"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/

"Me, You and Everybody we know" (2005), "Kajillionaire" (2020), Miranda July.

Miranda July is a multidisciplinary artist known mostly for her quirky movies. 

I can declare that she is the queen of the post-meet-cute scene. The meet-cute is the scene when our protagonist couple see each other for the first time. On the next minutes, they confirm the meeting and the future with a follow up. In "Me and You..." a stretch of street represents a life-long relationship which the characters traverse sharing years with each step. In "Kajillionaire" the entire last third of the movie works as a date culminating in the sight of a cash register panel, posited between the two, signaling forever freedom. It is all very enchanting.  In both cases, the notion of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) saving somebody with her strange manners and aloofness is rapidly dispelled.  July's movies don't have a Zooey Deschanel arquetype. Despite the surrounding weirdness, characters respond like adults would in real life. 

Now, it would be easy to accuse July of being a simple indie hipster, but there are indications that she has grown as an artist and does not belong with the nihilist retro consumerism of gentrified Brooklyn. In her first movie July packs multiple themes intercalated in a short runtime, as if it was the only chance she would had as a filmmaker.  However, "Kajillionaire" shows a mature director that can sustain interest by focusing on romance and family. 

"Me and You" lives entirely in the period between the birth of the popular Internet and the kingdom of smartphones, social media and Tinder, namely 2005. Digital art and the digital world are included as one of the main themes, both in the plots of July trying to make it as an artist (including criticism of the art scene) and young children arranging an online date with an adult through outrageous messages in a desktop computer messaging application.  A Boomer side character tells Julie to just take what it's hers, in this case the possibility of an exhibition in the local art museum.  In "Kajillionaire" angst again this kind of Boomer delusion is expanded into the main problematic of the movie. 

Two more things to add: July creates astounding tension out of thin air, in sequences that belong to a thriller but whose stakes are definitively small.  In "You and Me..." a father forgets a bag with her daughter's fish in the top of his car, and then drives. We are all witness to the impending disaster. Tension soars. In "Kajillionaire" the formal plot centers on a family of small-time crooks, thus it is part of the normal narrrative of heist films.

And finally, sexuality.  The unconventional pairings of "You and me... " include a child and an adult woman, a sexual scene between an early adolescence boy and two developed late adolescence girls, those girls and a young adult man, and the often hidden coupling between two old people in the last years of their lives. Nowadays some of those pairings would put Julie into the league of provocateurs such as Greg Arraki, Gaspar Noé or Todd Solondz.  Seems that 2005 is so close but so far away. 

"Me and You and Everyone We Know" - Recommended. 

"Kajillionaire" - Recommended.