OH CANADA (2024) NYFF 2024

Richard Gere gives his best performance ever as a dying filmmaker who is dying of cancer and who agrees to an interview with his former students about his life, vowing to finally tell the truth.

This is Paul Schrader's best film in years. A mosaic film made up of various bits, memories, reality, the story of a lost son and a few other things. There is no direct through line, other than the interview. There is no effort to tell his whole life and there is no effort to truly sort out what is the "truth". This is a film about the mind, memories and experiences of a man who is near death. Everything is fluid. 

This is very much an old man's film. The source novel was written by a man looking at death. The film was made by a filmmaker nearing his end and who has been unwell. It is a film that is very much a about looking back at life and all the regrets one has. It's a film that is made by men near the end. I say that knowing that I am on the back end of life myself. In the months and weeks before and after my last birthday I realized  I have been having all of the thoughts that Richard Gere's character have been having.  In doing so I realized just how absolutely on target the film is.

As good as the film is, it is flawed, the fragmentary nature  is too fragmentary in the last half hour. Something feels missing. Schrader said at the Q&A that everything is in the film except an epilogue, but something feels , slightly off.

Quibble aside I truly love this film.  It moved me and it made me think about a lot of stuff. It's also a film that has resulted in a lot of discussions. This is a film that is going to grow on people. Its a film that I think is going to be hailed as one of Schrader's best once people understand the structure of the film and realize it isn't supposed to be a whole life but what happens on a man's last day.

And it needs to be said- Give Gere the Oscar right now.

Highly recommended.

The Damned (2024) NYFF 2024

One of two films called THE DAMNED that hit festivals at around the same time. The other is period thriller on distant island. This film follows a group of Union soldiers who are sent into the American West in order to guard an unspecified border.

That this film won awards and got glowing reviews is something I can't understand. There is quite simply nothing here. 

There are no characters. None. We kind of know who they are by their look but thats it. There is no real attempt to build characters. Any dialog is of the sort that no one would ever say. It all feels like it was taken from journals and articles, not from life. 

There is no narrative. It's a bunch of non entities wandering into the wilderness.  Where they are is never explained. What they are doing beyond "guarding the border" is never explained. They are supposed to be waiting for another group to meet them, but how the hell will they find them because they are in the middle of nowhere at a place that was randomly chosen.

Don't get me started with the few events the few events that happen.  The bad guys, it's assumed it's the South, but it isn't clear, attack twice, once after moving into position in front of the sentries who would have seen them. When four men wander off to check on a way through  the mountains and there is snow, then there is a sequence without snow and then the snow is back.  

When the film ended I literally had no idea why I bothered, because there was no context to anything. It was as if the film simply existed just to show life on the plains. But there is absolutely nothing here. Zip.

As a recreation of life for soldiers it does seem to have a place, but, I'd rather go see a re-enactment where I could talk to the guys.

Skip this film because this is a film that will leave you scratching your head if it doesn't put you to sleep.  

GRAND TOUR (2024) NYFF 2024

NYFF frequent flier Miguel Gomes returns with GRAND TOUR with the story of a British diplomat who flees the fiance he hasn't seen in 7 year by touring Asia. First we see his flight and then her pursuit.

Lots of great travel footage is wasted in a two part tale that never really works. The problem is the split tale. The tale of the diplomat is intriguing for a about ten minutes, until you realize that we know , and will know nothing about him at all. He is entirely a cipher. Well we know he's a diplomat and has a fiance, but that's all. Everything we learn is via voice over narration which doesn't remotely fill in the missing material.

The second half of the film is the quest of Molly, the fiance to see the man she loves. Actually beyond trying to marry him, she has something to tell him. While this portion explains much we didn't know about in the first part, the story still seems fragmentary. Too many details are given us by voice over. While the second half  made me curious how it was going to play out for Molly ultimately I found this journey was a waste of my time.

Not recommended

The Room Next Door (2024) NYFF 2024

Pedro Almodóvar's first English language feature has Ingrid (Julianne Moore) reconnecting with Martha (Tilda Swinton) who is fighting cancer. When Martha decides to end her pain permanently, Ingrid agrees to accompany her.

Mid-level Almodovar is more like stage play then a feature film. While Moore and Swinton (and John Turturro in a funny cameo) are excellent, the script is full of dialog that is purple and exactly the sort of thing that you only hear on stage. We aren't listening to conversations but listening to speeches. Because everyone was saying perfectly craft lines about the meaning of life I never connected. There is no small talk only live and death discussions.

