50 great films with one-word titles

June 17, 2023July 15, 2023 ~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes when the days are slow and long and hot, I can just sort of geek-out and ponder random things related to my passions. Welcome to today, in which I spent a preposterous amount of time ticking off some of my favorite films that have one-word titles, from “Casablanca,” to “Goodfellas.”

It was a pointless exercise — massively pointless — but it was fun jogging my memory and eventually putting down a litany of terse titles, which always seem a bit more evocative than longer titles. As a lark, I chose 50 great films almost entirely off the top of my pointy head, and present them here in no order whatsoever. (Now it’s your turn.)

“Nashville” (1975); “Sunrise” (1927); “Amadeus” (1984); “Jaws” (1975); “Casablanca” (1942); “Airplane!” (1980); “Freaks” (1932); “Goodfellas” (1990); “Rebecca” (1940); “Heat” (1995):

“Detour” (1945); “Shrek” (2001); “Rushmore” (1998); “Ran” (1985); “Magnolia” (1999); “Oldboy” (2003); “Gilda” (1946); “Brazil” (1985); “Psycho” (1960); “Frankenstein” (1931):

“Duel” (1971); “Manhattan” (1979); “Eraserhead” (1977); “Se7en” (1995); “Yojimbo” (1961); “Notorious” (1946); “Lincoln” (2012); “Boyhood” (2014); “Chinatown” (1974); “Alien” (1979):

“Deliverance” (1972); “Spellbound” (2002); “Babe” (1995); “Sleeper” (1973); “Scarface” (1932); “Network” (1976); “Memento” (2000); “Hamlet” (1996); “M” (1931); “Breathless” (1960):

“Rashomon” (1950); “Stagecoach” (1939); “Ikiru” (1952); “Zelig” (1983); “Macbeth” (1971); “Klute” (1971); “Joker” (2019); “Cabaret” (1972); “Laura” (1944); “Metropolis” (1927) :

There are many more — “Bullitt,” “Contempt,” “Up,” “Repulsion,” “Gaslight,” “Slacker,” “Clueless,” “Thief,” “Locke” — but I wanted to keep the list at a tidy 50. I’d be here till Labor Day if I rounded up all the great single-title movies. But feel free to share your own.

You’ll notice I’ve made some glaring omissions of highly acclaimed films that simply don’t astonish me, and sometimes even rankle: “Fargo,” “Gladiator,” “Vertigo,” “Unforgiven,” “Zodiac” and “Casino.” Argue with me all you want, please.

Oscar mired

February 7, 2023February 7, 2023 ~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t seen, and will not see, James Cameron’s latest self-regarding epic of glorious wonderment and spine-tingling astonishment “Avatar: The Way of Water.” I loathed the first “Avatar” — its stupefying clichés, cornball story and embarrassing gravitas gave me the willies — and I have no need for three more hours of blue-hued pablum and pixie dust.

Still, the movie — which The Guardian torpedoed as “a soggy, twee, trillion-dollar screensaver” — is of course making bundles and is, Christ, nominated for Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars. It’s all so predictable, and so terribly depressing.

Cameron’s mammoth, mystical, magical 3-D cartoon joins nine other Best Picture contenders, a few of which look interesting. I’ve only seen four and a half of the 10 films, but I know what I like — and what to shun.

The list isn’t totally offensive, yet it’s certainly not in the league of, say, the Best Picture roster of 1976: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Barry Lyndon,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Jaws” and “Nashville.” (Top that.)

Still, I did enjoy Martin McDonagh’s chatty, touching tale of a foundering friendship, “The Banshees of Inisherin,” as much for its shattering performances (led by Colin Farrell, all knitted brow) as for its emotional fragility. Baz Luhrmann’s typically over-caffeinated “Elvis” biopic was fine if rather pat and conventional considering its Visine-demanding razzle-dazzle.

I could not finish the highly (and curiously) lauded metaverse mess that is “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” its great and fitting title aside. I don’t know who this steroidal video game is aimed at (yes, I do: freaks and geeks) and I found it incoherent, unfunny and frenetically unwatchable. The baffling part: It will probably win Best Picture. Seriously.

I long ago stopped trusting Steven Spielberg not to bow to bathos, and his latest, the autobiographical melodrama “The Fabelmans,” looks like a hot, bubbly bath of bathos. Respectable reviews apart, I’ve heard it’s dreadful, only confirming my hunches. Michelle Williams is up for an acting award and I hope she gets it. She’s terrific and is likely one of the few watchable things in this movie I will not watch. I don’t even like the title.

