PFF33 Day Two: Sean Baker’s Grand Return

Plus the first of many Indian films, and the craziest of the festival so far

That one screenshot from *Anora*. Credit: NEON

There was probably no film more anticipated this year than Sean Baker’s Anora (Grade: A), at least judging from the packed house I barely made it into. That would still be the case even if it hadn’t won the Palme D’Or this year (incidentally: pretty sure this is the first time the Palme winner has been in a Centerpiece slot and not in a side section in a hot minute); since breaking through with 2015’s madcap iPhone-shot Tangerine, Baker has only gained in prominence and in filmmaking prowess. The Florida Project and Red Rocket were both previous PFF entries, as well as movies I like to love a whole lot for both their sunbleached visuals and the uproarious laughs.

Anora is much of the same in some ways. For one, it’s the fourth in an unintentional series of films spotlighting sex workers, in this case the titular Ani (Mikey Madison), who works at a New York strip club. The shift to a relatively more dreary environment hasn’t stopped Baker from drenching the screen in color, awash in the neon lights as we follow Ani dance and hustle through a regular night of lapdances and parties. At first that seems like it’ll be the routine when Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) – or Vanya – walks in. Over a series of the quick-cut montages reminiscent of Red Rocket’s many sex scenes it moves into a private meet up, and then a girlfriend experience, until suddenly the two are married in a Vegas church (entirely sober, mind you). This is depicted less as a sort of romance than it is a bit that both decided to get into because why not? Ani scoffs at the initial proposal but we’ve seen her enchanted by Vanya’s luxurious lifestyle courtesy of his (potentially) oligarchical father and hey, they do seem to have fun together. That is not how Vanya’s family sees it and reality comes crashing in with the arrival of some Armenian associates (Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan, plus Yura Borisov), hellbent on annulling the marriage.

The film is by no means boring or lackluster in its first act. Eydelshteyn makes some particularly hilarious physical choices (ie, a backwards somersault on a bed) that – combined with his boyish charm – make you see what Ani might. But it’s once things all go to hell that Madison lights off the firecracker of her performance, turning into something of a hellcat. She’s effortlessly funny throughout, exasperated and confused, dropping off “fucks” like it’s her job. And yet there’s also some fear (of who these randos are and what she’s gotten herself into), and something like a desperation to hold onto the fairytale of a life with Vanya. Like all of Baker’s protagonists, she’s a real, flawed person, trying to make her way through this mess of a life, clawing her way out of desperation. I don’t know if I’d say it’s his best yet (I need to rewatch Tangerine and The Florida Project); what I can say is that Baker’s successfully controlled the chaos that’s often popped up into something more entertaining than stressful. He also lets the audience have a big cheer moment, before immediately undercutting it in truly devastating fashion. For whatever faults he may have – inside and outside filmmaking – here’s someone dedicated to showing the full spectrum of humanity, warts and all.

I didn’t plan it but today was a pretty women-centric day, at least onscreen. One of those women was Renate Reinsve, most famous for her Cannes winning role in The Worst Person In The World (a PFF30 entry!). She’s had something of a productive year in both Handling The Undead (Sundance, unseen by me) and A Different Man (one of the year’s best). Her third – that’s made it to the U.S. at least – is Armand (Grade: B/B+), Camera D’Or winner at Cannes (aka: best debut). In a shift from the younger focus of some of her characters, she plays Elisabeth, a single mother and actress called to a meeting at her son’s school where she learns he’s been accused of committing a heinous act against another child.

The details of said act are sketchy; only one child’s side is known, and no one else appears to have actually seen what took place. Further complicating things is her relationship to the parents of the other child (Ellen Dorrit Petersen and Endre Hellestveit), as well as her own struggles and issues, most clearly seen when she uncontrollably breaks into laughter for several minutes before segueing into sobbing.

If Elisabeth’s name and occupation didn’t raise any eyebrows, then knowing that director and writer Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel is the grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann certainly raises the spector of Persona (not unfounded, thanks to the focus on two women and encroaching psychological breakdown). Tøndel possesses some definite technical brilliance at least, contributing to very recent subgenre of “movies shot like horror that are not horror”. He wrings tension out of a malfunctioning fire alarm (ignored warning signs?) and deeply unnerving sound design that seems to emphasize every step that echoes in the empty school. Unfortunately, he decides to take it into a more surreal direction, not quite verging into explicit horror but diverging enough from the drama template to break the spell a little. At almost 2 hours, it’s maybe a bit too long, but Reinsve is an absorbing screen prescence, and there’s at least some meat on the bones for a good while.

This year, PFF is spotlighting Indian film through a whole section, and my goal is to try to catch all of them at the fest. The first of these is Girls Will Be Girls (Grade: B-/B), a coming-of-age story directed by Shuchi Talati. It follows Mira (Preeti Panigrahi), a girl who’s just been made head prefect at her boarding school in the Himalayan Hills, as she begins a tentative romance with Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), a new boy from overseas. The main conflict comes in the form of her more traditional mother Anila (Kani Kusruti, also from this year’s All We Imagine As Light) forbids the relationship but has no issue becoming close to Sri herself.

Talati’s camera makes good use of the landscapes, but I found the film itself rather slight. There’s the seedings of themes of womanhood, of the patriarchy in India, of the changing times (it appears to be set in the 90s) and a later scene makes a slight tonal twist that emphasizes what being a girl means for Mira, for the most part it’s rather understated. The plot as a whole is sort of meandering, unified mainly by the romance which is rather cute. It’s pleasant – which, there are worse things to be – but missing some kind of spark perhaps. Maybe I’m just being too harsh on it.

“Harsh” may as well be one of the words to describe Birdeater (Grade: B+/A-), so far the most “girl what the FUCK is happening????” film I’ve seen at the fest so far. “Unclassifiable” is another one. Jack Clark and Jim Weir’s debut has a simple enough premise – a man invites his fiancee to his bachelor party in the Australian wilderness – that gives one a certain impression of how things might go; Clark and Weir certainly do, judging from the prominence of a poster for Wake In Fright, perhaps the most famous “bad things happen in Australia” film next to Wolf Creek.

It’s not so much what happens, though a dinner scene features a revelation so out-there it sends the entire party into a tailspin. No, Birdeater is a truly demented construction of almost jazz-like editing – with score to match! – and a tone that occasionally feels like an Aunty Donna sketch. There’s some truly dread-inducing shots, like a truck driving off into the vast darkness, but it’s never quite “scary”. “Dread-inducing” feels proper, as it reveals itself to not so much be about toxic masculinity (though of course, that features in) so much as it appears to pull at the fragile stability of straight relationships. It’s telling that the one person who seems completely normal is the lone bisexual out of the cast. I may just be easily wowed by technical prowess and pretty images, of which there are plenty. Birdeater deserves marks for sheer audacity if anything else. You kind of have to respect something this destabilizing on a such a formal level, as fractured as the psychologies of the characters.

