Aliens

-
Few things, perverse though it may be, give me more pleasure than an unhappy, alienated film hero. I will always identify more with the Travis Bickles and the tortured chumps like Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) in Double Indemnity than with cinema's winners. If I have a movie culture Achille's Heel, a surefire way to slay me, it's the loser, the oddball. La Vie En Rose, Old Joy, Ghost World: show me a failure and I'll show you a five star rating. On that note, two recent films about alienated guys, The Visitor and The Counterfeiters spoke to that part of me that wants to see suffering, miserable-looking sadsacks struggling to connect.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Year in Film (So Far): Exploitation, War and a Brutal Economy in Film and Reality Alike

-
Image
                            The global haves and the have nots collide in the brilliant Brazilian nightmare Bacurau  A year of difficulty for individuals and also for the film industry, COVID-19 made 2020 a trial by fire for many. But even despite quarantine, incredible films by a variety of talented filmmakers, many of which flew under the radar, have made this a banner year for great filmmaking. It was also a year when smaller, independent or art house fare had a moment to shine, as blockbusters and big Hollywood movies took a back burner and tried to wait out COVID for the moment when theaters opened up. Smaller films, foreign films and works by a new wave of younger female directors were able to shine in the absence of the Hollywood's braying media blitzkreig. Read on for some of my favorite films of 2020 so far, in a year of visual delights still to come. All are currently streaming now on a TV near you.   Sorry We Missed You Ken Loach's chilling, painful in its truthfulne
Read more

A Dark Coming-of-Age Story for Girls

-
Image
Sidney Flanigan in Never Rarely Sometimes Always /Image courtesy of Focus Features Tales of innocence lost and knowledge gained, the male bildungsroman in film runs the tonal gamut from American Graffiti t o Stand By Me to Boyhood . It's an adventure story coupled with a rite of passage that signals a shift from childhood to manhood. Director Eliza Hittman's devastating Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a coming-of-age with a difference, an "adventure" defined by a quest, myriad obstacles and a fresh, painful reckoning with the world's injustices, for both protagonist and audience. The quest in this case is 17-year-old Autumn's (Sidney Flanigan) herculean effort to obtain an abortion following sex, the film insinuates, that may not have been her choice. The film's title comes from an interview in a New York City Planned Parenthood office in which Autumn is asked to, essentially, recount her sex life on a rating scale from good to horrific a
Read more

Girls Will Be Girls: Damsels in Distress Navel-Gazes at an Artificial College Experience

-
Image
Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics Whit Stillman's flowery, absurd Damsels in Distress substitutes Animal House 's crude frat boys for priss-pot coeds in this too-cute-for-school, obnoxious evocation of a make-believe college life. The damsels in question are all named for flowers, because girls are so, well, flowery. Block-of-wood indie queen Greta Gerwig is all square shoulders and flatline delivery as the bossypants Violet, the queen bee in a hive of girliness dedicated to rooting out bad smells and suicidal depression from their private Seven Oaks College. The slightly dim brunette Heather (Carrie MacLemore) and the elegant African-American girl Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke), who has come back from a London trip with an affected British accent and a conviction that all men are "playboys and operators," round out this coterie of Lanz nightgowns and proper enunciation. The girls live in a cozy dorm room
Read more