Cinema Obscura: "Vento del Sud" aka "South Wind"

Corruption of the innocent. That's the central theme of director Enzo Provenzale's "South Wind" when a young man (a very good Renato Salvatori), bound by his obligation to the mafia, decides to shirk his duties and go on the run. Caught up in her own desire to leave an oppressive family, Grazia (Claudia Cardinale) joins him and the two set off into the humid Italian landscape.

As an early vehicle for Claudia Cardinale, "South Wind" shows her burgeoning vitality as an international star. But even more impressive is the way director Enzo Provenzale maintains an aura of paranoid tension around the two young lovers on the run. There's a scene where their mouths almost touch as they talk on a train, and the tension of push-and-pull desire drips off the screen. In much the same textual framing, the ever-present mafia henchman's looming presence is a character all its own, from the car tailing a series of trains and buses, to a foot-chase down the bustling concrete corridors of an Italian city. But "South Wind" is ultimately about the slow development of a relationship between Cardinale and Salvatori. Of course, the air of fatalism catches up with everyone, but "South Wind" does its best to craft two distinct modes of narrative.... part thriller and part romance in equally pleasing measures. This deft touch should come as no surprise since Provenzale was a screenwriter for several of Franceso Rosi's best films (including "Hands Over the City" and "Salvatore Giuliano"), and "South Wind" is his only directorial effort and one that deserves reclamation and attention.

 

Flares and Squibs: Ringo Lam's "Undeclared War"

Ringo Lam's "Undeclared War" had me from its stunningly violent open in which a baptism ambush leads into hand grenades and helicopters. From there, it staggers into pretty much every late 80's/early 90's action film aesthetic- from the gaudy lens flares that visually accentuate Hong Kong 'actioners' of the time to the cop buddy narrative that sees two opposing worldviews combine to stop a global terrorist. Add to the mixture loads of cop swagger and "Undeclared War" is a pop masterpiece from a director known more for inspiring the skeletal outline of Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" than for his own works. After seeing Lam's "Sky On Fire" at the 2018 Dallas International Film Festival and then lapping up the brutality of his Jean Claude Van Damme collaboration (one of his many) "In Hell" last year, I've had the enjoyment of discovering one engaging action film after another. As usual, going beyond pop culture lip sync to observe the original purveyors holds so much more value.

And the value in "Undeclared War" hits the viewer in the face immediately. After the aforementioned violent opening, the stage is set for a visiting CIA Agent Gary (Peter Liapis) to team up with a local special agent in Hong Kong, Bong (Danny Lee), after his ambassador brother is assassinated by a terrorist named Hannibal (Vernon Wells). Played to cool perfection by Wells, Hannibal seems like a baddie ejected from the "Mission Impossible" universe.... prone to quickly dispatching those who fail him and eluding everyone through a variety of disguises. He's also a pretty good hand-to-hand combat fighter as well.

But beyond the mechanics of a plot that sees Gary and Inspector Bong putting aside their personal differences (Gary from the "Lethal Weapon" school of policing and Bong from the respect-bureaucracy phase of detective work), what stands out from "Undeclared War" is the clean and precise action set pieces. From a funeral home to a large hotel conference finale, Lam maintains a focused, organized logistics of violence. We understand where everyone is. The gun shots feel real. The delineation of good guys and bad guys is pronounced. Unlike so many Hong Kong action films, Lam doesn't lose sense of the placement of bodies and the elongation of suspense. Just watch how he handles a bomb in the finale. Or the cool confidence of police guys doing their work. Like the films of Johnnie To or especially Michael Mann, Lam infuses "Undeclared War" with a keen awareness of both public and private space in an action universe. I love discovering works like this and look forward to more Lam.

 

Your Lying Eyes: Jacques Audiard's "A Self Made Hero"

As a doom laden masterpiece where a whisper can be deadly or the nod of a head betrays friendship, Jean Pierre Melville's  "Army of Shadows" is one of my favorite films. Applying the same fatalistic sense that imbues his crime thrillers, it's a film that paints the Resistance during French Occupation of World War II as a carousel of death slightly postponed in order for its men and women to grasp at heroics. It's sad, infuriating, calculated, and full of Melville's memorialized relics from his past.

All of this to say that Jacques Audiard's "A Self Made Hero" would make for an interesting double bill with Melville's film. A bitter character study about a man who worms his way into the upper echelon of French military immediately after the liberation, "A Self Made Hero" is just as calculated in the dynamics of how a lowly no one (a brilliant Matthieu Kassovitz) becomes an interloper through sheer determination. It's a film that seems to question just how good such a person could have been if they'd applied their talents to something worthwhile.

We first meet Kassovitz early in life during the war, unsure of what to do and working menial jobs with little direction. He claims to be a writer of romance novels, which attracts Yvette (Sandrine Kiberlain) and they end up marrying. It's only after finding out his in-laws were once tangentially involved with the French Resistance (as well as his own mother's political leanings) that he makes a rash decision and walks away from his provincial life. The only thing left of him is his bike on a railway platform.