Tomorrow: One of my most anticipated movies of the year, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, plus Brady Corbet’s Great American Epic The Brutalist, Pablo Larraín’s Maria, and the latest from Kiyoshi Kurosawa

PFF33 Day One: SNAFUs and a Very Good Dog

Opening up the festival with the Munich Hostage Crisis and feral Chinese dogs

I love Festival Season. As a longtime Oscar watcher and film obsessive I’d scour every trade I could to see what the hottest incoming releases were. Once I got to college and realized that the Philadelphia Film Festival was not just a local fest but, in fact, had heavy hitters, I did my damndest to attend nearly every year I was in the city. So far, it’s been the only festival I’ve had the pleasure to go to – mainly out of location and timing concerns, and thanks to being in college for all that time. PFF is as associated with fall as my own birthday, and coming back feels like home in a way.

The point of this long-winded intro is that I consider myself a pretty plugged in person, one who’s just started going to the Opening Night showings because I both have a job and have passes that make it easy to decide whether I want to or not (also helped that the last two have been American Fiction and The Banshees of Inisherin, even if I only got to see the latter). Which is to say I was a bit surprised and confused when September 5 (Grade: C+) was announced as this year’s opener because I was pretty sure I had never heard of it until then. Turns out, I had; it was at Venice and a couple other festivals. It’s not difficult to understand why it might’ve been chosen either. Set during the 1972 Munich Olympics, it follows an ABC TV crew as they stumble upon and begin reporting on the Israeli team being taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, most famously dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s Munich.

It’s undeniably tense and often gripping, with the added pleasures of the many analog processes needed to bring live news coverage in front of television viewers (I didn’t realize that captions had to be physically made like that), and for the most part it avoids slipping into Newsroom-style “how it should’ve gone”. But at the same time, I can’t help but focus on the fact that it reduces the Palestinians to faceless terrorists, including a very creepy black and white image catching them one on a balcony. To be fair, the film is not unaware of the biases and subjectivity around such an unprecedented event. Multiple arguments occur over whether they can show someone getting shot on live television, and there’s a recurring theme of how bad it would be for Jewish people to once again die horribly on German soil. It never quite reaches the level of soul searching needed to fully fend off whatever the bad vibes, and mostly just settles for recreations. The fact that it doesn’t ever leave the control room hampers things quite a bit too, as does the relative anonymity of most of the workers save Leonie Benesch’s Marianne. Director Tim Fehlbaum was unknown before this. He’d probably be a journyman in a functioning studio system.

Xin and Eddie Peng in *Black Dog*. Credit: The Seventh Art Pictures

This was actually the second film I saw this day, a process that took much longer thanks to some technical problems related to the print that saw us waiting for an hour before it started. Much smoother was Black Dog (Grade: B+), this year’s Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes and boy, does it ever live up to that title. In fact it opens with a whole pack of dogs running across the Gobi Desert, in the process causing a bus to crash. That bus holds our protagonist Lang (Eddie Peng), prone to near total silence like so many Western heroes of yore. He’s been paroled and is on his way back to his decaying industrial town, set to be demolished as part of a revitalization project. Director and co-writer Hu Guan makes wonderful use of the desolate and bare landscapes; even the abandoned buildings look kind of pretty under his eye. It’s at one of these abandoned buildings that he has his first encounter with the titular creature, a vicious greyhound that’s among the many dogs left behind as their owners have picked up or faded away.

In need of money to keep a vengeful gangster off his back, Lang joins up with a dog capturing team (lead by Jia Zhangke, prominent chronicler of modern China. His Caught By The Tides is winding its way through the festival circuit to great reviews) and becomes set on capturing it. Somewhere along the way, a bond forms. The two seem to sense that they’re both trapped in cages not all of their own making, creatures that aren’t bad but just need someone to care for them. It does help that it’s a very good dog and if you’re wondering, yes, the actor – Xin – won the Palm Dog. Guan’s film may not quite cohere together on a full thematic level, at least on first brush, somehow both blunt and elusive. He’s an expert at staging set pieces, and a late one featuring a zoo jailbreak set to Pink Floyd is kind of awe-inspiring. Like its protagonist, you grow to love the thing anyways, warts and all. And if nothing else it’s an absolutely beautiful looking film.

Tomorrow: Sean Baker’s much hyped Palme winner Anora, Renate Reinsve as a single mother, and the first of many Indian films, as well as After Hours.

33rd Philadelphia Film Festival Coverage Starts Tomorrow

A slightly different tack for reporting on Da Movies™

A lot can change in the course of a year. For instance: last year at this time I was still employed, my uncle had just died, and my plans for that year’s Film Fest were scuttled both due to a small concert planning mishap and said death. Not to mention feeling a bit disappointed at the lineup that year – most of the high profile ones had either already released (Anatomy of a Fall, Killers of the Flower Moon) or were being held back for some unknown reason (The Zone of Interest, May/December).

Cut to this year: my job dissolves in November but wow, are the movies great. Which is all to say that today marks the official start of the 33rd Philadelphia Film Festival, aka the moment when my best of list gets filled out. This year is already an embarrassment of riches with the Philadelphia premieres of Anora and The Brutalist but factor in the new Mike Leigh, Payal Kapadia, Steve McQueen, Andrea Arnold, etc etc? Well… scheduling was a bit of a nightmare to say the least. I actually had to buy a badge for the first time this year thanks to demand which means I can now attempt to try every centerpiece plus opening and closing (a small blessing in disguise) and barring a few social events or exhaustion, my plan is once again to squeeze as many movies as I can in front of my eyeballs.

To that end, the purpose of this post. I’m gonna try something I wanted to do last year but couldn’t thanks to aforementioned personal issues, wherein I’ll do a daily recap/rundown of everything I saw in the style of The Dissolve and The AV Club‘s dispatches. The plan is to put up a post the next day with small(ish) reviews, ending with the usual top 10 or so when the festival ends. I will do my absolute best to put it up in a timely fashion – say, the morning of or afternoon – but I’m only human and, because I’m doing this on my vacation time, delays may occur.

All said, I’m pretty excited for this year. Some hard cuts may have had to happen but I’m confident those will come around sooner or later. If everything is as good as the hype has been, the year end list is going to be an absolute ordeal. I can’t wait. Hope you’ll follow along!

The Best Films of 2023

A (belated) roundup of a pretty great year

For a while, it was looking a bit touch and go there. I’ve been trying to do one of these since I first started this site back in 2021, but always held off thanks to something either not coming near me or still feeling like something was just missing. Hollywood seemed to be going downhill and anything not bought up by the majors was getting shunted right to streaming. Sometimes even the big ones from the majors ended up being forgotten on some platform somewhere, lost in a nebulous space. Was this it? A future where big screens surrendered to the Big Movies while everything else withered on the vine?

