Anora (2024)

A joyous moment that is being used to sell a downer of a film

I liked ANORA. It has some great moments and one extended set piece that is one of the best things I've seen in the movies all year. However this talk about it being the best film of 2024 and the probable Oscar winner has to stop.  I mean the film is easily the least film from Sean Baker and it has all sorts of narrative, character and tonal problems.

The plot of the film film has a girl named Anora, but who goes by the name of Ani, meeting Ivan, the son of a Russian oligarch, who becomes infatuated with her. On a trip to Vegas he proposes and they get married. Right after they get back to New York his parents find out and send their men to put a stop to it. Ani's husband flees and she is forced to help run him down before the parents arrive the next day. Billed as a romance the film is a grand tragedy as it all goes to shit in the end.

The simple response to the film is that once the first act ends the second starts with the family's men showing up and Ani being forced to help them track down her errant husband the film actually works until you realize that you knew how this was going to go from the start and you were just waiting to see how everyone is emotionally left broken (The not so romantic comedy is going to end as an unhappy tragedy). It's largely unremarkable story telling with nothing to say that we couldn't have worked out in the first five minutes.

The one thing the film has that makes me really like the film is a stunning sequence that is the start of the second act when the father's men are sent to find out what the hell is going on and if the rumors of marriage are true. The sequence in the house from their arrival until they head off on the chase is quite simply one of the best sequences in any film this year. Hell, it's better than most other complete films. The problem is it's the only one where you actually have real characters doing real things. Its the only one that doesn't feel contrived and angling to get us to the predetermined downbeat ending.

As I've said one of the biggest problems with the film is that there are no characters. Everyone, with the possible exception of the fixer, is one note. No one arcs. That maybe the point, Baker may have wanted to show us characters who never learn, but they never feel real as a result. Watching characters who are not real so much as cliche cut outs is tough. And while it maybe the point, I didn't want to watch characters who spend the first third of the film smoking, drinking and screwing and nothing else.

The truth is Baker's so incredibly lazy in his construction of characters that you know how empty and vapid a character is by how much a character smokes.  The more some one smokes anything the less complex they are simply because their use of tobacco, weed or vape is their character trait. Its also true of a lesser extent alcohol or pills which is only brought in so that something bad can happen. It's as if Baker created everyone on a spread sheet checking off traits to signify who they are or how they will react. The result is characters who are limited in characteristics and personality. 

What is truly annoying is that Baker's view of anyone in their twenties seems to be that they are still children who never learned impulse control or to grow up. He views his characters as simply as the person who once reduced Romero and Juliet down to the statement that it's "a three day love affair between a 13 year old and a 1 year old where  6 people die", except no one dies here. And while that simplicity is true of the Shakespeare play, which works because of the shading, Baker gives us no shading so his characters are non-entities. Baker has no real respect for his characters because there is nothing to them, their lives are getting wasted or getting laid. These are the least interesting people you can think of. Their selling point is one is a sex worker and the other is rich. What is there to them beyond that? Nothing. Honestly I would not want to be with these people in real life because they have nothing going on in their lives so why would there be a reason to see them on film? Baker never gives us a reason, even in a throw away line so the characters remain one note. The only two interesting characters in the whole film are the fixer (who we see at a christening indicating a bigger life) and the bald goon Igor, who takes pity on Ani who we see go to his grandmothers apartment indicating a bigger life.

The lack of arcing in the characters makes the film kind of pointless and ultimately dull. I mean why watch the story when you know that in the end Ani is going to be back where she started  but with the addition of the emotional kick to the gut of her relationship being bogus because her husband is really just a horny infant. More to the point why didn't you just make this a tragedy from start without the bogus comedy center? This isn't a story, so much a pointless shaggy dog story.

Tonally the film is a mess. It';s billed as a romantic comedy but there is no real romance just sex confused as love. The opening bit is a by the numbers meet cute and "romance" between people who only have sex in common. It's so by the numbers that there is no emotion, the sex scenes are not sexy, sure Ivan enjoys, but it it's mechanical and by its largely rote for Ani, who has to teach Ivan to be a lover. The film then shifts for the kick ass scene in the house which mixes humor and suspense, before shifting to broader comedy for the chase around the city, before turning again, this time into something tragic in the final bit as the parents come to town. Very little of it feels genuine, all of it feels as though it was set up to manipulate the audience. Again it's Baker working off the spreadsheet instead of writing about life.

I dragged from section to section, never carried along.

