{"id":182974,"date":"2022-12-03T10:25:15","date_gmt":"2022-12-03T15:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=182974"},"modified":"2022-12-03T11:32:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-03T16:32:18","slug":"november-2022-viewing-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=182974","title":{"rendered":"November 2022 Viewing Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something in the Dirt<\/strong><\/em> (2022; d. Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson)
\nI really liked this. If you like losing yourself in conspiracy theories – without being, like, a QAnon-type ready to shoot up a pizza parlor – then this is super fun. I reviewed for Ebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Argentina 1985<\/strong><\/em> (2022; d. Santiago Mitre)
\nArgentina, 1985<\/em> is my kind of movie and I really liked it. I’m biased towards it already due to its subject matte: military dictatorships, courtroom\/investigative dramas, the catastrophe of the “disappeared” in Latin America, as well as an underdog public prosecutor facing death threats going up against a strong institutional edifice (the military, the juntas, the whole shebang), the lies people tell themselves, the lies people insist on believing in, because if they actually admitted the truth, they would have to acknowledge the horrors they helped support. Based on a true story. Like I said, I’m already biased towards something like this – but I felt it was really good, and moving, really good acting, etc.<\/p>\n

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Unforgotten<\/em><\/strong> (2018-2021)
\nMum told me about this one. I decided to watch at least the pilot, and then, whaddya know, I binged the whole thing in a couple of days. It is EXCELLENT. <\/p>\n

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Eight is Enough<\/em><\/strong>, Season 5, episode 13, “Vows” (1981; d. Irving J. Moore)
\nThis was a revelation. I put up my post about Ralph Macchio on his birthday, where I write about an episode of Eight is Enough<\/i> that saved my life. Knowing what I know now (that bipolar swarmed my brain at age 12, alongside my first period, cuz that’s how it happens for girls, good times) … I don’t think “saved my life” is an exaggeration. It’s amazing to me that I only saw the episode once – maybe one more time in re-runs? It’s not like Eight is Enough<\/i> is in constant syndication rotation. It’s also not out on box set. I was never a big fan of the show, but I tuned in because of RALPH. And this one episode BURNED INTO MY SOUL. I posted about it on Instagram and – amazingly – a woman said that mp4s of each episode have been uploaded – and she provided a link. So I was able to watch it again! The Ralph Macchio post was written totally from memory: look how much detail remains in my head<\/a>. Incredible: Watching the episode again, I was amazed at how much I remembered. It’s all accurate. That’s how much of an impression it made on me. The rest of the episode was like walking into an altered reality and it made me think, “……….. This was a hit show?” It’s wild because … there’s a laugh track<\/i>. And CLEARLY there isn’t an audience there. It’s very strange. And why are all these ADULTS hanging around the house?? And they all appear to be the same age! Anyway, it was truly amazing to watch this episode again. Thank you random stranger on the internet!! I watched the silliness and had a moment where I said – to the episode – “Thank you for being there when I needed it.” Not kidding. <\/p>\n

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The Glass Key<\/strong><\/em> (1942; d. Stuart Heisler)
\nAlan Ladd and Veronica Lake, together again. They had such amazing chemistry, particularly because he was so tight-lipped, tough, taciturn, wary. Here, he’s not as sociopathic as he is in This Gun for Hire<\/i>, but compelling nonetheless. I love her. And Brian Donlevy is great too.<\/p>\n

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Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes<\/strong><\/em> (2022; d. Joe Berlinger)
\nThe next installment of Joe Berlinger Serial Killers on Tape docuseries. I mean, it’s not an official series, but … I watched the Jeffrey Dahmer one last month, there was the Ted Bundy one, and now there’s the John Wayne Gacy one. I think this is my second time with this one. Amazing interviews: people who knew him at every stage. The guy was truly terrifying, a monster in our collective dreams. The tapes are chilling. <\/p>\n

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Blue Dahlia<\/strong><\/em> (1946; d. George Marshall)
\nMore Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. A haunting California noir: up and down the Pacific Coast Highway, from LA to Malibu and back, on dark nights … Amazing mood and setting. It’s post-WWII – JUST – and there is a LOT of anxiety, particularly about servicemen coming home to wives they haven’t seen for years. What have the women been getting up to? NOTHING GOOD. <\/p>\n

