A few notes and some warm recs.
I more or less stuck to the schedule of my previous post, save moving a couple entries around, adding some, while skipping others by the end. Some of that was due to previous engagements, others I was just feeling a tad worn by the end and not entirely sold. Apologies to The Napa Boys and Maddie’s Secret in that case; the former should be on VOD now, the latter is opening this summer. For the most part I liked a lot of what I saw. I’m still not fully sold on the expanded lineup, since a couple entries amount to sneak previews, and there’s something kind of nice about being able to watch everything essentially. I do hope it remains on the smaller side, since that lends a feeling of uniqueness. My only other complaint is some of the screenings being limited but chalk that up to distributors. Rather than make a list of the best, I’ve decided to do some quick drive-bys. Hopefully I remember my thoughts since I only logged a few. Presented in watch order.
Mile End Kicks (Chandler Levack): I’m not immune to a needledrop. The instance I heard the guitar strings of Deerhunter’s “Revival” I was ready to lock in. As a glimpse of a bygone era (Montreal’s indie scene circa 2011, complete with Grimes), Levack’s film is warm and lived in. I really appreciated Juliette Gariépy getting to flaunt her range, and between this and Faces of Death I’ll follow Barbie Ferriera anywhere. Unfortunately I could not buy her crush on the most annoying man alive. On a conceptual level I understand the dynamic but he’s just so flighty that I was screaming at her to work on her Alanis book. Much less of that than you’d expect as well. B-
Hokum (Damian McCarthy): A damn good horror movie, not so much a step up from Oddity as an expansion of that movie’s strengths. Similarly, McCarthy also knows exactly why the audience is coming: here it’s a creepy-ass hotel room and he wrings it for all its worth. That’s not to say he doesn’t dive into the “elevated” bag from time to time (though it gets that out of the way earlier than you’d expect), with Adam Scott’s deadpan tortured writer and mixture of folklore and storytelling. It’s the best Silent Hill (or even Resident Evil) movie one could hope for, down to a devious scare when you least expect it. A-
Over Your Dead Body (Jorma Taccone): What can I say, I had a pretty good time with this remake of a Norwegian black comedy. Taccone demonstrates a nice handle on the tone, highlighting absurdity more generally while also making the gore have real impact. I’m not fully sold on the shift it makes in the second half, especially with one scene that almost goes too far – and in fact put off one of my friends. The fact that it plays as horrifying can be given to Jason Segal, who’s got great chemistry with Samara Weaving (more on her later). Not the deepest or probably even best version of toxic disintegrating relationship but it’ll get the job done. Great needledrop at the end too. B
Carolina Caroline (Adam Carter Rehmeier): Checked this one out on rec from Mike D’Angelo, having not seen Dinner In America or Snack Shack. Combining con artists with romance is almost always a safe bet and that works out fairly well here as Samara Weaving – with a great southern accent – meets Kyle Gallner as he pulls off a scam at her filling station, and the two fall instantly in love. You could probably guess where it’s headed even if it hadn’t opened at the end but it possesses its own sturdy charms, and an unexpectedly bracing scene towards the end with Kyra Sedgwick. Rehmeier and writer Tom Dean play at some tension between being a bad person and being good at doing bad things that mostly works. It’s the pleasures that sing here first and foremost, along with the views of the Southeast. B+
I Want Your Sex (Gregg Araki): I meant to watch some Araki before this so it’s quite possible this comes across as lower tier later on. To these untrained eyes it’s very entertaining romp through questionable power dynamics, awakening kinks, and contemporary art; it’s the first two that feel the most potent. It obviously wants to say something about GenZ’s relationship to sex but I don’t know that it ever manages to find a coherent point there, nor does its shots at the art world feel as fresh. Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman make a fantastic pair and Araki’s visual style becomes pop art of its own. Perhaps the best you could say is that it trafficks in clear Sunset Blvd. comparisons but manages to differentiate itself enough that you don’t feel like you could be watching that instead. B+/A-
