Skin, based on a true story, tells about Bryon Widner, a former neo-nazi with hateful tattoos all over his body and face, who gained some fame about 10 years ago when he had all those face tattoos (painfully) removed (instead of flashbacks, we get “flash-forwards where we see him getting them removed, interspersed throughout the film). Bryon was adopted by a leader in the hate group as a child and has lived within it his whole life. However, he starts to wonder what he’s doing there, and the film lets you come to that conclusion on your own. There are subtle spots you have to notice, like how he gives the new recruit a hard time, asking him why he wanted to join. Things start to change more when he meets a woman and falls in love with her and her kids. She was raised in hate groups herself (her dad was in the KKK) but swore it all off, and Bryon decides to leave his family and marry her and move to a new city. Unfortunately the family won’t let him go that easy, and follow him there. Jaime Bell is solid as Bryon Widner, and Danielle Macdonald is always good (check out Patti Cake$ if you haven’t), but the movie is a bit stale and paint-by-numbers, the same trap a lot of biopics fall into. Like many indie films with star power in the acting roles, the movie may be worthy of a watch by film lovers like myself just to see the performances, but as a movie itself, it isn’t very memorable.

I’ve decided I’m just not a man for comedies anymore. Used to dig them when I was younger and could watch them over and over again. Now, even on good ones, I laugh during the film, but afterwards just shrug them off, and they don’t leave any lasting impression on me. Long Shot is the latest, and it is indeed a very good comedy, but still didn’t do much for me. This one is about the unlikely relationship between a popular and powerful politician, Charlize Theron as Charlotte Field, currently Secretary of State but getting ready to run for President, and a quirky, left-wing journalist, Seth Rogen as Fred Flarsky. They were childhood friends, in fact, Charlotte babysat the slightly younger Fred, and they find each other again years later. At first, Charlotte just hires Fred to write speeches for her, but they quickly find a shared attraction for each other. As romantic comedies go, it is very good. Lots of laughs, though a bit crude for maybe my parents to watch, but like many films of this genre, it is awfully predictable. I did enjoy the gender change from the usual way this kind of film is told, putting the woman in the power role and having the man run to her for a change, but otherwise it is pretty standard fair.

To Dust follows an orthodox Hasidic Jewish man, Shmuel (Geza Rohrig), having a hard time getting over the recent death of his wife. More than her physical loss, he is having nightmares about the decomposition of her body, buried in its pine coffin. Having been raised without science and not knowing how long the decomposing can take, he “sins” by seeking answers from a local college science professor, Albert (Matthew Broderick). Thus embarks a funny yet heartfelt journey about loss, coming to terms, and moving on. At first Shmuel goes simple, burying a pig in the ground with plans to see how long it would take to become dust, but as Albert points out, “If you brought me a pig about as large as your wife, no offense, and buried her like a Jew, no offense, then we’d be cooking, but this is a mockery of science.” They get a bigger pig and bury it in the manner that the wife was buried, and go on to exhume it every month to see how far along it is getting. Along the way, Shmuel goes through his grieving process, saying good bye in his own ways. It’s a lovely film; Broderick mostly provides the comic relief and isn’t bad, but Rohrig is great, as he was in the Hungarian film Son of Saul, released a couple years ago and winner of that year’s Oscar for best foreign film (check this and that one out for some great stuff).

Midsommar was a hit last summer on the Indie circuit. It was billed as a great horror film. It is certainly unsettling and disturbing at times, but I’m not sure I’d call it a horror film, and honestly, I thought it fairly average. It is about a group of American college students who go with a Swedish friend to his hometown, a commune-like group off in the middle of nowhere. You get creepy vibes from the moment they arrive, with pictures on the walls showing rituals and whatnot, but our unsuspecting Americans seem completely oblivious. They don’t even freak out enough when a couple of old adults jump from a cliff in suicidal fashion, hearing the explanation that they were giving their lives to replenish the energies of the youth or some such nonsense. The film mostly follows the lone girl of the group, Dani (Florence Pugh, also known recently as the main actor in Fighting With My Family, and the one bright spot in this film). Dani recently lost her entire family when her sister killed their parents in a murder/suicide. She’s facing those demons as she faces the cult in Sweden, but the film doesn’t do enough to explore the correlations. Outside of some gross-out scenes inserted just for shock value, the film is pretty benign, and a bit long for a “scary” movie at 2 ½ hours. Not worthy of the hype.

In my opinion, Breaking Bad is one of the greatest shows ever made. I was one of the hoards of fans who eagerly anticipated every episode, and so when a new movie was surprisingly announced by Netflix, I couldn’t wait to see it. El Camino resolves the mystery of what happened to Jesse Pinkman, last seen on the final episode of Bad driving off in the eponymous car, being one of the few to survive the blood thirsty show. Rotten Tomatoes describes it as “entertaining if not essential” and I think I agree. We see Jesse dealing with the aftermath of having been tortured and caged for a year, and see some of what he went through in flashbacks. The film is a wonderful walk down memory lane, with many of the original cast returning in the those flashbacks. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t remember important plot elements after all these years (I can’t believe it ended way back in 2013!) but the film reminds you of the important stuff, without holding your hand and re-hashing old tales. It isn’t “necessary viewing,” and the show still stands on its own from beginning to end as a masterpiece all by itself, but El Camino is a fantastic curtain call.

Ok James Joyce, you got me. Finnegans Wake was a super hard read, and deserving of its reputation as one of the hardest challenges of the English language. But after finishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce’s first novel, published in 1916), I realize that he’s just a tough author in general. Granted, Portrait is no Finnegans Wake, but you still can’t speed read it.

Portrait is largely autobiographical and follows a man named Stephen Dedalus from his time as a young boy up into adulthood. Each chapter depicts a major moment in his life, moments that would shape his views on life and the world around him. Though it isn’t written in first person, the style of the writing changes too as Stephen grows older. It begins in a wondrous mood, since kids’ eyes are open to the wide world around them, but as Stephen ages, he (and the writing style) loses some of that luster and, while still called “the artist” or “the poet” by his friends because of what he enjoys doing, he becomes more pragmatic.

