I will have to watch this one again, having only seen
it on my trans-Pacific flight to the USA on the tiny back-of-the-seat screen
(possibly with an airline crash edited out).However, even with these conditions, I’m confident that this is director
Wes Anderson’s best feature since The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Although I
enjoyed them well enough at the time, Asteroid City (2023) and The French
Dispatch (2021) felt like a letdown. Here, Benicio del Toro stars as
businessman Zsa-Zsa Korda, who may have a shady past and also the target of
various attempts at his life (possibly leading to multiple airplane crashes,
all survived). He is trying to put together the financing for one last
engineering feat, which involves visiting a series of former business partners
around the globe. Along with him are Mia Threapleton playing his daughter
Liesl, now a nun, to whom he plans to bequeath his estate, and Michael Cera
playing Bjorn, a tutor hired to teach him about insects. The characterisations (including
from the many, often familiar bit players) are sublimely eccentric. Although
not scaling the droll comedic peak that Grand Budapest conquered, Phoenician
Scheme offers many amusing moments as Korda seeks to eliminate “the gap” in his
financing. As could be expected, the art design, set decoration, and music
(Alexandre Desplat, plus curated classical and jazz selections), are highly stylized
and exquisite.Recommended, particularly
if you’ve more or less given up on Wes recently.
In preparation for a family visit to the Deep Space escape
room at Ukiyo.com.au (courtesy of Nanna & Vaari) – and because I recently
played Alien: Isolation (the survival horror videogame) – I rewatched this sequel
to the original Ridley Scott 1979 horror sci-fi classic.This time with James Cameron at the helm
(fresh off his success with The Terminator, 1984), the franchise takes a
distinct turn to the action film, as a group of marines (including Bill Paxon,
Michael Biehn, Jenette Goldstein, and synthetic Lance Henriksen) are sent to
THAT planet, where a human colony has now disappeared, approximately 57 years
after the first film. Ellen Ripley (played again by Sigourney Weaver) has been on
ice in hibernation all this time on the Nostromo’s escape pod but, ultimately, is
encouraged to join the rescue mission (by slimy corporate shill Paul Reiser) after
a traumatic recovery period on Earth. When they arrive on LV-426, they find
only 9-year-old Newt whose parents and brother have been killed, along with all
of the colonists (except those used for incubating offspring), by the swarm of
aliens that has infested their base.And
with that premise in place, the rest of the film is one long fight between the
space marines, Ripley, and the aliens (including their queen), with a few subplots
for character development along the way.Cameron ups the tension and plays up the “maternal instinct” angle by
mirroring Ripley (with Newt standing in for her now dead real daughter) and the
alien queen.It’s a relentless ride,
although not quite up to the spooky-scary benchmark set by its
predecessor.If I recall correctly, none
of the subsequent films in the franchise are as good as the first two.
One of those
movies that I couldn’t remember whether I had actually watched it or not, with
T2 probably overshadowing any earlier memories. It turns out that this first
film in the series is a cracking good time, with raw gritty action that retains
a link to low budget masterworks like John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13
(1976), even as it points toward the big budget spectacles of the future (of
which director James Cameron would play a key role). This film took Arnold Schwarzenegger
from his previous beefcake roles (e.g., Conan the Barbarian, 1982) into
something even more iconic and weird – a futuristic cyborg time-travelling to
the past to kill the mother of the resistance hero fighting the A. I. machines
who have taken over the Earth. Suffice
it to say that Arnold’s Teutonic accent is perfect (and he does say “I’ll Be
Back”). Although the special effects do dominate before the film concludes
(whetting Cameron’s appetite, I guess), Linda Hamilton (as the target) and
Michael Biehn (as a futuristic human pursuing the Terminator) maintain their sense
of purpose, using every possible means to escape the unrelenting robot revealed
under Arnold’s skin. Having caught lightning in a bottle, I guess no one could
resist a sequel (or three).
One of the reviews
on Letterboxd suggests that a viewer at a film festival needed to google
Pavement to learn about the band – if this is you, this is not your movie.