Through sheer determination (memorizing the stories in numerous newspapers each day), he transforms into the fictional Albert Dehoussie. And like the cold mechanisms that chart the success and betrayals of the Resistance in "Army of Shadows", Audiard's film utilizes the same blueprint for Albert's cowardice. We're at once embarrassed for the way in which he liberally inserts himself in the circles of post-war government, and somehow charmed by his remarkable shape-shifting intelligence. As a cipher for modern politics (thinking of the whole George Santos parallels), "A Self Made Hero" was made 25 years ago, but its exploration of hollow representation feels more apt than ever. He gets free room and board by playing on the militarism of his ex-soldier landlord. He gleans all he can from the smooth operations of a self proclaimed spy (Albert Dupontel) who gives him, perhaps, the best advice of his career. To survive in 6 different cities, tell 6 different lies. Eventually, Albert becomes a top official routing out collaborators during the war.... a point not lost on Audiard and writer Alain de Henry as "A Self Made Hero" is essentially a film about the layers of deception that necessitate survival in a post war environment.

Adding a bit of comical complexity to the film, Audiard also inserts numerous fake current day interviews which comment on the Dehoussie affair, even going so far as to have the iconic Jean Louis Trigtignant playing the aged Albert with a wink and charm that only he could provide. It's fascinating to see theses fictional testimonies inserted as the men comment on Albert's exploits by showing the camera a prominent newspaper image, then deconstructing the deceit that Albert used to place himself there. It's a sharp deconstruction of his rise to power.... a mordant commentary on truth.... and a brilliant black comedy. And that's another essence to "A Self Made Hero". While being a repulsive main character, it's imminently funny. The fact that Albert ends up where he does with two women (one he scorned and another whose innocent love forced him to ultimately reconcile himself) is an embarrassing wealth of riches for such a mythological man. The fact that the film goes even further and shows Albert come out the other side with a reputation seemingly impertinent to the halls of politics is about as funny a comment on his life as anyone could fabricate.

My Fav Movies of 2021

 For full descriptions, please visit this list that published last month here at Dallas Film Now

 

13. Procession, directed by Robert Greene

12. Lily Topples the World, directed by Jeremy Workman

11. Shiva Baby, directed by Emma Seligman

10. Quo vadis Aida?, directed by Jasmila Zbanic

9. The Card Counter, directed by Paul Schrader

8. No Sudden Move, directed by Steven Soderbergh

7. Summer of Soul, directed by Questlove

6. Spencer, directed by Pablo Larrain

5. Titane, directed by Julia Ducournau

4. The World To Come, directed by Mona Fastvold

3.  Bergman Island, directed by Mia Hansen-Love

2. Wife of a Spy, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

1. Licorice Pizza, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Hazy Days: Les Blank's "A Poem Is a Naked Person"

I can only imagine the reaction if Les Blank's "A Poem Is a Naked Person" had actually been unleashed on the movie-going public when it was finished in 1974. Following alt-rocker Leon Russell around for a three year period in the boondocks of Oklahoma during various recording sessions three years prior, documentary filmmaker Les Blank's film is a meandering portrait of backwoods culture and hazy rock and roll lifestyles that feels like the anthropological template for the films of Robert Minerva and even Harmony Korine decades later.

Rarely shown outside of personal events for more than 40 years, "A Poem Is a Naked Person" only saw the real light of day in 2015-2016 after Blank's death, when it was remastered and released through Criterion.... with the support of Blank's son and especially Russell himself. What emerges in this crusty document of early 70's rhetoric is a blast. Darting from a wedding of a band member in Russell's very Southern gothic mansion to interviews with a very entertaining man who eats glass at an Oklahoma air show, "A Poem Is a Naked Person" is just as weirdly poetic as its title suggest. One does get a ton of Russell's earthy alt-country/rock music (and even more cameos from friends as diverse as Eric Anderson, JJ Cale and Willie Nelson), but the intention of the documentary is to replicate a time and place not through aggrandizement, but a down-and-dirty synthesis of creative artistry and all the weird freedom that brings with it.

All of that freedom (and glass eating) aside, "A Poem Is a Naked Person" fills a documentary gap that had been brewing for some time. Even though the grandfathers of the genre, such as Frederick Wiseman, D.A. Pennebaker and Haskell Wexler, were playing hard and fast with the rules of the form, what Blank ultimately creates with his effort is an explosive step forward. Yes, in a sense this is a musical documentary, but one that continually side-steps the music for a loose interpretation of whatever else caught his (or Russell's rag tag fellow musicians) eye. In the basic sense of the word, unless one is crafting a History channel documentary meant to educate a classroom, isn't that what the truest documentaries are supposed to do? In the case of Blank's film, he not only captures some musical momentum, but also the wild, unpredicatble and hazy world around that momentum.

 

My Fav Movies of 2020

As posted at Dallas Film Now: 

My favorite movies of the year, in descending order:

15. Tesla

14. Zappa

13. Undine

12. Saint Frances

11. The Assistant

10. Miracle Fishing

9. Sound of Metal

8. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

7. To the Ends of the Earth

6. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

5. Mangrove

4. Crip Camp

3. The Vast of Night

2. Tommasso

1. The Traitor

Cinema Obscura: Seventeen Years

Released in 1999- during the explosive and now legendary year of new Hollywood classics produced by expressive individualistic talents- Zhang Yuan's "Seventeen Years" deserves its overdue status as a masterpiece in the midst of this towering cinematic year. Essentially an observational travelogue film about a recently furloughed prisoner and the prison guard who unselfishly escorts her to her holiday destination, it eventually becomes an overpowering examination of regret and forgiveness. I dare anyone to watch the final few minutes and not get emotionally floored in the way Yuan stages a reunion scene where eyes, guarded body language and the gentle unspoken curl of lips says more about the inner workings of this family's trenchant relationship than any screenplay could ever deliver.