Nothing against that elfin egomaniac Tom Cruise — I happen to think he’s an underrated actor — but I also won’t be squandering two and a half hours on “Top Gun: Maverick,” a popcorn flick without the laughable high-minded pretensions of “Avatar.” How this show about penises with wings got nominated I will never know. Because I won’t be seeing it. But good for it!

In Todd Field’s “Tár” a commanding Cate Blanchett plays the titular classical conductor, an imperious and imposing figure, the artist as viper. A chamber piece cum character study, this coiled drama entrances with theatrical flair and a seriousness that lends it a sheen of prestige. I like it.

Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s famous anti-war novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a huge German production directed with gloomy zest by Edward Berger and starring piles of mutilated war dead. It’s grisly, affecting and deeply human. The film shimmers with ghastly beauty and unstinting realism — irresistible Oscar bait.

Snubs? While I’m happy Noah Baumbach’s irritating “White Noise” was dissed wholesale, the rejection of delirious Indian action orgy “RRR” for Best International Feature Film is scandalous. (Though it is — whoopee — up for Best Song. Watch it on Netflix. Please.) James Cameron, self-proclaimed King of the World, was denied a Best Director nod for “The Way of Water.” I bet he’s having a seismic hissy fit.

Finally in the Best Picture race are Sarah Polley’s #MeToo-ready drama “Women Talking” and Ruben Östlund’s dark international satire “Triangle of Sadness,” neither of which I’ve seen yet. Critics love them. They are probably good, maybe even superb, and for that they will win nothing.

Ta-ta, Tarantino

July 20, 2021July 21, 2021 ~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

It’s safe to say Quentin Tarantino doesn’t like me. We enjoyed several years of mutual respect, perhaps even admiration. But some time ago we lost that loving feeling.

I’m not entirely sure what happened. Was it the fact that I pretty much loathe his movies, except for ‘90s masterworks “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction,” and that, as a film critic, I got to say that and more in wide-circulation print? Probably.

The last interaction I had with the hopped-up hipster helmer was when he cancelled our interview mere minutes before the appointed time. No official word why — the publicist was at a loss — but I was still oddly flattered, even thrilled. QT had cut me off. Shucks. Cool.

And things were so good! I’ve sat down with and interviewed Tarantino at least four times, and watched many classic grindhouse flicks with him during his annual QT Film Festival in Austin. I wrote an effusive article about the festival that he told me he loved and went on and on about. I’ve been at several parties for him. I once honked and waved when I saw him walking down the street. He waved back.

Yet he’s always been thorny and brusque, too, like when he sat behind me during Richard Lester’s 1973 swashbuckling comedy “The Three Musketeers” and I left early to chat with someone in the lobby.

After the movie, back in my seat, I turned to him and told him how much I loved the movie as a kid. “That doesn’t mean shit if you weren’t watching it now,” he snipped. I turned back around, chastened, a whipped mutt.

Being berated by a major talent isn’t so bad. It’s kind of exhilarating. For two seconds they’re lavishing undivided attention on you. You feel a tiny bit important, even if you’re wincing.

Mouthy and explosively passionate, Tarantino gives great interview. The man can gab, and he has plenty to say. Intense, garrulous, profane and scary-smart, his encyclopedic film knowledge rivals Scorsese’s, if the elder director was obsessed with biker schlock and zombie-cheerleader exploitation. His tireless hands make wild semaphores and he accents thoughts with assertive “All rights?” — a rhetorical flourish that he’s almost trademarked. I liked this whorl of energy quite a bit.

He still makes garbage. Accomplished garbage, but garbage nonetheless. People often ask me why I find QT’s movies almost unbearable. The short answer is that they’re sophomoric, shamelessly derivative, self-satisfied, indulgent, juvenile, unfunny and, worse, brutally tedious. The fetishized violence is exasperating and the three-hour run times denote an egomaniac’s lack of discipline. The films, from the asinine “Inglourious Basterds” to the odious “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” are baggy and boring.

I never told him he made crap. I did write a negative review of the first “Kill Bill” and I may have talked up my aversion to nonsense like “Death Proof” to fellow film folk. The Austin movie scene, in which Tarantino often hung, is insular and gossipy.

One of my last QT encounters was at the party for “Grindhouse,” a double feature that includes the rotten “Death Proof.” I conducted a quick stand-up interview with Tarantino before he joined friends and colleagues.

Later, my friend got a free poster of the movie and asked Tarantino to sign it — a searing faux pas. Tarantino was livid. “This isn’t some Target opening and I’m not Ronald McDonald greeting the kiddies,” he told my friend. “This is just me hanging out with my friends at a party. So, no, I won’t sign it.”

