tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2949165408405355752024-03-11T21:51:30.735-07:00Are the hills going to march off?Cinema criticism with a focus on art-house and classic films.Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.comBlogger626125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-73260123741466848592019-01-22T18:47:00.000-08:002019-01-22T18:53:10.776-08:00My Favorite Films of 2018<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrd7feb8xId-zTQrkHYZ9YNRBkvLV01NexnJ3I1J_MzmbO5IKko2YhWZ15el9NVcvRd8lmCVx8rcTnB5v5W0Alq1o5Lie6_cK4L-5drD1enQ-gp2dmxu-sI0rBOM8or_2kWU_BOQN_SUM/s1600/24frames2.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrd7feb8xId-zTQrkHYZ9YNRBkvLV01NexnJ3I1J_MzmbO5IKko2YhWZ15el9NVcvRd8lmCVx8rcTnB5v5W0Alq1o5Lie6_cK4L-5drD1enQ-gp2dmxu-sI0rBOM8or_2kWU_BOQN_SUM/s400/24frames2.jpg" width="400" height="221" data-original-width="650" data-original-height="359" /></a>
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Despite having more than a handful of fairly significant blind spots in my viewing (<i>Happy as Lazzaro</i>, <i>The House That Jack Built</i>, <i>Dead Souls</i> and <i>The Rider</i> being the ones I'm most curious about), I'm still feeling like 2018 was one of this decade's standout years in terms of cinematic releases. Unlike last year, I didn't include any television or online series because the theatrical crop was just that good. And I'm 22 days late because there were some big titles that I felt I needed to catch up with before finalizing a list, so what follows looks a bit different than what I included in the list I submitted for Slant Magazine. I also had a clear #1 for the past several years but it wasn't so set in stone this year; therefore, consider 1-3 a kind of joint #1. Writing assignments were a bit more sparse over the last twelve months (voluntarily) so forgive the many slots without accompanying text. Otherwise, enjoy.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGx8eWlXN4agergeRkBjD5KRT0B5Twfu74dF9FjWM9iI0RM3Yr1svzhSf-WnJdsO15NWR5wv9KewAr5gIvAXPEvgYVvhkto_QZP0MwaqtidwP39jLgkCgmMpMOwFjV6ipxyno_g0Qy51E/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-09-19+at+10.58.08+AM.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGx8eWlXN4agergeRkBjD5KRT0B5Twfu74dF9FjWM9iI0RM3Yr1svzhSf-WnJdsO15NWR5wv9KewAr5gIvAXPEvgYVvhkto_QZP0MwaqtidwP39jLgkCgmMpMOwFjV6ipxyno_g0Qy51E/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-09-19+at+10.58.08+AM.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a>
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<b>20. <i>Classical Period</i> (Fendt, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoEX_BETB9lIl-8DPYM8YlZpAgYGgS7en9SdM_aud_WxLL-LnJwKEA60RcBtWO2aYQeGFUP61J9JX88U8JYBUcJtNcyM8ioQZhD3hDsZJWEVTfzqbJ8fsWwkNfWbfgbjf4iVVfaLIRm0s/s1600/zama.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoEX_BETB9lIl-8DPYM8YlZpAgYGgS7en9SdM_aud_WxLL-LnJwKEA60RcBtWO2aYQeGFUP61J9JX88U8JYBUcJtNcyM8ioQZhD3hDsZJWEVTfzqbJ8fsWwkNfWbfgbjf4iVVfaLIRm0s/s400/zama.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="676" /></a>
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<b>19. <i>Zama</i> (Martel, Argentina)</b>
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I wrote about a particular scene in this great movie for Slant's <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-20-best-film-scenes-of-2018">Best Film Scenes of 2018</a> list.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicU-uC1wNJVgrB2PnvpXAa4GwtmOFCaR2EkwdMoQBMXvCpje5LSa9LONQ2xoA-p86oQuyrUu44Irjs6blzDyYm7MEILVoOathlaBV34GtFCzP-giAfOLGsVAdvSMuSVTA8lHsXE7cbDJY/s1600/supportthegirls.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicU-uC1wNJVgrB2PnvpXAa4GwtmOFCaR2EkwdMoQBMXvCpje5LSa9LONQ2xoA-p86oQuyrUu44Irjs6blzDyYm7MEILVoOathlaBV34GtFCzP-giAfOLGsVAdvSMuSVTA8lHsXE7cbDJY/s400/supportthegirls.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
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<b>18. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/support-the-girls/"><i>Support the Girls</i></a> (Bujalski, USA)</b>
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"With <i>Support the Girls</i>, a seriocomic study of a single day at Double Whammies, a fictional Hooters-style restaurant in an unnamed Texas city, writer-director Andrew Bujalski splits his attention between the individual and the collective. In doing so, the filmmaker synthesizes the two poles of his cinema so far: Lisa (Regina Hall), the restaurant’s manager, joins a growing list of memorable protagonists in Bujalski’s canon who are united by their struggle to get by in a society increasingly predicated on transactional relationships, while the ensemble-driven exploration of a professional milieu and its culture recalls <i>Computer Chess</i> and parts of <i>Beeswax</i>."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKFe6gbwXO676NHBkoK6pjyPqd7906HdDRpSsFQyO3ch4pZ-4_aOGTvPmE4v3ICx0_RnQpYvk41LOTguO5mKEMZee9VOOm510yU3G5vp6SiIpcQXUgDdTNY_1l78f4Q8aZWb1xhdm-F68/s1600/goldenexits.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKFe6gbwXO676NHBkoK6pjyPqd7906HdDRpSsFQyO3ch4pZ-4_aOGTvPmE4v3ICx0_RnQpYvk41LOTguO5mKEMZee9VOOm510yU3G5vp6SiIpcQXUgDdTNY_1l78f4Q8aZWb1xhdm-F68/s400/goldenexits.png" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="780" data-original-height="438" /></a>
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<b>17. <i>Golden Exits</i> (Perry, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgceN7cDtoGuM_G9jHFRkVqZN5MDFnBEs2NqUWO_qKFBZmSfDY-9mSWc6s8QbkR6_WPcRfx2BIg5sMmPLCbg0gHcbnuzL-hiTeaU3h2QP4lPFFNP9is7cFOJWUg9Epko2nAGJSnV8DjE60/s1600/prototype.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgceN7cDtoGuM_G9jHFRkVqZN5MDFnBEs2NqUWO_qKFBZmSfDY-9mSWc6s8QbkR6_WPcRfx2BIg5sMmPLCbg0gHcbnuzL-hiTeaU3h2QP4lPFFNP9is7cFOJWUg9Epko2nAGJSnV8DjE60/s400/prototype.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="800" data-original-height="450" /></a>
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<b>16. <i>Prototype</i> (Williams, Canada)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlZ9CfrsGOQ2HafK93ZizHI-GNey-_PtUOfMcGDge-or_mbfvjPxHPo892KyWSEuwQbNTU_5bTeDF6aHL8q1zHGrPGMTgKeyXGFRAriMClpp3yWLImeUTjzMp631vzKfBMa38J_U-kv-g/s1600/unsane.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlZ9CfrsGOQ2HafK93ZizHI-GNey-_PtUOfMcGDge-or_mbfvjPxHPo892KyWSEuwQbNTU_5bTeDF6aHL8q1zHGrPGMTgKeyXGFRAriMClpp3yWLImeUTjzMp631vzKfBMa38J_U-kv-g/s400/unsane.jpg" width="400" height="237" data-original-width="590" data-original-height="350" /></a>
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<b>15. <i>Unsane</i> (Soderbergh, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijL5j1-kOuOJYEdGwljM6sggCMml83-hwa3KzCbR0N6L15EjwvyH3lVfpqTUJ-szhtyK2QFnMkBovZoeiGXfRyp-peSn5Vf2NUcufEHjQfLYsQ_k6VDkSFoxxHLlyu3QJwkrkEq5ifiFg/s1600/winterbrothers.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijL5j1-kOuOJYEdGwljM6sggCMml83-hwa3KzCbR0N6L15EjwvyH3lVfpqTUJ-szhtyK2QFnMkBovZoeiGXfRyp-peSn5Vf2NUcufEHjQfLYsQ_k6VDkSFoxxHLlyu3QJwkrkEq5ifiFg/s400/winterbrothers.jpg" width="400" height="247" data-original-width="1024" data-original-height="632" /></a>
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<b>14. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/winter-brothers/"><i>Winter Brothers</i></a> (Pálmason, Denmark) </b>
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"Shot on desaturated Super 16mm film in a Danish limestone quarry, <i>Winter Brothers</i> is one of the more aesthetically idiosyncratic directorial debuts in recent memory. Icelandic visual artist turned filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason, who decamped with his crew to the film’s inhospitable setting for the duration of the production, approaches his chosen location like Michelangelo Antonioni did with that of <i>Red Desert</i>, transforming a place of grim labor and scant sunshine into a punctiliously designed cinematic space. Where Antonioni painted trees and grass to achieve his pallid industrial dystopia, Pálmason creates his by coating the scenery in calcite, dressing his cast in filthy faded denim jumpers, and partitioning the world into a careful visual system, with each location treated to its own rigorous compositional scheme. If nothing else, the film is a feat of formal conception and craftsmanship."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4wez3FSvtlW6oRgpbIN_1tGgP8V6RCDVH1J4KxEaMf3iy9xwaEjAIwY2lU1XiuEGRC3YMHGM9Ibi5u3Yz-YB1UWAKQEQWLwlNPGRKDkJuWxFaW7eWQplEBuHFBUivIWwKNyqIACRiUM/s1600/greenfog.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4wez3FSvtlW6oRgpbIN_1tGgP8V6RCDVH1J4KxEaMf3iy9xwaEjAIwY2lU1XiuEGRC3YMHGM9Ibi5u3Yz-YB1UWAKQEQWLwlNPGRKDkJuWxFaW7eWQplEBuHFBUivIWwKNyqIACRiUM/s400/greenfog.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1000" data-original-height="563" /></a>
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<b>13. <i>The Green Fog</i> (Maddin, USA)</b>
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I wrote about a particular scene in this great movie for Slant's <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-20-best-film-scenes-of-2018">Best Film Scenes of 2018</a> list.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXwpPH_HGdXAYBgwikgV93dUHtCSkuxxNpIBhQyfs06DIEWasYGeD8Cd5UhxxaoZADuATj55yJr50DQ4PgE6TNG3pLKfkttPZNpWbUp99zOxpPcTZEuybbkZ7NDR8RDBlRkvq9PeC6YdI/s1600/shoplifters.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXwpPH_HGdXAYBgwikgV93dUHtCSkuxxNpIBhQyfs06DIEWasYGeD8Cd5UhxxaoZADuATj55yJr50DQ4PgE6TNG3pLKfkttPZNpWbUp99zOxpPcTZEuybbkZ7NDR8RDBlRkvq9PeC6YdI/s400/shoplifters.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1280" data-original-height="720" /></a>
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<b>12. <i>Shoplifters</i> (Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Japan)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicqVg67tXs7lePwTuQ2ccMUPdq5gbLp_dMPhdnV3hXm8as4E2TJQ9TXeaYjavtzWEqRAyiGR2INYHO04TSAujQk_oFz96hziLWOafokMqnltpzNKZXYIR4vKqznL4O4C3w70eFGvDYH1U/s1600/lcohen.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicqVg67tXs7lePwTuQ2ccMUPdq5gbLp_dMPhdnV3hXm8as4E2TJQ9TXeaYjavtzWEqRAyiGR2INYHO04TSAujQk_oFz96hziLWOafokMqnltpzNKZXYIR4vKqznL4O4C3w70eFGvDYH1U/s400/lcohen.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
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<b>11. <i>L Cohen</i> (Benning, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbmudJh9xEWcI3Lv2o8MLXciCxFjIDhIZMHEuKQUL9iVxENOgzaxC7uB6KVgnECDsUQSO5TNV9ZfxW61pYptfSLUtTwvP36g65f7ZQtZm1ldAeBZxX_SWoohRdBODsASA5_z0vHPOqb9A/s1600/marwen.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbmudJh9xEWcI3Lv2o8MLXciCxFjIDhIZMHEuKQUL9iVxENOgzaxC7uB6KVgnECDsUQSO5TNV9ZfxW61pYptfSLUtTwvP36g65f7ZQtZm1ldAeBZxX_SWoohRdBODsASA5_z0vHPOqb9A/s400/marwen.jpg" width="400" height="170" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="680" /></a>
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<b>10. <i>Welcome to Marwen</i> (Zemeckis, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZctRnh-lKBWamDxgFYUE8mY4YHHs9ppiDCEP5TOITZnBcAMwL4GM1Ug6F9rn8ZCLUim-MG8dYaw5OQwT4L5EKhutQTRdkWif54m-AcVlvf96W5Na2M_Ob4RykzDfitklOFGeX8mV9Hzc/s1600/DarkWebUnf.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZctRnh-lKBWamDxgFYUE8mY4YHHs9ppiDCEP5TOITZnBcAMwL4GM1Ug6F9rn8ZCLUim-MG8dYaw5OQwT4L5EKhutQTRdkWif54m-AcVlvf96W5Na2M_Ob4RykzDfitklOFGeX8mV9Hzc/s400/DarkWebUnf.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="675" /></a>
