Deeds

Mudbound

Jennie Tonic will tell you that this was the best film of 2017 (though is "film" even the right word for something that has been impossible for the vast majority of moviegoers to see on a screen bigger than the ones in their homes?), and I hereby invite her to tell you why, in the form of a comment.

For me, no, but it certainly is the best 2017 motion picture I've watched in the bunker because I couldn't see it elsewhere. It is also one of the most powerful films of the year, and maybe the most uncomfortable-making film about race in a year when that topic repeatedly made us squirm in our theater seats.

So why not a contender for me? Too much we've seen before, too much we see coming, too much that seems to come from lobbying for morality at the expense of telling the story. Still, merited Oscar nominations for cinematographer Rachel Morrison (if it looks that good on a 51" Vizio, imagine how good it could look . . . OK, I'll dismount that hobbyhorse) and Mary J. Blige, and a nod would not have been out of place for Jason Mitchell, whose back-from-WWII Ronsel is the moral center of the story. Absolutely robbed was the editing team: sudden cuts between the stories of poor black families and poor white families leave us often momentarily--and usefully--confused about which story we're in. A device that would be off-putting if overused instead helps tell the story.

It's the other white meat

Okja

A huge fan of Joon-Ho Bong's Snowpiercer and a reasonably large fan of his Mother and Memories of Murder and The Host, I was really looking forward to this enthusiastically reviewed (Net)flick, especially since the adorable title genetically enhanced piggish animal befriended by a determined young girl seemed to suggest a possible recommendation for the grandchildren.

Well, no, I don't think the grandkids need porcine rape or abattoir nightmares, and one of them is a vegetarian already. But that's a filmmaker's choice, and I respect that. My disappointment has more to do with the stacked moral decks--the villains are too easy, and the legitimate question of how we feed a burgeoning population deserves a more thoughtful answer than "not this way."

The kitten was fine

Trainspotting

(1996)

OK, that makes me feel better: if I can stream this, even at 720i rather than the optimal 1080i, I'm probably getting better quality than from the DVD I lent to someone but I don't know who, but whoever it was never returned it.

Damn, this is good--early Danny Boyle, early Ewan McGregor, and brand new Kelly Macdonald, whom I've been watching of late on Boardwalk Empire.

Roll back the stone

The Wise Kids

(2012)

One of my Scary Normal peeps recommended this, so I was prepared to like it, but I wasn't prepared to like it this much, and I certainly wasn't prepared to get most involved with and have the most empathy for the awesome-awesome-Jesus girl (Laura,  Allison Torem), who's freaked out by the discovery that her friend Tim (Tyler Ross) is gay. No, I would have expected to focus on Brea, partly because Molly Kunz positively lights up the screen, but mostly because she's the preacher's kid having a crisis of faith.

Laura's only crises involve the faith of her friends--she's a cocksure a Christian as you've ever sneered at, yet the writing (Stephen Cone wrote and directed) and Torem's portrayal of the character make it impossible to sneer; for me to love someone who believes as Laura believes is something of a miracle in itself.

The uneventful post-h.s.-graduation summer of these three is all the story required. In fact, for much of the film the less convincing parallel plot of the church's closeted music director's temptation and of his wife's sexual frustration seems tacked on, but even that solidifies in the final act, and thankfully the film offers no answers, no finality, no certainty. And that lack of satisfaction is eminently satisfying.

Sin never dies

Carrie

(1976)

Wow: no, I certainly had not ever seen this uncut before: I would have remembered Brian De Palma's slo-mo girls'-locker-room full-frontal-fest, complete with that distinctive lame '70s music that was the aural equivalent of soft focus. I realize that this is at least my second complaint in the past few weeks about gratuitous sex and/or nudity, making me sound like the grumpy old man I am, but come on: is there any reason other than the fact that being able to show pubic hair in a mainstream film was still pretty new in 1976?

