"I'm Thinking of Ending Things" (2019), Charlie Kaufman; "Straight Up" (2019), James Sweeney. Review.

In Kaufman's movie, the elaborate camera movements represent the character's feelings and a subtle mystery, but they fail to elicit an obvious emotional reaction from the viewer. You supposedly need to be smart to "get it". Kaufman doesn't clearly present his thesis and it hurts the film.  It requires two viewings that should not be necessary, unless you make it part of the experience (stitching the same movie back to back). The concept of stream of consciousness is not enjoyable if we don't get to participate in the intricacies of the protagonist and his mental state. Acting is phenomenal, albeit a bit exaggerated. However, men's lives of quiet desperation are accurately represented. Maybe too well.  We don't want to see ourselves in the protagonist, but our unsuccessful encounters with women are often only memorable to us.  Mr. Bernstein remembers in "Citizen Kane" a girl with a white parasol that he saw for a moment decades ago.  The girl doesn't even remember that day.  Obtuse movie, real situation.

In "Straight Up" the opposite is true.  Accessible rapid-fire rom-com, mix of "Gilmore Girls" and Lubitschian cinephilia.  An asexual affected young guy (Todd) decides that he is not indeed gay as everybody else thinks he is.  He rejects the alternative lifestyle that is now part of normality, and the social support that comes with it. His peers insist, he must be gay.  In this view, a man without overwhelming sexual impulses is not a man, regardless of his sexual preference.  He meets a brilliant and extremely beautiful actress that falls for him. Because of his personality. Do I need to explain that the man is also the director and the writer of this film?  He tries to justify the fascination of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl for our intellectually dashing and honest character, but those of us that have lived for a while recognize personal fantasies in art and what they're supposed to achieve. Movie is fun, quick and somewhat interesting, but it is also completely unrealistic. 

Thanks to Kaufman, we describe guys like Todd as a mosquito bite from twenty years ago on a summer night. Uncomfortable when it happened, since long forgotten. 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8855960/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

"Four Lions" (2010), Christopher Morris

Sadly always current, this blackest of comedies showcases the most powerful weapon of terrorism: stupidity. Morris thoroughly researched the lives of second and third generation Muslims in the UK, aggrieved low class men (and women) completely integrated into society while re-creating a foreign identity.  The most interesting point made in the film is that the most religious Muslim is the one that warns about the dangers of extremism, while the secular and westernized characters are the responsible of terrorist role-playing and finally violence.  Highly recommended. 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1341167/

"The Assistant" (2019), Kitty Green & "The Hunt" (2012), Thomas Vinterberg.

A secretary working untenable hours under a Hollywood producer that sleeps around.  A kindergarden teacher gets falsely accused of pedophilia. The horror of everyday life under contemporary society is way more scary than any supernatural slasher, ghost or demon.  It is real, it depends on unstoppable legal and social structures.  It can happen to you. 

"The Assistant" shows a work day in the life of a smart university graduate assisting a powerful man. Every activity, from the moment she gets into the office until she gets out, seems to be anxiety inducing because they don't come from a sense of professional pride but from fear.  The movie is powerful despite its flawed central thesis based on feminism and the narrative of the #meetoo movement. The alienation of workers and the toxicity of the office environment under a despot is so extreme that the power-for-sex exchange appears trivial.  And people still will scramble to have the life of modern slavery that the protagonist has. 

"The Hunt" happens in a small town in a country with an embarrassment of riches.  With no bigger societal problems to tackle, an overzealous kindergraden/nursery director destroys the life of a divorced teacher by weaponizing a little lie by one of the kids. The town gets thrown into a silent frenzy against one of their peers. They find a sense of community in this activity, togetherness, a way to feel alive.  It is just a continuation of the hunts they do in a nearby forest.  Do they feel shame when everything is proved false? Not one bit. Some excuses offscreen, and under their breath the delusion continues.  You are never safe again. 

Both movies are quite unsettling, albeit in different ways and with different stakes.  The Assistant could be fired, the Hunted can be killed. Both are terrifying.

