Girlhood

An experiment this year: because I'm hoping to be able to work out and get to an 11:20 screening of The Danish Girl, and because I can't pop the Veuve Clicquot until midnight, I'm doing my best-of sober. I know it sounds crazy, but let's reserve judgment. Oh, and this year the 2014 pictures that didn't get to town until 2015 aren't eligible for my top 10.

And before we get down to that order of business, let me share with you my new year's resolution, which is cinematically based. Some films I'm going to see more or less regardless of reviews, and some I'm going to skip barring universal critical enthusiasm. But inevitably, a lot of films end up on the fence over the course of the year--and precisely because I see so many films, most of those films fall on the "no" side. So my resolution is simply this: if a film is iffy, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt if it has a female writer and/or director, or if it has a female protagonist who doesn't wear spandex and fight supervillains. Because my daughter is a filmmaker, and women are still getting short shrift in Hollywood.
OK, remind me: what happened on the screen way back in . . .

• January? Well, nothing, according to my new rules, though this is when I got to see the squirmily excellent American Sniper and the sorta kinda disappointing Inherent Vice.
• As always, February is the cinematic dead of winter, though another excellent 2014 film came to town, Timbuktu.
• A March sing-out to The Last Five Years, a brave operatic experiment in depicting the life and death of love. Following late in the month was It Follows, the latest document in support of my contention that we are living in a golden age of horror films.
• The first 2015 film that absolutely blew my mind was White God, a sort of canine Spartacus. A very good film however it was made, and a stunning accomplishment when the logistical challenges are factored in. Special mention in April to Ex Machina, a good film but a film much more interesting than good. Huh! I'd forgotten how much I liked Clouds of Sils Maria; does that mean that it didn't grab me as tightly as I thought or simply that I'm in my 60s? Maybe it just means that baseball had started by this time.
• Haven't mentioned a documentary yet, have I? In May, Iris, about the stylish nonagenarian Iris Apfel. And then it was early summer so we got an adrenaline movie, but an excellent one, with a thrilling testosterone-estrogen cocktail, Mad Max: Fury Road.
• In June I was stunned by how much I loved two pictures I expected to like, both of which work largely via looking under the hood: Love & Mercy (the hood of Pet Sounds) and Inside Out (the hood of an adolescent). In between I saw the bizarre and affecting documentary The Wolfpack, about brothers sheltered by their immigrant father from the Lower East Side into adulthood. Dope was no Dear White People, but it worked a similar neighborhood well.
• Two in one day in July, very different and yet oddly related: the excruciating vampire documentary Amy, about the people who sucked Amy Winehouse dry, and the incontinently hilarious Trainwreck.
• In August the creepy Vertigo-esque Phoenix. And then, squirmy and wonderful, The Diary of a Teenage Girl.
• A thin September, the most notable film of which was the German (Austrian?) creeper Goodnight Mommy. By this time I was shifting into Mets postseason mode.
• And in October, I was pretty much all Mets all the time. Bridge of Spies drew my attention away the most effectively.
• The star of post-World Series November was the heroic journalism film Spotlight, though I still wish the Boston Globe had given its investigative team a more lively name so that this film could have had ditto.
• And finally, the month of Oscar (oh, dammit, I'm not gonna insert the little trademark bug--let the Academy come after me if they think they're bad enough!) hunger, except that I didn't really see much Oscar bait. The mostly unloved Chi-Raq is a mess, but a thrilling one. The Big Short is a cousin of Spotlight, and while it's not as excellent, it does have Margot Robbie in a bubble bath. And finally, a mystery about marriage, 45 Years.

So . . . ? Purely subjective, not necessarily the best, but my favorites:

10. Trainwreck
9. It Follows
8. Love & Mercy
7. The Diary of a Teenage Girl
6. Amy
5. Clouds of Sils Maria
4. Spotlight
3. White God
2. 45 Years
1. Inside Out

Happy new year!

Follow your arrow

Joy

Crit

A very strange, almost impressionistic, telegraphic narrative, complemented by the American-dream voiceover by Diane Ladd as the title character's endlessly optimistic grandmother. Somehow it works, even as it seems ever on the verge of falling apart. Credit to writer-director David O. Russell for that, if only in having the sense to bring back Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper again to play the two least-likely characters in a sort-of-true story of (spoiler alert) grueling trial capped by fabulous success.

