Prying Eyes (2023)

 PRYING EYES is an incredible short horror film.

It’s the story of a young man who films people when they are unaware, who is told that someone died in his building and what happens after that.

While the actor playing the young man seems to be “acting” for the early parts of the film  he eventually falls into the role.  Actually any perceived short comings are over come by the strength of the story and the direction.Fan Ka-chun has made a killer film that has a genuine “oh crap” ending.

What makes the film work as well as it does is that the story doesn’t do what we expect. Yes, the images are creepy, but at the same time this is a film that is carried by the story. What is happening and why isn’t what you think and the shock at the ending is because of the final reveal, not because it’s a jump scare.  This is the way the best horror films work. Frankly I’m so enthralled by the plotting and construction that I want to see what Fan Ka-chun does with a full-fledged horror feature because the construction of this film is so good.

Highly recommended where ever you can find it.

Marlowe (2022)

Based on a more recent Philip Marlowe novel (The Black Eyed Blonde by John Banville which is referenced in the film as a movie poster) this film has Marlowe being hired by a rich woman to find her missing lover. He's supposedly dead, run over outside an exclusive club, but she doesn't think so. Soon Marlowe is hip deep into it with all sorts of nonsense involving rich people, the movies, and ambassador, the mob, drugs, prostitution and blackmail.

For get the plot, it ultimately makes little sense. Marlowe is being sent on a weird chase that is is always pointed away from the real reason for things and as a result nothing hangs together. Additionally the film wants to say things about the rich and the poor but it's so messy as to be not worth pondering.

On the other hand the film has a great cast (Liam Neeson, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Colm Meaney, Diane Kruger and others), endlessly quotable dialog and cool visual sense. No it is not California, but who the hell cares? The film is a great deal of fun.

I had a blast seeing MARLOWE. Is it high art? Oh hell no, but it is a big budget dress up for everyone on screen. Sure they are aping the tropes of the hardboiled detective genre with plenty of anachronisms but the film is so much fun you won't care. This is just people having fun so we can have fun.

Neeson is okay as Marlowe. He's a bit too world weary, but he is still fine. I prefer him as Matthew Scudder from the books by Lawrence Block, but he is still a solid Marlowe, especially once he's allowed to be a man of action. I love it when he beats up guys sent to knock him off and after best thing them decides to clock one with a chair for the hell of it.

High art?

No.

Pure popcorn delight. This is the sort of film you'll stop and watch every time it's one.

Highly recommended.

Nate Hood ponders A STILL SMALL VOICE (2023) Hot Docs 2023

 

When I saw A STILL SMALL VOICE at Sundance I knew I had to get Nate Hood to see the film. Nate is currently studying to be a hospital chaplain and I wanted to get his thoughts on the film. How better to judge a film than a man living the events depicted?  I managed to get him to see the film and he was blown away by the film. 

Because of the way things fell and a class schedule Nate was only just able to turn in a review.  With the film playing soon at Hot Docs I'm presenting Nate's piece 

In his 1987 film Wings of Desire, director Wim Wenders imagines a Cold War Berlin inhabited by angels. These angels, invisible and incorporate to the humans among them, have watched over the city eons before it was even a city. They serve not as guardians, but as observers, eternal witnesses to the humans around them, privy to their innermost thoughts and feelings. In one heartbreaking scene, one of the angels named Cassiel (Otto Sander) watches helplessly as a young man commits suicide, hearing his every thought, sharing his every agony. The angel, sitting beside him until the last—head on his shoulder, hand on his back—howls in impotent, unheard agony as the young man falls out of his grasp off the side of a tall building.

I used to think that no other moment in film better captured my experiences as a hospital chaplain than this one. Coming from every walk of life and faith tradition, we chaplains aren’t called to heal or even intervene in the lives of our patients. There are doctors, therapists, and lawyers for that. When we enter the rooms of the sick, the dead, and the dying, we do so knowing we will ultimately be as helpless as Cassiel to save them. Though I’ve only completed one of the two necessary residencies to become a board-certified chaplain, I’ve already seen more than my share of death. I’ve prayed over the bodies of braindead car accident victims on life-support. I’ve held strangers in my arms as they shrieked and wailed mere feet from where their loved ones were actively coding. I’ve looked husbands, wives, sons, and daughters in the eyes as they learned those closest to them in this life have slipped away into the next. All I could do—all we chaplains can do—is be present in the moment and offer what religious help we can. We are there, like Wenders’ angels, to look, listen, and bear witness to the suffering humanity around us. We walk beside our patients in their pain, help them acknowledge their thoughts and feelings, and provide company when there is no other company to be had. Sometimes we talk about God. But most often, in my experience, we don’t. And that’s okay.

