For Film Comment: On Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life

Posted on December 9, 2019 by sheila

I wrote about A Hidden Life, Terrence Malick’s stunning – and extremely Catholic – latest, for Film Comment. It opens this Friday. If you can, this one should be seen on the big screen. I know it’s not possible for everyone.

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Review: Uncut Gems (2019)

Posted on December 9, 2019 by sheila

Well, you all need to see this. My review of Uncut Gems up at Rogerebert.com.

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R.I.P. Caroll Spinney

Posted on December 9, 2019 by sheila

Caroll Spinney, legendary puppeteer and creator of the characters Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street, has died at the age of 85. I knew this day was coming, of course. But I still was not prepared.

A couple of years ago, I reviewed the wonderful documentary I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story for Ebert.

Rest in peace. It’s been a life of service. Amazing artist.

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50 Best Albums, by Brendan O’Malley, #3. Mike Doughty, Skittish

Posted on December 9, 2019 by sheila

My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. He did series on books he loved, and albums he loved. I thought it would be fun to put up some of the stuff here. So we’ll start with his list of 50 Best Albums. I’ll put up one every Monday.

Brendan’s list of 50 Best Albums is part music-critique and part memoir and part cultural snapshot.

I have always loved these essays, because I love to hear my brother talk. I am happy to share them with you!

50 Best Albums, by Brendan O’Malley

3. Mike Doughty – Skittish

Once again I was driving the streets of southern Rhode Island late at night. These streets are the geography of my soul, the areas I travel regardless of where I actually live. In this case I was physically in Rhode Island but in a larger sense I will ALWAYS be driving the streets of southern Rhode Island late at night.

I was listening to WRIU, the radio station at the University of Rhode Island. This is the station that I first heard The Replacements on, the station that was the soundtrack to my high school punk misadventures, the station that was like a small dark portal to the outside world the entire time I went to college which feels like it lasted 25 years.

Cut to a post 9/11 me. I am a raw nerve. I am struggling mightily to handle the aftermath of a painful divorce, balancing that with the joys of a new relationship, the difficulty of adjusting to a new model of parenthood, one that necessarily must include time spent away from my son. Throw in a little hint of drug/alcohol addiction and major financial stress and what you have is a walking powder keg. 9/11 has left me incapable of dealing with any of this in a healthy way. I’d probably been losing that fight before those motherfuckers blew up my city.

I am back home for a summer stretch. Somewhere in some little dusty studio some college DJ plays a song. It shoots out into the ether. What are the odds that I would be one of the few to hear it? The station can’t have a very large audience, especially in the summer, and this was a late night show. If there were a thousand people tuning in I would be flabbergasted.

The song was an acoustic doozy and it contained the refrain, “Thank you, Lord, for sending out the F train to me”. It also referenced Park Slope, my neighborhood, and basically seemed like someone had read the secret diary of my heart and put it to music.

I had to pull over. I cried. I had a cathartic response. I don’t think I had my cellphone on me so I had to wait til I got back to my parent’s house to call in to find out what it was. As usual the DJ didn’t say anything about it when he recapped his play list. I listened and listened hoping that he would say, ‘And that song was…’ but he didn’t.

There was no answer at the station. The next day I called again and spoke with someone who told me who the DJ was and that they didn’t keep logs of what they played. So I’d have to call again when his show was on. In the meantime I feverishly searched for the song on the Internet using key words…”F train”. “Park Slope”. The show had been categorized as an emo music hour. None of these combinations came up with anything on Google.

The unnamed song haunted me. I asked music aficionados if they’d ever heard anything like it. No one knew what I was talking about. I didn’t have the artist name or the song name. All I knew was that it was a song about the F train.

Finally I hit upon the right mixture of words and something came up. Mike Doughty. He’d been the lead singer of a band called Soul Coughing that had had some success in the 1990’s. One song I knew called “Circle”.

I liked it but it was nothing compared to the stripped-down clarity and emotional wallop I’d experienced.

The song was indeed called “Thank You Lord For Sending Me The F Train”. The album was only available through Doughty’s website. I quickly ordered a copy and prepared myself to be underwhelmed by everything else on the album.

My fears were unfounded as “Thank You” is merely one of many transcendent songs. There is a burning quality to this album, something perfectly realized yet totally out of control. I have heard other Doughty songs and albums and while I can appreciate them – this is one for the desert island.

I’d take you through the songs and try to describe the perfection inherent in each. But that would be like trying to print the echo of the map I have of the streets of southern Rhode Island into your brain. You have your own maps to navigate. I just got lucky enough to hear someone sing about a street I was living on.

