Films etc.

This is continuing the list of films I saw in the year 2000 and notes I wrote about them at the time. As before, current updates are in bold.

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8/17. MABOROSI (1995) at Walter Reade. Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, who made AFTER LIFE, which I sort of liked at the time, but now would like to see it again in light of this earlier film. I really liked MABOROSI. His style and way of looking at the world is reminiscent of Ozu. No closeups in the entire film; I think the closest he got were several medium closeups. This kind of physical distance can result in an emotional distance from the characters, yet this film seemed full of feeling that’s very hard to describe. Few of the scenes advanced the “plot” in any conventional Western way. The film is almost anthropological in the way it just shows us locations and people and what they’re doing. A young widow’s efforts to understand why her husband apparently committed suicide are at the core of the film, but it’s almost never talked about. I also felt a kind of aprehension or anxiety that further tragedies were going to occur, or could occur, and maybe the fragility of life is part of the point of the film. The way it’s just presented without any usual explanations for the benefit of an audience reminds me of Abbas Kiarostami’s THE WIND WILL CARRY US.

I saw Maborosi again a week later on 8/24 and made this note: “Holds up on second viewing, though of course the sense of discovery is gone. Was able to admire the formality of the style more, but had less of an emotional experience.” This was Kore-eda’s first feature, an impressive debut considering how self-assured it is. He’s gone on to make many excellent films, which I’m always anxious to see.

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8/22. RAN at Union Square 14. Re-release, new print & sound. Looks good, though image is a little soft, I thought. This didn’t blow me away like I remember first time I saw it, though that time was at NY Film Festival with Kurosawa in attendance, so that was a real event. Still very striking. Toru Takemitsu’s score is great. Very mournful music. Very few, if any, real closeups. Mostly long & medium shots, long takes. The battle scenes are very graphic, though I thought the blood, and there was a lot of it, was generally too red, too bright, which undercut the realism for me. Amazing that Kurosawa was 81 or so when he made this. Must have been an arduous shoot.

I’ve seen Ran a number of times over the years, most recently in a 4K restoration last year in a 40th anniversary release at the IFC Center. At the time I made the following note: “My only reservation is that the blood (and there’s lots of it), sometimes didn’t look realistic, bright red doesn’t seem right.” This is almost exactly what I wrote in the entry above, so I guess my feelings about the blood stayed with me.

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9/12. NURSE BETTY at Campus Theater, Iowa City IA. Like it a lot. Renee Zellwegger, Morgan Freeman & Chris Rock were especially good. Unexpected movie from Neil Labute, though. More like a Coen Bros movie with a little Tarantino thrown in.

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9/25. HOUSE OF WAX at Film Forum. 3D screening. Have seen this before, but always interesting to see, since I think it uses the 3D process the best of any of the films made during the 3D craze in the 50s. Also showed the only WB Bugs Bunny cartoon shot in 3D, “Lumberjack Rabbit”, which isn’t very good, especially coming from Chuck Jones. Maybe I would’ve appreciated it more if I’d been wearing the correct eye glasses under the 3D glasses. Realized about 10 minutes into WAX that I’d put the 3D glasses over my reading glasses, which I was wearing when the program abruptly started up. I was in too much of a hurry to put my book away and get the 3D glasses on at the time.

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10/9. CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON at the New York Film Festival. Great, really enjoyed this, even seeing it at Avery Fisher. Michele Yeoh is especially good, brings a lot of feeling to her character. The fight scenes are amazing, though I didn’t like the one in the tree tops so much, it was just too much of a stretch for me. Also, the lengthy flashback sequence to the princess in the desert and her encounter with the bandit guy she falls in love with interrupts the main story, kind of fractures the structure, even though it’s a great episode in its own right. These are small points, finally, considering how much I liked the movie.

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10/20. THE YARDS at Sony Lincoln Square. Directed by James Gray (LITTLE ODESSA). Nice downbeat tone, but doesn’t really climax. Or maybe it does, but not in way that’s satisfying to me, or maybe I was just missing a big violent scene that would cap it off. Wahlberg is good, but his character mainly reacts; the part doesn’t give him all that much to do. Joaquin Phoenix’s character is actually the most interesting, along with James Caan’s. I wanted to like it more, but basically felt “so what?” by the end. One very good scene is when a guy has come to Wahlberg’s mother’s apartment to kill him. The guy is walking down the hallway with the camera tracking ahead of him, slightly slow motion, and what makes it interesting is that the natural sounds are dropped very low or out entirely and the music is low, ominous chords, kind of a grinding sound.

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10/21. BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET at Walter Reade. Had never seen this before. It’s very funny at times, though I found myself put off at times by the response of the audience, which seemed to be largely Italian. Felt their laughter was excessive, that what they were laughing at wasn’t quite that funny. Of course, if these people were indeed Italians, then they were probably picking up on language stuff, etc that I was obviously ignorant of, that the subtitles couldn’t convey. Interesting seeing Mastroianni and Vitorrio Gassman looking so young. This is part of a Toto series, though Toto has a guest role, appearing in only several scenes, but very effectively.

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11/14. RED PLANET at Loews Astor Plaza. Not as bad as the reviews I saw made out. Much, much better than De Palma’s disasterous MISSION TO MARS earlier this year. Thought Carrie-Anne Moss came off the best, despite the fact that hers was a fairly passive role. Tom Sizemore is a terrific actor, and Val Kilmer usually has a lot of presence, but their characters as written didn’t give them much to work with. But compare this to Kubrick’s 2001, 32 years old now, or ALIEN. PITCH BLACK, with a lower budget (I’m assuming) and a much wilder, more lurid style, was a lot better, I thought, and the situation is actually quite similar to RED PLANET.

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11/16. PIE IN THE SKY: THE BRIGID BERLIN STORY at Walter Reade. Part of the Indenpendent’s Night series. Pretty interesting documentary about someone heavily involved with the Andy Warhol scene. The interview segments with Brigid Berlin today were the most interesting to me. A friend, Vic Losick, shot this, which I guess was the main reason I decided to see it, though I’m glad I did. Can’t imagine the film will have any sort of wide appeal, but I guess it’s the rare documentary that does.

My closing comment about documentaries rarely having wide appeal ignores the popularity of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, March of the Penguins, Grizzly Man, Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens, and Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, to name but a few. Maybe not blockbusters, but not exactly rare.

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11/17. THE SIXTH DAY at Loews E-Walk. Cloning movie starts out pretty well, but goes off track after 30-45 minutes and gets quite absurd and unbelievable. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pretty good, though the scenes between him and the cloned Arnold are generally bad. There’s little or no attempt to give these characters much depth or history. Robert Duvall brings more to his role than it deserves. Seems like he’s actually trying to suggest some depth for the character, but maybe he just can’t help doing that as an actor. Tony Goldwyn is just a bad guy and that’s about it. The first part of the film looks to be influenced by Paul Verhoeven’s ROBOCOP in its attention to interesting and funny details, i.e. TV broadcasts, news items, advertisements, etc that give a sense of that particular world and society. The “twist” near the end with the Arnold we’ve been with finding out he’s the clone and the other guy’s the real Arnold, and not the other way around, reminds me of something out of Philip K. Dick. All in all, a fairly useless movie, though not terrible.

