My Top Movies 2023
2023 was a very fruitful year for cinema, and I was lucky to watch a lot of great movies this year. Indeed, I watched so many of them that I couldn’t, try as I might, whittle them down into a top 10 list. So I decided to divide my favorite movies into the following categories:
Best mainstream/wide release, best indie/arthouse, best documentaries and best animation, including some honorable mentions and my personal Top 5 at the end (don’t resist the urge to scroll down, do it, I know you want to).
If you’re an avid movie goer, I hope you’ll find something new and interesting on this list, and if you’re not, I hope you can enjoy some extraordinary movies this year. Allons-y!
The movies are, as always, in no particular order. They’re just all great.
A Non-Exhaustive List of Movies I Liked This Year
2023 was a very fruitful year for cinema, and I was lucky to watch a lot of great movies this year. Indeed, I watched so many of them that I couldn’t, try as I might, whittle them down into a top 10 list. So I decided to divide my favorite movies into the following categories:
Best mainstream/wide release, best indie/arthouse, best documentaries and best animation, including some honorable mentions and my personal Top 5 at the end (don’t resist the urge to scroll down, do it, I know you want to).
If you’re an avid movie goer, I hope you’ll find something new and interesting on this list, and if you’re not, I hope you can enjoy some extraordinary movies this year. Allons-y!
The movies are, as always, in no particular order. They’re just all great.
My Top 5 Indie Movies1
1. Fancy Dance
Dir. Erica Tremblay
2023
I’ve written about Fancy Dance in my overview of the Munich Film Festival in July and just want to reiterate how great it was.
Set in the Seneca-Cayuga Nation Reservation, Oklahoma Jax, played by the incredible Lily Gladstone1, has to hustle to find her missing sister (Hauli Sioux Gray), all the while fighting an unresponsive justice system and taking care of her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson). Meanwhile, Roki is convinced that her mother will be at an upcoming nationwide Pow Wow, as they’re set to perform the mother-daughter dance together. As child protective services threaten to take Roki away and settle her with her white grandfather (Shea Whigham) and his wife, Jax sees no other choice than to kidnap her niece and bring her to the Pow Wow herself, knowing that this event will more likely be a commemoration than reunion.
The movie tackles the invisibility of Native women, who face violence at the hands of men, white and otherwise, at a disproportionate rate, and an unconcerned justice and social system which fails them every single day. However, the characters of this beautiful movie aren’t defined by their suffering, instead Tremblay creates a healing story that champions the strength of tradition, community and hope within the reality Jax and Roki have to live in. Despite the world’s cruelty and ignorance, Tremblay highlights their unbreakable bond and connection to their roots and language and lets them carve out a world of their own in which every happy moment that they’re able to share is celebrated and recorded.
Although international sales rights for Fancy Dance have been acquired by Dubai-based sales agency Cercamon, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any information on whether they’ve sold the movie to any distributors. According to a guest column by Erica Tremblay in the Hollywood Reporter from 30 November 2023, no distribution deals have been made so far.
2. Daughter of Rage (La Hija de Todas las Rabias)
Dir. Laura Baumeister de Montis
2022
I mentioned Daughter of Rage in my overview of the Munich Film Festival as an honorable mention.
However, the more time passed, the more this exceptional movie loomed in my mind, its ferocity and lush atmosphere pulling me in whenever I remembered watching it.
11-year-old María (Ara Alejandra Medal) lives with her mother Lilibeth (Virginia Raquel Sevilla García) in a shack at the edge of an enormous landfill near Manaca in Nicaragua. Her days are filled with scaling the massive mountains of garbage and rummaging through the endless supply of human refuse. Meanwhile, Lilibeth has to hustle to keep them alive, mostly by selling the halfway useful stuff they find at the dump in Manaca, for which she has to undertake a dangerous journey and leave María behind for days on end.
To make ends meet and under threat of violence, Lilibeth agrees to breed a litter of (purebred?) puppies with her dog for a local crime boss. As the deal falls through, she panics and brings María to a recycling plant, where children make up the bulk of the workforce, promising to come back. As days go by without Lilibeth’s return, María concocts a plan to escape and look for her mother herself.
The movie is told primarily from María’s perspective, as she navigates the exceedingly dangerous and tragic situation she finds herself in. Although very determined and angry, she retains a child’s perspective throughout the entire story, with only a vague understanding as to why her mother abandoned her and of what is going on around her. María’s childlike perception is the fulcrum and one of the biggest strengths of the movie. Her quest to find her mother is structured like a modern fairytale full of wondrous forests brimming with life, prophetic dreams, and helpful friends she meets along the way.
Ara Alejandra Medal is extraordinary in her role as María, especially considering that it’s her first, and according to the director, last role. Every moment of her performance is intense and fierce. She portrays María’s emotional journey from a curious almost detached existence to intense rage and finally to a fragile hopefulness and acceptance in such a raw, sincere and painful manner that I couldn’t stop staring at her, even when she shared a scene with someone else.
Mirroring María’s internal development, the world she exists in and has to traverse is constantly in flux. Aided by the dynamic cinematography of Teresa Kuhn and the sound design by Lena Esquenazi, every scene, every set and interaction take on a life of their own. Be it the overwhelming mechanical drone of the dump contrasted with María’s dreamlike POV as she plays with her mother’s puppies, the incessant chirping and movement of forest creatures in her dreams, or the dry whispering of an overworked plantation she finds herself on near the end of the movie – everything has a constant sound to it, making Daughter of Rage a very pleasantly noisy movie.
It’s not difficult to figure out what’s happened to Lilibeth, and Baumeister de Montis uses the resulting tension by contrasting the cold and uncomfortable truth with María’s journey of coming to terms with her abandonment and her aethereal flimsy hope for a better future. Our “adult knowledge” doesn’t contradict or affect María’s quest in any way. On the contrary, against all odds, I found myself hoping that her version of reality will somehow come true.
As of 19 February 2023, the international sales rights for Daughter of Rage are owned by Brussels-based distributor Best Friend Forever who have sold the film to distributors in France, Spain, Switzerland, Mexico, Japan and Eastern Europe. The film has already seen a limited release in Spain, Switzerland and France.
3. Augure (Omen)
Dir. Baloji
2023
Another movie that stayed with me after the Munich Film Festival for much longer than I expected.
Omen tells the story of Koffie (Marc Zinga), a Congolese immigrant living in Belgium, who returns to his hometown for the first time in his adult life to settle some family matters and introduce his pregnant white wife to his mother. Koffie has been shunned by his family his entire life prior to immigration, due a birthmark that covers half of his face, which was deemed the mark of the devil by the backwards community his family belongs to. As he returns and the first meeting with his mother and sisters goes awry, he has to reconsider his understanding of home and family and whether it’s possible to abandon your roots completely.
Koffie is not the only main character in the story, however, which makes Omen an intricate jumble of POVs, with all of the characters experiencing phantasmagorical prophetic dreams, dreamlike real-life events and painfully realistic visions. Their stories collide with a world where tradition and superstition are strongly intertwined with everyday life, love and grief, and explore whether there’s a place for forgiveness in this unrelenting society.
Omen has been picked up for US distribution by Utopia and had its theatrical release on 15 Nov. 2023 in Belgium, so let’s hope for a wider European release in 2024. The movie has also been selected for the Belgian entry into the Best International Feature Film category for the 2024 Academy Awards. Godspeed.
4. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
Dir. Raven Jackson
2023
Like poetry in motion, we follow Mack (Kaylee Nicole Johnson/Charleen McLure) as she grows up and falls in love, through tragedies big and small, through life as it is – no linearity, thoughts and emotions intertwined. Her inner world is illuminated by intimate close-ups, with the cinematography (Jomo Fray) especially zoning in on touch, hands and physical contact in general, resulting in the best hug I’ve ever seen on screen. Mack’s hands sifting water, her crawling on a plush carpet while observing her parents dancing in a loving embrace at a party: all this is accompanied by a silence so full you don’t even notice that there’s no incidental soundtrack. Until, in a moment of power and beauty, the soundtrack by Sasha Gordon and Victor Margo hits you right in the gut.
Watching All Dirt Roads is an incredibly tactile experience, as the dreamy landscape of Mack’s mind, bathed in natural light, harsh Mississippi sunlight or serene rainy twilight, invites us to accompany her through love and heartbreak, tragedy and happiness, incredible tenderness and contemplative moments, while she listens to the sound of rain – pounding on the earth, reverberating in her body and soul.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is distributed by A24 and was released in US cinemas for a limited release on November 3, 2023 and is steaming on all relevant platforms in US since the beginning of 2024. I wasn’t able to find any information on a European release outside of film festivals, yet.
5. The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin)
Dir. Colm Bairéad
2022
The shy Cáit (Catherine Clinch), is growing up with five siblings, an overworked pregnant mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) and an alcoholic gambling father (Michael Patric). While her siblings somehow manage to carve out a space for themselves, Cáit is quiet and often invisible, which makes her the problem child, as far as her parents are concerned. As Cáit has a minor incident in school, they decide to ship her off to her mother’s distant cousin Eiblín Kinsella (Carrie Crowley) and her husband Seán Kinsella (Andrew Bennett) for the summer, without asking or telling Cáit.
When her father drops her off at the Kinsellas’ house and drives away with her suitcase still in his car, Cáit is confused and scared, cautiously taking in her new surroundings. While Eiblín welcomes her with open arms and takes over as a surrogate mother quite quickly, Seán is more reserved, which intimidates Cáit even more.
During the summer, however, Seán warms up to Cáit, and with both his and Eiblín’s unconditional love and attention, Cáit grows into a more confident and visibly happy child. This change happens very gradually, and she never loses her reserved quiet nature, which is the lynchpin of the movie.
Caít is constantly talked over by the adults in her life, but rarely replies or tries to get the adults' attention in any other way. This happens frequently with strangers, but also with her parents at the beginning of the movie. As they’re not privy to or interested in her thoughts, they treat her like an object. A unit that can be shipped off like luggage, eats a certain amount of food and can do a certain amount of labor. Her humanity and individuality are treated as non-existent.
Therefore, her interactions with adults throughout the movie put the burden of advocating for herself solely on her shoulders, and in turn her quietness is interpreted as not honoring this unspoken agreement. Only when Seán acknowledges her reserved nature as a strength to her directly, later in the movie does their relationship finally transcend into a warm parental bond.
The Quiet Girl is a very introspective slice of life, and Catherine Clinch is a great lead. She plays Cáit’s growth in a tender and subtle way. Great touches like Caít’s smile turning from a functional tight-lipped one, intended to please the adults around her, to being more natural and childlike during the summer, until it goes right back when Cáit has to go back home, are at the core of Clinch’s performance.
It’s a heart-wrenching movie, which will gut you at the end, but it's also a reminder that giving unconditional love and attention to a child is the most important thing for their development and mental stability.
The movie has been sold to distributors across the globe by its sales agency Bankside Films and has been nominated in the Best International Feature Film category in the 2023 Academy Awards. The film has since seen a wide release in several countries and is available on the usual streaming platforms (except Netflix) in the US, Canada and parts of Europe, although not in Germany for some reason. It’s also available on Blu-Ray.
My Top 5 Documentaries
1. Your Fat Friend
Dir. Jeanie Finlay
2023
Read my full review of Your Fat Friend here.
Following fat activist Aubrey Gordon from her days as an anonymous blogger to a successful writer and podcaster, the movie takes an incredibly tender look at fatness, activism, human mistakes and so much more. You will laugh, you will cry, and, I promise, if you watch this movie, you will be changed forever.
Good News Everybody! Your Fat Friend has been picked up by Together Films for international sales, so let’s hope they manage to sell the film to distributors around the globe. Jeanie Finlay has also been on extensive film tours throughout the year, so watch out for this movie in your town or (fingers crossed) on a streaming platform near you.
2. She Chef
Dir. Melanie Liebheit, Gereon Wetzel
2023
Read my full review of She Chef here.
An informative and heartfelt look at high gastronomy, fine dining and life in general, through one female chef’s eyes. Confident, competent and charming, Agnes Karrasch is a very sympathetic protagonist to her own life, and you’ll find yourself rooting for her every step of the way. Despite the trial and tribulations of the pandemic and an industry in crisis, it is a true joy to witness Agnes succeed and find a place among the very best and creative in high-end gastronomy.
You can buy or rent She Chef on Amazon Prime, Apple TV or YouTube Movies, albeit, as far as I can tell, in Germany and Austria only.
3. Band
Dir. Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir
2022
Band is a fascinating mix between documentary, mockumentary and biographical fiction, wherein Örnólfsdóttir tells the story of her all-female band The Post Performance Blues Band (ThePPBB), looking for a way out of obscurity without compromising their artistic integrity and vision.
Álfrún, Saga and Hrefna put everything they have into their music career. As ThePPBB, an all-female avantgarde electronic music trio, they take on any venue that’ll take them, performing phantasmagorical, theatrical and harshly lit techno punk (I’m listening to it right now, it’s amazing!), in front of miniscule audiences. They make their costumes, they write their songs, they’re incredibly creative and talented, and they maintain their vision despite their middling success.
After another concert, which results in even less appreciation than usual, the trio makes an executive decision: we’ll do everything to break out of obscurity, but if we don’t make it until the end of the year, we’re quitting.
With the deadline looming, the women spring into action. They hire a business consultant, they find a producer, record an album, which gets coverage in the local news and, with money they don’t have, rent a huge venue in the Harpa concert hall. While their partners take care of hearth and home, Álfrún, Saga and Hrefna work tirelessly on their success.
As you might’ve guessed, this is a movie about the definition of success; about womanhood and art; about both ThePPBB and being an artist in general. The leads are great at playing themselves, and Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir is a great first-time director with an equally strong understanding of visual and musical language. In addition to her recreating real-life events with her band and other participants in a stranger-than-fiction remix of reality and hindsight, the film is also intercut with ThePPBB’s self-produced music videos and performative dream-sequences that’ll make you fall in love with the titular band.
Unfortunately, I don’t have good news on the distribution front. Although the international rights for Band were acquired by French film production and sales agency Alief, I couldn’t find any evidence, as to whether they’ve actually sold the movie to any international distributors. Should you not have the chance to watch this amazing movie, you can at least watch ThePPBB’s music videos on their YouTube channel or subscribe to them on Spotify.
4. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Dir. Anna Hints
2023
A cavernous Estonian sauna deep in the woods, the sound of constantly dripping water, lilting chants and women talking. Talking about themselves, their lives, exuberant joys, minor annoyances and deep-seated pain.
And you in the midst of it all. The steam rises and falls like breath as the sauna becomes the world, a womb, the safest of places. This movie is life itself distilled into one cramped space, into one song; and just like the sauna is a place of transformation, so is watching this movie a truly life-changing experience.
I will not list all the very well-deserved and many (many many) accolades Smoke Sauna Sisterhood and Anna Hints got since the movie premiered at Sundance. In addition, it’s the Estonian entry for the Best International Feature Film for the 2024 Academy Awards. It is out now in cinemas in limited release.
As of publishing this post, the movie is still playing in some cinemas in Germany. Look for it, go see it!
5. The Cemetery of Cinema (Au Cemetiére de la Pelicule)
Dir. Thierno Souleymane Diallo
2023
Read my full review of the movie in my Top 3 of the Berlinale.
We follow the director Thierno Souleymane Diallo, as he travels through Guinea in search of Mouramani (1953), the first ever Guinean movie ever released. While visiting destroyed cinemas and barely financed film archives, he unravels the complicated history of Guinean cinema and why it was ultimately lost.
It’s both a heart-warming send-up to the power of cinema and its transformative power, as well as a melancholic look at a society that lost it.
As of February 2023, French sales agency Reservoir Docs has included The Cemetery of Cinema in its line-up, however I couldn’t find any information on any movement on the international distribution front.
My Top 5 Animated Movies
1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Dir. Joachim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
2023
Across the Spider-Verse is a direct sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), which I also highly recommend, if you haven’t seen it.
Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), already quite comfortable in his role as the new Spider-Man, faces new challenges in form of college applications and family expectations. In a very relatable dilemma, his parents both want him to outgrow his humble roots but are also not amenable to the idea of him going far from home. Already strained with juggling superhero and domestic responsibilities, Miles runs into The Spot (Jason Schwartzman), a goofy villain who seemingly can teleport between worlds and who swears to take revenge on Spider-Man for “creating” him at end of the previous movie.
As The Spot manages to wreak havoc across different worlds, Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) returns into Miles’ life and, unwillingly, sucks him into the chaotic and dangerous world of the Spider-Verse. Soon Miles faces the most difficult choice of all when he discovers that Gwen now works for the Spider-Society led by Miguel O’Hara or Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac), a mysterious agency comprised entirely of different iterations of Spider-Men/Women/Beasts whose mission it is to save different worlds from paradoxes and therefore from collapsing.
The animation3 of Across the Spider-Verse is as good, if not better as in its predecessor. The animators obviously had more opportunities to flex both skills and creativity. While gallivanting though the multiverse, Miles and the other Spider-People visit vastly different worlds, which, through their animation style, manage to convey absolutely different vibes. While Miles’ Earth-1610 evokes a homey New York feel, as Miles swings through the dynamic, colorful and urban landscapes, Gwen’s Earth-65 looks and behaves like a living impressionist painting, replete with shifting colors to match Gwen’s moods.
I have to admit that I didn’t like the story too much, as Across the Spider-Verse suffers from the typical ailments of all second films of a planned trilogy. It serves mostly as a setup for the third movie and therefore has less of a character of its own. However, what Across the Spider-Verse lacks in story it absolutely makes up in excellent character moments and development, as well as of course the extraordinary animation and voice acting.
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Dir. Jeff Rowe
2023
Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Leonardo (Nicholas Cantu), Raphael (Brady Noon) and Donatello (Micah Abbey) are isolated teenagers living in New York’s vast maze-like sewers, only allowed to go outside for groceries and other necessities by their stern adoptive father Splinter (Jackie Chan). They, being teenagers and all, yearn for the common comforts of the outside world – high-school, having a girlfriend, going to the movies – just being normal. Oh, if you haven’t already guessed from the title, the boys are man-sized mutant turtles, and Splinter is a giant rat, which might make integration into society … difficult.
As the turtles witness a scooter being stolen, they decide on a whim to help the owner, who turns out to be intrepid high-school journalist April O’Neill (Ayo Edebiri4). They chase the thief to a garage and decimate the gangsters inside with their superior ninja skills, which they learned from Bruce Lee movies (which is incredible and awesome). Hyped by their success and by April kind-of accepting them, the boys concoct a brilliant plan: They just have to become awesome superheroes, then people will accept them, and they’ll be able to live a normal life among humans.
Mutant Mayhem is a heaping spoon of nostalgia for elder Millennials, who loved the original show or the comics (that’s me!), although I think it’ll also be fun for people who don’t know anything about the franchise.
The animation, is constantly in flux, which is well suited to the many and varied action scenes. The fact that the turtles are voiced by actual teenagers and one very young adult gave the film the chance to explore the teenage side of the Turtles more than previous installations. It tackles both a coming-of-age story as well as the concept of found family, while exploring the theme of (self-)acceptance and finding one’s voice, both within a community and the outside world. The voice acting is very good, too. Ayo Edebiri excelled as April, and I’m just always happy to see that Jackie Chan is alive and well. Ice Cube as villain Superfly was, of course, cool as ice, and the soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross just slapped!
3. The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Dir. Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic
2023
Genuine New Yorkers, plumbing entrepreneurs and brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) hit a snag in their career, as their newly opened business refuses to take off and they face stiff opposition from their ex-employer Spike (Sebastian Maniscalco) as well as their own family. Downtrodden, late at night, they see a TV report of a major water main leak and decide to play hero and save the city by delving deep into the New York underground and stopping the leak. While exploring the sewers, the brothers happen on a warp pipe and get sucked into a magical world filled with everything you know and love about the Mario games.
Super Mario Bros. 3 was the first game I ever played sometime in the nineties somewhere in Russia, and I don’t know for sure, but I’d like to believe that I was a genius at it (unreliable narrator detected). Since then, like so many Millennials, regardless of how much or little I played, I still had a soft spot for this particular franchise (even for the 1993 live action movie starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper).
So, how do you adapt such an extensive and beloved franchise? Well, apparently quite easily, if you follow a simple (and very characteristic of our time) rule: No thoughts, just vibes!
The genius of The Super Mario Bros. Movie was to kind of leave everything as it is and not to (over-)explain anything. Talking mushrooms? – Yeah. The main villain Bowser (Jack Black) is a dinosaur turtle? – Yeah. The princess of the talking mushrooms is a (very competent) human named Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy)? – You betcha!
Granted, that doesn’t leave a lot of space for character exploration or development, but I think that in this case it’s a good thing. Neither Mario, nor any of the other characters in the game ever had character arcs, they were the constant in an ever-changing game and industry landscape. They grounded us as children and still do, while we desperately try to survive the world as it is right now. The filmmakers understood why Mario is still popular to this day and made a movie equivalent to a perfectly warm cozy blanket on a winter day with a cup of cocoa and your cat by your side (Warning! Your perfect cozy fantasy may differ.)
I also love that there was no unnecessary romance tacked on and that the relationship between Luigi, who was kidnapped by Bowser at the beginning of the movie, and Mario, who is trying to save him with his new friends, remains the focus of the movie. The animation is an eye-popping colorful messy joy to behold, the voice acting is fantastic, and the soundtrack by Brian Tyler, including the Peaches song graciously provided by Jack Black, is dynamic, funny, nostalgic and just awesome!
I had a lot of fun watching this movie and I hope you will, too!
4. Robot Dreams
Dir. Pablo Berger
2023
In a New York, which is populated by animals of all shapes and sizes, lives Dog. A lonely Dog. Lonely, until he sees a late-night ad for a new kind of companion – a robot that promises to be your best friend – which Dog purchases immediately. And so begins the story of a beautiful friendship – until it ends, that is.
