My favorite directorial feature film debuts

I was so impressed by Get Out, it got me thinking about my 10 favorite directorial feature debuts.  Here's where I landed:

Breathless
Funny Ha Ha
The Traveler
L'Enfance Nue
The 400 Blows
Jour de fete
They Live by Night
Boy Meets Girl
Killer of Sheep

Favorite (four), part forty-seven

Just like in my other forty-six posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer

I have long known that Godard was a big fan of Rouch but this is the first of his films I have seen.  It is extraordinary.  It breaks the fourth wall in more sophisticated and interesting ways than Godard ever did and serves as the template for the docu-style Godard would take into Masculin Feminin and several of his other films from the period.  A number of the scenes are magical including the long take of Marceline walking as the camera moves farther and farther away from her and the moment when the father imparts mountain climbing lessons to his more risk-averse daughter.

Paul Fejos' Lonesome

I wish Paul Schrader were here.  I've heard him list off on a number of occasions the things that cinema does particularly well and I always thought his list quite astute.  But one thing he may or may not have mentioned that I think the medium does unusually well is restraint.  When the cinema holds back from giving the audience what it craves for an extended amount of time and then finally delivers, the result can be incredibly powerful and moving.  I'm thinking of Fellini's restraint from using a close-up until the very end of Nights of Cabiria or Marker's sudden burst of movement in La Jetee or the emotional restraint Bresson exhibits throughout the entirety of Pickpocket until its very final moments.  Here, the restraint has to do with sound and as with the very best examples of restraint, when it finally breaks or gives in, it comes as a complete shock.  The first time the two characters spoke in Lonesome I did not know what to think.  I have seen a good number of films but I have never gone into a silent film expecting to hear two characters speaking to one another 30 minutes in.  But Fejos does not stop there.  He dazzles with color, he dazzles with montage and then when it is time for him to bring it all to a close, he does that gloriously as well.

Agnes Varda's The Beaches of Agnes

Although I still do not know Varda's cinema well at all (to date, I have only seen this and Cleo), I am very interested in tracking down more of her work.  Her cinema feels like some gourmet confection - inventive, sophisticated, quirky and most impressively, light.  I have seen a few other filmmakers go down this path of personal essay or stream of conscious autobiography (Marker and Godard, particularly).  But neither is able to articulate their personality and give you a feel for who they might be as a person better than Varda does here.

Billy Wilder's Avanti!

It is the work of a great artist, later in career, working at a time when a youth style has taken over that is so different and foreign it threatens to immediately render the director archaic or a fake depending on the approach he chooses.  Aside from his nod to 8 1/2 (and perhaps to all of the new generation's emphasis on style) in the film's prelude, Wilder confidently and intelligently chooses to stay "classic" and the film derives its power by this bold stance.  It is like Dreyer post Nouvelle Vague giving us the UFO that is Gertrud or Bresson adding color but perhaps nothing else that is stylistically new to his oeuvre in 1983.  Of course, also giving Avanti! its charge is the effect of classic elements in the hands of a master - deeply felt acting (I can't remember ever liking Lemmon better), an intricately designed narrative and long scenes, built and captured slowly, eloquently and artfully.

Favorite (four), part forty-six

Just like in my other forty-five posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Abbas Kiarostami's The Traveler

In its one track pursuit and its tunnel focus on the young main character, it feels like a black and white predecessor to Where is the Friend's Home?.  It is quintessential Kiarostami in its lyricism, its softness, its feel for the land and its rhythms.  A couple of scenes, like the photography session in the schoolyard, rank as Kiarostami at his most inventive and most cinematic.  Kiarostami would later become a little more rigorous with his filmmaking, longer takes, less music, but already in this, his first film over an hour, he announces himself as a great, new humanistic force.

Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn

Herzog is in the Hollywood system as much as I have ever seen but comes through, for the most part, true to form.  Herzog finds in Bale another perfect embodiment for his distorted heroism and proves once again that he can bring out the jungle of the jungle better than anyone who has ever worked in the medium.  The movie falters towards the end when it seems Herzog is trying to grasp at some sort of Hollywood convention but otherwise the film finds a unique, compelling voice inside a well-worn genre.  

Lewis Milestone's Hallelujah, I'm a Bum

Having read that one of my favorite critics, Jonathan Rosenbaum, rated it in his best 100 films of all time, I was extremely curious to see it.  It is exactly the type of film Rosenbaum tends to champion.  It is not stylistically flashy nor even terribly entertaining; however, it tackles complex subject matter and it does so with an intelligence and narrative skill of a very high order.  I may not always agree with Rosenbaum, but it is hard for me to argue with this film deserving attention and great respect. 

Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine

I watched a version on YouTube without subtitles so was unable to catch every word.  But, the film feels like the male version of Jules et Jim, or in other words, one male and two females.  I don't know Rozier's cinema yet but if this film is any indication he has the New Wave's keen interest and eye for youth, female beauty and the sea. 

Top 10 films I most want to see

Les hautes solitudes (1974)
One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
Histoire(s) du cinema (1998)
The Traveler (1974)
Games of Love and Chance (2003)
The Devil, Probably (1977)
Love Streams (1984)
They All Laughed (1981)
Centre Stage (1991)
Triple Agent (2004)

Was very honored to be included in this series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZWWzzelNMU&feature=youtu.be

Favorite (four), part forty-five

Just like in my other forty-four posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Jean Eustache's Mes Petites Amoureuses

I have long been a fan of Eustache's The Mother and the Whore but have had some difficulty tracking down the rest of his work.  And I just took a quick peek at Wikipedia and had no idea this was his only other feature.  I knew he had committed suicide young but never knew he only ever made just two features (and a good number of shorts).  This film is extraordinary, capturing a thing that I have never before seen captured on film.  The best way I can describe it is the very early awakening of the male interest in females.  It gets into the awkwardness but more than that it gets into the deep yearning and romantic creation that goes on in the head of many young boys.  There are a number of flat out brilliant sequences including Daniel's first imaginings while on a train and his encounter with the young girl Francoise in the neighboring town.

