I recently wanted to watch some modern foreign films, and in doing so, stumbled upon Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi. He’s one of few directors in the history of the Oscars to have won twice for best foreign language picture. I’m going to look at 5 of his films, going in reverse order (because that’s the order I’m watching them in).

Farhadi’s recent Oscar came in 2016 for The Salesman. It follows a married couple, Emad and Rana, who are actors in a new showing of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Emad’s day job is a teacher at the local school, but the couple is struggling. Their current apartment was found to be structurally unsafe, so they are forced to move into a rough neighborhood. On their first night there, while Emad is late returning home, Rana is attacked in her home when she mistakenly lets a stranger into the building through its intercom. Emad finds out the person who rented the apartment before them was a promiscuous woman, and he believes a former “client” of hers is the attacker. Rana is obviously shaken up and doesn’t want to go to the cops, so Emad makes it is business to hunt down the attacker himself. Despite what you might think, it isn’t a thriller. It is a deep and heartfelt drama, taking the viewer through all of the emotions from both the husband and the wife. I was reminded of a great film I saw a few years ago with a similar premise, The Light of the Moon. Check out that one if you don’t like subtitles, but this one is even better. ★★★★★

Farhadi’s preceding film was The Past, released in 2013. This one is about an Iranian man, Ahmad, returning to France to finalize his divorce to Marie, his estranged wife whom he left 4 years previously. Ahmad was husband # 2, and has a good relationship with Marie’s kids from her first marriage, especially teenage daughter Lucie. But he was not a great husband; they fought a lot and he was constantly absent. Her new guy, Samir, isn’t much better, and he and his son Fouad are dealing with their own problems, namely the suicide attempt of Samir’s wife. Samir and Marie had been having an affair, but he now feels conflicted since his wife lies in a vegetative state. All of these dynamics from this mixed family come to bear throughout the film. It is a deeply emotional, quietly contemplative movie, and while I felt it started to come off its rails for a few minutes in the latter half, it all comes together nicely in the end. Every character is this film is real: they each are flawed humans who at various times know and do not know what they want in this life. I ended up liking it even more than The Salesman. ★★★★★

There’s a scene in the iconic Fiddler on the Roof where one character is right, and the opposing argument is also right, and a bystander quips, “They can’t both be right.” In A Separation, the opposite holds true: no one is right. Yielding Farhadi’s first Oscar win in 2011 (it was the first film from Iran to win), this film shows the classic example of pride and honor getting in the way of truth. Nader and Simin are getting a divorce (Simin wants to move to a country where their daughter Termeh will have more rights as a woman), but Nader doesn’t want to leave his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Simin moves in with her parents in the meantime, and Nader hires a woman, Razieh, to look after his father. Just a couple days into the new arrangement, Nader comes home to discover Razieh not there, and she has tied Nader’s father to the bed to keep him from moving about in his condition. When Razieh does show up, Nader is so upset that he shoves her out of the apartment. She falls down the steps, causing a miscarriage. Razieh’s husband sues Nader, but Nader claims he did not know she was pregnant. Everyone gets wrapped in the case, including neighbors, teachers, friends, and not the least of whom, Termeh, who sees her dad Nader in a whole new light. Don’t expect a happy ending for anyone. If you are only used to life in the USA and not familiar with other cultures, especially in the middle east, this film is eye opening. The court system in particular is frenetic, with fast-paced calls for witnesses, quick judgments, and the inclusion of religious beliefs into decisions. It’s a very emotional piece. ★★★★

The greatness continues in 2009’s About Elly, maybe the most human of these films so far. A group of young adults, life-long friends, have rented a villa by the sea for a weekend. The group consists of married couples and a few young kids, and sole single man Ahmad, but Sepideh has plans to change that. She’s invited her kids’ teacher Elly to come as well, and hopes to make a match. From the get-go however, the shy (or traditional) Elly seems uncomfortable around the partying antics in the group. After just one night, Elly talks to Sepideh about returning home early, but Sepideh begs her to stay. Elly is left to watch the kids while some of the women go into town, and the men play volleyball nearby. When one of the children runs to the men screaming that another child is drowning in the sea, everyone runs in to save him. Only afterwards do they realize Elly too is missing. Did she drown trying to save the boy, or did she return to town without telling anyone? The human need to protect yourself comes out, as these friends blame each other for faults that led to this event, and then lie to save face. It’s a raw and emotional film, as I’ve come to expect from this director by now, and another excellent picture. ★★★★

Fireworks Wednesday was the director’s third film, released in 2006. You can tell he’s still a young director learning his craft. It is a fine film, but lacks the subtlety and humanism of his later pictures. The film follows a young betrothed woman, Rouhi, who goes to work for a married couple. The picture is a single day, her first (and maybe only) day on the job. She’s been hired to help clean Mozhdeh’s and Morteza’s apartment before they go on vacation, but she enters a household in flux. Mozhdeh is convinced that Morteza is cheating on her with a neighbor, Simin, who runs a salon out of her place. Mozhdeh clandestinely sends Rouhi over to Simin’s to get her eyebrows done for her upcoming wedding, for some reconnaissance. When he finds out about Mozhdeh’s worries, Morteza vehemently denies it. This picture from a story standpoint is the weakest of the set, but Farhadi does manage to pull fine performances from his actors, and there are glimpses here and there of the greater things to come. ★★½