Trailers

• Eddie the Eagle--Didn't care about this story when it was happening, don't care about it now.
• Whiskey Tango Foxtrot--If Tina Fey as a reporter in Afghanistan hadn't been enough to grab me, the prominence of one of my favorite songs of the year would have sealed the deal.

Let the . . . oh, you know

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Imax 3D

Post

Omigod! Darth Vader is . . . Luke's father! And . . . Leia's as well! And yes, that means . . .

Oh, wait, we already knew all that, didn't we? But I think I can be forgiven my confusion, given that episode VII is largely pieces cobbled together from episodes IV, V, and VI: you got a death star, you got a life-or-death-of-galaxies mission to destroy the death star, you got an intrepid young woman who needs rescuing less than her would-be rescuers do, you got a wisecracking pilot, you got a hero who needs to be convinced that he's a hero, you got a squeaky little droid that you want to punt into an asteroid belt (seriously, if you thought R2-D2 was the acme of artificial intelligence annoyance, you gotta meet this little soccer ball BB-8), you got a masked mouth-breathing villain, you got his creepy old even more villainous boss, you got familial complications Forcewise (one given away quickly, one reserved for VIII or IX), you got a quest for a retired Jedi (was I the only one praying that when that robed figure turned around, he'd be wearing Groucho glasses?). Oh, and right: you got three old geezers who eerily resemble swashbucklers from the first (aka "real") trilogy.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed the pic, and seeing and hearing it in huge 3D was a sensory delight, and I plan to follow Rey (Daisy Ridley, in a kickass chick performance that warms the heart of the father and grandfather of kickass chicks) and Finn (John Boyega, who, if you haven't seen him in Attack the Block, do) and Poe (Oscar Isaacs, or, as I thought of him throughout the film, that younger actor who looks a lot like Oscar Isaacs) in episodes VIII and IX as they battle Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, prettied up so much that I also didn't believe it was he; oh, but wait, he must have been killed when the death star exploded, right? Yeah, right; you haven't seen any of these films before, have you? Unless you actually see a light saber go through someone's heart and then see that victim fall a million miles into nothingness, that person has a contract to be in the next pic). I'm just hoping for some surprises.

Speaking of which, here's what I foresee: Rey spends a big chunk of VIII as Luke spent a big chunk of V, being tutored in the Force by the retired Jedi. Who, in this case, she finds out either at the end of VIII or in IX, is her father. I mean, come on, there aren't a lot of candidates for Force carriers, right? And she has already shown her untutored Force to be stronger than that of one she encounters who has only one Forceparent, so I'm thinking Luke and some Forceful woman merged somehow (not sex; please, don't make me think about Luke having sex), Rey and Mom were left in "safety" (don't these people ever go to the movies?), yadda yadda yadda.

Sisters

Post

Holy shit, I think I laughed my clit off. Is this just another dumbedy, but with women rather than the usual sexpects? Yeah, I suppose so; what's your point?

Trailers

• Star Trek Beyond--Best not to ask "beyond what," I suspect.
• Warcraft--Peaceloving orcs!
• Independence Day: Resurgence--Admit it: you think I'm making this up.
• Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice--What a clever idea! Superheroes squaring off against each other!
• Captain America: Civil War--What a clever idea! Superheroes squaring off against each other!
• The Jungle Book--Bigger jungle, bigger book.
• Dirty Grandpa--OK, this looks like another page in the dossier for De Niro career intervention, but it's the ONLY film of the nine I saw first-time trailers for that's not a sequel or a spinoff.
• Alice through the Looking Glass--Refused to see the first.
• 50 Shades of Black--Got more enjoyment (and hope for civilization) from the recognition of what this must be than from all the other trailers combined.

Smoke gets in your eyes

It's great to be old M4

Guess what?! Senior discount kicks in at 62 at IFC: 10 bucks instead of 14! And at Cinema Village I discovered that I've apparently been wasting money for two years: 8 bucks instead of 11 at 60! God, I love slouching toward senescence!

Hitchcock/Truffaut

VE

Wonderful nerdfest of a documentary about a book about two people talking. I need that book.