Werner Herzog's Stroszek

One of my favorite feelings as a cinephile is finding a film by a director whose work I only partially know and being inspired to track down the rest of their films.  Not only did Stroszek make me want to watch the rest of Herzog that I haven't seen yet but also get on a path to completion for Fassbinder.  Stroszek had so many things that I like but in particular I was moved by the emotiveness of Bruno S., the raw painterly quality of the camerawork, and the fact that it seemed a missing predecessor for a number of 80s movies I like a great deal including Stranger Than Paradise and the first two Leos Carax features.  And the final ten minutes have to go down as one of the greatest in the history of the medium.  They had the silent power of Anotonioni's The Passenger and embodied the absurd freewheeling nature of early Dylan better than any movie I have ever seen.

Howard Deutch's Pretty in Pink

I actually had never seen this before in its entirety and sure I'm being sentimental, and sure I'm being overly nostalgic, but I think Hughes captured (or formed?) the zeitgeist of that time better than anyone else in American film.  I felt real chemistry whenever Ringwald or McCarthy was on screen and believed the music, the clothes, the colors, the record stores, and pretty much every other great detail of the Hughes world.  

Werner Herzog's Cobra Verde

Not an easy film.  In its disjointedness, it felt reminiscent of something Welles might have made in the 50s or 60s.  And as a rougher and rawer Aguirre, it had me thinking about Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, a pure creation from a master filmmaker who seemed to no longer care if his audience was following.  Yet, the passion of Herzog pushes way past any financial limitations.  His pet theme of human greed comes through as well as in anything of his I have seen and the brilliant images by the sea in the final minutes serve as the perfect illustration for the preoccupations that led him to make this very amorphous work.   

Recent Twitter post

7YoungerFilmmakersI'mMostInterestedIn (cut off at 50 yo)
Gomes
Robert Mitchell
Saulnier
Mendonca Filho
Sciamma
Chazelle
Bonello
@colebrax

Favorite (four), part forty-four

Just like in my other forty-three posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Gordon Douglas' The Detective

I had never heard of this film until recently when I saw it was programmed as part of a series at the Paris Cinematheque focused on late 60s and 70s American cop movies.  Sinatra proves he was once again a double-threat as a singer and actor, very comfortable in front of the camera and believable in a number of roles.  Bisset was gorgeous, reminiscent of  Julie Christie during this period, but even sexier and with an even more dangerous sensuality.  And the film, though raw and uneven, goes deeper than most detective films and gives a real sense of the feelings and conflicted morality many people in the profession must face.  

Stuart Samuels' Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream

A very informative look at a special era in American cinema.  Great interviews abound from Hoberman to Rosenbaum, Barenholtz to Romero, Waters to Lynch.  I finished watching and now want to go watch all five movies that are its focus - El Topo, Pink Flamingos, Night of the Living Dead, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Eraserhead.  

Terrence Young's Thunderball
Although not considered the best Connery as Bond film, of all that I have seen so far it is Connery at his most brash, his most handsome and at his toughest.  Yes, it has a bit of a bloated ending but there are so many other great moments that far outweigh its final minutes.

Claude Chabrol's Que La Bete Meure
Chabrol's work does not have the playfulness of Godard, Truffaut, or even Rohmer, so I am not quite drawn to it in the same way.  But I like the way he uses his camera, moving through frames, capturing details, gestures, expressions gracefully and silently.  The locations and nature bring a warmth that balances out the cold, calculating nature of Chabrol's filmmaking approach.

Jean Pierre and Luc

I have seen a number of filmmaker's favorite film lists but of all the ones I have seen so far this one probably affected me the most.  I am a fan of the Dardenne brothers so it is not shocking that their list would align eerily close to my own (even if 10-15 films on their list are still blind spots for me).

But the Rossellinis, yes!  The Pialats and Bressons, yes!  And the Kiarostamis, are the Dardenne brothers reading my blog?

http://www.indiewire.com/2017/08/dardenne-brothers-favorite-films-streaming-1201864264/

#7Fav

Recently I was inspired by a list that had been circulating on my Twitter Feed where people had been naming their seven favorite films in a certain category.  I had seen #7Fav Film Noir lists, I think John Ford lists and maybe even John Carpenter lists.

Since I do like lists and am always trying to think about how my ratings of certain things change over time, I thought I would do a week or so of my #7Favs on Twitter.  I started with my two favorite periods of film, the French New Wave and the New Hollywood of the seventies, and then I went forward through the decades alternating French and American films.  

Here is where I ended up below:

#Fav2010sAmericanFilms
The Tree of Life
Margaret
Zero Dark Thirty
At Berkeley
La La Land
Carol
Only Lovers Left Alive

#7Fav2010sFrenchFilms
Film Socialisme
Carlos
Tomboy
Blue is the Warmest Color
Saint Laurent
Goodbye to Language
Clouds of Sils Maria

#7Fav2000sAmericanFilms
Our song
Mulholland dr
Funny Ha Ha
Femme fatale
All the Real Girls
No Direction Home
No Country for Old Men

#7Fav2000sFrenchFilms
Under the sand
Va savoir
Etre et avoir
Les amants reguliers
Secret and the Grain
Love Songs
35 Shots of Rum

#7Fav90sAmericanFilms
My own private idaho
Trust
Metropolitan
King of new york
Carlito's way
Heat
Dead man

#7Fav90sFrenchFilms
Oublie-moi
A Single Girl
JLG/JLG
A Summer's Tale
How I Got into An Argument...(My Sex Life)
Van Gogh
Thieves

#7Fav80sAmericanFilms
Blow Out
Stranger Than Paradise
Melvin and Howard
Blue Velvet
Sherman's March
The Thing
The Big Red One

#7Fav80sFrenchFilms
The Green Ray
L'argent
Boy Meets Girl
Mauvais Sang
Loulou
Full Moon in Paris
A nos amours

#7FavNewHollywoodFilms
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Shampoo
Taxi Driver
The Godfather
Five Easy Pieces
Night Moves
The French Connection

#7FavNovelleVagueFilms
Shoot the Piano Player
Pierrot Le Fou
Vivre Sa Vie
La jetee
Les cousins
Breathless
Cleo de 5 a 7

Favorite (four), part forty-three

Just like in my other forty-two posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Michael Ritchie's Downhill Racer

Ritchie is definitely a filmmaker that I am now far more curious about, having seen Smile (with him in person), The Bad New Bears and now this.  He has an auteur's deep feel for character and the freewheeling sensibility of Altman and Demme.  The soft shape of scenes and the way he slows down time during some of the races are what most affected me with this one.  I look forward to continuing to investigate more of his work, particularly The Candidate and Prime Cut.  

