Another round with our latest favorite, Renate Reinsve, then a truly bad new release, followed by a palate-cleanser courtesy of our favorite analyst of French kids, Celine Sciamma.
ARMAND (C+) - Renate Reinsve literally and figuratively stomps all over a slow-burn suspense film from Norway about a parent-teacher conference from hell, but neither she nor the workmanlike supporting cast can make this debut film makes sense. It drags its mysteries out to nearly two hours, about a half hour too long.
Halfdan Ullman Tondel -- the grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman -- pays homage to his grandfather with claustrophobic visuals inside a school and a narrative that is wrapped in several mysteries. Elisabeth (Reinsve), a harried and disgraced actress, is called to the school because her 6-year-old, Armand, has engaged in "sexual deviancy" with another boy. The accusers are the parents, Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Anders (Endre Hellestveit), who happen to be her in-laws -- Sarah is the sister of Elisabeth's dead husband, Thomas, who also had been a student at the school and apparently suffered some unexplained accident or form of abuse as a child.
Reinsve ("The Worst Person in the World," "A Different Man") bigfoots the sessions with administrators like the deflated diva she is supposed to be. The heels of her boots terrorize the corridor floors, and she wields an overcoat like a toreador's cape. She carries the film and provides a key centerpiece (excerpted in the trailer) in which she has an inappropriate laughing fit that devolves into maniacal sobbing. It's an extraordinary few minutes of cinema, but it's just not enough to make up for the fact that Tondel has a thin story that he stretches out interminably.
The teacher and administrators cultivate a fascinating bureaucratic subplot among them -- Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen) is the green instructor, Jarle (Oystein Roger) is the put-upon principal, and Ajsa (Vera Veljovic-Jovanovic) assists him when she's not dealing with bizarre nosebleeds. Tondel certainly has an appealing visual style -- he turns hallways menacing and crowds his characters into an intimate first-grade classroom. But his reveal is not very convincing in the end, and the expiation at the climax feels unearned. He could use a good editor.
HIPPO (D) - The less said about this creepy mess the better. The bizarre debut from director Mark H. Rapaport wallows in the breakdown of a broken family, in which the mother has lost her mind and the step-siblings have the hots for each other.
Co-writer Kimball Farley stars as Hippo, a socially stunted young adult partial to crossbows and video games as he celebrates his 19th birthday, and Lilla Kinzlinger plays Buttercup, his step-sister who was adopted from Hungary and who is eager to both lose her virginity and have a baby. Of course, Hippo is her top choice for that; but when he declines, she goes online to find a much older weirdo, Darwin (Jesse Pimentel), to come over for dinner and do the deed.
However, Darwin seems more interested in the mother (Eliza Roberts), who quickly gets tipsy and flirty, and when Darwin and Buttercup do end up in her room, things go horribly wrong. (Roberts' husband, Eric, provides clunky narration.)
It's not clear which parts of this are supposed to be funny, even if just a little. I did laugh at a few of the one-liners. But in the end, there's little humor, black or otherwise, to be mined in this depiction of disturbing mental instability. There's nothing amusing at all in home-schooled teenagers belatedly getting the birds-and-bees lesson from their mentally ill mother. Other things simply don't make sense; for example, if Buttercup was adopted years earlier as a teen, why does she have a thick Hungarian accent as if she just stepped off the boat?
Rapaport's effort here is as derivative as it gets; it is equal parts David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch and early Yorgos Lanthimos ("Dogtooth," "Attenberg") but not nearly as clever or thoughtful as any of those directors' efforts. It's just a bad movie.
TOMBOY (B+) - An early film from Celine Sciamma ("Water Lilies," "Girlhood," "Petite Maman") explores a gender-neutral child trying to fit in with peers after moving to a new neighborhood.
Ten-year-old Laure (Zoe Heran, above right) has a girly little sister and another sibling on the way, and when she meets new kids in the neighborhood, her short hair and stick frame read as male. As summer lazily winds down, she plays sports with the boys, and when a cute girl named Lisa (Jeanne Disson, above left) asks Laure's name, she identifies as Mikael, and everyone then assumes she is a boy. Her parents, of course, are clueless.
The final two-thirds of the movie follow Laure/Mikael as they walk the tightrope between genders, juggling family and friends. How do you navigate the swimming pool? How do you pee in the woods when others are around? Should she reveal her gender to the crushy Lisa? And what happens when school starts in the fall?
The freckle-faced Heran captures the innocence and confusion that dominate adolescence. Disson brings nuance to the concept of puppy love, and Malonn Levana makes for a pretty sophisticated 6-year-old as the suspicious little sister. Sciamma is a master explorer of the childhood experience, whether she is reveling in a soccer game or conveying the tenderness between siblings. The questions of sexuality in "Tomboy" are secondary to the universal narrative of a child finding themself.
Let's not complicate things. It was a fine year to watch movies in 2022.
There was much hand-wringing late last year about the decline of mid-budget, director-centric, "prestige" films, a supposed crisis for the movie industry beyond superhero sequels and Disney epics. ("We’re now seeing a grim future for 'cinema' at the movie theater," lamented this thoughtful essay.)
But below you'll find at least 20 very good (even great) movies that won't insult your intelligence, many of which did fine financially (and half of which screened at the independent single-screen Guild Cinema). The problem in 2022 wasn't the bottom dropping out of the market for quality movies; it was a lack of quality movies from the usual suspects who churn out "prestige" films. It's no wonder that it was an epic year for box-office bombs.