45 Years

IFC

An unconventional mystery/ghost story about unconventional infidelity, and I really don't want to say much more than that, except that it's a contender for my favorite film of the year. OK, I'll say one more thing: did it never occur to them when they chose the song for the first dance at their wedding reception that it's less a love song than it is a love-gone-all-to-hell song?

The Hateful Eight 70mm

VE

Worth twenty bucks? Absolutely: gorgeous Morricone score behind a gorgeous panoramic Colorado (standing in for Wyoming) screened in my favorite Manhattan theater, the palace in thirteenth-century Córdoba Moorish and Jewish décor that somehow survived the multiplexization of the rest of the building. Smart, funny Tarantino script, treated skillfully by members of his repertory company.

Great filmmaking, but I think maybe I'm getting too old for repetition of the n-word and physical abuse of a prisoner (never mind a woman) to work for me as running jokes. Now the running joke that did work for me--and, as it turned out, the one integral to the plot--was the need to kick in the front door and nail it shut again whenever anyone needs to enter Minnie's Haberdashery.

By the way, I expect intermission comes only in the 70mm Roadshow screenings, but if there's a break at about 1:50 (the fastest almost 2 hours imaginable, by the way) and you think, "There's hasn't been much violence yet," trust me: you won't feel cheated in the next hour.

TransFatty Lives

CV

Patrick O'Brien was just another maker of goofy trash films until he was diagnosed with ALS, whereupon he became a documentor of disease, determination, love, fatherhood, lost love, death, and life. An astonishing, queasymaking film that will never come to your town unless your town is Manhattan or Los Angeles, and judging from attendance at my screening and the one before it (total: 2), it's not going to be in either of those towns come Friday. Eminently worth renting.

Trailers

• Moonwalkers--Yeah, maybe: based on the myth that the moonlanding was a myth and that NASA tried to hire Kubrick to fake it. Do I need to say "a comedy"?
• Rolling Papers--Another story of newspaper intrepidity, this one a documentary about the Denver Post's symbiotic relationship with legalized recreational pot.
• The Boy--No, come on: no one is stupid enough to agree to be nanny for a ceramic doll modeled on an elderly couple's dead son.
• Anesthesia--Danger! Looks like another of those many-stories-connected-by-auteristic-pretense. Oh, but that's interesting: just noticed that the auteur in question is Tim Blake Nelson, in whom pretense would be a disappointing surprise for me.
• The Treasure--Yes, please: post-Ceaușescu comedy by Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective).
• Omhide poro poro (Only yesterday)--Part of IFC's Ghiblifest, wonderful, I'm sure, but I've gotten kinda Ghiblijaded.
• Yosemite--Even the trailer admits what's you'd been thinking: this is Stand by Me.

Zat you?

I Am Santa Claus

(2014)

My daughter totally bullied me into watching this documentary about freelance Santas--she even gave me an Amazon gift certificate to pay for a stream--and I'm so glad she did, because it's the perfect Boxing Day night farewell to the season.

Director Tommy Avallone covers the economics, the sociology, the sexuality of the Santa family--he covers such a spectrum that you're left regretting that we get only one glimpse of a black Santa, and nothing at all on the female Santa options. Sequels, I guess.

Darkroom

Carol

Crit

OK, confession: I'm not a consistently worshipful Todd Haynes fan. And I could toss out a few quibbles, but mostly I just loved the matter-of-factness of a 1952-53 lesbian love affair in the U.S. of A. Yes, of course, there are crappy repercussions--Cate Blanchett's title character is in critical danger of losing the daughter whom she cares about more than the film does--but mostly it's just a love story like any love story, except with much better-looking people (and if you can imagine such a thing, I mostly found Rooney Mara's face more riveting than Blanchett's).

OK, one quibble: for the most part the men in the film reminded me of when the Cro-Magnon sportswriter asked Martina Navratilova, "Are you still a lesbian" and she parried, "Are you still the alternative."

OK, one other quibble: I was thrilled to see the name of my second-favorite lesbian rocker in the opening credits, but most of what she did must have ended up on the cutting-room floor, because she shows up almost at the end for what must be < 2 minutes and for 3 lines. But having brought her up, let me take this opportunity to say that Sleater-Kinney's No Cities to Love is, by a wide margin, my favorite album of 2015. Click that link and download it, and thank me later.