Stephen is a boy raised in Ireland at a time when nationalism is at an all-time peak, and at times, there is a conflict between the government and the church, which is often seen as being a bit corrupt. Of course to the young Stephen, he is blissfully unaware of all of this, and only sees glimpses of it at home in arguments between his devout mother, his one-of-the-guys father, and their surrounding family, who like all families, fall across all lines of the political and religious landscape. There are moments that seem to push Stephen away from the church (such as when he is physically punished by a priest for having lost his glasses at school) and other times when he feels the call of God personally. Through much of it, Stephen often just goes with the flow and doesn’t seem to speak up for himself until he is much older. You get the impression of a young man who takes in all, but doesn’t show his cards.

At 16, Stephen commits his first big sins, and begins sleeping with prostitutes. He does this for awhile before, overcome with shame, he goes to a priest to confess. This leads to a renewed sense of Stephen feeling the presence of God, and he devotes himself again to leading a better life. He wants to feel something, and in so wanting, he dives in headfirst. This only lasts so long though. In college, Stephen finally realizes that he is unsure if there even is a God (but he is equally unsure if there isn’t too). He’s lost faith in man, and feels constricted by the ropes everyone wants to put on him, whether those ties come from his family, the church, or his community. He decides to leave it all behind and go into a self exile, where he can finally become the artist that he has always dreamed to be.

In some of my other reviews, I’ve praised the beautifully crafted language of some authors (William Faulkner comes to mind). James Joyce’s works are equally brilliantly built, and while it most definitely has a lyrical quality, it is much more challenging. You have to devote all of your attention to your reading, because if you get distracted for even a breath, you seem to lose the cadence and flow of words that Joyce is carrying you along through. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a difficult read, but it is rewarding for those with patience and care to read (slowly) and enjoy the journey along with Stephen.

Michelangelo Antonioni was an Italian filmmaker whose films became very influential in the art house circuit. I’ve never seen any of his stuff before, so will look at some today, including 3 of his arguably most famous pictures. Le Amiche (The Girlfriends), released in 1955, is about a group of five girlfriends as they deal with relationships in a changing society. Two of the five, Rosetta (coming off a recent suicide attempt because of an as-yet unknown reason) and Nene are in love with the same man: Lorenzo, Nene’s husband. This love triangle is the focus of much of the film, but the dynamics with the group of girls is heavily explored too. Momina seems to care for not much more than herself, Clelia is a woman who puts career before love (still a bit taboo in 1955), and all of them tiptoe around Rosetta because of her attempt to end her life. It’s a very lovely picture and acts as a snapshot of the time; it feels very real in a certain sense, but some of the characters feel like caricatures and too one-dimensional. Not a very deep film, but I can see how it heralds the more well regarded films that were to follow.

Some art films are often guilty of placing characters before plot (not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to be in the right mindset to watch a film like this). L’Avventura fits the bill, because it has hardly any plot, but I was still riveted. The film follows a spoiled rich girl named Anna who seems to hold the world on a string. She craves everyone’s attention but returns no feelings, either to her father, her boyfriend, or her best friend. After yachting with some friends, she disappears suddenly on a secluded island, and no one can find her. In searching for her for the rest of the film, her best friend Claudia and her boyfriend Sandro begin a relationship with each other. The film is all about these two and their circle of friends, and what makes them tic. But also, the film is a showcase of Antonioni’s style. He has a way with the camera, creating stark and empty landscapes where it seems our actors are the only people in the world. The scenes where the party is searching on the rocks of an empty, desolate island for Anna are almost surreal-feeling in a very real environment. You’ve heard of a slow burn, well this one isn’t even that, it’s more of a slow simmer. But I was enthralled. Light on plot but heavy on character development, L’Avventura is movie magic.

La Notte (The Night) is the story of a couple on the rocks, told over the course of a long day and night. Actually “on the rocks” may not be the best description, because that would imply that one or both of them would like to save their marriage, and it becomes increasingly apparent throughout the film that these two hardly have anger for each other. In fact, it is almost extreme apathy. Lidia walks around looking completely uninterested in her life and is almost certainly depressed, while Giovanni flirts with any woman that catches his eye. He is a popular writer among the intellectual (and pretentious) crowd, and enjoys all the attention, but isn’t wealthy himself, having gotten “into money” when he married Lidia. However, he internally fears that he is a fraud and isn’t nearly as talented as everyone thinks he is. The lack of talent does seem to bother him though, it is the threat of loss of status that he may care more about. Our vapid couple fit right in with the societal circles they hang in. It’s a very beautiful (if slightly depressing) film with wonderful, subdued acting by its two leads (Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni). Like L’Avventura, not much a real “plot” to follow along, and it does move slow, but it is a very rewarding film.

L’eclisse (The Eclipse) was heralded upon its release in 1962, as a film showing the disconnect between people in a modern “connected” society. Once again starring Antonioni’s muse, Monica Vitti, it is about a woman who can’t find love. Vittoria is a beautiful young woman, too beautiful for her own good, because men just want to sleep with her, but she seems to be looking for something more. The film begins with her breaking up with her previous boyfriend, who becomes a bit stalker-ish by showing up at her place the following night and hanging out outside her window (when she calls the ex-boyfriend’s friend to let him know to look out for his bud because he might need a helping hand at the moment, the friend hits on her as well). The next day, Vittoria meets Piero (a young Alain Delon, just two years after his break-out role in Purple Noon), a stockbroker whose lifestyle is as frenetic as his work. Vittoria likes him immediately, but like all men around her, he is singularly focused on one thing. She rebuffs him for awhile, but does eventually give in and the two sleep together. They agree to meet the next day at “the usual spot,” but as Antonioni shows with his brilliant camera pacing again, neither show up. I thought this movie had a very good-to-great beginning, and a transcendent ending, but the middle was a bit boring honestly. The ending makes up for it, but bring your patience. A brilliant film overall, showing the alienation of individuals from each other in world that was growing increasingly connected, and looking back on it from eyes in 2019, it has only gotten worse. As a side, I finally put my finger on how the director gets these films to feel so expansive. For one, he obviously picks locales where, often, there are few if any bystanders walking the streets, creating a feeling of emptiness. But more importantly, he uses the widescreen format to perfection. Whereas a lot of those old black and white films are 4:3, Antonioni’s films fill a widescreen television, and he often places the camera just a hair lower than you typically see done. It isn’t so much that you get a feeling of “looking up” at the actors, in fact it is easy to miss, but you do see the expansive sky above and around them while the walk around. Outstanding filmmaking, and I feel like a buffoon for missing it on the first couple films.

