Category: Films

Oh my. I thought it would be at least entertaining. Not. At one point I started thinking that it was a kid’s movie, and looked around at the audience. Not a kid in sight. I guess the demand for very stupid movies for adults is high.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/08/arash-azizi-iranian-film-repression/

Well done movie. Thoughtful, well paced. Kept me interested the entire time.

Directed by Ilker Çatak, who also cowrote it with Johannes Duncker. Starring Leonie Benesch.

It’s probably best to think of the film as a parable of sorts, one where an everyday institution is presented realistically, with correct procedural details, but also stands in for a larger system or set of ideals, like the jury room in “Twelve Angry Men” or the ship in a mutiny story. The film handles national, racial and class resentments as subtly as it handles everything else. 

Roger Ebert website

by Celine Song

Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrested apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Twenty years later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront notions of love and destiny.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2023/06/08/past-lives-movie-review/

By Kelly Reichardt

‘Showing Up’ Review: Making Art in All Its Everyday Glory https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/movies/showing-up-review-michelle-williams.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

by Jafar Panahi

Iranian director. Commentary on the meaning of film. Excellent.

Went to the Museum of Asian Art, Freer Gallery, to see this film about an Iranian painter whose live and work got caught up in the Iranian Revolution. Excellent. The painter and the co-director (his daughter) were there to answer questions.

Documentary about folksinger Joan Baez.

Not sure how such a terrible movie got so much buzz. Great marketing I guess.

A document about Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the Atomic Bomb.

Finish watch this series, which stars Billy Bob Thornton, who plays a down -on-his-luck (perhaps because he’s is constantly drunk) lawyer. I generally don’t like the “who done it” type show, but this one was the exception. Good writing, in general, and really good acting. The director Lawrence Trilling really added an artistic touch that enhanced the entire show. Too bad they aren’t making any more after season four.

When to see the new documentary about Yogi Berra yesterday. Really enjoyable. They make him out to be the best catcher ever; I’m skeptical. He certainly was great, but I don’t know about the best ever.

It wasn’t the worst movie I’ve seen this year. Amsterdam still holds that honor. When I see a movie that bad, I think I should have been a director. I could do no worse.

But it wasn’t good. I expected more from the guy that made American Beauty. I think its biggest problem was he couldn’t figure out what the movie was really about. Racism? Mental health? Movies? So it ended up a muddle. Too bad. Parts of it worked.

I had never heard of Frank Cabot, a descendant of the Massachusetts’s shipping magnet Cabots. In middle-age, he withdrew from his businessman career, switching his focus to gardening.

Good move. He built a few eccentric, magnificent gardens that people enjoy every day.

Excellent movie about the perpetuation of religious superstition. Directed by Ali Abbasi.

directed by Abraham Polonsky

The New Yorker recently ran an article about John Garfield, the star of Force of Evil. He was once of the first “method actors”, influencing many stars to come such as Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brando.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/looking-back-at-a-half-forgotten-pioneer-of-method-acting

Force of Evil is really good. It possess the question, “Who is worse?” The person that goes for whatever evil he wants or the person that convinces himself he is doing good but still does wrong, but just in a different way.

directed by Edward Berger

A fairly gripping film based on the famous book by  Erich Maria Remarque.

Went to see the film Amsterdam. Regret it. ‘Terrible with raisins in it.’

directed and written by Brett Morgen

I read a pretty negative review. I’m very glad I ignored it. It’s a really good documentary. Creative. Dramatic. Really showed that Bowie, who I don’t know that well, was a true artist. Glad I saw it.

by Abbas Kiarostami

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirin

by Asghar Farhadi

Excellent Iranian movie that – to me anyway – reflects on the way the truth can so easily be distorted by the media/social media.

by Ingmar Bergman

Beautiful film. Loved…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(1966_film)

A short film about George Booth, a legendary cartoonist with the New Yorker.

https://www.newyorker.com/new-yorker-live/george-booth-cartoons-emma-allen-mort-gerberg-emily-flake-jeremy-nguyen?utm_campaign=cm&utm_source=crm&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_SubTNYLiveMarRecap_040422&utm_medium=email&utm_term=NYR_CM_Active_Subs_Y_Perm_12_Mths

Interesting movie about the community of poor folks living in the Salton Sea area. Directed by the director of Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom.