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<b>9. <i>Unfriended: Dark Web</i> (Susco, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir8Om_pT_4KrraIiFbI9LZztod3UKCRoVX1JXsQtmpYt7ntJPQBDUL1DzJWSIcpM138-JiA5WLYnEVtM8Q4q7CCQhzL33YMxZ50cVykHC0rdoe8qiiDw7kQhgIs-UP_7Yansfv_kh7gJk/s1600/halecounty.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir8Om_pT_4KrraIiFbI9LZztod3UKCRoVX1JXsQtmpYt7ntJPQBDUL1DzJWSIcpM138-JiA5WLYnEVtM8Q4q7CCQhzL33YMxZ50cVykHC0rdoe8qiiDw7kQhgIs-UP_7Yansfv_kh7gJk/s400/halecounty.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
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<b>8. <i>Hale County This Morning, This Evening</i> (Ross, USA)</b>
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I wrote about a particular scene in this great movie for Slant's <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-20-best-film-scenes-of-2018">Best Film Scenes of 2018</a> list.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx6Knlm0NHriB2A8onBhOjmaF7MCF5Na8ZpA0yxsqPeUDrebRIJ6JSbR8hVdxRhrtgAOSmx8yLL45V7o6xPw42KZMF3bt65V6WUBifpi86Iq37vk1Z-Y5VjHWmFGtBzQ0RtNJ7Y0d1eMw/s1600/didyouwonder.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx6Knlm0NHriB2A8onBhOjmaF7MCF5Na8ZpA0yxsqPeUDrebRIJ6JSbR8hVdxRhrtgAOSmx8yLL45V7o6xPw42KZMF3bt65V6WUBifpi86Iq37vk1Z-Y5VjHWmFGtBzQ0RtNJ7Y0d1eMw/s400/didyouwonder.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="727" data-original-height="409" /></a>
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<b>7. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/did-you-wonder-who-fired-the-gun"><i>Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? </i></a> (Wilkerson, USA)</b>
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"Given these intriguing byways, it’s hard not to yearn for an expansion of this project, and yet the film’s concision is also a byproduct of its attempted self-effacement. Noticeably uncomfortable with the intermittently tasteful construction of his own work (at one point he calls attention to the fact that he’s shooting an unmarked grave with “an expensive camera”), Wilkerson takes every opportunity to ground his filmmaking in concrete realities that may not always be conducive to easy viewing, awkwardly superimposing a low-resolution photo over an otherwise appealingly composed image or leaving certain scenes bereft of any auditory embellishment. The film’s final movement directly quotes Chantal Akerman’s thematically analogous <i>Sud</i> in packaging an act of remembrance as a seemingly endless traveling shot. As with the Peck footage, Wikerson tints the shot red, making clear that we’re on a road that embodies the plague of racism itself."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCkc8tLVQpT35xdDFbrZCQRRjL0GuGfWVmYz3mDjhqhc39mjBkfVz-ogMzvuZ_I6fXYqGvY_9OmbXO-94AChZlOhWG7oWlSlAowDBSTQ7ZG0WecTwd12RbfsyrVDdWwpyIXIQqr3a4ujM/s1600/elmarlamar.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCkc8tLVQpT35xdDFbrZCQRRjL0GuGfWVmYz3mDjhqhc39mjBkfVz-ogMzvuZ_I6fXYqGvY_9OmbXO-94AChZlOhWG7oWlSlAowDBSTQ7ZG0WecTwd12RbfsyrVDdWwpyIXIQqr3a4ujM/s400/elmarlamar.jpg" width="400" height="239" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="956" /></a>
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<b>6. <i>El Mar La Mar</i> (Sniadecki, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtVUXrGv0Vho5LOsXzKjjNUfFnHqdWzKjhOC0G_z7xEsucIhUuA4ISncWvkJLfJdJs5XnlKHfDdybcEvI6UilVkEokEBLpY_caKz5OQF2kh_kEWmLjnSB9XtSFoz9a_FIubNxEOYKLqc4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-11-27+at+2.27.30+AM.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtVUXrGv0Vho5LOsXzKjjNUfFnHqdWzKjhOC0G_z7xEsucIhUuA4ISncWvkJLfJdJs5XnlKHfDdybcEvI6UilVkEokEBLpY_caKz5OQF2kh_kEWmLjnSB9XtSFoz9a_FIubNxEOYKLqc4/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-11-27+at+2.27.30+AM.png" width="400" height="250" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1000" /></a>
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<b>5. <i>The Other Side of the Wind</i> (Welles, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioK_sLMdDUK9_Q-uan_hU_CQ6msQnRxmL40_GPNtGke63JckKRur6mlrXFYgToXPC_EPw0YK5MRn2ZLlsOd5k27Y88e2XFoyngsOpVADz7V8kSd875804t1TDcis3iWvQVmWndJ0Bo77Q/s1600/first-reformed.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioK_sLMdDUK9_Q-uan_hU_CQ6msQnRxmL40_GPNtGke63JckKRur6mlrXFYgToXPC_EPw0YK5MRn2ZLlsOd5k27Y88e2XFoyngsOpVADz7V8kSd875804t1TDcis3iWvQVmWndJ0Bo77Q/s400/first-reformed.jpg" width="400" height="210" data-original-width="631" data-original-height="332" /></a>
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<b>4. <i>First Reformed</i> (Schrader, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtxabX9jKN9VeteUWPKBD7CGBAmJQXlpNjckbAlgoRPLyakKl02NzvSpvcn2GWUbw9egZ6ygyVGfKIX0ODll2AskAOC3lUAfuyzTKdsCMyyn9wo81m7rkQ2APMn-ulGR7RYnC3O68tE_Q/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-10-17+at+12.03.04+PM.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtxabX9jKN9VeteUWPKBD7CGBAmJQXlpNjckbAlgoRPLyakKl02NzvSpvcn2GWUbw9egZ6ygyVGfKIX0ODll2AskAOC3lUAfuyzTKdsCMyyn9wo81m7rkQ2APMn-ulGR7RYnC3O68tE_Q/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-10-17+at+12.03.04+PM.png" width="400" height="217" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="869" /></a>
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<b>3. <i>Monrovia, Indiana</i> (Wiseman, USA)</b>
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(Capsule written for <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-films-of-2018/P4">Slant's year-end list</a>.) "After making a series of films over the last few years that took encouraging views of communities and institutions, celebrating how people of different backgrounds can be brought around to new ways of thinking, Frederick Wiseman settles with <i>Monrovia, Indiana</i> on a milieu whose relative social, cultural, and religious homogeneity results in a brutal narrowing of horizons for the eponymous town’s population. Over the course of a relatively curt two-and-a-half-hours, the film volleys between town council meetings, commercial farming shifts, freemasonry ceremonies, class sessions at a high school, and more. Wiseman stitches each episode together with depopulated shots of Monrovia’s one-block main street and surrounding cornfields—all edited in uptempo fashion to emphasize the almost chilling emptiness of the town. The filmmaker lingers attentively on the minutia of labor within Monrovia, even as he leaves out the ultimate upshot of all this repetitive work. What awaits the souls of Monrovia—or contemporary America, for that matter—other than the grave? Wiseman’s elegy, which concludes with one of the most profoundly unsettling monologues in his oeuvre, seeks this answer and comes up wanting."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_5C1RogEJBcoZyJt62FdmRoUwE0Amsgr3j6Sxyy-DCJUvNVhubTXGBVAtREyD_JlXC3RwUfHmxoWCSwT44pwXQAwgM1d079m6HkYVIlwNB1Bpw2bqiUlL8mHotoz8UmaukdftDykfB0Q/s1600/24frames.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_5C1RogEJBcoZyJt62FdmRoUwE0Amsgr3j6Sxyy-DCJUvNVhubTXGBVAtREyD_JlXC3RwUfHmxoWCSwT44pwXQAwgM1d079m6HkYVIlwNB1Bpw2bqiUlL8mHotoz8UmaukdftDykfB0Q/s400/24frames.png" width="400" height="250" data-original-width="1280" data-original-height="800" /></a>
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<b>2. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/24-frames"><i>24 Frames</i></a> (Kiarostami, Iran)</b>
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"<i>24 Frames</i> is a delight on sensory levels alone, and depending on one’s patience for contemplating glimpses of natural and almost exclusively non-human goings-on, the overall effect is near-transcendent. But there’s also another feeling shading the experience, a steadily creeping poignancy that relates to the extra-textual knowledge of Kiarostami’s passing and the way in which the film’s ultra-simple structure—title cards announce each frame chronologically in between vignettes—acts as an expiring clock on the master’s career. If Kiarostami is, as suggested by Jean-Luc Godard, the end of cinema to D.W. Griffith’s beginning, then there’s a sobering poetry in the film’s use of the medium’s paradigmatic frame rate for its title and underlying construction. And especially gut-punching is the film’s concluding vignette, which bears witness to the last slow-motion stutters of an After Effects display rendering out an old movie’s soaring final kiss, all while the female editor dozes off at the workstation."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxnWv7AVJhSbQ6NU_LtMWxS6rNg9dUo4SyOLCMtNHZqPF8K2g5xWpDQ2mdjxtNyDRnwTb_xve6VAUw1iwgroVjv4cydngV4u_IvyDyWCxPzIRQLU-HAG5hwGMMNMBS-DGV5dvmCTDRe3w/s1600/LettheSunshinein.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxnWv7AVJhSbQ6NU_LtMWxS6rNg9dUo4SyOLCMtNHZqPF8K2g5xWpDQ2mdjxtNyDRnwTb_xve6VAUw1iwgroVjv4cydngV4u_IvyDyWCxPzIRQLU-HAG5hwGMMNMBS-DGV5dvmCTDRe3w/s400/LettheSunshinein.jpg" width="400" height="241" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="963" /></a>
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<b>1. <i>Let the Sunshine In</i> (Denis, France)</b>
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(Written for In Review Online's <a href="http://inreviewonline.com/2018/12/29/year-in-review-2018-film/">year-end list.</a>) "Made as a lark during production delays for the much more ambitious <i>High Life</i>, Claire Denis’s <i>Let the Sunshine In</i> nevertheless manages to alight on some very profound subject matter: namely, love, and the hours upon hours we spend conceptualizing it, pursuing it, and tripping over ourselves trying to just make it happen. Occupying a genre (romantic comedy) that’s typically thought to be the domain of the frivolous, Denis’s film doggedly details the love life of bohemian divorcée Isabelle (Juliette Binoche), a woman of deep sensitivity and resilience, and one for whom all other day-to-day concerns — her painting career, her family, the obstacles of living life in modern day Paris — become secondary to the hunt for her own romantic ideal. Though Isabelle’s superlative man is never explicitly defined by Denis, nor discovered by Isabelle herself, this film’s narrative does circle around a cluster of eligibles who fall short: the rapaciously horny Vincent (Xavier Beauvois), the emotionally out-of-step Marc (Alex Descas), an unstable and possibly alcoholic actor (Nicolas Duvauchelle), an ex-husband (Laurent Grévill) who still swings by for afternoon lovemaking, and a few others who briefly catch Isabelle’s fancy. Less oblique than usual, Denis’s filmmaking is intimately tethered to the temperament of her protagonist and the remarkably vulnerable performance of her star. When Isabelle’s in the throes of desire, the camera swoons along with her; when she’s defeated and confessional, it regards her with an honest, unmediated clarity. By turns gut-wrenching and revitalizing, <i>Let the Sunshine In</i> is anything but a fluffy diversion; its ostensible lightness cuts right to the heart of the matter." I also wrote about a particular scene in this great movie for Slant's <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-20-best-film-scenes-of-2018">Best Film Scenes of 2018</a> list.
