msicism

Smoking Causes Coughing (Quentin Dupieux, 2022)

The title Smoking Causes Coughing is a statement of direct causation. Doing this will lead to that. This is ironic, because nothing in Smoking Causes Coughing leads to anything else. It is, as they used to say, so random.

The thing about Quentin Dupieux is, he really does not give a single fuck. In many respects, his most successful and coherent artistic statement is his hit s...

Blue Jean (Georgia Oakley, 2022)

Debut films are hard, and it's often easy to overlook some formal or narrative missteps. Everyone has to start somewhere, and besides, the sheer gumption it takes to get your work in the can and on the screen can demand a level of confidence that can partially occlude an awareness of the weak spots. There are two big problems with Blue Jean, however. One, it is a film that speaks so directly...

A Respectable Woman (Bernard Émond, 2023)

Despite a 20-year career, Quebecois director Bernard Émond remains a bit of a mystery even to many of the most hardcore cinephiles. While on some level this is simply the fate of all but a very select few Canadian directors, Émond may be a special case. Having seen three of his features, I can say that he seems to have mastered a low-key narrative formalism. His films sneak up on you. At first they...

The Divide [La Fracture] (Catherine Corsini, 2021)

As incongruous as it may seen, I found myself thinking about the recent films of Adam McKay while watching La Fracture, the latest film from Catherine Corsini. Needless to say, it wasn't a flattering comparison. Like the liberal idiocy found in the likes of The Big Short and Vice (I could never bring myself to watch Don't Look Up), Le Fracture thinks the w...

Coconut Head Generation (Alain Kassanda, 2023)

I don't have a lot to say about Coconut Head Generation, an informative but flawed documentary about activism at Nigeria's University of Ibadan. At first, it centers on the university's Thursday Cinema Club, a student-run group who screen provocative films and hold often raucous post-screening discussions. Showing works by the likes of Med Hondo, John Akomfrah, Mahamet-Saleh Haroun, and othe...

Yanagawa (Zhang Lu, 2021)

Back in 2014, when TIFF was still doing its City to City program(me), I covered the entire slate of films that year. The focus was on Seoul, and as often happens when cramming for festival coverage, a lot of those films became a blur. Even having written about them all for Cinema Scope, very few of them made a lasting impression. One of those films was Gyeongju by Chinese director Zhang Lu. ...

Cruces (Maximilien Luc Proctor, 2023)

BY REQUEST: Florian Weigl

The usual disclaimers apply. Max and I are friends, and have worked together on some writing projects. But another disclaimer might be in order here. MLP is astoundingly prolific, and I have not even begun to delve into his ever-growing body of work. At this point I have seen four of his films, and although there are commonalities, of course, they all ...

Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbiner, 1972)

BY REQUEST: Jacopo Fiorancio

Having now watched all five episodes (and indeed, all eight hours) of Eight Hours, I find it all very much of a piece with Fassbinder's mature aesthetic, even if the tone is quite a bit different. By 1972, Fassbinder was well into his Sirk obsession, but for the most part that's absent from this series, apart from the typically extreme spat...

Enys Men (Mark Jenkin, 2022)

One benefit of going to commercial cinemas to see movies no one else wants to is that, when a few other people do show up, it can create an unexpected bond. I had a nice chat in the lobby with a couple of folks who'd also just watched Enys Men, and most of that chat consisted of just articulating what we'd seen and trying to suss out what Mark Jenkin might be up to. However, one thi...

Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023)

Read the room, Night. This is a terrible time to be making such an incoherent statement about gay parenting, in part because that incoherence can easily be mistaken for insight. Why have a family with two dads, and have the antagonists repeatedly claim that their being gay had no relevance to the sacrifice they were being asked to make, when from the family's point of view -- especially Andrew (Ben A...

The Lottery (Subscriber's Choice)

This weekend I'll finish Eight Hours Are Not a Day, and hopefully post about it by Monday.

But since it sometimes takes folks a minute to see that they've been tagged, I wanted to go ahead and announce the next three Selectors (in order of random selection):

#24: CRAIG LINDSEY

#52: FLORIAN WEIGL

#137: RYAN WU

Hi...

Leila's Brothers (Saeed Roustaee, 2022)

“Dostoyevsky Iranian style,” reads one positive review of Leila’s Brothers, the third feature film by Saeed Roustaee, and in a way that writer (Frédéric Da) has a point. Like the Russian existentialist, Roustaee is fascinated with bullheaded or deluded people who make bad decisions and then, out of misplaced pride or twisted ethics, double down on those choices until complete ruin is...

Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster (Umut Subaşı, 2023)

Umut Subaşı’s debut feature is a curious beast. In many regards it is quite accomplished, and displays some very decisive stylistic choices. Basically a roundelay involving four young adults in Instanbul, Almost Entirely a Slight Disaster is a suitably wry comedy of manners, one Subaşı orchestrates with planametric compositions, rhyming visuals, and a deadpan dramatic approach. It take...

The Face of the Jellyfish (Melisa Liebenthal, 2022)

In 2019, Argentinian filmmaker Melisa Liebenthal released a short film called Aquí y Allá (“Here and There”), in which she used Google Earth to pinpoint the exact location in which she was making the film itself. With wry reflexivity, Liebenthal asked us to consider the interface between our ordinary lives and the collection systems of Big Data, and how at any given moment we are subje...