He was genuinely miffed, gesticulating, that iconic jaw jutting. The group of guys sitting around him passed around a joint and cracked up. I was mortified, my friend devastated.

But that’s QT. I don’t begrudge him that emasculating dressing-down. In fact, he sharply cautions fans not to approach him for autographs at his festivals and parties. Come talk about the movies, great, but no panting fanboy b.s. (A paradox, since Tarantino is the biggest fanboy of all.)

My autograph-hound friend: guilty. Off to movie jail.

Which is where I feel I am after Tarantino fired me as a journalist and an acquaintance. I’ve been upbraided by other disenchanted celebs — Sandra Bullock, Bud Cort, Ethan Hawke, Mike White — but this felt personal. We had a years-long rapport, bumpy but true. Quentin Tarantino doesn’t have to like me, and I don’t have to like his movies.

God bless him: He has sworn he is done making films, that he would quit “at the top of my game” (in which I ask: “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is the top of your game?). And I’m done with panning films (well, mostly).

I suddenly picture Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi pointing guns at each other in “Reservoir Dogs,” two killers gripped in a dangerous truce. QT and me, after a fashion.

Ten great indies you may have missed

May 19, 2021May 24, 2021 ~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

So my movie-watching in this Covid cocoon is drastically spotty — I have yet to see Korean-American family drama “Minari” or Anthony Hopkins as “The Father,” both Oscar winners — and I find myself returning to favorite films, classics new (“John Wick”) and old (“The Thin Man”).

What’s stuck with me of late is a passel of small newish movies, from “The Rider” to “Eighth Grade,” that could easily be missed by casual viewers, despite the pictures’ celebrated exceptionalism.

I’ve culled 10 semi-obscure indie pearls from the past several years, 2013 to 2020, a few of which I’ve gushed about before, and many coincidentally released by A24, the hot independent distributor that’s crushing the competition with curatorial savvy.

I’ve seen the following titles at least twice, except for “Uncut Gems,” whose mad, relentless intensity has, two years later, left me spent. It’s a bruiser. And a winner.

Onward. These are 10 great indie films highly worth your time, in order of release:

“Locke” (2013) — A desperate everyman (the brilliantly intense Tom Hardy) is in the driver’s seat, literally, for the movie’s entire 85 minutes. Yes, he’s driving the whole time. The camera never leaves him as he negotiates via smart phone personal tumults on the winding highway of life. It sounds grueling, claustrophobic and static. It’s not. It’s gripping, hypnotic, and exhilarating.

“The Witch” (2015) — The smartest, creepiest, most stylish horror picture in years, Robert Eggers’ frightfully immersive period chiller lands us in woodsy 1630 New England, where a family is torn apart by the disappearance of one of its children. Suspicions target eldest daughter Thomasin (wide-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy of “The Queen’s Gambit”), who may have flirted with the dark arts. Then there’s that menacing dancing goat, who’s not quickly shaken. Beware Black Phillip.

“Tangerine” (2015) — Oh, is she pissed. When transgender hooker Sin Dee hears that her boyfriend and pimp cheated on her while she was in jail, she pops with glorious fury, tracking down him and his new lover and exacting a kind of sassy L.A. revenge that includes an inordinate amount of hair pulling. Move over, she’s stomping the sidewalk in teetering heels, cracking wise and hunting heedlessly. Sean Baker shot this scruffy, no-fi, Day-Glo gem on an iPhone, with stunning results. Raunchy and hilarious, it shimmers like a smoggy SoCal sunset.

“Good Time” (2017) — With flickers of the young Pacino and De Niro, Robert Pattinson is revelatory as a scrappy, dangerous two-bit criminal who’s on the lam after a comically/tragically botched bank robbery. The feisty film, by the gifted Safdie brothers, pulls you on a rousing run-for-your-life tumble through nocturnal Queens that’s at once loose-limbed and sweatily taut. A raw portrait of redemption and ruin, pocked with ground-level authenticity, it thrills as it harrows.

“The Rider” (2017) — Chloé Zhao’s understated drama moves at the painstaking clip of everyday life, much like her recent Oscar-winner “Nomadland.” But little is everyday here: Brady (non-actor Brady Jandreau) is a rock star of rodeo bronc riding, until an accident in the ring leaves him slightly brain damaged. He’s forced to give up the only life he knows, outside of breaking colts, which he does with a calm, tough-love Jedi mastery. The film is a fine-grained portrait of the pains of getting back on your feet after life-altering disappointment, about rebuilding your spirit after it’s been body-slammed and shattered. Easily the most moving film of 2017, “The Rider” is pure distilled emotion, beautifully shot on the Dakota prairie.

