Marseille (French with subtitles)
I binged watched this and now I’m heart-broken it only went to two seasons
before Net Flicks, the politically correct film distributor, cancelled the
series after that. I fuck’n hate Net Flicks.
Anyway, Marseille is a French
drama starring Gérard Depardieu who plays Robert Taro, who, after r 20 years as
mayor of Marseille, enters into a war of succession with his former protégé
turned rival Lucas Barres (Benoît Magimel). Otherwise there are all sort of
things going on in this series, murder, sex, seduction, betrayal, corruption, revenge, the Mafia,….you
name it, its here. Loved it, loved it, loved it.
Carbon (Carbone….French with
subtitles) I’m a true crime buff and was the film is based on a little known (In
the US) but true crime e Carbon Connection scandal of 2008-2009, which involved
billions of euros being siphoned from France and other EU countries by a
network of criminal and con men. So, for me, this was fantastic.
Better yet, Gerard
Depardieu is in it. (But underused) Bookended
by a voiceover ala Carlito’s Way, the film opens and closes with the shooting
of its leading man Antoine Roca (Benoit Magimel) Again, like Carlito’s way, the
movie is told through a series of flash back to five months earlier. I’ll leave
it there for you but if, like me, you’re a crime film fan, this is a must see.
Modern Love. An
Amazon series of eight 30-minute episodes. I enjoyed this. Its adapted from the
New York Times column of the same name, primarily by creator John Carney, the
series attempts to transform essays into short plays the finest of which is “When the Doorman is Your Main Man”
Back to Burgundy (French with
subtitles): “Back to Burgundy," details a year in the life of a fictional
wine-making family in Burgundy. It is a slow, occasionally funny, warm film
that offers a detailed look at the international subculture of wine and wine
making.
When his father becomes ill, Jean
(Pio Marmaï) returns home to the family vineyard in France after 10 years
abroad. He has had no contact with the family since he left. His two siblings,
Juliette (Ana Girardot) and Jérémie (François Civil) have stayed on to run the
family vineyard. When their father dies, the siblings (now including the
returned Jean have to decide to sell the vineyard or figure out a means to pay
an enormous inheritance tax.
This is a well written and physically
beautiful film filled with plots and sub plots about maturity, growing up, life
mistakes and dealing with the past and family. Some found the film slow, I didn’t. I thought it was well paced and filled with a
series of believable characters, different sorts of intimacy and personnel journeys.
Paris je t'aime: Ben Gazzara’s in it, so right there, it makes the film worth wading through. This is a collection of 18 short films, each 8 minutes long, by a host of international directors who offer their take on passion and romance, all taking place in Paris.
The film and the films within the film is varied, quirky and unpredictable enough to
keep the viewer interested.
Jo-Jo Rabbit: I $7.00
to watch it and turned it off after 20 minutes because I just can’t take
another holocaust movie. Okay, we got it, the holocaust was awful. My father,
at age 18, joined the Army and slugged a BAR across Czechoslovakia and shot, I’m
sure dozens of Nazis before the buried a hundreds of pieces of flack into his
legs and back. Everyone does what they can. Okay, we got it, the holocaust was awful.
Golden Exits: A lean
but meaty film, with a knockout cast,
about relationships and trust. The film is set in a small area of Cobble
Hill, Brooklyn, which nowadays is a ritzy place. A young Australian Naomi
(Emily Browning) takes a job assisting a forty-headed-for fifty archivist named
Nick (Adam Horowitz) which, understandably, reawakens trust issues in Nick’s
wife Alyssa (Chloë Sevigny), a psychologist, who's still dealing with Nick’s
many past infidelities with younger women.
Nick doesn’t let her down. He is inappropriate
with the girl, who has far better sense than he does (Its Hollywood, all white
men are weak idiots) His infatuation
with her grows despite the boundaries she sets. In the meantime, Naomi falls
for Buddy (Jason Schwartzman), a music producer who knew her when she was a
girl. The married buddy, Buddy spends time with her as a favor to his mother,
but, like the married Nick, falls for her and tries to hide it from his wife Jess.
