Hoping that Parasite will bring more recognition to the other works of Bong Joon-ho

The latest feature from Bong Joon-ho, Parasite (2019) has been the topic of much interest and discussion and has, I think, raised public awareness of this terrific South Korean writer/director; Parasite may well win an Oscar award and perhaps viewers will check out some of Joon-ho's other features (The Host, Memories of Murder, Snowpiercer, Okja - the most accessible - and especially Mother). Parasite is a genre-defying work that starts of as somewhat of a comic caper film: a family of 4 living in squalor in an impoverished Seoul neighborhood see a chance to lift themselves out of poverty. The teenage son gets a job as an English tutor to a high-school girl in a family of the Korean uber-rich, the father working as a CEO of a huge electronics firm, such as LG. Through devious means, the family members scheme to get the mother in the wealthy family to fire each of her servants (housekeeper, chauffeur, etc.) and to hire one of the family members (father, mother, daughter) - though she thinks the new hires are merely recommended friends, not family members. Up to this point, it's kind of funny - but then the story takes significant turn, which I won't divulge, but in effect it involves other Korean workers living in the sub-basement of the house of the wealthy and various interactions, many of them scary and brutal, between the workers and the super-rich, leading to an extremely gory conclusion. OK, so the delineation between the good and bad is ambiguous and blurred, but the obvious discrepancies of wealth within in this one prosperous country are vivid and horrendous and not really surprising; the film avoids the fate of over-simplification and heavy-handed messaging through its own wit and self-awareness: At various points in the developing story, the son/English tutor remarks "It's all so metaphoric!," which it is - but by saying so he invites us to share the director's vision. It's obvious that we're meant to sympathize (if not identify) with the impoverished, opportunistic family - at least up to a point. In the end, after the violent denouement, the question we're left with is: Which were the parasites?

One of the great films of the 21st century: Edward Yang's Yi Yi

The last film by the late Taiwanese writer-director Edward Yang, Yi Yi (2000), has a solid claim to be one of the greatest movies of the century (so far); I posted recently on Yang's earlier film, A Brighter Summer Day, also a terrific film though a little more challenging for American viewers, as it requires, or at least improves, with a little fore-knowledge about the Taiwanese history of immigration from mainland China. Yi Yi (translated roughly as A one, an' a two...) requires to special topical knowledge - it's a straight-out brilliant film at 3+hours (and worth all of that - and today would probably be conceived as a miniseries) about a year in the life of a Taiwanese family, beginning with a wedding and ending w/ a funeral. Over the course of the film we see each member of the family going through a personal crisis, some by the end of the year/film stronger for the experience, others perhaps not. The central event that drives the plot concerns the teenage daughter, Ting Ting; at the outset, she made a mistake and forgot to take out the garbage from their upper-story apartment; her grandmother, who'd not been feeling well, took out the garbage on her own and suffered a stroke in doing so. Ting Ting is thereafter consumed by guilt and remorse. Over the course of the film, each family member speaks in monologue to the near-comatose grandmother, and these monologue scenes are powerful, moving, revealing, and sometimes strange. Other plot elements developing over the course of the film involve the young brother who's being picked on by some kids at school and develops an interest in photography (an obvious analog for the director himself); the father who has an encounter with the girlfriend of his youth and is an uncomfortable fit in a youth-dominated Taipei electronics firm; and the mother, who suffers a nervous breakdown and spends time in a New Age retreat. So much happens in the film, and it all feels real and engaging - and we watch much of the action through windows in the tall apartment buildings, office buildings, and street scenes (such as a NY Bagels coffee shop) in then modern-day Taipei (with some sequences, far more placid and serene, in Japan/Tokyo). The concluding moments of the film a fantastic, guaranteed to bring a sob or tear. The early death of Yang was a tremendous loss to world cinema, a writer-director who worked at the height of cinematic naturalism, on a par, it would seem, with Ozu, Kurosawa, Bresson, maybe Bergman (though less existential), yet with a style and deliberate pacing of his that could carry and advance several interwoven plot lines that build upon one another and move the narrative toward a powerful, unified conclusion.

A documentary that exposes excessive government control of private lives in China: One Child Nation

The documentary film One Child Nation (2019, directors Nanfu Wang & Lynn Zhang) starts off just strange (at least to American viewers) and becomes increasingly horrifying and terrifying. It's a look at the policy adopted by China about 35 years ago to encourage couples to have on child only - as the country feared a shortage of resources and huge economic consequences if the population grew rapidly. Nothing in and of itself bad for a nation to adopt such a goal, though to Americans it would, and does, feel like too much state intrusion into private, personal lives of others. That said, the government at first supported the policy through massive propaganda: slogans pained on buildings and road signage (not too different from what we see in the U.S. today about auto safety and drunken driving), then with many to us weird songs and dances - and then the story becomes much stranger, as the government imposes severe penalties on families that have a 2nd child - and w/ the government eventually adopting policies that led to infanticide and forced sterilization (of women, of course). the directors travel to China to meet w/ people in Wang's family (she now lives in the U.S.) and in her home town or village to see what these people say in reflecting back on the policy (rescinded a few years ago, as the population has become stable). We see people who were responsible for thousands of infant deaths and sterilizations of thousands of women lamenting: What could we do? It was state policy. Others have reacted by leading a life of penance, supporting family planning and medical clinics. Then, strangest of all, they filmmakers report on the adoption industry that arose during this era: People procuring in all ways imaginable abandoned babies, selling them to state-run orphanages, which in turn sold the infants to foreigners eager to adopt children - so the state looked away from this criminal behavior because everyone was making money. (Much of this was uncovered by a reporter now living in Hong Kong.) Toward the end, the film loses a bit of its steam as they filmmakers focus on an organization in Utah trying to learn the true origin of many U.S.-adopted babies and to reunite some with their Chinese families; unfortunately, at this point none has been reunited, so the film is missing its final big punch (the movie from a few years back, Twinsters, does show this kind of surprise discovery and reunion of twin sisters, born in Korea and raised apart in the U.S.). All told, though, though it break no new cinematic ground, One Child Nation is worth watching for its expose of governmental control of the lives of people - even now, under the current "2-child" family movement in China.

Why to watch Atlantics despite its evident flaws

Senegalese director Ati Diop's new movied on Netflix, Atlantics (2019) is a really ambitious and unusual first movie starts off great and then seems to lose its way (or lose its audience). The film has something for everyone, in its odd way. It starts off focusing on a strike or walkout on the part of the workers and laborers - no trade unions in Dakar of course - walking off the job because they've gone 3 months without pay; this section of the film is shot in cinema verite style and it looks as if we're set for a realistic expose of working conditions in this impoverished African city (with an astonishing skyscraper on the horizon, for out of proportion to everything else and obviously symbolic of the haves and have-nots). Then we start to follow one of the workers, Souleiman who meets up with his girlfriend, Ada, and he's worried about making money now that he's walked off the job and thinks of taking a boat to Spain to find work - so we're now in a love story and an immigrant/refugee story. Then we see that Ada is engaged to a wealthy man from a local Muslim family - though she obviously does not love him (nor he her) and we're in a Romeo & Juliet story and a class of religious and social classes. Then, on her wedding night, there's a arson attack on her husband's home and the story becomes a police procedural. Then ... the investigating officer gets strangely ill and many of Ada's friends become possessed and wander the streets at night like zombies and threaten the man who's w/held wages - and all the while there are reports of S's return to Dakar but nobody quite seems able to find him, and at this point the movie is virtually impossible to follow and seems to be shooting off the rails. So all told Atlantics is a curiosity and a promising work - worth watching alone for the street scenes in Dakar, which are amazingly sad and sometimes exciting - and as a debut of a director with lots of talent but obviously still trying to find her way; a solid and straightforward plot line would be of help.

Marriage Story is Baumbach's best and most ambitious film to date

Marriage Story (2019) is Noah Baumbach's best and most ambitious movie to date; it's a powerful drama about the breakup of a marriage (and family), very sad and disturbing throughout and painfully believable. I'm not sure that it's a balanced depiction of a break-up - in my view the wife, Nicole (Scarlett Johannson) is far less sympathetic that her spouse, the beleaguered Charlie (Adam Driver - is he in every movie this year, btw?) - and I wonder if female viewers find her more sympathetic than I did; it may be a gender thing. In essence, we meet this Brooklyn couple, and their 8-year-old son, as they've started the process of mediation to lead to what they believe will be a completely amicable divorce. But from the first scene we see the fractures, as they squabble in the mediator's office w/ Nicole in particular refusing to go along w/ the "assignment" (listing things you like about your spouse. We see eventually that she's taking the lead on the break-up; she feels her husband in self-centered and has stifled her career - yet she's no Nora (Doll's House): She is the lead actor in his theater company and is offered a lead role in a show bound from Broadway. We soon realize, or should, that there are about a hundred ways in which she could advance her acting/directing career w/out breaking up the marriage; there has to be another reason for her ire (Charlie's been relegated to sleeping on the couch for a year!), but Baumbach does not reveal any more of her story. The essence of the film is the complete impossibility of an amicable divorce. Nicole breaks faith with Charlie and hires an extremely aggressive divorce lawyer (Laura Dern), and Charlie has no choice but to follow suit, so to speak, and they're at each other's throats (again, Charlie gets more of our sympathy as he's clearly being pushed aside in his desire to share custody of their son and he's financially strapped while N relies on family wealth). The high (or low) point of the film is the scene in which N visits C in his sterile rental apt in LA (she has moved to LA w/ their son) as they begin to discuss matters peaceably and rationally and the discussion completely goes off the rails. In fact there are many great, and always sad, moments - including all the visits of both C and N to their attorneys. the courtroom scene near the end is a little formulaic and I think matters could have been wrapped a little more dexterously at the end - did we need the 2 musical #s? - bu all told it's a well-scripted and well-paced drama that will provoke a lot of thought and self-examination among many viewers.

