Drama

Perfect Days

Oh it's such a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you

dir: Wim Wenders

2023

Like a fair few films that have been nominated for Best International Feature Film this year, I have a hard time figuring out what to actually describe the film as. Is it a Japanese film because the cast is Japanese and they speak in Japanese, and it’s set in Japan? Or, since it’s German director Wim Wenders’ film, does that make it a German film?

Like… when Tom Cruise was in The Last Samurai a bunch of years ago, was that a Japanese movie, since it had some Japanese people in it, and they spoke Japanese, and it was about Japanese history, even though it was in English and the lead was American and it was filmed in New Zealand? Or was it a Kiwi film? Or an American film?

This is a movie about a man who cleans public toilets in the Shibuya district. That’s it. And it was kind of commissioned by the people from the city of Tokyo who built a bunch of public toilets, and presumably wanted to show them off, which is one of the most bizarre reasons for a film to exist. As you might expect the film is not critical towards the toilets as designed or realised.

Also, because it wants to presumably show the toilets in the most positive light, they’re pretty much clean when the cleaner gets to them, which I guess makes the actor’s job a bit easier. They don’t want to gross us out, which is appreciated. I have a weak stomach when it comes to that kind of stuff, and I have a particular terror of public toilets.

None of that was triggered by this unusual flick. Kōji Yakusho is a legend of Japanese cinema. If you have watched only five contemporary Japanese movies, chances are he was in four of them. I remember him from as far back as Kamikaze Taxi way back in the day, but I’ve seen him in stacks of films since then. He can play gentle, he can play ruthless and brutal, but he’s an actor, he’s a man I could watch doing mundane things endlessly.

Rating:

7 stars

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1774 reads

The Teachers' Lounge

I will either educate your children, or eat them

(Das Lehrerzimmer)

dir: Ilker Ҫatak

2023

Why the fuck would anyone be a teacher, honestly? Not only in this day and age, but at any time in human history?

I cannot imagine a more thankless task. Dealing with these dead-eyed little shits, or, even worse, their controlling and awful parents. They’re either checked out or the worst of helicopter parents, bullying teachers into getting their entitled way for their hideous spawn.

I already thought teaching would be the worst possible profession for anyone, let alone myself, before watching this flick, but now, ye gods. All prejudices confirmed.

It’s just a German flick about a teacher, at a school! This is minor, low-key, low stakes stuff! Yet why was watching this film far more stressful than all the thrillers, all the car chases and all the altercations with police that you can ever possibly imagine. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack for at least 80 per cent of the film’s running time.

This is Germany’s entry in the Best International Feature Film category at the upcoming awards, and it’s a good thing it was nominated, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have heard about it. It hasn’t had anywhere near the buzz that Anatomy of a Fall has had, or Zone of Interest, but it’s no less worthy because of that.

I would dare the most extreme of cinephiles to get through this in one sitting without needing to take a handful of valium or at least breathe into a paper bag repeatedly.

Rating:

9 stars

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1505 reads

Io Capitano

I will lead you to the promised land, holding you like
you're a green balloon, because cinema is magic

dir: Matteo Garrone

2023

Ahem. Usually, when I title reviews, I have the title in English, since I write my reviews in English, and not my preferred language, which would be Ukrainian (Slava Ukraini! Geroiam Slava!), but at the top of the page I tend to have the title as written in whatever language the film was made in, or by, or for.

That would be a confusing thing to do in this instance. So this is a film made by an Italian director, but it’s about the plight of two Senegalese boys trying to emigrate to Europe, and they speak, mostly, Wolof, French, a bit of English and an even tinier bit of Italian.

So I have no idea what language is the “right” one for this flick to be titled in. I’m sticking with the title as written, as this was Italy’s submission to the Academy for Best International Feature Film for 2023 as Io Capitano, and thus it must stay.