Robot Dreams has no dialogue, but that doesn’t deter it from delivering a powerful message: Friendship is a precious good that can be lost, grief is an emotion that must be felt to the fullest,
and – most importantly – everything will be alright in the end, promise. This beautiful melancholic, but joyful story is helped along by endearingly simple animation, a very cute character design (the film was adapted from the comic by Sara Varon) and a nostalgia-inducing soundtrack.
The movie is subtle, sad, happy and everything in-between, and while Dog and Robot might be decidedly non-human, their struggles are very much human, indeed.
Robot Dreams has been acquired worldwide for distribution all over Europe as well as the US, so look out for a theatrical or streaming release near you.
5. The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka - lit.: How Do You Live?)
Dir. Hayao Miyazaki
2023
Inspired by socialist Genzaburō Yoshino’s children’s book How Do You Live?, The Boy and the Heron follows earnest and subdued Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki) as he adjusts to a new life after his mother tragically dies in a fire. Although the movie is set during WWII, the war is barely mentioned and seems far away from the idyllic village and estate where his father Shoichi (Takuya Kimura) brings Mahito some time after his mother’s death. The estate belongs to her family and is now owned by her little sister Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), whom Shoichi has since married and impregnated (I have mixed feelings about that). While trying to settle in as best he can, Mahito wanders the grounds of the mansion, which include a lake, a forest and an abandoned mysterious tower – and of course a grey heron, who tempts him to go in.
I hate to be “that person”, but the movie has to be seen to be believed and, most importantly, appreciated for what it is. It has so many facets that I’d probably need as long to review every one of its intricacies as it took Miyazaki to make his (presumably) last masterpiece (6 years). It’s simultaneously a coming-of-age story, an unsympathetic look at Japan’s history and its subsequent romanticization by modern-day Japan, a movie about odious birds and their poop, a morality tale as to how to be human (with a socialist tilt), birth, rebirth, acceptance, saying goodbye and so much more.
The Boy and the Heron is a new level of animation for Miyazaki, a maze-like ant hill of metaphor, allegory and different art styles. The animation and character designs are marvelous, a mixed-medium almost avant-garde world, populated with living, breathing, sometimes gross creatures, who never stop moving. Characters are juxtaposed with dreamy and still watercolor backgrounds, from which they stand out in lively, almost painful clarity.
Regardless of what exactly you’ll see in this movie, regardless of potential confusion or even anger at the oblique symbolism, this movie is definitely worth your while.
My Top 5 Mainstream Movies/ Wide Release
1. Killers of the Flower Moon
Dir. Martin Scorsese
2023
Killers of the Flower Moon is an adaptation of the book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by journalist David Grann, which tells the story of the eponymous murders, which took place in Osage County, Oklahoma over the span of about 20 years.
When oil is discovered on Osage land, the tribe gets headrights to the proceeds and makes Osage County into the richest county in the US almost overnight. To ensure the wealth ultimately lands in white hands, a complex system of conservatorships is put in place, resulting in the Osage wealth being governed by white curators, to which the family members with oil rights have to report any and all spending.
We follow Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a cowardly, dull little man, who returns to Osage from the war to live with his uncle William “King” Hale (Robert De Niro) and his family on a reservation ranch. He and his brother Byron (Scott Shepherd) soon begin to rob rich Osage and gamble their spoils away, while Hale nudges Ernest to marry into one of the families with oil rights. When Ernest meets Molly Kyle (Lily Gladstone), their courtship is swift and a wedding is held soon after. In an intimate character study, we then see Ernest capitulate to his greed and descend into corruption, cowardice and murder, as he either helps to plan or commits dozens of murders, including all of his wife’s relatives. Eventually the plot is uncovered by the newly minted FBI, and Hale and Burkhart are convicted on several charges.
Instead of going for a murder mystery or a typical western, Scorsese opts for a character piece and social critique about people who are absolutely convinced that they’re entitled to everything. They murder and steal, all based on this eternal conviction, and there is an entire system built to protect them from any consequences. Doctors, judges, lawmen – all of them are helping in their own way, either by looking the other way or actively opposing any real investigation into the deaths. The murders themselves are shown throughout the movie, strewn about like b-footage, further illuminating, how little is done to solve them.
Nothing makes this clearer than the way Scorsese portrays the incompetency of the conspirators, how haphazardly they execute their plans and how inept they are at covering up their tracks. Hale, Ernest and their entire crew are shown to be greedy, mediocre white men, who only succeed because there is a system in place to uphold and award them for their mediocrity. In short, they succeed, because no one gives a damn about dozens of dead Native Americans. Even when they’re caught, their sentences are laughably short and the murders are pretty much swept under the rug.
Killers of the Flower Moon is a movie about pure hatred, greed and disregard for human life, propped up by inhumane systems which persist to this day. It shows how easy it is to shed one’s humanity, if you’re already standing on a jingoistic foundation powered by the exploitation of minorities and Natives alike.
The movie is expertly paced and directed, incredibly acted (especially by Lily Gladstone) and boasts an extraordinary score by the late and very great Robbie Robertson. Truly a highlight of 2023 and probably the years to come.
2. Priscilla
Dir. Sofia Coppola
2023
Adapted from the memoir titled Elvis and Me (1985) by Priscilla Presley, who also served as executive producer on the film, and Sandra Harmon, Priscilla depicts Priscilla’s (Cailee Spaeny) and Elvis’ (Jacob Elordi) relationship in its entirety from their meeting at a party in Germany in 1959, when she was a 14-year-old high-schooler and he was 24 and already Elvis, to the day she left him in 1973.
In pastel close-ups, with Priscilla looking like a doll in her best 60-ies attire wandering the vast gilded halls of Graceland, Coppola tells the story of a young woman trapped in a relationship filled with love, but governed by an extraordinary power imbalance, Elvis’ wild mood swings and abuse. And was it not for this director, these actors, this soundtrack and cinematography, this movie would’ve been impossible to watch.
What fascinated me the most was the myopic focus on how Priscilla saw herself in the relationship. The movie is very faithful to the book, and by extension to real-life Priscilla’s version of events, so although the grooming and abuse, the drugs and the affairs are shown plainly and without any pathos, you can practically feel her bearing down on the movie, repeating (like an obsessive mantra) – “we loved each other, it was love, real love”. Despite the movie being set in the past, every scene, every moment is imbued with Priscilla’s present, with her undying commitment to Elvis and his estate, of which she is the conservator. Not only do we see the entrapment and grooming of a child in the movie itself – we see how Priscilla is still trapped in Elvis’ world, still trapped by their love (or whatever you want to call it).
I’ll take an unreliable biopic every day over drab “historically accurate” movies. If history is subjective, then a human life is doubly so, and Coppola understood that perfectly while making this layered gem of a film.
3. Past Lives
Dir. Celine Song
2023
I’ve written extensively about Past Lives before, so here’s just a reminder that it’s still one of the greatest movies of 2023. Heartfelt, melancholic, hopeful and driven by a very relatable immigrant story (which I love), the movie shows in great detail how difficult it is to be yourself if there are two selves contending within one soul.
4. Godzilla Minus One
Dir. Takashi Yamazaki
2023
Godzilla has been a symbol for a lot of things over its seventy-year run as the OG kaiju. From the human hubris of making the atom bomb, global warming, natural disasters and the role of science to “a lot of fish”, the bipedal lizard represented pretty much every problem that ailed Japanese (and to an extent Western) society. It roared and stomped its way into a lot of hearts and was even afforded to be the good guy in some of its appearances.
Matthew Broderick in Godzilla (1998) … IYKYK
However, Godzilla never was scary, at least not for me. Its roar was iconic, sure, but it never was as terrifying as the panicking actors, running from its destruction, made us believe. The destruction itself was also akin to a toddler destroying a Lego town, sad for the Lego builder, but kind of funny from an outsider’s perspective.
This changed when I saw Godzilla Minus One. This time we find Godzilla attacking post-war Japan, as the county is still recovering from the loss and destruction of cities and lives alike. Main character Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) a former kamikaze pilot who couldn’t bring himself to fulfill his duty (a suicide mission), returns home a broken, guilt-ridden man, only to find his parents’ neighborhood bombed out and utterly destroyed with very few survivors. While living in poverty in what’s left of his parents’ house, he scrounges any food he can find. On one of his excursions, he meets Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe), who managed to survive alone with a baby she rescued from its dying mother. They form a bond and start living together, even raising the child, but never going beyond being roommates and accidental parents.
For Shikishima and a lot of the people we meet during the movie the war is not over. The grief, the guilt and nightmares don’t just go away because a government surrenders to another. Into this time, ruled by destruction and grief, bursts Godzilla – a monstrous shape under the waters tearing through disarmed war ships and fishing boats alike, until it arrives in Tokyo’s newly rebuilt Ginza district. What was a symbol of hope and normalcy turns into a heart-rendering war site, as Godzilla tears through the newly renovated streets and is captured on camera by intrepid journalists as he destroys the Nippon Theater, a “beloved icon of the people”.
The destruction of a cultural heritage site, rather than a government building, sets the tone for the entire movie – it’s terrifying and painful to watch. Godzilla isn’t fetishized, is not cool and awesome to behold. When the monster, provoked by tank fire, finally unleashes its radioactive breath, it destroys Ginza completely and kills thousands of people, including Noriko, and you mourn every one of them.
Godzilla the monster is war incarnate. He is the misguided bravado of the Japanese military, he is the lackadaisical inaction of the Japanese government after the war, he’s destruction for destruction’s sake. He reemerges as a reminder that a war is never truly over unless we civilians take a firm stand against it. And so, in the movie, it is veterans and civilians that come together to defeat Godzilla, and only as Shikishima, set on revenge and beset by guilt, still chooses life over suicide, does Godzilla truly die.
The most beautiful, emotionally impactful and life-affirming anti-war movie I’ve ever seen.
5. May December
Dir. Todd Haynes
2023
We follow the TV-actress Elisabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), as she travels to Savannah to study the lives of Gracie Atherton Yoo (Julianne Moore) and her husband Joe (Charles Melton) for an upcoming movie. Berry is set to play Gracie in the true story, and an empathetic exploration (as Elisabeth is always quick to point out) of the illicit affair between 36-year-old Gracie and 13-year-old Joe, which caused a huge media frenzy at the time it was discovered. Over time the media coverage of the couple died down, and 26 years after the initial affair, Gracie and Joe seem to be happily married and about to send their twins off to college, while their oldest daughter has already flown the coop.
Right at the beginning of the movie, after it has been established that she is a controlling and tense character, Gracie opens the fridge and a loud piano sting underscored by ominous strings bursts onto the scene. What was a fairly normal establishing scene before turns into a tense, uncomfortable, moment out of the blue – what’s happening? She opens the fridge, the camera draws close, the piano and the strings are doing their best, and she says with a sigh: “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs.” (sad trumpet sound)
That’s May December in nutshell.
The movie approaches the very serious subject matter of grooming and child abuse from the point of view of sensationalistic press coverage and trite made-for-TV movies, which are known for making light of such matters to sate our desire for salacious scandals and forbidden romance. The soapy soft pastels, the awkward establishing shots, the clumsy metaphors and the music of typical Lifetime movies are gloriously riffed on. The score by Marcelo Zavros, who composed the incidental soundtrack as well as adapted pieces from Michel Legrand’s soundtrack for The Go-Between (1971), sets a very cheeky tone. It pipes up whenever it sees fit, without any regard of what’s actually happening on screen, making the movie feel off at all times. Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman play their parts to perfection, as unapologetic and controlling groomer Gracie and ambitious and tryhard Elisabeth respectively.
The beating heart of the movie, however, is Charles Melton as Joe. Regardless of how absurd the movie gets, it never makes fun of him. From the beginning Haynes is very empathetic towards him and his plight. There is no ambiguity in his situation or trauma. While the other characters are ostensibly fully formed adults, Joe is cosplaying adulthood, due to his stunted development, and it’s tragic. He mimics old-school, as seen on TV, masculinity as he grills, watches Bob Vila and other home improvement shows, while being interrupted by his nagging wife (sitcom style), and tries to give life advice to his son, who is not much younger than him. Everything he does feels out of place, like something is missing. We never really know where Joe ends, and the cosplay begins, and he doesn’t either.
May December is a masterclass in audience manipulation and a meticulously constructed movie. Haynes alienates the modern viewer by making the film look and feel like a nineties Lifetime movie, something we think we’ve outgrown. Enraged by a seeming disregard for a serious matter, by the movie and some audience members treating the trauma plot (with which we are very familiar) with the utmost disrespect, we flock to Twitter (ugh … X) and engage in discourse.
Is it melodrama or is it camp? Should a movie like that be considered funny? Big movie words are thrown around, genre discussions erupt and we do the same as the audience of those very Lifetime movies we so despise – we forget about the trauma part of the plot we’re defending. I can only hope that, when we’re all tapped out from discourse, we can return to the movie and appreciate its multilayered approach to everything the human condition has to offer.
May December is available to stream on Netflix in the US and Canada (everyone else, you know what to do).
Honorable Mentions – Speed Round
1. Barbie
Dir. Greta Gerwig
2023
I’ve written about Barbie and its wonky messaging at length. However, as I’ve already mentioned in my review, its also a fun, creative and beautiful movie. It’s well acted and, most importantly, shows great aesthetic taste. Be it costuming, make-up or production design - the visual of Barbie is flawless.
2. Saltburn
Emerald Fennell
2023
Its grand, kind of dumb and quite gross. Truly, The Talented Mr. Ripley our generation deserves. An absolute recommend!
3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
James Gunn
2023
James Gunn ends his epic Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy with a bang (and with a whimper), before leaving Marvel for good. I cried and you will, too.
4. The Holdovers
Alexander Payne
2023
Cute, cozy, thoughtful and bittersweet with great performances throughout.
5. Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan
2023
Once more we’re reminded that Nolan is almost unparalleled in using every aspect of the language of cinema. As a result of his undying dedication to the craft, we get both a movie with a subpar story, black-and-white morals and bad character writing on the one hand and an extraordinary use of sound, special effects, editing and cinematography as well as acting work, on the other.
In other words, a truly well crafted cinematic experience.
So you got to the end of this here behemoth. You don’t have time for 25 movies! Hell, you don’t even know, where to fit in lunch! Fret not – here are:
✨My Top 5 Movies of 2023 (out of the categories presented)✨
1. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
2. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
3. The Boy and the Heron
4. Killers of the Flower Moon
5. Barbie
↩ 1 I've included all the information, I could find on distribution rights and international distribution, so you have an easier time finding out, whether you can watch the movie in question in your region.
↩ 2. Freshly baked Golden Globe Winner for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Killers of the Flower Moon)
↩ 3. I would be remiss to say that the working conditions under which the over 1000 animators had to work were grueling, marred by unsustainable working hours and chaotic last-minute changes.
↩ 4. Who’s had a great 2023. Appearing, among other things, in the above-mentioned Spider-Man and the incredible show The Bear (watch it on Disney+), for which she got a Golden Globe as best supporting actress.
Sunshine and Lollipops
Here we are, at the end of my little excurse into producing honest-to-God content. The initial high of my brilliant idea, and the subsequent eventual low of no-one reading my daily musings on all sorts of movies, both have left me in a somewhat in-between state of mind. I still think that the idea was good, in a way it was even fun, and certainly informative.
Inktober Challenge Week 4
Here we are, at the end of my little excurse into producing honest-to-God content. The initial high of my brilliant idea, and the subsequent eventual low of no-one reading my daily musings on all sorts of movies, both have left me in a somewhat in-between state of mind. I still think that the idea was good, in a way it was even fun, and certainly informative.
I learned a lot about my own boundaries and the limits of my abilities. I learned how to put out writing of which I’m not insanely proud, because there’s simply no time for perfection. I learned that Instagram maybe shouldn’t be my first choice in promoting my mostly text-based work (although I have video-based plans for the new year, so stay tuned). Most of all, I learned how to cope with failure and even derive some sense of hope from it.
Feeling like a loser is not fun or uplifting in the slightest, but there is something cathartic in analyzing this feeling. Really engaging with not being able to finish the challenge, as well as with the fact that I put myself out there and failed miserably, unexpectedly grounded me in a new reality. I am now, more than ever, determined to find some kind of success as a writer. I finally understood what kind of writer and, yes, content creator I want to be. I finally understood the honesty of failure and the importance of it.
P.S.: Read to the end for bonus content :)
22. From Scratch (2022)
From Scratch is a Netflix original series created by Attica and Tembi Locke and adapted from Tembi Locke’s memoir of the same name. It stars Zoe Saldaña as main character Amy and Eugenio Mastrandrea and Giacomo Gianniotti as Lino and Giancarlo respectively, Amy’s two love interests, at least for the first episode.
The series consists of 8 episodes in total, of which I’ll be reviewing the first one, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
The first episode “First Tastes” sees Amy, a soon-to-be law student, arrive in Florence for a 14-day art course, which is not further specified or fleshed out. Amy is an artist at heart and needs the course to confirm for herself that she doesn’t want to go to law school, as her father demands, but actually wants to go to New York to work as an artist. It also seems that Amy doesn’t know a lot about art in general, as we don’t see her going to museums or studying the classics, while visiting her class.
In the course of her two weeks in the city, she meets chef Lino, who immediately lays an eye on her and tries to seduce her with his simple charms and good food, as well as Giancarlo, a rich gallery owner who takes her to Caravaggio’s apartment on their first date.
Unfortunately, as soon as the men enter the plot, Amy herself becomes a side character, secondary to the love story. Her interest in art, her ambitions to get her works into the final exhibition at the end of the class and her aspirations become sidelined by the mystery of what man she’ll choose at the end of her stay in Florence. Indeed, all characters become flat, as soon as the romance plot takes over.
Lino, whom Amy rejects several times, telling him over and over again that she wants to be friends and nothing more, gets increasingly agitated as the plot progresses, acting possessive and at one time confronting Amy over bringing her parents to his restaurant, but not introducing them, instead bringing her boyfriend to meet them (how dare???). As he confronts her in front of her apartment, lamenting that they definitely “have something”, she rejects him again and he dramatically “breaks up” with her.
At the end of the episode, Amy gets her art into the final exhibition, although we don’t know what her artistic process even looks like, as by now we’re not privy to any thoughts of hers which don’t concern the men in her life. Lino decides to grace the exhibition with his presence, having told her earlier that he doesn’t want to see her again, and Amy leaves the exhibition, where her teacher is more than ready to introduce her to important people in the art world (which would come in handy, if you want to work as an artist), to run after him. The end.
My first impression of the series didn’t exactly motivate me to watch any further. The lazy love triangle and the trope of a woman losing interest in anything she likes as soon as a man enters the picture is so old and overwrought that it’s not even worth getting mad at, and the possessive angry man trope, wherein male violence is confused with undying passion, is just disturbing and deserves to finally die.
23. Star Blazers 2199 – Space Battleship Yamato – Odyssey of the Celestial Arc (2014)
Odyssey of the Celestial Arc was directed by Yutaka Izubishi and Makoto Bessho. It’s a sequel to the military science fiction anime series Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199, which ran from 2012 to 2013.
Yamato is a typical space opera, very reminiscent of Star Trek, even having its own original series from 1974. The show, as well as the movie sequel, concern the crew of the state-of-the-art space battleship Yamato as they wage war with the Gamilas, a militaristic alien race, keen on conquering Earth.
At the beginning of “Odyssey” the war has been won and an accord between the races has been struck, which leaves no less animosity on both sides. On its return journey to Earth, the Yamato, bruised and missing its main weapon, encounters the Gatlantians, a suspiciously Klingon-like race, who seek to fill the void the Gamilas have left after being defeated.
The Yamato gets attacked by the Gatlantians and has to flee to a nearby planet. While exploring it, the away team stumbles upon the original Yamato, the sea battleship which inspired the eponymous spaceship, that for all intents and purposes should’t be there. On entering, the team finds an old-timey hotel inside and three Gamilas, who tell them that there’s no way out.
The rest of the film is set in the hotel, as the unlikely allies try to escape their predicament and solve the mystery of their entrapment.
Although I didn’t understand a lot of the references to the show, the background information and the new story unfolding in the hotel were well-balanced, and I managed to enjoy the fraught character dynamics between enemies that have so very recently become allies.
Their conflict was fought on an emotional rather than space battle level, as they learned to trust each other and work together to solve the mystery. The final space battle against the villainous Gatlantians was epic, however, and the two races uniting against a common foe brought tears to my eyes.
All in all, the sequel absolutely stands on its own and can be enjoyed by anyone. It also made me want to watch the show as well.
24. Shallow Grave (1994)
Shallow Grave was directed by Danny Boyle and stars Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston and Ewan McGregor as friends and flatmates Juliet Miller, David Stephens and Alex Law.
In their search for a fourth flat mate for their huge and weirdly empty apartment in Edinburgh, Juliet, David and Alex are not stingy with acerbic commentary about all the applicants they encounter. Granted, they’re also mean to each other, which constitutes a close friendship in the UK (I guess).
As they finally find a suitable candidate, the charming and kind of creepy Hugo, he promptly dies in his bed and leaves behind a suitcase full of cash. The three friends find him and, after some very short deliberation, decide to get rid of the body and keep the cash.
What follows is a great suspense thriller. While the other two are coping by indulging their hedonism, David, who had to dismember the body, gets increasingly paranoid. He hides the money in the attic and moves there permanently, like a dragon defending its hoard.
Meanwhile, Alex and Juliet, first annoyed and then disquieted by David’s behavior, plan to kill him, but fail miserably. David, meanwhile, having already killed two more goons to protect the money, not only transforms from bookworm to wyrm, but becomes unpredictable in his erratic behavior, as everything comes to a terrifying conclusion.
The soundtrack by Simon Boswell underlines David’s unraveling as well as the corrosion of the friendship with well crafted suspenseful music that haunts the empty corridors and rooms of the trio’s apartment and David’s creepy attic. As David’s mental state grows more and more unstable and Juliet and Alex start to eye him and each other with murderous suspicion, the flat seems to expand and warp like a haunted house, while the mostly primary colors adorning the walls and furniture begin to resemble a creepy nursery.
