General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait: Barbet Schroeder

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/pick-your-potentate-trump-or-idi-amin/?utm_content=buffer7f8aa&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

8/10

The Troubled Troubadour: Forest Ian Etsler, Sébastien Simon

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/115811/slamdance-2018-review-the-troubled-troubadour/.

Mary and the Witch's Flower: Hiromasa Yonebayashi

To read this review, go to: http://natehoodreviews.tumblr.com/post/170477310488/mary-and-the-witchs-flower-%C2%BD.

7/10

Man on Fire: Joel Fendelman

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/115903/slamdance-2018-review-man-on-fire/.

6/10

American Folk: David Heinz

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/115862/movie-review-american-folk/.

7/10

The Ballad of Narayama: Shōhei Imamura

I hate, hate, hate the fact that I first saw Shōhei Imamura's The Ballad of Narayama on a small TV set with a rinky, faded DVD. This is such a powerful, rich, deep, remarkable film that it deserves to be seen on the big screen. The film's general thesis seems to be that the senicidic act of ubasute where elderly people were abandoned in the mountains to die when they got too old was merely a continuation of the cycle of life and death in ancient Japan. This is highlighted with repeated inserts of animals and nature in all its stages: mating, birth, death, decay. There are moments of great kindness and great cruelty--one scene where a family of food thieves gets buried alive by the other villages is one of the most harrowing things I've seen in a while. But it all seems to be a part of the grand plan of nature. Morality doesn't count here. The continuation of the community and the family unit does. I must see this film again on the big screen.

9/10

On the Run: Alfred Cheung

Alfred Cheung's On the Run was the last film shown in a 12-hour Hong Kong marathon I attended. And wow, what a downer to end on. Even though both heroes survive and the bad guys die, it was an emotional Pyrrhic victory. The film is desperately sad and even nihilistic. Filmed during a time when Hong Kong began its transition from British to China control and everyone was trying to emigrate abroad, it follows a police officer and the hitwoman hired to kill his wife fighting back against a ruthless homicide division that runs a heroin business on the side. Nowhere is the brutality more poignant than a scene where the two discover that the police officer's young daughter had been killed during a chase. Ghastly stuff, but it's a necessary look into a culture in painful transition.

7/10

Kickboxer's Tears: Da Wei Shen

As far as cheesy action movies go, Da Wei Shen's Kickboxer's Tears scratches an itch. The plot's pretty simple: a famous kickboxer gets killed in the ring, his sister (the legendary Moon Lee) decides to avenge him, challenges a number of Triad-controlled kickboxers, and ends up getting involved in a shootout in an abandoned building. The movie is touted as being part of the "Girls with Guns" sub-genre, but at most there's only a girl with a gun in a single scene. You watch this movie for Moon Lee kicking butt, but also for a skinny nerd character who hulks out in the climactic shoot-out and kills the main bad guy. Fun stuff. But the film isn't particularly interesting visually and features mediocre acting. It's entertaining, but nowhere near essential viewing.

6/10

Cheap Killers: Clarence Yiu-leung Fok

Clarence Yiu-leung Fok's Cheap Killers is the most insanely over-the-top, scuzzy, grimy, and cheesy action film about gay hitmen I've ever seen. Not that it's a big list, but it's definitely at the top. Not just that, but it's now officially one of my favorite Hong Kong movies ever. Where else could you see a hitman get anally-raped by over a dozen men, become catatonic, get nursed back to health by his "best friend," and then go on a shooting rampage against his female ex-lover who's become the head of the local triad? Where else can you see a seduction scene ripped right out of a softcore porno involving a garden hose, a bucket, and white clothing? Where else can you see somebody get harpooned through the chest yet still keep fighting? Nowhere. It also helps that the film has one of the most gloriously triumphant final frames of its decade.

8/10

Expect the Unexpected: Tat-Chi Yau

Tat-Chi Yau's Expect the Unexpected is a painfully mediocre film that's basically Friends with the Hong Kong police. It's practically a soap opera where the various cops fall in and out of love while navigating a brutal group of armed robbers. In between the twee romantic interludes we see shockingly gruesome scenes of murder and death, the most significant being a scene where the cops discover one of the gang's old hideouts: an unassuming residential apartment. When they enter, they find that they had raped and murdered the occupant: a new mother. Not just that, they had thrown her newborn infant into the washing machine and turned it onto the spin cycle. The only reason why I'll remember this film is the ending, a scene that comes out of nowhere where all the happy cops get brutally gunned down in a street shootout with the surviving gangsters. What a twist?