But back to the film: good film. Good Christmas film.

Trailers

• Jane Got a Gun--Looks like it wants to estrogenize Tarantino.
• Miracles from Heaven--From the producer of Heaven Is for Real; people in the theater laughed.
• The Lady in the Van--Dame Maggie--this looks very much like one I'll see because of my New Year's resolution (stay tuned).
• Eye in the Sky--Does the presence of Helen Mirren satisfy the parameters of the NYR?

'Tis a ponderous chain

Scrooge

(1951)

This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased

This is Dickens straight, and the film paraphrases a bit, but just a bit. Excellent advice, that, but it seems that we are, as a nation, seemingly as a majority opinion, taking an "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" stance. Certainly, one of our traditionally major parties, the party that gave us Lincoln and abolition and the Fifteenth Amendment, has embraced those rhetorical questions as a virtual platform.

I don't believe there is a god, but if there is, how will she or he judge us? And if there's not, how can we judge ourselves?

The truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry

The Big Short

Crit

I took copious notes during the film, and I'm prepared to explain in full detail precisely what a collateralized debt obligation and all its various permutations are.

No, come back! I'm just kidding! Even with explanations by Margot Robbie in a bubble bath and Selena Gómez in a sexy dress at a blackjack table alongside my very own Yale University Press author Richard Thaler, it's still a little unclear. Maybe if Robbie explained it again . . .

That's two terrific films now based on books by Michael Lewis; maybe I should read him sometime. I wonder whether he found the black humor in the meltdown that killed people and fortunes, or whether that's all down to screenwriter Charles Randolph and cowriter and director Adam McKay?

Trailers

• 2oolander--Looks excruciatingly unfunny.
• Everybody Wants Some--Linklater remakes Dazed but in the '80s? Does this seem like a good idea?
• The Nice Guys--It's Inherent Vice down to the color palette.
• The Boss--Looks unsalvageably bad, even by Melissa McCarthy.

The gift

It's a Wonderful Life

(1946)

How strange that I've never quite gotten this before. All the 1946 signals are present: the tweed jacket, the fuck-off spectacles, the mannish hat, running to the bar girls for protection: "old maid" + librarian = . . . if George's window-smashing cock had never existed, Mary would have become . . . A LESBIAN!!!!

Another thing I thought this year: Sheldon Leonard (Nick the bartender), who later became a producer, is perhaps best known as the guy who discovered Bill Cosby, an honor that should not be diminished by recent revelations. In fact, on an early comedy album, Cosby does an impression of Leonard that anyone who has ever seen this film will recognize as spot-on.

We were desperate

The Decline of Western Civilization

(1981)

This documentary about the early LA punk scene has been a White Whale for me, a Holy Grail--I've been wanting to see the film since a friend who wasn't isolated, as I was, in West Virginia saw it and sent me a cassette dub of the soundtrack. It had a VHS life, I guess, but I never came across it in that format, and its DVD existence has been sketchy at best. Thus, uncharacteristically, I'm linking the title not to the Rotten Tomatoes page (which inexplicably dates the film 1988) but to the Amazon streaming video link (seems not to be available in any format from Netflix, but you can now [finally] buy it on DVD or BluRay, though only packaged with its two sequels). I finally got hold of it when TCM showed it in the middle of the night, and I noticed in time to DVR it.

Long, birthday-related story why I came to be watching it with my friend Laura B, but I was fairly certain that she wouldn't have seen it and absolutely certain that she'd want to. I was correct only in the second assumption, as she had a much more immediate relationship with the music than I and also wasn't isolated in West Virginia. So let's do another of those email dialogue posts:

LB--I was worried that after so much time this documentary wouldn't stand up. I think I find it MORE compelling now. In addition I wanted to know what happened to the people (other than the ones we know have died. Darby [Crash, enthusiastically self-destructive frontman of Germs],  didn't live much past postproduction). What happened to the movement?  Are they all capitalists now?

