A new film from Russia (!) that is sure to be considered a classic

 Who would expect a great film to be coming to us from  Russia of all places, not known for the excellence of its contemporary cinema, but here comes the (poorly titled) historical drama Beranpole (2019) and by any measure its a rare film that we can immediately call a classic. Set in Leningrad at the end of WWII (1945), it's at least in part a look at the complete disruption of Soviet society after the brutality and the losses of the war; people are pouring back into the city, but so many are wounded, physically and psychologically (or both), and the poverty and bleak conditions of a Russian winter permeate over moment of the film. Within this bleakness there are glimpses of beauty - notably the terrific designs of the crowded apartments with their colorful wall hangings and carpeting - yet everyone is bearing a terrible burden. The central (eponymous) character, played by the striking Viktoria Miroschnichenko (!), is caring for a young child entrusted to her by a woman she says was a comrade in arms during the war; the child suffers a bad fate, and when the child's mother - Vasilisa Perelygina - turns up there are many complications, none of which I will reveal - but will note a # of fantastic scenes: the clinic, the baths, Beanpole's first fit, sex in the car, fighting around a table (incredible camera work), the twirl scene, meet the parents - probably others as well: this film moves from one great, indelible moment to the next. Strangely, I heard that a reviewer compared this film w/ War and Peace, which I think is totally off the mark: Nothing about military strategy, not a glorification in any way of the military, no families of nobility, lots of disturbing moral dilemmas, and strangest of all, nothing that reflects well on the current state of affairs in Russia unless the message is "that was then, this is now." I don't know for sure how factual Beanpole is re post-war Russia and military life, but I read that it was based on reporting by Svetlana Alexievich, who won a Nobel Prize in literature for her nonfiction writing - the veracity only adds to the excellence of this film (Kanitemir Balagov, 29 years old, directed!). 

A movie worth missing: Midnight Sky

 Here's a movie that's worth missing: The overly familiar and pointedly ridiculous space odyssey (did we need another) the Midnight Sky, starring and directed by George Clooney, who ought to know better (stars directing themselves rarely works btw). GC plays the role of what appears to be the last man on earth: Some kind of unexplained radioactive disaster has killed most of the world's population and some survivors to try to endure in underground outposts (never explained nor depicted); GC is one of the few left behind, manning a radio outpost in the Arctic and dying of cancer (thus, expendable?). A space ship with an all-star crew is headed home after an unsuccessful attempt to explore a previously undiscovered moon of Jupiter that they thought could be a refuge for earthlings (you figure the chances!). Anyway, from that premise onward we endure a couple of ridiculous and improbable romances, rescue scenes, and space accidents, all of which look to be crabbed from previous space movies (e.g., Mars, Arrival for 2 recent much more engaging films) as Clooney gives us his best impersonation of Mandy Patinkin mumbling into his beard. I don't know what else to say about this movie except that it's not credible even for a moment and the central mystery of the plot - who is the 7-year-old girl left behind w/ Clooney? - should be clear to anyone who's actually trying to follow the plot of this film. 

A most promising film debut for director Talbot: The Last Black Man in SF

 The Joe Talbot debut feature, The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), has many great elements and moments, a film that's hard not to like even if many of the plot elements clearly preposterous and sometimes hard to follow. But no matter - you could say the film was worth watching for one of its laugh-out-loud moments alone (the bus stop scene in the Castro neighborhood; I'll give away no more). The plot involves two black men, best buddies, one of whom, Jimmie, has taken it on as his life's mission to buy and restore the beautiful Queen Anne-style mansion in which his family had lived for generations,  in the Fillmore district, once a black neighborhood now becoming gentrified. The efforts of the two men to take over possession of the house - getting rid of current tenants, entering as squatters, going through hoops to get ownership in their name - while highly unlikely do give us a picture of the pangs of gentrification, the struggle for good housing in a ridiculously over-priced environment - and along the way we see many SF neighborhoods seldom seen by visitors or even denizens, we see the struggles of the families of these two young men (Jimmie's family difficult and estranged; his friend (Mont)'s family loving and attentive (especially nice are the scenes w/ Mont's father who is blind) and we get a bit of social commentary on real-estate and banking scams and the housing market that makes some rich and others homeless. Jimmie and Mont also have some run-ins w/ a small group of neighborhood toughs - and much of the plot involves the efforts of Mont, an aspiring playwright, to create and stage a pop-up production centered on the history of the house that the two guys are rehabbing. In short, the film have a lot going for it, and you have to love it for its earnestness - a most-promising debut for co-writer and director Talbot. 

A terrific adaption of the August Wilson play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

 The George C. Wolfe (dir.)/Ruben Santiago-Hudson (screenplay) streaming v. of the August Wilson play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1982) is a terrifically engaging and highly dramatic show; I never saw the original play so I'm not sure how much this adaptation amended the original - aside from the obvious "opening up" by having the show open w/ Ma (Viola Davis) performing before an all-black audience in the deep South (1927) before the shift to Chicago where Ma is set for a recording session that will, all hope, introduce her work a more profitable, i.e., a white audience. Many things go wrong during this recording session, most of the because of Ma's irascible and irrational diva-behavior (she's a proud woman and steps warily into this new phase, but in the process she's nasty to just about everyone, often w/ good reason, as it's clear the two white characters - her agent and the recording-studio honcho - will exploit her work in any way that they can). Davis is great in the part, but the show-stealer is Chadwick Boseman, who died of cancer at 43 shortly after completing this project. Boseman, as a (relatively) young sideman in the band has some of the most powerful scenes you'll ever see in a stage (or film for that matter) production, providing throughout the humor, the drama, and the danger, as he goes through a range of emotions in second, from flippant to furious to maniacal in a moment. The film itself is a sad but all so true expose of the racism and exploitation in the early recording industry; it's scary at times - but not without its self-deprecatory humor, as the characters interact and develop over the course of one day's action. 

Steve McQueen's great anthology series on the West Indian community in London in the '80s

 High praise for Steve McQeen's groundbreaking series on Prime, Small Axe, a collection of 5 films (one true movie-length, 90 or so minutes, the other 4 clocking at about an hour, sort of a mini-movie or an episode), all of which depict the West Indies community in London in the 1980s, w/ an obvious emphasis on the injustices inflicted and the challenge of assimilation into or accommodation of the dominant white English political and cultural climate. Three of the 4 episodes (it's not an episodic series in any conventional sense as each episode stands on its own and there is no particular continuity of character or setting other than the overall principles) depict struggles w/ authority. The first episode, closest to a standalone movie, depicts the police harassment of a man who opens a restaurant in the community and whom the police suspect of harboring criminal and dealing in Rx; this episode, based on true events, led to a criminal indictment of about 10 people and long and controversial trial in a high-level and highly unsympathetic court (Americans will be reminded of the Chicago 7 trial). the 2nd episode is unique in the series, a simple story of a group of West Indians who turn their house into what today we'd call a popup nightclub - serving food and drinks, providing the music and the venue, and people show up for a long night of dancing and love; there's no real plot to this episode, and I have to say for me it was my least fave of the 5, though some reviewers have felt just the opposite. The 3rd episode was about a man who, as a child, saw his father wrongfully arrested and harassed, which led him to try to break the color barrier and join the London police force, to his father's dismay - again, based on actual people and events. The 4th is another that depicted in illegal arrest and harassment of a young man, an aspiring reggae singer, who was present at a riotous demonstration - a man who was about to turn his back on society but was persuaded by a cellmate to pursue his education, and he (Wheatle) has got on to a career and a prolific novelist (also based on real people and events!). The 5th and final episode, like its predecessor, puts for the message of the importance of education - in this case looking at the separate and unequal schools provided for students with learning disabilities, including many black students (and focused on 1) sent to one of these so-called schools because he was disruptive; a movement arose to get rid of these schools and provide real education and services for students with disabilities - based on a true issue and struggle (true in many locations and persistent today). All told this series is a great social documentary about a changing, evolving, struggling immigrant culture as seen through the daily lives and actions of a wide range of characters. It would be great to see other directors take on this anthology format, but I'm not holding my break on that. 

Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law starts off rough but improves as it moves along and has some surprisingly funny sequences

 Jim Jarmusch's 1986 film, Down by Law, at first looks as if it's going to be just a dark and unpleasant study of the lives of a few down and out people on the margins of the law in then-present-day New Orleans, but the film seems to grow and improve over its course and become not a dreary bit of nostalgia for the mud but, incredibly, a unique take on the genre of buddy/prison escape films (one of the characters even comments on the over-exposed genre). The principals are 3 guy - Zack, Jack, and Roberto (Bob), played by Tom Waits, John Lurie, and Roberto Benigni, on the heels of his international comedic success and the bringer of light and humor into this potentially nihilistic narrative. The 3 guys end up as prison cellmates and they plot an escape that they, against all odds and all probability but who cares, manage to accomplish. The look of the film, all shot on location in Louisiana, is an uncontested strength, but the developing relationship among the cellmates - as well as a glimpse at the underlife in the city and in the holding cells of the county prison - are what really drives the film. JJ is one of the true filmmakers working outside of the Hollywood system, and a film like this, low-budget and Spartan in design, shows how much can be accomplished outside of clutches of box-office gross and instant success. 

An excellent documentary on police corruption in Boston and the unjust imprisonment by an innocent man

 Remy Berkel's 2020 8-episode series, Trial 4, is a truly excellent documentary about the corruption of the Boston Police Department in the 1990s and how an innocent man, Sean Ellis, a 19-year-old black man w/ no arrest record, was charged with and convicted of the murder of a Boston drug detective, John J. Mulligan, who by all accounts abused the system and had many enemies. Despite the evident cronyism and outright illegality throughout the arrest, trial, and incarceration of Ellis - who spent 20 years in prison before his release and the opportunity to face a 4th trial for the shooting - the corrupt cops and the Suffolk County DA stood together (well documented at the time by the Globe) and persisted in hanging the collar on Ellis, whose crime was to be present at the wrong place at the wrong time (a 3 a.m. murder scene in Roslindale. Given his sentence of life without parole, he was headed toward dying in prison and would have were it not for the smart, selfless, and persistent efforts or his defense attorney, Rosemary Scappichio. Imprisonment of the innocent has become an all-too-familiar story, which has been treated well in other episodic and shows, such as Just Mercy and Rectified, but this series stands out for its scope (the case resonates across the political and journalistic landscape of Boston for 20 years), its focus on the central character, and most of all for the clear storytelling of Berkel and team who unravel the threads slowly and carefully and keep us well-informed throughout the 8 episodes despite the many jumps back and forth in time. To their credit, those who commented on the case for this documentary were by no means all sympathetic to Ellis and his plight. The Berkel team, however, included in each episode a list of the (many) whom they approached who declined to take part in the project. It's definitely a film worth viewing, in particular for those in the Boston area. 

The Top Ten Classic Films I Watched in 2020

 

The Top Ten (OK, it's 11) classic films I watched in 2020:

Day for Night

Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973) film is probably the best of all movies about the making of a movie; no other film gives as great a sense of what it’s like to direct a film and of the complex internal dramas that take place throughout the process of a shoot. 

Faces Places

The penultimate Agnes Varda film (2017) is a totally enjoyable and surprising documentary about her public-art project, in which she joins forces with a 33-year-old French graffiti artist who goes by JR. 

Fireman’s Ball 

These hapless, sexist firefighters can’t seem to get anything right, including fighting a fire, which I think was a brave thing for Milos Forman to dramatize in 1967, when any critique of uniformed officers came as close as possible to a critique of the Soviet control of the government; I believe most Czech viewers, though maybe not the Soviet censors, got the point.

Fox and His Friends

This 1976 film stands as probably Rainer Werner Fassbinder's first great work, groundbreaking in many ways and a film that established RWF as a master at staging and composition and as a multiple threat, director, writer, lead actor; in particular, the film was one of the first honest and non-exploitative films about gay culture.

Harakiri

Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 film is truly one of the great Samurai films of all time though it's not as well known or recognized, perhaps because overshadowed by Kurosawa’s work in the same genre; the film engages viewers right from the start as the first half hour or so is among the most powerful sequences in Japanese film.

In the Mood for Love

Writer-director Wong Kar-Wai's film from 2000 is a sad and strange tale of a man and a woman, each in an unhappy and faithless marriage, who meet and fall in love but find it impossible to leave their marriages begin a new life with each other, which may remind viewers of the great British film Brief Encounter.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

The man above suspicion in Elio Petri’s from from 1970, a police chief who commits a murder and flaunts authority is played by Gian Maria Volonte, who he gives a great performance: cruel, brutal, and scary, especially in his rants against “political” prisoners (i.e., anarchists, Marxists, et al.), an outburst that seems eerily contemporary. 

Of Time and the City 

Terence Davies's documentary from 2008 is a personal recollection and evocation of his childhood in Liverpool (in the postwar years, the 50s and 60s), a moving and sometimes frightening testament to the hardships of poverty then and now and a testament to what Davies calls the English propensity for the dismal. 

Shame 

Ingmar Bergman's great film from 1968 responded to the critiques of his beautiful chamber drama for being remote from the issues that were rocking the world; in this film Bergman takes on some of his typical material, the strains and break-up of a marriage, and plays out the drama in the context of war and revolution. 

World of Apu

Satyajit Rays the conclusion of his Apu trilogy not only lives up to its reputation as a classic in world cinema — it may even go beyond its reputation, as it looks better, more original, more mysterious today than it would have in 1959, with so many beautiful and strange settings in Calcutta and in rural India that now feel like messages from time capsule. 

Young Torless

Volker Schlondorff's debut film, from 1966, about hazing and abuse in a boarding school, is of course painful to watch, but it's not unrelieved or gratuitous pain and its message, articulated by Torless in a passionate speech in which he attacks those who are indifferent and feckless or cowardly in the face of abuse and exploitation, resonates today, perhaps even more than it would have 50 years ago.

The Top Ten returning or classic miniseries I watched in 2020

 The Top Ten returning or classic miniseries I watched in 2020 

Babylon Berlin 

This series emulates The Crown, as we can only wonder at the amount of money and the creative energy to replicate Berlin in 1929 down to the smallest detail, but in other ways this is its own series entirely, particularly in Season 3, as the Communists face off against the National Socialist Party.

Berlin Alexanderplatz 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 13-part series was ground-breaking in 1980 and has been hugely influential in charting the course for long-form, character-driven dramas such as The Sopranos, The Wire, House of Cards - the list could go on. 

The Crown

I will join in the universal praise for Season 4 of Peter Morgan’s monumental series, which deserves commendation on every level and aspect, starting perhaps with the spare-no-expense sets and settings for the royal family, all reconstructed and resurrected it seems in perfect period detail.

