The Strong Man: Frank Capra

"[Harry] Langdon's magic was in his innocence, and Capra took beautiful care not to meddle with it...Langdon became quickly and fantastically popular with three pictures, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, The Strong Man and Long Pants; from then on he went downhill even faster." - James Agee

I certainly enjoyed this Langdon film better than Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926). For one, Langdon's nonplussed, child-like personality is really funny here. Nowhere is this more apparent than a scene where a prostitute tries to get his attention by dramatically fainting in public. He pauses, regards her, and walks away. And yes, this whole sequence is a vignette designed solely to stretch out the film's runtime, but it still works. One of the best scenes in the film involves Langdon doing shtick for his blind girlfriend. There's a lovely shot of him bashfully hiding his blushing face behind his hat. Overall, the film sorta stumbles about until the third act. But what a third act! Acrobatics and madness that would impress even Buster Keaton!

7/10

23 Paces to Baker Street: Henry Hathaway

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/henry-hathaway-portrait-of-an-underratedd-artist/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Henry%20Hathaway:%20Portrait%20of%20an%20Underrated%20Artist.

7/10

North to Alaska: Henry Hathaway

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/henry-hathaway-portrait-of-an-underratedd-artist/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Henry%20Hathaway:%20Portrait%20of%20an%20Underrated%20Artist.

8/10

Werewolf: Ashley McKenzie

I'll probably need to see Ashley McKenzie's Werewolf 2-3 more times to truly understand it. It's not opaque or esoteric, there's just so much going on inside it that it can't all be appreciated in just one sitting. There's the way McKenzie uses her cameras to depersonalize her methadone addict protagonists during their visits to the Canadian medical bureaucracy to get their daily doses: watch how she chops them up with her framing, cutting off the tops of their heads, the whole of their bodies beneath their necks. Then there's McKenzie's uses of visual matching which seems more akin to poetry than to modern cinema. She'll pair a closeup of a methadone spigot with an ice cream shop soft-serve nozzle. Werewolf is a very quiet, very introspective film whose pace might frustrate casual viewers. I see a lot of these kinds of films, especially during film festival season. But this is one of the rare exceptions where the filmmaker actually has something interesting to say.

8/10

Garden of Evil: Henry Hathaway

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/henry-hathaway-portrait-of-an-underratedd-artist/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Henry%20Hathaway:%20Portrait%20of%20an%20Underrated%20Artist.

6/10

The Shepherd of the Hills: Henry Hathaway

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/henry-hathaway-portrait-of-an-underratedd-artist/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Henry%20Hathaway:%20Portrait%20of%20an%20Underrated%20Artist.

6/10

From Hell to Texas: Henry Hathaway

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/henry-hathaway-portrait-of-an-underratedd-artist/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Henry%20Hathaway:%20Portrait%20of%20an%20Underrated%20Artist.

8/10

Different from the Others: Richard Oswald

It's not fair to judge Richard Oswald's Different from the Others from any qualitative standpoint. After all, only about 40-50 minutes of the film survives. But as the first LGBTQ+ film that portrayed gay people as sympathetic, it is an essential part of history. Here is a film that must be taught, shown, and considered within the larger context of both cinematic and LGBTQ+ history. Made during the year and a half after the end of World War One where cinematic censorship wasn't being enforced within Germany, Different from the Others told a melodramatic story of the tragic romance between famous violinist Paul Körner (Conrad Veidt) and his student Kurt Sivers (Fritz Schulz). Blackmailed by a cruel extortionist named Franz Bollek (Reinhold Schünzel), Körner is eventually put on trial under Paragraph 175, the law that made homosexuality illegal in Germany. Though given a largely symbolic sentence of one week by a jury, Körner's desperation was such that he commits suicide. The film is heavily didactic, featuring many lectures and slideshows by pioneering sexologist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Though some aspects of the film may seem...unpleasant considering today's political atmosphere--a doctor assures a young woman in love with Sivers that he can never be married but can still serve as a "useful member of society"--the film's treatment of homosexuality is essential. We don't just see homosexuals portrayed as sympathetic, we see homosexual desire and love legitimized. It's a miracle that even the truncated form of the film survives--the original copies were all burned by the Nazis. The only reason we have the footage we do was because it was re-purposed in The Laws of Love, a later scientific film.