And Mike Doughty, if you’re out there, I need to let you know that you somehow built a bridge from Park Slope right to those Rhode Island streets, you clued me in that I had a new home, that I’d put down roots, that my homeland had been attacked and that my response to that was about as appropriate as could be. Thank you Lord indeed.

— Brendan O’Malley

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Review: The Disappearance of My Mother (2019)

Posted on December 6, 2019 by sheila

I reviewed the new documentary, The Disappearance of My Mother, “about” (sort of) Italian supermodel Benedetta Barzini, for Ebert.

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For Film Comment: On Kristen Stewart

Posted on December 5, 2019 by sheila

As long as she keeps working, I’ll keep wanting to write about her. For my latest column over at Film Comment.

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NYFCC winners announced!

Posted on December 5, 2019 by sheila

So yesterday, the members of the NYFCC, yours truly included, sat down in a windowless room and voted. At one point I murmured, “Jesus, this has been a really strong year.” And it really has, but not until I saw it all in the same place, being voted on, did I really get the sense of just how good a year it’s been. At any rate, here are our winners. Scribbled in my serial killer handwriting, as we voted.

Two additional things: we are giving a special award to Indie Collect, in honor of the essential work they do in preserving independent American films, in danger of being lost, and another special award to Randy Newman, for his lifelong contributions to film composing. RANDY NEWMAN. AHHHHHH.

I was also on the committee judging the Student Critic Contest, reading all the reviews written by the entrants. The real standout was Cole Kronman, a student at NYU. This comes with a $2,000 prize.

So it’s all very exciting.

Many of my #1 picks were eventually voted in as winners by the group – so that always feels good (if you’re interested, that would be: Best Actor, Best Supporting, Best Picture, and Best Screenplay), but I’m very happy with our choices. The main reason I’m happy is the wide variety of films represented. It’s exciting when one film “sweeps” multiple categories – see Roma last year – but it’s also really cool when it’s the OPPOSITE. And I’m SO happy about Antonio Banderas. Many other worthy candidates, but this award is a good way to signal to people “See Pain and Glory, for God’s sake.”

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Supernatural, Season 15, episode now I forget

Posted on December 5, 2019 by sheila

Have at it!

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Little Richard’s “I Saw Her Standing There”: when the cover vaporizes your memory of the original

Posted on December 5, 2019 by sheila

(… and the original is one of my favorite Beatles tunes. But Little Richard takes it somewhere ELSE.)

He and Jerry Lee Lewis are the last ones standing.

Let’s appreciate him while he’s still here. Happy birthday, Little Richard.

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November 2019 Viewing Diary

Posted on December 2, 2019 by sheila

The Best of Everything (1959; d. Jean Negulesco)
I love this movie so much. I read the book this year (for the first time). I highly recommend both. This is the wellspring from which Mad Men sprung.

The Devil Next Door (2019; d. Yossi Bloch and Daniel Sivan)
This is an interesting documentary series on Netflix about suspected Nazi – who had settled in Cleveland, with the Ukrainian community as camouflage – and the subsequent trial in Israel. A total circus.

Spotlight (2015; d. Tom McCarthy)
I have seen this movie many times by this point. It satisfies. It’s an incredible story of the investigative process, and how much of journalism is basically … boring, meticulous, fact-checking, administrative … but that’s the thing: we need journalists to do this painstaking work for us. Newspapers are not a business so much as they are a public trust, and that’s what Spotlight is about. I reviewed for Ebert.

Supernatural, Season 15, episode 4 “Atomic Monsters” (2019; d. Jensen Ackles)
I agree with you, Becky.

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018; d. Hu Bo)
This is definitely one of the strongest films of the year. It makes me sad to say that since Hu Bo committed suicide after completing the film (which is based on his novel). What a talent. To say the film is “depressing” isn’t even coming close to expressing the bleak hopeless mood throughout. “Depressing” is not a helpful term. It should be abolished. The film swims in hopelessness, in no-way-out-ness, which you see through the experiences of four different characters, all of whom live in the same apartment building. I watched this very lengthy film in one sitting, on a rainy grey Saturday. It really affected me.

High Life (2019; d. Claire Denis)
This movie is INSANE and I loved every second of it. It is drowning in sperm. There. That’s my review.

Fire in Paradise (2019; d. Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepar)
A very upsetting Netflix documentary about the Paradise fire last year.

Chernobyl (2019; d. Johan Renck)
My second time through. It’s fantastic.

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (2019; d. Matt Wolf)
A really interesting documentary. At first, it’s about this one interesting woman, who starts taping everything off her television, everything – for reasons she couldn’t really articulate. 35 years later it is a massive archive. And then the documentary shifts into profound waters, about the importance of archiving, of libraries, of preservation. I highly recommend it. I reviewed for Ebert.