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11/19. BOUNCE at AMC 25. Not bad, though my primary interest was in seeing it in digital projection, which I thought looked great, though as with DINOSAUR, I’d really like to see it in 35mm projection side-by-side to compare. Ben Affleck & Gwyneth Paltrow are very good in this. Doesn’t seem to do all it could with the material. Was also very aware of two scenes in the trailer that didn’t make it to the final cut. Those scenes suggested more development of Affleck’s character, or maybe just his problem with his relationship with Paltrow. Directed by Don Roos, who was the writer/director of THE OPPOSITE OF SEX.

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11/22. THE TRENCH at Film Forum. Pretty good, but didn’t quite get to where I think it wanted to go by the end. Also seemed a little stage bound by being in the trenches basically the entire movie. Of course, it is called THE TRENCH. The performances make it worth seeing, though I had trouble understanding all the dialogue.

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11/23. UNBREAKABLE at AMC 25. M. Night Shyamalan’s followup to SIXTH SENSE, also with Bruce Willis. The trailers are quite clever in that they don’t really don’t tell us what the film’s about beyond the initial train wreck survival. People expecting another SIXTH SENSE are going to be a little confused by this, I think. I was amazed that Willis turns out to be a superhero, in a true comic book sense, and is unaware of the extent of his “powers” until clued in by Samuel L. Jackson’s character, who is also revealed to be a mad villain at the end, Mr. Glass. The movie teeters right on the edge of absurdity with this, but I think almost pulls it off. I think Shyamalan was trying for something more mysterious and spiritual, but “real”, which may have prevented him from going further with the superhero angle, though I guess he goes pretty far with it. Great scene when Willis’ kid is going to shoot him just to prove Willis is indestructible.

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11/24. LA BUCHE at Paris Theater. First feature directed by Daniele Thompson, who I hadn’t hear of before. Sabine Azema, Emmanuelle Beart & Charlotte Gainsbourg play three sisters preparing for the Christmas holiday in Paris. Claude Rich is their father. Strange to see him looking so old after seeing him in Resnais JE T’AIME JE T’AIME this summer, but that was made in 1968, so he was 31 years older when this was made last year. Sabine Azema, who was my real draw to this film, having liked her so much in the Resnais films this summer, looked quite a bit older than she did in SMOKING/NO SMOKING from 1993. I liked this movie. It could have been quite sentimental, given the situations, but avoided taking that route.

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11/25. QUILLS at Lincoln Plaza. Philip Kaufman’s take on Doug Wright’s play about the Marquis de Sade’s final years in a nuthouse. Geoffrey Rush tends to put me off, but he’s well cast as de Sade. Kate Winslet & Joaquin Phoenix are very good. Michael Caine is good, but he doesn’t have much to do except be the bad guy. I thought the movie went on a little too long, plus the final scenes were neither that satisfying or convincing. Nonetheless, it held my attention and I liked it. Small point: the last scene with de Sade in the cage, having written on the walls with a mixture of his own shit and what else, there’s no way he could have shit that much to do all that writing.

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11/25. FOOLISH WIVES at Walter Reade. Goofy Erich von Stroheim extravaganza, but interesting. Live orchestra accompaniment was nice, but not spectacular. Interesting detail of a character reading a book titled “Foolish Wives”, and when there’s a closer shot of the cover we see that it’s written by Erich von Stroheim. Kind of like a Hitchcock appearance in his own film. Very grim scene of von Stroheim’s knifed body being dumped down a sewer manhole by the father of a girl his character tried to molest.

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11/29. ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER at Film Forum. Documentary about the Palestinian terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Found it interesting, since I didn’t really know anything to speak of about what had happened. But seemed like it pushed some easy buttons. Particularly interesting that the filmmakers were able to interview the last surviving member of the Black September terrorist group. We’re told in an end title that he’s survived many assassination attempts (the other two survivors were subsequently assassinated) and is living somewhere in Africa. It would be interesting to know how the filmmakers contacted him and arranged the interview, especially since their sympathies seem to be with the Israelis.

Subsequent theatrical features concerning this event include Stephen Spielberg’s excellent Munich (2005) and the smaller but equally excellent September 5, in which the ABC sports broadcasting team has to switch gears to cover the crisis as it unfolds.

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11/30. LIMBO at 92nd Street Y. Third film in Annette Insdorf’s “Reel Pieces” series. Didn’t go last week. Almost didn’t this week, but wanted to see David Strathairn in the Q&A following. I really like this movie. Strathairn was great in the interview. He said that not only is the ending unresolved, but he thought nothing else in the movie is resolved, either. I think this is true. We never really find out how things “work out” for any of the characters. Sayles really went out on a limb doing this.

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12/1. A HARD DAY’S NIGHT at Film Forum. New print and new sound. Looks great, a spotless picture. Still like seeing this. The jokes that weren’t that funny to begin with still aren’t, but small matter. Lots of very clever visual storytelling in this. With this film and HELP!, Richard Lester can lay claim to helping shape the way we perceived the Beatles. Not to mention the major influence on the whole world of music videos yet to come. So maybe Lester is also one of the inventors of MTV.

The “comedy” concerning some of the supporting characters is very lame and really took me out of the movie the last time I saw it a few years ago. Though the music and the Beatles themselves are still great, which I suppose is what matters. For me, Help! is a better film.

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12/2. PROOF OF LIFE at Sony Lincoln Square. Taylor Hackford movie with Meg Ryan, Russell Crowe, David Morse & David Caruso. Liked it, mainly the first 3/4 or so, but the big commando raid felt kind of bogus, also the final sequence when Crowe has delivered Morse back to Ryan didn’t play very well. People in the theater were laughing in spots. The Van Morrison song under shots of Crowe watching Ryan drive off with Morse is a major mistake. Russell Crowe handles this kind of extremely competent character very well, and I like watching him do it.

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12/3. A GOOD BABY at Walter Reade. Good film with Henry Thomas and David Strathairn. Had sort of a Flannery O’Connor feel, maybe because of the rural, backwoods Southern setting (actually North Carolina per the end credits). Strathairn is quite convincing as a duplicitous and murderous traveling salesman. I was concerned that from the time Thomas finds the baby in the woods in the beginning through to the end we never see anyone have to change the baby and only once is the baby shown being fed. I would think this would be a big concern with any baby. Some of the landscape shots were absolutely incredible, such a painterly range of green and brown.

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12/9. CHOCOLAT at Sony Lincoln Square. Excellent, liked it a lot. Lasse Halstrom followup to CIDER HOUSE RULES. With Juliet Binoche (looking much healthier than she did in ALICE ET MARTIN), Judi Dench, Alfred Molina, Johnny Depp, Lena Olin, Carrie Anne-Moss (whose appearance is totally transformed from THE MATRIX). The movie has a somewhat magical feel. The voice-over narrator’s first line is “Once upon a time…”, which invokes a fairy tale, and the first appearance of Binoche and her daughter approaching the village on foot wearing identical red hooded capes, adds to this. A happy ending is never in doubt, but the way we get there is really engaging. Very satisfying, top to bottom.

