Good old X, the Spotify AI DJ, turned me on to this one. The War and Treaty, "Lover's Game":
The Yardbirds, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago". The video has both Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on guitar ... this song was the first time the two did so on a Yardbirds recording. The video is lip-syncing from The Milton Berle Show ... the quality is poor and the band don't seem very interested.
CMAT is a rising performer from Ireland ... her name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson. This is "I Don't Really Care for You":
My wife once asked how many versions of "Fishin' Blues" exist, because I love them all and like putting them on playlists for when we drive in the car. This is one of my favorites.
Mikio Naruse continues to be an interesting case for film scholars in the West. He directed nearly 90 films in his career. He is highly regarded, yet his name doesn't often come up in lists of the top Japanese directors. He exists on the outskirts of famous lists ... the most recent such list, the Sight and Sound poll, had no films by Naruse among its top 250. I have only seen one other film by Naruse, Apart from You, which didn't do much for me. It was also different in many ways from Floating Clouds, including the fact that it was a silent movie.
So I am no expert on the work of Mikio Naruse. But I am glad I saw Floating Clouds, because at least now I get why some people swear by him. I wouldn't call it a classic. It's repetitive, feels longer than its two-hour running time, and the main characters are frustrating to watch. (The acting, especially from Hideko Takamine, is very good.) It's a tale of Yukiko and Kengo, who had an affair near the end of WWII. After the war, Kengo returns to his wife, despite telling Yukiko he would get a divorce. They have an on again/off again continuation of the affair, plus Kengo has other affairs, plus he never does divorce his wife. Struggling to get by, Yukiko becomes a mistress to an American soldier (it's not clear whether she works as a prostitute, or if people just make assumptions). She later becomes a live-in partner of a man who had in the past raped her. Late in the film, she gets an abortion (she was pregnant with Kengo's child).
I don't usually offer such detailed plot summaries, but I found this narrative to be startling. I might expect it from an HBO series, but to be watching a Japanese movie from the 1950s that had the above going on ... well, it's on me that I was at the least surprised to see this told in a fairly straightforward manner.
Naruse is sympathetic towards Yukiko, but the things she goes through could fit nicely into something by Lars von Trier. It never feels like Yukiko's love for Kengo is overwhelming and beautiful. Instead, her repeated attempts to get him back become annoying, and Kengo is never shown to be worthy of her attention.
So Floating Clouds is atmospheric, with good acting. It made me want to see more films with Hideko Takamine. But I wouldn't go any further.
I wanted to like The Quiet Girl. I expected to like The Quiet Girl. And now that I've seen it, I don't have any real complaints. Yet somehow, I was disappointed
Disappointed might not even be the right word, because that implies a committed reaction, whereas I'm more at the point of "that was OK, now what?" First-time director Colm Bairéad shows a good command of the medium. Young Catherine Clinch, who plays the title character, is excellent. The title is appropriate ... she is indeed a quiet girl, and Bairéad gives us a largely quiet movie. I don't know what I would do differently. But the subtleties didn't connect for me. I wasn't bored, but I wasn't affected enough by the quiet plight of the girl.
Perhaps the problem is with me, and The Quiet Girl is just another Not for Steven movie. Certainly it was a success with critics, and it picked up an Oscar nomination. Maybe I'll watch it again sometime and finally see what I'm missing. I wouldn't be surprised if Bairéad makes some good movies in the future, and it's easy to imagine Clinch becoming one of our finer actors. But it mostly left me empty.
The "Up Series", quoting from Wikipedia, is a "series of documentary films follows the lives of ten males and four females in England beginning in 1964, when they were seven years old. The first film was titled Seven Up!, with later films adjusting the number in the title to match the age of the subjects at the time of filming. The documentary has had nine episodes—one every seven years—thus spanning 56 years." I first watched films from the series in 2007 ... I thought 49 Up was going to be nominated for an Oscar, and decided to watch all of the series up to that point in preparation. (It wasn't nominated, and someone pointed out since it's a TV series, perhaps it will never be nominated.) I thought the series got better as it went along. but the idea has always seemed better than the result. At that time, I wrote:
The films are, or at least were, intended as a critique of British class society, but the films are least successful when they push that point. Far too often, interviewer and director Michael Apted asks leading questions designed to show off his notions about class … just as often, the replies are unexpected, thankfully. In 49 Up, more than in any other of the films, Apted is challenged by the participants. Many of them dislike having their lives interrupted every seven years … some think Apted and the series unfairly portrays their lives. A couple have quit participating over the course of the films, including at least two spouses.... Because it’s well-made, because the participants are likeable, because over the course of 42 years we get to know them, or at least get to know their “Up” personas, for all of these reasons, the Up series seems legitimate, even classy, and I think we might see more in them than really exists.