Looking at Baker's spreadsheet design, the dramatic structure  isn't really well done. Things happen just to drive the film and kill time until we get to the ending which reveals the film to be a remake of the original draft of PRETTY WOMAN. The opening act is rather cliche in that we know where it's going to go, we have to have a "romance" for the rest of the film to have a reason to happen. The start of the second act may be brilliant, but after confounding our expectations the film settles into a more or less chase mode where funny things happen but nothing is serious until a certain amount of time runs when Ivan is found to be hiding at Ani's old place of employment. Why did he go there? Because he never would have been found otherwise. Baker needed him to be found by Ani's friends so they could be directed to him. And in perfect example of why the film is badly and unoriginally plotted, not only did Mr Baker do the cliche thing of having him hide out in Ani's old work place but he also had him fool around with Ani's enemy.  Seriously? The film truly lost my respect there. The final third of the film has the parents arrive result in several sequences that wrap up the action but do so in a completely unremarkable way. And I don't mean that so much as we know how it's going to go, but rather the sequences and characters of the parents are so badly written  as to be cliche and events are so minimally written as to not let events play out but simply march the characters through events because we have to get to the ending. There is no shading to anything just what is required to explain where things are going as if it was pulled off an outline.

It's not bad, but it it isn't really good either. It all just sort of is. This feels more like a film made from a first draft script instead of one that was worked on over time. 

Walking out of the theater to the train with Nate Hood  He argued that the point of the film is to show that these people didn't change and didn't arc, and that they were vapid. But my argument back was then why tell us this story? What is the point of telling this story, in this way with heightened emotion and comedy, if we are going to end up with a depressing down beat ending? Honestly the final scene in the car should have wrecked me, and would have had Baker had any handle on the film's narrative rhythms. I don't see the point of giving us expectations of one thing of a possible Hollywood romance, only to have us crash into a brick wall? As I said this should have been played as what it really is trying to be, namely a real world PRETTY WOMAN (what that film was supposed to be) without the humor.

Personally if the film had ended with the shot of Ani's confused face staring at the Igor, who was nice to her, instead of her screwing him the film would have worked better because at that very moment the film would have given Ani an entire arc because she seemed to grow up and realize how badly she fucked up and how things could have/ should have gone. We did not need, nor should we have seen her slip back into her old ways of connecting through sex. For me had the film ended with her face and the instant arc I would have loved the film because the film would have come together in an instant, instead of coming together in order to simply fall apart.

Despite the many serious flaws I do like the film, but I can not see why anyone thinks this is anything near the best of the year because it's not. Anyone saying that is wrongly over hyping the film.

THE BRUTALIST (2024) is far from the greatest anything

There is going to be a lot here so stay with me.

Word out of where ever was that THE BRUTALIST was going to be the next greatest film ever made. Many people were calling it all the accolades that instantly get my panties in a bunch and make me want to get them in off the ledge. Other festivals, more accolades. Finally it hits NYFF and I buy a ticket for the last day it's screening because I want to hear what friends have to say and I want distance.

Word out of the NYFF press screening ran the gamut  from it being really good (no one was genuflecting) to one person calling it a noble failure and dismantling it in terms of Paul Thomas Anderson films (specifically THE MASTER and THEIR WILL BE BLOOD). It was the politest shredding of a film I've ever heard

Calmed by that, I suddenly had hope I wouldn't hate the film from top to bottom. Grabbing Nate Hood, who truly had no idea what the film was other than it was 4 hours and in 70mm, I went to the theater to see it for myself.

The film is the story of a noted Hungarian architect who comes to the US after being displaced and being in the concentration camps of World War 2 and ends up hooked up with a rich family hoping to make a cultural center in the middle of Pennsylvania.

The first half surprised me. It was quite good. While not the American epic promised by many, I was curious where it went.

After the intermission (which is actually part of the film- there is a reel change moments after the 15 minutes run out) things pick up and.... OH HELL NO. The film became an absolute mess. It's disjointed, unfocused and in desperate need of another hour and a half. SO much is unsaid, until it is, that the film just collapses under it's bloated pomposity and pretentious bullshit.

At this point I'm going to give a warning I'm going to reference things in the film---like the ending--- so if you don't want to know surf away now. No skin off my back.

If you are going to be here for the long haul understand I'm not going to do this in a perfectly formed manner because, quite frankly there is too much wrong with the film that there is no point in ordering my grievances, I'm just going to get it all out as it hits me.

Okay that isn't fair. This isn't a total waste, its okay over all, but it's not the GREAT film promised straight faced by my fellow writers. If the film wasn't as celebrated as it is it might have gotten away with being a pretty okay over long drama that people had to chase to actually see instead of an Oscar hopeful that is going to leave the paying public scratching their heads.

I should point out that most of the problems that will be referenced here are to do with the second half.

Then again there is one thing that the first half suffers from as well as the second and that is bad acting and lack of characters.  Yes, Adrian Brody is great. Yes he should be in the running for the Oscar, but everyone else, save the guy who plays the builder is either a badly written character or badly acted. And I do mean you, Guy Pearce. Normally you are wonderful even with an underwritten role, but you are just awful here. Without real characters we have no one and nothing to follow. I didn't care about anyone because there was no one to care about. (If you think otherwise please tell me who was well rounded-the wife? The Niece? Pearce's kids? No one is given enough to form a character)

This lack of having anyone to care about goes completely off the rails when Adrian Brody's character essentially disappears from the final 20 minutes of the film. Yes, he is kind of there is the epilogue, but he really isn't (it's some guy made to look like him).