Obsession (Curry Barker): More to come on this later, so let me just say that I literally screamed “oh my god” multiple times during one scene that I dare not spoil, except to say that according to the producer Q+A it was the reason the film originally got an NC-17 before being cut. The kind of film I could imagine finding richer on a second viewing, I’ve already seen some great analyses, featuring what might be the best performance of the year. B+/A-
These Are My Friends! (Aaron Bartuska): Local movies are always a bit of a tossup – as I imagine they are everywhere – but the decision to try it out was mainly because the director hit a Benny Safdie and stood outside the Film Center in a sandwich board advertising it. And whaddya know, it’s charming! Set over the course of a house party somewhere in South Philly, Bartuska’s film meanders about from person to person, sketching some low-key plotlines (burgeoning romance, someone who doesn’t wanna be there, a guy who’s gotten extremely drunk) but managed to win me over in the end thanks to its better-than-expected acting and a decent enough script. Nothing original at all and were it set anywhere else with characters just a little more obnoxious it’d probably be excruciating. Two biggest trips: realizing I went to college with one of the cast and seeing some characters enter the exact theater we were watching the movie in (the old Ritz East signage revealing this movie was shot a few years ago). B+
Tuner (Daniel Roher): Stylish enough with some jazzy editing as well as a pretty cute relationship between Leo Woodall and Havana Rose Liu but it can’t save it from piling coincidence on top of coincidence by the end. There’s not nearly enough process either, in the titular piano tuning or the eventual shift to thievery, and more focus on either end probably would’ve saved one specific reveal from annoying me to no end. Mostly well-designed, but there’s been much better versions of this type of thing; less stupid ones too. C
Leviticus (Adrian Chiarella): More to come on this in a month or so. I seemed to be the outlier of my friend group in being positive on this one. At a certain point I wondered if I was watching the best film of the year. While you can consider this hedging a bit – it does indeed have some resemblance to It Follows – I found it thematically potent, not just with the conversion therapy of it all (leading to the fear, the separation, etc) but with the ways that damage gets inflicted on other people, intentionally or otherwise. The romance between Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen is the biggest strength and it offers a veneer of hope that’s probably going to be needed more than ever. All that, AND a genuinely scary threat. A-/A
Agon (Giulio Bertelli): Tempting to call it “like nothing you’ve ever seen before” because in a lot of ways, it is. Bertelli’s style fits in with the Sensory Ethnography Lab aesthetic (Leviathan, etc) despite it being pointedly fictional. Despite that, it’s very easy to fall into thinking of it as a documentary; he sticks to a purely observational style with occasional wild detours I won’t spoil (except to say there’s a lot more video games than you’d expect) and slowly, themes of sports violence and competition begin to emerge. As a conventional narrative, it’s lacking in things like “character”. As an examination into the toll the Olympics take on an athlete, well… it’s in a class of its own. A-
Marriage Cops (Shashwati Talukdar, Cheryl Hess): Last minute sub since I couldn’t make it to Napa Boys. I expected something more from this. Talukdar and Hess stick to a stringently verité observation mode that doesn’t quite manage to generate enough interest on its own. Wished it would examine the divorce rates in India, why the government was sponsoring marriage counselling, etc. There’s a shocking amount of open admittance to domestic violence to the point it starts to form something of a thesis about the patriarchy, but it doesn’t go far enough. It feels caught between a unique “crowdpleasing” portrait and something more serious. C+
The Furious (Kenji Tanigaki): You’re not likely to see any better fight scenes this year and to some degree, that’s really all you need for a movie like this. Comparison’s to The Raid are accurate; much like A Better Tomorrow, these are stunts where you really feel like it hurts, even if everyone can withstand a mallet to the stomach and keep going. Easy to suspend disbelief and ride with it until people open their mouths and you get acting that ranges from “serviceable” to “godawful”. Dialogue isn’t much better than functional, the story is just as deep as it needs to be without completely bumming you out about human trafficking, and it drops an honest-to-God live action anime villain into the proceedings. So like a lot of Hong Kong action classics, except the extraneous bullshit doesn’t manage to kill the energy too badly. B
Life of the Mind 