We skipped a lot of releases this year, and the main reason was that they looked like navel-gazing slogs, way too long in running time. The poster boy for that is Steven Spielberg, whom we gave up on years ago. His shlocky childhood reverie "The Fabelmans" weighs in at 2 hours 31 minutes. Another pampered storyteller, James Gray ("The Yards," "Ad Astra"), also mined his own childhood, though he managed to do it in just under two hours.
Maybe it doesn't pay to over-indulge mid-career filmmakers and hand them big budgets and unlimited run times. Alejandro Inarritu ("21 Grams," "Babel") has done great work -- "Birdman" was our favorite film of 2014 -- but his 2-hour 39-minute film about a filmmaker having an existential crisis, is no one's idea of a good time at the cineplex. James Cameron's "Avatar" (which we'd never see anyway) surpassed 3 hours, as did favorite son and the epitome of privilege, Damien Chazelle (a B-level director if there ever was one: "Whiplash," "La La Land"), with his repulsive spectacle "Babylon." Others that put us off with their content and/or time-commitment:
"Everything Everywhere All at Once": Sensory overload-squared, it looked like 2 hours and 19 minutes of numbing mayhem.
"Tar": Award desperation from Cate Blanchett, from a director (Todd Field) who graces us with his art only rarely; it clocked in at 2:38.
The Whitney Houston biopic, from the hacks behind "Bohemian Rhapsody," running 2:24. More voguing: "Elvis" (from the King of Excess Baz Luhrmann) ran 2:39, and the Marilyn Monroe biopic "Blonde" droned on for 2:47.
"Triangle of Sadness," from the overrated Ruben Oestlund ("Force Majeure"), like "Babylon," featured a lot of bodily fluids spewing forth, though the studio managed to rein him in to a mere 2 hours, 27 minutes.
We miss Jordan Peele's days in front of the camera, and a casual perusal of "Nope" (2:15) revealed another chore of a story to try to keep up with (like "Get Out").
David O. Russell gets more and more insufferable; his latest, "Amsterdam," was a 2-hour 14-minute bomb.
Me-Too morality play "She Said" looked like a sad stepchild of "All the President's Men," even if, at 2:19, it was 9 minutes shorter than Alan Pakula's masterpiece.
Pulp Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook slowed things down for a chaste love story, "Decision to Leave," at a relatively snappy 2 hours, 16 minutes.
A couple of major disappointments (these we actually saw) from -- yet again -- mid-career auteurs were "White Noise" (Noah Baumbach, 2:10) and "Bones and All" (Luca Guadagnino, 2:10).
Which isn't to say that we hold any animus toward mid-career auteurs. That's why it feels good to give our top spot this year to Martin McDonagh, who has bumbled a bit since 2008's "In Bruges" (like with "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri") but who put it all together with "The Banshees of Inisherin," a thoughtful, mature, adult story about two friends going through a break-up. It is smart, funny, nuanced, heartwarming and heartbreaking. And it runs only 1 hour and 54 minutes. McDonagh is a writer-director who gets out of the way of his cast and doesn't overstay his welcome.
Other mid-career filmmakers who are finding fascinating narratives and fresh ways to tell their stories include Europeans Celine Sciamma ("Petite Maman"), Jacques Audiard ("Paris, 13th District") and Joachim Trier ("The Worst Person in the World"). Though that's not to say, either, that popular pulpy movies can't be appreciated outside of the art-houses. You'll find "The Menu" and "Emily the Criminal" in our Top 20. "Top Gun: Maverick" (2:10) was a lot of fun on the Imax screen, and Ti West's hokey horror throwbacks "X" and "Pearl" were worth seeing on the big screen.
Meanwhile, of the 20 films below, 9 of them are debut feature films and documentaries.
There are new voices out there, and we needn't go back to the well with
old or middle-aged filmmakers whose excesses don't get reined in. (Films below from debut directors are marked with an *.)
There are good movies being made and distributed. If you can cut through the clutter from the pampered favorites of the mainstream, you'll find the gems.
THE TOP 20 of '22
1. The Banshees of Inisherin: Colin Farrell leads the way in Martin McDonagh's most fully realized film. (This year's best screenplay.) (Stream on HBO)
2. Petite Maman: Celine Sciamma perfectly executes a wonderful idea about childhood and our relationship with our parents. (Hulu)
3. Apples*: A droll and melancholy rumination on self and memory. (Mubi)
4. The Janes: A flawless documentary about the pre-Roe women who set up an underground railroad for those seeking abortions. (HBO)
5. The Worst Person in the World: Another great movie from Joachim Trier (this year's best director), following along as a young woman (Renate Reinsve) searches for her purpose. (DVD)
6. Corsage: A fascinating character study and feminist howl. (Theaters)
8. God's Country*: A meticulously constructed and whipsmart back-country thriller. (DVD 2/28/23)
9. Emily the Criminal*: A compact suspense film powered by Aubrey Plaza's magnetism. (Netflix)
10. The Menu: A fun, smart skewering of the rich and indulgent. (HBO)
11. Aftersun*: Another debut feature, this one about a father-daughter reverie of a vacation from the '90s. (Theaters)
12. Queen of Glory*: A funny and heartwarming debut film about a young woman dealing with her eccentric immigrant family. (DVD)
13. My Old School*: A crazy-fun documentary about a con man, with a boost from re-enactments and Alan Cumming. (Hulu)
14. Fire of Love: "A fascinating slice of history wrapped in a love story." (Disney+)
15. A Love Song*: A simple, mournful love story featuring a couple of older actors.
16. Paris, 13th District: A keenly observed drama about Millennials navigating their way through relationships. (DVD)
17. Hold Me Tight: We almost walked out; and then we were floored by Mathieu Almaric's narrative daring. (Mubi/Kino Now)
18. Compartment No. 6: Another fascinating young woman, this one sharing space on a train with a rough Russian. (DVD)
19.Let the Little Light Shine*: An inspiring documentary about kids and parents fighting the system to keep their high-performing high school open. (PBS-POV)
20. Playground*: One of the most harrowing, emotionally wrenching movies you can imagine about school life for little kids. And it's only 72 minutes long. (Mubi)
JUST MISSED THE LIST
A quietly affecting story of a boy searching for his father, The Box.