“Eighth Grade” (2018) — Her chin and forehead dappled with islands of acne, 13-year-old Kayla is stuck in the excruciating pangs of adolescent metamorphoses. A smidge pudgy, she is awkwardly pretty, a butterfly half-jammed in her chrysalis, squirming to soar. Her two front teeth, jumbly and bucky, will break your heart. Played by the perfect Elsie Fisher, Kayla is the magnetic lead in Bo Burnham’s indie wonder. She’s an arpeggio of teen neuroses, a raw nerve that keeps getting pinged. It’s about today’s kids, glued to their phones, glazed in technology, and forging one’s individuality amid willful clones who gussy up their insecurities in narcotizing conformity. Kayla, a hero for the times, lives by her words, the dictums she professes on the videos she so bravely records on her phone. It doesn’t always work out, but watch her grow mightier upon each posting.

“Los Reyes” (2019) — In this inadvertently poetic, profoundly affecting doc from Chile, the camera veers from the skateboarding youth who cruise sinuous bowls to examine the laidback lives of BFFs (best furballs forever): Football, the elder, creaky-jointed cur, and Chola, the frisky female chocolate Lab mix that occasionally tries to hump a large pillow. Dispensing with anthropomorphic cutes, this astonishingly patient film relies on the dogs’ alternately mirthful and mournful antics, quizzical gazes, the way they doze unfazed among the rackety-clackety skaters, or a simple shot of Chola standing statue-still in the rain, getting soaked with the patience of a penitent.

“Uncut Gems” (2019) — Adam Sandler is off the hook, and it’s enthralling, like a buzzsaw to the head. In full serio-comic mode — he’s funny and foredoomed — Sandler plays a blingy, dingy New York jeweler who sees dollar signs even when there aren’t any. When he makes a reckless, big bucks bet that could set him up for life, he gets ensnared in a web of business buds, family and foes who all want a piece. Writers-directors the Safdie brothers (of the above “Good Time”) sustain such a frenetic frenzy in this chamber dramedy, you may feel wrecked.

“My Octopus Teacher” (2020) — The octopus cautiously unfurls a tentacle like a flower blooming in a time-lapse photo to the human hand before her. It glances the hand then suddenly sucks it, gently pulling it toward her. The moment carries the pitter-patter of courtship. Could this be love? “That’s when you know there’s full trust,” says the owner of the suction-cupped hand, free diver and filmmaker Craig Foster, in his rare doc. A viral smash, the film won this year’s best documentary Oscar. It’s something else: a simple tale about a grown man befriending a gorgeously slithery cephalopod in the swaying kelp forests of South Africa. Quietly instructive, it goes from lush nature doc to poignant octo-poetry.

“Saint Maud” (2020) — Poor innocent Maud. A reclusive nurse seeking Christian devotion after a vague trauma, she becomes the caretaker of an aging dancer dying of cancer. Detecting weakness, and death, Maud (a pretty, pallid Morfydd Clark) kicks into high gear, striving to save her ward’s soul from hellfire with an eerie resolve straddling the sacred and profane. Supernatural phenomena unfurl with a tang of Christian creepiness. Nothing is obvious in Rose Glass’ weird spiritual thriller, especially an amazing climax that will leave you snickering in squirmy, baffled awe.

Hounding the strays of Istanbul

March 5, 2021March 5, 2021 ~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

With a camera trained at butthole level, the street dogs of Istanbul bustle across the city, romp in parks, negotiate congested thoroughfares, brawl, chase cats, gambol, loiter and partake in public humping.

This is a day in the life of the Turkish city’s derelict dogs in the patient, panting documentary “Stray,” released today. The film is a quiet, lolling chronicle of both canine and human behavior — the mutual respect and tolerance is moving — done minus narration. With few dramatic accents, though alive with built-in pathos, “Stray” is almost uninflected — unvarnished life through a studiously objective lens. What is spoken comes from the pups’ playful pantomime.

I’m on good terms with the stray dogs of Istanbul, having befriended, pet and fed several during my four trips to Turkey. The hounds are plentiful in the rolling, seaside city and are protected under a no-kill, no-capture policy. Each dog is registered, one of their ears pierced with an official tag. One of my favorite canine pals wore a red tag on her floppy left ear, leading me, with a poverty of imagination, to call her Red Tag.

They get you like that, these streetwise mongrels. Locals are mostly kind to the wandering, well-behaved dogs, leaving out bones and food and, when annoyed by them, gently shooing them away from storefronts and doorways. It helps if you have a soft spot for animals. My mushy affection led me to feed and pamper the friendly hounds, which I happily photographed. More than just memories, the animals were also sweet, licky mood-enhancers, a pack of therapy pups just for me.