The Top 5 Returning Miniseries I Watched in 2019

Closing out my lists of the best shows I watched in 2019, here are the Top 5 Miniseries, Returning, that I watched in 2019, listed alphabetically:

Call My Agent (Season 3): In this rarity, a series that gets better with each season, we end up caring about each of the characters in this high-end Paris talent agency, despite their double-dealings and infidelities, and we appreciate getting what feels like a true inside look at this complicated profession - what agents have to do to get, retain, mollify, appease, and coddle the talent and how they manage to earn their 10 percent.

The Crown (Season 3): Moving along with a new cast (notably, Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth and Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret) to the reign of Elizabeth II in the 1960s and beyond, this series gives us the best of British acting, writing, and directing, with all 10 episodes clear and crisp, thoughtful and provocative; as with the first two seasons, the producers held back nothing on design and milieu - perfectly recreating all the lavish environments where the royals ruled and sported, down to the last detail. 

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 3): Although Season 2 sagged a little, the pace picked up in Season 3 in which we see the eponymous Maisel, played flawlessly by Rachel Brosnahan, on the cusp of fame as she takes her act on the road - along with her manager, Alex Borstein, as Susie Myerson, who's getting better and funnier as the series develops. 

Mindhunter (Season 2): In the first season, loosely based on facts, Agents Ford and Tench developed the concept of identifying serial killers via psychological profiling - a new and controversial methodology in the FBI at the time - and Season 2 is even better, as it moves away from a series of profiles to dramatize the use of those new technique in one particularly sensitive and troubling case, the series of abductions of black children in Atlanta in the 1980s.

Veep (Final Season): Julia Louis-Dreyfus is perfect once again as the egotistical, tempestuous presidential candidate Selena Meyer, and we see her maneuver her way through minefields on her way to the nomination, supported by her loyal staff members whom she rebukes and abuses and on whom she depends completely; all of the supporting players are credible and rich - a true ensemble production - and most of the secondary characters are as well, most notably Timothy Simons as the odious candidate Jonah Ryan.

Dark Waters has it's heard in the right place but it's lacking as a drama

Todd Haynes's Dark Water (2019) is one in a long line of movies about crusading lawyers taking on the evils of the corporate world - Erin Brocovitch and A Civil Action as 2 of the classics; also the TV series Damages, q.v.) - some more successfully than others. Though this film's heart is in the right place - and it's based on true events, as told in a magazine article from Nathanial Rich, it suffers from one major problem: There's no tension and no surprise and little to no evolution of character. We know from the start that the film is about polluted land and water, and there's no question as to who's responsible: Dupont Chemicals. The story line entails the struggles of a young corporate lawyer, played by Mark Ruffalo, to take on Dupont, for which he has to discover exactly what chemical(s) polluted the groundwater and precisely what these chemical do to people and how and when Dupont became aware of the dangers. This process involves tedious legal research, and that just is not enough to give a movie any gas. To a degree, Ruffalo's character changes over the course of the film - he starts off as a newly minted partner in a big corporate firm who encounters lots of resistance from other partners as he takes on this potential class-action suit (What are we? Ambulance chasers?), and in fact the firm had hoped to lure Dupont as a client - but not enough is made of this conflict, as the voices of opposition are pathetic and the head of the firm comes around to Ruffalo's side pretty easily. If this were a fiction rather than fact-based, it might have been good to see R leave the firm and take the case on his own, w/ consequences to follow. But as it stands, the film feels flat and the conclusion inevitable. That said, MR does good job w/ what he's got, and you've got to root for him throughout, he's so clearly in the right facing off against those clearly in the wrong. But all told the movie would have been stronger if it were a bit more subtle: the swelling crescendos from the score toward the conclusion were way over the top, for example. The drama should be enough to stand on its own at that point.

Queen & Slim is much more than just another fugitive film

Melina Matsoukas's Queen & Slim (2019) is on the surface another fugitive film - a direct descendant of Bonnie and Clyde - and it may remind some, as it reminded me, of the Australian series Wanted, about two women, neither w/ a record and character opposites, forced into a cross-country (and cross-ocean) flight from police pursuit. But what sets Q&S apart from the many other films in this mini-genre is its political awareness and of-the-moment topicality. In short, this film is about an African-American couple on their first date, and seeming to be polar opposites (she, a career-conscious criminal-defense lawyer and he a more laid-back and aimless but sweet guy), who get stopped by a racist cop with fatal consequences, sending them on the run, from Cleveland to New Orleans (where her uncle lives) and beyond. In the course of their flight they become nationwide figures and for man (but not all) blacks a symbol of resistance to police brutality and figureheads for the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the man strengths of this film is ambiguity of Lena Waithe's screenplay: the fleeing couple (Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith) find both support and antagonist; some of the white people they meet are helpful and sympathetic, others not; ditto, for the black people they come across. The film is nicely paced, holding everyone's interest right to the end I would think, and quite beautiful photographed and designed, and even gets props for an original score (Devonte Hynes), combining classical and avant-garde tonalities. For all its familiarity, as well as some required suspension of disbelief (is such an escape really possible?), the film is quite compelling as a drama and, in the end, moving and provocative as well.

Ford v Ferrari is not just for gearheads

James Mangold's Ford v Ferrri is one of those better-than-expected movies, not just for gearheads, though gearheads will probably get much more out of it than I could. The basic story line, based on the real-life achievements of the 2 leads, follows Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale) as they develop a race car for Ford Motor Co. to take on the Ferrari juggernaut as Le Mans in 1966. The movie is not subtle in the least: the "heavies" (the Ferrari snobs, the Ford Motor Co. management flunkies) are hateful and the heroes (Damon, Bale, the pit crew) are heroic. The attempts to make this story more "human" and to appeal to a wider audience - many cutouts to Bale's wife and young son - are pointless and unneeded. The story line is good enough and the race sequences are great; for anyone, like me I guess, who's wondered what's so athletic about race-car driving, you just floor it and steer around an oval track, FvF lets you know and feel what it must be like to drive in these competitions. There are a few powerful off-track scenes as well: Bale's wife driving aggressively in her station wagon, Henry Ford II bursting into tears after a quick test dive w/ Damon, Enzo Ferrari telling Ford to FOff while rejecting their buyout offer. Other scenes in my view were not so great, notably the Damon's maniacal driving on LA streets - lucky he didn't kill innocent passengers of pedestrians and a bad and immature image for this mostly good film to promote. All told, though, the film is informative about the car-race culture and about the auto industry and you can't help but root for the good guys.

The Top Ten (new or first season) Miniseries I Watched in 2019

As with just about everyone else, my viewing habits and preferences have shifted gradually away from movies (and movie theaters) and ever more toward streaming miniseries, which offer so many great opportunities to develop character, plot, and milieu over the course of multiple episodes and multiple seasons. Plus, they're so accessible. Here is the list, arranged alphabetically of the Top 10 (New or first season) Miniseries I Watched in 2019:

A French Village (2009). The first (of 9) seasons newly available this year on Prime, this completely engrossing and often frightening drama brings us into a small and seemingly typical village in rural France, not far from the Swiss border, at the outset of the Occupation (1940) and presumably in subsequent seasons taking us through the course of the War and its aftermath.

Chernobyl (2019): Most of us probably have no idea of the magnitude of the catastrophe of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl nor of how it could have been even more serious and disastrous but for the brave actions of a few scientists and many other workers at or near the plan; this HBO 4-part miniseries does a great job bringing the tension of days during and after the meltdown to light. 

Criminal (2019). This 12-part series from Netflix is a terrific project of high ambition, which consists of four sets of three dramas, each set from a different European country and using the same parameters: a 40-minute police interrogation of a suspect in a tightly confined setting. 

Escape at Dannemora (2019). This Ben Stiller-directed 7-episode miniseries from Showtime is a terrific prison movie, based closely the famous prison breakout in a remote New York locale, with exceptionally strong performances not only by the leads - Patricia Arquett, Benicio del Toro, and Paul Dana - but also from just about all of the secondary players.

Les Miserables (2018). This 6-part BBC/PBS English-language miniseries of Hugo's novel (2018) does a fine job presenting the highlights of the sinuous narrative, cutting this enormous text down to a fairly simple period piece, love story, and melodrama that follows the course of the eventful life of Jean Valjean (Dominic West).

Made in Heaven (2019). This Indian 9-episode series on Prime about a team of wedding planners who cater to the wealthiest of Delhi society at first seems as if it's an escapee from the Bravo channel, but we quickly see that it's far more than a lifestyles of the rich fantasy indulgence: There's a terrific and compelling through story that makes us think of the class structure in India and all that it still entails.

Mrs. Wilson (2018). This surprisingly good 3-part series on PBS depicts events are so odd that we wouldn't believe them in a fictional narrative - but the series depicts actual events in the life of the grandmother of the star of the show, Rita Wilson; the series moves gracefully across a few time spans, gradually filling in the picture of an entire life, it will keep you thinking and guessing and wondering right to the startling closing sequence.

Succession (2019). This 10-part HBO series portrays a dysfunctional, uber-wealthy. loathsome family, based loosely, or maybe not so loosely, on the Murdoch clan and its right-wing media empire; this show is well written and well acted by a large ensemble, each family member with a distinct personality and neuroses.

The Honourable Woman (2014). This series (for rent only) has to rank as one of the most intelligent and best-acted shows I've seen recently, a totally gripping story start to finish about a sister (Maggie Gylenhall, doing a fantastic job and rocking an English accent) and her brother who have taken over a huge family business and charitable organization dedicated to bringing about peace and understanding between Israel and Palestine. Good luck!

Unbelievable (2019). This Netflix 8-part series, based closely on true events that took place in Colorado and Washington in 2008-11, depicts the pursuit and capture of a serial rapist (and the horrifying treatment by male police officers that some of the rape victims endured); the two lead detectives are played brilliantly by Merritt Wever and Toni Collette. 