The last film is, unfortunately, the one I couldn’t get through, and I was probably most looking forward to this one initially. Red Desert is about a lonely, self-isolated woman (again, Monica Vitti) who feels disconnected from everyone around her, even her husband and son. She shares a bit of kinship with a coworker of her husband’s, who has similar feelings but has learned to live with them, and the two start an emotional affair. The affair maybe got physical by the end, but I didn’t make it that far. After about 80 minutes into the 2 hour film, I gave up. I wanted to like this one, because to add to the feeling of isolationism the main character feels, the film has an almost post-apocalyptic feel, and I typically dig those kinds of films. The industrial workers live in cold, concrete buildings, and there is pollution and dreary, foggy, miserable conditions all around them. But honestly the film is a slog. It lacked the trepidatious feeling of the previous 3 films, and watching our leading lady struggle through life seemed more challenging for the viewer than for her. I might attempt this one on another day in the future, but lacked the patience for it today.

For myself, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 was one of those books that, while reading, I knew it was good stuff, but for whatever reason, it never really grabbed me and held my attention. Some books just get a hold of you and you can’t put them down, turning page after page for hours. Catch-22 was good, almost unarguably great, but I never got that sense of urgency to find out what happened next.

The book is almost entirely a piece of satire, focusing on many subjects but primarily the asininity of the US military chain of command and the bureaucracy that goes with it. It follows a unit of air force bombers stationed in Italy during World War II, and almost all of them are nearly certifiably crazy (as the book points out, you’d have to be to fly repeatedly over enemy territories in slow planes while getting shot at, wouldn’t you?). The main character is Yossarian, who seems to be the least insane of them all, because he realizes that everyone there is trying to kill him, from the enemy combatants to his own commanders, for continually sending them on suicide missions, and he wants out. However, every time the unit gets close to meeting their quota of bombing runs, Colonel Cathcart, who is obsessed with impressing his superiors so as to become a general, keeps raising said quota. The big “catch 22” referenced in the title is Yossarian’s conundrum for getting sent home. A person would have to be crazy to do what he’s doing in his bombing missions, but to apply for reassignment he’d have to be of sound mind, thus not crazy, and still capable of flying more missions.

If Yossarian is sane for wanting to get out of his situation, everyone around him is most certainly not sane. His cohorts are all nutty, and include: Milo, the mess officer, who runs a “syndicate” trading in black market goods, even to the enemy; Orr, a pilot who gets shot down on every single mission, but always survives along with all of his crew; Major Major (rank and name), a recluse who hates meeting with people, so he makes sure his aid only lets visitors in to “see” him when he isn’t in the office; McWatt, Yossarian’s pilot, who Yossarian considers completely insane because of how sane he appears during the war; Nately, who is in love with a prostitute who will sleep with anyone but Nately; and a host of others. The doctors don’t know anything about medicine and the commanders don’t know anything about combat, leading to some very funny exchanges throughout the novel.

Through a multitude of seemingly unrelated events but which ultimately all tie together in the end, the book does have a nice plot, but there’s far too much of it to get into here. I’ll suffice to say that, like stated above, it is a good (great?) book, but just not engaging for me personally. Some of the humor had me chuckling, other parts rolling my eyes, and a few spots genuinely offended, such as the pilots’ treatment of the female nurses in the medical tents. Of course, it was written in a different time, published when “men were men” in 1961. I can’t argue that it is wonderfully written. Starting on it, it seems like it is jumping around a bit too much, but you realize after awhile that it is logically following certain ideas down paths to their conclusions, and then exploring something new, which may have started earlier but may finish later, if that makes sense. I’m not sure I’d place it as a top 15 “greatest of all time” novel, but it is a very nice book and I’m glad to have finally read it to see what all the hype is about.

I didn’t set out to do this on purpose, but ended up watching 5 films in a row that all featured subjects involving people on the fringes of society, mostly the poor but also the disenchanted. Mobile Homes is about a family eking out an existence beyond the fringe. Ali and her boyfriend Evan are total white trash, subjecting her son Bone to a life he should not be a part of at any age, much less the 8 years he has. They bet on cockfighting, Evan has Bone sell drugs, and they float from motel room to motel room with nothing permanent in their lives. One night Evan hits Ali and she and Bone run for it, spending the night in a mobile home under construction. The next day they meet the contractor building the homes, Robert. Robert allows them to stay, offering Ali and Bone some normalcy for perhaps the first time in Bone’s life, in exchange for Ali working around the site. Their short-lived idyllic setting is put to the test when Ali spots Evan’s van, and she can’t help herself but to accept him back. As bad a mother as Ali is, Evan cares for nothing but himself. It’s a tough film to watch; even the opening scene when Ali is trying to get Bone into a shelter, basically to abandon him so she and Evan can do their thing, and the receptionist tells her that Bone just walked out the door, Ali isn’t dismayed at all, quipping, “He knows how to get home.” That sets the table for the kind of people that make up this little trio. I liked the film all right, and I think Imogen Poots is really good as Ali, but the camera work doesn’t do her any favors to show off her talents. Like a lot of independent films these days, they have too much “shaky camera syndrome” in an effort to make it feel “real.” Decent film for indie movie lovers.