Here’s where to watch “Stray,” and here are some of my street-dog snapshots.

My freakish fixation

May 31, 2020 ~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

When am I not thinking about the Elephant Man?

I’m not just talking about the shattering 1980 film by David Lynch (still one of my favorite movies — see my appreciation here). I also mean the actual, real-life Elephant Man, née Joseph Merrick, the hideously deformed young Brit who, with considerable luck and one doctor’s wayward compassion, went from the squalid, dehumanizing freak show circuit to become the toast of Victorian London before he died at age 28 in 1890.

Merrick has been on my mind since I was yay high. Call it odd, perverse or, well, freakish, but the creepy and offbeat have clutched me in their thrall since my youthful exposure to Universal Horror flicks, campfire myths like Bigfoot and the Moth Man, and the most enduring gift I received on my eighth birthday, the thick book “Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves, and Triumphs of Human Oddities” by Frederick Drimmer.

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In the book, among the likes of Jo Jo the Dog-Faced Boy; Grace McDaniels the Mule-Faced Woman; the original Siamese twins; and Julia Pastrana, aka the Ugliest Woman in the World, was Merrick, perhaps the saddest story of them all. (Although Pastrana’s story is heartrending, bizarrely grotesque, and worth a look here.)

A speedy summary: In an unorthodox gesture of charity, Dr. Frederick Treves took in the incurable Merrick, who suffered from severe neurofibromatosis, at the Royal London Hospital, furnishing the sick, lost and abused sideshow veteran a dazzling new life of comfort, friends, celebrity visitors, room and board and more. Though his appearance still terrified the faint of heart, Merrick was embraced by mainstream society until his premature death.

(Merrick’s skeleton resides at the old Royal London Hospital, and a few years ago I visited hoping to see the bones. I was rebuffed, but I had the pleasure of the hospital’s special museum dedicated to Merrick’s life.)

I know a lot about “The Terrible Elephant Man,” as he was billed on the road, not only from “Very Special People” and Lynch’s ravishing biopic, but from a slim paperback I bought in seventh grade, “The True History of the Elephant Man,” about which I wrote and presented a book report to my befuddled English class.

What gets me about Merrick is his life story, one so rippled with tragedy and depravity, it curdles the soul as it breaks the heart. Living in a sooty black-and-white London of clanking, steaming machinery that ushered in the Industrial Revolution, Merrick’s old-timey milieu also enthralls (see the Lynch movie for a rattling immersion in time and place), and seems of a piece with his destitute, Dickensian plight.

And the disease: The exotically gruesome, inconceivably savage affliction renders man into monster, whose corrupted flesh cannot conceal the gentle soul locked inside the twisted, tumored carapace.

My fascination has become rather fanboy. (Elephant Man cosplay — I will have to pass.) Besides books about Merrick — including “Making ‘The Elephant Man’” by one of the film’s producers, which I just bought — I own the American, Turkish and Japanese posters of Lynch’s movie, as well as a coffee mug embossed with a period photo of Merrick looking dapper in a three-piece suit.

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Around the time I got the making-of book, I ordered what I’ve wanted for a long time, a t-shirt of the “Elephant Man” movie. This one is a silkscreen of the film’s Japanese poster art, fusing my passion for all things Japanese with my strange Merrick mania.

A tad zealous, perhaps. But consider that Michael Jackson famously tried to buy Merrick’s bones. He was flatly refused. I once thought that Jackson was overreaching, being the creepy eccentric he was.

Nowadays, not so much.

Superman is dead.

March 17, 2020March 19, 2020 ~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

For five good days, Superman was my pal.

Tall and lanky, with raven-black hair and a swoopy cowlick, and of course that totemic red and blue spandex suit, flaming cape billowing aft, Superman hung out, drank and watched movies with me and my soul-buddy Shannon during the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2007. Superman was our Super-friend.

Alas, kryptonite conquers. I just learned that Superman, née Christopher Dennis, died last November, a piteous death that HuffPost reports here:

“Christopher Dennis, the ‘Hollywood Superman’ who posed for thousands of photos with tourists outside the famed Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, has died. He was 52.

“Dennis, who was homeless, was found in a used clothing donation bin in Van Nuys, a neighborhood about 10 miles from the tourist district where he earned a living. Police said he was likely looking for something to wear and that no foul play was suspected.”

