"Ida" (2013), Paweł Pawlikowski.

I often search in Google Maps the village where my grandpa came from, deep in rural Poland. I look at the few houses and try to imagine which one was his. Then I go to the nearest town and look for the Jewish cemetery, or what's left of it. Is his family there? Did somebody bury the ashes? "Ida" is personal.

Every shot a picture. Literally. I feel that space is similar to Lucrecia Martel's treatment in "The Headless Woman", where anything left out speaks volumes. Some reviewers note that this virtuosity can act as a distraction. Instead of losing yourself in the movie, we react to shots as they formally are, parts of an art piece. When we watch Welles flex his genius muscles in "Kane", we marvel at the inventiveness but we are not taken out of the enchantment. But given the current state of cinema we are perhaps happy enough to have something pretty to look at. Hey, at least Pawlikowski took the time to try! The photographic aspect alone deserves a re-watch.

Not to speak about the big issue that shall not be discussed in Poland, the treatment of Jews not by the Nazis but by neighbors. I'm not going to write about it here. I know, they know, we know. It was done everywhere, also in the "advanced" countries in the West. I must say though, that I find Ida's situation depressing. If she doesn't have children, her line will have dissapeared from history, and the Nazis would have won. Maybe that's the point of the movie.

Should you watch "Ida"? Yes. Is it boring? Only if you don't engage with it.

Bodies: regarding sickness, image and beauty. Don Hertzfeldt, The House is Black,

"Lenox Hill" (2020) is a reality series from Netflix where we follow a group of neurosurgeons and their attempts to save the lives of patients that suffer from different kinds of brain cancers. Why am I suggesting this? Because I just watched Don Hertzfeldt's excellent "It's Such a Beautiful Day" (2011), part three of the "Bill Trilogy", the story of a man with a sickness that is never named, but that could undoubtedly be one of the hopeful Lenox Hill souls. The trilogy is composed by three animated shorts that make a single story, so I recommend you all to watch it in its entirety.  The Netflix series and Hertzfeldt's fantasy complement each other quite well, since you get to experience both sides of something that affects the core of the self. 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2078648/?ref_=m_nm_knf_t2

"Looks That Kill" (2020, Kellen Moore) is a Young Adult fantasy about a boy that has a face so beautiful that can kill people, thus must hide it with bandages.  He befriends a plain looking girl with health problems.  Both of them supposedly want the opposite sex to pursue them because of their personalities. Instead of wasting one hour and a half in this hypocritical hogwash, you could try to understand what changed Che Guevara's life when he visited a leper colony.  Lepers are people with a very evident condition that produces rejection upon view.  The best Persian poet of the 20th Century, Forough Farrokhzad, directed a short film that shone light into the unwanted ("The House is Black").  Like Tod Browning before ("Freaks"), Farrokhzad finds the human behind the sickness and poverty and validates their existance.  Here they are, not represented by a commercial machine in search of marginal gains but in their own flesh. 

TSPDT 2020 ranking : 332

The House is Black in YouTube

"Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World" (2023), Radu Jude.

A modern masterpiece. This movie is a comedic journey through the maladies of the new twenties. It is a scattershot approach to systemic criticism but it works quite well by covering many bases. Are the problems presented just Third World Problems? No, the developed countries impose their will.  Why is there no revolt by the Third World victims then? Because they must flow with the system to get the scraps. Was it better before, in communist times? It seems not, Ceaușescu was a totalitarian dictator. The film is dense with references, jokes and commentary, and will probably remain as a time capsule for future cinephiles and historians.

"Dune: Part 2" (2024), Denis Villeneuve

Villeneuve is the go-to director for the orphaned comic-book nerds escaping the Marvel Titanic ship.  Dune (part 2!) is composed of endless sands mixed with close-ups of angry people and Nolan womps. It's long, it's badly edited and it's boring. There's no interesting esthetics, no cinema to speak of. Even the CGI is tired. The Empire and other sections of "Foundation" had similar themes and did it a lot better.  Part of the fault lies in Herbert's vision of Jihad and Saviours, part on Villeneuve's approach to filmmaking, at best suitable for "Arrival", his moody Doctor Who-ish film episode. The nerds scream for recognition, and this comes in the form of seriousness. American Cinema is in the agonal respiration phase, a somber period where every character must pensively look at the horizon while the bass drowns any thought. Only feeling is allowed, a longing for a past that is not coming back. The magic is gone, colors are muted, the fire is dying ember, just the red dust remains.Villeneuve is the go-to director for the orphaned comic-book nerds escaping the Marvel Titanic ship.  Dune (part 2!) is composed of endless sands mixed with close-ups of angry people and Nolan womps. It's long, it's badly edited and it's boring. There's no interesting esthetics, no cinema to speak of. Even the CGI is tired. The Empire and other sections of "Foundation" had similar themes and did it a lot better.  Part of the fault lies in Herbert's vision of Jihad and Saviours, part on Villeneuve's approach to filmmaking, at best suitable for "Arrival", his moody Doctor Who-ish film episode. The nerds scream for recognition, and this comes in the form of seriousness. American Cinema is in the agonal respiration phase, a somber period where every character must pensively look at the horizon while the bass drowns any thought. Only feeling is allowed, a longing for a past that is not coming back. The magic is gone, colors are muted, the fire is dying ember, just the red dust remains.

