We saw her a couple of times in the early-80s ... as I said elsewhere today, "She looked like she sounded, a tough cookie who'd been to a few too many rodeos. She radiated star power." For people of our age, she was an icon, and then she was an icon for a second time.
In 1978, the Rolling Stones released Some Girls, their last great album. In 1979, Marianne Faithfull released Broken English. I thought at the time there was delicious irony in the fact that, even then, I knew the Stones would never again release an album as good as the one Marianne had just put out there. I was right.
It's nice when a movie gets a lot of almost excessive praise, and then lives up to the hype. Flow is one of those movies. It takes genre standards and then fiddles with them enough to make something new, miraculously resulting in a family movie that isn't forcefully sappy. It's the story of a cat that experiences a flood, with the film showing the efforts of the cat to survive.
Someone working on that movie knows a lot about cats, because the Cat acted as realistically as any movie cat I can remember. Dog lovers might get a similar feel from the Dog, in this case a yellow lab. The underlying message is very quietly expressed: in a disaster, the only way to survive is for disparate types, some enemies of others, to work together.
If I had to identify exactly what makes Flow so special, I'd point to the absence of human-spoken dialogue. I can't imagine this working with a celebrity voice cast. All we hear are the sounds of nature, yet we get the gist of what is happening. This absence of human-spoken dialogue is enormously helpful ... the narrative evolves in what feels like a natural way, without the kind of documentary tricks that in the 50s would turn a wolf or an eagle into a substitute human. The music on the sound track is very effective at leading us through emotional moments. Again speaking as a cat person, the mews of the Cat were heartbreaking at times, and I can't remember the last time I felt so invested in a movie having a happy ending. I simply did not want the Cat to die.
I did find the animation to be touch and go. The settings are gorgeous, but the animals are drawn in some more old-fashioned way, and at times, they looked blockish (the Dog in particular took me back to my Commodore 64 days) . I have a feeling I'll be arguing with myself for years about whether this is better than The Wild Robot or a bit shy of that fine film. (I've changed my mind three times and I only saw Flow last night.) What a pleasurable argument to have.
This is the nineteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 19 is called "Marty's Friends Week":
It was a huge deal when Martin Scorsese, father of famous TikToker Francesca Scorsese, joined Letterboxd. He also happens to be one of the most acclaimed directors of all time, with a career spanning around 60 years and surprisingly only 1 Oscar. He does have a Palme d'Or, making him the first winner to join Letterboxd, a club that now includes Sean Baker and Wim Wenders. If you're looking for a double feature or "companion" film to Taxi Driver or any of his other films, he has a list for you.
This week's challenge is to watch one of Martin Scorsese's Companion films, and for extra credit, make it a double feature with the corresponding Scorsese film.
Scorsese suggested pairing this film with The Irishman. He wrote, "It was all about the emotions of the characters, the friendships, the betrayals. It was about the gradual, inevitable unfolding. [It involved} very carefully, painstakingly planned criminal enterprises ... and in each one everything is very cool, deliberate, quiet throughout: even the violence and the betrayals happen quietly."
Grisbi is indeed cool and deliberate. Becker seems to be creating his own version of French noir here, with noble-but-flawed protagonists, nefarious women, and events that don't go as anticipated. The stakes feel low key, until they don't. Jean Gabin is perfect as the thief who is ready to retire ... he was pushing 50 when this film was made, his career had been in a slump, but his tired face touched audiences, and he entered another peak for his films. Besides Gabin, the cast is interesting, with Jeanne Moreau in an early performance, Italian Lino Ventura in his first film, even former Miss America Marilyn Buferd. The ensemble offers at least the illusion that the underworld we are seeing is accurately portrayed. Even Gabin, the big star, blends into the atmosphere.
It's the second film I've seen directed by Jacques Becker (I also saw the later Le Trou), and he is a solid, confident film maker based on those two movies. He was once an assistant to Jean Renoir, which isn't a bad way to learn a trade, and I think you can feel a similar affection for Becker's characters as that shown by Renoir. Grisbi is a bit better than Le Trou, I suppose, but while I don't want to damn with faint praise (for it is no insult to say Becker falls short of Renoir), neither film strikes me as a classic. Very good, worth seeing, and what's wrong with that?
We've seen Pink 8 times, I think, and since she became a top-level headliner, she's done a good job of picking opening acts. Here are a few we've seen:
The Ting Tings 2009:
The Hives 2013:
Julia Michaels 2019 (she had the advantage of singing a song called "Pink":
September 5 is a tense, compact thriller based on fact, when ABC, who were broadcasting the Olympics from Germany in 1972, was stuck into the middle of the ultimate in breaking news, as Palestinian militants entered the Olympic Village and took Israeli athletes hostage. This basic story would seem to be impossible to screw up ... the real-life tension can't be avoided. And Tim Fehlbaum doesn't screw up.