Tom Hanks's great performance makes the movie well worth watching

Tom Hanks's performance in Marielle Heller's Fred Rogers biopic, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), is a sure-bet Oscar nomination (supporting actor) for his uncanny portrayal of the children's TV hero. The movie shines in every scene with Hanks, as he captures not only FR's well-known cadences and quirky mannerisms but the offscreen Rogers as well - who, delightedly, has just the same patience, wisdom, and modesty - as well as a connection with children and adults. The plot such as it is concerns an Esquire writer (played by Matthew Rhys) assigned, against his will, to write a brief profile of FR - who immediately senses that Rhys is a troubled young man and leads him, gently, into a discussion about his "feelings" about his difficult, sometimes abusive father - leading, of course, to a feel-good conclusion. The scenes in which Rhys tries to interview FR (the plot is based on an actual Esquire story by Tom Junod) and in which FR deftly sidesteps questions and focuses laser-like on Rhys are great; ditto, the scenes in which we see FR on the set, especially the touching scene when he gets down on one knee to speak w/ a child visiting from a hospital. Less successful are the father-son scenes w/ Rhys and Chris Cooper; I never bought into the utter transformation of Dad and the pat resolution of the family crises, but so be it - sure the movie could have been 20 minutes shorter and could have ended on a more ambiguous note rather than on hosannas, but still worth watching for TH's performance and for some wonder, tender moments of insight into the lives and minds of children and of the adults, or one adult anyway, who had a unique connection to the feelings and emotions of the very young.

The Top Ten Movies I Watched in 2019

A mixture of new and classic, narrative and documentary, here is my list of the Top Ten Movies I Watched in 2019 (listed alphabetically):

American Factory (2019). Julia Richert and Steven Bognar provide a fantastic look at a clash of cultures and how that affects the American workplace in the post-industrial era; this documentary is much better and more powerful than its understated title would suggest - it's full of drama, conflict, surprises, ideas, and just plain weirdness.

Bitter Rice (1949). Giuseppe De Santis's movie, about the women who work at the annual rice harvest and planting in the wet fields in northern Italy, is a classic in every sense. It stands up to anything else from its era as both a social document and a powerful drama (or melodrama).

A Brighter Summer Day (1991). This terrific movie by the late Taiwanese director Edward Yang examines the lives of several teenagers in Taiwan in 1960, about 10 years after their families fled  mainland China and Mao's revolution to settle in Formosa. Today, Yang would probably have developed this 4-hour movie as a mini-series.(Bonus points: Check out Yang's even greater movie, Yi Yi)

Cold War (2018). Pawel Pawlikowsky's film from Poland is a great story of doomed lovers and their tempestuous relationship that plays out in a series of episodes across a 20-year time span; we see the struggles to build a life and a career in music and to be true to one's self not just against a wave of commercial pressures but against political pressures that can shut you off completely - or lock you up.

Il Posto (1961). This Italian (Milanese) film, written and directed by Ermanno Olmi, is another one of the somewhat unappreciated neo-realist works (this one filmed with no professional actors) that made Italian postwar cinema so great, tells of a teenage boy in a working-class family pressured to apply for a coveted white-collar job in a large unnamed company - a job he doesn't really want.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (2018). This highly inventive, contemporary-LA take on Shakespeare by writer-director Casey Wilder Mott is eccentric and fast-paced, as much fun to watch as just about any production of a Shakespeare comedy that I've seen on film.

Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood (2019). Quentin Tarantino's 1969-set film is, among other things, a whole lot of fun to watch, start to finish: a really good "buddy movie" starring two industry mega-stars, with DeCaprio as a nearly washed up star in TV Westerns and Pitt as his driver and gopher; a send-up of many mid-century movie styles and trends; and a really cool inside look at the process of movie-making, and who's not interested in that?

Ordet (1955). This film, set on a small Danish farm in 1925, is strange even for Carl Th. Dreyer: long close-ups, many slow panning shots, mannered and extremely slow and deliberate dialog, beautiful lighting so that each shot could be a still or portrait in the style of a Rembrandt or Vermeer, and unforgettable segments such as the botched delivery scene and the weirdness of a young man who wanders in and out of various scenes murmuring scripture. (Bonus points: Compare with Dreyer's Day of Wrath)

Three Identical Strangers (2018). Tim Wardle's documentary starts off as if it's going to be a feel-good story about triplets separated at (actually, six months after) birth who discover one another through a series of chance encounters when they're about 20 years old, but this movie gets darker and darker and becomes a serious examination of medical ethics, as we learn that the three boys, unbeknownst to them, had been part of a vast (and as yet unpublished) medical experiment.

Tokyo Story(1953). It's pretty much impossible to over-praise Yasujiro Ozu's film, a seemingly simple tale about an elderly couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their children, in what perhaps will be their last such visit; despite the father's flaws and mis-doings, it's impossible not to feel empathy for this couple, who are treated abominably by their children (an indication of the seismic shifts taking place in postwar family life) and truly welcomed only by their war-widowed daughter-in-law, who is both saintly and deeply troubled. (Bonus points: See Ozu's final film, Late Autumn)

A Soviet film from the 1920s with no evident reference to ideology

A brief note on a brief (30 minutes) film, a Soviet film from the silent era (the 1920s) called Chess Fever, remarkable in that I for one cannot find any reference to Soviet workers, agriculture, manufacturing, or military might. It's just a light-hearted look at the Russian fixation on chess, imagining if you will a world in which people follow chess with the ferocity that we today associate with football, soccer, or - in past decades - horse racing and professional boxing. The center of the film is a young man so obsessed with plotting out chess moves that he misses a date with his fiancee, who follows by kicking him out of her life. He's distraught - and as he wanders the snow-choked city we see a few (somewhat) amusing scenes: people walk the streets looking at newspaper printouts of chess boards, a policeman arrests a suspect but lets him go when they realize they both are chess-nuts, people see black/white squares of floor tile and begin to play chess on them, and so forth. The young man eventually gets to a bridge overlooking a rushing river, considers suicide, but instead throws his pocket-sized chess board into the waters and returns to his fiancee, ready to pledge that he's given up the game. But she has now become a fanatic! They find a small chess board, and everyone's happy. This short, showing now at MOMA in NYC, has been compared with Chaplain or Keaton short films; that's quite an over-reach, but it's an interesting curiosity - the kind of film that appeared from time to time in the early years (Vertov, e.g.) but would probably later be condemned as anti-Soviet, for its satiric look at many working-class people and for offering no positive (i.e., in keeping with the current Orthodoxy) resolution.

A surprisingly good true-crime film about the exploitation and the exploits of a group of NYC exotic dancers

The Lorene Scafaria writer/director film The Hustlers (2019) may not be Citizen Kane but it's a surprisingly good movie in a genre that more often than not is just plain exploitative and exhibitionist. Yes, it's a story about a group of exotic dancers in an NYC club catering to the Wall Street crowd; there are many scenes of near-nude dancing and foreplay, but to its credit the film puts these scenes into context by focusing (unlike, say, The Sopranos) on the suffering and exploitation of the women. In fact the women, reeling from the decline in business after the crash of 2008, set up their own little outfit, bypassing the club owners and others who chisel their money away. The plot may seem improbable, but the whole movie is based on a magazine article and is apparently quite true to the facts. The women - led by Jennifer Lopez, perfectly cast in her best film role in years - in essence pick up guys in bars, slip them drugs in a drink that knocks them cold, and steal their credit cards and other info, fleecing the guys of thousands of $s with reasonable confidence that the guys will never report these thefts - until eventually one (or 2) of them do so, leading to the arrest and downfall. Altogether, the movie is quite watchable right to the end - a rarity, today - and builds a lot of sympathy for these women who are by most measures straight-out criminals. Some of the scenes - notably the women in the club chatting and laughing among one another as they await the call onto the stage - are particularly well scripted and directed.

A mix of noir and melodrama in Losey's The Big Night

Joseph Losey's 1950 film, The Big Night, was, I think, has last work in the U.S. before he was blacklisted and migrated to England for a great career. Big Night is by no means a great movie, but it deftly combines two seemingly antithetical genres, noir and melodrama: In essence, a young man (played by Jonathan Barrymore Jr.) sees his father brutally beaten by a man bearing a cane; he vows to avenge this humiliating event and tracks down the assailant, who we learn is a sports writer involved in fixing boxing matches (unlikely, but there you have it). After he finds the man and shoots him, in a tearful reconciliation scene w/ his father, he learns some dark family secrets. OK, not much of this is believable, but we do get some fine night-time sequences, some shot apparently on location. Notable scenes include the crowd entering the arena for the boxing match (where the naive Barrymore is robbed of a ticket); Barrymore visiting a newspaper during the late-night/early-morning presstime - quite accurate, I would add; a visit to a nightclub where the protagonist has a memorable encounter with the chanteuse; and some nicely moody scenes shot on near-deserted city streets. The film would be better if the protagonist could learn about his family history gradually and over the course of the film - rather than in a big confession from dad in the final minutes - but still it's a pretty good film by a director who was treated badly.

A whole lot of fun and a new appreciation for filmmaking in Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood (2019) is among other things a whole lot of fun to watch, start to finish. It's a really good "buddy movie," about the evolving friendship between Rick, a nearly washed-up star of TV westerns now getting booked only as the "heavy" and in fear of losing his talent and his career, and his stunt double and faithful driver and gofer, Cliff; adding to the fun, these two guys on the downside of the business are played by two of the super-mega-stars of the industry, Leonard DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. QT gets great performances not only from these two but from a # of well-known and unknown actors in various cameo roles, notably Al Pacino as sleazy agent/dealmaker, Bruce Dern, and a scene-stealing child actor, Julia Butters. Most of all, the 1969-set film is a hilarious take on many facets of styles and genres of movies through the ages and particularly in the 60, notably the Spaghetti Westerns (hilariously poked in the title itself), martial-arts film (another hilarious scene in a portrayal of Bruce Lee "instructing" a group of extras), old-Hollywood westerns, and "new" Hollywood youth films of flower children and psychedelia. Even better, we get to see some fresh takes on movie-making, in particular some really good scenes of a troubled and hung-over Rick rehearsing and stumbling, in a long take, over his lines. On top of all else, the movie gives a "what-if" take on the Sharon Tate killings - not really credible, but the portrayal of the Manson clan itself is frighteningly believable. Every QT film has to have its share of violence, and he holds off until the climactic scenes before he lets loose - close your eyes if you must - but there's much more in the film to enjoy, not the least of which is some beautiful night-time cinematography, particular on drives through LA and poolside in the canyons; you'd think there's nothing more to be shown or said about these settings, but we end up seeing not only LA but the whole movie industry in a new light and with new appreciation.