Michael Ritchie's The Candidate

Further proof of the Ritchie style being similar to Altman and his loose, freewheeling 70s work.  Redford puts in another confident, affecting low-key performance and the surrounding cast, particularly Boyle and Garfield, are unusually strong.  Ritchie surely deserves a much larger reputation.

Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man

Having recently been in Alaska,  I was especially interested in seeing this now even if it had been on my radar since first coming out.  Herzog's unique sensibility and world view really come through and his restraint and humanism were surprising given what I thought I knew about him.  It is far from Wiseman's world of documentary but it is still of great interest with a different type of rigor.  

Richard Rush's Freebie and the Bean

A movie that had never hit my radar until about a week ago even though it stars James Caan and Alan Arkin and was made during my favorite period of American film, the Seventies.  The Stunt Man was the only movie I had seen by Rush, and though it had a huge reputation, it never meant very much to me.  Freebie is a bit of a challenge, a loose, messy installment in the buddy cop movie that cares less for plot and narrative logic and more for feel and character.  It has great feel, for instance, for San Francisco and shows us areas of the city I don't feel I have ever seen before on film.  And it has great feel for character.  The bond between Freebie and Bean is deep and most remarkable is that Rush makes us feel the bond simply by having us hang out with them for a couple of hours.  

Interesting film series at the Cinematheque in Paris

http://www.cinematheque.fr/cycle/good-cop-bad-cop-391.html

You can see the English titles by clicking on the French titles

Favorite (four), part forty-two

Just like in my other forty-one posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

David Lynch's Twin Peaks Season 3, Episode 1

David Lynch is one of my favorite filmmakers still at work.  And though I would not call myself die hard about Twin Peaks, I am a fan of both the first two seasons and the film.  So when Season 3 started, more than 25 years later, I had high hopes for it.  For it and Lynch who had also been away from screens for more than a decade, since Inland Empire.  When Episode 1 began last night, at first I thought "it looks strange".  First, it was the images, most likely video rather than the film of the first two seasons.  Then, it was the actors from the first two seasons, all weathered by time (25 years!) looking like the way Hollywood ages actors in a biopic or an epic but psychologically to an even different effect because this is actually how all of the actors look now.  I have no idea how this trip will end but when the two hour premiere ended last night, I felt once again Lynch's special talent and that he had succeeded in tackling the nearly impossible.  He had revisited a much beloved property 25 years later and gotten back inside its rhythm.  In a way, I feel like I am about to re-experience the way El Dorado and Rio Lobo played off of Rio Bravo, but this time Lynch-style.  

Eric Rohmer's The Marquise of O

The first period piece I have seen from Rohmer and it is a stunner.  What impresses most is the way that Rohmer uses his incredible talent for distillation to tell a story of transcendence and humanism in the unexpected backdrop of the late 1700s.  Rohmer proves that he learned much from Rossellini and the effects he is able to achieve do not feel terribly far removed from Rossellini's great La prise de pouvoir de Louis XIV.

Robert Culp's Hickey & Boggs

It feels like a more sensitive Walter Hill film with pretty good Hill-esque set pieces and that buddy thing that Hill really excelled at.  Cosby certainly proves he could have been a strong dramatic movie actor if he continued on that path and Culp makes some very interesting choices that add a moral and emotional weight to what could have been shallow genre fare.

Bruce Robinson's Withnail & I

It is a cult film that has buzzed around me for years but for some reason I am just now seeing it.  It features deep, committed performances and an explosive feel and timing for language.  Robinson may not have a highly identifiable style but this film feels like it must have been a key film for the musical New Wave practitioners and for Boyle's zeitgeist catching Trainspotting a decade later.  

What a program

I saw a lot of this but how did I not see it all?

http://www.americancinematheque.com/archive1999/2000/newhollywood6070.htm

Favorite (four), part forty-one

Just like in my other forty posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Josef von Sternberg's Anatahan

It has only been 20+ years since I first heard of the film and have been wanting to see it ever since.  It belongs in that special category of master director's final films and it has that same odd tone of finality of Dreyer's Gertrud and perhaps even Bresson's L'argent.  It is a mood film dripping with atmosphere and style and succeeds in throwing the viewer into its exotic land and bringing the strangeness terrifically alive. Sternberg excelled at this type of cinema that also includes Macao and Morocco.  

James Gray's The Lost City of Z

The film of Gray that has impressed the most so far is also the most revealing.  Treading in this territory is dangerous stuff.  How do you not immediately beg comparison to Apocalypse Now and Aguirre?  You don't.  What Gray does though is blend the epic and the chamber and in that way it feels different.  Herzog and Coppola's film were both always operating on a large canvas and their egos and talents had no problem sustaining an epic scope for their duration.  Gray's film fits what is seemingly his personality, something that is more cerebral and more measured than Herzog and Coppola.  What is most striking is that I have long known that Gray reveres the work of Coppola but never have I noticed their differences more than now.  Not only is Gray far more humble but he also struggles to reach the emotional shape of Coppola's best work.  I felt watching The Lost City that everything was of one piece - Ravel's music could not have been more perfect, sophisticated, difficult themes were borne out, Khondji's work seemed right (even if I have never been a huge fan of his) but Gray has trouble reaching the emotional heights of Coppola.  Lost City is an unusually ambitious and well executed American film in this current environment but without the emotional resonance of the films he most admires, it is difficult to call it great.  

