PIG HILL (2025)

 

A young woman begins to look into a series od strange disappearances in her town with the help of her brother and a friend. The disappearances appear to have something to do with “the pig people” a legendary bunch of people who do terrible things.

This is a nifty little thriller. I’m not going to say it breaks any new ground, but I will happily say that the film instead takes something similar to tales we’ve heard before and dresses it up so well that we fall in love it. There is a reason that some frequently told tales are more loved than others and it is in the hands of the storyteller. In this case it’s director Kevin Lewis who shows after the very fun WILLIE’S WONDERLAND that he is one of the best directors working today.  Lewis has made two great popcorn films and his work will make you want to see what he is doing next.

I had a blast watching this and I wish I had seen it at a packed festival screening where the energy of a similarly focused group of people makes it something greater. I will be seeing this again.

This film is a blast

Recommended.

How To Become a Mob Boss

Peter Dinklage narrates a how-to tale of what to do and what not to do if you want to be a mob boss. Focusing on the careers of various people (Whitey Bulger, Capone, Gotti, Carlos Escobar) the film charts what makes a successful boss.

This is a good look at the lives of various mob bosses and their various levels of success. It’s an informative way of doing things since it allows for the filmmakers to connect things up in unexpected ways. I was intrigued by how they did it.  I was also intrigued by the fact that their definition is kind of relative since none of the people profiled remained free, or alive.  Watching the episode on John Gotti I was struck by how he would have felt since he is repeatedly listed as the guy you didn’t want to emulate.

I originally put the series on because I wanted something “easy” to watch. I figured that it would be a bunch of stories I had heard. However the series surprised me by telling me a few tales of the early days of the mob I hadn’t heard before. I was hooked and what was supposed to be a leisurely walk through the series became a gallop.

I had a good time, though I dislike that the length of the episodes get shorter as the series goes on., with the final three running around 30 minutes.

Shortness of episodes or no this is a series that’s worth your time.

International Oscar Hopefuls: TARIKA and PALESTINE 36

TARIKA (The Herd)
This soul crushing magical realistic tale is the Bulgarian Oscar entry.  The film is the story of a father and daughter living in the country side. They are outsiders and not really trusted. Traika, has developed butterfly wings disease, a condition that makes her bones brittle. Complicating matters is the fact that the village thinks the girl is cursed and the source of the bad luck that seems to have befallen the town.

Told largely through action not words, TARIKA is a tale of what it means to be a paret and how the the herd mentality can over take reason. Its a deliberately told tale that you have to go with and pay attention to because what it important is told in actions and not words. There are long silences. If you can go with its rhythms will leave you broken at then end

Recommended

PALESTINE 36
Palestine's entry to the Oscars is the story of a young man caught up in the politics and tensions of 1930's Palestine, where the influx of European Jews is turning the status quo upside down.

This is a solid historical drama that takes the current vogue of Palestine before the Second World War tales and tries to tell a large story than that of a family caught in the march of history. I mention this because PALESTINE 36 is one of a half dozen or more films that have come out this year set in the same period, and one of at least three that is in the Oscar mix.

Of many films of a similar subject this is probably the most conventionally told, but it is also the one trying to tell a larger scale story. We are introduced to a swath of people from various groups and we are given a wider look at the politics of what is going on.

While just as good as the other films on the subject, it stands out for not taking a similar path. At the same time it is hurt by being clumped together with films that are less conventional. Don't get me wrong, I like the film, but at the same time seeing it at the end of the year in the midst of Oscar talk, I found it hard to take on it's own terms. That said I will revisit down the road.

My peronal quibbles aside PALESTNE 36 is worth a look.

100 LITERS OF GOLD (2024)

From Teemu Nikki whose previous THE BLIND MAN WHO DID NOT WANT TO SEE TITANIC comes the Finnish entry for the Oscars. It's the tale of two sisters who are known for brewing the best sahti ale. Asked to make some ale for a wedding they end up drinking it all themselves and have to scramble to find more.

Nominally a comedy this is a film that is more real then a comedy: Characters are broken, many are alcoholic in a very real way, life is messy.  Laughs come out of reality, as do the gut punches. It a film that moves you in all sorts of unexpected ways. 

To be completely honest I'm at a loss to know what its oscar chances are. It is most certainly a great film but it's not a film that behaves like a typical film.  its gloriously messy like life. Even saying its a black comedy doesn't prepare you for the real life edge to it.

The reality is this is one of the great finds of the year. Its a film unlike anything else you'll see all year.  It's proof that Teemu Nikki is one of the best directors working today. Like BLIND MAN, 110 LITERS forces us to see the world in an entirely new way.

Highly recommended.