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\nCapturing the Killer Nurse<\/strong><\/em> (2022; d. Tim Travers Hawkins)
\nIn the season where everyone is watching all these great films – and I am too – I do want to recommend the new Netflix doc with the sensationalistic and yet truthful title “Capturing the Killer Nurse” about the investigation that finally led to the arrest of “nurse” Charles Cullen, who acted as an angel of death through multiple hospitals until finally one brave nurse\/co-worker not only figured it out but worked to help capture him and trap him. You know how docuseries now and everything else are so drawwwwwn out and everything is 4 episodes long? Dammit, learn how to tell a story in an hour and a half like your ancestors. It’ll be better, I promise. Anyway, this one does its job and horrifyingly well in an hour and thirty. There are a ton of questions that the doc doesn’t address (who IS this guy, and why did he do it?). Cullen admitted to killing 29 patients – but detectives believe he could have killed up to 400, there’s enough evidence point to it. There’s some pablum included about how he felt “unsafe” in his house as a kid and blah blah oh boo hoo. There’s a ton of audio footage of him talking to investigators, because once he was found out, he caved, and just admitted to everything, almost like it was a relief to just be who he really was, a heartless executioner. The doc really isn’t about him. It’s about the hospitals, his co-workers, and his victims. You get to know the victims and the pain this psycho caused. Even though I wanted a psychological profile, this really was the best choice I think to put the focus on 1. the victims 2. the nurses who worked with him who had no idea and who also saw little red flags but didn’t put it together because … how could you? and 3. the two detectives who finally decided to go after this guy and how they did it. It’s a very good story showing the very admirable work of two New Jersey detectives who had no idea about all the medical stuff, couldn’t even read a chart – but knew enough to get the help they needed to interpret all this data for them. They they had to get the “smoking gun” and\/or syringe in order to make this thing stick, and they WORKED this very difficult case in the face of sinister hospital cover-ups and their own incomprehension in terms of medical language. One brave nurse – at great risk to herself – dug into the records, printed stuff out in secret and helped the detectives SEE what she saw in those damning charts. It’s grisly stuff and terrifying but the doc isn’t just interested in the scandal. The director really goes at the moral terror a case like this causes, and it allows for that moral and ethical horror to emanate. I watch a lot of these docuseries and most are so-so and\/or make me think “is there any reason you couldn’t tell this story in an hour and a half?” Here’s the killer with the two detectives responsible for putting this case together – Tim Braun and Danny Baldwin.<\/p>\n