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Dennis was at the film festival promoting — alongside The Hulk, Batman and Wonder Woman — the ridiculously entertaining documentary “Confessions of a Superhero,” which profiles the costumed characters of the Hollywood Walk of Fame with heart and, yes, heroics. (See the trailer here.) He appeared numerous times on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Dennis, a goofy guy with a crooked smile and sweet as a golden retriever, said he was inspired to put on the cape and tights because of his uncanny resemblance to Christopher Reeve, cinema’s most famous Superman. Some days he could make a bundle posing for photos; others, not so much. It was a rough life. HuffPost says that Dennis was once beaten with a golf club and robbed of his money and his Superman garb. He resorted to panhandling and drugs. Super drag.

Thirteen years after palling around with Superman, I frankly don’t remember fine details, just that we had a blast. Below is Dennis at the film festival, posing with Shannon and actor Paul Rudd, who’s now himself a screen superhero as Ant-Man. (Why is Shannon gasping? Rudd decided to grab her butt at exactly the right second. Superman looks on, wondering if he should save her. Nah.)

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Nicolas is cagey about why he bought himself a giant tomb

March 8, 2020March 8, 2020 ~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

One day Nicolas Cage is going to die. It will be sad, maybe shocking. Hopefully, in rightful madman form, he will spontaneously implode, eyes bugging, equine teeth gnashing, receding hairline beading with sweat, perhaps a cackle or two.

If we’re not prepared to lose this most erratic of thespians and eccentric masterminds, he apparently is. As you may know, he already has his own tomb erected in New Orleans’ oldest cemetery, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, which was founded in 1789. He bought the tomb in 2010 for a reported $3.2 million. He has big plans. Dying is one of them.

Amid mossy, decaying, crumbling graves from the 18th and 19th centuries stands, with majestic incongruity, Cage’s 9-foot-tall pyramid, resplendent in polished white marble and engraved with the Latin maxim “Omnia Ab Uno,” meaning “Everything from One” — fittingly enigmatic. (The cemetery is also home to late New Orleans voodoo queen Marie Laveau, one reason it’s said Cage picked this lot, though he’s never publicly explained why he settled on New Orleans’ most revered cemetery with a 9-foot-tall pyramid.)

I just got back from touring the cemetery and of course Cage’s ostentatious, rather comical spectacle is a big draw. Women plant lipstick kisses on the marble surface (giggling facetiously we hope), and selfies are mandatory. Locals detest this empty pyramid of death, as it befits the environs with the stylistic subtlety of a Popeye’s Chicken on the Champs-Élysées.

The actor incidentally just visited the mausoleum a couple weeks ago during Mardi Gras with a gossiped-over “mystery girlfriend.” They wore matching black leather pants for the occasion, dig.

Cage is not a native New Orleanian, but he’s owned homes in the city, including a place so haunted it caused him ghastly tax problems (it’s called evasion), cratered a soaring movie career and kinda made him crack up.

You don’t say.

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Chatting with the makers of one of the year’s best films

July 23, 2019July 23, 2019 ~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

In the remarkably moving, charmingly idiosyncratic documentary “Honeyland,” Hatidze Muratova is a Macedonian mountain woman with the face of a craggy Margaret Hamilton and a spirit of peerless pluck. She harvests honey from beehives as her livelihood, while tending to her blind, ailing mother in a rustic shack. Her new neighbors are more than exasperating, and she views them, and environmental concerns, as threats to her precious beekeeping ways. There is drama, joy, exotic upheaval and heartache. I can’t recommend the picture more, easily one of the year’s best.

The movie has won 11 festival awards, including three this year at Sundance, many of them singling out the stunning cinematography. (The film opens July 26. See the trailer HERE.)

I recently spoke by phone with directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov, both from Skopje, Macedonia, and whose English, if broken, is strong. These are edited excerpts of our conversation:

Gnashing: Where in the world did you find your leading lady, Hatidze, and how did you know she would be the one to guide your story?

Ljubo Stefanov: While we were finishing our previous film, we got a tip from our agency for a certain environmental project. We started to do research and our task was to find a subject in this (Macedonia) area for a short documentary. But soon after that we discovered the village with Hatidze inside, and it was clear that she would lead our story, which was supposed to be a couple months of filming and editing. But it turned to one year of filming, then three years of filming. A complicated process, but the result probably justifies it.

How did you locate the film’s story with such wide-open choices?

LS: There are two aspects. One is humanistic, the relations between characters. And the other one is the environmental message of the film. Before Hatidze is going to the city to sell the honey, she is taking the honey and she is talking to the bees, “Help for me, help for you.” We filmed that during the first week of shooting, and it was clear that this very strong motto would underline the film. It’s about users and providers. Users are human in many cases, the bees providers, the natural resources. The environmental message in this very simple story is about overusing natural resources.