I thought Plagues & Pleasures was far superior, but this was still good.

Based on the experience of screen writer Howard Mankewicki attempting to create a story for Orson Welles. Mank was a raging alcoholic and Welles a crazy egomaniac. Not a good combination.

Directed by David Fincher from a screenplay written by his father.

This was my favorite series perhaps ever. Quirky, funny, occasionally profound. Great combo.

He’s basically an essayist with a camera. A very, very lowbrow very poor man’s Thoreau.

A more than decent British series about a couple breaking up due, mostly, to infidelity. Billie Piper stars, apparently a big name in England.

The British make the best TV shows, no contest. This one is really excellent, off-the-wall. The teenage couple that star in the series are absolutely terrific. Based on a comic book series by Charles Folsom.

Finally got around to watching this classic. The director, William Friedkin, really keeps thing moving. Lost of action, lots of quick cuts, cursing, shooting etc. It’s always mentioned in any list of classic movies, and I can see why. Won Best Picture in 1971. I’d say Friedkin really deserves most of the credit for the movie’s quality, since it’s pretty much a standard good guys/bad guys thing. The pacing, realism really make it. He also made the Exorcist.

A Japanese documentary about the 1964 Olympics. The review I read called it “poetic.” True dat.

A documentary about the life of Peter Norman, an Australian runner who won a silver medal in the 1968 Olympics. Americans John Carlos and Tommie Smith, the other two medalists in Norman’s race, raised their hands in a black-power fist during the awards ceremony, setting off a tremendous world-wide ruckus.

On the medal stand, Norman wore a Human Rights packet to show his support for the cause of Carlos and Smith. For his efforts, his life was turned upside down. The highly racist and vindictive Australian officials basically banned Norman from the 1972 games.

The movie seemed pretty low-budget, but definitely worth a watch.

Indie director Lynn Shelton died recently. I hadn’t heard of her, thought I should checkout her films.

The plot of this movie is a man getting out of prison and trying to get back to his life. He was young when he was sent to prison, and when he gets out, he rides his bike around town, same bike he must had when he was a child. It’s an effective image.

He wants to start a relationship with the woman who helped him get out of prison, his old high school teacher. Instead, he ends up getting in a platonic relationship with her daughter.

I liked movie a lot. I thought both the acting and the writing were high quality. It was an interesting idea.

I liked this one. A serious story, well told.

Like all Terrentio movies, this one was both great and terrible at the same time. I’ll take it though. Not many lively movies these days. And great music.

I thought this movie was – at best – pretty good. At best. A great example of PC and rich guilt IMO.

Went to see Sam Mendes’ 1917 today. Overall, I’d say it was rather gripping. The “one-shot” camera working seemed to really put the viewer inside the movie, and the first hour or so was pretty intense.

On the other hand. The whole thing seemed a bit far-fetched. Why would the British send only two men on such an important mission? I know they said they would travel faster than a larger group, but why would they send several groups? Why wouldn’t they use the airplanes? The whole thing seemed highly implausible to me.

I didn’t see any this year that I would call a great – or even very good. Below is a list of the ones I did see (that I remember), roughly in the order of “goodness”.