(Analeigh Tipton) Some of the films photography is refreshing, its always good
to see a revitalized Brooklyn.
Knifes Out: The good
thing is, this dog finally ended so I didn’t have to shoot the TV to put me out
of my misery. Daniel Craig, an English actor, plays famous detective Benoit
Blanc who has a southern accent. I really wanted to go into the film and ask
him why he was talking like that and to please stop it.
Look, here’s a helpful
hint for actors. A real Southern accent falls into one of two categories and
their both based on class. The original southern accent was used by the wealthy
so they could let the world know that they learned to speak English from their
Black nannies, who spoke English with a mixed west African accent, hence the
southern accent. Jimmy Carters accent is an example of a studied, upper class southern accent. Everything else is a drawl, from a German word
meaning “to delay.” You can have one or
the other, not both, unless your Daniel Craig in a film that doesn’t end, like
Knifes Out.
The film is, of course, politically
correct. Almost all the white people are morons and the Blacks and Hispanic aren’t.
The cast is exceptional and some of the photography is wonderful. It’s the convoluted
story line that makes this a film to flee from.
Harlan Thrombey (Christopher
Plummer, God bless him) is a successful writer who dies. I can’t say I blame
him. I would kill myself too if I were in this film. His housekeeper Fran (Edi
Patterson) finds him with a slit throat. It looks like suicide, but maybe not.
The cops show up and jeopardize their
entire investigation by illegally allowing a private detective (This would be
Mr. Craig and his multi-southern accent) to tromp around the crime scene. Jamie Lee Curtis is in this, and she can do no
wrong in my book. So is Don Johnson and the delightful and talented Michael
Shannon and the equally delightful and talented Toni Collette. Anyway, skip this one and use
your time to watch something else, something good.
Horse Girl: Two things save this
film. Molly Shannon is one of them. She is a quirky delight. The other thing
that saves this film is that it is an accurate display of a person (Sarah,
played by Alison Brie) in the midst of deteriorating
mental health crisis, but that isn’t clear unless the film is watched from beginning
to end. It is a complicated story to tell and it’s told, overall, well. We need
more films that address the horrendous state
of mental health in America.
The only reason I figured it out
id that I watched with my wife who is a psychotherapist.
Sarah, Idiosyncratic, a bit goofy
and loveably naïve, is a socially awkward craft store employee whose family has
a history of mental illness and she doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand
she is slowly but surely slipping away.
The film ambles through the reassuring
sameness of Sarah’s days and her nights of strange dreams and nightmares.
Slowly she comes to believe that she's a clone of her dead grandmother, and a
time traveler who has been abducted by aliens although all of it is a result of
her poor psychological state of mind.
One of the problems with the
movie, however, is that the rambling tends to lead to nowhere once too often
and it would have been easier on the viewer if the story line made it clear somewhere
along the line that “Horse Girl” is about a woman progressively terrified of
her mental state and not of the figments her mental state has produced.
Tumbleweeds: I would recommend you pass on
this one. There is just nothing about it worth your time.The truth is, I
watched it with my wife because I had manipulated our screen time with foreign art
films with subtitles and I figured this would be a reprieve for her.
This is another “On the Road-headed
west to a new life” flick.
"Tumbleweeds," , a
gritty film, is about a troubled mother and her wise pre-teen daughter, (Of
course the kid is wiser than the mother, Hollywood has a problem with American
adults and parents families) who share a road journey to California while both
deal with the mother's immaturity, astounding ability to pick the wrong man, and free style sex life.
Michael J. Pollard is the film,
his last I think, and of course is absolutely refreshingly creepy. Jay O.
Sanders plays a co-worker who lost his own wife and is a truly gifted actor,
but he’s been miscast in this film. Not for a second did I buy the story line
that a guy like that would be dumb enough to involve himself with a nut case
like the mother.