5/10

Fong Sai-yuk: Corey Yuen

Corey Yuen's Fong Sai-Yuk has one of the most gloriously over-the-top villain deaths in cinematic history. The government stooge trying to kill the heroes--members of the Red Flower Society, the ethnic-Chinese secret society striving to overthrow the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty--gets killed himself by having an arrow stuck with a stick of lit dynamite that had been kicked towards him by a second fighter nail him in midair. It's gloriously over-the-top and ridiculous, but so is the whole film. Jet Li is at the top of his game here as the eponymous Chinese folk hero. The fight choreography is superb and there's a delightful lesbian subplot where the wife of a royal official falls in love with Li's mother while dressed in drag. The scene where Li's mother literally sweeps her off her feet and the wife looks up in rapturous awe is one of the best in the movie, a not insignificant feat considering how incredible the rest of the movie is.

8/10

Organized Crime & Triad Bureau: Kirk Wong

If there's one thing I learned from Kirk Wong's Organized Crime & Triad Bureau, it's that due process and procedure for cops is for wimps! If you've nabbed a suspect you know if part of a triad, then beat him, assault him, strip him naked and torture his genitals. Who cares? You gotta do what you gotta do! In all seriousness, as a police procedural the film is decent yet laughably disposable when compared to other procedurals of its era--the police are basically superheroes, as best shown in one scene where a hitman tries to kill a witness at a court hearing and two of the cops jump their way across the room like wuxia heroes, flipping and kicking the idiot into submission. But it is a pleasing piece of entertainment. And there are even occasional moment of beauty, like when the lead gangster and his girlfriend discover a tarp filled with rainwater while on the run from the cops. They poke holes in the bottom of the tarp and dance around in the water, laughing and smiling like we've never seen them do before.

7/10

Crazy Famous: Paul Jarrett

This piece was written and filed before the announcement of Audiences Everywhere's untimely demise. So I'm posting it here in its entirety.

Overview: A fame-seeking mental patient gets pulled into a clandestine plan to assassinate Osama Bin Laden…in 2017. Gravitas Ventures; 2017; Not Yet Rated; 78 minutes.

Smile for the Cameras: Paul Jarrett’s Crazy Famous opens with a scene of a mentally compromised young man stripping to his tighty-whities and gleefully trampolining over a fence into Camp David. It ends with a scene of the same mentally comprised young man gunning down a small army of Islamic terrorists in the woods alongside Dr. Phil in brownface. The first scene is played for laughs. The second is not. Great filmmaking can bridge the gap between outlandish tonal differences and hyper-violent absurdism. As I like to remind our readers, the Coen Brothers have spent their careers doing just that. But Crazy Famous lacks the necessary vision to make such films work. As such, Jarrett’s film stumbles about as confused and incoherent as the very mental patients it populates itself with.

This Ain’t the Salem State Hospital: At first Crazy Famous seems like an introspective character study of Bob Markus (Gregory Lay), a young man obsessed with becoming famous. Deliciously awkward scenes from his troubled youth reveal an oppressive upbringing by fame-crazed parents. His father tried to make him a sports star, his mother a child actor. He even had a disastrous stint as a competitive eater in high school. Somewhere along the way he figured out that fame and notoriety were the same thing, so he began a string of preposterous attention-grabbing stunts climaxing in the Camp David fiasco. After getting arrested, Bob’s shipped off to a mental institution where he falls in with an assorted gaggle of misfits and morons: Larry (Victor Cruz), a rage-junkie with a short temper, an eating disorder, and a laundry list of crippling neuroses like agoraphobia; “Dr. Phil” (David Neal Levin), a cheery fellow who believes he’s the eponymous television star and waddles around the psyche ward bestowing pop-psychology drivel; a suicidal young woman so inconsequential I’m not even sure she has a name who spouts off bizarre bon mots like a disaffected middle schooler going through her goth phase. (When she learns Bob’s name she replies “You’re a palindrome? Talk about karma.” Wait, what?); Mr. Smith (Richard Short), a nervous conspiracy theorist who believes the CIA is lying about Bin Laden’s death and personally knows his actual location. Spoiler alert: he’s right, he’s been institutionalized by other agents, and he organizes a break-out with the other inmates—except for the suicidal woman—so they can hunt Bin Laden down. Who of course now lives in a log cabin in…I’m gonna guess the Appalachian Mountains or the Adirondacks.