Catch up Posts: BRING HER BACK and LAST BREATH

BRING HER BACK

A Brother and a sister are put into foster care, but there is something wrong with their foster brother and their foster mom seems to have a motive for their being there.

This  horror film that  is a little too constructed for my tastes with everything set up to make us feel off, from wounding one character at the start with poor vision on to the end, everything is set up not so much to feel natural but to be the most disturbing just to be disturbing. Its a technically well done film with a plot line that requires more and more nastiness because the characters get into an almost unbelievable death spiral which will make you want to simply say "If Woody had gone to police...". Disturbing on a purely visceral level it never pulls it enough to be as great as the parts.

LAST BREATH
True story about the efforts to rescue divers at the bottom of the ocean.
If you can give this film 15 minutes to set everything up, this is a nail biting film that will creep into your dreams. I had heard this was good and that word was right.
If you can be patient this is very recommended.

Very brief thoughts on MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

Filmed version of the 2023 revival of the Stephen Sondhiem play is going to be a love it or loath it affair. the story of three friends over the years told backwards is not everyone's cup of tea. 

While the play has has rewrites, rethinks and assorted other iterations that added and removed songs the show has always been something I liked the idea of but never really the execution (a "proper" movie version filmed over the actual span of the play, so the actors age properly, is now being shot). Looking at the filmmed version of the show I was never fully engaged. The film is a record of the play and never transcends into anything beyond that. What works on stage doesn't completely work on the screen. Granted I am not a fan of the show so my tolerence for the piece was low

While I like Sondhiem and his shows I have always been kind of curious as to why he has become the theater god since many of his shows are intellectual and atypical and, the odd song aside, tend not to connect with the public in general.  That's not a knock on Sondhiem or the shows, only my inability to understand why theater people fall all over him.

As it stands now, this version of MERRILY is a nice record of the show, but I suspect it would have played best when it started it's run in the tiny New York Theater Workshop where it could have been an intimate experience and not one controlled bythe cinema gods.

Catch up Capsules: NOUVELLE VAGUE and IN YOUR DREAMS

 

NOUVELLE VAGUE
Richard Linletter makes a Wes Anderson film about the making of Breathless.
This is a delightful little film that is going to mean little to anyone who doesn't know film history, but those that do, and know the characters being portrayed on screen are going to have a grand time.

IN YOUR DREAM
Huge disappointing film that riffs on Little Nemo in Slumberland about a brother and sister trying to keep their family together. Awesome moments and glorious needle drops are stitched together with saccahrine  threads that have rotted from being used too much.  This isn't a film so much a polemic about life that made me physically ill.  It kills me to say that, but too much of this film is like the rotten meat the smelly stuffed animal is fond of.

An unhelpful pointer toward 100 NIGHTS OF HERO (2025)

Cinematic adaption of a graphic novel. It is based on the 1001 Arabian Nights but reduced down to 100.

I'm not going to say much about the film because five minutes into it I realized that I was not the audience for it. Set in an alternate universe and possessing a DIY esthetic, the film deliberately seems to be leaning to a camp sensibility.  I'm not sure why, the underlying story is good, it just feel jumbled in the telling. It feels like Bruno Dumont's EMPIRE.

I know that isn't really helpful but it's all I got.

Brief thoughts on BUGONIA (2025)

Two conspiracy theorists kidnap a big executive because they think she is an alien attempting to destroy the world. 

This is a bleak, black science fiction comedy is a remake of the Korean film SAVE THE GREEN PLANET. I never cared much for GREEN PLANET, there was a mean edge and an uncomfortableness that didn't like. This film was originally supposed to be a remake by the original director, however he dropped out and was replaced by Yorgos Lanthimos who madea film that reminded me too much of the original for me to like it much. Yes, the performances are fine, but I don't know why this film was needed except to have an English version.

CATCH UP CAPSULES: MATERIALISTS, SORRY BABY

 

SORRY BABY
Young woman in a spiral doesn't realize how bad she is until a friend shows up.
Okay drama would have worked better for me had I liked the main character more (and the film wasn't so deliberate in its construction)

MATERIALISTS
Celine SOng's follow up to get Oscar nominated PAST LIVES is weird misstep. Despite having a cast operating at an Oscar award level the script never feels real. Or even something that Song wrote. Weirdly conventional and feeling like an attempt to intice the Academy into giving her an award the film feels less like a singular voice in film and theater and just a product turned out byt the Hollywood machine

Come Closer (2025) Opens Friday

This is the story of a young woman named Eden. When her brother is killed in a car crash she spirals off. Realizing her brother had a whole other life which she knew nothing about she begins investigating and begins a relationship with his brothers girlfriend.