The characters have great chemistry, both during their time of tentative peace as well as during the time when their friendship starts to deteriorate. McGregor, Fox and especially Eccleston play the characters with youthful charm, but enough flaws to later expand on and have them be the trio’s downfall.
Overall, I very much enjoyed Shallow Grave. A perfect psychological suspense thriller for the Halloween season.
25. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
“Confessions” is based on TV host Chuck Barris' “unauthorized autobiography”, published in 1984. It was directed by George Clooney and stars Sam Rockwell as Chuck Barris, Drew Barrymore as Penny Pacino, George Clooney as Jim Byrd, and Julia Roberts as Patricia Watson.
Chuck Barris is an ever-horny, mediocre, but driven young man, who wants to make it in television. With the power of pure audacity, he gets to produce his own show named The Dating Game, which becomes so popular that he becomes a household name in showbiz.
Meanwhile, in spite of his philandering and hedonistic tendencies, he also gets recruited as an assassin by the CIA, whose directives he fulfills while traveling for his show. As his assignment in East Berlin goes awry, Chuck has to think fast, as a mole threatens his colleagues' and his own lives.
The movie is a great black comedy. In fact, the macabre absurdist assassin story and Chuck’s slow decline into enjoying the wetwork gels so well with the storyline of him becoming the king of low brow entertainment that I found myself in a perpetual cycle of laughter and terror.
The actors have perfect comedic timing (Rockwell rocks!), weaving the comedy throughout their characters, while never veering too far from a grounded performance, which makes the characters interesting and multi-layered.
As the CIA always denied Barris’ employment, the movie plays with its unreliable narrator brilliantly, illustrating the blurred lines between the entertainment industry and how Chuck portrays his patriotic duty. It’s stylized, sultry and full of people wearing mask upon mask.
Once again, I was reminded of three things: how good George Clooney is as a director, how beautifully subtle and funny his movies are, and that his collaborations with Julia Roberts are perfect and they should stay friends forever.
26. First Cousin Once Removed (2012)
“First Cousin” is a documentary showing the last years of the life of Jewish-American poet Edwin Honig as he succumbs to Alzheimer’s disease. The movie was made for HBO by his first cousin once removed Alan Berliner.
In painful, deliberately uncomfortable close-ups, we meet Edwin Honig at the end his life. He is frail and, as he says himself, doesn’t have much of a memory anymore. Still, there’s a trembling soul in the mist of a horrible disease, and this movie captures it beautifully.
Alan’s warmth towards Edwin mixes with his grief, as he and his family live through the loss of their loved one in real time. Meanwhile Edwin, while losing his past and then present, retains the perspective of a poet and sees beauty even in the loss of memory.
Honig’s words, his gestures and silences reveal the liminal world between memory and poetry, for what is a poem if not a speck of fixed emotion – frozen in time forever? Consequently, this movie adds to Honig’s voice the voices of his loved ones, with their own lyricism – their own memories.
His final advice to the audience: Remember how to forget.
A sublime and devastating movie about memory, loss and love, “First Cousin” had me in tears for the entirety of its relatively short runtime. If you watch just one movie out of the 31 that I reviewed this month, let it be this one.
27. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
Rise of the Beasts was directed by Steven Caple Jr. and stars Anthony Ramos as Noah Diaz, Dominique Fishbacker as Elena Wallace, as well as Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, Pete Davidson as Mirage, Ron Perlman as Optimus Primal, Michelle Yeoh as Airazor and Peter Dinklage as Scourge.
We open on the home planet of the Maximals, the eponymous beasts rising, as it is being eaten by Unicron, a planet-devouring being of immense power. As a Hail Mary pass, Optimus Primal, robot gorilla dude, and his companions activate a universe-jumping plot-defining thingamajig, which Unicron was after, and escape to Earth.
On Earth, at his wits’ end as to how to pay his brother’s medical bills, former soldier Noah Diaz turns to crime. As he tries to steal an expensive-looking car, however, it promptly transforms into Mirage, an alien Autobot (one of the protagonists of the Transformers franchise). Meanwhile, museum intern Elena Wallace accidentally breaks an ancient statue, believed to be Horus, and reveals a crystal hidden inside it, which promptly sends an energy pulse into the heavens.
Noah, Elena, Autobots and Maximals converge, only to discover that Earth is in mortal peril and it’s on them to stop its destruction.
After First Cousin Once Removed utterly devastated me, this movie was the right amount of mindless fun to bring me back to life.
The new lead Noah Diaz is much more charismatic and fun to watch than former Transformers main character Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), and the robots were fine, even having some actual character moments, with Noah and Mirage’s friendship being quite believable. Co-lead Elena Wallace, the exasperated fish-out-of-water archeologist, is also a lot of fun and almost totally inoffensive.
The Maximals were nice to look at, but there was suspiciously little actual rising of the beasts, as the movie was still ostensibly about the Autobots. Nevertheless, the last epic battle between Scourge, Unicron’s goon in charge, and our heroes felt appropriately grand.
The action is fast-paced, the morals are black and white, and my brain felt like it was in a spa.
Thanks, I loved it!
28. The Sparks Brothers (2021)
The Sparks Brothers was directed by Edgar Wright and tells the story of Sparks, an avantgarde pop duo consisting of brothers Ron and Russell Mael.
The Sparks Brothers is a thorough, smart and compassionate documentary about a band who never compromised their artistic vision, no matter the cost.
Also, in typical Edgar Wright fashion, it’s fun. The different phases of Ron and Russell’s career are illustrated via all kinds of animation, including claymation, photos and videos of the band in their early years, as well as celebrities and fans talking about how Sparks is the awesomest band ever.
However, the best thing about this documentary is seeing two artists uncompromisingly create art for five decades straight. Unlike a lot of bands of their era, the brothers are still creating new music, relentless in their pursuit of not financial, but creative success.
Sparks’ weirdness and creative professionalism is a great reminder that one doesn’t have to earn money with creativity; that it’s a basic human right to create and enjoy art, without capitalist expectations or limitations.
Here's to Ron and Russell. May they stay weird! 🤘
✨BONUS ROUND✨
29. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)
Character-driven drama or action buddy comedy? - Well, why not both!
Nicholas Cage reflects on his illustrious career, while simultaneously (hilariously) making fun of himself, as he expresses his love for cinema and everything that it entails. Him and Pedro Pascal have great and extraordinarily joyous chemistry, which elevates this absolutely vibes-based movie to something greater than it had any right to be.
Touching, exciting and just a little bit cringe - that’s how I like my Cage!
30. Rush Hour (1998)
It’s a visceral pleasure to watch Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan play off of each other. Both are incredibly physical, and while Tucker never stops moving, talking, dancing, Chan’s initial restraint just adds to the explosion of joy once he starts punching people.
I think there’s also a plot or whatever, but it pathetically fades away when faced with the enormous screen presence of its stars.
30. Fire Walk With Me (1992)
This movie clearly deserves a full review (I’ll get to it - promise).
“She’s dead, wrapped in plastic.”
This is how David Lynch’s groundbreaking show Twin Peaks starts.
Who is she? Why is she dead? Why the plastic?
Well, Fire Walk With Me is here to answer all these questions.
In an intimate look of Laura Palmer’s last days before her murder, the prequel to Twin Peaks paints a horrific picture of abuse, suffering and dissociation. Lynch doesn’t shy away from making the audience uncomfortable in showing the full scope of Laura’s pain, while maintaining a fully empathetic view of her as a person. Laura is neither fetishised, nor sexualized — the gaze is firmly directed towards her inner turmoils, even if she’s shown in sexual situations.
Lynch is acutely aware of a prequel’s framework of inevitability, and so he shows Laura locked in a chronological prison with the audience’s knowledge of what is to come bearing down on her. And so we watch her struggle against it with every fiber of her body until it’s time for her to fail.
In the end, I felt complicit, as though my watching the movie made Laura’s suffering, murder and subsequent careless dumping of her body into the river, wrapped in plastic, reality.
The Void
In the introductions to the previous installations of this little series, I tried to convey what I was feeling while I was undertaking this, for me, very difficult endeavor. I wanted them to feel light-hearted in a way, as though the things that I tried to express didn’t really matter, and I feel that I did you and myself a disservice.
Inktober Challenge Week 3
In the introductions to the previous installations of this little series, I tried to convey what I was feeling while I was undertaking this, for me, very difficult endeavor. I wanted them to feel light-hearted in a way, as though the things that I tried to express didn’t really matter, and I feel that I did you and myself a disservice.
This is what I want to write with all the fibers of my aching, conflict-averse soul:
Oftentimes, I feel overwhelmed by the smallest things, which send my ADHD-riddled brain into an hours-, even days-long stupor. The fact that I managed to come as far as I did, is enough for me — I’m proud of myself.
However, well, actually:
Writing into the void is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Ever. The humiliation in combination with crushing self-doubt sent me into a crippling death spiral, out of which I’m still finding my way out.
There, I said it.
Any guide on how to write a (good) essay will tell you as early as the introduction to the course that writing from a place of pure pain is not a good idea. A personal essay should be personal, yes, but you should’t (and I agree) overwhelm your reader with too much of yourself. Instead, your experience should invite the reader into your world, make them see the connection to their own lives — maybe even provide them with the right words for a feeling they never could find themselves.
This is why I have to write out this feeling that had me trapped all this time. Write it in all its ugly drama.
Because I know for a fact that this experience is far from unique. I know that feeling discouraged, if no-one perceives your work, creative or not, just plain sucks. I also know that talking about it is weighed down by a shit-tonne of shame. Hell, I’m ashamed right now. It’s awful.
Shame for being a drama queen, shame for caring about me and my stupid endeavors while there’s war everywhere, shame for being safe, shame for feeling lost.
I know that it’s impossible to stop feeling shame — it’s the worst and clingiest of emotions. So is there a way to at least try to feel less shame for our seemingly unimportant work woes, family matters and everything that we deem too dramatic to give it the time of day?
I think we have to try. I think, we have to illuminate the small stuff, give it space to breathe and acknowledge the pain it causes us in order to better cope with everything that’s happenning in the world right now.
P.S.: I also traveled and stuff.
P.P.S.: Oh, and here’re some fun reviews.
15. House of the Flying Daggers (2004)
House of the Flying Daggers was directed by Zhang Yimou and stars Andy Lau as Captain Leo, Zhang Ziyi as Mei, and Takeshi Kaneshiro as Captain Jin.
In 859 AD, with the Tang Dynasty declining, several rebel groups are established to take down the corrupt government. The largest of these groups is the House of Flying Daggers, who, after their previous leader was captured and killed, are number one on the most wanted list.
As Captains Leo and Jin capture Mei, a blind dancer who they think might be the daughter of the killed leader of the House, they concoct a plan to break her out of prison, gain her trust and let her guide them to the House of Flying Daggers and their new leader.
The movie is first and foremost a melodrama, sprinkled here and there with wuxia fight scenes and some political plot points. Mei and Jin fall in love during their journey, and as it turns out that the entire journey was a ruse to guide the imperial army into a trap, the political plot stops there and the melodrama takes over completely. Mei turns out to be not blind, and Captain Leo a secret spy and her former lover.
However, because of the fact that both Jin and Leo tried to rape Mei at different points of the movie, the entire love triangle just feels gross. Both men’s assaults are explained away by their undying passion for the beautiful Mei, who in both instances just lies there motionless and stares into nothing. When Jin and Mei finally consummate their love, consensually, in a hilariously bad sex scene, Mei is promptly killed by Leo for falling in love with another man. In the climax of the movie the two rapists fight over Mei’s dead body.
In typical melodrama fashion, Mei also refuses to die three times or so, laboriously standing up every time and looking frail, while her would-be rapists bash each other with swords in an epic winter landscape. Eventually all three die. We don’t know what happened to the army or the rebels.
The House of Flying Daggers is a tedious melodrama and gross rape apologia, sprinkled with beautiful cinematography and grand landscapes.
16. Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Alita: Battle Angel was directed by Robert Rodriguez and stars Rosa Salazar as Alita, Christoph Waltz as Dr. Dyson Ido, Keean Johnson as Hugo, Jennifer Connelly as Dr. Chiren, and Mahershala Ali as Vector. The movie is a live-action adaptation of the manga Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro.
In 2563, after Earth was devastated by an all-encompassing war known as “The Fall”, scientist Dyson Ido finds a cyborg head with a completely intact brain while scavenging for parts at the scrap yard. He takes the head back home and attaches it to a body, which works perfectly, as the cyborg girl wakes up soon after, demanding food. It turns out that, although her brain is fully intact, she can’t remember anything from her past, and so the good doctor names her Alita, after his dead daughter.
The movie shows a typical cyberpunk society, with a floating city called Zalem on top and Iron City, whose population almost entirely works for Zalem, at the bottom. The characters are scrappy and learn to survive quickly in the harsh environment ruled by Vector, the de facto ruler of Iron City, and his hunter-warriors, a kind of private police division. The people of the city are kept in check with a combination of fear and hope of ascension to Zalem, should they make it in the Iron Ball tournament, a huge and violent roller derby which keeps the people both entertained and placid.
Alita, therefore, has a very simple premise: get back memories and eat the rich - and this works astoundingly well. With its mesmerizing special effects and character designs, made by Wētā FX, and fast-paced story, the movie follows Alita and her boyfriend Hugo on a journey of self-discovery as well as the discovery of dark secrets at a break-neck speed. The villains are believable and pose a real palpable threat to our heroes, and the character deaths hit hard when they happen. The actors are all very good, with Rosa Salazar delivering a fantastic performance.
Alita is definitely the best anime adaptation I’ve seen so far, and although the movie ends on a cliff-hanger, it works as a stand-alone, as well.
(Still hoping for a sequel, though!)
17. Demon City Shinjuku (1988)
Make it stand out
Demon City Shinjuku is a lesser known movie from Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the creator of Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.
We open at an epic sword battle between Genichirou, a master swordsman, and his friend turned rival Rebi Ra, who allowed himself to be possessed by demons to finally best his friend.
He does so, and with Genichirou’s death, he plunges the city of Shinjuku into darkness, turning it into a demonic landscape, and announces that in 10 years time, he will do this to entire world.
10 years later, it is on Genichirou’s son Kyoya to finish what his father’s started and defeat Rebi Ra once and for all.
Demon City Shinjuku definitely looks and feels like a Kawajiri movie. From the character design with its over-exaggerated blocky features, to the heavy melodrama drenched in blood and (if lucky) other bodily fluids, the movie already harkens to the auteur’s later and more known works like X. There are best friends who become enemies, damsels to be saved and sexy booby demons who want to kill you, after….
Despite the movies’ age, the animation is dynamic and fluid, and I especially liked the creative and disgusting monster designs, something we’ll also see in Kawajiri’s later work.
In spite of its very basic plot and typical eighties anime pitfalls, I enjoyed Demon City Shinjuku and would recommend it, if you’re interested in older anime.
18. Blazing Saddles (1974)
Blazing Saddles is a parody western pastiche written and directed by Mel Brooks and starring Cleavon Little as Sheriff Bart, Gene Wilder as Jim the Waco Kid and Mel Brooks as whatever he wants.
“Blazing Saddles would never be made today” said Mel Brooks in a 2017 interview with BBC Radio 4, because we’ve become “stupidly politically correct”, which is the “death of comedy”. It’s fine, old comedians say this stuff all the time, it’s their way of bowing out of the current climate, of admitting that they don’t understand the world they live in anymore.
I, for my part, have to contradict the great Mr. Brooks. Blazing Saddles can absolutely be made today with little to no adjustment. The movie is brilliantly towing the line, between offence and delight and still has a lot to say about class and race relations in America.
The racist cowboys are a farting, illiterate and easily bamboozled lot. The white townspeople and the main villain are depicted as racist caricatures, spouting the n-word left and right, while Bart and his black brethren are depicted as mostly normal people trying to survive in this stupid world.
The most poignant thing about Blazing Saddles, however, something that should be repeated more often, is that it goes out of its way to show that it’s a movie. A funny movie, with characters, sets and a director – nothing more. Because, in the end, a movie can’t show you, how to not be racist.
It can point out the stupidity behind racism, it can show you that the perceived other is as human as we are, while simultaneously pointing out racism as inhuman. But in the end it’s on us to educate and better ourselves.
Movies like Blazing Saddles could and should be made today, sans the casual homophobia of course. Because movies like these, don’t pontificate, don’t pretend to have the moral high ground, they’re just make you laugh and maybe, while you’re at it, think.
19. Plump Fiction (1997)
Plump Fiction was directed by Bob Koherr and is a parody lampooning violent nineties action movies like Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994), Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992) and, of course, Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994).
While a parody like Blazing Saddles is still relevant to this day, despite its obvious flaws, I’m happy that movies like Plump Fiction are mostly dead by now.
The movie is an amalgam of bad takes, a total and deliberate misunderstanding of the movies it’s parodying, and a lot (a lot lot) of fat jokes.
The actors are crap, the sets are cheap and the cinematography is muddy gray and kind of gross.
Just don’t watch it. It’s coma-inducingly boring and just bad.
20. Frost/Nixon (2008)
Frost/Nixon was directed by Ron Howard and stars Michael Sheen as David Frost, Frank Langella as Richard Nixon, as well as Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Matthew McFayden and many more in an all-star cast.
The movie is a fictional retelling of a series of interviews Frost conducted with Nixon in 1977, after he stepped down due to his participation in the Watergate scandal.
I was struck by the incredibly sterile depiction of this seemingly important piece of journalistic work. While Nixon absolutely controls the narrative and is being increasingly humanized by the movie, Frost just stays the same and doesn’t seem to care much about the interviews or their political weight.
Only after Nixon drunkenly calls him in the middle of the night and delivers a barely coherent rant, Frost is spurred into action. He finally reads the reasearch his team conducted, in which he showed absolutely no interest before and delivers the last interview, which sees Nixon finally confess to his involvement in Watergate.
However, even during the confession, Nixon is portrayed as a morally righteous hero, led astray by his own strong sense of justice and devotion to his country - it’s bizarre. The last shot of the movie positions Nixon in the Californian sunset, finally in peace, while an epic Hans Zimmer soundtrack blares in the background.
Frost, on the other hand, is bid farewell by a barren text, stating Wikipedia-style facts about his career and that the interviews with Nixon were and still are the highlight of his journalistic endeavors (which is factually not true).
When I put this movie on my list, I expected a high-impact newsroom drama like She Said (Maria Schrader, 2021) or Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 2016), however Frost/Nixon turned out to be just a really weird piece of Republican apologia, despite a stellar cast and a solid soundtrack.
21. Kill Chain (2019)
Kill Chain was directed by Ken Sanzel and stars Nic Cage as Araña, a mysterious hotel proprietor, who seems to be a magnet for all kinds of trouble.
The movie is a another direct-to-VOD Nic Cage vehicle, which sees Araña orchestrate a chain of events to kill the people who killed his best friend and his daughter.
The plot moves quickly from death to death, until we get to Araña himself, who explains everything with a self-satisfied grin and a Nic Cage-appropriate crazy glint in his eyes.
The movie really wants to be Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard, 2018) or at least a Tarantino film, with a quirky comic-book style intro sequence, as well as characters mostly having descriptive names like “The very bad woman” or “The woman in the red dress”. Unfortunately, it fails and turns out to be quite boring, instead.
Its narrative structure, while trying to be dynamic and mysterious, jumping from one death to the next, ends up feeling artificial and jarring. Meanwhile, the visuals try to match Nic Cage’s zany antics with a neon color scheme and foreboding angled cinematography, but also fail to deliver.
Speaking of Cage, the cast consists of mostly lesser-known television actors, who do a fine job, but are not given enough material to work with, with the exception of Mr. Crazy Eyes himself, who manages to hog screen time and ham it up, despite the boring story.
The plot itself is a standard revenge fantasy with an extra heaping of uncomfortable misogyny, as most of the female characters are either victims of terrible abuse, used as a catalyst to spur Araña’s plan into action, or sexualized props.
All in all, not even Nic Cage, who is fine in his role as puppet master, can save the movie from being a boring and drab mess.
Dream a Little Dream
In the second week of Inktober, as the leaves started to turn something of an autumn hue, my travel plans were in full effect. Between watching movies, good ones and bad, and writing and publishing, I visited Porto, where I had THE best hot chocolate in my life (ruined me forever), and was already on my way to London.
Inktober Challenge Week 2
In the second week of Inktober, as the leaves started to turn something of an autumn hue, my travel plans were in full effect. Between watching movies, good ones and bad, and writing and publishing, I visited Porto, where I had THE best hot chocolate in my life (ruined me forever), and was already on my way to London.
There, I managed to watch some movies at the LFF (BFI - London Film Festival), meet some new people and generally have a great time in one of my favorite cities. I watched Priscilla, The Holdovers, Anselm, On the Adamant, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt and Robot Dreams — all of which were excellent in their own way.
At the time, I didn’t review any of the movies (maybe I will in some form or another later this year), as I didn’t have enough energy to deal with a full-blown film festival and my self-inflicted burden of the Inktober Challenge.
And me oh my, was it a burden. I just didn’t know it, yet.
In the midst of all the travel and the excitement of writing every single day and getting better at it, I didn’t really notice that no one was reading. I felt awesome, I love writing, I love movies — who cares about social media? (not that it’s the thing that got me into this mess in the first place).
Turns out, I cared a lot.
Anyway, on week two, I still felt hopeful and light-hearted, so without further ado.
8. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is an animated anthology film directed by Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi and James Algar and produced by Walt Disney. The feature consists of two literary adaptations: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, narrated by Basil Rathbone and Bing Crosby respectively.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a well-known tale not featuring any toads, so I’m focussing solely on the adventures of Mr. Toad today.