OK, now let's dispose of Piper Laurie: she makes Carrie's mother scary in an old-Bette Davis/Joan Crawford movie way, in stark contrast to Moore's honest-to-god (!) scary-human-being portrayal. The only part of Laurie's portrayal that is better--and the credit may go to De Palma--is her orgasmic response to her fatal multiple penetration by kitchen blades, a blend of Saints Sebastian and Teresa.

Overall, this is consistently the lesser of the two films through the dumping of the pig's blood and (apart from the goofy shtick with the firehoses) consistently the better one after that, in part because Peirce seems a little too concerned with justice for those who haven't been shitty to Carrie, but mostly because it gets to the end with much more dispatch. And gee whilikers, that final scene: a scary movie classic.

Family

35 Up

(1991)

If the dominant demographic theme of 28 Up was wedding bells, here we hear the knell of loss: parents lost, husbands shed. But in fact, as far as we know (without explanation, neither Paul's orphanage mate Symon nor Neal's fellow Liverpudlian Peter appears in this installment except in archival footage), the divorce rate among this cohort remains remarkably low, and the two divorces--forJackie and Sue, two of the three East End girls--have been balanced by marriages by the two upper-crusters who declined to appear in 28, John and Charles.

Charles again opted out, but while adding a wife he has moved up to producer at the BBC. John, on the other hand, has an intriguing reason for coming back in front of the camera. Still a successful barrister, he has married the daughter of a former ambassador to Bulgaria, which turns out to have been his mother's ancestry, and while he remains steadfastly Tory, he has become committed to the welfare of that country, and he hopes that his appearance on the program will raise consciousness for that cause.

Cracks have appeared in Suzy's marriage, and she has become increasingly complex and appealing. But the cracks we (clearly, I was not the only one to notice) perceived in the marriage of nuclear physicist Nick and the equally ambitious Jackie were apparently illusory--or at least that's what Nick (now an associate professor; I expect him to be full at 42) says; Jackie has opted out of the series, along with 1-year-old Adam.

Toff Andrew has moved into corporate law and become a partner; East Ender Tony still drives his own cab, now on shifts with his wife, and his childhood ambition to be a jockey now manifests in the ponies he keeps for the 4 children.

The only never-marrieds are Neal and Bruce. Neal, one of the most exuberant of the 7-year-olds, has made some progress battling his demons. He's still on the dole, but he's settled in a council flat in the Shetland Islands, where he acts in the village pantomime (Beauty and the Beast this year; last year he directed the show, but because of his insistence on his own dramatic vision, he was not invited back to that role this year), writes plays, and is trying to organize a professional touring company for the islands. It would not be a surprise if he has become successful on his own terms by 42, but neither would it be a surprise if he doesn't reach that age.

Bruce certainly is a career success on his own terms: still teaching math, he is spending a year in Bangladesh, and though he brushes off the suggestion, it's hard not to see the 7-year-old who hoped to be a missionary and help Third World people "be, more or less, good." But I still see a tragedy in Bruce's personal life: he admits to "teenage-like crushes on people," but he remains careful not to specify a gender, an evasion that I suspect reveals far more than it conceals. Yes, yes, I know: he's not really our friend, he just plays one in the movies, and he doesn't owe us full disclosure, but his closetedness seems too profound to exist only when the camera is running. I'm hoping that at 42 he'll be in love and settled, but I'm not optimistic.

42 Up

(1998)

For the first time director Michael Apted asks participants the Heisenbergian meta-question of what the series has meant to them. Working-class Jackie says it had made the 14 of them family; upper-class Andrew says he'd never let his own son participate in such a program; his boarding school chum John says (or, rather, said without being asked in 35; for the second time in three installments, he has opted out) that the exercise is torturous; and Suzy (whose evolution has been among the most rewarding) says the same. But Aussie Paul acknowledges that it's a kick in the positive sense as much as in the negative; University of Wisconsin nuclear physicist Nick jokes that his ambition is to become as famous for a scientific discovery as he is for the series, "But that's never going to happen, Michael"; and Tony, who has moved from the East End to a house in Woodforde, Essex, but still shares shifts in his cab with his wife, contrasts the usual cabbie's bonus of finding a Paul Gascoine in his hack with his own experience of having fares regularly recognize him as a celebrity.

