IDLES - Gift Horse

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: the surplus pt. 1

  I'd originally planned post one of these once a day, then it became at least one a week, then came doubt that I could even do one a month cuz life happens; man plans, God laughs. In defiance of God's will I'm compromising by consolidating everything into one post (I also have been trying to revisit a few here and there). Thankfully, there's so much to cover - almost overwhelming how many good movies have come out this decade (and so, so much I still haven't seen).

in no particular order:

 SINNERS

  Like The Batman in 2022, talking about Sinners is kind of impossible. Everything that can be said has already been said over and over because its popularity and good will is overwhelming. If you stick your head up and try to offer anything, you're just another soundwave arch in the mountainous cacophony and your voice will probably be unintended plagiarism of echoes.

  I do want to point out that it's neat how Remmick is Irish so there's-- no, it's already been said.

  But I could say that it's great how Michael B. Jordan plays two ro-- lol, that was the first thing everyone pointed out.

  Oh! The generational music sequence is a work of-- really? Stop.

  I know: I love the fact that Coogler used squibs. So many movies—this year alone—have foolishly relied on cgi blood and it annoys the fuck out of me (The Monkey, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Toxic Avenger). I appreciate that Coogler used corporeal red goo spraying everywhere; haven't seen anyone talk about that yet. Or! The fact that Remmick and Sammie's dynamic turns the magical negro trope inside out. To Remmick, Sammie exists solely to help him reconnect with his family. And, saddled with the guilt his father put on him about the devil following him, Sammie would have caved if it weren't for his [found] family protecting and preventing him. Hell, who's to say if Sammie's magic would have even worked if he'd been turned into a vampire? Coogler's characterization of Sammie is so thorough as he doesn't let Remmick's myopia define him; a lesser movie would. And that's why so much has been said about this movie because it's simultaneously thoughtful, artful and highly entertaining.

  Everything positive you've read about it (and its soundtrack) is true: a real-life crowdpleaser that more than earns its reputation.

  EEPHUS

  A deliciously fizzy hangout movie that has so many odd twists of lemon; funny and wholesome but also acerbic and sad. It hits even better on rewatch, like adding new condiments to a second hotdog. This is also the kind of movie that never compromises its initial set-up no matter what, barreling forward with defiant formal fortitude. Every moment of drama, comedy, catharsis and/or poignancy are deliberately unforced. Hell, the whole premise pointedly negates any conventional inclination to root for an underdog: everyone is equal. There's no moustache-twisting villain to hate because the reckoning for this beloved diamond is in the form of—checks notes— the construction of a middle school to help reduce the commute for local children. You even get the sense that the characters almost wish they were in a movie, so that this final game would be 'worth it' for them. Throw in the ticking-clock element and all the fun is undercut by an unending tension of the narrative denying their wish fulfillment but, at the same time, it reinforces its verisimilitude.

  THE FABELMANS

  Totally knocked on my ass by how confrontational and honest this is. Spielberg, via Judd Hirsch, grabs us and tells us he has an addiction and it's one that all artists have, like an inherent defect. It's such a wild moment because it's set up like a wholesome 'old-man-gives-sage-advice-to-a-young-protegé' scene when it's more of a harsh warning by a weathered cynic. Hell, it even sort of validates a spooky scene of prophetic delusion as his Mom says she was warned by her dead Mother that something terrible was coming. I also didn't expect to be reminded of Blow Out as Spielberg uses the tools of cinema to uncover the 'conspiracy' of his Mom's apparent infidelity. Then there's that^ moment of him in the mirror showing us just how dependent he becomes on his art just like his Uncle said he would.

