(Prime) SYLVIE’S LOVE is a lovely Sirk-ian throwback romance from writer/director Eugene Ashe. It features Tessa Thompson as Sylvie, a bright young woman who dreams of a job in television and whose fiancee Lacy (Alano Miller) is overseas fighting in the Korean War. Nnamdi Asomugha is Robert, a skilled Jazz saxophone player who immediately falls for Sylvie immediately upon seeing her in her father’s (Lance Reddick) record store.
It’s a sweet, lushly shot old-school melodrama of two people who keep finding themselves thrown together, despite the obstacles they put in front of themselves.
(Criterion/HBO MAX/VOD) It’s undeniable that Orson Welles — the man who faked an alien invasion via a radio play — is a trickster, but his ‘cinematic essay’ F FOR FAKE is perhaps the apex of his trickster skills. It’s not just an examination of art forger Elmyr de Hory, not just a profile of Clifford Irving’s illicit and fabricated Howard Hughes biography, but also a deep dive into the nature of authorship, authenticity, intent, and narrators. Despite how heavy that sounds, the film’s extraordinarily playful, staying true to Welles’ trickster self.
(Netflix) I CARE A LOT is an overstuffed marvel; part huckster film, part heist film, part crime thriller, part courtroom drama, but all confidently shouldered by Rosamund Pike. Pike is Marla Grayson, a woman who preys on the elderly via an elaborate scheme in which she pays off a doctor to state in court that the elderly person is unable to take care of themselves and require a legal ward, then they suggest Marla. Marla then scuttles them off to a nursing home, sells off all of their belongings, milks their bank account until the person dies, then look for the next mark.
She’s a monster, and Pike revels in it. Just that premise alone could have carried the film but, it turns out that Pike and professional and personal partner Fran (Eiza González) end up abducting the mother of a crime boss, played with relish by Dianne Wiest (HANNAH AND HER SISTERS) and Peter Dinklage. Matters escalate, then culminate to what feels like a very unsatisfying Hays code-ish ending, but you can’t argue that you don’t see it coming.
While I could talk about the performances all day, director J Blakeson (THE 5TH WAVE) and cinematographer Doug Emmett (SORRY TO BOTHER YOU) also spend a refreshing amount of time with color theming, riffing off of Pike’s blond hair and ice blue eyes, to the point where there’s a shot where the color swatches are practically painted on someone’s tremendous heels. It’s a welcome change in this age of dull-sheen films.
(kanopy/VOD) FEELS GOOD MAN is a deep dive into the re-appropriation of artist Matt Furie’s Pepe the Frog, and the steps Furie takes to try to get the character back.
Most of the doc focuses on Furie recounting his history and struggles with the laidback frog, but director Arthur Jones and producer Giorgio Angelini bring in artists (including BOJACK HORSEMAN’s Lisa Hanawalt) and comedians/writers (such as BARRY’s Emily Heller) and academics to flesh out the online world of trolls and memes. Even if you believe you know the story of Pepe — and I certainly thought I did — you’ll still find new and surprising bits.
If FEELS GOOD MAN was just a collection of talking head interviews, it’d still be worth a watch, but Arthur Jones leans on his animation background to liven up the doc with vivid, kinetic animated sequences depicting Pepe and his friends as they react to the events as they unfold. It’s a welcome respite from the traditional motion graphics interstitials that pepper most modern documentaries, and is so expertly done that I was left wishing that a BOYS CLUB animated show existed.
(Criterion/kanopy/VOD) Ken Loach’s SORRY WE MISSED YOU is a slow-motion car crash of a financial horror story about a family trying to get by while giving all of their spare time to low-wage gig jobs. The husband Ricky (Kris Hitchen) has just sold his wife Abbie’s (Debbie Honeywood) car to purchase a delivery van in order to delivery Amazon packages and the like around the U.K., and Abbie is now forced to bus around to her nursing jobs. Both of them are out of the house for twelve hours a day, which results in their teenage son’s troublemaking escalating and their young daughter being the one waking her mom and dad up when they fall asleep in front of the television. Bills mount up, fees spiral out of control, and it looks like there’s no way out.
While their debt and stress casts a pall over the film, Paul Laverty’s (who penned Loach’s prior film I, DANIEL BLAKE) script inserts enough kind and sweet moments, such as one afternoon when Ricky takes his daughter along delivering packages, and there’s a poignant scene between Abbie and one of her ‘clients’ where they share family photos. The client pointedly shows off pictures of her in her old union job.
That one scene, where Abbie’s client talks about her old union job as ‘the good times’, is the only explicit commentary that Laverty and Loach insert, but ultimately the entire film is a plea for a return to the age of unionization and workers’ rights. They make sure to hammer home the simple fact that the gig economy is a return to pre-union times: a return to the company store, a return to being nickeled-and-dimed, a return to job inequality, a return to inexistent worker protection.
Near the end of the film, the daughter yells “I just want to go back to the way things were before!” and, while she’s too young to realize that the ‘before’ wasn’t necessary significantly better, she realizes it’s far better than the stressed-out hell everyone is dealing with now. She deserves better. We as a society deserve better than this.
(hoopla/kanopy/tubi/VOD) THE QUIET MAN is a ‘last man on earth’ story (loosely based on Craig Harrison’s novel), one that wouldn’t feel out of place in THE TWILIGHT ZONE, but it justifies its existence by featuring an electric performance from Bruno Lawrence, being set in New Zealand, and by containing a number of interesting and cerebral twists, including one hell of an ending.
There’s a trailer, but it’s essentially a condensed summary of the entire film, so I’d refrain from watching it until -after- viewing the movie.
