You don’t just watch Sátántangó, Hungarian director Béla Tarr’s 7.5-hour paean to slow cinema. It seeps into your bones. At least, it seeped into mine.
Up until now, the movie was notoriously difficult to see. A flawless new 4K scan of the film, and imminent release on Blu-ray, will change that. Prior to 2019, the only home video release of the art film was a 2006 DVD by the Chicago non-profit cinema arts organization, Facets, which (I’ve been told) wasn’t the best transfer, and has now become all but impossible to find. So, with a beautiful transfer of it readily available, I suppose the only bragging rights left among cinephiles will be seeing all seven-and-a-half hours in one sitting in a theatrical setting.
I had the opportunity to do just that at Dallas’s historic Texas Theater, and the experience was exhilarating, transcendent, anger-inducing, exhausting, and ultimately very rewarding.
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The Park family aren’t bad people, per se. They’re just completely oblivious to anything and anyone that doesn’t involve them directly. Their obscene wealth allows them that luxury. So, late in Parasite – director Bong Joon-ho’s savage satire on class – when a heavy rain storm causes catastrophic flooding in poor neighborhoods, Mrs. Park, Yeon-kyo, can only perceive how it has affected her. The heavy rains have washed away the grime of the city, she says. In fact, it’s really a blessing. And besides, the next day has brought sunshine and a beautiful afternoon, perfect for celebrating her son Da-song’s birthday. She says this to one of her servants, a member of the Kim family, whose semi-basement apartment was devastated by the flood.
That moment offers a stinging observation, one among many, of how the rich move effortlessly through the world, while the less fortunate struggle to survive. Just like Snowpiercer, Bong’s 2013 dystopian take on class struggle, Parasite is as socially conscious as it is wildly entertaining. His use of virtuoso camera technique, dense structure, surprising plot twists, and pitch-black humor coalesce into an unforgettable piece of cinema.
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Kevin Smith has officially given up on his film career. One of the seminal figures responsible for turning the word “independent” into a noun to describe an entire American cinema movement in the early-to-mid 1990s now can’t be bothered to come up with actual titles for his movies. The comedian/writer/podcaster, whose real career is simply being Kevin Smith, isn’t even interested in making sequels anymore. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot isn’t a sequel to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. This isn’t Clerks III or Mallrats 2. In Smith’s own words – because he clearly doesn’t give a shit who knows how lazy he’s become – Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is “literally the same fucking movie all over again.”
And let me tell you, he ain’t kidding.
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It started with a Fresnel lens. If you’re wondering what that is, then we have something in common; so did I when I first read the term. For his second feature effort, The Lighthouse, director Robert Eggers knew he wanted the 19th century technology – developed specifically to make lighthouses visible by ships from farther away than was previously possible – as the centerpiece of his film. Just like with his directorial debut, the hypnotic 2015 film The Witch, Eggers was obsessed, and achieved, the most meticulous period accuracy for The Lighthouse. It seems blasphemous to use the word masterpiece so early in his career, but with his painstaking attention to detail, his eye for striking cinematic imagery, and his exploration of the human psyche, that’s just what Eggers has produced with both The Witch and now with The Lighthouse.
Set in the late 1890s and making use of sources like Herman Melville’s writings and actual lighthouse-keepers’ journals for its idiosyncratic dialog, Eggers hasn’t just re-created the time period with The Lighthouse. He’s brought it back from the dead.
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Both Paul and Gilligan do justice to the character and to Breaking Bad with El Camino. My only gripe with the film is that it doesn’t look particularly cinematic (which really stood out since I saw it in a theatrical exhibition setting). It looks – and mostly plays – like an extended episode of Breaking Bad, but when you’re talking about one of the best shows ever created, that’s hardly a complaint.
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“I’m the bad guy?” That’s the question Michael Douglas’s character, William Foster, asks in the final minutes of the movie Falling Down. Despite the fact that the movie, up until that point, solidly aligns itself with Foster’s point of view and his sick sense of vigilante justice, this one line of dialog suggests that Falling Down is a more self-aware movie than director Todd Phillips’s Joker. There’s never any question that Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, who transforms himself over the course of this origin story into Batman’s greatest nemesis, is our champion.
And the movie seems to have no idea how disturbing that is.