Savage Youth is another better-than-average indie film, and apparently based on a true story (though I admit I didn’t look up any info on it to verify). The first 20 or so minutes introduce us to the half dozen main characters, a group of young 20-somethings that are acting like a lot of kids these days. There’s a rough-and-tumble guy, his artistic girlfriend, her slutty friend, a closet gay man who acts tough around his friends, and, on the other side of town, a pair of black brothers who can’t escape the color of their skin to succeed in life. But just because most of the characters seem a little aimless, don’t think that the movie itself doesn’t have an endgame. It builds quietly but surely to a tremendous climax. Like a lot of low budget films, there’s a mixed bag of acting chops in this one. Some are really great, others not so much (there’s definitely some over-acting here and there), but the quiet tension and slow-building suspense get you past the rough patches, and I really enjoyed this one too. Bring your patience, there’s not a lot of “action” to carry the story, but some of the performances are really quite good, especially the subtle styles of Grace Victoria Cox as Elena and Tequan Richmond as Gabe.

We the Coyotes (retitled Anywhere With You upon release in the USA) follows a young couple, Amanda and Jake, as they move to LA for a fresh start, but mostly to escape Amanda’s disapproving parents, who see Jake as a loser/floater/stoner with no ambition. Amanda has a job interview lined up and they are planning on staying with her older sister for a few days until they get established, but a family fight leaves them without a place to stay, and the job doesn’t pan out. Later in the day, their car gets towed and they spend all the rest of their cash on getting it back. Broke and homeless on their first day in the city, they have no options. Amanda is portrayed by Amanda Saylor, better known as the snotty daughter in the first few seasons of Homeland, the girl everyone loved to hate. She’s just not very good, and shows the same perplexed looks now as she did on that show 7-8 years ago as a kid. The film is as aimless as its characters, and the ending is just dumb, because (SPOILER) they get super excited that Jake unexpectedly lands a minimum wage job and Amanda becomes a “manager” for a homeless local musician. Yay, we can afford to stay in LA! Really?

Concrete Kids is about a couple kids (no older than 10 it seems) who set off across LA over night to reach the Staples Center by morning for a silly contest where the winner gets $1000. Edison is from a solid middle class family and is doing it for the adventure of it, but Sage comes from a poor family and really wants the cash to prevent being evicted. The beginning felt pretty cliché, skateboarder kids and all. I don’t know why I thought I’d like this one; I hate child actors, because they usually deliver their lines like they are reading a book in front of class and their mannerisms seem forced because (nearly always) they are just doing exactly what an adult told them to do. Those observations are true here again, but the film isn’t terrible. It is mostly about Sage (who, as a poor kid, is exposed to a lot more than his friend) opening Edison’s eyes to the world around him, warts and all. Edison begins by being scared of everything from the bus to the metro to the plentiful homeless around the city, but comes out of his shell as the night progresses. However, Sage isn’t the only one with problems, and Edison’s come to light at the end. Fairly ho-hum film, nothing to get too excited over.

Little Woods takes place in a small town in North Dakota and follows two sisters, Ollie and Deb, who are at a crossroads. Ollie is just getting done with her probation after having been arrested crossing the border with Canada with a backpack full of prescription drugs. She had been going up there to buy, and giving pain pills to their dying mother and selling the rest for cash on the street. Though she’s the one with the record, sister Deb is really the trouble child. Ollie was just doing what she needed to do to take care of mom, but Deb has one child already, another on the way, and the father is a drunk and a dead beat. Deb’s been living out of a trailer under threat of eviction, and the family house that Ollie is staying in now that mom has passed is also back due on taxes and mortgage. With money due on the house and no prospects of a decent job on the horizon, Ollie agrees to make one more drug run to get them in the clear. At the same time, Deb decides to have an abortion, but since they can’t afford it in the states, she will go north with Ollie and have it done in Canada. The film was marketed as a western (not really, though it does take place in the back woods of the northern frontier) and thriller (not really again, though at times it has a quiet suspense), it is more of a family drama. I thought it was just all right, not worth a second viewing, but the two leads, Tessa Thompson and Lily James, both give stellar performances. Thompson has gained traction in the last five years with roles in Selma, the Creed films, and as Valkyrie in Avengers (and a good part in the HBO Westworld show). James too is on the rise lately after parts in Baby Driver, the latest Mamma Mia sequel, and Yesterday. However, both are better in this film than anything I’d seen before. It is worth watching once for their performances alone.

Samuel Fuller is a director whose raw, often low-budget films were not thought very highly of early in his career, but who gained esteem later. His style is more visceral and was even called crude in their day, but they are definitely compelling films. His directorial debut was I Shot Jesse James, released in 1949. Unlike Dominik’s film The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (tremendous film by the way, see it if you haven’t), the actual killing isn’t the big climax, in fact, the murder goes down fairly early in this one. The movie follows Bob Ford. He wants to get out from under the bounty on his head, and sees an opportunity to kill his best friend, Jesse James, to get the clemency offered. He wants freedom to marry his girl, but she no longer loves him, something everyone is well aware of except for Ford himself. When the governor denies him the promised $10,000 reward for James’ death, Ford strikes out to find money to marry somewhere else, first in his infamous traveling show detailing the murder of James, and then in a silver rush in Colorado. Fuller is finding his footing here, but some of the trademarks he would use throughout his movies, like extreme closeups and raw characters that are very un-Hollywood like for their day, are already present. For my tastes, Fuller’s off to a great start.