Toad, prone to extreme flights of fancy which have left him penniless and in enormous debt, has a new obsession: motor cars. Despite his friends begging him to leave Toad Manor, the only thing he’s still in possession of, in the community, as it is a beloved heritage site, he signs it over to a shady barkeep for a shiny new car, which not only leaves him homeless, but also lands him in jail.
After a while in jail, he seems reformed, but, when he is tempted to escape, he does so with maniacal fervor. He then gets his house back with ease, his friends forgive him almost instantaneously, and, having learned nothing at all, he flies into the horizon on his newest obsession – the aeroplane. The end.
As with The Road to El Dorado, I really tried to focus on the positives here, too, but failed miserably and let my mind wander, so you get this instead (sorry):
Toad is an aristocrat with severe BPD who is surrounded by enablers, who stay with him regardless of his abuse.
As soon as this thought popped into my head, my enjoyment went severely downhill. However, the animation was, of course, outstanding, and Basil Rathbone is always a pleasure to listen to, so sometimes I did catch myself smiling, despite my gnawing annoyance.
Both short films are obviously products of their time, and I don’t deny that sometimes, when one’s in the mood, they can be enormous fun. Unfortunately, I wasn’t, and the old-timey mores, so unfitting for the modern world, got to me.
9. The Bouncer (2018)
The Bouncer was directed by Julien Leclercq and stars Jean Claude van Damme as the titular Bouncer Lucas.
The movie itself is typical direct-to-VOD fare, a listless dirty-looking movie about a bodyguard turned bouncer, who, after he accidentally kills a man on the job, gets pressured to work for a Belgian mob boss by a corrupt cop in exchange for his freedom. As Lucas is a single father, he agrees for the sake of his daughter.
There’s not much to this movie. It’s tedious and boring, tinted a depressing blue, and the characters and dialogue are lifeless. Van Damme sleepwalks through the movie, his character barely speaks, and, much to my dismay, he also barely punches anyone – he just seems tired.
I did like the scenes he shared with his on-screen daughter. Despite being few and far between, van Damme managed to play the single father with surprising warmth and affection, as he fed her breakfast, showed her how to cook and drove her to school. The scene where he goes shopping for school supplies, lost amidst never-ending shelves of right and wrong pencils, was quite touching. She also was kidnapped just once and was returned to Lucas unharmed in the middle of the movie (I take the wins where I can get them).
Although van Damme demonstrated surprising depth in the scenes with the little girl, it’s by far not enough to salvage this movie. So, there. I watched it, so you don’t have to.
10. Cookie’s Fortune (1999)
Cookie’s Fortune was directed by Robert Altman and stars Patricia Neal as the eponymous Cookie, Glenn Close and Julianne Moore as her nieces Camille and Cora, as well as Liv Tyler as her great niece Emma.
Jewel Mae, alias Cookie, is old and misses her husband, who’s passed away recently. Estranged from her family, she leads a lonely life in a house filled with happier memories. Although she’s cared for by her friend Willis, she decides to commit suicide on Easter. Her death sets off a chain of events, which unravel long dormant family secrets, unveil a villain in sheep’s clothes and change Cookie’s family forever.
Glenn Close definitely wins the movie for hamming it up as the villainous Camille, who, as she discovers Cookie’s suicide, eats the suicide note and accuses Willis of murder to finally get her hands on the eponymous fortune. As her plot is revealed and she gets locked up, we see her dancing in her cell and cackling maniacally, while reciting Oscar Wilde’s Salome. Perfection!
Despite Close’s best efforts, however, the movie is not fun to watch. It’s tinted a sickly yellow, the music is a generic mix of swamp blues and gospel (you know, because we’re in the South), and the other actors, while not bad, are just not given enough to do, as most of the characters, except Camille, are not properly developed.
The ending, usually the juiciest part of such family melodramas, as the scandalous, pearl-clutching family secrets finally get revealed, turned out to be quite unsatisfying. Camille getting pregnant out of wedlock and Willis actually being related to Cookie but stemming from -gasp- the Black side of the family, while spicy in 1999 in the South, is quite vanilla for modern sensibilities.
Cookie’s Fortune is a nigh biblical morality tale, where the wicked get punished, the good and righteous get rewarded, a wayward daughter returns and finds love, a lost heir gets the keys to the kingdom, and the snake is cast out of paradise. All standard fare, which August: Osage County did far better.
11. The Wandering Earth (2019)
The Wandering Earth was directed by Frant Gwo and stars Qu Chuxiao as Liu Qi, Wu Jing as Liu Peiqiang, Ng Man-tat as Han Zi’ang, and Zhao Jinmai as Han Duoduo.
In a not-so-distant future the sun starts expanding and threatens to take Earth with it. In an act of desperation, humanity forms a United Earth Government that sets its sights on realizing The Wandering Project, which entails sticking several propellant engines on the surface of the Earth and moving it from our solar system to another one. To ensure the survival of at least some humans, huge underground cities are constructed underneath every engine, to house the remnants of humanity at the heart of an otherwise frozen Earth.
Before pilot and engineer Liu Peiqiang takes off on the space station which is launched to accompany Earth on its journey, he secures a spot in one of the underground cities for his father-in-law Han Zi’ang and his 6-year-old son Liu Qi. 15 years later, the Earth is in danger of crumbling under the pull of Jupiter’s atmosphere, and now its up to the now adult Liu Qi, his grandfather and adoptive sister Han Duoduo to save humanity from ultimate destruction.
Where The Wandering Earth succeeds is its excellent execution of the truly ridiculous premise. The filmmakers seem to have actually thought through how stuff works and how to make it believable within the parameters of the story. Otherwise, the movie is built like clockwork. The characters are all well developed with clear goals and motivations as well as very endearing, with the actors doing an excellent job. All plot beats hit the right emotional spots, the deaths are handled with gravitas, but are not dwelt upon, and the darkest hour is so dark that it’s truly not clear whether our heroes will actually make it. The push and pull between hope and despair is handled so well that the ending feels well deserved and cathartic. It’s almost scary in its precision.
The Wandering Earth is a fun adventure movie, with a perfect mixture of dumb premise and excellent execution.
12. Extreme Job – Spicy Chicken Police (German title) (2019)
Extreme Job is directed by Lee Byeong-heon and stars Ryu Seung-nyong as Chief Go, Lee Hanee as Det. Jang, Jin Seok-kyu as Det. Ma, Lee Dong-hwi as Det. Young-ho, and Gong Myung as Det. Jae-hoon.
Chief Go and his motley crew of detectives hit a snag in their careers as they consistently fail to bring in any arrests, while their rival team, who all look like K-Pop idols, manage to catch all the big fish all of the time.
As Go gets a tip from the captain of the “idol” team that a mobster who’s been out of jail for a while is planning to return to the drug trade, Go takes on the case. For observation purposes, the team is forced to buy a dilapidated fried chicken restaurant, which evolves into a foodie hot spot after Det. Jang marinates the chicken in his parents’ secret rib sauce.
Eventually the team comes to a fateful crossroads – do they want to keep their jobs as less than stellar policemen (and woman), or do they want to make money hawking chicken… or can they do both?
Extreme Job is a funny-at-times cop comedy with a very endearing found family of ridiculous misfits, who you want to succeed in any endeavor, chicken-related or not. The characters have quirky, almost anime-like personalities, distinct in style, movement and type. The villains are fun, albeit queer-coded, but also deliciously violent and greedy, while also being dumb as rocks. The fight scenes are fast, creative and just fun to watch – especially the last fight at the end of the movie, where everything comes together in a chaotic scene of character moments and lots of punching.
Although a lot of the jokes fall flat, partially because of the language and culture barriers (apparently chicken is some kind of symbol for the poor and downtrodden in Korea), I mostly enjoyed this light-hearted and spicy movie.
13. Rise – Blood Hunter (2007)
Rise – Blood Hunter was directed by Sebastian Gutierrez and stars Lucy Liu as main character Sadie Blake, Michael Chiklis as Det. Rawlins, Carla Gugino as Eve, James D’Arcy as Bishop, and (in his last role) Mako as Poe.
Intrepid journalist Sadie Blake is kidnapped, raped and killed by a cult, after writing about vampire-themed underground goth parties, which had their teenage participants partake in animal blood and other kinky stuff. She doesn’t stay dead for long, however, as the cult turns out to be vampires and, unfortunately, she’s become one of them.
After a failed suicide attempt, Sadie is scooped up by the Alchemist, a vampire, who helps Sadie take revenge on those who harmed her, with the main target being Bishop, the cult leader and Sadie’s killer. Armed with a crossbow, an attitude and nothing to lose, Sadie sets off on her path to revenge.
Rise is a typical rape revenge movie, but with vampires. Gutierrez, being a 2007 edgelord, doesn’t use the word “vampire” of course. However, with one of the core features of the genre being a woman taking on the violent traits of her abuser to exact revenge, Gutierrez helps it along by making the rapist an actual blood-sucking monster. Therefore, Sadie’s transformation is a more visible representation of a woman taking on the monstrosity of what’s happened to her. Although her begging for death at the end because she is a monster negates the “catharsis” aspect of the genre.
The movie seems to have fallen victim to vigorous recutting, and I have a strong suspicion that a longer version of Sadie’s rape was cut, along with other more plot-relevant content. A lot of plot threads set up at the beginning were left unfinished, the characterization of all but Sadie feels incomplete, and the whole vampire thing is kind of superfluous, as they don’t serve any narrative purpose. Isn’t a rape cult enough in and of itself?
The acting was fine for the most part, with the exception of Lucy Liu who was excellent. Otherwise, the movie is a drab and boring mess of weird editing and unfinished plot threads.
14. A Castle for Christmas (2021)
A Castle for Christmas was directed by Mary Lambert and stars Brooke Shields as romance author Sophie Brown and Cary Elwes as Myles.
After Sophie Brown faces backlash for killing off the male lead in the latest book of her long-running romance series, she escapes to Dunbar, a tiny village in Scotland, where her father initially grew up as part of the family who kept the grounds of Dun Dunbar castle. While visiting the place, Sophie runs into Myles, who is initially quite charming and even volunteers to show her around. His mood, however, turns sour when Sophie goes to an off-limits part of the castle to look for the carving of her father’s last name “McGuinty”, which he secretly carved into a door when he was a child.
Having fallen in love with the castle, Sophie buys it on a whim, not suspecting that she will have to contend with Myles, who turns out to be the heir of Dun Dunbar and who, although in dire need of money, will not let go of his castle that easily.
Grumpy and Sunshine? Forced proximity? Enemies to lovers? Quirky side characters and a dog?
What more could a romance-loving heart desire?
Although Scotland is thoroughly romanticized, the stereotypes are not too egregious and work well within the movie. The characters are all lovable, especially the local knitting club, which takes Sophie under its wing when she first arrives in Dunbar. The leads have great chemistry, and I love me a romcom with middle-aged leads and the fact that Sophie buys a castle from her hard-earned writer money (goals!).
A woman finding herself in her forties is much more appealing to me than heroines in their teens or early twenties, who think that love is a grand immutable thing worth dying for. Not only does Sophie find love in Scotland, she also reconnects to her roots, changing her name from Brown to McGuinty at the end of the movie.
A Castle for Christmas is a perfectly valid cozy Christmas movie, and although it will never surpass The Holiday in my mind, I might give it watch once in a while, when the days grow darker and the hot chocolate beckons.
In the Shadows
As it goes, at the beginning of September, the Inktober prompt list made its way into my overfilled inbox.
I read the prompts, chuckled at the absurdity of me attempting to draw 31 pictures in 31 days and let it sit in said inbox, while I was preparing for a busy month of traveling, which also included the London Film Festival (which I ended up partly scrapping). I prepared, the list festered and everything was fine in the world.
Well, did you know that FOMO is a thing – like, a huge thing?
Inktober Challenge Week 1
As is goes, at the beginning of September, the Inktober* prompt list made its way into my overfilled inbox.
*Instagram event, which challenges you to draw as many pictures as possible during the month of October, following an official prompt list.
I read the prompts, chuckled at the absurdity of me attempting to draw 31 pictures in 31 days and let it sit in said inbox, while I was preparing for a busy month of traveling, which also included the London Film Festival (which I ended up partly scrapping). I prepared, the list festered and everything was fine in the world.
Well, did you know that FOMO is a thing – like, a huge thing?
In mid-September, the official Inktober Instagram account started posting about the upcoming event, and I got increasingly anxious. I felt like everyone was joining in. Everyone, but me (stupid obsessive brain!). And so, I concocted a cunning plan. If I turned Inktober into work, instead of fun, then I had to do it (not really), I couldn’t possibly skip work (yeah, I can).
My Cunning Plan:
Find 31 movies with any of the prompt list words in the title, watch the movies, write Instagram length reviews (2200 symbols), rejoice in the organic growth of my account and the praise I’ll be getting.
Oh, sweet early autumn child.
In the end Instagram seems to have shadow banned me for using bad words that make the algorithm angry and literally no one read anything I’ve written.
Sad as this may be (and believe me, I am incredibly sad), however, I did learn a lot during this month. I learned, how to schedule posts, how to compose short and to the point reviews, and best of all, I learned how to work on a tight schedule and how to have and express an opinion on every movie, no matter my personal taste.
Because I was pretty much publishing into the void this whole month, I decided to publish my reviews here in four increments during November and a bit of December, before turning to Christmas and end of the year matters.
I hope you like the reviews and if you do, go to my Instagram account, interact with my posts and maybe then I’ll be released from shadow prison.
1. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Requiem for a Dream centers on Harold (Jared Leto), his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly), his friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) and his mother Sara (Ellen Burstyn), all of whom struggle with addiction. The main trio is addicted to drugs of various varieties (heroine, cocaine, weed), and Sara to television, chocolate and being liked? (Aronofsky’s views on fatness haven’t changed much, judging by how he handled Charlie in The Whale).
The movie is divided into three distinct sections – Summer, Fall and Winter – in which the progression of the seasons marks the downfall of the characters. In Summer, we get to know the characters and their dreams, in Fall the hens come back to roost, because of their addictions and bad choices, and in winter everything is bad and Lux Aeterna plays.
Speaking of Lux Aeterna. It’s no secret that Requiem for a Dream wouldn’t have been nearly as successful, if not for Clint Mansell’s score, performed by the excellent Kronos Quartet. The eerie crushing strings, combined with heavy scratch beats, creepy vibraphone notes and an overall heavy and alien ambience, make the film worth watching just for the the score progression alone, which turns unbearably madness-inducing in the Winter section.
As per the director’s intent, the soundtrack also alerts us to the fact that we’re watching a movie from the very beginning, further alienating us from what’s happening on screen.
We meet Harry in the middle of stealing his mother’s TV set (the thing she’s presumably addicted to). As he verbally abuses her, while she hides and cries in the closet, we hear the quartet tuning their instruments and the conductor tapping his baton to indicate that the show is about to begin, then the title card literally crashes onto Sara.
The movie overall feels like a long overwrought anti-drug PSA* with creative editing, great sound design and one of the greatest film scores of the last fifty years. We repeatedly see characters through a surveillance camera and “unnatural” shots (fish-eye lens, overhead, tracking shots), which not only convey the mood and the perpetually strung-out states of the characters, but also alienate us from them, remind us that this is a movie – or a freak show.
*Public service announcement
Aronofsky is obviously fascinated by people he deems “other”, but he doesn’t empathize with them. Instead, he isolates them in specimen jars, observing them, shaking the jars when he gets bored, and leaving them in a dark cupboard when they finally die.
The characters in Requiem for a Dream, or any of his movies really, are not allowed to grow, to have character arcs or simply have any traits or interests that are not related to their otherness. The only thing they’re allowed to do is suffer for Aronofsky’s and our entertainment.
Thanks, I hate it.
2. Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), originally a novel by Manuel Puig, was directed by Argentine-Brazilian director Héctor Babenco and stars William Hurt and Raul Julia as main characters Luis Molina and Valentin Arregui, as well as Sônia Braga as Leni Lamaison/Marta/Spider Woman.
The movie is mostly a chamber play set in a prison cell, where Molina, a homosexual convicted to at least eight years without parole, and Arregui, a journalist and member of the resistance, who’s being held and tortured by the Brazilian military dictatorship in order to get him to give up his resistance cell, meet and argue about their political beliefs, gender roles and what it means to be human.
Originally planted by the prison director to extract any at all information from Arregui, Molina retells one of his favorite movies to Arregui to pass the time. In a sepia-toned movie within a movie, complete with a sweeping 1940-ies soundtrack by John Neschling, he tells a grand romantic tale about the beautiful chanteuse Leni Lamaison, as she falls in love with the handsome Werner, the chief of counterintelligence, during the German occupation of France.
Molina, clad in a turban, kimono and very tasteful prison make-up, moves and sways to imaginary music, as he tells the tale of the star-crossed lovers. As Arregui points out that the film is obviously Nazi propaganda, designed to make Jews and the French resistance look like grubby, dirty cowards, while elevating the Nazi cause, Molina gets annoyed and insists that it’s just an unimportant backdrop to the actual story – the romance.
The movie, therefore, posits two still very topical questions, which it answers in a shockingly modern manner.
1. What is the price of freedom?
2. What does it mean to be a man (or woman)?
Molina is effeminate and fully identifies with the female main characters of his fanciful tales. He repeatedly asserts that he needs a real man (meaning heterosexual) and suffers under the circumstances of the gender he was assigned at birth. Whether on purpose on Babenco’s part or not, Molina is a trans woman. Suffering from gender dysphoria and constant societal oppression, she chooses to be apolitical. Why should she, in the end, help others, if they’re more likely to hate her for what she is? From her point of view, being apolitical is an act of freedom and defiance.
Arregui has clear definitions of what it means to be a man, which is also closely tied to his political beliefs. For him and the world he lives in, it’s a mixture of violence, asceticism to the point of self-harm, and duty above all. Molina’s gender-fluidity and consequent political inertia, irk him so much that he even physically assaults her, because of her perceived decadence and emotionality. His duty to the cause, the resistance against a fascist regime is very much tied to his masculinity, to his ability to choose politics over emotion. From his point of view, being apolitical, choosing fantasy over reality like Molina, is a crime not only against society (a society he chose to leave on his own accord, not because he was cast out), but a crime against the very foundation of masculinity.
Over the course of the movie, Molina patiently nurses Arregui back to health after he was poisoned by the warden, while Arregui opens up about why, for him, the cause is worth dying for. While Molina experiences the selflessness of fighting for a better future, for freedom, firsthand, Arregui gradually accepts the inherent selflessness in caring for others, in emotional support (it’s still 1985, so these are the female traits we get). When Molina professes her love for Arregui, he accepts it, reciprocates it even. In this moment Arregui truly sees Molina for what she is and she, in turn, finds something worth fighting and even dying for, as being free and apolitical doesn’t change anything, doesn’t bring her and others like her closer to the acceptance she feels when Arregui looks at her.
In the end, they both die, of course. Molina dies protecting the information Arregui gave her when they parted ways, and Arregui is beaten to death after refusing to give up his resistance cell. As he finally allows himself to feel, the film ends with him escaping into a dreamy landscape with the woman he loves.
Love and ideology are a dangerous mix, and the movie is not perfect, as its views on gender and homosexuality are still of its time. However, the themes it touches upon are still relevant to this day and very much worth talking about.
3. I’m Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago (2015)
This was not my first choice of movie for this particular prompt. Alas, the Spanish import DVD of Primrose Path got lost somewhere between Germany and Spain and the other English language movies I had easy access to (I’m trying to watch movies, which are widely available) were weird straight to VOD war movies or Pathfinder, which has a whopping 9% on Rotten Tomatoes.
So, I had to get creative. And here we are, a German movie about an overworked entertainer, who, as the title says, loses and finds himself on the Camino de Santiago, also known as the Way of St. James. Way – Path – close enough.
I’m Off Then was adapted from the wildly popular book Ich Bin Dann Mal Weg by German entertainer Hape Kerkeling. The book is largely autobiographical, as he recounts his time on the Camino de Santiago, his religious upbringing and how he finally found himself and God on an 800km hike through Spain. The movie was directed by Julia von Heinz and stars Devid Striesow as Hape Kerkeling and other German greats like Katharina Thalbach, as his grandma, Martina Gedeck and Karolina Schuch as his travel companions Stella and Lena as well as Annette Frier is his agent Dörte.
We meet Hape at the peak of his career and totally and utterly burnt out. As his doctor prescribes 3 months of “doing nothing”, Hape starts to reminisce about his religious upbringing and wonders, where that faith went and whether he can find it and himself again. On a whim he decides to hike the Camino de Santiago and hopefully find God along the way.
Over the course of his hike, Hape finds himself not only in his renewed faith, which is touched upon lightly, but never to the point of preaching, but also in his acceptance of his need for other people. As he tries to go the way in a typical lonesome pilgrimage fashion, he gets depressed and is tempted to just leave and resume his comfortable life, even going so far as make plans to go home.
Before he can book the tickets, however, he realizes that being around other people is not a distraction or frivolous indulgence, but a vital part of himself as a person. As soon as it hits him, he not only has the strength to resume his journey but help his companion Stella along the way.
I’m Off Then is a cute, heartwarming and touching little movie about one man’s journey to himself, but also about all the other ways, paths and journeys, we can take to get to know ourselves, be it religious in nature or not.
4. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
Now that I’ve shown that I understand smart movies, it’s time for something very ….. very dumb.
If you ever wanted to see a rag tag team of inferior gym bros take on a jacked-up team of incredibly superior gym bros (and broettes) in a dodgeball match of epic proportions, then do I have a movie for you!
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is a 2004 raunchy comedy directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and stars Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, Justin Short and Rip Thorn.
Like a lot of the comedies of the early 2000s its offensive, ticking off pretty much all the boxes with impressive panache and fervor: its misogynist, sexist, fatphobic, racist, and probably a lot more stuff that I’ve missed, because for some reason … I was busy laughing my ass off.