Candleshoe (1977; d. Norman Tokar)
It was so much fun watching this again, in preparation for my Film Comment essay on “tomboy films.”

Love & Basketball (2000; d. Gina Prince-Bythewood)
I also re-visited this favorite for the “tomboy films” essay. I love it so much.

Appropriate Adult, episodes 1 and 2 (2011; d. Julian Jarrold)
I saw this back when it aired. It’s very very good, and quite frightening. I like Emily Watson a lot, particularly in what are – essentially – procedurals. Watching this and Chernobyl basically back to back drove the point home. She’s excellent in this type of material. You BELIEVE her.

Supernatural, Season 15, episode 5 “Proverbs 17:3” (2019; d. Richard Speight Jr.)
I was okay with this one. I like “the boys” on the road. I could do without the mansion-sized tent. There’s a thin-ness at work, and I don’t understand many of the choices. Like, I don’t know what’s going on “over there” (as I call it). Why cast three identical blondes? It’s okay if you want to do that, but I need to feel there’s some thought behind it, some reason why? I’m just not getting that sense. I’m not sure the purpose of “bringing back Lilith” – especially if you’re not going to use the same actress. I feel like they’re just throwing everything at us, right now, in the mad rush towards the end … knowing that some of it will please some people, other stuff will please other people … it’s fan service, I guess, but it’s all over the place.

Uncut Gems (2019; d. Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie)
This movie, people. THIS MOVIE. And ADAM SANDLER. Believe the hype. I’ll be reviewing it.

Queen & Slim (2019; d. Melina Matsoukas)
An epic-scoped parable. I reviewed for Ebert.

Supernatural, Season 15, episode 6 “Golden Time” (2019; d. John F. Showalter)
There’s one small moment that indicates my issue with …. everything that’s going on. On this show and everywhere else. In the “fight scene” – where ghosts apparently can strangle each other … Eileen has a “win” – I can’t remember what exactly – and she pauses for a moment, to look at Sam, with a huge “I’m awesome” grin on her face. YUK. It’s pandering. It’s like that moment in Lord of the Rings, when the chick rips off her helmet and her long hair billows and the audience bursts into applause. Okay, fine. She’s a fierce girl. But truly fierce girls don’t STOP in the middle of a huge battle to revel in their awesome-ness. Think back to Eileen’s first appearance. How logical she was, how competent, how she was competent in a way the boys were – she had worked to become a brilliant hunter, on her own, an amazing tracker. She’s not the type to have a moment where she gets to be all pleased with herself. It’s not her style. I know it’s a small thing, but it’s representative of a huge thing elsewhere – all this “you go girl girl power” stuff – which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. A hangover from Wayward Sisters. Imagine Sam or Dean stopping in the middle of a fight to throw a happy self-pleased grin at a nearby person. Wouldn’t that be silly? Yes. It would. And it’s silly when Eileen does it too. That’s where the “here, let’s give the Eileen fangirls something they will LOVE” feeling from the writer’s room is most explicit. They’ve got one eye on “us” out here, and the show suffers as a result.

The Morning Show (2019)
Allison and I just binge-watched it. I haven’t read the lukewarm reviews so I have no idea what the complaints are. I think it’s phenomenal. And complex. It’s not a black-and-white story, it’s actually nuanced. Maybe that’s the issue. Now is “not the time” for nuance, I guess. Well, fuck that. Plus, it’s awesome to see Jennifer Aniston in this role, not ingratiating, not even particularly likable, but you love her. Everyone’s good, though. I’m really into it.

Miracle (2004; d. Gavin O’Connor)
I’m so excited my nephew William has just discovered the “miracle on ice” story. Little did he know his Aunt is a Miracle on Ice buff! We watched the movie together on Thanksgiving night and had some good discussions about it.

The Disappearance of My Mother (2019; d. Beniamino Barrese)
I’m reviewing for Ebert.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of my Voice (2019; d. Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman)
I am so glad this documentary exists now! I hadn’t realized how much I needed it. I cried. Hearing Dolly Parton … Emmylou Harris … Don Henley … Kevin Kline … pay tribute to her … forget it. I was a wreck.

Cafe Society (2016; d. Woody Allen)
Working on something. Needed to re-watch. I like this movie a lot. Has a lot in common with Radio Days, and it maybe works better in Radio Days, but I like the “family collage” approach.

Pain and Glory (2019; d. Pedro Almodóvar)
One of the best films of the year. It laid me FLAT, I tell you. I never wanted it to end. And Banderas … one of his best performances. So pained, fragile, truthful. People should be flocking to see this movie.

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