But before that, Yuan establishes a cadre of characters in a family during 1980's China, stepping back in time seventeen years. Now on his second marriage, Yun (Liang Song) is barely able to keep his household together. His wife and her daughter Yu (Liu Lin) seem to provoke and taunt his daughter Tao (Li Jun) at every turn. When the issue of missing money comes up one morning, the two stepsisters (urged and inflamed by both parents) argue before leaving for school. On the way there, something happens that sends young Tao to prison for the aforementioned time span.

The tragedy of how Tao got there takes up only a fraction of the film's swift but effective run-time. "Seventeen Years" resumes those years later when Tao is released from prison for the duration of a Chinese New Year holiday. Also traveling from the prison is guard Chen (the wonderful Li Bingbing in an early role). Initially helping Tao find the right bus route and then realizing her indifference to actually getting anywhere at all, Chen decides to help her find her way home.

It's in this quiet relationship between Chen and Tao that "Seventeen Years" shines. Not much is said between them, but the moments they encounter together, such as Yuan's sly comment on China's destructive march of progress when Tao discovers her family's home has been demolished for years for urban renewal, echo the nostalgic sentiments proposed in so many of fellow countryman Jia Zhangke's films.

By also presenting two women as the protagonists in an era where Chinese films mainly treated them as simple matriarchs of a family through the passage of time or second wheels to the more dominant men in their lives, "Seventeen Years" stands out as something special for treating their problems....their worldview.... their sympathies for one another as equally haunting and monumental as that of male figures during the time. It's in the quiet, reserved performances of Jun and Bingbing that "Seventeen Years" really surges, however. The way they silently eat together or walk with hunched shoulders.... and especially the dignified reaction and slow turn Bingbing gives during the final scene when she realizes the magnitude of her unselfish mission with Tao... the two actresses seem to "existing" more than acting. It's a wonder to behold.

Though not an art house/household name, filmmaker Zuan (who did gain some acclaim a few years prior with his "East Palace West Palace") has carried on making films for the past two decades, but none with the exposure or impact of his 90's work. It's a shame. I desperately want to to see more of it. If the sensitivity and acute purpose of realizing the harsh truth of real forgiveness as exhibited in this film is present even remotely in his other work, than we have a talent who's sorely underappreciated. "Seventeen Years" reveals that time doesn't always heal all wounds, but the simple act of facing up to them can help dull the pain.

My Faves of 2019

20. Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie)

Assuredly building a body of work that rings every ounce of desperation, energy and intense movement out of an already nervy New York City, the Safdie Brothers' "Uncut Gems" may be the definitive word on the subject. Starring Adam Sandler as a gambler/jewelry dealer whose every moment on-screen is spent wheeling, dealing and driving the audience for a heart attack, the film is assaultive  but essential.

19. Caballerango (Juan Pablo Gonzales)

Juan Pablo Gonzales' pensive documentary "Caballerango" is many things- an anthropological study of time and place, an excavation of memory for one family's pangs of grief around the suicide of their son, and a masterful example of our landscape's powerful ability to dwarf all of us. There are two shots in this film that stand as some of the most moving in years- a long monologue from a migrant worker about the state of hopelessness that seems to swath this small village followed by the truck he's sitting in taking off and slowly climbing up a gill, revealing just how close the camera has been to him the whole time. The second is the final shot as the camera watches two horses from a distance before they gently jerk out of range, causing the stationary camera to reflexively pan after them, as if the animals suddenly realized they were being watched and wanted to get away. It's a nice summation of the film itself, revealing that no soul (animal or man) wants to be bottled up for long.

18. Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodovar)

Pedro Almodovar's quasi autobiographical effort about a filmmaker addicted to pain medication, drugs and a sense of reconciliation with his past is a gentle and humane thing. As the Almodovar stand-in, Antonio Banderas has never been better. Oscillating between present tense and (supposed) past, "Pain and Glory" feels just as cathartic as something Fellini would have made, exorcising the demons of art, romance and sexual identity. It's Almodovar's best film in years.

17. Tigers Are Not Afraid (Issa Lopez)

Adding itself to a long line of cherished films about the nightmarish definitions young children apply to real world horrors, Issa Lopez's "Tigers Are Not Afraid" is startling and brilliant for how it deals with both of those layers. Following a rag-tag group of homeless children fending for themselves in a Mexican City hell where everything is run by drug cartels and maintains a post-apocalyptic vibe, the film soon gives enormous heart to its young protagonists and their daily struggles. Mixing tense crime thriller aspects with the veil of a horror film (equally frightening for the way Lopez visualizes her ghosts as dripping, moldy, black souls reaching out for anything), "Tigers Are Not Afraid" makes plain that the line between both genres is negligible. This film slipped through the cracks this year and I urge everyone to give it a chance on home viewing.

