Last word on 2017

At last, I am able to comment on the most recent Oscar winner for best foreign film.  Netflix never even listed it on DVD or streaming, but I finally tracked it down on Starz.  And indeed, A Fantastic Woman (MC-86, Starz) is pretty fantastic, especially as played by transgender actress Daniela Vega.  She’s a singer and waitress in Santiago, Chile, who has just moved in with her lover, an older man who has left a wife and children behind.  On their night of celebration, he dies and she must deal with the consequences, finding a way to grieve while dealing with his aggrieved family, and with others who take her identity as a grievance.  Sebastian Lelio previously directed the wonderful Gloria, which he has remade in English with Julianne Moore, and also Disobedience, so he has established himself as a female-oriented filmmaker worth watching.  Combining fantastical moments with hard-eyed realism about human interaction, the film is continuously engrossing and surprising, and worthy of the award.

Also on Starz, I caught up with Loveless (MC-86, Starz).  There’s no denying that Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev is a downer, but the question is, what makes his films so compelling?  His is a world where the sun never shines, and all souls are tortured.  It’s Putin’s Russia, and from TVs we hear the official take on the war in Ukraine, but all these characters are far removed from political considerations.  None can see past their own pain.  There’s the divorcing couple, and most pathetically, their 12-year-old son.  When the boy disappears, the parents have to interact with each other, and with various officials and volunteers searching for him.  It’s all long, slow, and lugubrious when not scabrous.  The key is the film’s austerity, modesty, and patience, supported by universal empathy (and terrific acting across the cast).  There’s quiet beauty in many shots, and the minimalist music is maximally effective.  And oh yes, some pretty hot sex scenes, if you’re brave enough to watch the rest.  One critic (Peter Bradshaw) nailed the film’s quality by describing its “hypnotic intensity and unbearable ambiguity.”

On the other hand, Netflix streaming is the only way to see the Hungarian film On Body and Soul (MC-77, NFX), which is not an easy watch, but worth it for the award-winning work of two women, writer-director Ildiko Enyedi and lead actress Alexandra Bobely.  The latter plays a government inspector in a slaughterhouse, a pale fragile blond (I thought of Yvette Mimieux, if you can remember her).  Beyond shy, she’s clearly on the autism spectrum, and lives a bare life of managed scripts.  The boss of the place has his own social deficits, but reaches out to her, only to be rebuffed, until it is discovered that they are having literally the very same dreams – of the gentle relationship between a stag and a doe in a bucolic sylvan setting (shot beautifully, as in the finest of nature documentaries).  This film is a tough sell at best, starting with the slaughterhouse scenes, but develops a surprising power and poignancy. 

In The Insult (MC-72, NFX, AMZ), directed by Ziad Doueiri, a minor Beirut street encounter, between a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee, escalates into continued altercation and eventual court cases, where the extent of sectarian atrocities and animosities that linger from Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s are brought into evidence.  I’ve tried to know as little as I could manage about Middle East conflicts during my lifetime, but this film was instructive in showing how Beirut went from cosmopolitan Mediterranean enclave to perpetual warzone, which prefigures Iraq, Syria, and all the rest.  It was also timely in reminding an American viewer of the extent of sectarian atrocities and animosities that linger from our Civil War in the 1860s.  A somewhat programmatic narrative is given depth by excellent performances across the board.

There were aspects of The Square (MC-73, NFX) that kept me watching long past the time when I knew I was not going to like it, primarily the film’s setting in an art museum in Stockholm, but by the end, I was resentful and wanted those two and a half hours of my life back.  Ruben Ostland’s film is provocative but inconsequential; it wants to make you uncomfortable, and does.  Occasionally comic in its satire but mostly cringe-worthy, it’s as smug and self-congratulatory as the people and situations it depicts, perfect for a Palme d’Or at Cannes.

I won’t go so far as to say the Swiss film The Divine Order (MC-67, NFX, AMZ) should have received a nomination, but I liked it more than most of those that did.  A polemical but sweet comedy about the coming of women’s suffrage to Switzerland (in 1971!), the film is obvious but rather endearing.  In a conservative village where no one will admit to favoring the vote for women, one housewife experiences an awakening, which becomes a movement that brings the tide of liberation to this backwater.  Somehow the film is simultaneously quaint and timely.

