Flicks with The Film Snob

Over the past thirty years, Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan has been gaining stature as one of the world’s best living directors. His style features long takes, wide shots, and minimal camera movement. Lately, though, he’s been making what I would simply call “philosophical” films that examine human nature and culture, moral responsibility, the individual versus the mass, and the doubts and inner struggles that human beings always go through. Ceylan is at that stage in the life of some artists when they seek to understand everything. His latest film is called About Dry Grasses. The title is from a…

A single mother whose kids were taken away tries to win them back, while she considers offering another child on the way for adoption. Earth Mama, from first-time filmmaker Savanah Leaf, tells the story of a young Black pregnant single mother in Oakland named Gia, and played by Tia Nomore. Successfully avoiding tiresome exposition, Leaf introduces us immediately into Gia’s world. First we witness her answering questions at an office in Child Protective Services. Her two children, a boy and a girl, were taken into foster care when the office was alerted to Gia’s drug use. She’s been mandated to…

A drama about the experiences of inmates participating in a theater program at the titular prison, featuring actual veterans of the program. Sing Sing, a film from director Greg Kwedar, is set, as you might expect, in the famous almost 200-year-old New York State prison thirty miles north of the city called Sing Sing, the name being a distorted version of a Native American name for that area. I’ve only been aware of it through old Hollywood prison movies up until now. But this film takes place in the real Sing Sing of today. In a large auditorium in the…

The true story of forbidden romance between the heir to the throne and a 17-year-old girl in 19th century Austria was brought to life in this classic film from 1936. Anatole Litvak was a Russian Jewish writer in the avant-garde theater of the early revolutionary period in the Soviet Union, eventually getting involved in the film industry there. He slipped out of the country in 1925, it’s not clear exactly how, and ended up directing films at UFA, the big German studio that was the home of Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and many others. He made a few films that…

Two recent films explore new styles and meanings in the horror genre. I think it’s significant that in our current historical moment the most prevalent film genre is horror. It might have something to do with the scariest stuff these days not being in movies, but in the news. Well, there are plenty of routine formulaic horror films, but horror is also attracting new artists that have more on their minds than just saying “Boo!” Many horror films employ supernatural elements, like black magic or demonology. Weapons, written and directed by Zach Cregger, is one of those, but never attempts…

Agnès Varda’s film essay on gleaning explores the many implications of this ancient practice. Gleaning—gathering food left on the fields after harvest—is an ancient tradition in Europe. In France, as we learn in the great Agnès Varda’s endearingly personal film from 2000, The Gleaners and I, gleaning is protected by law, although the laws vary in different provinces, and with different crops. Varda was intrigued not only with this practice, but with all its echoes and implications—our attitudes and policies towards waste; our ideas about property, labor and sustenance; the dumpster-diving of the homeless in the cities; artwork based on…

A young woman professor is challenged by the memory of a traumatic event. Sorry, Baby is the debut feature from 31-year-old Eva Victor, who is the writer, director, and star of this drama about persevering through traumatic events with honesty and humor. Victor plays Agnes, a newly promoted professor at a New England school who is visited by her best friend and former college roommate Lydie, played by Naomi Ackie. Their affectionate ways with each other, their conversations and jokes, convey a genuine rapport. Then Lydie springs a surprise: she’s going to have a baby. The film is divided into…

A woman dying from cancer asks an old friend to be in the room next door when she takes her own life. The Room Next Door, the latest film from the grand artist of Spanish cinema, Pedro Almodóvar, is based on a novel by Sigrid Nunez that I have not read, but the story couldn’t be more well-suited to his style. Ingrid, a successful novelist, played by Julianne Moore, discovers that Martha, an old friend with whom she’s been out of touch for years, a former war correspondent played by Tilda Swinton, has cancer. When she visits her in the…

Charles Laughton’s only film as a director, from 1955, is the dark tale of a criminal (Robert Mitchum) pretending to be a preacher, who marries an unsuspecting woman (Shelley Winters) in order to find money that her deceased husband had hidden, and in the process terrorizes her and her two children. Charles Laughton was a renowned British actor who made it big in Hollywood, but someday wanted to direct a movie. In 1953, Paul Gregory, a producer and long-time friend, sent him a book by a new writer, Davis Grubb, called “The Night of the Hunter.” Laughton was captivated, and…

Documents the German occupation of Amsterdam from 1940 to 1945 by showing us many locations in the city as they appear today, while a narrator tells us what people and events from the Nazi period lived or took place in that location. Try to imagine your country being attacked, conquered, and then occupied by a hostile foreign power. It’s difficult unless you’ve been through it. The most prominent examples occurred during the Second World War, when Nazi Germany conquered most of the European countries, instituting its murderous practices into the fabric of these countries. We have countless testimonies and books.…

