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tilbageidanmark · 11 months ago

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Movies I watched this week (#169):

3 by forgotten [re-discovered?] Turkish director, Metin Erksan:

🍿 Dry Summer, a mesmerizing 1964 Turkish masterpiece I never heard of before. It tells of a greedy peasant who refuses to share the water on his field with his neighbors, as well as his scheme to steal his younger brother's new bride. (Photo Above). A rustic tragedy featuring one of the most insidious screen villains ever. Highly recommended. 9/10.

It was championed and restored by Martin Scorsese's 'World Cinema Project'. (I'm going to start chewing through their list of preserved classics from around the world.)

🍿 Time to love (1965) is a fetishistic, probably-symbolic, melodrama about a poor house painter who falls in love with a wall portrait of a woman, but who can't or won't love the real person. Lots of brooding while heavy rains keep pouring down, and traditional oud music drones on. Strikingly beautiful black and white cinematography elevates this strange soap opera into something that Antonioni could have shot.

🍿 "May Allah's mercy be upon her! May Allah's mercy be upon her! May Allah's mercy be upon her!"

In 1974 Erksan directed the cheesy Seytan ("Satan"), a plagiarized, unauthorized Turkish rip-off of 'The Exorcist'. It was a schlocky, nearly a shot-by-shot copy, and included the blood spurting, head spinning, cursing, stairs, a young actress that looked strikingly like Linda Blair, and even extensive use of Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells'. But it eliminated the Catholic element and had none of the superb decisions of the William Friedkin's version. 1/10.

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Agnès Varda's deceivingly blissful drama, Le Bonheur. Exquisite, subversive and beautifully simple, about an uncomplicated man who's completely happy with his idyllic life, his loving wife and two little children. But one summer day he takes on an attractive mistress, while still feeling uncommonly fulfilled and undisturbed. Varda lets the Mozart woodwind score do all the heavy interpretive lifting of this disturbing feminist take of the bourgeoisie. Just WOW! 8/10.

At this point, I should just complete my explorations of Varda's oeuvre, and see the rest of her movies. Also, I'm going to take a deep dive one day into the many terrific movies from 1965 (besides the many I've already seen, 'Red Beard', 'Simon of the desert', 'Repulsion', 'The spy who came in from the cold', 'Juliet of the spirit', 'Pierrot the fool'...).

/ Female Director

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2 by amazing Bulgarian director Milko Lazarov:

🍿 Ága, my first Bulgarian film, but it plays somewhere in Yakutsk, south of the Russian arctic circle. An isolated old Inuit couple lives alone in a yurt on the tundra. Slow and spiritual, their lives unfold in the most unobtrusive way, it feels like a documentary. But the simplicity is deceiving, this is film-making of the highest grade, and once Mahler 5th was introduced on a small transistor radio, it's transcendental. The emptiness touched me deeply.

Together with 93 other movies, this was submitted by Bulgaria to the 2019 Oscars (the one won by 'Parasite'). How little we know; If selected, we might have all be talking about it. Absolutely phenomenal! The trailer represents the movie well. 10/10

(It also reminded me very much of the Bolivian drama 'Utama' from 2022, another moving story of an elderly Indian couple living alone in the desert, tending to their small flock of llamas.)

🍿 Milko Lazarov made only one earlier film, the minimalist Alienation in 2013. It tells of Yorgos, a middle age Greek man, (impassively played by the father from 'Dogtooth'), who crosses the border to Bulgaria to buy a newborn baby. But it's not as bad as it sounds, because he's actually helping the impoverished surrogate mother (who looks like young Tilda Swinton) who can't effort to keep him. Another stark and snail-like drama about quiet people who barely speak, told with the masterful language of a true poet. Like 'Ága', it too opens with a stunning close up of a lengthy incantation in an unfamiliar language. I wish he made more movies. 8/10.

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2 more arctic dramas:

🍿 The original movie about indigenous Inuks, Nanook of the North, from 1922, was the first feature-length documentary to achieve commercial success. An engaging slice of life of an Inuit family, even if some of the scenes were staged. 💯 score on Rotten Tomatoes.

🍿 "Many of the scientists involved with climate change agree: The end of human life on this planet is assured."

Another fascinating Werner Herzog documentary, Encounters at the end of the world. About the "professional dreamers" who live and work at McMurdo Station in Antarctica; divers who venture to explore life under the the ice, volcanologists who burrow into ice caves, etc. Herzog's 'secret sauce' is finding the most outrageous, interesting spots on earth, and then just going there and letting his camera do his bidding.

