Persian white

Popcorn-for-Thanksgiving M3

OK, don't worry about my state of mind (or don't worry about it any more than usual), but after 3 movies that I enjoyed, I decided I'd rather head home and watch the Illini game only a couple of hours after it occurred than hang around for the 3D Godard film, especially since I realized that I'd thrown away my chance of using MoviePass, since 3D flicks aren't covered.

Why hadn't I already used MP on one of the 2 earlier films I'd seen at IFC, you ask? Because I was running so late that I entered the theater for the first one moments after the feature had begun, and the second while the short was in progress. Given my experiences with MP, I decided that using it for the one film of the day for which I wouldn't be rushed was the (as it were) ticket, but then I remembered the restriction too late.

Of course, I thought I'd try anyway, but the app informed me that it didn't have the theater's showtimes, and the thought of navigating that kink in the system--to try for a ticket to which I wasn't entitled--was more than I could contemplate

But hey, good news/bad news re ticket costs: when I checked my ticket stubs, I found that the cashier had TWICE assumed me to be eligible for the senior price of $10, so I saved $10 even without MP

And that's about all I have to say about my M3. Oh, wait, right: the movies:

Citizenfour

IFC

All right, I'm convinced: Edward Snowden may technically be a traitor, but that doesn't stop him from being a patriot in spirit. An extraordinarily static documentary that somehow manages to be fascinating, largely by playing on the tension between secrecy and transparency.

Le Jour se lève (Daybreak)

FF

Yes, Jean Gabin had a great face, and it's hard to imagine a better victim-of-circumstances protagonist, but it was hard for me to get past the implausibility that the police would let a killer hole up in his room long enough to flash back through the entire narrative that brought him to his fatal circumstance.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

IFC

I'm sorry to announce that this will not be Iran's submission to the Academy in the Best Foreign Film category. But damn, it oughta be.

The Girl, for whom no name is ever heard, has no explicit backstory, though it's clear that she likes rock & roll and prides herself on maintaining standards of morality consistent with being a vampire.

Beautiful black & white cinematography, strong soundtrack (including someone called Kiosk, who can fairly be described as the Farsi Tom Waits), a stunning, almost silent star (Sheila Vand, who undoubtedly spoke more words in the history lecture that opens Argo), and a touching love story with a Graduate final shot. Oh, and a character with some seriously badass tattoos. Oh! And a great damn cat!

Trailers

• Zero Motivation--A comedy about female Israeli soldiers.
• Arrête ou je continue (If you don't, I will)--Mathieu Amalric + Emmanuelle Devos = hell yeah.
• Leviafan (Leviathan)--Angry Russians.
• Risate di gioia (The passionate thief)--Mario Monicelli retrospective at Film Forum.
• Song of the Sea--Selkies, animated.
• Yume to kyôki no ôkoku (Kingdom of dreams and madness)--Documentary about Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.
• The Babadook--Hfs! The trailer scared the crap out of me. In!
• Goodbye to All That--Divorced dad has girlfriends.

Hearts and minds

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, part 1

Crit

People, come on: did you not notice the "part 1" in the title? Were you not expecting to be left in an awkward plot place? This is the closest to a riot breaking out that I've ever seen in a movie theater, including one young woman right behind me who would not be mollified by her boyfriend's logic and just wanted to get out of the theater right now, apparently in hopes that the sooner she left, the sooner she'd be offered part 2.

Difficult to make this semistory work, and the film does what I'd call an honorable, workmanlike job of it. I suppose I'll be back for part 2 (maybe right in front of the young woman in the previous paragraph), but the impulse will be obligatory closure, not anticipatory excitement.

Probably the first film I've ever seen whose locations were all in Georgia (our state, i.e.) and France.

Whiteout

Force majeure

Crit

Think of it as Macomber facing a big scary avalanche rather than a big scary animal.

Most of us, I suspect, never have the opportunity to learn what we would do if faced with potentially lethal physical danger. We'd like to think that we'd fall toward the right end of the hero-to-coward continuum, but it's one of those things you can't really have a dress rehearsal for, and most of us don't know.

This is about a man who is tested and fails, and it's less about the failure than about how you deal afterward with the wife and children who saw you run, with the world that has no idea or only a secondhand idea of what you've turned out to be, and how you reorder what you now know about yourself. And yes, being Swedish, the answers are as excruciating as you'd imagine.

Straight, no chaser

Rosewater

Crit

First, let me say that I've never been so fond of Leonard Cohen. I noticed in the end credits that the music supervisor was Linda Cohen, but I've been unable to establish whether the surname is coincidental. It's not exactly a rare name.