I was pleased to find Vincent Price starring in Fuller’s second film, The Baron of Arizona. This is loosely based on a true story, the story of a man named James Reavis who tried to swindle the government out of the territory of Arizona before it became a state, and he very nearly succeeded. In the film, Reavis has a plan from the beginning, and is as thorough as he can be to bring it to fruition. Knowing that the government will continue to recognize land grants issued in the west by the Spanish and Mexican governments, he finds a parentless girl to doll up as an heiress. After setting her up with a governess, he heads to Spain. There, he spends years infiltrating a friary until he is a welcome member, at which point he gains access to their original records of land grants issued by King Ferdinand VI. He forges a document there, and does so again at a copy in the house of a collector and government official in Madrid. With everything in place, he returns to Arizona to marry the girl he left behind, who is now a grown woman. The rest of the film plays out with the US government trying to poke holes in his claim. The film feels different than his first and later movies, more like a traditional Hollywood western, but still has some of Fuller’s stylistic character. Price would later say this one of his favorite roles. Perhaps that is because it is very different from many of his other films, but you can tell he is having a good time here, and is fantastic in the role. I very much enjoyed this one.

Pickup on South Street shifts to the hustle and bustle of urban New York. A noir film, it begins right away following a thief named Skip McCoy as he robs a young attractive woman on the subway. It turns out Candy was carrying in her wallet a splice of film that held something very much wanted by her handler, her ex-boyfriend Joey. Joey tells Candy that the film held trade secrets from his former employer that he was going to sell for a lot of money, but like a lot of films made in the early 50’s, the real bad guy is the communist party. They want that film, and the rest of the movie features a race against time, with the cops, Candy, and Joey all trying to get to Skip to get their hands on that film. Murder, fist fights, and hard language (for its era) all combine into a thoroughly gripping and tense film. Skip is an unlikely hero, as rough-and-tumble as they get. He does despicable things but Fuller does all that he can to get us to like him, and does a good job of it. I thought Fuller’s raw style was great for the previous westerns I’d seen, but it seems even more perfect for a noir. Great flick.

These last 2 films are probably more typical of the type Fuller would become famous for. They are certainly much more shocking than the previous ones. Aptly enough, the first one is Shock Corridor. It’s about a journalist named Johnny who is obsessed with winning a Pulitzer. He thinks his most sure-fire bet is to solve a murder at a local mental hospital, and to do so, he gets himself admitted by convincing his girlfriend to pretend to be his sister, a sister that he has been making sexual advances to. This gets him in the door, but he has to keep up appearances while there, all while locating the three witnesses to the crime and getting them to come out of their insanity just long enough to drop a clue to help him solve the case. Each of the three is definitely certifiable: one thinks he is a Confederate general in the civil war, another (a black man) thinks his is a leader in the KKK, and the third behaves like a child. As Johnny gets closer to the answer, he gets further from his own personal ties to sanity. The film is much more raw than Fuller’s earlier pictures, and very edgy for 1963, dealing with subjects you didn’t see much of back then.

If you think a sharp look inside a mental hospital would shock the high minded in the 60s, it has nothing on The Naked Kiss. Kelly is a prostitute on the run from her pimp, and finds herself in hiding in a small town. She’s only there for a minute when she runs into a police chief named Griff, who recognizes her for what she is immediately, and wants her out of his quaint little town. She stays anyway, renting a room nearby and beginning to volunteer at the local children’s hospital. Kelly meets Grant, a wealthy man and Griff’s best friend, and the two fall in love despite Griff’s objections. Kelly tells Grant about her past and he doesn’t seem to care, but he has his own dark secrets. Kelly walks in on Grant molesting a little girl, and he admits that he loves Kelly because they are both deviants and can share their sicknesses together. A disgusted and enraged Kelly kills Grant, but then is sent up for murder charges by Griff, who doesn’t believe her story. Despite all the good she’s done in her short time in the town, finding people to come forward to speak for her, now that her past is all over the papers, becomes an impossible task. Gritty and unflinching, this film was obviously way ahead of its time. Constance Towers is incredible as the (now cliché) hooker with the heart of gold, and the story, direction, and camera work are all top notch. Great classic film.

Fast Color is a very non-traditional superhero kind of film. There’s no big bad guy to kill and no earth-shattering special effects (though the understated effects that are there are done very well); instead, it is about the personal journey of a person with special powers. Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) has just escaped a government facility where they were guinea-pigging her. We see quickly that she causes regional earthquakes, but learn later that other powers are present in the women in her family, and always have been, specifically, the power to take objects apart molecularly and put them back together. Ruth and her family are surviving in a world that is dying around them. Water has become scarce; it never rains anymore, bodies of water are a thing of the past, and even a jug of water to use for bathing is more expensive than a night at the motel. Ruth reunites with her daughter just as the government’s goons narrow in on them. The film is measured and moves slowly, which normally isn’t a problem for me (see Aniara that I review next), but it doesn’t fit well here for some reason. Mbatha-Raw is very good as Ruth (I liked her a lot in Belle a few years ago too), but Lorraine Toussaint as Ruth’s mom Bo was honestly a bit over the top and didn’t mesh with the other actors. The film does have a fine, stirring climax, but it felt like an age to get there.

Aniara shows how a slow burning film should go. A Swedish film, it takes place in the future where our Earth is dead and people are moving to Mars, though as a cold planet, it isn’t much better. The trip is to take 3 months, but the cruise ship-like Aniara is damaged by debris early on, and has to jettison their fuel rods, leaving them adrift. They are hurtling away from Earth with no way to steer or change speed in the inertia of space. The captain announces that they will use a celestial body’s gravity to slingshot around and return home, but it will take 2 years. However, an astronomer on board knows there is no such body on their course, and that they will never make it back, and she spreads the news, causing panic. The main story of the film follows a woman named MR, who runs an AI-powered virtual reality shop named Mina. Mina reads the minds of the people that visit her and gives them peaceful views of Earth before it was destroyed by its own inhabitants. However, with news spreading that they are stuck in space, people are depressed and angry, leading to Mina becoming the same, and she kills herself, ending the program. As the last haven for people to escape the monotony of their lives is gone, conditions on the ship deteriorate. Years go by, some good, but mostly bad. After 4 years, a probe is picked up on sensors heading their way. Not big enough to be a rescue shop, but hopefully carrying new fuel rods, the captain spreads lies that they are going to be saved. When the probe arrives 2 years later (6 years in), the crew finds it isn’t fuel, and may not even be human made. I cannot say enough how much I loved this movie. It is a real look at what makes up the good, bad, and ugly of humanity. So many aspects are explored, such as love and hate, hope and despair, religion and cults, birth and suicide, etc. Don’t watch if it you like Hollywood movies with pretty endings, but do watch if you like a profoundly moving film where the journey is just as important, if not more so, than any ending you can imagine.