Not all chaplains are Christian, but I am, and in my tradition we call this work a “ministry of presence.” Though some might reject this as superstitious nonsense, it’s no snake oil pseudoscience. A landmark, oft-cited 2014 study in the Journal of Palliative Medicine proved that hospital spiritual care both improves recovery rates and patient quality of life. Our work is necessary and transformative. But it’s hard. It exhausts the body and mind. It’s heartbreaking, soul-wearying work. And what’s worse, there aren’t enough of us to go around. In 2019, more than one-third of American hospitals didn’t have chaplains on their staff. Now, four years later, I can only imagine how our ranks must have been further diminished by COVID-19. (I caught the disease myself for the first time while working with COVID patients. Despite being young, relatively health, and triple-vaccinated, the disease incapacitated me for nearly a week.)

But now, a new documentary has arrived which supplants Wings of Desire as the most honest depiction of what hospital chaplaincy work feels like: Luke Lorentzen’s A Still Small Voice. The film follows 150 days in the life of Margaret (Mati) Engel as she nears the end of her chaplaincy residency program at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Filmed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the film accompanies Mati as she visits patients, participates in group discussions with members of her residency cohort, and reflects upon the stresses of her work. A third generation Holocaust survivor, Engel never shies away from her conflicted feelings about God as a practicing Jew. She’s open with her colleagues and patients about her difficulties having what she calls an “adult relationship with the divine.” She quotes a prayer from Maimonides one moment only to question the idea of an “imminent God” the next. 

Not that this disqualifies her from chaplaincy. Quite the opposite, in fact. I can testify from my own experience that patients more often than not want and appreciate honesty about our convictions and doubts about God. This is evidenced in one powerful scene in the film where Mati talks with a bereaved family member of a recently deceased patient over the phone. When they ask her what Jews believe about life after death, she answers that she can only speak from her own experience. Quite simply, she doesn’t know. She admits that death is scary. But she explains that she believes that “when a soul is finished with its work…death is okay.” And though we can’t see the relative’s face, we can hear the relief and reassurance in her voice over the phone.

Lorentzen’s last film Midnight Family (2019) likewise examined people working on the fringes of an overworked healthcare system, following a family of paramedics operating a private ambulance service in Mexico City. As in that film, Lorentzen spends relatively little time focusing on things audiences might find “exciting.” There are no breathless sprints to flatlining patients, no dramatic bedside conversions, no interviews with patients sporting grotesque injuries or exotic diseases. The one exception is a scene where Mati blows up at her supervisor after he confronts her for showing up several hours late for a shift without properly notifying anyone. But even this confrontation, though painful, is brief and quickly moved on from. As with Midnight Family, Lorentzen is more interested in the job’s less glamorous moments of stillness and sheer, full-bodied exhaustion. Many of the shots see Mati leaning against the walls of empty hallways, sprawling on the bed in what I assume to be either her apartment or her hospital’s on-call suite, or sitting in silent reflection in group meetings. Personally, I’m glad Lorentzen took this approach; any attempt to glamorize what we do or ignore the toll it takes would be disingenuous.

Wenders’ Wings of Desire ends with Damiel (Bruno Ganz), one of Berlin’s angels, rejecting his immortality and becoming human. The end of A Still Small Voice reveals that Mati, too, left hospital chaplaincy after completing her residency. She now, ironically enough, lives in Cassiel and Damiel’s home city of Berlin, working as a “performance artist, theologian and spiritual care practitioner.” All I can say is that I understand and wish her well. Our profession can be a meatgrinder that leaves nobody, even the ones who stick around, unscathed. So why do we do it? I think Mati herself inadvertently answers this question in the film when she admits that religion can be used as a “psychological crutch” some people use instead of confronting reality. “But then,” she continues, “at the same time I can’t throw all of this out because there’s too much here that is nourishing.” Nourishing for her patients? Or somehow, I wonder, nourishing for her as well? I have my suspicions. And I think anyone else who watches this magnificent film will have them, too.