Notable developments in the lives of the two biggest puzzles: Neal, back in London, has been elected and reelected as a Liberal Democrat member of the Hackney Borough Council. He has received a B.A. in open university to teach English as a second language. That said, he remains unemployed and on the dole, but when Apted asks, "What's the most enjoyable thing in life for you right now?" he replies, stunningly, "I think it's looking to the future." Oh, and also, he read a prayer at . . .

Bruce's wedding! To Penny, a colleague at the East End Catholic girls' school to which he moved on his return from Bangladesh. "He's not the kind of man you'd ever have any doubts about," she says. Hmmm.

Back on the active roster is Symon, Paul's orphanage mate, and the only person of color in the 14. He was, by 35, divorced from Yvonne, the mother of his 5 children, and now he's married to Vionetta, with whom he has a 4-year-old son, Daniel (named for his never-present father; his anger over the abandonment has, he says, finally turned into boredom), as well as a stepdaughter she brought to the marriage.

Nick's marriage still seems solid--Jackie, burned by her portrayal in 28 (which to me seemed simply the portrayal of a woman who wasn't going to settle for being a helpmeet), still refuses to participate, but we learn that she too is a professor (of journalism) at UW, where, yes, Nick is now a full professor. The farm is getting away from the family--it's too much for his aged father, and neither brother is interested--and we return with him for a nostalgic trip to the Yorkshire Dales, a place whose beauty he proclaims "magnificent but rather grim."

Also solid, after 23 years, is the marriage of Lynn, who was initially the least prepossessing of the trio of East End girls, the one whose ambition at 7 was to work at Woolworth's. Budget cuts have ended her long tenure in a mobile library, but she now is a librarian who oversees class visits and has various administrative responsibilities. Her husband, Russ, cooks dinner during the week, and Lynn takes over on the weekend. She has quietly become the pleasant surprise of the series.

Her childhood pal Jackie, who before 35 had divorced the husband she had wed at 19, then quickly borne a son from a "brief but sweet" relationship, now has 2 more boys and has moved to her partner's native Scotland--except that Ian quickly becomes her ex-partner, and she's on her own with 3 children and rheumatoid arthritis, surviving with help from the state and a mother-in-law.

Tony has improved his family's lifestyle a bit beyond his earning power, and has also risked his marriage more than once via infidelity; a big change in the next 7 years would not be a big surprise.

And then Suzy, whose domestic contentment seemed in jeopardy at 35, continues to stretch: faced with the prospect of an empty nest and the consequences of her decision to be a stay-at-home mother rather than pursue a career, she is now training to be a bereavement counselor, for which she is uniquely suited, since she still grieves not only for her parents but for their marriage, which ended when she was 14, leaving her in a deep emotional hole from which she has heroically emerged.

49 Up

(2005)

Perhaps I've been wrong about Bruce, who now has 2 sons and finds himself "contented and reasonably happy." In any case, I love these people, but I've really had enough of them for a while. OK, I'll mention that Paul has had psychiatric treatment for his low self-esteem, that his daughter became the first in either family to attend university, studying archaeology, and that he has begun to run marathons. And I can't fail to mention that Nick has hit a hardware snag in his research, about the same time that his marriage to Jackie ended, but that he has found love again with Chris, an education professor at the University of Minnesota, about whom he says, without a great deal of exaggeration, "I don't want to be superficial, but she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." Or that Symon and Vionetta have become foster parents, that Tony remains married and financially overextended, having built a vacation home in Spain, and that John has returned to the series and continues to work for humanitarian aid to Bulgaria.

