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...]
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...]
‘My Policeman’: Keeping the kid gloves on
Decorous and idealized, My Policeman updates the kinetic love triangle of François Truffaut’s Jules & Jim in a style more befitting the old Masterpiece Theatre. While the situation it depicts is precipitous, it’s a film that only suggests cliffs and edges, approaching them only to turn tail. As an LGBTQ film angling for a mainstream audience, it’s far too polite to be bold, yet … [Read more...]
‘Tár’: A brilliant achievement, for star and director
Intellectually stimulating, abundantly rewarding and furiously relevant, Todd Field’s Tár is a work of such herculean achievement that I can hardly deign to do it justice. While it remains to be seen if it will top my list of the best films of 2022, it is superior to anything I saw last year, with the possible exception of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, of which it … [Read more...]
Far above the world: ‘Moonage Daydream’ an astonishing immersion in Bowie
Jean-Luc Godard, who departed this world last week at 91, once quipped that “a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” This concept, a once-radical rebuke to the logic and coherence of classic Hollywood cinema, can seem quaint by today’s outsider art — who says we need to have these elements at all? Godard himself became more of a … [Read more...]
‘Clerks III’: Tired re-tread shows franchise needs at last to check out
Like the classic horror villain who won’t stay dead, the clerks of Clerks have suited up once more in the blue-and-yellow garb of the Quick Stop in suburban New Jersey. Twenty-eight years have passed since Kevin Smith introduced the characters in his low-budget indie debut, and their station in life is pretty much the same. Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) … [Read more...]
‘Barbarian’: Scary monsters, super creeps
In a different movie, it could be the beginning of a meet-cute. Thanks to a glitch in the system, two young, attractive, presumably hetero strangers have booked the same Airbnb house for the same night. Left with scant alternatives — there is, conveniently enough, a medical convention in town that’s consuming all of the hotel rooms — they must make it work by sharing the house. … [Read more...]