I mention Thomas Vinterberg’s The Commune (MC-60, Hulu), about a houseful of characters in 1970s Copenhagen, for two reasons only:  to praise the central performance of Trine Dyrholm, and to point you in the direction of an infinitely superior film in the same vein, Lukas Moodysson’s Together (NFX, AMZ).

Though The Shape of Water made a bigger splash, the best performance of the year by Oscar-nominee Sally Hawkins was delivered in Maudie (MC-65, NFX), Aisling Walsh’s adaptation from the life of Canadian outsider artist Maud Lewis.  Afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis, Maud was virtually crippled, and mentally limited but shrewd.  Thrown out of her family home, she desperately attaches herself as housekeeper to an impoverished fishmonger played by Ethan Hawke, who is an even more limited product of an orphanage.  The house is so tiny that they have no choice but to sleep in the same bed, and eventually to marry.  The movie may have turned their lives into more of an unlikely love story than it was, but Hawkins and Hawke sell it convincingly, if inarticulately.  The husband’s harshness melts some when Maudie’s paintings start to bring in a little money, and then more as their house becomes a Nova Scotia tourist attraction (it now resides in a museum).  The seasons turn beautifully through the middle decades of the 20^th century, as Maudie remains simply devoted to her painting and her man, the physical and emotional pain overcome by passion for her art.  I would show this at the Clark if I were still programming films there, maybe paired with another favorite of mine, Seraphine.

Last Flag Flying (MC-65, NFX, AMZ) is another film I single out as better than its general reputation.  Many critics seemed to resent Richard Linklater’s decades-later “sequel” to Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, but I never shared that reverence for the original.  I would watch the Ashby again, if it were available, but it’s not really a prerequisite to the Linklater.  In the gap between Vietnam and Iraq, Jack Nicholson has morphed into Bryan Cranston, as filthy motor-mouthed iconoclast, now a drunken bar owner.  Laurence Fishburne has gone from hellraiser to preacher man, and Steve Carell is the gentle soul who served his time in the brig, only to lose his wife to cancer and his son to a Baghdad assassin.  He gathers the Marine buddies he hasn’t seen for thirty years, to accompany him to his son’s burial at Arlington.  Revelations lead to another road trip for the trio, as they re-forge their earlier comradeship.  Linklater’s relaxed and thoughtful direction gives the actors plenty of space to work out their characters, mixing the comic and the tragic, while commenting on America’s recent wars, those who serve and those who send them on fraudulent missions.

Finally viewed, Columbus (MC-89, Hulu) bumped the previous film from my top ten list for 2017.  In direction and themes, acting and setting, this debut film from Korean auteur Kogonada stands out and stands above.  It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen about architecture, and one of the most architectonic in its own right.  You might find the film static and eccentric in its pacing and framing, but unlike so many “art” films, the elements of the human comedy come through clearly.  Ozu is a clear inspiration.  The director withholds and diverts attention, but does not frustrate.  The humanity of the film is immensely enhanced by the performance of Haley Lu Richardson as an extremely bright girl just out of high school, who lacks the finances and family stability to go away to college (reminiscent of Lady Bird).  So, stuck in her hometown of Columbus, Indiana (coincidentally, where Mike Pence is from), she forms an attachment to the architecture of this surprising mecca of mid-century modern architecture (the Saarinens et al.)  She works in the striking public library, but dreams of giving tours around the town’s great buildings.  She meets a Korean man – whose father is an architectural scholar, in town to give a lecture, where he suffers a stroke and now languishes in the hospital between life and death – and they bond over buildings.  John Cho is the son, and Parker Posey is the father’s protégé and associate.  Wistful, amusing, thoughtful, this film is a poem of blood and spirit, concrete and glass.

Molly’s Game (MC-71, NFX) was more engaging than a film about poker has any right to be.  Aaron Sorkin directs one of his scripts for the first time, and the cutting is as quick as the dialogue.  Jessica Chastain is quite marvelous as the title character, and Idris Elba brilliant as her lawyer.  Her career as competitive skier short-circuited by a serious mishap on the slopes, Molly Bloom deferred law school and went to LA, where she went from cocktail waitress to hostess of a high-stakes poker game, eventually running the whole show, and then moving it to NYC, where she ran afoul of various mobs, including the Feds.  This a crime story that turns on matters of honor and pride, rather than of guilt or innocence.  Maybe the first-person narration, adapted from Bloom’s own story, is a little too insistent, and maybe the film drags past the two-hour point and would have been well-advised to severely cut Kevin Costner’s role as Molly’s father – nonetheless I wouldn’t fold on it.