Elle: Paul Verhoeven

Ha, ha! It's a good thing that I wasn't assigned to review Paul Verhoeven's Elle by any of the sites I write for. If I did, I would have had to figure out a score to give it. But since I get to write about it here, I can do the cowardly smart cowardly thing and give it a N/A rating. Why? Because I have no idea how in the hell to quantify my reaction to it. It's a rape/revenge/comedy/romance movie by Paul Verhoeven where we watch Isabelle Huppert get violently raped 4-5 times, get into a quasi-romance with her rapist, and finally kill him. It's obviously meant to be funny, obviously meant to unnerve the audience as much as the bystanders in Huppert's life. But does Verhoeven pull it off? I don't know. First off, with the exception of Robocop (1987), I've never found Verhoeven to be as smart or clever as he likes to think he is. Showgirls (1995) wasn't a satire, it was a hateful softcore porn. Starship Troopers (1997) only works as a winking parody of Hollywood war films for the first half. But again I ask: does it work here? I don't know. But I think the key to figuring it out is a sequence where one of the characters in the video game being made by Huppert's company is revealed as transformed into a powerful witch after being brutally raped. Make of that what you will.

Halloween II: Rick Rosenthal

Here's the main problem with Rick Rosenthal's Halloween II: it tries to replicate the speed of John Carpenter's original without any understanding of his use of pacing. It's mind-numbingly slow and bereft of tension. Even when Michael Myers kills a half-naked nurse by repeatedly dunking her into a vat of boiling water, I couldn't help feeling bored and tired. There are all of the drawn out silences and stillness of a great thriller, but no understanding of how to weave them together to create something interesting. The whole plot twist of Laurie Strode being Myers' sister didn't really piss me off. I guess you had to have been alive to see the first one in the theaters to feel properly betrayed. The one bright spot in the film is Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis: he's a maniacal, Captain Ahab-like figure nonplussed by accidentally killing an underage teenager in the opening 20 minutes of the movie if it means he gets closer to stopping Michael. Delightful!

5/10

Day for Night: François Truffaut

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/day-for-night/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Francois%20Truffaut%27s%20DAY%20FOR%20NIGHT:%20A%20Love%20Letter%20to%20the%20Movies.

8/10

Shin Godzilla: Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/shin-godzilla-may-best-godzilla-since-first/.

9/10

Theo Who Lived: David Schisgall

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-theo-who-lived/90227.

7/10

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp: Harry Edwards, Frank Capra

"[Harry] Langdon's magic was in his innocence, and Capra took beautiful care not to meddle with it...Langdon became quickly and fantastically popular with three pictures, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, The Strong Man and Long Pants; from then on he went downhill even faster." - James Agee

Well, I hope Langdon went uphill soon after Harry Edwards and Frank Capra's Tramp, Tramp, Tramp because, in all honestly, I wasn't particularly impressed by it. It's too slow, doesn't build up any forward momentum like the films of Harold Lloyd (which also tend to start slow before creating considerable inertia), and quite frankly, it isn't that funny. The Langdon persona hear was more infuriating than it was charming: he's incompetent, idiotic, and selfish. I understand that innocence was his whole shtick. But there's a difference between innocence and being a self-centered, clumsy moron.