Blame the problem on the choppy nature of the second part. We travel through time and space in a disjointed matter. Huge pieces of exposition are just not there. Plot threats and thematic threads come and go (I'll come back to this).  It causes chaos in our ability have a handle on things. For example after Brody takes his wife to the hospital because of the overdose, she mentions that he confessed when they were tripping together. THE NEXT scene has her going to Pearce's house and she is, not in the wheelchair, but a walker. Where and how? More to the point because of the dialog Brody has been in New York with her for two days. Two days from when? Not the overdose, she wouldn't be there, much less walking into the house in a walker.

Part of the reason the characters don’t exist is the weird ass jumps in time. Because the second half careens through time no one is allowed to arc. They simply are the next thing. Look at the development of Brody’s wife. Ignoring the fact that she exists simply to say something that needs to be said or to be a person around which something can happen, we never are given a reason she becomes more and more assertive. She just is until suddenly she is walking into the house to reveal she knows what happened between Pearce and Brody. Where did it come from? And because there is no arcing in the second half Brody’s character simply thrashes from scene to scene in a different manic state. 

I am bothered by the film’s relationship with heroin. Not that it’s there but how it uses it. For some reason I feel that too much of the plot is driven by it. I kept wanting to say a variation of the old Woody Woodpecker line “If woody had just gone to the police none of this would have happened.” Here it would be if Brody hadn’t used heroin so much of this wouldn't have happened. The drug simply becomes the way to have events happen such as the incident with Pearce, that Brody uses it to stop his wife’s pain, and the implication that his being so sick from it that his wife has to confront Pearce is asking too much of it to the point that it’s simple a deus ex machina. This film could not go forward if Brody's character wasn't a junkie.

The truth is the film fudges too much with the wife. Not only doesn't she arc but simply exists for a moment or a line. She speaks of talking to god and knowing everything about what Brody did, but we have no clue about it really. Later after her overdose she speaks of his confessions of all these things but there is no indication of what exactly other than the incident with Pearce when she walks into the house…. 

 ...and about that there is absolutely no indication about the depth it bothered him-other than the look when he and Pearce walk out of the cave. There is no indication that it bothered him so badly that his wife would have to step up and fix the problem. 

 If it isn’t clear the second half of the film is a real mess and the more I think about it the more I keep adding to this piece because the more I need to say how fucked it is. The film is riddled with all sorts of continuity plot and thematic questions particularly in the second half.

The biggest problem with the film is what is the film about? Yes I know Adrian Brody, but thematically? The film never makes a stand for anything.

Is it the immigrant experience? Maybe, but that disappears for chunk of the film. It doesn't matter he is an immigrant, more that he's crazy.

Is it life after the Second World War? The war comes and goes.

Is it a societal expose on class? Perhaps but it says nothing new.

Is it a look at being Jewish in America? Yes, but outside of the religious services and Israel the threads aren't always there. There doesn't seem to be a great deal of overt antisemitism outside of the wife of the cousin in the film, with any objections to Brody are  not because he's Jewish but because he's from an Eastern Block nation. 

Is the ending saying that all Jews should just go to Israel because they will be happy and successful? It isn't clear and I'm not certain, enough to make a guess, though the film is geared to say that had he just gone to Israel he'd have been happy sooner.

What is this all about? I'm not certain.

But this isn't surprising since basic facts such as a seemingly that's given such as that Brody and his family were in the concentration camps is bobbled. It's referenced here and there,  but Brody is said have broken his nose when escaping from train car on the way to the camp. Did he escape or not? And while it's fleetingly referenced, it doesn't come to the forefront until the epilogue when it's said the design for the building he was making is based on the camps he and his wife were in. It's a fact that was never referenced until the final moments of the film.

If I misinterpreted something don't blame me, so few of the details are really clear.

One of the things that Nate and I talked about after the film, as did several people outside the theater after the film, was that the writing was too clever and unclear for it's own good. Forget the fact that things just happen because they need to, basic things in the dialog are set up to be really sly. There are lines all though the film that mean nothing, but suddenly become clear indications of things later on. For example the fact that Guy Pearce's character is queer and wants to screw Brody is seen in the reference to Brody that he's beautiful.  It's never really mentioned again until things happen. There are other examples, but I don't want to completely dismantle the film. The problem with clever referential dialog in a four hour film is that people will forget seemingly throw away lines in the first hour. Sure cineastes and scholars will catch things on the second or third go but the first time through its all going to be the wrong sort of missed.  While I love puzzle box films, or films that have layers to them, you shouldn't have to catch and retain everything the first time through to understand or even just like a film.

More troubling is that I felt passages of dialog seem recycled from elsewhere. The unsigned check story for example, comes from at least one other film. While I don't see the Paul Thomas Anderson references, I do sense that this isn't as fresh as many people would think.