Dark Phoenix may be the last movie in the X-Men film series before it rides off into the sunset (we’ll see if the long-delayed New Mutants ever gets released or not). The series will get rebooted and brought into the juggernaut that is the MCU in the coming years. Unfortunately it may go down as the worst of the series, and that’s saying something when you consider Origins: Wolverine. It’s the re-telling of the Phoenix storyline, first seen in X Men: the Last Stand. We see young Jean Gray first come into her parents, the same day she accidentally kills her parents and is brought to Professor Xavier’s school to join the X-Men. Years later as an adult, she and her team encounter a space anomaly which, instead of killing Jean, is absorbed into her, further strengthening her already considerable powers. She doesn’t immediately use her newfound strengths for good. The movie is thrilling for the first 20 minutes, and just when I started to wonder where all the bad reviews came from, the cracks started to appear. Sophie Turner does a great job of putting all those years of bad-assery learned on Thrones to good use, and she makes for a solid Jean Gray, but the movie just isn’t very good. Some truly fantastic actions scenes aren’t enough to blanket shoddy dialogue, cheesy throw-away lines, and a paper-thin plot. Every piece of cliché dialogue you can imagine makes an appearance, some more than once. It’s a dull thud of a movie, only really watchable for die-hard fans.

Going to state up front that I know nothing about Pokemon, and went into Pokemon: Detective Pikachu completely blind. I was too old to play the card game or the cartoon series when those were big, never played the Nintendo video games, and only played Pokemon Go for like a week when it first came out, to see what the craze was about. I think I would have enjoyed this movie more (or at least, all the little easter eggs that seem to be laid throughout) if I knew some of the backstory. It follows a young man whose father recently died, and he inherits his father’s pokemon, a pikachu voiced by Ryan Reynolds. The duo goes on a hunt to solve the mystery of the man’s death, and end up going up against a big corporation with a lot to hide. I bet fans of the series find plenty to love here. There were some decent moments and Reynolds’ delivery is always good for some laughs, but the film was a bit boring for me.

In The Dig, man, Callahan, returns to an abandoned family home in Northern Ireland and starts to fix up the place. He immediately confronts an older man, McKenna, coming out every day to dig holes on his property. Turns out Callahan has just been released from prison, having served many years for killing the older man’s daughter. McKenna has been digging in hopes of finding his daughter’s body, but Callahan was blackout drunk at the time of the deed, and doesn’t remember where her body is. Callahan is wracked with guilt, and McKenna can’t stand his guts for obvious reasons, but the two begin to dig every day together, and are fed meals and water from the surviving daughter, Roberta, who has been by her father’s side all these years. In the small town, Callahan is also hounded by the local citizens, even the local police officer, who don’t appreciate him being back. The film unfolds as a mystery/quasi-thriller. Our murderer wishes he could remember the events of that night, but they just never come, and his anguish grows with every swing of the shovel. Its a film about obsession and, hopefully by the end, redemption. I wasn’t a big fan of the twist that came in near the end, but the denouement was satisfying enough, and overall, I enjoyed the quiet, tense film.

I read over the weekend that Moviepass has shuttered. I was honestly bummed, because signing up for Moviepass in 2013, and seeing 122 movies at the theater in 2014, was one of the most fun years I’ve had in my life. Joining Moviepass and seeing all those movies was what goosed me to start this blog in the first place, and it has turned me into a bit of a movie connoisseur (aka movie snob).

Moviepass was good back then. I paid $30 a month and was glad to do it, as I saved a boatload from what it would have cost me to see that many movies at the theater otherwise. In my opinion, they killed themselves when they reduced the price to just $10 a month (long after I’d left), because it’s obviously not sustainable when they still have to pay the theaters full price, no matter what they were charging their account holders. Someone (a former CEO I think) is all ready trying to revive Moviepass, but I think its time has come and gone. However, they did shake up the industry. AMC and Regal have since announced their own subscription services, and if I ever get through my 100 books list, I’ll probably sign up for Regal as it is the closest to me, and start seeing a bunch of films in theaters again.

I closed my account after 2014, not due to bad service, but just because I wanted to start focusing on reading more. Obviously since then, I’ve gotten into classic and foreign/art films, so my blog has exploded with movie reviews. I’m now seeing a whole lot more than 122 films in a year, but 2014 still holds a special place for me. Getting up early, going out late, the drive (usually alone) to see a film, and sometimes being the only one in the theater, made it seem like an adventure. I have many great memories of the various places I went, the movies I saw, the workers I interacted with, some of whom got to know me by face, especially those late night crews. Watching films at home on a nice big screen in surround sound is convenient, but nothing beats the theater experience. Thanks for the memories Moviepass.

Rafiki follows two young women: Kena is an athletic tomboy who is treated as “one of the guys,” and Ziki is the polar opposite, who dresses up and goes dancing with the girls. However, the two have an immediate physical attraction to each other, in spite of each of their political parents running against each other for local office. This attraction is very dangerous in Kenya, where being gay isn’t just socially persecuted, but is still criminally punishable. Kena need look no further for evidence than the local openly gay man, who walks around getting called names and, every now and then, sports new bruises and scrapes from being beat up. When others start to notice Kena’s and Ziki’s growing relationship, there are explosive consequences, even from their own families. The film was unsurprisingly banned in Kenya due to its nature, but has received acclaim elsewhere. As a whole I thought it was just OK, good but not spectacular. Samantha Mugatsia is very good in the lead as Kena though; this is an actress that I hope can find future roles to show off her chops to a bigger audience.