1917 is right up there with the best movies I’ve seen recently. It is loosely based on various missions director Sam Mendes’ own grandfather, Alfred Mendes, undertook in World War I. The film plays out over a single day, in spectacular almost-real time, and deceptively shot to look like a single, long take. This manages to pull the viewers into the action and characters in an immeasurable way. In the film, Schofield and Blake must cross a no-man’s land, past the German front, to find a battalion of British soldiers who are planning an attack on the Germans the next day at dawn. At stake is the lives of 1600 men, including Blake’s older brother, because the attack is doomed to fail. Not only is Germany ready for it, but they’ve set a trap to lure the British soldiers into the attack on their terms. As the two young soldiers creep across dangerous lands, stumbling across multitudes of dead bodies and the signs and leavings of war all around them, they are on a race against time to get their message through. It is 2 hours of heart-pounding action and suspense. The couple times when our heroes get a rest, allowing the viewer to take a breather as well, are only short enough to calm the heart for a brief spell before the action picks up again. This is a tremendous film, I’m confident it is going to go down as one of the greatest war films of all time. ★★★★★

Angel Has Fallen is the third film in the Gerard Butler secret service films. I really liked Olympus Has Fallen back in 2013, and in 2016, despite terrible reviews, I thought London Has Fallen was still pretty good. But the third film has fallen off the rails. Head of secret service Mike Banning is set up as the perpetrator of an assassination attempt on the president, and he goes on the run. He knows early on who is behind the attack, so Mike goes on a quest to clear his name, while he is pursued by the FBI as the lead suspect. All of this is being run by a shady, faceless bad guy who is pulling all the strings, and who also says the most eye-rolling, cliché-ridden lines ever put to film. The previous film suffered some of that, but the action saved it in my eyes. That is no longer the case, even the action is ridiculous now. ★

Hala is a high school senior growing up in the USA. She has all the same issues most typical girls of that age do, and on top of it, she struggles with her parents and their deep Muslim faith and traditions. Her dad is the typical “cool dad” and she likes him more, but she finds her more traditional, Arabic-speaking mother overbearing and too conservative. Hala’s 18 years old, so talk is starting to circle about her finding a good Muslim man to marry, but she has a crush on a white boy, Jesse, at school. Against her parents’ and their faith’s wishes, she starts hanging out with him alone, when others aren’t around. It is on one such date at a diner when she sees her dad out with another woman. This pushes her to be more rebellious, and she has her first sexual encounter with Jesse. Her dad suspects something immediately, and all of a sudden, he’s not the nice one anymore. Hala starts to see aspects of him she never picked up on before, and comes to realize her mother is only the traditional homebody wife because her husband made her so. One night, her parents invite family friends over with their college-age son, in what is obviously an attempt to set up their children together. Hala runs from the house, pulling her hijab out in frustration. Her life is in turmoil, and she does some things that have real world consequences outside of her own life. The film is narrated throughout by Hala’s journal entries, in an introspective and poetic way. It’s a good film, a different take on the tried-and-true coming-of-age, self discovery kind of tale, though the second half is a bit choppy and not as cohesive as the first. ★★★½

I was pretty excited to see Ms Purple. It is from director Justin Chon, and I really dug his film Gook a few years ago. Gook felt real, and raw, and unfortunately Ms Purple feels contrived. For one, it takes a long time to get going, and by long, I mean nearly half of its 90 minute length. We are introduced to Kasey and her estranged brother Carey, adult Korean Americans who are living pretty effed up lives. Kasey is a high end prostitute/escort at night, and takes care of their comatose father during the day. When her live-in caregiver quits, Casey calls Carey asking him to move in and take care of their dad while she works. Carey is jobless and aimless. It isn’t until much later than we learn their individual issues stem from their parents. Their mom abandoned them both when they were kids, and their dad was really horrible to Carey, which is what led to Carey moving out of the house at the young age of 15. Now back home, Carey has taken to wheeling his dad out of the house during the day, bed and all, but he doesn’t know how to properly care for him, leading to large bed sores on the dad’s back. The whole film has a feeling of trying to be something deep and penetrating, but really it’s just a shallow, simple story, with nothing memorable to latch on to, and (nearly) a complete waste of time. Some fine acting by Tiffany Chu in the lead is the only saving grace. ★½

The Two Popes is a biographical drama, mostly focused on Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (who would go on to become Pope Francis), showing his relationship with Pope Benedict XVI as well as his past as a young priest in Argentina. The film, understandably, is heavily dialogue driven, and the banter between the two men was the highlight for me. Benedict is a very conservative figure, loving the pomp and pageantry of his office, whereas Bergoglio very much believes in simplifying the church, bringing it to the people, and also moving the church ahead with the times. Their opposing views create some fantastic dialogue in the film, but other parts bogged down and honestly at times, the movie’s pacing was a bit slow. The actors themselves are great though; Anthony Hopkins is always on obviously, but Jonathan Pryce as Bergoglio is the real show. Pryce has been around a long time, but received just his first Oscar nomination for this role. I’m not Catholic, I don’t know much about the inner workings of the church and its politics, but I mostly enjoyed this film as a picture in time. ★★½