But the premise of the movie strikes me as a bit off. The film makers aren't trying to hide anything, and while my misgivings remained at the end of the movie, they were the same misgivings I might have had before I'd even seen it. Because the focus isn't on the hostages. It's on the ABC people sending the news across the globe. The central issue has nothing to do with Middle East politics, but instead with journalistic ethics (and some professional turf fighting tossed in). We admire the ABC crew as they work in real time to tell the story unfolding before them, and we feel for them when in the heat of the moment they get something wrong (reporting, along with most of the media, that the hostages were safe when in fact they were all eventually killed). The crew is doing their best under trying circumstances, and it is there Fehlbaum identifies the tension.
My complaints about all of this don't feel right, but those misgivings won't go away. The film sticks largely with the facts ... there is a German woman who works as a translator who is an invention, but for the most part, we see actors portraying real individuals, and of course, it's all supported by existing footage, most powerfully of Jim McKay, whose online presence is part of American news history. You could show this to a journalism class that wondered how it used to be. No actor could convey the immediacy of McKay's now-famous lines:
When I was a kid, my father used to say "Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized." Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They've now said that there were eleven hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone.
This is the sixth bonus film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Bonus Week 6 is called "Letterboxd Top 250 Week":
As I'm sure many of you can relate, Letterboxd has personally enhanced my movie-loving experience and I am very grateful that it exists and for the kind of community it can create as with the Letterboxd Season Challenge that so many have taken part in over the decade. As Benjamin Milot pointed out when he created this theme as the first bonus challenge on LSC's 5th anniversary, Letterboxd itself is the ultimate host for LSC and we honor it by watching one of the movies currently on its Top 250 Narrative Feature Films list.
Kiyotaka Oshiyama makes his feature debut with this film, an anime adaptation of a manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto. It's a coming of age tale of two girls, both talented artists, who team up to create a manga that becomes popular. The film is gorgeous to look at, and the characters and their relationship to each other are appealing. The approach to the film is artful, but I fear it was too artful for me, who often struggles to follow complicated narratives (that's on me, not Oshiyama). In this case, the two girls grow up, and that part of the story is clear and interesting. Serious events occur, and the girls growth into adulthood is believable. But then there are what appear to be reverse time jumps that I didn't follow, and I was no longer sure if what I was seeing was all part of one fractured timeline or if in fact we were experiencing multiple times. Most people will probably get through this without any problems, despite my own confusion. In the meantime, it's beautifully drawn, with touching characters.
I'm taking on another challenge. This one is The Criterion Challenge 2025. It's the fifth annual, my first try. "There are 52 categories. The goal is to watch any Criterion released film based on the categories ... between 1/1/25-12/31/25." There is no specified order, so I'll watch them as I get to them. Today's category is the 1930s.
I recently updated my Letterboxd list of the top 100 directors of all time. I usually try to come up with some new methodology for making this list, and one thing I always check is the position of Jean Renoir, because if you just asked me on the street who the best was, I'd say Renoir, but when I concoct some method to adjust for my subjective approach, he's never #1. On this latest list, I have him at #6, up from #9 the last time I did this. I love all of the directors ranked above him, but I can't honestly say any of them are better than Renoir.
It's funny, I say this even though I'm still woefully behind on seeing his films. The Lower Depths is only my 8th, which Letterboxd tells me means I've still got 80% of his movies to go. But of those I have seen, two are acknowledged classic (The Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion), a few more are as-good-as classics (especially including French Cancan), and all of which are at worst wonderful. The Lower Depths doesn't change any of that, although I'll admit it's "only" wonderful.
The film is based on a play by Maxim Gorky, and was filmed a year before Grand Illusion. One point I found fascinating is that after writing the screenplay, Renoir showed it to Gorky to see what he thought. I admit to knowing little about Russian literature, and I assumed Gorky was a contemporary of 19th-century Russian writers like Dostoevky, but Gorky was still alive and available for Renoir. The film tells the story of a Baron on the way down, and the people in "the lower depths" he would meet in his poverty. Among them is a thief, Pépel ... they meet when the Baron catches Pépel in the act of stealing from him, only to assure his new-found friend that he had nothing, everything was lost. Eventually, the Baron takes residence in the same flophouse as Pépel, along with various other characters. The film is pretty stagy ... its origins are obvious, and most of what we see takes place in that flophouse.
It's known for the excellent acting. Louis Jouvet plays the Baron and the great Jean Gabin was Pépel ... their acting styles were different, and meshed perfectly with their characters. Suzy Prim was Pépel's former lover. The story isn't unusual ... rich man turned poor, poor people remaining poor. As usual with Renoir, everyone is treated with a humane touch, even the villains. There is something universal about Gorky's play ... Renoir was able to keep its spirit even as he moved the setting to France, and in the 1950s, Kurosawa moved it to Japan during the Edo period, with the inevitable Toshiro Mifune as the thief. The transition from Russia to France is mostly seamless, although it takes a bit of getting used to hearing French characters with Russian names like Vassilissa. The Lower Depths is not where I would start if I was beginning my Renoir experience, but it's a fine addition to his canon.
