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Short review: “Personal Shopper”

This is an absorbing, atmospheric, ambiguous film from acclaimed French auteur Olivier Assayas, one that rides the enigmatic Kristen Stewart for essentially the entire running time. Stewart’s ongoing artistic rebellion is really something to behold; she is now indisputably the most interesting young American actress. Her character here is living in Paris, working as a personal shopper for a high-profile actress, and, most importantly, waiting for her recently deceased brother to contact her from the spiritual world. It’s a deeply strange film.

Personal Shopper isn’t for everyone, and even arthouse crowds may not dig it as much as Clouds of Sils Maria (Assaya and Stewart’s last collaboration), but there is a lot going on here if you let yourself get drawn in. There is one plot point in the final act that on the surface seems predictable and out of place in such an unconventional film, but it’s part of a larger point being made, which becomes more clear in the closing moments. Great use of sound and a lot of really cool long takes. Probably my favorite film of 2017 so far.

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Netflix recommendation: “Laura” (1944)

I wish more people were into film noir, but I freely admit that some of the old black and white classics are not for everyone. Particularly those in which plot is secondary, like “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep.” They’re both considered classics, and they’re pure candy for noir-heads, but they’ve got labyrinthine stories that can be hard to wrap your head around. And while mood and atmosphere (and Bogart) go a long way, for most normal people, story is ultimately what makes a film enjoyable.

Enter Otto Preminger’s “Laura” (1944). Just 88 minutes, it’s currently streaming on Netflix. It has all the elements of classic noir: the dame, the murder, the hard-boiled detective, the snappy dialogue, the ever-present cigarette smoke. But the story is penetrable, and it’s just an incredibly funny, charming, and stylish film, with characters that are superbly crafted, including one that’s unforgettable: Waldo Lydecker, played by Clifton Webb in an Oscar-nominated performance. Webb chews up scene after scene with dry humor and witty disdain, and it all plays perfectly against the other characters, particularly Detective McPherson, who plays with a ridiculous handheld baseball game throughout his murder investigation. Weirdness abounds.

The less you know going in the better. But the basic story is that a girl has been brutally murdered, no one knows who killed her, and every male character seems to either be in love with her or falling in love with her, despite her now being dead. Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars and included it as one of his Great Movies. For my money, it’s the best of 1940s noir, and certainly the most accessible. Not sure how much longer it will be on Netflix but anyone open to old movies should give it a shot.

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Five Most Anticipated Films of 2017

I’m not sure 2017 will be as strong as 2016, but there is still a lot of interesting stuff on the menu. Here are the five I’m looking forward to the most this year.

5. Dunkirk I’m not a Christopher Nolan guy but I have to say, a Nolan war movie always sounded really intriguing, and this looks like it will be fucking awesome. Because he’s Nolan, it looks like he’s going to play with time and narrative a bit. I’m excited to see what he does here. Out in July.

4. Downsizing Alexander Payne is kind of a divisive filmmaker but I’m a fan of basically everything he’s done (especially “Sideways” and “Nebraska”). He’s been working on this project, a social satire, for years. The cast is stacked, with Matt Damon at the top. Payne’s films are always smart and empathetic and I would pretty surprised if this isn’t another critical success. Scheduled for awards season.

3. Inner City Dan Gilroy has only directed one film, 2014’s “Nightcrawler,” which is one of my favorites of the current decade. This is a crime drama set in L.A. and he’s got Denzel and Colin Farrell to play with. I don’t really need to hear any more. With two Best Actor nominations in the past five years, Denzel is on a nice run, having found a proper balance between dumb stuff and serious work. No release date I can find.

2. Happy End Austrian Michael Haneke is one of my favorite auteurs. He makes dark, bleak, penetrating films, with a very distinct style. He turns 75 this month and may be slowing down a bit; this will be his first feature since 2012’s “Amour.” This one has all the ingredients, though. It pairs Jean-Louis Trintignant, who was superb in “Amour,” with the goddess Isabelle Huppert, who has appeared in several of Haneke’s films. It started filming last year. Details are hard to come by but it’s supposed to involve the European migration crisis. This should be a tough watch. Likely an awards season release.

1. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project Rumor has it that the working title is “Phantom Thread.” Paul Thomas Anderson may be our greatest filmmaker. Virtually anything he does deserves the top spot by default, particularly when Daniel Day-Lewis is involved. This is set in 1950s London and DDL is playing an “uncompromising dressmaker commissioned by royalty and high society.” There’s no release date, we don’t even know for sure it’s coming out this year, but filming is underway. This will be a major event for cinephiles. Keeping expectations reasonable will be the hard part. Nobody should go in expecting another “There Will Be Blood.”

Honorable Mention: David Robert Mitchell’s “Under the Silver Lake,” David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story,” Taylor Sheridan’s “Wind River,” Denis Villenueve’s “Bladerunner 2049,” Darren Aronofsky’s “Mother!”

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The 2017 Oscars

I make no apologies for loving the Oscars, despite how stupid and wrong they often are, as evidenced by the fact that Hitchcock, Kubrick, and PT Anderson don’t have a single award between them. It took until fucking 2007 for Scorsese to get one, for god’s sake. Nevertheless I enjoy the glamour, the Old Hollywood feel, and the utter ridiculousness of it all. It’s a fun night.

Damian Chazelle’s La La Land is almost definitely going to be the story on Sunday. We don’t really know the extent to which it will dominate the lower categories, but Best Picture, Best Director, and a few others look pretty safe.

Chazelle is an immense talent. The guy just turned 32. Whiplash is, in my view, one of the five or ten best American films of the 21st century. He deserves credit for taking all the capital he accumulated from Whiplash and putting it on the line for this kind of passion project – an ode to classic Hollywood musicals, featuring two actors who don’t sing or dance particularly well (sorry). The critical adulation and box office success of La La Land were not assured. It was a risk that obviously paid off beyond what even he could have imagined (Here’s to the ones who dream, etc.).

As achievements in storytelling, La La Land doesn’t stand with either Manchester by the Sea or Moonlight, two extraordinary films that explore what it means to be human in a way rarely seen on the screen. There is a depth of feeling to those films that La La Land obviously wasn’t even attempting to match. Kenneth Lonergan and Barry Jenkins have made masterpieces and it’s unfortunate that, barring a major surprise, neither will be recognized to the degree that they should be. Either film would have owned 2015 but in 2016 they happened to run into this juggernaut (and each other).

Like many others, I saw La La Land only after absorbing months of critical adulation, bordering on ecstasy. It was impossible to suppress expectations. And while I can’t say I was blown away, I wasn’t disappointed, either. I think everything after the first act is really good. For the first thirty minutes or so you’re thinking it’s just going to be this light musical, but eventually the feel of the movie shifts to something a bit darker and more interesting. The story and characters remain thin, but the cinematography is striking, and Stone and Gosling bring undeniable warmth and charisma. It may be the most rewatchable film of the year.

Chazelle took a big swing with this – something we all want from our auteurs. So as much as I believe both Manchester and Moonlight are more deserving, as the kids like to say, I’m not even mad. If I did have a vote, I would probably go with Manchester for Best Picture and Lonergan for Best Director. That’s my movie of the year. But barring something weird happening, Chazelle is taking everything. If it’s a real tidal wave, and La La Land equals or even breaks the record of 11 wins, it will be interesting to see how all of this looks in ten or twenty or fifty years. Is this really a singular film that deserves to be the all-time Oscars champ? Will it actually hold up against the other great American musicals? Ehh. I don’t know.

A few thoughts on the other categories:

Best Supporting Actress The story here is that Viola Davis and her snot got dropped into this category to avoid the Best Actress bloodbath. She has a lot of screentime in Fences, nearly as much as Denzel, and it’s pretty ridiculous for her to be competing in the same category as Michele Williams, who appears in only a few (heart-stopping) scenes in Manchester. I’m not a fan of this kind of playing with categories and I think the Academy should crack down on it. So yes, Viola has the most impressive performance of these five, but Williams’ work in Manchester – as well as Naomie Harris’s in Moonlight – is, or should be, the reason this category exists.

