Aftersun (2022)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Aftersun (2022) – C. Wells

After all its great reviews (which I didn’t read), I’m not sure why I shied away from Aftersun for so long.  I guess it seemed like a heartwarming father-daughter bonding story -- and I didn’t think I needed that (but see Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, 2025, where I got that and I liked it!).  In fact, this is a Scottish father-daughter bonding story and perhaps that makes a difference. It feels more authentic than what I expected an American or Hollywood version would be like.  But more importantly, this is a mood-piece (and/or a moody piece) where we’re somewhere in the future looking back on the events, years later, viewing young dad Callum (Paul Mescal) partly through the eyes of 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and partly through adult Sophie’s eyes (but we spend only a blip of time in this present tense). Young Sophie is always watching – her dad, but also the teenagers around them at the Turkish resort town where they are holidaying. We see her observing adult things, but it isn’t quite clear how much she understands or whether she fully grasps what we as viewers can plainly see – Callum is struggling, perhaps from his divorce, perhaps for other reasons. Writer-Director Charlotte Wells (whose debut feature film this is) shows us Callum on his own, in other scenes to which Sophie is not privy, that fill in some gaps, emotional gaps, if not factual ones.  Knowing that the film is somewhat autobiographical privileges Sophie’s viewpoint and lets us understand that the director is reconstructing what she could have or should have seen, in hindsight years later.  We never know what happened next for Callum but what we do get to see, in these casual, naturalistic, real-feeling moments between father and daughter, is deeply affecting, precipitating a gentle flow of thoughts and reflections about childhood, parenthood, and how to cope in this world.  Very moving.

One Battle After Another (2025)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

One Battle After Another (2025) – P. T. Anderson

Time may not exist very clearly in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest (and greatest?) film, which begins in an era where Weather Underground-styled activists are attacking the authoritarian and anti-immigration actions of the current US government and then fast-forwards 16 years to another timepoint where, uh, not much has changed, except the revolutionaries have aged and the authoritarians have tightened their grip.  Sounds serious (and topical) but this is a comedy … and an action film, complete with car chases.  In fact, the film script (also by P. T. Anderson but indebted to Pynchon) had been gestating for 20 years, starting with Anderson’s desire to extend his range with those car chases.  That he does.  However, the comic-book broadness of the characters here (specifically Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J Lockjaw and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson) doesn’t feel too far afield from Anderson’s other Pynchon adaptation, Inherent Vice (2014), with a similar goofy vibe. But One Battle After Another is Anderson at the top of his powers and fearless in his willingness to “go there”. Surprisingly, this may also be Leo’s greatest performance ever – and certainly his funniest – as he bumbles his way through the action as a past-his-prime substance-addled/depleted former rebel, now paranoid stay-at-home single dad to Chase Infiniti’s mixed-race teenager, who both get dumped into a neo-Nazi operation to cleanse America.  Benicio del Toro plays a welcome role as Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, a karate instructor who helps Bob out. Indeed, there are a variety of excellent character turns here from faces familiar and not (Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, Eric Schweig, more) that heighten the kaleidoscopic experience which still, in the end, stacks up as an action movie/thriller with a not-so-disguised political theme (and call to action). Highly recommended!

 

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) – R. Altman

I was listening to Leonard Cohen’s debut album not too long ago and, naturally, it reminded me of this Robert Altman film that prominently uses three songs from that LP (“the stranger song”, “sisters of mercy”, and “winter lady”).  These songs lend a very melancholy feel to the film and surprisingly were added after the film was already written, even if their lyrics feel very apt.  The plot is pretty melancholy too – Altman called it an “anti-Western” but methinks it isn’t unlike other traditional Westerns that show changes as the wild frontier gave way to business interests. Perhaps the implied destruction of the American dream by unfeeling corporate monoliths (even if the small business focuses on booze and hookers here) is at odds with John Ford’s focus on community building (even if the community was sometimes racist). This description reminds me just how American the Western genre really is. But it’s true that Altman has put his own spin on things here, importing his muttered/overlapping dialogue into the sound design and working with cameraman Vilmos Zsigmond to “flash” the film before shooting (creating a hazy appearance that makes indoor scenes by candlelight/firelight warm and cozy). The camera also zooms and tracks, catching incidental action or drifting in and out of focus on gambler/businessman McCabe (Warren Beatty) and brothel manager/prostitute Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) who may or may not be developing a relationship before everything goes sour.  It’s not surprising that Christie escapes from this reality by smoking opium, lending even more haze to a picture that feels like an impressionistic (if possibly realistic) look at the past as prelude.