From there the film decays from character study to unfocused procession of comedic set-pieces and poorly executed action scenes. Mr Smith gets tortured by CIA agents, Larry gets a face-full of Dr. Phil penis as they try to climb into the hospital’s air ducts, the gang robs a gun store, Dr. Phil gets painted brown so he can infiltrate Bin Laden’s base, a car chase gets resolved when Mr. Smith discovers the car he’s squirreled away for his escape has a James Bond oil-slick button. These scenes don’t flow together, but even worse the more you think about them the less they make sense. If Mr. Smith wants to kill Bin Laden, why wouldn’t he tell the CIA where he actually is? Why does robbing a gun store for a small army’s worth of firearms not result in the National Guard getting called on them? And what on earth is Bin Laden doing in the Appalachian/Adirondacks? The film has little interest in these obvious questions; it’s more interested in how its characters respond to them. However—with the exception of Levin’s turn as Dr. Phil, a character who’s so obliviously stupid he’s actually enjoyable—none of the other characters are interesting enough for us to want to follow them. Bob starts the film as a fascinating, damaged human being but by the end he’s been pushed to the periphery in favor of Mission Impossible shenanigans.

Closing: The more one thinks about Crazy Famous, the more frustrated one becomes at it. What was it trying to do? Was it trying to be a commentary on America’s obsession with fame? Was it trying to be a silly road-trip movie featuring mental patients? Was it trying to be an irreverent spy thriller? Perhaps Jarrett was trying to do all these things at once. And in doing so it becomes none of them. All we’re left with is a strange, nonsensical plot and mental patient minstrelsy.

Grade: D

J. Edgar: Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar labors under the weight of something, a certain something that degrades an otherwise mediocre, unfocused film into a laughably bad one: about 5-10 pounds of prosthetics and make-up used on actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer as the elderly versions of J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson. They look less like old people makeup, but a comedy sketch's idea of old people makeup. They look like Ken dolls! Anyhow! The film continues Eastwood's odd pattern of conservatively-minded films with an unmistakably liberal bent towards social issues: he sees some merit in J. Edgar's totalitarian, fear-mongering tactics, but sees the humanity in his homosexual relationship with Clyde, even beauty. But otherwise it's uneven and forgettable.

5/10

Humor Me: Sam Hoffman

Sam Hoffman's Humor Me is painfully, woefully mediocre and contrived. It's another run-of-the-mill story about a sad sack author who travels back home and rediscovers himself by rediscovering his family. The twist this time around is that the writer has to go to a fancy retirement community and gets roped into helping a trio of old biddies put on a show of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. It's a sad film that wastes the considerable talents of Jemaine Clement--even more so the talents of Elliott Gould. But it finds a way. The best scenes involve rude jokes and recited shtick, several pieces of which I plan on using myself in the future (particularly one routine involving a flower vase...). But the rest is the kind of stuff best promptly forgotten.

5/10

I, Tonya: Craig Gillespie

The first half of Craig Gillespie's I, Tonya is a Scorsese-esque drama about a scruffy young nobody trying to break into a glitzy professional world despite their impoverished upbringing. In this case, it's Tonya Harding, a working class figure skater who became one of the best skaters in the world despite her unorthodox costumes, music choices, and bellicose temperament. It even boasts a similar hyper-kinetic stylization. The second half is a Coen Brothers caper film about idiots trying (and failing) to pull off idiot schemes. A number of people found this tonal whiplash. But I for one felt it worked perfectly for the kind of story it was trying to tell, one of a take-no-prisoners innovator and screw-up who wouldn't take no for an answer.

8/10

American Sniper: Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood's American Sniper is fascinated with violence, but it gives mere lip service to why violence happens and what inspires men to go to war. The main character Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) joins the Navy Seals out of rage in response to the 1998 United States embassy bombings and a vague need to "protect people." That's apparently enough to make him devote himself to serving four tours in the Middle East after 9/11. We never explore why the Middle East collapsed into violence after the American occupation of Iraq. And we never see Middle Easterners as anything other but bloodthirsty savages. It's explorations of PTSD only really become apparent in the last third, and even then it seems undeveloped when compared to other military dramas about veterans. Yes, it's well-shot, well-acted, and well-directed. But it buys too much into its own gun-ho patriotism without interrogating it.

6/10

Brutal Tales of Chivalry: Kiyoshi Saeki

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/a-romantic-brutal-tales-of-chivalry/?utm_content=buffer19517&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

7/10

Desert Hearts: Donna Deitch

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/criterion-discovery-desert-hearts/.

7/10

The Commuter: Jaume Collet-Serra

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/film/115115/the-commuter-review-liam-neesons-latest-is-a-flashy-and-fun-ride/.