Despite its good intentions, The Report is devoid of drama and character

Scott C. Burns's Amazon Prime film, The Report, gives us in detail the true history of the attempt by a team of investigators, led by one Daniel Jones (played be the ubiquitous Adam Driver), under the auspices of California senator Diane Feinstein, investigated reports of secret CIA prisons where American officers, in teh wake of 9/11, tortured suspected terrorists in what was a totally failed attempt to gather intelligence about planned attacks. The team does uncover crucial info - despite CIA attempts to destroy massive amounts of records - then runs into fierce opposition from the CIA and from various senators and administration officials as they attempt to suppress the lengthy investigative report - which finally saw the light after a leak to the NYT and some support from Feinstein and other courageous senators (including our own great R.I. Senator Whitehouse). This film is a noble project and it's good to recognize that American agents could do evil and that the country could recognize this, eventually, and take action to rectify (to a degree). That said, the film is a almost schizophrenic: On the one hand, there are many vivid scenes depicting the various forms of torture inflicted on the prisoners - these are largely unwatchable. The rest of the film consists of extensive and laborious re-creation of Jones's investigation and the obstacles Jones et al. faced; this part - the vast majority - of the film was also unwatchable because it was, well, exceedingly dull. Seldom has so much talent (many all-stars in the cast, including Annette Bening, John Hamm, Michael C. Hall, and others) been brought together w/ so little to show for it: There's one meeting and conversation after another, few or no scenes of any great drama. Driver does the best he can w/ weak material, but the few attempts to build his personality - the young idealist who loses his innocence, the man who becomes obsessed with his mission to the point of losing all contact w/ others and all perspective - go nowhere, as the film is mired in its commitment to document the years of infighting and investigation that led to the final publication of an edited version of the report (which we knew from the outset, of course). Any episode of Homeland is better than this 2-hour slog.

Dreyer's unique style is at its strangest in Ordet

Carl Th. Dreyer's film Ordet (The Word, 1955) is strange even measured against Dreyer's out strange movies - very few, over the course of many years from the silent era into the 1960s, but each in Dreyer's unique cinematic style: Long closep-ups, many slow panning shots, mannered and extremely slow and deliberate dialog, simple sets and settings, mostly shot in interiors (though the few exterior shots become all the more striking), beautiful lighting so that each shot could be a still or portrait in the style of a Rembrandt or Vermeer, very few "cuts," and an archaic look throughout - little or no technology, for example. Ordet is set on a small family farm in Denmark in 1925 (it's based on a play, about which I know nothing); the farm family, the Borgens, face 3 crises: one son, Johannes, is suffering from a delusion and thinks he is Jesus returned to earth - he wanders slowly in and out of many scenes, muttering some pseudo-Biblical words and staring into the distance, zombie-like; another son, Anders, wants to marry the daughter of the village tailor but both families strongly object because they are not of the same church (one seems conventionally Christian and the other a strange and austere Christian sect - in some ways perhaps they're not all that different, so we're seeing a case of narcissism of small differences; I also wondered whether this was a cryptic way to get at the issue of anti-Semitism and inter-faith marriage); the third son's wife is pregnant: She, Anna, is the only woman in the film w/ a significant role. Her pregnancy and delivery become the dramatic highlight of the film. All viewers will be puzzled by the surprise conclusion, and I for one do not know what to make of it - but will note here that the whole film is about the examination of faith, whether faith is a solace for the hardships of life or an obstruction that keeps people apart and destroys communities remains an open question that Dreyer raises but does not resolve. So much the better - Ordet will, or should, hold the interest of any patient viewer: It's not at all modern, and is closer in style to a silent film than to any other films being made in the 1950s, even Bergman's (obviously influenced by Dreyer, but much more "contemporary" in look and feel, even when set during the Crusades, for example); worth seeing, especially alongside Dreyer's other and strikingly similar works about faith and redemption, such as The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath.

Still one of the best series ever on Netflix: Season 3 of The Crown

Season 3 of Peter Morgan's terrific series, The Crown, picks up where Season 2 ended, w/ the necessary changes, i.e., w/ an older set of actors portraying Queen Elizabeth and family - and of course the updated casting seems perfect, w/ Olivia Colman taking over seamlessly from the great Claire Foy and great performances as well from Tobias Menzies (Prince Philip),  Helena Bonham Carter (Princess Margaret), Erin Doherty as Princess Anne, and Josh O'Connor as Prince Charles as we follow the Windsors from roughly 1960 to the 25th Jubilee in 1977. This series gives us the best of British acting, writing, directing, with all 10 episodes clear and crisp, thoughtful and provocative. As with the first two seasons, the producers held back nothing on design and milieu - perfectly recreating all the lavish environments where the royals ruled and sported, down to the last detail (the flowers, the furniture, the cutlery, the oil paintings on the gallery walls, and "motor vehicles," the planes and trains, the croquet equipment - everything!). Over the course of the ten episodes we see the Queen, at last, show some flashes of tenderness and sentiment - though for most of the episodes she and the other royals are clench-jawed, cold, and viciously protective of their life of privilege. A theme throughout has been the interference with anyone in the family headed for an "unsuitable" marriage - to the ruin and despair of several members of the family. The one way in which this season falls a little short of the first two: In seasons 1 and 2 we see the gradual "education" of Queen Elizabeth, as she evolves from a young woman thrust on the world stage and initially treated like a pushover into a powerful monarch and family leader. In Season 3, she is a well-established character and personality and does not evolve any further; each episode depicts a different family/national crisis, but mosy are not centered on the Queen (the episodes on Charles - his schooling, his relationship with Camilla - are particularly moving; those on Margaret are at times comic - HBC is a great comic actress - and at times harrowing). But the season doesn't have a plot "through-line" in the same way that Seasons 1 and 2 did. Still, one of the best shows to come through Netflix in many years, and all viewers are awaiting Season 4, which will introduce Princess Diana.

The good and thenot so good in Scorsese's The Irishman

Our cultural appetite for great movies about the mob/gangsters/organized crime of almost any era remains forever unsated, with Martin Scorsese's The Irishman (2019, Netflix) the latest entry - and one of the best, though by no means a perfect movie. MS, basing his movie on a book by Charles Brandt (and screenplay by Stevn Zaillian) is clearly working in the great tradition of the extremely long feature (or multiple-edition feature) with the members of the Pantheon being Coppola (Godfather movies, at least the first 2), David Chase (Sopranos, 7 seasons!), and Scorsese himself (Goodfellas). One difference between the Irishman and these others: This movie feels about an hour too long at 3.5 hours; the others left us wanting (up to a point) and getting more. To take the negatives first, The Irishman - the story of a Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) who rises from a trucker who skins a little off the top by stealing and unloading some of his freight to become a mob assassin (as the film wry calls is, "painting houses") to a top-level associate of the mobbed-up union boss Jimmy Hoffa - aptly and deftly delineates Sheeran's rise through the chambers of the underworld, but it almost completely lacks context: We see nothing of his childhood or his parents and almost nothing of his married life or his personal. His rise to prominence seems scripted and foreordained; there's a big difference between stealing some sides of beef and killing a man in cold blood, but we don't see any hesitation, remorse, or regret about this dramatic change in his life, from thief to killer. I know including such material would make this movie even longer, but maybe it should have been in two parts? Hoffa is a leading character, and the movie offers its own theory on his demise, which is kind of obvious though I won't give it up here, but I found Al Pacino's portrayal to be off the mark: His Hoffa is an eccentric, sometimes bumbling tyrant; I think, no matter how weakened he was by the end of his reign, he still has to be portrayed as someone formidable and fearsome. All that said, there are some tremendous strengths in The Irishman as well, not the least of which is it did hold our interest over its long span and its multilayered narration (3 strands of time). There's plenty of action, but none feels gratuitous, and by far the greatest part of the film involves the long private conversations among the key players, the 3rd by Joe Pesci as Russell Buffalino: There are many long confidences in which the characters speak in euphemisms and in code, a means of expression generated no doubt by years in fear of surveillance. Particularly great are the asides among characters as the dinner in Frank's honor, as the various forces plan to push Hoffa out of the picture. Also fantastic: the art direction and costuming, beautifully evoking the look and feel of this era and this culture without ever feeling overdone or over the top (Goodfellas was similar; so for that matter is the current Netflix series The Crown). All told definitely a film worth seeing; probably worth the $ and the trouble to see it on a full screen, if you can stand the 3.5-hour length; otherwise, it plays well at home, too.

History has not been kind to Dreyer's Vampyr

History has not been kind to Carl Th. Dreyer's Vampyr (1932), one of the first, though not the first (see, Nosferatu) cinematic depictions of the vampire legend. It was one of Dreyer's first films in the sound era but to be honest it could just as well have been a silent, as there is virtually no dialog and a lot of film-time is wasted w/ a scrolling text from an "ancient" book about vampires, filling is in on the whole legend, with which everyone now is well acquainted. In this telling, we follow a young man visiting the country (outside Paris, apparently) who stops at a decrepit country inn where his sleep is interrupted by horrid noises - and eventually by the death of another guest! The young man wanders over to a nearby half-ruined estate where he learns about the vampire legend and somehow feels obligated to help break the curse by keeping a stricken young woman awake through the night and aiding in the plunge of a stake into the heart of a vampire corpse. The plot elements are extremely difficult to keep straight, not is there any need to dwell on the story line. Main the film is memorable for a few striking images and some groundbreaking photography: misty outdoor scenes in which the protagonist seems to drift away from his own body (probably shot in double-exposure?), skeletal hands, a woman's face in possession and slowly transforming into a vampire grin, a deadly scream in the night, the entombment of the camera and the illusion we have of being carried to a waiting gravesite, the death by live burial of the vampire's assistant, plus others. But there are so many more frightening and imaginative vampire and zombie movies over the past 50 years or so: Night of the Living Dead (the best!), Let the Right One In, the Twilight series - to name just a few - that Dreyer's comes off today as perhaps foundational but not especially weird or scary or thoughtful. Unlike his other great films of this era, such as the Passion of Joan of Arc, this one comes off more like a relic than a masterpiece.