 

One Cut of the Dead (2017)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One Cut of the Dead (2017) – S. Ueda

Not what I expected at all (and therefore so much better).  Described by SBS as “real zombies attack a film crew making a zombie movie” and it might be that for the first 30 minutes or so – but it isn’t only that or even really that.  I can’t write the review without explaining what happens after the first 30 minutes so stop here, if you’d like to be surprised like I was.  That said, the Japanese title (Kamera o tomeru na! or Don’t Stop Shooting!) pretty much gives things away.  The “real” plot involves a middling director (Takayuki Hamatsu) hired to film a zombie movie live in one take for a broadcast event – and the first 30 minutes is exactly that.  This “one cut” is indeed pretty thrilling but also rather odd with strange longueurs and unexpected dialogues, entrances, and exits.  When the characters run, they really run and the hand-held camera bounces along behind them.  Of course, watching this at first, you don’t really understand the technical challenges required to make the film flow (and sometimes not flow).  Therefore, the subsequent hour of the film takes you through the making of the film – but the genius here (from what appears to be an actual film class/collective) is that this “making of” is also fictional, with the script delightfully “explaining” all the weirdness in the zombie film that we’ve already seen (and now see again from behind the scenes, still in “real time” but no longer one cut).  Only in the end credits do we get a glimpse the actual crew making the real one cut zombie film.  Given the extreme low budget (made for $25K but earned $25 million), this reminded me of Kore-Eda’s After Life (1998) where amateur players recreate dead people’s most cherished memories, also on a shoestring.  And just like that film, One Cut of the Dead has a lot of heart, endearing yourself to the ragtag crew and in this case its central family.  Well worth your time, whether you like zombies or not!  The zombies are incidental!

 

Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1966)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1966) -- O. Sembene

Does African Cinema begin here? (So said film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum in 1995). I haven’t seen enough to know but it certainly seems plausible (notwithstanding the fact that there should have been a half-century of African films before this one).  In this regard, this hour-long Black-and-White feature from Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene (his first) presents a microcosm of colonialism in the relationship between a Senegalese maid, Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) and her French employers, using techniques also adopted by the Nouvelle Vague (particularly a narrative structure that intersperses flashbacks to Dakar within the scenes of domestic life in the flat on the French Riviera) but otherwise characterised by social realism.  With insights into the behaviour of both the colonisers and the colonised, Sembene does not candy coat things for either party. That said, the unabashed brutality and ignorance of the colonisers is unforgiveable, whereas the reticence, defiance, and ultimate hopelessness of the colonised seems a natural reaction. Clearly, Sembene’s answer is resistance and independence and this is the path that Africa has followed in the nearly 60 years since this film. But the harrowing legacy of colonialism continues to play out.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) – M. Scorsese

