Maigret Sets a Trap (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ½

Maigret Sets a Trap (2016) – A. Pearce

Matlock!  Uh, I mean, I chose this TV movie starring Rowan Atkinson as Inspector Maigret because I was looking for something easy on the brain (or because I am old).  But it was so unchallenging as to be rather a waste of time, in fact.  Atkinson shows nothing of his verbal or physical wit (from either Blackadder or Mr. Bean) and seems to be purposefully underplaying instead. The setting in 1950s Paris is nicely art-directed and the story from Georges Simenon is perhaps clever enough – the clues take a while to show up but after they do, Maigret is all over them, yielding a conclusion that would be hard to otherwise deduce. Not sure I need to watch the other episode on the DVD (from the library).

 

Under the Shadow (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Under the Shadow (2016) – B. Anvari

Set in Tehran during the ‘80s (near the end of the lengthy Iran-Iraq war), director Babak Anvari uses the ghost story genre to raise questions about gender roles in society (a critique that applies not only to the Middle East).  When her husband, a doctor, is called to duty in the warzone, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) is left to take care of their young daughter, Dorsa, on her own.  All seems fine (apart from Shideh’s stresses and the sexism directed against her) until a missile strikes their building, neighbours begin to flee the city, and Dorsa loses her favourite doll.  Soon, Dorsa is reporting that another woman promising to be a better mother has been talking to her. Shideh herself begins to see things moving in the apartment. One of the remaining neighbours begins claiming that there is a Djinn in the building, supposedly invited by the mute orphan she has taken in.  Indeed, the ghost appears in a full burka (or chador but we don’t see a face – perhaps invisible in there!) threatening Dorsa even as Shideh knows they must flee to the basement bomb shelter. In the end, apart from a few solid jump scares, the film is less scary or spooky than it is thought-provoking,  Not surprisingly, Anvari filmed this outside of Iran and its censors.   

Creepy (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Creepy (2016) – K. Kurosawa

After a case goes bad, Takakura leaves the police force and becomes a criminology professor.  But when a former colleague asks for his assistance, he can’t help but get sucked into investigating a cold case (the disappearance of three members of a local family), despite his wife’s hope that he would stay out of it.  In fact, he and his wife Yasuko (Yûko Takeuchi) had moved to a new neighbourhood to get a fresh start after he changed careers.  However, their new neighbours are distinctly unfriendly or awkward and weird.  Nevertheless, Yasuko grows closer to their strange next-door neighbour Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa) who may be harbouring a secret that links him to the cold case.  Despite this intriguing set-up in line with earlier genre successes from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (e.g., Cure, 1997), the subtitles let me down (seemingly created using Google Translate) and I suspect that I missed some important nuances.  For example, Yasuko’s motivations and behaviour seem to alter strangely without notice – although this may be due to some mysterious powers exerting influence on her (not unheard of in Kurosawa’s films which often include spooky and supernatural elements, hence this title).  I’m sure things must be much more coherent for native speakers.  (That said, Kurosawa has not always wanted to connect the dots in the past).  So, if you can find a proper source, this is likely a solid entry in the morbid serial killer police procedural genre.

  

A Dark Song (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Dark Song (2016) – L. Gavin

Very spooky and sinister (and punctuated by my DVD player abruptly spitting out the disc at a particularly scary moment 85 minutes in).  Sophia (Catherine Walker) who harbors grief (and hate?) in her heart hires Joseph Solomon (Steve Oram) to help her perform an occult rite (based on Crowley) that will allow her to summon her guardian angel and speak to her dead son.  The rite involves months of gruelling and painful sacrifices inside an old mansion (surrounded by a ring of salt, of course).  First time director Liam Gavin expertly manages the tone and suspense, keeping things creepy even when nothing is happening – it is the air of expectation (and the shadows) that keeps viewers glued to the screen.  Will anything really happen or are these people simply desperate and confused? (Solid acting keeps us unsure).  And then, of course, things start to happen.  I missed about 60 seconds of the darkest moments, I think, due to the damaged disc – I don’t think things became too gruesome or sadistic (but I guess viewer beware).  The end reminded me of Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture (1991) -- which I should certainly watch again – conjuring up a reset of your expectations. Worth a look, esp. for the Halloween season.

