Sometimes I don't have anything to say here. This week is one of those times.
Movies
A psychological horror movie about a recently converted woman purportedly receiving messages from God and going through all the wild, ecstatic medieval prophet experiences. I do love that this movie unironically appropriates a lot of church tradition into its characterization of this woman, and I'm positively elated that this movie reminds us that a lot of people in the first millennium who became saints claimed to get spontaneous orgasms from God—we need to bring back Weird Bodily Christianity. It's also a dialogue with/deconstruction of the idea that piety and suffering are linked, which is interesting, though I do think that the movie could have been more specific with her theology; mostly, the movie just focuses on her feeling guilty about sex (welcome to Christianity, baby) and struggling with silence from God (welcome to the human experience, baby), both of which are fine but kind of broad strokes for a movie about a literal prophet, and I guess I'm the nerd who would have liked for her to have had more space to give her whole manifesto on her beliefs. Also, I didn't think the horror elements added anything to this movie except a marketing angle. So I guess what I'm saying is that I wish this were just First Reformed with ecstatic visions. The way I'm talking about this movie makes it sound like I didn't like it, but I did! It's just the kind of good movie that's easy to imagine being a lot better, which is a nagging feeling to have in a movie. Grade: B
Woman goes out to the wilds of Wyoming in a possibly self-destructive impulse to isolate herself in a quest to overcome personal tragedy. This movie feels awkwardly positioned between the meditative stillness of Kelly Reichardt and a more conventional grief-recovery drama in the vein of Wild or something like that. It doesn't fully commit to either mode, and as a result, the movie never truly excels at anything either, despite there being some good ideas batted around. I don't know if this makes sense outside of my head, but to me, this movie felt so self-conscious in second-guessing all of those ideas that it could never settle into anything all that interesting. Grade: C
This definitely feels like a large step down from Afterschool as far as written/directed by Antonios Campos goes, in terms of both its thematic and aesthetic ambitions (neither of which feel as radical or prescient here as in that earlier movie, while also kind of re-treading some of the same ideas re: screens and white male psychology). But it's still a fairly engaging, bleak character analysis, where the slow revelation of the true rottenness of our protagonist's soul is almost as compelling as it is sickening. There are also some really sublime visual moments and needle drops that give me chilly echoes of Lynne Ramsay or Claire Denis—not exactly sure how to square that with this movie's narrative, but it's cool nonetheless. Grade: B
Tommy Wiseau is a legitimately riveting screen presence, and there is definitely something sui generis about his bizarre acting inflections and writing style. At this movie's best, there's something truly arresting and surreal about its idiosyncrasies. So I understand completely how this became such an object of fascination, though it seems like willful hyperbole to call this "the worst movie ever made" or even include it in those conversations. But everything else about the movie is either super boring or wildly misogynist, and the whole thing feels kind of sad and immature in a depressing way, so it was hard for me to completely buy into this as a wild laugh-fest either. So I dunno. Eh. The memes are still good, though. Grade: C
A revisionist take on a Brothers Grimm story with a heavy Ingmar Bergman vibe—this movie is going to probably live and die for you based on how much either of those two things appeal to you. The original Brothers Grimm story is wickedly bizarre, and this version does a good job of making it a story with actual recognizable human beings, so I like that. And you know that I LOVE Ingmar Bergman. Also, this stars pre-Sugarcubes Björk, so it's not as if there was any chance of me not liking this movie at least a little bit. It's good, if a bit stiff in the way that a lot of Bergman imitators can sometimes be. Grade: B+
I generally find Michael Moore insufferably smarmy and intellectually dishonest, and with this movie, he basically popularized my least-favorite kind of documentary, i.e. the personality-centric, ironic-music-cue-reliant activist doc. But the one thing Moore can usually be counted on is to give his best material when focused on his hometown of Flint, which this film is thoroughly, and the naked populist fury of Roger & Me is virtually unmatched in both Moore's career and the careers of his numerous imitators. You've got the usual Moore shenanigans here, like his mostly worthless "I must talk to GM CEO Roger Smith" quest and the fictitious chronology implied (e.g. acting as if the construction of AutoWorld was in response to GM factory closures despite plans for its construction predating them by at least a decade is dumb, and honestly a truly chronological documentary detailing the decades of public planning failure in Flint could probably have given a more compelling, sobering context to the GM closures), but the film's central issue is so narrow in scope that even these indulgent tangents tie in a lot better than similar gestures do in, say, Bowling for Columbine. Plus, the whole Flint/GM milieu is parochial enough that Moore is actually able to make this movie almost entirely original footage; a lot of later Moore docs rely heavily on already public footage, e.g. George W. Bush reading to school children during the 9/11 attacks, meaning that most of what Moore adds are his irritating self-insert antics, but here instead, while we do get those antics, they're intercut mostly with some truly searing footage taken by Moore's actual crew—genuinely chaotic and heartbreaking stuff like evictions on the one hand, and on the other hand, some absolutely outrageous "bread and circuses" behavior from the wealthy and powerful of Flint. On the latter, I think you'd probably have to go to The Act of Killing or Errol Morris's documentaries on McNamara and Rumsfeld to find a more stunning example of a documentarian allowing his subjects to tie their own nooses. In one scene, a bunch of rich people throw a literal Gatsby party and then, in full roaring twenties attire, talk to the camera about how their daughter got to do ballet so life in Flint isn't so bad and poor people need to stop complaining so much; in another, some other rich people have a party in a soon-to-be-opened prison complex during which the party-goers play-act as inmates and prison guards, joyfully swinging around clubs and sporting riot gear; in another, a GM lobbyist, imagining he is giving some grand rebuttal to Moore's inquiries, says that it's impossible for corporations to care for their workers' well-being under capitalism. Just some of the bleakest, most astounding examples of people unwittingly advocating against their own existence that I've ever seen. Grade: A-
Music
Basically just Tuareg guitarist Mahamadou "Mdou Moctar" Souleymane absolutely shredding over 42 minutes of strongly rhythmic fusion music. A lot of "fusion" is basically just jazz and rock mixed, but in this case, it's Saharan folk mixed with American rock. I can't say that I know a lot about West African music, but on the basis of this record, I would like to learn more, because this rules. One of my favorites of the year. Grade: A-
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