JANUARY 21, 2021 
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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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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 . . . 

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.
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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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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

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.
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