7/10

Subarnarekha: Ritwik Ghatak

After searching for LITERALLY 5-6 years, I've finally found a copy of Ritwik Ghatak's SUBARNAREKHA (1965). This film has the austere beauty and pictorial tranquility of Satyajit Ray as well as an earnest emotionalism that seems shocking even today.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) January 9, 2018

I mean, I wish this copy didn't have WHITE SUBTITLES that disappeared into the characters' costumes and the foreground, but beggars can't be choosers.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) January 9, 2018

ANYHOW

One of my favorite details in this film is the pervasive knowledge among its cast that the rest of the world is moving into the future while post-colonial India struggles to revive itself: Germans are reinventing engineering, Soviets are putting men in space, etc, etc.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) January 9, 2018

7/10

Proud Mary: Babak Najafi

Whatever studio executive who wanted to kill Babak Najafi's Proud Mary by burying its release date in January, refusing to let critics see it in advance, and giving it a limited release is a stupid idiot who hates money. Not because it's good. In truth, it's aggressively mediocre: a tired plot, tired action choreography, otherwise great actors giving poorly directed performances. But the audience I saw it with loved it. People were cheering in their seats--shout-out to the one guy who screamed "I love you Mary!" to rapturous cheers. People laughed during the funny scenes, gasped during the twists, and applauded during the action scenes. This film is a bona fide crowd-pleaser. Their loss, I guess.

6/10

Archangel: Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin's films are always a hallucination of films and cinematic techniques past, and Archangel is no exception. The film is an odd, mesmeric tale of amnesia, lost identity, and memory set against the Bolshevik Uprising of 1919. Strange, wonderful images abound: rabbits falling into war trenches, a severed leg being passed around a peasant family, a man strangling enemy Bolsheviks with his own intestines. But the film is hard to watch, mostly because it insists so much on its labyrinthine plot which you need a spreadsheet to follow and understand. As a purely aesthetic and ecstatic experience, it's wonderful. But it fails everything else it tries to do. But I'd be willing to give this film a second shot in a movie theater. Who knows? That might be the only proper way to appreciate it.

7/10

Spider Baby: Jack Hill

I saw Jack Hill's Spider Baby at a midnight showing at the Nitehawk Cinema. And honestly? It was an amazing decision. Spider Baby is not a good film, but it is a self-consciously silly and trashy one. The film involves two insane teenagers being taken care of in a rickety old mansion by a too-good-for-this-movie Lon Chaney. Lawyers show up and stay overnight and madness, cannibalism, and one hilariously uncomfortable dinner party ensue. The film knows it's stupid--see the scene during the dinner party where they start talking about the Universal Monster movies and Lon Chaney says "It's going to be a full moon tonight!" My favorite scene, though, is an admittedly horrifying one where a lawyer gets caught in the basement by the two girls. At first we only see them in shadowed silhouette. But then when light shines on them we see they both have demoniac grins. Screaming, they charge at him. Delightful stuff.

6/10

The Green Fog: Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin

The Green Fog is a reconstruction of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) made up of clips and found footage from films that are not Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. It's the kind of mind-bending concept art piece that you can't really understand until you see it for yourself. But it's well worth the search. It would be a miracle if it ever got a wide release; I'm not sure if the directors would be able to clear all of the samples they use. But this is definitely a film that should be sought out. What's fascinating--other than the clips they use--is how the film has a kind of frame story where we watch a bunch of stuffy old men in a screening room essentially putting the movie together, a bit which becomes hilarious when the film tries to reconstruct the redwood forest sequence and the stuffy old men come up with nothing but an old NSYNC music video to use (Hello!! The forest moon of Endor, anyone??). Other highlights: shots of the slow-motion chase sequence in Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962) during the opening rooftop chase; plates of shrimp signifying the film's spiral motif; Chuck Norris in An Eye for an Eye (1981) during post-fall catatonia scenes.

8/10

Wanda: Barbara Loden

I don't know if I've ever admired and enjoyed a film with such terrible audio. I get that Barbara Loden's Wanda was one of the first great indie films in an age when indie films weren't really a thing. And it's a powerful, dreamlike look at lower class alienation and ennui like Jon Jost's superlative Last Chants for a Slow Dance (1977). But I couldn't understand over half the dialogue because the boom mic was too far away from the performers and the audio mixing kept what was picked up drowned out. But I'm willing to accept that maybe my DVD of the film was in bad shape. Anyhow, the film is devastating in its quiet power; it's one of the most powerful cinematic portrayals of a woman beaten down by decades of emotional (maybe even physical?) abuse. Michael Higgins is terrifying as the possessive, mentally unstable petty thief Mr. Dennis, and Loden gives one of the best female performances of the second half of the twentieth century. And that cinematography is perfect: deliciously grainy 16mm projected into 32mm.