5/10

Hooligan Sparrow: Nanfu Wang

Nanfu Wang's Hooligan Sparrow--a documentary about feminist/human rights activist Ye Haiyan and her harassment by the Chinese authorities--is obviously unfinished. If anything, the film feels like an assembly of B-roll captured in the intervals between protests and legal hearings. But through this smattering of incomplete footage we get an absolutely terrifying glance into the plight of Chinese activists. Much of it is shot guerilla style with hidden cameras (one of which was hidden in a special pair of Wang's glasses) capturing belligerent counter-protestors, home invaders, and police-sponsored harassers. There are moments watching this film where one feels it difficult to breath. I wish that Wang had focused more on Haiyan and her history of activism--the section that recounts her world-famous protest for sex work legalization where she worked as a prostitute for two years turning tricks for free was easily one of the best in the film. But everything that remains is vital.

8/10

Grandma's Boy: Fred C. Newmeyer

"[Harold Lloyd] was especially good at putting a very timid, spoiled or brassy young fellow through devastating embarrassments. He went through one of his most uproarious Gethsemanes as a shy country youth courting the nicest girl in town in Grandma's Boy..." - James Agee

According to that reliable font of information, wikipedia, Fred C. Newmeyer's Grandma's Boy was instrumental in pioneering feature-length comedies which "combined gags with character development." At times it feels like three different comedies spliced together into one: a young man nervously courting a beautiful young woman only to repeatedly make a fool out of himself; a flashback to Lloyd's grandfather who captured a Union code for the Confederacy during the Civil War (easily the most entertaining segment of the film); Lloyd going after a dastardly criminal armed with the courage he gained from a mysterious family heirloom said to give bravery to whoever holds it. All of these films work together perfectly well on their own. And though the film can't smooth all the bumps in-between these sections, the film works well as a whole. It's not Lloyd's funniest or most memorable, but it's entertaining enough.

7/10

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break: Edward F. Cline

"Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Universal) is not a movie; it is 70 minutes of photographed vaudeville by polypnosed W. C. Fields...as such, it is strong drink for cinemaddicts who believe that the Great Man can do no wrong, small beer for those who think that even a Fields picture should have a modicum of direction." - James Agee

I disagree with Agee on the point that the film was poorly directed. If anything, it has one of the tightest narratives I've seen yet in a Fields film. This is due in large part to the framing device of Fields playing himself as he pitches story ideas to a movie studio executive. Respectable schtick—including a hilarious sequence involving the same studio head getting harried by a rowdy production crew while working with a young actress—dominates the first 20 or so minutes. But after that it's off to the races as the film illustrates Fields' bizarre, absurd flights of fancy. This may be my favorite Fields film, even more so than The Bank Dick (1940), simply because it made me laugh more than any of his other work.

8/10

Money Monster: Jodie Foster

While Jodie Foster's Money Monster isn't that good, I was actually very surprised that it was as good as it was. I'll always be suspicious of filthy rich Hollywood stars making populist movies about the evils of Wall Street--the fact that Adam McKay's The Big Short (2015) was one of the best films of the decade was nothing short of gob-smacking--but where Money Monster shines is in how it constantly surprised me. Whenever I felt like I had figured out where it was going, it turned around and ruined my expectations. An inspirational scene with an inspirational speech by George Clooney asking people to buy terrible stocks to save his life ending with the stock actually decreasing in value? The bomber's pregnant girlfriend showing up and emasculating him on national television? I actually like how cynical these twists were. But they were still a far cry from making this feel like anything other than a rich-liberal-guilt movie. I wish it had been as cold and detached as a 70s political thriller.

6/10

La Marseillaise: Jean Renoir

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/2016-new-york-film-festival/.

4/10

Angels of Sin: Robert Bresson

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/2016-new-york-film-festival/.

6/10

Deadlier Than the Male: Julien Duvivier

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/2016-new-york-film-festival/.

5/10

The Ornithologist: João Pedro Rodrigues

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/the-ornithologist-is-an-allegorical-failure/.