Going to look at various foreign films from around the world today, starting with The Insult from director Ziad Doueiri from Lebanon. It shows when a fairly simple argument can blow up when religion and/or cultural differences get involved. Yasser is a foreman for a construction crew. As a Palestinian refugee, he isn’t allowed to be an engineer in the country, but he runs his crew well as foreman. He’s doing renovations in an area when he gets into an argument with a resident, Tony, a Lebanese Christian. Over a couple days, the verbal back-and-forth becomes violent and Tony is injured. He ends up suing Yasser, and the lawyers ratchet up the rhetoric. Lots of old prejudices are brought up. The filmmakers examine everything, from the plight of Palestinians without a country of their own, to brutal tactics used by both sides during the endless wars the region has gone through, to (false) accusations against Tony for being a Jewish sympathizer, which of course bring threats against him. Violence erupts in the streets as tensions in the courtroom boil over into the public. I’m aware of the generations of animosity in that region, but having never lived there, there are moments in the first half of the film or so when I thought the premise was a bit ridiculous. By the end, it does a good job of showing to those like me who aren’t as well-versed in the history of these wars what it has meant to those living there. A strong film, with some powerful moments. ★★★

Embrace of the Serpent is a Colombian film from director Ciro Guerra. I’ve seen one other film of his, Birds of Passage, which was so-so, but this one is fantastic. It follows two timelines, 30 years apart. In the early 20^th century, German scientist Theo von Martius has been exploring the Amazon, but has become ill. He gets help from an indigenous warrior, Karamakate, to hunt a mythical cure-all plant called yakruna, which may heal him. 30 years later, another man, Evan, is supposedly after the same plant, and is following Theo’s notes. Evan runs into an older Karamakate and asks him to be his guide. We sense early on that there is more to Evan’s story, but what that may be remains to be seen. In both stories, we see Theo and Evan with their guides travel through the jungle, mostly by river, as they encounter mad religious zealots, rubber plantation atrocities, and the dangerous jungle itself. Shot in beautiful black and white to mimic the old photos we associate with those early explorers, the film shows a wondrous and unforgiving land, and one which seemed to be fighting a losing battle with European colonizers for a way of life they could not hold on to. ★★★★

Tangerines comes from the countries of Estonia and Georgia, and is directed by Zaza Urushadze. It takes place in 1992 inside Georgia. With the USSR falling apart and its former states declaring their independence, war has broken out between the native Georgians and Russia-backed Abkhazian separatists, mostly mercenaries. In a tiny farming village, many have already fled for the more peaceful Estonia, but two older men are still tending a tangerine farm. One is hurrying to get the crops down so he can take them Estonia to sell, but the other is hinting that he will not be leaving with him, but his reason isn’t discovered until the very end. One night, a gunfight comes to their doorsteps, and there are just two survivors, one from each side of the conflict. As the farmers tend to the wounded, the enemy soldiers vow to kill each other once they are healed up. As they get better though, they get to know each other, and each discovers the meaninglessness of the war they are fighting. This is a great “intro” for people just getting into foreign films, or people wanting to watch a contemplative picture but which still has some movement and action, and isn’t “too deep” nor overly long, coming in under 90 minutes. ★★★½

Loveless comes from director Andrey Zvyagintsev out of Russia. It is about the breakup of a marriage, but not in an endearing way like the recent Netflix film A Marriage Story. Boris and Masha hate each other. Each person has all ready moved on, she to an older more successful man, he to a younger (already pregnant) woman. The worst of it all, neither wants to take their 12-year-old son Alyosha with them to their new life. This one is hard to watch from the very opening 20 minutes, where a scene shows the mom and dad fighting about who is going to be forced with the child, and he can hear them all from the room down the hall. Watching him quietly sob is heartbreaking. The next day, each parent goes to stay the day with their own new loves and don’t return to their home apartment until a full day later, during which time Alyosha has run away. The rest of the film is a search to find the boy. The investigators realize immediately that the parents don’t really love him and are only going through the motions out of a sense of societal obligation, and to try to hurt the other parent. The film takes a really long time to get going: 20 minutes of introduction, followed by 30 minutes of watching the adults have sex with their new partners and talking about how much they hate their previous lives, and then a fruitless search. I honestly didn’t care for them as people obviously, and the one person to root for, the boy, seems to be a side story in their lives and the film itself. Powerful? Undeniably. But a good film? That’s debatable. ★★

Ending on a positive note. The last film comes from Turkey and director Ildiko Enyedi. On Body and Soul is one of those beautiful, quiet dramas that you just have to sit back and appreciate. Endre is one of the higher-ups at a meat processing plant, and they hire on a new girl, Maria, as quality inspector. Maria is deep on the autistic spectrum; she abhors physical contact, doesn’t understand any social cues, and isn’t in touch with her emotions. But she and Endre have something in common: every night, they have the same dream. In their dreams, he is a stag, and she a doe, and they wander the forest together doing various deer things. Endre, an older man with a crippled left arm, gave up dating years ago, and Maria has never dated before, so they are shy and apprehensive to each other, but their relationship slowly grows over time. I was really into this film for the first two thirds or so. It hit a lull for awhile there in the latter half, where Endre pulls away, which confuses Maria even more, but the ending is great. A really touching film. ★★★½

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is another one of those books that somehow I escaped reading in high school. Seems like everyone else did (and still does), but just never in any of the classes I was in. I finally remedied this, and what a fantastic, engaging book.

I’m sure most of you have read it, but to recap, since it may have been awhile. The book follows Scout (Jean-Louis) and her older brother Jem (Jeremy), the only children of Atticus Finch. Atticus is a lawyer in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, and he takes his job very seriously, almost as seriously as he does with raising his kids right, with their mother long gone. His unconventional parenting style doesn’t always sit well with his neighbors or his well-to-do family, who have a respectable name (a neighboring town even bears the Finch name), but Atticus is a respected man in the community. He lets his tomboy daughter run around, not very lady like, and treats his kids almost as adults. While he does try to shield their innocence from the dangerous and uncaring world out there, he’s teaching them to be critical and independent thinkers, even from an early age.

