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MOVIES I WATCHED THIS WEEK # 239:

3 BY FRENCH DIRECTOR EMMANUEL COURCOL:

🍿 THE MARCHING BAND, a French gem from 2024 which I never heard of and which immediately became my favorite Feel-Good Dramedy of the Week. An acclaimed orchestra conductor discovers that he has adopted brother he never knew of, when he's diagnosed with leukemia and is in need of a bone marrow donor. The trailer.

A warm and entertaining musical story that ends on a predictable concert, but with a twist. The director uses a noticable short cut language to push the plot points along, and which doesn't feel rushed. Recommended! 10/10.

🍿 It seems that THE BIG HIT from 2016 was his early draft for 'Marching Band'. It used the exact same plot, a talented professional trying to motivate a group of less fortunate individuals to discover transcendence through art. This time it's a theater director staging a performance of 'Waiting for Godot' in prison. Even some of the actors of both films are the same. It's similar sentimentality, and it's even more predictable. But when the inmates perform the play in front of an audience outside for the first time, it's magical. 6/10.

This was based on a true story that happened in Sweden in the 80's and Beckett apparently said that it was the most beautiful thing that could have ever happened to a work of art of his.

🍿 GÉRALDINE JE T’AIME, a 26 min. short from 2013. After his carburetor fails one day on his way to work, a woman gives Grégory Gadebois a lift, and they start sharing their ride regularly. This stops when a casual comment he makes, triggers a painful story from her past. Recommended - 8/10.

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"Le Monde est à nous”

LA HAINE ("Hatred", 1995), the highly-acclaimed, raw portrait of 3 disaffected friends from the poor banlieues outside of Paris. 24 hopeless hours of "hanging out”, aimlessly, aggressively and more and more desperately, in a hostile environment full of drugs, violence and nasty cops who want to harm you. Anti-authority anger and full of macho and vinegar. Toujours ACAB!!

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SUGAR (2024) TV series starts as one show, and ends as another. Colin Farrell is a cool 'Private Eye' in LA, whose specialty is 'finding the missing'. Actually, he's more than cool; He's like a good-looking Buddha in a Seville Raw suit driving a 1966 blue Stingray. He's a polyglot, an obsessive film buff, gentle and caring, a sleek operator who know everything and has power over dogs, women and villains, a perfect human. He moves in a beautifully stylish Los Angeles - a modern film Noir in colors.

But he's too perfect. It's obvious that he's either a replicant, a super soldier, time traveler, or an alien. And by the 6th episode (out of 8), he is shown to be some kind of an alien indeed. So this 'Chinatown'-wannabe become 'The man who fell to earth.' The convoluted mysteries piling upon mysteries are given an unfortunate and simplistic extraterrestrial explanation, and the resolution of the elaborate set-up amount to not much. The trailer. 4/10.

Half of the episodes were directed by Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles, of 'City of God' fame.

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"Weed... Bush... Skank-amola... White Widow Super Cheese... It's the new gold rush..."

THE GENTLEMEN (2019), my 4th Guy Ritchie action-comedy, and also starring Colin Farrell. A 'Godfather'-inspired tale of Marijuana mogul Matthew McConaughey going mano a mano against miscasted Kendall Roy as an effeminate billionaire, Henry Golding as a brutal Chinese Virgil Sollozzo and other assorted thugs. Everybody sports Irish or Welsh or Cockney or other kinds of "fake British accents". With one throw-back to 'Black Mirror' pig-fucking plot from 'The National Anthem'. The framing device and that Charlie Hunnam side-kick character were not convincing, but otherwise, it was entertaining enough. I can see myself watching it again soon.

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YEARNING (1964), my first by Mikio Naruse, his most acclaimed melodrama. A war widow sacrifice her life to build and run a small grocery story for her dead husband's family, and eventually is forced to give it all up, when a new supermarket opens up across the street. Things get complicated when her husband's brother, 11 years younger than her, tells her that he always loved her. A sad story of unrequited love and restrained performances. (Final screenshot above).

I love watching small urban locations from that time and place.

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ART SPIEGELMAN: DISASTER IS MY MUSE (2024), a standard but excellent PBS documentary exploring the life and art of underground comix artist, and author of the groundbreaking 'Maus'. Comprehensive and Well-researched, and filled with clips of like-minded cartoonists, Robert Crumb, Bill Griffith, Gary Panter, Chris Ware, Etc. I didn't know that he's the one who invented the Garbage Pail Kids series too! 💯 score on Rotten Tomatoes.