And what are we to make of the ending where characters disappear both figuratively or literally with no real sense of an ending, except a tacked on epilogue that gives it a quasi-happy ending that isn't earned and raises a lot more questions than it answers.  It's as if they didn't know how to end it so they just winged it and tacked things together.

This is a film made by a filmmaker who desperately wants to be taken seriously. Its flashy and showy in a way that screams "I"M THE MOST IMPORTANT FILM OF THE YEAR!" Its the work of a man who wants to be an artist and can put the pieces together to create a faux piece of art, unlike his protagonist who just does it.

This film is ultimately pretentious twaddle which disappoints because if the second half hadn't been as choppy and the themes were more focused  it might have been a pretty good film.

I suspect it will get lots of Oscar noms, Brody may win Best Actor, but in a year or two we won't be discussing the film much.

Forgive me for ranting but I really don't think the film works, and I feel stronger because I went to the film with one of the smartest film people I know and he was vexed by the film as well.

(And one last brickbat - I've seen dozens of films in 70mm over the years and this was the first time I was left puzzled as to why.)

ADDENDUM: If you want to make comments on this piece or tell me I got anything wrong feel free. However you absolutely can not tell me anything that was either in the press notes or things the director said in an interview or at a Q&A. Films MUST stand on their own so you can not bring in anything from the outside because 99% of the people who see the film will not see the notes, interview or Q&A. I will delete any comments that mention them because they are not in the film.

Caught By The Tides (2024) NYFF 2024

Jia Zhangke’s CAUGHT BY THE TIDES should not work, and even if it did work it shouldn’t work as well as it does.. The film was cut together from “mountains” of footage shot randomly over a 21 year period. During the lockdown Zhangke and his team went through the footage and found things they could tie together. They then shot some new footage to tie it all up together. It may take a while to click, but there is a point where it suddenly just comes together.

Beginning with some documentary footage of some women singing on Women’s Day, the film jumps around for a bit between documentary pieces and then a man and a woman who are in a relationship. They break apart and then going looking for each other over time. Before meeting again in the days of covid.

It’s not giving anything away because what makes this film special is the performances. Watching the actors age over time, in clips that were never meant to go together is something special. Somehow the ravages of time makes what we see even more special. There are nuances that we would never have seen otherwise.

What blows me away is that there is very little dialog. Everything is expressed in the physical performances. And then in the final section, set during covid, everyone is largely masked. The result is a couple of towering performances being given with only part of the face. If Oscar and other awards were truly based the best performances then the ones in this film would clean up.

Watching the film I wasn’t sure what I was watching. Some of this is as I said documentary footage, some of it is just staged bits. A bunch of it doesn’t seem to hang together. Yes the travelogue like footage is amazing  but there were times when I wasn’t sure that Zhangke was making his point…and then suddenly it clicked. Suddenly I was there. Suddenly the pain and loneliness crashed into the audience. Suddenly you realized that this seemingly imperfect experiment was going to break your heart.

I was moved.

Seeing this and taking the ride was one of the coolest things experiences of the year.

I think based on the reaction of the screening at NYFF, where no one seemed to walk out and everyone stayed for the Q&A I think the rest of the audience was too. ( do see the  NYFF Q&A where Zhangke explains in detail how he made the movie)

And if you don’t like it, that’s okay, this is a one of a kind movie.  But if you see it  don’t give up on it until the film ends.

Recommended

THE SHROUDS (2024) NYFF 2024

There is no getting around it, David Cronenberg’s THE SHROUDS is a disappointment.  Based on Cronenberg's own feeling after losing his wife, the film is the story of a man dealing with the grief he feels after his wife died. He uses his tech savvy to create burial shrouds for the dead that allow people to watch their loved ones decay. As he tries to reconnect to life the cemetery is vandalized and conspiratorial plots involving the technology are possibly hatched.

This is the first film where Cronenberg lost sight of his characters for the plot. Perhaps this is the result of this being intended to be a miniseries for Netflix that got axed or perhaps it’s just Cronenberg wrote himself in the corner. Either way this film takes a long time before focusing on the characters and then in the final third it loses them again.

To be certain when the characters take front and center the film soars- the scene where the blind wife of one of Vincent Cassel’s clients touch his face was one of the best scenes in all of this year’s New York Film Festival and the sex scenes are both erotic and manage to drive the plot – but the truth is the film is too interested in the technical stuff to really work. In the words of Hubert Vigilla, with whom I saw the film, it’s like watching THE FLY and having it be about how the pods work.

I’ve been a fan of Cronenberg for decades and this is the first time one of his movies ended and I felt nothing. Both Hubert and myself were left staring at the screen by Cronenberg’s choice of ending point for the film since it doesn’t feel like a stop but simply mid action abandonment.

While the film is well made and has moments it really isn’t a good film. If the interpersonal bits weren’t as good as they are this would probably be the first truly bad David Cronenberg film.