3/10

The 5th Wave: J Blakeson

It might just be me, but if I was an evil alien race seeking to subjugate the earth, I wouldn't try and train the children to become soldiers to exterminate the adults. First off, that's a really circuitous way to take over a planet, especially for a race that can apparently bio-engineer lethal plagues, destroy a planet's technology, and trigger untold natural disasters. Second, c'mon now, you train the adults to kill the children, not the other way around! Children are weak, uncoordinated, and prone to freaking out in stressful situations. But I'm not the aliens from J. Blakeson's The 5th Wave. So what do I know? Truth be told, besides its preposterous premise, there isn't much wrong with The 5th Wave. It's simply a boilerplate Hunger Games ripoff complete with tough teenage female protagonist, two possible male love interests, and a militaristic force controlling society. It's all quite predictable. Not much else to say.

5/10

The Boss: Ben Falcone

Well...at the very least, it seemed like Peter Dinklage was having a good time. Man, I just have not had good luck with Melissa McCarthy comedies, haven't I? I think Paul Feig's Bridesmaids was legitimately the last one of her movies that I truly loved. Everything else was just middling--like Paul Feig's Ghostbusters (2016)--or just terrible, like Ben Falcone's The Boss. I can't stand obnoxious characters and McCarthy's is as obnoxious and mean-spirited as they come. I know her character has an arc and changes over the course of the film, but man, I just didn't care about her after the first 30 minutes. The whole heist subplot in the third act was so forced, so unnecessary. Most of the comedy is either terrible line-o-rama or completely contrived. I only laughed a few times during the whole thing. I will say this, though: I think this movie gave me a huge Kristen Bell crush.

4/10

The Lost City of Z: James Gray

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyff-review-the-lost-city-of-z/89369.

7/10

Central Intelligence: Rawson Marshall Thurber

There is some enjoyment in watching Rawson Marshall Thurber's Central Intelligence. It's not the comedy: the jokes are all either terrible, predictable, or simply not funny. It's not the action: it's too frenetic and jerky to really enjoy. And it's not the plot: there are so many ridiculous twists and turns that trying to follow it stops being entertaining. Also, did anyone notice that it totally brushed off the fact that one of its characters was a government employee who not only condoned by enjoyed torture? Anyhow, the enjoyment to be had in Central Intelligence is simply watching Dwayne Johnson be Dwayne Johnson. He's so charismatic, so entertaining, so effortlessly sincere and adorable that every time he comes onscreen you can't help but light up inside. I can take or leave Kevin Hart: I don't particularly find him funny, but I also don't particularly find him unfunny. For me, this movie was all about The Rock. And it has plenty of him.

5/10

Zoolander 2: Ben Stiller

Listen, some parts of Ben Stiller's Zoolander 2 worked, some didn't. It isn't as good as the first, but parts of it made me laugh. And that's what really matters. So in lieu of a regular review, I'm just going to list the parts of Zoolander 2 that I liked:

--The running joke about Owen Wilson being in a relationship with an orgy.
--Will Ferrell cursing Anna Wintour out.
--"The new Hilfiger collection, brought to you by white privilege!”
--"Really? You wanna know why I killed Justin Bieber?"
--Everything about Kyle Mooney's Don Atari.
--Benedict Cumberbatch taking the piss out of his bizarre looks.
--Sting cramming in as many Sting lyrics as possible into his dialogue.

5/10

Personal Shopper: Olivier Assayas

I've spent a lot of time thinking about Olivier Assayas' Personal Shopper, for a couple of reasons. First, as the first of Assayas' films that I've seen, it's made me intensely curious to check out the rest of his filmography. Second, this might be the only Kristen Stewart performance I've ever seen that's truly effected me. I'm not saying that Stewart's a bad actress, merely that my limited exposure to her career has been...less than ideal. *cough*Twilight*cough* Third, I haven't seen many films that have so successfully played around with genre filmmaking as a way to surpass those same genres. Personal Shopper may technically be a ghost story/thriller hybrid. But first and foremost it's a film about loss and grief and how we internalize and externalize those emotions. It's one of the scariest movies I've seen all year, but it's not really interested in BEING a horror film, feel me?