9/10

Raw: Julia Ducournau

Just like the other films of the French New Extremity, Julia Ducournau's Raw falls apart and becomes stupider the more you think about it. Yes, the gore is disgusting and shocking and it's a powerful metaphor for sexual awakening and blah blah blah. But after a while it just becomes silly and ridiculous. Also--and I hate to be this guy especially since I've grown to hate this form of criticism--but the plot has too many holes. Why would the parents let their girls go to college if they knew they were violent, murderous cannibals? Why wouldn't a school expel the girls after the morgue video got leaked? Did the police really never become suspicious that so many random cars were crashing in that conspicuously empty country road? The whole allegorical concept of the plot falls apart in the wake of these holes! Gah!

5/10

Inherent Vice: Paul Thomas Anderson

Oy...but didn't Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice have the single sexiest and erotic scene of any movie I've ever seen? It was so sexy that when it finally exploded into sex I felt let down. The build-up, the anticipation was just perfect as Shasta (Katherine Waterston) teases and torments her ex-boyfriend Larry "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) with nothing but the sole of her foot. Unf. Oh yeah, I suppose there's a whole film here to consider. I get what Anderson was trying to do: use the trappings of the neo-noir genre to make a statement about the burned out post-Altamont stoner crowd. And to that end, the film gets the job done, especially with regards to how blatantly it eschews trying to tell any kind of cohesive narrative. But I felt underwhelmed. The best part of the film--other than the one I mentioned at the top of this review--was the antagonistic friendship between Doc and Det. Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen (Josh Brolin). This is a film I think I'll need to revisit later.

6/10

The Gang's All Here: Busby Berkeley

I'll level with you all: I didn't pay attention to the plot in Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here. At all. I'm pretty sure it was some aggressively forgettable story about lovers who fall in and out of love and work out their problems with the help of song-and-dance numbers. When you go into a Busby Berkeley film, you go in for the dance numbers anyway. And the ones in this film are pretty good, especially the ones with Carmen Miranda. Yes, this was one of the most famous films to come from the America/Brazil Good Neighbor Policy cultural exchange. Miranda immortalized herself with her fruit hats, searing herself into the national consciousness. The banana dance scene is easily the most impressive and entertaining in the entire film. And I'm pretty sure Benny Goodman was there too. But since he doesn't dance, I didn't particularly care when he showed up onscreen.

7/10

The Master: Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master might be the single most challenging film of the director's entire career, even more than Inherent Vice (2014), a film which deliberately tries to have as little to do with a cohesive, comprehensible narrative as possible. The Master sits on your chest and brain like a weight, daring you to try and comprehend its heady philosophical quandaries. Each shot feels like a painting, creating the impression that the film isn't so much a film as a trip down a moving art gallery. The three central performances by Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams rank among the best of their respective careers. People say this movie is about Scientology. That may be, but even more so it's a film about why broken people are drawn to cults and why so few are able to escape before it's too late.

8/10

Bright: David Ayer

David Ayer's Bright could have honestly been an okay film. I loved it's urban fantasy universe, loved the idea of Magic Wands, and liked the production design of a world torn between humans and monsters. But here's the problem: Max Landis. The man has no concept for subtlety and even less for social justice. It blows wet, noisy raspberries at the #BLM movement and social justice activists in general, particularly with the now infamous line "Fairy Lives don't matter today!" I wish somebody with talent and finesse had written this screenplay.

5/10

The Big Feast: Marco Ferreri

I'd heard Marco Ferreri's The Big Feast was essentially an anti-food porn film, so I went into it expecting to see some kind of reverse Tampopo. In reality, it's more like what would've happened if the four aristocrats in Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) had been demented foodies. Honestly, I'm not opposed to the idea of watching four rich people gorge themselves to death as some kinda commentary on the emptiness of bourgeois life, but Ferreri does a poor job making the four protagonists vehicles for despair. Instead, they show up at a mansion cheerily dig into food, and die. And one of them doesn't even die from over-eating! The entire spectacle feels like just that: a spectacle. And with nothing beneath it's surface, what's the point in watching these people eat scrumptious food you can never try?