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<b>Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order)</b>: <i>Burning</i>, <i>Cam</i>, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-commuter/"><i>The Commuter</i></a>, <i>The Day After</i>, <i>Distant Constellation</I>, <i>Good Luck</i>, <i>Infinite Football</i>, <i>Isle of Dogs</i>, <i>Leave No Trace</i>, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/love-after-love/"><i>Love After Love</i></a>, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/lover-for-a-day/"><i>Lover for a Day</i></a>, <i>Mandy</i>, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/pow-wow/"><i>Pow Wow</i></a>, <i>Werewolf</i>, <i>Western</i>Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-30090692838977008102018-09-11T12:38:00.001-07:002018-09-11T12:38:21.640-07:00The Sacrifice (1986) A Film by Andrei Tarkovsky<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNpoj3ECgjvLDmDtS4hElwuEsEPpoHDKd-SimCJYLM4ZNmDYNaqxtzm0MM9L_ZKWgDANwv-YvCN4jII9oNZ89PsdkcQFaQgTnzd2sjkvOxpx5MIGrtlf7c7plR9d7rCskspns6rWDlqks/s1600/sac.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNpoj3ECgjvLDmDtS4hElwuEsEPpoHDKd-SimCJYLM4ZNmDYNaqxtzm0MM9L_ZKWgDANwv-YvCN4jII9oNZ89PsdkcQFaQgTnzd2sjkvOxpx5MIGrtlf7c7plR9d7rCskspns6rWDlqks/s400/sac.jpg" width="400" height="238" data-original-width="706" data-original-height="420" /></a>
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"In Andrei Tarkovsky’s <i>The Sacrifice</i>, the distance from hope to despair is a short jump—a chasm crossed with the help of something so immediate as a television transmission. As his birthday celebration winds down on a gloomy summer evening in remote Sweden, retired intellectual Alexander (Erland Josephson) tiptoes half-drunk into his living room to find a small company of friends and family bewitched by the soft blue glow of a TV set’s screen, out of which emanates an announcement of nuclear conflict. The warning winds down, the TV is turned off, and the mood descends—first into stunned silence, then into outright hysteria, and then into a kind of sedated anxiousness from which the film never quite resurfaces. In certain contexts, this dramaturgical pivot might register a bit maudlin, but in 2018, when Twitter and cable news provide an endless gushing stream of outrages, the film’s evocation of being rapidly thrown into disarray by a piece of topical turmoil hits home."
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Kino released a new Blu-ray for <i>The Sacrifice</i>, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/the-sacrifice">so I reviewed it for Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-78198365514178787042018-08-31T14:47:00.000-07:002018-08-31T14:47:39.679-07:00Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2018) A Film by Bruno Dumont<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg3P7pXPjely0gSHbPgD31z3Di-N9B0fFfQtN0sT-fHTAMjHTzCQqxT-0gD_79Rf8ncg7A6VAiPMW4tT5_jSP8f02xxrlXQGG_GU9JCf-HOch6NT-0A3cKydzn3bxe_AI35_2DhOc-5Ws/s1600/Jeannette.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg3P7pXPjely0gSHbPgD31z3Di-N9B0fFfQtN0sT-fHTAMjHTzCQqxT-0gD_79Rf8ncg7A6VAiPMW4tT5_jSP8f02xxrlXQGG_GU9JCf-HOch6NT-0A3cKydzn3bxe_AI35_2DhOc-5Ws/s400/Jeannette.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="960" data-original-height="540" /></a>
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"For all its natural beauty and genuine sense of surprise, however, this is a film handicapped by Igorrr’s uniquely terrible music, a near-constant formless riffing that alternately suggests reheated Evanescence tracks, Raffi sing-alongs, and the electronic tinkerings of a GarageBand apprentice. Where the silences in between words in Dumont’s cinema used to be filled with spacious field sounds and feelings of unspoken dread, now they’re stuffed with skittering breakbeats and doomy double-bass-pedal hammering. It’s true that the disorientation produced in the collision of Igorrr’s frenetic style-mashing and Dumont’s unadorned long-take aesthetic ensures that the film feels remarkably distinct from prior cinematic adaptations of Joan of Arc’s life, but it’s also hard not to wonder how this particular story might have played without the farfetched musical conceit grafted atop it. As it stands, <i>Jeannette</i> is admirable in its defiance of recognizable modes and its naked showcase of Dumont’s exploding imagination, but it’s a tedious novelty indeed."
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<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/jeannette-the-childhood-of-joan-of-arc">Full review at Slant</a>.Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-76729881687084945982018-04-17T14:06:00.000-07:002018-04-17T14:06:17.170-07:00Love After Love (2018) A Film by Russell Harbaugh<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVY0XJxRpDPecyJbOtekcAmBRvEYv505ZZFpks-UAHkIBlkS23moHOWXuUfiE5LGtkrahGLZRR5Y2xL5Lwn1ZZW4PO2KSUxjqb49t1ffKcVvsiNNTGSkuAR91pKCdmiWSkQJy5VQ3kp0/s1600/Love_After_Love_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVY0XJxRpDPecyJbOtekcAmBRvEYv505ZZFpks-UAHkIBlkS23moHOWXuUfiE5LGtkrahGLZRR5Y2xL5Lwn1ZZW4PO2KSUxjqb49t1ffKcVvsiNNTGSkuAR91pKCdmiWSkQJy5VQ3kp0/s400/Love_After_Love_2.jpg" width="400" height="231" data-original-width="1040" data-original-height="600" /></a>
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"For a film about the breakdown of a bourgeoisie family’s comfortable suburban existence following the death of its patriarch, Russell Harbaugh’s <i>Love After Love</i> is a remarkably cool-headed, composed piece of work. Like John Magary’s <i>The Mend</i>, which Harbaugh helped conceive, this melancholic drama is marked by an acute focus on the quarrelsome collision of various family members’ ideas of themselves and each other, and it benefits from its nuanced, fully inhabited performances. But unlike <i>The Mend</i>, which is as abundant in frantic leaps in style as it is in mood swings, <i>Love After Love</i> displays a commitment to balance, consistency, and a persistent formal idea: In every scene, a steady camera observes Harbaugh’s characters from a careful distance on a zoom lens, and the cutting is dictated less by the tempo of their banter than by the turbulent pace of their inner lives."
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<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/love-after-love#disqus_thread">Full review continues at Slant.</a>Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-23044416261723059392018-04-02T16:23:00.001-07:002018-04-02T16:23:10.466-07:00Drift (2017) A Film by Helena Wittmann<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt6J2tDLW_-PDL7pAZRJKgGivFU2eEnHfYLju5xFZzXYEhuuSMbtVMIN9IVMuOyGvvtGTHIU4mRyo6H9ovMVcPajRWo7LjosysVsrOmyly_xjkL6GzbT1zp3coufN_2yu-i7QflJ2fSr0/s1600/drift_still_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt6J2tDLW_-PDL7pAZRJKgGivFU2eEnHfYLju5xFZzXYEhuuSMbtVMIN9IVMuOyGvvtGTHIU4mRyo6H9ovMVcPajRWo7LjosysVsrOmyly_xjkL6GzbT1zp3coufN_2yu-i7QflJ2fSr0/s400/drift_still_2.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
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"The ocean has provided fertile territory for visual experimentation in recent years in a number of non-narrative art-house films, from Mauro Herce's hallucinatory <i>Dead Slow Ahead</i> to Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel's frantic <i>Leviathan</i>. Helena Wittmann's <i>Drift</i> can now be added to this micro-genre, which isn't so much nascent as inextricably connected to an ancient tradition of storytelling based around the unknowable mystery of the sea. Two examples of this narrative legacy get cited early on in the film when its nameless female protagonists share thoughts at a beachfront café somewhere in wintry Germany prior to their parting from one another after a long weekend. One (Theresa George), who will soon embark on a solo expedition across the Atlantic, paraphrases a Papua New Guinea creation myth regarding a primeval crocodile and the warrior who slays it. The other (Josefina Gill), who plans to return to her native Argentina, responds by mentioning the legend of Nahuel Huapi, a Patagonian riff on the Loch Ness monster."
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<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/drift-2017">Full review of this New Directors/New Films entry continues at Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-48231366201422908492018-03-29T11:26:00.000-07:002018-03-29T11:26:08.783-07:00Winter Brothers (2017) A Film by Hlynur Pálmason<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYme-0fd55XCVW7RJbCP89a3hnOZomScvxEoX_EdsUQmyYfgGwplR4sYUYX6DAmqniWsjJqyiV8Zt-OMxETF4iydfJa4U5eo5cZ28Gmnazyc1TDVO0FnUS6u6bDZ0oILNFQ_L9gQKpJ_I/s1600/WinterBros.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYme-0fd55XCVW7RJbCP89a3hnOZomScvxEoX_EdsUQmyYfgGwplR4sYUYX6DAmqniWsjJqyiV8Zt-OMxETF4iydfJa4U5eo5cZ28Gmnazyc1TDVO0FnUS6u6bDZ0oILNFQ_L9gQKpJ_I/s400/WinterBros.jpg" width="400" height="246" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="737" /></a>
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"Shot on desaturated Super 16 mm film in a Danish limestone quarry, <i>Winter Brothers</i> is one of the more aesthetically idiosyncratic directorial debuts in recent memory. Icelandic visual artist turned filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason, who decamped with his crew to the film's inhospitable setting for the duration of the production, approaches his chosen location like Michelangelo Antonioni did with that of <i>Red Desert</i>, transforming a place of grim labor and scant sunshine into a punctiliously designed cinematic space. Where Antonioni painted trees and grass to achieve his pallid industrial dystopia, Pálmason creates his by coating the scenery in calcite, dressing his cast in filthy faded denim jumpers, and partitioning the world into a careful visual system, with each location treated to its own rigorous compositional scheme. If nothing else, the film is a feat of formal conception and craftsmanship."
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Full review of this incredibly striking directorial debut, part of the New Directors/New Films series, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/winter-brothers">continues at Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-70714966580916743362018-03-26T11:05:00.002-07:002018-03-26T11:05:28.056-07:00Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (2017) A Film by Travis Wilkerson<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis5qJ-r6Ug-KptLKbrY_xftAiqiGX-ig4dBH2IQ3JAMHbIZQvNBzYraJHL7ujI-gkqxHrJsB8OlYyCo5i9l6pIx3dVjb157qrSSytzmoHTwl2cnlBDeAz-Q1RpfRNnk8R7pwcVj2P7qjU/s1600/Wilkerson.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis5qJ-r6Ug-KptLKbrY_xftAiqiGX-ig4dBH2IQ3JAMHbIZQvNBzYraJHL7ujI-gkqxHrJsB8OlYyCo5i9l6pIx3dVjb157qrSSytzmoHTwl2cnlBDeAz-Q1RpfRNnk8R7pwcVj2P7qjU/s400/Wilkerson.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="432" /></a>
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"The documentary <i>Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?</i> begins with a baritone voice intoning the following credo over pin-drop silence: “Trust me when I tell you this isn't another white savior story. This is a white nightmare story.” The voice belongs to director Travis Wilkerson, whose documentaries are often self-narrated, and here, sounding as though it belongs in a scare-mongering PSA, the voice immediately dispels any expectations of casual entertainment or purely pedagogical history lesson. In directly requesting the audience's trust, Wilkerson initiates a not-particularly-inviting proposition for the viewer, and specifically the white American viewer: <i>Follow my lead, the voice seems to say, and my conclusions will make you uncomfortable.</i>"
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<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/did-you-wonder-who-fired-the-gun">Full review continues at Slant.</a>Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-15399611922064874072018-03-15T23:22:00.002-07:002018-03-15T23:22:51.437-07:00Pow Wow (2017) A Film by Robinson Devor<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkXgPbqgkQbzJt7uokvwZrP8X2qJnshxAUoaNpdOU45FJw4D5u8v-XTe7VyQq_QgTCNWjMfsnOm6gxqMoWAAjXq3E-W3NqpfiSjLiQbQStzCubs0EqB-TDsWOHzpBsWFnanTrj3vzRc7U/s1600/pow-wow.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkXgPbqgkQbzJt7uokvwZrP8X2qJnshxAUoaNpdOU45FJw4D5u8v-XTe7VyQq_QgTCNWjMfsnOm6gxqMoWAAjXq3E-W3NqpfiSjLiQbQStzCubs0EqB-TDsWOHzpBsWFnanTrj3vzRc7U/s400/pow-wow.jpg" width="400" height="258" data-original-width="620" data-original-height="400" /></a>
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"In our drought-ridden Southwest, the sight of a sprinkler left to spray unsupervised for hours tends to cause alarm among the environmentally cautious. While cataloguing civic life on the periphery of Palm Springs, Robinson Devor’s <i>Pow Wow</i> internalizes this quotidian paranoia in its recurring images of golf courses being generously watered, the soothing buzz of which carries into the soundtrack as an uneasy refrain. The predominant subtext of this eccentric community portrait is the use and abuse of land in the Coachella Valley’s hostile ecosystem, a topic with historical and social dimensions that Devor teases out in small doses, all while positing water as a precious commodity with political significance of its own."