Taken from the viewpoint of the kids and especially Scout, who is just 6 at the beginning of the book, the novel does have a certain innocence. She’s only interested in what she can get away with, her friends, and neighborhood gossip, like the recluse neighbors, the Radley family, whose son Boo no one has seen in years. Scout, Jem, and their friend Dill spend a few summers trying to peak inside the Radley house for a glimpse of him, but to no avail. Finally they are warned away by Atticus, telling them to leave that poor family alone. Scout’s world is only what she can see and hear, and she isn’t aware of adult matters going on, even when they are right in front of her. Thus, when the book takes a turn halfway through, it hits the reader just as hard as it hits Scout.

Her father Atticus has been assigned to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman. It doesn’t matter than Tom is a respected hard worker in the area (as respected as a black man can be in 1930’s Alabama), or that his accuser, a white trash woman named Mayella Ewell, whose family is as different from the Finches as the sky from the ground, all that matters is that he is black and she is white, which usually means death to the black man. Atticus however is bent on not only making a showing at the trial, but actually giving it his all. He believes Tom is innocent of his charges, and proves it well in court later on.

Scout finally sees what is going on when Atticus doesn’t come home one night. She and her duo of cohorts walk to the jail, and find Atticus facing off against an angry crowd, intent to pull Tom out and kill him. It is actually Scout who steps forward to call out one of the crowd, reminding him that she knows his son. This wakes them up, and they guiltily return to their homes. Atticus tries to inform Scout that people aren’t stupid or dangerous individually, but can become so when part of a mob. Tidbits like this pervade the whole book, and what stand out as the fantastic parenting Atticus is trying to achieve, even in a rough situation.

In the end, Tom is indeed found guilty, though Atticus is able to at least get the jury to give him several hours of deliberation, when it usually takes them just 5 minutes in such a case to return a guilty verdict. Tom is later killed when trying to escape prison. Walking home from school one day, Scout and Jem are attacked by Mayella Ewell’s dad, but Boo Radley finally comes from his house and saves them. In the confusion, Ewell is killed. From Scout’s description, Atticus is convinced Jem stabbed Ewell, and dreads turning in his own son, even if it was self defense. The Sheriff seems sure that Boo did it, but Boo is simple minded and unable to explain the events. In the end, the Sheriff states that the drunk Ewell fell on his own knife, to protect all of the innocent families from further torment.

This isn’t a very deep or introspective book, it practically lays out its meaning (don’t kill mockingbirds, i.e. things that are only in this world to create beauty and don’t hurt anyone). It’s a coming-of-age, loss-of-innocence kind of book for Scout, but Jem does his own growing up. Lee definitely wants us to know what she thinks about prejudice and social class, placing more emphasis on character than birth. But sometimes even fairly simple, straight-ahead books can leave the biggest impact. It is a heartfelt novel, will equally choke you up and make you laugh. Easy to see why it has become such a classic.

I’ve reviewed many of Hitch’s earlier films, and now I’m getting into some of his more famous pictures, but still ones I’ve never seen. Hitchcock is on record for saying 1943’s Shadow of a Doubt is his personal favorite. It features a pair of big stars of the 1940’s, Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Charles Oakley is a bachelor from the east who returns to California to visit his sister and her family, including his niece Charlie, who is named for him. Charles seems a charming man, showering the family with presents, but Charlie almost immediately begins to suspect something is up. Things don’t get any better when a pair of investigators show up, under the guise of reporters doing a story about the “all-American family,” and Charles refuses to have his picture taken. When Charlie unearths the real reason the investigators are digging into her uncle Charles, that he is a suspect in murders of wealthy widows back east, she is shaken, but keeps the secret to herself, not wanting to stress her mother in particular. I liked this one quite a bit. It has a lot of heart, a strong plot, and doesn’t have as sudden an ending as many of Hitchcock’s other films; he wraps it all up nicely. ★★★½

I seem to constantly forget how great Ingrid Bergman was, until I watch a movie like Notorious. Paired with Hitchcock (and America’s) fave, Cary Grant, Bergman plays Alicia, the daughter of a Nazi German spy who’s just been convicted and sentenced for his crimes. Alicia is recruited by Grant’s Devlin, a government agent, to do a mission for the good ol’ USA in Brazil, but even he doesn’t know the details. The pair arrive in Brazil and just as they start to fall for each other, they learn about the job: Alicia is to use her family’s history to get close to Nazis who have fled to Brazil to avoid prosecution, and to seduce one of them who used to have the hots for her, in order to dig up dirt and see what the remaining Nazis have planned. What a tremendous film. Besides the spying and suspense, Devlin is obviously sending out a girl he cares for into a dangerous situation, knowing she’s with another man. He doesn’t want to love her, because he knows about her former partying days, but he can’t help himself. Grant is great as the conflicted lover, it’s hard not to like anything he’s in, and Bergman is eye-arresting in every scene she’s in. Hitchcock often toyed with the Hollywood censors with his sexual innuendo, but he is downright brazen in this film, especially for 1946. It’s a brilliant high-stakes spy thriller, called by some to be Hitchcock’s best. ★★★★★