Lynn, asked my Apted whether, after 30 years of marriage, she's in love, tears up and answers, "Very, very much." But budget cuts further threaten her work as a children's librarian, doing some of her most rewarding work with handicapped children. Her childhood friend Jackie has a burst of anger at Apted, accusing him of underrating her throughout the series, but if he and we underrated anyone early on, it was this heroic East Ender.

And Neal's painstaking rebound has continued--we even seen him driving a car, which surprises him as much as us. He has left London and is on the Cumbria County Council, in the extreme northwest. He has some part-time earnings and an increased participation in the church, but he remains the only one of the 14 not to have walked down the aisle.

And finally, Suzy, so unpleasant at 7, at 14, and at 21, saying that for the first time she feels "happy in my own skin," but that after seven films, she is bowing out. I just checked the 56 Up website, and indeed, it looks as if I'll get to find out whether she stuck to that resolution on 1 March, when it's scheduled to open downtown.

Mobility

28 Up

(1985)

The biggest success story in the 4th installment of the series is probably the American immigrant: Nick, the farmboy, is an assistant professor in nuclear physics at the University of Wisconsin. His wife is also an academic, and they are one of several couples navigating the marital politics of the mid-'80s. For me, the years between 21 and 28 took me from married, childless, and in graduate school to divorced with a child and working as a sportswriter in Appalachia. The majority of the Up cohort went from single to married in those years--8 of the 14 joining the 2 who had already taken the plunge by 21. And in at least one case--the heretofore consistently unpleasant Suzi--marriage and motherhood has effected a nearly miraculous personality change; she has become interesting and interested.

Coincidentally, 2 of the 4 who remain unmarried declined to be interviewed for this installment, 2 of the trio of public school toffs. The eternally conservative John has succeeded in becoming a barrister, and is engaged to be married; the eternally rebellious Charles has become a journalist, an assistant producer with the BBC.

The other two unmarrieds are the most disquieting stories. Bruce, who at 7 wanted to be a missionary and remains the most outwardly devout of the group, has a satisfying teaching position (coincidentally, in the East End school attended by Tony, the would-be jockey, who has grown up to be a cabbie), but he shows every sign (visible at least from age 14) of being barricaded in the closet.

Then there's Neil, for whom it could be considered a triumph to be alive, as depressed and lost as he seemed at 21. Oddly, he seems a bit less gloomy at 28, but the main hope for him is that, after 7 peripatetic years on the dole, his circumstances have bottomed out. He's clearly intelligent and as thoughtful as any of the 14, and his critique of middle-class suburbia is hard to argue with. Yet it's cringe-inducing to hear him say, "I can't see any immediate future at all"--though he's quick to acknowledge that he has spent time among those with even less future.

On the other hand, working-class pals Jackie, Lynn, and Susan remain as resilient as ever, and as impatient with the series' insistent curiosity about class. Says Jackie, "We don't think about class until this program comes up once every seven years."

If all goes according to plan, those years are going to fly for me tomorrow: since I want to switch from streaming to disc when my billing period ends next week, I'd like to clear my Up decks this weekend. Three more installments will take them to 49, and 56 Up is said to be coming to town next month.

Give me the child

21 Up

(1977)

The third in director Michael Apted's series (but the first of feature length, following the half-hour television documentary Seven Up and the hourlong 7 Plus Seven) following a group of English children into adolescence and now young adulthood and then beyond. The series this year reached age 56, and 56 Up is said to be on its way to a theater near me, so I'm making haste to catch up aging with people who are, after all, just about my own age.

The declared motive motto for the series is the ominous Jesuit boast "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man," but even as early as 21, some of the fifteen or so subjects have begun to put the lie to that maxim, or at least are showing that it's true, but . . .

To be sure, poor little rich girl Suzy, thoroughly unpleasant at 7 and 14, remains thoroughly unpleasant at 21 (to be fair, you have to imagine that her parents are even worse), and her closest male equivalent, John, remains morally convinced of the rightness of the existing distribution of class privilege (but key word there is morally: John at least thinks about these issues, whereas Suzy's head seems never to have had a thought trespass on it). And East End tough Tony, though his dream of being a jockey ended in his teens, remains the same boy who declared at 7 the importance of knowing how to use one's fists.