---

 1. Puchalski, Christina M et al. “Improving the spiritual dimension of whole person care: reaching national and international consensus.” Journal of palliative medicine vol. 17,6 (2014): 642-56. doi:10.1089/jpm.2014.9427

 2. Abrams, Amanda. “Hospital Chaplains Stick to the Heart of the Job amid Health Care Industry Changes.” Religion News Service, May 31, 2019. https://religionnews.com/2019/05/28/hospital-chaplains-stick-to-the-heart-of-the-job-amid-health-care-industry-changes/. 

3. Engel, Mati. Mati Esther Engel. Accessed April 12, 2023. https://www.matiestherengel.com/.

DRY GROUND BURNING (2022)

Nonprofessional actors tell a version of their lives in a story of a group of women bikers in Brazil. They are on the outside of society and are struggling to get along.

I really liked this film about a way of life I know nothing about. Looking more like Hollywood's idea of a post-apocalyptic dystopia DRY GROUND BURNING reveals to us how close we are to a society that is very different than we see in America. I kind of groaned when I realized that I was going to be committing to a two-and-a-half-hour film, but once the film started, I was instantly transported to another place.

The performances are for the most part very good. Only when the film pauses for sequences where the characters are just sitting and talking is there any sense they are not real people or trained actors. It’s only in those moments they don’t seem to know how to ‘act”. Outside of that this film feels as if it could be a documentary.

This is a gem. 

If you want to a solid drama that isn't Hollywood. DRY GROUND BURNING is a must

Passion (2008) opens Friday

Rysuke Hamaguchi’s PASSION was made while the great director  was in film school. I say that up front because watching the film it’s clear that the master who made DRIVE MY CAR and his more recent films  was just starting out.

The film concerns a couple who announce their engagement to friends. This leads to a series of emotional revelations that that send shockwaves through the couple and their friends.

On it’s own terms PASSION is a good drama, but it isn’t anything special. It’s a very intense film about emotion and ideas that let’s us know that this is trying to be more than a pot boiler.  It’s a film that looks like it was made for TV with shot choices that seem that they put together by a TV vet, instead of a budding cinematic master.  Honestly if it wasn’t a first film from a  great director I don’t think PASSION would have traveled to America.

That said as the starting place of a master PASSION is interesting. Looking at the film  one can see how Hamaguchi got from PASSION to DRIVE MY CAR. There are sequences and moments that are as expertly handled as anything that came after, even if the film as a whole doesn’t.

Is it worth seeing? Yes absolutely both on it’s own terms and as a starting place, just don’t go in expecting the film to be a four star masterpiece, rather it should be seen as a good drama that lead to greater things.

Lost Weekend (2022)

 

I'm going to be pondering LOST WEEKEND A LOVE STORY for a while. Its the story of May Pang and her relationship with John Lennon, Yoko and Lennon's first wife and son Julian.  Its a complex story with no easy answers. Its a film that is going to rattle some people's cages because even 40 plus years on from John's death he is still viewed a certain way.

I like this film a great deal, however at the same time I still haven't full processed it. Pang's portrait of Lennon is not the  one the media pushes, not is it the one that the media has been reinventing over the years. It is clearly one that is coming from someone who knew the man up close and personal. Even though I am not a huge Lennon fan I still have a certain picture of him from decades of media stories.

This is a really good film that anyone who wants to know not only what happened during the time Pang and Lennon were together should see, but also anyone who wants to get a better handle on who Lennon was as a human being.

Worth a look

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (2022)

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOOSHED is the story of Nan Goldin and her battle with the Sackler family (the family behind the Oxy and other opioid epidemics).

Oscar nominated documentary was the talk of last year’s New York Film Festival with everyone making it a must see. I missed it and was chomping at the bit to see it. I finally caught up with the film thanks to HBO and I’m kind of puzzled by the Oscar nomination.

Told in as a mix of Goldin’s legendary slide shows that splices together all her work and a current footage of Goldin battling the Sacklers the film attempts to tell the tale of woman whose past has lead her to fight the good fight for the good of humanity. It’s good but odd film. It’s odd because the two stories never fully blended. It feels like they took a good bio of Goldin and welded it with a social justice film and let the chips fall as they may. While I understand that things in Goldin’s past are the reason she wants to take the Sacklers down, I don’t think there is enough here to justify the two hour running time, at least as a split tale. Frankly I think the two halves are better than the whole.