Don’t get me wrong, the movie is incredibly stupid and offensive, but something in the movie’s confidence in its own offensiveness being endearing, caught me off-guard. Instead of being disgusted, I was delighted at Ben Stiller’s stupid mustache and the horrible fat-suit, I loved how both the villain, and the hero sexually harassed the female protagonist, but only one of them was labeled a creep and oh me oh my, I loved the never-ending oppressive stream of ball and dick jokes.
I forgot how refreshingly naïve the “humor” back then was, how obviously vile, without the use of dog-whistles and the dark presence of a fascist regime always looming in the background. I’m not sad those days are gone, I like that modern comedy is at least trying to punch up and not down, but somewhere deep in the recesses of my soul, I miss those days of innocence.
5. Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009)
Remember me, as the woman with long hair …. hrrk…
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo was directed by Isabel Coixet and stars Rinko Kikuchi as Ryu, Sergi Lopez as David and Min Tanaka as the Sound Engineer/Narrator.
The narrator, a sound engineer we know nothing about, tells the story of Ryu, an almost silent protagonist who is a fish market worker by night and assassin by… night. As she gets hired by a bereaved businessman to kill his late daughter’s boyfriend David, she soon finds herself weirdly drawn to the much older man. They soon start and affair and then she dies.
This movie is incredibly boring and formulaic. Besides the exotic pull Japan has on Europeans, there is absolutely no reason as to why the movie is set in Tokyo, and although we were promised a map of its sounds, the sound design was nothing special. The actors had no chemistry whatsoever, the dialogue was stilted, and their sex scenes were so gross and cringy that I (a very adult woman) had to skip them (ick).
The characters are also hardly developed, least of all the main character Ryu, who seems to solely exist for the gratification of the men around her, a prop in character form.
The narrator is in complete control of the story, so everything we know about her comes from him; he tells us what she likes and dislikes, how she feels and who she is. Outside of his narration, she is a blank slate, constantly being observed and characterized by him and then later by David.
Without their gaze, she would be nothing. After Ryu dies a senseless death protecting David, the narrator chimes in to give us the last words we’ll hear about this woman: “…. he’ll always remember the woman with long hair who loved mochi.” That’s it. This is her characterization. The same goes for the businessman’s dead daughter, by the way: we know nothing of her, except for what several men tell us about her.
Although the title promised something unique and interesting, the movie turned out to be a boring ode to the male gaze and orientalism, using its female characters like props to fulfill male needs and desires.
6. The Road to El Dorado (2000)
The Road to El Dorado was directed by Eric Bergeron and stars Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh as Tulio and Miguel respectively, a pair of ancient Spanish con-men, who, after stealing a map to the fabled Aztec (this word is not mentioned once, btw) city of El Dorado, experience the wonders of colonialism and easily bamboozled noble savages.
No, I won’t lay out the entire tapestry of Western foolishness at the base of this movie, there’s no sense in criticizing a nearly quarter-century old cartoon. Instead, I want to focus on the positives.
Although the story is quite basic, I very much enjoyed the characters and voice acting. Kline and Branagh had great chemistry, and Tulio and Miguel’s friendship was believable and heart-warming. The other voice actors, including Rosie Perez as adventurous Chel, Armand Assanti as the villainous Tzekel-Kan and Edward James Olmos as the good humored Chief Tannabak, are wonderful and clearly had fun with their roles.
What makes the movie still stand out even today, however, is the superb animation. The faces are incredibly expressive, and the character models are so distinct that I didn’t have any difficulty distinguishing even the background characters (some of them anyway). The soundtrack is also endearingly old-fashioned, with original songs by Elton John and a score by Hans Zimmer, who is still the master of maritime adventure music.
The Road to el Dorado is cheesy and slightly old-fashioned, but it’s easy to ignore its obvious shortcomings in favor of the excellent animation, cute characters and endearing soundtrack.
7. Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
There is, unfortunately, no movie with the word “drip” in its title, except a short horror film, which is probably a perfectly fine film, but horror movies are not kind to my overwrought imagination - never were.
Therefore, I had to play a game of association: drip —> coffee. That’s it. It wasn’t a very long or difficult game.
Coffee and Cigarettes is an anthology film consisting of 11 short vignettes directed by Jim Jarmush, which feature an eclectic cast of characters meeting and talking over a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette.
As the sections are incredibly short and bear the typical Jarmush air of improvisation, here are the themes of every one of them in one word (more or less):
1. Strange to meet you (Roberto Benigni, Steven Wright)
Strange encounters and sharing responsibilities.
2. Twins (Cinque and Joie Lee, Steve Buscemi)
Power, race relations and taking responsibility.
3. Somewhere in California (Iggy Pop, Tom Waits)
Creative differences.
4. Those’ll kill ya (Joseph Rigano, Vinny Vella, Vinny Vella Jr.)
What doesn’t kill you…
5. Reneè (Reneè French, E.J. Rodriguez)
Male entitlement.
6. No Problem (Isaach de Bankolé, Alex Descas)
Unspoken words and non-verbal communication.
7. Cousins (Cate Blanchett)
Desperate for connection.
8. Jack shows Meg his Tesla coil (Jack White, Meg White)
Accepting help from other people.
9. Cousins? (Steve Coogan, Alfred Molina)
Connections are power.
10. Delirium (RZA, GZA, Bill Murray)
Bill Murray is a figment of or collective imagination.
11. Champagne
The sheen of bygone days.
All sections are shot in black and white and feature a beautiful centered overhead shot of the different tables, populated with coffee mugs, cigarette butts, stains and crumpled napkins.
The dialogue is spontaneous, awkward, sometimes quite tedious, and the actors feel lost at times, searching for words, trying desperately to connect to their scene partner (even if the scene partner is yourself (Cousins)).
Overall watching all of the vignettes in a row was a mind-numbing experience. The constant cigarette smoke emanating from the screen started to smell at some point, and at the end of the movie, my apartment, my clothes, my hair stank of stale cigarettes and coffee and my soul felt stained with a thin layer of grime.
Past Lives
If an opening scene of a movie was ever an indication of its tone, it’s the opening scene of Past Lives, written and directed by Celine Song and starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro.
The Tender Awkwardness of Opportunities Past
If an opening scene of a movie was ever an indication of its tone, it’s the opening scene of Past Lives, written and directed by Celine Song and starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro.
Our three main characters Nora (Lee), Hae Sung (Yoo) and Arthur (Magaro) are sitting at a bar. While the former two are talking and smiling, the latter is staring awkwardly into his drink. We observe them for a couple of seconds, until disembodied voices, presumably belonging to the people who are actually observing them from across the room and with whom we have the pleasure of people-watching together, start a guessing game, as to who those three are to each other and why they’re here.
The Asians are siblings, and the white guy is the woman’s boyfriend, no, maybe the white guy is the Asian couple’s one American friend, or they’re colleagues who are for some reason sitting at a bar at 3 a.m. Three distinct possibilities, three lives, each and every one as true or false as the next one. Nora turns and looks directly at the camera, smiles, and we’re transported into a flashback – 24 years ago.
Nora (then Seung Ah) and Hae Sung are childhood friends and budding sweethearts, until Nora’s family decides to emigrate to Canada. As they see each other for the last time, Nora doesn’t have the heart or the words to tell Hae Sung about either her impending emigration or her feelings, and so their last playdate is encapsulated in the fabric of the movie and its ever-expanding list of lost opportunities.
Twelve years later, Nora is in college studying to be a playwright in New York, her Korean is rusty and she’s living the American dream. On a whim, she googles Hae Sung and finds out that he’s been looking for her on her father’s Facebook page. They reconnect and start a fledgling romance, talking almost every day on Skype. Their conversations are tentative, tender and tinged with the awkwardness of online communication – lost connections, glitches and inappropriate frozen expressions.
The awkwardness, however, goes deeper. It permeates every sentence when Nora searches for words in her rusty Korean, it populates the fault lines between their very different lives and cultural backgrounds, and it holds them in place as it becomes increasingly obvious that they can’t and won’t meet in person. As they drift apart, this moment becomes another time capsule – another “what if”, forever frozen in a blurry Skype image on an early 2000s laptop.
Another twelve years go by and we meet Nora and Arthur at customs control at the Canada-US border, as they’re being insistently, albeit not overly harshly, questioned on the purpose of their travel:
Customs Officer: Why were in you in Canada? – Arthur: To visit her family.
Nora smiles.
Customs Officer: What is the purpose of your visit to New York? – Arthur: We live here.
Nora smiles.
Customs Officer: What do you do for a living? – Arthur: We’re writers.
Customs Officer: Excuse me? – Arthur: We’re writers.
They exchange glances. Nora smiles.
Customs Officer: Are you related? – Nora/Both: We’re married.
Although Nora is a constant in the movie and her experiences are front and center, there’s an air of stillness around her, an aura of unsaid words and neutral facial expressions. The opportunities of her past lives seem to weigh her down as she awkwardly glitches in and out of existence in the tentative moments when we see her on-screen. So, it’s Arthur who has to explain their lives into existence when we begin the third and final chapter of the movie.
After Hae Sung partially breaks up with his girlfriend, he decides to go to New York to see Nora under the guise of taking a vacation. They meet and talk, now full-on adults with appropriate, unshakeable convictions about life, love and marriage. They spend the day walking and talking, traversing a beautifully lit and scored urban landscape. Very romantic, very cinematic.
In all of their encounters throughout the movie Nora and Hae Sung (even their child selves) have great chemistry, which cements in the viewer a profound sense of loss when it comes to their missed chances. Their scenes are warmly lit, overlayed with the golden haze of days gone by and the soundtrack by Chris Bear and Daniel Rossen, both of indie darling Grizzly Bear fame, creates an atmosphere of tender longing, be it for each other or for a different life. Their relationship is pure fantasy, full of nooks and crannies ready to be filled in, romanticized and exploited for pure romantic pleasure.
In contrast, Nora and Arthur’s relationship feels lived in and almost boring. Their scenes are cramped, the actors positioned impossibly close to each-other in tight central frames. There is no looseness to their interactions, no space for interpretation and although we don’t get to know them very well, it seems like the kind of relationship one doesn’t fantasize about very often, the kind that only comes about years after the happy ending of a romance story.
Finally, we arrive at the scene from the beginning of the movie, but now from our main trio’s perspective. Hae Sung’s English is about as bad as Arthur’s Korean, so most of the talking falls to Nora, as she acts as the interpreter and cultural bridge on their very awkward dinner date. While she’s interpreting, choosing what to include and what to exclude from her translations, her elusiveness, her simultaneous blending in and standing out in both cultures, her glitching in and out of the reality the movie has constructed for her, makes her an archetype I haven’t seen in a while – the migrant interpreter.
During their day out, Nora tells Hae Sung that she and Arthur got married very soon after they met, because she needed a Green Card, leaving no doubt that she loves Arthur, but also keeping to herself whether she would’ve married that soon, were it not for this transactional aspect. Hae Sung, on the other hand, struggles with the thought of getting married in the first place, as he’s convinced that his mediocrity in life, career and financial status doesn’t make him good enough for his girlfriend. Although, they both see marriage as transactional, at least in part, Nora describes Hae Sung’s notion of it as “so very Korean” when she later talks to Arthur and in this instant, it seems that her Koreanness is hidden even from her.
At home, she tells Arthur how she feels both very Korean and not at all at the same time when she is with Hae Sung, while Arthur becomes ever so slightly irritated by the subject altogether. He asks her whether Hae Sung is attractive, to which she replies yes, kind of, in a very Korean manner, but that she doesn’t think that she’s attracted to him. Again, giving a less than defined answer to Arthur’s need for some stability. As there are no constants with Nora, Arthur continues to question her in bed in an attempt to get some peace of mind. Yes, he knows that she won’t up and leave with Hae Sung, but does he really, and will it be because of him or because she doesn’t want to abandon her career? Yes, of course, she loves him, but he also kinda finds it hard to believe. Nora’s reactions throughout this conversation remain subdued, almost neutral and noncommittal.
Although Nora has left Korea behind in her early teens, she has retained enough of it to never fully fit into her new environment. Her identity is in constant flux, so much so that it’s hard to pinpoint the person underneath or get a clear reaction or answer out of her. While Hae Sung is still mostly talking to the little girl he knew in Seoul and the hypothetical Korean woman she’s become, Arthur only refers to her Canadian/American side, the playwright, the one who married him for a Green Card and has a mysterious other side which he can’t access due to language and cultural barriers.
On a deeper level, both men feel the lack of substance in their assumptions about Nora, they feel that one part is always missing and that they can’t get a straight picture of the woman they love. Instead, they cope in their own ways. Hae Sung looks to Korean mysticism and the concept of In Yun – fate, which brings or doesn’t bring people together. For him, everything happened for a reason, and he and Nora, despite being tied by fate, simply are not meant to be together. Arthur, on the other hand, chooses a much more cerebral approach, looking for constant reassurance that what they have is real, that Nora’s life is as affected by him as his is by her.
When Nora and Hae Sung part, it seems final. They say their goodbyes, assure themselves and each other that their lives never took the “wrong” turn, that everything is as it should be. There’s just as much romanticism in their words as self-delusion. Delusion or not, however, Nora becomes real in this very instance, finally anchored in reality by the pain of their farewell and her love for both Arthur and Hae Sung. After Hae Sung’s Uber drives away, Nora drags herself back home, where Arthur is waiting for her on the front porch.
Wordless, she starts crying as he hugs her. The hug is honest and awkward, as though she somehow still doesn’t fit onto his form, and the cry is loud and ugly. They’ll grow together eventually, by living their awkward, messy and beautiful present life. Or not.
40. Filmfest Munich
Recap and Top 5 of the 40th annual Munich Film Festival.
Recap and Top 5
To celebrate its 40th birthday, the Filmfest Munich hit memory lane hard. At every screening, in every cinema, like your drunk but lovable aunt at a family gathering, it regaled us with a montage of its bygone moments of glory. When you (sweet summer child) wandered into one of the festival cinemas, you were almost assaulted by a powerpoint presentation of pictures taken in the eighties and nineties, showing Hollywood stars as they were barely stars (baby Tilda Swinton, young Selma Hayek with Robert Rodriguez), stars in their prime (Ralph Fiennes), stars at the zenith of their stardom (Michael Caine), and stars who shouldn’t have been invited in the first place (Roman Polanski). Auntie FM always in their midst, desperately thinking of what to do with her hands.
After a while, I stopped paying attention to her stories, however. Aren’t we here to watch movies? Whatcha got for me, auntie? Although there seemed to be no apparent theme to the festival except for it being its 40th birthday, the movies I’ve seen and those I chose as my top 5 turned out to have something in common. A red thread woven through their very being – memories.
In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Anna Hints; Estonia 2023) the tradition of the South Estonian smoke sauna comes to life in an extraordinary film project. Over 7 years director Anna Hints met dozens of women of all walks of life and led them to the sauna. In the wet, barely lit, cavernous, almost womb-like cabin the women opened up - told stories of great trauma, grief, but also joy and life in general. Set to a lilting soundtrack and old Estonian folk songs sung by the participants themselves, the movie envelops the audience in a mist of mysticism, intimacy and love. The level of care the documentarians put into every aspect of the movie is so mind-blowingly subtle that you sometimes forget that there was a camera and boom mic present at every step of the way.
The same day I witnessed this magical movie and thought it couldn’t get any better, I also saw Band (Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir; Iceland 2022). In a hybrid of documentary and fiction, the real life band The Post Performance Blues Band, of which Örnólfsdóttir is a member, tries to finally have a real break-through without compromising their artistic vision. In their struggles to find mainstream success, they lose money and members and contemplate just quitting outright. Still they move forward – redefining the meaning of success in the process. In addition to being great musicians, the ladies from the titular band are also great actresses (or at least they’re great at playing themselves), and Örnólfsdóttir’s style of filmmaking is playful and quite unconventional.
The next day, I was pumped. How couldn’t I be? The previous movies were great, so I sat down in the theater, still ignoring auntie’s old-folk stories (oh so many old people), and watched Fancy Dance (Erica Tremblay; USA 2023) instead.
Set in the Seneca-Cayuga Nation Reservation in Oklahoma, the movie stars Lily Gladstone as Jax, a hard-boiled lady who does everything to get by and take care of her niece Roki, since her mother has gone missing. Day in day out, Jax is split between her duties as an aunt and trying to find her sister, which also entails getting (any) authorities to believe that her disappearance is serious enough to finally list her as a missing person. As the child protection services deem Jax unsuitable for raising Roki and relocate her to Jax’s (white) father Frank and his wife, Jax hat to hustle even more to find her sister and get her niece back. The movie shows the stark contrast between the external and internal. We’re shown how the world mistreats native women, deeming them a nuisance at best and unimportant and invisible at worst, but also how great the bond between them and their culture has to be to withstand this treatment.
Days went by, sprinkled with some more photo collages and a couple enjoyable movies, until we arrived at day 5 of the festival. At this point, I was kind of tired and couldn’t bring myself to do anything else than stare at whatever was in front of me, which was, you guessed it, the greatest hits powerpoint presentation. In my youthful (?) arrogance, I’ve ignored the memories of the Filmfest pretty much since day one, considering them to be too old and crusty (which they were) to warrant my attention, but when I looked up, halfway through the festival, the old people, the bygones were actually gone. Instead, new photos had appeared on the screen. Photos from this year’s premieres, red carpet, events, workshops and Q&As. There was Anna Hints in mid jump in her Smoke Sauna Sisterhood tee, there was Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir at the premiere of Band and so many more new exciting filmmakers…
…never mind, the movie was about to begin and this day was about to test the limits of my perception and memory.
In Dalìland (Mary Harron; USA 2022) brilliant director Mary Harron mixes her own memories of 1970s New York with our collective memories of Salvador Dalì and his posse during their stay at the St. Regis Hotel in 1974. As James, a young art gallery assistant, stumbles into the world of Dalí, he soon becomes enthralled by their wild parties and orgies. As his relationship with Dalí and his beloved Gala becomes as toxic as their own relationship and he uncovers some well-intended art fraud, the young man is forced to leave the fantasy that is Dalíland. A whirlwind of art, faces and arguments – a wonderland one enters and leaves forever changed, like a midsummer night’s dream. The performances are on point, especially from Ben Kingsley and Barbara Sukowa as Dalí and Gala respectively, and the cinematography is nothing other than wondrous.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to leave wonderland as soon as I thought I would, as I stumbled into a showing of Augure (Baloji; Belgium, Germany, France, Netherlands, South Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Augure begins like a typical prodigal son story, as Koffi returns to his hometown from Belgium to make peace with his family and introduce them to his wife and soon to be mother of his twins. Koffi has been shunned by his very traditional and, in his opinion, backwards, family, as a sorcerer, because of his birthmark, which covers a large part of his face. As his plan goes horribly awry, he has to reconsider what his birth place actually means to him and his children. But wait…. pretty soon the story becomes uninterested in Koffi and gently shoves him aside to reveal another POV, and then another. In the end Baloji weaves an intricate story of family, tradition, loss and violence, which no one can escape. Beautiful, ethereal and very very intense.
Although the rest of the festival kind of went by in a blur, these are the movies that stuck out to me the most. The last time I looked up at the projection of the assorted memories of the festival, the old photos were all gone. No young Hollywood celebrities used to make the festival seem more worldly, no revered rapist directors. What was left was us. Our experiences, the Q&As with the most fascinating people, the talks, artists beaming into the audience, ready to talk for hours about this thing they just made. Young exciting directors, the future of the industry.
Every movie on this list was, in the end, in one way or another about the power of memory. About preserving them for yourself and others — and this is what a birthday is all about, isn’t it? Looking back on the past and then pivoting and looking forward to the future.
Honorable mentions:
1. Mami Wata: A Nigerian folklore in beautiful black and white about the place of tradition in the face of progress.
2. The Other Widow: A touching exploration of grief, when you’re supposed to bottle it up.
3. La Hija de Todas las Rabias: A terrible situation, teeming with life and hope against all odds.
4. The Persian Version: Being a second generation immigrant is hard.
5. A Man: Great mystery, great resolution and a twist. What else do you want?
She Chef (2022)
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000) by chef, adventurer and overall food lover, the late (very great) Anthony Bourdain. It’s a fascinating look into a kitchen culture dominated by broken abusive men, who elicit respect (or fear) from their staff consisting of (mostly) similarly broken men. Homophobia, misogyny and good ol’ racism permeate this weird fossil of a book that belonged to a world that I remember, but truly can’t fathom today (doesn’t mean that we have no problems whatsoever, though).
Directed by Melanie Liebheit and Gereon Wetzel
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000) by chef, adventurer and overall food lover, the late (very great) Anthony Bourdain. It’s a fascinating look into a kitchen culture dominated by broken abusive men, who elicit respect (or fear) from their staff consisting of (mostly) similarly broken men. Homophobia, misogyny and good ol’ racism permeate this weird fossil of a book that belonged to a world that I remember, but truly can’t fathom today (doesn’t mean that we have no problems whatsoever, though).
When Bourdain mentions women outside the kitchen, they’re usually referred to as “pussy” or “chicks” (charming). However, when he mentions them inside the kitchen, he regales us with some anecdotes to show us how much he respects them for surviving the kitchen environment. Women line cooks (no mention of female chefs whatsoever) are a “true joy” (p. 57) to work with, as they can be a “civilizing factor in a unit where conversation tends to center around who’s got the bigger balls and who takes it in the ass.” (p. 57).
According to Bourdain (circa 2000), a good female line cook should have the following traits: “tough-as-nails, foul-mouthed, trash-talking”, “studly” and they should under no circumstances be “weak reeds” (p. 57). They should also come into work when highly pregnant, never call in sick, and ignore or laugh off any abuse or sexual harassment they might incur. In other words – they should be men.
After weeks of me exposing myself to that nonsense (I admit that the last third of the book did get better), She Chef was a breath of fresh air. Although it premiered at DOK Leipzig in 2022, I’ve only recently heard of the film, as it came out in German cinemas in May 2023.