Raven Jackson’s debut feature shows the world of rural black Southern life through the eyes of a serious, sensitive girl. A black girl is being taught how to fish by her father. We see a close up of her hands turning the reel. “Not so fast,” he tells her. “Easy.” When she catches a fish she touches its scales with her fingers, feeling its curious texture. We see her face, with intense eyes, serious and still. A younger girl, her sister, is looking on. Eventually the father says “let’s go home,” but the girl pauses to touch the shallow water…

A pub owner in a depressed town in northern England helps welcome Syrian refugees into the community. British director Ken Loach announced his retirement a couple years ago, at the age of 86. Like everything else in his remarkable career, this was a modest and well considered decision. With 26 feature films, plus numerous shorts and TV programs, he’s been an important presence in cinema for 60 years—one of only ten directors to win the Golden Palm at Cannes twice. But because he never stopped making movies about the lives of working class people, their problems and underlying issues; and…

A parody of a host of film genres displays Wes Anderson’s style at its most avant-garde. I’ve talked a lot about Wes Anderson over the years. In fact I’ve reviewed seven of his films on this show. I’m at the point where I want to just assume you know something about his work by now, and that I don’t have to keep describing his style and methods, such as sets that look like marvelous intricate toys, everything in bold colors, block-like patterns, with the camera either facing the actors head on or from the side, precise geometrical movements, the love…

A romance of 19th century France, in which a famous chef comes to rely on his female assistant to carry out his culinary ideas. Food films: movies that tell stories about cooking and eating, are a popular genre. When I think of the best ones, Babette’s Feast and Tampopo immediately come to mind. There are others. Now we can add The Taste of Things, from Vietnamese-French director Trần Anh Hùng, to that list. The Taste of Things begins at a French country estate in the late 19th century. Eugénie, an older woman played by Juliette Binoche, is smiling while she…

A bold adaptation of a famous Czech novel about brutal conflict in 13th century Bohemia, and the struggle between power and innocence. Marketa Lazarová, the 1967 film by Czech writer-director František Vláčil, opens on a vast winter scene, wild horses running in the distance. A deep-voiced narrator says we are being told a series of stories that were assembled “almost at random.” We are plunged into a world of ragtag medieval warriors: stealing, fighting, and killing as they roam through a snow-covered landscape. It turns out that when the film says the stories are random and unworthy, it is seeking…

Two young men are bonded as friends in a Florida juvenile detention camp in the Jim Crow South.  When filmmakers turn to historical subjects of oppression and persecution, it can be difficult to communicate the feeling of living through these events. Well, independent director RaMell Ross found a way to do this, in his adaptation of a 2019 Colson Whitehead novel about a Jim Crow era juvenile reformatory in Florida, Nickel Boys. Nickel Boys opens in 1962, with an African American boy in Tallahassee named Elwood Curtis, raised primarily by his loving grandmother Hattie. Elwood is quiet and studious; he…

Gregory Peck plays a general assigned to toughen up an American aircraft bomber group in England during World War II. During World War II, Hollywood made a lot of war films. There were some good ones, and some not so good, but they were all presented in the spirit of patriotism that was a requirement during the fighting, and so almost every one of them could be called a “flag waver.” Nothing wrong with that, except that the reality of war was softened for homefront audiences. On the other hand, in the years right after the war, from the late…

Martin Scorsese’s 2019 documentary covers Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour from 1975, and Simon Weitzman’s recent doc presents the life and career of Tucson native and rock n’ roll tour manager Chris O’Dell. Bob Dylan’s 1975 “Rolling Thunder Revue” was a unique idea for a concert tour. Dylan and his band at the time (which included the violinist Scarlet Rivera) were the headliners. Joan Baez and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott were also on the bill. Allen Ginsberg came along as a spiritual guide, and he recited some of his poetry in the shows. Various other guests hopped on the bus…

