Brimstone (2017) A Film by Martin Koolhoven

"Running 148 minutes and encompassing four chapters (portentously titled along biblical lines, such as 'Exodus' and 'Retribution'), the film returns over and over to scenes of frontierswomen being ruthlessly degraded by vile men; in a recurring scenario, Koolhoven frames the agonized faces of victims being dealt blood-drawing belt whippings. That Brimstone ultimately postures as a feminist yarn is unsurprising given the current market demand for Strong Female Leads, but its bid for social correctness—manifested most plainly in a last-minute uplifting voiceover—does nothing to make the film’s juvenile and numbing fixation on brutality any more palatable."

Full review at Slant Magazine.

The Human Surge (2016) A Film by Eduardo Williams

"Were it not for one showy transition of a camera burrowing through topsoil for a macro-photographic tour of an ant colony, The Human Surge might easily be mistaken for a particularly interminable YouTube video, unfolding as it does like the aimless time-killing of bored boys without much to do and a crummy camera to record whatever ends up happening. Facetious as such a characterization may seem for a film with the temerity to divide its action across Argentina, Mozambique, and the Philippines, it's not exactly unsuitable given director Eduardo Williams's subject matter, which concerns the lives of minimum-wage slackers from the aforementioned locales who fill their downtime forging tenuous human connections across Internet platforms. Using a pair of nifty cuts to connect these disparate milieus, the film develops in chapters as if to imply a fundamental interconnectedness between people across the world in similar dead-end situations, yet often the only quality holding the episodes together is the amateurishness of the staging."

Full review continues at Slant Magazine.

A Cure for Wellness (2017) A Film by Gore Verbinski

"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, A Cure for Wellness 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."

Full review of this highly entertaining movie at Slant Magazine.

Anatahan (1953) A Film by Josef Von Sternberg

"The film's starting point is the real historical incident of a Japanese squadron found stranded alive on the titular island years after the defeat of their army. What Sternberg freely imagines are the seven years of toil and hardship endured by these men while separated from their homeland, which constitutes an act of speculative empathy that puts the project squarely in the realm of storytelling. Complicating this understanding, however, is the filmmaker's decision to narrate the tale himself in a droll tone that pinballs between Job-like questioning, poetic musing, and impartial reportage, including the use of such documentary-tinged phrases as 'we can only reconstruct the events' and 'we can only surmise what happened.'"

Full review of Anatahan, now playing in a Kino Lorber restoration at Metrograph in New York City, continues at Slant.

Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire (1974) A Film by Tony Palmer

"Like [D.A.] Pennebaker, [Tony] Palmer shoots in 16mm in anonymous green rooms and regal concert halls but plays looser with his aesthetic (mixing monochrome and color stock) and allows himself more fanciful editorial digressions. A live performance of 'Sisters of Mercy,' for instance, intercuts Cohen's on-stage act with both contemporaneous footage of him on tour and various flashback snippets of the singer reading and writing poetry, while a radiant rendition of 'So Long, Marianne' intermingles impressionistic home movies of Cohen as a young boy. In a more dubious example, Palmer sources graphic clips of suffering in Vietnam during the war to complement Cohen's musings on the political utility of his music—an intrusion which effectively sullies the suggestive vagueness of his lyrics on these subjects."

Full review here.

Wagon Tracks (1919) A Film by Lambert Hillyer

"Chronicling a journey through a man's conscience as much as across the heat-cracked landscape of the Gold Rush-era Southwest, Wagon Tracks is a stark morality tale that nonetheless garnered a Los Angeles Times decree as Hollywood's 'great desert screen epic.' The designation makes sense insofar as the rugged location photography, captured on the parched earth outside Los Angeles by early John Ford cinematographer Joseph H. August, offers a healthy spread of grandiose high-noon expanses and indelible campfire tableaux. That said, what most distinguishes this parable of manifest destiny is the compactness of its drama, which narrowly squares its attention on a principled frontiersman's agony over the matter of who shot his brother."

Reviewed a new Olive Films Blu-ray over at Slant Magazine.

My Favorite Discoveries/First-Time Viewings of 2015

(Titles link to my writing when applicable.)

1. In a Lonely Place (Ray/USA/1950)

2. Skagafjördur (Hutton/USA/2004)

3. News From Home (Akerman/Belgium/1977)

4. Day of Wrath (Dreyer/Denmark/1943)

5. Kagero-za (Suzuki/Japan/1981)

6. The Prowler (Losey/USA/1951)

7. Hail the Conquering Hero (Sturges/USA/1944)

8. Doomed Love (Oliveira/Portugal/1984)

9. Van Gogh (Pialat/France/1991)

10. JFK (Stone/USA/1991)

11. Out of the Past (Tourneur/USA/1947)

12. Figures in a Landscape (Losey/UK/1970)

13. South (Akerman/Belgium/1999)

14. Seven Men From Now (Boetticher/USA/1956)

15. Lodz Symphony (Hutton/USA/1993)



16. Gate of Flesh (Suzuki/Japan/1964)

17. The Trial of Vivienne Ware (Howard/USA/1932)

18. The Grissom Gang (Aldrich/USA/1971)

19. The Emigrants (Troell/Sweden/1971)

20. The Heroes of Telemark (Mann/USA/1965)

21. Noroit (Rivette/France/1976)

22. Juggernaut (Lester/UK/1974)

23. My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant/USA/1991)

24. Obsession (De Palma/USA/1976)

25. The Truth (Clouzot/France/1960)

26. Jezebel (Wyler/USA/1938)

27. Eight Hours of Terror (Suzuki/Japan/1957)

28. Seventeen (DeMott, Kreines/USA/1983)



29. The Legend of Lylah Clare (Aldrich/USA/1968)

30. Divorce, Italian Style (Germi/Italy/1961)

31. Five Dedicated to Ozu (Kiarostami/USA/2003)

32. Our Blood Will Not Forgive (Suzuki/Japan/1964)

33. The Woman Next Door (Truffaut/France/1981)

34. I Walk Alone (Haskin/USA/1948)

35. The New Land (Troell/Sweden/1971)

36. The Choirboys (Aldrich/USA/1977)

37. The Bad and the Beautiful (Minnelli/USA/1952)

38. Cape Fear (Thompson/USA/1962)

39. The Angry Hills (Aldrich/USA/1959)

40. The Big Sky (Hawks/USA/1952)



41. La Captive (Akerman/Belgium/2000)

42. The Devils (Russell/UK/1971)

43. Apache (Aldrich/USA/1954)

44. The Holcroft Covenant (Frankenheimer/USA/1985)

45. Anatahan (Sternberg/Japan/1953)

46. I Am Keiko (Sono/Japan/1997)

47. Woman with Flowers (Strand/USA/1995)

48. Touki Bouki (Mambéty/Senegal/1973)

49. Medium Cool (Wexler/USA/1969)

50. Center Stage (Kwan/Hong Kong/2000)