The film is definitely worth a look, just be prepared to have interest begin to lag about the half way point.

Woman King (2022)

WOMAN KING is the true story of the female warriors of African kingdom of Dahomey. Lead by a fierce warrior, played by Viola Davis, they could out fight any other army they fought against.

I’ve been sitting on my thoughts of WOMAN KING for a while now. It’s not that there is anything wrong with the film, there absolutely isn’t, it’s a very good historical action epic. I had a blast watching it both times that I saw the film.  My reluctance was purely from the stand point that I was not sure why people were falling all over themselves in regard to the Oscars. I’m not sure why the film was in the Oscar talks beyond  Viola Davis in the lead.

As I said this is a kick ass historical action film. It’s a film that easily fits in with some of the best action films out there. It’s a classic historical epic done in modern day. I just don’t think it should have been in the Oscar mix.

That said, what a blast.

Recommended.

Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker (2023)

Kai the hatchet wielding hitchhiker of the title was at first thought of as a savior after saving someone's life by hitting them with the blunt side of an axe, however a darker side to him appeared.

This is a great film about a viral sensation that is stark warning about why we shouldn't be celebrating viral sensations without vetting them. As we see Kai was unstable all they come and while we see he eventually turned to murder, we realize early on that he wasn't that far away from it to begin with. For example we learn he may have been responsible for the mayhem that brought him fame.

I was held captive by this film and it's turns. I couldn't stop watching it even though I had other things I needed to attend to.

Highly recommended, its now on Netflix

Little Richard I Am Everything (2023) plays a special one night only screening Tuesday before opening wide April 21

Magnificent portrait of Richard Wayne Penniman, aka Little Richard. This is a film that covers Richard's entire life and being with an openness and honesty that I've never seen before.

I have seen a lot of biographies of Little Richard over the years but this is the first one to seemingly tell it all. Nothing is left out to the point that more than once I was murmuring that I didn't know that to no one in particular.

Yes we get the music. Yes we get to see him perform and be the wonderful entertainer. I love that we get some amazing talking heads to explain how Richard changed the universe for the better, but there is so much more here that it kind of boggles the mind.

I love that we get a sense of the man beyond the performer. Yes Richard was always open, but there is something about the way director Lisa Cortes brings it all together that we feel like we are touching the man inside the persona. In all the years I've watched interviews or read on Little Richard there was always a sense of a wall between us. Richard was himself some where beyond us. That isn't the case here. Richard is sitting with us, across the table at a diner telling us his story and we are so much better for it. The shields are down so I was deeply moved when late in the film Richard talked about wanting to find love. Yes he knew he was loved but there was a special kind of love he wanted that he never found..

I wanted to give him a huge hug.

Biographical documentaries do not get better than this.

Absolutely one of the best films of 2023 - you must see this film.

Coconut Head Generation (2023) NDNF 2023

This is more a marker than a straight review. 

I managed to see COCONUT HEAD GENERATION today. It's a look at the 20 somethings in Nigeria attending the university there who are much more connected to the world and what is happening than their parents and society gives them credit for. The film is an excellent observational look at the students and their lives. 

It is very recommended if you get a chance to see it.

Tommy Guns (2022) plays NDNF 2023 today and opens April 12

A group of soldiers during the Portuguese occupation of Angola find that things are turning against them and that their efforts to retreat of a place of safety have put them into danger.

Allegorical exploration of occupation starts off as a straightforward tale of how occupiers and colonizers interact with the indigenous population and then takes a turn toward the nightmare as the film becomes more like a horror film with surreal touches.

I like a lot of TOMMY GUNS. There is a great deal to be said about the craft of the film and some of it’s nightmarish sequences get under you skin more than many straight horror films. The problem for me is that the film is trying very hard to make a point  and trying even harder to shock. The moment half an hour in when a soldier prays and then just shoots the woman he was, with while unexpected, felt like it was there just to get a rise out of the audience. The idea of taking the goods of a country and the leaving it dead was a bit too heavy handed for my tastes.

Still TOMMY GUNS packs a punch and is worth a look.

Ride On (2023)

RIDE ON is a first for Jackie Chan, a film that is so disappointing that you really don’t ever want to see any of it ever again.  Say what you will about Jackie’s out put of films, no matter if you liked a film or not, there was always something in them that made you want to see at least part of them again. With RIDE ON that really isn’t the case. I wouldn’t feel heart broken if I never revisited it.