Tim Roth, compelling as a depressed rich guy, in Sundown.
Another debut feature, about a teen yearning to escape her small village, Murina.
Renate Reinsve, captivating in "The Worst Person in the World."
Little Josephine Sanz in "Petite Maman."
THE LEFTOVERS
Some 2021 films we caught up with: "Mass" -- a stunning examination of grief among two sets of parents -- would have made our top ten of 2021 had we seen it in time. ... Paulo Sorrentino turned in a fine, workmanlike job going back to his childhood for the gorgeous and heartwarming "Hand of God."
Wayback Machine: We ventured to the '60s and '70s to further explore the catalogue of Jack Lemmon, including Billy Wilder's "Avanti." ... We paid tribute to the late Peter Bogdanovich, screening "What's Up Doc," and William Hurt ("Broadcast News"). ... We revisited John Sayles' labor masterpiece, "Matewan." ... We finally braved the mediocre "Godfather 3" and then cleansed our palates with the epic originals, Parts 1 and 2. ... We traveled to France in the '80s for "Loulou" and "36 Fillette." ... There was the Robert Forster double feature, "Medium Cool" and "Alligator." ... And we bade au revoir to Jean-Luc Godard (part of a continuing series).
GUILTY PLEASURES
It was easy to overlook the corniness and Tom Cruise-ness and just enjoy the rote storytelling and visual extravaganza of "Top Gun: Maverick."
Ti West went back in time for some quality horror parodies, and he was lucky to have Mia Goth as his star, in both "X" and "Pearl."
Jeff Baena gathered some of his stars from 2017's "Little Hours" and got pleasantly silly again with Alison Brie in "Spin Me Round."
IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME
(Well, maybe this time it is you)
Noah Baumbach, whose movies we've chronicled for more than a quarter century, was out of his depth in the big-budget attempt to adapt Don DeLillo, "White Noise."
Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen," "Amelie") underwhelmed with the cluttered "Big Bug."
Luca Guadagnino has two of the great films of the past 15 years ("I Am Love" and "A Bigger Splash") but he made the worst movie I saw in quite a while, the story of young cannibal love, "Bones and All."
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Here are a bunch we wanted to see but didn't get the chance:
Jafar Panahi's latest, "No Bears," not arriving here until late February.
Sarah Polley's latest, "Women Talking."
The documentary about photographer Nan Goldin, "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed."
The documentary "Dear Mr. Brody."
Join us in 2023 as we track down those titles and more of the finest movies you wouldn't otherwise think of watching.
WATER LILIES (2007) (B+) - Yet another coming-of-age French film, this one infused with heart and soul by Celine Sciamma, a table setter from a decade ago on her road to Tomboy (2011) and her masterpiece, "Girlhood" (2014).
Here we have teenage synchronized swimmers jockeying for friendship and the attention of the generic boys on the other side of the pool. Young Marie (Pauline Acquart) has her sights on the star of the girls squad, Floriane (Adele Haenel). Marie is shy and underdeveloped, while Floriane is beautiful and pouty, constantly swarmed by boys. Marie's best pal Anne (Louise Blachere) is chubby but less shy, gunning for the cutest boy around.
This sets up an odd, fairly chaste love triangle among the girls as they toy with each other's emotions and compete for affection. Acquart is the anchor of the movie. Her Marie isn't so much tomboyish as immature and inexperienced. Acquart has an old-school Kristy McNichol to her demeanor and a puppety jangle to her twiggy limbs.
Floriane may like running off with boys, but she shows little actual interest in them as either friends or love objects. She subtly invites Marie's attention, showing much more affection for Marie than she does for the trail of frustrated boys she leaves in her wake. In a provocative scene, Marie considers agreeing to help deflower Floriane, who needs to tend to her reputation for fear that she'll one day be discovered a virgin.
It's hard to tell if this is genuine lesbian lust or merely puppy-love curiosity, an inevitable outgrowth of summer ennui. Sciamma isn't shy about showing off the coltish frames of her three leads, but she makes it clear -- mainly in the clunky pool scenes -- that these are kids still growing into their skins.
Where Sciamma bathed "Girlhood" in sultry blues, here she flashes her style with a club scene drenched in a menstrual red. It's a summer of exploration for the girls, and sometimes these things get messy.
PETITE MAMAN (A) - It's a toss-up as to what is more appealing here -- the execution of this movie about a little girl meeting the child version of her own mother, or merely the existence of the simple idea itself. Either way, writer-director Celine Sciamma once again delves into the young female experience with sharp insights.
Sciamma's previous two features -- "Girlhood" and "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" -- provide intimate details about the lives of teens and young women and how they interact. Here, she reaches back to age 8 and has an absolute treasure in little Josephine Sanz, who plays Nelly, a thoughtful and observant girl who internalizes the awkward relationships of the adults around her.