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T\u00e1r<\/em><\/strong> (2022; d. Todd Field)
\nWhat a film! There are so many movies that self-consciously (and sometimes self-importantly) address “how we live now” and reviewers call them “timely” or “prescient” or whatever – but, imo, the majority of those movies will sink like a stone and be forever forgotten, attached only to their own time. Just you wait: in a couple years, words like “gaslight” will be like “Oh wow, that’s so 2018.” You’ll be able to nail stuff down to almost a particular MONTH. A movie like Casablanca<\/i> was designed to be entertaining, but it REALLY was about the plight of refugees, clustering in Morocco, trying to get to Portugal. Now THAT is a successful way to slide in a relevant message, without sacrificing the movie’s intent. T\u00e1r<\/em> is the story of a brilliant famous conductor (Cate Blanchett) whose life unravels in a matter of months, due to a couple of accusations – one from a former protegee who ended up killing herself – and then there are students who record her lectures, and splice “inflammatory” comments together, to make Lydia look terrible. She’s famous but she is not well-liked. It’s the story of her – yes – and her girlfriend (played by the superb Nina Hoss) but for me … it’s ABOUT how we live now, with the constant threat of accusation. People are fired because of the accusation. No due process. No opportunity to learn or grow, or even apologize and course-correct. You must vanish forever. But … people can’t vanish forever. They’re still alive. There’s a ritual to all of this: a ritual of denouncements, and even if the person is your friend, you must denounce them. Scandals follow people from job to job, and etc. EVEN IF the person apologized, the scandal doesn’t die. (Look at what just happened with Letitia Wright. She apologized. Two years ago.<\/i> The internet will never ever let her forget.) T\u00e1r<\/em> is not explicitly trying to make points about how we live now. It’s more like “how we live now” has seeped into the pores of the film itself: it’s a mood, an atmosphere, an electrical buzz in the air we breathe. Lydia is famous. She is not some random citizen with 200 Instagram followers who wore an inappropriate Halloween costume in high school and now can’t get into grad school because of it. Lydia IS difficult, she DID behave badly with her protegee, and she DID make those comments in the lectures, although imo they weren’t that bad. They were off-the-cuff comments, maybe a little cranky and imperious, but … enough for an entire life to be trashed? (At one point, one of her students says to her, “As a BIPOC pangender person, I won’t listen to Bach because of his patriarchal attitudes and how poorly he treated women.” Her response is along the lines of what you would imagine. The clips go viral. But again, the movie isn’t ABOUT that: it’s more about what this free-floating sense of indiscriminate PERSECUTION actually feels like on a daily level. Because make no mistake: it is something new. Being “canceled” is not new – see, Scarlet Letter<\/i>, see the village stocks, see … the history of humanity … but the internet super-charges the situation. You can’t even move to another town and try to start again. Tar<\/i> unfolds almost like a horror movie, and Lydia’s rapid deterioration comes out of this free-floating indiscriminate sense of threat, AND from the feeling that no matter what you do or say, no apology will be sufficient. It’s all there, in the cinematography, the exquisite sound design, the colors allowed in the palette (the palette is very strict), the sense of psychological dread … even if Lydia isn’t aware of it, we in the audience ARE. Let me point you to Glenn Kenny’s excellent review.<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Post<\/strong><\/em> (2017; d. Steven Spielberg)
\nLove it. Have seen it about 5 times by now. It’s comfort food. I needed it this month. <\/p>\n

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There There<\/strong><\/em> (2022; d. Andrew Bujalski)
\nSpeaking of movies trying to address “how we live now” – There There<\/i> was filmed during COVID, with none of the actors – or director or cinematographer – being in the same place at the same time. It felt more like an experiment than a movie – that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it didn’t work for me. I reviewed for Ebert.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Lady Chatterley’s Lover<\/strong><\/em> (2022; d. Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre)
\nI’ve seen so many adaptations of this. It’s hard to make it seem fresh. It’s hard to make it, in general. This is really good! I reviewed for Ebert.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Saturday’s Children<\/strong><\/em> (1940; d. Vincent Sherman)
\nJohn Garfield and Anne Shirley star as a young married couple struggling to make ends meet. Claude Rains plays the girl’s father, in a wonderfully warm performance. Garfield has to play a shy tongue-tied man, perhaps a bit of a stretch, but he makes it work. I loved the section where they were dating but not dating … they were just “hanging out” … they were friends … Uh-huh. “Friends”. And she kept insisting they were just hanging out, but she didn’t realize she was really falling for him, and he was too shy and polite to make a real move. Her family can see what’s going on before she can. A very realistic film, about regular people living regular lives, which – of course – are not regular at all.<\/p>\n

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The House on Telegraph Hill<\/strong><\/em> (1951; d. Robert Wise)
\nThis film is so disturbing. So much anxiety in it. Anxiety in every frame. <\/p>\n

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EO<\/em><\/strong> (2022; d. Jerzy Skolimowski)
\nFor me, there are two best films of the year: Jafar Panahi’s No Bears<\/i> and this one. I was overwhelmed by EO<\/i>. It hit me way harder than I was prepared for. It’s a movie about a donkey. Okay. I love donkeys. Who doesn’t love donkeys? The film is told from the POV of the donkey, known as EO … he is first seen performing in a circus. Then the circus is shut down and he finds himself in another place. And then another place. The universe is unpredictable, capricious, whimsical in sometimes sinister ways, as seen through an animal’s eyes. My favorite review of this special film by a Polish master is my friend Stephanie Zacharek’s review in Time<\/i><\/a>. Please see EO<\/i>!<\/p>\n

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\nAnd here’s the trailer:<\/p>\n

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