Rope followed in 1948, and was Hitchcock’s first color picture. The picture’s name is used in the opening scene of the film, as a murder weapon. A pair of men have just killed a man, just for the thrill of it, and because of a warped sense of superiority over the victim. They’ve stuffed his body into a large trunk in their living room. To add to their sense of power, they’ve planned a get-together that evening, in the very room where their now-dead friend is lying in his temporary resting place. The film has a lot of comedic wordplay, including lots of morbid humor related to the body a few feet from the unknowing visitors. John Dall and Farley Granger portray the perpetrators, with legendary James Stewart playing a former teacher and intellectual who picks up on the subtle hints that something is amiss. It is a quietly gripping film, with slow-building suspense especially in the latter third. There’s a scene after dinner where the maid is clearing the food off the trunk, in preparation to put some books back into it, all while the guests are chatting about the missing friend, that is pure Hitchcock thrills. The film is a technical masterpiece too. It is shown in real-time and has the illusion of being several long takes, though the length of film did necessitate cuts. It was later edited in such a way to make it appear to be just a couple shots. ★★★★½

Rear Window is one of the director’s most famous pictures, and one I’m ashamed I’d never seen before. Many people know the gist of the story. James Stewart plays Jefferies, a successful photographer who’s been holed up in his tiny apartment for 6 weeks due to a broken leg. The only thing he can do is look out the window at his neighbors, and he’s followed their routines for these last few weeks. One particular couple, an older man with his nagging wife, becomes the central plot of the film. One night during a particularly bad storm, Jefferies hears a scream, and then watches the husband leave and return to the apartment several times over the course of the night, always with large suitcase in hand. Jefferies thinks the wife’s been killed, and the body taken out in pieces. The next morning, Jefferies tells his physical therapist his little hunch, which she laughs off, but then Jefferies sees the suspected murderer putting away a very large saw and knife, and later, Jefferies’ girlfriend thinks there may be something to it. This fuels his suspicions, and ratchets up the suspense. The final 15 or so minutes is some of the most psychologically scary moments on film that you’ll ever see. ★★★★★

Finishing up with one of Hitchcock’s lesser known films, The Trouble with Harry, from 1955, though it is noted as Shirley MacLaine’s film debut. It is also very different from the above films, and most other Hitchcock movies, as it is a comedy, albeit a dark comedy, and even has a romantic element to it. The trouble with Harry is that he is dead, his body found in the woods, and no one who stumbles across the body (and hilariously, many people do) seems to care too much. No only that, but there is more than one person who thinks they are responsible for the murder. It seems the whole town gets involved in Harry’s business, or lack thereof, before the end. I really enjoyed the first half of this film, but the weirdness of it wore off after awhile. Many (most?) Hitchcock films have some funny dialogue here and there, but this film is the result when you write a movie full of it, and it doesn’t work as well as you’d think. I’ll give it an average rating for the good moments. ★★½

I never watched Dora the Explorer, never had any kids into the show, but Dora and the Lost City of Gold looked cute, so I thought I’d give it a chance. The movie starts out with the little 6-year-old Dora of the TV show, being raised in the jungle by her parents, but quickly jumps ahead 10 years to a teenage Dora getting ready to move to the city for the first time in her life. Dora is completely unprepared for the city, and the city is unprepared for her. Her one-time sidekick, cousin Diego, has lived in the city all these years and is initially embarrassed by Dora’s naivety and complete lack of social skills. When Dora and some classmates are kidnapped to a South American jungle by treasure hunters, after the fabled Incan City of Gold which Dora’s parents have been hunting for years, their adventure really starts. Isabela Moner is cute as a button and portrays Dora with infectious good cheer, and her exuberance permeates through the tv, but I wasn’t buying it all. This is a family film that is definitely geared towards the youngsters, and has a few too many cliches for the older crowd to enjoy. ★★

Luce is a good kid, a senior in high school, on track towards a seemingly bright and successful future. Adopted as a child from war-torn Eritrea, he was raised well and never has given any reason for anyone to doubt him. Yet he is surrounded by circumstantial evidence that he has a darker side. A class assignment has him write an essay from the point of view of an historical figure, and his pick is a revolutionary who called for violence to end colonialism. He does the paper so well that it negatively grabs his teacher’s attention. Luce was in the vicinity when a classmate was sexually assaulted. He had illegal fireworks in his lockers, but claims they were someone else’s, as he and his friends all share lockers. The only person that doubts Luce is that teacher, but whether she’s right, or she has a vendetta against him, isn’t apparent to the viewer. This is one of those “thrillers” where all the suspense is created by the unknown. There is an obvious racial angle, with Luce being black and raised in a white household in an upper-middle class neighborhood, but it is so much more too. Luce is smart, smart enough to realize he is hampered by both expectations to succeed by some, and by others, expectations to fail. Tremendous, multi-layered film with a fantastic ensemble cast. ★★★★

Official Secrets reminded me of another recent historical film, The Report. Like that picture, this one focuses heavy on the facts of a moment that many people may not be terribly aware, and frankly by itself, though important, may not be all that riveting as viewing material, but which features strong actors to try make it work. The Report succeeded for the most part, Official Secrets does not. This one follows a woman in the intelligence community in the UK, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), who leaks a memo to the press that the USA has been gathering intel on UN diplomats, in a bid to perhaps blackmail them into voting to legitimize an invasion of Iraq, despite intel that Saddam Hussein in fact has no WMD’s. The second half of the film, where she is busted and brought to trial for being a whistleblower, is boring as hell. I almost made it to the end of the movie, but finally gave up. There’s some good, recognizable actors in this one, but the script is as dry as a desert. ★½