The film opens on Nelly saying a series of goodbyes as she goes door-to-door visiting people in the nursing home where her grandmother has just died. She's sad that she didn't get to say goodbye to her grandmother. Next, Nelly and her mother (Nina Meurisse) are off to grandma's home to tend to the old lady's house and things. To bide her time, Nelly goes off to play in the woods. It's there that she meets another girl her age, Marion, who looks very much like her (Marion is played by Sanz's sister, Gabrielle).
The trailer and the title tip us off that Nelly has gone back in time and found her mother, who lives in a mirror version of the grandmother's house, down to the cane that the grandmother used until her death, even back when she was in her 30s, when we see an alternate version of her (played by Margot Abascale). Nelly drinks in this alternate universe, watching her 8-year-old mother cope with her own depressive mother.
What a gift it would be to, as a child, get to know a parent when they were that same impressionable age. What shaped them? Did they eventually turn into their own parents? How can we use that intel to deal with them in the present day? In the wrong hands, such a concept would be treated like a gimmick, open to sci-fi tricks and cheap gags. Not here.
Sciamma resists every urge to exploit her brilliant idea, settling instead for quiet observation. And she is blessed to have Josephine Sanz, who carries the movie with cool confidence. She has a way of holding a gaze while she drinks in what has just happened or what has just been said to her, as the wheels in her brain spin. She eventually evolves from dumbstruck to enlightened over the span of the film's spare 73 minutes.
At one point in the few days that pass, Nelly's mother -- perhaps overwhelmed by the task of reconciling the grandmother's life -- disappears, and Nelly's kind father (Stephane Varupenne) looks after Nelly. Through their interactions, Nelly picks out more pieces of the puzzle that is her mother.
Nelly can come off, alternatively, as timid and precocious. Early in the film, as she sits in the back seat during the drive to grandmother's house, she reaches up to the driver's seat and feeds snacks to her mother. It's a sweet moment -- a little girl nurturing her mother -- and it sets the tone for what plays out there in the woods and in her mother's childhood home.
It's all incredibly sweet but never saccharine. By the end of this adventure, there will be certain reconciliations, but you hope that little Nelly will have absorbed enough inside dope to break a few nagging habits in the generational cycle going forward.
GIRLHOOD (A) - Sometimes a film presents a singular experience that doesn't lend itself to a whole bunch of analysis. After two viewings, I'm still at a loss for words as to why this is such a powerful drama.
Celine Sciamma ("Water Lillies," "Tomboy") further explores the maturing of young women, here a group of black teen girls trapped in the dead-end life in a housing project outside Paris. (The original title "Bande de Filles" translates better as "Girl Gang.") We follow Marieme (Karidje Toure), nicknamed Vic by the gang's leader, Lady (the striking Assa Sylla), as Marieme finds strong companionship, an escape from a home where she must mother her two younger sisters while their mother works as a housekeeper. She's also terrorized by a menacing (or worse?) older brother who has a caveman's view of teen girls dating.
The connection is strong among the four girls, including the sporty Adiatou (Lindsay Karamoh), who knows how to rock a matching yellow 'do rag and high-tops, and heavy-lidded Fily (Marietou Toure). They prowl malls, party in hotel rooms, and get into fights with other gangs. Lady is the alpha female, but she'll face serious challenges that might create an opening for Marieme.
Marieme is a lousy student who flunked out and lost her chance to go to college, and she's adrift, fluctuating between seeking and escaping. She has a crush on cute, geeky Ismael (Idrissa Diabate), a friend of her brother's, but she risks getting tagged as a slut if she fully pursues him. She eventually shuns honest work with her mother and instead dabbles in drug-running, dolled up in a white wig or posing as a boy. Karidje Toure smolders as the pent-up 16-year-old, going to extended lengths to please her pals and defy her brother.
The story might sound familiar, but Sciamma and her regular cinematographer, Crystel Fournier, create a stunning visual palette. Most of the scenes are tinged or bathed in shades of blue. Every frame is carefully designed and is visually arresting. One scene that will be make this a classic is a full rendering of the Rihanna song "Diamonds," lip-synced by the girls in their hotel room, infusing it with love and yearning and grrrl power. They take a rather ordinary hit and make it an anthem.
This tale of society's outcasts coming of age in a barren suburban landscape gives voice and swagger to emerging women. The fact that it's a visual masterpiece elevates it to true art. Words just don't do it justice.
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (A-minus) - This exquisite visual feast tells the delectable story of two young women surreptitiously falling in love in late 18th century Brittany. The story is told in one big flashback. Marianne (Noemie Merlant), an art teacher, has her memory sparked by her painting of a woman whose dress is on fire. That woman turns out to be Heloise (Adele Haenel), who has been promised to a Milanese man, though she objects and has refused to sit to have her portrait painted and sent to her betrothed.
Marianne is brought to the coastal town ostensibly as Heloise's companion, but she is to study Heloise and secretly paint the portrait. Thus, Marianne must keenly observe her subject, and soon their gazes deepen. Heloise agrees to sit for the portrait, as a torrid love affair ensues.
This is not just a story of forbidden love. It is a profound dissertation on the unique rush one gets in the early stages of infatuation. It is directed by Celine Sciamma, the pre-eminent auteur studying the female form and psyche, including "Water Lilies," "Tomboy" and "Girlhood." Here she fills every frame with beauty and style, love and lust. Merlant and Haenel are wholesome beauties who emit a slight vibe of Friday night premium-cable soft-core porn, but Sciamma's film rises above the tacky at every turn, producing a heart-swelling and heart-wrenching love story for the ages.