Fauda 

Like its predecessors, Season 3 of this Israeli series about team of agents assigned to undercover, anti-terrorism work against radical Islamists and Palestinian activists is as tense and gripping as anything on TV or streaming, start to finish - and of course it leaves the door open to a 4th season. 

Last Chance U 

Football is the vehicle but the show itself, which concluded this year with Season 5, is about so much more than football; it’s about communities, leadership, poverty, inequity, and the “collision of forces” inevitable in any high-pressure sports enterprise that is part of an academic setting. 

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Season 3 of this series was a definite step up from Season 2, which seemed to drift away from what gives the series its strength and its life: Rachel Brosnahan’s portrayal of the eponymous rising-star standup comedian.

Ozark 

The 3rd season continues with the great storytelling, writing, and ensemble acting (Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Julia Garner) of the first 2 seasons, as we watch the Byrde family sink ever deeper into world of money laundering, corrupt gambling, the heroin trade, and an outright war between two Mexican cartels. 

Rectify 

This highly intelligent and moving socio-drama about a man released from prison after 20 years on death row, which never really found its audience, was not only a personal drama focusing on the now severely traumatized man but it was also a family drama, a legal thriller, and, to a lesser extent, an issue film about the rights of prisoners and of ex-prisoners trying to make the best of what's left of their lives post-incarceration.

Schitt’s Creek 

There’s no doubt that this excellent series, which is both hilarious and completely engaging, is one of the few comedy-miniseries of our time in which the show gets better with each passing season and ended, this year with Season 6, on the right note at the right time.

Succession

As we continue to watch the members of the Roy family engage in a dynastic fight to control their corporate enterprise and in Oedipal struggles to unseat or deracinate the family patriarch, the strengths remain the great ensemble performances, with every cast member in and out of the family holding up the standard set by the occasionally hilarious and demanding script.

The Top Ten (new) streaming miniseries I watched in 2020

 The Top Ten (new) streaming miniseries I watched in 2020:

Derry Girls 

This series for Ireland series stands simply as one of the funniest and most endearing comedies streaming today.

The Eddy

This series about a jazz nightclub club is a study in character and in group interaction, the development over time of life/work/family relationships that bind the lead characters to one another, and an homage to the ex-pat jazz scene still alive in Paris.

Giri/Haji

This British-Japanese co-production has some eye-closing scenes of violence and many shootouts – plus some surprisingly tender and thoughtful scenes, including a final episode with one of the most unusual surreal sequences I’ve ever seen in a crime show.

The Last Dance

This isn’t a series for basketball fans only; all viewers can watch with amazement and wonder at Michael Jordan’s dominant skills in every facet of the game, physical and mental. 

Lenox Hill

This series should be on everyone's list, a terrific documentary that follows over the course of a year or so the professional (and personal) lives of four doctors (2 brain surgeons, 1 ER doc, 1 (pregnant) OB-GYN doc) in the Manhattan hospital.

The Queen’s Gambit 

This highly acclaimed series is well worth watching regardless of your knowledge of or even interest in chess, in particular for Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance in the lead role as a chess prodigy with many troubles in her life. 

The Spy 

This British series is another in the long run of high-quality suspenseful espionage shows, though this one has a particular plaudit: The often hard-to-believe series of events is in fact based closely on an actual case of Israeli espionage.

Unorthodox 

This popular series depicts the bravery and the struggle of the 19-year-old Etsy Shapiro (Shira Haas), who flees from her ultra-orthodox community in Brooklyn to seek freedom and a new life in, of all places, Berlin. 

Waco

This series provides a surprisingly thoughtful and multifaceted re-creation of the horrendous 1993 ATF/FBI raid on the Branch Davidian complex - as seen from perspectives both inside and outside of the complex under siege. 

Who Killed Malcolm X?

This under-the-radar series presents a taut account of the 1965 assassination of the  black leader, the shoddy if not corrupt NY police investigation of the killings, the imprisonment for 20 years of 2 men who had nothing to do with the killings, and the suspicious indifference of the police and the FBI regarding the most likely assassin.

Note: And I will add one more that I watched after compiling this list: Trial 4, about the unjust imprisonment of a Boston man convicted of the murder of a Boston police detective. 

The Top Ten (new) movies I saw in 2020

 In a year of much screen time, here are the Top Ten (new) movies I saw in 2020:

1917 

Sam Mendes's WWI movie came out of nowhere - had he ever in his long career done a movie so daring and innovative? - and will astonish and engage any viewer, no matter how many war movies you've seen, or missed. 

23 hours to Kill 

You would think that, eventually Jerry Seinfeld would run out of material, as he’s made his long and brilliant career based on commentary about the minutia of daily life, but his hour-long comedy special on Netflix shows that he continue to work miracles. 

The 40-Year-Old Version

When I'd first heard about this Netflix film (written, directed, starring playwright Radha Blank) I thought, despite strong reviews, that this would be a film for which lI would not be the ideal audience; all the more props to the amazing R Blank in that I was totally captivated, entertained, and moved by her really intelligent and imaginative film.

 Ali Wong: Hard-Knock Wife 

This spirited comedy special is terrific and memorable not only for Wong’s fantastically energetic performance and her terrific comic timing but also for the range of her materials, which includes marriage equality, breast-feeding, c-sections, universal paid maternity leave and, on the lower end of the spectrum, fart jokes.

Dick Johnson is Dead

Kristen Johnson's funny, original, and moving documentary about the last years of her father's life has many surprises and somehow manages to avoid the lachrymose sensibility that pervades many such projects. 

The Farewell 

Lulu Wang's film, with a great lead performance by rising star Awkwafina as a 20-something Chinese-American would-be writer in NYC, is a movie full of multiple culture-clashes and generational clashes, family dramas and mini-dramas, and some hilarious and riotous segments.

Mank

This David Fincher (dir.) & his (late) father Jack Fincher (screenplay) tells of Herbert Mankiewicz, a troubled, alcoholic, charming roundtable drinking buddy and Hollywood wash-up until he got tabbed by the 24-year-old Orson Welles to write the screenplay that would become Citizen Kane.

Nanette

Hannah Gadsby’s hour-long live-from-Sydney comic stand-up show is, at the end, a knockout —  a most unusual comic gig that mixes humor – (much of it about Gadsby’s coming out as a Lesbian in her mid-30s) – with some unusual comic riffs; who’d have thought you could work into a standup show a long and hilarious series of riffs on art history?

Pain and Glory 

Pedro Almodovar’s film is a rich and complex narrative of a type that we don’t see often today, at least in films from the U.S.: a story about a 60-something film director at a point of crisis in his life and his career

Young Ahmed

The Dardennes brothers’ latest film is a bit of a break for them: same territory and milieu (the industrial territories of Belgium and northern France) but focused on a teenager who has become absorbed in a conservative Muslim mosque whose young and charismatic leader has seemingly pushed this vulnerable young man to criminal extremes. 

And a special note to 3 excellent streaming versions of three plays: the impossible to overpraise Broadway musical Hamilton; the Bridge Theatre (London) production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the most exciting and imaginative Shakespeare productions I’ve ever seen; and the Met Opera live streaming broadcast of Porgy & Bess. 