The Love Witch (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Love Witch (2016) – A. Biller 

Whereas this might look on the surface like an homage to (or spoof of) the sexploitation horror films of the late 60s/early 70s, it is something much more.  Director Anna Biller uses Brechtian tricks -- mainly the stilted vocal delivery of all characters but also the slow dreamlike pace – to get us to detach from the events at hand and ponder her aims.  And to her credit, these are not obvious nor simplistic.  Samantha Robinson stars as Elaine, the Love Witch of the title, who has fled San Francisco for a small Northern California town where she begins making candles and witchy objects and hooks up with an occult community (treated as a sizable minority in the town).  After the breakup of her marriage (we see her husband dead in flashback, seemingly after drinking a spiked drink), Elaine wants love and uses sex magick to try to get it.  Unfortunately, the men she lures do not respond as she had hoped – although they are keen for lovemaking (and self-objectification on Elaine’s part), they soon turn into needy emotional messes.  She may not have gotten the spells exactly right – or so she thinks. Soon, the police are after her – but he is certainly a hunky detective and she reels him in.  Despite its nudity and sex, it is easy to read this as a feminist film.  For one thing, it is told from Elaine’s point of view; she may not be aware of the inadequacy of sexualizing herself to achieve the love she wants – but viewers are; and other characters explicitly discuss women’s roles (and do not think it is to please men, first and foremost, as Elaine suggests). Beyond this, the film has many fanciful and surprising scenes (again with the quality of a dream) although some might feel it drags – but you’ve got to be impressed by Biller’s talents (she wrote, directed, edited, and did the production/costume design).  

 

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) – A. Øvredal

With that title, you know exactly what you are going to get in this horror thriller -- and thanks to the acting of Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch (as father-son coroners) and the direction by André Øvredal, we actually get it.  In other words, this is a tight little chiller (at 87 minutes) that manages to keep its creepy sensations going all the way through.  Of course, if you are looking for something plausible or believable, then that isn’t what you’ll find here.  The film starts spooky (an autopsy of a mysterious young woman in a dark basement) and quickly moves to supernatural bumps in the night and then well, yeah, worse.  But apart from the autopsy itself (gruesome), this is more in the Val Lewton tradition of things that you don’t see (that could get you) rather than explicit (usually phony) monsters made with makeup, prosthetics, or special effects.  An amusement park ride for those escapist October moods.

The Nice Guys (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Nice Guys (2016) – S. Black

Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling try their hands at slapstick comedy to varying degrees of success in this buddy action flick that attempts to bring us back to the glory days of the ‘70s P. I. flick.  Director Shane Black (best known as a screenwriter for Lethal Weapon and similar) isn’t afraid to toss in some violence and sex but somehow the film doesn’t get too tawdry.  This might be due to the presence of Angourie Rice, who plays P. I. Gosling’s 13-year-old daughter, plain-talking and ready to help solve the crime/find the missing girl.  Crowe and Gosling stay in character well (brusque with a soft heart and definitely loopy, respectively) but the plot doesn’t really build much suspense.  Kim Basinger shows up relatively late as a villain to tie everything together but the plot isn’t really the point, I guess.  Instead, we are encouraged to revel in the period detail and overall pastiche.  But aside from the bright spark offered by Rice (and some of Gosling’s shenanigans), the film felt a bit flat.  Perhaps it could be shorter and tighter.  So, I wouldn’t necessarily seek it out, but if you are looking for something brainless…

  

Certain Women (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Certain Women (2016) – K. Reichardt

