Set against shifting political and musical environments and spanning at least four countries and 15 years, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War is a gorgeous and mournful ode to star-crossed lovers that feels equally sweeping and intimate.
Zula (Joanna Kulig) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) share names and characteristics with Pawlikowski’s own parents, though their story certainly differs a bit. As the film begins in post-war Poland, Wiktor is recording the songs of the people—folk songs handed down by peasants, which will become part of a new arts program aimed at celebrating Poland’s authentic voice. Until, that is, the program is co-opted and the songs become tributes to Stalin and agricultural reform.
Zula is unphased. A pragmatist, a survivor and a bit of a con artist, she wiled her way into the company by enchanting Wiktor with a song she’d learned from a Russian movie—not exactly a peasant’s lament.
As the film follows this very different and yet somehow connected pair, Pawlikowski casts a spell—with an assist from Lukasz Zal, whose black and white cinematography here is as glorious as it was in his Oscar-nominated 2013 collaboration with the filmmaker, Ida.
Together they capture an evolving tone and changing rhythm as folk ballads become jazz tunes, as Poland becomes East Germany and then Paris. In everything, Pawlikowski holds those melancholy, wistful notes just an extra beat. It’s a melody Kulig and Kot dance to beautifully.
Kulig impresses most as the ingénue who is master of her own future. Her performance is unpredictable and unapologetic, emphasizing the will of a character who does what she feels she must do, although that is rarely what anybody else expects.
Kot’s gentle, smitten but equally tortured character offers a fascinating, sometimes frustrating counterpart. It makes sense that these two creatures are based at least somewhat on living people. It would have been far too easy for them to fall into stereotypes, but instead they are as authentically confounding and beautiful as any committed and self-destructive couple.
Pawlikowski uses music to inform a shifting relationship; he uses a relationship to illustrate changing global politics; he leans on an impossible political situation to articulate insurmountable challenges within a relationship. The result is poetry.
“Sometimes it’s better to choose your own family.”
A softly nuanced testament to home being where the heart is (and the Palme d’or winner at Cannes), Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters finds its considerable magic by letting small moments reveal big emotions.
On their way back from pilfering a few items at the local grocery, a Japanese father and son find a young girl named Yuri outside alone, shivering in the Tokyo chill.
They take Yuri home for the night, with a plan to help her return to her parents the next day. But Yuri endears herself to the extended family of small time crooks she’s introduced to, and as Yuri’s behavior points to a possibly abusive home life, it is decided that she should stay.
Writer/director Koreeda returns to the nature vs. nurture themes he has probed throughout his career, most notably in Nobody Knows (2004) and Like Father, Like Son (2013). What defines a family most: bloodlines or genuine love?
Yuri joins a house crowded with characters who may or may not be blood relatives. Slowly, we learn about their lives outside the home, and the part each plays in the network of cons and thefts that allow everyone to keep eating.
The cast is universally charming, and when Koreeda is content to ride the casually observational pace he introduces, Shoplifters works humanistic wonders with its sweet vignettes of love and mercy.
Doubts about the family business slowly creep into the house, though, and with them an unusually heavy weight is added to Koreeda’s hand. Interactions begin to carry pregnant dramatic pauses that only highlight the surprising obviousness of the dialog that follows.
The catch-22, of course, is that it is the subtle effectiveness of the film’s first two acts that makes the hurried nature of the final act seem more desperate than it actually is. Disturbed only momentarily, the spell cast by the memorable family in Shoplifters is still sturdy, and one not that easily broken.
It’s that time of year! The Academy celebrates the best work in the industry and we celebrate the early, mainly terrible work of those same nominees. It’s Skeletons in the Closet season, people!
We will let you know up front that, because Sam Rockwell and Bradley Cooper have already been subjects of the program, we will not be discussing Clown House (Rockwell’s feature debut) or Midnight Meat Train (or My Little Eye, for that matter, though Cooper appears in both).
And let us also congratulate nominee Willem Dafoe for managing to make several decent horror films, and garnering his first Oscar nomination for his work in one great one—Shadow of the Vampire.
But enough about good movies. Here are the stinkers.
