Everything here is beautiful; I love the look of the film stock and the old buildings, wet streets, fish markets and motel rooms, along with John Lurie's soundtrack. The central character is deeply interesting too, and it strikes me how much we still don't quite know about her and her motivations even by the end of the film. The one thing that took me out a little was the recurring – in at least one case, extended well beyond the…
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Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe 2023
I’m calling for a total and complete shutdown of French artist biopics until we can figure out what is going on.
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Riddle of Fire 2023
I don't think you even have to be all that much of a cinephile parent to despair of the offerings of theatrically distributed children's cinema: in any given year, you get one or two Pixar films that have about a 50% chance of being any good, a shitty Dreamworks animation, a few unbearable live-action films with a giant CGI animal, more Disney and then maybe the odd ambitious literary adaptation that's actually worth seeing. It sucks because cinema is a…
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Millennium Mambo 2001
Has (a few) moments that soar, and I appreciate that it's a film about twentysomething malaise and inability to move forward – something that lends a poignancy to its Japan-set ending and framing narration – but I just felt a little too disconnected from the characters to ever be totally engaged.