If the past 2 years felt like post-COVID blues, 2023 was the year when it seemed like things started getting back to normal. The MCU began to flop. A 3-hour epic about the creator of the atomic bomb made Titanic money and a Titanic reputation. Festivals were overflowing with choices and gems. Somewhere along the way, Hayao Miyazaki even managed to best Disney.

Making a list this year turned out to be murder, even with a spot reserved for my eventual #1. It felt like the first time since possibly 2019 when I didn’t have to scrape to find something to fill out the bottom ends, where cutting something was painful. Even the ones I didn’t love as much as expected still held a wealth; it’s very possible some of them could creep up on a rewatch. At the moment, these are what I’ve committed to, and it reflects how I felt at the time. First a couple rules: I go by Academy rules, which in this case means “it received a theatrical release in New York or LA long enough to qualify for awards”. That means I get to push some contenders to next year, but it does mean some unreleased or late breaking ones might get left off. In any case, if it’s been making enough lists and it’s on Mike D’Angelo’s Commerical Release Master, it counts. There will also be some honorable mentions and superlatives after. In any case, it’s been wonderful to remember the wealth last year gave, and only raises anticipation for the coming year.

15. Priscilla – dir. Sofia Coppola

A counterpiece of sorts to the big self-titled one released last year, though by no means dependent. Through Cailley Spaney’s carefully observed performance, Coppola captures how it feels to have Elvis Fucking Presley courting you and the boredom that sets in once you realize what that entails. Jacob Elordi – having something of a breakthrough year – may not look like The King, but he embodies him to get to the feeling of him. It’s a gauzy, hazy memory, both the good and the bad.

14. Bottoms – dir. Emma Seligman

Bottoms': Horny, Queer 'Fight Club' Is the Comedy Movie of the Summer

It’s tempting to focus on the Ayo Edibiri post-Emmy win and People’s Princess crowning. But I would regret not mentioning her insane roller coaster of an opening monologue that spins out a wild, anxious fantasy about your life going to shit and is truly unpredictable. That quality describes a lot of the humor of Bottoms – Rachel Sennott and Seligman’s script indulges in the teen movie cliches you expect but takes them to out-of-pocket, delirious places in its story of two gay losers who form a fight club to get chicks. More than most ironic Millenial/GenZ comedies, you either get it, or you don’t, and if you can’t laugh at the way Sennott asks “Has anyone here been raped before???”(a reading that almost made me spit out of my drink) then God help you.

13. Godzilla Minus One – dir. Takashi Yamazaki

Much has been said about the human focus: a kind of wholesome found family story, a bit of romance, the question of “How much PTSD can we shove into one guy?” And that’s still all very true. But don’t forget it’s also a pretty great Godzilla movie; when he gets to stompin’, those debris fields seem more dangerous than the Heat Breath. Sakura Ando will appear later in this list. She’s had a good year!

12. The Boy and The Heron (aka How Do You Live?) – dir. Hayao Miyazaki

The Boy and the Heron: Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli at their best - Vox

Not at all what you’d expect, maybe exactly what we deserve. Possibly Miyazaki’s most complex on a pure narrative and symbolic level (don’t quote me on that) yet still managing to carry forth a wave of emotion. Just watch someone run, or a bird fly, and you’ll remember you’re in the hands of a master. He may not really be retired but if he is, what a way to go.

11. Falcon Lake – dir. Charlotte Le Bon

Falcon Lake' Review: Pack Water, Sunscreen and Palo Santo - The New York Times

Sometimes, a movie just comes out of nowhere and burrows into your head. Like Scott Tobias, I also probably wouldn’t have seen this had Mike D’Angelo not spoken so highly of it, and it becomes clear within the first mysteriously beautiful minutes. What could easily have been the banal coming-of-age somewhat romance between a teen boy and an older girl he meets on vacation instead becomes haunting and ominous, building up to an ending that feels inevitable yet crushing. It should be so simple, yet the results are nearly indescribable.

10. Passage – dir. Ira Sachs

Passages' Review: Ira Sachs' Brutally Self-Destructive Love Triangle – IndieWire

The year’s sexiest movie by far should frankly put an end to the exhausting sex scene discourse. As the World’s First Bisexual Demon Twink, Franz Rogowski crashes through multiple lives, pulling people in, throwing them out, absorbing all of their attention until you can visibly feel them getting sick of his shit in real time. Sachs captures all of this in a very European sense: both in setting, and from the blocking. Never before has a back been so erotic on screen.

9. All of Us Strangers – dir. Andrew Haigh

Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal on diving into the great gay sadness of All of Us Strangers | CBC Arts

Gay sex scenes are having their moment in all their explicit glory, and Haigh makes a pretty cute one. He also turns in a devastating rumination on grief, of things unsaid and things you wished you’d done. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal have beautiful chemistry together, enough that it makes an ending that shouldn’t quite work land full force. More than anything, here’s a film that taps deeply into a generational gay experience and suggests those lines aren’t as full as you’d think.

8. Oppenheimer – dir. Christopher Nolan

This should probably be higher. I don’t know what much else there is to say about it. Propulsive, entertaining, walloping. It’s a director working close to the heights of his very considerable powers, effortlessly merging past and present, history and reality, guilt and loathing, all into a complete package. Who else would make us excited for getting the band together only to then sit with the weight of our actions for an hour?

7. Asteroid City – dir. Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson's 'Asteroid City' is one of his most philosophical films, and one of his very best | WBUR News

The longer Wes Anderson goes on, the freer he gets. The freer he gets, the more he devastates. In Asteroid City, he brings his signature artifice full circle into a movie about the making of a play, wrapped around the making of said play. It’s frequently very funny, maybe even a little chaotic. And in that chaos, we get glimpses of clarity like Maya Hawke and Rupert Friend giving heed to the wind and dancing to “Dear Alien (Who Art In Heaven)” (song of the year). No one’s better at hitting you when you least expect it; there’s lots of those moments here, but none I can explain more than having “Freight Train” recontextualized as an existential sigh of acceptance. “I don’t know which train he’s on / Won’t you tell me where he’s gone?”

6. May December – dir. Todd Haynes

May December trailer: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore uncover truths. Watch | Hollywood - Hindustan Times

The conversation surrounding Haynes’ latest has perhaps exposed just how much there is to explore. Brilliantly thorny, uncomfortably off-kilter, this story of an actress coming to shadow a woman who 30 years ago married the teenager she statutorily raped unfolds new layers with every second glance at its carefully composed images. Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore may have been the stars on the poster, but it’s Charles Melton who proves to be the soul and heart. He practically steals the picture from them and in a way, Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik’s screenplay suggests that’s the only moral way to tell this sordid tale.

5. Monster – dir. Hirokazu Kore-Eda

Monster” Contains a Mini-Masterwork About the Lives of Children | The New Yorker

Maybe this is just projecting, but it feels like in some corners this has been received as somewhat of a disappointment, especially compared to Kore-Eda’s other (belated) release from this year. Personally, I think it’s as good as Shoplifters and perhaps in line with his other work. The unfolding perspectives read a bit like Farhadi but more localized; it starts as an engrossing mystery, transitions into rage at institutions, before settling in at how little adults know and how much children observe. Sakura Ando – in her second big role from this year – is wonderful, Kore-Eda wrings devastating performances out of Sōya Kurokawa and Hinata Hiiragi. It’s one of the finest depictions of the contradictions and anxiety caused by the closet, and the push-pull between doing the right thing and fitting in.

