(DVD/HBO MAX) I love Curtiz’s adaptation of James M. Cain’s MILDRED PIERCE — he certainly knew how to work the material to fit Joan Crawford — but it’s Todd Haynes’ (CAROL, FAR FROM HEAVEN) version that is truer to Cain’s novel. Yes, most of Cain’s works are lurid and pulpy crime tales, sensational enough to be banned, but MILDRED PIERCE is the exception. Cain paints a detailed portrait of a difficult mother with an even more difficult daughter, both of whom get wrapped up with a exploitative cad. It’s an epic character piece that deserves every minute of the approximately six hours that Haynes gives it.
Haynes enlists Kate Winslet who plays the role with a muted air — not quite the hysterical, over-protective mother that Crawford portrayed — while Evan Rachel Wood brats it up as her daughter, and Guy Pearce gleefully tears into inhabiting a genuine shitheel playboy. As you’d expect from Haynes, the cinematography is lush, the production design department spared not one piece of patterned wallpaper, and everyone’s stitched to the nines.
Most importantly, Haynes knows how to let scenes breath. Cameras track contemplatively, gazes wander, and characters sit with themselves, processing the ramifications of their actions. While it may not be as fondly recalled as the initial adaptation, or even any of Haynes’ prior works, it’s a mini-series that merits the extra time.
(Hulu/kanopy/Prime/VOD) Recently I’ve been waking up with STARSHIP’s -Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now- in my head and I couldn’t quite figure out why. It’s a top-notch slice of 80s pop, but hardly a song in my normal rotation.
Then I remembered the following scene from THE SKELETON TWINS:
Not the worst scene to occasionally wake to.
THE SKELETON TWINS is a charming, human look at two very fucked up fraternal twins who have been estranged for ten years, but re-unite when the sister Maggie (Kristin Wiig) is told that her brother Milo (Bill Hader) has unsuccesfully attempted suicide. Maggie invites Milo to live with her and her husband (Luke Wilson), and together they explore the miseries and coping mechanisms of their lives.
It’s rare for film to get adult brother/sister dynamics right, but writer Mark Heyman (BLACK SWAN) and director Craig Johnson (ALEX STRANGELOVE) do a fantastic job of managing the push-and-pull aging siblings have, without turning either of them into cartoonish monsters. It’s not as cheerless as it may sound — especially when you have interludes like the above Starship one — but also not as maudlin as it could be.
(kanopy/Prime/VOD)? With the recent handwringing about theaters potentially going out of business due to the pandemic, a lot of folks focus on the communal experience of shared spectacle and of whiplash moments, but few discuss how the darkness of theaters also allow us to nakedly indulge in other emotions with strangers.
Case in point: THE FAREWELL. (Warning, some small spoilers ahead, but really, they aren’t.) I watched it solo on a balmy Friday night, late in July 2019. There was a fairly sizable crowd and, while we laughed and tensed up at every well-crafted moment, it was the end — and I don’t mean the epilogue — that brought the entire room to tears. As the taxi drove away, everyone was audibly sobbing, men and women, myself included. (Although, I admit, I’m a soft touch when it comes to tears.)
Obviously, we were saddened for Billi, for her grandma, for the front that the family felt forced to put up, their regret at not being able to be truthful and have proper closure. However, as the camera revealed the rest of the family inhabiting the cab, it felt like we were also crying for those around us who had lost family, who knew what it was like to experience unreconciled grief. The theater became a shared funereal experience, one that simply wouldn’t have happened in a brightly lit room with a giant LCD screen.
While the film’s epilogue staunched the tears a bit, there remained a somber feeling in the air as we numbly walked towards the exit, barely looking at one another, perhaps a bit embarrassed, perhaps a bit raw. It’s these sort of experiences I’ve missed the most during the pandemic, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
(hoopla/kanopy) I last watched Jim McBride’s (DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE) remake of BREATHLESS many moons ago, back when I could walk down the street to my cult video store and rent a VHS copy. Despite not thinking much of it at the time, I have vivid memories of the film’s neon spills, as well as one terrible joke:
“You know Frank Lloyd Wright? This is Frank Lloyd Wrong.”
Watching it recently, after years of scrutinizing adaptations, I realized I was far too tough on it.
