As someone who was less than impressed by John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, I was happy but not surprised that John Wick: Chapter 4 turned out to be good. The film absolutely will not please those who have always had a problem with the series's aesthetic of excess and lack of "meaning." But if you want to see it just because you like Scott Adkins and Donnie Yen, you should.
The first film discussed below, Radu Jude's Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, is one I've found myself thinking of fairly regularly since I saw it. It's been a while since I saw a movie from the last 5 years or so that I can say that about. That said, the best film I watched in the last three months—the best film I've watched since Letter from an Unknown Woman in 2021, and one of the best films I've seen period—was definitely Compensation.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)
This film is funny, but it's a little too easy to share the main character's extreme frustration with the ridiculous people around her to feel entirely like a comedy. The part when it all most seems like a big joke is the second of the film's three segments, which is a nonnarrative litany of words and their definitions reminiscent of Godard or even Hollis Frampton, accompanied by footage that often makes the definitions look farcical, ironic, or vulgar, while tying them to Romanian politics and history.
It's a film about how we always start our approach to any problem with preconceived meanings in mind, and how we struggle to use and defend them when we encounter recalcitrant people, or when the normal functioning of the world is thrown off. This isn't to say it's a film about how people change their minds so much as the unconscious change of word use and patterns of thought. That said, while it's not entirely pessimistic about what could change in the event of a system shock, it's not focused on the possibilities nearly as much as how silly people look fumbling around with old, obsolete definitions.
Knock at the Cabin (2023)
Some people find this to be a reactionary film about religious faith, but I think that's uncharitable. I doubt anyone would say that about A Record of Sweet Murder, the film Knock at the Cabin's story most reminded me of. And yet, while Record's God has a monstrous appearance but ambiguous motives, I would say the unseen God of Knock at the Cabin is clearly evil. Like Record and Koji Shiraishi's other films, it remains ambiguous for some time about what's really going on, but at the same time ratcheting up the sense of impending apocalypse while the characters argue over the explanation for it.
Knock at the Cabin resembles other recent Shyamalan films with its extreme close-ups, conspicuous use of short-focus, and a restlessly sweeping, spinning camera. I've known Shyamalan fans who compared him to Carl Theodor Dreyer, and at the time I didn't see it, but this film clarifies it for me; in retrospect, I can see it in Old as well. The film sticks almost entirely to one interior, and the constant movement and reorientation makes it feel like the place is bursting at the seams with activity. The characters strain to get beyond their limited world to find a more secure promise that what they believe is right, but they have no choice but to figure out how to live stuck where they are. Both the premise and the technique are similar to Dreyer's Ordet. But where the characters in Ordet struggle with beliefs over what makes life worth living, the characters in this film struggle with communication, obstructed by the differences in their class backgrounds and the main characters' past experiences with homophobic violence.
Leviathan (2012)
The sea is another universe, and we need enormous screeching machines to open portals into it. It coughs up all kinds of things, and our attempts to take what we can use from it require back-breaking work and leave behind trails of bones, flesh, and blood. Seagulls in this film start to look angelic just because whenever we see them we can tell which ways are up and down. This is the kind of film you watch to remind yourself how strange the world really is. It also reminds you how violent it is, though its tone is always pretty ambivalent.
Nostalgia (1983)
I sometimes have to remind myself that I like Tarkovsky's films. I have a kneejerk reaction to his name because I dislike the tendency of some film fans to express their opinions entirely in Tarkovsky quotes. The quotes themselves I often find true but not particularly insightful, and sometimes a little too sweeping or presumptuous. But some are illuminating.
When I went to see what other people had to say about this film, I was surprised to find that many people felt that this film is the one where Tarkovsky indulged a little too much. It's too slow, or mirthless, or the story is ridiculous. I thought this was the cleverest and most elegant film I've seen from Tarkovsky when it comes to connecting his pet themes with his views on duration in film.
Tarkovsky holds on locations full of small details that you catch onto slowly as you sit with them. You come to share something with the characters by occupying the same physical space. But Nostalgia reminds us that the people living in these places are, inside their heads, flashing back to different places, and sometimes entirely different worlds from the real world. The film is about a Russian man, Andrei, who visits Italy for research. Things Andrei perceives as mysterious or spiritual are seen as normal and practical by the Italian characters. He finds it easier to relate to Domenico, an outcast madman living in a derelict building, than everyone else. Domenico is the only other person who sees the world around him in a similarly pensive, estranged way. Andrei's alienation comes from a different personal history from Domenico's, but they're still able to share something in the present.
Take the X Train (1987)
The world depicted early on in this film is cold and alienating but simultaneously overstimulating with advertisements and neon storefronts. This is a film about a supernatural, invisible rogue train that terrorizes Japan's railroad infrastructure. The train is represented by arcs of lightning passing over the tracks. There's a scene in which people are gathered around the tracks at night, hoping to catch a glimpse of the train. Just as the train is arriving, a child runs onto the tracks to catch a firefly. Everyone panics, but the train abruptly stops just short of the child, vibrating threads of light hanging in the air over the tracks. After the child is removed from the tracks, the train powers forward and blasts straight through a metal barrier. It tears the barrier to pieces and builds itself a physical body from the debris. For reasons I feel no need to explain, this scene was extremely compelling, especially after the earlier parts of the film.
Toolbox Murders (2004)
This film is largely confined to an apartment building in Los Angeles with a number of dark areas cordoned off with plastic tarp for renovations, walls and ceilings stained yellow with age. It's a place of neglect, where the landlord brushes off every complaint the tenants make about the state of the place and where someone screaming their lungs out in the next room is assumed to be an actor practicing for a role. It's not a place anyone would want to be if not for its proximity to Hollywood, which the landlord won't shut up about. It's kind of a cinematic prison, like the homes in Skinamarink and Jeanne Dielman. It's also kind of a haunted house. But before either of those, it's a plain old shitty-but-affordable place to live.
None of the tenants' apartments really belongs to them, because the killer always has a back entrance. On the contrary, they belong to the building, their bodies torn apart by the same tools being used for renovations and ending up nailed to the walls or under the floorboards. In the end, it turns out that people in places like this are grist for the mill of cheap imitations of immortality.
Will-o'-the-Wisp (2022)
If Michael Clayton is a movie about how you shouldn't want to be respected by a bunch of suits, Will-o'-the-Wisp is a movie about how you should want to be respected by people who are silly, immodest, and unfiltered about their desires. There are a lot of things at stake in this film, with climate change looming the largest. But the film is not about addressing such issues as it's about psyching yourself up to have the commitment necessary to do so seriously. The main character only begins to figure out what his own real investments are after meeting people who hide nothing of their desires.
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