For die hard fans of the director only.

OH CANADA (2024) NYFF 2024

Richard Gere gives his best performance ever as a dying filmmaker who is dying of cancer and who agrees to an interview with his former students about his life, vowing to finally tell the truth.

This is Paul Schrader's best film in years. A mosaic film made up of various bits, memories, reality, the story of a lost son and a few other things. There is no direct through line, other than the interview. There is no effort to tell his whole life and there is no effort to truly sort out what is the "truth". This is a film about the mind, memories and experiences of a man who is near death. Everything is fluid. 

This is very much an old man's film. The source novel was written by a man looking at death. The film was made by a filmmaker nearing his end and who has been unwell. It is a film that is very much a about looking back at life and all the regrets one has. It's a film that is made by men near the end. I say that knowing that I am on the back end of life myself. In the months and weeks before and after my last birthday I realized  I have been having all of the thoughts that Richard Gere's character have been having.  In doing so I realized just how absolutely on target the film is.

As good as the film is, it is flawed, the fragmentary nature  is too fragmentary in the last half hour. Something feels missing. Schrader said at the Q&A that everything is in the film except an epilogue, but something feels , slightly off.

Quibble aside I truly love this film.  It moved me and it made me think about a lot of stuff. It's also a film that has resulted in a lot of discussions. This is a film that is going to grow on people. Its a film that I think is going to be hailed as one of Schrader's best once people understand the structure of the film and realize it isn't supposed to be a whole life but what happens on a man's last day.

And it needs to be said- Give Gere the Oscar right now.

Highly recommended.

The Damned (2024) NYFF 2024

One of two films called THE DAMNED that hit festivals at around the same time. The other is period thriller on distant island. This film follows a group of Union soldiers who are sent into the American West in order to guard an unspecified border.

That this film won awards and got glowing reviews is something I can't understand. There is quite simply nothing here. 

There are no characters. None. We kind of know who they are by their look but thats it. There is no real attempt to build characters. Any dialog is of the sort that no one would ever say. It all feels like it was taken from journals and articles, not from life. 

There is no narrative. It's a bunch of non entities wandering into the wilderness.  Where they are is never explained. What they are doing beyond "guarding the border" is never explained. They are supposed to be waiting for another group to meet them, but how the hell will they find them because they are in the middle of nowhere at a place that was randomly chosen.

Don't get me started with the few events the few events that happen.  The bad guys, it's assumed it's the South, but it isn't clear, attack twice, once after moving into position in front of the sentries who would have seen them. When four men wander off to check on a way through  the mountains and there is snow, then there is a sequence without snow and then the snow is back.  

When the film ended I literally had no idea why I bothered, because there was no context to anything. It was as if the film simply existed just to show life on the plains. But there is absolutely nothing here. Zip.

As a recreation of life for soldiers it does seem to have a place, but, I'd rather go see a re-enactment where I could talk to the guys.

Skip this film because this is a film that will leave you scratching your head if it doesn't put you to sleep.  

GRAND TOUR (2024) NYFF 2024

NYFF frequent flier Miguel Gomes returns with GRAND TOUR with the story of a British diplomat who flees the fiance he hasn't seen in 7 year by touring Asia. First we see his flight and then her pursuit.

Lots of great travel footage is wasted in a two part tale that never really works. The problem is the split tale. The tale of the diplomat is intriguing for a about ten minutes, until you realize that we know , and will know nothing about him at all. He is entirely a cipher. Well we know he's a diplomat and has a fiance, but that's all. Everything we learn is via voice over narration which doesn't remotely fill in the missing material.

The second half of the film is the quest of Molly, the fiance to see the man she loves. Actually beyond trying to marry him, she has something to tell him. While this portion explains much we didn't know about in the first part, the story still seems fragmentary. Too many details are given us by voice over. While the second half  made me curious how it was going to play out for Molly ultimately I found this journey was a waste of my time.

Not recommended

The Room Next Door (2024) NYFF 2024

Pedro Almodóvar's first English language feature has Ingrid (Julianne Moore) reconnecting with Martha (Tilda Swinton) who is fighting cancer. When Martha decides to end her pain permanently, Ingrid agrees to accompany her.

Mid-level Almodovar is more like stage play then a feature film. While Moore and Swinton (and John Turturro in a funny cameo) are excellent, the script is full of dialog that is purple and exactly the sort of thing that you only hear on stage. We aren't listening to conversations but listening to speeches. Because everyone was saying perfectly craft lines about the meaning of life I never connected. There is no small talk only live and death discussions.

It' not bad, but it isn't great either. This is a impressionistic painting of life not life itself.

This is going to work best for fans of the director.

Pavements (2024) NYFF 2024

This is a mixture of portraits of the group Pavement. One is a record of a pop up museum, one is a bio pic, another coverage of their 2022 reunion tour, another is a collection of archival footage and another is a jukebox stage musical. All of these things are inter-cut together to make a one of a kind portrait.

