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.