Nicholas Ray's Wind Across the Everglades

Ray made numerous films that were haunted with very dark characters spiraling deep, and almost uncontrollably, into their own obsessions and struggles.  His visual sense of abstraction was among the greatest the medium has ever seen and his diseased tone potentially more unique and consistent than that of any auteur.  I have now seen early Christopher Plummer twice (here and in The Silent Partner).  His ability to tap the hysteria within his own compulsion is a perfect match for the sensibility of Ray and his talent simply remarkable.  It is a shame more people do not discuss this work as it is the rawest, most uncompromising Ray film I have seen to date.    

Warren Beatty's Reds

I was deeply impressed by Beatty's ability to handle a story of this size with such directorial grace and skill.  I found his performance to be as good or close to as good as his typical level but it was Keaton's acting that really got me.  I have never found her as affecting and as deep as she is here.  I could do without the Greek chorus device as I found it took me out of the story more than further embedding me.  But the rest of the style is quite beautiful from Storaro's cinematography to Sondheim's music. 

Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)

4/22/17 I watched James Gray's The Lost City of Z.  The film of Gray that has impressed the most so far is also the most revealing.  Treading in this territory is dangerous stuff.  How do you not immediately beg comparison to Apocalypse Now and Aguirre?  You don't.  What Gray does though is blend the epic and the chamber and in that way it feels different.  Herzog and Coppola's film were both always operating on a large canvas and their egos and talents had no problem sustaining an epic scope for their duration.  Gray's film fits what is seemingly his personality, something that is more cerebral and more measured than Herzog and Coppola.  What is most striking is that I have long known that Gray reveres the work of Coppola but never have I noticed their differences more than now.  Not only is Gray far more humble but he also struggles to reach the emotional shape of Coppola's best work.  I felt watching The Lost City that everything was of one piece - Ravel's music could not have been more perfect, sophisticated, difficult themes were borne out, Khondji's work seemed right (even if I have never been a huge fan of his) but Gray has trouble reaching the emotional heights of Coppola.  Lost City is an unusually ambitious and well executed American film in this current environment but without the emotional resonance of the films he most admires, it is difficult to call it great.  

10/28/17 I watched Susan Lacy's Spielberg.  I have never considered myself a huge fan of the filmmaker but realized I do like more of his work than I remembered, including Munich and A.I.  I don't think Lacy goes all that deep, but I don't think Spielberg really allows someone to go there.  

11/25/17 I watched Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird.  Not what I had been reading, it certainly does not belong in conversations about the great coming of age art films - Kes, Germany Year Zero, 400 Blows.  What it is more than anything is a 2017 Pretty in Pink.  It is at its best when it is Gerwig quirky such as the scene of her grabbing the bottle of vodka at the house party soon after her arrival in NYC.  What is most limiting is the terribly episodic approach Gerwig takes to the entire film.  It needs length, space, oxygen.  As is, it is a syrupy indy that will do well for what it is, Hollywood not fringe.  

12/7/17 I watched Jordan Peele's Get Out.  It is the type of artistic genre film that I wish was less rare in today's American cinema.  What impressed me most was its insightful casting, particularly Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford and Caleb Landry Jones, and each of their deep commitment to every story beat and feeling.  We are millions of miles away from the cardboard performances found in most exploitation fare.  I found its restraint surprising and refreshing.  It cuts fairly slowly, gives the actors space to move around and is unafraid of stillness and quiet.  It uses its camera and music with intent and to great effect.  And, when it finally delivers on more conventional genre elements, in this case horror violence, it is fresh, inventive and affecting.  Of course, Peele also has come up with an incredibly smart script and lens with which to examine racism.  Scenes like the "slave auction" work at a very deep, artistic level and are worthy of the very best in critical attention and admiration.  It also seems that Peele studied the first Scream, beginning his film in similar ways to the great Barrymore opening in Craven's work.  With Get Out, Peele has delivered an explosive debut that I believe years from now will be considered in the same discussions of other brilliant debut genre films such as Reservoir Dogs and Kiss Me Deadly.  

12/31/17 I watched Benny and Josh Safdie's Good Time.  Sure Pattinson is interesting and the brothers maintain a very high tension throughout but anyone who wants to shoot a ninety minute film in close-up with screeching wall-to-wall music could achieve similar effects.  

1/3/18 I watched Joe Wright's Darkest Hour.  Oldman gives another remarkable trans-formative performance in this rousing pic from the director of Atonement.  

1/20/18 I watched Todd Haynes' Wonderstruck.  I was a huge fan of his previous film Carol but this one just left me a bit bewildered.  I hate the whole concept of a film not working, but I feel like this one does not.

1/27/18 I watched Robin Campillo's BPM (Beats per Minute).  I knew going into it that it was Les Inrocks' favorite film of the year and their taste is often closely aligned with my own.  What struck me most, aside from its performances, was its shape.  Campillo is able like Kechiche with Blue Is the Warmes Color or Bonello with Saint Laurent to avoid classical scene shape without seeming unstructured.  His modernism is not abrasive, loud or jarring.  It is immersive, fluid and welcoming.

2/24/18 I watched Sean Baker's The Florida Project.  After having seen the critically acclaimed Take Out and Prince of Broadway, I was squarely not on the Baker bandwagon.  I found his cinema limiting, overly full of close-ups and handheld camerawork.  Here his budget opens up, his camera pulls back and his cinema gains interest in ways in which I could not previously give it.  It still has handheld work when I question the choice but it also has sensitivity, an interesting perspective on our country and extraordinary work with its actors, particularly its young ones.  What I would now criticicize, more than anything, is its shape.  It becomes boring.  It is overly long in its claustrophobic commitment to its primary storyline and it lacks the transcendent highs or propulsive narrative of the very best of American cinema.  I shed a tear at the end and was stimulated by what the sped-up camerawork might signify but I was in admiration not in trance.