The strange beauty of Dreyer's Day of Wrath

Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer's film Day of Wrath (1943) was shot in Denmark during the Nazi occupation, and one might look for sly or subtle analogies between the persecution and execution of young women accused of witchcraft and the Nazi genocide and the fascist ideology. In some ways, it's amazing the was even made, but perhaps the contemporary reference points were too subtle for the censors to comprehend. In any event, it's a terrific and unusual - clearly an influence on fellow-Scandinavian Bergman is evident throughout (especially The Seventh Seal, with its medeival setting and its execution scene). Yet Day of Wrath is unmistakable Dreyer's - shot very much in the same style as his silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc: Spare settings, mostly interiors, lots of closeups on the tortured faces of the principal actors, beautiful lighting that will remind most viewers of Vermeer and Rembrandt, a remote historical setting, male dominance and cruelty in the guise of religious decree and Christian faith, and an extremely slow and deliberate pacing of every scene. Day of Wrath, set in 17th-century Scandinavia, in b/w - although if it were in color it would look almost the same, as everyone wears funereal black with those odd Dutch/Danish collars and wimples  - is about an older man, a priest, married to a much younger woman (Anne - the central figure in the movie); when the old man's son arrives from somewhere abroad - where he's been or why is never stated - the son and Anne fall in love, eventually driving the old man to his death and thereby raising the possibility that Anne may have brought about his death through witchcraft. The movie feels much older than it is - perhaps because of the setting, perhaps because Dreyer was imbued with the look and pacing of silent films - but it's beautiful in its own way, especially in its portraiture of the main characters and in its creepy re-creation of church rituals: a funeral, an execution, and the chorus of young boys chanting prayers as if burning a woman to death were just an ordinary event in their lives, which perhaps it was.

A powerful Ozu film of social realism and a prelude to Tokyo Story

Yasujiro Ozu's 1957 film Tokyo Twilight (once more, the title gives us little info about the film) is a stop toward his masterwork, Tokyo Story (1960), with many of the same actors and similar themes - generational conflict, father-daughter relationships, sibling relationships, the changing mores of postwar Japan, the breakdown of the urban Japanese family. This film centers on a somewhat well-to-do banker, play by Ryu who stars in dozens of Ozu films, living w/ teenage daughter and whose young married daughter has arrived unexpectedly with infant daughter (somewhat of a reverse from Tokyo Story). As we learn, both daughter have major problems: the married daughter, played by Ozu's usual female lead S Hara, is in the midst of a marital breakup, as her husband - who'd been championed by the father (he dissuaded daughter from another suitor) - is drinking heavily and becoming at times violent. The younger daughter, a part-time student who spends most evenings in mahjong parlors and in dubious bars, finds out that she's pregnant - and of course he sketchy boyfriend gives her the quick brush-off. These plot elements, particularly the struggles of the pregnant daughter to get a legal abortion and some financial aid, present a graphic picture of Japanese urban life, a rare bit of social realism in Japanese films of the 1950s. The film also as some wildly improbable and melodramatic elements as well - notably, the appearance in Tokyo of the man's estranged wife/mother of the two girls - which are emotionally effective, especially in the final sequences as the estranged mother leaves by train for northernmost Japan - but as Ozu matured more in his work these he purged his plots of these extreme elements and let the characters and the setting tell the story in simpler terms. Still, overall, Tokyo Twilight is a powerful, mostly overlooked Ozu work, whose only glaring flaw are the portions of the soundtrack in which Ozu incomprehensibly used an endless loop of what sounds like carnival hurdy-gurdy music, completely at odds with the sad and sensitive unfolding plot.

Farhadi's breakout film falls flat

Everybody Knows (2018) marks a big shift in the career of Iranian writer-director Asgar Farhadi: first film outside of his native Iran (the setting is Spanish wine country, tho never explicitly identified)? First work w/ major world talents (Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem), and I would guess his highest-budget film and first major release via Netflix and despite all this - plus "nominations" for many top awards this film is a disappointment - especially on the heels of his fantastic film The Salesman. IN short, the film depicts a family gathering for a wedding, and during the post-nuptial celebrations Cruz's 16-year-old daughter starts to feel woozy, goes off to be early, and disappears - as a ransom note and some news clippings about kidnappings arrive in Cruz's in-box. Over the course of this complicated film - and I must say that Farhadi's strength lies not in his setting forth a clear plot w/ well delineated characters - we watch the struggle of this not-wealthy family to gather the money to meet the ransom demand. The questions raised are: Why would the kidnappers choose this child to nab? Why would they target this family, which has no significant wealth of stature? And who dunnit  (as we never see the kidnappers until the denouement)? I think most viewers will find the answers to these questions to be require far more willing suspension of disbelief than I was able to give: It's one of those criminal acts that maybe could have succeeded if 500 things had gone as planned but that in reality would have failed in any # of ways. Although this film is over all emotionally cold - particularly as we never see the kidnapped girl during her ordeal - I will say that Bardem and Cruz do a fine job w/ the roles they're given - Cruz in particular, who is her beautiful self at the outset and, over the course of the film, crumples into a state of loss and despair. All this said, good luck to Farhadi, and I hope he will find his footing again and give us some great film dramas like The Salesman and A Separation.

A terrific experiment from Netflix: the 12 episodes of the series Criminal

I'm not sure who organizes the project for Netflix, but despite its unevenness at times, the 12-part series Criminal is a terrific project of high ambition, worth watching straight through. The project consists of four sets of three dramas; each set of three is from a different European country: UK, Germany, France, Spain. Each episode uses exactly the same parameters and the same setting: a 40-minute (approx.) police interrogation of a suspect (or in one episode of a convicted criminal whom they are hoping will provide additional info about her crime), with the "action" confined to the interrogation room, the room where others on the team watch the interrogation, and the hallway outside of the interrogation rooms (the vending machines provide some comic moments). Each of the 4 sets is independent, and to a degree each interrogation is independent, though with in each set there's a bit of drama involving the police team - love troubles, office rivalries, etc. All of the interrogations involve some kind of surprise or twist at the end; sometimes they end w/ some ambiguities; the best involve the characters in some moral and ethical thickets: How far can the police go in fabricating information or providing false information in order to elicit a confession, to "break" a suspect?" The ground rules for these interrogations will surprise most U.S. viewers: There seems to be a time pressure, in that they cannot hold suspects w/out charges for +24 hours; the use of attorneys in these also differs from the rules for defense lawyers in the U.S. (in these episodes, the police can order the attorneys to back off). On the other hand, these sets don't seem to be "windows" into 4 different European cultures - all 12 episodes are similar in tone and convention. In the end, these are like 12 fascinating short dramas, and I think they could play well, with some minor adjustments, on a stage.

Ozu's Tokyo Story, a masterpiece by any measure, is worth multiple viewings

It's pretty much impossible to over-praise Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), from a screenplay by Ozu and Kogo Nodo, his collaborator on all of his major films, and with leading roles for several of the leading actors who appear in dozens of his film, most particularly Chishu Ryu as the father. This film, simple on the surface, is the story of an elderly couple living in a city a day's train ride away from Tokyo, go to the city to visit their children, in what perhaps will be their last such visit (and evidently their first in many years). We see right away on the arrival that the sudden appearance of these two quiet and submissive souls is seen by the children as nothing for a nuisance; in this culture, which traditionally had been built upon reverence for and deference to parents and the elderly, is shifting in postwar Japan to a get-ahead capitalism in which the elderly parents have no place. Everyone at first is painfully polite, but we can see that the children feel put out - even their children seem bratty and entitled, as the little boy whines about having to move his desk (we later see him working on an assignment for an English lesson - a glimpse at from where the postwar attitudes derive). Ultimately, rather than deal w/ the parents the children send them off to a so-called resort - they seem to delude themselves into thinking the parents would like that, when obviously the whole point of their visit is to spend time w/ family - and that's a further disaster. Rather than go through the whole plot, which includes some twists and surprises, it's important to note that Ozu's touch always allows for ambiguity and depth of characters; the father is no angel himself and no doubt was a difficult and distant father when the children were young. The conclusion, which brings many of these tensions to the fore, is stunning and heartbreaking - and all in the understate, almost ceremonial tone that characterizes most of Ozu's mature work - no hysterics or violence, in complete contrast to the more conventional Western family dramas. This film is worth multiple viewings, and it's worth watching frame by frame - it's impossible not to feel great empathy toward the lead characters, and in particular to one of the younger family members (played by Setsuko Hara, another Ozu regular), a figure who will remind viewers, I think, of Cordelia or the Book of Ruth.

An unusual documentary short subject in which h.s. friends recall the youth of a possible terrorist

The recent (2019) Netflix documentary short subject, Ghosts of Sugar Land (directed by Bassam Tariq) is a potential Oscar nominee but probably without enough substance to take the prize. Tariq interviews five or so guys - friends of his from high-school days? - from the small Texas city of their youth; the interviewees are all Muslim-American, and they are struggling to understand the life course of one of their h.s. friends, whom they refer to by the pseudonym Mark. Mark was the only African-American in their otherwise diverse high-school class. He become close friends of these Muslim-American classmates and eventually converted to their faith. Once he did so, he became a fanatic believer and eventually left the U.S. and made his way to Syria where he pledged loyalty to Isis and began an active anti-American cyber-presence. His behavior mystifies his friends, and they speculate that perhaps all along he was an FBI plant spying on the Sugar Land mosque and that he may still be an FBI operative trying to smoke out potential terrorist threats. There's not much drama in this story, as it's entirely told by talking heads - or, I should say, talking masks, as all of the interview subjects wear Halloween masks throughout their interviews, probably to protect their identities (though Sugar Land residents will probably be able to ID them all) and in part to give the film a weird, almost psychedelic and spooky atmosphere - a Stephen King nightmare come to documentary life. In the end, through closing credits, we learn more about Mark's fate. Props to Tariq for recognizing that he had about a half-hour of material here and for not making this film any longer than it needed to be.