• Marriage Story. I didn’t expect to like this one. Noah Bauckman, I suspected, specialized in upper-middle-class navel-gazing. And I suppose this movie has some of that, but I thought it was overall a very intelligent look at marriage/divorce.
• Rocketman. Elton John bio-picture. The only movie this year that I felt showed some decent imagination.
• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Fred Rodgers bio. Tom Hanks made a good Mr. Rodgers. Not sure how it was not nominated for an Academy Award.
• Richard Jewel. Clint Eastwood picture about the bombing at the 1996 Olympic games. Paul Hauser deserved a nomination as well. The movie was highly criticized for its right-wing politics – unfair – and for its portrayal of the journalist from the Atlanta Constitution as a whore, which was very fair criticism. Entertaining movie though.
• Ford vs. Ferrari. The story of the rivalry between the two companies to win the race at Le Mans. The real story is much more interesting than the movie, which was a bit stupid. But entertaining.
• Dolimite is My Name. Biopic of Rudy Ray Moore. Entertaining, Eddie Murphy is always good.
• Uncut Gems. Adam Sandler is fine in this Sardie brothers film. The story is preposterous, and not all that engaging. Overrated. But good effort.
• Irishman. Scorsese’s mob movie. Eh.

Forough Farrokhzad was an Iranian poet.

The movie is credited for paving the way for the Iranian New Wave. The subject is a leper colony in Iran. Tragic. Her poetry accompanies the video. Very effective.

documentary on her life:
https://www.imvbox.com/watch-persian-movie-iranian-movies/sarde-sabz

Very beautiful movie, liked it a great deal. Plot a clear ripoff of Casablanca (and probably many other films). Doesn’t matter. The camera work is very fine. The director keeps it moving just perfectly. The story, despite a lot of gaps, is compelling. Two thumbs up. Probably watch again someday.

Borg vs McEnroe is a 2017 internationally co-produced multi-language biographical sports drama film focusing on the famous rivalry between tennis players Björn Borg and John McEnroe at the 1980 Wimbledon Championships, culminating in their encounter in the men’s singles final. The film is directed by Janus Metz Pedersen, from a screenplay written by Ronnie Sandahl, and stars Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny, and Robert Emms. The film opened the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.

Bio pic of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Standard bio pic. Woody Harrelson as LBJ was inspired. Perfect.

Three older women form a book club. Read 50 Shades. Get horny.  Stars Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, and Candice Bergen.
Can’t   describe how bad this movie was.

Bio pic of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s. Starring Micheal Keaton. Excellent.

Silent film about a young girl who get pregnant and parents kick her out of house. Super good.

Two brothers team up to rob banks in Texas. Their plan is to raise money to payoff deceased parent’s ranch  which is about to be foreclosed on. Stars Jeff Bridges as the local ranger bent on capturing them.
Verdict: Not bad. Kept my attention. Script nothing exceptional,but better than most. The director, David Mackenize, has a nice sense of style.  Written by Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote Wind River, which might be worth checking out.

Watching it right now. Starring Ryan Gosling, mister handsome who starred in that piece of crap La-La Land. Also starring Michelle Williams who was not in that piece of shit, but was in the fabulous Manchester by the Sea.
So far my kind of movie, dark and depressing.
Directed by Derek Cainfrance. Never heard of him. He also wrote it with some other guys I’ve never heard of.
Ok, the movie is well done. and i have to say Gosling is good, makes the character real. He’s too handsome for me to like though.
The character might be a flawed. First, the dialog seems to be too intelligent for his character, a blue-collar, alcoholic who plays the ukulele. The same, to a lessor extent, is true of Williams’ character.
The scene were she dances while plays ukulele in the street is charming. Also breaks up the monotony of the marriage desolution, which seems to be going on for fucking ever.
I like it, but it’s just too much one note, over and over, the marriage going down the shitter. Needs something more. Maybe should have focused more on when they were happy.
It’s also too long. Woody Allen was right, a movie should be an hour and a half.
It finally ended. All I can really say is glad it’s over.

Why the fuck is that piece of shit so popular? I really think part of it is just political correctness. Black stars, woman heroes, gotta be great, right.
Part of it is me though. I focus on acting, dialog, the writing. I think people that like these movies focus on the action, and more seriously, the more big-picture mythological aspect, which I don’t pay attention to.
Anyway, I still think it sucked major ass.

Saw this film last night. Two thumbs up. Nothing terribly original, but  entertaining and informative. Gary Oldman did a fantastic job as Churchill.

