Il Deserto Rosso was Michelangelo Antonioni’s first foray into color and a painterly palette did he choose. He explores the themes of alienation in the modern world and the divorce between reality and spirituality. His scenes of industrialized post war Italy are both beautiful and frightening. Progress comes with a cost. Monica Vitti is extraordinary as the wife of the plant manager who suffers a mental breakdown in the face of modernity.
I rate this movie 8/10.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer, written and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, is the brilliant evocation of an American horror story. It was definitely the most disturbing film that I saw in 2017 and yet it made my Top 10 List.
I didn’t know what to expect when I started watching this film and I was slowly drawn into the seeming banality of the of the characters. The movie opens with a scene of open heart surgery performed by Stephen Murphy (Colin Farrell) which is nothing less than spectacular. This was a real surgery. It was filmed during an operation on a real patient who was undergoing quadruple bypass surgery.
In a subsequent scene early on in the film we see the famed heart surgeon making friends with a young man. We don’t know exactly why or who this young man is. Is he a family member? A friend? A neighbor? A little at a time the story unfolds and we learn that the boy’s father was a patient of the heart surgeon and that the father died on the operating table. We surmise that the doctor feels badly about the boy losing his father and he is making friends with him in some sort of an attempt to appease the boy and possibly mollify his own feelings of guilt.
Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan
Slowly they form an emotional bond and the doctor invites the boy over to meet his family. Everything seems to be normal at first but there is a creepy feeling that something just below the surface is not right.
Spoilers ahead
Martin befriends the children and forms an emotional attachment to Kim, the daughter. Before long a mysterious illness befalls both children and they lose the use of their legs. We learn later that somehow Martin has caused this illness to occur. He then makes a crucial demand upon Stephen in order to save their lives. It seems Martin blames the death of his father on Stephen. Martin demands that a sacrifice must be made in order to set things right. Stephen must make a horrible choice as to who in the family to sacrifice.
Nicole Kidman with the two children played by Sonny Suljic and Raffey Cassidy
This is where the killing of deer comes into play. The movie is loosely based on the myth of Iphigenia. In Greek mythology Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, was to be sacrificed for the sins of her father. He had killed a sacred deer belonging to Artemis. The goddess demanded in retribution that Agamemnon kill his daughter Iphigenia.
There are other disturbing aspects to this film There is a strange sexuality that exists between the doctor and his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman). Also, Anna has a sexual interlude with the anesthesiologist who was on duty on the day that Martin’s father died. This she did in order to get information from him about her husband’s condition on the day of the fateful surgery.
The scenes in film were shot in a manner to put one in mind of a series of Edward Hopper paintings. Which is to say they carried with them an emotional weight and a strange beauty.
Nicole Kidman was in fine form here as Anna, the doctor’s wife. Is there anything she can’t do? Colin Farrell was very good as Stephen Murphy, the surgeon and Barry Keoghan was sufficiently strange and creepy as Martin.
I liked this film but it is not for everyone. It was extremely disturbing and strangely cathartic.
I just love westerns. Not too many good ones come down the pike anymore but this one is pretty good. A bit slow and talky for an oater but that didn’t seem to bother me none. This is a thinking man’s western. With themes about the hatred of the other, brutality, love and death, and redemption, you know, the usual. Strong writing, directing and acting. Christian Bale is particularly convincing as Captain Blocker who must do his duty by escorting his old enemy Yellow Hawk back to his ancestral homeland in Montana. Complications ensue. People change. Photography of the American West is is achingly beautiful which is another reason to love westerns. Rate this 70%
2017 was a pretty good year for the movies. What I liked was the movies I liked were spread out pretty evenly throughout the year. Although, I did have to play catch up at the beginning of this year (2018) to see all the movies I wanted and needed to see.
My criteria for making the top 10 list were that first of all I had to actually see the film, secondly I had to really really like the film. It had to resonate with me. From there I looked at acting, writing, directing, cinematography, originality, story, thought provoking ideas, and technical aspects.
Here, then is my list of the top 10 movies for 2017.