But John's fellow proto-toff Charles, already wearing jeans and talking guardedly about hippies at 14, has by 21 come to examine the class system critically, perhaps his only point of agreement with John being that those of their privilege background are obliged to stay in England and bring their abilities to bear for the island's benefit. Nick, the only farmboy of the group, has succeeded at Oxford, while the middle-class Neil, perhaps the most exuberant 7-year-old in the bunch, has failed in his Oxbridge ambition, washed out of Aberdeen University in a year, and at 21 seems directionless and depressed to the verge of suicide.

I could yammer on and old (I haven't even mentioned the two boys from the orphanage, or the trio of girls from the East End, or Bruce, who began wanting to be a missionary and now chafes to admit his charitable tendencies), but hey, why don't you just start watching these yourself. The Jesuits may not have it quite right, but what is certain is that any life is the most compelling narrative there is.

Natural habitat

Attenberg

(2010)

Opening: the least-erotic, funniest girl-kissing-girl sequence ever.

Sweet sixteenish and never been otherwise kissed, Marina (Ariane Labed) occupies a circumscribed world: the only other occupants who matter are her more experienced friend Bella (Evangelia Randou), with whom she likes to go on silly walks in dresses identical but for symbolic colors; her terminally ill father, an architect and genuine Greek philosopher, with whom she likes to watch the wildlife documentaries of Sir David Attenborough; and the unnamed fare (Giorgos Lanthimos) of the car service for which she works, with whom she likes to play foosball and then talk nonstop while shedding her virginity.

Quirky without being false or ostentatious, just an absolutely lovely character study--rather like those Attenborough films.

Love and war

The Countess

(2009)

Look, I love Julie Delpy (who wrote, directed, and starred in this oddity), but what the what? First thing I want to know is: was the screenplay really in English, and if so, was it intentionally written to sound like a stilted translation, and if not, was it translated intentionally to sound like a stilted translation, and was the dubbing sometimes off, or was that just the Netflix stream? OK, that's more than one thing.

Oddly, the usual sources--the New York Times, RottenTomatoes.com--reveal little, except that the picture seems to have gone straight to video (no NYT review, only 2 on RT). How about Wikipedia? Well, there we find that it showed at Berlin and Cannes. And there's a link to an interview before she made the film, where she talks about the theme of female power in the 17th-century setting, and yes, that could have been a strong element, as might have been the narrative ambiguity (did she or did she not kill 400 virgins in order to keep herself young with their blood?--a potentially intriguing question, I think you'll agree), if only I hadn't been so distracted by everyone talking as I imagine characters in Harlequin Romances talk.

Parallel synchronized randomness

La science des rêves (The science of sleep)

(2006)

I remember being disappointed in this when I first saw it, and I had the same reaction this time, though at its surreal best, it's as beautiful as a dream can be. As in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry breaks our hearts, but here the payoff is more intellectual than emotional, and it just doesn't seem a fair trade.

Ben and Andrew make a porno

Humpday

(2009)

If it's set on the West Coast and has a plot, can it still be mumblecore? Humplecore?

About that plot: it's the sort of foolishness you'd come up with drunk and stoned at a party: old college buddies, one squarely married, the other footloose and arty, both ostensibly straight, are drunk and stoned at a party with a bunch of polyamorous artists when they hit upon the perfect project: they'll make a porn film, together.

What might have been a brainless goofy romp becomes a brainy goofy romp in the hands of writer-director Lynn Shelton--no accident, I suspect, that it took a woman to confront the whys of coming up with the idea in the first place, of feeling compelled to go through with it in the calm sobriety of the morning after, and of confronting all the realities of logistics and implications. In the process, all the sublimated homoeroticism of every buddy movie ever made, not to mention most great American novels, is mined and refined hammered into gold plate. OK, the metaphor got away from me, but still: a stunningly good film; see it.