This is an interesting film that is going to play best for fans of the group. The reason for that is the group did not a want a typical portrait for the group, as a result there is no real effort to really tell the story of the group but its instead a collection of impressions.  While I know some of their music, I know nothing about the group so as a result I could only surf on the moments.

Strangely surfing actually works. Once the film gets going , about 20 or 25 minutes, there is something enjoyable about bouncing from the various pieces.  While I would have love to have seen all of the various parts complete, based on the talk at the New York Film Festival Q&A it was probably best we didn't.

I enjoyed the film, but realistically, if you aren't a Pavement fan you can probably skip this.

DIRECT ACTION (2024) NYFF 2024

The NYFF write up calls this film "...a work of striking, meaningful duration..." I have no idea what that is. How is a duration meaningful? You have to watch something for a certain length of time to get meaning? Is there an umeaningful duration? Can you imagine what George Carlin would have done with that phrase?

I'm calling bullshit. I say that because this three and a half hour sleeping pill is one of the most pretentious piece of cinema that I've run across in years. Its a film where we watch things play out for long periods for no reason  Its showing us things in real time but it's just a series of random bits, much like the opening of the film where we are watching random video files. I think the person who wrote the film up called it a film of meaningful duration because it couldn't say this film is dull and boring and we don't know why the programmers programmed it.

The film is supposed to be a look at the Notre-Dame-des-Landes commune France,  where they  try to to disrupt and discourage corporations and state entities from building on land. And some of it is in the film but so are long shots of the sky (there is a reason they are using the tower shot above as a selling point), people reading manifestos, people doing farm work in long takes and other not very interesting things.

To be fair this might have worked if the filmmakers had connected things up and not let them sit there but they didn't. It also might have worked if they shortened the pieces. With much of it  we get the idea rather quickly and we don't need an extended look.

Avoid this film unless you need sleep.

Queer (2024) NYFF 2024

Daniel Craig gives an Oscar worthy performance as Bill Lee a queer junkie living in Mexico. Lee becomes obsessed with a beautiful young man who insists he isn't queer.

William Burroughs novel is turned into a surprisingly beautiful film by Luca Guadagnino. It's a film that, despite the source material and some male nudity really isn't "offensive" as one might have thought. I was shocked by that, because as a fan of Burroughs,, the thing I love about his writing was the raw and real language and Guadagino smooths it all out. The result is a film that disappoints me it isn't more raw despite the fact it's a really good look at obsession.

For me the story of the film is the performances. Daniel Craig is magnificent. If he wasn't as well built as he is he would be the perfect William Burroughs. Its a raw and real performance that he fully commits to. This maybe the best thing he's done on film. Equally good is Leslie Manville. Usually playing refined ladies, here she is a skeevy pipe smoking botanist. It's a film that will confuse the hell out of you and make you want to give her the Oscar now. And then there is Jason Schwartzman who is just wonderful.

This is definitely one to see 

Recommended.

TRANSAMAZONIA (2024) NYFF 2024

Rebecca is a small girl who survives a plane crash into the Amazon. Years later her father, an evangelist preaching in the jungle has positioned her as faith healer of great power. However life beyond the church is complicating things.

This is a low key and rambling film that is just okay. We watch Rebecca as events transpire around her, her father tries to hook up with a nurse, the logging company clashes with the indigenous population and  she preaches and heals. While the film has some tense moments, and keeps hinting at why the nurse thinks Rebecca looks familiar, the film never generates a great deal of enthusiasm. To be certain it is better than many of the other films playing at NYFF this year, but at the same time it just sort of is there and doesn't do anything.

Part of the reason for this is Helena Zengel, who plays Rebecca with a stony expression that never changes. Buster Keaton has nothing on this girl. It doesn't work because we never know what she is feeling.

An interesting misfire

April (2024) NYFF 2024

An obstetrician gets into trouble when an infant dies during delivery. She followed the mothers request not to do a c section and that may have resulted in the child's death. As she awaits the outcome of the inquiry, which everyone fears will result in her being found out to be an abortionist, she broods on life.

Slow, I mean glacially slow, film is told with painfully long silences and never ending shots. Its a "real" time film on abortion issues and as such is a festival darling. It's a beautifully shot film with a killer sound design which should make it a winner but the film is so gawd awful slow that no one is really going to watch more than once.

Kudos to this polemic being adult and showing things on screen. When it's working it's real life feeling sequences will affect you (people left during the births and abortion) but the pacing, the artistic sequences and at times deliberately plotted/constructed moments work against it. I'm not sure how many people would have stayed to the end if there wasn't another press screening after it.

I, and everyone at the press screening, admire it for taking a stand (and that's the reason its at festivals) but I doubt anyone will really stay or stay awake long enough to hear what it has to say.

LITTLE, BIG, and FAR (2024) NYFF 2024

 

Jem Cohen's portrait of an Austrian astronomer who is pondering life and his work after turning 70.