It' not bad, but it isn't great either. This is a impressionistic painting of life not life itself.

This is going to work best for fans of the director.

Pavements (2024) NYFF 2024

This is a mixture of portraits of the group Pavement. One is a record of a pop up museum, one is a bio pic, another coverage of their 2022 reunion tour, another is a collection of archival footage and another is a jukebox stage musical. All of these things are inter-cut together to make a one of a kind portrait.

This is an interesting film that is going to play best for fans of the group. The reason for that is the group did not a want a typical portrait for the group, as a result there is no real effort to really tell the story of the group but its instead a collection of impressions.  While I know some of their music, I know nothing about the group so as a result I could only surf on the moments.

Strangely surfing actually works. Once the film gets going , about 20 or 25 minutes, there is something enjoyable about bouncing from the various pieces.  While I would have love to have seen all of the various parts complete, based on the talk at the New York Film Festival Q&A it was probably best we didn't.

I enjoyed the film, but realistically, if you aren't a Pavement fan you can probably skip this.

DIRECT ACTION (2024) NYFF 2024

The NYFF write up calls this film "...a work of striking, meaningful duration..." I have no idea what that is. How is a duration meaningful? You have to watch something for a certain length of time to get meaning? Is there an umeaningful duration? Can you imagine what George Carlin would have done with that phrase?

I'm calling bullshit. I say that because this three and a half hour sleeping pill is one of the most pretentious piece of cinema that I've run across in years. Its a film where we watch things play out for long periods for no reason  Its showing us things in real time but it's just a series of random bits, much like the opening of the film where we are watching random video files. I think the person who wrote the film up called it a film of meaningful duration because it couldn't say this film is dull and boring and we don't know why the programmers programmed it.

The film is supposed to be a look at the Notre-Dame-des-Landes commune France,  where they  try to to disrupt and discourage corporations and state entities from building on land. And some of it is in the film but so are long shots of the sky (there is a reason they are using the tower shot above as a selling point), people reading manifestos, people doing farm work in long takes and other not very interesting things.

To be fair this might have worked if the filmmakers had connected things up and not let them sit there but they didn't. It also might have worked if they shortened the pieces. With much of it  we get the idea rather quickly and we don't need an extended look.

Avoid this film unless you need sleep.

New Fest 2024 starts Thursday

The wonderful New Fest starts this week and never mind that this filled with LGBTQ+ films, you just need to go. 

Why? Because the films transcend being queer and are just magnificent pieces of cinema. Seriously I cover the festival not because I want to cover LGBTQ films but because I simply want to see great films. New Fest is just great films. I mean YOUNG HEARTS may be about two boys in love but I dare you to find better romance anywhere this year.

You will forgive me if I don’t speak to the LGBTQ experience, it is not mine. I know good movies and as such that is why I return to this festival year after year. I love the programming of the festival because it is so full of wondrous things.

The fest this year is running from October 10th until the 22nd and is both in person and on line so there is no reason not to hunker down and see something. (Tickets and information here)

As this posts I’ve already seen a few films and I’m waiting to cover a few more.

The following films I’ve previously covered:

CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS 

EMILIA PEREZ

LIZA TRULY TERRIFIC ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY

WORLD ACCORDING TO ALLEE WILLIS 

YOUNG HEARTS 

DALTONS DREAM 

ELVIRA MISTRESS OF THE DARK is a great deal of fun.  While I never wrote it up I’ve seen it multiple times going back to when the film was originally released. It’s a delightful story of about an outside changing the perspective of the people  she meets. It’s also a wonderful spooky comedy, perfect for this time of year.

New Fest is having a mini-retrospective of John Waters Films. If you’ve never seen them, what are you waiting for? Waters, the grand and great low budget outsider who was so good at what he did he quietly slipped into the main stream. As he said he never an intentionally subversive film until he did Hairspray, which was so successful it spawned a musical that plays around the world even in places where the messages in the story would get it boycotted.  The films are a lot of fun and if you’ve never seen them you should, especially if you can see them with an audience (say a festival audience) because they are so much more fun.

I have seen TEACHES FOR PEACHES the documentary on Peaches, the singer best known for the song F*** The Pain Away. It’s a real raw and punk look at the singer and her life as she gets ready to tour. It’s a glorious shot of rock and roll  in cinema form and is highly recommended.

For now I’m going to get ready to see what else I can get to.

For more information and tickets go here.