The beautiful and mysterious story in Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love

Writer-director Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood For Love (2000) is a sad and strange tale of a man and a woman, each in an unhappy and faithless marriage, who meet and fall in love but find it impossible to leave their marriages begin a new life with each other. It's something of an Asian version of the British Brief Encounter (thus I was not surprised to see the Criterion linked these two films as one of their "double features"). It's a mysterious and moving film throughout: the man (Tony Leung) and the woman (Maggie Cheung) meet when they rent adjacent apartments (their apartments are essentially rooms within the same household - the film is set in the 1960s, when Honk Kong was obviously not prosperous and housing was a challenge). Both learn that their spouses in unfaithful, and the 2 (weirdly named Chow and Chan) begin what starts as a friendship but gradually builds into a love relationship - though it's not clear whether had sex (one would suppose so, but the film is oddly or perhaps intentionally discrete on that point). Eventually, their lives part and we see them in loneliness and sorrow, apart, in late life. There are many beautiful scenes and moments throughout the film, the mysterious ending in particular and also their break-up "rehearsals," which are quite a surprise (I won't give it away). The score is strange, including what seems to be a Latin samba selection and some classical motifs. The camerawork, with many slow panning shots, is great, especially the outdoor scenes in the rain and the crowded adjacent apartments, w/ all kinds of background noise and chaos as the 2 lovers try to find a bit of solitude and privacy - these scenes shot like a Wiseman documentary. All told, an intelligent, deeply sad story of two who meet at the wrong time, the wrong place. 

A terrific biopic about the making of Citizen Kane and Hollywood in the studio era

 The David Fincher (dir.) & Jack Fincher (screenplay) biopic, Mank, about the Herbert Mankiewicz, troubled, alcoholic, charming roundtable drinking buddy and Hollywood wash-up until he got tabbed by the 24-year-old Orson Welles to write a screenplay that would become Citizen Kane and which popular lore had attributed almost entirely to Welles until later scholars and critics (notably Pauline Kael I think) set the record straight at gave the late Mank his due. The film is a little hard to follow at first, as many characters are quickly introduced and the plot line, particularly as it involves a 1934 California gubernatorial election, is not widely known and seemed to me a little obscure and confusing. But the main outline of the story is quite well known, as least to those likely to watch this film: the creation of a film masterpiece about a titan of the publishing/newspaper industry who was brought down by his own folly, in particular by his using the newspaper resources to push the performing career of his much young paramour - and the two characters were to closely modeled on WR Hearst and Marion Davies that the Mank's career if not his life was on the line. Throughout, J Fincher's writing is sharp and witty - a real challenge for a screenwriter, to outdo the legendary screenwriter/wit who is us subject, and the film has a terrific look start to finish. Daringly, D Fincher made the film to look like a 1940s movie, in b/w, with scene intercuts using the hideous Courier typeface that amazingly is still in use for screenplays if nothing else and filming some of the outdoor sequences at the desert retreat - perhaps using infrared techniques? - so that the background looked like the painted backdrops used in a lot of low-budget films of the era. The team even used the sprocket marks in the upper right corners once used to alert projectionists about an impending reel change! There are some terrific scenes throughout: a great nightclub sequences on election night, a banquet in Hearst's San Simeon at which Man (Gary Oldman) embarks on a weird, drunken monologue, Welles throws a tantrum, and others. It helps to know Cit Kane if you're going to watch this film, but even w/out that as a backdrop this is smart and I think accurate re-creation of life in Hollywood in the days of the studio bosses and actors/writers/directors working under contract, swimming in dough, churning out ideas, and often drinking themselves to death. 

Incredible beauty and shocking brutality co-exist in Terence Davies's Scottish melodrama, Sunset Song

 Terence Davies's Sunset Song (2015), based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, has the classic beauty of over Davies films, in this case to the extreme, with its many wide-screen shots of the Scottish landscape across the seasons and in various forms of inclement weather known well to anyone who's lived in or even visited Scotland - plus some extraordinary interior of the farm house and the outbuildings on a Scottish one-family planting and dairy operation, scenes with lighting that can only remind your of a Vermeer (props to Michael McDonald for cinematography) - all this and a pretty good melodrama of a plot, with amazing scenes of life throughout the farming community - wedding celebration, funeral services - as well as some scenes of almost unbearable tension (getting the horses into the barn during a midnight thunderstorm) & brutality (see for yourself). The story line, w/out spoilers, involves a few years in the life of a young woman, Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn), as she navigates family tensions in their overcrowded farmhouse dominated by the brute of a father, leading to shocking tragic deaths and ultimately her independence and then marriage to a seemingly benevolent young man from the village obvious in awe of her poise and beauty and then, as w/ SO many British films, the war intrudes and her husband is changed in dramatic (and to be honest not entirely credible) ways that threaten her life and her child's. The plot carries us along nicely, and that's all that we need to otherwise enjoy this film for its capacity to capture both the natural beauty of the Scottish lands and the look and feel of the hard life of the small farmer - the film set ca 1915 but maybe the same story could hold today. One drawback: for most American viewers the Scottish language or accent will make this feel like a film in a foreign language; some may opt for closed caption, though we decided to decipher as best we could and not intrude on the beauty of the imagery.  

Why The World of Apu is a classic among world cinema

 Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu (Apur Sanar, 1959), the conclusion of his Apu trilogy (and based on the novel Aparajito, by Bibhutibhashan Bandopodhyay) not only lives up to its reputation as a classic in world cinema, it may even go beyond its reputation, as it looks better, more original, more mysterious than it probably did back in the 1950s, as now its views of Calcutta look like time capsules, a view of another world, whereas the scenes of rural India (the slow boat ride along a winding river to the wedding site, scenes late in the film on the mountainous coal-mining region of what I think is Bengal, in winter) look even more devastatingly beautiful in their b/w imagery, which adds a sense of distance and classic taste to films of its era. The story line - young man (Apu Roy, played by great, expressive Soumitra Chatterjee, who died last week btw) leaves college because he can't afford the fees and sets off on his own, with dreams of becoming a great writer - living in a rundown, dismal apartment, his clothes in tatters, and the landlord threatening him w/ eviction - yet he has an optimistic, survivor's spirit and he looks for work (a devastating part of the film, as we see the conditions in which others, w/out his formal education, are forced to work) and carouses w/ his friend Balu as they share their dreams and optimism. The 2 guys seem entirely contemporary - and a throwback to many other great works about artistic and amorous dreams crashing against reality: think La Boheme, or Sentimental Education, or Great Expectations to name 3. Apu's life takes some dramatic twists and turns, which I will not divulge, as he experiences joy and exhilaration, young love and aspiration (with the beautiful Sharmila Tagore as his wife Aparna), tragedy, depression, and at least partial recovery and reconciliation. There are so many beautiful scenes and moments, but of particular beauty are the many shots of trains criss-crossing the smog-glutted outskirts of Calcutta as well as Aparna's arrival at Apu's dwelling, in particular the long take of her tearfully peering through a threadbare, tattered curtain her new surroundings. Also notable is the haunting score by the then little-known (in the West) Ravi Shankar. 

