"Roma" and the rest of the "best"

Now that we have passed the peak of awards season, I will be reviewing a range of 2018 films that have received nominations, very high Metacritic ratings, or other accolades.  Starting with my confident anointing of the best of the best, these are reviewed more or less in the order of my recommendation, which will be added to until I finalize my Top Ten (or however many).

I did not expect to dissent from the consensus that the best film of 2018 was Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma (MC-96, NFX), and I felt total agreement in watching it.  I’ve loved his films in the past, and as a proponent of the auteur approach to film appreciation, I always look for the autobiographical element in any director’s work.  So I was primed to love Roma, and did.  No one is more of an auteur than Cuarón, since he wrote, shot, and edited, as well as directed, this story from his own early life, in the Mexico City neighborhood of the title.  One word that characterizes the film for me is “density.”  It is solid, substantial, compact.  Each frame is filled with information, through which the viewer must search for meaning.  Everything is encompassed from household dogshit to earthshaking cataclysms, from private grief to societal uproar, all in the frame of a child’s memories of being raised by an indigenous maid in a chaotic but well-off household.  Shot in lustrous and memorious black & white, it follows a year (1970/71 to be specific) in the life of the family, during which it adapts to the abrupt departure of the father.  Though you’ve never seen her before and may never see her again, Yalitza Aparicio will linger in your mind for the absolute authenticity of her character as the maid, and moreover primary caregiver for the four children of the family.  The movie is dedicated to the woman who played that role in Cuarón’s life, and a more beautiful thank-you note cannot be imagined.  And despite the extremely personal nature of the material, the film is unrelentingly sociological, and political in the best way.  It’s clearly a must-see, and after you see it, I recommend this article on the backstory of the film’s making.

Summer 1993 (MC-81, AMZ) is another superb, though much less noticed, memory-piece redolent of personal authenticity.  Carla Simón’s clearly autobiographical debut film is marked by natural performances across the board, but I have to single out the central character played by Laia Artigas.  She’s remarkably poised and charming as a 6-year old orphan sent from Barcelona when her mother dies of AIDS, into the Catalan countryside to live with her back-to-the-land uncle, his extremely sympathetic wife, and their darling younger daughter.  She observes, keeps her own counsel, and acts out, while the whole farm family reaches out to her.  The interactions of the two girls are both a joy and an anxiety to watch, so unforced yet telling, as is the entire film.  Rather than story beats and narrative conventions, Ms. Simón offers the impressions of an at-risk girl in a formative period, fragmented but cumulative to beauty, passion, and delight.  All seen with a child’s eye, but a wise adult’s understanding.

There may be no current director whose work I approach with more anticipation than Hirokazu Kore-eda, and his latest, Shoplifters (MC-93, Hulu), meets all expectations.  (Look for career summary link, soon to appear in right column.)  How do I recommend a film, when the less you know about it going in, the better?  I guess the title and first scene aren’t too much of a spoiler – we see a man and a boy, apparently the title characters (as in Bicycle Thieves), casing the joint and then in neat pas-de-deux, lifting the items on their shopping list, to return to the tight confines of a house they share with a family designated as wife, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law.  The domestic interiors are reminiscent of Ozu, though several steps down the economic ladder.  The group is soon augmented by an adorable 4-year-old-girl, whom they have kidnapped/rescued from abusive parents.  It takes half the film to work out this family structure, and the second half to unpeel it layer by layer, at the same time unpeeling layers of Japanese society.  The acting is terrific across the board, and the two kids are incredibly cute and convincing, though also heart-wrenching, a Kore-eda specialty at least since Nobody Knows.  Re-watching some scenes, I did notice that the music might have been a bit treacly, but that’s the only negative thing I can think of, in this acute and moving film. 

Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War (MC-90, AMZ) works on so many levels – visually, musically, conceptually, politically – but there’s an added dimension in the final credits, with the dedication, “For my parents.”  The story of this can’t-live-with/can’t-life-without couple tracks changes in Polish and European culture through the postwar years, but the autobiographical element helps explain some of its emotional power.  Very much in the style of his Oscar-winner Ida, this film uses black & white cinematography, plus a narrow frame and elliptical editing, to achieve clarity and concision.  We first see Tomasz Kot recording Polish folk music as a nationalist exercise after WWII, soon coopted as Stalinist propaganda, as a troupe of young performers is gathered.  The composer is struck by one of the auditioning women, played magnetically by femme fatale Joanna Kulig, and their on-again-off-again romance, persists through betrayals and defections, as well as Berlin and Paris and Yugoslavia, though the Fifties and into the Sixties.  Music is an integral part of the journey, from Slavic folk music through jazz to rock-n-roll.  At less than 90 minutes, this film suggests all the more by all that it leaves out, forcing the viewer to fill in the blackout gaps, in a way that makes it linger and unfold in memory.

What a minefield Jennifer Fox stepped into with The Tale (MC-90, HBO), and what a miracle that she makes it through without mishap!  The result is as disturbing as a horror film but infinitely more plausible, exhilaratingly complex and multifaceted.  Ms. Fox is an accomplished documentarian making a fictionalized retelling of her own story, the one she wrote in a middle-school creative writing class, and the one she explores retrospectively when her house-clearing mother unearths the pubescent tale, a romanticized retelling of clearcut sexual abuse.  Laura Dern plays Ms. Fox as 48-year-old and Isabelle Nélisse as 13-year-old, both stunningly good as the story switches between them, with some alternate memories repeated with variation, as clarified when the adult character discovers new information or delves into repressed memories.  As clear a demonstration of child sexual predation as you could possibly want, this film is difficult to watch, but astringently honest.  So layered, truthful, and well-made, see this film if you can manage it.

In Tully (MC-75, HBO), director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody team up again after Juno and Young Adult, and bring back the star of the latter.  This time Charlize Theron, as usual playing against the curse of her beauty, is the very pregnant suburban mom of two children, exhausted and disenchanted as the third arrives.  Ron Livingston is her sympathetic but useless husband.  Mackenzie Davis is the title character, a “night nanny” who arrives like a genie from a lamp, to help Charlize through her postpartum depression and reconcile her to her stage of life.  The film is not quite what it seems to be, a light but sharp comedy, and a final twist separates viewers into those who think it’s more and those who think it’s less.  Count me among the more camp.

I want to highlight one little-mentioned film as among the year’s best, to let it emerge from the shadows of mixed reviews and indifferent release.  Golden Exits (MC-71, Hulu) is by far writer-director Alex Ross Perry’s most accomplished film, IMHO.  It speaks to me directly, in several ingratiating ways.  First of all, it’s intimately and affectionately set in a Brooklyn neighborhood near where I spent a formative passage of my life.  Secondly, I think it deserves the distinction of being called “Rohmer-esque,” high praise from me.  The film opens with a tight shot of a lovely young Australian woman (Emily Browning) sitting on a brownstone stoop singing “I’m back, back in a New York groove.”  She’s been hired as an archival assistant to Adam Horovitz (a Beastie Boy turned estimable actor), whose current project is the “materials” of the famous father of his wife (Chloe Sevigny) and her sister (Mary-Louise Parker).  The girl (if so she may be called) also insinuates herself between another couple (Jason Schwartzman and Analeigh Tipton).  There’s another pair with whom she becomes involved catalytically – so you could add it up to three couples, or two family groups of three, but either way, it all interlocks quite neatly.  The characters are not special, nor even likable necessarily, but they do like talking out their ordinary problems, in a way that is literate, funny, and unexpected. 

A Star is Born (MC-88, HBO) is an unnecessary film.  I like Bradley Cooper, and was pleased to make the acquaintance of Lady Gaga, especially unadorned in the early going; was happy to watch them perform.  But nothing in this story is fresh or revealing.  The worst thing I can say about the production is that it left me with no desire to watch or re-watch any of the other iterations of this tale.  There’s really not much interesting about these characters or their conflicts.  While the performers are appealing (and so are the supporting players), my response goes no deeper than a shrug of the shoulders.  Stars are inherently less interesting than genuine personalities.  Obviously, others may see it differently.