16. Shadow (Zhang Yimou)  

Crafting ground breaking and genre busting films for over 30 years now, Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou shows no signs of decline with his latest masterpiece, "Shadow". Playing like a twisted Shakespearean drama with royal intrigue, ghostly doppelgangers and  maddening betrayals, what's most bracing about the entire thing is its visual palette. Using muted colors and taking place in a landscape drenched in endless rain showers, Zhang allows the neutral scope to seep under our skin before shocking us with buckets of blood later on, making the gnarly bloodshed that much more poetic when it happens. Oh yes, there's a pretty damn good story here as well about warring factions, hidden kings and confused relationships. It all blends into a perfectly choreographed mythic tale that only Yimou could sustain.

15. Peterloo (Mike Leigh)

Imagining Mike Leigh tackle a historical act of massacre seems like an oblique fit for his intensely talky and introspective human nature dramas. I'm so glad he made this film, and yes, it does fit nicely as a very talky effort that exhaustively examines and discusses the swirling politics and history leading up to the event. The first 2 hours can be head-spinning for how many characters are introduced and have their say about the divisive lines between laymen and the governing body. And the final half hour....spent in an explosive   deconstruction of soldiers marching and killing scores of innocent protesters is enough to make one's blood boil. "Peterloo" is an immaculately rendered film of time and place (oh the locations and settings just reek of nineteenth century miserablism) whose distorted, complicated history is made quite clear by Leigh's unending craftmanship.

14. Non Fiction (Olivier Assayas)

For a film largely concerned with the marching evolution of technology, Olivier Assayas "Non Fiction" remains grounded in a very traditional framework of simple mood and antiquated tempo. Another talky like he's been making for over 20 years now, his latest film crackles with intelligence and sinewy humor as several couples are having affairs with each other, smoking cigarettes and talking around the sadness in their married lives. It also helps the film stars Juliette Binoche, Guillame Canet and Vincent Macaigne as said couples. In the background of it all, Assayas also touches on prescient topics such as the disappearance of the written word and our world's dedication (or lack thereof) to its production. In my original review of the film, I called this film the next continuation in the life of the harried teenagers from "Cold Water" (1994). I look forward to however else Assayas wants to shape this universe of people.

13. Little Women (Greta Gerwig)

Greta Gerwig's latest adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel has stuck with me for days. Incredible acting, a sly sense of opening up the tale with a thrilling sense of editing, and an atmosphere that perfectly captures the alternatively freewheeling and morose swaths of fate that affect the four sisters, the film is a triumph of small emotions and gentle passage of time. No matter how small the part, each and every character is rendered as a vivid person. And, it only further cements the talents of all involved as defining artists for what will be decades to come.

12. Motherless Brooklyn (Edward Norton)

I have to begin by asking why it's taken someone 20 years to allow actor Edward Norton to write and direct again after his sweetly affectionate and witty debut film "Keeping the Faith". I fell in love upon seeing it in the theater all those years ago and it remains one of the best films of the 90's. A far cry in mood and tone than that previous ode to Lubitsch-like romance-comedy, his latest film, "Motherless Brooklyn" still retains his affection for people and relationships even when said relationships involve extortion, bribery, corruption and murder in 50's set New York where the sky's the limit for powerful men slicing up chunks of the city. Trying to unravel the mystery is Lionel (Norton), the adopted associate of a slain snooper (Bruce Willis) whose nose gets them all involved in some hefty affairs. Complicating maters is Lionel's tourette's disorder, which serves more as a compass for the nervousness he feels when things get heady, calmed only in moments after Laura (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who may or may not be fully involved in the affair he's investigating. While the narrative of "Motherless Brooklyn" ultimately leans into noir-tinged familiarity, what's not pedestrian is Norton's supreme handling of the film's pace and composure. Lots of secondary characters (played by famous faces from Willem DaFoe to Michael K. Williams) provide a sprawling canvas of depth, but they're never allowed to overwhelm the carefully constructed atmosphere. Attuned to the beauty of the world around his concrete-bound characters, Norton continually cuts to things around them as they talk, such as golden blades of grass or the sun-lit dusted items on a bedroom dresser. For a film often caught inside the scrambled head of a man desperately trying to fit together the disjointed pieces, "Motherless Brooklyn" is a magnificently contemplative work and a seriously overlooked gem from 2019.

11. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot)

It's not very hard to make San Francisco look dreamy and romantic on screen, but what director Joe Talbot does with "The Last Black Man In San Francisco"- besides a fully realized and heartfelt relationship between two best friends- is create a film of otherworldly beauty and quirky sentiments that feels wholly original. Actors Jimmie Fails and Jonathan Majors are revelations as marginal personalities in a gentrified San Francisco who make it their mission to save and restore a large house that once belonged to one of their grandfathers. A beautiful soundtrack, a host of memorable secondary characters and a complete control of mood situates "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" as a breakout effort from all involved.