Joining the chorus of universal praise for The Crown (season 4)

 I will join in the praise of Season 4 of Peter Morgan's monumental series, The Crown. The series deserves commendation on every level and aspect, starting perhaps w/ the look of the spare-no-expense sets and settings for the royal family, all reconstructed and resurrected it seems in perfect period detail, both big (the airplanes, the cars, the equestrian stuff and hunting) and small (the many object d'art and portraiture in every interior). The series is of course centered on the disintegrating relationship between Charles and Diana w/ the side story being the tension between Thatcher and just about every else during her ten year reign of austerity; several of the episodes concern moments in British history in the 1980s not well known to American viewers - the disappearance of Thatcher's son during an African road rally, an intruder in Buckingham Palace - others are much better known, e.g., the Falklands War, the role of the UK in re apartheid. The lead actors are all terrific, perfectly cast and totally credible in their roles, with Olivia Colman at the top but also standouts for a # of others whom I have to look up: Josh O'Connor as Charles, Emma Corrin as Diana, Tobias Menzies as Prince Phillip, Erin Dohherty as Princess Anne, and Helena Bojnham Carter as Princess Margaret (and note that all of the minor roles are equally well cast and played). Highest praise to Morgan, as the writing (and direction for that matter) is incredibly smart, as well are constantly surprised at the twists and turns of the dialog and feel both sympathy and loathing, at various moments and degrees, for all of the royals, even Charles: How can we not pity him, even when he's at his most brutal, when we see the family he came from, the complete and total lack of affection? he's perfectly cast in this series, but miscast in life. 

A look at the China that tourists never see

 Chinese director Jia Zhangke's debut film, Xiao Wu (1997) is a curiosity, worth watching today for its up-close look at everyday life in China in the late 20th century, a life and setting that American tourists never see, and for the sheer audacity of a film a crime and dissolution among China's youth - all on what must have been an extremely limited budget. All actors in the film were nonprofessionals, working out their characters and the milieu as the project progressed; apparently the film was shot entirely w/ 16mm handheld cameras, and it looks like it, too - though that adds the the sense of place. The story line such as it is in valves the eponymous Xiao Wu, a young man who makes a pretty good living as a pickpocket working the streets and shops in an industrial wasteland of a city on the distant outskirts of Beijing. He doesn't look like much of a thief or a threat - clean-cut, always wearing a red sweater, wonky thick eyeglasses. There's some pressure from family and friends pushing him to go straight and enter a dubious though maybe ominous business in wholesaling cigarettes. All of this is just a means to give us a portrayal of life in China, far from what the authorities or the tourist industry would have liked us to see - maybe that's still true: run-down building and apartments, projects left unfinished, terrible hygiene, prostitutes running a slick business, ineffective policing, everyone chasing money, and not a thought or a moment about China or ideology - although at the end there are hints of building a new urban China to welcome the annexation of Hong Kong. 

A terrific film that uses original and documentary footage to examine the life and death of a powerful Italian leader

 Francesco Rosi's The Mattei Affair (1972) is what today we'd call a "docudrama," a retelling of the life of a man little-known to Americans today, or ever, who was entrusted toward the end of WW2 with the management of the oil reserves of Italy and over the next 20 years or so built the Italian oil conglomerate into a hugely powerful enterprise, broad in scope. Amazingly, in the process of his doing so he seems to have managed his personal integrity - no bribes, no obvious corruption, a relatively Spartan lifestyle (except for his private jet - which he makes a good case that he needs for his constant international travel), and an insistence throughout his career that the oil belongs to the people of Italy and he will do all he can to enrich his country, not himself. Well, of course, in his two decades of making deals for Italian oil reserves he makes many enemies (in particular, the U.S., which tried to undercut him with sales to the oil conglomerates, Standard Oil et al. - one of the great scenes in the film is Mattei's confrontation with a nasty American oil baron who says he won't deal with an "oil salesman"). Mattei is played brilliantly, at an extremely high energy level, by the great Jean Marie Volonte (best known to us as the police chief in Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion). Another one of the best scenes has Mattei speaking to a huge, adoring crowd in Sicily - and you have to wonder in that scene if he had or could have had political ambitions. As it happens, he died in a crash of his private jet in 1962: the scene of his plane crash opens the film, and then we go back 20 years and gradually, as Rosi builds the case that the crash was an act of sabotage. Although no foul play was detected at the time (cover-up?), an investigative team (not sure if they were journalists or filmmakers) began a new investigation in about 1970 - when one of the investigators, in Sicily, vanished and has never been seen since. It was unclear to me whether Rosins used any documentary footage (a check of Wikipedia shows that he did include scenes of himself investigating the death of his friend/colleague) but, either way, it's a powerful film by a truly courageous documentary filmmaker.

The Losey-Pinter 1967 film, Accident, is well crafted in all respects except that the leading characters are loathsome

 The 2nd of the Losey-Pinter projects - Accident (1967) - available on Criterion, is less ominous and peculiar than the first collaboration, The Servant, with it's odd camera angles and the menacing undertone of moral corruption and psychological torment. Accident is a more straightforward socio-drama and it feels much more cinematic and less like that film adaptation of a stage play. Briefly, the plot consists 2 Oxford "dons," close pals apparently, who find themselves in a deadly rivalry for the affections of a student, who herself is something of an exotic femme fatale (and who, by the way, never utter a word about their work, their ideas, or their reading). It's also a bit of a class-relations tragedy, although tempered in that the dons, or at least one of them, seems pretty damn aristo (maybe psueudo aristo, but anyway wealthy) himself. There are a few high-tension scenes, well crafted by screenwriter par excellence Pinter and well managed by the great camera work of director Losey. All that said, both films but especially this one, are headed by morally corrupt and unlikable male characters that by the end you just (figuratively) shrug and say "a plague on both your houses." Nice that the film opens with the eponymous accident, in which the young woman walks, or at least stumbles, away and her young boyfriend apparently dies - and then Pinter jumps back in time to the onset of the web of attractions and relationships and we never learn precisely what happened in the accident until the end - which, by the way, is framed by a weird and provocative closing sequence. 

A good example of Pinter's dramatic style in Losey's The Servant

 The Joseph Losey film The Servant (1963), with screenplay by Harold Pinter (based on a 1948 novel by Robin Maugham - about whom I know nothing) bears all the markings of Pinter's style as a playwright (I assume this was first a stage play?) - dialogue that's enigmatic, concise, spoken obliquely so that we have a sense that none of the characters - usually only two on stage/screen at any time - even understands what's being said. One (of the many) strange scenes takes place at a restaurant where two of the (4) main characters are having dinner - but we here more from the adjacent tables than from the principals (all of the "overheard" conversations are bleak, including a pair of Anglican priests sniping at each other and an unhappy couple, with Pinter taking a cameo role here). The essential plot: A young man, Tony (James Fox) allegedly back in England after a (allegedly) sojourn in either Africa, Brazil, or India (completely fabricated) hires a "manservant," Barrett (Dick Bogarde). The 2 have a strained and bitter relationship, with Barrett at first entirely buttoned down and subservient, but gradually we see Barrett plotting to take control of his life and of the household, bringing in his girlfriend (whom he says is his sister) to seduce Tony, break apart his engagement - which leads to Tony's firing of Barrett and to further complications. the level of tension and of mystery is high throughout with some really imaginative camera work (many mirror shots and staircase shots). One would assume that Pinter cut the novel to shreds in his adaptation for stage/screen; the film, despite its strengths, could have used some trimming during the final segments, as Barrett and Tony become buddies and accomplices (a strange implied sexuality to their time as roommates) in which the scenes become more crowded and dissolute and, at the end, as the two men become bitter rivals once again but with the tables turned so to speak; we get it - and could have gotten it 15 minutes sooner. 