3/27/18 I watched Brett Morgen's Jane.  I found Glass' music to be heavy-handed and overwhelming but the footage is fascinating as is Goodall's story.

5/25/18 I watched Hong Sang-soo's On the Beach at Night Alone.  Proof yet again that Hong is one of the cinema's great simplifiers.  He is able to take all of life's complications and reduce them down until what is left are only his favorite things - women, smoking, drinking, nature, cafes and conversations.  If there is a filmmaker today churning out more consistently interesting works, I have yet to find him.

7/15/18 I watched Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women.  I have never been much a fan of her work.  Having seen Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy and Meek's Cutoff, I often felt her work was admirably minimal without the heft or depth of a Bresson or Ozu.  But her latest feels different to me, saying a tremendous amount without saying much at all.  Reichardt uses one of cinema's greatest weapons, silence, to get underneath her themes and wonderfully rich characters and stories.

9/29/18 I watched Benoit Bourreau's Aware, Anywhere.  It's interesting whenever two of the most passionate cinephiles currently at work are discussing the medium and their approach, Olivier Assayas and Kent Jones.  It's not the most fully compelling doc but worth a look for anyone with interest in Assayas.  

11/10/18 I watched Frederick Wiseman's Ex Libris: The New York Public Library.  Reminiscent of At Berkeley and In Jackson Heights but did not quite move me as much as the other two.  What is remarkable about Wiseman though and is certainly the case here are the speeches and conversations in his films.  Time and time again he is able to capture intelligent or even simply passionate people being intelligent and passionate in ways no one else has ever been able to achieve.

11/24/18 I watched Claire Denis' Let the Sunshine In.  Perhaps most remarkable about Denis' films, aside from the fact that they are always top shelf, is that they consistently feel modern.  As she advances in her career, her work never feels regressive with respect to her own filmography or retro with regards to the history of the medium in general.  Denis and Binoche are a potent combination.  They are two of our most daring artists, repeatedly willing to defy labels, classification or emotional signposts in their venturing.  When the end credits roll, it is clear once again that Denis is writing the book on film grammar today.  It is precisely the little touches like this that keep us moving forward and remind us, once again, that she is one of the greatest filmmakers at work today.      

2/21/19 I watched Hong Sang-soo's The Day After.  Although I prefer Hong's films in color, he proves yet again with this work that he is unusually comfortable in his skin and knows how to use his repetitive style and approach to great effect.  The more I watch his films the more I feel he is like an Erik Satie of cinema.  It's like he keeps hitting the same key on a piano until suddenly, somehow, through repetition it just begins to sound different.  Also, Hong again impresses with his use of ellipses and the way he is consistently able to transcend budgetary limitations and lack of action to leave the viewer in an elevated emotional state.  For instance, I found the final scene of this work particularly masterful and affecting.

1/16/20 I watched Abbas Kiarostami's 24 Frames.  It is a very interesting final work from one of the greatest filmmakers to ever work in the medium.  It is not necessarily an enjoyable watch as it gets a little repetitive after a while but for insight into the mind and heart of the great Kiarostami, it's as good as anything he ever made.  

3/14/20 I watched Steven Spielberg's The Post.  It was an interesting story that I did not know.  But several times I found it strained for those big Spielberg emotions.

3/19/20 I watched Chloe Zhao's The Rider.  I was completely surprised by this one, particularly impressive was its sensitivity, confidence in silence, and the acting by its main character.  Zhao finds a way to inject newness into the western genre, showing us towns, lives and feelings we have never quite experienced before in the western tradition and structure.

4/10/20 I watched Abdellatif Kechiche's Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno.  If I were still making films, Kechiche would be one of the filmmakers I would study the closest.  His films feel as pure and perhaps more modern than anyone else's.  It is clear he is a cinephile and it feels as though he is taking art cinema to its most exciting and logical next phase.  What does that mean?  Kechiche's cinema is as much documentary as it is fiction.  Like the New Wave, he is embracing lighter technology to get inside his characters, get inside his scenes more to ward off elements that can quickly make the medium of cinema feel artificial.  But all the while, he is bringing in aspects of narrative cinema that make it arguably more palatable and more entertaining than cinema verite.  Kechiche has a painter's eye and dresses his realistic or naturalistic settings with strong locations, set design, emotive ambient sound and interesting-looking people acting in very believable ways.

3/13/21 I watched Francis Whately's David Bowie: The Last Five Years.  A moderately interesting look at the tail end of Bowie's life and career.  I think it could have and wish it would have gone deeper.

12/28/21 I watched Abel Ferrara's Alive in France.  Interesting for any Ferrara completist but if not I would start with some of his other docs and films.

2/17/22 I watched Daniel Warth's Dim the Fluorescents.  A film with one actor that moved me and several original moments never fully involved me.  It had energy and verve.  I just wish it also had a slightly tighter editing eye and a few stronger actors.  

7/14/22 I watched Sara Driver's Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat.  It's the type of documentary that would be hard to imagine an outsider being able to make.  Driver is able to tap her network as well as lived experience to gather extraordinary footage of Basquiat and the NYC art world in the late seventies to early eighties.  For any fan of Basquiat or anyone just curious to learn a little more about the man and the unique era that inspired his work.    

9/18/22 I watched William E Badgley's Here to Be Heard: The Story of the Slits.  A must see for anyone into post-punk that wants to learn more about this seminal group.  Interesting to see that even people who leave a mark on music history sometimes have to move on to a life that has little to do with his or her art.   

3/2/24 I watched John Scheinfeld's Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary.  Hugely recommend to any fan of Coltrane's music.  I got great insight into a number of things about his life and creative process that I never knew.  