10. Dolemite is My Name (Craig Brewer)

There was no better movie-going experience in 2019 than the Texas premiere of Eddie Murphy's affectionate ode to 70's filmmaking and maverick-outsider status than "Dolemite Is My Name". An audience rolling with every joke and riding the wave of every emotion elicited the exact same reaction I'm sure the original "Dolemite" film did for African-American audiences in the early 70's desperate for a film idol that wasn't James Bond or Dirty Harry. Profane and uproariously funny, "Dolemite Is My Name" is everything a crowd pleasing film is designed to do. Toss in a whiz-bang cast of associates such as Wesley Snipes and DaVine Joy Randolph, and the film far outstretches its modest Netflix designed small-screen ambitions into an expansive comedy whose main intention is bawdy reverence for a true cinematic pioneer.

9. Booksmart (Olivia Wilde)

About two-thirds of the way through- and once the film's teenage friends played wonderfully by Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever finally make it to the graduation party they so desperately want to attend- "Booksmart" finds its footing and attains something quite terrific. The film's patchwork assortment of outrageous characters and high school crudeness coalesces into an achingly honest and masterful examination about the crushing facade of teenage life and its very thin margins of identity/acceptance. First time actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde balances the pieces together brilliantly, manifesting all the strengths of her film in one long shot that turns a shattering underwater discovery into an equally shattering composition of two young women trying to compose themselves in the uncertainties of adulthood. Just a great film all around.

8. Ad Astra (James Gray) 

Even though it resides in a loopy science fiction template that features ghost ships, nerve-jangling space walks and knife fights inside a cockpit, James Gray's "Ad Astra" is a lot closer to his morose studies of male psychosis and obsessive choices than it first appears. In fact, it makes for a nice double feature with his previous masterpiece "The Lost City of Z" in which pioneers of terrain and courage venture farther out into the unknown than anyone before them. In "Ad Astra", that explorer is astronaut Brad Pitt, chosen to travel to Mars (a planet that houses the last stable outpost of humanity in near future of colonization) in order to hopefully coax his lost father (also an astronaut) to stop sending chaotic micro bursts of energy from a failed mission decades ago. I know, it does preposterous when explained, but Gray manages to create a moody and introspective work of art that challenges science fiction conventions in its quiet remorselessness.

7. Destroyer (Karyn Kusama)

There's a trend in modern crime films I like to call "New American Miserablism". I suppose the grandfathers were David Fincher and Michael Mann, now carried forward by any young filmmaker treading into the noir tinged waters. Even the small screen isn't immune, specifically behind the grandiose darkness inherent in Nic Pizzaloto's "True Detective" series. Granted, even I'm worn down by the heaviness permeating these efforts. So why is Karyn Kusama's "Destroyer"- a crime film especially miserable, right down to the grizzled makeup coated across Nicole Kidman's face to exemplify the haggard weight of her world bending upon her- different? Well, it is and isn't. The film trades in so many themes and situations that have dotted the noir landscape in the past, however Kusama and screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi resuscitate their effort into something special because of the layered storytelling whose timelines slowly reveal a painful tendency to protect only the best things from a very bad time. In addition, Kusama's crisp style renders a ubiquitous Los Angeles with new eyes, portraying viaducts and side street banks with just as much underlying ferocity as many other films have treated the beaches and Pacific Palisades mansions. "Destroyer" is a tough, meandering and ultimately a fragile personification of 'miserablism' done with grace and, well, heart.

6. Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho)

Although it's not quite a horror film, one of the most horrific moments of the year on-screen happens in Bong Joon Ho's "Parasite" as a set of crazed-white eyes slowly peers up from the darkness from a set of basement level steps, igniting a child's nightmarish imagination and sending the second half of the film into a frenzy of drastic action and numbing consequence. It's what Joon Ho does best- wringing recognizable genres until they twist into a morass of social commentary and obfuscated styles. What begins as ant act of greedy infiltration by a lower class family into the personal spaces of the upper class starts out simply enough before the screws are tightened and every shot, feeling and mood is controlled masterfully by Joon Ho. There are stretches in this film where I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity, hoping I'd soon be given permission to breathe. Caustically funny and whip-smart tense, "Parasite" is a master firing on all cylinders.

5. Waves (Trey Edward Shults)

A film of two distinct halves. First, an untethered camera floating with a boisterous soundtrack and histrionic emotions with a story that feels right at home in any young adult/teen fiction novel as athletic Kelvin Harrison Jr. deals with a diminishing body, an inebriated state of mind and a relationship that wrecks havoc on everyone involved. It almost all seems like too much. But that's the point of Shults' magnificent work as it pivots in the second half to younger sister Taylor Russell and how the somber reckoning of her family settles around her delicate shoulders. With "Waves", Shults has confirmed himself as a towering voice in modern independent cinema, enraging some and bewitching others. I look forward to whatever he does next.

4. Climax (Gaspar Noe)

Gaspar Noe's latest is a delirious concoction of New Wave musical and Euro-freak out horror film, fire-branded by his swerving aesthetic and provocative sound design that feels more like an assault than a viewing experience. Broken into three parts- including an opening of each character talking from a television set that serves more as a nerdy namedrop for the influences of Noe via the spines of books and VHS tapes cluttered around the image rather than a proper introduction- "Climax" then morphs into a punishing segment of carefully choreographed dance numbers interrupted by the young dancers' vulgar and misogynistic conversations about their carnal desires.... which serves as an apt reminder that Noe once made a film titled "Carne". From there, the film really goes off the rails as someone spikes the communal punch with LSD and the cloistered dance performers each burrow down their individual holes of tormented hell. Some screw the night away. Others fight. Others wander the neon-lit lodge their locked in like specters haunting the corridors of uninhibited youth, all captured by Noe's now trademark long takes that plunge us in, out, and around the confusion and bad trips. It's an unsettling portrait of modern youth, and one of Noe's best films that continues to pursue his aggressive vision of wasted society.