4. Killers of the Flower Moon – dir. Martin Scorsese

Movie Review: 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

An American Tragedy, immense in its scope and rooted in a toxic love story. The machinations and skullduggery being so out in the open only enhances the rage and despair at this horrible moment of history, punctuated by Lily Gladstone’s screams of anguish and pain that will never leave my head. For a brief moment, Scorsese even makes you believe that justice might be done for once, before the ending reminds you that no, this is still America, and this is still a story we will never understand. Gladstone radiates starpower, commanding the screen with simply a look, a tone of voice. It’s an unshakeable piece that reckons with its very making.

3. Blue Jean – dir. Georgia Oakley

We may be through with the past, but (unfortunately) the past isn’t through with us. Oakley’s sadly relevant debut may be following a PE teacher in Thatcherite England, but Don’t Say Gay bills are little more than Section 28 rehashes. Rosy McEwan deftly portrays the moral dilemma being closeted puts people in: when a student seems to get clocked and bullied for being a lesbian too, how can she help without putting her career and herself on blast in the process? Oakley maintains something of a suspense tone throughout, effortlessly depicting the cruelty of the situation, yet never quite letting her protagonist off the hook. As bad as things may be, the joy Jean experiences in the gay bar shows why it’s worth fighting.

2. How To Blow Up A Pipeline – dir. Daniel Goldhaber

If anything deserves to get slapped with the meaningless descriptor of “urgent”, it’s this call to action. Goldhaber – along with star Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol – turn Andreas Malm’s nonfiction book of the same name into a tense heist-like movie about a group of climate activists committing the titular act. Whatever didacticism or preaching it may offer is offset by how purely entertaining and tightly edited it is (the money shot: a cut to a flashback right as a strap breaks and everything seems to go to hell). Each member gets enough back story to understand them, and no one is shortchanged in the ensemble whether it be their jobs or their prescences. Fitting that it’s credited as “A film by Daniel Goldhaber, Ariela Barer, Jordan Sjol, and Daniel Garber”: here’s a movie the power of the collective with complete and utter faith in their beliefs and the actions needed to accomplish them.

1. The Zone of Interest – dir. Jonathan Glazer

The Zone of Interest' review: Jonathan Glazer's new masterpiece - Los Angeles Times

I’ll admit, I had been anticipating this since the reviews at Cannes dropped. I had a spot reserved for it and everything. It got to the point where I wondered if I’d end up disappoiting myself through hype. Well, it’s one thing to read about the form; it’s another to actually experience it. Glazer throws out most of Martin Amis’ book and turns it into 105 minutes of a panic attack through sheer wrongness. Less the banality of evil and more how comfortable one can be in it. You can never stop thinking about the bodies over the fence; every word said carries menacing notes. Despite never setting foot in Auschwitz, it’s all you can think about. Perhaps the most chilling parts are how we see this evil seeping into the children, the soil, the entire environment of the place. These things happen because they become banal; they become banal because it contributes to someone’s idea of a “perfect” world. Make no mistake: everyone’s aware of it. Their inhumanity comes from believing it’s right. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so shaken leaving the theater. Here’s a film that sits in your brain, turning over with every realized implication.

(And now, based in part off old AV Club formatting, some superlatives and extras!)

Honorable mentions: The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green), Tótem (Lila Aviles), The Taste of Things (Trần Anh Hùng), Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet), The Iron Claw (Sean Durkin)

Performance – Charles Melton, May December: Not so much a “revelation” as a “break-out”, as I’d seen him before on Poker Face. The former Riverdale star emerges as a force with his hunched over body language, his nervous yet sweet demeanor. Melton makes him feel like he’s just play acting at being a dad, while at the same time not fitting in with the younger kids. The tension between not wanting to be a victim and being victimized for so long emerges in bursts, as in the much talked about scene on the roof, and it brings us back to the real person behind the stories.

Underrated – Rye Lane (Raine Allen-Miller): Many have decried the death of the studio rom-com, fated to be stuck with streaming fare like Red White and Royal Blue or The Kissing Booth. Here comes this charmer, a riff on Before Sunset with a wealth of style and energy to shock complacency. David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah exude wonderful chemistry together, with Miller providing a tour of South London fit to rival any classic Brit-com. It’s enough to make you believe love is real again.

Overrated – Barbie (Greta Gerwig): The big movie of the year has gotten more than it’s share of praise, criticism, rebuttals, and whatever else you want to call it. Gerwig’s movie has many charms for sure but despite that, it still ends up something of a mishmash, unable to fully shake off its corporate mandate or become a true “feminst” statement. But mostly: I just wish it was funnier.

Biggest Disappointment – Skinamarink (Kyle Edward Ball): When I first saw the poster online, I was all in. The trailer looked like the perfect mix of surreality and analog horror, and who could shake “In This House?” I don’t know whether watching a screener in my house deflated some of it when I went to the theater but alas: despite loving the look and the concept, I just found my mind wandering too much. I so desperately wanted to lock-in, and I can feel a successful version for me somewhere if it were just a little more active. Here’s hoping Ball’s next one fulfills his potential.

Most Pleasant Surprise – Night of the Hunted (Franck Khalfoun): All relative, since I don’t really tend to watch widely hated movies or things I think I’ll dislike because I’m currently doing this all for free. Which is to say: a thriller directed by the guy who did the Maniac remake may not seem all the fruitful. I found a rather tense single-location thriller, gory and brutal, and fairly plausible in keeping its heroine isolated. It may not be much more than that – and your mileage may vary as to the sniper’s ultimate political ranting. But it’s executed with a sure enough hand to stand out above a lot of Shudder exclusives.

Review: Eileen’s Psychosexual Drama Never Comes Together

The Anne Hathaway/Thomasin McKenzie two-hander doesn’t know who its’ title character is

Note: Expanded from Philadelphia Film Festival thoughts

Eileen is the sort of movie that promises a lot from the get-go. In its very first scene, we see the title character (Thomasin McKenzie) observing a couple getting frisky in the car next to her, appearing to get turned on herself before she shoves snow down her pants. The 60s setting and icy New England landscapes would point to some sort of repression on her end; at the very least, with an alcoholic father and dead-end job at a juvenile corrections facility in a remote town, her life doesn’t seem to going great.

All this is before Rebecca Saint John cruises into the parking lot in a Mustang and captures her attention. As embodied by Anne Hathaway (doing an accent, and doing it pretty good), Rebecca is the New Woman: unmarried, unwilling to take men’s shit, handling a cigarette in the way mysterious yet alluring women tend to do in movies like this. She’s arriving to take over for the prison psychologist and begins to take something of an interest in Eileen. Is it a crush? Simple mentorship? Something more sinister? The scene seems set for a dark sort of seduction.