CB--The where (and who)-are-they-now? question is irresistible, of course, but for present purposes I'm more interested in the personal grip punk and this film (for you as a film, for me as a cassette dub of the soundtrack) had on us in 1981. I was an age-inappropriate 27 when I put away the Manilow and Newton-John of my married life and embraced Jonathan Richman and X and Ian Dury, but you were of the punk age cohort--but living in what I've always imagined was a fairly quiet, fairly protected community. Correct my misconceptions, and tell me why you listened to punk and got all those tattoos and piercings as a kid.

LB--Yes, yes, it was a difficult time for sure. I was really angry. Angry at my broken family (divorces, drugs, domestic violence, neglect, emotional abuse). Angry about living in a trailer in a biker neighborhood on the outskirts of Phoenix. Angry knowing that my generation was the first generation that wouldn't do as well as our parents'. Angry at race inequality, gender inequality, class inequality. Angry at the horrible education I got. (I remember the first time someone told me their parents took them around to shop for colleges. The idea was completely foreign to me and the very working-class background I was accustomed to.) Punk came along and ignited the fuse. Suddenly there were 100X more like me, disillusioned and exploding with energy. Watching the film now I understand that it wasn't a very healthy thing to respond to anger with more anger. We gave our anger carte-blanche, when really there were probably other things I could have been doing to create a better future for myself and the world around me. Everything that I experienced as a teen is nothing new. There are kids experiencing the same things now. I feel guilty for not behaving better, for not being a better person and looking for a more positive outlet. But hey, I was 14, 15, 16 . . .  And it was seriously fun to slam. 

CB--Are there photos? Were there tattoos and piercings? Apart from the chronological difference—when I was discovering punk, it had zero practical application to my lower-middle-class-but-upwardly-mobile life; it was just exciting new rock & roll, in stark contrast to the mind-deadening sentimental dreck that had dominated the predivorce playlist—it’s hard to establish, if I had been the right age but living the life I lived at that age, how punk would have worked for me. Sad to say, I suspect I never would have noticed it, because I was the antithesis of the rebel when I was in high school. “Rebellious” music for me then was the Doors, Cream, Led Zeppelin, but I mostly listened through headphones, to avoid rocking (!) the house/boat. If anything, I’m afraid I’d have been like the skin-deep suburban pseudopunks (though I was way too far from any “urb” to have been remotely suburban). In my real life, punk, like so much else, was essentially an academic construct.

LB--For some reason, in Dec. 2013, my high school friend Tracy posted the attached picture to my FB page. I was 19 when the photo was taken in 1985. It's a pretty tame photo given the topic, but you can see I wasn't your average Deb. That's Danny Elfman's guitar pick on my left ear, captured the year before at a show in Phoenix. Lou Reed is over my left shoulder. We silkscreened the B&W prints in our graphic arts class in high school. The high school I attended was heavily focused on graphic arts, we learned printing and photography among other skills. There was no such thing as college prep; I was told not to bother to apply to college by my counselor. Of the people who did not leave Phoenix, many of my peers wound up either in jail or working at the jail. A cohort just posted her prison release papers on FB. Very few of my peers got a college education, and those that did got out. I've been mighty uncomfortable with the middle-class most of my life. It is a conflict, I desperately want to be accepted by the middle-class while at the same time eschew it for all its comforts and societal ease. I have seen classism, sexism, and racism perpetuated by many "good" people who call themselves middle class. But I have also seen incredible generosity, humanity, and empathy. Today the middle-class is declining and I have some sympathy. Maybe the demise of the classes will bring us closer together as a country. The 99%.

CB--You’re pointing at Bowie’s dick! You little hussy!

LB--Not possible, Bowie is an androgynous being.

CB--In that case you're pointing at both of his genitalia.

Not war

Chi-Raq

Crit

A messy masterpiece from Spike Lee, with support from Aristophanes, as ambitious a joint as anything since Malcolm X and as powerful as any since 4 Little Girls. Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) persuades women of the South Side to unite against (sexual) union until the Spartan and Trojan [sic] gangs put away their guns. Sometimes too preachy, sometimes sidetracked in subplot, but at its best--the opening song, "Pray 4 My City" by Nick Cannon, who plays one of two title characters (the one not on the Illinois map); the long, impassioned sermon by Father Mike (John Cusack); every moment Dolmedes (Samuel L. Jackson) is on the screen--stunning, inspiring, thrilling.