7/10

13th: Ava DuVernay

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Ava DuVernay's 13th might literally be the most important documentary of 2016. It might even be the most important documentary of the decade. A stunning, stirring examination of the 13th Amendment and how it makes exceptions to slavery in cases that involve prisoners, it explores nothing less than the soul of America through its treatment of African-Americans in the post-Civil War era. Its methodology is flawless in how it weaves together apparently disparate subjects like the prison industrial complex, the Civil Rights Movement, Reaganomics, and the rise of Donald Trump into a single story. But I also loved the little details involving DuVernay's craftsmanship: how interview subjects are filmed not in neutral sets but in "their own spaces" like office buildings and abandoned train stations; how hip-hop is used like a Greek Chorus commenting on the action. 13th should be shown in schools all over America. And because it's streaming on Netflix, there's no reason why anybody should miss it.

9/10

Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's the Fantastic Four: Marty Langford

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/doomed-untold-story-roger-cormans-fantastic-four/.

7/10

Tower: Charles Whitman

To read this review, go to: www.audienceseverywhere.net/tower/.

8/10

Things to Come: Mia Hansen-Løve

Well...this certainly was a French film. If watching beautiful Europeans walk around the countryside, talk philosophy, and occasionally burst into tears, then Mia Hansen-Løve's Things to Come is for you. I joke, I joke, but the film is so top-heavy with weighty dialogue that it makes me wonder why this wasn't a stage play. Things to Come doesn't really do anything wrong: it's a finely acted and well-written piece about a middle-aged woman coming to terms with her life as it crumbles around her and rebuilds itself. Isabelle Huppert does a fine job with the material provided, but the script never gives her much of a chance to make an impression. But here's the thing: the film never does much to make me like it, either. I understand it's a stoic, restrained reflection on life, the universe, and such and such. But it's practically interchangeable with any number of similarly stoic, restrained art films making the rounds on the festival circuit. Things to Come occupies no real estate in my brain; I doubt I'll ever think of it again after today. Truth be told, I didn't find Hansen-Løve's last film, Eden (2014), very interesting either. But if I have to watch French people be boring, I'd rather do it to a Daft Punk soundtrack. Also, the Coen Brothers called: they want their mischievous, missing cat subplot back.

5/10

Showgirls: Paul Verhoeven

Shut up. No, I'm not giving Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls a 0/10 because I was offended by its graphic sexual content. I've seen worse and more explicit. What truly repulses me is its mean-spiritedness, it casual misanthropy. Listen, I get it: the whole "from rags to riches" storyline is bullshit, people gotta do cruel things to get ahead in life. But still, this movie about assholes being assholes to other assholes drained me. Everybody's essentially playing cartoon caricatures of themselves. And though the scenes of Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon toying with each other and hate-f**king each other through the medium of dance were pretty good, the overall performances in the film suck. But still, I know how many people claim this is a satire. If it is, then why does it include the over-the-top rape scene of Gina Ravera. You can't do campy satire and then hit us with a rape scene. It'd sorta be like if Blazing Saddles (1974) had a sequence in the third act where Harvey Korman and Slim Pickens gang-raped Madeline Kahn. And don't even get me started on the film's depiction of black people: they're either cruel bitches, super-studs, or, in Ravera's case, exist merely to create angst for Berkley's character when they get attacked.

0/10

Swiss Army Man: Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan

Three minutes into Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan's Swiss Army Man, I knew I was watching something special. Thirty minutes in, I knew I was watching one of the best films of 2016. By the end, I was seriously considering if I had just watched one of the greatest movies of all time. In short, Swiss Army Man is a Charlie Kaufman-esque ontological treatise tempered with moments of melancholic, epistemological whimsy. Also, farts. I can't stress the farts enough. Here is a film with more audacity than almost any other film I've seen in years. My recommendation for those considering whether or not they should give it a chance: let it shock you, let it surprise you, let it move you. The film blends comedy and tragedy together in a way that hasn't been properly seen in the cinema since the days of Charlie Chaplin. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days I bump this film's rating up to 10/10.