Kristen Johnson's funny, moving documentary about the last years of her father's life - with many surprises

 Kristen Johnson's funny, original, and moving documentary about the last years of her father's life, Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020, Netflix) has many surprises and somehow manages to avoid the lachrymose sensibility that pervades many such projects. This one, in the direct line of Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell, is part of an emerging genre that we might call auto-film, much like the movement toward auto fiction (from Proust to Knausgaard) that has become a dominant trend in literary fiction. KJ's film, made with the complete cooperation of her dad, a successful Seattle-based psychiatrist, widowed for some time (his wife died of Alzheimer's complications) is, as the documentary opens, feeling the first painful signs of the onset of dementia, and his daughter, of whom he's proud, asks if he'd be willing to be the subject of this project (in one of the many touching moments in this film, KJ shows the only video she has of her mother's last years, and she regrets she had so little). All viewers will be struck by how kind, pleasant, and intelligent Dick Johnson is - a well-adjusted man, w/ friends and with patients who seem to care deeply for him. This film is the antithesis of a "Mommy Dearest" project; the family is well-adjusted, comfortably established but by no means wealthy, loving, and caring - what a surprise! The arc of the story entails director KJ helping Dick J relinquish his profession, his independence, and his beautiful Seattle house and re-locate to NYC where he is sharing quarters with his daughter (and his, thankfully, near his beloved grandchildren). He never resists her plan, realizing it's for the best for all, but there's much sorrow and struggle as he gives up the life he knows. What keeps the film buoyant are the many comic "pranks" that KJ creates and stages, all of which dramatize Dick J's calamitous death, e.g., a window AC falls on his head as he walks down a NYC street, or a construction worker carrying a beam turns thoughtlessly and the beam smacks Dick to the ground. But he always "rises," to the point that we become inured to his death - though KJ has some surprises for us right up to the end of this film, an ending that is powerful and a beautiful summary of her father's life and of her art. 

A series worth watching regardless of your interest (of lack of interest) in chess: The Queen's Gambit

 After a bit of a rough start - the first episode seemed heavy-handed - the Netflix series The Queen's Gambit (2020; by Scott Frank and Alan Scott, based on the novel by Walter Tevis) really picks up w/ episode two. The series begins in an orphanage where the young Beth Harmon first views a chessboard (the janitor plays the board in the basement of the orphanage) and is immediately recognize as a gifted player; in the 2nd episode we see Beth, newly adopted by a well-off couple w/ a load of problems and issues, as a high-school student, and she really picks up, with Anya Taylor-Joy in the role, a young actor clearly destined for great things. She's terrific, in a demanding and complex role, through her 6 episodes, as we follow Beth's career from local tournaments to international competitions - and along the way to many personal struggles and awakenings and to some surprising plot twists, which never feel gimmicky or improbable. The conclusion in particular is dramatic and completely satisfying, intellectually and emotionally - a rarity for a dramatic miniseries, most of which abandon the need for resolution as they try to keep the doors open for a sequel. It may sounds like damning w/ faint praise, but the chess matches, even for novices (maybe especially for novices) are the most exciting moments in the series - but it's a tribute to the writers and directors how well they stage these constrictive scenes. There are a slew of secondary characters, all of whom contribute to the plot line and the development and deepening of Beth's characters. All told, it's a series well worth watching regardless of your knowledge of or even interest in chess. 

Blind Alley is a curiosity from the 1930s but still kind of fun to watch, esp for the dream sequences

 Charles Vidor's 1939 film, Blind Alley, is today more of a curiosity thank a great film - I was led to it because the Criterion Channel promoted it as part of its look at cinema and psychology - but that said it's a kick to watch and the film is only about 70 minutes long: Imagine that! The film is adapted from a stage play and it looks it, though I have to say the play was probably pretty good, in the Agatha Christie mold, perhaps. Basic plot? We begin with a professor leading a college (all male, all white) class on psychology; he just begins to discuss abnormal behavior and the fundamentals of Freudian psy - not nearly as well known then as today - when the bell rings, class dismissed. As it happens, that very night!, when the prof goes home to a house full of weekend guests and his young son, a convicted "killer" breaks out of jail, holding the warden hostage (it makes no sense that they kill the warden, btw), and they are looking for a hangout and head for the prof''s house, where they hold the whole household hostage while awaiting a boat pickup for a getaway. The plot turns own the prof's ability to "analyze" the killer and unbury the childhood memories that have tormented him for his whole life and have make him the killer that he is. The premise is intriguing, and the development of the plot, while far from probable and a complete distortion of the process of analysis, but who really cares? It's kind of fun, intense at times, and it features a few highly imaginative dream sequences that probably inspired later such passages in Hitchcock and others. 

The South Korean Joint Security Area is a fast paced thriller with lots of surprises - though at times it's difficult to follow

 Park Chan-wook's highly successful South Korean film Joint Security Area (2000), based on a novel (not on "true events"), is at first a challenge for American viewers who may not be familiar w/ some of the protocols and procedures regarding the military standoff at the DMZ between the 2 Koreas - in fact, it may help to story the film (on the great Criterion Channel) about 30 minutes in and rewatch those to make sure you have the principals and principles clear in your mind. From that point on, the movie is dramatic and exciting - centering on an investigation by neutral nations (in particular, one of the investigators is a Geneva-born Swiss army Major of Korean descent) of a fatal shooting - execution style? - in the North Korean border outpost. There are numerous twists and surprises in the plot, and if you can't quite get them all clear in your mind just enjoy the movie for the drama and the interactions among some extremely different types of the military personnel, from hard-line extremists on both sides of the line to everyday soldiers filling out the terms of their required military service. Some of the characters who seem heroic at the outset turn out to be everything but - as the film continues to surprise us and disrupt our expectations at many turns 

Lenox Hill is a terrific, moving look at medical care in the NYC hospitals

 The Netflix 8-part series Lenox Hill (2020) should be on everyone's list, a terrific documentary from Ruthie Shatz and Adit Barash that follows over the course of a year or so 4 doctors in the Manhattan hospital: 2 neurosurgeons, one OB-GYN resident, and one ER doctor. We get incredible scenes of these doctors at work in their practice, plus plenty of life-information about each of them and about many of their patients as they deal with life-and-death, critical issues and conditions. The 4 physicians who participate represent, obviously, two extreme ranges of the medical profession: the neurosurgeons are treating the most critically ill, any of them younger patients, all of whom must undergo the most stressful and difficult of surgeries, not all w/ good outcomes by the way. The OB-GYN doc, who is herself pregnant and expecting her first child (in the face of some scary genetic information) in a sense represents the other extreme: her practice, as we watch her work w/ a # of women in their delivery, deals with women (and to a MUCH less extent their partners and families) in the process of giving birth - an extremely stressful passage toward a wonderful life, and a practice that probably has not changed much, for most pregnancies, for many years. The ER doctor, although she, too, must at times deal w/ life-endangered admissions, for the most part depicts here at completely different aspect of the hospital work, the hospital as a de facto social institution: Many walk-ins, generally with cuts, abrasions, dislocations, but also many who clearly one to the hospital for a bed and a sandwich, although their life conditions are generally awful, due to all of the stresses of homelessness and often Rx and alcohol; their presence in the ER is an indictment of the entire health-care and social-services systems in the U.S., and the doctor is heroic in her treatment of these patients whose needs go well beyond the scope of Lenox Hill. The series has its moments of joy and of deep sorrow, not all of it involving the patients, and we see these highly skilled doctors as valiant but also plagued at times by self-doubt. Viewers will not, for the record, that the neurosurgeons in post-op tend to present the most optimistic assessment of their treatments to the patients and their families, when in fact they keep to themselves their doubts and concerns - an extra burden that they carry, as they, unlike the other 2 docs, generally deal w/ long-term cases and often w/ multiple highly invasive surgeries. 

