December 2024 Viewing Diary

The Last Showgirl (2024; d. Gia Coppola)
Pamela Anderson gives my favorite performance by a woman this year. I reviewed the film for Ebert.

Dark Waters (2019; d. Todd Haynes)
I love movies about rapacious evil corporations, and a dogged individual who takes these fuckers down. Todd Haynes brings a solemnity and also a gleam to the visuals – the glass windows of the downtown buildings, the dizzying reflections, compared to the grit and roughness of the countryside, those bleak farms and suburbs, all the greys and blacks. Mark Ruffalo’s character is so interesting! And so is his wife. I honestly think this is one of Anne Hathaways’ best. She has an intense scene with Tim Robbins in the hospital and she crushes it. Great film.

The End (2024; d. Joshua Oppenheimer)
I reviewed this dystopian musical, starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon, for Ebert.

Juror #2 (2024; d. Clint Eastwood)
It’s so good! This could very well be Clint Eastwood’s final film. He’s in his 90s. Extraordinary filmmaker and artist. Nicholas Hoult is having a YEAR, as they say. He’s in three major films and each role is totally different. I have such fond memories of him as a child in About a Boy. He’s very very good.

Subtraction (2022; d. Mani Haghighi)
Wow, this film is haunting and strange: one of my other favorite “genres” along with corporation-corruption: doppelganger movies. Starring Taraneh Alidoosti, whom I’ve written about a lot. She plays a double role. Two women who look exactly alike. To say more would be to ruin the twists and turns of this extremely emotional film, with such a destabilized mood and feel. What would it be like to have another you running around? And yet the characters are so different. One is sleek and polished, one is almost puffy with her despair and worry. You instantly know which one is which when she’s onscreen. Great acting job. But they’re all good. This one does not have US distribution (and you can see it is dated 2022. I wonder if Taraneh getting arrested somehow buried it.) People should be able to see it.

Three Wise Girls (1931; d. William Beaudine)
The “three wise girls” are played by Jean Harlow, Mae Clarke, and Marie Prevost. This was Harlow’s first starring role. I wonder if people not familiar with Jean Harlow, beyond her image in glam shots, etc. – would be surprised by how natural she is as an actress? This Pre-Code features Harlow as Cassie, a small-town girl who decides to follow the lead of an old friend, and move to the big city. She wants the glamorous independent life it seems her friend Gladys (Mae Clarke) has. The reality is a little different, though. The friend works as a model – which seems very glamorous, and Cassie gets a job as a model too – but Gladys is essentially a “kept” woman, living in a penthouse paid for her by her rich (married) boyfriend. The third wise girl is Dot, Cassie’s roommate. Dot works from the apartment, in an early example of a remote job, and is a wisecracker, who develops a crush on a chaffeur – and honestly Dot is the only one who keeps her head about her in the big city. The details are what makes it. Each character is distinct, the three women all give very good performances.

Out of Here (2013; d. Donal Foreman)
Criterion was streaming three of Foreman’s films, and I highly recommend checking out this Irish filmmaker’s work. Out of Here is the story of a young Irish guy who returns home to Dublin after a year in Australia. He’s broken up with his girlfriend and kind of can’t get over her. He re-enters the swirl of Dublin night-life, reconnecting with old friends but … they aren’t in college anymore. Might be time to start growing up. But how? A very honest funny charming film.

Say Nothing (2024; d. Michael Lennox, Mary Nighy, Anthony Byrne, Alice Seabright)
The series gets side-tracked by the High Drama of the Price sisters (understandably, I want to make clear. The Price sisters are a VIBE). It’s not that they’re tangential to the story, of course they are crucial figures in untangling the present-day mystery of what happened to Jean McConville, but … the real story is Jean McConville, and how the Belfast Project played a role in all of it, or at least the fallout. I mean, it’s definitely there. But there are a couple of episodes featuring JUST the adventures of the two teenage girls in berets joining the IRA and blowing up a building in London (and getting busted immediately). Then we have more episodes showing Dolours’ marriage to Stephen Rea, her alcoholism, etc. I feel like none of that is actually the point, although fascinating. Dolours took over the narrative – and this is understandable, again, but for a couple of episodes I forgot about Jean McConville. The oral history project also made international headlines, due to Boston College’s role in all of it (look it up: it’s very recent history). I followed all of these events in real time because I know two of the main figures in the story – Brendan Hughes was best man at their wedding. They were both interviewed heavily for Patrick Radden Keefe’s book. I stayed with them when I was in Belfast – and, while I had no idea at the time of course – the Belfast Project was being compiled while I was there. Coincidentally, and weirdly, I’m also connected to the Boston College “liaison” of this whole thing (my dad’s Irish book collection is housed at BC – purchased by the guy who was ALSO the famous liaison – this “liaison” was at my dad’s wake). I only mention this because it’s weird to be adjacent to these massive events. The series is very well done, again, and I was engrossed by it (horrified, saddened, outraged). But there are definitely conversatinos to be had about the book and the series. This is a must-read.. I trust my friends, who were there, who lived it, who had a huge part in telling this story. And I know they are proud of their part in it (and approve of how they were presented). That matters.