In the film Jackie plays an employed stuntman who lives with his horse. He is struggling to get by. He can’t make rent, the local gangsters want the money they loaned him and his daughter is trying to reconnect. When a fight with some of the gangsters goes viral he has a shot at redemption with a second chance at the movies. 

Okay....

Where do I begin?

The first problem is that this film is like five or six films all mashed together. Every plot thread should have been its own film. There are so many characters in this film it feels like we are in the middle of New York’s Penn Station at Rush Hour and we are trying to make a film of everyone that is getting off every train. It’s insane.  Complicating things is the tone of the film changes from moment to moment. Nominally a light comedy the film is frequently maudlin. Jackie looks like a broken man and seems to be playing this as Death of Salesman.  What was this supposed to be originally because I don’t think that’s it now.

Shot as an epic, the film is a true widescreen film where everything is big and bold. This helps the action sequences which have room to be huge set pieces, but the characters get lost in the smaller moments as the characters get vanish among the sets.

Probably the most heartbreaking thing is the action set pieces are just okay. I would like to say it’s just Jackie showing his age, he tuned 69 on the day the film was released, but there have been several recent films that worked with Jackie and hid any slowing down through editing and camera work. Here the set pieces feel slowed down. At times the sequences feel like they filmed the dress rehearsal instead of the actual performance. Set pieces such as Jackie playing a Green Hornet type character are brilliant in conception but poor in execution. It feels like everyone is moving two steps slower than they should be.

I kept thinking what would this have looked like ten years ago? Two years ago? With a different creative team?

The worst part of all of this is the film doesn’t feel like there was any love involved in the making. It feels like a contractual obligation. It’s a feeling hammered home by the outtakes that run during the credits and there isn’t the joy the sequences had in other Jackie Chan films. There is no sense of fun in them.

I was disappointed from start to finish.

While not bad, it’s just nothing worth the effort.

Skip it

ARNOLD IS A MODEL STUDENT (2022) NDNF 2023

A young man returning from the US finds that is integration back into the Thai school system difficult. The schools, run with an iron fist, make it ripe for cheating because it’s an easier way to avoid the grief inflicted upon them

Dark comedy is a bracing commentary not only on the Thai school system but also the rise of authority in the world. It’s a troubling look at the way things are done in order to get the best results.

While very well made, the film is a bit too mannered in the telling for my taste and I never fully connected emotionally.

That said  this is worth a look if it interests you,

Autobiography (2022) NDNF2023

Youngman gets a job as the driver of a retired general and ends up going down a dark path as the general’s run for mayor sends him into unexpected directions.

Slow moving meditation on Indonesian society and how it has been corrupted. It’s a dark political drama that makes you think about how the evil of some men corrupts everyone around them.

A slow meditative film AUTOBIOGRAPHY is strong an mood. It’s a film that gets under your skin and makes you feel uncomfortable. There but for the grace of god this could have been any of us.

Worth a look

The Pure Place (2021)

Horror collides with heavy handed social commentary in a film that looks good but never manages to make the horror mesh with the lofty ideas

Allegorical horror film about children who are part of a cult. Considered the lowest of the low they wander a Greek Island living in filth and shoplifting what they need. They are waiting for the time when their leader will call them and lift them up into cleanliness and purity.  However the path to salvation takes unexpected turns for everyone involved.

Great looking film missed the mark for me. A little too insistent on being more than a horror film I never fell under its spell since it always seemed to be striving to be about something other than chills. This isn’t to sell the film completely short, it works as an drama an allegory, but it’s not really a scary film, which is what I wanted.

Reservations aside it’s worth a look for the curious.

Sam Now (2022)

Filmmaker Reed Harkness  and his brother Sam decide to try and find Sam’s mom who suddenly disappeared several years after divorcing their father.  The result is look at the brothers and their family which goes into all sort of unexpected ways.

I had no idea what I was expecting when I went into SAM NOW and ended up taking one hell of a ride. I thought it was going to be a mystery, and it was to a degree but it actually is more a look at a family and the trauma that every member carries with them This is a portrait of a family that does deeper than most films. It’s a warts and all look at the family that reveals layers we don’t normally see.