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"...Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it...."

One of the favorite novels of my youth, "Satan in Moscow" by Mikhail Bulgakov (And the one that introduced me to the concept of "Walpurgis Night") had been adapted to the screen multiple times. The latest (2024) Russian version THE MASTER AND MARGARITA is a faithful and excellent adaptation, done with epic style and imagination.

Yes, it would be good if the role of Behemoth, the cigar-smoking, enormous black cat would be more dramatic. 7/10.

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3 BY YOUNG CANADIAN HARLEY CHAMANDY X 3:

🍿 ALLEN SUNSHINE is his debut feature, which he wrote at 19, and filmed at 22. Chamandy won the Werner Herzog Film Prize in 2024 for this film, while being compared by Herzog to Abbas Kiarostami.

It's a beautiful and meditative study of grief. A former music mogul retreats into a secluded lake cabin, after the suicide of his famous wife-singer. (The suicide is never mentioned as such in the movie itself). It's slow- and sensitive-cinema, and the Canadian lakeside is sensual and narcotic to see, but the subtle drama is missing the 3rd act. The trailer. 7/10.

🍿 THE FINAL ACT OF JOEY JUMBLER (2018) was his first, terrific short. An emotional story of a party clown with a tragic secret. Extremely mature for a 16-yo director!

🍿 In WHERE IT'S BEAUTIFUL WHEN IT RAINS (2022), an 8-yo boy is looking for a job in NYC. It ends with an odd song and tap-dance number, where the boy shows talent.

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"La Spinash O La Bouchon

Cigaretto Portobello

Si Rakish Spaghaletto

Ti La Tu La Ti La Twah"

MODERN TIMES (1936), Chaplin's loving send-off song to his silent 'Tramp' character, full of visual slapstick gags and sentimentality. One of the true greatest films in history. A message film with clear leftist (but not communist), and mild anti-capitalist bent about how the proletariat is getting shafted in their struggle for survival in our 'Modern times'. Few good choices were available for the working stiff during the Depression: Inhuman work conditions, jail - or vagrancy. A frequent re-watch ♻️. (Final Screenshot Above).

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I was looking forward to finally experience LOVE EXPOSURE (2008), my first by Sion Sono. A 4-hour long epic masterpiece about perverted up-skirt photographer, erections, ultra-violence and pedophilia? No problem with the length of it, the Catholic sacrileges, the usage of Ravel's Bolero [Like 'The Big Hit' above], kung fu, and the rest of the aberrations. But when the movie titles appeared at the one hour mark, I realized that I just can't stand it, and had to click it off. ⬇️Could Not Finish⬇️.

(Last month I saw SERENA, a short where Jennifer Garner confesses to priest Alfred Molina that she loves an unavailable man. This was copied from this Japanese mess. OK...)

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BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, my 8th thriller by Otto Preminger. This must have been the film that convinced Kubrick 2 years later to use Keir Dullea in 'Space Odyssey'. An unpleasant "Psycho"-lite psychological mystery, where a single mother in London is immediately accused that her disappeared baby daughter never existed. 60's movies were seldom kind to women with "mental illnesses", but this was no 'Repulsion', and the actress playing the mother was no Catherine Deneuve. A few jarring elements added to the creepiness: Every stranger, from police detective Laurence Olivier, to perverted landlord Noël Coward, had no concept of 'personal space', and always came to stand extremely close to her, literally 'right in her face'. The plot demands brought the story into a monkey experimentation lab (?) and a chilling "Doll surgery hospital", as well as a performance of 'The Zombies' which had no connection whatsoever to anything. And all the phone receivers were huge, and I'm not sure why.

The opening Saul Bass title sequence however stood out, and may have been the best detail in the whole sordid affair. 3/10.

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SEX ON FILM X 3:

🍿 LESVIA (2024), my first sweet documentary by Tzeli Hadjidimitriou, a pioneer of queer Greek cinema. It opens with a quote from the poetess Sappho: "Someone will remember us. I say. Even in another time."