Favorite (four), part forty

Just like in my other thirty-nine posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Jim Jarmusch's Gimme Danger

Jarmusch saves his rawest aesthetic to date for the rough and tough Stooges, and even though it is a major stylistic departure for Jarmusch he seems comfortable in this different skin.  Jarmusch provides new insight into the highly influential band and the deep emotional wounds that have propelled Iggy for the last 50 years.  

Michael Ritchie's The Bad News Bears

Ritchie's slacker sensibility is a perfect match with the material.  I don't think this one gets near enough attention and should be in any conversation around the greatest sports movies of all time.

Ewan McNicol and Anna Sandilands' Uncertain

How these thoughtful and talented filmmakers came to work right in my backyard I have no idea (tax credits?) but they do an excellent job at capturing life in the Caddo Lake backwoods.  They resist easy storylines and typical trajectories and leave us with an affecting look at a different world.

Michael Schultz's Cooley High

Even though it was an AIP production, it feels more like an American New Wave film or a 1970's Shadows.  I have heard it referenced in rap songs and as an important entry in that decade's pop culture but now finally seeing it, it exceeded expectations in the way it captures the clothes, the music, the feel of the times.  Required viewing for anyone that wants a link from Shadows to Burnett to Spike.

Favorite (four), part thirty-nine

Just like in my other thirty-eight posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Jim Jarmusch's Paterson

Another strong entry from one of my favorite filmmakers currently at work, after what felt like a slight drop in quality between Ghost Dog and Only Lovers Left Alive.  Like his great previous film, Jarmusch seems to be in an internal dialogue with the past and with art.  Whereas the excellent Lovers was with one of his favorite passions, music.  This time around Jarmusch seems to be most concerned with another of his primary artistic passions, poetry.  In fact, there is so much in common, formally and narratively, between the two films that they seem to form a couple relationship within his body of work.  The greatest strength of Jarmusch has always been his ability to distill and condense.  Like the best poems, his work conveys so much with so little.    

Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

I was frustrated by the backlash against La La Land.  And I was confused by the critical preference for Moonlight.  Sure, Chazelle's film had the more robust budget.  But I felt like his film also had far more filmmaking rigor than Jenkins' and that Chazelle's formal approach in general was much clearer and achieved at a significantly higher level.  And when I hear someone compare Moonlight's color palate to the incredible work Doyle and Wong Kar-wai achieved together I really don't see it at all.  

With that out of the way, I was looking forward to rewatching Demy's film, cited as a key influence on La La Land.  I remembered Demy's work with color as among the most impressive in film's history and it was as brash and beautiful as I remembered.  The pinks, purples, and splashes of bold colors of Demy's cinema certainly find their way into some of the clothes and onto some of the sets of La La Land (most noticeably in Emma Stone's apartment and her roommates' outfits).  What I did not remember though is just how bittersweet and powerful the final minutes of Cherbourg are.  Rewatching it now, if you felt it like I did, it seems that the secret behind the emotional power of some of La La Land's final exchanges is Chazelle tapping into the same cinema magic Demy was onto for Cherbourg's last moments.  Both films explore unrequited and both get deep rewards for staying on the other side of happily ever after.

Sadao Yamanaka's Humanity and Paper Balloons

I know nothing at all about the filmmaker and it was the first of his films I have seen.  What impressed most was the film's study of class and the way it examines the idea that there are other things in life of far greater value than money.  Yamanaka also infuses the film with a similar strain of poetry that seems to exist in the other great works of Japanese cinema. 

Yasujiro Ozu's I Was Born, But...

For the first time since February of 2016, I am back to working my way through the work of Ozu in chronological order.  This one I had seen before and I had very fond memories of and re-watching did not disappoint.  And, it was instructive to watch it in relation to what immediately came before it.

Ozu seems to be using "tatami" shots now in almost every shot but I wouldn't say all aspects of his signature style are present.  There seem to be far more quick cuts than we find in the later Ozu, when he begins to move to very long takes.  There also seems to be far more movements of the camera, primarily tracking shots to follow characters walking, but there is also a backwards tracking movement to introduce the dad at work that seems very reminiscent of Vidor's The Crowd.

Ozu's under-recognized sense of playfulness is really at the fore as is his unusually strong ability with his child actors.  Without a doubt, this is also his most complex film emotionally to date, as he delves into some very rich but tricky terrain as the two boys try to reconcile what they come to learn about their father.

I Was Born, But... (1932)

For the first time since February of 2016, I am back to working my way through the work of Ozu in chronological order.  This one I had seen before and I had very fond memories of and re-watching did not disappoint.  And, it was instructive to watch it in relation to what immediately came before it.

Ozu seems to be using "tatami" shots now in almost every shot but I wouldn't say all aspects of his signature style are present.  There seem to be far more quick cuts than we find in the later Ozu, when he begins to move to very long takes.  There also seems to be far more movements of the camera, primarily tracking shots to follow characters walking, but there is also a backwards tracking movement to introduce the dad at work that seems very reminiscent of Vidor's The Crowd.  

Ozu's under-recognized sense of playfulness is really at the fore as is his unusually strong ability with his child actors.  Without a doubt, this is also his most complex film emotionally to date, as he delves into some very rich but tricky terrain as the two boys try to reconcile what they come to learn about their father.

 

Favorite (four), part thirty-eight

Just like in my other thirty-seven posts in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  Most of the films I have been glad to see but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those and my hope is one or two will be good to you as well.

Kleber Mendonca Filho's Aquarius

I know nothing of Filho's work, not even if the filmmaker is male or female (although the unusually sensitive treatment of the central female character leads me to think it is the latter).  Filho is a graceful filmmaker, reminding me of Moretti in the artful, light way he glides through scenes.  Most remarkable aside from the fully felt Clara is the way the filmmaker so effortlessly moves through time and the way quick cuts are used to show sexual actions and waves of Clara's thoughts and memories. 

Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way

It's been 20 or so years since I first saw this in a bad print at the New Beverly.  It's much stronger than I remember, Bridges and Heard quite impressive and the whole thing in much the same vein as Night Moves.  It is one of the more important final bookends to the American New Wave, artistic with an A list crew and disheartened that the utopic future for America envisioned by the youth at the time had clearly failed.  

Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds

I have very little experience with Naruse's work, this being either only the first or second film I have ever seen from him.  I'm not a fan of his almost wall-to-wall music and I wish he were more similar to Mizoguchi and Ozu in his sense of restraint.  But I admire his ability to go the distance with the material, never becoming sentimental even when it would have been more palatable and more commercial to do so.  He is gifted with time, effortlessly gliding back and forth between the past and the present, and emotionally he is more engaged with reality than the cerebral Mizouchi and the distant Ozu.  

John Ford's The Lost Patrol

What I was most struck by, aside from Ford's signature ability to bring out the haunting poetry in natural landscapes, is a certain modern quality to the work.  McLaglen's physicality towards the end does not feel too much different than Pacino in the latter stages of Scarface and the fact that Ford almost never cuts to the opposition gives the film artful restraint that really helps create the effective, ominous atmosphere he sustains throughout.

Before Hollywood, The Go-Betweens, 1983

Bouncy, jangly, and very far removed from the baroque and epic songwriting of 16 Lovers Lane.  In fact, if I didn’t know any better I would think they were two entirely different bands.    Certain albums shift into a different gear at some point in their sequencing.  Here that magic stretch happens from “Ask” to “Cattle and Cane”.  Not that the entire album is not top-notch but songs 3-5 are otherworldly, somehow more connected and more memorable than the other sections of the album.  The Go-Betweens never cracked my US mainstream.  They never even cracked my radar until years after they had disbanded and I was reading about them while I was living in France.  But for any fan of early REM, hours of sophisticated songs of beauty await.

My Top Seventeen "Films" of 2016

Either I have lowered my standards or it was simply a more satisfying year.  Largely I think that's because I was willing to work harder to dig out the things I really wanted to see.  Whether it was at the movies or streaming on Amazon, Fandor, Filmstruck or Netflix, here were my high points.  

Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon

Ruiz's film is a display of filmmaking "class" with every shot meticulously framed and every movement of the camera elegant and graceful.  The previous film (or two) of Ruiz's left me completely unprepared for the force and effect of this extraordinary achievement.  It might have been shot on digital but it leaves no doubt that a certain sort of classicism in filmmaking (beautiful acting, immaculate set design, repetitive, symphonic score) when done in the highest manner can reach the soul every bit (if not more) than any of the more contemporary techniques.

Todd Haynes' Carol

Haynes' latest, very mature and sophisticated, is more European in its textures and shape than American indy or mainstream.  It felt even more mysterious than its closest Haynes' counterpart Far from Heaven and is poetic and delicate in ways I have never experienced in his other work.  A great surprise and another chapter in the brilliant careers of both Blanchett and Burwell. 

Celine Sciamma's Tomboy

A very strong addition to the kid in peril genre that includes 400 Blows, Kes and Germany, Year Zero.  This one is incredibly unsettling, particularly for the way it takes the audience's experience with past movies and uses those memories of what could possibly happen to create an almost relentless tension.  The end credits mention Ferran and Lvovsky, which come of no surprise as influences and to help locate the cinematic world in which Sciamma is so effectively treading.   

Hong Sang-soo's Right Now, Wrong Then

Hong's latest outing once again treads familiar territory - a doppelganger narrative, a filmmaker as main character and plenty of scenes of eating and drinking.  This installment especially benefits from Hong's ability to capture so many of those awkward but charged emotions we have all experienced during the early stages of courting.  And the way the second narrative remixes the events that have come before has Hong working at the absolute height of his skill.

Damien Chazelle's La La Land

I was a big fan of Whiplash and interested in seeing this, Chazelle's next film.  After Whiplash, I sensed and hoped that Chazelle might be the type of filmmaker I have been waiting for, a sophisticated cinephile with enough mainstream appeal to succeed in imposing and protecting his cinema within Hollywood.  I was excited when I first discovered David Gordon Greeen, Andrew Bujalski, even Bennett Miller.  But, in truth, Gordon Green and Bujalski never seemed to have the sensibility to fully crossover.  They might get their chance to work within the system but it would be in the way the system wanted them to work and not the other way around.  Miller, in a similar way to Kenneth Lonergan, will probably succeed in continuing to make smart cinema in Hollywood, but it will almost certainly be a cinema devoid of style and without any internal dialogue or link back to film's history.  Meanwhile La La Land is truly bold cinema, a young auteur's willingness to go all in, cash in on his sophomore effort fully knowing that it really does not matter how daring he is because if he makes a film that connects he will be given additional chances.  If not, he will be back to making small-scale indy work as he grovels for Hollywood to give him another shot.  Chazelle gambles and emerges, in my eyes, as the most gifted new American filmmaker since the exciting new voices of the nineties, like James Gray and Tarantino,  I made a similar, now obviously irresponsible claim in '99 when O'Russell, Payne and The Wachowski Brothers all had breakout years.  But I have more trust this time around.  After all, one of Chazelle's main subjects of La La Land is how to preserve something that is under great threat of fading away.

Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret

Genre.  Novelistic.  Ambition.  Massive.  Pressure.  Huge, after the breakout success of You Can Count On Me.  I have long been a fan of Paquin and here Lonergan gives her the space to show off deep layers of her talent.  The sprawling film is difficult and flawed but also infinitely more rewarding than most of the work currently coming out of the States.  It feels most akin to a French art film, something Desplechin or Assayas would attempt, and full of extraordinary moments bubbling with feelings and ideas.    

Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu

Ray takes a few years away from his trilogy before coming back and completing it with this film, and the style feels a little different than the first two movies.  This film has a slightly more elliptical quality and seems intent on drifting closer to poetry.  The ending of the film is one of the very strongest moments of the entire trilogy with Ray attaining that transcendent experience of the great neorealist works.  

Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre

It has been years since I have seen a new Moretti film, the last being 2001's The Son's Room.  But his work such as Palombella rossa and Caro diario both rate among my favorite films of the eighties and nineties.  Moretti is in top form with his latest outing creating something that is fairly small-scaled and intimate.  It is a work that seems to aspire and succeeds in being something that is appealing to look at and listen to, that will make you both think and feel deeply.

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le deuxieme souffle

Definitely one of these blueprint films that presented (and perhaps even introduced) so much of what would become conventions for the ambitious crime films of the next thirty years.  It takes its time, coming in a little over 150 minutes, and relies heavily on ambient sounds, featuring very little in the way of music.  Where there is music it is that moody minimal jazz that we will find again in Friedkin's French Connection, Klute and Night Moves, to name but a few.  We see the two-gun shootout that would become trademarks of Woo and Tarantino.  We have the zoom and heavy reliance on location shooting that almost sum up the aesthetic approach of Friedkin in the French Connection.  And we have onscreen time stamping that shows up all over Scorsese's work and in seemingly every copycat crime filmmaker that would follow in its wake.  

Samuel Fuller's Underworld U.S.A.

Fuller's strengths - his constantly roving, expressive camera and his hard-hitting sensibility are at the fore while his weaknesses, such as a heavy hand creating believable romance and intimacy are hardly, if at all, noticeable.  Clearly an influence on later great works such as Carlito's Way and an argument as good as any that the noir cycle did not end with Touch of Evil in 1958 but was still going strong well into the sixties with important and powerful entries such as this.    

Jacques Rivette's Le Pont du Nord

One of the real pleasures of being a cinephile is discovering a new link to a film that you already love.  In this case it's Carax's Boy Meets Girl and really to Carax's cinema in general.  Rivette's influence seems to be all over.  It's in the way that Carax uses the little seen areas of Paris, the way that he fixates on maps of the city, and in the countless quirky mannerisms of Lavant that run throughout Carax's body of work.  Also, of note is this strange relationship with genre that Rivette seems to have (and I guess Godard did as well, think Pierrot le Fou or Vivre sa Vie).  It's like they don't want to make pure art films but instead prefer adding these trivial crime subtexts to the real meat of their stories producing a formula that ends up being something like - - serious characterization + ironic treatment of genre = playful, thoughtful art.  What is interesting is how some of the New Wave filmmakers get at the poetry of the genre by having fun with it in ways that the original practitioners of the genre never achieved.  I am thinking particularly of where Truffaut ends up in Shoot the Piano Player, Belmondo's final moments in Pierrot and the remarkable last few minutes Rivette gives us between Pascale Ogier and Jean-Francois Stevenin.  And I've gotten all the way here and only begun to mention Pascale Ogier, the most interesting and most tragic early loss in all of French cinema, who in but a handful of films offered up everything that James Dean and River Phoenix did only to disappear all too soon. 

Arnaud Desplechin's My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument

Desplechin's second feature comes with a certain looseness that could belie a unique cinematic intelligence and a nearly unprecedented capturing of uninhibited femaleness.  It feels more akin to a novel in its shape and courage to let time unfold within its own disheveled set of rules.  "Tenderness is the fear of adulthood", Desplechin quotes Kundera, and this film might be as spot-on as any in the medium's history for capturing that very strange road from freedom to responsibility.   

Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie)

Godard returns after a twelve or so year departure from "traditional" narrative cinema with this absolute scorcher of a film.  I was surprised (although I do not know why since Godard remains perhaps my favorite of all) by its beauty, its playfulness, its ability yet again to tap into the zeitgeist of its time.  It is Godard as post-punk and it is up there with his extraordinary work from the sixties.  If anyone thinks Godard's importance ended with Week End, have a look. 

Miguel Gomes' Tabu

Clearly I am late to the party but there seems to be something very special right now happening in Portuguese cinema.  I already recently got on the bandwagon for Manoel de Oliveira and now I am starting to see what this Gomes guy is all about.  If Tabu is any indication, he might be one of the most gifted and bold filmmakers at work right now in the world.  Visually it is absolutely rapturous cinema, using modern black-and-white like the killer poetic weapon it can be when in the right hands (think Wenders' work with Muller or Dead Man, again Muller).  And Gomes' style, in addition to his visual approach, is as free-wheeling and exciting as Godard can be in his most effective moments.  Gomes jumps all around chronologically, mixes silent cinema with voiceover and uses music and nature as well as the great Swiss one.  I can't wait to see more of Gomes' work.  He's exactly the type of filmmaker, in its current isolationist cinema culture, Americans are losing out on by not having more readily available.

David Simon and William F. Zorzi's Show Me a Hero

My most memorable viewing experience last year was seeing the entirety of The Wire for the first time.  I was astounded by Simon's ability to simultaneously juggle so many rich characters and the way he so gracefully glided around the different corners of the carefully detailed and observed world he had created.  Simon moves the focus from Baltimore to Yonkers but the result is similar, another microscopic study of a section of our community and a work that not only lodges itself deeply into our personal and moral fabric, but shifts us.  

David Lynch's Twin Peaks (TV show)

As a long time fan of Lynch I figured it was about time I sit down and watch the entirety of the two seasons of Twin Peaks.  I also wanted to make sure I was caught up when the new batch premieres in 2017.  Although not every moment is fully captivating, the show rises above any other I have seen in its casting, its fearlessness and the primal power of its greatest scenes.  Nothing topped the final episode for me but other unforgettable moments include Leland Palmer and Madeleine's final scene, Coop's Tibetan Method, and any scene that bears the threat of Leo coming home.

Jeffrey Dupre and Maro Chermayeff''s Soundbreaking

The access that the filmmakers had, most likely because of Sir George Martin's involvement, is extraordinary.  And the fact that they chose to tell the story thematically rather than chronologically gives the film a pulse and an entertainment quotient that Ken Burns' work never seems to achieve.