Director Kelly Reichardt’s films are minimalist in their approach to plot, with much time spent observing characters (in action or even doing not much at all).  She sets ideas in motion and allows viewers to invest psychological meaning into the events on screen that aren’t always clearly spelled out (perhaps are often not spelled out).  In Certain Women, Reichardt sets forth three minimal plots, the starting place for three stories that ultimately remain unfinished, focused on four women and their relations with others in society.  All the stories take place in a remote part of Montana with beautiful lonesome vistas.  Laura Dern is a lawyer whose client, Jared Harris, has been injured on the job and then manipulated into taking a settlement, thereby voiding his ability to sue.  She’s treated by Harris and others as though she isn’t competent and instead her relationship skills are highlighted (i.e., she’s stereotyped as a woman).  Michelle Williams and her husband James LeGros want to build a house (a second house?) and she is keen to use “authentic” materials in the construction, such as old railroad ties and some sandstone retrieved from a long-gone schoolhouse that they want to buy from lonely old timer Rene Auberjonois.  Her husband unintentionally undercuts her when talking to Auberjonois and also to their daughter, minimizing her needs or calling attention to her demands as requiring kid gloves or special treatment.  Here, women are placated rather than having their views valued and accepted.  Kirsten Stewart is a lawyer who accidentally agrees to teach a class on education law four hours away (near the Wyoming border) – another woman (Lily Gladstone) attends the class (although not enrolled) and strikes up a friendship (perhaps seeking more). Stewart is friendly but not responsive. Gladstone drives to Stewart’s town but nothing happens.  Both women remain unsatisfied by these encounters.  In the short stories by Maile Meloy from which the film’s sketches are drawn, the Gladstone character is male, which would make the potentially unwanted attention more explicitly sexist – but the ambiguity works in the mysterious and minimal contexts that Reichardt provides.  Indeed, we are led to be curious, to wonder what might happen, to think about the purpose of everything in the script – and the dots are rarely connected for us, even as the three stories threaten to come together at the end of the film (and don’t).  Perhaps these unfinished sketches could have benefited from longer running times (particularly the middle story) or some firmer resolutions, but there is no doubt that Reichardt chose to leave us suspended in thought with the hypothesis that these certain women do represent the (psychological) experiences of many women.   

Westworld (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Westworld (2016) – J. Nolan & L. Joy

It’s been eons since I saw the original Westworld (1973) with Yul Brynner as the theme park robot who goes out of control and attacks the guests.  But I remember it somewhat fondly so I thought I would give the HBO update, starring Anthony Hopkins, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, and Ed Harris, a go.  I haven’t really watched too many series in what seems the new golden age of television (apart from Twin Peaks Season 3 and True Detective Season 1, which were both excellent) but I admire the form in that it allows actors and screenwriters to really develop rich characters and for a story to play out across a larger arc.  (That said, I still enjoy the constraints of the 120-minute movie and what can be done within them).  In Westworld, there are numerous storylines that initially feel separate but of course intersect and then come together by the end (over the course of ten 60-minute episodes).  Hopkins and Wright are the scientists who make the robots (and deal with the corporation that has taken over their company/theme park). Newton and Wood are two of the robots who start to verge toward sentience.  Harris is a mysterious guest on a quest.  There are a lot of other strong supporting players who flesh out the onstage (robots) and backstage (workers) stories.  The acting is generally excellent, in fact.  But being HBO, I suppose sex and violence are required – many of the robots spend much of their time naked and of course, there are knifings, shootouts, and the rest the West can offer.  A lot of this does feel gratuitous – and at times, the story drags (or some of the plot strands do).  Yet, suspense is still created so that you want to get to the next episode; i.e. there are enough surprising plot twists (“reveals”) to keep you watching.  However, I’m not sure proper justice has been served for the deeper questions about artificial intelligence and its role in the world’s future.  Sure, humans are base and self-interested; sure, robots are a billion times smarter. Perhaps the ethical and moral issues will be (were) at the heart of Season 2 (2018)?  But I’m not sure that I will stick around to find out; there seems to be less here than meets the eye.  The constraints of a shorter running time might have helped -- or maybe I’m just being too tough on what is essentially popcorn fare with some vaguely highbrow pretensions.