I found 56 Up to be the best yet, but the reason was largely because these films have a cumulative power, as we get further along in knowing the participants. We root for all of them. 63 Up continues this pattern, but the truth is, I can no longer say that each one is better than the one before. I think we get more out of each episode because of that cumulative effect, which speaks to the enormous power of the project, but that doesn't mean 63 Up is best, as much as it means every seven years we look forward to the films with increased anticipation.
It is possible that 63 Up will mark the end of the series. Michael Apted, who worked on the first film and directed the rest, died in 2021. Of the 14 original kids, one has died, and a few decided at some point to quit participating, although in every case but one, they later returned. The series has a remarkable lack of voyeurism ... it is often compared to reality television, but whatever the problems the participants have had over the years, our interest grows out of sympathy more than it does of gossip.
[This is the thirteenth in a series that will probably be VERY intermittent, if I remember to post at all. I've long known that while I have given my share of 10-out-of-10 ratings for movies over the years, in almost every case, those movies are fairly old. So I got this idea to go back and revisit movies of relatively recent vintage that I gave a rating of 9, to see if time and perspective convinced me to bump that rating up to 10. Of course, it's always possible I'll drop the rating, but time will tell.]
I first saw Children of Men in 2007, and liked it enough that I taught it in a class soon afterwards. As I wrote at the time:
Alfonso Cuarón is one of my favorite directors. Y tu mamá también is an all-time favorite, and Cuarón’s Harry Potter movie was the only one I thought was any good. Children of Men is a terrific movie, dark, stylish, emotional, interesting. Cuarón and his team manage to get across an awful lot of information in the backgrounds of scenes … very little about the future in this film set in 2027 is explicitly explained, but nonetheless the movie isn’t confusing, you pick things up in subtle steps. When special effects are called for, they are old-school … you don’t see fancy futuristic flying machines, instead you get astonishing single-take scenes that would make Orson Welles proud. I’ve never been in battle, but the use of camera and sound in the battle scenes for this movie come across as startlingly realistic, and more disturbing than heroic. There is some fine acting from the ensemble of actors, moments of wit and humor when it is least expected, and an effective combination of artsy touches and connections to our present times. There’s even a Pink Floyd in-joke, and at one point they play “In the Court of the Crimson King” on the soundtrack.
You can’t keep your eyes off the screen. Alfonso Cuarón creates a believable world and populates it with characters who fit into that world. There aren’t any false moments. I don't have any reason to give it a "9" instead of a "10". It remains as impressive on a third viewing in 2023 as it did when I saw it for the first time. And the depiction of the treatment of refugees is sadly still relevant.
With Triangle of Sadness, I have now seen 9 of the 10 movies nominated for a Best Picture Oscar this year (sorry, Avatar). I think Everything Everywhere All at Once and Women Talking are the cream of the crop (I'd include RRR, but it didn't get a nomination). I'd put Triangle of Sadness in the middle of the pack.
My guess is by next Monday no one will even remember that Triangle of Sadness got three Oscar nominations (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay) and won none. Which isn't a knock on the movie ... there are more worthy/likely winners in those categories, and if the three nominations are a stretch, they aren't egregious. But Triangle of Sadness will eventually stand on its own, regardless of Oscar nominations, and based on what I've seen, it's a pretty typical Ruben Östlund picture. I've seen Force Majeure and The Square, and like Triangle of Sadness, those are odd movies, decent but not great, with just enough bizarreness to stick in your mind. I wrote about The Square, "You might call The Square smug ... at the least, it is quite proud of itself." I added, "None of the characters come off well, although they are pleasant enough on the surface and not exactly evil underneath." I'd say something similar about Triangle of Sadness. It's supposed to be an attack on class structure, it is an attack on class structure, but the rich people aren't mean enough. Which I can see as a good thing, but Östlund sets things up so we can enjoy the comeuppance of the rich, and then makes it less enjoyable because they aren't that awful despite their wealth. I may be asking for the wrong thing.
Force Majeure had an impressive avalanche, and The Square had some kind of monkey man who was also a work of art or something. The impressive avalanche in Triangle of Sadness is a colossal classy dinner served on a cruise ship during a storm that has some of the most ... what word am I looking for, "entertaining"? ... scenes of vomiting. It's not easily forgotten, for better or worse. It's even part of the publicity for the movie:
Triangle of Sadness is too long ... it has three parts, and for me, the entire first part could have been cut without doing any damage to the film. (The Square was also too long.) It's another Ruben Östlund film that you'll remember with a combination of fondness and something less positive. With Harris Dickinson, Dolly de Leon, and Charlbi Dean (who died unexpectedly at 32 just after the film's release).
This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film nominated for an African Movie Academy Awards. Thank you to Adam Graff for this handy list, found here.