Unfortunately, Eileen herself never seems to snap into focus. McKenzie also does an accent and it’s rather passible, but her character is too passive and internalized. The script is an adaptation of Otessa Mosfegh’s book – written by the author and her husband – and it feels as though large portions of an internal monologue were lopped out rather than integrated. Periodically, there are supremely jarring moments of fantasy where Eileen imagines herself having rough sex with a prison guard or shooting herself in the head, and they always come out of nowhere. It’s hard to even figure out if Eileen has some sort of repressed sexuality or obsessive desire since it’s not always clear what exactly she wants. Which means that Rebecca’s background story involving a prisoner who killed his father starts to become a lot more interesting, despite it being an ostensible side show.

The film takes a sudden swerve in the third act heightened by an impassioned monologue from Marin Ireland that also raises a boatload of interesting things to explore. For a moment, it seems to get into some thorny territory that itself could make a great story, but the movie ends before it has a chance to fully examine that. It’s not an issue of direction – William Oldroyd keeps a tidy pace and a clean visual style that makes great use of dark – but that aforementioned missing bits. It might’ve needed to be longer to fully unpack the impact of the massive twist. As it is, Eileen presents a titilating scenario but can’t make its protagonist shine through it. (C+)

May December and What We Mean by “Camp”

Thoughts on hot dogs, Twitter fingers, and taking abuse seriously.

If you’ve been online the past week or so, you’ve probably seen the arguments about Todd Haynes’ May December. The film is – at its face – a story about an actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) travelling to Savanah to interview and observe a woman, Gracie (Julianne Moore) who was involved in a tabloid scandal almost two decades ago. Said scandal is that she had an “affair” with a 13-year-old boy named Joe (Charles Melton, we’ll get to it), got pregnant, went to jail, and then subsequently married and had more children with him. All this is very clearly based on the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal from the 90s; lots of Cannes coverage mentioned this, as well as talking up how funny the movie was in addition to things like its psychological complexity. From the trailers and that coverage I had been eagerly awaiting it, especially curious to see multiple people I know and trust say it was one of the funniest movies of the year.

And make no mistake, Samy Burch’s screen play does make several jokes throughout. But I didn’t find it as funny as it was hyped. As I’ve said on Letterboxd and a few other places: while I laughed at things like Julianne Moore opening a fridge to a dramatic sting of music (aka, “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs”), it was frequently much more of an uncomfortable sort of laughter. Things like Elizabeth (the actress) remarking how none of the kids auditioning to play Joe in her movie are “sexy” enough, as you’ve just witnessed some VERY young boys. Or Gracie (the woman) telling her daughter how brave she was to show her arms in a dress in what must be the least subtle backhanded compliment anyone’s ever given. I found the movie to be a showcase of extreme repression and denial, where just hinting at the truth would be too much to bear psychologically.

The word that keeps popping up in all the discussion around the movie is “camp”. Now, I frankly do not have time to really get into what camp is – there’s been enough of that – but the way I see it: Katy Perry wearing a burger outfit to the Met Gala is not Camp. Katy Perry hurriedly attempting to get back into the burger outfit so that she can catch someone passing by is Camp. The word at its base implies some sort of artifice, a blowing up of things to heightened reality; the “tragically ludicrous” and “ludicrously tragic”, as it were. All this has lead to things like Netflix posting a screenshot of the two women with the opening to the Zola tweet thread, as well as numerous Letterboxd reviews about “mothering” and “slaying”. May December in that sense has become a sort of queer movie to some, something I can only describe as a “yass queen” type thing.

Buried under all of this is a central conflict: the implication of “badness” within the work. To me at least, “campy” means that you know something is bad or unintentional, and you celebrate that by pushing it up. “Camp” is not really made, it’s sort of the process that happens within some sort of failure or a general queer sensibility. Notably, Todd Haynes himself has disagreed with the label, and honestly if anyone would know it’s him. I don’t think it’s camp either. In fact, I think calling the movie “camp” or reducing it down to just a display of actresses actressing is sort of turning it into a metacommentary of sorts on the very scandal its adapting.

Charles Melton is the heart and soul of the movie as Joe. He practically steals the movie away from the two women and in a way, it’s really more about him and the ways he’s manipulated by the two of them. At the center of May December is the simple fact that a 36-year-old woman had sex with a 13-year-old boy and had his child. She did this multiple times; she convinced him they were in love, she maybe even convinced herself of it. The whole thing feels tawdry because it’s a sex and cheating scandal; it feels ridiculous because they were pet shop employees. That doesn’t mean it’s not deeply serious though. It’s more accurate to call May December a melodrama: these aspects are heightened to draw out the emotions of the situation, and draw your attention to the dark reality that everyone seems to be exploiting one way or another.

In a strange way, the reception to the movie is mirroring the tabloid scandal of years past. It’s easy to focus on the weird elements, the odd details, the way Julianne Moore says “I’m secure”. These are all great parts of the movie and it would do as big a disservice to dismiss them as insignificant. But it’s important not to lose sight of the man who never seems to fit in with the kids nor the adults. Someone was harmed both in real life and the context of the film; we should be able to look it straight on and call it for what it is. Men are often glossed over when it comes to abuse by women. Joe deserves to have the depth of his pain heard.

A Roundup of the 32nd Philadelphia Film Festival

In the midst of ever chaotic times

When the lineup for this year’s fest was announced, I confess to feeling pretty disappointed. It’s been a pretty good year for movies – at least as I observed from the outside – and this fall especially was looking to be jampacked. So you can understand my eagerly opening the page and feeling some of that enthusiasm deflate: no Ferrari, no May/December, Priscilla. Anatomy of a Fall and The Killer both ended up at the Ritz Five during the fest, and Killers of The Flower Moon was already out. Which isn’t to say it was a bad festival mind you; PFS managed to snag the latest from Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Ryuichi Hamaguchi, and Aki Kaurismaki among others, and the more obscure picks still managed to surprise me. But one does have to stare in jealousy as their friends at other fests get to see The Zone of Interest early after convincing yourself it’d be there.

I managed to see a lot more movies this year than almost any other, thanks in part to taking time off. Because of personal issues, I unfortunately had to miss some (The Holdovers, Dream Scenario) and I missed American Fiction due to a concert. With such expanded viewing, it felt as though my scores tended to become more even; call it growing older and wiser, or perhaps trying to be more evenhanded. I still managed to find quite a few that blew me away, and at least a couple to watch out for later. Making a top 10 actually felt hard for the first time in a long while; I can only imagine that the year end list will be murder. A few of those will end up on that list, some will be pushed to next year. As always, everything listed here is worth checking out, and a sign that PFS can still push beyond the crowd-pleasers to find something more unique.