6/10

The Post: Steven Spielberg

With Steven Spielberg signing on to direct the film a mere month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, The Post stands as one of mainstream Hollywood’s first direct confrontations and condemnations of the Trump presidency and its culture of pervasive deception, corruption, and debasement of America’s political institutions. Perhaps not since Samuel Fuller’s Park Row (1952) has there been a film as passionately enamored with the American newspaper business and its role as democracy’s first line of defense. And despite being comprised almost entirely of scenes of nervous men and women standing around cluttered newsrooms and spacious parlors, the film roils with the nervous, breathless energy that enervated so many of his big-budget blockbusters. Make no mistake: this is Spielberg at the height of his powers, both as supreme cinematic craftsman and tireless interrogator of the myths and legends we Americans create and tell about ourselves.

8/10

Phantom Thread: Paul Thomas Anderson

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/film/114584/movie-review-phantom-thread/.

8/10

Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Rian Johnson

Finally! A Star Wars film that does its own thing! That doesn't try to fill in or replicate old parts of the franchise but originate something new! A film that takes risks! That embraces change! That introduces the most ruthlessly adorable aliens since Ewoks! Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the breath of fresh air this franchise needs so badly. Everything from Luke and Leia's new Force powers to Rose Tico to Canto Bight to Kylo Ren's new backstory, all of this feels new and revitalized. Johnson could have made a film that sought to only placate old fans, but he decided to thumb his nose at those stuffy old guards and take the franchise where it needed to go. And why yes, I AM babbling on to increase my word count!

8/10

Radio Mary: Gary Walkow

Wow. The heck was Gary Walkow's Radio Mary doing on mubi? That's a channel for good and/or distinguished films. Radio Mary is neither. It's this cockamamie piece of rubbish about a woman who becomes a "human radio" after getting touched by an evil guy who may or may not be a space alien. What's ridiculous is how the film treats it like this solemn event; the lead actress almost never raises her voice above an annoying whispered vocal fry, even when she's picking up the inner thoughts of terrible people or trying to escape the villain who makes her an accessory to murder. The film takes itself too seriously--it allows itself to have no fun with its subject matter. And this is the kind of subject matter you need to have fun with. Also, the film has one of the most unnecessary topless scenes I've ever seen. I think Walkow just wanted an excuse to look at his actress' boobs.

2/10

The Shape of Water: Guillermo del Toro

To read this review, go to: www.audienceseverywhere.net/shape-water-american-fairy-tale/.

9/10

Te Ata: Nathan Frankowski

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/46541-2/.

My Happy Family: Nana Ekvtimishvili, Simon Groß

I'll be honest, I unfairly overestimated Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß's My Happy Family, mostly because I went into expecting one of the best films of 2017. Why? Because that's what Bilge Ebiri said. So I went into My Happy Family ready and eager to be blown away by some gripping, life-changing drama. And maybe it is, but only if you approach it the right way: without preconceptions. The film is a slow, gently-paced story about a woman's self-emancipation from a loving yet over-bearing family. It's all about observational touches and emotional nuances. And quite frankly, that wasn't what I was expecting. Truth is, I fell asleep halfway through it, necessitating my watching it over the course of two evenings. I'll definitely have to give this film another watch at some point.

Brave New Jersey: Jody Lambert

In making a film about one of the most notorious mass panics in American history, one of the most important things to get right is the tone. Sure, it might seem silly now, but when Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds hit the airwaves on October 30, 1938, it scalded a frayed nerve that had tormented the American public for years: the fear of invasion. Fascists in Japan and Italy had already steamrolled their way through large swathes of Manchuria and Africa. Russia had been overtaken by a a brutal band of Communists. And a Bavarian madman named Adolf Hitler was casting a long, horrific shadow over the rest of Europe. It didn’t matter that the invaders they heard described on the radio were tripod-piloting, heat-ray welding Martians—they were the Foreign Enemy made manifest. And some rural communities, particularly those near the Martians’ supposed landing ground in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, experienced near cataclysmic panic. Here we see hints of the international paranoia that would define post-World War Two American culture: the anxieties of the Cold War; the fear of atomic annihilation. And yet in Jody Lambert’s Brave New Jersey, a film which claims to tell the true story of what happened in the isolated New Jersey community of Lullaby, the entire debacle is portrayed as an occasionally serious yet essentially light-hearted romp. It seeks to inspire, not indict; to entertain, not explain. It climaxes with a hodgepodge of residents charging blindly into a fog-filled meadow in slow-motion while uplifting music swells in the background, informing us that each of these men and women have committed themselves to bravely charge the unknown! To respond to uncertainty with confidence! To fear with courage!

