A great yet seldom-seen Fellini film from the 50s

Fellini's I Vitelloni (1953) not only still stands up as a great film after +60 years - it's probably even a better film today than on its release, as today it's a look at a culture that in some ways is long gone, as distant and peculiar to contemporary Europeans, say, the rites of an Amazon tribe - yet in some aspects we can see the same forces at work today, today in particular. Does this remind you of anyone: the film is about a group of guys who, we learn, are about 30 years old, but behave as if they're about 15, led by a large, somewhat handsome type A who shamelessly gropes women, cheats on his new wife, mocks the disadvantaged and the disabled, takes advantage of others including his father, his in-laws, his employer. The group of 5 pals are the vitelloni of the title (the word means, if my memory serves, young calves; a good American approximation of the title might be: The Boys); the film follows the group through roughly a year in the life. Though the 5 "boys" are irresponsible they are, with the exception of their gang leader, Fausto, in many ways lovable and sympathetic characters, each with his own stunted ambitions. One in particular, Leopoldo, seems close to Fellini's heart - an aspiring playwright whose hopes are smashed when he has as opportunity to show his work to a supposedly famous actor - a pompous, outmoded blowhard who leads him on and then comes on to Leopoldo. The other prominent character is Fausto's brother-in-law who is repulsed by Fausto's treatment of his sister and of his father but who is too weak to stand up to Fausto, following along w/ him meekly, even when it comes to petty theft (the scene in which they rob Fausto's employer, who runs a shop selling sacred objects, was echoed a few years later in Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner); the brother-in-law has his own dark secrets: he seems to be a homosexual and perhaps even a pedophile, though Fellini leaves this intentionally ambiguous. There's a lot of humor - especially around their melodramatic attachment each of the "boys" (Fausto excepted) has for their dear mama - each dreams of leaving the small coastal town but is far too attached to the family to take any step toward doing so (one does get away at the end, as of course Fellini himself did). Among the many great scenes: the Miss Mermaid 1953 beauty pageant, the Carnival (in which the boys telling all cross-dress), the walk along the beach; the interiors of the petit-bourgeois households are a time capsule of provincial Italian taste and decor; the exteriors of the bleak public squares and alleyways show the impoverished post-war Italian social structure - not a car in sight, most of the time - so different from any Italian city today. Yes, there are a few flaws: we never quite buy into the runaway of Fausto's wife toward the end, and the scenes in which F's father supposedly beats him with a belt is not in the least credible. Quibbles aside, it's still an amazing film that has been largely eclipsed by the many other great (perhaps better - and more commercial and conventional) Fellini films of the 50s.

Terrific conclusion to Season 1 of The Crown - more, please!

Season 1 - and we definitely hope there will be more! - of The Crown keeps up its high standard start to finish, with the last episode, in which we see that he young Queen Elizabeth has slowly, almost without our noticing, become a kind of monster - willing to give up everything in her personal life and family life to serve the interest, as she sees it, of her monarchy and of the UK: she tosses her sister, Margaret, aside, breaking promises both to her and to their late father and telling her she cannot marry against the will of the Church of England. Elizabeth seems like a strong leader but she is actually a follower - she's popular enough to stand up to the fogies of the church and the Cabinet, but she's not strong enough to do it - and part of the tragedy is that she's all alone, w/ no one to counsel her (esp in episode 10, the finale, w/ Churchill gone and feckless and devious Eden in his stead). Have to particularly call out episode 9, about the official portrait of Churchill: the scenes in which Churchill, both cranky and exceedingly vain, poses for his official portrait and engages in a range of discussion w/ the artist - Sutherland (had to look it up): their conversations start of mundane enough but gradually get into the nature of art and illusion and, most important, the tragedies of family life both had endured and how they used art to help them understand and come to terms with their fate. Terrific writing - by Peter Morgan, who wrote each episode; I an even imagine the portrait sessions blown out into a full-scale play (though maybe less is more - it usually is).

Good luck if you can make sense of The Lobster

The Lobster is an entirely peculiar movie from start to finish that will no doubt hold your interest but as it held ours but in the end I just shrugged my shoulders and thought why did I waste 2 hours on that? The premise, such as it is: we are in some kind of alternate world (maybe in the future, maybe in another state of being) in which there seems to be some kind of great societal battle between people in couples and "loners." The film opens as a middle-aged man recently widowed or in some way separated from his wife is taken away by some unexplained posse for a stay in a resort-type hotel where he has a set amount of time - 45 days I think - to become a couple with one of the women at the hotel. The trick is that two can form a couple only if there share some kind of malady or shortcoming, ranging from the trivial - near-sightedness, for example - to the more profound: complete lack of empathy. If he fails to couple, he will be transformed into an animal of his choice (his choice is a lobster because he loves the sea). Eventually he escapes the premises and allies himself with a cadre of loners, who have equally strict prohibition against building any sort of relationship with anyone else in the group - a taboo he breaks by falling in love (w/ loner Rachel Weisz). Ok so this movie is not meant to be realistic on any level - so I guess it's allegorical or symbolic somehow? But symbolizing what? The triviality of many supposedly happy relationships? Our societal obsession with family values (or with individual expression)? Maybe, but none of this felt in the least enlightening to me. There are some tense moments and some funny ones - the dialogue among the hotel guests and between the loners can be weirdly ludicrous at times - but the movie is also stunningly cruel, even sadistic at many points, and the score is infuriating - using a beautiful passage from a Beethoven quartet repeatedly to the point where I'm afraid I'll never hear that passage without thinking of this stupid movie.