How did the narrative evolve? Was it supposed to be a story about this solitary beekeeper and then suddenly this disruptive family moves in next door? Did you expect that to happen?

Tamara Kotevska: This story unfolds much over time. It started as something completely different. When we found her and started working with her we were still wondering if the form of this film should be more just a portrait of her. We realized that this would not be the film we want. We wanted to actually create a stronger story from her, not just a portrait. The nomad family came but we didn’t pay any attention to them, until we found out that they were the crucial part of the conflict in her life. It was crucial for us to find a way to bring them into the film because they make up a huge part of her life.

How would you describe your heroine Hatidze? To me, she is plucky, resourceful, lonely …

TK: She is a miracle. Anybody who’s met her says you’ve never met anyone similar, because going to this place, everything is completely lifeless, time is completely different, everyone walks very slowly. Even when we went there, our energy just went down. It’s shocking to see her, the only person who spent her life there, and she has the most energy, most spirit. She’s completely open to people, she’s an extrovert and loves being seen and to talk to people. She’s a star.

The cinematography has received lavish attention and won many awards. How important was it to have such lush, observant camerawork for a film like this?

LS: We were a filming crew of four — two cinematographers and two directors. We filmed with DSLRs (digital cameras) with simple photographic lenses, no filters or additional light, and cheap microphones mounted on the cameras. There’s nothing spectacular with the equipment. But obviously the skills of the cinematographers (Fejmi Daut and Samir Ljuma) and the will for bringing the goods were crucial parts of such visual quality. Also, we don’t understand Turkish, so we were filming based on the visual activities, so great visuals were important.

9 best films of 2019 (so far)

June 30, 2019July 1, 2019 ~ Chris ~ 5 Comments

In no particular order, the movies I’m excited about at the year’s half-way point …

“Climax”

Puckishly sadistic, Gaspar Noé and Lars von Trier remain cinema’s great pessimists, glib nihilists and gleeful provocateurs. Look, without flinching, at Noé’s masterwork “Irréversible” or von Trier’s “Antichrist” and you’ll see my point. With the head-spinning, hallucinogenic swirl of body (and camera) movement that is “Climax,” Noé takes his visual and thematic tics past the edge of woozy chaos. When an extraordinarily talented dance troupe’s party is ruined by a bowl of LSD-spiked punch, hell uncorks with fury. What was a glorious pageant of writhing bodies becomes a descent into a violent nightmare of screeching, thrashing individuals trying to relocate reality. The camera rides a liquid wave of neon hues, racing and corkscrewing down halls and weaving through rooms. Frequently indulgent and meandering, with no real characters or story, just sensation and electro-shock, the film is pure immersion, a sustained climax. I didn’t say it was pleasant. But it is novel, and queerly riveting. And purely Noé. Watch the trailer HERE.

“The Last Black Man in San Francisco”

At once arty, elegiac, poetic and tough-minded, this is a tale, a beautiful reverie, that strikes on topics of race and class and gentrification with sparks and lyricism and primary-color Spike Lee sizzle. It’s something singular, and it slowly intoxicates with its emotional and sociological depths. Following Jimmie Fails (played by the actor of the same name — he’s as charismatic as a young Don Cheadle) as he presses to reclaim the giant Victorian home of his grandfather, the film is both a call to honoring blood bonds and a plaintive hymn to a troubled city. Joe Talbot directs (and co-writes) with soaring vision and intense feeling. The result is dire, daring, dreamy. Trailer HERE.

“Honeyland”

In this gorgeously observational documentary, weathered, middle-aged Hatidze lives in the rocky Macedonian mountains, where she cares for her ailing mother and tends to several beehives that produce honey for a tenuous livelihood. A large, rowdy family moves next door and decides to try beekeeping, but without expertise, they flail and almost comically get stung more than they harvest the sweet goo. Tensions arise between the neighbors, but this achingly humanistic look at an exotic if seriously impoverished way of life is mostly a portrait of Hatidze, a steely, lonely woman who has as much soul as those mountains can contain. The doc won a record three awards at Sundance 2019, including for its ravishing cinematography. Trailer HERE.