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2 fantastic shorts by Hungarian animator Réka Bucsi:

🍿 Her 2014 Symphony No. 42 consists of 47 short & whimsical vignettes, without any rhyme or rhythm; A farmer fills a cow with milk until it overflows, a zoo elephant draws a "Help me" sign, a UFO sucks all the fish from the ocean, wolves party hard to 'La Bamba', an angry man throws a pie at a penguin, two cowboys holding blue balloons watch a tumbleweed rolls by, a big naked woman cuddle with a seal, etc. Earlier than Don Hertzfeldt's 'World of tomorrow' and my favorite Rúnar Rúnarsson's 'Echo', it's a perfect piece of surrealist chaos. 10/10

My happiest, unexpected surprise of the week!

/ Female Director

🍿 Love (2016), a lovely meditation on nature, poetry and cats in the cosmos. 8/10.

/ Female Director

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Françoise Dorléac X 2:

🍿 Her name was Françoise ("Elle s’appelait Françoise") is a fluff bio-piece about the utterly gorgeous model-actress, who died at a fiery car-crush at 25, and who left a legacy of only a few important films. It includes previously-unseen, enchanting clips and photos from her short life. But then is cuts into her and sister Catherine Deneuve practicing their "Pair of Twins" song-and-dance from 'The Young Girls of Rochefort', the most charming musical in the world, and life is sunny again.

/ Female Director

🍿 That man from Rio, her breakthrough film, was a stupid James Bond spoof, inspired by 'The adventures of Tintin'. Unfortunately, it focused on protagonist Jean-Paul Belmondo, and used Dorléac only as eye-candy. It's the first film I've seen from Brasília, just a few years after it was constructed. 2/10.

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Paintings and Film X 3:

🍿 'Painting Nerds' is a YouTube channel by 2 Scottish artists, putting up intelligent video essays about the art of painting. Paintings In Movies: From '2001: A Space Odyssey' to 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' is an insightful meditation which explores the relationship between the two art forms. Among the many examples it touches on are the canvases in Hitchcock's 'Rebecca' and 'Vertigo', 'The French Dispatch', 'Laura' and 'I'm thinking of ending things'. They even made a Wellesian trailer for that essay, When Citizen Kane met Bambi : The Lost Paintings of Tyrus Wong!

🍿 So I decided to see some of the movies mentioned above, f. ex. Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry from 1955. Famous for being Shirley MacLaine's film debut, his first collaboration with Bernard Herrmann, and this being his only "real" comedy. However, the only engaging element among the idiotic machinations on screen were the stunning VistaVision landscapes, painted in true Vermont autumn colors.

🍿 All the Vermeers in New York is my [5th film about Vermeer, and] my first film by prolific indie director Jon Jost. The Scottish essay above interpretated it as a "Charming mirroring of art and life, but also a deeply sad film... The gallery scene shows the transmission of feeling from painting to person, and ultimately, the vast amount of space between them. It plays out the entire drama of the film in microcosm.." But that Met Gallery scene was the only outstanding one in an otherwise disjointed experiment about the NYC art world. The abrasive stockbroker who falls for a French actress at the museum and mistakes her for a woman from the painting was mediocre and irritating. 3/10.

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First watch: Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, an homage to Melville's Le Samouraï. An RZA mood piece about a ritualistically-chill black assassin / Zen Sensei, who communicates only with carrier pigeons, and who drives alone at night in desolate streets on mafia missions. 'Live by the Code, die by the Code'.

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Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Scorsese's only melodrama with a female protagonist (? - haven't seen 'Boxcar Bertha' yet). It opens in a tinted Wizard of Oz scenery, and tells of an ordinary single mom who dreams of becoming a singer. Hardly a feminist story, as she navigates between one unloving husband, an abusive lover and eventually bearded Kris Kristofferson, who ends up beating her son and promises not to do it again. 3/10.

[I finally watched it because of this clip of 15-year-old Jody Foster singing Je t'attends depuis la nuit de temps on French television].

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The new well-made HBO documentary The Truth vs Alex Jones. About the collective mental sickness that is Amerika. It's hard to imagine how insane are the crazies over there. 💯 score on Rotten Tomatoes.

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3 more shorts:

🍿 The Most Beautiful Shots In Movie History, a little mash-up clippy from The "Solomon Society" with an evocative Perfect day cover.

🍿 Joana, a beautiful tribute of a Spanish father to his little daughter. Reminds me of better times and another daughter.

🍿 From hand to mouse, a mediocre 1944 'Looney Tune' short from Chuck Jones, with the same dynamics that the Coyote & Road Runner did much better.