Song Without a Name, the feature debut, from 2019, of Peruvian director Melina León, starts in 1988, with newspaper headlines describing Peru’s financial collapse and the catastrophic inflation that followed. This was a time of conflict between the government and a Maoist terror group called The Shining Path. In a small cabin within a stark mountain vastness, a fire blazing, a group of native people, Quechuans, are praying and singing while a young man, Leo, dons the beautiful costume of a traditional Andean musician. He’s leaving for the town of Iquitos to work a manual labor job while hopefully also making money playing music with local groups. Among those gathered we see a young woman, Georgina, who is in the late stages of pregnancy. She is Leo’s wife, and is going with him to Iquitos to work. In the windy morning they climb the steep hill leaving home, the black and white photography and the spare, almost abstract landscape making this all look like a fearful dream. After reaching the town, Leo works in a warehouse, while Georgina sits on a street corner selling potatoes that have been assigned to them by Leo’s bosses. It’s a difficult adjustment, where they have to speak Spanish to get by, which they don’t know that well, instead of their indigenous language Quechua. They don’t usually get to see each other until the night time. One day, Georgina hears an announcement on the radio. There is a free clinic in Lima that will provide childbirth care and delivery. Experiencing the beginning of labor pains, she takes the 2-hour bus ride, alone, to the address given on the radio. The austere looking clinic is in one room of a large, official looking building. Georgina is there coached through a difficult childbirth. “It’s a girl,” they say, and then the mother loses consciousness. When she awakens later and asks for her baby, they say she’s in the hospital. The next day, despite her frantic requests to see her child, they drag her out of the clinic and lock the door. In the coming days she will return, eventually with Leo, and keep banging on the door. No one answers. It takes some time before Georgina can grasp the terrible truth that her baby has been stolen. At the police station, they shrug their shoulders and say they can do nothing. Georgina’s grief is conveyed in heart rending fashion by first-time actress Pamela Mendoza, whose intense determination and emotion carries the film. Eventually she goes to one of the Lima newspapers, and a young, very serious reporter played by Tommy Párraga, decides to investigate. The movie then explores his experience, as a member of the press, of Peru’s social and political malaise. One notices immediately that León’s style is not at all traditional. She’s committed to an expressionism that magnifies the feelings of her characters, and her visual strategies are daring. The story is based on a real case from that time, with implications far wider than this one woman. The combination of the “solving a mystery” type story with the avant-garde visual technique is spellbinding. Without reservation, I’ll say this is a great film that has not become as well known as it should be. And the profound meaning of the title, Song Without a Name, is eventually revealed, to devastating effect.

In August of 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed in a concert at Madison Square Garden. This was a benefit for mentally disabled people, in response to a recent TV program that had exposed neglect and abuse of patients at the Willowbrook hospital in Staten Island. Well, as it turned out, this was the only full-length concert that John Lennon would do in the years after the Beatles disbanded. He showed up as guests in other people’s concerts, or in brief gigs, but this show was headlined by him and Yoko, and included other artists as well, including Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack. The recording was eventually made into an album released in 1986, after Lennon’s death, called “Live in New York City.” But now film from that concert, with an excellent soundtrack remastered by Lennon’s son Sean Ono Lennon, has emerged in a new documentary entitled One to One: John & Yoko. This could have just been made into a concert film, which considering the quality of the sound and image, would have been fine. But veteran director Kevin Macdonald, famed for his innovative documentaries, is the leading creative spark behind this movie, and he decided to use the concert as a kind of focal point for that brief tumultuous period in America, 1971 and ‘72, when John & Yoko first moved to New York and became part of a vital artistic and political scene there. We open with Lennon’s rocker “New York City,” in a dynamic performance with his band at the time, Elephant’s Memory. Interwoven with the songs, which include breathtaking versions of Instant Karma, Imagine and Mother, is a fascinating collection of footage and audio excerpts from that period. Macdonald’s starting point is John & Yoko’s moving into a Greenwich Village apartment in 1971, where they would spend a lot of time watching TV. A collage of amusing TV ads and parts of various shows of that time is accompanied by news clips of a nation going through some difficult changes. We see that the Vietnam War was still raging. We watch coverage of the uprising at Attica State Prison in ’71, about which Lennon wrote a song. In contrast to the countercultural movement, we see lots of Richard Nixon and his campaign for reelection in ’72, and George Wallace running for president again, and getting shot, and too many other events to mention. Macdonald’s tapestry includes the great and the trivial, and there are funny excerpts from phone calls between John, Yoko, and various other people in their lives. It’s a fiercely evocative portrait, both joyous and sad in retrospect, of this remarkable time. In leaving the Beatles, John sought to discover who he really was, unimaginable fame having sort of frozen him into a life that didn’t feel free. Yoko Ono wasn’t just someone he fell in love with. She was an experimental artist, part of a vibrant avant-garde movement that awakened something in Lennon that felt to him like a new birth. His awareness became radical, and in Yoko he found a partner that could see him and help him realize his potential. One to One: John & Yoko is essential viewing for those who want to get to know the power of these two amazing people, and to reckon with a time when millions were crying out to just give peace a chance.