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New Mexican Directors: I Am No Longer Here & Identifying Features

3/30/2021

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In Mexico, cities and towns have become battlegrounds ruled by murderous gangs and drug cartels. Assassins called Sicarios are conscripted, often as teenagers, to instill fear, obedience, and acquiescence to drug lords. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project reports over 11,400 events of gang-related violence across the country since the beginning of 2018, with more than 80 percent targeting civilians. Rival groups competing for territory and drug trafficking routes exacerbate the chaos. This drug-dealing mayhem has, for better or worse, inspired plenty of entertainment. Films like Miss Bala (2011), Savages (2012), The Counselor (2013), and Sicario (2015) graphically depict the mechanics of the drug trade and the terrorism of gang violence. Slick thrillers like Blow and Traffic put movie stars at the center of the action. Well-meaning films like Maria Full of Grace or City of God proffer sobering studies on the social scourge of narcotics. Even in music, the Narcocorrido subgenre romanticizes criminality with stories of drug lords, arrests, shootouts, and betrayals. A report on NPR quoted the alarming conclusion of one of Mexico’s most prolific corridistas, Reynaldo “El Gallero” Martinez: “The kids of Reynosa and Matamoros and many parts of Mexico learn the words to a corrido before they learn the National Anthem.”

A scene from I Am No Longer Here.Two new films by young Mexican directors break from narco-romanticism and conventional action structures. I Am No Longer Here (streaming on Netflix) and Identifying Features reject conflicts that resolve in triumph, tragedy, or martyrdom. Instead, they make use of a kind of free-form narrative that highlights the emotional cost of living with fear, intimidation, and death.
​Continue Reading

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The White Tiger

3/30/2021

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JANUARY 21, 2021 
​
The White Tiger, based on Aravind Adiga’s 2008 best-selling novel, is a fitting choice for Ramin Bahrani, the director of such neorealist films as Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, and Good-Bye Solo. Those focus on working-class struggles, often among immigrant populations, and were shot in urban locations with mostly nonprofessional actors. This film, streaming on Netflix, was also photographed in India’s chaotic streets, impoverished villages, and wealthy estates, but here Bahrani cast seasoned Indian actors. Adiga and Bahrani (to whom the Man Booker prize-winning book is dedicated) were friends at Columbia University, and their relationship is no doubt key to how successfully the film captures the novel’s dark comic tone. The result is a wicked and entertaining satire on the class conflicts roiling Indian society, a neo-Marxist story of masters and servants, money and corruption — a Horatio Alger tale with a devilish twist.
The opening scene, set in 2007, establishes the contrasts between modern and traditional.
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Sound of Metal

11/21/2020

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Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal  begins with an industrial metal duo in performance (shot live at the Middle East Club in Cambridge). The guitarist, Lou (Olivia Cooke), emits distorted guitar sounds matched by a vocal that is more primal scream than singing. The scars on her arm suggest that she has had a past of self-harm. Ruben (Riz Ahmed) a reformed heroin addict, is lean, bare-chested, and covered in tattoos. He fidgets restlessly at the drums. His chest reads ‘Please Kill Me,’ which is the title of a classic book on punk rock history. On cue, he launches into an assault on the kit, arms flailing, double bass drum pedals thundering out 16th notes at warp speed.
The film then abruptly cuts to silence. It is the following morning. The couple are in their Airstream trailer home where Ruben blends green smoothies, makes breakfast and coffee, exercises, and cleans their portable recording consul. Without warning, sounds around him become muffled, voices are indistinct. He realizes that he is losing his hearing
​CONTINUE READING . . . 
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On the Rocks