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Full review <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/pow-wow">continues at Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-5010858659692024062018-02-02T11:36:00.000-08:002019-01-16T18:02:44.525-08:00My Favorite Films of 2017<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHRAHumiQu6J2KSjUuz6_OtsQDOWvAruACqbPkigSKANYYQQWUNTPHZ3laDH9j4VhVf-BaRMGbcgJa-mmwklxVop75Gk-WjUydDKHGH0AG8DG06jnkb_VlSRKL1aKtvI2NZybxoTLX_Uo/s1600/tptr.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHRAHumiQu6J2KSjUuz6_OtsQDOWvAruACqbPkigSKANYYQQWUNTPHZ3laDH9j4VhVf-BaRMGbcgJa-mmwklxVop75Gk-WjUydDKHGH0AG8DG06jnkb_VlSRKL1aKtvI2NZybxoTLX_Uo/s400/tptr.jpg" width="400" height="205" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="307" /></a>
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Things were a bit different in 2017. I shot a feature-length film with a good friend and wrote and recorded the debut album of a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/minesfalls/">new</a> <a href="https://soundcloud.com/minesfalls">musical</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MinesFalls">project</a>, and both events considerably overshadowed my film viewing and writing, not to mention my dwindling participation in "film culture," which has been growing increasingly inane in the age of Twitter. Serendipitously, this relative lack of investment in theatrical filmgoing occurred in a particularly fecund year for non-theatrical forms of visual media (i.e. television and streaming stuff), so I've abandoned the rules I clung to in previous years regarding inclusion in this list. (With that said, I just couldn't bring myself to include Super Bowl LI or Game 5 of the World Series in this round-up despite being two of my most rapturous viewing experiences in 2017.) As always, this list is as much for my own records as it is for your perusal, but I'm not a wild self-promoter during the year so I hope it can also function belatedly as a helpful aggregator of the pieces I wrote that, however proud I was with them, nonetheless probably fell off into internet obscurity.
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Also, it's worth noting that I (obviously) fell way behind on developing this post, and at this point with my top-of-year assignments and obligations piling up, I'm not in the mood to write new capsules for some of these films that I haven't seen in months. In the case of the eight films here that don't have accompanying text, I've just linked to my favorites pieces of writing on them. Hope that's cool with y'all. For films that do have copy attached, the titles link to my reviews.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3t1G-2oaGLXnIpB9WqpfCUXoBe8DopTCv8xgomyyWwYfNSrFQVoBMOjmLv0_R5eFesCfo8epbroHqNLzeht9XS-TMdquBmc_idjQvlO13WAWZX685JqfBE-NyRpbl_GBFhEpuCtDY6SU/s1600/cureforwellness.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3t1G-2oaGLXnIpB9WqpfCUXoBe8DopTCv8xgomyyWwYfNSrFQVoBMOjmLv0_R5eFesCfo8epbroHqNLzeht9XS-TMdquBmc_idjQvlO13WAWZX685JqfBE-NyRpbl_GBFhEpuCtDY6SU/s400/cureforwellness.jpg" width="400" height="223" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="669" /></a>
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<b>20. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/a-cure-for-wellness"><i>A Cure for Wellness</i></a> (Verbinski, USA/Germany)</b>
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"Verbinski excels at such disorienting crosscuts (the film’s literally hell-raising climax juxtaposes ghastly happenings in the spa’s basement with jubilant festivities in the ballroom above), and in a larger sense, <i>A Cure for Wellness</i> thrives on a collision of tones. The immaculate cosmetics of the wellness retreat itself, from the prudently manicured foliage to everyone’s spotless white uniforms, contrast with an alarming emphasis on creepy-crawly body horror. There’s enough sickly exposed white flesh on display throughout the film—often submerged in water filled with man-eating eels—to make Ulrich Seidl blush, while one bit of dental treatment/torture administered to Lockhart produces a retina-searing image worthy of early Cronenberg."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-URrpElC3NVPE-Dc1Bf9anwrxYYIKEKzHufWV8Cjkhd_VC3Vqw7zqx166OH9qPkDm5j3Sezf_GFvxPbjM34Bwv9QjTbaHtcE_LLF9eOE1EDtm2EEjSEU99_hAVSX4fxZIDH8SuKYQD5w/s1600/autumnautumn.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-URrpElC3NVPE-Dc1Bf9anwrxYYIKEKzHufWV8Cjkhd_VC3Vqw7zqx166OH9qPkDm5j3Sezf_GFvxPbjM34Bwv9QjTbaHtcE_LLF9eOE1EDtm2EEjSEU99_hAVSX4fxZIDH8SuKYQD5w/s400/autumnautumn.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
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<b>19. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/autumn-autumn"><i>Autumn, Autumn</i></a> (Jang, South Korea)</b>
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"If conventional narrative cinema grammar has trained us to understand scenes taking place prior to the broadcasting of a film’s title as build-up to the story proper, a whetting of the palette for the more significant events to come, then how do we negotiate the import of Ji-hyeon’s tale, remarkably slight as it seems? This is just one of the gentle perplexities of <i>Autumn, Autumn</i>, a deft realist miniature that operates as both a record of everyday spaces and a document of the emotionally charged, albeit ephemeral, human dramas that pass through them. When the film abandons Ji-hyeon after its delayed title card to resume a different narrative thread, it becomes apparent that Jang’s conception of storytelling isn’t linear but delicately cubist, and rooted less by human agency than by a fixed time and place."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9F8xRAcYWyseZlrMFGW5VYq1OgffmyreXh1EVlskV-wv9UEQtV2WcocUXUJGyiZ328bb_sVyr3tWDqVIEQ5NOPosCrRA4SSBQjaVOkOVuE1iB8c9NyHSHDpXYBJ2rben1501JhPkXxXk/s1600/songtosong.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9F8xRAcYWyseZlrMFGW5VYq1OgffmyreXh1EVlskV-wv9UEQtV2WcocUXUJGyiZ328bb_sVyr3tWDqVIEQ5NOPosCrRA4SSBQjaVOkOVuE1iB8c9NyHSHDpXYBJ2rben1501JhPkXxXk/s400/songtosong.jpg" width="400" height="168" data-original-width="620" data-original-height="260" /></a>
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<b>18. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/song-to-song"><i>Song to Song</i></a> (Malick, USA)</b>
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"In the end, <i>Song to Song</i> has next to nothing of consequence to say about the music scene in 2017, just as <i>Knight of Cups</i>’s gloss on Hollywood deal-making and networking was nothing if not incidental. Though the film features dozens of musical cues from artists ranging from Bob Marley to Sharon Van Etten to Julianna Barwick, its snapshots of big-venue machinations and backstage antics comprise only a fraction of its content. Instead, the music industry—as a combustible, always-moving collaborative enterprise in which nothing’s guaranteed—provides the textural backdrop for another long-form, free-associative investigation into the highs and low of romantic love, and one that arguably constitutes the most rewarding of Malick’s recent output."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAklsbHCZv1ujQZE_9-UpYvLNpJ7bJ7syy9k7NT4RhLvAy-hV12U_18xIZHtnHNhnKm7MrIq8xxKFp57l7JHYzchZotRP38WDOI6GjvOx5IVqeCSoHwOQ_2IkTjvyZKEtfN7TXhA9acNQ/s1600/thechallenge.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAklsbHCZv1ujQZE_9-UpYvLNpJ7bJ7syy9k7NT4RhLvAy-hV12U_18xIZHtnHNhnKm7MrIq8xxKFp57l7JHYzchZotRP38WDOI6GjvOx5IVqeCSoHwOQ_2IkTjvyZKEtfN7TXhA9acNQ/s400/thechallenge.jpg" width="400" height="168" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="671" /></a>
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<b>17. <a href="https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/film-week-challenge/"><i>The Challenge</i></a> (Ancarani, Switzerland)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipsUgxP8hTGF0KQwElfQkLBnqe0NjstlgssqB3nQjLpBE3Kf3yjH557gK6r_6QnIDCgeZoElpfodpOlLcDMpBD08_kYgH2hn982hysI8Uum5Qai65uf4_e7ezU7qIxlaMF773bU0w4tkM/s1600/floridaproject.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipsUgxP8hTGF0KQwElfQkLBnqe0NjstlgssqB3nQjLpBE3Kf3yjH557gK6r_6QnIDCgeZoElpfodpOlLcDMpBD08_kYgH2hn982hysI8Uum5Qai65uf4_e7ezU7qIxlaMF773bU0w4tkM/s400/floridaproject.jpg" width="400" height="167" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="500" /></a>
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<b>16. <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/10/18/if-heaven-aint-a-lot-like-disney/"><i>The Florida Project</i></a> (Baker, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHHM8B2TW5i2q319B3-PN6Q9E9oiy4LTrEodq_n5wHuKLou61Gv1dhAdTmMPJTrhiqfUldISQqp6ti0BCfLh3GSbg89X-H4tt2iYDrHYBq-Sipc1CtcxWwXeRzXW5J-Dwx9I7VaQ-uFPM/s1600/nathanforyou.jpeg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHHM8B2TW5i2q319B3-PN6Q9E9oiy4LTrEodq_n5wHuKLou61Gv1dhAdTmMPJTrhiqfUldISQqp6ti0BCfLh3GSbg89X-H4tt2iYDrHYBq-Sipc1CtcxWwXeRzXW5J-Dwx9I7VaQ-uFPM/s400/nathanforyou.jpeg" width="400" height="265" data-original-width="588" data-original-height="389" /></a>
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<b>15. <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2017/11/14/16650726/nathan-for-you-season-4-finale-finding-frances"><i>Nathan for You: Season 4</i></a> (Fielder & Koman, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqxJfMEq_uhJrf9YlBVriQ5jMdHq1eRDCJe3kZ_A9YzolJMN-bT8s6dzWma0LzWy3fTZtNSr9cSdarAt4J6aVD0UcrZQ0YTtH5Li3JRuQDfJjAmo9T6kO-zpwJ9F2HzZC5u0ZarRuJWi8/s1600/personalshopper.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqxJfMEq_uhJrf9YlBVriQ5jMdHq1eRDCJe3kZ_A9YzolJMN-bT8s6dzWma0LzWy3fTZtNSr9cSdarAt4J6aVD0UcrZQ0YTtH5Li3JRuQDfJjAmo9T6kO-zpwJ9F2HzZC5u0ZarRuJWi8/s400/personalshopper.jpg" width="400" height="238" data-original-width="960" data-original-height="570" /></a>
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<b>14. <a href="http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/2252/personal_shopper"><i>Personal Shopper</i></a> (Assayas, France)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTheOAS3by1zMjR59OydR8Wbohd7tvb4wqxQXW2d4rvzQYnzggKvx_2vPmA20Ie_WVFd08O7dlRV5jdWcycixxgxXVlApc0NXFwxLf2gwysxVgXclhxy8v-9zehyJBB9Rm5NrS_cs9-A/s1600/ladybird.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTheOAS3by1zMjR59OydR8Wbohd7tvb4wqxQXW2d4rvzQYnzggKvx_2vPmA20Ie_WVFd08O7dlRV5jdWcycixxgxXVlApc0NXFwxLf2gwysxVgXclhxy8v-9zehyJBB9Rm5NrS_cs9-A/s400/ladybird.jpg" width="400" height="254" data-original-width="920" data-original-height="584" /></a>
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<b>13. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/lady-bird"><i>Lady Bird</i></a> (Gerwig, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPDijCfavdjLHYOb8ox7e1B1bg2RV3Yib1F-BRzkgbaSdwXn8j0FUbtV-MRpoZLKYDCRYoqu3l6q5-nHK-e1y3VCswXYH_Zh7d2D4uaD2O9oOKeNBMCsHzDflIbN3HARoKgIoCEWuFjGo/s1600/hermia-and-helena.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPDijCfavdjLHYOb8ox7e1B1bg2RV3Yib1F-BRzkgbaSdwXn8j0FUbtV-MRpoZLKYDCRYoqu3l6q5-nHK-e1y3VCswXYH_Zh7d2D4uaD2O9oOKeNBMCsHzDflIbN3HARoKgIoCEWuFjGo/s400/hermia-and-helena.jpg" width="400" height="223" data-original-width="800" data-original-height="445" /></a>
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<b>12. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/hermia-and-helena"><i>Hermia and Helena</i></a> (Piñeiro, Argentina)</b>