Astrakan (David Depesseville, 2022)

Astrakan, the debut feature from David Depesseville, is a film that is at once deeply humanist and utterly pitiless. Essentially a character study, the film depicts the precarious and often horrifying world of Samuel (Mirko Gianinni), a young boy in the French foster-care system who is placed in an unloving home in rural Morvan. While such a plot could easily give way to uncomplicated victim...

A Few Preliminary Words about....

Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972)

At this point I've seen the first two of the series' five episodes, and wanted to jot down some thoughts.

-- This is by no means "early Fassbinder." After all, he produced this right after Petra von Kant, so his mature style was already well established. But in making this "family series" for WDF, Fass...

Two Upcoming Reviews

Today I started watching Fassbinder's Eight Hours Are Not a Day, and what do you know? It's about eight hours long. I will report back once I "binge" the whole thing. But I've also been doing reviews for InReview Online, and since they now have most of their work behind a Patreon paywall, I'll be posting those writings here for the benefit of my subscribers. More are on the way (I'm doing ND...

A Flower in the Mouth (Éric Baudelaire, 2022)

The more films I see by Éric Baudelaire, the less I understand what he's up to. They all seem so different, from his look at the breakaway republic of Abkhazia (2014's Letter to Max), to his riff on Masao Adachi (2017's Also Known as Jihadi), to his recent Vardaesque collaboration with French schoolchildren, Un Film Dramatique (2019). None of them look alike, and none of t...

Utama (Alejandro Loayza Grisi, 2022)

BY REQUEST: Gavin Petty

Over the years I've discovered a common trait among many, if not most, debut films. The filmmaker has spent years working toward the project in question, and they can never be entirely sure they'll ever get a second turn behind the camera. So debut films can often feel overstuffed, as though decades' worth of ideas are all getting put onscreen, come what...

Parafango (Charles Atlas, 1984)

Among the major video artists of the 80s and 90s, Charles Atlas doesn't have the reputation he deserves. This is probably because he works in a very narrow genre, one that he may not have invented but has certainly helped to define. Atlas specializes in making moving-image records of dance works. He is best known for his long association with Merce Cunningham, with whom he made seven films. He also g...

There Once Was a Singing Blackbird (Otar Iosseliani, 1970)

BY REQUEST: Kirk Johnson

Well, it was kind of inspiring to see that even at the start of his career, Iosseliani had most of his primary obsessions firmly in place. In particular, Singing Blackbird foregrounds the director's puckish, apolitical embrace of truancy. As with Monday Morning, Farewell Home Sweet Home, Brigands, and nearly all the o...

Brother and Sister (Arnaud Desplechin, 2022)

There has been a strong surge of anti-Desplechin sentiment brewing over the past few years. The critical response to his last few films, along with the fact that major film festivals have started ignoring them, would suggest that something like a consensus is forming, that Desplechin is essentially washed up. And while I would agree that the evidence suggests that he is unlikely to once again achieve...

in water (Hong Sang-soo, 2023)

Allegedly kept out of the Berlinale competition for being "too weird," in water certainly has the hallmarks of radical new direction, for any filmmaker really but especially one who so often gets the bum rap of all his films being the same. No one will mistake in water for any other Hong Sang-soo film. While it will probably frustrate newcomers to Hongland, people like me who've bee...

Laberint Sequences (Blake Williams, 2023)

The usual disclaimers apply. Blake and I are friends, and while I have been a pretty consistent fan of his work, I've done my best to remain quasi-objective. Now, I've already enthused about Laberint Sequences on Twitter, but a closer analysis is in order for a film that has as much going on as this one. I mentioned that it felt a bit like an experimental feature, despite being only 20 minut...

RANDOM SUBSCRIBER SWEEPSTAKES!

You asked for it, you got it! Using a random number generator, the following three subscribers have been selected for this month's TELL ME WHAT TO WATCH game.

#207: JACOPO FIORANCIO -- come on down!

2023-03-14 04:18:03 +0000 UTC View Post

I'm Thinking....

I have been a bit distracted from watching older movies lately, mostly because of year-end polls. Now I am not sure how to proceed. What do you think?

R.M.N. (Cristian Mungiu, 2022)

The title R.M.N. refers to an M.R.I., whose initials in Romanian are R.M.N. But of course, R.M.N. also seems to signify "Romania," and in a way Mungiu's film attempts to be a sort of cinematic brain scan of his homeland, one that reveals a backwards, hateful culture where xenophobia is a given, and the only real question is whether it'll be casual or openly aggressive.

If this...

Nostalgia (Mario Martone, 2022)

A funny thing happened while I was originally composing this review. I got about a paragraph out, which was pretty much my usual stuff: a bit of background on the director, his major festival appearances (this film was in competition at Cannes last year), and a note explaining that this is the first film by Martone I've seen, despite some evidence that he's a bit of a big deal in Italy.

Then, a...

Cairo Conspiracy (Tarik Saleh, 2022)

When Tarik Saleh's Cairo Conspiracy (or Boy From Heaven, as it was called at the time) was announced as a selection for the 2022 Cannes competition slate, there was a bit of confusion. Wait, isn't that the same guy who directed some random Chris Pine actioner? Indeed, Saleh's other 2022 release, The Contractor, was the sort of routine Hollywood junk studiously ignored by cr...

Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg, 2023)

Let's Go Brandon! In terms of evocation of mood, inarticulate menace, and a batshit approach to visuals and sound design, Cronenberg fils has it going on. Even the end titles bear an unmistakable Godardian stamp, retrofitted for the vaguely bureaucratic atmosphere of much of the film. Infinity Pool looks and sounds great, but it's signifying less than nothing. The primary conceit --...