I was going to write that the idea of this film is superior to its execution but waking up this morning, I find that it has stuck with me more than expected.  Focusing a fiction film on the murders of the Osage people (women, especially) in 1920s Oklahoma as a way of calling attention to colonialism’s effects on Indigenous people and culture more broadly is laudable indeed. Lily Gladstone (a Blackfoot woman) plays the central Osage heiress to an oil fortune, Molly, with powerful resignation, never giving in spiritually to the white usurpers but also not overtly speaking out, perhaps playing a long game or perhaps accepting her culture’s fate.  We are told early on that hers is a culture that speaks little but knows all.  Clearly, her situation is one of supreme powerlessness – and the plot echoes other “women in distress” pictures, such as Gaslight (1944), which director Martin Scorsese would be well aware of.  But the film focuses less on Molly and her family (her three sisters and her mother all die) and instead, perhaps for commercial reasons or from loyalty to his stable of actors, the narrative spends most of its time with the white characters (i.e., the villains in this story). In particular, we follow Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a WWI vet who has moved to Oklahoma to live with his rich uncle Bill “King” Hale (Robert De Niro).  Hale has a plan that involves his family members marrying Osage women in order to secure the “headrights” to their oil money (as oil was found on tribal lands). Not coincidentally, these same Osage women soon die, either from the “wasting illness” or from murder.  About two hours into the movie, the FBI (led by Jesse Plemons) investigates.  I was also going to write that I’m not a big fan of Leo’s but I’m willing to reconsider that statement as well.  Here, he seems to be playing just a dumb guy – or an unreflective one, driven to this lack of reflection by the way it suits his own self-interest.  Again, this seems a metaphor for much of white America’s foreign and domestic policies:  do what lines the pockets of the powerful while somehow maintaining a complete lack of self-awareness about any ill effects on the poor and people of colour. So, I have to hand it to Leo for suppressing his natural instinct to be charismatic to play this evil man (if evil can be represented by bad faith; see Sartre).  De Niro, playing old rather than morphing young, also disappears into his character, the much more crafty and overtly evil boss.  Scorsese takes his time allowing the plot and characters to develop (running time = 3 hours and 17 minutes) but I really did not feel that things dragged (even if I believe undoubtedly there must have been ways to cut this down).  He pulls out a few directorial flourishes that delight the eye and, in a moment of real panache, uses an unusual coda to tell us the ultimate fates of the remaining characters, as these events are based on a true story (from David Grann’s book).  The coda seems to serve a number of functions – homage to the days of storytelling of yore but also perhaps an acknowledgment of the need to use artifice to present the tale.  Naysayers may question whether the implementation of the idea for the film has transgressed on the real lives and real issues of the Indigenous people portrayed (or not portrayed) but I reckon Scorsese was right to use his starpower (and that of DiCaprio and De Niro) and his bully pulpit to focus our attention here.

 

Conclave (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Conclave (2024) – E. Berger

I watched Conclave for Easter but it barely triggered a memory of my Catholic high school past (apart from the fancy dress, there’s little to no religious content here).  Instead, I was reminded of Advise and Consent (1962) where liberal Henry Fonda’s nomination to be Secretary of State is subjected to game-playing and deceit by both sides of politics, in an effort to block or confirm his appointment.  Here, there are more than a few rivals for the Popedom, including liberal Stanley Tucci, conservative Sergio Castellitto, ambitious John Lithgow, and the first viable African candidate Lucian Msamati.  Ralph Fiennes is the Dean of the Cardinals whose job it is to organise a conclave to elect the next pope when the old one suddenly passes away. He’s ready to leave the Vatican due to a spiritual crisis but commits to managing the conclave as a sort of final act, even as he is drawn into the political intrigue, with candidates jockeying for position and their dirty laundry aired by their opponents (or uncovered via investigation by Fiennes). Although the film feels grim at times (since this is “serious” business), as it proceeds and the tension and speculation grow (with vote after vote unsuccessful – only grey, not white, smoke sent up the Vatican’s chimney), it suddenly exploded for me into something a bit more berserk.  The director, Edward Berger, plays the audience, letting the melodrama erupt into something more absurd (unless you are willing to believe that God has sent a message to Fiennes). To top things off, after the pope is chosen, there’s a surprise coda at the end of the film, like the last chocolate egg discovered once the hunt has concluded. This final offering reverberates beyond the final credits, a remarkable curveball to strike out the last batter and leave the other team and most spectators speechless. You can see why Peter Straughan’s screenplay (adapted from the book by Robert Harris) won the Oscar, even though the acting prowess on display did garner noms for Fiennes and for Isabella Rossellini as a nun who intervenes at a key moment. The only question that remains is whether the film’s contribution to political discourse could be read as less-than-serious (given all that’s preceded it) when in fact it’s worth genuinely absorbing.