A high point in the journeywoman career of writer-director Joan Micklin Silver, 1979’s Chilly Scenes of Winter has finally received the lavish Criterion Blu-ray it deserves ($27.99). A comedy with acidic undertones — or a bitterly funny drama, depending on how you look at it — it stars a never-better John Heard as Charles Richardson, a civil servant pushing paper in Salt Lake … [Read more...]
‘One Fine Morning’: Tender story of decay and love never abandons hope
Anyone who has dealt with a family member suffering dementia can recognize the disease’s telltale signs, no exposition necessary. And so it is with Mia Hansen-Løve’s (Bergman Island, Things to Come) new feature, One Fine Morning, in which Pascal Greggory, through an extraordinary combination of homework and an actor’s intuition, embodies this state of cumulative … [Read more...]
The View From Home: A challenging experimental twofer from Marguerite Duras
Was there a better year for slow cinema and Delphine Seyrig than 1975? That was, most famously, the year Jeanne Dielman, reviewed last month here on ArtsPaper, burrowed into theaters and helped change the way movies could be made. Astonishingly, though, it’s not even the most radical Seyrig vehicle to be released that year. That honor goes to India Song, the novelist Marguerite … [Read more...]
The View From Home: The minimalist perfection of ‘Jeanne Dielman’
“A lonely widow turns to prostitution to make ends meet.” This one-sentence synopsis offered by HBO Max for its presentation of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, is as literally accurate as it as tonally, emotionally, thoroughly misleading. It suggests that Chantal Akerman’s 1977 masterpiece could be a humanist melodrama, the sort of hardscrabble women’s … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Rivette’s subtle, rewarding ‘Gang of Four’
What would a Hitchcock thriller look like if it were stripped of all of its suspense — its capital-E entertainment? As a director of mainstream, if fussily curated, studio pictures, the maestro himself arguably never attempted such a gnomic exercise, the male gaze-y avenues of Vertigo notwithstanding. I believe such a thought experiment would resemble Jacques Rivette’s … [Read more...]
New Palm Beach Film Festival looks to be inclusive
Live film festivals are back, and a new one, The Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Film Festival, makes its debut Jan. 26 with the opening night film, the U.S. premiere of the French comedy Two Tickets to Greece at the Kravis Center Cohen Pavilion. Directed by Marc Fitoussi, who is scheduled to attend the screening, the film stars Laure Calamy, Olivia Côte and Kristin … [Read more...]
The View from Home: Three French noirs from the 1950s
By the late 1950s, American cinema had summited peak noir. As color would soon eclipse black-and-white as the dominant form of visual expression, and as prosperous suburban sprawl replaced hardscrabble city life, the genre of shadows, crime, sex and skewed morality would ease, gradually giving way to neo-noir in the decades to come. But in ’50s France, the genre still found … [Read more...]
Critic’s choice: My top 10 films of 2022
I had my work cut out for me this viewing year. It became apparent by, say, late October — even before the onrush of Oscar hopefuls started to populate our cinemas, streaming services and my mailbox — that 2022 would be an exceptional year for cinema. On most other years, my 10 honorable mentions could easily have made it into the year’s 10 best. I’m sure the COVID backlog … [Read more...]
The View from Home: A hit and a miss from Leconte
In its ongoing efforts to excavate the buried corners of contemporary art-house cinema, Cohen Media Group has dug up a pair of little-seen romantic dramedies from France’s Patrice Leconte, at one point among the most acclaimed and distributed directors worldwide. Felix and Lola and Love Street have been collected on a single, and gorgeously transferred, Blu-ray disc ($17.99, … [Read more...]
The View From Home: A lovely, insightful import from Greece
For Artemis (Sofia Kokkali), the 20-something protagonist of the Greek import Moon, 66 Questions ($24.99, DVD, from Film Movement), it’s often unclear if she’s enjoying her downtime or exorcising buried traumas. Perhaps her actions start as the former and end as the latter, or vice versa. What to make of the scene, for instance, when she jerkily maneuvers a car back and … [Read more...]