A Mother's Embrace (2024) Beyond Fest

As a storm approaches, a firefight who recently lost her mother, is tasked with checking on the residents of an old age home someone said was collapsing.

If the reasoning behind this film actually made any sort of sense this would have been one of the scariest films of the year. Filled with fantastic characters and images this film is technically one of my favorites of the film but the reasoning behind anything is completely lacking and nothing makes sense.

The film has something to do with a tentacled monster living underground and a passage to a better life, and giant fetus. How or why is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t help that things just suddenly happen. Yes I know the call that get the firefighters to the home is bogus, but everything that happens after that makes no sense.  Is there any reason to remove the residents? Not really… until the house starts to try and kill people.  Floors collapse, walls crack and the hallways just keep going on and on.

There is no logic.

There is no logic and as such no suspense. It might have worked if there were one or two moments of nonsense, but everything in the opening sequence and the nursing home is devoid of any reasoning even dream reasoning. As Raymond Chandler had warned, an audience will only believe one, perhaps two things that happen with no explanation, any more than that you lose the audience. 

A MOTHER’S EMBRACE lost me early, and despite some the best images and sequences of the year the film is an over all miss.

Queer (2024) NYFF 2024

Daniel Craig gives an Oscar worthy performance as Bill Lee a queer junkie living in Mexico. Lee becomes obsessed with a beautiful young man who insists he isn't queer.

William Burroughs novel is turned into a surprisingly beautiful film by Luca Guadagnino. It's a film that, despite the source material and some male nudity really isn't "offensive" as one might have thought. I was shocked by that, because as a fan of Burroughs,, the thing I love about his writing was the raw and real language and Guadagino smooths it all out. The result is a film that disappoints me it isn't more raw despite the fact it's a really good look at obsession.

For me the story of the film is the performances. Daniel Craig is magnificent. If he wasn't as well built as he is he would be the perfect William Burroughs. Its a raw and real performance that he fully commits to. This maybe the best thing he's done on film. Equally good is Leslie Manville. Usually playing refined ladies, here she is a skeevy pipe smoking botanist. It's a film that will confuse the hell out of you and make you want to give her the Oscar now. And then there is Jason Schwartzman who is just wonderful.

This is definitely one to see 

Recommended.

Shadowland (2024) Beyond Fest

Looking like one of Richard Stanley’s documentaries, the film begins as a portrait of the filmmaker as refugee from the film world while staying in a small town in France. He’d fallen in with a group of mystical believers and seemed to have become a leader. As things go on the charges against Stanley for domestic abuse raise their head and things begin to change as the group has to ponder what the charges mean for them.

This is a heady film that twists and turns as it goes. Even knowing what happened, I wasn’t certain how the turns were going to come. (that’s a rave)

What I like about the film is that this isn’t Stanley’s story. This is the story of the community he became part of and which had to come to terms with a man who ended up not being who they thought. It’s the story of how a group of people moved away from “modern society” to heal themselves and then had to use what they learned to survive something they never expected to have to deal with.

There is a magic in this film fueled by the human spirit and like the best mystical journeys it’s one that isn’t easy and isn’t as expected.

You will forgive the lack of details in this film, I am still processing. Yes there is a narrative arc that is easy to discuss but this film is more than the narrative. This is a film about belief, and community, and the search for self and the darkness in the real world. It’s a film that has a great deal to say and in the days since I sat down to watch it I find that I have been pondering it, waiting and waiting for  the words to come to me so that I can really discuss it and really show you the wonders contained. The trouble is the words haven’t come and all I’ve been left with is a deadline.

Make no mistake, this film is a stunner, it’s a film that will fill you with thoughts and feelings and make you ponder it. This is the best sort of filmmaking.

I can’t wait to see it again.

Highly recommended.

TRANSAMAZONIA (2024) NYFF 2024

Rebecca is a small girl who survives a plane crash into the Amazon. Years later her father, an evangelist preaching in the jungle has positioned her as faith healer of great power. However life beyond the church is complicating things.

This is a low key and rambling film that is just okay. We watch Rebecca as events transpire around her, her father tries to hook up with a nurse, the logging company clashes with the indigenous population and  she preaches and heals. While the film has some tense moments, and keeps hinting at why the nurse thinks Rebecca looks familiar, the film never generates a great deal of enthusiasm. To be certain it is better than many of the other films playing at NYFF this year, but at the same time it just sort of is there and doesn't do anything.