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (MC-65, NFX) depends a lot on the appeal of Annette Bening, and the woman she plays, the film noir star Gloria Graham, both of whom interest me but may not interest you.  It’s the story of Graham’s last years, told through the memoir of her young lover, played well by Jamie Bell.  The gender reversal from the usual May-December romance is refreshing, and Paul McGuigan’s direction is effective, if a bit tricky.  I rather liked this romantic weepie with a hard edge, but it’s far from a must-see, unless you’re a particular admirer of Ms. Bening.

To me, Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (MC-75, NFX) was a very mixed bag.  Joseph Cedar is an Israeli writer-director who made a point of casting his American Jewish characters against type.  Richard Gere transforms himself from WASP Master of the Universe into a Manhattan macher as shlub, a low-rent Madoff or Michael Cohen.  He’s well-dressed enough, but apparently homeless as well as officeless, walking the streets and taking refuge in libraries or coffee shops, always plugged into his phone, trying to make deals out of no tangible assets, except his ability to ingratiate and fabricate.  Michael Sheen is his nephew, Steve Buscemi is rather hilariously a rabbi, and Charlotte Gainsbourg is a corruption investigator.  Gere lucks out with a connection to an Israeli politician, who becomes an unlikely Prime Minister, and favors get exchanged, until he gets caught in a web of promises he can’t keep.  Cedar’s film is funny and sad, but tries too hard for an antic tone, while remaining serious, with a conclusion more wishful than convincing.

[Click through for more reviews and my tardy Top Ten of 2017]

What is it with all the fraternal writer-director teams?  Were all these guys inspired by the Coen brothers?  Clearly the Dardennes weren’t, but all these young bros?  The latest pair is Alex and Andrew Smith, with Walking Out (MC-79, NFX).  Beside their own forces, they combine a number of familiar movie tropes – man in wilderness, father and son, fight and flight, endurance and survival – into a workable fable of manhood, enhanced by fine cinematography of Montana big-sky high country and committed performances from Matt Bomer and Josh Wiggins, as mountain man father and visiting 14-year old son go hunting for moose and each other.  The journey is arduous, and you know where it’s going, but on the whole, worth the trek.

Though I would be more generous to Goodbye Christopher Robin (MC-54, NFX, HBO) than the Metacritic average, I acknowledge it takes an Anglophiliac to enjoy it.  But I was recently back from two weeks in the UK, and rather reveled in it.  The storytelling is not tidy, but the settings are sumptuous, and the acting carries the day.  Domhnall Gleeson as A.A. Milne has a face that speaks the unspoken; Margot Robbie is magnetic yet scary as his society wife; and Kelly Macdonald is characteristically sympathetic and heartfelt as the nanny.  I found the child whose teddy bear becomes Winnie-the-Pooh somewhat distastefully adorable, but tastes may differ.  Pretty as it is, this film takes a darker turn, as the boy becomes an unwilling celebrity, a real-life Harry Potter.  I’ll grant the film is manipulative, muddled by overreach, and not fully resolved, but I didn’t mind being manipulated for the duration.

Speaking of England’s green and pleasant land, I have to mention several films I watched on the plane over and back.  Tiny screen and tinny sound prevent valid evaluation, but I liked The Disaster Artist (MC-76, NFX, AMZ), directed by and starring James Franco, tongue firmly in cheek, as the passionately obtuse maker of what is reputed to be the worst film ever.  He recruits brother David Franco as his straight man sidekick, and a host of familiar faces to play the talentless participants in the real-life fiasco, which somehow becomes a success through self-mockery. 

While I may have missed some of the finer points of that effort, I think I squeezed all of the available juice out of Finding Your Feet (MC-53, NFX), a manufactured bit of British whimsy (you can tick off all the hits it mimics, from The Full Monty on), which touched on many points I had just experienced first-hand.   Richard Loncraine’s movie is better than run of the mill, due to the presence of quality stock in Imelda Staunton, Timothy Spall, and Celia Imrie.