If Beale Street Could Talk (MC-87, Hulu), I hope it would have more to say than this film, which has many excellent elements, but adds up to less than the sum of its parts.  I would definitely point a finger at writer-director Barry Jenkins as the problem.  Rarely have I gone though a film questioning the director’s judgment as much as this; scenes run too long, too slow, do not connect, with scattered narration to paper over the gaps.  With James Baldwin as source material, utterly relevant to today’s issues, and extremely appealing and believable performers, to my eye Jenkins fumbled the opportunity here, and has been overpraised for the effort.  Stephan James is definitely a contender for the mantel of Denzel; KiKi Layne is astoundingly – distractingly – beautiful, but no reason to hate her for that; they’re young and in love, she’s pregnant, he’s in jail on a trumped-up rape charge.  Regina King as the girl’s mother earned an Oscar that she deserved for Support the Girls.  I like a Douglas Sirk-ian melodrama as well as the next man, but can’t see that as the appropriate treatment “For Jimmy,” as the film is dedicated.  For a serious portrayal of mass incarceration on black family life, I would refer you to The Middle of Nowhere, by Ava DuVernay of Selma and 13^th.

I consider myself pretty catholic in my tastes and interests when it comes to film, though finicky about the art of cinema and averse to some popular genres.  When critics generally are raving about a given filmmaker, I will take a look and at least discern what the appeal is, even when it doesn’t particularly appeal to me.  So I have previously educated myself to an appreciation of Lucrecia Martel, but I have to confess that I could get no handle on her latest, Zama (MC-89, AMZ).  It’s quite possible that a second viewing would open my eyes to what others have seen in it, but I’m not inclined to put in the time and effort.  Maybe this film is a profound statement on Spanish colonialism in 18^th-century Argentina, working tangentially and obliquely on many levels, but you couldn’t prove it by me.  It does have a certain hypnotic power, but I was not drawn into the story, if story is actually the point.  And all the characters remained opaque to me, though maybe that is the point.  Knowing the source novel would have helped.  Maybe an audience full of knowing laughter would have jollied me through, but solo it was a slog.

I’m definitely entering a dissent on Hereditary (MC-87, AMZ), perhaps the most inexplicably high Metacritic rating I’ve ever encountered.  I thought that the presence of Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne might overcome my generalized aversion to the horror genre, but nope, this still felt like trash to me, albeit a slightly higher class of trash.  Really, nothing to see here, folks, just move along.  Save yourself two hours of your life.

Likewise with the ninety minutes of You Were Never Really Here (MC-84, AMZ).  I never really got into it, not being any fan of revenge thrillers (not even Taxi Driver, the obvious model for this one).  Joaquin Phoenix’s performance has been widely praised, with some justification, as has Lynne Ramsay’s direction, with less.  As a violent exercise in style, it may have some virtues to which I am immune, but in terms of story and characterization it is unpleasant and unredeemed.

Safe to say that you’ve never before seen anything like Madeline’s Madeline (MC-76, AMZ).  Whether you’d like to see it is another question.  Many critics bought into its self-importance, but I am of two minds.  Yes, I remained engaged with the story and performances, and admired the boldness of the filmmaking, but was somewhat put off by the overwrought obscurity of it all.  Helena Howard makes an impressive debut, as a talented teenager with a history of mental problems.  Miranda July is her nervous, awkward, but caring mother.  Molly Parker is the leader of an avant-garde dance troupe, who becomes a surrogate mother by both encouraging and exploiting the girl and her problems.  But the choreographer’s pretensions are somewhat mirrored by the director Josephine Decker, with a result that is either powerfully disorienting or disorientingly powerful, as reflected by clusters of Metacritic ratings at 100 and at 40.

[The leaders in the clubhouse, which is to say the candidates for best of 2018 that I have already reviewed are (in alpha order):  Black Panther, Eighth Grade, First Reformed, Leave No Trace, Paddington 2, Private Life, The Rider, and Support the Girls.]