This is the second 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 2 is called "Anxiety Week":
“Anxious-nervous, like he’s dreading it or anxious-excited like he’s looking forward to it?” I, like Nick from The Parent Trap, am anxious-excited for this week. Last year we featured the Polish Moral Anxiety movement, which featured films made in response to real-world anxieties. This year it will be the films themselves that provide the anxiety. Here we celebrate films that get under your skin and keep you on edge, whether it's action, horror, cringe comedy, or, uh, Stuart Little 2 apparently? I haven't seen it but I can only imagine the tension.
This week we invite you to make yourself uncomfortable and watch a previously unseen anxiety-inducing film.
I can't be particularly fair with Sabotage. I didn't realize it when I started the film, but I was tired, and soon I was struggling to stay awake. It only lasts 77 minutes, and I did manage to keep from falling asleep. But I'm not sure I really appreciated the suspense ... I wasn't anxious enough.
Sabotage was adapted from Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, and is considered by some to be Hitchcock's finest film from his British period. That feels excessive to me, even if I try to be kind in order to compensate for my sleepiness. It's certainly worth a second viewing after I've had some caffeine. But I found the buildup to the suspenseful scenes to be draggy, such that even at 77 minutes, it felt long. Sylvia Sidney and Oskar Homolka are fine in the leads, and I wasn't annoyed by teenager Desmond Tester. But I didn't care enough about the characters, the setting, anything. Still, as with even the worst Hitchcock movies, there is one classic scene, when the teenager is unknowingly sent off to deliver a bomb to Picadilly Circus station. For these few minutes, Hitchcock delivers the anxiety.
Pauline Kael once referred to Bruce Lee as "the Fred Astaire of martial arts", and that's a good call. There is something so aesthetically pleasing about Lee's fight scenes that you watch, not just in awe, but with a sense that he is elevating the genre. There are limits to this ... as David Thomson wrote, "He seems to me to celebrate a spur of cinema that separates violence from life, and revels in it." Lee's movements are otherworldly, and we react to the violence the way we might to a Road Runner cartoon. When I am watching Lee, I barely think about the damage he is doing to others, because there is such enjoyment in just watching him move.
Lee's place in movie history goes beyond Enter the Dragon, but it remains true that if you only watch one of his movies, this is the one to see. Wikipedia lists the inflation-adjusted worldwide gross revenue at $2 billion. It's his most "Western" movie, an American-HK co-production with actors like John Saxon and Jim Kelly. It looms large in his legend because he died at age 32 just before the film was released. It's a genre classic of crucial importance, although I'd argue it doesn't really transcend the genre. Lee is great, the movie makes the most of his presence, but the action takes a while to get going and the plot is pretty standard. Certainly everyone should see it at least once, and if the genre appeals to you, you will watch it again and again.
[There is a lot of great trivia about the making of the film. My favorite is this: "Bruce Lee had laryngitis for three days of the shoot. The production team did not have vocalisations with the right intonation from Bruce to re-use in the fight scenes, so instead used stock sound clips of animals, including adolescent seagulls, for Bruce's vocal sound effects."]
I liked the first Alien movie, and loved the second. Thought Alien³ was dreadful, and found Alien Resurrection even worse, After that I quit watching. But I was encouraged this time around because I liked director Fede Álvarez' movie Don't Breathe, and hoped this latest installment in the Alien franchise would be a good one. Well, that, and it was my wife's turn to pick a movie.
Sure enough, Alien: Romulus delivers. It takes its time getting to the action, and the various characters aren't all that interesting, so it's slow going until the aliens arrive. But things are straightforward ... no artsy-fartsy stuff here. A decision was made to use mostly old-school special effects, and that's nice ... you feel for the actors when you can't deflect your fear into "well, they're acting against CGI in front of a green screen".
James Cameron's Aliens remains the standard against which all other Alien movies fall short, but Romulus is as good as the first in the series. And Cailee Spaeny in the lead pulls off a cool special effect of her own: Sigourney Weaver's 6'0" height helped make her Ellen Ripley an iconic part of the franchise, but Spaeny is also quite believable as a bad ass in Romulus, and it seems even more amazing, given she is only 5'1".
Alma's Rainbow has an interesting history. It was the first feature for writer/director Ayoka Chenzira, who had made several shorts. It was self-funded by Chenzira, and featured a cast of unknowns ... heck, 30 years later, and I still didn't recognize anyone but Isaiah Washington, who had a small role. The talent behind the camera was impressive, including editor Lillian Benson, cinematographer Ronald K. Gray, and costume designer Sidney Kai Innis, all of them new to me. The film looks great, helped by a fairly recent 4k restoration.
It's a coming-of-age movie, and I love the title: Rainbow is the daughter of Alma. It's a slice of life, and it offers a lot of insight into the culture of African-American women. There is a confidence in the film making that makes the movie feel "real". The acting is solid ... there's pretty much nothing bad I can say about the movie. It doesn't jump out at you, nor is that Chenzira's intention. It's never boring, and something is always catching your eye. It's an indie film that succeeds. It was ignored at the time, and was barely distributed, but the restoration resulted in the film finally getting the attention it has always deserved. It is one of 75 films selected for Slate's New Black Film Canon.