Don’t Breathe (2016)

☆ ☆ ½

Don’t Breathe (2016) – F. Alvarez

I’ve been trying to decide who is the target audience for this picture (it wasn’t me) and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a thrill ride meant for young people to watch in the cinema.  In retrospect, I can hear people gasping, ewwing, and perhaps even cheering during the action in the cinema – it would play better in a crowd than alone in headphones (which is how I watched it).  The plot sees three millennial thieves breaking into the house of an old blind veteran in a run-down Detroit neighbourhood after hearing that he has a few hundred grand inside.  Unfortunately for them, the old man is more than they bargained for and they are soon playing a game of cat-and-mouse -- where they are the mice scurrying through the basement catacombs in the creaky old house.  Director Fede Alvarez uses all the tricks of the trade to heighten the tension – but it really is all technique and virtually no plot here.  You’ve paid your admission and you have a 90 minute ride.  (My worry that this might turn into torture porn was fortunately groundless – but it has a few sicko moments for sure).  Not my thing.

Train to Busan (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Train to Busan (2016) – S.-h. Yeon

If you are looking for Korean zombie action, look no further!  Director Sang-ho Yeon moved from anime to debut in this live action flick that follows the conventions of the (modern) zombie genre, including fast moving zombies who are the result of some biological lab accident.  This time, the epidemic seems to have covered most of South Korea – except the southern coastal city of Busan.  A seemingly amoral businessman played by Yoo Gong is travelling there to bring his primary school daughter (Su-an Kim) to see her mother, his ex-wife.  But when the zombie outbreak infects the train, he needs to learn to make some moral decisions.  There are a fair few character-types on the train, including a no-nonsense and buff married man (charismatic Dong-seok Ma) and his pregnant wife (Yu-mi Jung), some baseball players and a girlfriend/cheerleader, an evil corporate leader, the conductor, some old women, cabin attendants, and so on.  En route to Busan, they have to fight a lot of these very hyperactive zombies (who also apparently can’t see in the dark) and also navigate interpersonal tensions among the survivors.  As you would expect, not everyone survives.  But it is ripsnorting action throughout, with only a few pauses to play up the pathos and let us catch our breaths.  Yeon controls everything smoothly and the art direction/set design/effects are all top notch. Nothing too important here, of course, but a lot of fun and not as gory as you might expect.  So, if zombies are your thing, this is a treat!

Free Fire (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Free Fire (2016) – B. Wheatley

Yes, it’s basically a 90-minute gun fight between characters to which we are never properly introduced and which are never fleshed out.  So, if that’s not what you are after, look elsewhere.  I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted either.  But I enjoyed High Rise (2015) from director Ben Wheatley and so I thought I would give it a try.  So, beyond the fact that it’s shallow, it is a marvel of technical craft.  Basically, you have 10 (or 13) people spread out across a warehouse floor, shooting at each other, getting hit but not killed (as Wheatley apparently wanted realism and drew from actual FBI records of gun battles), dragging themselves bloodily to different hiding spots, and mustering all their strength to escape, call for reinforcements (on the one telephone, as this is set in 1978; cue John Denver), or kill the opposition.  That’s about it, except that it is also pretty funny.  The technical wizardry is less to do with blood and gore and a lot more about the editing and storyboarding that keeps the viewer straight with both who is still alive and their physical location in the complicated set.  But, yeah, if you don’t want to see blood, violence, and a lot of swearing, this isn’t your film.  Starring Bree Larson, Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer, Noah Taylor, and others with whom I was unfamiliar (Sharlto Copley is a stand-out and Babou Ceesay has a great surprising turn). 