The movie tells the story of chef Agnes Karrasch. After acquiring a degree in Travel and Tourism Management and completing several stints as a private caterer as well as a guest chef, Karrasch started her training at the Steirereck, a Michelin-star restaurant located in Vienna. At the end of her training, her boss, impressed by what he saw, recommended Agnes for the Austrian junior national team to compete in the Culinary World Cup 2018, which they won. Now 25, Agnes begins her wandering years and sets out to intern at three very different Michelin-star restaurants.
Agnes makes her ambitions exceedingly clear: she wants to work in haute cuisine, she wants to have a restaurant of her own one day, and she’s fine to not have children or a family life to achieve these goals.
Her journey begins at Vendôme in Bergisch-Gladbach in the west of Germany, which then had three Michelin stars (now bumped to two). Over three weeks Agnes works at every station the restaurant has to offer and makes friends with the kitchen crew, including the then sous-chef Dennis Melzer (now head chef of Vendôme), with whom she remains close friends to this day.
Agnes and Dennis
Vendôme is a traditional fine dining establishment, as we see virtually no women in the kitchen, except for the dessert station. The jokes are crude and, as expected, Agnes experiences everyday sexism (at one point the head chef Joachim Wissler asks her whether a small girl like her can handle big knives), which she (in good old Bourdain fashion) shrugs off. Just like Bourdain describes, Agnes takes part in the jokes and shakes off anything uncomfortable for the chance to be and learn at this venerated establishment.
The feeling that things have to change starts to creep in early on in the movie. Although it seems that it doesn’t even occur to Agnes to talk back, there are glimpses of her resisting the testosterone-filled environment she finds herself in, even in the early stages of her internship. She tells the pâtissière about her sexist experiences in Steirereck and reminisces how she was the only woman out of 16 chefs in the kitchen. There’s a blatant belief that, if you become pregnant, you’re automatically out of the industry, to which Agnes replies: “I won’t leave the kitchen. You’ll have to carry me out of here.”
In the end of her internship, she genuinely seems happy and leaves with a glowing review. Next we see her making her way to Disfrutar in Barcelona.
The three founders and head chefs of Disfrutar from left to right: Oriol Castro Forns, Eduard Xatruch Cerro, Mateo Casañas Puignao
Disfrutar is an experimental restaurant, specializing in molecular cuisine/gastronomy, and right off the bat the atmosphere is very different from Vendôme, as the head chefs are much more communicative and there are several women in the kitchen (seems like a low bar).
Crispy egg yolk with mushroom gelatin
During her stay at Disfrutar the pandemic hits hard, and the restaurant has to close twice, due to government regulations. Agnes goes back home for the first time and then returns, before the restaurant has to close again and she decides to end her internship then and there. Although she has two other internships lined up, she’s not able to complete them due to the pandemic. However, after she stumbles upon an interview with Poul Andrias Ziska, the head chef of Koks, the most remote Michelin-star restaurant in the world located on the Faroe Islands, she applies for an internship and gets in.
As she’s getting ready to leave, she gets a job offer from her friend Dennis Melzer, who’s about to open his own restaurant in Berlin, and says that she’ll be honored to work with him after her internship at Koks. Agnes and Dennis talk regularly, and there’s a definite feeling of change in the conversations and how they relate to their work, during and after the pandemic. As it starts to taper off, both of them reflect on the working conditions in the fine dining industry. They actively don’t want to return to the endless hours, the fact that you don’t have a life outside the restaurant if you want to achieve something in high gastronomy and the constant pressure, mind games and yelling.
It’s a widely known fact that the industry exploits its workers left and right, that it works them to the bone with no sick or personal days; and as a woman it’s impossible to even think of having children, if you want a viable career. However, a lot of young chefs, including Agnes and Dennis, see what that wrought in the face of pandemic (especially the no-sick-day policies). They are the future of the industry, and they see that the old ways (the toxic Anthony Bourdain[1] ways) don’t work anymore, that no one should put their lives and health on the line to hold on to a job, regardless of its exclusivity.
The glass ceiling for female chefs in fine dining is touched upon frequently in the movie, but no easy solutions are offered, and Agnes is not painted as a girl boss. Although it seemed like it at Vendôme, there is no typical male narrative of perseverance and eventual acceptance of the prevailing rules, as the movie easily could’ve been flavored with the “making it”- narrative. Instead, also due to the pandemic, we see Agnes gradually grow as a person, take in new information and practices, and sometimes surprise herself with her own decisions.
At Koks, Agnes experiences a working environment radically different from what she’s experienced before. Established by a young chef, who doesn’t believe in strict patriarchal hierarchies and never yells at his employees (what an incredibly low bar), Koks provides Agnes with a communal experience. Instead of shouting, the chefs help each other out, for the first time she doesn’t feel that her gender matters at all, and together they’re able to produce interesting and incredible food. Agnes is taken seriously from the start, and at the end of the internship Poul offers her a full-time position.
Agnes and her fellow chefs greeting the guests outside and then running back to the kitchen
Although she feels guilty for disappointing her friend, she accepts.
She Chef is a tender antidote to male-led narratives like Chef’s Table, or even Wetzel’s other fine dining documentary about the father of molecular gastronomy (he kinda stopped calling it that) Ferran Adrià. Instead of being pure food porn (to which I wouldn’t have been opposed either), the excellent food photography emphasizes Agnes’ growth as a chef and human being. From Vendôme’s traditional high end fare on meticulously arranged plates garnished with carefully tweezed off tarragon tops, to Disfrutar’s modernist cuisine-inspired jellies and foams, and finally to Koks’ locally sourced (weird) cockles and whale meat – every shot underlines the progress fine dining has undergone in the last couple of years and how its young chefs are changing the future of the industry.
Poul Andreas Ziska and his (delightfully) weird food
Much to my delight, the movie avoids the pitfalls of a girl boss narrative, wherein a female lead pretty much has to take on male traits to survive the “testosterone-heavy, male-dominated” (p. 57) world she chose for herself. Instead, we get a very intimate view into the ambitions of a very talented young female chef, who is absolutely aware of her chosen profession’s flaws, but tries to change them and doesn’t adhere to the stereotype Bourdain prescribed for his perfect female cook.
[1] I know, I’m harping on good old Tony a lot. Truth is, I love his writing, especially his later books, where he admits himself that Kitchen Confidential was a product of its time and his very bad life back then.
Your Fat Friend (2023)
Last week I had the great pleasure to watch Your Fat Friend, director Jeanie Finlay’s (Seahorse, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King) newest documentary starring author and fat activist Aubrey Gordon at Sheffield DocFest.
Directed by Jeanie Finlay
Last week I had the great pleasure to watch Your Fat Friend, director Jeanie Finlay’s (Seahorse, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King) newest documentary starring author and fat activist Aubrey Gordon at Sheffield DocFest.
Your Fat Friend has not yet been announced for distribution.
— Although I love spoiling stuff, I decided to write a spoiler-free review this time, as I want everyone to experience the joy (and constant crying) that I’ve experienced while watching this excellent movie. —
I’ve been a fan of Gordon’s writing for a long time. Her book What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Fat(Beacon Press, 2020) and her ingenious work on the Maintenance Phase podcast with co-host Michael Hobbes literally changed my life. So, when I heard that there will be a movie chronicling her path from anonymous blogger writing about fat activism and anti-fat bias to a successful writer/journalist, and that an International premiere was scheduled for Sheffield DocFest, I hopped on a plane and found myself in a very cute British town awash in film festival excitement (since then Your Fat Friend had won the Sheffield DocFest Audience Award, which makes me very happy).
When I entered the crowded, fully booked venerable Crucible Theater, drowsy from the heat (the frazzled hotel clerk assured me Sheffield is normally cold and rainy), I noticed two things. One: it’s a gorgeous theater and I regret not being able to catch another showing there while I’m in Sheffield. And, most importantly, two: I found myself amidst my people. Short, colored hair in all the colors of the rainbow gave way to colorful vintagy outfits – excited “small fat, mid-fat, superfat”[1] women all around me. I’ve never seen so many of us in one place, happily chatting away, an expectant atmosphere in the air. Although I was too shy to talk to any of them (I kinda hate that for me), for the first time in my life, I felt comfortable being myself in a crowded room.
If you’re familiar with my writing (hi, mom!), you know that I’m a big fan of sincerity (good old, corny pathos, if you will), and I find the recent move towards sincerity in documentary film, but also film in general, and even reality shows (I see and love you Bake Squad!), delightful, to say the least. Although the old (so very, very old) auteurs and the well-oiled Marvel machine still try their best at post-modern deconstructionism and a good portion of wallowing, I’ve been finding myself more and more frustrated with them showing a problem (sexism, racism = bad), but never offering any non-libertarian or non-individualistic solutions.
As previously discussed in my review of She Chef, there is something refreshing in the notion that you not only have to name the problem, but actually do something about it (unfortunately the Hobo With a Shotgun strategy is not a viable solution). Your Fat Friend is an intimate view of a living, breathing person’s life, but just by virtue of Gordon existing in the world (as a very fat and very vocal woman on the internet), it’s easy to forget that she’s not a political statement, that her life is not up for grabs, and her existence certainly not up for discussion. And this is where the brilliance of Jeanie Finlay as a documentarian starts to show through.
Jeanie Finlay staring into your soul
Finlay follows Gordon from the start of her internet writing career as anonymous blogger Your Fat Friend, from 2016, after the publication of her excellent first essay A request from your fat friend: what I need when we talk about bodies ending her exploration with Gordon’s first ever public appearance at a book reading in 2021/22.
The movie begins with a voiceover from Gordon reading the following quote from her 2020 essay Just Say Fat: “Just say fat. Not “curvy” or “chubby” or “chunky” or “fluffy” or “more to love” or “big guy” or “full-figured” or “big-boned” or “queen size” or “husky” or “obese” or “overweight.””, which is accompanied by under water images and finally by her floating in a pool. Right from the start, there’s no inherent bias in the images, no “caressing” the body up and down, no overt focus on certain areas. The body and, by extension, Aubrey just is.
I’ve been actively watching documentary cinema for only a year, so I’m not as well versed in the techniques of this format, however, I do understand that it’s not just letting people sign an agreement and then shove a camera into their face until they reveal their innermost self (partly why I found Superpower by Sean Penn and anything by Michael Moore so grating). There is a kind of magic and infinite finesse in showing the humanity of the subjects involved – a fine line between a non-judging eye and the drive to tell a story. Jeanie Finlay and her DP Steward Copeland walk this line with a precision I’ve never seen before.
The movie is peppered with childhood videos and photos of Aubrey as well as contemporary interviews and conversations with her parents. When Gordon talks to her mother Pam about her incessant dieting and the bad body image she projected unto her daughter, there is no judgment, no scorn, but instead a staggering amount of understanding and empathy towards a flawed parent who didn’t know better (Aubrey Gordon is a much better person that I am in this regard). Subsequently, due to her unpacking everything on camera (to this particular documentarian), we see Pam come to an important realization about her expectations when she put Aubrey on diet after diet. This realization is not sensationalized by swelling music in the background, nor are there excessive tears shed for the benefit of the viewer – what follows instead is contemplation and gratitude.
The same goes for many similar moments in the course of the documentary. Moments of realization, moments of pure (sometimes unwanted) emotion, moments of sadness and joy are all treated with the utmost dignity and sincerity. The dread Gordon experiences when she is doxxed, but also her exuberant joy of talking about her her extensive diet book collection (seriously, listen to Maintenance Phase for a glimpse into the great and horrifying world of celebrity and conservative dieting) are both given time to breathe and the gravitas they deserve.
Can’t wait for them to discuss this one on the podcast!
And this is it, really. The film gives Aubrey (the author), Aubrey (the activist), Aubrey (the daughter) – Aubrey (the person) the space to breathe, to expand freely, to “grow wild and untamed as a garden you loved as a child“[2]. When the credits roll, a great sigh of relief and a couple (a lot) of sobs reverberate throughout the audience. A gentle catharsis washes over me, as I feel the hope, the righteous anger at diet culture, a newfound empathy for my flawed loved ones – I let myself feel.
Jeanie Finlay and Aubrey Gordon at the Q&A, after the screening at the Sheffield DocFest
Breathe in, breath out … just say fat.
[1] Gordon, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, e-book version, p. 9
[2] Your Fat Friend, A request from your fat friend: what I need when we talk about bodies
Berlin International Film Festival 2023
I came back from the Berlin International Film Festival, or Berlinale, about two weeks ago and have been sifting through my numerous notes on the 20 movies I’ve managed to watch.
While roaming Berlin’s finest cinemas (or not), I managed to catch a good cross-section of bad, meh, good and excellent movies, and this is more or less how I want to structure this write-up. I won’t mention each and every film here, instead just writing about those that somehow left an impression on me, negative or positive.
Part 1: The Good, the Bad and the Meh
The Bad
Bad Living (Mal Viver)
Directed by João Canijo, Portugal 2023
The opening scene of Mal Viver tells you everything you have to know about this dreary movie.
It is a cold overcast morning at a hotel pool; in a static wide shot from the bird’s eye view we’re introduced to two of the main characters. Angela (Vera Barreto), the good-natured cook and odd-job woman at the hotel, is cleaning the pool, while chipperly humming a tune. Meanwhile Piedade, the oldest daughter and our main point-of-view character (Anabela Moreir), is lying on a lounger, after an early swim, while cradling and talking to her dog.
Several other chattering figures enter the static shot and Angela joins the group, hugging one of them. We zoom in on the group and meet Sara (Rita Blanco), the stern (and as we later find out highly abusive) matriarch and owner of the family hotel, in which the entire movie will be taking place, Salome (Madalena Almeida), Piedade’s estranged daughter, who, up until now, lived with her father in Lisbon and was invited to the hotel by Sara, and lastly Raquel (Cleia Almeida), the youngest daughter and perpetual people-pleaser.
Piedade, stands up and stiffly walks over to her family. Her eyes wide, looking as though she is about to start crying, she awkwardly hugs Salome, without releasing her dog and then walks away saying “I don’t like surprises”. Salome looks after her on the verge of crying herself: “Will this dog never die?” – “It did. She got a new one.”
If you’ve guessed that the lighting will remain as bleak as this misty morning, you’ve guessed correctly. If you’ve also guessed that the relationships in this movie are as cold as the awkward hug Piedade gave Salome, you’re also correct. In the course of roughly two hours, we will witness Piedade being abused by everyone but her beloved dog (her relationship with the dog is the only loving relationship in the movie) and a family that forgot how to talk to each other normally a long time ago. Every conversation in this movie devolves into accusations of abuse, physical and mental, and then into subsequent gas-lighting. It will go on for so long that, I promise, you’ll be relieved that someone dies at the end. Death being the only feasible escape from this hellish place (and viewing experience).
Although the themes of the movie are unbearably bleak, I have good things to say about the direction and cinematography. As the movie progresses to its inevitable conclusion, the director masterfully tightens the shots, from the relatively loose wide angles at the beginning to ever more uncomfortable close-ups and weird angles, which isolate the characters from each other, even if they appear together in one scene. This gives the movie a noose-like tension and, despite its lofty interiors, a chamber play feel. This tension also never releases, as the movie closes on a midrange low angle shot, suffocating the audience while credits roll. A beautifully shot and paced, but highly uncomfortable experience.
Mal Viver fully lives up to its name, as all of the people on-screen and off are miserable during this torturous bleak film. I can’t recommend this to anyone, but if you’re a HUGE fan of tight chamber-plays and family melodramas (or female suffering), give it a try.
Bonus Content: Mal Viver’s companion piece Living Bad (Viver Mal) (João Canijo) is a carbon copy of the former, but without the tight pacing and cinematography. Split into three separate stories, starring the guests of the hotel, it tells the same story over and over again (same abusive mother figure, same abused children and their long-suffering partners), relentlessly torturing all of the characters, while the torturing of Mal Viver goes on in the background. As it lacks the tight direction of its sister, Viver Mal turns out to be a loose mess of horribleness. It’s terrible, don’t watch it.
Ugh, even the poster sucks!
The Meh
All The Colors of The World are Between Black and White
Directed by Babatunde Apalowo, Nigeria 2023
All The Colors is a queer coming out story set in Lagos, the biggest and most important city in Nigeria.
Bambino (Tope Tedela) is a gentle soul, who is always happy to help and never asks anything in return. As a delivery driver, he frequently explores the city on his scooter, before going home and having the same humble meal every day at the same food stand. Due to his good nature, he is always on the verge of being exploited – by his boss, by a woman that behaves like his girlfriend, although he has no interest in her, and other random people who solicit money from him.
At one of his delivery spots, he meets Bawa (Riyo David), an assertive young man, who, despite being relatively well off, with his own betting shop, dreams of being a photographer. Bawa immediately takes a shine to Bambino and starts photographing him, which makes Bambino uncomfortable, but he, being soft-spoken as he is, doesn’t object. The next day, when Bawa delivers the photos, he asks Bambino to show him the city, as, due to his job, he knows it better than anyone. They start to bond, and a relationship that could go the exploitative route, as a lot of Bambino’s other relationships did, instead turns into a tender friendship and then much more.
Bawa photographing Bambino, while caring for him after the latter was beaten. By the way, he never (ever) asks for consent, when photographing him.
The visuals and soundtrack of the movie are heavily inspired by Italian cinema, specifically by “pink neorealism”, the successor to Italian neorealism, which was, like All the Colors, sporting a yellow-ish sun-soaked image and sweeping romantic music juxtaposed with a bleak post-war partially destroyed or otherwise trashy environments as a backdrop. Thematically, “pink neorealism” movies had a slightly lighter tone than neorealism, highlighting social issues like class disparity as well as personal tragedies like unhappy marriages and love in general.
And so, the city of Lagos is shown from all its angles, flattering and unflattering, while Bambino and Bawa fall in love, to epic music, while riding a vespa-esque scooter.
Throughout the movie, we’re confronted with the unfeeling society the two men find themselves in, as Bambino watches people getting mugged or beaten on the street several times, as the camera rests on his calm face, watching, but never intervening. His transformation and acceptance of himself and his sexual identity within this society, as well as his attempts to leave the safety of the invisibility he built for himself with his soft and unassuming demeanor, are at the core of the movie.
Although the movie is a compelling exploration of identity and sexuality in a hostile environment, it failed to grab me. For me it turned out to be a mediocre coming out story, bogged down by a brutal “will they – won’t they” dynamic and a repetitive back and forth, as Bambino tries and fails to crawl out of his shell time and time again, until it culminates in a very uncomfortable, borderline intrusive scene at the end.
However, I’m aware that I’m looking at it from the perspective of a European cis white lady, so I wholeheartedly admit that I might not the right audience for this movie. Therefore, I would still recommend it if you’re in the mood for sweeping visuals and (very) soapy melodrama.
The Shadowless Tower (Bai Ta Zhi Guang)
Directed by Zhang Lu, People’s Republic of China 2022
Gu Wentong (Xin Baiqing), a morose middle-aged food critic, is in full-on mid-life crisis. Having been divorced for a long time and only seeing his daughter sporadically, because she lives with his sister and her husband, he drinks and smokes his loneliness away as he goes through the motions of life. This all changes when his brother-in-law slips him a note with the number of his estranged father, whom Wentong hasn’t seen since his mother threw him out for, allegedly, groping a woman on the bus. To prevent bringing public shame on the family, Wentong’s father Gu Yunlai (Tian Zhuangzhuang) never contacted his children ever again, even after the charges were long forgotten.
Hello darkness my old friend……
With this number and a new flirtation with his much younger colleague Ouyang Wenhui (Huang Yao) on his mind, Wentong now has to face his middle age, his inability to look forward, and the fact that he might be turning into his father, who left his family and stayed away even after their mother died, held back by his politeness and understanding of social norms.
This movie is beautifully shot and supremely paced. Every moment of Wentong’s journey is plotted like a quest for self-discovery, with certain objectives to be overcome, in order to progress to the next level. Younger girlfriend (check), better relationship with family (check), closure with ex-wife (check). This feeling of immense control is highly satisfying to experience, I admit.
Unfortunately, the movie failed to engage me otherwise. The relationship between Wentong and Ouyang Wenhui is very surface-level and feels gross at times, as he energizes his own inert life with her youthful energy, only for her to get unceremoniously dropped from the movie once she’s served her purpose for the quest. And, indeed, every character feels like an NPC, forgotten or dropped as soon as their role in Wentong’s epic midlife-crisis adventure is done.
In the end, he sits alone, smoking, having learned that relationships are good actually and that he will become his father in the near future.
If you like coming into old age stories and are out of satisfying compilation videos on Facebook (IYKYK), give this film a shot.
Remembering Every Night (Subete No Yoru wo Omoidase)
Directed by Yui Kiyohara, Japan 2022
This movie is best described as a sound- and landscape film. In Tama New Town, a dull residential area built in the 1960-s, three women traverse its monotone architecture with its never-ending green spaces and alternating uniform housing units, in search for some kind of human connection.
While the oldest (Kumi Hyodo) tries to find a friend who moved there, the youngest (Ai Mikami) dances in the park to rekindle a memory of a high school friend, who killed himself when they were teenagers. The first scenes of the movie feature the oldest lady, who, after a trip to the unemployment center, decides to make a detour into Tama New Town. While she tries to help some children to retrieve a ball stuck in a tree, we switch POVs to continue with a new character (Minami Oba), whose job it is to wander the housing units and to read and report the status of the power meters. And so, the point of view changes from woman to woman as they go about their daily goals.
Slow cinema has always fascinated me. The shots that linger far too long on a presumably uninteresting scene and the weird music or even the complete lack of a soundtrack, instead opting for a soundscape of quotidian sounds are staples of the genre; but it’s biggest staple and what it does exceedingly well is the overt hands-on approach to time. Making the audience acutely aware of time passing in a movie, making it go slower or faster or even move laterally, makes for a different viewing experience than conventional cinema, as the you’re not supposed to notice time manipulation in say an action movie or a romcom, except it’s a montage of some kind.