One of the best Ozu films: Late Autumn

Yasujiro Ozu's Late Autumn (1960) has all the great Ozu elements: A smart and beautifully written screenplay (by Ozu and Kogo Nota, writing partner throughout their careers), subtle and careful direction, beautiful production and art direction - practically every interior scene is a work of art; if nothing else, watch some of this movie for the color-coordinations - and terrific acting, esp from the two frequent Ozu stars, Chishu Ryu, who appears in Ozu films over the course of his entire adult life, and Setsuko Hara, frequent female lead). This is by no means an action film; the plot unfolds quietly and deliberately - and over the course of 2 hours gives us a careful look into the lives and mores of a small group of characters: A group of 3 men, old friends who meet up at a memorial service for a friend who'd died 5 years back, and who begin a discussion about the widow and her 20-something daughter. In a somewhat comical, rueful manner the 3 old guys become matchmakers, seeking a suitable husband for the young daughter - who seems to claim that she will never leave her widowed mother - and trying to arrange for one of the guys (the Ryu character) to marry the widow (Hara). It looks as if this is headed toward a comic conclusion w/ multiple marriages and everyone happy, but it's much darker and more subtle than that, with various bruised egos,  arguments, estrangements, shame, and reconciliation along the way; in part, this is an examination of Japanese culture of its time, understated, feelings rarely expressed directly, everyone smiling and being polite even as they grit their teeth. In other ways, it's a universal story of love, devotion, loneliness, and the clash between generations - one of the finest scenes is the young office worker telling off the 3 old, meddling men. Like many Ozu films, this one ends on a plangent, sorrowful note that will surprise most viewers - one of his best works for sure.

A Netflix series about police interrogations, and a Japanese film by a little-known director

2 posts today, first, the British 3-part segment of the Netflix series, Criminal: United Kingdom; apparently this series is based on police interrogations of suspects, showing us how the team of police officers nail the cases, or don't, with some pretty lame attempts to build drama and relationships among the members of the team involved with the interrogation (usually 2 doing the interrogation and the other four in an observation room - though the team assembles during breaks and at the conclusion). The first 2 episodes were weak, in my opinion, in particular that it didn't seem that the interrogation drew out the key facts: In the first, the suspect pretty much incriminated himself after a long stretch of his saying nothing but "no comment"; in the second, it hardly took a genius to see the amateurish mistakes that the interrogator made. The 3rd episode was by far the best, as the team races the clock to get a truck driver, suspected for transporting immigrants into the country, to tell where he'd abandoned his truck and his human cargo, who may be freezing to death as the interrogation goes on. In part this episode is the strongest because there's so much ambiguity around the man under questioning, and also because there's a big surprise regarding one of the interrogators, prompted by an odd observation by the truck diver's attorney.

Second post follows on viewing of a 1937 Japanese film with the weird title of Humanity and Paper Balloons (don't ask), directed by Sadao Yamanaka; it was in fact his last film (he'd done many movies, mostly silent), as he died at age 28 in the war against Manchuria. It's by no means a great film (though at least one critic would disagree w/ that), but it does show the lost potential, who might well have risen along w/ his contemporaries Kurosawa and Uzo. This film is a little difficult to follow, especially at the outset, but centers on the lives of several characters in decrepit, crowded tenement in the Samurai era (18th or 19th century?). The main plot line follows a would-be Samurai who tries to get the support of a wealthy man for whom his father used to work but is continually rebuffed, driving him to drink; his best friend and immediate neighbor takes on the local criminal gang and tries to run how own gambling operation, with predictable results. The strength of the film is its depiction of horrible living conditions; it seems obvious that the powers that be would not allow a contemporary setting for this film - the misery and poverty had to be in the past, of course - but viewers today, and then no doubt, get the point.

A strong Netflix series based on pursuit and capture of a serial rapist that took place 2008-11

The Netflix 8-part series, Unbelievable, about the pursuit and capture of a serial rapist, is based closely on true events that took place in Colorado and Washington in 2008-11, fully revealed in reporting that put ProPublica  on the map and led to a Pulitzer and a Polk award and to a book (by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong). The TV series, developed by Susannah Grant (plus Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon) is a terrific account of the hunt for the rapist with special attention to the two lead detectives, played brilliantly by Merritt Wever and Toni Collette - too bad there's no likelihood of a 2nd season, as these to make a great team of opposite types (one cool and quiet and devout, the other tough and belligerant and profane). The strongest performance though is from the lesser known Kaitlyn Dever, as the first victim, Marie (whose real name has never to my knowledge been published). The series is in essence a police procedural, with many false leads that will keep viewers guessing and thinking, and it's also a profound indictment of the behavior of far too many police officers, skeptical about any report of sexual assault. A technical detail: Unlike most series this one includes no opening credits, and "thanks" to the ridiculous Netflix practice of cutting off credits at the end of view (and quickly jumping to the next episode, whether you want that or not) you have to look up the credits on your own if that matters to you. Quibble aside, it's a very strong series throughout and highlights an issue that is still troublesome and significant.

The surprising strengths of Ozu's Record of a Tenement Gentleman

Yasujiro Ozu has never been known for great film titles - in fact, many of his greatest films have abstract titles that (Late Spring, e.g.) that deliberately provide no useful information and make it really hard to identify from a list which films you've seen - but the title of this one - Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) completely baffles me: I literally can't figure out what it means, who's the gentleman, where's the tenement, what's the record? So putting the title aside, this is a good film for a # of reasons but not yet at the level of Ozu's greatest works (e.g., Tokyo Story - same actor in the lead, though, I think): the characters are not nearly as fully developed, the denouement is a little melodramatic, the editing and cinematography are a little shaky (he had not yet fully developed his famous "tatami mat" perspective), and the young boy was clearly unable to convey some of the emotions that the screenplay demanded. But, on that other hand, the story is quite straightforward and emotional: a man is followed home to his village by a young (maybe 5 years old?) boy who has become separated from his father; none of the villagers steps forward to house the boy, even temporarily, and a bitter and unfriendly widowed (war widow?) woman reluctantly takes on the responsibility. She's mean to the poor troubled child, who barely says a word through the whole film, though - spoiler alert, kinda - toward the end she has a change of heart and warms up to the child, at least a little. But then the boy's father shows up: He truly had lost the child in a crowd, and he's overjoyed to have found his son. Now the mean widow feels great remorse about her coldness and about the mean things she said to the boy, especially telling the child that his father had intentionally abandoned him. So the end is quite a kick, and unexpected. But the real strength of the film is not its story line but it's depiction of post-war Japan: Many establishment shots show us a ruined landscape and streets filled with rubble and demolished buildings. We get the sense that there are thousands, at least, of abandoned children - either orphaned in the war or victims of the complete social upheaval. The film concludes w/ some shots of a village square, where dozens of children (all of them boys, for some reason) play and horse around, and we get the sense of a complete social catastrophe: This boy's story is just one of many, maybe one of the few with a positive outcome. The film becomes, as we look back on it, almost a documentary drama, or at least a social commentary rather than a sentimental tear-jerker.

Season 3 of The Sopranos: As good as television can get

You can't really say enough about Season 3 of The Sopranos, which is about as good as television can get. By this point, David Chase and his team have firmly established the personalities and the milieu of all of the major characters, and it's in this season that the interactions reach their peak and the plot lines continue to accelerate, surprise, frighten, and at times amuse us. The actors are all now seemingly living in their characters - most will forever be known for their roles in this series - and the writing, directing, and acting are at their best - both in individual episodes and across the arc of the season. To mention just a few highlights: The first episode in which the FBI goes to great lengths to install a bug in the Soprano basement - Chase et al. have us on edge rooting for the FBI - get the hell out of there before Tony comes home! - and the ending of the episode is a comic masterpiece. Speaking of masterpieces, an episode toward the end, Pine Barrens, is probably the best single episode in the entire show, in that it shows a side of the players that had been implied but never so effectively dramatized: Their love for and loyalty to one another. The episode (Chris and Paulie try to dispose of a dead man, who seemingly springs back to life) is both exciting and hilarious at every step (much praise to Steve Buscemi for his direction). Similarly, the Tim Van Patten written/directed episodes that present the Tony's troubled and tempestuous relationship w/ the fellow Melfi patient Gloria are fantastic - we see her fragility and the danger she poses for Tony far more clearly than he does, and the conclusion of this story line is one of the great Soprano moments. There are also two fantastic story lines re Dr. Melfi: first of all her rape and the terrific episode in which she ponders what to tell Tony about her evident injuries; second, the intimate look at the Soprano marriage as Carmella joins Tony for some analysis sessions - this, too, culminating in her harrowing visit to another psychiatrist. Other examples abound (a personal favorite: the golf-course confrontation w/ Junior's cancer surgeon), but a final strength is how well things elements are lined up for the next season: Ralphie's continued emergence as a malevolent sadist, Paulie's resentment and his drift toward the NY family (plus his efforts to get his mother into an expensive nursing home - all these moments that show the emotional and sentimental side of these cold-blooded killers are amazing), the FBI's planting an agent to befriend and spy on Andrea, Silvio's arrest, Junior's recovery: The season ends with the weird spectacle of Junior singing a beautiful song of love lost at the young Jackie Aprile's wake, and with all of the fear and tension around the room, held in check for a moment but poised to explode.

Impossible to overpraise the first season of the French series A French Village

It's hard to overpraise the terrific French series A French Village (creators: Emmanuel Daucé, Frédéric Krivine, Philippe Triboit), at least based on the first (of nine!) seasons: A completely engrossing and often frightening drama that brings us into a small and seemingly typical village in rural France, not far from the Swiss border, at the outset of the Occupation (1940) and presumably in subsequent seasons taking us through the course of the War and its aftermath. The series is exciting and provocative throughout, as just about every relationship that develops w/in the village and between the villagers and the occupying German forces is nuanced and troublesom. It's easy to set here on the outside 8 decades later and think we'd be active in the resistance and would give the Germans hell and would protect the Jewish residents - but would we? It was so easy to be quiet, to try to get along, to believe that cooperation w/ the Germans was a way to make life better (for some). We see it all: the resistance, the collaborators, the profiteers, the ordinary citizens, the careerists - up and down the whole social strata, but without melodrama or overstatement and with fine delineation of character and development of some of the central characters over the course of the season, some for better some for worse. The first season is entirely watchable, even without any special knowledge about the early years of the Occupation in France, and the series is of course especially disturbing now in the U.S. as we witness the rise of right-wing fascism and hatred with no sense of where it will lead this country over the next few years. Who will collaborate? Who has already?