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) – W. Herzog

The Werner Herzog documentary has certain well-known features:  importantly, the director narrates these films in his inimitable German accent, often appearing or at least conducting interviews from an offscreen space (as he does here).  His early docos often focused on visionary (or slightly cracked) individuals single-mindedly pursuing their dreams but since Encounters at the End of the World (2007), he has often cast his net more widely, choosing topics because of their intrinsic interest and then riffing on them.  He likes to go beyond the accountant’s truth to get at something more “ecstatic” which might sometimes be more poetic than strictly-speaking truthful.  That may have been the aim here in this wide-ranging review of the effects of the internet on human life, but things feel a bit looser and less focused (even for Herzog).  The film is broken into ten parts that use interviews with different people (some, like Elon Musk, may fit the mold of Herzog’s earlier protagonists) who have something to do with the cause and effects of the internet.  We are treated to brief but often stimulating discussions of: the start of the internet; the negative effects of trolling; the ways that the internet could still allow us to communicate on Mars (cue Musk); the future of artificial intelligence (and robot soccer teams); driverless cars; what would happen if solar flares disrupted the internet; the negative impact of hackers; the possible use of internet disruption and hacking in warfare (cold or otherwise); gamifying the cure for cancer; and so on.  Directly after the film, I felt it was a bit of a mess – but a lot of the content has stuck with me and generated new and different thoughts about the world and its fragility (mostly).  So, it must be a success, and particularly by Herzog’s standards.  But I also felt rather depressed about just how little I know about the world and the way that the internet has grown fundamental to it.  I’m not a luddite but I had hoped somehow that trying to keep things simple would mean keeping them safer and easier for me and my family.  But things have just moved too far and too fast in recent years.  Hell, I’m old.     

Gimme Danger (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Gimme Danger (2016) – J. Jarmusch

A master filmmaker, such as Jim Jarmusch, can really take a well-worn genre, such as the music doco, and enhance it.  The result is even better when the focus, The Stooges, is so clearly loved by the director and so clearly deserving of attention (I have their three original albums:  The Stooges, 1969; Fun House, 1970; and Raw Power, 1973).  So, even though a big proportion of the running time is Iggy Pop’s talking head, he is charismatic enough to carry the weight (as one of rock’s elder statesmen, surprisingly). Jarmusch and his team work some magic in the editing room, ladling on ace concert footage, old photographs, unusual video or musical clips (virtual asides that spring from Iggy’s comments), and even animated sequences showing The Stooges and their adventures.  We do hear from Ron and Scott Asheton (guitar and drums) and Steve Mackay (sax) who died before the film was released and from James Williamson (guitar on Raw Power) who became a Silicon Valley exec in his second/actual career.  In an interesting choice, Jarmusch opens the film with the band’s downhill slide into oblivion in the mid-70s, pre-opening credits, and then returns to tell the tale from the beginning, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and onward to Detroit and then their major label recording contracts (both Elektra and MainMan/Columbia), their dissolution, and then “reunification” (as Pop calls it) in the mid-2000s to widespread acclaim with Minuteman Mike Watt on bass (their Live in Detroit DVD is pretty great). The rapport and friendship between Jarmusch and Iggy Pop (who featured in Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, 1993, and had a bit part in Dead Man, 1995) very likely created a climate which helped to boost this beyond your usual rockumentary.  Right on!   

Lion (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆

Lion (2016) – G. Davis

Based on a true story, a moving uplifting story that is meant to bring tears of joy to your eyes.  Except mine.  Perhaps the film was over-hyped leading me to have high expectations. Or perhaps it suffered from a contrast effect since I’d watched an intellectually stimulating film the night before.  Or perhaps it just felt like it was trying too hard (with sweeping musical cues to tell me when to feel moved).  Whatever the reason, I wasn’t grabbed the way others have been.  That isn’t because scenes of poverty and kids in distress in India don’t affect me – Pather Panchali (1955) is one of my favourites.  Here, Sunny Pawar is adorable as the boy (who grows up to be Dev Patel) who is accidentally lost thousands of kilometres from home and then adopted from an orphanage in Calcutta by a Tasmanian couple (played by Nicole Kidman and David Wenham).  But Patel himself seems somewhat constricted, probably because the script has him ruminating about finding his real mum (a rural labourer) for a good chunk of the running time, pushing aside girlfriend Rooney Mara in the process.  Finally though, Google Earth is there to save him (and indeed Google pitched in to sponsor the film) and we get the ending we’d been advertised.  I’m sure this was incredibly dramatic when it happened to the real Saroo Brierley, but I found the narrative to be rather simplistic (even with the brother Mantosh subplot that doesn’t really go anywhere).  True, there are some beautiful Australian and Indian vistas to behold and if you aren’t curmudgeonly like me, you might feel exalted by these vistas, the music, and the stirring emotional story.