1. Riddle of Fire – dir. Weston Razooli

Michael Lehrmann’s description of “if the kids from The Florida Project made a movie for $2 and it was fucking hilarious” might sound like a warning to some. I fell completely and totally under the spell of this wild blend of kids fantasy, S/NES RPGs, and Adult Swim style deadpan that had me laughing pretty much constantly. The key is a total control of its tone: taking place in Wyoming in some anachronistic vision of today as it follows 3 hellions on a quest to get their sick mom the perfect slice of blueberry pie so they can play video games. So many ways it could go wrong, but Razooli wisely dials back the anarchy to something a little more placid and avoiding easy intrusions of the adult into the fairy tale (not that it doesn’t happen). I can’t articulate it any better than how much the sight of them running through a grocery store in a silly pose had me guffawing; three perfect child performances in their occasional stumbling and crack timing, and a willingness to just go for it.

2. Monster – dir. Hirokazu Kore-Eda

The other side of a film starring children. Kore-Eda’s first Japanese film since Shoplifters unfolds at first as a mystery surrounding a conflict between a young boy and a teacher at his school. Shades of Asghar Farhadi creep in as more layers are revealed, more sides to the story shown. Where it truly shines is in its depiction of burgeoning gay love, the terror that it will be revealed, the need to destroy it despite that being the last thing you want. It’s a wonderful showcase for the child actors and a great mystery that blossoms the more context you receive.

3. The Settlers – dir. Felipe Gálvez Haberle

Chile’s submission for Best International Feature is a haunting revisionist Western drained of almost any thrills. Across a beautifully desolate landscape, three men – a Scottish soldier, an American cowboy, and a mixed-raced indigineous worker – trek on a mission to eliminate any native they see at the behest of the landowner. Haberle captures the various contradictions of colonialism: the hypocrisy, the need to consume everything despite “worth”, the rigidly enforced order no mater how much you give yourself to the empire. Bleak, brutal, and absolutely scathing towards the Chilean national mythmaking.

4. Red Rooms – dir. Pascale Plante

A techno-thriller that dangles a sordid little hook at the start: the trial of a serial killer who filmed himself torturing and murdering three young girls and sold the videos online, and a mysterious woman with an interest bordering on the obsessive. Plante’s film is horror in the way We’re All Going To The World’s Fair is, in that the subject matter itself is horrific but the director is far more interested in the type of person who chooses to follow it. Similarly, it’s smart about technology, not just in its depiction of process and things like ArchLinux, but in how the Internet can turn people into abstractions to be fanned over. Rather than sounding an alarm, it admits that there is something alluring about staring into the void, but warns that some things are unspeakable for a good reason.

5. Evil Does Not Exist – dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi

It may be the shortest of Hamaguchi’s recent films, but by no means is it the lesser. While the title suggests something more sinister, the conflict between a remote community and the developers who want to build a glamping site falls in line with the director’s emphasis on quiet moments and relationships. Not to mention it’s unexpectedly one of the funniest films of the year (sample, after one of the developers compliments an udon cook for the soup warming him up: “That’s got nothing to do with taste.”) At it’s heart, it’s a film about how there really isn’t malice involved, but incompetence and impatience; things that can’t be applied so easily to nature, no matter how much control we think we have.

6. Tótem – dir. Lila Avilés

Another submission for Best International Film – Mexico’s in this case – follows a family as the gather together to throw a celebration for a gravely ill family member. Avilés presents small slices of life as seen through the eyes of a young girl coming to terms with the idea of death, captured with warmth and, yes, love. A wealth of animal imagery and superstitious elements lends an air of the mysterious, as if to highlight their importance to children whether they’re aware of it or not.

7. The Taste of Things – dir. Tran Ahn Hung

Cooking and food as an act of the deepest possible love. Tran Ahn Hung’s culinary fable has been the delight of critics since it premiered at Cannes (where he also won Best Director) and it’s easy to see why. The kitchen sequences alone are well worth the price of admission: vegetables sizzling, decadent lamb roasts, mouthwatering baked alaska. France chose it for submission at the Oscars and for the food alone, it should probably win, but it’s the love story between Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel that raises it beyond simple food porn.

8. The Breaking Ice – dir. Anthony Chen

Stark, beautiful winter landscapes form the backdrop for Chen’s story of three disaffected youth in China on the border of North Korea. A sort of romance, sort of friendship story, it has the power to sneak up on you if you aren’t careful. At its heart, it’s a tale of three lonely people coming together to share company and bond amidst personal and economic ruin, when living can be so hard. Simplistic, yet deeply affecting and in the end, hopeful.

9. The Green Border – dir. Agnieszka Holland

Extremely controversial in Holland’s home country of Poland, and for good reason: here’s an absolutely unsparing portrait of the hell faced by migrants coming into Europe, lured by promises of asylum then subjected to the world’s worst game of ping pong by guards and countries that see them as little more than bargaining chips and annoyances at best. It’s an angry film, and that anger at times threatens to dip into impotent rage at seeing a person who didn’t do anything get dragged through the mud. But Holland ultimately issues a call to arms of sorts, reminding us that we all have choices to make in this system, and pointing to something of a brighter future for those willing to fight for it.

10. This Closeness – dir. Kit Zauhar

Philadelphia native Zauhar’s second film is as claustrophic as its title, taking place in one single, nondescript apartment. She also plays one half of a couple, staying at an AirBnb for the weekend so her boyfriend can attend a high school reunion. Tensions are already high enough thanks to their rocky relationship, but they rise even higher once they learn that their awkward host will also be staying with them. Zauhar showcases a deft hand at composition, framing some exceptionally off-kilter and unique shots that nonetheless bring a sort of – if not beauty, than aesthetic pleasure – to the single space. Amidst jokes about getting prix fixe in Philly (side note: girl fuck you!!!!) and sequences of ASMR emerges a narrative about vulnerability and what it means to actually get close to someone, exploring whether staying in a relationship to not be alone is worth it in the end.

A few honorable mentions (because I can’t help myself): Upon Entry, Late Night With The Devil, Fallen Leaves, Sleep, Smoking Tigers

Review: The Past Looks A Whole Lot Like The Present in Blue Jean

A stunner of a debut following a lesbian teacher in Thatcherite England

We like to think that we’re better than the past. It’s just the way of the world: as time goes on, we make progress. Things improve and we learn to be more tolerant. Films about minorities tend to fall under this a lot, and it’s understandable to want to show someone fighting for their rights, or there being one person who was on the right side of history, so that the viewers can walk out of the theater shaking their heads and chattering about how awful it was back then and isn’t it nice we’re not like that anymore?

What I’d like to suggest is… maybe we’re not?

Blue Jean, the debut film from Georgia Oakley, is set during the late 80’s in the midst of Thatcher’s England. Section 28 – which banned the promotion of homosexuality within schools – has just become law. Characters will talk about this but otherwise it hangs over the movie like a cloud, a warning. The titular character of Jean Newman (Rosy McEwan) is a high school PE teacher who also coaches a girls netball team. She is also a lesbian, and at nights she transforms into the proper attire and hangs out at a gay bar with her friends and especially lover/girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes), a leather butch in contrast to Jean’s more androgynous appearance (it’s a wonder she doesn’t get more rumors behind her back).