So, depending on what the director wants you to sit in for an uncomfortable amount of time, there are different flavors of slow cinema. Here Yui Kiyohara opted for the vibe of the first sunny day in months, where it’s absolutely fine to walk instead of taking the bus, and even to smile at strangers once in a while. A day where everything seems to be in flowing languid motion and rigid routines are unimportant.
So, why is this movie in the “meh” pile? As slow movies go, this one doesn’t come together quite as satisfyingly as other examples of its brethren, one of which will be in my Top 3 (Part 2 of this Berlinale write-up). Although the soundtrack, mostly consisting of weird bing-bong and phwoot noises, amazingly fits the atmosphere described above, I still couldn’t completely vibe with the movie; mostly because it was just too long. As soon as the atmosphere settled in, there was nothing more to look out for, and so, at some point, what began as a relaxing spa-day experience became a chore to watch.
If you like slow cinema, though. Check it out, maybe it’ll pass the vibe check for you.
Superpower
Directed by Sean Penn, Aaron Kaufman, USA 2023
Sean Penn (left) during his first interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy (right) on the night of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.
Superpower tells the story of a coincidence of historic proportions. Actor and director Sean Penn and his co-director Aaron Kaufman attempt to make a funny little documentary about how and why the actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected president of Ukraine, a country they know very little about. After their first visit to Ukraine they learn about its history and the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which led to the ousting of the elected corrupt president Victor Yanukovych and the beginning of the Russo-Ukranian war, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Taken aback by the Ukranian people’s fight for freedom, the triumph of democracy and the high cost of achieving it, Penn and Kaufmann arrange for a second visit, this time to interview Zelenskyy himself. Staying at a hotel in Kyiv, the night before the interview, they find themselves in the midst of the Russian incursion into Ukraine on February 24th 2022.
From then on the movie turns into a diary of the war, from Penn’s and Kaufman’s perspective. They decide not to cancel the interview and meet Zelenskyy the same night, as the first missiles strike Kyiv, and are highly impressed (almost enamored) by his resolve. After a somewhat risky journey out of Ukraine, they immediately start an information campaign about the country, its people and the war back in the US, by giving interviews and going on any television show that will have them.
Superpower is a fascinating time capsule and important piece of media from the beginning of the war, and it can be used as educational material for people who know next to nothing about Ukraine or the war. The Western, especially, American point of view on the matter might even make it more palatable for Western audiences, with Sean Penn, a weathered authority figure, as their guide.
However, his emotionality and reverence for Zelenskyy put me off, as he is clearly not an expert on geopolitics and sometimes says some exceedingly dumb stuff.
Nevertheless, I would absolutely recommend the movie, if you want to know what’s going on in Ukraine and/or want to help.
The Good
In Water (mul-an-e-seo)
Directed by Hong Sang-soo, South Korea 2023
Seoung-mo (Shin Seok-ho), a first time director, travels to Jeju Island, a popular vacation spot, with Nam-hee (Kim Seung-yun), an actress, and Sang-guk (Ha Seong-guk), a DP, to scout for locations for his movie. They rent a seaside apartment, where they eat pizza and any other cheap snacks that they can afford and talk about moviemaking, acting and the potential to make money or at least earn some kind of recognition with both.
From left to right: Nam-hee (actress), Sang-guk (DP), Seoung-mo (director)
At the beach they observe the tourists laughing and eating, and generally doing touristy things, in hopes of getting an idea for the movie, as it seems that the director came to Jeju without a script. He sees a local woman collecting trash at the beach, and finally gets inspired. Then they make the movie. The end.
Hong Sang-soo is one of the weirdest auteurs working in modern cinema today, and this film is certainly no exception. Shot entirely out of focus, with various degrees of picture clarity, this movie tells a visual story of a search for meaning in the brutal world of movie-making and the experience of working in a medium which people use for recreation. How much is good cinematography worth, if more and more of the audience watches movies on a tiny screen, as a background to various household chores? How much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice as a director or actor?
All these questions are asked, but not answered in In Water, which instead shows us a blurry image of a sun-soaked island and a woman collecting inordinate amounts of trash left behind by hordes of faceless tourists. Do with that what you will.
In Water is a magical little moment, suspended in time and space. It doesn’t demand anything from you, not even an analysis, beyond what you’re seeing on-screen. A weird little movie, from a director I came to adore. Just watch it and let yourself be adrift in it’s cinematic landscape.
Suzume
Directed by Makoto Shinkai, Japan 2022
The movie starts, as many animes, with our 16-year-old heroine Suzume (Hanoka Hara) having a recurring dream of a mysterious door and a starry world beyond, where she sees her child-self roaming a bleak winter landscape calling for her mother.
After waking up, she dons the iconic school girl uniform, exchanges some snarky dialogue with her aunt and cycles to school. On her way, a man (Hokuto Matsumura) stops her to ask for directions to the nearest ruins. She points him to an abandoned leisure village nearby and resumes her way to school, but soon can’t help herself and turns around to follow him, partly because she finds him very attractive and partly because she felt a weird connection during their brief encounter.
She doesn’t find the hot guy at the ruins, unfortunately, but to her astonishment encounters a familiar door in the middle of a room with nothing attached to it. When opened, it reveals the same starry sky, she saw in her dreams, but when she attempts to enter it nothing happens; and after some more supernatural (cat-related) shenanigans, she flees the village and goes to school.
At school, she tries to communicate what’s happened to her classmates, when she sees a terrifying red pillar of smoke emanating from the ruins she just visited and has sent the stranger to. Alarmed, she points at, but no one else seems to see it, and as soon as her phone goes off with an earthquake warning for her region, she knows one thing: whatever she did at the door must have caused this. With the earthquake getting worse around her, she rushes to the village, and thus begins her foray into adulthood and world-saving.
Suzume tells a coming-of-age story in the midst of a buddy road trip to save the world from a cataclysmic earth-shattering event. We follow Suzume and her companion Sōta (the hot guy from before), as they travel Japan, get to know and learn to trust all manner of people, and, of course, slowly fall in love. Pretty much all of the relationships in this movie are heart-warming and very cute, and this also goes for the budding relationship between Suzume and Sōta.
I was quite bummed that they made it a love story, though, as they had excellent friendship vibes going on, and this decision takes the story into the “creepy older guy taking advantage of a school girl” territory. This is typical for animes, but could’ve been easily avoided, if Shinkai’d kept it platonic. This is my only gripe with the movie, however, and it didn’t dampen my enjoyment of it too much.
The visuals are stunning, especially the large apocalyptic set pieces and the voice acting was on point. All in all, a very enjoyable experience about getting older, opening yourself up to other people and (most importantly) cats.
A definite recommend on my part.
Kill Boksoon
Directed by Byung Sung-hyun, South Korea 2023
The second (much more enjoyable) mid-life crisis story on this list stars Gil Bok-soon also known as Kill Boksoon (Jeon Do-yeon), an internationally renowned killer for hire and a suffering single mother to Jae-yeong (Kim Si-a), her surly and secretive teenage daughter. With her daughter turning seventeen, Bok-soon feels her age slowly descending upon her – making her question how long she can continue her physically and mentally taxing job, as well as how long she can continue to lie to her daughter, which makes their relationship actively worse. After a particularly showy and celebrated kill, and with the day of her contract extension coming up, Bok-soon decides to retire and finally make amends with her daughter.
With just a couple days to retirement left, her boss Cha Min-kyu (Sol Kyung-gu), the CEO of MK. ENT., the assassination agency that corporatized killing for hire in Korea, sends her on her last assignment, which he seems to understand she’ll have difficulties fulfilling. He has been infatuated with her since he hired her at 17-years-old, and he wants to keep his best assassin at the company but, more importantly, Bok-soon by his side. As he expected, she fails, which sets in motion a string of events where she eventually can’t outrun the question of who she is and who she wants to be in the future.
Min-kyu and Bok-soon having a nice calming tea party.
First of all, Kill Boksoon is just fun to watch if you’re into bloody highly stylized action flicks, and it came at a time when I was already weary of watching self-effacing suffering (or worse) on screen.
The story is very simple, and the underlying mother-daughter relationship is very similar to the one we’ve seen in Everything Everywhere All At Once, down to the plot beat of Jae-yeong at some point revealing to her mother that she’s gay and Bok-soon reacting poorly to it. Nonetheless, the storyline is well executed and quite believable as the emotional core of the otherwise bloody action movie going on around it.
The action is fast-paced, and the stunt-work paired with the cinematography is creative and dynamic. But what got me personally was the genuine fun Bok-soon had while slashing and dicing her way to the top. She seemed genuinely inspired by her work, and almost every bloody murder scene showed her smiling while jumping around and slashing throats left and right – we stan a queen who loves her job.
The most unsettling thing about Kill Boksoon, however, and also why I liked the movie so much, is that the movie doesn’t condemn killing as a profession. At no point, except one brief moment, does Bok-soon regret being what she is, and instead tries to focus on important things like being a good mother, despite being a fallible human being. By leaving out the hand-wringing and the bad conscience, we’re left with a peculiar film that bends the rules of the genre just a little to achieve an interesting and disquieting outcome that construcs a narrative in which killing (for hire or not) is good actually, as long as you’re being true to yourself.
Kill Boksoon is fun and just weird enough to warrant a watch (or three).
The Fabelmans
Directed by Steven Spielberg, USA 2022
Despite the names and some of the events being changed for cinematic effect, The Fabelmans is for all intents and purposes an autobiography, in which Steven Spielberg recounts his formative years from the age of 6 into young adulthood.
We open with the eponymous Fabelmans, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), Burt (Paul Dano) and little Sammy (Mateo Zorian), on their way to Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show. Sammy is understandably nervous and afraid of the huge people on screen, but is soon sucked in to the movie and especially into an action sequence containing a train barreling into a car at full speed.
Little Stevie Sammy with parents Burt and Mitzi at the movies.
At this moment the movie diverges into two layers of perception: The reality that adults perceive (the aforementioned collision being achieved by switching to a toy train ramming a toy car) and a child’s perspective (Sammy being afraid and stunned by the very real collision he just witnessed). This dichotomy of perception will be an important device, until a pivotal moment later in the movie, in which they’ll converge again.
At home, Sammy is so stunned by the movie that he soon wishes for an electric toy train for Hanukkah, specifically that he can crash it into his toy cars as many times as he wants. Burt, however, ever the pragmatic scientist, forbids Sammy from playing with the train until he can learn to take responsibility for expensive things. Mitzi notices how much distress the collision on-screen has caused her son and proposes he film one crash, so that he can watch it over and over again, without damaging his new toy. Sammy agrees and, when he gets the developed reel, rushes to his room to watch what he’s created with his mom. They’re both mesmerized by what Sammy’s created, and this clumsy little home movie is what, according to Spielberg, launches his titanic movie-making career. Quite romantic.
I must admit the actor playing Sammy creeped me out … a LOT!
When we meet up with teenage Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle), he’s still in love with movie-making and films everything in his wake. He makes movies with his friends and shows them at their boy scout meetings, he films family gatherings and trips, and he obviously wants to make movies when he grows up, despite his father not taking this desire seriously. Indeed Sammy doesn’t have any other hobbies or interests in life, except filming, directing and editing his movies. And so, while editing a recent family camping trip, he discovers a family secret, which was obvious for the adult viewer from the beginning of the movie, but becomes painfully clear to him at 16 years old, welcoming him into adulthood.
This discovery starts the second part of the movie, which feels grittier and more real than the first one, which mostly contained happy childhood memories, with the adults confined to incomprehensible, but benevolent loving beings.
The Fabelmans is a great movie and one of the best Spielberg has made in the last decade and it’s an extraordinary autobiography. A living legend telling us the myth of his creation. A distant myth veiled in perpetual fog of memory, through which characters are sometimes allowed to poke through, before being swallowed up again. Due to this very personal and myopic framework, every scene feels like an actual memory, sometimes unreliable and changed over time to fit into a personal narrative. His sisters, for example, are but a glimpse on Sammy’s radar, and so we only sporadically see them aiding him in his moviemaking, sitting silently in the background or distraught over the inevitable family tragedy that occurs near the end of the movie. The same goes for Mitzi and Burt, who also don’t really feel like real people, but rather faint memories, imbued with adult regrets and “couldhavebeens”. This is brilliantly executed and feels so very human – we forget, we erase or change our memories, but all of us can make a hell of a story out of those we choose to remember.
A beautifully shot and scored movie about the very human habit to make a narrative out of our own lives. A definite recommend from me.
Ennio (2023)
In this almost three-hour long documentary, Giuseppe Tornatore tells the story of Ennio Morricone – the music composer who changed film music forever.
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
In this almost three-hour long documentary, Giuseppe Tornatore tells the story of Ennio Morricone – the music composer who changed film music forever.
Morricone got famous with his creative and experimental scores to Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, like the Dollars Trilogy (For a Fistfull of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)), which defined, how a Western should sound, for generations to come. The movie, however, goes much deeper, than the Westerns. It explores a decades long career: from the early sixties, where Morricone defined the sound of Italian pop-music, over his amazing collaboration with Dario D'Argento at the peak of the Giallo genre and his Oscar win for the original score for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight in 2015.
A career marked by love for music and the iron will to not be compromised in his artistic vision, the movie portrays Ennio as a man of conviction, but not someone, who is not willing to change. Rather, we see a man, who was always at the ready to learn from his mistakes and to move on. Only by continuous learning and always reinventing himself, did he have such a profound impact on cinema music. Any score of the last 40 years is highly influenced by his compositions, be it John Williams’ classical compositions, Hans Zimmer’s bombastic hooks or Justin Hurwitz’ creative musical landscapes.
The movie itself is well-structured, but for a lack of dramatic narrative, as by all accounts, Morricone was a well-adjusted, hard-working artist, it one too many times circles back to the notion that he was unappreciated in some way. It takes a lot of time explaining, how he was shunned by his peers, because he was “whoring himself out” by writing film music, instead of serious music; and several times comes back to the fact that he didn’t get an Academy Award, until very late in life. This dramatic insistence of the world somehow wronging Morricone, somewhat cheapens the message for me, but not enough to be grating or to make the movie unenjoyable.
Overall, a solid documentary about a genius composer, who changed, how we watch movies forever.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is an action-comedy directed by master of action-comedies Guy Ritchie (or so I thought).
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is an action-comedy directed by master of action-comedies Guy Ritchie (or so I thought).
The British government hires two competing teams of external contractors to retrieve a stolen device that is given the codename “The Handle”, as no-one really knows what it is for two thirds of the movie. The important thing is that it is important and dangerous enough for the Ukrainian mob to sell it to an unknown buyer for billions of dollars with the help of the internationally infamous arms broker Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant). We follow the team of Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes) and his preferred specialist spy guy Orson Fortune (Jason Statham), as they spy, punch and over-enunciate their way through a boring plot of world domination conceived by two Silicon Valley crypto-bro-villains.
Guy Ritchie is known for his fast-paced, dialogue-heavy movies which are most and foremost fun to watch. Imagine my surprise when the movie unfolded into a long and slow slog, desperately trying to emulate Mission: Impossible and James Bond at the same time. Despite all the fun genre conventions of a high-end spy movie being present, the movie never picks up speed as we see our bland heroes hopping from one international location to another. There is no conflict to speak of, as we don’t know the stakes for a big chunk of the movie, and after the nature of “The Handle” is finally revealed, nothing really happens.
Mike, the leader of the other team, is the main antagonist of the movie, but it’s never revealed why everyone hates him so much, ostensibly making this the smoothest spy mission I’ve ever seen on screen. Our protagonists win every fight, infiltrate many a high security facility without incident or tension, then hit a tiny snag at the end of the second act that is immediately resolved and then … win, I guess.
With no conflict, stakes or character development to speak of, nothing really stands out, which makes the bad acting even more visible. Every actor in this movie, even the good ones, over-enunciates every word of the extremely boring dialogue to a point where I thought that there must be a joke somewhere – that a punchline will certainly reveal itself along the line. Unfortunately, there are very few punchlines in a supposedly funny movie about punching. The only saving grace for this particular ensemble turned out to be Hugh Grant, who, while looking like a sun-burned prune, exuded more charisma then in Notting Hill and Love, Actually combined.
Judging by the way the movie kept setting up Orson Fortune as a quirky guy that punches well, and by the ending of the movie, it seems like a feeble attempt to set up some kind of franchise á la Benoit Blanc, sans the good writing or acting. Looking at the numbers, this will fortunately never happen. It feels like Guy Ritchie dropped the ball on this one, foregoing his fast-paced convoluted plot-lines for a very simplified version of Mission: Impossible. Shame.
Memoria (2022)
Jessica, a British orchid farmer living in Medillín, Colombia, hears a peculiar sound in the middle of the night, while visiting her ailing sister in Bogotá. At first she mistakes the sound for construction, but she quickly starts hearing it again in different places, while others don’t seem to notice at all. After Jessica stops sleeping, she embarks on a journey to find out what that sound is, why it affected her and why she longs to hear it again.
Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Jessica, a British orchid farmer living in Medillín, Colombia, hears a peculiar sound in the middle of the night, while visiting her ailing sister in Bogotá. At first she mistakes the sound for construction, but she quickly starts hearing it again in different places, while others don’t seem to notice at all. After Jessica stops sleeping, she embarks on a journey to find out what that sound is, why it affected her and why she longs to hear it again.
Memoria is first and foremost a metaphysical meditation on memory, time and sounds of life.
The movie has a very minimal score, rather opting for a rich soundscape. Every sound, including Jessica’s mystery sound, has its own character and is given space to breath. So, the depressing silence of a hospital room is interrupted by the cracking of the old chair that Jessica’s been sitting in for hours at her sister’s bedside. The rain splatters on concrete with a metallic, industrial quality, while it feels lush and comforting out in the rainforest, the rain seeming to be more at home there than anywhere else. Everything, from human chatter in a restaurant to intimate moments is emphasized and breathes life into every scene.
Jessica herself, lost and uncomfortable in an urban environment, seems to be a magnet for any sound of life, no matter how small and only through her eyes, do we see how they are woven into the very being of the movie - memory and time itself. After she manages to reproduce the sound in a sound studio with the help of a young sound engineer named Hernán, who then interprets the sound in a beautiful song, no one ever gets to hear, but Jessica, he disappears and seems to not have existed at all, except in our and her memories. The sound further drives her to explore her sleeplessness, as her perception of space and time warps, as she soon discovers other discrepancies, like thinking someone dead and gone, who is actually alive and well.
Eventually she turns to a doctor for sleeping pills, but the doctor refuses to give her the Xanax, as she could get addicted and because it dulls the senses and makes you blind to the beauty and sadness of the world; which are indeed quite visible to us in this movie. Time continues to scrunch together, until we’re not sure, what is past, present or future, Jessica becoming a being out of time, experiencing everything and nothing in long stretches of silence.
At the end of her journey, she comes across a fisherman who claims to remember everything. He is attuned to the universe and its memories, as Jessica seems to be as well. He doesn’t dream and while he sleeps, he dies and is resurrected, when he wakes. He invites her into his home and Jessica starts to “remember”, too, finally learning the origin of the sound.
The world quiets down, she is at the end of her journey, while we’re just beginning to fathom the failing linearity of time and the mysteries of the universe.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
“Some things there’s no moving on from. And I think it’s a good thing.”
The Banshees of Inisherin takes place on a sleepy fictional island off the coast of mainland Ireland about a month before the end of the Irish Civil War in May 1923. Colm (Brendan Gleeson), an introspective man with a penchant for classical music and composing, ends his years-long friendship with Pádraic (Colin Ferrel), a nice animal-loving fellow.
Directed by Martin McDonagh
“Some things there’s no moving on from. And I think it’s a good thing.”
The Banshees of Inisherin takes place on a sleepy fictional island off the coast of mainland Ireland about a month before the end of the Irish Civil War in May 1923. Colm (Brendan Gleeson), an introspective man with a penchant for classical music and composing, ends his years-long friendship with Pádraic (Colin Ferrel), a nice animal-loving fellow. When confronted, Colm posits that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his short life with his dull friend, listening to his inane blathering. Rather he wants to compose music and generally be left in peace. To that end, he stipulates an ultimatum: Should Pádraic ever talk to Colm again, he will cut the fingers off his fiddling hand one by one. Therefore hurting his chances to play the music, he composes. It is, however, put into question, whether Colm is as intellectually superior, when Pádraic’s sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon), easily the smartest person on the island, points out some inconsistencies in his intellectual grandstanding as well as reminds him that, for her, everyone is dull on Inisherin. Pádraic, however, spurned on by his friend Dominic (Barry Keoghan), can’t stop pursuing Colm, as everything spirals out of control.
The movie was filmed on the Aran islands off the coast of Galway as well as Achill island, lending the landscape of Inisherin a quilt-like quality of everything Ireland has to offer, from farmland divided by ancient stone fences to sheer cliffs shrouded in mist to hills and mountains. The production design (Mark Tildesley) makes full use of the landscapes, setting its locations so strategically that it feels like the characters are navigating a maze, never knowing where they’ll end up eventually, invoking a timeless mythological feel. As all of the houses are located on different islands, every home tells a different story and every visit offers a unique visual and textural experience. The color palette is eclectic. Indigos, bloody reds and vibrant yellows, featured mainly in the costume designs (Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh), provide a necessary pop of color to the more expected browns and grays typical for period dramas, with the scarfs and amazing knitwear harkening back to the quintessential irishness of the story and characters.
The characters and the way their dialogue is written feels natural and their stories, while personal and unique, also mirror the classic Irish tale of conflict and isolation with the backdrop of the civil war. Both sides of the conflict in the movie as well as the war, presented a united front, once. They were friends and allies, before, seemingly out of the blue, brothers in arms turned to enemies in a spiraling conflict that led to bloodshed and death. However, the movie is not interested in straight allegories, likening every character to either side of the war, rather it invokes the feeling of utter surprise, betrayal and subsequent resentment, when a friend turns from you for seemingly minor reasons as well as showing how a deep schism like than cannot be easily overcome.