Other films I liked but didn’t make the cut:
I just love newspapers and movies about newspapers. The Post (2017) rivals some of the best pictures from the past such as Citizen Kane (1941), The Front Page (1974), and All the President’s Men (1976). The Post probably has more in common with All the President’s Men than the others because both movies are about the same newspaper, the Washington Post, and the subject matter was similar; political intrigue. As a matter of fact, the Watergate break in happened the very next year after the publication of the Pentagon Papers and resulted in the resignation of an American president, Richard Nixon. But that is another story and another movie. These movies show the power of the press and its importance in American society. Justice Hugo Black once said, “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
The Post gives us a nostalgic look back at what the newspaper business used to be like. From the loud, busy, bustling news room to the Linotype operators and the press room, it was a miracle they were able to get a paper out on time as it was such a huge undertaking. Things have changed in the world of journalism since the advent of computers and the internet, but I found it fascinating to see the actual operation of getting a paper out on deadline. I’ve seen it before in real life. As a young Loss Control Representative two of my accounts were the Louisville Courier-Journal and Standard Gravure. Together they published two daily newspapers. It was my job six times a year to inspect their entire operation. It was a fascinating and exciting process to witness.
The Post is concerned with the publication of the infamous and so-called Pentagon Papers. When American military analyst Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) realizes the extent of the US government’s deception regarding the Vietnam War, he copies top-secret documents that would become the Pentagon Papers. Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post, played to perfection by Tom Hanks, discovers the New York Times has scooped them with an explosive expose on those papers. Nixon gains a court injunction on the New York Times prohibiting them from further publication of the Papers or what they have learned from them. Bradlees finds Ellsberg and obtains copies for himself and talks the owner of the Washington Post, Katherine Graham, into publishing them. Meryl Streep plays Katherine Graham in one of her best performances in years. The case goes before the Supreme Court and a ruling in favor the Times and the Post is rendered. One justice was quoted as saying, “The court rules in favor of the governed, not the governors.”
Steven Spielberg is not my favorite director, but that is just a matter of personal taste. He is unquestionably an American master filmmaker. I loved his Indiana Jones series and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But His masterpiece, in my opinion, was and always will be, Schindler’s List. The Post comes in a close second.
“Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find You all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, It humbles my heart, For You are everywhere.”
That line from an unknown poem pretty well defines the movie, The Shape of Water.
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water is pure movie magic. It is hard to peg exactly where this genre movie falls, but since del Toro was heavily influenced by Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), I’ll start there. This movie is much more than just a horror film. It is a period piece, a romantic thriller, and a spy movie, all wrapped into one. It explores the timeless themes of loneliness, alienation, isolation, being different from others in an intolerant society, and yes, falling in love with the other.
Sally Hawkins as Elisa Esposito
Sally Hawkins plays disaffected and lonely janitor Elisa Esposito. She works at a Aerospace research facility in Baltimore with her friend Zelda, (Octavia Spencer). Elisa is mute and communicates with the world in signs. The time is 1962 at the height of the cold war. Sometime while working her shift a specimen is brought into the lab that had been captured in the Amazon and is worshiped by the natives as a god. The creature is described by the military as the “asset.”
This asset is a humanoid type creature that Elisa is able to befriend. She discovers that he is intelligent and communicates with him in sign language. They develop quite a relationship together. When the creature becomes endangered Elisa plots to set him free in a rain canal in Baltimore. But first she smuggles him out of the facility and into her small apartment where she keeps him in her bathtub. While there they fall in love.
The creature has a curious way of glowing in blue colors when stimulated and is a marvel to watch.
Spoilers ahead: The military, in the form of Colonel Richard Strickland, is hot on their trail. He gets to the canal just as the creature is about to make his escape. Strickland shoots both the creature and Elisa. Miraculously the creature is able to heal himself of the gunshot wounds (he is a god after all) and also to heal Elisa. He grabs her up and leaps into the canal. He gives her gills so that she may breathe underwater and presumably they are able to live happily ever after.
I just loved this movie. This is why you go to the movies. You keep going to see movie after movie, hoping you will see one that you can connect with, hoping to see a movie as good as the best movie you ever saw, wanting to hit that high mark one more time, but seldom ever making it. This is Guillermo del Toro’s love letter to Hollywood and he has copied it to the rest of us. It is genius.
The Shape of Water jumps to the top of my Best Movies of the Year list for 2017. I give it a 10/10. The only other movie that I rated that high this year was Blade Runner 2049. I am not sure which one will get the top slot, but I have to admit, I am a sucker for a good loves story.
Movie Review
Either this was pretentious crap or it was pure genius. Whatever it was I loved every minute of it. Best viewed as an allegory with plenty of religious references thrown in for good measure. Definitely a horror story based on a Kafkaesque nightmare. Aronofsky is said to have written mother! in a fever dream lasting five days.