Some innovative style in an early Mizoguchi film, although good luck making sense of the Kabuki scenes

 Okay it's not as great a film as his later-career masterpieces Sansho the Bailiff and Ugetsu but it's still worth taking a look at Kenji Mizoguchi's early (1939) piece, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums. Yes, even on the formidable Criterion release the print and sound quality are horrible and yes the plot feels familiar - young man who's an aspiring (Kabuki) actor (ca 1890) who at first has limited talent falls in love w/ a young servant woman (his baby sibling's wet nurse) who inspires him to continue striving toward excellence in acting; they fall in love, but the young man's (step)father, who's also the leader of the Kabuki troupe, forbids him to see the woman; they run off together to the provinces, live as man and wife as young man (Kiku) perfects his craft leading to a triumphal return to Tokyo and renown, but leaving the ever-faithful wife (Otoku) in the dust - but the film is significant for its sympathetic depiction of the sexist and class prejudice and for its depiction of the struggle Kiku undergoes as he's torn between family loyalty, career, and love. The style of the film is particularly notable and ahead of its time for its use of extremely long takes and careful attention to the topical details of life on the road, in the theater, and in Tokyo from the POV of a theater troupe. Some really imaginative and evocative nighttime scenes and a terrific final sequence showing Kiku at the head of a boat parade celebrating the success of the theater group and Otoku lies dying in a dingy nearby small apartment. The biggest stumbling block for, I assume, most non-Japanese viewers will be the 3 (I think) Kabuki sequences, almost entirely incomprehensible to those not familiar w/ this form of theater; there's much talk about Kiku's, at first, limited talent and, later, of his acting genius, but I'll be damned if I could tell the difference - in fact, only from reading some notes on the film did I learn that Kiku was playing female roles. (Only Ozu, to my knowledge, successfully integrated Kabuki into one of his films, can't recall which one, mainly because we were watching audience interaction rather than the unfolding Kabuki drama on stage.) 

Borat sequel worth watching for highlights, even though some of its episodes fall flat

 Sacha Baron Cohen's 16-years-later sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (aka Borat 2), doesn't rise to the level of hilarity and astonishment of the first go-round, largely because, as noted in some reviews, SBC's success is in part his undoing: Whereas almost all of Borat 1 seemed to be a series of punks on many unsuspecting people who thought they ere being interviewed for a profile or news segment for a legit Kazakh TV network, in the sequel it seems that many (not all) of the encounters were at least to a degree scripted or orchestrated by the filmmakers. That said, there are some great segments: Everyone's talking about the "interview" with Giuliani in which he comes across as a sexual predator and rightfully so, it's an astonishing take; also of note Borat's crashing a speech by Pence to a conservative (of course) audience: How the hell did he manage to get into the meeting dressed in a Trump mask and fat suit, carrying his "daughter" (played well by Maria Bakalova) over his shoulder, without drawing immediate hostile response of SS? The sequence of Borat leading a right-wing rally in singing a dreadful diatribe attacking Fauci et al is painful to watch - the glee on their faces as they sing these hideous lyrics - and what can we make of a woman in a bakery who obligingly writes in icing, adorned w/ little smily faces, "Jews will not replace us" - or the supposed minister/counselor who listens blithely and offers palliatives as Borat tells the him that he's had sexual relationships w/ his own daughter? The film, however, does drag along w/ a few episodes that seem just silly or ludicrous - the crashing or a debutante ball, addressing a small group of Florida Republican women - who, by the way, handle this intrusion calmly and with reasonably good sense. Still, the film is worth seeing for its highlights, even if there is some meandering along the way. 

An excellent film about the world of urban arts in uptown NYC, as seen by struggling playwright Radha Blank

I have to say that on when I'd first heard about the new (2020) Netflix film The 40-Year-Old Version (written, directed, starring playwright Radha Blank) I though, despite strong reviews, that this would be a film for which let's just say I would not be the ideal audience. All the more props to the amazing R Blank in that I was totally captivated, entertained, and moved by her really intelligent and imaginative film. She plays, in a role that seems autobiographical but honestly I know nothing else about her life and work, a 39+-year-old Black playwright/director who'd been honored a decade back as one of 30 Under 30 playwrights on the rise and now, producing no new work over the past decade, beginning to question all aspects of her life and career. We see her in the various aspects of her current life, dealing w/ a range of problems and issues: she teaches a high-school drama class to make ends meet, but, despite her obvious affinity for the work and the kids, realizes this is not her life plan; struggles with her brother over the disposition of her late mother's estate; spats and make-ups with her long-time agent and lifetime friend; pressure from a theater troupe eager to stage a play she's been working on about the gentrification of Harlem, but at great cost to her integrity and her vision; and most of all her strange desire to channel her work into a rap mixtape. She's surprisingly good at it - in spite of the obvious differences in class and age between her and others in the rap community, of which we get a glimpse. Surprisingly, she develops a relationship with the sweet but much younger rap entrepreneur, who goes by the name of D. The film has many great seasons on and off various stages, and overall a jaunty, sometimes sweet style and an unflinching look at life on the streets and the subways in contemporary uptown NYC. Anyone who's worked in, dabbled in, or dreamed of joining the world of urban arts will or should enjoy and gain insight from Blank's film. 

A film worth watching, especially for those who know little or nothing about TheTrial of the Chicago 7

 Like it or not, Aaron Sorkin has a certain style and an undeniable talent for building entertainments out of the wheelings of government, the media, and the business world - and his current (2020) Netflix movie, The Trial of the Chicago 7, exemplifies his work, for better or worse. And I have to admit I was entertained and sometimes astonished by this film, which recreates, using only a small amount of documentary footage, the epochal political trial of the '60; for those who didn't live through the era, it may be astonishing to watch this film, which may lead some to think that it had to be made up. It's not - the courtroom drama, to the best of my memory - is quite closely (though not entirely) based on the trial itself - 7 political leaders from some widely diverging factions on the left arrested by the Nixon administration and charged w/ conspiracy based on their loose association and general proximity during the demonstrations in Chicago during the '68 Democratic convention. It was widely known at the time that the Chicago police were ordered to storm and brutalize the unarmed street protesters; the news footage of the era was astonishing and sickening. It was also obvious to all of America the Judge Julius Hoffman was incompetent and completely unjust - culminating with this order for literally gag Bobby Seale, the only Black defendant - a judicial order so outrageous as to get up the ire of even the prosecutors. So in that regard the movie is powerful and a welcome document and remembrance even generations later. Of course the film at times gets waylaid by the Sorkin style: All of the characters sound sharp and witty and pointed, but they all sound like the same person (Sorkin?) and he never really succeeds in building sympathy for Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman (couldn't anyone help Sacha Baron Cohen in his hapless struggle w/ a Boston accent?) - they annoyed me as much as they annoyed the judge, though maybe that was the intent? In any event, the film is entertaining and informative, worth watching especially for those who think the times could never be more out of joint than at present. 