This movie has gotten some good press and a nomination for Best Picture (I  think).
I didn’t hate it but I certainly didn’t like it either. First, a poor student from a poor family getting accepted into Columbia based solely on a well-written essay is patently absurd.
More than that however, I intensely disliked the incredibly self-centered, egotistical main character.  She wouldn’t get admitted to community college if it were up to me.
It seems to be that many young people these days are like this character. Too bad.
 

The  new movie  by Steven Spielberg about Katherine Graham’s role in publishing the Pentagon Papers. I  was surprised at how much I liked it.
Spielberg’s movies have also annoyed me a little.  They are all  good, and I always enjoy them. He has a nice formula,  which I mean as both a compliment and  a fault. He knows the steps to take  to put together an entertaining movie but it often feels a bit too much a paint by numbers. I  also feel like  he’ s talking  down to me too.
Meryl Streep is fantastic. I  always been a little  skeptical about her “greatness”, but I take it all back. She’s perfect in this one.

A collection of short experimental films.
I don’t know,  I probably didn’t understand a lot of it.

Directed by Sean Baker, who also did The Prince of Broadway and Take Out, but of which were ultra-low budget movies that I really liked.
The one seems to have had a bigger budget. Willem Defoe was a co-star. Still had the look  and feel of an art-film.
Plot centered around a young stripper/ part-time prostitute and her child and their “adventures” living in a low-rent motel close to Disneyland.
Film did a nice job of developing the characters and portraying the challenges of living with low/no income. Characters, especially the mother,  were very believable  and gave real insight into their lives. Defoe’s character as the motel manager was also well-done. The kids were amazing “actors”.
That being  said,  the  movie had major flaws. The plot really didn’t go anywhere, the same dysfunctional personality disorders were repeated over and over.
Still, I liked the movie quite a bit.
 
 
 

Got decent reviews in both the  Washington Post and the New Yorker. Not from me. Yuck. 

Nice little movie, based on a true story.  Plot: comedian from traditional Indian family meets white (very) girl. They fall in love, she becomes seriously ill, he realizes he’s an idiot, they get married. Lot of funny culture-wars type humor. Light weight, but very charming. Maybe fifteen minutes too long. 

Started out promising, but eventually just repeated scene after scene of Edith in a drunken rage, screaming and yelling. Surely she was more interesting than that. Perhaps they should have focused more on the music.  
Didn’t enjoy this one. Didn’t even make it to the end.  

By the same  director/writer as my favorite movie of last year, Manchester by the Sea. 
Love his writing. Really packs an emotional whallop. I love movies that are both tragic and funny.  
 

I liked this movie quite a bit. Like all her work, I have trouble fitting it all together. What exactly she’s trying to say? What is the theme that ties it  all together? These questions I have trouble answering.
On the other hand, her work is incredibly inventive, and I love the combination of music, words, and images. Five stars. 

This movie really didn’t do much for me. It was ok, but certainly not my choice for Best Picture. Standard “it’s tough to be poor, black, gay, and from a dysfunctional home” film. Done reasonably well I guess. Second half was slow. Nothing really made it standout to me. I wouldn’t watch it again.  

Saw Hidden Figures yesterday. 
The history was interesting. A group of black women working at NASA in the “computing” department. One in particular, Katherine Jackson, played a significant role in solving the mathematical problems associated with the project.
The movie itself though is not so great. Boring script, very predictable plot, cliche-ridden, and teeth-grinding bad acting. 
 

Good movie about the Catholic Church child abuse scandal. Centers around the  investigation of the Boston Globe which to exposed the church. Watched it, ironically, on the day our esteemed president declared that “the press is the enemy of the American people”.  
 

Directed and written by Hannes Holm. Swedish.
I liked it. Sort of the non-violent swedish version of Clint Eastwood’s Grand Torino. The movie is full of cliches, and the heart-warming ending can  be seen coming  from the very beginning.  Still, the movie is highly enjoyable. The characters are believable, and their relationships feel right.  It also has more than it’s share of laughs. 
 