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"It may be Piñeiro’s most inspired and thrilling work to date, exhaustive in its means of keeping the viewer off balance and yet rich in its emotional implications. The subject matter is derived at least tangentially from the director’s own recent tenure as a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard and as a Big Apple resident (Camila is twice redirected by an obliging local while walking the wrong way to a destination, which feels like potential self-portraiture on Piñeiro’s part), and this firsthand experience lends an added charge to the film’s inquiries into the nature of belonging, the difficulties of translation (and transition), and the coexistence of past and present."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih4XuU6AKc7FNCk6YAWCxqnM9oQqRDY3NCaMMAcEdiFVVOzXoxPoiY_82SHILh2dC00S61ZnaCATDl2h6FvbYCACfROJjQaeYPO647cFd0XxnuEmQxpRoSwS3HfdvLFOnaoYdvRWUdfFQ/s1600/ratfilm.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih4XuU6AKc7FNCk6YAWCxqnM9oQqRDY3NCaMMAcEdiFVVOzXoxPoiY_82SHILh2dC00S61ZnaCATDl2h6FvbYCACfROJjQaeYPO647cFd0XxnuEmQxpRoSwS3HfdvLFOnaoYdvRWUdfFQ/s400/ratfilm.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="675" /></a>
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<b>11. <a href="http://cinema-scope.com/spotlight/rat-film-theo-anthony-us/"><i>Rat Film</i></a> (Anthony, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJKlWY9wPfObedhLWlvH4BGmOgiYzx5s_nxeBTMXzMnnRquWyqlmpcSMreyqYhHm798nDEz6qx-nOBN5eKx34LNyAup-aW4GcHFhsK7LBk6JPOp3JiY6x2hw5evnSI35b7bkXVdz7KqFM/s1600/goodtime.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJKlWY9wPfObedhLWlvH4BGmOgiYzx5s_nxeBTMXzMnnRquWyqlmpcSMreyqYhHm798nDEz6qx-nOBN5eKx34LNyAup-aW4GcHFhsK7LBk6JPOp3JiY6x2hw5evnSI35b7bkXVdz7KqFM/s400/goodtime.jpg" width="400" height="152" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="456" /></a>
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<b>10. <a href="http://cinema-scope.com/spotlight/rat-film-theo-anthony-us/"><i>Good Time</i></a> (Safdies, USA)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Etwi-2dj7kS_OHfzyLYzYSRNvdlyrNXgO5NfI13LhFdxUJIuf-xgaftpZabdzY38wFa08WrX5u0Wt-U8yZdM0L-6GFW0A317_DxraS6QxUf79mNNqzZK995wRqUAXmI1DSZj4ketYTk/s1600/ollimaki.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Etwi-2dj7kS_OHfzyLYzYSRNvdlyrNXgO5NfI13LhFdxUJIuf-xgaftpZabdzY38wFa08WrX5u0Wt-U8yZdM0L-6GFW0A317_DxraS6QxUf79mNNqzZK995wRqUAXmI1DSZj4ketYTk/s400/ollimaki.jpg" width="400" height="210" data-original-width="1024" data-original-height="537" /></a>
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<b>9. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-happiest-day-in-the-life-of-olli-maki"><i>The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki</i></a> (Kuosmanen, Finland)</b>
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"Exceptionally modest and unapologetically minor-key, <i>The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki</i> homes in on the figure of the beta male who happens to excel at a sport he loves but increasingly finds himself at odds with the competitive mentality on which it operates. The small but seismic developmental stage that ensues—that is, the realization that personal fulfillment should be sought elsewhere, and that one’s engagement with the sport should be cut back—doesn’t necessarily resonate as screenwriting gold, and yet Juho Kuosmanen’s film commits wholeheartedly to this character study. In doing so, the pageantry and theatrics of the boxing world, the chosen arena of Olli Mäki (Jarkko Lahti), fall away as background noise."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXpfzgR7WW1u0F8Q85cfkjhd6yxiqfrz-sAil884C3PDe43gcsn-BPWBUlR_7wnK0nKkMJf0O_A4Uji7rCh6oo6BXCJJUzHKC6j8mmDcftax6a0BqjkQykUH3hXW4WP1iczofKYLPpuL4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-12-31+at+1.38.19+AM.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXpfzgR7WW1u0F8Q85cfkjhd6yxiqfrz-sAil884C3PDe43gcsn-BPWBUlR_7wnK0nKkMJf0O_A4Uji7rCh6oo6BXCJJUzHKC6j8mmDcftax6a0BqjkQykUH3hXW4WP1iczofKYLPpuL4/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-12-31+at+1.38.19+AM.png" width="400" height="230" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="918" /></a>
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<b>8. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/i-love-you-daddy"><i>I Love You, Daddy</i></a> (C.K., USA)</b>
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"Louis C.K.’s first theatrical feature as a writer-director since 2001’s <i>Pootie Tang</i> wrestles relentlessly, in scene after discomfiting scene, with some of the entertainment industry’s most immediate and upsetting issues: the plague of sexual assault, the unsavory legacy of white male privilege, and the ongoing problem of enabling. And the film will, undoubtedly, be rejected by many as the unsolicited penance-seeking of a man around whom such discussions have recently circled. It’s also as exhilaratingly honest and unshackled a work as many have come to expect from this auteur of cringe comedy, one that foresees, absorbs, and responds to all possible bile that might be directed its way, knowing full well of the muck it dredges up. Certainly, more can be asked of C.K. as a man, but can more be asked of an artist?"
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Note: This review was filed literally minutes before the New York Times broke a now-widely-circulated exposé on C.K.'s history of sexual assault, news which was already aired as "rumors" a few years ago. I regret my review being published in the midst of such turmoil, but I do stand by my appreciation for the film and the words I wrote. Louis is quite clearly a pig and reckons deeply with what it's like to be a pig in his work. Sometimes art that touches on ugly aspects of humanity can be as revealing as the inverse. By the same token, I hope that C.K. puts his money where his mouth is and takes a hike.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaaRN-Z8VNPczU_vB7spoAwslj7frvyVhNHETV3FYyL7CsUgmgdOjdCFBkleIgyMaUfeD3Y3iKCgWgsV5EjLv5ynSNSn-grAU9jP_Y4s9Fd1cqWiPccBGhYUAJLVXba3v5zgOAipqpgF4/s1600/marjorieprime.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaaRN-Z8VNPczU_vB7spoAwslj7frvyVhNHETV3FYyL7CsUgmgdOjdCFBkleIgyMaUfeD3Y3iKCgWgsV5EjLv5ynSNSn-grAU9jP_Y4s9Fd1cqWiPccBGhYUAJLVXba3v5zgOAipqpgF4/s400/marjorieprime.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
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<b>7. <i>Marjorie Prime</i> (Almereyda, USA)</b>
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(Capsule written for <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-films-of-2017/P2">Slant's year-end coverage</a>.) "As science fiction, Michael Almereyda’s <i>Marjorie Prime</i> derives its haunting power as much from its speculative elements as from the cozy familiarity of its mise-en-scène. Exploiting a multi-generational beachfront family cottage designed in a warm midcentury modern style as its setting, as well as comforting splashes of Beethoven and the Band on its soundtrack, Almereyda’s spare restaging of Jordan Harrison’s talky play imagines a near future where holographic simulations of dead loved ones (also known as “primes”) have placed familial relations in peril, providing unprecedented grief-coping opportunities on the one hand but enabling an echo chamber of delusion and emotional confusion on the other. Starring Tim Robbins, Geena Davis, Lois Smith, and Jon Hamm as the corporeal and projected personae of a bourgeois family bound by a history of half-clarified emotional wounds, <i>Marjorie Prime</i> consists of a series of charged one-on-ones between humans and uncanny A.I. contraptions that progressively muddy the tenuous distinction between truth and selective memory—in addition to showcasing the ensemble’s dexterity. As with 2015’s <i>Experimenter</i>, Almereyda excels at running a tight ship (the film was shot in 13 days with limited resources) while still bringing out the best in his collaborators (cinematographer Sean Price Williams and composer Mica Levi both do daring career-highlight work here), and his elliptical treatment of the script’s central existential dilemma—the havoc wreaked in transcending the absolute finality of death—is enough to justify a sly visual nod to <i>Last Year at Marienbad</i>."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAmxFos97mjf42eDMOjUIlX5hZFsmWOVKNSZckGNTNBzcRsrPc6bM53i5QueYUUuDKfl4xP4SYFDJ5ip9UlPHLZsVsWYR7FhWMFuTtSPs43NpUwkDAXLd0l7mZC8cA52_3yXMAXMfg0bQ/s1600/strongisland.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAmxFos97mjf42eDMOjUIlX5hZFsmWOVKNSZckGNTNBzcRsrPc6bM53i5QueYUUuDKfl4xP4SYFDJ5ip9UlPHLZsVsWYR7FhWMFuTtSPs43NpUwkDAXLd0l7mZC8cA52_3yXMAXMfg0bQ/s400/strongisland.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1024" data-original-height="576" /></a>
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<b>6. <i>Strong Island</i> (Ford, USA)</b>
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I caught this only recently but was floored by it. Ford's raw exposé of her brother's decades-old murder case and its emotional aftermath doesn't feel like a debut work, and carries the force of a long-overdue unburdening. I imagine that the filmmaker's tenure as a producer at PBS's POV non-fiction series cultivated an allergy to convention and expository blandness in documentary, and that elevated insight shows in the film's patient, piecemeal delivery of information, its confrontational mode of address (accomplished across of number of rigorous formal devices), and its refusal to overstate its chilling topicality, preferring instead to simmer in the particular emotional wounds of its tale.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB_sF0WIDhjLU4CiMCmEmXa35zFc0uELEM7i7exC-P_yRLZPBvMnXK1VV6Edxp7vRaOg2nHtgO0Tpj-UCnY2Nnm9Z7i6raxOhM0QcGtuznselDkhCcLAOraU47kjUVNRCMiO2f4OgJ270/s1600/slackbay.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB_sF0WIDhjLU4CiMCmEmXa35zFc0uELEM7i7exC-P_yRLZPBvMnXK1VV6Edxp7vRaOg2nHtgO0Tpj-UCnY2Nnm9Z7i6raxOhM0QcGtuznselDkhCcLAOraU47kjUVNRCMiO2f4OgJ270/s400/slackbay.jpg" width="400" height="164" data-original-width="1170" data-original-height="480" /></a>
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<b>5. <a href="http://cinema-scope.com/columns/filmart-un-canny-bruno-dumonts-ma-loute-creatures-cannes/"><i>Slack Bay</i></a> (Dumont, France)</b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZx1DfDPhKzldgCaMFHV7n0MU5WqaKLgzvXrHPpD6kpZiFIyM7nH5pNOypbRGz9X3LBn4ErFGfWyTFcXagYjgUZ4KDNAcRPimlQcqVEwJzjuhuAkEOmrLNQgUdaWOA9BZavGDDBVLRj5w/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-12-31+at+1.43.10+AM.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZx1DfDPhKzldgCaMFHV7n0MU5WqaKLgzvXrHPpD6kpZiFIyM7nH5pNOypbRGz9X3LBn4ErFGfWyTFcXagYjgUZ4KDNAcRPimlQcqVEwJzjuhuAkEOmrLNQgUdaWOA9BZavGDDBVLRj5w/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-12-31+at+1.43.10+AM.png" width="400" height="219" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="874" /></a>
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<b>4. <i>On Cinema at the Cinema: Season 9</i> and the Apple Valley News broadcast of the "Electric Sun 20" trial (Heidecker & Turkington, USA)</b>