"Sound of Metal" (2019), Darius Marder

From viral YouTube videos of people getting cochlear implants straight to your scripted film, "Sound of Metal" it's a double entendre about the music genre and the implants'   initial impressions on its users.  

Technically  it sits straight on 21st Century pseudo-realism, with shaky cams and naturalistic conversations. Its cultural underpinnings belong to the new mainstream: identity politics of unthinkable corners, such as the Deaf community.  It seems that being deaf is not currently a disability but an entire culture, a position maintained by rich families supporting enveloping institutions as seen in Netflix' reality show "Deaf U".  I'm guessing that the rest of the community riding in their coat-tails have no moral quandaries on cashing disability checks though. 

There is a smear of guilt over the entire film, our character drums (his drums away) even when being told not to do so, gets his operation despite possible rejection by the Deaf (cult), and has certain shame over his relationship with a girl with rich daddy issues.

It is watchable, Oscarizable and a bit forgettable.  Its disservice to a medical achievement that alleviates a significant problem makes it a time capsule of the era of cultural relativity.  In short, if we could solve deafness tomorrow it would be immoral not to enforce it. 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5363618/

"Rust and Bone" (2012), "The Father" (2020). Capsule reviews.

"Rust and Bone" (2012), Jacques Audiard. 

Marion Cotillard is just astounding as a marine park trainer in search of a new meaning in life after a devastating accident. Movie is sensual and dirty but dated, since lust for the low class hunk has been commodified by Tinder into easily disposable one-night stands.  I can't feel sympathy for the lumpen-proletariat and the story of redemption-by-woman. Still, movie has many moments of beauty (see photo).

"The Father" (2020), Florian Zeller. 

Terrifying movie about dementia.  Disorienting until we understand that we are seeing things from the point of view of the sufferer, a spectacular Anthony Hopkins in what is probably his swan song.  Once we get the gimmick we try to (re)solve the clues into a coherent situation, but the film ends being dishonest, since it abandons Anthony's POV to show the degeneration from the outside. Educational, but is it really different from a short advertising about the subject?  This is one end of the story for many Boomers, and given Covid-19 is not even the worst possible one. If I was in my sixties or seventies I would not watch this.

"You Were Never Really Here", (2017), Lynne Ramsay. Review.

This movie stands in the intersection between mass appealing commercial filmmaking and a traditional art-house outing. Joaquin Phoenix plays yet another maladjusted introspective violent man that saves kidnapped children and teens.

It is full of beautifully photographed transition shots, so full that they become a significant chunk of the runtime.  Yes, they're Rockwellian and pretty to look at, but is it cinema? They call attention to themselves and many are not very original, just what you would expect from the current state of digital correcting wizardry, in color grading and specific effect shots.  I certainly enjoyed them, but their superficial beauty is not so different from a Marvel green screen tableau. When Laughton filmed a body in the water in "The Night of the Hunter", its haunted beauty had intent, meaning and looked like an impressive technical achievement.  When Ramsay does the same it feels like she watched "Under the Skin" on repeat.  To be fair, "Get Out" was released the same year and used the same idea.  It is now a popular staple between independent filmmakers and suspect a technological reason is involved. This is modern art temporary exhibition material. 

Many reviewers seem to remember only a specific part of this movie: action scenes are not followed but shown (or not) through CCTV shots.  Some called it "an inaction film".  Trite but quite fulfilling. After all, going to an art school exhibit is still an acceptable way of having fun. 

"Humanity and Paper Balloons" (1937), Sadao Yamanaka.

Master filmmaker Sadao Yamanaka died at 28 years of age during the early 20th Century Imperial Japanese wars, but he left us with this beautiful ode to the common folk, living in a poor street in Edo (today's Tokyo). 

Before watching an old film, I always worry that it will be antiquated and boring, but it feels modern instead.  Why? Because people were not very different back then, and good naturalist acting shows them as our neighbours. Portentous or stilted acting is not exclusive of black and white movies, but technology and rapid editing techniques masks the inadequacies of contemporary directors. The characters in "Humanity..." are not actually modern, they're real.  