Mambety's final film would be great for high-school or college classes

The Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety's last work, the brief (42 minutes!) feature The Little Girl Who Sold The Sun (yes, the upper-case The is intentional - as what she's selling are copies of the daily newspaper The Sun) - is a close look at the street people of Dakar, their difficult lives, their painful rivalries, and their occasional instances of solidarity and affection. The eponymous young girl - perhaps about 10 years old - starts off begging for money to support her and her blind grandmother. While doing so - unsuccessfully - she observes a group of teenage boys selling copies of the newspaper on the street. The next day she sets off - with great difficulty, as she uses crutches because of what she calls a "bad knee" and gets copies of the paper on credit from a sympathetic distributor. Amazingly, a wealthy guy - he looks like a film star or athlete - buys the whole packet from her and gives her an enormous tip. As she sets about using this money for benevolent deeds in the community, the other vendors, jealous, set out to get her and to drive away he competition; one benevolent soul, a somewhat older and much more agile and fit young man, protects her. That's pretty much it. The characters are not fully developed and plot line is thin and we have to wonder - as DDM made this film as he was near a young death (lung cancer) if he hadn't planned something more grand and complex, like his two great (and only feature-length) films, Touki Bouki and Hyenas; nevertheless, what we have is a really good film that apparently used for the entire cast real street people from Dakar, so the movie has almost a documentary quality. I streamed this film from the excellent service, Kanopy, which is a service provided by a national consortium of libraries - and this film is appropriate for that site as it would be a great film for viewing and class discussion about a range of issues - poverty, colonialism, social relations - in many high schools or colleges.

A powerful documentary far more dramatic and sigmicant than its understated title: American Factory

The 2019 Netflix documentary American Factory (Julia Richert and Steven Bognar) is a fantastic look at a clash of cultures and how that affects the American workplace in the post-industrial era. The film is much better and more powerful than its understated title would suggest; it's full of drama, conflict, ideas, and just plain weirdness. In brief, the film depicts - with unusual full access (the factory owners obviously had no idea of the effect of this film on an American audience - the fate of a former GM assembly plant that closed about a decade ago in Dayton, Ohio. After years of stagnation and the kind of economic hardship in the community affected by the loss of thousands of unionized blue-collar jobs, a Chinese billionaire factory owner took over the abandoned plant and under the umbrella name Fuyao began hiring thousands of workers for an auto-glass manufacturing facility. What ensures is a tremendous cultural clash, as the Chinese ownership (and hundreds of Chinese workers consigned to this new factory) have completely different management styles and expectations. The pay is terrible, the workplace unsafe, the push to meet quotas unrealistic and even dangerous - and the Chinese can never comprehend why the American workers refuse to work OT and weekends. Things come to a boiling point when the American workers try to unionize, and the Chinese spend about a $1 million to block the effort. We see close up the near-enslavement of workers - particularly the Chinese workers sent to the U.S. and separated from their families, living her in incredibly Spartan poverty. The best part of the movie by far is the account of a visit to the HQ in China by a team of American workers, who are amazed and befuddled by everything they see in the Chinese workplace: the militaristic approach to forming workplace "teams," the paternalism, the bizarre (to us) worship of the founder/CEO and of the company itself, the lavish but strange entertainment at a New Year's celebration - all leaving us (as well as some, though not all, of the visiting workers) fully aware that this partnership is bound to fail. Near the end of the documentary, there's quite a kicker, which I won't divulge. This film should be required viewing in any program that looks at labor-management relations or at U.S.-China business partnerships - though you don't have to be a specialist to be caught up in the drama and pathos of this powerful film.

A high-school drama that touches on many important themes - all from the students' point of view

The second season (2019) of the Netflix series Elite (created by Carlos Montero and Darío Madrona) picks up where Season 1 ended as a fine teen drama with many plot strands and many important elements: class conflict, murder and a coverup, corruption at the highest level of Spanish government and business, teenage romance, homosexual love, cross-cultural conflict, and I could go on. In essence, the plot concerns an "elite" private high school in Madrid that accepts several scholarship students, with inevitable fights and romances and other entanglements between the rich students and their new, street-savvy classmates. In the 2nd season we follow the investigation of the killing of a popular female student - particularly interesting in that we know who killed her and we watch that character simmer with guilt and remorse. There are many plot twists and subplots - one of the better being the attempts of a scholarship student to hide her background (her mother is a janitor in the school) and try to pass herself off as wealthy. There are so many plot elements - much like a telenova series - that it can be hard to keep everything straight as you watch, which also keeps you paying close attention to everything that happens (no doubt it will be easier to follow if you're fluent in Spanish). Most of all, what's impressive and unusual about this series, is that it's almost entirely from the POV of the students; there are a few parents with supporting roles - notably the devout Muslim storekeeper whose loyal and studious daughter is drawn into the party life -but the adults are always at the periphery and could almost be written off, or out, with impunity. Apparently, a Season 3 is on the way - good, though I thought the loose plot strands left danging at the end of Season 2 were thin at best.

Where did Tony Soprano go to high school?

Where did Tony Soprano go to high school? There are a # of references to his high-school days throughout the span of The Sopranos, but David Chase et al. are surprisingly silent on the precise name/locale of the school. (There are some ambiguous and conflicting hints about the location of his mother's house - Nutley? Verona? - but it's not even clear that she owned the house when Tony was a teenager.) One visual clue, however, gives us the definitive answer: When Tony is at his mother's house going through a box of old possessions, he comes across his varsity letter and it's unmistakable: the maroon and white superimposed W - O of West Orange High School. (Season 3, episode 2, 32 minutes 19 seconds into the show)

Some incredible scenes in the Keaton silen film Our Hospitality

The Buster Keaton silent from 1923, Our Hospitality, recently restored and with a newly composed/recorded sound track, shows its age, of course - it's so quaint to see these broadly drawn characters bob and smirk and leap their way through a silent comedy, but it's still worth watching as a historic relic in film history and as a pretty amazing work of film production. The story, sketchy as it is, is based on the Hatfield-McCoy rivalry, with in this case Keaton as the youngest offspring of the McCay family marked for murder - we never know why nor does it matter - by the brothers of the Canfield family. This leads to some really funny scenes in which Keaton, unaware that he's a target, escapes from a few jams and culminates in an incredible chase sequence, involving an antique (movie set in 1810) train - how did they build that thing and get it to work? - and some special effects way ahead of their time as Keaton climbs a precipice and ends up in a rushing river; I really have no idea how they could have filmed some of this sequence w/out putting the actors at great risk. Keaton is not as well appreciated today as is his contemporary, Chaplin, but he deserves props in his own right: in a way, he's more athletic and more expressive than CC, although his character doesn't seem as sweet and vulnerable. One quibble w/ the movie: a little stray dog plays a big role, up to a point, but he's completely forgotten in the chase scene and the romantic conclusion. What happened to the pup?

A classic Western from Ford that should have been 30 minutes shorter

All things considered, I prefer to song. There's a lot to like, though, in John Ford's 1962 Western drama, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (based on a short story by a woman author I'd never heard of - who knew?), most notably the strong lead performance by 3 megastars: James Stewart as the principled lawyer who comes to town and refuses (at first) to resort to violence to settle disputes; John Wayne as the strongest guy in town, who has a grudging respect for the lawyer though their rivals in love; and Lee Marvin as the eponymous Liberty and the essence of an incorrigible bad dude outlaw. Any time that the drama centers on these 3 men and their rivalries and their ethos the movie is good, even great: some classic confrontations, shootouts, bar-room (or dining room) brawls, and a huge climactic night-time encounter in the town crossroads. But there are far too many long, languorous passages that attempt provide almost a comic background for the action - the goofy and feckless town marshal (Andy Devine), the goings-on in the kitchen of the town eatery, stuttering and alcoholic characters - and an ending that drags on for a good, or bad actually, 30 minutes after the big showdown wrapping up some loose plot points (the long section on the fight between farmers an cattlemen over statehood just weighs down the drama). As always with Ford, the exterior shots are beautiful - especially in this throwback b/w production - though the many scenes shot on sets today look stagey. And what about the famous song? It's not even the closing-credits theme song; must have been released after or independent of the movie, especially in that its narrative of events doesn't quite match that of the film.

Second season of Mindhunter may be even better than the first - a rarity!

Season 2 of the Netflix series Mindhunter is that rarity, as good as or even better than the intriguing Season 1. The first season, which aired a few years back, stayed I imagine pretty close to the nonfiction book on which it was based: We watch as a team of agents (Ford and Tench) introduce to the reluctant FBI the concept of building psychological profiles of particular kinds of criminals (in this case, serial killers) to help identify suspects; the agents are in the process of developing methods for predicting the type of person who might be behind a series of crimes - using interviews w/ convicted killers to get insight into the mind of likely suspects. This methodology represented a severe shift in criminology, which till then had been based only on physical evidence and witness accounts. IN the second season we move beyond the establishment of profiling (fewer interviews w/ convicted killers) and we see the application of the principle in relation to a major killing spree, the Atlanta child abductions in the 1980s. The FBI agents, Ford in particular, insist that their data reveals a certain profile of the killer; the forces on the ground will have none of this and seek only physical evidence. The profiling is particularly troublesome to Atlantans because Agent Ford is sure that the perpetrator must be a young black man - which on the surface looks and sounds like racism. Aside from the political battles and the complex, unfolding search for the likely killer, there's a good back story developing, as Agent Tench's young, troubled son is involved in a brutal killing of a child - a plot line that strains credibility a little but leads to some powerful scenes and really builds our sympathies for the ramrod-straight agent Tench. Another secondary plot line involving the love life of Wendy, the academic expert who's an outside consultant to the team, feels peripheral and forced, but that's a minor matter. Overall, the 9-part series will hold interest and attention throughout and promises more developments if there ever is to be a Season 3.