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12/10. PLENILUNIO at Walter Reade. Part of the yearly “Spanish Cinema Now” series. Hadn’t planned to see this, but glad I did. Directed by Imanol Uribe (2000), who I’d never heard of before. Really liked it. Concerns a police inspector investigated the murder of a girl about 12 years old. Also his love affair with the dead girl’s teacher. The actors are great; they convey great depths of feeling. The woman who plays the teacher, Susanna, is very hot, though not in a “babe” way; she’s a real woman — sexual, intelligent, independent. There are some scenes with young girls here that I think would be a problem in an American film. An early scene, after the discovery of the dead girl on the riverbank, is at the medical examiner’s and the camera tracks alongside her nude body, not an overhead shot, but we see her hairless vagina. Later in the film the killer has left a second victim for dead, but she’s still alive, naked on the same riverbank. She manages to get up and climb up the bank and into the street. We see her naked from behind. I think American audiences, or the MPAA, somebody, would be very nervous about these scenes. There’s nothing salacious about them in anyway, however. They just make the film that much more powerful. I really liked the actor who plays the police inspector, Manuel.

Saw this again at Walter Reade on 12/26 that year and noted that it held up well on a second viewing. Haven’t seen it since.

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12/15. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH at DGA Theater. Didn’t hold my attention as much as when I saw it at the New York Film Festival. Was noticing how careful Davies was in each scene to maximize what was a fairly low budget, how little we actually see of an outside world. Through bits and pieces at the edges of the frame, angles and shadows, the film suggests settings much larger than what we actually see. There are very few exterior wide shots, certainly not in the urban settings. Gillian Anderson and Eric Stolz are really good. Terence Davies was there to introduce the film and participate in an interview and Q&A following. He’s given to bitchy behavior and outbursts. His personality seems quite at odds with the totally sober film he made. I also had this impression at the Q&A after the NYFF screening. Don’t care for him personally, but it’s a good film.

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12/16. BILLY ELLIOTT at Sony Lincoln Square. Finally saw this and liked it. Had held off, for some reason, maybe the influence of a few negative things I picked up from glancing at the reviews when it opened. Jamie Bell is terrific in the title role. I thought the family caved in a little too quickly on their opposition to Billy’s ballet aspirations. Julie Walters is great as his first ballet teacher. I also liked that they let these working class characters talk the way they talk, so it’s a lot of “fucks” and “twats”, which means an R-rating here, which is kind of too bad. It ostensibly shuts out a lot of younger people who’d probably find the movie inspiring.

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12/17. TRAFFIC at Ziegfeld/Movies 101 screening. A friend invited me to the last screening in the fall term of Richard Brown’s film class, which I’d taken before. Liked it a lot, though wasn’t emotionally blown away like I wanted to be. It’s really well made, and has a rough, documentary look and feel. The use of different film stocks (presumably, though this effect might have been achieved in the lab) reminds me of THREE KINGS. All the acting is outstanding, with Benicio del Toro being especially good. The closing scene of Del Toro at a Little League (or equivalent) baseball game at night is a fine positive note on which to end the film, since building the ball park was his price to the DEA for his assistance. The Michael Douglas as drug czar storyline is slightly weaker than the other two, maybe because his character is finally pretty ineffectual.

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12/23. STATE AND MAIN at Lincoln Plaza. Funny and clever, but in a very smug, smartass way. All the acting was good, i.e. William H. Macy, David Paymer, Alec Baldwin, Rebecca Pidgeon. Seemed like it had Preston Sturges aspirations. Didn’t quite buy Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character; he seemed a little too dense to me.

Tried to watch this again a couple years ago and couldn’t get through it. No longer thought it was “funny and clever,” even in a smartass way. Seemed very forced and condescending this time. Good cast, though.

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12/23. O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? at Union Square 14. Liked this Coen Bros. movie a lot more than I thought I might. It’s a real fable; quotes and parallels with “The Odyssey”, though I didn’t get all the references. Great music. There’s a great moment when a cow gets hit by a speeding police car.

As with The Big Lebowski, which I initially did not like but later came to love, this film took time for me to realize how great it is. Good stuff frequently takes a while for people to catch up. Stanley Kubrick’s films are another example of this.

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12/29. SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE at Loews E-Walk. Liked this. John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck are terrific. Eddie Izzard finally got a good screen role. The background design behind the main titles is great, really creates a mood, plus the score is very good. Wasn’t sure if Udo Kier and Cary Elwes believed Murnau when he finally tells them the truth about Schreck. Do they really believe Schreck is a vampire? Did I miss something? Schreck approaching the camera at the end is quite unsettling.

On January 6, 2001, I saw Shadow of the Vampire again at AMMI (now called the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens). Dafoe was there for an interview and Q&A after the screening. When asked how he got into the character of Max Schreck as a real vampire, he said that the makeup did most of the work for him, he was already there. Also, I love the scene where Schreck snatches a bat out of the air and chomps down on it, to the consternation of those nearby.

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Okay, that does it for this one. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

This is a follow-up to the four previous installments of Selected Takes. In 1996, I started keeping a log of films I saw. Initially, I wrote notes for each film expressing my reactions, but eventually wrote less and less until I basically stopped sometime in 2001. Got lazy. I’d written these just for myself and had no thought or intention at the time that they might one day be released into the wild, so to speak. The films from 2000 in this post aren’t the only ones I saw that year, just those I wrote about and want to include here.

As before, when I mention a Sony or Loews theater, these are now AMC. AMMI (American Museum of the Moving Image) is now the Museum of the Moving Image. BAM is the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Except for minor edits and a few notations, I’ve left these entries as they were originally, though I’ve added posters for a little color. Present-day comments are in bold.

Since there are too many films for one post, I’ve decided to split this into two parts.

Also, I want to apologize for the overuse of adverbs such as “pretty” (as in “pretty good”), “really,” and others. This tends to be how I talk. I changed some of them in this post, but then figured what the hell, it is what it is.

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1/6. RESERVOIR DOGS at BAM Rose Cinema. Great seeing this again on big screen. It’s actually a much better film than I’d remembered, holds up very well. Harvey Keitel was there for q&a afterwards, which was nice, but brief and the moderator kind of got in the way.

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1/21. REAR WINDOW at Film Forum. Restored version. No missing scenes or footage, but a negative restoration with colors truer to the original release, or so they say. Good movie, but not as great as I’d remembered from the 1984 re-release. Stewart’s character is rather irritating. Grace Kelly is sublime, however. Thelma Ritter is very good. Some of the ongoing neighborhood dramas seem a bit contrived. Still, the almost silent movie playing of these scenes is pretty interesting.

I can’t account for my tepid reaction at the time. For me, Rear Window is close to perfect, one of my favorite Hitchcock films.

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2/11. MAD MAX at Film Forum. New print with Australian dialogue tracks restored. Opening 10-15 minutes are pretty amazing, but I found the rest very uneven. Impressive debut for Mel Gibson, though. Overall the movie has a Roger Corman/AIP low budget look and feel. Amazing how much more polished and solid ROAD WARRIOR is. Music score is pretty bad, though probably typical for the period and budget. I guess this movie has to be put in historical context to appreciate its significance and impact at the time. But I think in the U.S. it was only in the wake of ROAD WARRIOR that MAD MAX got any kind of attention. Seem to remember it was treated like typical exploitation 42nd Street kind of fare in its initial release. There was that great Frank Frazetta poster, though.