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Between going on a national tour, running a podcast, writing and performing in various Adult Swim shows, and releasing a steady stream of topical folk songs, Tim Heidecker's productivity this year was staggering. Still, at the top of the pile sits <i>On the Cinema at the Cinema</i>, originally a farcical YouTube-hosted movie-review show that has since ballooned into an alternate universe that bleeds into social media. There's no way to adequately summarize in a sentence the slow mutation that the show has taken over its nine seasons from clever satire to warped melodrama and evolving mirror of the stupidity of our online culture (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj7VEcSjdXU">this video</a> helps though). Suffice to say that the latest ten-episode installment pushes the ongoing tension between its two hosts to new heights of passive-aggressive absurdity and further muddies the drama's tenuous separation from "real life," a gambit that culminates in Heidecker's most challenging and formally audacious experiment yet: the complete, interminably long, and aesthetically exacting mock-broadcast of a weeklong trial held against "Heidecker" for a crime committed by his character. Catch the season <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgtt8K2x8m6SlCdazCB3Pq3pr2fVQyPSx">here</a> and the court proceedings <a href="http://www.adultswim.com/videos/on-cinema/the-trial-day-1/">here</a>. And don't sleep on the two seasons of <a href="http://www.adultswim.com/videos/decker/"><i>Decker</i></a> either, which, while not quite up to the standard of the first two web-only seasons, continue to provide another hilarious prism into this world.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAiIfTH2f7IuO-C_tA1XuJ5c8yht7iUIbcDPD7RKleoHkVQ1D_rH6OiWNSvgfPYB5TAU57R8Jr4swJeeM1xZMEJ7-EOH1pRThi1hJt7geHORUP-QF7dogAiVhwOJoveNszjNaCTmBx_XQ/s1600/phantomthread.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAiIfTH2f7IuO-C_tA1XuJ5c8yht7iUIbcDPD7RKleoHkVQ1D_rH6OiWNSvgfPYB5TAU57R8Jr4swJeeM1xZMEJ7-EOH1pRThi1hJt7geHORUP-QF7dogAiVhwOJoveNszjNaCTmBx_XQ/s400/phantomthread.jpg" width="400" height="216" data-original-width="1280" data-original-height="692" /></a>
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<b>3. <i>Phantom Thread</i> (Anderson, USA)</b>
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(Capsule written for <a href="http://inreviewonline.com/2017/12/29/year-in-review-2017-film/">In Review Online's year-end list</a>.) "Romantic relationships have often existed on the periphery of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s films—when not acting as outright structuring absences. Of Anderson’s many male protagonists, only Doc Sportello of <i>Inherent Vice</i> seems propelled by something other than naked greed, lust, or ambition, and the film’s sweet, wistful coda crystallized the benign yearning that grounded Doc’s persona. With <i>Phantom Thread</i>, Anderson has centered a story around romance—and particularly the work involved in sustaining it long-term—without abandoning the more selfish, abstract qualities that have long plagued his heroes’ thirsts for transcendence. The hybrid of competing instincts—towards the self and towards the companion; towards wealth and power; and towards domestic bliss—make for Anderson’s richest and thorniest character study yet, one set in a lavish, insular world of high fashion that’s no less a battleground than Freddie Quell’s alien home front or Daniel Plainview’s oil field. Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis, photographed in the soothing glow of a midcentury London mansion, give performances steeped in decorum that nonetheless seethe with rage, passion and libido. The same might be said for Anderson’s consummate formal control, which passes off incredibly tricky sewing-room sequences, interjections of dream logic, and ornamental flourishes like slow dissolves and artificial snowfall, with the casualness of a seasoned veteran."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTotwqPkZobOLRATL_J1Mk-SWAwF4dxNKae6sUMdkZe5KO4aEuCXJTgaNxiYBeg5CDKcRCN7hy20YJ71Hyy_A-5z_-7js1v5XpDKW47ZmP4cKKmShBcFMBqwrTgUEa60f0yMLm0gcmB6w/s1600/quietpassion.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTotwqPkZobOLRATL_J1Mk-SWAwF4dxNKae6sUMdkZe5KO4aEuCXJTgaNxiYBeg5CDKcRCN7hy20YJ71Hyy_A-5z_-7js1v5XpDKW47ZmP4cKKmShBcFMBqwrTgUEa60f0yMLm0gcmB6w/s400/quietpassion.jpg" width="400" height="168" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="252" /></a>
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<b>2. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/a-quiet-passion"><i>A Quiet Passion</i></a> (Davies, UK)</b>
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"Timeliness and contemporary relevance are such powerful influencers in the production of biopics that it’s rare to come across a specimen of the genre that fully respects the particulars of its era without indulging the temptation to editorialize from the vantage of modern-day frames of reference. Terence Davies’s <i>A Quiet Passion</i> is one such rarity, refusing to over-account for the sensitivities or attention spans of today’s audiences in treating Emily Dickinson as a living, breathing human inextricable from her everyday reality. Dickinson may have been a proto-feminist, but the film is hardly a resurrection of the 19th-century poet as an icon of social justice—surely one market-friendly direction this project could have taken—but rather a hard look at the contours of her sequestered social universe, and how those sometimes limiting parameters nevertheless fueled her work."
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZT49OhpawZPXQO0qdGwNx6hZYVVQsgYm0wH8ThR0Mn8Zc7K5-LCvEqosN8TVPkwxuuuh1rppxz1taF6SOnc1r5Ua6ltpKhgKBX6yyFElitgRTvEk6PvXO7VpW-28H-9kWDsLQtqh7ai0/s1600/tptr2.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZT49OhpawZPXQO0qdGwNx6hZYVVQsgYm0wH8ThR0Mn8Zc7K5-LCvEqosN8TVPkwxuuuh1rppxz1taF6SOnc1r5Ua6ltpKhgKBX6yyFElitgRTvEk6PvXO7VpW-28H-9kWDsLQtqh7ai0/s400/tptr2.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1160" data-original-height="653" /></a>
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<b>1. <i>Twin Peaks: The Return</i> (Lynch & Frost, USA)</b>
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David Lynch finagled a remarkable amount of creative freedom to spearhead eighteen hours of material for a major television company, proceeded to deepen the lore of a beloved 25-year-old property while also shrewdly resisting the desires and expectations of fan culture, and wound up with a crowning achievement that synthesizes his past and present as an artist. Of course it's #1. I won't try to parse this behemoth in a short paragraph, but I will direct you to the two best pieces of critical engagement I experienced this year while consuming it: first, my friend Keith Uhlich's <a href="https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/tag/Twin%20Peaks%20Recap">incredibly perceptive and astute week-by-week dissections at MUBI</a>, and second, Kate Rennebohm and Simon Howell's <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-lodgers-a-twin-peaks-podcast">relentlessly inquisitive podcast "The Lodgers."</a>
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<b>Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order)</b>: <i>Columbus</i>, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-death-of-louis-xiv"><i>The Death of Louis XIV</i></a>, <i>Decker: Mindwipe</i>, <i>Get Out</i>, <i>Logan Lucky</i>, <i>The Lost City of Z</i>, <i>The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)</i>, <i>Mother!</i>, <i>The Ornithologist</i>, <i>Person to Person</i>, <i>Porto</i> (<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/porto">piece one</a>, <a href="http://filmmakermagazine.com/100174-gabe-klinger-on-shooting-porto-on-multiple-film-gauges-approaching-sex-scenes-and-manoel-de-oliveiras-influence/">piece two</a>), <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/son-of-joseph"><i>The Son of Joseph</i></a>, <i>Split</i>Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-30163447940902574962018-01-31T12:15:00.001-08:002018-01-31T12:15:32.598-08:0024 Frames (2017) A Film by Abbas Kiarostami <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1UMzV8v1ypCpeVc37Cbv4nvGLen-kgDRcK2KEZVRdIIvIQJ0HZB2bKAjNwkPg34f4GOldqpO-mnnJlguY1HWL41W935sYrm0mL8p4dQmdeuKMuW3agXtszR7cvk9P165gltDh0xU_1lU/s1600/24fr.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1UMzV8v1ypCpeVc37Cbv4nvGLen-kgDRcK2KEZVRdIIvIQJ0HZB2bKAjNwkPg34f4GOldqpO-mnnJlguY1HWL41W935sYrm0mL8p4dQmdeuKMuW3agXtszR7cvk9P165gltDh0xU_1lU/s400/24fr.jpg" width="400" height="227" data-original-width="780" data-original-height="442" /></a>
<br />
"The basis for the film, specified in an opening title card, is Kiarostami’s photography work. Looking over his stills archive, the filmmaker was apparently overcome with a desire to witness more than what his images could offer, and thus set about resurrecting, with some mixture of memory and projection, the 'scenes' leading up to and succeeding the click of the shutter—an undertaking that deflates Henri Cartier-Bresson’s famous idea of 'the decisive moment.' If one 'decides' on immortalizing a single instant with photography, Kiarostami seems to posit, then one has robbed a moment of its life and complexity, qualities that can only be revived through cinema. It’s no accident that whenever a death occurs in <i>24 Frames</i>, the vignette comes to an end; movement and progress are the organizing principles here."
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My full review of Kiarostami's final, posthumously released film is <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/24-frames">live on Slant now</a>. I anticipate this being at or near the top of my 2018 year-end list. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-88957525994484075262018-01-29T17:55:00.001-08:002018-01-29T17:55:43.600-08:00The Commuter (2018) A Film by Jaume Collet-Serra<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIv8vNoIRg66TsABUG9Y0KuP1UaHmwWbmz00M4_KoziZLCrEvrA2eZDAx8F-FvxVnKx3TEmGaMcJpWkzkg0HCP_tTUGmTpnrOJzBL2AYKiTy-VNM7xIikj2eXofLF5diB5vplceOZRqIY/s1600/The-Commuter-2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIv8vNoIRg66TsABUG9Y0KuP1UaHmwWbmz00M4_KoziZLCrEvrA2eZDAx8F-FvxVnKx3TEmGaMcJpWkzkg0HCP_tTUGmTpnrOJzBL2AYKiTy-VNM7xIikj2eXofLF5diB5vplceOZRqIY/s400/The-Commuter-2018.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
<br />
"For <i>The Commuter</i>, director Jaume Collet-Serra shrewdly casts longtime collaborator Liam Neeson, who recently announced (again) that he's retiring from action movies, as a middle-class man struggling through a sudden layoff. In what's surely no coincidence, the justification that Neeson cited for his retirement to reporters at last year's Toronto International Film Festival—'I'm sixty-fucking-five'—has found its way into <i>The Commuter</i>'s dialogue almost verbatim. 'I'm 60 years of age,' pleads Michael MacCauley (Neeson) when given the axe by his boss at the Manhattan insurance firm where he's worked as a salesman for more than a decade, implying that he's not yet old enough to weather his remaining years without financial stability. Where the real Neeson appears to be resolute in his decision, MacCauley is a bundle of nerves as he's booted from the deceptive comfort of a high-rise office building to the grimy swarms of a New York gripped by recession-era anxiety."