  

American Honey (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

American Honey (2016) – A. Arnold

I wonder if the title American Honey (2016) has anything to do with A Taste of Honey (1961) which I just happened to watch a few weeks ago?  The earlier British film follows a teenage girl who, due to neglect by her mum, ends up having to make her own way in the world, navigating the onset of adulthood (including sexual relations and then pregnancy) as best she can.  The director of American Honey, Andrea Arnold, is British and (although the new film does include a song of the same title by country group Lady Antebellum) I suspect that the use of the word honey here is no coincidence.  After all, the new film also follows a teenage girl who, seemingly abandoned by her parents and living in a kind of hell in Oklahoma, must find her own way in the world.  She joins a circus-like “mag crew” (door-to-door magazine sellers) made up of other lost kids, headed by Riley Keough (Elvis’s granddaughter), only a few years older but a tough businesswoman.  But maybe not a successful one, because it doesn’t seem as though these kids actually sell many magazines.  Instead, their life is one continuous rather chaotic party (with hip-hop the music of choice, despite the title track).  Our heroine, Star (played by newcomer Sasha Lane), observes everything with a bit of distance, some querulousness, some disdain, but a genuine desire to belong.  She is especially thunderstruck by Jake, the chief sales-dude played by Shia LeBeouf, who seems really to have no moral compass.  Indeed, Star herself displays some very poor judgment, often willingly entering situations that contain real risks, especially for a young girl.  But director Arnold passes no judgment on these kids and this is not really a cautionary tale.  The (handheld) camera hovers around Lane, detailing her reactions in close-up, allowing the viewer to soak up the sensations she experiences (and this is a very sensual film, with heightened sights and sounds).  The acting is sometimes impressive and sometimes wet-behind-the-ears.  But the film is also too long (at 157 minutes) and, if it is really meant to be a snapshot of the American experience at this point in time, emphasising the under-class (as did the British Kitchen Sink films of the 1960s), then it seems rather narrow in scope.  In the end, both sad and exhilarating.

I, Dalio (2015)/Debra Paget, For Example (2016)/Our Stars (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

I, Dalio (2015)/Debra Paget, For Example (2016)/Our Stars (2015) – M. Rappaport

You may remember video essayist Mark Rappaport from his ‘90s features, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992) or From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1995), in which he used film clips to investigate a certain thesis (for example, that Hudson’s films often hinted that he was gay) or to review an artist’s work as a way of gathering insight into the culture as a whole (as he does with Seberg).  Well, Rappaport has been very active again lately (in his 70s) creating a series of short essays, that use an actor as a starting place for a certain premise and then digress all over the place.  Of the three that I watched last night (each about 30 minutes long), I, Dalio (2015), focussing on French Jewish character actor Marcel Dalio, was the best.  Rappaport’s premise is that Dalio’s Jewishness meant that he was channelled into outcast roles (such as stool pigeon, hoodlum, etc.) in France before WWII but then when he fled to the US during the war he was typecast instead as French and was granted more positive roles (such as Frenchy in To Have and Have Not (1944) or the head croupier in Rick’s Café in Casablanca, 1942).  Returning back to France after the war meant a return to villainous parts – until he was old enough to be typecast simply as “old”.  Only the great director Jean Renoir had Dalio explicitly play Jewish roles in both The Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), where his Jewishness is openly discussed and reflected upon (just before the war).  So, Rappaport’s point is that identity is a function of context and the career of Dalio is a case in point.  The premise of Our Stars (2015) is that Hollywood pairings of stars that worked during their first cinematic incarnation cannot work again years later because they can only demonstrate that the stars have aged and that their chemistry has dissipated.  He uses Gregory Peck & Jennifer Jones, Barbara Stanwyck and both Gary Cooper and Fred MacMurray, and Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster to illustrate the point.  Debra Paget, For Example (2016) seeks to use the 20^th Century-Fox contract actress of the 1950s as an example of the careers of those on the second rung who never crashed through to stardom.  Neither of these latter two films seemed as rich or deep as I, Dalio but they were still never less than entertaining, with well chosen “knowing” clips and digressions that were sometimes more interesting than the main focus.  Rappaport narrates each essay himself or instead uses actors who pretend to be the central protagonists, speaking in first person about what they might have been thinking. Of course, it’s all a fiction (or a blend of fact and fiction) but thought-provoking if film is your thing.