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2/12. THE BEACH at 62nd & B’Way. Not very good, though it has its moments. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a good performance, but his character is such a fuckup that it’s hard to empathize or identify with him. He’s certainly attractive enough, but the character makes serious mistakes that harm others while he comes out basically unharmed. The final scene seems to make everything okay. The shark damage to those two guys’ bodies is beyond anything I’ve ever seen, just horrendous. Looked very real. But the more I think about it, I don’t think the movie makes much sense on a narrative level. Danny Boyle can put together some powerful scenes, for what that’s worth. Still think SHALLOW GRAVE is his best movie so far.

 

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2/25. REINDEER GAMES at Sony Lincoln Square. Pretty bad. After RONIN I had my hopes up for Frankenheimer’s next film, this one. The characters are unappealing and the movie has a grubby look and feel. Donal Logue is pretty good as one of Gary Sinise’s gang, as is Clarence Williams III, who’s a long way from Mod Squad.

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3/10. MISSION TO MARS (Brian De Palma, director) at Sony Lincoln Square. Jaw-droppingly awful. Hard to imagine how a major studio release with a name cast could be this bad and actually get released in this shape. There wasn’t one believable moment in it. The endless sequence with Tim Robbin’s death was so badly written, acted and edited. It seems like every single aspect of this film was bad, everything. It’s hard to understand how this can happen.

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3/17. ERIN BROCKOVICH at Sony Lincoln Square. Pretty good. I’d been put off by the trailer, which seemed to show only clips of Julia Roberts making wisecracks. But Steven Soderbergh is a good director, so wanted to check it out. Roberts is very good in it, as are Albert Finney and Aaron Eckhart. The narrative is a sort of combo CIVIL ACTION & NORMA RAE, without the tortured heaviness of the former. Seemed a little improbably that Roberts’ character could be so effective with her investigation so quickly, but what the hell. She also seemed more physical, in a sexual kind of way, in this movie. No doubt because that’s the character, but I was especially surprised by how long her legs are.

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3/19. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE at Quad. A friend recommended this, and he was right. I loved it, was absolutely blown away. Written & directed by a Bosnian living in London, Jasmin Dizdar, his first feature. Follows several groups of people, who we find out are connected in one way or another, and like WINTER SLEEPERS, RUN LOLA RUN and MAGNOLIA, has to do with how chance & coincidence can affect our lives. This one took a while to introduce all the characters and relationships and circumstances, but it seemed to build and build. It’s a very human movie.

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4/1. METROPOLIS at AMMI. At 140 minutes this is a longer version than previously shown in this country, or so they say. Print was from an archive or museum in Munich. The inter-titles were in German. A German guy was there to provide translation, though his accent sometimes got in the way, and seemed like he stumbled frequently. I wondered if he had the translation written out or was doing it off the screen. Latter doesn’t seem likely. Print quality varied a lot. Some footage looked like it had  been shot yesterday, but a lot of it really showed its age. Still an incredible movie, though. Our introduction to the robot Maria, and the transformation of the robot into flesh & blood was really powerful. The transformation scene had to have influenced the Universal Frankenstein films, particularly the first two.

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4/1. HIGH FIDELITY at Sony Lincoln Square. Pretty good. Didn’t like the talking to the camera routine too much. Seen too much of that, especially lately on TV. It can be pretty gimmicky. John Cusack, who I love, seems a little old for this character, or though maybe part of the point is that this guy is too old for the life he’s living. Didn’t find his girlfriend all that attractive. Wanted her to be prettier.

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4/4. GET CARTER & STORMY MONDAY at Film Forum. Really good, tough movie (CARTER). Saw it first time last fall at The Screening Room’s Michael Caine series. THE LIMEY has a lot of similarities to it. Saw STORMY MONDAY when it was first released, but remembered virtually nothing about it. Early Mike Figgis film. It’s pretty good, but maybe a little underdeveloped. Interestingly enough, Tommy Lee Jones’ performance is fairly weak, or maybe it’s the character, either not enough there or too cliched. Sean Bean & Melanie Griffith are good. I think Sting’s character needed more development.

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4/7. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT at Sony Lincoln Square. Not that great, but kept my interest all the same. Drags in places, not much character development. Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson are as good as they have to be to sell the material, but their characters just aren’t that interesting. Compare this performance to what Jones does as Sam Gerard in THE FUGITIVE, though I imagine he had more to work with in that one. The prologue in Vietnam isn’t all that convincing, doesn’t quite look or feel authentic. The firefight at the embassy in Yemen is very strong. I think Friedkin was deliberately going for a SAVING PRIVATE RYAN level of intensity, and sort of succeeds. Tag lines at the end tell us that Ben Kinglsey’s craven ambassador and Bruce Greenwood’s bad-guy NSA advisor  finally get what’s coming to them, but I felt dramatically cheated because I wanted some of that onscreen. Jones’ trip to Yemen to look for evidence could easily have been shortened to make room for more narrative follow-through at the end. Also, when Jackson was pronounced not guilty of the murder charge it didn’t come off as a big enough moment. The music and camera crane-up as he left the courtroom tried to create that, but wasn’t supported by the preceding scene.

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4/9. BREATHLESS at Film Forum. Hadn’t seen for this for many years. Couldn’t remember much of it. Also didn’t like it that much, though I think it helps to see it in its historical context, i.e. at the start of the French New Wave, really shaking up the more traditional styles of filmmaking, etc. Jean Seberg was so pretty. I suppose her French was supposed to sound that flat and bad.

I saw Breathless again recently, and still don’t much like it, though feel like I’m supposed to.

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4/11. THE FILTH AND THE FURY at Film Forum. Sex Pistols documentary made by Julien Temple. Interesting, occasionally very exciting, but was a little disappointed. The band, and Johnny Rotten in particular, really shook things up at the time, but they’re not particularly interesting people. Thought the method of having Lydon, Steve Cook & Glen Matlock completely in shadow during the present day interview segments was a big mistake, pointlessly distracting & annoying. I wanted to see them.

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4/15. AMERICAN PSYCHO at Loews 84th. This is pretty good, very funny. Christian Bale is great. Willem Dafoe seems kind of wasted, though he’s definitely a little creepy. Everything is a bit off-center, deliberately so, I think. My biggest objection, or maybe it’s confusion, is the way the film goes the last quarter or so. It becomes increasingly surreal, and rather apparent that much, if not all, of the violence has been in Bateman’s mind. So the movie becomes a question of what really happened and what didn’t. Chloe Sevigny is good. I actually thought there should be more on-screen violence, and have the feeling there was, but director Mary Harron had to cut stuff for the ratings board, though don’t know about this.

Yeah, I wanted it to be real.