EMMA (C+) - I guess you're either into these Jane Austen romps or you're not. I'm not. So take this all with a grain of salt.
Every generation gets the "Emma" it deserves, and Millennials are gifted with this slightly sarcastic side-eye starring the wide-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy in a flippant but earnest performance. If you can keep track of all the characters, kudos to you. (If I read the book, it was 35 years ago.) In the end, it doesn't matter that much. Emma's meddling in the love lives of others creates surprisingly little tension -- dramatic or comedic. Taylor-Joy is not the nimblest of comic actors. A few ringers help perk up the proceedings, including Miranda Hart as Miss Bates, Mia Goth as Harriet, and the reliable Bill Nighy as Emma's father.
Video director Autumn de Wilde splashes in her feature debut with panache and a distinct color palette. This is her variation on Sofia Coppola's trendy "Marie Antoinnete." It's a visually interesting diversion.
PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT (A-minus) - Millennials pick their way through relationship thickets of modern Paris in Jacques Audiard's keenly observed and well-acted comic drama. The cast dives deep in the roles of disaffected millennials yearning for a connection.
Audiard ("A Prophet," "Dheepan") reveals a soft side, shooting in velvety black-and-white. He is blessed with both a smart script he co-wrote with filmmaker Celine Sciamma ("Girlhood") and Lea Mysius, and a few fantastic actors. Newcomer Lucie Zhang (below) is a revelation as Emilie, a witty, sensual under-achiever who brings in a new roommate/fuck-buddy, Camille (Makita Samba), who leaves his Ph.D program to run a friend's real estate business. He quickly moves out of Emilie's apartment and hires (and eventually seduces) Nora (Noemie Merlant, from Sciamma's "Portrait of a Lady on Fire"), a small-town transplant who dropped out of law school after being mocked mercilessly over her resemblance to a porn star.
This sophisticated love triangle is actually a quadrangle, as Nora develops an online friendship with that porn star (they don't really look that much alike), drawing close (via computer chats) to tattooed Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth). This could have been quite messy, but Audiard juggles it like a pro, and somehow no one character gets short shrift.
Camille could have been drawn with more depth; he recently lost his mom and now tutors his sister (a budding stand-up comedian who stutters), giving him shorthand character traits that don't feel fully earned. But Zhang's Emilie is layered and fascinating. She is a liberated young woman but hounded by doubts that she can achieve most of her goals merely through sexual seduction. Merlant, so memorable from "Portrait," imbues Nora with an intensity and anxiety that threaten to combust at any moment. The two women, rarely seen together, ground the film at opposite poles.
The cast also revels in nudity and sex that feels both natural and intoxicating. The coupling is sometimes joyous and sometimes fraught. The carnal connections power a well-crafted plot. The ending was too neat for my tastes, but, overall, this is substantive storytelling
ATLANTIS (B) - As grim as a Bela Tarr slog, this film from last year imagines life in the near future, in the aftermath of a gruesome war with Russia in Ukraine. Until its final moments, this is about as bleak a depiction of humankind as you can present on screen.
Writer-director Valentyn Vasyanovych unspools a post-apocalyptic hellscape by telling the story of a veteran of the war, Serhiy (Andriy Rymaruk), who loses a buddy to suicide, leaves a smelting job to drive a water truck, and then falls in with a crew from a non-governmental organization that exhumes and identifies the war dead. The crew includes Katya (Liudmyla Bileka), a sad-eyed compatriot who helps him deal with his PTSD in this desolate terrain.
Working with non-actors, Vasyanovych gives his world -- especially in light of recent news events -- a documentary feel. Some of the scenes are beyond ghastly. At one point, two men, in painstaking detail, peel the clothes off and analyze the rotted skeletal remains of a soldier who has been dead for at least a year; the realism is not for the squeamish.
The main problem involves an agonizingly slow opening half hour. (I considered walking out.) Like Tarr, Vasyanovych favors long static takes, as his unblinking camera allows a mundane event (a massive vat pouring molten slag down the side of a hill, e.g.) to play out in real time. If you're patient, you may grow to find some of these images transcendent. There are repetitive visual references to fire, as if mimicking this ravaged landscape's proverbial return to the stone age. At one point Serhiy runs a hose to a dumpster, lights a bonfire under it, strips to his briefs and submerges himself under the waters.
Vasyanovych bookends the film with scenes shot with an infrared camera. They represent the extremes of human behavior -- love and violence. It's a neat trick, and it offers a glimmer (but no more than a glimmer) of hope for the survivors navigating this gutted world.
Michael Apted ("56 Up") returns for the ninth installment of his indispensable generational profile of British boomers, "63 Up."
Celine Sciamma ("Girlhood," "Water Lillies") ventures back to the 18th century for a tale of forbidden love, "Portrait of a Lady on Fire."
Rian Johnson ("Brick," "Looper") assembles an all-star cast for a ribald whodunit, "Knives Out."
The Safdie brothers ("Good Time") recruit Adam Sandler for their latest pulp thriller, "Uncut Gems."
A legend of film criticism gets the documentary treatment, "What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael."
Then there's the career summation of the work of Agnes Varda, who died in March, "Varda by Agnes."
We'll keep expectations low for the environmental polemic from Todd Haynes ("Carol") and starring Mark Ruffalo, "Dark Waters."
Two indigenous women in Canada go through a harrowing experience in the debut feature "The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open."
SLALOM (B) - This French production avoids the trap of presenting another repulsive take on the stale narrative of an older man exploiting a younger woman, or in this case, a skiing coach abusing his 15-year-old student. It's a scenario we don't need to seek out.