The bleak, nihilistic Joker, which, by its final frames, leans into its fascism in a way that even the heavily reactionary Falling Down doesn’t, says a lot more about Phillips’s worldview than the character he is exploring.
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Ad Astra is a work of art that is singularly beautiful but structurally flawed. Writer/director James Gray, working here with cowriter Ethan Gross, attempts a tone of cosmic mystery in his space epic set in the near future. It’s about the personal connections humans make even as we search for extraterrestrial life.
For the most part it works; I found myself falling into the rhythm of Ad Astra even as certain of its elements continued to irritate me.
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It’s a delight catching up with all the Downton Abbey characters, both “upstairs” and “downstairs.” Fellowes’s screenplay and Engler’s direction also make it enjoyable enough that newbies can get something out of it, too. The movie retains what made the show work: characters in whom it’s easy to become invested and a marvelously recreated early 20th century setting.
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So, with (most of) the nostalgia gone from this part of the story, what’s left? The answer is a movie that is, for the most part, consistent with its predecessor in creepy tone and jump-scare fun. Chapter Two also has some of the same problems as the first part, namely that we are asked to believe Pennywise the Clown is a merciless killer, except when it comes to our heroes. Whenever his target is one of our beloved Losers Club, Pennywise is suddenly very bad at his job. Chapter Two is also interminably long at 169 minutes, with a structure that feels more like a video game than a movie.
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This is the next entry in my ongoing 100 Essential Films series. If you missed the first one, you can find the explanation for what I’m doing here. Film number six is the first feature-length animated film ever produced: Walt Disney’s (with the help of dozens of artists) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I had the experience that probably most people would have upon sitting down to watch it: I know the basic story, the songs, and the characters (including all of the dwarfs), but I don’t know that I had ever actually watched the whole thing from beginning to end, aside from maybe when I was three years old. The movie is just so ingrained in our cultural memory, it’s easy to assume you’ve actually seen it, even if you haven’t. Just like the other films in the series, I borrowed a Blu-ray through intralibrary loan. It was the 2016 Disney Blu-ray release, and the film looks fantastic.
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This is the next entry in my ongoing 100 Essential Films series. If you missed the first one, you can find the explanation for what I’m doing here. Film number five is the romantic comedy It Happened One Night from 1934. Many hail the picture as the first screwball comedy ever made – although 1933’s Bombshell might have a little something to say about that. Class commentary and romance are the chief preoccupations of both the genre and It Happened One Night. I first saw the movie in college, about 800 years ago, so it’s technically a revisit, but this go-round was almost like seeing it for the first time. In fact, I might have slept through part of it in college; those 8 am classes were a killer… Just like the other films in the series, I borrowed a Blu-ray through intralibrary loan. The disc was produced in 2014 by the Criterion Collection, and although the majority of the film looks sparkling, there are a few shots that show how challenging the 4K restoration must have been.
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The horror/fantasy film Tigers Are Not Afraid is being compared favorably to the early work of director Guillermo del Toro. Like del Toro, its writer/director, Issa López, hails from Mexico, but the similarities go much deeper. The American distributor of the Spanish language Tigers – streaming service Shudder – is eager to encourage the connection to the Academy Award winning director of exquisitely crafted fantasy films like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. Their publicity material features a quote from del Toro about the movie: “An unsparing blend of fantasy and brutality, innocence and evil. Innovative, compassionate and mesmerizing.”
I wasn’t nearly as impressed as Mr. del Toro.
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At very specific moments throughout The Nightingale, director Jennifer Kent has her characters look directly into the camera. Her main character, Clare, does so both as she’s singing a song to entertain English troops posted in the Australian outback and as the commanding officer of those troops is brutalizing her. Kent even manages to catch a shot of an infant – within the movie, it’s Clare’s baby – looking into the camera as the little one falls asleep.
These moments set Kent’s film apart. They implicate every member of the audience in the horrific violence happening on screen. They also tie the oppressed and dehumanized characters to Kent herself. We’ve seen this kind of story many times before, but almost never from a female perspective. Kent’s vision is a shattering one.