3. A Hidden Life (Terence Malick)

I can't even count how many times I gasped at the visual beauty present in Terence Malick's latest work of cinematic poetry. And then those visuals were overtaken by the emotional gut punch in its story of faithful farmer Franz (August Diehl) and his refusal to serve for Germany in World War II, choosing to stand his ground and be a conscientious objector. I've been out on the last few Malick films (his last great one being "The New World" in 2005), but "A Hidden Life" struck me as something staggering, heartbreaking and completely worthy of Malick's re-anointment as cinema's most purely spiritual guide. It's one of the few films whose passionate inner resolve of its protagonist seems to melt through the screen into our own hearts. 

2. Transit (Christian Petzold)

On another given day, this could easily slide into the top spot on this list. Adapted from a novel by Anna Seghers, "Transit" is a masterwork adapted (and updated) by Petzold from its original intentions of the novel's World War II experiences into the sleek and metropolitan anti-thriller in which the vehicles, dress and locale of today juxtaposed with the occupational fears of yesteryear- although some would argue the occupying forces are stronger and more insidious than ever. Like Petzold's previous film "Phoenix", he gets to play with the notions of a society simultaneously crumbling and rebuilding at the same time, leaving the inhabitants to pick up the personal pieces in its wake. And like "Phoenix", Petzold fashions a final scene so ripe with meaning and so crushing in emotional complexity, it only further solidifies the fact that he's one of the two or three best filmmakers in the world today.

1. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)

With his previous film "Silence" (2016) and now "The Irishman", Scorsese has certainly entered his pensive period and, as a filmmaker whose lifelong investments have been people struggling with the cause and effect of inner turmoil (both spiritually and non), "The Irishman" may be his crowning reflection on the matter. As a sweeping tapestry of mid-century gangsterism and unionist history, it's a completely enveloping recreation of the stalwart loud mouths (Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa) and powerfully quiet sea changers (Joe Pesci as mob boss Russell Bufalino) who had their fingers on the pulse. And as a character study of one man (Robert DeNiro as Frank Sheeran) along for the turbulent and violent ride, it's a meditative masterpiece that ends on such a somber, devastating image that even after 3 and a half hours, I was still stunned it was over.

Faves of 2018

15. 1985

Filmed in inky black and white, Yen Tan’s micro-indie 1985 details the wavering emotions of young Adrian (a sterling Cory Michael Smith) returning home to his Texas family from New York during the holidays. If the movies have taught us anything, Christmas reunions rarely yield better results than familial discord and terrorists taking over Nakatomi Plaza. In this version of a personal holiday apocalypse, Smith portrays a homosexual man, gravely struggling with coming out to his Bible-thumping father (Michael Chiklis) and subservient mother (Virginia Madsen) about his lifestyle.

Couple that decision with the medical epidemic and uncertain furor brewing in America over the AIDS crisis and 1985 becomes a film about a specific place and time that widens into a crushing exploration of identity, acceptance and shifting relationships. It’s a film both immensely sad and heroically delicate, especially when Adrian reconnects with an old girlfriend (Jamie Chung). Tan handles the nuanced emotions masterfully, combining carefully staged long takes with earnest dialogue that never disrespects its characters. And the fact it ends on an especially happy moment in Adrian’s life only compounds the sadness that’s spilled out before.

14. Support the Girls

Andrew Bujalski’s comedy about women working in a Texas sports bar/restaurant sounds inanely tacky. In fact, it’s one of the most humane comedy in years, akin to the light touch of Jean Renoir focused on a milieu of certain people dealing with the trivialities of their everyday.

Starring Regina Hall, Hayley Lu Richardson and newcomer Shayna MacHale, Support the Girls features nary a bit of the mawkish ‘mumblecore’ attributes usually radiated by a Bujalski film. In fact, he saddles none of his characters with anything less than sharp characterizations, sharp humility and a sharp sense of humor … no matter how bad their singular day gets.

13. Madeline’s Madeline

The opening shot of Josephine’s Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline is a weird one. A young girl (Helena Howard) is pretending (?) to be a cat, spouting lines that obviously could only exist within the mind of an overachieving theater playwright. It serves as a shaky, disorienting introduction to a film (and a young female character) that only goes deeper and stranger from there as the lines of reality, play-acting and dominance shuttle back and forth between an experimental teacher, a young girl and her domineering mother.

One of the last films I saw on a particularly long day of movie-watching, I went into it lethargic and emerged frazzled and invigorated for the way Decker re-appropriated everything from narrative form to character development into one free floating experimentation. It’s a trying, manic and overstuffed film that consistently confronts and challenges the viewer on what it is and where it’s headed. We need more like this. Now.