The Farewell is just one of those quiet, beautiful movies that make you feel good. Awkwafina, who burst onto the scene the last couple years in comedic roles in Oceans 8 and Crazy Rich Asians, takes on a more serious part as Billi. Raised in the USA since the age of 6, she returns with her parents to their native China, ostensibly for the wedding of Billi’s cousin, but really to visit her Nai Nai (grandmother), who has terminal lung cancer. In Chinese tradition, none of the family is giving Nai Nai the news of her impending death, forecasted just months away, and she thinks she is just fighting a bad cold. Raised “in the west,” Billi doesn’t understand this tradition and thinks Nai Nai should know the severity of her condition, but she is cowed by all the rest of her family, including her parents. As the wedding approaches, Billi has to come to terms with the differences in cultures from which she was born versus where she was raised. Despite sounding very somber (and it is at times), the film has moments of levity that prevent it from becoming a dirge, such as the time when the family has to rush to the hospital to intercept Nai Nai’s recent test results before she can read it herself. It’s a lovely film and a fantastic role for Awkwafina, nabbing her a Golden Globe. ★★★★

Followed up a film predominately in Chinese with one completely in it, but Long Day’s Journey Into Night is much less linear. Our main character is a man in search of a lost love, and the film starts with a trip through his memories. There’s no clear path through them either. He remembers his girl, his deceased father and surviving mother, and his friend who had been murdered. The memories are disjointed, out of order, and like our own memories, probably not exactly accurate. In fact the same actors play a couple different characters, intentionally I think, to mimic the infallibility of human memory. The director (Gan Bi) uses running water to great effect to signify the flowing of time; water drips everywhere in these memories, from faucets, from rivers, from the sky. The second half of the film is what everyone brings up when they talk about this movie. There is a single, hour-long cut in real time (and shown in 3D no less) following our main character through a dream of his. He’s fallen asleep in a movie theater, and the hour is one long continuous shot of his journey through his dream. And he’s not just sitting in a room. The camera follows him as he walks through a mine, then a nearly abandoned town. There are some truly astounding sequences, including when he takes flight over the town. How the camera pulled all this off is astonishing. It reminded me of other famous long shots where a lot was going on, like the hallway fight scene in Oldboy, the street-side pan of Godard’s Weekend, and the battle at the hospital in Children of Men. Those were all amazing, but this one will amaze you. (And it’s a good, thought-provoking movie too.) ★★★★

I’m a little torn on Judy, starring Renee Zellweger. I was wanting a true biopic about Judy Garland, but instead the film focuses on her final year of life, with a few flashbacks to her early career working for Louis B Mayer at MGM, as she prepared for The Wizard of Oz. In 1968 or 69, Garland is broke and in debt. No one in the USA wants to hire her, what with her reputation for not showing up on time and being hard to work with. With no prospects and the very real possibility of losing her kids to her ex-husband, she signs on for a series of shows in London, where she is still very popular. With most of the film looking at her as an aging, bankrupt star, struggling with addiction, it is a very good picture, just not what I expected. Zellweger gives it her all, and there are moments when the camera is in just the right spot that you forget that it isn’t Garland herself in front of you. It does a great job of showing Judy as a woman who loved to please the crowd, often to the detriment of her own health, but also a person with very real demons that, in the end, she wasn’t able to shake. ★★★

Some books just don’t translate well on screen. By all accounts, The Goldfinch is a fantastic read, but the movie, while it has a few nice moments, never realizes its grand expectations. After a short, cryptic narration, the film becomes a flashback when Theo was a young teenager. He’s one of a few survivors after a terrorist has blown up an art museum in New York. His mother is killed, and with no other family (his deadbeat Dad has disappeared), he goes to live with a classmate’s family. He is treated kindly, and just as he starts to feel at ease, his Dad shows up and takes him off to live in Nevada, where the only saving grace is an immigrant friend he makes, Boris. Theo’s time with his alcoholic, abusive father is awful, until finally Theo runs away and makes his way to New York alone. The title comes from a piece of art, once thought destroyed in the bombing, which Theo has secretly kept it in hiding all these years. Unfortunately the end of the film is very weird, doesn’t fit at all with the rest of the picture. The movie features good acting by Ansel Elgort in the lead, supported by Nicole Kidman, Sarah Paulson, Jeffrey Wright, and Luke Wilson, but good actors can’t save the subpar script. I stuck through the film hoping all the pieces would come together in the end, but they never add up to anything grand. ★½

BrightBurn is a low budget sci-fi horror film with some big names behind it. It is about a husband and wife, Kyle and Tori (David Denman, Roy from The Office fame, and Elizabeth Banks), who want a baby but have been unable to conceive. Their prayers seem to be answered when an alien spacecraft crashes outside their rural farm, housing a baby, Superman-style. They raise Brandon as their own, and 11 years later, he seems to be a normal boy. However, when the buried spaceship comes alive, it brings out a sinister side of Brandon, and also seems to awaken his superpowers. Let’s just say, he’s not a good guy. Brandon gives in to his anger too easily and starts killing. It’s a decent horror flick, though it does fall into the trap of many low budget such films and really ratchets up the gore in the latter third of the flick. The film is produced by James Gunn of Guardians of the Galaxy fame, and takes place in the same world as one of his early pre-fame pictures, 2010’s Super. ★★½