As the birthplace of Sappho, the small village of Eressos, on the island of Lesbos, had drawn scores of lesbians since the early 1970's. Hadjidimitriou, who was born on the island itself, composed a touching portrait of the place and the woman who flocked there. Beautiful Mediterranean beaches, sex and freedom. Also, the political struggle to discover one's identity, and the class clashes between the local villagers and the influx of "different" tourists. 8/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿 I'm voting with the pro-porn block, but I'm still haven't found a good documentary about pornography. The new 1000 MEN AND ME about "adult" actress Bonnie Blue, and her publicity stunt of fucking 1057 men in 12 hours is not where it's at either. A shallow heavy breather, sensationalist TV-tabloid trash work with little value. 1/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿 TURN THE PAGE (1999), my first by Swedish heavy metal drummer (and director) Jonas Åkerlund. My old crush Ginger Lynn is a hooker and a pole dancer who tries to take care of her 8-yo daughter. 1/10.

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"Pornhub is dead?..."

I am not a huge fan of the many Stephen King's film adaptations [with few exceptions, 'The Shining', 'Stand by me', and maybe 'Carrie' which I haven't seen in 50 years, and maybe should give another try], since I can't swallow most of all the metaphysical mambo-jumbo that are the foundations for many of his stories.

The new oh-chucks-how-wonderous THE LIFE OF CHUCK was recommended by my friend Nava, but it also fell flat for me. The first act describing the 'End of the universe' and how people deal with 'The Collapse' [which in real-life is due sometimes in the next couple of decades], was fair. The unexpected dance scene at the square was kind-of lovely. But the third metaphoric act, revealing the origin story of ordinary Chuck's symbolic Everyman, lost me completely. Everything is low-brow, and Netflix-bland. 3/10.

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MARC MARON: PANICKED, his stand up from 2 months ago introduced me to Taylor Swift's Bigger than the whole sky, which is nice. He opens hot on the current political catastrophes we live through, and how much shit we're swimming in, but quickly retreats to his familiar, personal themes of anxiety, trauma and grief.

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THE SHORTS:

🍿 EVERY SUNDAY (1936), with early performances for both Deanna Durbin (her first) and Judy Garland. The two delightful 14-yo friends save an open-air orchestra in the park from cancellation by singing. 7/10.

🍿 ART OF STYLE: JEAN COCTEAU, Narrated by Timothée Chalamet. My 10-minute introduction to the avant-garde poet. I MUST seek out his movies and art tout de suite. 9/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿 THE OLD CROCODILE (2005), my 4th disturbing animation by Koji Yamamura. Minimalist in style and based on a 1923 French story, it tells of a giant Egyptian crocodile who suffers from arthritis because he's over 2500 years and cannot catch his food any more. So he starts by eating his grandson, and gets chased away from his family... and then it goes weird...

🍿 Yuri Norstein's 1975 HEDGEHOG IN THE FOG, an old-fashion fairy tale for very small children, and the "prettiest" of his animated films that I've seen so far. Like 'Winnie The Pooh' it's a bucolic, feel-good animals lost & found in the fog, the swamp and a river.

🍿 POLLUTION (1967), a biting short satire with a comment on environmental conditions in 1967. Sung by the one and only Tom Lehrer, who just died at the ripe age of 98.

RIP, Tom Lehrer!

🍿 THE GOD MAN (2025), a mock interview with the astronomer who discovered a space object that looks like a man.

🍿 TREEVENGE (2008), a Canadian Tree-xploitation film about the poor Christmas trees in a Christmas tree farm that are being "brutally murdered" by sadistic lumberjacks, who cut them and pack them and send them away. But eventually, the trees get their bloody revenge, and massacre all the humans - in an orgy of insane guts splashing! And that is why I don't watch Slasher films. 2/10.

🍿 "Nerdwriter1" Evan Puschak's latest essay TWO WAYS TO FILM THE SAME SCENE compares the Library Scene from Wim Wenders's 'Wings of Desire' to its 1998 formulaic remake 'City of Angels' (with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan). He analyzes what the difference between European art cinema and Hollywood commercialism reveal. I dislike remakes, and am not sure if I will ever see the American remake.

🍿 THE BLUE UMBRELLA (2013) a light Pixar love story about Pareidolia, and two umbrellas, one red and one blue in the rain. 3/10.

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(ALL MY FILM REVIEWS - HERE).

#movies #master and margarita #Mikio Naruse #yearning #japanese film #modern times #charlie chaplin #film review #movie recommendation #movie review #cinema

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