I just saw Death of Stalin (MC-88, NFX) on a NYT list of the best films of 2018 so far; I may have to give it another look, since I missed so much of the dialogue on the airplane.  Armando Iannucci follows In the Loop, The Thick of It, and Veep with another scabrously funny political satire, this time set among the Politburo scrambling for power after the title event.  Versatile Steve Buscemi plays Khrushchev, Jeffrey Tambor is Malenkov, Michael Palin is Molotov, and other funny folk fill out the cast.  Missing dialogue, I was left with mostly slapstick, so withhold judgment.

When it comes to blockbuster movies, I am the antithesis of a fanboy.  So take that into consideration when I say that Blade Runner 2049 (MC-81, NFX, HBO) was not worth my time, or yours probably.  I gave Ridley Scott’s original a couple of tries back in the day, but never saw what the appeal was, and despite some dazzling cinematography from Roger Deakins, I was equally unimpressed with Denis Villeneuve’s belated sequel.  Long, slow, and drawn out, the film never engaged me, except for a few oh-wow moments.  There are some good actors in the film – Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Harrison Ford – but no characters that I took an interest in.  And the story was – yada yada yada.

Wonderstruck (MC-71, NFX, AMZ), I was not.  But I did appreciate Todd Haynes’ parallel evocations of New York in 1927 and 1977.  And I really liked the girl actor in the earlier period, though not so much the boys in the later.  Plus the celebration of museums, from natural history dioramas to a vast miniature replica of NYC built for the 1964 World’s Fair.  And the theme of deafness.  Et cetera, et cetera.  But for me, it just did not add up in the end.  Or maybe adds up too neatly, too airlessly.  The cabinet of wonders is just too miscellaneous, and over-determined.  Julianne Moore makes her obligatory appearance in a Haynes film, in small dual roles, but Michelle Williams’ is merely the briefest tease.  Based on a book by Brian Selznick, this film obviously bears comparison to Scorsese’s Hugo, but not favorably so, I’m afraid.

Though reminiscent of many documentaries about scholastic competitions – sporting, academic, performative – Step (MC-81, NFX, Hulu) has a flavor of its own.  Not least in its milieu, the same mean streets of Baltimore portrayed in The Wire, and its setting in a charter school for black girls, which vows to get all its graduates into college.  We follow the fortunes of the first graduating class, especially the leader of the competitive step-dancing group from school’s first class of sixth-graders.  Both students and faculty make for interesting portraits, and the dance team is an interesting avenue into diverse concerns.  Though the formula is familiar, the facts – and the moves – are fresh.

As an old person, I rely on film to show me what it’s like to be a young person today, and that, along with the appeal of Aubrey Plaza, was enough for me to sit through Ingrid Goes West (MC-71, NFX, Hulu).  She plays a young woman whose life was circumscribed by care for the sick mother who has just died; her only contact with others comes from social media.  With the money she’s inherited, she goes to California to stalk a woman (Elizabeth Olsen) whose golden online existence she’s been following, and succeeds, for a while, in becoming her best friend, before spiraling into madness.  Mixing the poignant with the crazy, the film achieves an edgy comedy, remote from me but sufficiently engaging.

In my year-end summaries, I’ve typically broken down all the highly-regarded films I’ve seen into Exhortations, Recommendations, Appreciations, and Equivocations.  This year, probably my last attempt at full coverage, I’ll settle for something like a traditional top ten list of my personal favorites.  It’s no coincidence that all these films are defined and characterized primarily by their director’s personality, so I add their names (and ranking per Metacritic), in very rough order of my estimation:

Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (#3)

Steven Spielberg’s The Post (#50)

Koganada’s Columbus (#10)

Dee Rees’ Mudbound (#33)

Sean Baker’s The Florida Project (#5)

Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime (#56)

Nana & Simon’s My Happy Family (#21)

Aisling Walsh’s Maudie (NR)

Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake (#91)

The Dardenne brothers’ The Unknown Girl (NR)

To include documentaries and make it an even dozen, I would add:

Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (#6)

Agnès Varda’s Faces Places (#1)