 The little-known Belgian TV series The Twelve (on Netflix) is one of the best courtroom dramas I've seen in some time - highly intelligent, challenging, provocative, and, unlike so many series that die dreaming of a 2nd season, conclusive. American viewers will be particularly interested in seeing how different a criminal trial in Belgium is from one in the U.S.; among other things, the accused sits (or stands) in isolation, the lawyers sit with one another alongside the 3 judges, the accused is interrogated during the course of the trial, the even-#ed jury faces no prohibition against speaking about the case with one another nor about following news accounts of the trial (though they are strictly forbidden to speak w/ members of t he media about the trial). The case is brought against a 40-something woman accused of killing her best friend some 18 years previous and her 2-year-old daughter some 2 years back (that's another major difference: in the U.S. the cases would definitely be tried separately). Over the course of the 10 episodes we continue to get facts and information about the accusations - most of seem credible and not crackpot, all of which will keep viewers guessing and thinking along the way. At the same time, we follow several story lines about several of the jurors, w/ particular scrutiny of their questionable interactions during the course of the trial. Amazingly, the final episode brings all (or most) of the strands together and resolves all or most of the conflicts and all of our doubts. It's a demanding series for American viewers, in that none of the names will look or sound familiar and the trial itself will seem strange - but it's a series that merits more attention and talk (and maybe other work from the creators: Sanne Nuyens and Bert van Dael. 

A gangster film that should be much better known and appreciated: Le Deuxieme Soufle

 Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 film, Le Deuxième Souffle (Second Wind is the best translation) is one of those gangster movies closely modeled on the American hardboiled crime films that the French seem to do so well - and this, though little known today, is one of the best. The plot is a bit tangled at the start, but the essence of the crime and punishment becomes clear and stark and inevitable as the film progresses (it's pretty long, at 2:30). The basic story line concerns a gangster (Gu, played well by Lino Ventura, who worked with JPM on many films I think) who escapes from prison near Paris and needs to make one big score big score before fleeing, with his "girl," Manouche (Christine Fabrega) by boat to Sicily. Of course things go wrong. In the process, there are some extraordinarily powerful scenes: the prison break (fantastic start to the movie!), the shootout at the gangster bar/hangout, the terrific show put on by the wily and unexpectedly insightful Police Detective Bolt (Paul Meurisse), most of all the heist (of bars of platinum!, being shipped, stupidly, from one bank to another with somewhat flimsy police protection) that Melville shoots in real time - far more intense and intelligent than any other heist I've ever seen on film. Things go right, and then they go wrong, as Gu gets picked up and risks his life to protect his honor-among-thieves demeanor. Yes, it's just a gangster movie, in the end, but there's so much to look at and think about throughout that it rises well above its genre and should be as well known as its American counterparts, in film and TV/cable. 

A powerful and unusual personal film memoir about the city of Liverpool

 Terence Davies's documentary film, Of Time and the City (2008), is a personal recollection and evocation of his childhood in Liverpool (in the postwar years, the 50s and 60s), the type of memoir cinema that we're likely to see more of as the format requires no sets and actors and directors, a Covid-possible format for aspiring or established filmmakers (there have been other films like it over the years, of course - e.g. My Winnipeg). There are a few unusual aspects to Davies's project: First of all, the film, which Davies narrates, tells us little about the salient facts of his childhood and nothing at all about the overall course of his life. It's not his story so much as his setting. Second, the film is a melange of several media: extensive use of both still and video photography to capture the look and feel of life in Liverpool in the mid to late 20th century; a really unusual soundtrack with some music typical of the era and the locale plus many passages from the classical repertoire (Mahler - great; Bruckner - what does Davies possibly hear in him?); many passages of poetry and other literature, through which Davies highlights some of the visual sequences - passages from Eliot (which I recognized), the Psalms (ditto), though note that none of these passages are identified, in the film proper or the credits. Most of all, though Davies indicates that he yearns for his childhood in this grim and then-impoverished city, he also makes it clear that Liverpool was a visual and spatial horror: in the early years just an incredibly awful place, truly ugly and frightening housing much of it ij the shows of the gasworks, public buildings of a Gargantuan sort, a waterfront entirely given over to industry, soot and grime and jam-packed crowds everywhere, and, in the later years, public housing of an extraordinarily oppressive design that, as Davies notes, encapsulates the English propensity for the dismal. All told, it's a moving and sometimes frightening testament to the hardships of poverty then and now - and I have only one quibble, which is that Davies barely touches on the music scene and is particularly condescending about the Beatles, a ray of light in the dark past of his home territory. 

Lots of reasons to watch Antonioni's early film The Lady Without Camelias

 Michaelangelo Antonioni's 2nd (?) film, the seldom-seen The Lady Without Camelias (1953), is by no means a great film and I'm not even sure that it was predictive of the success Antonioniha had through the long arc of his career, from Italian neo-realism to such personal statements as L'Aventura and Zabriski Point - but that said it's a lot of fun to watch. On one level it's a typical film-ingenue story: A young woman (Clara - Lucia Bose) working in a shop is spotted by a director and is an instant success, which upends her world: She marries badly, is abused and exploited by her husband, is pushed by various producers into ever-more-demeaning roles, her world's coming apart. But then, a twist: She recognizes that she can never be a star and be content w/ her life, she tells a long-time confidant that she's going to quit the business, but her persuades her to take acting lessons and to become a true actress and not just a beauty, a prop. She follows this advice, but then - surprise again! - nobody wants to cast her in serious roles, and the film ends w/ her doing some publicity still for an obviously terrible and exploitative film. Every view, I think, will get a kick out of the hilarity of a bunch of Italian directors and producers trying to put together a film that will be under budget and that will make revenue. And everyone interest in film - which would include most viewers of this piece of film history - will get a kick out of the many scenes filmed on the famous Cinecitta studios lot, with lots of scenes taking place among half-abandoned sets for other films. Antonioni indulges in some really sharp filmmaking, pushing this melodrama right to the edge: lots of shots using mirrors, complex interior shots in the multilevel ultramodern extravagance where Clara lives, some interest us of jazz piano in the score. It's kind of funny that Lollabrigida and Loren turned down the lead in this film; they obviously would not be convincing as a beautiful starlet whose career was going nowhere. Sadly, Bose is convincing in the role - she's beautiful but suitably plastic and cool-tempered, perfect for a story about a star who can't really act. 

Four excellent episodes in the police-interrogation series Criminal UK

 I'm really glad to see the return for Season 2 of the Netflix series Criminal, with the first installment the season 4 episodes of Prisoner UK (if the pattern of Season 1 is to be continued we should soon see return of Criminal France and Germany). Each 50-minute segment centers on the police interrogation of a suspect, with most of the drama taking place inside the interrogation room with some of the drama involving as well other members of the police team watching the interrogation through a one-way mirror and w/ occasional meetings and discussions in the hallway outside the interrogation room (and some whimsical touches amid the extremely tense dramas, usually involving the vending machines in the hallway). Each segment is like a powerful one-act play - some better or at least more credible than others, but all well acted and with the tension heightened by an eerie soundtrack. Of the 4 in the new UK series I found the strongest to be the interrogation of a young businessman/entrepreneur accused of raping one of his employees. Other episodes entail a would-be jailhouse snitch who offers up info on the casing of a missing young boy, a woman who poses online as a teenage girl in order to entrap and she hopes convict sex offenders, and a woman charged w/ murder in a case involving administration of Rx to someone supposedly in her care (I had a lot of trouble following this one - made even more difficult by the unfamiliar British accents and by the disconcerting echoic effects that distort some of the dialog - my bad).   Despite these quibbles, each episode holds you fast start to finish, and as Season 2 rolls out, I hope, we will once again see some of the cultural contrasts between the police procedures in each of the countries (all quite different from police interrogations in the U.S., in a # of ways).