10/15/2020

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On the Rocks is Sofia Coppola’s seventh feature. There is a consistency to what initially look like disparate stories: they tend to be about women alienated from their environments and from themselves. (Somewhere might be an exception, though the character played by Stephen Dorff is tested through his relationships with females, particularly his young daughter.) Coppola’s female rites of passage and/or transitions have wildly different outcomes: suicide in the Virgin Suicides, murder in The Beguiled, execution in Marie Antoinette, and imprisonment in The Bling Ring. Lost in Translation, possibly her best film so far, is not nearly as melodramatic as the others. Scarlett Johansson’s Charlotte, a young college graduate, meets Bob, an aging actor played by Bill Murray, in Tokyo. Across generations, they connect at an uncertain time in both their lives. It’s a love story without sex. Murray brings grace and delicacy to this role; it is one of his best performances.
In her latest film, Coppola again casts Murray, this time as Felix, a successful art dealer, the father of and adviser to Laura (Rashida Jones), a harried housewife who bustles around the city with her two small children. She is happily married to Dean (Marlon Wayans),   Continue Reading . . . 
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White Noise

10/14/2020

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 The first of many disconcerting moments in Daniel Lombroso’s White Noise gives us a good look at the glee of Trump’s Alt-Right supporters following his unexpected victory in 2016. The enthusiasm generated that night does not bode well; what will extremists’ reaction in 2020 be if Trump loses or charges into a battle mode? The documentary is the first production of the Atlantic, a publication that has contributed some of the year’s best political writing. This is also the first film for Lombroso, the Jewish American grandson of two Holocaust survivors, who is a journalist and former staff producer for the magazine. He followed three early stars of the Alt-Right Movement for four years: Richard Spencer, Mike Cernovich, and Lauren Southern. In contrast to the Sieg Heil madness and bad haircuts of the mob in the opening sequence, these profiles offer a slicker frame of reference on the racist right. This is the first detailed look, on film, of these figureheads. Uncomfortable as White Noise is to watch, these personalities thrive in the muddy heart of America, whether we like it or not. Continue Reading ...
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The Painted Bird

7/25/2020

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The Painted Bird, based on Jerzy Kosiński’s 1965 novel and directed by Czech filmmaker Václav Marhoul, is about bearing witness. Whether or not what we are called on to witness is appropriate for the screen has become an issue with this film, which is stirring up controversy. This is a journey through hell, set at the close of the Second World War. Implied acts of pedophilia, child abuse, rape, eye-gouging, bestiality, and other atrocities are reasonable causes for concern. But these acts are not treated graphically or gratuitously exploited. They are dispensed with quickly, part of an epic 170-minute tapestry that depicts, with stark power, man’s brutality and elemental inhumanity.
Thirteen-year-old newcomer Petr Kotlár plays Joska, a boy who never speaks. He greets the world around him with a doe-eyed, grim, immobile face. Eventually, we grow to understand that he was abandoned by his parents, most likely because of  poverty, and left to wander across this landscape. The film provides little explanation or context for the adolescent’s meanderings. An “interslavic language” is used for much of the dialogue — apparently to avoid stigmatizing any single ethnic group. (The novel was criticized for its unsavory depictions of various ethnic groups.)
Joska is looking for signs of  hope, and a means of survival, in a world gone mad. In the opening scenes he is carrying a pet cat. We then see him running through the snowy woods pursued by unnamed bullies, who beat him and burn his cat alive. After an aunt, who has taken in the orphaned boy, suddenly dies, the emotional shock makes him knock over a lamp and burn her cabin down. Destitute, he walks off, eventually finding a village filled with superstitious peasants who “diagnose” the dark-skinned lad: “He’s got the Devil in him.” Facing death, he is pronounced a vampire by a primitive healer named Olga, who buys the boy to aid in her practice that draws on incantations, snakes, and ground tooth concoctions.
Continue Reading . . .
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Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful

7/25/2020

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Helmut Newton, whose fashion photography created a bold look that inspired such global fashion moguls as Carl Lagerfeld and Yves St. Laurent, was born 100 years ago this year. Examples of Newton’s work were omnipresent in fashion magazine during the ’70s and ’80s: these bizarre photos featured long-legged Germanic and Aryan women (with the notable exception of the androgynous Black icon, Grace Jones) in various stages of undress — very often completely undressed — in surreal settings, glaring at the camera. In Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful, the photographer and his art are not so much defended as explained through the voices of the world’s top models and movie icons with whom he worked: Isabella Rossellini, Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling, Hanna Schygulla, Claudia Schiffer, Marianne Faithfull, Nadja Auerman, and Grace Jones, among others. All speak enthusiastically of his methods, his art, and his tremendous sense of humor.
The documentary chronicles the enormous influence Newton had on both international art and fashion advertising.
CONTINUE READING . . . 