I used to tell an anecdote about El Norte ... well, "used to" isn't quite right, since I'm still telling it, but this took place long ago and I'm not sure anymore if I remember it right. El Norte was originally supposed to show on PBS, but a positive reception at festivals led to it being released first to theaters. Thus, it was a couple of years before it made it to TV, which is where I saw it, so we're talking around 1985. So don't hold me to the accuracy of this anecdote, but as I remember, there is a scene where Enrique, an indigenous Mayan from Guatemala, is planning to escape to the north with his sister. A friend explains that once the border patrol figures out they are from Guatemala, they will send them back home, and he advises Enrique to pretend he is Mexican. The way to do this, says the friend, is to say "fuck" all the time, because that's how Mexicans talk. (This actually works when they get to the border into the United States.) Here is the scene:
Now, what I no longer remember is whether the dialogue or the subtitles were censored by PBS. My memory is, it was the subtitles, and the words "fucking" and "fuck" were missing from the titles. What was funny, though, is that the soundtrack wasn't changed, so anyone who either spoke Spanish or knew Spanish street language could hear "chingada" coming through loud and clear.
El Norte came from the team of writer/director Gregory Nava and writer Anna Thomas. The two received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Twelve years later, they were responsible for one of my all-time favorite films, Mi Familia, followed by the biopic Selena (which only Nava worked on), which made a big impact. Since Selena, though, Nava has only directed two films, written one, and created the TV series American Family. The last of these was in 2006. Nava is still with us, and is apparently a mentor to young film makers, but 2006 was a long time ago, and I can find nothing to explain his absence.
El Norte feels real. When the siblings get to the U.S., everything seems liberating, and Nava/Thomas allow us to experience this as the characters do. Eventually, reality sets in, but as in Mi Familia, we are meant to respect the experiences of the characters, both at home and in the States, with an emphasis on feelings ... there is no stinting on emotion.
Your reaction to Civil War will depend, I think, on your expectations going in. I doubt I'm the only person who looked forward to a dystopic look at a near-future America, with clear parallels to the era of Trump. And that's not an inaccurate summary of the plot. What is missing, purposely so as far as I can tell, is a detailed examination of how America got to the point of Civil War. Alex Garland didn't want to "take sides", and he wasn't as interested in how we got there as he was is showing where "there" was, and how it affected his characters. So Civil War is less about the war, and more about its impact on Americans, in particular, journalists.
There is a lot of fine acting in Civil War, especially from Kirsten Dunst. Alex Garland has picked up quite a troupe over the years ... for example, half-a-dozen of the members of this cast were also in his mini-series Devs. They do what they can to enliven the interpersonal relationships between the various journalists, but I found those sections hit-or-miss, and I preferred the action scenes, which raised the film to another level.
Things could be worse. Civil War is an intelligent, well-made, thought-provoking movie. But for me, Ex-Machina remains his best.
This is the first 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 1 is called "The American History of X Week":
Hollywood has a fickle relationship with the letter X. These days it's a popular (if increasingly uninspired) choice for the rare franchise that makes it to a tenth installment: The Land Before Time, Friday the 13th, The Fast and Furious, and Saw have all adopted the roman numeral. But before this new millennium fad, X meant something very different.
In 1968, in response to the desire for a more faceted system of ratings—and, in its early days, to promote the kind of artistic freedom the Motion Picture Production Code had quashed—the MPAA replaced its "approved" and "not approved" seals with a quartet of letters: G, M, R, and X. The X-rating indicated, simply, that a film was appropriate for adults only.
Soon after, in 1969, Midnight Cowboy burst onto the scene. Worried about exposing youngsters to the film's frank homosexual content and depictions of drug use, United Artists chose to self-apply the X-rating, hoping the choice would not only protect American youth but drum up publicity, too. Because the MPAA had failed to trademark their new content advisory system, everyone from Walt Disney to Gerard Damiano (director of Deep Throat) could slap any rating they wished on their work. And the porn industry wished. Once the floodgates had opened, however, the X-rating didn't last long. By 1973, Hollywood studios had given up on the rating (the adult film industry's tongue-in-cheek co-opting having soured it), and the purveyors of explicit films had done the same, instead preferring to use "XXX" to denote the strength of the adult content in their movies. The X-rating languished in Hollywood until 1990 (although independent and international filmmakers didn't shy away), when the MPAA replaced it with the newly minted—and trademarked—NC-17.
To kick off The Letterboxd Season Challenge's tenth installment (LSC10, incidentally, not LSCX), we take a look back at the original era of X. This week's challenge is to watch a mainstream (non-porn) MPAA X-rated film from the rating's 22-year lifespan, conveniently compiled in this list from C Collins.