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<a>Full review continues at Slant.</a>Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-21761103088982387102017-12-30T21:32:00.000-08:002017-12-30T21:32:35.732-08:00Happy End (2017) A Film by Michael Haneke<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ82-BDh0AZy9vyzgavB3dJ-g7tjMxt6zfxubYKt5jJC7teVRyQtBQ2mr7L2jDfb5ByURTLsBHk8YEDe0ARXvAAH6sF9QLsQ-lZEKIvZE_PXP-oP4LQ0crPL-6hdd_uDQWU00ANepVHu0/s1600/happyend.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ82-BDh0AZy9vyzgavB3dJ-g7tjMxt6zfxubYKt5jJC7teVRyQtBQ2mr7L2jDfb5ByURTLsBHk8YEDe0ARXvAAH6sF9QLsQ-lZEKIvZE_PXP-oP4LQ0crPL-6hdd_uDQWU00ANepVHu0/s400/happyend.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1280" data-original-height="720" /></a>
<br />
"With <i>Happy End</i>, Michael Haneke takes circuitous routes to arrive at rather simplistic observations—namely, that modern technology is a plague and that the rich are soul-sick and insulated from real-world troubles. He’s concocted a plot just busy enough to distract from these worn cynicisms and a set of characters too enigmatic to dismiss as mere chess pieces off the bat, but by the end, <i>Happy End</i> reveals itself as something vacuous and cold, a bizarrely seductive pseudo-thriller lacking a thoroughly worked-out payoff."
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Review <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/happy-end">continues at Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-17024868363659795422017-12-05T13:04:00.001-08:002017-12-05T13:04:59.916-08:00The Voice of the Moon (1990) A Film by Federico Fellini<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKJd-0bSGo22TxtWUm-XMkh2BqHK7XUGBar5uXGHzf7VkpMhZaitPp02O02JjDMXwl2Xs4Qr0gIQ_Gsow70Z_fx-sfxzW7tEZqWxrihOgk_B1iNWs5wIsGQk-Hsp_H_4rN4bVHV3FOC2s/s1600/VoiceoftheMoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKJd-0bSGo22TxtWUm-XMkh2BqHK7XUGBar5uXGHzf7VkpMhZaitPp02O02JjDMXwl2Xs4Qr0gIQ_Gsow70Z_fx-sfxzW7tEZqWxrihOgk_B1iNWs5wIsGQk-Hsp_H_4rN4bVHV3FOC2s/s400/VoiceoftheMoon.jpg" width="400" height="263" data-original-width="640" data-original-height="420" /></a>
<br />
"Somewhere deep in the foggy Italian countryside, in an abandoned barn in the middle of the night, Michael Jackson's 'The Way You Make Me Feel' booms over a sound system for the dancing pleasure of a mob of leather-clad Gen X-ers. On the evidence of <i>The Voice of the Moon</i>, this was an aging Federico Fellini's vision of a world under the spell of globalized pop music and youth culture, where the new and the hip is a pervasive bug filling every crevice left by the old and the archaic. When this endearingly absurdist illusion manifests itself around the three-quarter mark of the film, however, it's a sense of euphoria, not cynicism, that prevails."
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Full review of Fellini's swan song, now out on Blu-ray from Arrow Video, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/the-voice-of-the-moon">continues at Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-91765625078662052902017-12-04T12:22:00.001-08:002017-12-04T12:22:39.954-08:00Kevin Jerome Everson: Cinema and the Practice of Everyday Life<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM58TN0imJkOAll3WEZeKv6afuhNg6fObNpMkDmmxks9zoi_6n3ZDiPipnc8gDes9ozuipMQCzHpbLSfMe2babz1Ut_CM7pvyeZ776Pm8hhj9ThGJj08vyjU-ue2KGLE4eSvS_JxIIGRc/s1600/Everson.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM58TN0imJkOAll3WEZeKv6afuhNg6fObNpMkDmmxks9zoi_6n3ZDiPipnc8gDes9ozuipMQCzHpbLSfMe2babz1Ut_CM7pvyeZ776Pm8hhj9ThGJj08vyjU-ue2KGLE4eSvS_JxIIGRc/s400/Everson.jpg" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="450" /></a>
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"Rooted so firmly in African-American settings that any appearance of a white person comes as a surprise (in itself a substantial political act), Everson’s films obsessively fixate on the everyday, offering immersive depictions of people working, passing time in their neighborhoods, running errands, going to the doctor, fixing their cars, and enjoying brief respites of leisure. These slivers of quotidian activity stand on their own as “complete” cinematic subjects, not mere fragments of larger narrative scaffolding, and the plainly descriptive titles of Everson’s films speak to his unwavering conviction in the seemingly undramatic minutes and seconds that mainstream cinema—or, for that matter, even a wide swatch of documentary and avant-garde cinema—routinely passes over as unworthy of prolonged attention."
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The Harvard Film Archive is hosting a formidable retrospective of the films of Kevin Jerome Everson this winter. I spent my September and October consuming and researching the man's work and contributed the entirety of the program notes for the series, <a href="http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2017decfeb/everson.html">which can be found here</a>. Everson's a highly unique figure. I don't think there's anyone quite like him on the contemporary scene. He makes films that almost necessitate accompanying texts to make sense of, and I hope what I've done here suffices.
Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-82020142398215472262017-11-13T11:40:00.003-08:002017-11-13T11:41:31.255-08:00I Love You, Daddy (2017) A Film by Louis C.K.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0HwF7aSCQHAFbF0jRF8mNOb-7Juy1f-M509rwNDDAWcTtAOBo7rDPx7r2EOHRJ66__ZWQNL-1nmSOGyRgHplqC388eEEhjPSXt5LB5In-Bsm2rVg-RT0vVVjXlIiUKwNNPI56nuyApSE/s1600/i-love-you-daddy.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0HwF7aSCQHAFbF0jRF8mNOb-7Juy1f-M509rwNDDAWcTtAOBo7rDPx7r2EOHRJ66__ZWQNL-1nmSOGyRgHplqC388eEEhjPSXt5LB5In-Bsm2rVg-RT0vVVjXlIiUKwNNPI56nuyApSE/s400/i-love-you-daddy.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
<br />
"Fittingly, the perennial question of whether art and artist can possibly be detached from one another looms heavily over <i>I Love You, Daddy</i>, which finds C.K. alter ego Glen Topher tormented by the sudden involvement of his teenage daughter, China (Chloë Grace Moretz), with an illustrious film director, Leslie Goodwin (John Malkovich), who also happens to be a rumored sexual predator—a simultaneously cerebral and ingratiating type who splits the difference between Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. A terrific Malkovich is fully at ease under a goatee and a sarong, investing every one of Leslie's highfalutin proclamations with a strange brew of sociopathic detachment and charitable curiosity. Slyly repelling any villainous narratives surrounding himself, Leslie is defined by an inscrutability that drives C.K.'s prosperous TV writer—and us—up the walls and fuels the film's anguished interrogation."
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Full review of Louis C.K.'s new (and now not-to-be-released) film <i>I Love You, Daddy</i> is <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/i-love-you-daddy">up at Slant Magazine</a>. Note: I filed this piece shortly before a NY Times exposé was published outing C.K. as a sexual predator. I stand by my review, but there's certainly discomfort in having it out there, knowing that in some way pieces like this enable a Hollywood system that has historically supported men like C.K. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-74748291065856265872017-11-06T11:24:00.000-08:002017-11-06T11:24:15.818-08:00Princess Cyd (2017) A Film by Stephen Cone<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgElQu6kCo_wWSEd8njudEGsnLxEtEVInOom7orgjstfTSZyOueKOTFrjMExPBIeBTbrzdpOeYRHqBhw6Af8nhwjP8eyZAMz2UW1w6sA2JfBDPmOErY0CCPxuDOt-iVWeONih9mF_tCEAc/s1600/PrincessCyd.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgElQu6kCo_wWSEd8njudEGsnLxEtEVInOom7orgjstfTSZyOueKOTFrjMExPBIeBTbrzdpOeYRHqBhw6Af8nhwjP8eyZAMz2UW1w6sA2JfBDPmOErY0CCPxuDOt-iVWeONih9mF_tCEAc/s400/PrincessCyd.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1280" data-original-height="720" /></a>
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"At once a vacation movie and a homecoming story, a coming-of-age and coming-out tale, and a study of both teen epiphanies and adult convictions, writer-director Stephen Cone’s <i>Princess Cyd</i> is distinguished by a dramatic complexity that would seem to run counter to its remarkably even-tempered tone. The film’s summertime plot picks up nine years after a tragic incident left Cyd Loughlin (Jessie Pinnick) without a mother—a backstory revealed obliquely in the police recording that opens the film, then detailed later in a cathartic speech delivered by Cyd in close-up to the camera. In spite of this turbulent history, however, the film’s characters exhibit few obvious traces of having persevered through unthinkable trauma, and this is the clearest indication of Cone’s maturity as a dramatist. Instead of underlining past disturbances with ornery character traits, the director examines well-adjusted individuals who’ve managed to compartmentalize their pain."
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<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/princess-cyd">Full review continues at Slant</a>.Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-5232755202783357882017-11-03T07:58:00.001-07:002017-11-03T07:58:37.740-07:00The Square (2017) A Film by Ruben Östlund<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxhDzwzvzSPxYqJ0autAx2NWfRrsH_wLB4Zbl-QVz4Xtp0gyOGLbNZnaLibi81vdaR__bQKx0P2_dPvSM6arU6nqFG2Rn7dmHGxAJX5lQVjscPF5ZCuPgWm6CJF7Nd6cdQ8vRSM6xd5mQ/s1600/TheSquare.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxhDzwzvzSPxYqJ0autAx2NWfRrsH_wLB4Zbl-QVz4Xtp0gyOGLbNZnaLibi81vdaR__bQKx0P2_dPvSM6arU6nqFG2Rn7dmHGxAJX5lQVjscPF5ZCuPgWm6CJF7Nd6cdQ8vRSM6xd5mQ/s400/TheSquare.jpg" width="400" height="216" data-original-width="1500" data-original-height="811" /></a>
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"After scrupulously analyzing the rippling effects of a man’s moment of human weakness in <i>Force Majeure</i>, Ruben Östlund has adopted a more panoramic view for <i>The Square</i>, edging his latest film closer to the vignette-driven narrative terrain of 2008’s <i>Involuntary</i>. Juggling the handful of interconnected tribulations that overwhelm Christian (Claes Bang), the curator of a reputable Stockholm contemporary art museum, in the run-up to the opening of a new relational art exhibition called <i>The Square</i>, the film grabs at a pinwheel of hot-button social topics including class privilege, liberal guilt, urban poverty, viral marketing, and mutually reinforced passivity in the face of mounting inhumanity, winding up with something simultaneously overstuffed and undercooked. While Östlund’s mastery of visually amplifying social unease is still very much intact, he’s partially undone here by his own thematic ambition, which, in scene after exquisitely staged scene, threatens to put too fine a point on otherwise thrillingly indeterminate situational comedy."
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My review of Ruben Östlund's very disappointing Palme D'Or winner and NYFF selection <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-square-2017">continues at Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-76377572533881819422017-10-25T11:02:00.000-07:002017-10-25T11:02:29.525-07:00Western (2017) A Film by Valeska Grisebach<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWXPJziHi5xpx7TmXLhwtRe_3KnUJKTDy-mkRCjnk0RldvuK1aVwlF3_kGjsjY6hRhywFuMmLBMoWCMfuln4x64ebo2EeSr-zTC09iXTWi_W3Z7fRyFOvoFxd2sGGS6lQP8_0PNO-wvkM/s1600/Western.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWXPJziHi5xpx7TmXLhwtRe_3KnUJKTDy-mkRCjnk0RldvuK1aVwlF3_kGjsjY6hRhywFuMmLBMoWCMfuln4x64ebo2EeSr-zTC09iXTWi_W3Z7fRyFOvoFxd2sGGS6lQP8_0PNO-wvkM/s400/Western.jpg" width="400" height="222" data-original-width="1170" data-original-height="650" /></a>
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"'War is war. Life is life. You can’t lump them together,' says a burly construction worker early on in Valeska Grisebach’s <i>Western</i>, immediately invoking the dichotomy between civility and savagery at the heart of the genre referenced by the film’s title. The seasoned audience member will recognize the hollowness in such a statement, as the most ageless westerns have proven time and again that violence—physical and otherwise—is the engine of civilizing progress. And though blood is scarcely spilled in <i>Western</i>, the film nevertheless teems with nervous tension as a German construction crew descends on a modest Bulgarian village to conduct work on a hydroelectric power plant in the hills nearby. In a supremely understated style, Grisebach sets this all-too-modern scenario in motion and charts the ways in which power and privilege unconsciously manifest themselves, turning a boilerplate engineering initiative into a loaded culture clash."
