7 stars

dir: Bas Devos

2023

This flick called Here should not be confused with the Robert Zemeckis directed, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright starring flick called Here that came out last year. Totally different movies. Could not be more different. Each interesting in its own way, but completely different.

This here flick called Here, or Heɿe, if you believe the opening credits/title is a prime exponent of “slow” cinema, in that there is no hurry in any scene for anything to happen or anyone to do anything. There are people in the story, actors, I believe they’re called, and stuff happens, but it’s of the mundane, every day, slice of life sort of stuff.

And lots of images of nature, and mosses. Lots of mosses.

You should absolutely already know whether this is your own personal vision of hell or not by now. It didn’t aggravate me at all, but then I have the patience of a fucking saint, so, there’s that to consider.

Not everyone has either the time or the inclination to sit through something in which not a lot happens, and that is the point. Me, I sometimes relish chances to watch slow, meditative stuff, even if there’s not that much to meditate on or ruminate over. We bring what we have to these kinds of films, because they rarely tell us exactly what to think about what we’re seeing.

There is a chap, and he works in construction, as in, on a construction site for a skyscraper somewhere in Brussels. He, like his co-workers, is getting ready for his summer holidays, with construction industry folks taking 4 weeks off over summer. He is not Belgian, and, as a Romanian, is intending to drive home.

He looks at the veggies in his fridge, and thinks “these will all be rotten when I get back; I better make something with them now”, so he makes a big pot of soup. This soup will play an extraordinarily important role in the film.

I’m not actually joking. Our chap, often clad in t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, suffers from insomnia, so he either walks around at night or visits people he knows are awake. He visits a friend who works the night shift at a hotel and gives him soup. He visits his mechanic, whose says his car will be ready Tuesday, and once he offers the soup, the mechanic says the car will be ready Monday. He visits his sister who’s a nurse at a local hospital, and they enjoy the soup together. Everyone loves the soup.

dir: Jacques Audiard

2024

It’s almost disappointing. I was promised a disaster, and instead I just got a flick that wasn’t that bad.

Despite this flick’s baffling level of awards success, it’s important to point out that critically, this flick has been savaged the way that a pack of hyenas bring down a wounded wildebeest by chasing it down and nipping at it until it collapses in exhausted defeat. The most positive review I’ve read of it said something like “it’s okay, but the songs are not memorable at all.”

Oh, did I decline to mention that it’s a musical?

Also, despite the fact that it’s been nominated for a Titanic or Lord of the Rings level of Academy Awards, I don’t think there’s a single person from Mexico that had a positive thing to say about it, despite the fact the film is mostly set there (even though there’s not a second of actual footage from there, other than probably some aerial / drone shots).

It’s made by a French director, with no Mexican actors, mostly but not exclusively in Spanish, with the actual leads played by Americans. And it purports to be about someone from Mexico involved in the cartel wars wanting to turn over a new leaf (in so many ways), but it doesn’t really treat any of its big ticket items with any depth or nuance.

And, yes, it’s historic that Karla Sofía Gascón has been nominated in the Best Actress category, as the first trans woman to receive such an “honour”, but can anyone that’s seen this movie, including the people that didn’t completely hate it, say that her performance was in any way better than Zoe Saldana’s performance, or even that of Selena Gomez? Gascón’s performance is at best subdued in comparison to the others, and that’s being generous.

dir: John Cassavetes

1980

See, this is what happened: a classic actress called Gena Rowlands died a few months ago. Well, it was actually August 2024, but who’s counting. When she passed, having reached her 90s but having endured nearly a decade of dementia, and I read all the tributes to her I thought to myself “Self, she sounds like she was a great actress and a tremendous woman – you should watch some films she was in so you can have a slightly informed opinion and to honour her.”

In everything they said about the actress, most often reference was made that she was married to John Cassavetes, legendary independent filmmaker, and starred in most of his films before he died of the demon drink in 1989. Nine years before that fateful day, he made this here flick Gloria.

Guess what – it stars Gena Rowlands. Guess what else – it might have been made in 1979/1980, but it looks and feels and smells like something from the 1960s. It is the ‘old’ New York, where entire suburbs are ethnic enclaves, and there are more mobsters all over the place than there are cops.

In another example of how different this flick is from a) contemporary flicks or b) other flicks from that era, the opening ten minutes of this flick is the credits, superimposed over some abstract expressionist paintings, while smooth jazz plays on the soundtrack. It’s a leisurely ten minutes.

And it’s far more chill than the rest of the film. Having never watched, as far as I know, a Cassavetes film before, I soon realised that there was probably a good reason for that: based on this flick and its opening half hour or so, Cassavetes filmed and directed and edited everything for the purpose of exhausting the audience. I was so tense even before anything bad happened that I had to stop watching it and take multiple breaks, and that’s just down to all the yelling and the editing.

dir: Zoë Kravitz

2024

It’s not enough that her parents are Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz who are, if nothing else, two of the most supernaturally attractive people on the planet. It’s not enough that her parents are incredibly talented and successful as well in their respective fields. It’s not enough that Ms Kravitz is immensely talented and successful herself, and that she’s been great in most of the performances I’ve ever seen her give, in films as different as The Batman and, a film I actually liked, being Kimi or that remake series of High Fidelity.

Now she wants to successfully direct movies as well. Goddamn talented nepo babies: a leg up and a foot through the door, and so much more.

Also, as if to emphasise what a nepo baby experience this all is, a child of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman is in this, but no, it’s not Maya – it’s their son Levon, who plays a complete nothing of a character. He is there just to remind us what the untalented nepo babies are up to.

Plus, Ms Kravitz also hires her fiancé, who’s clearly hurting for work, being Channing Tatum, to play one of the main roles here: that of a tech billionaire who’s always vaping.

If only that was the worst of his crimes. This is one of those movies where someone accidentally or unintentionally gets trapped in a place where they might get hunted or murdered or worse. You know, like those films where rich people hunt poor people for their selfish amusement.

The twist in the tail here is that the rich tech bros led by Slater King, which is a name so terrible it could only be the name of a vile tech bro who rubs shoulders with the likes of Elmo Husk or Peter Thiel, have it all figured out. He and his other monsters are monstrous predators, but they are comfortable ones.

The thing is, right from the start, we know something odd is going on, and that’s a good place to start from.