All Creatures Here Below features a couple recognizable faces as its co-leads, neither of which have been the main attraction before, to my knowledge. Gensan (David Dastmalchian, in Ant-Man, among other things, and also the writer of this film) and Ruby (Karen Gillan, Nebula in MCU and the hot action girl in the new Jumanji films) are a couple living in poverty and with no prospects. When both lose their jobs in a short amount of time, they each make decisions that send them down an unalterable course. Gensan attends a cock fight and ends up killing a man for his winnings, and Ruby kidnaps the neighbor’s baby. Gensan is the brains but he is quick to anger, Ruby has maternal instincts for the baby but honestly isn’t very bright. With money and a baby, they head out on the lamb, driving cross country. If that’s not dark enough for you, it gets pitch black before the end, in more ways that one, with twists no one would see coming. It’s a powerful film (I admittedly was pretty emotional at the end), with a pair of people who do terrible things, but ultimately are painted as a tragic couple living with the hand life has dealt them. Like Rafiki, the leads, and in particular Dastmalchian, are really allowed to shine.

The Public is written and directed by, and stars, Emilio Estevez. It has other recognizable faces such as Jena Malone, Michael K Williams, Alec Baldwin, Christian Slater, and Jeffrey Wright. Estevez plays a man named Stuart Goodson, the head librarian at the Cincinnati Public Library. He is liked by his staff and the patrons of the library, including many of the city’s homeless who come there every day in the winter to stay warm. There is one particularly bad cold spell going on at the moment, and the city’s shelters are full, leaving people out in the cold, literally freezing to death at night. When one of the homeless men organizes his fellow to occupy the library one night in protest of the city’s lack of shelters, Goodson sides with them, and spends the night talking to the cops and the city prosecutor. Throughout the evening, we learn Goodson’s story, and some of the others’ as well. The film shines a light on the plight of the homeless, including the personal struggles many of them face with mental illness. It brings up good points, but the film itself feels roughly made and suffers from poor writing, and isn’t nearly as gripping as it could be. Not a bad film, but very average.

The Third Wife is proof that a great story and superb, subtle acting can create magic in the most unlikely of places. From first-time director Ash Mayfair, this Vietnamese film was made on a low budget, which you could never tell from the beautiful cinematography thanks to today’s available technology (and an eye for the sublime, obviously). The title refers to May, a 14 year old girl who has become the newest wife to a local landowner. May quickly sees how the politics of the house lay out: of the two older wives, the one who has given sons to the husband is definitely higher up on the totem pole than the wife who has only had girls to this point. May prays to give birth to a son, and becomes pregnant soon enough. The house is full of secrets too, apparent when May sees wife # 2 (the one with daughters) sleeping with one of her husband’s sons in the woods. May herself feels no physical attraction to her husband, and instead we learn she is attracted to wife # 2 as well. This little love quadrangle gets murkier when the son takes his first wife, but refuses to lie with her because of his secret love for his for the popular wife # 2. After such a soft-spoken film throughout, don’t expect an explosive conclusion or anything, in fact, it is almost frustratingly enigmatic, but it is a beautiful film, especially visually.

Papi Chulo follows Sean (Matt Bomer), a weatherman in LA who is put on leave when he has a breakdown during the telecast. He’s been upset because he was dumped by his long-time boyfriend 6 months ago, and he still hasn’t moved on. When he needs to paint his deck, he hires a local Mexican immigrant named Ernesto (Alejandro Patino), who speaks as much English as Sean does Spanish, which is almost nothing. However unlikely though, the two begin to develop a friendship. He continues to pay Ernesto every day, but mostly just to hang out with him: to hike, to go to gay parties, etc. Lots of humor, even dark humor, like when Sean is complaining about what he is scared of, which is mostly mundane things, and when he asks Ernesto what he is scared of, he replies, “Immigration authorities.” We wouldn’t know Ernesto’s thoughts at all if it weren’t for his daily calls home to his wife, which are some of the funniest moments as he explains the zany things he’s been doing with Sean. A revelation in the final third of the film really starts to put things in perspective, and turns what is a decent movie into a very good one. There were some uncomfortable moments for me involving some sequences after this bombshell, where I didn’t know if I should laugh at Sean’s situation or feel bad for the tragedy he’s found himself in. Bomer is great as a depressed, nearly hopeless man unwilling or unable to move on. I found the journey of the film better than the ending, which was a bit cliché, but still a pleasant experience.

Juliet of the Spirits was Fellini’s first film in color, and he uses it to beautifully showcase the dream world that he so often puts in his films. This one follows Juliet (Giulietta Masina), a woman devoted to her husband, but otherwise lonely and maybe even depressed. After a seance with her friends, she begins to be visited by spirits, in particular, Iris and Olaf. They both seem to be trying to tell her something, though the masculine Olaf is more forceful. Shortly after, Juliet begins to suspect her husband of cheating, and hires an investigator to follow him. As the investigator is working, Juliet becomes friendly with the neighborhood wild girl, Suzy, who admits she sleeps with anyone and lives life to the fullest. Hanging out with Suzy seems to awaken more spirits for Juliet. Juliet, who married the first man to come along and never lived a life on her own, is starting to feel independent for the first time in her life. When the investigator comes back with news that, yes, her husband is having an affair, Juliet is saddened, but no longer demure, and goes to confront the woman. By the end, Juliet seems to have found peace for herself, and does not need a man’s happiness to give her joy. It’s a good film, a little out there with the blending of dreams and real life, but it was hard not to root for Juliet to finally break free of the upbringing that chained her to be a timid little housewife (even if film does suggest that if she would just a bit of a floozy, she’d be a lot happier).