Much is implied instead of shown, but what appears on screen is entertaining and depressing at the same time. This slice of life tells a simple story of low class people confronting their social superiors and trying to get ahead in life, while maintaining their honor and their sense of agency.

Recommended. 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0029314/

"Un long dimanche de fiançailles", (Eng:"A very long engagement", 2004), Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Typical Jeunet whimsy contrasted with graphic war horror.  The absurdity of the Great War trenches is framed as a mystery about the whereabouts of a young French soldier condemned of desertion by self-harm.  Her fiancee (a beautiful Audrey Tautou) does everything to find him. However it is impossible to solve the case with the clues given in the script, which jumps between plot points. We join her ride while recognizing this or that actor on the way. It is visually gorgeous but flimsy, illuminated in crepuscular yellow tones and continuos camera movements. Worth watching once. 

"First Cow" (2019), Kelly Reichardt. Capsule Review

Exemplification of (an attempt) at capitalist originary accumulation. As in "Lone Star" (John Sayles), old remains are discovered in the field and the following is the reason why bones ended in such a place.  The setting is somewhat similar to Lucrecia Marte's "Zama" and its slow and methodical historic reconstruction. This time is post-colonial and filmed in Academy ratio (1.33:1), emphasizing the non-epic nature of the story.  Two migrants in the American Northwest of the early 19th century are trying to make their own fortune.  One has the smarts, the other the qualities of the value-producing artisan. But they lack capital, so they must steal.  Is this their only choice? The tale itself is simple, and after a long and tedious beginning it becomes somewhat engrossing, but the wait makes it inaccessible to the same public that would benefit the most from the understanding of the basic mechanics of capitalism and capital ownership.  It is a shame because there are many beautiful elements in this film, from the authenticity to the great acting. Recommended with reservation.

IMDb link

"Mind Game" (2004), Masaaki Yuasa , Kôji Morimoto

The cliché says that Japan is technologically in the future.  The truth is that the country predicts quite well the social problems that other developed countries will have in a couple of decades. This animated movie was made sixteen years ago and already presents (like many other Japanese films) the crushing alienation of the young undesired man, which, as it is (a modern) tradition, is an aspiring manga illustrator. 

Nishi wants to date his childhood friend, Myon, but their impromptu and random day out is interrupted by the local mafia.  Nishi gets to meet God, and back on Earth he escapes and find himself stranded inside a gigantic whale with Myon.  The question is: should they escape and go back to disappointing reality? 

The prevalent style is animated hyperbole, exaggeration of a situation to the breaking point of attention.  The director brings the viewer to the brink and back, but often falls into overlong indulgence, as with a musical sequence inside the whale representing our characters' isolated happiness.  And in the opposite side I wish that the film would have shown the history of the characters at the end at a lower speed, to better appreciate the history of Japan surrounding them. 

It is still a minor achievement and way more interesting that anything that the corporate artists at Pixar could dream of. 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0452039/

Capsule review of "El Dorado" (1966), Howard Hawks

Late western with a standard plot, which Howard Hawks uses as a playing sandbox for a variety of themes and genres.  A powerful ranch owner trying to coerce a self-made family of cattle wranglers to sell their water rights. Against him stands a sheriff (Robert Mitchum), a young adventurer (a dashing James Caan), and an old no-nonsense gunslinger (who else but John Wayne). 

There's action and there's comedic relief (including an old fashioned "yellowface" bit). There's drama and also sexyness. Above all, there's paranoia.  Constant paranoia at  every moment, with every movement.  The Wild West is represented by the rule of the gun.  Hollywood is telling contemporary Americans in the 1950s and 1960s that the US is "now" a safe place where upholding the law doesn't require constant shootouts. Scenes are thus full of standing tension, as the adversaries position themselves in space preparing for the inevitable. The sheriff can't wait the official forces of order to reach town, the US Marshall is not coming, men need to fend for themselves. It is truly America. 

It is all very matter of fact, both by the practical men and the surprisingly modern (strikingly beautiful) women, that stand alongside, not below, the men they love, hurt and help. There are lots of Spanish-speaking roles, colors are vibrant but appropriately dusted.

An entertaining time at the movies. Recommended. 

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0061619/