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Ramy Youssef X 3:

🍿 I discovered first-generation Egyptian-American stand-up comedian Ramy Youssef. In his funny 2019 special, Feelings, he comes across as a sweet dude, a sensitive, observant Muslim, on a complicated spiritual quest in New Jersey. Recommended!

🍿 Ramy was his A24 TV-series that expanded on the themes. It had more of a sitcom vibes, reminiscent of 'Master of None', another one that dealt with an unexplored ethnicity, previously marginalized. I only watched the first season, and liked how unapologetic he was in having large part of the dialogue in other languages, Arabic, French, Etc. Episode 7, "Ne Me Quitte Pas", starring his screen-mom Hiam Abbass was a terrific stand-out.

🍿 “Where were you when the floods happened in Pakistan?”

More feelings, his brand new stand up which just dropped is dark and gentle. It opens with some dark truths from his friend Steve who wants to die, and moves right into the situation in Palestine.

(Later: He hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend.)

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(My complete movie list is here)

#movies #nuri bilge ceylan

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thorntonkrell-blog-blog · 1 year ago

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Through the grapevine I leaned about Poor Things a few months ago when I first heard raves about Emma Stone's performance in a film that might be coming to a theater near me. If I was in Rochester, no doubt that the film would be available because we have the always reliable Little theater to release movies that have a limited release due to the "artiness" of their presentation. Artiness tends to mean their distance from the marvelous and the pursuit of popularity.

I like Emma Stone. I was glad she won a Golden Globe for her performance as best actress for her role in Poor Things. I'm also a fan of Willem Defoe and Mark Ruffallo who were also nominated.Aside from that I knew nothing about the film so I was pretty sure that I would be surprised by the film. I didn't expect to be astonished/flabbergasted.

I didn't expect such an orgasmic performance from Emma. If I put on my prude hat, I can honestly say Poor Things is the that this is the Filthiest movie ever to be nominated for so many awards so apparently prurience is on the rise.

Taking off that heavy hat, what's the problem with full frontals and female orgasms.

Nuthin' wrong with any of that.

Poor things is like a combination Frankenstein, Edward Scissorhands, Bride of Frankenstein, mixed somehow with steam punk, extreme brash humor and sexual liberation.

Emma plays Bella Baxter. Bella is the recreation of Godwin (God) Baxter played by the great Willem Dafoe who portrays both Doctor and monster Frankenstein who guides Bella through her awkward, stumbling Elsa Lancaster stage of development although unlike Elsa, Bella is not horrified by her manufactured state but rather enbraces it with a splendid awkwardness as she lurches around breaking glass in the privacy of God's London townhouse. Also unlike Elsa, Emma is seeking human connection which leads hr into the arms of Duncan Wunderburn (played by Mark Ruffalo. Duncan takes Bella on an uncontrollable journey of debauchery highlighted by a trip to Paris where Belle gets a taste of the oldest profession and she loves it (particularly the furious jumping)which demolishes Wunderburn and leads her back to God and her betrothed.

Yeah

Poor Things has a built in Oscar advantage to balance out the disadvantage of fornication, full frontalism, penises and pubic hair. The advantage is that Poor Things despite the eye popping costumery, snappy editing, hallucingenic cinematography is not going to draw a big crowd. It's too poetic to be popular in spite of Emma's stagggering performance.

When the movie ended I semi-whispered "Whoa".

The other male in the audience raised my "whoa" with "I wasn't expecting THAT!" THAT includes Emma/Belle experiencing multiple orgasms which are captured up close and personal as he batttles against the power of patriarch towards her eventual liberation through innocent impudence and child like abandon.

Yeah

Poor Things sure ain't Barbie.

I preferred Barbie, myself but ....

Whoa.

Yorgos Lanthimos seems delighted in depicting extreme behavior within pristine settings, whether it’s the quiet suburbia of “Dogtooth” or the clinical lab of “The Lobster” or the opulent grandeur of “The Favourite.” That glaring contrast between the expectations of decorum and the messy truth of humanity seems to fascinate him endlessly.

Willem Dafoe on God's relationship with Bella at the 'Poor Things' premiere in NYC

Nowhere is this conflict more exaggerated and entertaining than in his latest film, and his best yet, “Poor Things.” Everything here is wonderfully bizarre, from the performances and dialogue to the production and costume design. And yet at its core, as is so often the case in the Greek auteur’s movies, “Poor Things” is about the awkwardness of forging a real human connection. We want to know each other and make ourselves known. The figure at the film’s center, Bella Baxter, seeks to achieve enlightenment, become her truest self, and establish enriching relationships with people who genuinely love her and don’t just want to control her. The nuts and bolts of this story may sound familiar: A young woman embarks on an odyssey of exploration and finds her identity was within her all along. The execution, however, is constantly astonishing.