This s a film you have to give yourself over to. Seemingly rambling in structure, the film is more a stream of consciousness tale that takes us into the mind of Karl that shows us clearly how he sees and processes the world. What at times is a film that will make you wonder where it's going, Ultimately comes together into something wondrous.

This is a film that will make you see the world in a new way.

Who By Fire (2024) NYFF 2024

(Apologies up front for not using names in the review, but people are introduced and disappeared so I never caught names)

A father, his daughter, his son and his son's friend go into the wilderness to spend some time with the father's friend and former collaborator for a few days. While there things go sideways in a WTF coming of age tale.

While I like this film to some degree, the truth is this film is a complete and utter mess narratively. Director Philippe Lesage brings together 11 people and manages to focus on none of them, moving them around in ways that make no sense.  Yes the individual scenes mostly work on their own but over all none of it really hangs together, killing not only a character who barely registers but the dog as well.

My feelings for the film have gone up and down since I saw it. Mostly I trade off liking moments (Rock Lobster is going to be what people latch on to) and realizing that the film has massive problems. 

The problems begin with the fact that most of the characters don't really exist because after they are introduced they disappear. Everything is focused on the friend of the son who wants to sleep with his best friends sister. I would ask why he's the focus when he isn't that interesting a character, except there are no other characters in the film. The father is a wine obsessed turd, the daughter is the sex object and everyone else is  barely there. The most telling clue as to how badly the characters are drawn and the plot is a mess in the fact that the main character, the friend of the son, has only two scenes with his supposed best friend. They almost never appear together, yet are so chummy that they go on vacation together. WTF? The son is such a non-entity that I completely forgot about him for most of the film.

Truth be told by the end everyone is so shitty to each other you will wonder why are they friends.

The plotting is just as bad with things happening, just because.  Big blow outs happen one minute and everything is hunky dory the next. Someone dies (I think they die), and then nothing.  It feels like the director didn't know what to do so he made it up. Let send everyone down a river because... The father obsesses about who switched his wine because he has nothing else to do. Scenes at times feel like pieces of long moments that got trimmed down.(why do I think there is a five hour cut of this that makes more sense)

It's a film that rambles all over the place and yet manages to go no where.

The actors are lost. The great Irene Jacob appears late in the film and does nothing but sit there.

This is two hours and thirty five minutes that are a waste of your life - yes I really like pieces- but that is all this is, pieces

As good as the pieces (particularly the literal needle drops) are there is no way I can tell you watch this over long trip to nowhere.

Pepe (2024) NYFF 2024

 

PEPE is the story of hippo who escaped from the menagerie of Pablo Escobar and wandered the wilderness. As he dies he tells us of the people he met and imparts wisdom.

The film is not so much his story as the stories he tells about the people he encountered. You will either buy it or you won’t.  

I  didn’t

Eephus (2024) NYFF 2024

This is not going to be a normal review. The problem is I've been thinking about it a lot and while I found what I wanted to say, it requires me to do something atypical.

I have written several drafts of this since I saw the film at the first New York Film Festival screening. My "review essentially began when the film ended as I talked with Hubert Vigilla about our feelings about the film.  Our initial thoughts were that we liked the first half and then felt it got lost as the day got longer. I wrote another review on the train home and then another on the train to work and yet another at work after talking to people at work  and then finally this one.  

Ultimately my feeling is that EEPHUS is not a good film. It has some moments but ultimately it is a rather unremarkable and derivative film that doesn't really work. Actually what hung me up is that the film is a bad variation of the sort of sports story that was told to absolute perfection by the film THE LATE GAME about a late night hockey league that came out earlier this year and rocked the house. To say that is something that really shouldn't be done, but the truth is EEPHUS does everything wrong that another film from this year called THE LATE GAME does right.

EEPHUS starts as a low brow comedy about the last baseball game that is going to be played on a field before it becomes the site of a new school.  We see everyone arriving and getting ready to play. The film then bobs between the the various characters in a not so much scenes as black outs. As the game drags on  the game seems to never end. The humor all but disappears in favor of bittersweet nostalgia. The umpires leave, as do the spectators. The game drags on into the night a the men play the game because they have to.  The game ends and....then nothing. 

This isn’t a really a narrative film, it more a series of jokes and later, situations that only loosely hang together. There is no real narrative thread here just moments. We are constantly bouncing between characters and situations moving as soon as we get to a punchline or a warm moment. During the post screening Q&A director Carson Lund said that the film was constructed one joke or moment at a time.  The result is nothing hangs together. 

There are no characters only sketches of ideas of people. Most damningly Lund never ever gives us any sense that either side is a team. Almost nothing happens that make you think that these guys can really play together.- actually he works against it by making jokes at almost every characters' expense. Why are these guys together? Only because Lund put them on the field in similar uniforms.