The most expensive TV series ever made?

The Netflix series The Crown is not the type of thing I usually buy into - all those many Masterpiece Theater productions and their ilk - I have to say, based on the first 5 episodes (out of 10) that it's a truly great series: taking the events of British history and the British royalty and building a series that's political, personal, and historical: We see all the drama surrounding the abdication (in the background), the death of George VI, the ascension of the young and newly married Elizabeth - amidst all the pressures and conflicting demands - upholding tradition while recognizing the changes in the world and in English culture, still reeling after the War, led by a dyspeptic and perhaps incompetent elderly Churchill; we see the marriage tensions between Elizabeth and Philip, and we see in a way that never ironic or didactic the basic simplicity of the monarchs - a clan that loves only dogs and hunting and shooting and sport and has little interest in anything else. OK, it makes Eliz a bit too much of a hero: it's hard to believe she really was strong-willed enough to push for a modern monarchy; and it glosses over, in fact ignores entirely, the dark history of Edward, a Nazi sympathizer if I remember correctly - you want see that here. But you will see the most lavish and expensive production values of any series ever - Netflix out-doing the BBC by a million pounds, at least. Everything, large and small - from bi-planes to steam locomotives to Rolls Royces from 1955 to teacups and garments and flower arrangements is of the period and lavish and must have cost a fortune to create or re-create. Even for a non-royalty junkie it's an amazing series just to look at. Beyond that, the leads are good, in fact Claire Foy, who's making a career of playing monarchs, is excellent in the lead and Jared Harris, late of Mad Men, makes a great weak and shy George VI thrust into a fame and responsibility he never wanted. Jonathan Lithgow is a fine doddering Churchill as well. Worth watching for sure - and more seasons anticipated.

Is everything smarter and funnier in an English accent?: Fleabag

Have watched half (3 episodes) of season one of the BBC3 series Fleabag, a comic vehicle for a terrific British actress whom we don't really know yet in the the U.S., Phoebe Waller-Bridge - playing, like many contemporary comedians, an exaggerated version of herself: 30-something, pretty but slightly awkward, very driven by and frank about sex, going through multiple break-ups and make-ups with a goofy boyfriend, in a constant struggle with the type-A sister, trying to eke out a living in a tiny bakery-coffee shop that she runs alone (her business partner died in a traffic accident, possibly suicide after a break-up), difficult relation with widowed and re-married father. Some really funny scenes and in fact part of the charm and humor is PWB's crisp fresh delivery and her perky asides to the viewers. Doesn't everything sound better, smarter anyway, in British English? Lots of laughs for sure but you also need a pretty high tolerance for the grotesque and the crudely sexual. What keeps this from rising to a higher level is the overall lack of plot direction: there's no significant narrative thread running through this series, so we don't come back to it, if we do at all, to find out what happened next - just to get more laughs. Also, the series would be stronger if the secondary characters were funnier or at least more distinct personalities. Her sister, yes, maybe - but nobody else really. Is PBW strong enough to carry the series? Possibly at this microscopic six-episode length but for anything grander she'd need a more sporty vehicle.

Some great things in The Wailing but it's ultimately crushed by its heavy ambitions

If you can imagine is mash-up of Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist set in contemporary, rural Korea, you've got the essence of The Wailing, a really weird horror film that plays on our deepest cultural fears and anxieties: particularly possession of children - the horror that a child can be transformed into a demonic creature beyond morality, completely evil and deranged. Add to this a remote community where people attacked by zombies become infected and turn into ghouls that gorge on flood (and on fish, it seems), and add to that a few other themes: the irrational phobia against outsiders and foreigners (build a wall!) the torment of sin and expiation - a lot going on in this movie. It differs from many other horror films in that it's structured as a police procedural: a local police officer is called out on a rainy morning (torrential rain is a feature and a torment throughout the film) to investigate a murder, which turns out to be the first in a sequence of ghastly, unexplained death - gradually we see that each is carried out by a crazed zombie bloodthirsty screaming demonic person - but who or what is infecting these people? The police officer has a good relationship w/ his young daughter, but in a strange sequence the daughter spies him having sex in the back seat of his patrol car with the family maid. He later takes the daughter for a walk in a park, and she blithely indicates she's caught him in the act before - but she says "Don't worry, I won't tell." On a psychological level, it's this repression - his, and hers - that leads to her infection and possession: She doesn't "tell" but she becomes a monster, screaming obscenities at her father and others. The cinematography in this film is extraordinary - with a great range of palette, from beautiful mountain landscapes to the run-down remote town with its grim main street and modern but threadbare hospital and police precinct to some haunting scenes of possession and attempted exorcism. All told, though - I wish I could like this movie more. It held my attention, and had a lot of working themes, but in the end I couldn't help but think: what was that all about? Sure, you need to have a willing suspension of disbelief to engage in any horror film, but this one seems weighted down by its own ambition: to many themes, too many ideas, and an ending so convoluted as to defy any normal attempt at comprehension.