This film really didn't work for me. Blame it on Eden, a character who is either badly acted or badly written, or both. The problem begins before the accident where we see Eden smothering her brother as if he was a needy lover rather than his sister.  Its the wrong sort of creepy. Watching her spiral out after that distances us as she doesn't seem anything other than nut. What makes it worse is the performance is so ungrounded that the character seems like she is in another film entirely. That isn't a bad analogy- this is a film where everyone except Eden is in another film entirely.

I was disappointed

The Chronology of Water (2025)

Kristen Stewart makes her feature directorial debut with an adaption of Lidia Yuknavitch's autobiography which chronicled her abusive up bringing, days on the college swim team and her life changing experience working with Ken Kesey. 

All hail Kristen Stewart, director. Is there anything that she can't do? She is a bold and daring director giving us a gloriously well-made film that is like an emotional lightning bolt into the heart. Refusing to feel shackled by convention Stewart does what every great director should do and that is make a film by any means necessary. The film feels more like the work of some of the independent directors I love to watch, but with a bit more fearlessness. There doesn't feel that anything was held back.

The cast is wonderful. Imogen Poots stands tall in a role that hides nothing. She is all there, and she so disappears into her role as Yuknavitch that I had to wait until the end credits to see who the actress was. Everyone else is just as good. I do however need to single out Jim Belushi as Ken Kesey. How could no one have realized that he was this good a character actor?

You need to see this. 

Highly recommended

Brief thoughts on Little Trouble Girls (2025)

Two girls on a Catholic choral retreat have their friendship tested when one of the girls takes an interest in a worker where they are staying.

The Oscar offering from Slovenia has me looking at is quizically.  While the film is good on its own terms it is very similar to about three other films from the last year or two. Its so similar that watching the film I was conflicted because the story I was seeing so close to other films that I really thought I had seen  it despite knowing that I had never seen any of the images.

Don't get me wrong, I like the film. Its really good on it's own terms, but why this was chosen for Oscar consideration completely vexes me. 

Peter Guiterrez on A Private Life which opens Friday

“I’m not crying, it’s my eyes.”

***

While it may be a slight stretch to claim that A PRIVATE LIFE is the kind of film that Truffaut would’ve loved to have made, it’s not unreasonable in the least to speculate that he would’ve loved watching it. After all, Rebecca Zlotowski’s engaging quasi-noir has all the hallmarks of a classic French thriller—it’s super smart, full of mystery and humor, and everything is executed with a light yet highly skilled touch. The fact that A PRIVATE LIFE is somewhat “Hitchockian” would, of course, have been an extra bonus for Truffaut. The obvious touchstone in this respect is REAR WINDOW: while Jimmy Stewart’s photojournalist character suspects murder as a result of casual voyeurism, Jodie Foster’s psychoanalyst character suspects murder because her profession relies on, as she puts it, “knowing the secrets and lies” of her clients. As in REAR WINDOW, the protagonist must enlist the efforts of a love interest—in this case, a somewhat unlikely one—to investigate a crime that no one else is sure has even taken place. Come to think of it, given its psychoanalytic bent and dialogue that interprets some creative mindscreen sequences, this is a film that the director of SPELLBOUND himself would have enjoyed.

That is, with the possible exception of the characters’ unrepressed sexuality and the film’s ultimate critique of reason alone—remember, Hitchcock never made supernatural or paranormal genre fare. In these aspects, Zlotowski’s script, co-written with Anne Berest and Gaëlle Macé, is at its Frenchiest. On the other hand, the presence/aura of Foster, who’s playing a longtime expat, and the way that the story wraps up in an upbeat fashion (which is one reason A PRIVATE LIFE isn’t a true noir) point to an American side of the film’s lineage. Indeed, for some the way that Foster’s arc cleanly dovetails with the solution to the central mystery, the transformation of her own fiercely held epistemologies, and the resolution to her sidebar family conflicts will be a bit too much—it’s too pat and too Hollywood, achieved with little ambiguity and earned at little cost. 

There’s some validity to such an argument, but I’m choosing mostly to ignore it. Granted, A PRIVATE LIFE may be too ambitious for its own good, attempting to say too much about too many things, but in a way that’s part of its charm. It’s like one of the wine-filled evenings it depicts—too much may be said, and some of it not even clearly recalled later, but no one can say that the time spent in its company isn’t full of life and truth. Once upon a time critics called such a film a “confection,” but A PRIVATE LIFE is a little too dark and too serious under its veils of wit and style to be dismissed as something sweet. 

man finds tape (2025)

  A filmmaker  makes a film investigating the story of her brother, who one day found a mysterious video tape inside his barn, a tape of him when he was a young boy and a strange figure walked in. Her brother then starts a YouTube series that seeks to investgate what happened...