There is no sense to the game. We see an odd play here and there, but there is no sense of what they are doing on field. I love baseball and I love baseball films, and when you watch a baseball film there is always a sense of the game being played. There is none here. 

Lund said that they wrote out the whole game as a box score but we never see it on screen. The game is never really there, there is just an idea of a game,  and only the vaguest idea at that. The game should inform the shift from comedy to melancholy but it doesn't happen because we don't concretely know when anything is taking place. The film simply not having a real time frame- the game starts in the morning and ends late at night. The clock is forever chiming three no matter what time it is. It would have worked if the game was said to be in extra innings but the film makes clear its only nine innings. Worse the film references times of day that don't tie together.

I keep wondering if Lund had it all worked out in the script  but in cutting the film together he left everything except a few jokes and a stadium full of pretensions on the cutting room floor. Then again I don't think it was ever there because of the way he said he put the script together and because there are all these odd reference to things off screen that go nowhere. For example one of the guys playing apparently responsible for the destruction of the field but it, like other threads, go nowhere.

Ultimately the problem is that Lund doesn't know how to tell this story, he is so focused on getting to the bittersweet ending that he flushed everything that would make it work. Worse Lund's desire to celebrate the game and the people who love it doesn't exist in this film at all.  When the game is done so is baseball. No one will travel half an hour to play. Everyone complains about how there will nowhere to play close. Growing up with a father who played professional and semi pro football, ignored his family for dozens of softball leagues, and a brother who loves to play hockey and will travel across the tri-state area to play a game at any time of the day or night, the whiney jerks on screen don't have any love of the game-so the ending falls flat.

And that's where THE LATE GAME comes in. Watching EEPHUS I couldn't stop thinking about this other film. THE LATE GAME is the story of a guy who gave up on hockey who gets sucked into playing a midnight hockey game. By going to play the game he finds the love he lost. While not the same plot of EEPHUS, it has similar themes running through it. It has real characters. It has a real sense not only of the game but a love of the game. You know why these guys are playing at midnight. In EEPHUS you have no clue as to why they even bothered to show up.  

(You will forgive me for not going into a deeper discussion of THE LATE GAME, but this isn't a review of that film (This is). What I suggest is you go see it so you'll know how the story should have been told.)

But I'm digressing.

What kills me is that even on it's own terms EEPHUS isn't very good.  The first half is a comedy that is funny, but not funny enough. It then stops being funny as it gives way to a pretentious drive to make a contrived and artificial feeling that it telegraphs at the start. 

Watching the film I went from being engaged to shaking my head one of the most pretentious films of the New York Film Festival. 

In the end this doesn't seem to have been made for film fans or baseball fans.  It’s a film that seems to have been made to win awards instead of tickling the heart of fans, either films or baseball. This is a film designed to win the hearts of festival programmers and people who don’t know the game is all about.

7 WALKS WITH MARK BROWN (2024) NYFF 2024

This is seven trips into the wild with botanist Mark Brown as he looks for various plants and discusses his efforts to create a original forest.

This is an observational film that is going to have a limited audience. You really have to love plants or really enjoy a deeply observational film where the subject doesn’t talk down to you. This is Brown walking through the world and speaking in fluent “botanist”.

I was there for a bit but after a certain while my attention wandered because this was not anything I cared about.

VIET AND NAM (2024) NYFF 2024

 In 2001 two miners in Vietnam have a passionate love affair as one of them plots to leave the country for a better life somewhere else.

This is a jumbled art house film where every moment is dripping with meaning and artistic pretension. Nothing just is, everything means something. The arrangement all means something. This is a film that has a lot to say, like a director making his first film and who isn't certain he'll ever make another so he throws everything into it. Unfortunately little of it sticks together. There is the gay romance, the desire to leave the country, class struggle, the desire to find lost loved ones from the war, religion, and about 19 other things.Everything takes center stage for a moment and then is dropped. It's never clear what it all means because nothing ties together. 

The performances are all zombie like. The notion of everyone being dead inside makes the film hard to watch because the film has a single tone. There is no life, only dead people. The dead eyed performances make even the sex scenes dull. While there seems to be passion, the facial expressions undercut it.

It doesn't help that the film now and again shifts to the metaphorical, not because the film needs it but because the filmmakers want to oversell the moment. The final sequence for example looks lovely and is heartbreaking but it kind of is just out there unconnected to anything.

I never cared.

While very well made, the film is so messy narratively and thematically I can't believe it's getting so much festival love. I understand this is the director's personal tale and statement, but it's so personal it means nothing to anyone else. 

A bust.

Jimmy (2024) NYFF 2024

A meditation on James Baldwin's 1948 trip to Paris, where he found a home and began to write.

This is a black and white film told with a driving jazz score that is more about feelings than facts. Yes Baldwin wanders through the film, and there is some attempt at narrative sequences, however the truth is those are the weakest parts of the film. This is a film that work bests on mood. 

Running just over an hour the film is an interesting footnote.