  Absolutely none of these and other weird, thorny elements (like the borderline Oedipal scene of Sammy filming his Mother's sensuous headlight dance, where her dress is practically translucent) could have been predicted. The experience is a kind of shock to the system that almost equips the viewer to actively crave the typically saccharine Spielberg schmaltz. He even gives a kind of explanation as to why he leans on populist romance: it's a coping response. He just...can't help himself. This kind of autobiographical criticism impressed the Hell out of me, not to mention its incredibly sly, but playful, final shot. (David Lynch also kills it as John Ford)

  KAJILLIONAIRE

  A very pretty and refreshingly earnest movie about arrested development, the allegory of the cave, unconditional love, and how vital nurturing is. As a tragicomic character study of a woman learning to live authentically after being raised to scam, it operates as a kind of the inverse of Red Rooms as it's incredibly warm and funny (one of the funniest frames this decade is a shot of space with the subtitle 'your brain is in your tits' floating in the stars). Evan Rachel Wood gives the best performance of her career and Richard Jenkins (always great) somehow does the same. Miranda July's usual quirk shines through and this one, more than her other work, feels like a Wes Anderson movie with a full-blooded pulse - especially the last act.

  KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

  Makes me especially sore that this one is being relegated to a short blurb instead of its own individual post as it's too dense, ambitious, tragic and contradictory to merely sum up here. Wisely changed from the 'whodunnit' aspect of the book to an adamantly matter-of-fact look from within, Scorsese dissects the clogged aortas of America's black heart. Along the way he asks if he, too, has committed artistic malpractice by telling this story.  Taking the time to include himself in a metatextual coda about authorship is such a bold act of self-examination. And since this is a movie about complicity, evil, and the silent continuum of erasure it serves as a surprising thematic knot while also denying the audience a proper ending since there wasn't one for the Osage people; "there were no mention of the murders" being the final line of the movie. Soraya Roberts: "This is not a film about the Osage, but a film about settler America’s relation to the Osage, and, more largely, to the world. Specifically, it’s a film about a country’s colonialist, exploitative, violent, destructive, patriarchal subjugation of the world. This is a story of white America, as Scorsese has always been eager to tell. And just as Scorsese could not tell the Osage story, the Osage couldn’t quite tell this one."

 RRR

  Another story about the history of white supremacist imperialism but it's the diametric opposite of Killers Of The Flower Moon; where Scorsese opted for something subdued and, at times, quiet, this is pure uncut maximalist filmmaking. It's 3 hours long, highly stylized, cartoony, brutal, heart crushing, and just fucking running up and through and in every kind of eye-bugging image it can in the Dudes Rock canon. It even invites cliche lines like "just when you think it's topped itself, it does something new" because it really does that shit. It's equal parts buddy-cop action and a sprawling story about resisting against violent oppression that spans decades. I swear it takes an hour [or damn near close to it] to get to the full title card as it makes its personality known with two[!!] prologues. I'm exhausted just thinking about it and also nostalgic for this scene, that scene, etc. I stocked up on commas for this thing: all the shootouts, dance numbers, chases, wire work, and fight scenes to whet the largest appetite for action movie gluttons who are realism-intolerant. Eat up.

Fred Wiseman Was Right

When I find a new director, writer or musician, I lock into them and dive into their respective catalog. I knew of Frederick Wiseman after hearing about Titicut Follies years ago. Then I started hearing about his other work and how wide ranging it is. Titles like Welfare, Law and Order, and Public Housing. I started with a place I always go to, the library. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library presented the documentary form stricken of all of its tropes. There are no talking heads. No background music telling me what I should feel during a particular scene. The library is shown for all the public good it does. It has everything you could want: knowledge, education, community, race, class, politics. It explores these topics through budget meetings, book clubs, guest speakers pooled from diverse background, community outreach, brail classes, photo archives used for creators. The ins and outs of a particular institution or place is something that has fascinated me and something I really haven't seen since The Wire. The documentary was 206 minutes and I figured I'd divide it into two days. I ended up watching the whole thing in one sitting.

When I finished Ex Libris, I was hungry for more but I didn't know where to go next. Choosing from the rest of his forty two documentaries can be a daunting task. So I looked to a Letterboxd user named Esther Rosenfield, well versed in the language of Wiseman, for guidance. She pointed to Central Park as the best starting point. The next problem was access. Kanopy was the streaming service I kept hearing about to stream his films. The trouble here was, it isn't available in my area. So the next step I took was going to the Harold Washington Library and seeking out his docs that way. I got a hold of Central Park. 

