Village Vidiot

“Ragtime,” November 19, 2021 (1981), DVD.  My book group is reading and discussing E.L. Doctorow’s novel and so we decided to contrast it with the Milos Foreman movie presentation of the book.  I loved the book’s sweep, complexity, awareness, and insight into early 20th c. American culture.  The movie has a bangup cast, including Mary…

“The Long Riders,” October 20, 2021 (1980), DVD.  The brothers Carradine, Quaid, Keach and the Guests star in this energetic and interesting Walter Hill Western charting the rise and fall of the James-Younger gang of bank and train robbers whose exploits terrorized and captivated the nation’s interest after the Civil War.  Guerilla secessionist racist raiders…

“Riders of Justice,” Danish with subtitles, September 30, 2021 (2020), Hulu.  This dark serio-comic film from Anders Thomas Jensen has much to recommend it, although I didn’t have the over-the-top pleasure of so many reviewers.   His admiration for Quinton Tarantino’s work, including the mix of philosophy, humor, and carnage, is evident. Mads Mikkelsen is Markus,…

“Hell or High Water,” September 11, 2021 (2016), DVD.   Heist flicks are usually not my/our thing, but both Bronwen and I really liked this very intelligent and exceptionally well-written, well-directed, well-acted, and photographed film.  The West Texas landscape of towns declining in The Last Picture Show and ranches dustier than they were in Hud are…

“The Constant Gardener,” September 7, 2021 (2005), DVD.  We both appreciated the chance to see this British film adaptation of John Le Carre’s novel about love, corruption and abuse of third world populations by corporations.  It packs a lot in.  Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) is an unassuming British diplomat stationed in Kenya.  He’s much more…

“Jaws,” August 15, 2021 (1975), DVD.  I had the unusual experience of watching this with an adult who had never seen it before.  Hard to imagine.  And she’s a serious swimmer in open water including oceans and Long Island Sound.  Now she swims miles in Walden Pond every week.  My wife, Bronwen, has always been…

“Blancanieves,” July 27, 2021 (2012), DVD.  Watched down on Fire Island.  This Spanish black-and-white silent film homage to the ‘golden age’ of silent in the 1920s from Pablo Berger reconfigures the Grimm story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Bullfighter Antonio Villalta (Daniel Gimanez Cacho) is the tragic wounded king whose wife dies in…

“First Cow,” July 10, 2021 (2019), DVD.  Kelly Reichardt (director and co-writer) and her writing partner Jonathon Raymand (co-writer and author of the novel The Half Life,  from which this is derived) work together a lot, and I’ve loved their collaborations.  They do wonderful, thoughtful and contemplative films like Wendy and Lucy (2008) and Meeks…

“Bo Burnham: Inside,” June 4, 2021, Netflix.  My nephew Kyle was right in recommending this one to me.  Accomplished director (“8th Grade”), actor (“Promising Young Woman”) and established solo-comedian, Burnham spent many months of Covid worrying this into being.  It’s funny, terribly serious, sarcastic, insightful, and often very painful.   It’s about self-conscious, self-critical privilege.  It’s…

“The Father,” June 26, 2021 (2020), DVD.  Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for best actor for this difficult role and it is quite remarkable. Based on Florian Zeller’s play (he co-wrote the screenplay and directs), Hopkins plays Anthony, a man in his 80s who is sliding deeper into dementia.  His daughter Anne (Olivia Coleman in…

“Summer of Soul: (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), July 4, 2021, Hulu.  1969 marked a momentous year for popular music.  Woodstock brought 400-500,000 fans together for the concert in rain and mud.  It became both a free concert and a hugely successful movie that sanctified the moment.  The months prior to Woodstock…

  ”Tenet,” May 29, 2021 (2020), DVD with special features. Chris Nolan does big movies.  At 250 million dollars, with filming in six countries, a huge cast and crew, an amazing set of stunts, sets, technological innovations, and grand ideas, this certainly qualifies.  He prefers real special effects rather than CGI and some of these…