I’m not entirely sure if that translates to “I, Captain" or "I am a captain”, or “I am the captain”, or if it’s a reference to the Tom Hanks nauseating thriller Captain Phillips, but I’m pretty sure it’s at least one of those options.

Its relevance only becomes apparent at the very end of the two stressful hours we spend with our protagonists.

And who are our protagonists? Two Senegalese boys called Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), who are convinced that their fortunes will be made if only they can get themselves to Europe. It doesn’t matter where in Europe, just Europe. They will make big fat wads of money and send it back to their families and also maybe get somewhere with their rapping and musical skills, to the point where white people will fight for their autographs!

Rating:

8 stars

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1607 reads

Society of the Snow

"No thanks to the plane, many of us are still... Alive!"
*chomp chomp* "We certainly are."

(La Sociedad de la nieve)

dir: J. A. Bayona

2023

This is a story like few others. A heroic tale of survival against impossible odds. A level of dedication and bravery like hopefully none of us will ever experience.

And yet…

That it is a true story is the most remarkable aspect of it all. That, of the survivors who were picked up 72 days after their plane crashed in the Andes, most of them are still alive to this day is even more baffling.

But when you mention how they did it…

It’s okay to feel some conflicted feelings about it all. I know I do.

I watched this two and a half hour film, and I enjoyed it immensely, despite the fact that it is about something unbelievably terrible that I can barely mention without feeling ill.

There is something about survival stories that I think we all respond to (well, those of us that can stomach the more grotesque details), because most of us want to survive, are alive, and want to stay that way. And we’re thrilled by the idea of people (standing in for ourselves) sacrificing life and limb in order to keep others safe or alive, whether they love them, are related to them, or not.

The more extreme the environment, the more likely that death will come for all, the more heightened the emotions involved, the more of a vicarious thrill on the audience’s part(?)

And environments don’t get more inhospitable, more extreme that the top of a mountain in the Andes, in the 1970s.

Rating:

8 stars

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1607 reads

American Fiction

Jeffrey Wright is the OG, the Original Gentleman

dir: Cord Jefferson

2023

American Fiction is a lot of film. I guess it’s lots of two lots; a lot of a family drama, and a lot of a satirical take on the state of, you guessed it, American literary fiction.

But really, what it is, is funny. It’s a pretty funny film. I got genuine laughs out of this flick, and it’s not billed as a comedy. I got more laughs out of this than No Hard Feelings, the recent Mean Girls update or even Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, which had to have been a comedy, because otherwise…

In terms of its satirical components, its target is mainly well-meaning “white” liberals who through a mixture of condescension and egotistical imagined empathy end up being more racist towards African-Americans than even the dumbest red-hatted Trump voter. Right from the start as our main character is shown in class at the university where he lectures, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is being castigated by a student because of the presence of a certain word on the whiteboard.

They’re analysing the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. One of those short stories happens to be The Artificial N-----. Now, I don’t particularly love the word either, but it is the short story’s name. Thelonious is African-American, and a writer, and lecturer, and the student complaining, saying that even seeing the word causes her distress, is, for lack of a better descriptor, white. When she persists in her complaints, Thelonious tells her that he got over whatever trauma the word represents, so she could too.

Naturally, she wants to have a word with his manager, being the Karen-in-training that she is, and complains to the university hierarchy. She - let’s not gloss over this, took offence on behalf of African-Americans, including the ones in her class, including her lecturer - when they themselves in that context weren’t offended.

Rating:

8 stars

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1218 reads

All of Us Strangers

We may be strangers, but we could still get to know each other?

dir: Andrew Haigh

2023

A boy loses his parents when he is too young. It arrests his emotional development in shocking ways, gives him a wound he never recovers from.

He may grow up eternally aching for their approval, which he can never get, because they’re dead, so he punishes himself (by keeping himself isolated), punishes others (by pushing them away) in order to somehow make up for that profound lack in his life. It’s a self-made, self-sustaining hook that he cannot let himself get off from.

But enough about every version of Batman that’s ever been made.