Shopworn (1932; d. Nick Grinde)
A Pre-Code I haven’t seen which is always exciting. A young Barbara Stanwyck plays a girl who, after her father is killed, gets a job as a waitress with her horribly strict aunt and uncle. She grew up surrounded by men in a labor camp – so she knows how to handle the flirty guys asking her out as she tries to ring them out. (I love the subliminal “No Sale” on the cash register). She has a “reputation”, even though she hasn’t done anything. Before you know it, she’s sneaking out with a boyfriend (Regis Toomey). He is a very nice guy, but his snooty-dowager mother forbids her precious son to have anything to do with that bad girl. Regis Toomey was a stolid regular character actor (who, near the end of his career, played a stern priest in the Elvis movie Change of Habit): Toomey rarely paid romantic parts so this was cool to see.

Anthony Jeselnik: Fire in the Maternity Ward (2019; d. Marcus Raboy)
I’ve been very turned off by the way standup comedy has been co-opted by these muscle-men roided-out misogynists who position themselves as free speech warriors, and then whine and bitch when they get criticized. The Joe Rogan effect. For such tough guys, they sure are whiny snowflakes. I was talking with my brother about this and he recommended I check out Anthony Jeselnik. I did. I am now obsessed. He’s doing something very different. And he’s now being very vocal about how much he thinks the whole comedian-podcast culture has hurt standup comedy. His jokes are vicious and dark and not for everyone but it’s different from these rich unfunny guys getting up and complaining about mean comments on YouTube and calling it a “Netflix comedy special”.

Lady of the Dunes: Hunting the Cape Cod Killer (2024; showrunner Maija Norris)
This is a terrible story and even though it all happened in my (general) neck of the woods, I had never heard of it before. Let’s hear it for the lesbian cop who devoted her career – and lost her career – trying to solve this case.

Anthony Jeselnik: Bones and All (2024; d. Bill Benz)
See what I mean? I’m obsessed. This dropped in November. He’s carved out his own weird little lane. He’s a loner. I’ve been watching interviews with him, and I’m fascinated. He’s smart. He thinks deeply about what he’s doing. He’s a huge reader. Sally Rooney is one of his favorite authors. I could go on. In a conversation about books that should be on high school curriculum, he recommended Play It as It Lays. Play It as It Lays. What?? I want to interview him about books and his reading habits. Just putting it out there.

Babygirl (2024; d. Halina Reijn)
I reviewed for Ebert. I see the film as a comedy, or a comic-opera – with elements of both. Or maybe it’s more like a fable. I don’t see this as a typical “erotic” film where sex is seen as this big serious thing that really is best within the confines of marriage. Still thinking about it and looking forward to seeing it again.

American Psycho (2000; d. Mary Harron)
The tone of this captures a vibe – the snarky halfway-soulless Bret Easton Ellis vibe, and Harron establishes this very bold tone, and it’s carried into the filmmaking, the production design (so many mirrors), the casting. It’s a commentary on Wall Street bros and the fucked-up male value system that dehumanizes others, especially women. The tone is funny, though. I love Mary Harron.

The Order (2024; d. Justin Krezel)
This is so good. Jude Law has been working for 25 years. I think this is his best performance. Based on a true story. Nicholas Hoult again. White supremacists up in Idaho, the Northwest. The killing of the radio host. The FBI, the “order” – an “offshoot” of Aryan Nation – blah blah all those fucking losers. It’s gorgeous film-making too.

Archipelago of Earthen Bones – to Bunya (2024; d. Malena Szlam)
A 20-minute films featuring a series of dissolves showing volcanic mountains from Chile to the Bunya Mountains in Australia. It’s haunting. And there were parts that were almost frightening, and I’m not sure why. Suddenly the camera would move, and I’d have a visceral reaction to it.

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024; d. Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich)
Zita Hanrot plays Suzanne Césaire, a surrealist writer who only wrote seven essays, but those essays are extremely influential and establish her as a major figure, in not just surrealism but Afro-Caribbean anti-colonial resistance. Hunt-Ehrich’s contemplative experimental work is an act of redress, or reclamation. Césaire destroyed most of her work. At one point Hanrot looks right at the camera and says, “We are making a film about an artist who didn’t want to be remembered.”

Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of The Dana Carvey Show (2017; d. Josh Greenbaum)
I wept with laughter watching this documentary about the short-lived Dana Carvey Show, starring the then-unknown Stephen Colbert, Louis Ck, and Steve Carell. I remember that show. Germans Who Say Nice Things.

 
 
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