The Lost City of Z (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Lost City of Z (2016) – J. Gray

Although the material seems perfect for a film – an explorer travels the uncharted border between Brazil and Bolivia along the Amazon River in the early 20^th century – somehow the execution lets things down.  Perhaps it is the “Masterpiece Theatre” treatment that keeps things stately and stodgy?  A quick comparison with Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) which admittedly placed its Amazonia voyage a few centuries earlier, shows how dynamic and real-seeming this sort of film could be (cue Klaus Kinski and spider monkeys).  Instead, director James Gray somehow reduces the tension within the film, despite the physical challenges faced by the explorer, Percy Fawcett (played by Charlie Hunnam), and the moral/political conflict between him and the establishment.  Of course, some of the problem could be due to the rather earnest style of acting by Hunnam and others which comes across as stylized or phony – only Robert Pattison, playing Fawcett’s aide-de-camp, seems natural and charismatic.  Yet, the story of Fawcett, who ended up disappearing in 1925, is interesting enough that I looked him up on Wikipedia later.  And the cinematography by Darius Khondji does offer some beautiful shots in beautiful locations.  But the film is over-long, misuses Siena Miller (as Fawcett’s suffragette wife), and squanders whatever chances it had for something really special.  Too bad.  

  

The Neon Demon (2016)

☆ ½

The Neon Demon (2016) – N. W. Refn

Pretentious, ponderous, puerile (OK, I stole that from Glenn Kenny in the NY Times), and pointlessly provocative.  Nicolas Winding Refn turns out to be just another poseur trying to affect some cool by needlessly using sex and violence in a film that could have been made by someone on drugs, but probably was intended for viewers on some heavy drugs, presumably the kind that interrupt cognitions of any sort.  Because, yes, there is no real plot here.  Or let’s put it this way – the movie starts off with the beginnings of a story, with poor Elle Fanning arriving in LA to become a model, wide-eyed, impossibly young (16 in reality), and ready for exploitation.  She meets people, goes to parties, gets yelled at by brutish Keanu Reeves, joins an agency, makes enemies and then things fall apart, get weird and weirder and pretty well offensive until the end.  To try to pass the time, I imagined that Refn was trying to do a Dario Argento film – after all, the ostentatious coloured lighting, occasional jolts of gory violence, and somnambulistic acting are similar and the plot does fall by the wayside in favour of psychedelic staged setpieces in both.  Except Refn doesn’t have the imagination of Argento (who lost his way after a handful of pictures when incoherence began to dominate artistic value – Refn may be already there).  Perhaps more upsetting is the way that The Neon Demon seems to reference Kenneth Anger (Lucifer Rising, in particular) with its odd triangle totem and hypnotic electronic score.  If any of this sounds interesting, please don’t be fooled – the film is mind-numbingly boring and senseless as well as insulting on both the intellectual and moral level.  Not worth your time.      

Shin Godzilla (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆

Shin Godzilla (2016) – H. Anno/S. Higuchi

Ayako watched this with me and I am certain she got a lot more out of it.  To me, it was your typical disaster film, although amped up for the 21^st century.  Godzilla comes out of the water and then progresses to destroy parts of Tokyo while the armed forces of the world and numerous scientists try to stop him.  However, to her, it was very nearly a satire on the bureaucracy of the Japanese government (and relationship with the USA) with a lot of jokes that sailed over my head (or were lost in translation) and a clever use of particular character actors to tweak the audience.  I could see there was some comedy and the editing and music were used to good effect to keep things moving; nevertheless, at 2 hours, the film started to feel long.  Godzilla himself was digitized but they used motion capture to keep him looking like a man in a rubber suit.  When he gets fully going with lasers coming out of him everywhere, it was pretty impressive (especially when seen in context in the middle of Tokyo).  However, unless you are Japanese, I’m not sure I would recommend…