Part of the reason for this is Helena Zengel, who plays Rebecca with a stony expression that never changes. Buster Keaton has nothing on this girl. It doesn't work because we never know what she is feeling.

An interesting misfire

Equal Play (2024) Hamptons 2024

This is  look at how sports for kids with disabilities is just as important as is it for every other kid. Looking at two English kids, we are shown very clearly how playing sports changes kids for the better.

This film is magic. It will truly open your eyes to the magic of sports. We see how the kids become more social and feel better thanks to their playing sports. 

There is one of the best moments in any film I've seen in 2024. The sequence where Tammy, the young electric wheelchair bound girl, who gets put in a racing chair and then manages to not only do a single lap of a track (which her coach hoped she might be able to do) but a second. The look of absolute delight on her face as she is set loose and can just go...and go... and go... had me tearing up. The pure unbridaled joy on her face says it all.

This is a great film. You need to track this down.

Swim Lesson (2024) Hamptons 2024

Portrait of swim instructor Bill Marsh who has made it his life to teach children as young as possible to learn to swim. Marsh feels that kids need to swim so that the danger of drowning is minimized.

This i an excellent portrait of a man who is doing something that is helping to keep the next generations safe. Inter-cutting several classes with various kids we watch as the kids fear goes to absolute delight.

A joy that will put a smile on your face.

April (2024) NYFF 2024

An obstetrician gets into trouble when an infant dies during delivery. She followed the mothers request not to do a c section and that may have resulted in the child's death. As she awaits the outcome of the inquiry, which everyone fears will result in her being found out to be an abortionist, she broods on life.

Slow, I mean glacially slow, film is told with painfully long silences and never ending shots. Its a "real" time film on abortion issues and as such is a festival darling. It's a beautifully shot film with a killer sound design which should make it a winner but the film is so gawd awful slow that no one is really going to watch more than once.

Kudos to this polemic being adult and showing things on screen. When it's working it's real life feeling sequences will affect you (people left during the births and abortion) but the pacing, the artistic sequences and at times deliberately plotted/constructed moments work against it. I'm not sure how many people would have stayed to the end if there wasn't another press screening after it.

I, and everyone at the press screening, admire it for taking a stand (and that's the reason its at festivals) but I doubt anyone will really stay or stay awake long enough to hear what it has to say.

Zurawski v Texas (2024) Hamptons 2024

This is a look at a lawsuit brought by women in Texas against the state’s medical rules for abortions in the wake of over turning Roe v Wade. The women are challenging the law for, among other reasons, that things aren't clear enough so that medical professionals are so afraid of doing anything, even when medically necessary that very often they are putting the lives of the mother in danger. There is a real risk of death or the women not being able to have another child through no fault of their own.

This is a vitally important film whose story  needs to be heard. Sure it was easy to put abortion bans in place, unfortunately the lawmakers, in typical fashion, didn’t think things through and left the people of their states hanging. The legislators  simply wrote the law and didn’t think about how it worked or what it allowed or didn’t.

The film charts the lawsuit filed by a number of women in Texas and the lawyers fighting for them. It’s a film that perfectly explains what happened and why. It’s a story that makes clear that things have to be changed, however it also makes clear that no one really wants to step up and fix something that makes sense.

If there is anything wrong with the film  it is that the film is so perfectly put together that it comes across matter of factly. The film perfectly states it’s point and explains the problem that it kind of removes some of the emotion. You come out of the film feeling that of course this is a problem that needs to be addressed, why isn’t anyone doing it…. And then you realize we’re talking about Legislators and we are not talking about the brightest bulbs in the box.

All kidding and quibbles aside this film is required viewing.

Write your law makers

Daytime Revolution (2024) Hampton's Film Festival 2024

This is a look at the week in 1972 when John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosted the Mike Douglas show. Douglas was the number one person on daytime TV and Lennon and Ono were a major get. Brining friends along with them Lennon and Ono hoped to get their view of the world out to middle America.

Mike Douglas was a big deal. An easing going singer, Douglas was one of the best interviewers I’ve ever seen. He never had an agenda, he simply wanted to just talk to his guests and wanted them to feel at easy and be themselves. When you watch him interview people it becomes clear that his style was more what you get when friends are hanging out in a diner talking. It was this easy going attitude that allowed Lennon to open up and talk about himself, his life and ideas more clearly than he did elsewhere. He wasn’t on, he was just being John, human being.