12. The King

Documentarian Eugene Jareki is someone who questions and studies the underbelly of our society through global politics (The Trials of Henry Kissinger, 2002, and Why We Fight, 2005) to the state of our country eroded by our best intentions (The House I Live In, 2012). With his latest effort, The King, he smashes both of those ideals together with a grandiose swing. Taking a variety of famous authors, musicians and just regular folk cross country in Elvis Presley’s coveted 1963 Rolls Royce, following in the master’s footsteps from Mississippi to Las Vegas, the film becomes a progressive rolling roadshow of the halls/faces of America.

Jareki has much more on his mind than ‘celebrity-icon-mythmaking’ enshrinement, however. Hearing Ethan Hawke tell stories about Colonel Tom Parker’s iron fist control of Elvis or seeing John Hiatt become emotional in the backseat because he can feel how “trapped” Elvis must have felt are powerful moments, but Jarecki makes sure to overshadow these louder tales by focusing on the anonymous and common faces of the people he picks up hitchhiking or those who simply wonder aloud why our country has left them so far behind. It’s an amazing feat that cements Jareki’s status as one of the best of the outlaw documentarians, like Bill Morrison, Travis Wilkerson and Adam Curtis.

 11. Widows

Directed by Steve McQueen from a script by mystery novelist Gillian Flynn, Widows is a precise crime film that understands the pulsing heart beneath its genre sheen. With a narrative that sounds like something out of a 1970’s ‘poliziotteschi’ twister, the idea of a group of women taking over their husband’s next heist not only reeks of those Italian exploitation efforts, but plants itself firmly within the current movement of gender reassessment.

And even both of those analogies feels weak. McQueen has immersed his crime drama with so much overlap: Political corruption. Community gamesmanship. Role reversals. It all blends together beautifully, creating a film that hits on all cylinders with its exact aesthetics, especially one shot that at first feel extraneous, then reveals itself to be a sly commentary on the razor thin divide between the ‘haves’ and the have nots,’ and an uncanny knack for editing.

10. First Man

What was Hollywood golden boy Damien Chazelle to do after scoring massive critical and popular hits withWhiplash (2014) and La La Land (2016)? Make an astronaut movie that defies both of those previous efforts in mood, tone and look, of course. Restrained and prone to almost a mechanical presentation of NASA’s Apollo moon mission, that doesn’t make First Man bad. In fact, I found Ryan Gosling’s interior portrayal of Neil Armstrong as some of the best work of his career.

It’s a film that eschews outward emotion because it dutifully represents the subdued personalities of a group of people struggling to make sense of the scientific advancements they’re risking their life for. And when the film does get personal- especially with Armstrong’s walk on the moon and one brilliantly composed scene of enormous tragedy — First Man — hit me like a ton of bricks.

9. Les enfants du 209, rue Saint-Maur, Paris Xe

Cinema lost an extreme talent in 2018 when filmmaker Claude Lanzmann passed away in July. I would hope he got the chance to see Ruth Zylberman’s documentary, Les enfants du 209, as it feels like a companion piece to Lanzmann’s exhaustive excavations of people, faces and events of the Holocaust. As a piece of anthropological essay, Zylberman’s documentary, which traces the history of a few families at this address during the Holocuast, is immensely moving, breathtakingly humane and tirelessly essential.

While other filmmakers have tackled the same subject at various lengths, Zylberman’s 100-minute documentary captures the power of memory and shared experience of a very dark time in history quite unlike any other. Its faces will linger in your mind long afterwards. The stories they tell will harden into your soul. And although their history is full of despair, Zylberman chooses to end on a family reunion of sorts, and the image of ten and eleven year children walking at the edges of the survivors only strengthens the idea that no matter how determined we are as a race to wipe each other out, the future is unstoppable.

8. Assassination Nation

Like a lurid pop-dream, Sam Levinson’s Assassination Nation is a visually bold and simmering assault on everything from gender equality to the sometimes toxic nature of social media. Appropriating ages-old literature from the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne and our nation’s own descent into supernatural madness with the Salem witch trials (a town which the film aptly mimics), writer and director Levinson has crafted a jaw-dropping tale that takes place in the very current “now” when four teenage girls (played to perfection by Odessa Turner, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef and Abra) become targets, and subsequently are forced to become justice swinging vigilantes, after a computer hacker exposes the town’s deep, dark personal secrets.

Aided by some of the year’s finest cinematography, courtesy of Hungarian Marcell Rev, and a thumping score by Ian Hutlquist, Assassination Nation ascends to wondrous heights in commentary and visual pastiche, masterfully stealing the whimpers that similarly themed films like the egregious Purge series aspire towards. Hopefully, this film will catch onto some sort of zeitgeist on home video, as it came and went in theaters faster than most. I loved every second of it.

7. Loveless 

Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev is a director. Even when it appears there’s not much going on within his films, rest assured, there’s a lot going on beneath the surface. The way his camera lingers over a large plate glass window overlooking a snowy field in between condo housing or the frontal shot of a woman’s distant stare as she runs in place on a treadmill lend his films an authority of presence that’s continually striking. They ask of the viewer much more than passive interest.

Following up 2015’s trenchant Leviathan — a film that angrily dissected the bureaucracy of simply fighting for one’s property — Zvyagintsev drops Loveless. Essentially about the loss of a child and the incrementally studious search for him, it’s also a film about the real casualties of a, well, loveless marriage. And in the hands of Zvyagintsev,Loveless becomes just as trenchant an observation about both of these events as any we’ve seen before.