Structurally, McBride’s film is the same as Godard’s, he just inverts the locale and the protagonists’ countries of origin; instead of taking place in France with a French cad (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and American love interest (Jean Seberg), it’s an American cad (Richard Gere) with a French love interest (Valérie Kaprisky).
McBride, and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSCRE 2 -and- PARIS, TEXAS) are aware that trying to recreate the verve of 60’s BREATHLESS would be futile, so they ramp matters up a bit. Their BREATHLESS is a sleek, neon-soaked affair that wants nothing to do with jump cuts. Gere’s no longer an admirer of Bogart, but instead idolizes Jerry Lee Lewis. He doesn’t have the cool collected air of Belmondo, but instead is a ball of energy, constantly moving. As opposed to the erotic tête-à-tête between Belmondo & Seberg, they lean into full-blown sex scenes.
Is it a good film? Arguably, yes, it’s a gripping erotic thriller. Is it on par with Godard’s BREATHLESS? Oh, no, please. Godard’s BREATHLESS is a genre masterpiece, stitched together by sheer reactionary inventiveness and the vibrant performances from the leads. McBride’s BREATHLESS is a fascinating flip side, shining a spotlight on American appetites that falters mostly because both Gere and Kaprisky, and American culture in general, lack the enigmatic allure that makes the original film work.
One last note: BREATHLESS (1983) leaves Hulu on February 28th!
(Netflix) Radha, a black woman living in NYC is on the verge of turning forty, re-evaluating her life as a struggling playwright, and contemplating revisiting her teen rapping aspirations.
I love a film that draws a full portrait of the protagonist immediately out of the gate and damn, the opening of this film deserves to be framed. Thankfully, the rest of the film spends its time spooling out everything that brought her to her current state, then explores how she’s trying to move forward.
Deftly shot, utilizing numerous inventive, but not gimmicky, techniques, it’s a visually sumptuous black-and-white film, but it’s the script that really shines. While the story beats are familiar, they’re very welcome, and Radha (Radha Blank, who also wrote/directed/produced VERSION) is exceptional at undercutting a scene, at penning rhymes, at acerbic comments, at maintaining a joke rate that you’d expect from a sitcom, and also finely timing the scenes. To say she’s the writerly equivalent of a triple-threat would do her on-screen performance and direction a disservice.
(hoopla/kanopy/Prime/VOD/Vudu) Paul (Jaeden Martell, IT (2017), THE LODGE) is a thirteen-year-old boy with Hypertrichosis (also known as ‘Werewolf Syndrome’), whose body is fully covered with hair. He’s grown up without his mother and feels ostracized and misunderstood by all — even his loving but somewhat misguided father (Chris Messina, SHARP OBJECTS, BIRDS OF PREY) — so, when he gets a birthday present from his mom, marking a spot in Philadelphia and promising answers, he takes off in search of her.
What follows is a misfit coming-of-age story as Paul encounters all sorts of threats and oddball friends along the way, many of whom mirror those Odysseus met during his adventure, including Sophie Giannamore (TRANSPARENT) as a singer who loves water, executive producer John Turturro as a predatory carnival owner — Turturro should really play more villains — and Eve Hewson (TESLA, previously recommended) as an energetic eye-patched punk who loves to steal.
WOLFBOY’s penned by Olivia Dufault (a playwright who has also written for LEGION and PREACHER — the very definition of an epic misfit adventure) and while the unique folks Paul meets along the way are the focal point of the film, she inserts whimsical elements while keeping them grounded in the real-world. First-time feature director Martin Krejcí manages to instill artistic wonder and scale into traditionally humdrum urban locations. A soundtrack featuring the delightfully melancholy DeVotchKa and Timber Timbre also imbue WOLFBOY with swoony charm.
In my opinion the trailer shows too much but, with this film, it’s about the journey.
(hoopla/kanopy/Prime/tubi/VOD) A quiet drama about British Aid doctor, Shea (Andrea Riseborough, MANDY, CHRISTINE), who is currently on leave because she’s ‘seen some things no one should see’. She embarks on a trip to Luxor, Egypt and, quite quickly, runs into her former lover of twenty years ago, Sultan (Karim Saleh, TRANSPARENT, COUNTERPART), who is there on an archeological dig.