“The Mustang”

Breaking a horse is a bitch. Triple the challenge if it’s a rearing, snorting wild desert mustang. That’s what Roman (Matthias Schoenaerts) is tasked with as a violent criminal in a Nevada prison program in which convicts break mustangs for auction, preparing them for work in law enforcement. “We’re not training these horses for little kids’ birthdays and pony rides,” growls Bruce Dern’s crusty bossman, who knows both man and horse require an especially prickly strain of tough-love. If Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s feature debut falls into a formulaic groove — the apex of the depiction of trust-building between human and wild horse remains Carroll Ballard’s 1979 “The Black Stallion” — the film doesn’t flinch from gritty, violent twists. The dangerous dance between Roman and his horse Marcus retains tension, as the two captives, both scrappy and obstinate, circle each other in a face-off that could end in injury and defeat, or mutual respect and friendship. Roman’s frustration boils — “Just fucking listen to me!” he snaps. “I’m not going to hurt you! You hear me, you stupid animal!” — and it’s no surprise the horse is listening. Trailer HERE.

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“Her Smell”

Elisabeth Moss’ performance in this shambolic punk-rock portrait is as athletically interior as it is exterior, spiked with physical fits and spasms like a lunatic child in a druggy tantrum. In my favorite performance of the year, Moss plays Becky, volatile front-woman of a female punk band she’s struggling to keep together between coke binges and flame-throwing hissy fits. The actress stirs up a cackling, hand-flinging cauldron of Courtney Love, Blanche DuBois, Charles Manson and Gena Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence.” It’s all raw-nerve, and Moss commits to her anti-heroine in a self-immolating blaze. She’s as shattering as this ballsy, surprisingly sensitive film by writer-director Alex Ross Perry. Trailer HERE.

“Booksmart”

Barreling forth with raunchy vigor and unbridled zest, this breakneck coming-of-age comedy, actress Olivia Wilde’s impressive directorial debut, screams fun. Almost literally: There’s a lot of screaming — in surprise, horror and explosive joy. An amplified spin on school-days greats — “Dazed and Confused,” John Hughes’ oeuvre and last year’s “Lady Bird” and “Eighth Grade” — “Booksmart” piles on twists with a sharp, knowing eye that zooms in on the timely and topical, from female power and LGBTQs, to bullying and the corrosive effects of cliques, and, duh, the liberating if daunting pull of sexual exploration. Starring a terrific Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as boundary-pushing besties, who learn, in a fleeting haze, that maybe bongs are as fun as books. Trailer HERE.

“Gloria Bell”

A glowing Julianne Moore — is there a more radiant actress? — assumes the title role in this sweet, ebullient, slightly melancholic snapshot of a middle-aged divorced woman seeking love and connection in modern Los Angeles. A touching remake of the 2013 Chilean film “Gloria,” by the writer-director of that movie, Sebastián Lelio, the movie follows its wise, free-spirited character onto her favorite place, the dance floor, where she finds romance with a nice guy (a fine, empathetic John Turturro) and all the attendant delights, complications and disappointments of love. No matter how sore things get, Gloria’s joie de vivre stays infectious. Trailer HERE.

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“Non-Fiction”

French writer-director Olivier Assayas‘ dramedy is a tireless, tonic gabfest that had me speed-reading the flurry of subtitles more than drinking in the warm faces and colors of the bustling scenes. That’s no complaint. The profusion of words — intelligent, eloquent, biting — brim with ideas, humor, pain and pathos, for an enveloping artful experience. You want to know the fork-tongued characters, led by an enchanting Juliette Binoche, because of the literary, arty cosmos in which these writers, editors and actors orbit. It’s heady and human: They’re just people, with all of our people-ly problems, and it’s more exciting than you think. Part tart publishing-world satire, part feast of infidelity, part anatomy of midlife crises, “Non-Fiction” is light on plot, more enmeshed in ideas about love and life, loyalty between friends and lovers, and, in a topical concession, a pointed conversation about new media vs. the printed word. It’s like a Gallic Woody Allen comedy, without the tootling clarinet and stammering, gesticulating neuroses. Trailer HERE.

“The Souvenir”

Not an easy film, Joanna Hogg‘s elusive, divisive relationship drama is boobytrapped with qualities that repel people from the arthouse. It’s glacial, elliptical, remote. It makes you work with loosely hanging scenes, a jagged structure and oblique characterizations. I broke a small sweat trying to solder the plot together, identify with the actors and figure out where Hogg was taking me. The entry point is young film student Julie, played with winsome diffidence by Honor Swinton Byrne. Julie’s lover Anthony (Tom Burke) is a heroin addict, a secret until it’s not, which inevitably snarls their relationship. The story is mostly scenes of the couple muddling through their unconventional, occasionally off-putting upper-middle-class affair. With drugs. And spats. And sex. And dinner parties. And the making of a student film. And an IRA bombing. Somehow, Hogg’s disparate elements crazily fall together. Trailer HERE.

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