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Tommaso

6/12/2020

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Willem DaFoe in Tommaso.Tommaso, the new film written and directed by Abel Ferrara (which begins streaming tomorrow) is an imaginative work of creative psychotherapy that swings from delight to frenzy. In this loose combination of autobiographical material drawn from Willem DaFoe and Ferrara, Dafoe plays a screenwriter living in Rome. Ferrara has cast his own wife, Cristina Chiriac, and their 3-year-old daughter as the family. Domestic scenes were shot in the director’s apartment by way of a hand-held camera. The result is that we feel we are taking in a spontaneous documentary, albeit punctuated by energetic flights of fancy. For Ferrara, interweaving present fantasies and his past are integral to how he makes art. So it is should not be surprising that this expressionistic profile is short on plot — it is a portrait of  the messy internal life of an artist. It is a carefully structured landscape of the mind — a personal statement filtered through the dreams of two friends.
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Driveways

6/12/2020

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Brian Dennehy, who passed away on April 15, began his commanding presence and prolific acting career at the age of 39. Over four decades he accumulated 139 credits in film and television. In his later years, the actor won Tony Awards for his performances in classic dramas Long Day’s Journey into Night and Death of Salesman. In one of his final films, Driveways, he plays Del, a retired octogenarian Korean war veteran. In this role, he is a man of few words: gone is the bluster of Sheriff Will Teasle in First Blood and the furtive angst of Salesman’s Willy Loman. By turning Del’s conflicts and regrets inward, Dennehy fashions a subtle and heartbreaking performance that is among his best.
Directed by Andrew Ahn, Driveways is about a young single mother, Kathy, played by Hong Chau (Downsizing), who arrives with her eight-year-old son to clean out her late sister’s house, which is next door to Del’s. As her son, Cody, Lucas Jaye turns in a wonderfully natural performance. The boy is bright but shy; he prefers the companionship of manga and video games to the roughhousing of neighborhood kids. All three feel as if they are outsiders in a small suburban community. Kathy, a single Asian mom, knew little about her sister; she is surprised to discover she was a hoarder. Kathy is strict with her son but, without a father around and with a house to clear out and sell, her hands are full. Del, on the other side of their driveway, often sits quietly on his front porch, lost in his own thoughts, impassively observing his neighbor’s difficulties. His only regular companions are a few old friends (including the venerable 90-year-old actor Jerry Adler), who gather at the local vets Bingo Hall.  Continue Reading
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Shelter in Place Attractions: Places to Find the Best Video Essays on Film

4/30/2020

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Video essays have been characterized as “the articulation of thought in audiovisual form.” 

A scene from Apehood, A Boyhood/Planet of the Apes parody by Nelson Carvajal.Several years ago I moderated a panel for the Independent Film Festival of Boston (which we sadly will miss this year) on the Video Essay, with Kevin B. Lee, Nelson Carvajal, Serena Bramble, and Drew Morton, whose works have been published/posted on a number of major media outlets. It was then I discovered just how informative and well produced audio-visual essays can be. These short productions have been characterized as “the articulation of thought in audiovisual form.”
I have gathered some of the best sites for video essays on the art of film. Some are amusing, others more scholarly. A few have thousands of subscribers, others have more personal appeal. Several come with a Patreon subscription option, but all contain free content. Studios have been known to occasionally block content on video essays about film because they draw on copyrighted material. All the sites listed below are fully available. The videos offered on the sites are generally short and entertaining — there is enough content here to provide a pleasurable education in the cinema for your days and nights.
CONTINUE TO FULL LIST OF LINKED SITES

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