In 1971, Huey Newton wrote an extensive analysis of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, beginning, "It is the first truly revolutionary Black film made and it is presented to us by a Black man." Newton found the film ripe for explication, and his lengthy piece provides insight into the film and the times. Watching Sweet Sweetback in 2024, we recognize it as a movie of its times, but it retains relevance today, for the situation for black men in America is only partly improved from 1971.
Speaking solely in terms of its impact on American cinema, Sweet Sweetback is trendsetting. Yes, it was "rated X by an all-white jury", and it comes by that rating honestly, with several seemingly unsimulated sex scenes. There is also extreme violence, but these scenes affect us differently depending on who is performing the violence. When white men beat black men, we feel anger ... when black men retaliate, we feel redemption.
As a kid, I remember hearing music on FM radio made by Van Peebles. It was like nothing I'd heard, a combination of jazzy underpinnings and poetic readings. Van Peebles told of lives outside of my white suburban situation, and it was memorable ... it opened up some odd new worlds. Van Peebles is present on the soundtrack to Sweet Sweetback, backed by Earth, Wind & Fire, who released their first two albums in 1971. What sounded like music from outer space on the radio makes perfect sense as the accompaniment to Sweetback's adventures.
Van Peebles worked on a very low budget, partly because no big studios would finance him, although that gave him the independence he needed. He uses an experimental touch at times ... the film has roots in the French New Wave. Things get repetitive near the end, but it doesn't ruin the movie. There is a clear auteur behind the film, as befits a movie where the same person is producer, director, writer, editor, star, and soundtrack contributor. No one else could have made Sweet Sweetback. Along with Shaft, also released in 1971, Sweetback also kicked off the blaxploitation genre.
Abortion is serious business, and a movie that features abortion better be good or it will outrage ... what a woman goes through deserves a powerful film. Of course, abortion is a crucial topic in the U.S. right now, and some movies, which occur in a time and/or place where abortions are hard to come by, really hit home. In Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), the central character is only 17, and can't get an abortion in her state without parental consent, so she goes to New York. And the brilliant 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) takes place in Romania during the Ceaușescu era, where everyday life is oppressive.
Happening takes place in France in 1963, and the illegal status of abortion and the accompanying repression reflects our own times. The decision of the young student to have an abortion is honest and considered ... she isn't thoughtless, she is realistic. But the trauma is twofold, because abortion is a difficult decision and the procedures are risky (especially when you must go underground to get it done), and because of the social pressures on women to acquiesce to their situation as they are told to. Happening doesn't hold back ... the various attempts at abortion are grisly and extremely upsetting, and it's a bit hard to recommend the film to anyone sensitive to these things. But it's also honest and necessary, and it's a surprise that it wasn't submitted to the Oscars as the French submission. They sent Titane, another unsettling film that isn't as good as Happening. Titane was explicitly in the body horror genre ... in Happening, writer/directorAudrey Diwan manages to show how an unwanted pregnancy fits into that genre as well, almost accidentally.
This was the first time I saw Anamaria Vartolomei, and she is excellent. The legendary Sandrine Bonnaire turns up late in the film as an abortionist. It's always good to encounter new-to-me talents like Diwan and Vartolmei, even when the film is as disturbing as Happening.
I saw the original Twister, probably when it came out. It was fun, although honestly, the only thing I remember about it is the flying cow. Now, almost 30 years later, a sequel. Was it worth the wait?
Money talks. Twister made almost half-a-Billion dollars worldwide on a budget of under $100 Million. The only real question would seem to be, what took so long to put out a sequel? In 2024, the special effects are better, and Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones are 2024 equivalents of Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. Twisters is a passable time-waster, but now that I've seen it, I'm not sure why I bothered. The action scenes were impressive, the character studies boring ... in other words, it's typical. People know in advance if they want to see it, and I suppose if they do, they won't be disappointed. But it's no match for Furiosa ... heck, I think Jason Statham's The Beekeeper was more fun. Director Lee Isaac Chung got a deserved Best Director Oscar nomination for Minari ... this is a step backwards.
A friend recommended this, and I came to it cold ... knew nothing about it, never seen any movies from director Christian Petzold, knew none of the actors. It's one of my favorite ways to watch a new-to-me film, but I think I might have needed some context.
Undines are water nymphs ... the little mermaid is an example ... and I'm not sure if Petzold embellished the legend or not, but the titular Undine in his movie (played by Paula Beer) has some specifics related to love with a human. None of it was very clear to me, which is where context might have helped. At the beginning of the movie, when a man is breaking off a relationship with Undine, she says that means she must kill him, as if that's something everyone knows. I just went with it, knowing from the start that I'd be in the dark about the fantasy elements.
And it was an intriguing watch, no matter what I was missing. Beer is excellent, and Petzold creates an atmosphere that is a good blend of reality and mythology. Undine's relationships with men are both romantic and mysterious, thanks to the underlying myth, and if I never quite got the idea, I was able to go with it anyway. Undine is the kind of movie that often bothers me, yet for some reason this time I bought into what I was watching.