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4/19. RETURN TO ME at Sony Lincoln Square.  Considering that there isn’t really any drama or conflict, beyond the basic premise, and no bad guys/girls, I really enjoyed it. Found it quite touching, actually, probably due to the casting, especially David Duchovny, who’s really appealing in this. Robert Loggia is great, as usual. Jim Belushi’s character was irritating to me at times. There’s something very simple and nice about this movie. ** Something the movie played with a little but then dropped was implying some sort of paranormal connection, psychic or emotional, between Minnie Driver’s character and Duchovny’s dead wife. There’s the moment at the zoo when she’s entering the gorilla house and passes Duchovny as he’s leaving. She stops and we feel like she felt something when he passed, but she doesn’t know what. More pointedly, when she puts her hand on the glass of Sydney’s cage and he puts his hand up against where hers is, which we saw him do earlier with Duchovny’s wife. Not sure why they put this in if they weren’t going to do anything more with it, but maybe they just wanted a hint or suggestion of something on a mysterious or spiritual level. Also, who is the kid on roller blades outside Duchovny’s house, and later inside the house when Duchovny’s leaving to go back to the restaurant to get his cell phone? Is he a neighbor kid? Most likely. But he’s just there a couple of times and then gone. Seemed a little strange, though I forgot about him until just a while ago.

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4/22. BARRY LYNDON at Film Forum. New 35mm print, which was very clean, though focus seemed a little soft at times. Wonder if this is how it was shot? Will check my laser disc copy sometime to see. Great movie, one of Kubrick’s best, I think. Ryan O’Neal still seems like an odd casting choice, though, but I think it works.

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4/23. WOMAN IN THE WINDOW & SCARLET STREET at AMMI. Two really good films in the Fritz Lang series. Had seen both before, but only on video, never in 35mm in a theater. Edward G. Robinson’s characters in both are similar, though the one in WOMAN is stronger. His character in SCARLET STREET  goes from rather pathetic to tragic

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4/29. THE VIRGIN SUICIDES at Sony Lincoln Square. First feature written & directed by Sofia Coppola. Interesting, but kept me at a distance. Of the five sisters, only two had any identity; I couldn’t tell the others apart. Same for the two sets of boys, with the exception of Josh Hartnett’s character, the improbably named Trip Fontaine. The film seemed really clever at times, clumsy & underproduced at others. James Woods and Kathleen Turner as the girls’ parents suggested deeper stuff going on, but we never got to it. Scott Glenn looked very much not like a priest in his brief role as a priest.

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4/29. FREQUENCY at Sony Lincoln Square. Pretty good, though it falls apart in the last half hour or so. The time travel premise of a son in 1999 communicating with his father via short wave radio back through time in 1969 is an interesting one, but they could’ve done a lot more with it. The idea of changing the past, i.e. preventing a death, and then having to deal with the consequences of how that change has caused other changes, i.e. other deaths that hadn’t happened in the first time-line, is fairly old ground in science fiction writing, but I wish they’d developed it more here. BACK TO THE FUTURE II really got into the convolutions & paradoxes of this kind of stuff. When the movie focuses on the search for a serial killer both in 1969 and 1999, it becomes far less interesting, and the parallel climax really doesn’t work. But I basically liked it, though Dennis Quaid’s Queens accent and Andre Braugher’s 1999 old-age makeup are both a little weird. The boy who plays Jim Cazeviel’s character in 1969 is really quite striking, a wonderful smile.

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4/30. THE IDIOTS at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. Lars von Trier “Dogma 95” movie. Didn’t like it much, though I liked the actress who played Suzanne. There are many scenes in which male frontal nudity is blocked out by a traveling black square. Read afterwards that this was done just to avoid an NC-17 rating in this country. Which seems a little strange since the film is not rated according to the newspaper ads. Anyway, it’s annoying and works against the film, I think. But also interesting in that female full frontal nudity in the film is not censored in this way, so I guess breasts and pubic hair are okay, but cocks get blocked out.

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5/5. GLADIATOR at Sony Lincoln Square. Liked this, though felt like there was something missing that could have made it really rousing. Russell Crowe is great in it. Doesn’t evoke much of the 50s & 60s sword & sandal movies. It didn’t feel like the same historical period that I got familiar with in those movies, and I guess I missed that. Didn’t get the scope of sequences like the chariot race in BEN HUR or the huge set built for FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The computer-created stuff is good, but doesn’t match the physical feel of those earlier movies. The gladiator combat scenes are pretty intense.

5/27. GLADIATOR at Ziegfeld. Really held up on second viewing. Liked it better this time, actually, found it more impressive. Russell Crowe sells the film; he brings a lot of heart and energy to the role. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance still seems a bit precious.

I’ve come to love this film. I find it very repeatable. Can’t account for my initial reaction, though I must have felt something, since I saw it again three weeks later. Though the second time was at the Ziegfeld, which is where I should have seen it in the first place. Really miss that theater.

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5/14. GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL & GO TELL THE SPARTANS at Walter Reade. Had seen GUNFIGHT several times before, but didn’t like it very much this time around. It’s very much rooted in a 50s/60s style of “big” studio Westerns (and feels contrived in a way that THE SEARCHERS definitely doesn’t). Kirk Douglas has the most interesting part and gives the most interesting performance. ** Hadn’t thought I’d seen SPARTANS before, but now I think I may have, or at least parts of it. It’s pretty good, very downbeat, though the locations don’t feel like Vietnam at all (think it was shot in Southern California). The production has a low-budget look, but it’s a very interesting movie.

Go Tell the Spartans is notable in that I think it was one of the first feature films to deal with our involvement in Vietnam war.

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5/19. TIME CODE at AMC 25. Pretty interesting. The narrative or “plot” is the least interesting thing about this film, but the style and method Mike Figgis uses is what’s really going on. Using four digital video cameras and uninterrupted takes following different characters (sometimes the same characters at the same time from different perspectives), we see all this via split screen, quadrants really, four small screens within the screen of the movie theater. Figgis directs our attention by raising and lowering the sound from a particular screen, but I found myself often drifting to the other screens, so I was doing my own editing in a way. Not sure how or if this would work with other films, but it does raise some interesting ideas. The actors apparently improvised within a pre-set structure. This works pretty well. Also, the image quality looked great, looked like film to me, though it had to be a digital tape to film transfer.

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5/20. SMALL TIME CROOKS at Lincoln Square. Pretty lame Woody Allen movie. Harks back to his early films, but is quite clumsy at times. Tracy Ullmann & Hugh Grant are good. Woody and Tracy are obviously supposed to be Ralph and Alice from “The Honeymooners”, especially in the first part of the movie when he’s launching his sure-fire bank robbery scheme.

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5/25. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 at Loews E-Walk. Pretty bad, though I sort of enjoyed it. Seemed like such a cynical project, made with little feeling, emotion. There was nothing really at stake for these characters. The PG-13 rating made Woo hold back on the violence, i.e. almost no blood or bullet hits despite all the gunfire. Might’ve been better as an R. The fight between Cruise and the villain at the end was total cartoon violence. This kind of violence is horseshit because it totally denies consequences or results. FACE/OFF is the best John Woo American film, but nothing he’s done here so far compares to his HK films. Kind of weird seeing Robert Towne’s screenwriting credit, since the story is the weakest aspect of the movie.