While the above may sound like a ‘late-in-life rekindled romance’, it isn’t, although the looks and stumbled phrases they exchange upon seeing each other after so many years ensure they’ll be orbiting each other for the rest of the film. The core is a human story about a woman who is not confident that she will feel broken for the rest of her life. While the undercurrent of revitalized romance is there, it’s just one facet of Shea’s present time.
Quiet tales like these, about people with lived lives, of adult reflection, are rarer and rarer nowadays, and writer/director Zeina Durra (THE IMPERIALISTS ARE STILL ALIVE!) does an exceptional job realizing her script, letting the camera follow the actors and allow the silence to speak volumes.
(DVD/YouTube) Apologies in advance for the lengthy entry — please bear with me.
I moved to Chicago to attend film school, specifically Columbia College Chicago (not to be confused with NYC’s Columbia College). Back in the 90s, Columbia College Chicago was known as a film trade school: folks who worked in the industry taught you the basics to become another cog in the industry, and you were immediately able to get your hands on a camera, sit behind an AVID deck, rig lights, etc., as opposed to say UCLA or NYU, which taught you film history and theory for two years before you could shoot a single frame of film.
Freshmen CCC film students were required to enroll in FILM TECH I, and your first exercise was to shoot a three-minute silent film in Grant Park, an iconic Chicago space carved out in the mid-19th century, and was never to meant be touched by developers’ hands. It’s also basically Columbia College Chicago’s backyard.
Grant Park also happens to be the location of the protests that occurred during 1968 Democratic National Convention, the time and place of Haskell Wexler’s (best know as the Oscar-winning cinematographer of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOS NEST, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) hybrid fact/fiction documentary MEDIUM COOL, a film primarily concerned with the ethics (or lack thereof) of documentaries and photographic/filmic journalism, but whose captured footage of the DNC protest turned the film into an evergreen historical document.*
If you aren’t familiar with the events of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, here’s a primer.
(If you can’t view it, basically: a peaceful protest was turned into a bloody warfield by Chicago cops abusing their authority, all approved by the first Daley mayor.)
I didn’t see MEDIUM COOL until about a year into my CCC education, but I was still shell-shocked to see it, shot in the very same field I filmed a terribly pretentious, very slight short film. I admit, I felt a bit dirty, despite the fact that yes, it’s a public space but, after watching MEDIUM COOL, it felt like hallowed ground (even if it hosts Lollapalooza and the Pitchfork Music Fest every year).
Watching the events unfold yesterday (January 6th 2021), witnessing folks storming the US Capitol, watching a coup so dumb it felt like Christopher Morris penned it, immediately brought me back to when my wife and I travelled to DC for the Women’s March in 2016 which was definitely a clusterfuck of a protest, but still: it was a peaceful, indelible protest.
It made me recall all of the times I’ve seen protests in the news, and how when I was in D.C. my mind blurred into all of the prior D.C. protest footage I’ve seen in film and news over the years. It was a surreal moment then, and seeing a locale turn into the shitshow of domestic terrorism we witnessed on the 6th, of cops simply opening the floodgates into the US Capitol, allowing these racist, seditious assholes run rampant through the building, looting it as if the Patriots just won the Super Bowl, fried my brain.
To say we haven’t resolved the issues that spurred the police abuse in 1968, events that occurred ~fifty years ago., would be an understatement. But this is why MEDIUM COOL exists: to visually document historically important events, to reflect on them, and to force the viewer to reconcile the events in the film with the events in their current lives.
(hoopla/Prime/tubi/VOD) This is one hell of a neo-noir thriller. In the wrong hands, this story of mother accidentally murdering a man could have been Lifetime movie, but director/writer Matthew Pope, along with lead Bethany Anne Lind, shape it into a wickedly ruthless tale, then punctuate it with a gut-punch of an ending.
(kanopy/Starz/VOD) SAINT FRANCES won me over within the first five minutes by spooning out an absolutely perfect introduction to the protagonist, her whims, persona, and obstacles. It expertly sets up the achingly human story of Bridget (writer Kelly O’Sullivan), a thirty-something Chicagoan woman working through a lot of issues while being a nanny to Frances (Ramona Edith Williams), an extraordinarily interesting misfit child.
The end result is a delight, and pairs well with PRINCESS CYD — not just because it too was shot in Chicago.
“I don’t know why I’m crying! I’m an agnostic feminist!”