The film highlights Lennon being John via copious use of clips from the show. The filmmakers smartly don’t cut away  when Lennon is talking, they simply use the clips and let him go, thus allowing the clearest portraits of the man since the shows originally aired. The film also highlights how Douglas’ interviews humanized the other guests like Ralph Nader, Bobby Seal and George Carlin who nore chill then in any other interview I’ve ever seen.

The clips of the show and the guests  are mixed with interviews with the people who were there. Everyone talks about how this was the first time that they were going before middle America and how it changed themselves and the country.

If there is anything wrong with the film is that outside of explaining how the shows came together and how they opend up minds, the film doesn’t really put things into context of society in general and the political landscape. The film opens and closes with text about Nixon hating Lennon and going after him politically, but out side of a couple of lines we really don’t get any sense of the what a big deal that was. I say this because books were written about Nixon’s war with Lennon, so it should have been a few more references.

That said it’s a minor quibble and the film still demands to be seen.  If for no other reason than we get to see Mike Douglas in action.

Highly recommended.

AMERICAN CATS: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE CUDDLY (2024) Hamptons 2024

Comedian Amy Haggart (Full Frontal With Samantha Bee) looks at the cats in America, focusing on the drive to declaw the cats.

A funny and amusing film with a very serious under current AMERICAN CATS has some really great things in it. The trouble with the film is going to be how you react to Haggart and he acerbic snark. As much as I was enjoying the images and the discussion I  found I didn’t much care for Haggart’s personality. She simply rubbed me the wrong way.

My reservations aside this film is worth a look.

LITTLE, BIG, and FAR (2024) NYFF 2024

 

Jem Cohen's portrait of an Austrian astronomer who is pondering life and his work after turning 70.

This s a film you have to give yourself over to. Seemingly rambling in structure, the film is more a stream of consciousness tale that takes us into the mind of Karl that shows us clearly how he sees and processes the world. What at times is a film that will make you wonder where it's going, Ultimately comes together into something wondrous.

This is a film that will make you see the world in a new way.

Who By Fire (2024) NYFF 2024

(Apologies up front for not using names in the review, but people are introduced and disappeared so I never caught names)

A father, his daughter, his son and his son's friend go into the wilderness to spend some time with the father's friend and former collaborator for a few days. While there things go sideways in a WTF coming of age tale.

While I like this film to some degree, the truth is this film is a complete and utter mess narratively. Director Philippe Lesage brings together 11 people and manages to focus on none of them, moving them around in ways that make no sense.  Yes the individual scenes mostly work on their own but over all none of it really hangs together, killing not only a character who barely registers but the dog as well.

My feelings for the film have gone up and down since I saw it. Mostly I trade off liking moments (Rock Lobster is going to be what people latch on to) and realizing that the film has massive problems. 

The problems begin with the fact that most of the characters don't really exist because after they are introduced they disappear. Everything is focused on the friend of the son who wants to sleep with his best friends sister. I would ask why he's the focus when he isn't that interesting a character, except there are no other characters in the film. The father is a wine obsessed turd, the daughter is the sex object and everyone else is  barely there. The most telling clue as to how badly the characters are drawn and the plot is a mess in the fact that the main character, the friend of the son, has only two scenes with his supposed best friend. They almost never appear together, yet are so chummy that they go on vacation together. WTF? The son is such a non-entity that I completely forgot about him for most of the film.

Truth be told by the end everyone is so shitty to each other you will wonder why are they friends.

The plotting is just as bad with things happening, just because.  Big blow outs happen one minute and everything is hunky dory the next. Someone dies (I think they die), and then nothing.  It feels like the director didn't know what to do so he made it up. Let send everyone down a river because... The father obsesses about who switched his wine because he has nothing else to do. Scenes at times feel like pieces of long moments that got trimmed down.(why do I think there is a five hour cut of this that makes more sense)

It's a film that rambles all over the place and yet manages to go no where.

The actors are lost. The great Irene Jacob appears late in the film and does nothing but sit there.

This is two hours and thirty five minutes that are a waste of your life - yes I really like pieces- but that is all this is, pieces

As good as the pieces (particularly the literal needle drops) are there is no way I can tell you watch this over long trip to nowhere.

Pepe (2024) NYFF 2024

 

PEPE is the story of hippo who escaped from the menagerie of Pablo Escobar and wandered the wilderness. As he dies he tells us of the people he met and imparts wisdom.

The film is not so much his story as the stories he tells about the people he encountered. You will either buy it or you won’t.  

I  didn’t