Known for such pictures as Black Swan (2010), Noah (2014), and The Wrestler (2008), writer-director Darren Aronofsky brings his apocalyptic vision to the screen. Him, played by Javier Bardem, is a poet who is suffering from writer’s block. His beautiful wife, half his age, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is restoring their Victorian home which was destroyed by a fire. She is the titular character known as “mother!” They are visited by a mysterious couple who show up out of nowhere: “Man” and “Woman,” played respectively by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer. Their two grown children (Brian Gleeson and Domhnall Gleeson) arrive soon after. They are known as “younger brother” and “oldest son.” A murder ensues and the house springs forth a stigmata. Pretty soon we begin to realize something pretty strange is going on here and paradise is not what it seems to be.
Spoiler Alert!
Inspired by Rosemary’s Baby and Luis Bunel’s, Exterminating Angel, I also saw echoes of Stardust Memory and 8 ½, but I may be projecting. The house represents earth, Javier Bardem is God the Creator, and Jennifer Lawrence is Mother Nature. Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer are Adam and Eve, and The Gleason Brothers are Cain and Abel.
When He breaks through His writer’s block and completes his masterpiece mother gets pregnant and things really get interesting. The house is besieged by the writer’s fans and all hell literally breaks loose.
The acting is uniformly excellent. Javier Bardem plays his character with a smooth detached quality. Jennifer Lawrence carries the film with her close up reaction shots that fill the screen. Michelle Pfeiffer, still beautiful after all this time, plays her character with devilish delight.
This movie has garnered plenty of controversy. When it was shown at Cannes, half the audience stood up and clapped and half the audience stayed in their seats and booed. You either love it or hate it. If you take someone to see this movie one of you is going to love it and one of you is going to hate it, which will make for some good dinner conversation later. This, I think is a mark of a good film, one that makes you want to talk about it and one that stays in your mind long after you’ve seen it.
It’s not for everyone, but I highly recommend this thought provoking film. And to quote Mr. Aronofsky, “This serving is best drunk as a single dose in a shot glass. Knock it back. Salute!”
Debut film by Nicholas Ray. A film noir that is a cut above the rest. A genuine love story between two innocents that was bound to fail.
Ray did some innovative things with sound and one of the earliest overhead shots shot from a helicopter. He went on to direct such films of note as, Rebel Without a Cause, Johnny Guitar, and King of Kings.
They Live by Night was remade in 1974 by Robert Altman using the title, Thieves Like Us, which is the title of the novel the two movies was based upon. It was a pretty good flick as well.
Don’t confuse these two well made and entertaining movies with the execrable, Live By Night, directed by Ben Afleck in 2016. It is unwatchable.
They Live by Night (1948), I give it an eight out of ten.
Well, I’ve seen Stalker two times now and I had to ask myself both times, whoa! What was it I just saw? It’s like watching a movie while on acid but without the acid. I can’t stop thinking about it. The movie definitely has a certain haunting quality about it
Stalker is a feature film by master Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, based on the short novel, Roadside Picnic, written by Arkadiy Stugatskiy and Boris Stugatskiy. The brothers also wrote the screenplay along with Tarkovsky. I am relatively new to Tarkovsky, but better late than never. Having seen this film two times, I now I want to see every film in his oeuvre.
This is a film about a quest into a zone in search of a room that will grant you the one thing you desire most. The zone appears to be sentient and dangerous. It requires the skills of a stalker to enter the zone and locate the room. On this journey Stalker takes with him two characters from the Russian intelligentsia, a dispirited writer and a hopeless scientist. The job of a stalker is illegal and entering the zone is forbidden. The zone may have been created by a meteorite or it may be inhabited by aliens. This is never made clear as many things are never made clear in this very peculiar film.
The zone in the film was inspired by a nuclear accident that transpired near Chelyabinsk in 1957. But it presages a larger and more serious event that occurred at Chernobyl in 1986. At Chernobyl, following the disaster, an area extending 30 kilometers was cordoned off in all directions from the plant and designated the “Zone of Alienation.”
Evocative of the gulag with echoes of a nuclear disaster the zone is alive with possibilities and traps and most of them are deathtraps. It has been described as sentient and in one scene one can clearly see the ground breathing or at the very least undulating. There is water everywhere and submerged beneath the surface is the detritus of a civilization gone by.
The movie starts off in sepia tones then abruptly switches to color once the protagonists get to the zone, then switches back to sepia when they get back. There are more changes to color towards the end when we see Monkey, Stalker’s crippled child.