Colm is a renowned fiddle player and composer, having many people come to him from the mainland for lessons. His home is filled with knick-knacks from foreign countries, presumably sent to him by his former students or admirers. Despite his apparent worldliness, however, he never left Inisherin and now regrets having spent a lifetime on a dull island with a dull man. He breaks with Pádraic in a peculiar nebulous pursuit for “something greater” - in his case, music and the kind of immortality that comes with being remembered; a pursuit, for which he is willing to maim himself and endure the disaster that comes with his actions.Throughout the movie he is resolved, but conflicted every time he sees Pádraic, trying to outhink his emotions towards his friend’s suffering. Despite Colm being true to his word, however, Pádraic can’t stop bothering him, either, first out of concern then loneliness, and finally anger and retribution. Letting his emotions get the better of him in a bitter spiral. In the end, both men are locked in an inescapable conflict - deeply depressed choosing destruction as the way out - be it internal or external. Destruction that eventually leads to both being alone, having lost everything but each other in the conflict.
It is of note that the action takes place at the end of the war. The small rural community is shielded from outside news and from engaging with the civil war, but the atmosphere of tiredness and inescapable stillness pervades the island and its misty cliffs. The motives of the main characters and also of everyone on the island are blurry, undefined, as though no-one has the energy to go on - the only things remaining being bitterness and obstinate stubbornness, with no chance of reconciliation.
The only way to escape this purgatory, is to tear yourself from this place and leave, regardless of the pain. Siobhán as well as Dominic, the son of the local police chief, do escape in the only ways possible. Siobhán loves her brother dearly and takes care of him, but is also acutely lonely and feels her life draining with every escalating step of Pádraic’s and Colm’s conflict. Eventually, she leaves for the mainland never to return, painfully separating herself from her brother and her birthplace. Where Siobhán sees too much, Dominic chooses to see nothing, actively ignoring or ridiculing his own abuse at the hand of his father and the rejection of the community - instead retaining a shaky sliver of innocence. It is the conclusion to his story that ends the conflict and plunges everything into unbearable silence.
Martin McDonagh wrote a quintessential Irish story. A story about soured friendships, inescapable nearness and escape as the only way out, however it may look. When all is said and done, what remains is the people you’re stuck with for the rest of your life, the misty cliffs and the banshees wailing over Inisherin.
Three Winters (2022)
Anna (Michèle Brand) and Marco (Simon Wisler) live in a small village in the Swiss Alps and are in love. Alpine farming is hard labor and everyone has to do their part, be it herding cows, mowing the grass high in the mountains or stemming huge boulders out of the way. Everyone knows everyone, the entire community being quite curious about Anna’s and Marco’s future together. When they finally tie the knot and Marco gets diagnosed with a brain tumor, we’re shown how much their love can endure.
Directed by Michael Koch
Anna (Michèle Brand) and Marco (Simon Wisler) live in a small village in the Swiss Alps and are in love. Alpine farming is hard labor and everyone has to do their part, be it herding cows, mowing the grass high in the mountains or stemming huge boulders out of the way. Everyone knows everyone, the entire community being quite curious about Anna’s and Marco’s future together. When they finally tie the knot and Marco gets diagnosed with a brain tumor, we’re shown how much their love can endure.
The pacing is deliberately slow and the movie is full of still frames that are held for a protracted amount of time. It opens with a shot of a rock, which we watch, while life goes by slowly, setting the mood for what’s to come. This deliberate stillness is underpinned by a very minimal soundtrack (Tobias Koch, Jannik Giger, Chor Luzern) and a rich soundscape of nature sounds and especially breathing, which is emphasized to a sometimes uncomfortable degree.
The body, in general, is at the forefront of the movie. Before we see his face, we see Marco doing physical labor, then we switch to farmers sitting around a table and discussing how hard he can work and joking about him not drinking alcohol. Physical fitness determines your value, as a member of this society and his bulky frame is juxtaposed with Anna’s petite figure several times. As soon as Marco gets sick, the world around him gets desolate, with him sharing little to no scenes with others, except Anna. The acting both from Brand and Wisler is terrific, them conveying a bigger range of emotions through touch and looks, than the sparse dialogue.
The movie is structured like a Greek tragedy with an extradiegetic choir standing in breathtaking alpine scenery, singing you into the next act with thematically appropriate Swiss folk songs. The years serve as act dividers and the seasons set the mood, sending the protagonists on a journey not unlike the one of Orpheus and Eurydice.
All in all, Drii Winter is both a sweeping Greek tragedy and a meditative piece on love, death and the value of a person.
What You Can See From Here (2022)
Luise (Lina Wedler) a 22-year-old book shop assistant reminisces about her growing up in a strange little village in the Westerwald region of Germany and its quirky set of residents, while dealing with her crippling anxiety and her grandmother Selma’s (Corinna Harfouch) sickness. In flashbacks, we see her and her best friend Martin (Cosmo Taut) roam the nearby sun-soaked golden woods and practically live at Selma’s house. Every time Selma dreams of an Okapi, someone in the village dies within twenty-four hours, so the story kicks off, when Selma dreams once more.
Directed by Aron Lehmann
Luise (Lina Wedler) a 22-year-old book shop assistant reminisces about her growing up in a strange little village in the Westerwald region of Germany and its quirky set of residents, while dealing with her crippling anxiety and her grandmother Selma’s (Corinna Harfouch) sickness. In flashbacks, we see her and her best friend Martin (Cosmo Taut) roam the nearby sun-soaked golden woods and practically live at Selma’s house. Every time Selma dreams of an Okapi, someone in the village dies within twenty-four hours, so the story kicks off, when Selma dreams once more.
The visuals are at first quite reminiscent of Wes Anderson movies, as the cinematography (Christian Rein) is downright dreamlike and the soundtrack (Boris Bojadzhiev) is very similar to Amélie and similar movies. The characters, all played by well-known character actors, are introduced in a very symmetric full body shot, facing the camera, while a voiceover introduces them and their quirks. However, despite the very recognizable visuals and soundscape, the movie doesn’t feel redundant. On the contrary, the characters and the story feel very relatable and grounded.
The entire movie revolves around Samsara, the cyclicality of life, matter and existence, its most important symbol being a red circle drawn over some faulty floorboards in Selma’s house. Additionally, motifs like birth and rebirth, as understood by Buddhism, as well as actual Buddhist monks also play a major narrative role. We see Luise being born, held by Selma in this very circle and then love, lose, be terrified of life, love and lose again. The Okapi, a weird looking concoction of a donkey, giraffe and zebra, as the harbinger of death, is not just funny. It shows that death can’t fit into our preferred perception of life, but exists nonetheless, no matter how unexpected it looks. A fact we have to contend with.
All in all a very touching movie about birth, life, love, loss, death and rebirth.
Top 10 of 2022
For as long as I can remember, I loved year-in reviews and especially best-of listicles, but before devising this list, I truly had no idea how much power they had over me. I started reading and watching movie reviews when I was about sixteen and it quickly became a life-changing obsession. As a teenager, I would hang on to every word of anyone who called themselves a movie critic and scold myself for not liking a movie on their best-of list, and then I kept trying to like it to the point of exhaustion. Growing up, however, I learned to sit with my own opinion and to reflect on the opinions of others. The youthful self-loathing transformed into critical thinking and so, by reading movie reviews and interacting with criticism I learned to be more empathetic, while trusting myself in the process.
Year-End List
For as long as I can remember, I loved year-in reviews and especially best-of listicles, but before devising this list, I truly had no idea how much power they had over me. I started reading and watching movie reviews when I was about sixteen and it quickly became a life-changing obsession. As a teenager, I would hang on to every word of anyone who called themselves a movie critic and scold myself for not liking a movie on their best-of list, and then I kept trying to like it to the point of exhaustion. Growing up, however, I learned to sit with my own opinion and to reflect on the opinions of others. The youthful self-loathing transformed into critical thinking and so, by reading movie reviews and interacting with criticism I learned to be more empathetic, while trusting myself in the process.
My love for listicles hasn’t faded one bit, though. I still read them with great appreciation and love to explore movies I haven’t seen or even heard of before. The more unknown movies I encounter, the more I feel like a part of something greater, a network of thoughts and emotions all focussed on the greatest art form there is - cinema.
This year was filled to the brim with great movies. Social injustice, wars and a worldwide pandemic do tend to bring out the best out of the industry, regardless of how sad this sounds.
Social satires were on the rise, including mainstream and festival darlings like The Menu (Mark Mylod) and Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund). The Marvel Cinematic Universe is still the biggest moneymaker for Hollywood, raking in a whopping 26.6 billion U.S. dollars as of June 2022, but also continues to be a total disappointment, with lackluster blockbusters like Thor: Love and Thunder (Taika Waititi) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Ryan Coogler) being among the most underwhelming movies of the year. The decennial “Sight and Sound” Greatest Movies of All Time list also came out this year and Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelle (Chantal Akerman) was put on the top of the list, replacing the all time favorite Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock). I highly recommend you watch this movie and I’ll probably publish a review of it soon, but for now, let’s talk about my best movies of 2022.
The movies on this list are in no particular order. All of them are here for different reasons, be it, because they brought me incredible joy or deeply touched me and if you decide to watch one or more of them, I hope that you’ll be able to feel your way through them and come out on the other side transformed, as did I.
My Top 10 Movies of 2022
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Dir: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
My cinema year began with this fraught mother-daughter relationship. No, a martial arts fueled sci-fi adventure with sausage fingers and on-point comedy. No, a story of generational trauma in immigrant families - or was it rather a tender love story between people who have been married for an eternity? In the end, it was everything and more. This movie forever changed my perspective on motherhood, but also what it means to be an only daughter and a disappointment. It made me question my harshness towards the fallible adults in my life and made me rethink my relationship with my loved ones. A powerful, subtle sci-fi spectacle, this movie masterfully combines the cinema of attractions with high concept sci-fi and family drama.
Watch it or be swallowed by the most mysterious bagel in cinema history.
Nope
Dir: Jordan Peele
On the surface Nope is a fun sci-fi alien invasion movie, about an alien that wants to eat everything in its wake and has chosen the California backcountry as its hunting grounds and the horses on our protagonist’s ranch as its preferred meal. Below the surface, however, bubbles a meditation on harsh Hollywood environments, on taming the beast of progress and the future of the industry. It shows that Hollywood survives on passionate borderline obsessive people that push themselves to the limits to get it right, to stay there, to feel its magic, however flawed and corrupt. It shows unlikely heroes doing their darndest to get the best shot.
Watch it or be left behind in the dust of cinema history.
Corsage
Dir: Marie Kreutzer
A powerful reimagining of the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria or “Sisi”. Corsage tells the story of a woman who has been dead for a very long time and whose place in history has been determined by everyone but her. Together with actress Vicky Krieps, director Marie Kreutzer gives Elisabeth agency and the power to tell her story however she pleases. Her moods affect everyone and everything around her, her decisions have unforeseen consequences, and her search for the part of herself she lost along the way to becoming Austria’s beloved Sisi is uncomfortable, bleak and incredibly nuanced. The ending by the sea is a sigh of relief and a stark acknowledgement that women, regardless of status, should be able to write their own stories.
Watch it or be forever trapped in a corset of societal expectations.
Top Gun: Maverick
Dir: Joseph Kosinski
This movie is the perfect spectacle and is not weighed down by plot, character development or any ethical dilemmas. The only thing that counts is Tom Cruise looking cool, while flying expensive military gear and getting whatever he wants, him being as much a cash cow for the military-entertainment complex now as he was 36 years ago, when the first Top Gun (Tony Scott) came out. Watching the movie with its nebulous mission targets somewhere in Russia, witnessing the audacity of the U.S. military bombing something in a foreign country out of unapologetic arrogance was so overwhelming that my brain short-circuited into pure excitement and joy.
Watch it or be forever haunted by half-naked oiled up soldiers on the beach.
Le Otto Montagne
Dir: Felix van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch
The most sincere portrayal of friendship I’ve seen this year, Le Otto Montagne tells the story of two boys who spend their summer vacations together in the Western Alps forming an irreversible bond, until their lives diverge. In adulthood they find each other again and the Alps as well as other mountains become their guiding light through an unknowable universe. Always moving on the path of the eight mountains, life and death, summer and winter start to feel like a part of an incomprehensible cycle, always in flux, always repeating, until there is nothing but light, love and friendship.
Watch it or never be graced by the touch of the universe.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Dir: Rian Johnson
A whodunit mystery is only as good as the sum of its moving parts and, oh man, does Glass Onion have those in spades. Every character has a juicy secret and motive, every scene is dripping with clues and easter eggs and the conclusion is so incredibly satisfying that you won’t know what to do with the abundance of joy that accumulated in all the nooks and crannies of your very being (Warning: You might want to dance it out.) Benoit Blanc with his combination of over-the-top showmanship, a brilliant mind and an empathetic sense of justice is quickly becoming my favorite master detective of all time, surpassing such greats as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
Watch it or be found out by the detective with the piercing blue eyes.
She Said
Dir: Maria Schrader
Although She Said just came out, it can already easily take its place among such greats as The Post (Stephen Spielberg), Zodiac (David Fincher) and Spotlight (Tom McCarthy). The difference is that we finally get to experience women in the roles of the hardened reporters and every societal repercussion that goes with it. Megan Twohey and Jodi Cantor, well versed in the intimidation tactics of powerful men, take discreditation attempts or even threats in stride and expose them for the abusers that they are. One empathetic interview at a time, they scrupulously gather information to uncover the biggest sex scandal in the history of Hollywood and kick off the Me Too-movement in the process.
Watch it. No joke here.
The Worst Person in the World
Dir: Joachim Trier
You can’t decide what career suits you, because you’re kind of good at everything? You have a long-term relationship, but doubt your commitment every day? You don’t want kids, also you kind of do, but you don’t? - Well, you must be The Worst Person in the World. An intimate portrayal of the “modern woman”, the movie doesn’t judge the main character (or you for that matter) for any roads taken or not taken, as it is far more interested in showing and accepting the messiness of life, love and womanhood.
Watch it and stop judging yourself.
Decision to Leave
Dir: Park Chan-wook
A study in carefully crafted atmosphere, I felt the movie settle on my skin and eyelashes like a cold sticky mist. Be it by showing the lofty coldness of a mountain or the foaming maw of the unforgiving sea, Decision To Leave plants little innocuous seeds of foreshadowing directly into your brain. While you perceive the surface level plot - the murder, the characters - the atmosphere seeps into your subconscious and tells you exactly what will happen. An intrusive experience of pure movie magic, aided by the subdued acting and a meticulously curated soundtrack.
Watch it, or be forever lost in the mist.
Aftersun
Dir: Charlotte Wells
Soaked in the late summer sun, the Turkish resort opens its doors to 11-year-old Sophie and her father Callum. Its walls are fading, paint chipping from the facade and the rooms are musty from countless holiday experiences. In this trip down memory lane a 30-year-old Sophie tries to piece together her memories of this unforgettable vacation with her father. The result is a dreamlike reconciliation of the father she experienced as a child and the one she now understands better than ever. Meditating on getting older, responsibilities and love, you float through Aftersun on an inflatable mattress through the azure Mediterranean sea, not yet knowing where you’ll end up.
Watch it or fade away like fragmented DVR recorder footage.
Honorable mentions:
Apollo 10 ½ (Richard Linklater)
A unique moment captured in time, seen through the lens of a young boy, whose thoughts come out in a stream of consciousness so vivid you’ll think they’re your own.
War Pony (Gina Gammell, Riley Keough)
A fascinating and empathetic glance into the society and life of a Native American reservation and the hopes and dreams of the people who live there. A world most people don’t get to experience.
Der Russe ist Einer der Birken Liebt (Pola Shirin Beck)
An intimate study on grief and the loss of self in a constantly shifting world.
En Corps (Cédric Klapisch)
A feel-good movie about a ballet dancer who discovers that dance doesn’t just exist in the strict confines of classic ballet, but can be found in the unlikeliest of places and heals body and soul alike.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson)
A great reimagining of the well-known morality tale into a story about parental and political responsibility.
Enola Holmes 2 (Harry Bradbeer)
A fun mystery with a strong feminist message.
Servus Papa, See You in Hell (Christopher Roth)
A movie about a terrible man and how only collective action can bring such monsters down.
One Fine Morning (2022)
One Fine Morning tells the story of Sandra (Lea Seydoux), a widow living with her daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins) in a tiny apartment in Paris. Her long forgotten love life is one day reanimated, as she meets Clément (Melvil Poupaud), a former friend of her late husband, just as her father (Pascal Greggory) has to be admitted into a permanent care facility.
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve
One Fine Morning tells the story of Sandra (Lea Seydoux), a widow living with her daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins) in a tiny apartment in Paris. Her long forgotten love life is one day reanimated, as she meets Clément (Melvil Poupaud), a former friend of her late husband, just as her father (Pascal Greggory) has to be admitted into a permanent care facility.
The movie is a quiet meditation on life and death, on getting older and on missed opportunities. Sandra's father, a renowned philosophy professor suffers from a neurodegenerative disease robbing him of his precious mind and memories. Although he always wanted to write a memoir, he never was able to overcome his procrastination, until it was too late. Now, a shell of the person he once was, blind and untethered, he wanders the halls of the care facility calling out for his lover, who is ever present in his mind, but suspiciously absent from the movie.
Sandra, a translator and interpreter, meanwhile resigned herself to a life of perpetual in-betweenness. Between languages, life and death, youth and adulthood, love and despair. Her days are filled with stillness, long silences and words unspoken. Only by watching her father wither away and his indecisiveness in life haunt him to a point, where he starts to shy away from any memories, purposely forgetting his daughters and past life, does she understand that life is only worth living, when it is concrete and physical with all its exuberant joy and deep sadness.
Lea Seydoux delivers a subtle, but intense performance of a woman deathly afraid of life and Pascal Greggory brings a touching vulnerability to his character, delivering some of the most powerful scenes in the movie.
All in all, I feel like I'm missing a couple of decades of life experience to fully comprehend or appreciate this movie. Armed with a powerful message about attachment, memories and death, it sorely lacks an emotional core. The characters feel detached and even in its most passionate moments the movie feels like a still image.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Avatar: The Way of Water is the sequel to Avatar (2009). A decade after the events of the first movie, we meet Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) raising a family with four children. Their familial bliss, however, is interrupted by the arrival of the avatar clone of Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the main villain of the first film. His mission: Pacify the indigenous population of Pandora to make it a new home for humanity and, personally, avenge his death by taking out Sully and his family.
Directed by James Cameron
Avatar: The Way of Water is the sequel to Avatar (2009). A decade after the events of the first movie, we meet Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) raising a family with four children. Their familial bliss, however, is interrupted by the arrival of the avatar clone of Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the main villain of the first film. His mission: Pacify the indigenous population of Pandora to make it a new home for humanity and, personally, avenge his death by taking out Sully and his family.
Cameron builds on his critique of colonialism and American exceptionalism with an environmental and anti-imperialist message, the humans being so vile that it’s fun to watch them die in the final battle. The message is incredibly clunky and on the nose, but some things don’t require subtlety (I guess). All of the things the movie shows us happened in real life to many indigenous tribes and their environment, the level of cruelty is not overstated, so the cathartic moment of the movie is seeing the colonists not succeed for once.
Lang has a lot of fun playing the villain and the Sully family has good chemistry. Simon Franglen’s soundtrack is appropriately epic, as are the reused pieces from late James Horner. However, the main character and what does all the heavy lifting are the visuals. The creature designs are creative and colorful, the environments, both forest and water islands, are beautiful, rich and teeming with life and the character designs are expressive and believably real. The visual style is a character of its own and deserves all the praise it gets and we have to thank the insanely talented team from WētāFX for that.
Like its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water is a mediocre movie in an amazing technicolor dream coat. The ideas are not original, but executed with such vehemence that it’s hard to stay mad at their shallowness for long. The visuals are amazing and the characters likable enough. All in all, a solid blockbuster.
Apollo 10 1/2 (2022)
Apollo 10 ½ is the story of Stan (Milo Coy), a normal boy living in a brand new Houston suburb in 1960s America. With his proximity to NASA, future is in the air, as Stan navigates a happy childhood surrounded by his many siblings, astronauts and the dream of space exploration.
Directed by Richard Linklater
Apollo 10 ½ is the story of Stan (Milo Coy), a normal boy living in a brand new Houston suburb in 1960s America. With his proximity to NASA, future is in the air, as Stan navigates a happy childhood surrounded by his many siblings, astronauts and the dream of space exploration.
In a perpetual stream of consciousness, adult Stan (Jack Black) narrates his life and experiences of the space age. In seemingly never ending detail, he goes into every minutia of his life. From his fights with his siblings, to the beatings at school, his household chores, his thoughts on his family’s financial situation and most and foremost his fascination with space. Through Stan’s eyes we get a glimpse into a time of inevitable change. The Vietnam War was raging, the feminist movement was on the rise and America was at the verge of winning the space race and sending the first man to the moon.
Richard Linklater likes to play with the notion of time and boyhood and this movie is no exception. The feeling that the past doesn’t matter pervades the entire movie and gives it an uplifting almost manic feel, as we see the protagonists vibrate with possibilities. Ten years, until the first colony on Mars is established, freedom for all, free love. Anything seems possible. Stan becomes a vessel for the hopes and dreams of an entire generation, experiencing all its milestones, culminating in the moon landing of 1969 and Neil Armstrong’s legendary words “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The animation gives the movie a languid fluidity that couldn’t have been achieved in live action and the soundtrack makes the narration come alive with the feel of a typical 60-ies childhood.
Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood is a time capsule of a movie, perfectly preserving the atmosphere of a time period, where everything was possible and the future was bright. But it’s also a movie about memory and its inner workings and how everything seems just a little brighter and more palatable, if enough time has passed.