There’s some suggestion that Jean’s sexuality is a somewhat new development for her; while she doesn’t have that self-loathing that so many queer films gravitate to whenever they take place pre-1995 or so, Jean is rather happy and seemingly carefree in her carefully regimented life. Despite this, there’s a sense she’s still a little bit afraid to embrace herself, hiding Viv from her sister when she makes an impromptu visit in an early scene, and shying away from bonding with co-workers (who chitter about the law during lunch).

All of it threatens to come crashing down when she gets outcast and loner Lois (Lucy Halliday) to join the team, then subsequently sees her in the same bar where she finds such freedom. It’s here that Oakley shifts the tone to something akin to a horror film, though it never fully tips over. A terrible dilemma begins to present itself: both student and teacher know about the other. One desperately wishes that Jean could be something of a mentor to Lois, perhaps even shield her more from the bullies. But as an earlier scene makes clear – in which Jean tells Viv how she pretended to be her boss when calling a parent about one of the girls – she can never show anything that could be construed as favoritism. Not only that, but anything that could even remotely suggest she might be forming a relationship with a student beyond what’s appropriate. What the film lays bare is that laws like Section 28 create a cycle of oppression and more fear in both the adults and the youth. These moral panics about groomers discourage teens from seeking help, and adults from standing up for them and themselves. Because it’s not just her job that’s at stake for Jean, it’s everything. But what tilts it into greatness is the ease at which Oakley also expresses Lois’ point of view, depicting an understandably angry youth caught in the worst sort of rock and hard place.

Blue Jean‘s final moments bring a note of grace and understanding for both characters, while doing its best not to put too neat a bow on things. There are perhaps moments when it feels a little too blunt, too tuned into what feels like contemporary moments. At its very best, Oakley reminds us that the struggle is forever ongoing and what seems like a new low has really always been here. Those in power do their best to stamp out queer history, to make mentorship a liability and keep us at each others throats. In balancing this joy with dread, it reminds us why the fight is worth it, and who it’s all for.

The Best Films of the 31st Philadelphia Film Festival

"31st Philadelphia Film Festival" text imposed over red theater seats, with "SEE SOMETHING YOU'LL NEVER FORGET, OCTOBER 19-30" in the bottom right corner.

Back at it again.

It feels so good to be back at a festival. For about 5 years or so – pretty much since I started college – I’ve been attending the Philadelphia Film Festival in some form or another; a small blip occurred in 2017 for the 26th edition because of my co-op schedule. And of course, the 29th edition was remote thanks to COVID, while I missed the 30th because I had moved back home temporarily.

But finally, things have come back to some semblance of normality and looking back, it was a pretty great festival. I didn’t really find any new or off-the-radar picks, and there wasn’t a Tremors or a Thoroughbreds – aka, something that really knocked my socks off – but the established greats were still pretty great. Like every year previously, I’ve probably seen enough to formulate my end of year list but that of course will be held off until the other heavy hitters see fit to come to this city. At least one – Nanny – I missed due to technical issues on my first screening, and then the second and third overlapping with ones I’d bought tickets to (Women Talking) or decided to prioritize due to unsure distribution (Huesera).

For now, here’s a rough ranking of the best films I saw at the fest. Some of these are coming out imminently, other the next year. All of them are my definite recommendations.

1. How To Blow Up A Pipeline – dir. Daniel Goldhaber

The second film from Goldhaber (technically a film by Goldhaber, Ariel Barrer, Jordan Sjol, and Daniel Garber) makes good on his promise from Cam to marvelously entertaining effect. Their adaptation of Andreas Malm’s 2021 nonfiction expands it into a heist movie while still retaining the core message of direct action. Like all good heist movies, the cast is distinct and filled out. And Garber’s editing keeps things moving at a steady clip while deftly inserting flashbacks in often thrilling ways. But most importantly, it’s just a damn good film, adaptation or no.

2. Aftersun – dir. Charlotte Wells

One of those films that’s so deceptively simple yet powerful that trying to capture what makes it special in words feels futile. In short: it follows a father and daughter (Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio) on a vacation to Turkey, as filtered through the eyes of the daughter looking back on old camcorder footage. Wells mixes those camcorder segments along with slow-motion footage of the father at an otherworldly rave to capture the feeling of peering through memories trying desperately to understand one’s parents. Mescal is simply stunning, while Corio makes a promising debut, nailing that edge between adolescent and teen. This is a film of deep, emotional power, and when it connects, it hits like a hurricane.

3. Glass Onion – dir. Rian Johnson

While the novelty may have worn off a little bit compared to the first (and – admittedly – some of the satire can be a little cringe), Johnson’s much-anticipated sequel proves to be every bit as good. Riffing off the locked-room mystery, it’s suspenseful but much more of a comedy, and thankfully the hits are high. Most importantly, I’m thankful Janelle Monae finally has a role worthy of the talent she showed off in Moonlight, while Daniel Craig confirms he’s having an absolute blast as Benoit Blanc.

4. All The Beauty And The Bloodshed – dir. Laura Poitras

What could’ve been a standard (yet righteously angry) advocacy doc about the Sackler family’s art world reputation laundering becomes a devastating memoir when combined with Nan Goldin’s own photoslides and voice over. Goldin’s activisim itself is wonderful to see, but it’s this added context – this merging of past and present, of the things she’s lived through and fought against – that give her crusade its overwhelming power. It’s also a marvelous work of queer history, giving a personal look at one person while remembering everyone lost along the way.

5. The Banshees of Inesherin – dir. Martin McDonough

As if McDonough saw the doubts scattered in the wake of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and decided to remind everyone that, no: he is, in fact, the real deal. Returning to his playwright roots and to his home country of Ireland proves a much needed reset, as does the reunion of Colin Farrell and Brenden Gleeson (the former giving what might be a career best). This deeply allegorical tale of a disintegrated friendship is emotional, yes; but it’s also by far one of the funniest films of the year, padded out by wonderful supporting performances from Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan.

6. Return To Seoul – dir. Davy Chou

Kim Jee-Min is an absolute force as a Korean-born Frenchwoman reconnecting with her biological family in Davy Chou’s second film (inspired by a real life anecdote). She communicates so much with her face alone and flips on a dime while remaining intensely charismatic and watchable throughout the various timejumps of the film. Wanna know what’s crazy? This is her debut performance. Chou’s script – with it’s mix of awkward comedy, luscious nightlife, and split cultures – ain’t too bad either.

