Christmas leftovers

These are the films I saw in December on which I had a bit less to say on Twitter.

MONSTER (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2023) 4

If there’s anything worse than a gimmicky narrative structure that doesn’t work, except as a trick and subterfuge, it’s a film that tells the same story that your favorite film of last year told straight, if subtly and allusively.

I’m not naming the film to avoid spoilers, which is exactly the problem … it’s not until iteration three of the same basic story events told from three perspectives (the mom, the teacher, the boy) that The Central Topic becomes apparent or even that strongly hinted at. I don’t hate the film like some do because Diversity, but it’s unfair to us regardless.

Though I have to be honest … the film really got off on the wrong foot with me in the scenes with the mom and the school officials, which simply pass the point of believable bureaucratic indifference. They aren’t acting like politely indifferent ass-coverers; they’re barely even acting like zombies.

Of course no thread about a Kore-eda movie will be complete without noting his penchant for MOR classical piano tinkling. Though in fairness, I should add the film’s most notable departure from that musical style and into the horn section may have been its best moment (until that got effed up too).

EILEEN (William Oldroyd, USA, 2023) 6

Know what was a fantasy … a Masshole bar drunk circa 1960 saying “a left hook like Joe Frazier” rather than Rocky Marciano. That was merely annoying as a boxing fan … but the film was near-great until The Twist.

What we had for so long was an overheated seduction movie with Anne Hathaway AnneHathawaying up the joint (Sirk in the midst of drab neorealism), and Thomasin McKenzie just barely registering her words in a muted sound mix.

As for The Twist … I’m fine in principle with it except for where the film goes with it specifically. It’s pure Therapeutic Society hokum about Bad Dads that then forgets Anne. A part of me was thinking the whole movie might be an OWL CREEK-type fantasy (we get lots of foreshadowing false scenes), but we’re clearly meant to see the end as final liberation, which … ick and ugh.

OUR TRIP TO AFRICA (Peter Kubelka, Austria, 1966) 2 s V

Remember in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS that documentary that Woody made about Alda? This film is like that film .., only it’s in real world and not in a comedic movie. Maybe if you consider hunting and white tourism to be a priori evil, you’d consider these Kuleshov juxtapositions, both visual and aural, to be somehow profound. I sure as heck wouldn’t know. Kubelka does let us see African boobs and dick though, which is not at all exploitative.

THE TEACHER’S LOUNGE (Ilker Catak, Germany, 2023) 6

If it had an ending, we’d add one or even maybe two to that.

Much of this film is a reductio ad absurdum of small-d democratic education and its melting before actual human behavior, including gossip and procedural authority … or perhaps LE CORBEAU transferred into a school setting. Leonie Benesch is excellent at the center, as the new teacher who tries to advocate for students, but only makes things worse for herself and everyone else. It’s familiar territory — Bildung as disillusionment — but never quite applied to this context.

But LOUNGE doesn’t want to go for the jugular a la APPROACHING THE ELEPHANT. It shows educational authoritarianism all right, at the start even, but it can’t bring itself to say education is authoritarian. So it paints itself into corner it can’t resolve on its own small-d terms. It just gives us a pointed non-ending.

THE BOY AND THE HERON (Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 2023) 3

Another case where I’d advise the director’s fanboys to ignore me. I’ve never been much of a fan of world-building and even universe-building, and the deeper this one got into it, the less my interest became. Pretty much checked out mentally by the time the parakeets showed up, though there was a good movie in the “real” world about step-parents and some potentially fun comedy with the old servants.

But this film was critically clarifying for me about why world building so often leaves me cold. It requires exposition dumps about a world with which I’m necessarily unfamiliar, which is both boring and necessary to remember. If you’re not already carrying around the mythology in your head, it leads to events that make no sense, either as plot or as theme. You eventually get sunk in the quicksand trying to follow it even if the imagery is sometimes amazing. What the rules of block stacking, for example, have to do with mother loss is … unclear at best.

EMBRYO LARVA BUTTERFLY (Kyros Papavassiliou, Cyprus, 2023) 6

I saw this yet-undistributed film, about a scrambled timeline pregnancy, at the AFI Silver’s EU Film Series, and wrote up my reaction at Letterboxd.

OPPONENT (Milad Alami, Sweden, 2023) 7

I saw this yet-undistributed film, a Payman Maadi wrestling/refugee movie, at the AFI Silver’s EU Film Series, and wrote up my reaction at Letterboxd.

AMERICAN FICTION (Cord Jefferson, USA, 2023) 7

Or what if BAMBOOZLED were a good and smart movie (which is very definitely a fiction)…? Lee was held back by terrible-looking 2000 video, an awfully conceived Damon Wayans performance, and a really stupid and unbelievable premise (white people would watch blackface on anyone but a left-wing politician). This one is just much better calibrated and Jeffrey Wright isn’t a caricature.

The film is held back only by its own manifesto-worthy point that black life is more than the easy mass-commodified images, especially the caricatured ones highlighted here as more “authentic.” Which is undoubtedly true but, as Hitchcock said, drama is life with the dull bits cut out. Much of the domestic drama here is those dull bits and I wasn’t crazy about the early death.

So yeah, I wanted the movie the trailer was selling … all literary-scam material, more social satire about white consumption, “blackness,” fakery. The best scene is the one between Monk and fellow black author Sintara Golden about their two books, which … does not go the way I was expecting when it started.

SILENT NIGHT (John Woo, USA, 2023) 2

Maybe John Woo just isn’t my bag. I saw THE KILLER in 1989 or 90 and had not otherwise ever seen a Woo movie. obviously SILENT NIGHT wasn’t trying for my sweet spots (I largely shrugged at the hyperemotionalized “gun fu” of THE KILLER). But I do like SOME violent action films — ONG-BAK first comes to mind — and this one is just empty.

I like dialogue. It helps movies make sense. I like characterization. It gives movies stakes. I don’t inherently like violence. It hurts. I like some basis in reality. It also helps movies make sense. I like emotional restraint. Its lack is cheap.

I could buy that the lead character (Joel Kinnaman) doesn’t speak as a character feature. But to have nobody speak like a normal human being is just an affectation. The only scene I wasn’t bored by was the one-shot ascent up the stairs. The choreography and camera movement is the work of a virtuoso. All else was just stuff and dough.

A FISH CALLED WANDA (Charles Crichton, Britain, 1988) 10 R V

Seen for just the second time in a decade, but surely the 10th or 12th time overall, and it struck me more than ever how, once the basic situation with the jewels is set up, the film is completely fat-free and goes from memorable comic set piece to memorable comic set piece without the slightest concession to “normal” events.

You also have four great comic performances in completely different registers. Kline and Palin are both playing caricatures, but Kline with far more … zest (in the character anyway) while Palin is perpetually … held back (no, I don’t mind it one bit). The contrast between the two is why the goldfish scene between them is great. Curtis and Cleese are more believable human beings, but with a similar polarity — she’s a schemer and he’s a mark.

SALTBURN (Emerald Fennell, USA, 2023) 3

Imagine KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, only rewritten by Tennessee Williams’ po-faced Chinese knockoff and directed by Lee Daniels’ non-union Mexican equivalent — though that probably makes this movie sound more awesome than it is.

I have a taste for the lurid but not if devoid of humor (unless you find the story so over the top it’s automatically funny … which … fine, I guess). But my tolerance for someone mourning by fucking the fresh grave dirt and ending with unsimulated nude dances is … limited. And yes, despite recent attempts at reclamation, the oversexed, ultra-stylized “thrillers” from the 80s and 90s WERE dumb as a bag of hammers.