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6/2. THE VAMPIRE LOVERS at Film Forum. Not very good, but at least seeing it checks a box in my Hammer Films screening history. Peter Cushing’s role is more of a cameo, definitely no more than a subsidiary character. Ingrid Pitt is quite something, though. The lesbian stuff is pretty tame, though probably strong enough for 1970. The actresses playing the young girls seduced by Pitt’s character were totally without interest. The actress who played the governess had something going on, however. Typically cheesy late-Hammer production values. Nice looking new 35mm print.

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6/3. DINOSAUR at AMC 25. Technically it’s very cool, story is okay. Saw this in digital projection, which looked great, though I’d like to be able to compare it to film projection. Would also like to see a live-action film projected digitally. Guess I’ll be able to soon enough.

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6/24. THE TRIAL at Film Forum. New print, looked very good. Don’t think I’d ever seen this before in its entirety, though had definitely seen some scenes somewhere. Don’t like the ending with Joseph K being blown up (apparently) in a pit out in a field, but overall liked it a lot. There are some incredibly striking scenes; for example, Perkins entering his work area and we see hundreds of people typing at desks in what looks like an aircraft hanger-sized space, or his surprising speech in the courtroom, if that’s what it was, packed with seemingly several hundred men in dark suits. Romy Schneider was a very erotic presence. Disturbing movie, glad I saw it.

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7/7. BLOOD SIMPLE at Lincoln Plaza. Doesn’t have the impact it had when I first saw it in 1984, but still pretty good. Easy to see how it got a lot of attention at the time, but it’s not new anymore. Pretty influential, considering how many other filmmakers have gone down this road since then.

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7/11. MCCABE & MRS MILLER at BAM. New 35mm print, looked great. The film doesn’t move me the way it did when I fell in love with it when it came out in ‘71, but it’s a very good movie. McCabe seems like more of a fool to me now. Guess I haven’t seen it in quite a few years. Altman was there for Q&A afterwards, interviewed by Elvis Mitchell of the NYT. Altman was great. Called Warren Beatty an asshole but said he wouldn’t change a thing about Beatty’s performance in MCCABE..

Great film. Among other things, it introduced me to the music of Leonard Cohen.

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8/4. HOLLOW MAN at AMC 25. Astounding special effects, but pretty bad movie. Interesting how much more story there was in the 1933 INVISIBLE MAN. Paul Verhoeven has made far better, more involving, films. One problem is that Kevin Bacon’s character is such an asshole to begin with, that when he gets trapped in his invisible state it doesn’t mean much. There’s no sense of tragedy, as in INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, because I don’t care much for the character.

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8/6. WONDERLAND at Angelika. Liked this a lot, but was distracted by the film being slightly out of focus the entire time. Went out three times to ask that the projectionist check the focus, but it never happened. Afterwards talked to the manager and was given a free pass, big deal. There’s a sort of MAGNOLIA-like feel to this movie, maybe in part because of how the music is used over parallal sequences and the way we keep cycling through several sets of characters’ lives over a 3-day period. A scene where the three main characters’ mother, pissed off at the neighbor’s incessantly barking dog, sits in the dark in her living room easy chair and begins barking herself, and actually seems to frighten the dog.

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8/12. GIMME SHELTER at Film Forum. 30th anniversary re-release of this Maysles documentary. Still pretty powerful, a shrewd structure, but left me feeling more bummed out by the end than anything else. The performance footage at the beginning is very exciting and takes you back. Scenes in the editing room of Jagger & Charlie Watts watching footage from the movie are the most interesting to me.

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That does it for this one. Part 2 will be up in a couple of days. Stay tuned. — Ted Hicks

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A lot has already been written about Frederick Wiseman in the wake of his death on February 16, but I wanted to add my thoughts about his extraordinary, unparalleled career. He was a major artist who leaves a massive body of work as his legacy. It’s impossible to overestimate his importance.

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In a piece about the 61st New York Film Festival posted on November 30, 2023, I wrote the following in response to Wiseman’s latest film, the four-hour Menus-Plaisirs Les Troigros:

Fred Wiseman has made a career out of examining institutions of all kinds, often at lengths of three to four hours (or more), without identifying titles, narration, or talking-head interviews. Nothing fancy; we’re just there. This is immersive, in-the-moment filmmaking (though carefully edited and structured). Wiseman is one of the greatest living filmmakers. With the deaths of Al Maysles (age 89) in 2015 and D. A. Pennebaker (age 94) in 2019, he’s probably the last one standing of his generation. At age 93 he does not appear to be slowing down, which is great for the rest of us.

That was in 2023. And as it turned out, that was his last film. In 2025, he said in an interview that he was retiring because he did not “have the energy” for a new production. I think we can cut him some slack on this, since in the fifty-six years since his first film in 1967, Titicut Follies, Wiseman made (by my count) forty-four documentaries, many of which, as mentioned above, have running times of three to four hours. One of which, Near Death, which I’ve yet to see, is just shy of six hours.

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In a piece about the fifty-first New York Film Festival posted on October 1, 2013, I wrote the following regarding Wiseman’s four-hour At Berkeley:

I don’t know how he gets the access he does, but with a three-man crew he gets into the guts of how these places work. There’s no exposition, no on-screen titles to identify people or places, no narration or interviews. It’s the very definition of fly-on-the-wall observation. Though Wiseman doesn’t like terms like “cinéma vérité,” which he once called a “pompous French term that has absolutely no meaning as far as I’m concerned.” He has said, “What I try to do is edit the films so that they will have a dramatic structure.” He has also said his films are “based on un-staged, un-manipulated actions… The editing is highly manipulative, and the shooting is highly manipulative…What you choose to shoot, the way you shoot it, the way you edit it and the way you structure it… all of those things… represent subjective choices you have to make.” His films have a point of view (his view), but you don’t get hit over the head with it.

In a 1991 interview with Frank Spotnitz in American Film, Wiseman said, “All aspects of documentary filmmaking involve choice and are therefore manipulative. But the ethical… aspect of it is that you have to… try to make a film that is true to the spirit of your sense of what was going on… My view is that these films are biased, prejudiced, condensed, compressed but fair. I think what I do is make movies that are not accurate in any objective sense, but accurate in the sense that I think they’re a fair account of the experience I’ve had in making the movie.”

At the excellent HBO Directors Dialogue moderated by Kent Jones on Sunday, Wiseman said he doesn’t start with a particular point of view, but begins to collect footage to see where it leads. For At Berkeley he shot on digital cameras for 12 weeks, resulting in 250 hours that was edited down to 4 hours over a period of 8-10 months. Watching the film is a bit disorienting at first,  because we spend time in conference rooms and classrooms without knowing who the people are (though you pick that up) or what exactly is going on (you pick that up, too). There are wonderful moments throughout. One of my favorites is almost a throwaway. We’re in a robotics lab watching a machine with robot arms fold a towel over and over. Each time it ends with motions of the arms that suggest an elegant “Et voila!” gesture.

I think the goal in his films is to get inside institutions like UC Berkeley to show how they work, how they function.  After seeing all the administration meetings, classroom discussions, students going to and from classes, etc etc, I felt like I had a sense of the ongoing life of the university. This is Frederick Wiseman at his best.