It's Victorian London, and Emma Stone’s Bella lives in a tasteful townhouse with the mad scientist who also serves as her father figure. As Dr. Godwin Baxter, Willem Dafoe offers a gentle presence beneath his scarred visage. Bella is a grown woman but behaves like a toddler at first, grunting out words and throwing plates and dancing gleefully around stiff-legged. She calls him God, and that’s actually not hyperbole. We will learn the backstory behind all of this in time, and I wouldn’t dream of giving any of it away here.

Godwin is one of several men who try to mold Bella over the course of her development; one of his students, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), is another. Max moves in with the intention of assisting Godwin in his research but ends up falling in love with Bella and asking her to marry him, and Youssef brings an element of warmth and reason to this otherwise mad world. But he’s no match for Mark Ruffalo, an obvious cad with the very proper name of Duncan Wedderburn, who whisks her away on a lavish world tour. This consists mostly of vigorous sex in a variety of positions—which Bella calls “furious jumping” in her rapidly maturing mind—and it’s a key element to both her independence and the film’s brash humor.

Reuniting with Lanthimos after “The Favourite,” Stone gives the performance of a lifetime in a role that has a staggering degree of difficulty. This could have gone horribly wrong; instead, what she’s doing is wildly alive and unpredictable in ways large and small. Watching her start out big and broad and fine tune the character little by little, physically and verbally, as Bella evolves is a wonder to behold. She’s doing such technically precise comedic work here, especially during the character’s childlike origins, but eventually she’s captivating when she’s fully in command as a sexually liberated woman. Enormously likable, she quickly wins us over to her side even when she’s being an impudent brat, and she keeps us rooting for her in the face of increasing patriarchal oppression.

Ruffalo, meanwhile, is hysterically funny in a way you’ve never seen him before. He’s both a charismatic Lothario and a preening buffoon. He’s also unexpectedly sexy, and, in time, amusingly pathetic. Also among the stacked supporting cast are comedian Jerrod Carmichael and German legend Hanna Schygulla as traveling companions who give Bella a boost in her quest toward self-possession. A sly bit involving a book on a cruise ship is particularly funny. The petite but powerful Kathryn Hunter, so startling recently as the Witches in Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” provides a spicy, spiky presence as a Paris madame, but even that small role includes shading you might not expect at the outset.

So much of what is pleasing about “Poor Things” comes from the specificity of the language. In adapting the novel by Alasdair Gray, Tony McNamara’s screenplay begins in intentionally disjointed and stilted fits and starts, but it has a rhythmic poetry about it. The dialogue becomes more florid as Bella blossoms in her intellectualism, and it’s a joy to watch Stone seize upon the complexity of her proclamations. McNamara’s writing here isn’t as deliciously mean as it was in Lanthimos’ “The Favourite,” but it bounces along with a witty bite all its own.

In creating the grandiosity of this world, Robbie Ryan’s cinematography is stunningly beautiful in varied textures and hues. “Poor Things” begins in grainy black and white when Bella is more childlike, with plenty of fish-eye lenses and peepholes to keep us off balance and urge us to lean closer. But it steadily opens up into lush, wondrous color as Bella comes into her own; the nighttime skies during the ocean voyage portion of her journey are particularly awesome. This evolution may sound obvious, but it feels like a magic trick he’s pulled off right before our eyes.

The costume design from Holly Waddington convincingly tells Bella’s story in detailed, vibrant ways. Simple white nightgowns in her girlish state give way to puffed-sleeve explosions, each more elaborate than the last. And the production design from Shona Heath and James Price—where to begin in singing their praises? From Godwin’s slightly off-kilter house to a luxurious Lisbon hotel to a cramped Paris brothel, each new setting imaginatively reinvents the kinds of historical images we might think we know, only through an outlandish prism with hints of Escher and Gaudi.

But none of these exquisite technical elements matter if we don’t care about the woman at the center of them. And we do. Bella remains kind and optimistic even as she sees the truth of the outside world, but she’s also learned enough to assert her newfound power when necessary. It’s as if “Barbie” were actually about Weird Barbie, but even that idea doesn’t quite do it justice. A more apt description is: It’s the best movie of the year.

Willem Dafoe on God's relationship with Bella at the 'Poor Things' premiere in NYC

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