However, if you’re like me, owning all of their records which were on steady
rotation back in the day (and therefore virtually memorised), then Pavements
will be something of a trippy experience. Or let’s just say director Alex Ross
Perry capitalises on the sense of absurdity and ridiculousness that was an
undercurrent in the band’s work (so if that’s also something that brings a smirk
to your face, I say go for it). The film has 4 or 5 strands all interwoven but
skilfully edited to provide not just an historical narrative of the band but an
emotional one which crescendos at the end, celebrating Pavement’s 2022 reunion
shows (which I somehow skipped here in Melbourne; but did see Malkmus’s
subsequent emergence in The Hard Quartet this year). We see scenes of the band rehearsing
for the reunion as well as clips from the past, all the way back to the
beginning, but we never get a complete song – everything is excerpts, offering
tantalising primes that trigger longer memories and complete versions of unplayed
songs as earworms. Everything else in the film is a form of fiction, a staged “meta”
take on the “what if” aspect of the Pavement story, as in “what if” they
actually became as famous as contemporaries Nirvana.In that fan-fiction future, there’s a
Pavement museum in NYC – we see the gallery opening featuring other Matador
bands playing Pavement songs (snippets only, naturally), and an array of celebs
(Thurston Moore et al.) mingling with the members of Pavement and the assorted
hipsterati, amongst the many (catalogued) artefacts (t-shirts and weirder) from
the band’s past. It seems that this event really happened, but how staged it
was is hard to say (clearly there is no such museum).Weirder still, the producers may have really
issued a call for auditions for a proposed Pavement stage musical (“Slanted! Enchanted!”)
– we see earnest Broadway wannabes singing their hearts out via Gold Soundz and
a few dance numbers (cringeworthy, yes, but fitting in some way?). It’s
possible to see Stephen Malkmus’s guiding hand behind some of this, as absurdly
self-mocking as it seems. The final strand is the hardest to digest and the
most distancing (at least for this viewer – is it Brechtian?). To provide more
narrative grit to the Pavement story (and align it with the cliches of the music
doc?), and again as a kind of fan-fiction, we are treated to a parallel version
of the band’s story in which Spiral Stairs (Scott Kannberg, played by Nat Wolff)
is bitter about the band’s lack of success, Malkmus (played by Joe Keery) is
visibly alienated from the possibility of fame, and there’s a faux climax
focused on Lollapalooza’s mud-slinging incident which leads to an intense band discussion
(in contrast to the reality of the band laughing in the green room after the
incident which is shown in split-screen). The producers cast actors in the role of band
members and relevant record label execs (Tim Heidecker as Gerard Cosloy; Jason
Schwarzman as Chris Lombardi; founders of Matador records who also appear as
themselves) and we see actors preparing for their roles by emulating historic
footage of the band (e.g., using a voice coach to get Malkmus’s vocal fry just
right and examining a photo of his tongue) which takes us further into bizarro-world.
Ultimately, the film offers an opportunity for an extended (128 minutes)
meditation/reverie on the band (with Perry using all the cinematic techniques
at his disposal to keep it interesting), if that’s what yer looking for; if you
don’t know the band, I suspect the film would be nearly incomprehensible. I haven’t
pulled this out for a while but for a straight-up documentary of the band you
might try Lance Bangs’ Slow Century (2002). For my part, I enjoyed these
moments of (self-)indulgence.
Have I over-rated
this film? I think not. As a morality
play, set in the early days of television as a growing mass-medium, it
interrogates the psychology of its characters, the contestants’ motivations
(and rationalisations) for accepting the offer to cheat (on the game show
Twenty-One), as well as the producers’ greed and anti-Semitism. The tension created by director Robert
Redford (rest in peace) is real, as federal investigator Dick Goodwin (Rob
Morrow) starts honing in on the deception, aided by a developing relationship
with Charlie Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) supported by their shared Ivy League
backgrounds (Harvard for Goodwin – with Morrow sporting a terrible Boston
accent; Columbia for Van Doren, son of noted poet Mark Van Doren). Van Doren famously beat Jewish Herbie Stempel
(John Turturro), purportedly because the producers (and sponsor Geritol, headed
by Martin Scorsese) wanted a more attractive WASPish winner. Did Redford take notes while acting in All the
President’s Men? This film does not reach the dynamic heights of that thriller
but the structure feels similar. Reflecting back on this time in the early ‘90s,
it is hard to remember that Fiennes was just fresh from his triumph in
Schindler’s List, Morrow was a TV star (Northern Exposure) seeking to make the
leap to the big screen (unsuccessfully), and Turturro was already an
established character actor (for Spike Lee and the Coen Brothers). It seems
like a lifetime ago – and the quiz show scandal seems like ancient history,
though I recall watching The Joker’s Wild as a child, not realising it was host
Jack Barry’s comeback after a decade in the wilderness following the scandal of
Twenty-One. Engrossing.
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.
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!