"Poor Things" (2023), Yorgos Lanthimos

 A feminist (and misandrist) mishmash of Frankenstein, My Fair Lady and Edward Sissorhands, this excellent outing by the otherwise cold Lanthimos is enchanting but morally dubious. The Paddington esthetic is saddled with unnecessary fish-eye lenses and sudden zooms, but the award-worthy performance by Emma Stone overcomes any directorial dictatorial flourishes. A must see, and clear candidate for the best movie of the year.

Full Time (À plein temps), 2021

Full Time (À plein temps), 2021, Eric Gravel (5/5)

A horror movie: it's about being a proletarian in the middle of a transport strike in Paris. Imagine that. It's suspenseful, nerve-wracking, and very relatable. Andrea Arnold and a young Ken Loach could not have done it better. In real life though, things are even worse, with backstabbing colleagues and petty low management. Highly recommended and as I read elsewhere it should be non-optional viewing for union activists before deciding measures.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt13269580/

Funny Ha Ha, King Richard, Bodies bodies bodies, Babylon, Air

Funny Ha Ha (2004), 4/5

Low budget, naturalistic dialogue, slice of life, nothing really happens. Mumblecore was an American style of filmmaking portraying the lives of young urban dwellers. The daddy of them all was this movie, a series of fragments in the monotonous daily grind of a girl from Generation X and her friends, barely graduated from college. I don't know how this was received when it premiered, maybe it was thought to be pretentious, maybe slight and useless. However, the river of time and technological change have given this film an unexpected present: perspective. We follow 23 year old Marnie through a series of parties, jobs, conversations with friends and prospective lovers. And there is no smartphone in sight, barely Internet, no distractions other than shooting the shit with the people you know. A boss innocently closes the door of his office to have an interview with the young lady; a girl is obsessed with the guy she has been friends with for a while, but has time to hang out with a guy falling for her; impromptu happenings start with people haphazardly meeting on the street: all impossible feats in the virtual era. Change made this movie invaluable, this was how life was: languid, warm and hopeful.

King Richard (2021), 2/5

Objectivist hagiography of self-made man that invests in multiple (meat) machines until two of them pay off, costs be damned. This Randian "hero" produces two juggernauts through cunning and perseverance. You see, he has a plan. And as shown, the only way Black people in the US have to stop being poor is to pull themselves out by their sport shoes and throw some balls for entertainment. This film thinks that it is a good idea. There's an appropriate famous song by Tones and I about this phenomenon. 

Bodies bodies bodies (2022), 4/5

In theory I should not like this at all. It is a simple genre exercise, a joke, a Reddit tale. However, the Z Gen rich kids' obnoxiousness is hilarious, think about it like "Euphoria" with money and blood. It is a good time at the movies, one character worse than the other. The end is ridiculous and appropriate.

Babylon (2022), 3/5

It feels weird to give only three stars to such an endeavor. Orchestrated chaos containing a barely dressed sensual Margot Robbie implodes at the two hour mark due to unfocused plot and unearned grandiose pretentious. Chazelle could talk about The Hays Code vs. 1920s free-for-all, could talk about the technical aspect of filmmaking, could talk about power, gender and race (ugh). But not about all at the same time, in three hours, without a serious anchor. A wasted opportunity, a simulacra of better movies aided by good actors. Better watch "Singin'..." and "Cinema Paradiso" again. 

Air (2023), 3/5

Corporate hagiography. The new fashion in American cinema seems to be the retelling of business lucky ideas finally succeeding into the famous thing we know from our youth. It is a sub-genre of the sport movie, the underdog that finally wins big. It is difficult to make such a movie about a big billion dollar corp. (back when a billion was a lot of money) so they take an everyman independent thinker that "gets it". This one has some good jokes and too much 1980s memorabilia thrown to the audience at every juncture. "Hey, remember this?" seems to be the mode of operation. It partially works.