All of Us Strangers follows the story of a man called Adam (Andrew Scott) navigating (or not) his way through life, hoping for benediction or a blessing where none is forthcoming. He lives alone in an apartment in a sparsely occupied tower. It might be a new construction, because there’s only one other chap living there on a different floor, apparently.

That guy, Harry (Paul Mescal), tries to connect with Adam, but he’s drunk, and Adam’s not taking visitors. Adam is shy and retiring, and retreats at all times.

He retreats so much that he travels back to the place where he grew up, somewhere south of London. He wanders around old haunts, even to an area that kinda looks like a beat, have to say. And a certain distance away, he spies a smiling, mustachioed man, who seems to know him, or at least like him.

Adam follows him and ends up at his childhood home. It looks exactly the same as the photo he carries of the place. Even has the family car in the same spot, and his little bike.

Mum and Dad are home, looking younger than ever (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), and welcome him in for a chat. He is astounded to see them, as one would expect, since his parents died in a car crash when Adam was 12, and he’s in his late forties now. He’s older than his parents, somehow.

Given a gift like this by the universe, why would you question it. He takes the opportunity to speak to his parents a little bit about the present, but mostly about the past, the long ago past, the past before he lost them.

Rating:

8 stars

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1367 reads

Anatomy of a Fall

I wonder what he did in provoking someone into
doing this to him? Was it the way he was dressed,
maybe? Or maybe he'd been drinking?

Anatomie d’une chute

dir: Justine Triet

2023

Anatomy of a Fall is an odd film if what you think you’re getting is a crime / legal drama, which would be a reasonable assumption based on how it’s presented. And it won a bunch of awards, so you’d also think, since it’s a French film, that it must be all classy and shit.

But for a French film, there’s a surprising amount of dialogue in English. And the lead character is German. No one else speaks German, so she has to speak French, begrudgingly, and English when she can get away with it.

Which is, like, all of the time. I don’t pretend to know much about the French, but I do know two things: they laugh when non-French people try to speak French, and they pretend not to know English when people try to jabber at them without resorting to French.

And yet everyone seems cool with it, even her eleven year old son Daniel, who speaks no English whatsoever.

Strange vibes. But that’s not what the film is about. It’s on the surface about what happened to cause her husband Samuel to fall out of a window to his death.

On a deeper level maybe it’s about whether, if she did do it, was it an understandable thing to do? If not justifiable?

We spend a lot of time in a French court room, so the profound differences between their model and the ones we have in Britain or Australia are on display. As in another recentish film I watched mostly set in a French courtroom, being Saint Omer, the differences between the adversarial system we have in Australian courts and the inquisitorial system they have in France couldn’t be more stark.

To put it more simply, they say some crazy shit in court which wouldn’t fly in this hemisphere, let me tell you.

Rating:

8 stars

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The End We Start From

Let's start from the ending and work our way backwards

dir: Mahalia Belo

2023

Where does it end? For any of us, for all of us? And do we get to start again?

The post-apocalyptic as a setting in television and movies has probably taken over almost every other possible setting or genre trappings, to now be the dominant format for all art forever more.

Usually, though, the reason is zombies and variations thereof. Last year’s The Last of Us was all people could talk about for about 10 weeks, at least the very online people were talking about it. And that had mushrooms as the culprit.

The End We Start From is a tiny bit of a play on words, which probably works on a number of levels. But it’s not really a post-apocalyptic scenario.

A major weather event, which is a euphemism in itself, occurs over and around London. London and surrounds get flooded. As this is happening, a woman goes into labour.

That woman (Jodie Comer) is desperately trying to get in contact with her husband (Joel Fry) and get to a hospital as their ground floor flat starts flooding.

Beautiful baby is born during the flood. Naturally, Noah is suggested as a possible name for him. I think they settle on either Zed or Zeb, not entirely sure.

Well, phew, you’d think the hard part is behind them. A cute anecdote to tell the kid when they grow up.