Here, Pépel has been arrested for robbing the Baron:
Tom Robinson was a big deal in the punk era with The Tom Robinson Band. His next group was called Sector 27. They released an album in late 1980, and it was a good one, although it didn't get much chart attention. Robinson later left the band, and they never made another album. We saw them in January of 1981. I liked the show because Robinson was engaging ... I had gotten to meet him and TRB at a club date at one point ... but he had laryngitis that night, so it was a bit disappointing. The rest of the band looked very young. Bass player Jo Burt was Robinson's principal collaborator, but I mostly noticed guitar player Stevie B. Danny Kustow was the lead guitarist for TRB, and I was much enamored with his playing. He was fairly traditional in the rock tradition. Stevie B was jagged, not out of place in the music of 1980.
Here is Sector 27 with "Where Can We Go Tonight?":
This is the eighteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 18 is called "American Neorealism Week":
One of the most famous movements in the history of film is Italian neorealism, which was a way for Italians to contend with the social and economic crises that led to WWII and Mussolini's fascism through movies. These films centered on poor or working-class people and were shot with low budgets, on location, and with non-professional actors. Hollywood, with its big studios, big budgets, and big movie stars is the exact opposite and so most American movies fail to tell the stories of the ordinary people living in the Unites States or Canada today. There are a few directors and movies that do focus on depicting poor and/or oppressed people without prejudice in their filmmaking, and shine a light on the real people that make up a large portion of the world and who reveal the vast disparities in quality of life and in the social and economic structures that play such a pivotal role on the people all around us.
This week's challenge is to watch a movie that could be classified as American neorealism. Here is a list from Keyser Soze to help out.
I think this challenge is a bit misleading. Italian neorealism existed, yes, and the above description is accurate enough. And if you treat all American movies as coming under the "Hollywood" umbrella, you will definitely find big studios, big budgets, and big movie stars. But there are more than a few "directors and movies" that "shine a light on the real people".
The Fits is as far from a big-budget Hollywood movie as you can get. It's reminiscent of the Italian neorealist movement. But I don't have problems finding movies like The Fits. Sure, it's not as easy as just turning up at the local multiplex to watch the latest Marvel movie. But you can find films like The Fits. I don't say this to brag, but only to make a point: there are 186 films on "Keyser Soze's" list above, and I've seen 76 of them. OK, I watch a lot of movies. But The Fits stands on its own, not as part of an emergent American neorealism but as a strong first feature film from a director working on a small budget with non-professional actors.
The Fits is an interesting slice-of-life drama with gentle fantasy elements. The title confused me at first ... I thought perhaps it referred to the outfits worn by the young dance troupe at the center of the story. Then, when individual troupers began having unexplained seizures, I thought the titular reference was to those "fits". And that's closer, but while there are indeed unexplained seizures in the movie, at the end, they remain unexplained, and the movie is the better for it. Writer/director Anna Rose Holmer isn't making an explicit horror film, nor as far as I can tell is she making a metaphor for adolescent young girls, the way something like Ginger Snaps does. (Among other things, Ginger Snapsis an explicit horror film, of course.)
Holmer extracts great things from her non-professional cast, most obviously the delightfully-named Royalty Hightower in the lead. Hightower has continued acting since making this film, and she has great promise. But that promise is already fulfilled in The Fits. She is in virtually every scene, and while she doesn't have a lot of dialogue, I feel like we got to know her character in some depth. It's a very low-key movie, and I admit I'd probably rather watch Ginger Snaps for the umpteenth time than revisit The Fits. But it's a solid film.
There's been some Oscar talk for Pamela Anderson's performance in the title role of this film, and that's understandable. Her career has been treated like a joke, and it's good to see her in a straightforward, serious movie. It's an opportunity she deserves.
I wish the movie itself was better. Gia Coppola goes low-key for a drama about an aged Las Vegas stage show, and while that might reflect the passing of the heyday of such shows, it makes for a drab movie. Getting to see Anderson stripped of much of what worked against her career is promising, but it's more entertaining to hear about it than to actually watch the movie. It's odd ... Anderson needed the chance to show what she could do with a quieter role, but the script doesn't help her much. Her Shelly is a stock figure, and The Last Showgirl recalls other movies, some better, some worse, but there are a lot of backstage dramas about time passing, and The Last Showgirl is never more than Just Another Entry in the genre. It's interesting in theory to see the ho-hum lives of the dazzling stars of the stage show (called "Le Razzle Dazzle"), but it largely falls flat.
Some of the actors come out better than others. Jamie Lee Curtis gets to be the most ebullient ... if she hadn't already won one for Everything Everywhere All at Once, you'd say this was her Oscar bait. Younger actors like Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song, and Billie Lourd don't stand out, and again, it's not their fault. The dialogue and plot aren't exactly All About Eve. The worst victim is Dave Bautista, who has often said he wants to be seen as a legitimate actor, not just a beefy ex-rassler. He sleeps through his role as the producer of the stage show, and the best I can say is that given the overall tone, he likely just delivered what was asked of him.
Reading the above, I can see I'm being too negative. The Last Showgirl is a decent movie with which to reintroduce Pamela Anderson, and it doesn't overstay its welcome (89 minutes). I was just disappointed, which in itself could be seen as a positive, since there was a time when I wouldn't have looked forward so eagerly to a Pamela Anderson movie.