Saw new film by Jim Jarmuch. Enjoyed it much. So beautiful, so poetic. Adam Driver was a good choice for a Jarmuch movie, he fits right in with John Laurie, Tom Waits etc.

The poetry written for the film didn’t really make it with me. I missed the humor of some of the older movies. 
Overall I really like it.
 

Saw “The Salesman”, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, a well-know Iranian director working inside Iran. 
My impression was that the movie took way too long to get to the point. The last half-hour was engrossing as the movie worked it’s way to the  climax. I suppose the theme was revenge vs. forgiveness, the husband taking the side of revenge, the wife forgiveness.
Farhadi also made acclaimed The Separation, which I did’t like so much, and About Elly, which I did. 
 

Been trying to see some of  the “big” movies of the year.  List is roughly order of preference (best to worst).

• Manchester by the Sea
• Jackie
• Hacksaw Ridge
• Loving
• Lion
• Certain Women

Also saw Gimme Danger, Jarmusch’s documentary about Iggy Pop. 

The  filmmakers try to determine the origins of the popular dish. Claims a Mr. Peng created it in Hunan, took it with him to Taiwan, then U.S. I’m skeptical, but who knows?
 
There actually was a General Tso!
The most interesting part for me was the explanation of why so many Chinese folks run restaurants and dry cleaners. Film said it can be tracked back to the 1882 (?) Exclusion Act, which basically forced people of Chinese decent to be self-employed.  Makes some sense.
Pretty entertaining little film.
 

Definitely one of my favorite movies. Intellectually lively, seriously funny, and insightful about relationships, and just life in general. I could watch it every year, even more.
ALVY:   “I thought of that old joke. This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.’ And the doctor says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ And the guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’ Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships. They’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd and . . . but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.”

I doubt I would have gone to see it on my own volition, but now that I have seen it, I gotta say I’m glad I did: more than just pretty good. I liked it.
I’m not sure how much i would have liked it without the 3D. It has a good story,  based on the well-known but not  to me children’s story by Rudyard Kipling. Certainly the “acting” was good; Bill  Murray has the friendly bear was at time hysterical.   Scarlett Johannsen  (sp.) turn as a sneaky snake was clever.
Then again, it is a children’s story, so by definition was a bit predictable and sentimental,  and this one was probably above average in  both areas.
The 3D / animation certainly put it over the top. The whole time your asking yourself “how the hell did they do that, and how much  did it cost?”
Anyway, enjoyable movie, easily worth the time and money.
 
 

I’m watching I Smile Back right now, starring Sarah Silverman, one of my favorite comics. I can’t say it’s an enjoyable movie to watch – so bleak,   the characters so unlikable, so much white privilege. It is a good story though, and Silverman is surprisingly good, convincing as an out-of-control druggie with serious psychological problems. Good role for her.
I  think maybe the filmmakers need to do something more than just keep focusing scene after scene on her self-destructive behavior. On the other hand, I like how it doesn’t have a nice tidy uplifting ending. Screw that bullshit.

Watched Cool Hand Luke again last night. I don’t often watch a movie over and over, but this one I do. It’s a beautiful thing. Serious and thoughtful yet still entertaining.
Donn Pearce, the writer of the book/screenplay, was in real-life similar to Luke, spent significant time in prison, even working on a chain gang.
 

Watched A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour. You’ll often hear it billed as an “Iranian”movie,  but it’s not really. Amirpour is an Iranian-American, which is not the same thing. The movie is in Farsi, and the setting does look like it could be Iran, but it’s really California.
It’s a good movie. A good vampire movie. Not much of a plot, and in places doesn’t make a lot of sense. It does have a really great sense of poetic style, really reminiscence of the early Jarmusch films, but without the humor. Amirpour says she’s not a Jarmusch fan, which is very odd. Her  movie suggests she is.
Food Equivalency:  Kabob at a nice place
 

Very predictable, but mildly entertaining. Many better ways to spend your time, but if you’re really tired or something, you could do worse.
Food  equivalency: McDonald’s Fish Fillet