It’s magnificently miscalculated. If the acting was just a little worse, the writing a little more hackneyed, the director a little less competent, Brave New Jersey could have been a so-bad-it’s-good classic. But there’s too much talent propelling this misfire forward. It arrives finally at mere mediocrity.

Consider all the cliched character archetypes introduced by the film to bounce off each other in the second and third acts. There’s the nebbish, nervous mayor Clark Hill (Tony Hale), a man who somehow got elected into office without the aid of any discernible charisma or spine. There’s the surly, disillusioned preacher Ray Rogers (Dan Bakkedahl) whose Dark Night of the Soul is broken by the “invasion,” spurring him to form the beginnings of a cult that views the Martians as God-sent messengers of peace. There’s Ann Davison (Grace Kaufman), a little girl thrust into the center of the madness after she’s locked up with the rest of the town’s children—including her Polish refugee cousin Ziggy (Harp Sandman)—when the panic first hits. And there are many others, none any more memorable, none any more significant. And when these characters start dropping F-bombs, the film’s aw-shucks veneer shatters so entirely we wonder why Lambert attempted such bland, Lifetime Original Movie pretensions in the first place.

Rating: 4/10

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Luc Besson

For the first five minutes or so of Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, we feel a faint glimmer of hope that we are seeing something truly special: an emotionally resonant big-budget sci-fi soap opera with seemingly impossible production values. The opening sequence of the titular city of a thousand planets forming as satellite combines with satellite, each new human race strutting into the station with the confidence of a people who've reached scientific ascendency, is pure visual poetry. Then the story starts. And Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne start talking. And everything falls to pieces. These two performers give baffling, wooden, painful performances where they spout nothing but exposition and rote melodramatic patter about their relationship/partnership/mutual loathing. The story makes no sense. My friend and I spent the entire time trying to explain away the massive plot holes and inconsistences (exactly how DID Rihanna's shapeshifting alien get fatally wounded?). Here is a truly beautiful film that shows off each penny of its $209 million price tag. Unfortunately Besson forgot that you also need a story, good characters, and good performances to make a film click.

5/10

The Wolf of Wall Street: Martin Scorsese

I really, really, really wish I had seen Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street before it had been memed to death: before the ubiquity of Matthew McConaughey's chest-thumping; before the gifsets of Leonardo DiCaprio desperately trying to enter his car while strung out on Quaaludes; before the ascendancy of Margot Robbie; before the behind-the-scenes stories of Jonah Hill accidentally poisoning DiCaprio with too much sushi. I bet this film was a revelation of technical craft. But see, that's the thing: the film feels like an exercise in the technical aspects of filmmaking. There's none of the creeping sexual guilt or religious imagery that makes Scorsese's films feel so unique and vibrant. I can see why he may have been drawn to this project: it exposes the truth that Wall Street is essentially another street gang, just one with better clothes, cars, and women than Henry Hill could have ever afforded. It's about a social climber working his way up in a misogynist cloistered world. But again, it feels like a film of surfaces. There's precious little of the depth that makes Scorsese's work stand out. Still though, as an exercise in filmmaking, it's superb.

7/10

The Lure: Agnieszka Smoczynska

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/criterion-discovery-the-lure/.

7/10

Antiporno: Sion Sono

To read this review, go to: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-antierotica-of-antiporno?utm_content=buffera5bfe&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

7/10

Irma Vep: Olivier Assayas

Olivier Assayas's Irma Vep is a film about an actress who gets pulled into a country she doesn't quite understand to act in a film she can't fathom surrounded by people who don't speak her language. Here, that woman is Maggie Cheung playing herself as she is cast to play the legendary Irma Vep in an ill-conceived, ill-fated remake of Louis Feuillade's Les Vampires (1915). The film is about her own disorientation, but also the disintegration of a French cinema that has ossified within its own pretensions and jealousies of larger budgeted American films and more visually kinetic and exciting Hong Kong films--it's perhaps no coincidence that the director, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, obsesses over Cheung's martial arts films and Hollywood blockbusters like Batman Returns (1992) while guzzling liter bottles of Coca-Cola. But for the most part, the film feels unfocused, sparing one brilliant moment where Cheung seems to become Irma Vep and does a little impromptu cat-burglarizing of her own. It reminds me of her struggles with the boundaries between actor, character, and historical figure in Stanley Kwan's Centre Stage (1992).

