, despite a promising cast: Lance Henriksen, Kevin J. O'Connor, Johnny Williams, Adrienne Barbeau, and some spirited lesser knowns Robert Miano, Bai Ling, Silvia Spross, Robert Rhine.

The Assistant (2019)
Director, writer Kitty Green portrays the sexism built into the larger context of alienation of the workplace and its banality. The counterpoint stillness and upstaging the main perpetrator to emphasize the victim, effects and system that enables are similar to Unbelievable.

Chronicle (2012)
Having the right idea for some of the first-person conceit, super power effects and development psychology cannot escape the trap of silliness for all of them.

Ugly (2013)
Interesting reflexive touches about movies and Bollywood -- a police interrogation breaks down into a movie discussion -- either lurches capriciously between humor and heavy-handedness, or I just don't get the tone. The satiric spark and the chilling point about child abduction themselves get waylaid by too many wild twists, and especially by one wild violent turn.

Underwater (2020)
Decently done, though thoroughly derivative. Jumping right on the white knuckle ride is the right idea, because when it slows down for redundant stuff about families and dogs, you notice all the silliness.

No Regrets for Our Youth (1946)
Interesting portrait of resistance to Imperial Japan that has become relevant in another way. The direction is better than the script. Great role for Setsuko Hara who gets to show more range than most of her Ozu characters.

12 (2007)
Reworking of 12 Angry Men to post-Soviet Russia is ambitious, sometimes wildly so, in an idealistic theatrical way. But even the conceit(s) of the soliloquy roundabout of the jurors is fun to watch because not typical of American movies, and even the kind of actors and their performances, which manage to be more involved even as overdone as far as script and direction. And a really interesting twist on the verdict, too, about whether the just result is always the best one.

Salyut-7 (2017)
If more obvious about its dramatic cliches, it's also less pretentious about the dimensions of the plot and events, than something like, say, Gravity.

Les Misérables (2019)
Seems Cannes takes things too seriously, too, these days. The Joker and this. This isn't really kitchen sink, more like kitchen pot being stirred.

Stray Dog (1949)
Precursor to High and Low and with Seven Samurai cast coming together. Great detail work by Kurosawa, his angles and insets.

In a Year with 13 Moons (1978)
Not the easiest Fassbinder to sit through, but a great performance by Volker Spengler and an interesting cobbled music score, along with the usual Peer Raben good stuff./

Fighting with My Family (2019)
Feel good wrestles with kitchen sink and each makes surprising turns on the other. Nice little offering from Stephen Merchant with a good performance by Vince Vaughn. Based on a true story.

Synonyms ()
Written and directed by a native Israeli, it has the wry, dry wit of Godard and something like the deadpan surrealism of Kusturica or some Central Asian movies.

Long Day's Journey into Night ()
May be hard to come by. Sidney Lumet's version. Starts off in a flurry at perhaps too high a theatrical pitch, but settles down into the liquor and morphine pace of the evening.

The Iceman Cometh (1973)
The American Film Theatre series version directed by John Frankenheimer and with a cast that includes Frederic March, Robert Ryan, Jeff Bridges, and especially great role for and performance by Lee Marvin.

Defendor (2009)
A nice, modest little douse of cold water for all your superhero gaga.

The Invisible Man (2020)
Great parable idea for abusive relationships and narcissistic control, using even the ancient Greek myth ideas about invisibility to better purpose. Though not as thick as Black Mirror, tends toward that and to bogging down the allegory in plot mechanics.

Little Evil (2017)
A sort-of spoof of evil kid movies, especially the Omen ones, it's not nearly as funny as The Omen movies. It's more a warm-hearted parenting melodrama, but with some nice turns, like Sally Fields as an evil matron.

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
Cold War era Snowden. Directed by John Schlesinger of Midnight Cowboy fame, with great performances by Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn. There's even a Keystone cops comment.

Cold War (2018)
Tones of Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds, among others, with a great performance by Joanna Kulig.

The League of Gentlemen (1960)
Twitty little caper headed by Jack Hawkins, with Richard Attenborough preparing for The Great Escape and an uncredited, very young Oliver Reed showing up as quite un-butch. Not to be confused with the great Brit series around the turn of the century that borrowed the title and for its ironic sense.

Wavelength (1967)
One of the most famous experimental, or non-narrative, films actually undermines itself by injecting some figure elements. The prolonged zoom-in and sound make it like a play of hypnotism, though even your own zoning out gets pulled back into the experience.

Superfights (1995)
The Karate Kid for cokeheads.

Take This Waltz (2011)
Though it's triangle tragedy passing as hipster romcom, there are some good twists from writer/director Sarah Polley, especially just when you think it's that intolerable fare (and for Michelle Williams).