Ever wonder where the term “Stockholm syndrome” came from? The film Stockholm answers your question. As it states in the opening credits, this movie is based on an absurd but true story. Lars Nystrom is a not-very-bright crook when he walks into a bank one day, not to rob it, but to use the hostages as leverage to free his buddy from jail. The cops do just that, but soon become wise that Lars’ bark is a lot worse than his bite, and that he has no intention to hurt those with him. Ethan Hawke plays an over-the-top robber, with a fine supporting cast including Noomi Rapace as Bianca, one of the hostages. That duo make the film, because as a picture, it is just average. It is worth watching for those acting chops though. In my opinion, Hawke has really upped his game these last few years; it’s getting to the point where I will watch anything with him. ★★★

Speaking of watching anything with him. Joaquin Phoenix is very picky about what he’s in, and they aren’t always good films, but his performances are always spot on. Joker is his latest. An origin story of how one of the greatest comic villains came to be, Phoenix plays a man, Arthur, and his descent into madness (which isn’t a long trip). We’ve seen it done before, like Jack Nicholson’s version in 1989’s Batman, but the Joker isn’t falling into a vat of acid this time. In fact, this is one of the most believable ways it could happen. Arthur is a man who the system has let down. Suffering from mental health problems due to abuse as a child, unable to get his meds or therapy due to cuts to social programs by the city, and plagued by a disorder in which he laughs uncontrollably when he’s nervous, Arthur certainly feels like the world is out to get him. When he finally snaps, it seems like that was the only outcome you could expect. I loved the film. It isn’t related to the current DC Universe films and stands by itself, but I hope a sequel gets made to see Phoenix’s Joker go up against the Bat. ★★★★

 

After James Joyce, it was nice to just read a normal book, and a good one at that. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is an iconic novel that meant a whole lot to a whole lot of different people. Released in 1982, it won Walker a Pulitzer Prize (the first African-American woman to do so) and inspired a generation of young writers.

The principle protagonist is Celie, a poor teenager living in the south in the early 1900’s. Her background, established in the first pages, is about as terrible as you can imagine. Only 14 years old, she’s had two children all ready, both fathered by Celie’s own father Alphonso, who beats and rapes her without mercy. He took the children away from her shortly after birth, and she’s never seen them again. All Celie has in this world is her little sister Nettie, but Alphonso all ready has his eyes on her at the age of 12. When a neighbor, “Mister,” (his name, Albert, isn’t given until much later in the novel. For the majority of it, he’s simply known as “Mister.”), asks to marry Nettie, Alphonso refuses, giving the Celie to him instead. Celie goes from one evil house to another, and her beatings continue. Though still young herself, she has to look after Mister’s children and do all the housework. To get away from Alphonso, Nettie runs away, promising to write letters every day until she dies. However, years go by, and Celie never receives a single letter.

Over the years, new people come into the picture, including Mister’s true love of his life, Shug. Shug is a singer, once a good one, but she’s fallen on hard times due to drugs and a hard life. She moves into their house and becomes Mister’s mistress, under the same roof as Celie. Celie doesn’t care, as she has no love for Mister anyway, and her beatings are less frequent when Shug is around. Other people have tales to be told too, including Mister’s son Harpo, his wife Sofia, and his mistress Squeak, but more than I want to get into in a short synopsis.

Over time, Celie and Shug develop a friendship, and ultimately, a romantic relationship. With Shug’s encouragement, Celie begins to grow her self esteem. This is further developed when Shug finds a cache of letters from Nettie and brings them to Celie. Nettie had indeed been writing all these years, but Mister never gave the letters to Celie. Celie learns that Nettie latched on to a black married couple who have gone to Africa as missionaries. Not only that, but the couple adopted and have been raising Celie’s two children, given to them by Mister when they were just kids. Celie is thrilled at the news, but doesn’t let on to Mister. However, she does start to grow a backbone, and the book subtly shifts as Celie begins to exert more power in the house. In one letter, Celie learns from Nettie that their father wasn’t their father at all, he was a stepfather who stepped in to the void filled with their real father, a local shopowner, was lynched. Knowing that her kids aren’t the product of incest after all, Celie goes to confront Alphonso, who is still mean, but no longer this mythical all-power entity to be feared. The same goes for Mister. When Alphonso dies and the family learns that the land is rightfully Celie’s, she goes to live there, leaving Mister.

Most things finally settle out for Celie by the end. She starts her own sewing business, making clothes that become popular among the local population, and though she never gets the relationship with Shug that she wants, she does find peace. Mister (now called by his name, Albert) even finds the error of his ways, and he and Celie come to terms with each other. At one point, he asks to marry her again, now in spirit as well as in body, but she refuses, knowing that is not her path. The big reunion you are hoping for throughout the book does finally come in the end.

This book is deceptively simple, but there’s a lot going on under the surface. It is told as a series of letters, most written by Celie, and obviously some by Nettie later on (I didn’t even get into her family’s work in Africa, a whole bunch of stuff about the trials people there faced against encroaching white business owners, not to mention the village’s part is selling slaves to America in the first place). In the beginning, Celie is writing to God, as He is the only person she has in the world, when she thinks Nettie and her kids are dead. Later, when even God seems to have turned His back on her, she writes to Nettie, even before Celie knows she’s still alive. Since it is written in first person narrative by an uneducated person, the language is simple, full of grammatical errors, and often phonetic. But through Celie, Walker gets her point across. This is a woman who never had anything, born into a world that hated her from the moment she came out of the womb, but she still found love and acceptance through sheer will and perseverance. Whether you want to interpret that as God’s love in the world, as Shug does in the book, or take a more agnostic look at it, is entirely up to the reader. However, I think it is definitely about an enduring faith that there has to be something better out there. It’s a great book, and an easy page turner that you won’t want to put down.