Jon Stewart nails it in his debut as screenwriter and director, adapting Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari's memoir, Then They Came for Me, of his Kafkaesque imprisonment and torture by the Ahmadinejad regime. We've seen prison and solitary confinement and torture in movies before, but I'm not sure we've ever seen as good an articulation of the  rhetorical question: who is the more imprisoned?

Whiplash

Crit

First, this: what sort of example does a film set to have two characters in an early scene chatting in the movie theater where Rififi has just started?

But wow. Another torture story, though one in which the victim is a lot more complicit in the process. Andrew (Miles Teller, whom we loved in The Spectacular Now) is an insanely driven drummer at Juilliard-in-all-but-name, and Fletcher (J. K. Simmons, who has been a wonderful character actor for ages without ever being remotely as scary and repulsive as this) is the abusive-for-the-art director of the institution's marquee jazz band. All you need to know is this: I came out of the first fine film of the day deeply affected by the protagonist's ordeal. I came out of this absolutely exhausted from the stress and anxiety--this a film where some blood does get spilled, the worst of it from excessively vigorous drumming. Holy christ, what a film. A lock right now for the year's best list.

Trailers

• Foxcatcher--Yes; would have been an apt completion of a torture triplet.
• Mr. Turner--Not big into art, but (1) Mike Leigh, (2) Timothy Spall, (3) hell yeah.

Wise blood

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction

(2012)

I'm sure I'd seen the guy in a dozen movies before then (well, no: a quick scan of IMDb suggests that the number was only about a half-dozen, though supplemented by lots of TV appearances), but the first time I was ever really aware of Harry Dean Stanton was in Repo Man, of whose place in my cinepsyche I have given a fragmented account. Since then, I've never seen enough of him, notwithstanding his ubiquity, never gotten enough of that cracked-desert-earth face and the weird, sad stories it tells, even when the just-a-couple-more-cigarettes voice is silent.

This is a documentary, I suppose, 'cause what else are you going to call it, but really it's a conversation, with song--an extension of a featurette on the Criterion Collection's Repo Man. Harry Dean remembers, Harry Dean philosophizes, Harry Dean dismisses the interviewer's interpretations, and Harry Dean sings another old song, beautifully (in the same way Harry Dean's face is beautiful). And again, at < 80 minutes, not enough.

Dylan's dream

Interstellar

Crit

Well, that was certainly trippy, and certainly of an extremely high quality in every way. But it's one of those films I admire more than like, and unlike most Christopher Nolan pictures, it's one I doubt I'll ever feel compelled to revisit. I may be wrong: it's does have that daddy-daughter thing going, and I'm a sucker for that. On the other hand, I felt pretty uncomfortable hearing all these scientists talking about a "they" who were apparently making the salvation of humanity possible, but the less said about that, the less spoily.

Trailers

• The Interview--More silliness from Franco, Rogan & Co.

Preserve, protect, defend

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Failure to launch

Laggies

Crit

Well, duh: why wouldn't you prefer hanging out with cool teenagers to growing up when all the adults in your world, including those nearest and dearest to you, are either assholes or douches? But the damn near genius of this film is that it shows regression to an immature past self as a route out of stasis in an immature current self. The cliché monster makes an inevitable third-act appearance, but a smart story and a terrific cast make that sin forgivable. A very pleasant surprise.

By the way, not that the title really needs explanation, but if you don't pay close attention, you'll miss the one articulation and gloss of the term.

When we talk about

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Crit

A heaping helping of All That Jazz, a hint of The Player, and plenty of slapstick as lubricant. Genius? Well, yeah, I think there's some genius in there somewhere, but then there's also an anticriticism rant and a bit of off-screen slap and tickle that don't really attach anywhere, as well as an oh-so-obviously thematically connected declamation of Macbeth's "Tomorrow x 3" speech that doesn't belong anywhere near genius. As one character is described, it's a great mess.

Trailers

• The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel--The sequel looks every bit as irresistible as the first one, which I resisted.

Relo

Beetlejuice

(1988)

Bonus Halloween-season screening, since I got a late start, and to prepare myself for anther over-the-top Keaton performance tomorrow, but I gotta say: surprised how bland and unfunny this is. Yes, the involuntary calypso scene is wonderful, and Keaton's commitment can't be denied, and it's a hoot to see Goulet and Cavett as self-important assholes, but it's just not a very interesting pic. It's as if Burton is trying too hard to give us something Burtonesque. Sorry.