The night of the jackal

Carlos

(2010)

I've spent far too many hours watching this tonight to devote more than a few minutes writing about it, but I have to say that while I enjoyed it, while I found it a very good film (or series of films), I'm not really clear how it made best-of-the-year lists.

In the narrative arc--a man who lives by violence drifts increasingly from his early oddly idealistic value system--Carlos is clearly meant to put us in mind of Michael Corleone, but if Michael's enterprises had gone as consistently awry as these, he'd have come home from that dinner at the Italian restaurant in a doggie bag.

A better iconic analogue might be Elvis Presley--addicted to notoriety, loose in his judgment of the best uses of his talent, and forever fighting the battle of the bulge. At his puffiest, Édgar Ramírez even resembles the King a bit. I guess the sequel should be a remake of Jailhouse Rock.

57 channels and nothing on

The Cable Guy

(1996)

I've been hearing for years that this is one of the most misunderstood and underrated films of the past couple of decades, and now I have proven it. Because, good god, it can't be as bad as I think it is; it can't be as unfunny and unrewarding in its squirm inducement as it seemed. Its advocates credit it with creating discomfort that somehow equals artistic achievement by demanding intellectual engagement, so my perception must just be wrong that what it elicits is the vicarious embarrassment that any jackass behaving idiotically in public can induce in us. I readily admit it: I have failed to understand it; I have failed to appreciate it properly; hell, I'll say it's better than Citizen Kane as long as you promise I'll never have to see it again.

Homeschooled

Kynodontas (Dogtooth)

(2009)

A. O. Scott ordered me today (well, technically tomorrow, in a Sunday section that comes on Saturday) to stream this Oscar®-nominated Greek film, and you know me: I can't say no to the Times.

One very strange and probably very good film, about a couple who shelters their (teenage? older?) son and two daughters to an absurd (and absurdist) extent, providing incongruous definitions for words that might jangle their complacency and never letting them stray from the grounds of their suburban home (the title comes from an article of faith: a child is ready for the father's freedom of a car only when one or the other ["it doesn't matter"] canine teeth falls out and grows back).

This might all work, in its way, but for the need to provide a sexual outlet for the son. The security guard from the father's plant--taken blindfolded to and from the house--becomes an inadvertent snake in the garden by providing one of the daughters videos of Jaws and Rocky. And how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm . . . ?

I'll give Scott the last word, because it's a good word: "a creepy, funny, elegantly shot allegory of something very weird in human nature (Language? Power? Sex? Family?)."

Ahoy, there, Captain Cook!

Up

(2009)

Well, I expected it to be good, else I wouldn't have made it my first watch of the new year, but what I didn't expect was that it would be It's a Wonderful Life, only without the annoyingly gender-conventional undermining of the spirit of adventure--this version provides two much more satisfactory channelings of that spirit.

That said, apart from an opening and a close that provide genuine transport, it's no more than pretty good Pixar entertainment.

We cut the hair

The Man Who Wasn't There

(2001)

Two eternal associations with this film: with seeing it in a Manhattan theater I can't identify from subsequent Manhattan movie trips, with my still-wife, but after, I believe, the official separation had begun, or if not, very close to it, after it had been decided; and then, with a friend who always used to joke about spoiling a movie for someone who hadn't seen it by saying, "It was so great when the flying saucer came down."

Anyway, not sure why I'd given it 4 Netflix stars in the past, but I've cut that to 3. Which is, still, after all, "Liked It."

Double indemnity

The Lady Eve

(1941)

Barbara Stanwyck as the same dame, Henry Fonda as the priggish snake lover, and a half-dozen of the best character actors in a nearly perfect screwball comedy, written and directed by Preston Sturges.

As a kid, I knew Stanwyck only from The Big Valley, and I didn't take her seriously. But seriously, she makes sexy funny and vice versa about as well as any star of her generation.