Got to catch up on some movies during this Christmas break. Some comments:
The Favourite
Big fan of Yorgos Lanthimos but this is probably my least favourite of all his films. I still enjoyed the movie, especially all the anachronistic touches and how the story made the audience shift their allegiances back and forth. But the repeated one-up(wo)manship and the repeated scenes portraying Queen Anne as mentally dim and easily manipulated (which I'm pretty sure is a commentary on Trump, and perhaps the reason why Lanthimos took on the project as this is his first film in which he did not receive a writing credit) becomes monotonous after awhile. Plus Lanthimos' repeated use of that fisheye lens got to be really distracting for me because it made the scenes so cinematically ugly. Later in the evening after the movie, my wife and I were reading up on Queen Anne on the internet and were pretty amazed at how much of the movie was based on historical facts -- the movie is filled with so many bizarre and anachronistic scenes that one leaves the movie thinking it was all made up.
In the Fade
Finally caught up with the latest film from the great German filmmaker Fatih Akin (Head-On, Edge of Heaven, Soul Kitchen, etc.). I'm not sure what to make of the film when taken in its entirety. The movie starts strong as the first third of the film contained a powerful depiction of grief and depression that reminded me much of Manchester By the Sea, plus a mystery surrounding the ex-felon dead husband and whether he was attacked because of his former lifestyle. Then the film transitions, during the second third of the film, to a conventional (but still interesting) courtroom drama, where there was what seemed to me like some pointed commentary about Germany's domestic/right-wing terrorism problem. And then the last third of the film goes bats**t crazy as it goes into full revenge thriller mode but if Lisbeth Salander was a soccer mom. I generally love movies that upend audience expections but I'm not sure the second act was necessary and I didn't buy the last third of the movie. Diane Kruger won the best actress award at Cannes for this role and it was well deserved. She should have received a lead actress Oscar nomination given what I felt was a pretty weak field last year. Plus, Casey Affleck won an Oscar for his powerful performance in Manchester by the Sea and Kruger's portrayal of grief was at least equal to that of Affleck's and she did it in two languages to boot. Some familiar and appreciated Akin elements here such as the use of Turkish-German actors (it was in Akin's films where I learned about the large Turkish population in Germany) in the cast and his use of great music -- the title of the film is a reference to the Queens of the Stone Age song and Josh Homme scored the film.
The Last Race
Apparently Long Island was once a real hotbed of motorsports, containing, at one point, 40 auto racing tracks. This documentary is about the last race track on Long Island that is struggling to hold on in the face of real estate development, noise ordinances, an aging fanbase and even older racetrack owners who are considering cashing out. After the movie, I looked up the Riverhead Raceway on google satellite view and it's pretty ridiculous how close big box stores and housing developments have advanced upon this race track even though its location was once considered remote and surrounded by forests. Like many documentaries today, it borrows heavily from Errol Morris so there are lots of long, static, visually appealing shots with super slow-motion. But it's missing the blood boiling aspects (i.e., an unsolved mystery and/or social injustice) of Morris documentaries. It's more of a somber eulogy for a disappearing blue collar way-of-life.
Private Life
I really liked this movie for a couple of reasons. First, I'm a huge sucker for movies about hyper-literate urban bohemians with neurotic personalities and messy lives, like those films made by Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach and Whit Stillman. I've seen Tamara Jenkins's previous two movies (Slums of Beverly Hills, The Savages) but had never heretofore thought of her belonging in the same company, likely because she makes films so infrequently as this is only her third movie in 20 years. But this film and The Savages certainly belong in this very narrowly-defined genre. The second reason I liked the movie was because it is about a couple's battle with infertility. I think any couple who have had to deal with infertility issues will recognize many of the scenes in this movie -- the daunting odds the doctors love to keep repeating, the poking and prodding by clinicians, the constant popping of fertility vitamins and supplements, trying to masturbate into a small plastic cup at the clinic using decades-old pornography with your pants down at your ankles while a bustling clinic is on the other side of the door and then partially missing the cup which ends up on the couch and you suddenly realizing you've been sitting on the same couch as thousands of other men who invariably also missed the cup, etc. Smart, well-written dialogue too -- where else will you find references to Serpico, Bella Abzug and that "Innocence" short story by Harold Brodkey in the same movie?
The Rider
I was amazed to learn after watching this film that all the main actors were non-professional. This is the third great film in recent memory (along with The Florida Project and Mid-90s) in which the lead actors are non-professionals. I find these performances to be so miraculous. Add the fact that the director, Chloe Zhao, happened upon this family of rodeo cowboys by coincidence and started developing the screenplay based on a particular incident in their lives shows you the limitless potential of cinema. This is one of the best films of the year. The movie is so gorgeous to look at as well. This is Zhao's second movie (I have not seen her first) but this movie could only be made by a bonafide filmmaker.
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