However, this debut feature from writer-director Charlene Favier pulses with dread and sadness, as young doe-eyed Lyz (Noee Abita) has been cast adrift by distracted divorced parents, and coach Fred (Jeremie Renier from Francois Ozon's "Double Lover") fills the void. A nuanced character, he comes across as someone with more of an uncontrollable compulsion than just some evil predator. Still, a rape scene two-thirds of the way through is shocking and disturbing; yet, Favier trains her camera on Lyz's face, those frightened eyes searching not so much for rescue but for a way to instantly process the attack and find a drawer in her mind to instantly shelve it away in her psyche.
Abita is fascinating to watch. She just turned 22, but she looks like an awkward teenager, with small hands but full lips, as if she's still growing into her body, which gets inspected and measured regularly to assess her progress as an athlete. But it is her eyes that constantly scan her surroundings (mostly teen social and competitive dynamics at the remote school in the mountains) and assess situations for survival options, whether Fred is stalking her or her best friend in the group, Justine (Maira Schmitt), gets a little too chummy.
Favier hints at the idea that Fred is just working every angle he can in order to motivate this future champion to maximize her talents. (He often uses "we" to describe Lyz's athletic accomplishments.) The filmmaker refuses to outright demonize Fred but rather provides just a few shades of grey to keep the viewer off balance.
Favier shows a strong visual flair in this resort setting (she is particularly adept at capturing the flurry of snowflakes, whether natural or machine-produced), but she lapses into conventional choices; there must be at least a dozen establishing shots of the snow-covered mountains, a technique intended to perhaps suggest emotional impediments involved here, but which eventually comes off as repetitive, if not nearly Pythonesque ("forbidding, aloof, terrifying ..."). And Lyz's ascent -- from budding phenom to world's greatest skier -- is a little too shorthand to be fully believable.
But this is Abita's movie, and Favier, like Celine Sciamma ("Girlhood"), has a distinctive connection with the adolescent experience, which allows her young actress to add layers and subtlety to what otherwise could have been a shallow, exploitive movie.
A documentary about a hippie heir who vowed in the early '70s to give away his wealth, "Dear Mr. Brody."
From the eminent French director Jacques Audiard ("Dheepan," "A Prophet"), with a writing assist from Celine Sciamma, a relationship drama, "Paris, 13th District."
A hybrid horror-comedy from the UK, "All My Friends Hate Me."
From Romania, a dark satire about a rescue mission gone awry, "Intregalde."
A campy slasher film that looks like it has a knowing self-deprecating edge to it, "X."
Celine Sciamma ("Girlhood," "Portrait of a Lady on Fire") tells the story of a girl who meets up with a familiar figure in a forest by her grandmother's house, "Petite Maman."
The son of noted Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi ("This Is Not a Film," "Jafar Panahi's Taxi") makes his own road movie about a family, "Hit the Road."
A cult and a criminal enterprise seem to merge in an artful drama, "Los Conductos."
A dark comedy directed by the talented Jerrod Carmichael, "On the Count of Three."
A look at the songwriting partnership between the Bad Seeds' Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, "This Much I Know to Be True."
Our most anticipated film is the latest from Andrea Arnold ("Fish Tank," "Red Road"), the story of young folks who sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door, starring Sasha Lane (above), Shia LaBeouf and Elvis' granddaughter Riley Keough (from TV's version of "The Girlfriend Experience"): "American Honey."
AUTEUR, AUTEUR
We're wary of biopics, but director Jeff Nichols ("Take Shelter," "Mud") and stars Joel Edgerton ("The Gift") and Ruth Negga are drawing us to the law-school legend about the couple who convinced the Supreme Court to strike down laws against interracial marriage: "Loving."
Iranian master Asghar Farhadi ("A Separation," "The Past") is back with another end-of-the-year must-see, about the strained relationship of a couple performing in a stage version of "Death of a Salesman" while settling into a new apartment that used to be occupied by a prostitute: "Salesman."
Our guy Jim Jarmusch snags It Guy Adam Driver for a week in the life of a bus driver and poet: "Paterson." Jarmusch also puts his documentary hat on to splash the story of the original punks, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, "Gimme Danger."
Andre Techine ("Changing Times") teams up with writer Celine Sciamma ("Girlhood") for a coming-of-age film, this time with boys: "Being 17."
American master Kelly Reichardt ("Old Joy," "Meek's Cutoff") is back, re-connecting with Michelle Williams ("Wendy and Lucy") (above) for a series of vignettes about three women in Montana: "Certain Women."
Two from Romania: Cristian Mungiu ("4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," "Beyond the Hills") continues to examine his society after the fall of the Iron Curtain with "Graduation." And Cristi Puiu ("The Death of Mr. Lazarescu") dramatizes a family gathering after the patriarch's death in "Sieranevada."
Can Pedro Almodovar pull of a comeback? He offers up a tale of a
middle-aged woman refusing to move away, in case her estranged daughter
returns: "Julieta."
FAVORITES
Paul Verhoeven ("Showgirls") and Isabelle Huppert collaborating on a story about a woman shrugging off her own sexual assualt? We're drawn to "Elle."
Huppert also joins up with Mia Hansen-Love ("Goodbye First Love," "Eden") for a drama about a jilted philosophy professor, "Things to Come."
Can Billy Bob Thornton rekindle the brilliant awfulness of the original holiday downer about Father Christmas? We'll find out with "Bad Santa 2."