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From a remembrance and interview with Fred Wiseman by Ed Symkus in The Arts Fuse, an online arts magazine in Boston:

From the interview: “Yes, shooting is the research. Since none of the events in my films are staged, I find there’s not much point in spending a lot of time in the place because nothing that I’m seeing will be repeated exactly the way I saw it. So, what I try to do in advance is get a sense of the geography and a sense of the routine before I start shooting. When I made At Berkeley, I knew where the director’s office was, and I knew where the entrances were, and I knew what time the place opens up. I can usually do that in a day.”

“The technique is always the same. It’s a small crew. There are three of us – me on sound, John Davey’s behind the camera – and we only use one camera – and an assistant. No interviews, no lights. You just hang around.”

“I discover the film in the editing, and I always have.”

Re the process of editing: “I look at all the rushes. That takes six or seven weeks. I make notes about the sequences, then I put aside roughly 40 to 50 percent of them, and I edit the ones that I think I might want to use in the film, without even thinking about structure. It’s only when I have all of the ones edited that I think I might use that I begin to work on structure.”

“It’s very interesting work. I don’t find it to be a strain. I love doing it. I love making documentaries because it’s intellectually demanding and physically demanding. You have to be in shape, both to run around and make the movies, and then to sit for 10 months in a chair editing them. But it’s fun because it’s completely absorbing.”

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I remember I was working the night shift at the Du Art lab here in 1988 when this guy brought in a big bag of 16mm film for processing. It took me a minute to realize this was Fred Wiseman. He was shooting Central Park (1990) at the time. Came in by himself. I really got a kick out of that.

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A Wiseman film that I don’t think gets as much attention as many of his others is Boxing Gym, which I saw when it came out in 2010. At ninety-one minutes, it’s one of his shortest films. The setting is Lord’s Boxing Gym in Austin, Texas. I saw it again last year in a major Wiseman retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center, “Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution,” an appropriate title considering the institutions of all kinds that have been his focus throughout his career. Boxing Gym might seem to be on a smaller scale when compared to Wiseman’s films concerning hospitals, museums, library systems, and the like. More of a breather compared to the deep dives of those films. But I was quite taken with it.

Per the description when Boxing Gym was shown at the 48th New York Film Festival: Wiseman observes men, women, and children as they train and interact in a lively and diverse environment. The irresistible portrait is marked by Wiseman’s sensitive eye and adroit editing, and recalls his past meditations on bodies in motion (Ballet; La Danse) and on violence, people at play, and America in microcosm. 

What stuck me the most was near the end, when we see a real sparring match between two guys who are much closer to being real boxers than the “ordinary” people we’ve seen up to that point. It was brutal and brought home the violence that boxing is. There was nothing casual or playing-around about it. And it was just there in the film without making any kind of big deal about it.

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In an online profile for The New Yorker, Richard Brody calls Frederick Wiseman the “greatest documentary filmmaker ever.” He’ll get no argument from me, though there are some people of Wiseman’s generation who deserve mention as well, in addition to the previously mentionbed Al Maysles and D.A. Pennebaker, as follows:.

Robert Drew, died age 90. Sometimes called the father of cinéma vérité, or direct cinema (a term I think Wiseman might prefer)

Ricky Leacock, died age 89

Agnes Varda, died age 90

Raymond Depardon, a French filmmaker I’m just getting exposed to via a current retrospective of his work at Film at Lincoln Center, age 83 and still alive.

Fred Wiseman lived to age 96, the oldest of the bunch.

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So long, Fred, and thanks!

New York Times obituary

Wiseman appraisal – Alissa Wilkinson, NYT

That’s all for now. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

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P.S. Just remembered this. Too good not to add. This is from an interview with Wiseman by Eric Hynes for Metrograph in 2016.

Wiseman: I had some interest in making fiction movies. I wrote a screenplay based on a novel by Anne Tyler, but I couldn’t get the money. My bullshit meter explodes when I land in Los Angeles. I just don’t have the patience or the tolerance or the sufficient interest to have pursued that. It’s hard enough getting money for documentaries.

Bullshit meter explodes. I love that.

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Okay, this again. As with previous editions, this consists mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. Some are candid while others are obviously posed for promotional purposes. I’ve indicated photographer credits when I know who took the shot.

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Agnès Varda

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Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes with footage from Faces (1968). 

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Sigourney Weaver

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David Lynch

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Dennis Hopper and David Lynch while making Blue Velvet (1986).

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Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini

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Fellini and Magali Noël while making Amarcord (1973).

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Bill Murray and director Sofia Coppola, Lost in Translation (2003).

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Director Brian De Palma with Al Pacino on Scarface (1983), and with Michael Caine on Dreessed to Kill (1980).

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François Truffaut

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Truffaut with Julie Christie on Fahrenheit 451 (1966), followed by Isabelle Adjani on The Story of Adèle H. (1975), Jacqueline Bisset on Day for Night (1973), and Fanny Ardant on The Woman Next Door (1981).

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Cinematographer Karl Freund behind the camera for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).

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Cinematographer James Wong Howe, whose credits include Seconds (1966), Hud (1963), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Thin Man (1934), and many others from 1923 to 1975.

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Jean-Luc Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard.

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Giancarlo Giannini and director Lina Wertmüller, probably on Seven Beauties (1975).

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Marlon Brando during Last Tango in Paris (1972).

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Cinematographer Gordon Willis and Woody Allen while shooting Annie Hall (1977).

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John Huston in 1967 with daughter Angelica, age 16.

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Steven Spielberg, Roy Scheider, and Robert Shaw while making Jaws (1975).

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Charlton Heston and Senta Berger during Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee (1965).

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Warren Beatty and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond with Robert Altman during McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971).

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Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese while shooting Taxi Driver (1976).

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Cybill Shepherd and Scorsese, Taxi Driver.

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De Niro with Scorsese’s mother, Catherine.

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Shutterbugs

Sofia Coppola

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Romi Schneider, with Luchino Visconti in background.

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Liv Ullmann

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Julia Roberts

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Charlotte Rampling

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Brigitte Bardot

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Photographer Richard Avedon with Sophia Loren, New York City 1966.

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Stanley Kubrick with Shelley Duvall and the Grady Twins while making The Shining (1980).

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The Grady Twins just before their scene (and probably a million takes). Below this, the actual twins, Lisa and Louise Bruns.

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Kubrick with Jack Nicholson shooting The Shining.

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Kubrick on set: Spartacus (1960), Barry Lyndon (1975), Full Metal Jacket (1987).

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Rather disturbing selfie before selfies, a prototype of the “Kubrick Stare.”

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Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer

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Audrey

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Marlon Brando, touching up his makeup for On the Waterfront (1954).

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Brando and Al Pacino while doing The Godfather (1972).

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John Wayne does some touch up.

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Boris Karloff being made up as the Frankenstein monster  by Jack Pierce.