Rating:

8 stars

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1233 reads

Master Gardener

Some flowers fight for supremacy over the others in even
the most well tended garden

dir: Paul Schrader

2023

Get this: a recent film about an isolated weirdo who writes in a diary, leads a quiet, austere life and who eventually does something violent.

Have you figured out which movie I’m talking about? Obviously it would make a lot of sense if I were talking about Master Gardener, it being Paul Schrader’s most recent movie.

But let’s be honest, it’s the same plot of every movie Paul Schrader has ever been involved with dating back to Taxi Driver.

More recently he’s made a trilogy of films about men sitting in rooms writing in journals. It seems like he’s really dead-set against men journaling. Like it’s really bad or something. Those three flicks are First Reformed which starred Ethan Hawke, The Card Player which starred Oscar Isaac, and this here film, which stars Australia’s Own Joel Edgerton as a guy who keeps a diary. They are three films about three guys who would rather murder a bunch of people, or harm themselves than ever get therapy or mental health support from anyone. They cannot deal with guilt, or frustration, and so they set themselves apart from the world before they lash out at it, sometimes catastrophically.

Here Edgerton plays a guy called Narvel Roth. Narvel dresses very prim and properly. Always looks very sharp. Always keeps his arms and neck covered. Hmm. Wonder what that’s about.

He is the master gardener of the title, running a very tight ship at some southern estate that you just know used to be a plantation and definitely had slaves at some point.

The owner of the manor is an imperious sort, and Narvel is very deferential to her and her expectations. She is a lethally dangerous sort of dowager duchess called Norma, played ably by Sigourney Weaver.

Rating:

7 stars

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1457 reads

The Royal Hotel

Travel all over the countryside, they said, see the sights, they said

dir: Kitty Green

2023

The film festival of “Australians are terrible” continues, except now it’s updated to 2023.

Yes, what I did was recently watch and write about a classic Australian film about people in shitty mining towns being appalling human beings and drinking themselves stupid out of sadism, masochism, boredom and existential dread. That film was Wake in Fright, and it’s about as nasty a depiction of what a lot of true blue, dinky di, fair go, Aussie Battlers were like 50 years ago, and will be 50 years into the future, unless the sweet meteor of Death wipes us all out or that orange pile of earwax achieves the highest office of the land in his country of origin yet again.

And now, The Royal Hotel is the special of the day, the main course of a movie depicting how shitty Australians are (mostly men but women too) to each other but especially to women. Backpacker women. Canadian (allegedly) women. But women, especially.

Two young “Canadians” (they’re really not, but they think everyone hates Americans) party in Sydney like it’s 1999, or until their cash runs out. Visa conditions being what they are, they find work at a remote pub many hours west of Sydney, so far away that it’s South Australia. As far as I could tell there’s a pub, and a mine, and an endless supply of shitty men to hassle them, and nothing else.

Hugo Weaving, playing somewhat against type, since in recent roles he’s been more of a kinder, gentler kind of guy, plays one of the roughest and nastiest types of Hugo Weaving roles that I’ve seen in ages. And he played Agent Smith for crying out loud.

He is abrasive and shocking as the publican, well, shocking to the girls, and he’s not even trying to be that much of a prick to them. Unlike many of the pieces of shit pub owners I’ve come to know and loathe over the years, he’s not even the one directly sexually harassing the female staff. But he does see it as a condition of employment that the girls be pliable and all ‘golly gee oh you’ as they constantly get harassed by the patrons.

The explanation of which beers are which, and how that corresponds to buttons on the register, is a classic piece of workplace fuckery, of something that makes perfect sense to those who know the system, but means absolutely nothing to a newbie.

Rating:

8 stars

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1317 reads

Drama

Perfect Days

The Teachers' Lounge

Io Capitano

Society of the Snow

American Fiction

All of Us Strangers

Anatomy of a Fall

The End We Start From

Master Gardener

The Royal Hotel

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