Some pretty funny people -- Kate McKinnon ("SNL"), Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, T.J. Miller (HBO's "Silicon Valley"), Olivia Munn and Matt Walsh (HBO's "Veep") -- could make a formulaic holiday comedy worth watching: "Office Party."
More funny folks -- this time Zack Galafianakis, Kristen Wiig and Owen Wilson (plus the poular McKinnon) -- are assembled by Jared Hess ("Napoleon Dynamite," ages ago) for some slapstick involving a bank heist: "Masterminds." The mere sight of the movie still makes me want to see it:
Greg Mottola ("The Daytrippers") rounds up more of our favorites -- Galifianakis, Jon Hamm and Isla Fisher -- for a spy-vs.-spy romp about neighborly rivalry: "Keeping Up With the Joneses."
THE REST
The filmmaking
collective behind "Martha Marcy May Marlene" and "James White" produces a
debut feature, a thriller about "a young farm girl whose psychological
development gets rudely interrupted": "The Eyes of My Mother."
In
another intense family drama from Kenneth Lonergan ("You Can Count on
Me," "Margaret"), Casey Affleck stars as a handyman sorting through the
affairs of his dead brother, "Manchester By the Sea."
Ewan
McGregor (also behind the camera), Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning
are a strong cast for the Philip Roth classic about a man dealing with
his radicalized daughter in the turbulent '60s: "American Pastoral."
The understated Mike Mills ("Thumbsucker," "Beginnings") explores female relationships in the 1970s with Annette Bening, Alia Shawkat and Elle Fanning with "20th Century Women."
A German film about "a prankster dad attempting to reconnect with his workaholic daughter" was a critics' darling at Cannes: "Toni Erdmann."
It was mid-August 1969, and the Chicago Cubs were beginning an epic collapse -- blowing a 9.5-game lead that month -- eventually ending up 8 games behind the Amazin' New York Mets. My grandfather uttered "The Cubs stink," went off to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and as he returned to the living room, he keeled backward in the doorway and crashed like a tree, gone instantly. He was 65.
I was 6.
A lot of ugly but amazin' stuff happened in 1969, and after a year of anniversaries, it's time to put them in an Apollo time capsule and seal them away forever. Last year my age was a multiple of seven, and it was time to launch a new seven-year life cycle. I rewatched -- either on the big screen or in my mind's eye -- the gathering at Woodstock, the moon landing, Chappaquiddick, the Manson murders, the collapse of those Cubs, the felling of my mom's dad, the start of kindergarten.
In 2019, I was surrounded by death and illness. Cancer attacked my mom and two of my oldest friends, one of whom succumbed. Two close friends had loved ones murdered. My healing guru in Arizona died of a heart attack. During this whole struggle, I outlived my father, whose heart had given out 28 years earlier, a half a lifetime ago. The message of this odd year was loud, if not clear: It was time to let go and move on.
Seven years have passed since I revived this film blog full-time at the start of 2013, and that's a life cycle that feels complete. (It helped that in 2016 the Cubs finally exorcised decades of demons by winning the World Series.) It became clear this year as I indulged in the nostalgia and trauma of my childhood era, that it's time to bury the '60s. It was a treat to revisit the moon mission in the tick-tock documentary "Apollo 11"; watch the baby boomers wallow in rose-tinted memories of Woodstock documentaries; or have Quentin Tarantino meticulously re-create the specific time of the Manson killings in L.A. that summer (or, better yet, view the female perspective in "Charlie Says"). But it's over.
There's a list below of the best films of 2019, and it's, you know, a list -- already pinned to the past. Many of you have already skipped down to it. That's great. Load up your queue. Follow the links. The blurbs speak for themselves. No essay needed to put it all into perspective. There was no grand theme that emerged. Like the past couple of years, only the top two or three will endure as great movies that withstand the test of time. (We're twinning this entry with a Best of the Decade, for perspective. We mean it -- it's time to put a bow on an era.)
Which brings me to the movie that struck me as the most appropriate and symbolic of the year, a little-noticed film from 2005. It's called "Game 6," and it has all the ingredients I need in an obscure film -- pre-"Birdman" Michael Keaton as my avatar, a baseball obsession (this time the Red Sox' epic fail in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series), a screenplay by Don DeLillo. (GRADE: B+)
The film observes one day in the life in Manhattan of noted playwright Nicky Rogan (Keaton), whose latest drama -- based on his family history -- is debuting on Broadway (and before the vicious critic Steven Schwimmer, played by a loopy Robert Downey Jr.) on the same night that the Red Sox are seeking to close out the World Series in Game 6. You might recall it would be the night when Mookie Wilson's dribbler would go through Bill Buckner's legs, continuing the 68-year Curse of the Bambino.
Buckner, the epitome of the agony of defeat, died, conveniently for this essay, in May of last year at 69. For Nicky, Buckner's error was just another in a long line of heartbreaking plays going back to his childhood as a Red Sox fan. (His age 6 scar involved Johnny Pesky's hesitation on a relay throw in Game 7 of the 1946 Series.) It's that decades-long rollercoaster of having hopes perpetually raised and dashed, raised and dashed, by a stupid baseball team you can't let go of. "It's like having your whole childhood die," Nicky laments to his mistress as he spits mouthwash into the sink for effect, "over and over and over again."
Nicky stalks the city for hours, visiting with a panoply of "This Is Your Life" personas: his dotty father (Tom Aldredge), a burned-out playwright pal (Griffin Dunne), his flaky daughter (Ari Graynor), his chain-smoking estranged wife (Catherine O'Hara -- "I've been talking to a prominent divorce attorney." / "How prominent?" / "He has his own submarine."), his barber (who provides him with a Chekhovian pistol), his lover (Bebe Neuwirth), a young actress (Shalom Harlow), and the cast of his play at rehearsal, led by Peter Redmond (Harris Yulin), who has a mysterious brain disease that's messing with his line readings. Peter can't remember a key line, even though his father character must merely repeat the line posed to him by the son in the play: "This could be it."