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Late in the documentary Mike Wallace Is Here, there is a clip of the legendary reporter interviewing playwright Arthur Miller. Wallace asks Miller what the ultimate goal has been of Miller’s decades of work; what he’s been trying to achieve. “Oh, some little moment of truth,” Miller responds. Director Avi Belkin’s documentary about the life and career of Wallace has uncovered much more than that. His film explores not only the driving force of one man’s life, but how he in turn affected the entire profession of journalism, for better and for worse. Mike Wallace Is Here is a perceptive, unflinching look at what made Wallace tick.
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I’m doing something a little different with this week’s review. As I explain below, I have recently fallen down the rabbit hole of Twin Peaks, so I took advantage of re-watching the feature film Fire Walk with Me as a chance to add to my Revisited feature. That’s where I’m going on the record with a movie I’ve seen before but never written about. I’m also mixing in a funny story about the first time I watched the movie with my partner Rachel.
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Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (OUaTiH) is Tarantino’s re-creation of and loving, yet gleefully revisionist, tribute to this fractious period in Hollywood’s history. Without giving too much away, this film is a spiritual cousin to Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Basterds. That movie incensed more than a few people with its shockingly gory climax that reimagined the end of World War II.
The same will probably be true for OUaTiH. Tarantino puts his unique spin on the bloody, unspeakable events that closed the 1960s. When creating works of art, I have no need for the artist to feel constrained by the facts when representing real events. A big part of art is reimagining the world in new, different, and interesting ways. A possible exception is documentaries, but even those have exceptions to the rule. Mainly, the purpose Tarantino’s divergence from truth serves in OUaTiH, at least for me, was one of catharsis. Just like in Inglourious Basterds, we get to see good triumph over evil, in the bloodiest, most outrageous way possible…
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It feels like an incredibly trite observation to make that the story director LuLu Wang is telling in her film The Farewell is universal despite being centered around a Chinese family. It’s one of those go-to descriptors us white people love to pull out when we enjoy a story that doesn’t revolve around people who look like us. As if we have to be the ones to swoop in and proclaim something worthy because we were able to connect with an entire cast of non-whites for 90+ continuous minutes. We’re so used to whiteness being centered in virtually all popular entertainment that it feels like the biggest triumph – something on a UNIVERSAL scale – when that isn’t the case.
The Farewell isn’t universal despite featuring an exclusively Chinese cast. The Farewell is universal because it tells a very moving story that is steeped in the messiness of human emotion and relationships.
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I’ll be the first to admit I’m no expert on the subtleties of film distribution. I just watch the movies and react to them. But it’s telling and more than a little ironic that a documentary about sexism and misogyny in the entertainment business isn’t getting a traditional theatrical roll out. This Changes Everything, directed by Tom Donahue and executive produced by Geena Davis, will be seen in theaters for one night only on July 22nd, 2019 as part of a Fathom Events special screening on 800 screens across the U.S.
Those screenings, in conjunction with the documentary’s availability on streaming platforms, has the potential to create a lot of buzz for a movie with a vitally important message. But it also has the potential to fizzle in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scenario. Let’s hope the latter doesn’t happen.
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I was 15 in 1995 when the first Toy Story was released. That’s a bit older than the target audience for Pixar’s inaugural feature film, but I vividly remember seeing it and being dazzled by both the story and the groundbreaking animation. I’ll be 40 next year. I’ve been wowed by each successive Toy Story installment released over the last quarter century. Both the astonishing leap in digital animation technology and the touching stories involving old pals Sheriff Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the rest of the gang – Toy Story 2 and 3 consistently bring me to tears with every revisit – get better with each new film.
That’s definitely the case with the seemingly impossible jump in animation quality between Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4. The plot, however, isn’t quite up to the level of the earlier films, especially Toy Story 3, probably the strongest of the series. While “cash grab” is too strong a phrase, this is the first entry in the franchise that feels like the artistic vision got a little fuzzy.
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Much like his first effort, Hereditary, director Ari Aster’s follow up, Midsommar, is an exercise in exacting detail. From the meticulous set design, to the beautiful execution of each camera movement, to the painterly quality of almost every shot composition, Aster is an uncompromising film artist. That he uses his skills in order to shock and disgust his audiences (as well as make them laugh) is part of what makes him such a unique filmmaker. Midsommar is Stanley Kubrick meets Dario Argento. At the same time, you won’t see anything like its sui generis sensibility on screen this year.
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