Dial up the full podcast, co-hosted by Senior Aussie Correspondent (and host of Golden Spiral Media’s Rewatch podcast), Cory Metcalfe.
5. Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part III
Viggo Mortensen has been a working actor for more than 30 years, which means bones in that there closet. There was the questionable Psycho remake, and his version of Lucifer in Christopher Walken’s dark angel camp classic Prophesy (featured on the 2018 Skeleton’s episode).
Let’s focus on his place with the inbred cannibal clan the Sawyers in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. Directed by Jeff Burr (From a Whisper to a Scream, Stepfather II, Puppet Master 4, 5 and Blitzkrieg Massacre), it’s a competently made if inspirationally dry episode.
Viggo plays Tex, and unquestionably outshines all the rest of the talent in the film. He’s sneaky, snaky, sexy, and he loves his mama.
4. Warlock (1989)
There is something to be said for this oh-so-Eighties adventure. Steve Miner (Friday 13th 2 & 3, H20, Lake Placid) directs from a screenplay by David Twohy (Critters 2, Pitch Black, The Perfect Getaway). The film follows witch Julian Sands 300 years into the future to 1989 USA, where he’s followed by witchhunter Redfern (Oscar nominee Richard E. Grant).
There’s nothing especially interesting about the film, and Lori Singer could not be more annoying in the lead, but both Sands and Grant elevate the material. The two veteran low-budget, crowd-pleasing horror filmmakers know how to give you something.
The flight sequences are too lame—in fact, all the FX promise to make you cringe—and much of the humor dates horrifically. But Grant commits to his character and Sands’s wicked grin makes up for a lot of plot holes.
3. Mary Reilly (1996)
Boy, there were high hopes for this bloated embarrassment when it came out back in ’96. Director Stephen Frears re-teamed with his Dangerous Liaisons screenwriter and stars John Malkovich and Glenn Close for a retelling of the old Jekyll and Hyde tale.
At the center, a plucky young housemaid named Mary (Julia Roberts).
Roberts’s career had begun its slide by this point, and this movie did not help things because she is just God awful. Oh my word, that accent.
Eight-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close plays Mrs. Farraday, proprietress of a brothel. Boasting gold tooth, smeared lipstick and sneer, Close camps it up with an accent a bit more bizarre even than Roberts’s.
There is so much wrong with this movie—its leaden pace, its inconsistent tone, its sense of self-importance, the fact that we’re supposed to believe no one realizes both guys are Malkovich, the idea of Malkovich in a sexy role, Roberts performance in literally every scene—it’s hard to know where to start.
Maybe just don’t.
2. Frogs (1972)
As the eco-terror flick from the Seventies opens, a handsome and manly brunette with no facial hair canoes through a swamp. He’s so manly!
Hey wait, that beardless brunette is Sam Elliott!
The manly Picket Smith (Elliott) ends up stranded on the vacation island of a wealthy family led by Ray Milland. He’s a dick. The frogs know it.
We get it, rich people who believe men are meant to rule the world will be the downfall of the planet. (If we didn’t know it in 1972, we know it now.) But couldn’t these scenes be briefer? Couldn’t there be any action at all?
Frogs? Seriously?
1. Death Machine (1994)
Holy cow, this movie is bad.
And we had more than a few to choose from, because Rachel Weisz makes a lot of movies. The Mummy was not good. The Mummy Returns was worse. Constantine—yikes. Even Dream House, which had all the earmarks of a decent flick, chose not to be.
But Death Machine, which showcases the young thespian for maybe 45 seconds, sucks right out loud. Written and directed by Stephen Norrington (Blade, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), it follows a young executive (Ely Pouget) as she tries to end the evil inventing of a mad genius (Brad Dourif).
Weisz plays Junior Executive, and her scene is the one that doesn’t blow.
Dourif is so wildly miscast as the long haired, heavy metal misfit that you almost overlook the idiocy of every moment of screen time.
Old Hollywood is a theme this week, with head scratchers and surprise gems in the mix. Join us as we talk about Stan & Ollie, The Kid Who Would Be King, Serenity, The Great Buster, Genesis 2.0, Yours in Sisterhood plus new releases in home entertainment.