9/10

The Battle of Algiers: Gillo Pontecorvo

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/2016-nyff-battle-algiers/?utm_content=buffer55bc9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

10/10

The Unknown Girl: Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne

To read this review, go to: https://unseenfilms.blogspot.com/2016/10/nathanael-hood-investigates-unknown.html.

8/10

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds: Alexis Bloom, Fisher Stevens

I was afraid for a moment that Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens' new documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds would make the titular mother-daughter duo out to be a poisonous couple, constantly slinging abuse towards each other in-between tearful reconciliations. But here's the beauty of the film: both are generally at peace with each other and their relationship. The film is a look back, both at how foolish they were and how foolish they still are. As born actresses, both Fisher and Reynolds seem to be constantly performing--Reynolds playing up her Hollywood persona and night club routine, Fisher her role as exasperated nerd royalty and playfully cynical (and self-deprecating) industry veteran. There are especially touching sequences exploring Fisher's drug addiction, bipolar disorder (she calls her "happy" persona Tony and her "sad" persona Pam). It's sometimes sad, sometimes, funny, but always completely engrossing. There's love in every single frame. If it had gone on for another hour, I doubt I would have been bored.

8/10

Graduation: Cristian Mungiu

To read this review, go to: https://unseenfilms.blogspot.com/2016/10/nathanael-hood-on-graduation-2016-new.html.

5/10

Fire at Sea: Gianfranco Rosi

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyff-review-fire-at-sea/88608.

2/10

Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened: Lonny Price

I think Lonny Price bit off a bit more than he could chew with Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, a documentary about the disastrous 1981 Stephen Sondheim/Harold Prince Broadway production of Merrily We Roll Along. He tries to turn it into some big commentary on life and memory and moving on after failure, but the film feels incomplete in its scope. Certain individual members of the cast (most notably Jason Alexander for...obvious reasons) get tons of screen-time while others are almost completely ignored. The first third which follows the casting and rehearsal of the production feels preposterously saccharine, practically a Hallmark movie. The real meat of the film comes when Price explores what happened to the cast members after the show closed after only 16 performances. But I wanted more. For instance, I would have really liked to learn what Merrily We Roll Along was about other than just a description of the three leads and the central gimmick of playing the plot backwards. You know what might have been interesting? Juxtaposing archival footage of the original production with modern reenactments featuring the original cast performing alongside their children. We do get some footage of the 2002 charity concert reunion, but Price doesn't do enough with it.

6/10

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail: Steve James

To read this review, go to: https://unseenfilms.blogspot.com/2016/10/nathanael-hood-on-abacus-small-enough.html.

7/10

Turkish Delight: Paul Verhoeven

I'm not giving Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight a rating because I think I'm missing some sort of cultural context. See, this film about two repellent people having a repellent, doomed affair was voted the greatest Dutch film of all time...by the Dutch themselves. Really? REALLY? Is Rutger Hauer being a carefree, near sociopathic asshole supposed to be charming? Do the Dutch think it's still okay to root for him as a protagonist after he straight-up tries to rape his wife, played by Monique van de Ven? If anything, Turkish Delight is an anti-romance: it takes every opportunity to bask in the taboo, vicious, and even scatological side of physical attraction. But I would also go one step further: it's nothing more than a softcore porno with an unusually downbeat ending. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that de Ven spends more time naked than she does being clothed. And it's also not an exaggeration to say that Hauer spends more time being an awful human being than he does being a decent one. But like I said, I think I'm missing some cultural context. I'm not trying to tear down a classic for the sake of tearing down a classic. I truly, honestly want to know what's going on with the Dutch and this film.