6. Shirkers

Any true film lover remembers their angst-ridden, teenage experimentation with making their own film. I almost want to forget my very black and white John Cassavetes-like attempt, featuring two friends and an unbroken 20 minute dialogue scene as they played pool … and didn’t sink a single ball. It had its charming moments, too, I suppose. Sandi Tan’s Shirkers is just as painfully awkward a documentation of this experimentation as any, but her story is tinged with the miraculous as well. She and her teenage friends did make a film. Then lost it due to mania and naivete. And then she found it again, albeit in an altered format.

Also titled Shirkers, Tan builds her current documentary around this episode in her young life when she and her friends wrote, directed and financed a film that many regard as something that could have shifted Malaysian independent film for its freewheeling attitude and punk rock aesthetic. Tan uses excerpts from her ‘lost’ film to study the dynamics of her life (especially with older man and mentor Georges Cardona) and her relationship with film history. Part self essay and part investigative journalism, Shirkers is a completely enveloping experience. It’s a shame we won’t ever see her fully embodied film, but perhaps she’s assembled the next greatest thing, which is something couched between reality and the rose-tainted memories of those involved like a faded fairy tale, complete with cinematic heroes and villains.

5. Happy As Lazzaro

Recently, filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher revealed her ten favorite films of all time. It’s no surprise she loves Ermanno Olmi and Luis Bunuel. Her latest film, Happy As Lazzaro, conjures the best of them both, including the breathless mid-century antiquity of Olmi and the slightly absurd parable building of Bunuel. Not content to simply imitate those masters however, Happy As Lazzaro only echoes their influence while establishing her own magisterial voice.

Essentially a film of two halves, it follows a pensive young sharecropper named Lazzaro (a wonderfully cast Adriano Tardilio) and the relationship he forms with the local landowners. Something tragic happens, shifting the second half of the film into an utterly beguiling examination of how time is both uninterrupted and erosive. It’s a film of subtle beauty, whose images and tone continually took my breath away. I dare anyone not to be transfixed by the moment when organ music ethereally follows young Lazzaro into the street and becomes a chorus from the heavens.

4. You Were Never Really Here

Constructed from hard edits of cacophonous city noise, long stretches of tortured silence and a nerve jangling score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here is essentially a straight-to-video revenge flick shattered into a million little avant garde pieces and then reassembled with the intention of leaving most of the important stuff out. I know that doesn’t sound like high praise, but it’s a bold and confrontational film that deftly applies Joaquin Phoenix’s sinewy personality into a character study of a man trying to locate a missing child, and in the process repair some damaged parts of his psyche as well.

Watching the film can be stomach-churning at times, not because of the harsh violence that seems to explode from the corners of the screen, but because it’s such an odd beast of images and sounds that makes the viewer feel just as uncomfortable in their skin as Phoenix’s determined vigilante.

3. Suspiria

Considered sacrilege when director Luca Guadagnino announced plans to remake Dario Argento’s goth-horror classic Suspiria, the results were miraculously undisastrous, managing to foster the original film’s eerie 70s ambiance while creating something wholly different in the process. While the narrative beats — a young American dancer (Dakota Johnson) arrives in Europe to learn in a highly regarded studio that’s also the home to witches — follow the same throughline as Argento’s original, Guadagnino stuffs his version with so much to digest that the horror elements are subdued in favor of a provocative essay about the meaning of identity and repressed guilt.

From its expertly sculptured mise-en-scene to the ruminations about the past and how both worlds (human and sorceress) reconcile their grief and guilt, this latest version is a visual and thematic knockout.

2. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda

Known to Western audiences mostly for his Oscar winning soundtrack to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor(1987) and Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Stephen Schible’s documentary on Japanese musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto is an exhilarating showcase of creativity, resilience and poignant confrontation of the unknown. However,Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda isn’t content just to be a biography of the musician.

In fact, outside of a few snippets of his early career in which he was at the forefront of Japanese pop, electronic and experimental fusions in the late 70’s and early 80’s, there’s virtually no history lesson of the man. Instead, the film remains firmly planted in the here and now, choosing to observe and record how the 66-year-old veteran molds his creative impulses today. It’s a break from traditional documentaries, but one that yields startling results.

1. Gemini

I’m just as surprised as anyone that a modest, low-fi neon noir, barely released and receiving even less buzz, stayed with me as long as it did. But that’s exactly what Aaron Katz’z Gemini has done.

Appropriating the genre into a completely fresh imagining, the film gets lost in a haze of somnambulist Los Angeles glow and carefully orchestrated paranoia as people go missing and others are forced to become junior private eyes, wading through traditional methods of investigation as well as the murky, dangerous wastelands of social media.

Starring a wide-eyed and pitch perfect Lola Kirke,Gemini is a firecracker of a film, confident and memorizing in the way it updates film noir and latches onto something altogether frightening about our modern culture and the need to disappear from its carnivorous nature.

The almost made its. Count these as #16-onward:  Custody, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, How To Talk to Girls At Parties, The Favourite, Mandy, The Death of Stalin, Wildlife, Disobedience.

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