NIGHT. FISHING BOAT CABIN. DESPERATION HEAVY IN THE AIR:
McConaughey takes a long, emphatic drag on a cigarette, then downs a shot of rum, his constantly wet t-shirt screaming for mercy.
Hathaway vamps in from the thunderstorm, wearing a hat pulled down low and a raincoat from the “nothing underneath” collection at Victoria’s Secret.
“I still love you, high school sweetheart, and now you have to save me…and our child,” she purrs. “Take my abusive husband Jason Clarke out on your fishing boat, feed him to the sharks, and I’ll give you ten million dollars.”
SMOKE, DRINK, STARE, T-SHIRT SOMEHOW WETTER INSIDE.
Yes, the noir is strong with Serenity, with familiar tropes laid so heavy you know something must be up. So when writer/director Steven Knight finally does make his pivot a la Gone Girl, the real eyebrow-raiser is why.
Knight, whose career has shown flashes of brilliance (Eastern Promises, Locke), takes his latest in some wild directions, almost none of which make much sense. There’s plenty of pretty island scenery, “fish on the hook” and “one that got away” symbolism, along with some random supporting talent (Diane Lane, Djimon Hounsou) that feels as wasted as the leads.
The spoon-feeding that’s waiting at the end of Serenity is well-intentioned but structurally misguided, landing so far from the mark that just embracing that early Body Heat wave and riding it out might have made for a better crash.
Wouldn’t it be nutty to peek behind the curtain of one of cinema’s most famous pairs—your Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Bert and Ernie—only to find that they are exactly as entertaining and likable in person as they are onscreen?
That’s actually part of what makes Stan & Ollie, Jon S. Baird’s loving biopic of the famous comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, so peculiar a film. Go in expecting demons, divas and drama and you will be disappointed. If you’re looking for a tender image of partnership and friendship struggling to overcome a harsh business, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
The inexhaustible talent of John C. Reilly squeezes into a fat suit of Darkest Hour impressiveness as Oliver “Babe” Hardy. The physical transformation awes, but it’s the way the actor mines Hardy’s gentle good nature that impresses even more.
Coogan’s the real surprise. Not only is his resemblance to Stan Laurel almost eerie, but the performance is easily the best dramatic turn of his career.
Both actors, working from a wistful script by Coogan’s Philomena writing partner Jeff Pope, sidestep drama in favor of a kind of resigned camaraderie. Theirs is that well-worn relationship of both love and necessity that comes with decades of familiarity, unspoken grievances and love.
The actors’ chemistry is a fine match for that of the iconic duo, and through the pairing, Baird explores partnership in a more meaningful and less sentimental way than what you’d normally find in a “stars in their declining years” biopic.
The result is an endearing, if slightly underwhelming dramedy, enlivened by Baird’s charming direction. While the film is at its best when Coogan and Reilly quietly grapple with changes facing them, it is at its most enjoyable when art imitates life imitating art. That is, when Stan and Ollie drag a really big trunk up a big flight of stairs, only to let go of it, watch it slide back to the bottom, and do it again.
Like the comedy of Laurel and Hardy, this film is sweet, clever and entirely of another time.
Just eight best picture nominations this year and a list of contenders that clarifies what a kickass year 2018 was for female roles. Well done, chicas!
Do we have gripes? Well, honestly, not too many. Here’s the rundown.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
This is a good list. Strong. Not a lot of bones to pick here. Our heart goes out to anyone trying to narrow this field down to a single winner. Wouldn’t have minded seeing Nicole Kidman (Boy Erased) or Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace) get in, but how to make the room?
Amy Adams (Vice)
Marina de Tavira (Roma)
Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Emma Stone (The Favourite)
Rachel Weisz (The Favourite)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
We love Sam Elliott. Honestly, who doesn’t? Driver and Rockwell, too, and all were amazing in their respective films. But we would have had to leave them off in favor of Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther) and Lucas Hedges (Boy Erased). But no Timothee Chalamet for Beautiful Boy? That might be the biggest snub this year.