7/10

Mudbound: Dee Rees

I'm not too proud to admit that I skipped a bit of Dee Rees' Mudbound. It was the scene where one of the main black characters is seized, "tried," and mutilated by the Klu Klux Klan for having slept with a white woman while overseas fighting Nazis in Europe. I just couldn't do it. Mudbound is a film of such power and poetry that it hit me as hard, if not harder, than all the scenes of torture and injustice in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013). Here's what I want to know. How did Rees shoot such an impressive looking film with only $10 million and just a few weeks? It looks like a finely polished Hollywood super-production. And oh, how some of the scenes echo with fire. The opening scene where two white sharecroppers almost drown while burying their Klan father in a slave's grave during a thunderstorm is the kind of thing that would have made William Faulkner green with envy.

8/10

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: Martin McDonagh

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/three-billboards-outside-ebbing-missouri/.

8/10

The Convent: Manoel de Oliveira

Thank goodness for small mercies. I was originally supposed to write a full 1,200 word article on Manoel de Oliveira's The Convent for a prominent site. But they changed their minds and told me not to bother. And honestly, I couldn't be happier. This was a dreadful, slow, boring, plodding film. Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich go to an old Portuguese monastery and get tempted by a caretaker who's basically Mephistopheles. I know this because the film straight up tells us that's what he is. This movie was interminable--obnoxiously literary, it couldn't go three minutes without referencing some great work of literature, turning to the camera, and winking. Ghastly stuff.

4/10

The Fate of the Furious: F. Gary Gray

I never though I'd get bored with the Fast and Furious franchise after it went bananas with its fifth entry, but here we are. Don't get me wrong, I still love the action and side characters. There's one sequence in particular that ranks among the best in the franchise: an evil hacker named Cipher (Charlize Theron) steals a nuclear football from the Russian Minister of Defense by hacking into a thousand smart cars and using them to run their vehicle off the road. There's even one scene where cars start pouring from the side of a building that's almost pure poetry. But the film revolves around the ridiculous premise of Vin Diesel betraying his "family" and yadda yadda yadda. At this point Diesel is easily the weakest part of the franchise. Can we make Kurt Russell or Dwayne Johnson the main hero please? Also, Cipher is simultaneously the best and worst movie villain ever. She's like the best parts of Blofeld and the worst parts of Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz rolled into one. I hate-loved every minute she was onscreen. But man, this film just didn't cut it.

5/10

The Disaster Artist: James Franco

A joint review w/ my buddy Hubert...

Just saw THE DISASTER ARTIST.

Was overwhelmed by its okayness. Anyone else kinda blindsided by how the film chickened out from holding Tommy Wiseau accountable for being an abusive monster on set, particularly during the sex scene shot?

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) December 2, 2017

I mean, he's confronted by it during the scene where he takes Greg Sestero back to Frisco to play catch, but then it immediately goes back to the film's original light, mocking tone.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) December 2, 2017

Seems I liked the move more than you. With regard to Tommy, I don't think the movie acquits the character well. He's a jealous, petty, egotistical monster who is not good at anything but accidentally fails upward into cult status. He's a creepy weirdo even in real footage...

— Hubert Vigilla, which rhymes with "Vubert Higilla" (@HubertVigilla) December 2, 2017

The movie would take a much different turn if it did take down its star space cadet. It would probably be more like Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana's documentary Overnight, if anything. Wondering about deviations from the book, e.g., I doubt that premiere went as well as shown.

— Hubert Vigilla, which rhymes with "Vubert Higilla" (@HubertVigilla) December 2, 2017

Oh definitely. I bet it was mostly just confused, embarrassed silence.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) December 2, 2017

With loads of walkouts

— Hubert Vigilla, which rhymes with "Vubert Higilla" (@HubertVigilla) December 2, 2017

Been reading some reviews. Surprised how some characterize Wiseau as a blundering artistic hero. The way I took it was that he becomes the monster he denies he is and remains oblivious to the harm he's doing--it's the 1st restaurant scene taken to its cringey, logical conclusion.

— Hubert Vigilla, which rhymes with "Vubert Higilla" (@HubertVigilla) December 2, 2017

And sabotages his friend's career in the process.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) December 2, 2017

Yeah, those first hints of possessiveness and jealousy at the bar seasoned my read of the character--Tommy is not a good person, but like some awful people, I've hung around them solely due to perverse curiosity, like I wondered what kind of crazy shit they'd do next...

— Hubert Vigilla, which rhymes with "Vubert Higilla" (@HubertVigilla) December 2, 2017

Which is, admittedly, a shameful thing to admit, but the movie reminded me of some relationships in my twenties where I'd hang out with someone I considered a friend only to wind up asking myself "Why am I friends with this person?"

— Hubert Vigilla, which rhymes with "Vubert Higilla" (@HubertVigilla) December 2, 2017

7/10