Ulysses. The name itself can send shivers down the spine of any reader, prepared or not. I thought myself in the former group, having already completed other novels of James Joyce (Finnegans Wake and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). Both were challenging (Finnegans Wake is often called the hardest book to read in the English language), but Ulysses is on another level. The book follows a similar structure and shared character profiles of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. This is a true masterpiece, written by perhaps the greatest writer of all time. Though hard to read, and even harder to decipher, it is rewarding for those brave enough, and patient enough, to tackle it.

The book takes place over one long day and chiefly follows two men, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus (returned again from Joyce’s previous novel). It begins with a couple short chapters following Stephen, mostly serving (as far as I can tell) as an introduction to him for people unfamiliar with Portrait. Stephen interacts with some friends and coworkers, and thinks about his mother’s death. It then switches to Bloom, who will be the chief character for much of the book. Bloom is at home in the beginning of a busy day for him. He sorts the newly delivered mail and says goodbye to his wife, Molly, and daughter before heading out for some errands. While walking through town, he reflects on his wife’s affair with her manager, a man named Boylan. He then heads to a friend’s funeral, along with Simon Dedalus (Stephen’s father) and other acquaintances, though being Jewish, Bloom isn’t “one of the boys.”

Bloom has lunch at a local pub, then heads to the library, where he crosses paths with Stephen, who is expounding his theory of Hamlet to his friends. Afterwards, Bloom has dinner at another bar, and sees Boylan head out for his tryst with Bloom’s wife. Bloom goes for a stroll along the beach, masterbating to a pretty young girl he sees with her friends, before visiting a maternity hospital where a young woman is giving birth. Again, Stephen is there too, but while Bloom, as an older man, is worried about the girl and her long and painful labor, the younger and less mature Stephen tells ribald jokes with his buddies. Afterwards, Stephen and Bloom find themselves at a local whorehouse, where each daydream about their past lives, sins, hopes, and dreams. After helping a drunk Stephen home in a very fatherly-like way, Bloom returns home to Molly. Now very late in the day, he crawls into bed with her, while she ruminates about her time with Boylan earlier and her previous loves as a younger girl, before reaffirming to herself and the reader than she does indeed still choose Bloom.

That’s it, in a nutshell. Nearly 800 pages summed up in 2 paragraphs. Reading that, you may think, what’s the point? The proof is in the pudding, or as I like to say, the journey is more important than the destination. Nearly each “chapter” or section of this book, and there 17 or 18 of them by my count, is written in an entirely different manner. One, when the two men are in the whorehouse, is written as a play, complete with stage directions. Another, when Bloom visits the local paper in his wanderings in the morning of the day, is written with headlines and news stories. When they are at the maternity ward, Joyce shows off his mastery of the language by giving us a history of language itself, meaning, the narration changes throughout the chapter in styles of other writers, and even a section that is very Bible-esque in structure. There’s a chapter that is entirely made up of questions and answers, which for me, solved the most riddles contained in the rest of the novel. And in true modernist fashion, the final chapter is nearly completely stream-of-conciousness writing.

Only a few times throughout this expansive book is there traditional, flowing narrative, i.e. Bloom crossed the street, said, “Hello.” to a passerby, etc. Most times we are in his or someone else’s head, as they dream, reflect, consider, pontificate, and otherwise explore the world around them. A sentence grounded in the real world may end, and the next will begin a paragraph of thoughts or imaginations, with nothing to warn the reader that something has changed. I’m not sure I had the same sense of wonder upon completing Ulysses as I did on Finnegans Wake, but there’s no denying that this is a true work of art, perhaps the greatest novel ever written, and worthy of all the praise you’ve ever heard about it. Like Finnegans, I’ll revisit this one again one day, perhaps with an annotated helper to assist me in deciphering its deeper explorations.

My blog has evolved since I started in 2014. It started off as a journal of my quest to see 100 films, all at the theater (I ended up seeing 122). In 2015 I started reading the “100 greatest English language novels of the 20^th century” (I’m still working on it). I cut back on my movies, but according to my letterboxd account, still saw 91 films that year, mostly at home. That increased every year, to 131 in 2016, 182 in 2017, and then 214 last year. By necessity, my full write-ups on each movie morphed into a small snippet, often collected into like-minded groupings of 5 films, but I tried to write about most of what I saw.

2019 was a whirlwind for me. I started the year by watching films at a breakneck speed, so I thought I’d give it a go to watch over 365 movies in a year. And these were not re-watches, these are all new-to-me films. To say that aloud blows my mind. I’m not some kid with nothing to do, I work 50+ hours a week, have a family, and a group of friends I hang with somewhat regularly, so cramming that many films into a year is pretty wild. At the end of the day, I blogged about 367 of them, but actually watched 387 according to my letterboxd. Crazy stuff. Oh, and I also managed to read 31 of those books.

After all that, I’m honestly a little burned out, so you might be seeing less of me this coming year, at least for a little while. I’ve got just 6 books left of those 100, and then my list is done. I’ll finish those off, and then get to reading some other stuff that I’ve put off since my last break. I’m going to play some video games again. I’m going to go some weekends and not watch a single movie. I’m sure once some time passes, I’ll get that itch to watch again (I still have lots I want to see!). But as always thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts on all these pictures, new and old.