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Full review of Valeska Grisebach's recent NYFF competition title, <i>Western</i>, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/western-2017">continues at Slant Magazine</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-10718518725341224742017-10-16T23:29:00.000-07:002017-10-25T11:02:43.350-07:00Lover for a Day (2017) A Film by Philippe Garrel<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzyRWkkhmPIEJDnoA1VjT4BKLrdOAVkRuLaHYxpFb-26VNbc_oJnW1nYmwCJkK6FB6Rvk-bZqFHl7JO-_hFR_yeKp_bnU3Wy-TwrhGwn53lyOhsIoU6ECFiZSfaeQfQrhMUHx9fCvpNbw/s1600/LoverforaDay.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzyRWkkhmPIEJDnoA1VjT4BKLrdOAVkRuLaHYxpFb-26VNbc_oJnW1nYmwCJkK6FB6Rvk-bZqFHl7JO-_hFR_yeKp_bnU3Wy-TwrhGwn53lyOhsIoU6ECFiZSfaeQfQrhMUHx9fCvpNbw/s400/LoverforaDay.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
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"Like <i>In the Shadow of Women</i>, <i>Lover for a Day</i> is shot in widescreen black and white by Renato Berta, staged in a prosaic suite of bedrooms, cafés, and side streets, and narrated in a terse short-form prose style. But in contrast to Garrel’s last film, which diligently plucked away at the morose self-importance of its male lead, the wise French dramatist’s latest foregrounds the malleable spirits of its young female characters, leaving Gilles something of an implicit gravitational force rather than a subject of sustained consideration. In doing so, the film adopts an unbiased lucidity. Instead of the wry, pitch-perfect assessments of human behavior contained within <i>In the Shadow of Women</i>, we get a hushed sense of awe and empathy as Garrel ruminates on the burgeoning womanhood of his daughter, here cast for the first time in a lead role under his direction, by way of the character she inhabits."
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<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/lover-for-a-day">Full review of Philippe Garrel's latest film continues at Slant Magazine</a> as part of the site's annual coverage of the New York Film Festival. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-76154524804657641872017-10-10T15:32:00.001-07:002017-10-10T15:32:26.967-07:00Rebel in the Rye (2017) A Film by Danny Strong<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidzBpphbztCL6hBLzmOyF_NLRpkRvnfrNVM8wOEqvSIMVkCrgWTQI9r-c9VpGeBOdYPPeMbvWc2S4XFExbi7AiTnhavjDzNUrIIv8PE3oPo0rnVtAfoDD5btSwnpW2yEG6HjZTDBM84Zo/s1600/RebelintheRye.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidzBpphbztCL6hBLzmOyF_NLRpkRvnfrNVM8wOEqvSIMVkCrgWTQI9r-c9VpGeBOdYPPeMbvWc2S4XFExbi7AiTnhavjDzNUrIIv8PE3oPo0rnVtAfoDD5btSwnpW2yEG6HjZTDBM84Zo/s400/RebelintheRye.png" width="400" height="213" data-original-width="640" data-original-height="341" /></a>
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"Making liberal use of inner monologue to give form to Salinger’s feverish stop-and-go writing process, Strong ties the epiphanies and crushing disappointments of the author’s life to key passages within his body of work. In doing so, Holden Caulfield becomes less a spontaneous fictional creation than the logical sum of Salinger’s romantic frustrations, his run-ins with hectoring authority figures, and his scarring visions of Nazi death camps (realized on budget here as blue-tinted glimpses of gaunt silhouettes and hands clutching past barbed wire). The whole affair suggests dramatic Tetris, and it leeches the artist and his process of any mystery."
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<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/rebel-in-the-rye">I reviewed Danny Strong's boring-ass J.D. Salinger biopic</a> over at Slant Magazine. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-21084160812327963002017-09-29T16:48:00.000-07:002017-09-29T16:48:57.515-07:00Dayveon (2017) A Film by Amman Abbasi <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguunyspv_Jd3rpjVlka2SKp41CxgpbWK1qPD5RRjpaAzzOVUoPMOicDAXowNMm72Z4Cc99mGIX1MAM2RlFy-2WgbKGR00ueJH1ihM54x1dD_4mnEBb1-55CV3NqJvtr9oW1oXtNCNh5v0/s1600/Dayveon.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguunyspv_Jd3rpjVlka2SKp41CxgpbWK1qPD5RRjpaAzzOVUoPMOicDAXowNMm72Z4Cc99mGIX1MAM2RlFy-2WgbKGR00ueJH1ihM54x1dD_4mnEBb1-55CV3NqJvtr9oW1oXtNCNh5v0/s400/Dayveon.jpg" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="1537" data-original-height="1152" /></a>
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"Shot in 4:3 with sliver-thin depth of field and a lush palette of swampy greens, Amman Abbasi’s <i>Dayveon</i> is largely predicated on the idea of imparting a hyperreal sensuality to a region—an almost exclusively black small town in rural Arkansas—not often depicted on the big screen. The results, which sometimes conjure the spirit of Eugene Richards’s medium-format photojournalism in the Arkansas Delta in the late 1960s, are frequently breathtaking—and in no way trivial aestheticism. Small truths of the milieu, like the way leather peels off a sofa in the moist summer heart, or the smudgy details of a window in a 'hotboxed' Oldsmobile, become prominent pieces of mise-en-scène in Abbasi’s careful, patient framing, accumulating in a way that richly contextualizes the downtrodden lives of his characters."
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<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/dayveon">Full review continues at Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-9196016226661017822017-09-28T11:15:00.001-07:002017-09-28T11:15:48.988-07:00They Live by Night (1948) A Film by Nicholas Ray<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnKNlG9Mc1HVnfyGndpUs3vX5G8Gqvm48TAoa8_yPhAe-eqCB60HvrF8_TEsIY6zWfJmpyWuKIBbKgelJKI-gDL6o0Si52crgHrvnZrhrtRw6L1TFIsej7sQd2T5YCt-BXCsKF-6yQiKk/s1600/TheyLivebyNight.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnKNlG9Mc1HVnfyGndpUs3vX5G8Gqvm48TAoa8_yPhAe-eqCB60HvrF8_TEsIY6zWfJmpyWuKIBbKgelJKI-gDL6o0Si52crgHrvnZrhrtRw6L1TFIsej7sQd2T5YCt-BXCsKF-6yQiKk/s400/TheyLivebyNight.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a>
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"François Truffaut called <i>They Live by Night</i> 'the most Bressonian of American films,' and while his characterization was overzealous, there’s more than just these performer resemblances to link the two directorial sensibilities. Like many Bresson films, Ray’s debut is a genre movie featuring only the bare minimum of generic trappings, one that favors the quiet dramas of decision-making and one-on-one commiseration to the louder spectacles that occur, often unseen, to push the plot along. It’s also a story about a pursuit of grace cut short by the callousness of society, which is manifested most plainly in a number of scenes detailing monetary transactions."
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Full review of <i>They Live by Night</i>, now out in a stunning Criterion Blu-ray, <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/they-live-by-night">continues at Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-49014274121731133832017-06-08T16:41:00.000-07:002017-06-08T16:41:04.218-07:00Ascent (2016) A Film by Fiona Tan <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr6QOWHXVc7frE5Ys5Hr6F4fSCTU0k08KopmFJQD1QU4eyD_K8swaaLQRwDRjQUqaNUDMxs5yqrhCZcSCraw5rl_QYewGja8QIftTA3Ny-U8FiBufdzvXFolG6gEqPhIC2o-UMnb44K90/s1600/Ascent.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr6QOWHXVc7frE5Ys5Hr6F4fSCTU0k08KopmFJQD1QU4eyD_K8swaaLQRwDRjQUqaNUDMxs5yqrhCZcSCraw5rl_QYewGja8QIftTA3Ny-U8FiBufdzvXFolG6gEqPhIC2o-UMnb44K90/s400/Ascent.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="675" /></a>
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"Splendor can't be diminished by context or weakened by one's overexposure to it. That's one of the principal lessons of Fiona Tan's <i>Ascent</i>, a docufiction photomontage film that meditates on Japan's magisterial Mount Fuji via its representation in photographic material captured over the course of the last century. Tan's comprehensive project discriminates against no particular era or pedigree of imagery, meaning that the depictions of Mount Fuji on display run the textural gamut from exquisitely staged shots on early color-tinted celluloid to pixelated, drive-by cellphone snaps and everything in between. The mountain's singular presence—astonishing, enchanting, intimidating—remains the one constant throughout, emanating in even the lowest-grade photos a peculiar autonomy, a tendency to float apart from the surrounding image as though possessed of its own life force."
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Full review <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/ascent">continues at Slant</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-85206301738413562612017-05-15T16:26:00.001-07:002017-05-15T16:26:34.867-07:00The Woman Who Left (2017) A Film by Lav Diaz<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMOOKW2dSr8yOmruHSoOBvY2R4HVj8F9TmVjjn6oyaB49s8jrNMEBYTKgm9I0f-NgskyYl8ZcQWI7kqDp_WwvZPLyCA95PLCmfF-0QByb5ZwmF3jEW841vlf9sFR8KqVmNFRcI2mmXYR0/s1600/WomanWhoLeft.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMOOKW2dSr8yOmruHSoOBvY2R4HVj8F9TmVjjn6oyaB49s8jrNMEBYTKgm9I0f-NgskyYl8ZcQWI7kqDp_WwvZPLyCA95PLCmfF-0QByb5ZwmF3jEW841vlf9sFR8KqVmNFRcI2mmXYR0/s400/WomanWhoLeft.jpg" width="400" height="225" /></a>
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"Having demarcated his world cleanly into abject cruelty, haunted victimhood, and pure saintliness, Diaz eases into <i>The Woman Who Left</i>'s primary plot around the two-hour mark when a trans woman, Hollanda (John Lloyd Cruz), on the brink of death after a brutal beating, collapses her way through Horacia's front door. The scenes that follow, which feature Horacia patiently fielding Hollanda's torrents of self-loathing, healing her open wounds, and talking her down from a cliff, represent the tender highpoint of the film, and yet they're also dramatically inert, functioning transparently as allegory for a wounded nation. That the eventual resolution of this thread implies transference of violence from one outlet to another hints at the director's pained and pessimistic assessment of the country's past and present."
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<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-woman-who-left">Full review of Lav Diaz's latest film at Slant Magazine</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294916540840535575.post-58267413079310196482017-04-21T12:08:00.000-07:002017-04-21T12:08:20.588-07:00Woman of the Year (1942) A Film by George Stevens <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsj1L3IfZuAROMndBeh4wzzyXH8JzTzgq3gu3GMJkejpcwHP9KVYdWpSySK1YeFrFHIFOp_2cuFYSJJqPt9jN9r1vEysPMFXN3IGYhWzM6LC_4aLvg01oua7ZqTkcB1oUPFPBswPztdzc/s1600/WomanofYear.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsj1L3IfZuAROMndBeh4wzzyXH8JzTzgq3gu3GMJkejpcwHP9KVYdWpSySK1YeFrFHIFOp_2cuFYSJJqPt9jN9r1vEysPMFXN3IGYhWzM6LC_4aLvg01oua7ZqTkcB1oUPFPBswPztdzc/s400/WomanofYear.jpg" width="400" height="321" /></a>
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"Harping on the politics of a 1942 romantic comedy is a dubious game, especially when one considers that the context for <i>Woman of the Year</i>'s American exceptionalism was the pall of Nazism. But the film plays particularly poorly in 2017, and not only because its central narrative thrust involves the question of how to handle refugees, the relevance or lack thereof of the traditional blue-collar American male, and the place of feminism within American life. The film's conservative agenda also shortchanges Tracy and Hepburn's chemistry. The former's earthy restraint and the latter's electric sensuality are best collided in the early stages of the plot before Sam and Tess's differing worldviews stir conflict (one alcohol-lubricated back and forth in which the lovers hesitantly flesh out their respective backstories features a sizzling arrangement of intimate close-ups). But the screenplay's emphasis on Sam and Tess's disparities quickly fosters an environment that runs counter to Tracy and Hepburn's finest asset when sharing the screen together: the sense that the actors, and not just the characters they're playing, can barely contain their affection for one another."
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Full review of The Criterion Collection's new Blu-ray release of <i>Woman of the Year</i> <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/woman-of-the-year">continues here</a>. Carson Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10164962777812861110noreply@blogger.com0