Best Supporting Actor I was glad my guy Michael Shannon was the Nocturnal Animal to get nominated, even after Aaron Taylor Johnson’s inexplicable win at the Globes. Johnson got to ham it up in that movie but I thought Shannon’s performance was ultimately more interesting. Jeff Bridges provided the full Bridges Experience in Hell or High Water but this looks like Mahershala Ali’s night, and rightfully so. Who knew Remy from House of Cards was capable of this? I’m excited to see where his career goes from here. His speech should be one of the highlights of the night.

Best Actress Emma Stone was the heart of La La Land. She acted circles around Gosling in that movie and clearly gave it everything she had. She is always great. I see that she is a heavy favorite to win. All due respect to her, and to the goddess Isabelle Huppert, but I feel like there’s some conspiracy here against Natalie Portman I haven’t been let in on. What she did in Jackie, in my opinion, towers above anything else here. It doesn’t even seem like a close call. I don’t know what’s going on.

Best Actor This race has gotten quite a bit juicier following Denzel’s surprise win at the SAG awards. Word is that past accusations of sexual harrassment may doom Casey Affleck but I think this is probably being overstated? He lost the SAG but he has still dominated awards season. He’s only a slight betting favorite now but I’m still hoping he gets it. Denzel is one of my favorite actors alive but Casey gave the performance of a lifetime in Manchester, portraying grief and suffering in a way that I’m not sure they’ve ever been portrayed on the screen. He deserves this moment.

Best Original Screenplay I loved what Taylor Sheridan and Yorgos Lanthimos did with Hell or High Water and The Lobster, but this is a no-brainer. Kenneth Lonergan is a writer, first and foremost, and the writing in Manchester is stellar. Chazelle taking this may prove to be the biggest injustice of the night.

Best Adapted Screenplay I’m not sure Moonlight’s power is primarily derived from its script, but I’m happy to see Jenkins win here against this field.

Best Cinematography The American Society of Cinematographers went with Lion, which was kind of odd, but I can’t see La La Land being denied here. Nor should it be. The opening sequence, the use of natural L.A. light, the lush colors, the flashy camerawork… no matter where you stand on La La Land, it’s hard to deny that it’s a visual masterpiece.

Best Foreign Language Film Still haven’t gotten to Farhadi’s The Salesman but I’ve seen the others. This has been a strange year for this category. Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden was ineligible because it wasn’t Korea’s official selection. Someone should probably be arrested for this. And Paul Verhoeven’s Elle, a dark, intriguing film that earned Isabelle Huppert a nomination for Best Actress, somehow didn’t even make the final cut of potential nominees. Senseless.

Land of Mine, a penetrating Danish film set just after the conclusion of World War II, was one of my favorites of the year. I was glad to see it get nominated. I also loved A Man Called Ove. But this looks like a race between The Salesman and Toni Erdmann, the bizarre, 162-minute German comedy. Farhadi, an Iranian, will not attend the ceremony, in protest of Trump. Politics will almost certainly factor in here.

That’s about it. I loved the Jackie and Moonlight scores but yes, La La Land, okay. City of Stars, best song, fine with me. Months later and I’m still humming that shit.

Oh, also, OJ: Made in America was amazing but that is a miniseries, not a movie, and I’m glad to fight with anyone over this. It’s nearly eight hours long and it was shown on TV in five installments. Stop calling it a movie.

Enjoy the show.

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Top Ten Movies of 2016

As of this writing, I’ve seen 76 movies released in 2016. Here are the ten that stayed with me the most.