Days after seeing the film I am still pondering it. The film kicked up all sorts of thoughts and feelings about things in my own life that I haven't thought of or wanted to ponder. Its a film that will get you thinking. It’s also wonderful conversation starter since it kicks up so much material that I can imagine not standing in the lobby after a screening and trying to sort it all out with the other members of the audience.

You really should see this and see how it hits you.

This is a really good film and is highly recommended.

Safe Place (2023) NDNF 2023

SAFE PLACE is 24 hours in the life of a fragmenting family in the wake of one members attempted suicide.

Based on the director’s own life the film is a trip into the lives of a bunch of very real people. We are watching the moment following a terrible event and watching what happens as it all plays out.  Since it is a film of the moment, there is no effort to go back and explain any of the back story. We are simply watching the characters as they live their lives. Back stories are not needed since they are living their lives.

A beautifully acted and made film I suspect that the film is going to want more details then we get. People want details on either side of the events in a film and SAFE PLACE doesn’t give them. That’s both a strength in that it makes it all real, and a weakness since there were a couple of times I wish I knew a bit more to have things connect to me emotionally.

Quibble aside this is worth a look for anyone wanting a heady lived in Drama

The Strange Case of Jacky Caillou (2022)

Jacky is a young man who likes to wander around recording sounds to blend into his music. When his grandmother, a healer of great power, passes Jacky thinks that he will be able to go off and do what he wants. However when a young lady shows up with an odd rash he takes steps to help her.

This good mix of coming of age, fantasy and horror is a small low key gem. This is the sort of film that makes it clear why you need to look past the Hollywood blockbusters at the other films that are out there. To be honest the film may not be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it is a damn satisfying film. Its rare that a Hollywood film left me feeling as satisfied as this.

The cast is first rate with everyone selling their roles.

Recommended.

Some Thoughts on Kelly Reichardt's Showing Up (2022)

 

By the time the twenty-first century rolled around, Western culture had convinced itself that Art was somehow innately edifying--for those who created it, those who experienced it, and even society at large. And perhaps there is some merit in believing in its positive effects, if only the psychological ones (clearly in terms of politics and morals, art itself, with a lowercase "a," is neutral at best). Still, in both the popular imagination and the over-intellectualized discourse of the art world, artists are typically celebrated... or romanticized to the extent that they are not celebrated. Either way, there is still an "otherness" that clings to the aura associated with being an artist. The truth is, as I'm guessing most of us instinctively suspect, working artists simply show up and, well, do the work.

With this in mind, Kelly Reichardt's wonderful SHOWING UP, which premiered at Cannes last year.    does more than just demystify the lives of contemporary artists: it shows that there's really nothing to demystify. That is, it refuses to apply any kind of essentialism to pursuing art, either as a vocation, an avocation, or something in between. There are all types of artists, with all sorts of motivations, and they take all kinds of approaches. Some may blame their cat for a poor effort or being ignored by the muse while others don't blame anything--they're too busy forging ahead and simply getting on with it. 

Typifying the former approach is Michelle Williams, in a brilliantly lowkey comedic role; fully embodying the latter is the always reliable Hong Chau, who, to use a cliché, disappears into the role. Their characters, the best of frenemies, are consistently positioned as contrasts, and their art reflects their personalities, intensely personal and fragile versus vibrant and large-scale. But no judgment is placed on either set of artwork, and that fits with Reichardt's exquisitely observational directorial style. If you're expecting big scenes of dramatic catharsis, you'll be disappointed; instead, there are moments of hope and metaphor, and instead of feeling forced or trite, they feel well-earned.      

In addition to these two main characters, the film presents a spectrum of the art community, from long-established "name" artists, to middle-aged art school faculty, to newbies/students. And Reichardt works wonders with the cast: I saw SHOWING UP some weeks ago, and the supporting characters remain both vivid and memorable. Yes, artists are interesting. But part of what the film argues is that they are largely interesting to the extent that they are not just artists.

To be sure, we should show up to support artists, and particularly those who are our friends, family, and colleagues. But we should show up with that in mind: they are close to us and we value them. If we come for the free cheese, or expect our lives to be changed via an aesthetically-induced epiphany, our expectations may be skewed; the only way our lives will change, Reichardt and co-writer Jonathan Raymond might contend, is if we actually change them.

* * *

SHOWING UP releases from A24 on April 7.