  “News of the World,” May 4, 2021 (2020), DVD with attached special features. This is my third western in a month after years of not watching one.  Quite a binge for me.  Tom Hanks and the amazing new young German actress Helena Zengel star in, and make this underappreciated and beautifully filmed Paul Greengrass…

  “Haymarket: The Bomb, the Anarchists, the Labor Struggle,” May 4, 2021, directed by Adrian Prawica , 2021, documentary, 83 minutes, now at various festivals. Americans’ collective sense of history is weak at best, and their knowledge of labor history is frequently non-existent.  Though most Americans work, the institutional labor movement struggles to survive, and…

  “My Happy Family,” April 13, 2021 (2017), Netflix (Georgian with English subtitles.)  I really liked this well-acted Georgian film written and directed by Nana Ekytimishvili..  It provides an engaging and informative look at the creaking process of change and movement in this developing Caucasian nation.  52-year old Manana (Ia Shugliashvili), a teacher of Georgian…

  “Promising Young Woman,” April 10, 2021 (2020), DVD.  Nominated for Best Picture.  I’m not a big one for thrillers; I mostly don’t enjoy the stress they induce.  This, however, is a very interesting film, and I would recommend it.  It is the first feature from actress Emerald Fennel (“The Crown” and “Call the Midwife.”) …

  “Tokyo Story,” April 5, 2021 (1953), DVD.  I had never seen this brilliant, quiet, black-and-white classic from Japanese master Yasujiru Ozu, but this Criterion release is a special presentation of his genius.  It’s 1953, and Japan is reindustrializing after its defeat and losses in World War II.  You see the building but it is…

  ”Collective,” April 4, 2021 (2020), DVD.  Stellar Romanian documentary up for both Best Documentary and Best Foreign Language Oscars.  I don’t have a clue as to how they managed to construct this in real time, except for the willingness of certain journalists and officials to 1) know what they had and document the process;…

  “Deadwood—The Movie,” March 28, 2021 (2019), DVD.  We both really liked this return to the incredibly vulgar, obscene, corrupt and immoral world of Deadwood, South Dakota in its mining days.  It featured the entire cast of the original series and was written by but not directed by David Milch, who did the three season…

  “Sound of Metal,” March 21, 2021, Amazon Prime.  Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor nominations are, deservedly, in on this one.  Ruben (Riz Ahmed and Oscar nomination) and Lou (Olivia Cooke) are an up-and-coming heavy metal duo and couple in this excellent film written and directed by Darius Marder.  She sings and plays guitar; he’s…

  “The White Tiger,” March 20, 2021, Netflix.  Adapted by Ramin Bahrani from the 2008  Booker Prize winning novel of the same name by Aravind Adiga, this Indian/American, Hindi/English hybrid looks at the new and old India clashing in the era of globalization.  This India is one of political corruption and payoffs, of brutally repressive…

  “Olive Kitteridge,” March, 2021 (2014), DVD.  We both very much liked this four-part series excepted from Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name.  Starring Frances McDormand as the remarkably difficult and often unpleasant title character (she co-produced with Tom Hanks), she’s a high school math teacher with a heart of coal. …

  “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie,” March 13, 2021 (2019), Netflix.  We’ve not seen “Breaking Bad” for several years and maybe it’s time to again as some of the references here probably got lost on us.  Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) is on the run after escaping from the fascist sociopaths of The Brotherhood during…

  “Nomadland,” March 12, 2021 (2020), HULU.   Oscar Nominated.   Our Francis McDormand mini-festival continued with this new and contemplative look at an unusual American population. Fern (McDormand) loses everything when the U.S. Gypsum plant she and her late-husband worked in closed and the town, Empire, Nevada essentially disappears.  She outfits a van for living and…

  “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society,” February 27, 2021 (2018), Netflix.  I had hoped for more from this film, based on the novel of the same name.  In the end, however, while the film satisfied in some ways by telling an interesting story, it felt overly romanticized for my taste.  It gives…