10. The Neon Demon Let’s get a little unconventional for the tenth spot. Nicolas Winding Refn takes his lunatic creativity to such an extreme here that, five years after “Drive” made him such a critical darling, this film was booed at Cannes and generally wrecked by critics. The budget for “The Neon Demon” was miniscule and it didn’t even make its money back. I don’t care about any of this. Give me this glorious score, give me the mesmerizing use of color, give me Elle Fanning, give me Keanu Reeves as a delightfully creepy motel owner, give me the cannibalism, the lebsian necrophilia, everything. This was a blast.

9. I, Daniel Blake Ken Loach, now 80, is known for his socialist politics, and for making films that shine a light on the underclasses in Britain. “I, Daniel Blake” just radiates humanism and empathy. There’s a great simplicity to this story and to these characters. They are struggling, deeply, but still find it in themselves not only to carry on, but to put others first. Also manages to be one of the funniest films of the year.

8. Elle I love all things Isabelle Huppert. A.O. Scott describes her as “the most ferociously intuitive and the most serenely intelligent actress working in movies today.” She’s also, along with Cate Blanchett, the most confident. Paul Verhoeven has made a really strange, ambiguous film here. Not for everyone but I loved it.

7. Love and Friendship I’ve now seen Whit Stillman’s period piece, based on a Jane Austen short story, three times. Probably the funniest, most purely enjoyable movie I watched this year. Beckinsale is a force of nature and the supporting performances are perfect. The fact that it came out early in the year is likely causing a lot of people to forget about it now, but this is an absolute gem.

6. Jackie It’s easy to roll your eyes at Natalie Portman for doing something like this. The absurd commitment, the self-seriousness, the guaranteed Oscar nomination. But my god does she nail Jackie Kennedy. Try to take your eyes off her. It’s an arresting performance. This is some seriously impressive and confident filmmaking from Chilean director Pablo Larrain. Great cinematography and score. There is just so much packed into these 95 minutes.

5. Nocturnal Animals Tom Ford has already established himself as one of the more interesting American filmmakers. This is a slick, brilliantly constructed neo-noir thriller with a great contrast in settings between rugged West Texas and chic, high-end L.A. Some great character acting from Michael Shannon, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays one hell of a villain. The ending will be divisive but after sitting with it for a while I ended up really liking it. I’m excited to see what Ford does next.

4. Under Sandet (Land of Mine) This Danish film blew me away. It’s the rarest of things: a World War II story that has not been widely told. After the war, about 2,000 German POW’s were forced to find, and disarm, millions of land mines in western Denmark. The story focuses on about a dozen babyfaced Germans – all hungry, shellshocked, and homesick – under the command of a vicious Danish sergeant. They’re charged with clearing all the mines on one specific beach and, as it turns out, watching terrified kids take apart land mines is fairly nerve-wracking! A penetrating, gorgeously-shot film, with a brilliant performance by Roland Moller, who plays the sergeant.

3. Hell or High Water “Heat” meets “No Country for Old Men.” A backdrop of long-term economic decay in West Texas just hangs over David Mackenzie’s whole film. It forces the audience, as well as the locals, to upend their traditional views of right and wrong and of who the real villains are. In one sense this is just a really well-made genre film, but it also feels quite original, and it has a lot to say about class in America. The final scene with Bridges and Pine is one of the best of the year.

2. Moonlight Barry Jenkins tells this story with such raw, overwhelming power that it’s hard not to feel physically affected watching it. It actually feels weird – almost disrespectful – to compare this to other movies, talk about in the context of awards, etc. It’s so distinct. I didn’t want this movie to end. I wanted to stay in the theater for as long as it took to see Chiron’s story all the way through. So many unique and memorable scenes here.

1. Manchester by the Sea An honest, funny, gut-wrenchingly sad masterpiece from Kenneth Lonergan. Casey Affleck puts on a master class in vulnerability and restraint and emotional deadness. The scene with him and Michelle Williams toward the end is every bit as moving and unforgettable as advertised. Just an incredible meditation on tragedy and grief and the strength needed to carry on when you are permanently broken. One of the best films of the decade.

Honorable Mention: La La Land, Allied, The Lobster, A Man Called Ove, Hacksaw Ridge