(hoopla/VOD) HOTEL ARTEMIS is about a hospital for criminals masquerading as a hotel. Sure, that may make you think about JOHN WICK. Doesn’t make me think about JOHN WICK, but I’ve only seen the first so far, and the design, style, and intent of HOTEL ARTEMIS seems completely different than JOHN WICK.
While it’s centered around a criminal-centric hospital, HOTEL ARTEMIS also takes place in the ‘not-too-distant future’ where folks are rioting about water allocation in LA and, well, really, the only way you can tell this is in the future is because all of the criminals have cool toys. The titular hotel is a gilded age throwback (inspired by LA’s Hotel Alexandria) featuring plenty of art deco flourishes and vintage wallpaper, resulting in an extremely attractive feat of production design, and again, the only way you can tell the hotel exists in the future is because of all of the cool toys The Nurse (Jodie Foster) has to help heal her patients.
I’d still recommend HOTEL ARTEMIS for the production design and all of its plot and character machinations, but they also wrangled a hell of a cast clearly loving their time at the hotel. Not only does the film have Foster adopting an awkward running gait (and donning surprisingly decent age makeup), Dave Bautista is the stern-but-kind-eyed orderly glue that holds the hotel — and the film — together, Sterling K. Brown is the sympathetic bank robber, Jeff Goldblum is a cheshire-grinning mobster, Sophia Boutella is the stylish assassin, and other surprises.
The ensemble, as well as the use of throwback needle drops, certainly gives off a whiff of Tarantino fetishism, but HOTEL ARTEMIS is more concerned with escalating tension, as opposed to luxuriating in its mood and dialogue.
The film doesn’t completely hold together — really, how many of the great heist films do? — and it ends on a whimper — how many of the great heist films don’t? — but the well-honed action, atmosphere, and charming performances made me forget those shortcomings.
“This is America. 85 percent of what I fix is bullet holes.”
(VOD/Every other week on TCM) THE THIN MAN is based on the Dashiell Hammett detective novel of the same name but, while the pre-code film adaptation retains the same narrative bones as the book, it backgrounds the murder mystery in favor of the boozy, flirty interplay between spouses Nick & Nora Charles, resulting in one of most winsome on-screen couples.
Like the book, Nora (Myrna Loy) is a rich socialite, and Nick (William Powell) is a man who gave up his detective badge to marry her, and they have a dog in lieu of children. They spend their copious recreational time running around night clubs, garnering hanger-ons and hangovers, making each other laugh with witty banter and, in general, having one good time after another, at least until Nick gets roped into investigating a murder. What makes them such a great on-screen couple is that, yes, Nick is the investigator, but Nora is often the instigator, has just as much insight and deductive powers as Nick, she takes no shit, and Nick is always willing to indulge her. They both push-and-pull each other with an endless amount of quips and gazes, and love each other for doing so.
While it’s always worth watching Loy & Powell together, what really makes the film resonate is the sparkling script penned by married couple Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, who had an amazing tandem career both as playwrights (they won a Pulitzer for their stageplay of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK) and screenwriters (they also worked on FATHER OF THE BRIDE, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, and SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS). They were not shy about admitting that they poured much of their relationship into the screenplay, and it shows, as they feel like a real forever-love couple — doting, a bit combative, occasionally prickly, always respectful — but never in a cloying way. It’s a delightful watch, a film I never tire of.
If you’re interested in reading more about Goodrich & Hackett, I suggest the combined biography of the two in THE REAL NICK AND NORA by David L. Goodrich.
(hoopla/Prime/tubi/VOD) The few folks who saw this film after first being exposed to Werner Herzog via his masterful documentary GRIZZLY MAN must have walked out of the theater feeling very confused. THE WILD BLUE YONDER doesn’t fall into Herzog’s lighthearted docudramas, but instead lands closer to his doomsaying visual photo montages, such as the better known LESSONS OF DARKNESS (1992) which took an abstracted, hellish look at the oil fields and general destruction of nature in Kuwait after the Gulf War.
THE WILD BLUE YONDER goes one step further by bringing in Andromedan extraterrestrial Brad Dourif as your personal tour guide through arctic and NASA footage. Herzog’s always been exceptional at crafting visual narratives, but having Dourif here to verbally stitch the montages together is a real treat. That said, if you’re looking for anything resembling a proper narrative, look elsewhere. My wife and I debate to this day as to whether the Gene Siskel Film Center accidentally played the reels out of order.
(Criterion/HBO MAX/VOD) THE NAKED CITY tries to be a lot of things: a detective story, a portrait of New York City and its citizens, plus an attempt at bringing a neorealism aesthetic to the silver screen. Despite its reach, it succeeds wildly with all of its aspirations.
Directed by Jules Dassin (who would make the underrated noir NIGHT AND THE CITY before being blacklisted), it’s just as much as producer/narrator Mike Hellinger’s film. Prior to being involved with film, Hellinger was a New York journalist and short story author, and you can see his background peppered through the entirety of THE NAKED CITY. (In fact, Hellinger was still giving notes about the film’s post-production on his death bed.)
THE NAKED CITY revels in the fact that they shot on location in New York City, and they even brought on infamous crime photography Weegee — who had a well-known photo book of NYC named NAKED CITY — to consult during production. (Despite Weegee’s involvement, it doesn’t revel in matter-of-fact violence the way Weegee’s photos were known for.)
Lastly, in a world before DRAGNET, THE NAKED CITY made the effort to detail the police procedural process, mostly via character actor Barry Fitzgerald as the head homicide detective. The end result intentionally veers away from overt sensationalism, often feeling more like a drama than a detective story — at least when the narration isn’t being too cheeky — but it is all the better for it.