This could be it.
Nicky engages with a cabdriver (Lillias White) and her grandson. (In classic DeLillo fashion (see "Cosmopolis") Nicky hopscotches through Manhattan on this day, regaling each of the cabbies (who bear ominous post-9/11 foreign monikers) with his own tales of driving a taxi back in his lean days.) He takes gram and grandson to dinner to watch Game 6. The cabdriver, a wise owl, has mistaken Nicky for an infamous local mobster, and he plays along, gun in the waistband and all. She tries to imbue him with positivity, urging him to lose the loser mentality and embrace hope. (They develop the circular mantra "Baseball is life. Life is good.") Cue a bar full of annoying Mets fans.
This could be it. The moment when the tortured past gets purged, sins are washed.
Except -- and we know this all along -- it doesn't work. Or Nicky just isn't open enough to the universe to allow it to end well. That 6-year-old is stubborn. God and Bill Buckner (former Cub) had other plans. (And Tarantino isn't around to rewrite history.)
DeLillo's philosophical musings are a treat throughout this snappy 83-minute stage play for the screen, full of precise phrasing. (At one point Nicky complains to his pal about a reclusive colleague wasting away "in a small, dark apartment eating soft, white bread.") But the novelist isn't exactly subtle here. "Your truth is locked up in the past," Nicky is told. "Find it. Know it for what it is."
Finding it isn't the problem. How obvious can it be? How heavy can it sit on a 6-year-old's shoulders? But knowing it and wrestling it into submission -- that's the challenge. Nicky would have to wait another 18 years for that championship, for expiation, if he could even be bothered to hold out that long. It can feel impossible to let go of the things that stamped us when we were small.
2019 was a ghastly, ghostly year at times. To cope, I numbed myself with an inordinate number of "R.I.P." headlines in this space -- Agnes Varda, Bruno Ganz, Robert Forster, Robert Evans, Kim Shattuck, Daniel Johnston, Phillip Blanchard, D.A. Pennebaker, Dick Dale ... even one of the "Seven Up" kids died before the latest installment of "63 Up." Bring out your dead!
The pathetic mantra of the Cubs back in the day was always "Wait till next year." Well, next year has finally arrived. The '60s are now comfortably more than 50 years ago; time to seal the decade in a sarcophagus. I'm still among the living, willing to squint into the sunshine and step forward. This could be it.
THE TOP FILMS
1. Give Me Liberty- An exciting debut feature that captures a day in the life of ordinary folks, including a medical transport driver and his charges, in a big city. 2. The Other Side of Everything- A mesmerizing tone poem about the breakup of Yugoslavia as seen through one family's history. 3. Marriage Story - Harrowing, funny, real. It hits uncomfortably close to home. 4. Thunder Road - A crazed fever dream chronicling a flawed man's often-hilarious mental and emotional breakdown. A one-man tour de force. 5. Under the Silver Lake- A modern stoner neon neo-noir in the grand tradition of L.A. cinema. 6. Hail Satan? - A flawless documentary that is informative and entertaining. 7. Wild Rose- As close to pure joy and heartbreak as we got in 2019. 8. Never Look Away- A gorgeous sweeping history of the second half of the 20th century from the fussy auteur Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck 9. Fyre - An absolute hoot and a story that tells itself so well that all the filmmakers had to do was get out of the way and let it spill. 10.Parasite - Bong Joon-ho finally finds the sweet spot between story and spectacle with a sizzling, juicy narrative. 11. Waves - An epic, gut-wrenching family drama that lures you to the edge of your seat and then slams you back in the chair. 12. Honeyland- Realism doesn't get more depressing or insightful than in this documentary. 13. Booksmart- Sheer giddiness and old-fashioned angsty high school bawdiness with two strong leads.
We got to a few leftovers from 2018, too late to make last year's list. A pair that stood out: the unique perspective of the quirky documentary "Bisbee '17"; the tender story of skate-punk buds, "Minding the Gap"
With the dearth of compelling 2019 releases, we reached back further in time and appreciated the following:
We finally got around to re-viewing and reviewing one of the greatest movies of all time, 1968's "Spring Night, Summer Night."
The lovely tale of an old man in his final days, from Italy, "The Window" (2009).
We paid tribute to the memory of Bruno Ganz by teeing up the 1987 classic "Wings of Desire."
David Lean adapting Noel Coward with 1945's "Brief Encounter."
Jamie Bell starring in David MacKenzie's "Mister Foe" from 2008.
Not that we've bothered much with Martin Scorsese the past 20 years, but "The Irishman" was dullsville. And his cheat of a documentary with Bob Dylan was unforgivable, "Rolling Thunder: A Bob Dylan Film."
Frederick Wiseman is fading fast with the watching-corn-grow tedium of "Monrovia, Indiana," a leftover from late 2018.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
(Haven't caught these yet)
Celine Sciamma's "Portrait of a Lady on Fire"
Francois Ozon's "By the Grace of God"
From Romania, "I Do Not Care If We Go Down as Barbarians"
From China, "One Child Nation"
The Safdie brothers' "Uncut Gems"
Stay tuned for reviews of those five titles and plenty more, albeit in condensed form, as we gleefully charge into 2020, such a round even number.