Mahershala Ali (Green Book)
Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman)
Sam Elliott (A Star is Born)
Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)
Sam Rockwell (Vice)
LEAD ACTOR
Another solid list, although how the entire world ignored three insane performances from Joaquin Phoenix this year—You Were Never Really Here, Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot, The Sisters Brothers—is beyond us. Please, please do yourself the favor and watch You Were Never Really Here. We’d have given him Mortensen’s slot, but we and the Academy disagree about that one particular film this year.
We would also have made room for Ben Foster (Leave No Trace) with a Malek/Dafoe coin flip.
Christian Bale (Vice)
Bradley Cooper (A Star is Born)
Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate)
Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Viggo Mortensen (Green Book)
LEAD ACTRESS
We would have applauded nods for Elsie Fisher in Eighth Grade and Toni Collette for Hereditary, but holy cow, people, this is acting. This is the art and the craft, right here. No bones. No complaints. Just awe.
Yalitza Aparicio (Roma)
Glenn Close (The Wife)
Olivia Coleman (The Favourite)
Lady Gaga (A Star is Born)
Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Had hoped for Black Panther and Leave No Trace (in a whiplashed swing from “everybody saw” to “nobody saw”). Buster Scruggs was a surprise, but when is it ever a bad idea to nominate the Coens?
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel and Ethan Coen) BlacKkKlansman (Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee) Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty) If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins) A Star is Born (Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper Will Fetters)
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
What we would have given to see Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade get some love here. Where would we have put it? Honestly, only The Favourite and Roma are better written, but in our book, it certainly deserved the slot designated to the self-congratulatory Green Book.
The Favourite (Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara) First Reformed (Paul Schrader) Green Book (Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly) Roma (Alfonso Cuaron) Vice (Adam McKay)
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Don’t mind the overrated Shirkers not making it, but shocked not to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor? here.
Free Solo
Hale County: This Morning, This Evening
Minding the Gap
Of Fathers and Sons
RBG
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FEATURE
Um…Burning? Really, did you just forget?
Capernaum
Cold War
Never Looks Away
Roma
Shoplifters
CINEMATOGRPHY
We’re a little surprised not to see If Beale Street Could Talk or First Man included, but none of these are weak.
Cold War
The Favourite
Never look away
Roma
A Star is Born
ANIMATED
This is just a fight for second place after Spider-Verse.
Incredibles 2
Isle of dogs
Mirai
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
DIRECTOR
Would have cheered for Lynne Ramsay (YWNRH), surprised not to see Bradley Cooper (A Star is Born) and disappointed not to see Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), but how great is it to see Pawel Pawlikowski make this list for his groundbreaking love story Cold War? Pretty great. (Also, Oscar likes black and white movies.)
Lee, Lanthimos and Cuaron, though, that is a trifecta we applaud until our hands ache.
Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman)
Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War)
Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite)
Alfonso Cuaron (Roma)
Adam McKay (Vice)
FILM
Only eight this year, which means we can wish for two without having to bump any. We wish for Eighth Grade and Hereditary. Then we’d bump Bohemian Rhapsody and admitted frontrunner Green Book in favor of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and You Were Never Really Here. There you go. We’ve dreamed up a nice list.
Black Panther
BlacKkKansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star is Born
Vice
The 91st annual Academy Awards will air Feb. 24th on ABC.
Thank you Netflix for financing and distributing Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece, Roma. No offense to the small screens that Netflix often lives in, but this one demands to be seen on the big ones.
A breathtaking culmination of his work to date, Roma pulls in elements and themes, visuals and curiosities from every film Cuarón has made (including a wonderfully organic ode to the inspiration for one of his biggest), braiding them into a semi-autobiographical meditation on family life in the early 1970s.
At the film’s heart is an extended group concerning an affluent Mexico City couple (Fernando Grediaga and the scene-stealing Marina de Tavira), their four children and their two live-in servants Adela (Nancy Garcia Garcia) and Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio).
The family unit will morph, stretch and strengthen by film’s end as Cuarón envelopes us in a languidly paced but visually sumptuous exploration of Cleo’s point of view.