After watching Central Park, I was again blown away by the ground he managed to cover. I sought out more. His distribution company Zipporah Films had a website in which you can order them. The pricing however was too high for just a DVD-R. So I crossed my fingers and hopped and Ebay and found a user selling them for 30% off the price Zipporah had listed. In the mean time, I would rent Aspen and Public Housing from the library. Two radically different settings. One a vacation spot consisting of 95% white people. The other setting a housing project where everyone is black. Once again, I was taken with how many incredible scenes there are. There are people documented here who I will never forget. 

I sought out any podcast there was on Wiseman and landed on one that covers each film. Two hosts and a different guest for each film they cover. 

Learning about Wiseman's process is something that endeared me even more to his films. When he begins filming a particular place, he has no idea what the film is going to be about. There's no script. No outline. No research. He finds the film in the edit. For four to six weeks, he works in the institution he portrays. He then spends a year editing. He starts from hundreds of hours of footage. He begins by reviewing the material and uses a grading system adapted from the Michelin star guide of 1 to 3 stars. At the first phase, he sets aside forty to fifty percent of the material. It takes him six months to do all of this. After editing these sequences he begins to work on structure. It is through working on the structure, he is able to find a shape and what the film will ultimately be about. So when you sit down and watch one of his films, it begs the question, of all the footage he chose to keep, why did he keep that. How does it connect with the whole and what is he trying to say with it? 

Because Wiseman's films rely on conventional techniques of narrative construction (establishing shots,  cutaways to reaction shots, continuity editing), individual sequences are relatively easy to understand. His cameraman John Davey employs a good deal of camera movement and long takes. These shots require just as much active participation on the viewer's part as the editing does. Wiseman scholar Barry Keith Grant observes, "The mosaic structure encourages the viewer to focus on the logic of cinematic construction and institutional organization rather than empathize or identify in any consistent fashion with specific individuals." When watching Welfare, it felt like watching Nashville for the first time. 

Fred says he never pushes a point of view on the audience because he abhors being didactic. Instead, he is dialectical, asking the viewer to tease out meaning by discovering the structural logic in his work. The viewer, in a sense, repeats Wiseman's own process by discovering the structural logic in his films and exploring their implications. "They have to fight the film, they have to say, 'What the hell's he trying to say with this? And they have to think through their own relationship to what they're seeing." 

He makes call backs and parallels to his previous films so with each new film of his I watch; a new piece of the puzzle is unlocked. In an interview Wiseman compared the theme of education in both High School and Basic Training. "In many ways, the army was much more successful in its educational method than Northeast High was." When I first watched Public Housing, I was taken with the sharp contrast regarding community when compared with Aspen. On the second watch, I watched it after Welfare and again, it felt like a continuation of bureaucratic frustration but instead of the confinement of an office, the canvas is an entire housing project. 

Wiseman makes no pretense at being objective. When it comes to the "cinema is truth" discussion he scoffs. "The notion that cinema is the truth is preposterous I never get involved in those discussions. Everything is subjective and everything represents a choice. To use the word "truth" is incredibly pretentious. It's such a typically French term: cinema verité."

Looking back at the last fourteen films of his I have seen, I am more than thankful for all the faces and places etched into my brain. Helen Finner tirelessly stating her case on the phone about the importance of the housing project in Public Housing, the daughter outraged at the "runaround" the welfare office is giving her mother and the dismissive reaction of the office worker in Welfare, the juxtapositions of agriculture work to a rich couple getting married in a hot air balloon in Aspen, the 45 minute scene in Deaf between the administrator, counselor, mother and deaf child, the way the guards mock the patient Jim in Titicut Follies, the birthday chicken scene in The Store, Steve the mescaline guy from Hospital. I could go on. There are dozens of unforgettable scenes across the 15 films of his I have watched that have run the spectrum of emotions. From horror to laughter to shock to tension to sadness.  

When I think about the long journey ahead (30 films to go!!) I realize just how monumentally generous Frederick Wiseman has been in his contribution to cinema. I haven't even hit the halfway point and already consider him the biggest discovery of the last fifteen years and locked into my top 10 favorite filmmakers. 

You can watch the full-length documentary Hospital here.