Device Notes

  This is a movie that wants to be confusing.  Lydia's past is revealed to us only in brief, blurry visions.  She hears mysterious sounds from unidentifiable sources.  They could be real, or they could be hallucinations or dreams.  Maybe they're ghosts.  The confusion is partly why I disagree with Richard Brody, who finds it obvious that Tár is an attack on identity politics.  But at least he acknowledges that the movie is like this, even if he thinks its only purpose is to give "plausible deniability to its conservative button-pushing."  There is a scene in which Lydia publicly lambastes a student at Juilliard for saying that Bach's misogynistic life makes it hard for them to take his music seriously.  Lydia offers some typical culture-war talking points against this character.  T he way this interaction eventually comes back to bite her is one of the more nonsensical things I've seen in a movie this year.  A student pos...

The Rise of Skywalker is a lawyerly movie.  Emotion, style, theme, etc., are less important than the esoteric rules it follows.  Compare Palpatine's urging Luke Skywalker to kill him in Return of the Jedi with his urging Rey to kill him here.  With Luke, the concern was that killing someone out of anger is wrong.  With Rey, it's that if she does so as part of some ritual, properly performed, the spirit of the Sith will possess her.  He gets her to agree to kill him by threatening the lives of everyone in the Resistance, and telling her she can save them if she kills him.   In fact, Rey would have been killing Palpatine for the same reason Darth Vader did in Return , namely, to save someone else's life.  But she still would have suffered the same consequences Luke would have suffered had he struck down Palpatine in anger.  The significance of killing a Sith Lord is no longer determined by personal character.  Rather, it's about being in the ...

The announcement of The Orbital Children came as a shock.  It was something I had been hoping to hear for almost 10 years, and I thought it was very likely I never would.  The director, Mitsuo Iso, is an animator, writer, and cinematographer best known for his work on a number of high-profile movies and TV series.  I highly recommend this post , because I don't think I can better do justice to Iso's career.  While he's had many prominent roles in production, there were many times he had to leave ideas by the wayside.   Maybe this is why his 2007 series Den-noh Coil , which I love, feels almost overstuffed.  It's a rare fully-realized, original work from Iso.  From the beginning, it slams you with made-up words, strange and suggestive imagery, and clashing factions of characters.  The first half of the show is exploratory and loosely focused, while the second half is a string of connected crises that follow up on what happened in the first hal...

  It opens with ancient Earth and early humans.   We see apes using tools.   Then it jumps forward a few hundred thousand years.   We see h umans in spacecraft.  Apes using tools.  It may be the most recognizable match cut ever: from a bone, a primitive tool, hurtling through the air to a cylindrical satellite orbiting the Earth, a modern tool.   Following this, a dance between the planet Earth and the objects surrounding it.   Everything spins slowly.  The majesty of the Earth and of space have become ours to marvel at, thanks to an elegance and stability that didn't exist in prehistory.  The ancient apes and the modern apes are both contained within the film’s first act, titled “The Dawn of Man.”   But it quickly falls in doubt whether this elegance can last, and if it is the best we can do.  Appropriate of a film from 1968, we see some cordial but tense exchanges between American and Russian scientists.  The next seg...

  To call David Cronenberg one of the greatest living filmmakers would be true but misleading.  He's 79 years old and of the 22 movies he's made, the most well-known are from the 1980s, though his films from the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s are as remarkable as his earlier films. The point is, whatever his role is for the future of cinema was probably defined a long time ago, and the impact of his films would be clear even if he was no longer working.   Crimes of the Future was originally planned for 2003.  Viggo Mortensen said that Cronenberg "refined" the story he wrote between then and now, but did not say when or how much.  In any case, Mortensen and several film critics saw the film as a return to Cronenberg's "origins."  One review referred to the film as Cronenberg's "foray" into body horror, apparently unaware either of Cronenberg's filmography or what the word "foray" means. If you are aware, though, you will not be surprise...

    I learned recently that a book I was looking forward to, The Political Economy of Hollywood by James McMahon of the University of Toronto, has in fact already been out for seven months.  I have my copy now and I suggest you check it out. Before Sunset (2004)  Before Sunrise is more romantic than this film and Before Midnight is more about the two leads, Celine and Jesse, what they think of each other, and their individual personalities.  This film stands out to me because of the course the conversation between Celine and Jesse takes.  Before Sunset is the only film in the trilogy that takes place in real time.  Sunrise and Midnight condense a few hours into 100 minutes.  Sunset depicts an unbroken conversation that takes eighty minutes.  It means Delpy and Hawke must act out in real time how the characters decide how sensitive the subject matter of their conversation should be, or how directly they want to answer each other's quest...