Toni Erdmann: Maren Ade

So, why exactly did Ines (Sandra Hüller) strip naked near the end of Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann for her birthday party? Was she having a nervous breakdown? Had she finally cracked under the constant pressure of her father Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonische) masquerading as his alter-ego Toni Erdmann? Or was it just something that...happens? Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this last explanation was the real one. Toni Erdmann is a film wherein things happen, but usually with little or no explanation or reason. Over-long, over-wrought, and only funny is spurts, the film is a 3-hour time-sink. I could write an article of nothing but questions concerning what happened in the film:

--Why did Ines allow Winfried to tag along to so many business meetings and site visits despite the fact that she could have just told him to go away?
--What was up with the semen-eating scene? Was it to show how emotionally isolated she had become towards her one-night stands?
--Why did he grate cheese on his head in that one scene?
--Why did Ade feel it was necessary to spend almost five minutes watching Toni in his Bulgarian costume stumble around a city park?
--Why was this film considered to be the front-runner for the Palme d'Or?
--Why has this film been heralded as a masterpiece?

4/10

Manchester by the Sea: Kenneth Lonergan

To read this review, go to: https://unseenfilms.blogspot.com/2016/09/nathanael-hood-travels-to-manchester-by.html.

7/10

I, Daniel Blake: Ken Loach

To read this review, go to: https://unseenfilms.blogspot.com/2016/09/nathanael-hood-is-rocked-by-ken-loachs.html.

9/10

Paterson: Jim Jarmusch

Jim Jarmusch's Paterson is a revelation, a heart-rending yet soul-uplifting story of a blue collar poet that reminds me why I love the cinema. I think the world had considered Jarmusch to be a director beyond his glory days, one of those old hat cinematic pioneers content to throw the odd project on the festival circuit every few years. But Paterson? Paterson is just as vibrant, vital, and stunning as anything Jarmusch has ever made. It might very well be my new favorite film of his. Adam Driver is wonderful as Paterson, a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey. He spends his days writing poems in his head which he scribbles down before work and during his lunch break. He has an eccentric wife obsessed with black-and-white, a dumpy dog, and a run-down bar he likes to visit every night for a beer. The film takes place over a week, and like a fugue Jarmusch uses the repeated structure of Paterson's daily grind for revelations, discoveries, and chance encounters. This isn't just a film you watch, it's a film you inhabit. When I saw this film at the New York Film Festival, I remember thinking that I wish they would show it 2-3 more times instead of whatever else was on the program for that day (a wish I felt even more powerfully after sitting through the next film, João Pedro Rodrigues' interminable The Ornithologist [2016]). The characters become friends we become accustomed to. We feel like a passenger in Paterson's bar, and family member at his dinner table, a local at the bar he frequents. It is, in a word, sublime. And here's another word: essential.

9/10

Cutter's Way: Ivan Passer

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/blu-ray-review-cutters-way/.

7/10

Starship Troopers: Paul Verhoeven

I'm ALWAYS suspicious when directors claim their poorly received films were misunderstood because they were "satire." But yeah, Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers was DEFINITELY satire. The problem is that the film ITSELF forgets it's satire for the whole second half of its run-time. In the last half it becomes a standard war thriller. It makes us care too much for its characters, makes us too invested in their survival. You can't have your cake and eat it, too, with satire. Compare this film with Trey Parker's Team America: World Police (2004): there's not a frame of that film that doesn't remind you it's satire. If you were to accidentally catch just the last half of it on TV, you'd think it was a standard sci-fi thriller. The battle scenes are great and the effects still hold up. But the film fails to use them properly to achieve its satiric goals. It's a mess. A fun mess to watch, perhaps, but a mess nonetheless.

6/10

I.T.: John Moore

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-i-t/87369.

5/10

At All Costs: Mike Nicoll

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-at-all-costs/87143.

7/10