... I can't say any more because where this film goes is unexpected.... no really. There is a point in the film where it goes from "this is good, but I've seen this before" to "what the hell is going on?" And I mean that "What the hell is going on" in a good way. I say that because what is what happens is nothing I've seen before. It's also a film that doesn't give us a lot of answers (in a good way - the filmmakers understands that not only don't we need them but also because to do so would require stopping the film for lonmg exposition)

As much as I like the story telling, I dislike the  framing as a found footage film. There is couple of times where the film breaks the found footage wall and several others where it works against the film.  While it's annoying it isn't fatal because the story ultimately too good to fail.

Ultimaely this is one of the great horror films of recent vintage...and yea I want a sequel so I can have answers, but at the same time I don't want a sequel because it might ruin what's here.

Recommended

PEACOCK (2025)

A man who makes a living pretending whom ever other people need him to be, finds his own life imploding when his girlfriend leaves him.

Gentler but similar to the uncomfortable films of Ruben Ostlund and Torgos Lanthimos, this is a film you are either going to love or hate. Mannered in it's telling you can feel the hands of writer director Bernhard Wegner all over it. As much as his protagonist is not in control of things, Wegner is. You are either going to love that or hate it. I didn't much care for it.

What I did care for is the performance of Albrecht Schuch, who gives a masterful role as a man who doesn't know who he is or how to behave. It is one for the ages.

Worth a look if you like uncomfortable comedy.

(ADDENDUM- I saw this weeks before RENTAL FAMILY which is similar in some ways and better. Honestly by the time I saw RENTAL I had forgotten the plot completely)

Troll 2 (2025)

This is just brief thoughts on TROLL 2.

Its going to be brief because I’m still looking for the plot.

The film is a continuation of the first film, with the same characters and with the government trying to figure out what to do about trolls. This has some connection to the Second World War where the Telemark raid to stop the creation of a German atomic bomb really had something to do with a sleeping troll that was being studied. The troll gets loose and there are more trolls, and I don’t know. I really don’t. I mean I understand everything once the troll gets loose, but the whole first hour is a big question mark.

Is it bad? Not really (it gets dark and the Star Trek/Iron Giant reference killed me), but its a huge step down from the first film. Frankly if this was the first film there would never have been a second. I would love another, better film.

Worth a look on a slow night.

La Grazia (2025)

This is a beautiful film where the florishes and odd moments get in the way of a solid story.

The president of Italy is serving out his final six months. As he does so he has to decide what to do about a euthanasia bill and whether to sign two pardons for people who killed their spouses.

Paolo Sorrentino returns with a lovely and thoughtful portrai of a man of the law who has to wrestle with friends, family and what he believes in in order to figure out what the right thing to do is. It was a film that played festivals across the globe in the last year to great acclaim.

For the most part I absolutely loved this film. I loved the performance by Toni Servillo as the president who is uncertain what do do. Able to convey humor and heartbreak at the same time it is a performance that you will take into your heart and treasure.

For the most part I truly loved this film. Almost everything is spot on and I loved the mix of humnity and heady discussion of ideas. What I did not like was Sorrentino's periodic awkward flights of fancy or allowinf sequences to over stay their welcome. I broke slightly with the film with the sequence of the ambassadors arrival in the rain, which just became the wrong sort of absurd, a feeling that returned periodically through the film.

Reservations aside this is a wonderful film and worth a look.

THIS ORDINARY THING (2025) opens Friday

The story of 45 people who helped to keep Jewish people safe during the Second World War

I do not have a lot to say, largely because everything that needs to be said is said on screen. While the film is a rehash of the story of the Holocaust, the film rises above it by simply being a record of what the people who helped the Jews did. Told in a simple, almost matter of fact style, the film reveals how simply basic humanity saved humanity. Time and time again we hear the  simple refrain that they helped because that was the thing to do. No one was trying to save everyone, they were just trying to help who they could. In a world where people refuse to help or even to acknowledge that anyone not isn’t someone they know is human, it speaks volumes.

I was moved.

By the time this slightly longer than a hour long film had ended I was wiping away tears.

A truly great film.

 Recommended.

ROSEMEAD (2025) opens Friday

 

A woman tries to come to terms with the fact that her son is not taking his schizophrenia medication and is becoming more violent while not letting anyone know about the experimental cancer treatment she is taking may not be working.

This is a sold drama that show cases Lucy Liu’s true acting ability. Disappearing into the role of a mother being broken by life’s turns Liu sheds her flashy big budget persona to become a small woman trying to do right by her son. It’s a heartbreaking role that could put her in the Oscar mix if the film’s campaign can gain traction. She truly is stunning in a far from showy role that needs to be shepherded in front of academy voters.

Beyond her performances this is a solid little drama that’s worth your time.