7. All That Breaths – dir. Shaunak Sen

Sen’s documentary follows a group of brothers in India who run a makeshift hospital for New Delhi’s black kite population. Frequently lyrical and poetic, with lots of shots of birds flying, garbage strewn around the streets, mosquitos floating above water, it’s as much a sensory experience as it is a portrait of dedication. More that that, it connects India’s political struggles to environmental damage to give a grander picture of a nation itself at odds. Worth it alone for that magnificent bird footage.

8. Burning Days – dir. Emin Alper

Slow burn Turkish political thriller following a prosecutor assigned to a remote village in the midst of a trial over a water crisis. It takes its time setting up the dominoes but once in motion it’s gripping and morally complex, diving into aspects of corruption and toxic masculinity as scandals emerge and the pressure on him increases. A complicated film for sure, with an enticing thread of ambiguity running throughout.

9. Holy Spider – dir. Ali Abbas

I seem to be a bit of an outlier in liking this serial killer/jounrnalism movie so much; which is just as good, considering that I was a bit of an outlier in disliking Abbas’ last movie, the troll fable Border. This one is based off a real life Iranian serial killer and follows a journalist (Zar Amir Ebrahami) as she investigates along with the killer himself, proclaiming he is on a holy mission. It’s blunt about the misogyny at play, but perhaps even more potent is the idea that for the journalist, every man could be just as dangerous as the killer, especially in a society that largely believes he’s done nothing wrong since he’s killing prostitutes. It’s damning, but in more places than some would like to believe.

10. Next Exit – dir. Mali Elfman

My favorite part of film festivals is getting to discover those hidden gems, especially in the genre space. So in lieu of Decision To Leave (Park doesn’t need any help from me), I wanted to spotlight Mali Elfman’s debut feature. Opening a few months after the ghosts are proven – in a similar logline to Charlie McDowell’s The Discovery – the film follows a mismatched pair (Katie Parker and Rahul Kholi) traveling from New York to San Diego to take part in an experiment that will allow them to peacefully commit suicide. There’s a small bit of indie quirk to the proceedings, and it’s a little predictable at times. I was caught off guard by how deeply I’d become invested into the characters by the end, and before you know it, it’s become a slow burn romance that earns it. Can’t say I wouldn’t have liked a more philosophical film, or scenes like one reminiscent of The Leftovers, but it’s a rather promising debut. If anything, see it for Kholi to prove his range.

Spooktober ’22 #1: The Blair Witch Project

An existentialist horror classic

“There’s no one coming to save you! That’s your motivation!”

Thoughts on a horror film every week for the month of October, both new and old.

No one will ever be able to replicate The Blair Witch Project. This is true in the broadest sense, in that audiences will no longer believe a movie is truly “found footage”, especially after the myriad rip-offs and knock-offs in the early 10s. But in the most literal sense, the very methods and form used to create the movie have been supplanted both by higher quality video and audio, as well as the fact that, well: the cast was essentially psychologically terrorized over the course of weeks in a sort of “Method filmmaking”, as directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez described. Watching The Blair Witch Project almost 25 years out – long past the hype cycle and a few attempts at turning into a proper franchise – have only strengthened the core of why it still resonates so strongly. Marketing gimmicks are temporary. Bone deep mental disintegration worms its way deep inside your mind and festers.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. While praised by critics, it’s proven much more divisive amongst audiences in part because of how barebones it is. There aren’t really any overt scares, at least nothing that we can see. We sure hear a lot: snapping twigs, a baby crying, maybe someone being horribly killed. Among the genius of the movie (something that’s been cited time and time again) is how much is really left to your imagination. Even the thing that could be chasing college kids Heather, Josh, and Mike isn’t set in stone. Myrick and Sanchez offer everything from the Blair Witch herself to a child serial killer and even float the possibility of the locals fucking with the kids. One thing’s for certain: there’s something out there, and it means harm.

As we get further and further away from 1999, the idea of reality has only evaporated further and further. So much of the discourse surrounding The Blair Witch Project was the idea that these events actually happened; it was heightened by the actors each using their own names for characters and by staying out of the spotlight once the film debut. There were documentaries, websites devoted to shaping the central myth that what you saw was real, even though it still carries normal credits and disclaimers (not to mention that were it actually true, it would have amounted to a snuff film, and while Hollywood is amoral, it’s not that amoral). Found footage itself has basically lost the veneer of reality through establishing tropes and casting familiar faces. But in a paradoxical way, this makes it easier to slip into the world of the film. The footage is all handheld consumer grade film, the kind college students would be able to get. It looks rawer because it is, all the imperfections and “amateurness” kept in. Cameras have only gotten better and in some sense, we’ve lost this sort of scuzzy feel. The footage just looks too good. But then again… how many times have you scrolled by a video reuploaded through 3 different social media platforms, degraded by compression, showcasing a purportedly real-life event? More things are staged than ever before, so what does it even matter if it’s not real to begin with? Josh calls it a “filtered reality” and later, suggests that Heather keeps filming because it makes it easier to pretend it’s not happening. Judging by the way she screams back “It’s all I have left!”, he may have a point.

What matters is that it’s convincing, and the movie does not work at all if you don’t believe the actors. A recurring criticism (especially of Heather) is that they’re all annoying college kids goofing off but look at the opening scenes. Here, they’re casual, laidback, playful even. There’s an unforced chemistry and charisma to all of them, little touches like zooming into some marshmallows or Heather declaring she hates scotch. These establishing scenes give the later ones when they turn on each other a great impact, because we know that’s not what they’re normally like. Josh’s especially is upsetting, because we see his friendship with Heather earlier on, and his repeated shouts of “There’s no one coming to save you” pour more and more salt into the wounds of her mistakes. Heather herself – it should be said – has proved a competent director, despite what the public opinion says. After all, she got them the interviews, filmed openings, lead them to Coffin Rock. Perhaps she got them lost but if she did, well… there’s also a demonic presence insistent on torturing them, so you can’t blame it all on her. Heather Donohue is willing to make her abrasive as things get worse, but there’s a deep sense that she knows she fucked up and she’s being constantly reminded of it, but she can’t change it as they spiral closer and closer to her doom. Her final confession is iconic in part because of her despair and terror, of seeing how frayed she is and how she wishes she could’ve made a better decision. It’s possible that wouldn’t have helped anyways. Maybe you can’t hate her if you don’t believe that she could exist.

The Blair Witch Project is a psychological drama masquerading as a horror film. It’s not necessarily “scary” so much as it is deeply upsetting and uncomfortable to witness. Part of that is knowing that – yes – the cast really were operating on little sleep and food, being tormented by the directors (one line late in the film could be aimed at either the spiritual presence or the directors themselves). But that weariness translates into a sort of existential dread that comes with knowing you’re deeply lost in the woods and that every day will bring more of the same. It’s in seeing people turn on each other in some of the most vicious ways, clawing at each other while gripping tightly for support. The lines between reality and fiction dissolve as much as their own sanities until by the end we’re seeing pure, animalistic terror. You can’t recapture that. Maybe you shouldn’t try to.

Available on HBO Max, Hulu, and digital rental platforms.