The writer and professor meet up at a dingy bar at what looks like the edge of civilization and wait for the stalker. After Stalker arrives the trio leave the bar and go to a railway station. There ensues a chase scene of sorts as the travelers try to elude the armed guards and secure a small trolley car to ride the rails. They are shot at by the soldiers but manage to make it out through the gate of the barbed wire topped fencing and onto the tracks with the trolley car. What follows is a long tracking shot as Stalker, Writer, and Professor are transported in the direction of the zone. The rhythmic clanking of the car on the tracks has a lulling effect on the audience and the riders, then on a sudden, the sepia tone turns to color and we are in the lush green environs of the zone.
According to Tarkovsky, writing in his book, Sculpting in Time, “The setting of Stalker is a mysterious place that was reportedly created by an asteroid and may contain other world forces. It doesn’t symbolize anything. The zone is the zone. It is life. An allegory about human consciousness, the necessity of faith in an increasingly secular world, and the ugly, unpleasant dreams and desires that reside in the hearts of man.” The writer and professor may be thought of as archetypes, but no, they are really flesh and blood characters into whose personalities we delve deeply for psychological insight. The movie examines the psychological , philosophical, metaphysical, and existential dimensions of life and man’s relation to it.
The film resists interpretation. It is quite literally anything you think it is, like the zone itself. The zone is always changing, adapting itself to what is going on in your head. The zone seems to have a consciousness of its own. When you step into the room your deepest wishes will come true. What will be revealed to you in the room is who you really are. Stalker says the most important moment of your life is when you enter the room. The main thing is to believe. Yet, when they arrive at the room nobody wants to go in. Stalker says stalkers are not allowed in the room (it is forbidden). The other two don’t want to go in. But, the camera ends up in the room and the audience is given a POV from the room into the anteroom where the Stalker, Writer, and Professor are sitting and ruminating.
Cut back to the bar where it all started. We are now once more in sepia. We don’t know how they got back. The trio disbands and go their separate ways. Stalker’s wife has appeared with their child, Monkey. They go home. The last sequence returns to color when we watch Stalker carry Monkey on his shoulders back home and again in the last scene where Monkey telekinetically moves glasses across a table. It turns out Stalker is the more cultured, educated, and intelligent one in the film, more so than the writer or the scientist. In the film’s finale a bookshelf appears stuffed with books.
According to Tarkovsky, the existence of the zone or the room in which wishes are realized serves only as a pretext to discover the personalities of the three protagonists of the film. Stalker is the last idealist. Writer declares, “A man exists in order to create works of art.” “The world is ruled by cast-iron laws, and it’s insufferably boring,” says Writer.” Tarkovsky further elucidates, “It seemed to me that one could make a film with the unity of place, of time, and of action. These classic Aristotelian unities allows one to arrive at an authentic cinema. The subject permitted me to express in a very concentrated manner the philosophy of the contemporary intellectual, or rather his condition.”
There are 142 shots in Stalker in 161 minutes of run time. The average film has between 2000 and 3000 shots. So that gives you some idea how slow it is compared to, say, an action flick of today. Some of the Russian distributors asked Tarkovsky if he could speed it up. He said no. If anything he would slow it down. That way it would eliminate the kind people who shouldn’t be seeing the film in the first place
There is much symbolism in the movie despite Tarkovsky’s claims to the contrary and his disavowal of the use of symbols. Symbols abound such as the dog, birds, a sand dune filled room, telekinesis and, the meat grinder. The writer at one point dons a crown of thorns. But, what some may call a symbol Tarkovsky may call a metaphor. “We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image, as opposed to a symbol.”
“In the end, everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love.”
References:
Atomic Blonde is long on style but short on substance. More art and less matter you might say. The plot is a little messy and hard to follow. But that didn’t seem to matter too much to me while watching it as it was gorgeous to look and riveted my attention throughout its 115 minute run time.
The movie takes place in Berlin, on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the cold war among the shifting alliances of the various powers, super and otherwise. Charlize Theron plays Loraine Broughton, an MI6 spy, who is sent to Berlin to deal with an espionage ring that has recently killed an undercover agent. It is her mission to root out a suspected double agent. Plenty of mayhem and action sequences ensue.
I normally don’t like action thriller movies but this is a cut above the rest and is done extraordinarily well. The director, David Leitch, was himself a stuntman on many movies and co-directed the cult classic John Wick. This is his directorial debut.
Charlize Theron is a wonder as the ice cold action hero of this thriller doing hand to hand combat with an assortment of Russian goons and East German Secret Police. She is gorgeous to look at and a sexual bombshell.
The action set pieces and stunts just keep on coming and are extremely well orchestrated as a finely tuned choreographed ballet of violence. They are clever, original, and brilliantly executed.
Great summer fun, two thumbs way up!