A remarkable Aparicio quietly observes all that goes on around her—the tumult and the quiet of life inside and outside the house—as Cuarón’s camera performs a cross between poetry and ballet to capture those observations.
Filmed in gorgeous black and white, the picture is showy without being showy, it’s realistic with flourishes of absurdism. More than anything, it is proof of Cuarón’s mastery as a cinematic storyteller. The same fluidity he brought to his Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban serves a different kind of magic here, capturing the intimate and the epic, the simple and the wildly complicated with pristine clarity.
Sequence upon sequence offers a dizzying array of beauty, as foreground and background often move in glorious concert during meticulously staged extended takes that somehow feel at once experimental and restrained. The effect is of a nearly underwater variety, a profound serenity that renders any puncture, from a street parade moving blindly past the distraught woman in its path to a murder in broad daylight, that much more compelling.
Roma is filmmaking of the most consummate skill. Though it’s anchored in family strife that might feel at home in a Lifetime melodrama, the film achieves an intimacy that’s grand, detailed and perhaps more than anything else, inviting. Accept that invitation, and Cuaron will serve you a feast not easy to leave behind, even if you want to.
Can Shyamalan do his trilogy right? Is Shoplifters the best foreign language film of the year? Are fraternities ever a good idea? We cover Glass, Shoplifters and Pledge, plus all that’s worth note in new home entertainment, on this week’s podcast.
M. Night Shyamalan has been grappling with expectations for nearly twenty years. They were high when he was blowing our minds with twist endings, but the craving for another Sixth Sense experience led its follow up, Unbreakable, to be wrongly labeled as a step down.
After years of diminished returns led to zero expectations for a Shyamalan project, Unbreakable began to get its due in retrospect, a hand the writer/director played perfectly with the riveting Split three years ago. That film stood tall on its own, but when the drop-the-mic final scene revealed it as an Unbreakable sequel all along, expectations for the next round went skyward pretty damn fast.
Or was that just me?
I know it wasn’t, and while Glass caps thetrilogy with a dive into comic book lore that is completely fascinating to watch unfold, it lands with a strangely unsatisfying thud.
Split left us with The Beast – the most dangerous of Kevin Crumb’s (James McAvoy) “horde” of personalities – on the loose in Philly. Glass begins with David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who has spent the years since Unbreakable running a security firm with this son (Spencer Treat Clark in a nice return) and walking the streets as a mysterious vigilante hero dubbed “The Overseer”, tracking him down.
Their standoff leads to an early burst of crowd-pleasing action, and a trip to the psych ward for both Crumb and Dunn – the very same hospital where Elijah “Mr. Glass” Price (Samuel L. Jackson) has been serving his life sentence.
Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) arrives to define the film’s central conflict, telling them all that superpowers are only for comic books, and everything remarkable about their lives can be deconstructed and explained, much like a magic trick.
Shyamalan’s feel for pace and sequencing is fine here, as is his changing color saturation when superhero themes gain strength. The film’s first two acts build a compelling arc on the fragility of human potential set against the ambitious premise of comic books as real life.
As Crumb and his 23 identities, McAvoy is completely mesmerizing once again, able to move freely between contrasting personalities with such incredible precision the understated performances around him seem only right.
Willis’s default setting of steely glares serves him well as the reluctant savior, Jackson gives his scheming mastermind the right mix of brilliance and condescension, and Paulson wraps Dr. Staple in a fitting air of mystery from her first introduction.
It is only Anya Taylor-Joy, returning as Casey “the girl The Beast let go,” whose talent seems ill-placed. While Casey is seemingly there as a reminder of Crumb’s humanity, the frequent tight closeups on Taylor-Joy’s comic book ready eyes become a heavy handed blur to the message.
But with Split putting Shyamalan firmly back in his groove, expectations for an unforgettable end to the trilogy create a uniquely painted corner. Potent storytelling gives way to declarations that ring of self-serving defenses of the filmmaker’s own work, while more obvious foreshadowing overtakes the nifty, hide-in-plain-sight subtlety.
Would Glass have worked better if we hadn’t been standing around staring all this time? Probably. but Shyamalan got us here with skill, and he gets us out with a film that’s easy to respect, but hard to cheer for.