Fellini is one of three directors in the anthology piece Spirits of the Dead, from 1968. All are based on stories of Edgar Allen Poe. The first stars a young Jane Fonda, and is directed by her then-husband, Roger Vadim. In medieval times, the young and beautiful Frederica has inherited a large estate. She only lives for physical pleasure, and treats people poorly. However, she genuinely falls in love with her cousin, Baron Wilhelm, who lives a simple life on land nearby. When he rebuffs her, she has his stable burned down, and in the ensuing blaze, Wilhelm dies trying to save his horses. That same day, a black horse comes to Frederica’s castle, and she believes it to be Wilhelm’s spirit returned to her. She leaves her old life behind and finds joy with the black horse, and decides to die in flames with him when lightning sets her fields afire. The second tale, directed by Louis Malle, stars Alain Delon as William Wilson, an all-around terrible person who is haunted by a man of the same name. Every time Wilson does anything bad, the other Wilson is there to turn him in, landing him in trouble his whole life from childhood to an adult. Finally the two spar after a masquerade party, and the evil Wilson kills his doppleganger with a knife. When the mask is removed, Wilson sees his own visage. Faced with the knowledge that he is crazy and has “killed himself,” Wilson jumps from the tower to finish the deed. Onlookers rush to to the body, to find him dead from the fall with a knife in the stomach as well. The final vignette comes from Fellini, and of course, it is the most dream-like. A declining, alcoholic actor arrives in Rome to shoot a new film. Immediately upon his arrival in Rome, he begins having visions of a little girl, playing with a ball, that he names as the devil. At an awards ceremony later, his hallucinations grow worse. After the ceremony, extremely drunk, he gets into his new ferrari and speeds off, driving around all night. Eventually he comes to a downed bridge, and sees the girl and her ball on the other side. He speeds towards it, but crashes, becoming decapitated. The segment ends with the girl forgoing her ball and picking up the head. Honestly I enjoyed the first two pieces a lot more than the third, which just seemed like the ravings of a madman. Overall, a decent, if ultimately forgettable, film.

Fellini Satyricon, from 1969, is both more and less cohesive (a tighter story and better characters, but crazy, insane images of a culture on the decline) than the director’s short in Spirts of the Dead, and it is one wild, fun ride. It is based on Satyricon by Petronius, a Latin piece written in the first century. To try to give it even a short synopsis here would not do it justice. Based around two brothers, Ecolpius and Ascyltus, a whole lot happens in the movie’s 2 hour length. There are wild adventures, death, curses, bizarre weddings, stories-within-stories, and the death of Caesar. Fellini uses the debauchery and setting of ancient Rome to make a film as gaudy and dream-like as any he had ever done. It is easy to see the inspiration in this film for some of Pasolini’s films that would shortly follow in the early 1970’s, but while I didn’t care for those films as much (Decameron, Canterbury Tales, and especially Salo), I did like Satyricon. It is a bizarre, colorful trip from beginning to end.

La Dolce Vita was Fellini’s biggest hit. Released in 1960, it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes that year, and was a huge box office smash. (When it came to the states in 1961, it was still the 6th highest grossing film of the year, subtitles and all.) It follows Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), a celebrity news journalist, and his wayward life among the stars. Marcello spends his days aimless, and his nights partying among the elite, sleeping with its various women from rich Italian heiresses to American movie stars. His girlfriend wants him to give up the lifestyle and choose to stay with her alone; she dreams of having a house and family away from the noise of Rome, but Marcello doesn’t seem to want anything else. If you are expecting Marcello to find redemption by the end, don’t hold your breath, this is not a film with a sweet ending. But it is a fantastic movie, loaded with poignant moments that leave you pondering its meaning long after it is over. From Marcello’s memories of an absent father, to his best friend’s murder-suicide of his family after talking about the constraints his home life in contrast to the “glamorous” lifestyle of their other friends, to a seemingly chance encounter with a girl at a restaurant which may be more fate than chance. The film paints a stark picture of a society that glamorizes celebrities who are undeserving of the fascination the public gives them. This may sound ho-hum today, but consider this movie was made 60 years ago. When watching the film, I thought many times of the idiocy of these rich and famous people, getting drunk at parties and carrying on like college kids without a care for tomorrow.

If La Dolce Vita was Fellini’s biggest commercial hit, 8 ½ is arguably his the most critically acclaimed one. Released in 1963, it is widely regarded as one of the best films ever made, and still finds itself on top 50 lists to this day. It has often been called the greatest film about making a film. The film follows a famous director, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni, in perhaps my favorite role I’ve seen so far, next to A Special Day), as he prepares to make a new movie. However, for someone who wants to make a picture, he doesn’t seem like he wants it very much. He is dragged around here, there, and everywhere, pulled in a million directions, by the producer, potential actresses, his wife, his lover, set designers, etc. Most have questions that he keeps putting off; in fact, it seems he is completely unready to make this movie. While a very expensive set is being built out in the country, Guido is vague about all details, even to the producer. He privately admits to himself and us viewers that he thinks he is a fake, an impostor, who maybe isn’t as talented as everyone thinks he is. Yet, at the same time, he is extremely narcissistic, daydreaming that all women want to be with him, and thinking he is fooling his wife about his extramarital affairs. Near the end of the film, during screen tests for actresses (all of whom are dressed like his friends and family, a clue that the picture is becoming autobiographical), one of the actresses sees Guido immediately for the man he is: a person who doesn’t know how to love, and only takes from people, never giving. This movie is tremendous, fantastical as you’d expect from Fellini, but also, very real and grounded in the emotion and turbulence of a famous director surrounded by sycophants, with he himself perhaps being the worst of them. It won Fellini his third Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film; he would win a fourth 11 years later, the most ever won by a director in this category.