The surprisingly hilarious Romanian film 12:08 East of Bucharest

The Romanian film 12:08 East of Bucharest (2016, Cormeliu Porumboiu [had to look that one up]) is a dark and unexpectedly hilarious comedy about a single call-in talk show broadcast in a small city in Romania. The host of the show has selected for his topic an examination of the day that the totalitarian Communist government/police state was overthrown and the question - apparently quite controversial, at least in this film and this city - as to whether local activists held a demonstration before the overthrow or merely poured into the streets to join the throng after the overthrow. The show itself, though apparently on local TV, seems much more like the old days of public-access TV in the U.S., with extremely poor production and virtually no audience. The host, after much struggle in the first half of the movie to get assurances that his guests will show at the studio!, gets for his panel 2 guys: One is the supposed leader of the pre-overthrow demonstrations, a sad sack of a guy w/ major drinking and debt problems. As the show rolls along, various callers denounce the guy as an imposter and insist that the city square was empty the whole morning (in fact until after 12:08, the time of the capitulation); the guy keeps insisting that he led a dangerous demonstration, but hes pretty much crushed by the end of the broadcast. The other guest is an old curmudgeon who actually says very little but pretty much steals the show with his glowering and fidgeting (throughout the broadcast he seems to be folding notepaper into paper boats). At the end, nobody's any the wiser, and the film ends with a look at some of the pathetic  public housing in this city in the midst of a slushy winter storm.The message beneath the subtle comedy (and commentary) seems to be: Is life any better in a "free" country? Does it really matter who was the first to demonstrate for freedom? We get a sense that there are many old wounds and resentments, and this weird talk-show is something like a public airing of long-stranding grievances and jealousies - but to what end? Isn't it better to move on and look to the future?

Two notes on Yang's A Brighter Summer Day

A further note on Edward Yangs's A Brighter Summer Day (1991): The film commentary notes that Yang and his team developed lengthy and detailed biographies of each of the main characters - and there are dozens (+100 speaking parts in the movie), which leads me to think that this work was somewhat ahead of its time in many ways. If Yang were alive today, I suspect he might have tried to resurrect and re-imagine this complex, 4-hour movie as a TV miniseries, giving each character and each plot strand his or her due - and if he didn't do so w/ this movie we can only imagine that he would have thrived in the grand space awarded to filmmakers today, pretty much impossible in the early 90s, especially in Taiwan, with its just-emerging art-film culture. I also need to note two casting mistakes, in my view: the young woman who portrays Ming, the lead female character, never convinced me that she'd be the girlfriend of a gang leader and the enchanting beauty who lured young men into danger. (The woman who played Jade would have been better cast in the lead.) Second, the gang leader and Ming's boyfriend seemed small and puny and not the kind of charismatic figure needed for this role (plus the ridiculous sailors' suit he wears doesn't help nor does his not-tough name, Honey!).

Yang's great if challenging Taiwanese film A Brighter Summer Days

I broke w/ my convention - I usually post on the movies and shows I'm watching the day after I finish watching the film or series - but for this major film, A Brighter Summer Day (1991), I watched it twice, the second time with the excellent Criterion Channel commentary by Tony Rayns, as I really felt I had no grasp on the work after one viewing (spread out over several evenings). Overall, this is a terrific movie by the late Taiwanese director Edward Yang - an excellent examination of the lives of several teenagers in Taiwan in 1960, about 10 years after their families fled from mainland China and Mao's revolution and settled in Formosa. The despite its strengths, is incredible challenging for a # of reasons: first, it's 4 hours long! Second, there are, according to Rayns, more than 100 speaking parts. 3rd, the young men at the center of the film can be hard to distinguish from one another as they are always seen in their school uniforms (a pseudo-military outfit). Most of all, there's a lot of assumed background that very few Western viewers today will have any info about - and Rayns does fill us in well in his commentary. In essence there are 3 youth "gangs" in the film, each from a different social class; knowing that will help viewers follow the intricate plot. There's so much in this film, though, for better or worse: 3 gangs and their rivalries, 3 killings (at least), a story line about young love (Si'r and Ming are the central "couple" in the movie) and its fatal consequences, a story line about a film under production in a local studio, a story line about the interrogation by the Taiwanese police and its effect on a family, a story line about young boys who dream of success singing American pop songs (which they memorize phonetically even though they know no English; the film title is from an Elvis recording that the boys are studying), antagonism between native Formosans and the relocated mainland Chinese, a discipline issue in the school and a father's attempts to get his son (Si'r) transferred into a better program, family tensions between a near-broken father and the socially ambitious wife, class tensions within the school as a lonely but wealthy student stirs up antagonism, and I could go on. Some of the greatest scenes are filmed in a highly unusual manner, mostly in the dark (a great gang fight illuminated only by flashes of light) or dialog with the main speaker - Si'r often - offscreen; Yang does many scenes, however, with just a long take and a camera in fixed position, a style familiar from many classic Japanese films. Yang went on to direct the great film Yi Yi, which is more accessible than Bright Summer Day, but this one seems to have established him as a highly ambitious and intelligent filmmaker. As Rayns says in his commentary, this film is a something like an indie-art film done to epic proportions. Exactly right!

A challenging crime series well worth watching for its characters, plot, and setting: Trapped Season 2

Continuing from Season 1 with many of the same characters - notably the top police officer Andri and the local police chief Hnrika - but w/ a completely new plot line, Season 2 of the Icelandic saga Trapped is a series that will hold your interest and attention through all 10 episodes. Once again the plot focuses on a series of unexplained, grisly deaths in a small Icelandic town that is undergoing a huge economic upheaval, as a foreign conglomerate is building a vast power plant and mining operation - supported by local (and national) politicians but bitterly opposed by some of the local farmers. There are many strands to the story line, and some of these strands are red herrings; at times it's difficult to follow all the leads, especially for viewers, like most of us, unfamiliar w/ Icelandic nomenclature. But close attention will be rewarded, as the complex plot unfolds and the various layers - possible pollution from the power plant, possible bribery of public officials, inter-familiar warfare, tension between foreign workers (from Africa) and others, a homosexual relationship that endangers both men, bizarre behavior by Andri's daughter that makes her a target, kidnap of the Mayor by right-wing activists, a brother's botched attempt to murder his sister who is also the Minister of Industries and responsible for the power plant, plus others. Whew! The tension is always high and the characters are always credible, and even though a few of the plot elements don't quite make sense of close examination that series creator, Baltasar Kormakur, does a good job keeping us in suspense and guessing right up to the very tense dramatic conclusion: a somewhat challenging but always intriguing crime drama that's worth watching. Plus, there's probably no country in the world as photogenic as Iceland - worth watching for that alone!

An ambitious film from South Korea based on a Murakami story: Burning

Chang-Dong Lee is one of the many fine directors from South Korea (Oasis, Poetry) who hasn't by any means become a household name in the U.S. but who continues to writer and direct highly intelligent and engrossing movies, the latest of which is Burning (2018, avail on Netflix). I wouldn't say it's a great movie, but it has some great moments and scenes and is a puzzling, disturbing study in character. In brief the plot in involves a young man, son of a dirt-poor farmer living in the distant suburbs of Seoule,  who says he wants to be a writer and that he is working on a novel, though there's little evidence that he's really doing so. At the outset, he meets an attractive young woman who was a neighbor when they were children; she invites him to her apartment, where they have sex; she is obviously much more experienced and worldly than he is. She is about to leave for Africa - clearly, a vacation she cannot afford - and asks him to stop by daily to feed her cat. When she returns, she calls and asks him to pick her up at the airport, and she arrives accompanied by another Korean man, a little older, extremely wealthy, and in every sense a despicable character. The lead character - Jong-su - is obviously troubled and puzzled by the appearance of this rival. So to this point it appears we're looking at a love-triangle movie: Will the sad but likable man win? But gears shift. The young woman vanishes, and attempts to find her lead Jong-su down many strange pathways. The ending is a bit of a shock - I won't give it away - and I didn't quite understand all of the elements. In part this confusion and oddity comes about because this movie is an adaptation of a Murakami story, Barn Burning; Marukami always moves his narratives into strange and disturbing places, sometimes to great effect - but the effect wears a little thin in cinema, where everything looks "real" (whereas in fiction, we can believe more oddities and ambiguity because the images are all "in our minds"). There are beautiful moments throughout - the nighttime driving through the Korean countryside, the young woman's stone dancing, the views from her apartment of the crowded, thriving city, to name a few. That's probably enough to make the film worth watching, though the plot and its resolution will probably puzzle most viewers. [ See related post on Elliotsreading]

The surprisingly unconventional original Danish v of After the Wedding

Susanne Bier's Danish-language film After the Wedding (2006) has been remade in English w/ some major plot twists; the remake has gotten tepid reviews at best (as one would expect - these attempts to Anglicize and cash in on small budget "foreign"-language films never seem to work), but I went back to the original version last night - I'd seen it more than a decade ago and hardly remember it - and was struck by how good this film was in its original (all of us watching agreed, btw). In brief the story concerns a 40-something man (Mads Mikkelsen) devoted to his life's mission of running an orphanage in Mumbai (called Bombay in this film) who gets summoned (home) to Denmark at the request of a philanthropist who wants to make a major donation but wants to meet the head of the enterprise face to face first. The philanthropist (Rolf Lassgard) invites Mikkelsen to his daughter's wedding, and it turns out that Mikkelsen has had a relationship w/ Lassgard's wife (Sidse Babett Knudsen) - all three in epic performances. I won't give any of the plot points away except to say that there are many surprises and, unlike most movies full of arbitrary and manipulative twists and turns and coincidences, all of plot twists are credible within the plot and deepen our knowledge of the characters. Any attempt to predict where this movie is headed will derail - it seems at many points to be headed toward a romcom drama, but it's always a step ahead of us and it always seems to find a way to defy convention: props to Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen on the screenplay. I'd encourage anyone thinking about seeing the English-language remake to see this original version instead or at least in addition.