Another great challenge category, as I had seen none of the movies on Adam Graff's list, an empty spot in my lifetime of watching that needed to be filled. The theme is timeless, progress and its implications, as a small village is forced to resettle when a new dam will flood the land they have lived on for as long as anyone can remember.
There are several elements that raise This Is Not a Burial above the average. The soundtrack by Yu Miyashita is uncanny, sounding modern yet also connecting to the land and the past. The cinematography of Pierre De Villiers, which won an African Academy Award, is good at showing the expanses of the land, but also inventive in smaller, tighter places indoors. Director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese is always in command (he, too, won an Academy Award).
Best of all is 80-year-old Mary Twala Mhlongo as a woman near death who is more willing to accept that death than she is to accept the "progress" that will destroy her homeland. Her performance was so authentic, I thought Mosese had gotten an amateur village woman to play the part ... Twala's work isn't the least bit hesitant or amateur, but she is so believable I could barely believe she was acting. Her character is the heart of the village, and her acting is the heart of this film.
Another Guy Ritchie movie. He's like Michael Bay, in that you recognize his films, even though they aren't usually any good. There's no question why Ritchie gets to make movies ... they usually make money, often a lot of money (his live-action Aladdin earned more than a billion dollars world-wide). I've seen five of his films, and only liked one of them (the first Sherlock Holmes). Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was tolerable, The Gentlemen less so, and I thought Snatch was a real dud.
There's that category I invented, Not for Steven, but I usually assign that label to movies by people like Terrence Malick, arty directors who know what they are doing and get what they want while not connecting with me. I guess Guy Ritchie falls into that category, although I'm not as certain he knows what he's doing, and I wouldn't call his movies arty. No, they are popular, and more power to him and his fans. But they clearly Aren't for Steven.
Operation Fortune lies in the middle of the pack. Jason Statham is in a lot of Ritchie movies, and I like Statham ... he's made some decent action pictures. Operation Fortune has the added advantage of Aubrey Plaza, who is a lot like Statham in that she's made some decent pictures, and every one of her movies that I have seen are better because she was in them. In fact, Ritchie often has large casts with recognizable people in smaller parts ... it's one of the best things about his movies (this time around, besides Statham and Plaza, he has Josh Hartnett, Hugh Grant, Bugzy Malone, and Eddie Marsan).
I found Operation Fortune incoherent and stupid, but there's always something happening and it's never boring. There are worse movies ... Ritchie has made some of them himself. Me, I'd go with the fact that Aubrey Plaza is once again the best thing in the movie, and if I hadn't seen it, I'd check out Emily the Criminal, which is a bit better and has Plaza in almost every scene.
As I have mentioned before, it was more than a decade ago that I joined two others in a lengthy thread on Facebook for our 50 Favorite Movies. I told myself at the time that I was going to watch all of the movies the others had chosen that I had missed. With Comfort and Joy, I have finally fulfilled my promise to Phil Dellio. (Phil had Comfort and Joy at #30.)
Comfort and Joy is the third Bill Forsyth movie I've seen, after Housekeeping and Local Hero, both of which I liked. All three films are of a piece ... Forsyth has a recognizable feel. As Steve Fore said in a comment here re: Local Hero, "Fundamentally, Forsyth's films are fables, almost a kind of Scottish magical realism. They portray a world that is quite recognizable, but full of tiny wonders, and humanist in the best sense."
The word that comes to my mind is whimsical, but "Scottish magical realism" is a better description. All of the movies I've seen had something to get my attention. Local Hero has Burt Lancaster, and Housekeeping was based on a novel I liked. The only marker for Comfort and Joy was that Phil loved it, and that's enough ... Phil isn't Burt Lancaster, but he did have Sweet Smell of Success at #5 on his list. (I countered with From Here to Eternity at #37.) The cast is mostly unknown to me ... Clare Grogan, lead singer for the band Altered Images, has a big part. Bill Paterson is the lead, playing a local morning DJ named Alan "Dickie" Bird, and he has had a long and highly-regarded career. I've seen him in a few things without actually remembering them (he had the lead in the TV series version of Traffik). I know him best as Fleabag's father:
Amazingly, the plot turns on a bit of whimsy that turns out to be based on real life: the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars. The instigation for the plot comes when Alan's longtime girlfriend leaves him, and while the plot takes some fanciful turns, the humanism Steve Fore mentioned is ever-present. Alan is not a sad sack, he's sad, which isn't the same thing. The one place where Forsyth's essential kindness escapes him is with the girlfriend, who would be called a bitch except she is too lackadaisical to work up that level of meanness.
I'll let Phil have the last word:
Three reasons I love this film so much: 1) lots of driving scenes, many of them at night (all the drivers are sitting on the wrong side of the car, but that’s okay); 2) Claire Grogan from the band Altered Images; 3) jokes that leave me smiling for days--“Give us an autograph, Dickie.” My favourite in the entire film has to do with Mr. Softy.