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Behind the Scenes

The War of the Worlds (1953)

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This Island Earth (1955)

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Ben-Hur (1959)

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North by Northwest (1959) – photo by Kenny Ball

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The Hunt for Red October (1980)

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Titanic (1997)

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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

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The Fabelmans (2022)

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Charlotte Rampling

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Diane Keaton

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James Dean

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Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren

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Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo

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Jean Paul Belmondo

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Belmondo with Ursula Andress

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Alain Delon and Belmondo

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Alain Delon

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Delon while making The Leopard (1963)

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Delon and Romi Schneider

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Isabella Rossellini

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Ingrid Bergman and Isabella Rossellini

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Two great shots of Ingrid Bergman.

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Director Wim Wenders in Cannes, 1987 – photo by Fulvia Farassino.

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Pier Paolo Pasolini, directing The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964).

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Director Robert Bresson

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Jean-Luc Godard

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Russian director Sergei Eisenstein

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Director Luis Buñuel, photographed by Salvador Dali, 1930.

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Jean Cocteau, 1922

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Arthur Miller and John Huston while shooting The Misfits (1961).

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Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Ernest Haas while making of The Misfits

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Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Milton Greene, 1954.

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Another view of Marilyn, photographed by Bert Stern.

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Jean Seberg, Isabelle Adjani, Isabell Huppert

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Jim Jarmusch and Tom Waits

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John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow while making Rosemary’s Baby (1968).

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Gina Rowlands and John Adames on set for Cassavetes’ Gloria (1980).

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Breakfast in bed with Roger Vadim and Brigitte Bardot, 1960s.

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Godard and Anna Karina

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Cary Grant and Doris Day while making That Touch of Mink (1962).

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Dustin Hoffman photographed by director John Schlesinger while making Midnight Cowboy (1969).

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Alfred Hitchcock

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Paul Newman and Robert Redford on set for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

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I think this is more than enough for now. Too much? I have many more of these, and find new ones everyday, so you can expect more posts like this down the road. Okay, see you next time. — Ted Hicks

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And once agsin, Agnès Varda to take us out.

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Leonardo DeCaprio & Jennifer Lawrence  (32:39)

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Ariana Grande & Adam Sandler  (42:54)

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Colin Farrell & Jessie Buckley  (45:43)

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Kate Hudson & Jeremy Allen White  (36:40)

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Michael B. Jordan & Jesse Plemons  (39:36)

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Jacob Elordi & Gwyneth Paltrow  (40:58)

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Julia Roberts & Sean Penn  (41:09)

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Sydney Sweeney & Ethan Hawke  (32:59)

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Teyana Taylor & Oscar Isaac  (32:59)

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Stellan Skarsgård & Alexander Skarsgård  (39:42)

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That’s it for now. See you next time. Stay tuned. — Ted Hicks

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2025  turned out to be a good year for films, especially in the last six months. The filmmakers included here are either contenders for Academy Awards this year or represent exceptional films, even if not nominated. This is a lot of material. Pick and choose what looks interesting to you. Running times are indicated.

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The Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable: Amanda Seyfried, Cynthia Erivo, Jennifer Lawrence, Jesse Buckley, Laura Dern, Renate Reinsve (53:14)

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The Los Angeles Times Actress Roundtable: Sidney Sweeney, Tessa Thompson, Emily Blunt, Elle Fanning, Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow (46:49)

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The Los Angeles Times Actors Roundtable: Jesse Plemons, Stellan Skarsgard, Will Arnett, Benicio Del Toro, Jacob Elordi, Wagner Moura (47:04)

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The Hollywood Reporter Actor Roundtable: Adam Sandler, Dwayne Johnson, Jacob Elordi, Jeremy Allen White, Mark Hamill, Michael B. Jordan, Wagner Moura (57:11)

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The Hollywood Reporter Directors Roundtable: Chloé Zhao, James Cameron,Joachim Trier, Kathryn Bigelow, Ryan Coogler, Yorgos Lanthimos (57:31)

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The Hollywood Reporter European Cinema Roundtable: Jafar Panahi, Joachim Trier, Mascha Schilinski, Oliver Laxe (1:00:36)

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The Hollywood Reporter Writers Roundtable: Bradley Cooper, Clint Bentley, Guillermo del Toro, Hikari, Noah Oppenheim, Will Tracy (50:41)

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The Hollywood Reporter Cinematographers Roundtable: Adolpho Veloso, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Claudio Miranda, Lukasz Zal, Michael Bauman, Robbie Ryan (49:02)

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 The Hollywood Reporter Producers Roundtable: David Heyman, Joseph Kosinski, Nia DaCosta, Marc Platt, Sara Murphy, Sev Ohanian (51:06)

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Next up in a day or so, Actors on Actors, a selection of pairs of actors/actresses talking to each other about what they do and how they do it. Stay tuned. — Ted Hicks

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I saw a total of 309 films last year, both new and old, 218 in theaters and 91 streaming or on video discs. I’ve come up with 29 films that are the best of what I saw, or at least my favorites. I don’t claim that all of these are great films, though some of them are. They got my attention and engaged me in one way or another. Most of these films were written or co-written by their directors. I think this makes a difference in the result. Below are my picks for the top five films of the year, with Sirāt and Train Dreams at the very top. The rest are listed in alphabetical order.

In the interest of economy and attention spans (mine included), I’ll try to keep my comments to a minimum..

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Sirāt (Oliver Laxe, director & co-writer)

I saw this at the start of a week-long Academy Awards qualifying run in December and was so knocked out that I saw it again before it left. The second time was, if anything, an even richer experience. From the opening scene, with a huge wall of speakers being set up in a large, outdoor location with hundreds of people milling about, it feels like something immense is about to happen. When pounding techno music began pouring from the stacks of speakers and the crowds started dancing, I realized this was a rave. A father (Sergi López), along with his young son, is searching rave sites in the deserts of southern Morroco for his daughter, who has disappeared. They hook up with four ravers to continue the search. This is an amazing film that reveals itself in continually unexpected ways. There are frequent jolts along the way. At times it has echos of The Wages of Fear (1953) and L’Aventurra (1960), but it’s definitely its own thing.

Sirāt opens for a regular run on February 6. I’ll be there.

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Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, director & co-writer)

I’d bought the Denis Johnson novella when it was published in 2011, but didn’t get around to reading it until sometime last spring. I was deeply moved by the story and the direct, uncluttered way it was written. It was after reading book that I was excited to learn that a film adaptation was in the works. I’ve seen it twice now, and was not disappointed either time. This is probably Joel Edgerton’s best performance so far, quiet and understated. If Train Dreams has a message, it’s that everything’s connected, from the smallest to the largest.

Train Dreams is available for streaming on Netflix.

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The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, director & writer)

I first saw Wagner Moura in Elite Squad (2007), and liked him very much in that. He’s the heart of The Secret Agent. This is a heavily layered narrative, with a framing device that I only really understood at the end. Very strong movie with a lot of weight.

Not yet available for streaming, but continuing to play at Film at Lincoln Center.

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Sinners (Ryan Coogler, director & writer)

This is the first film I saw last year that really seemed like something. I’d heard that it had to do with vampires, but the marketing before it opened was very cagey about that. And yes, Sinners has vampires in it, but it’s not a vampire movie, if you get the difference. For a large-scale, costly IMAX production that became as popular as it did, it’s unusual that it’s not a sequel, not part of a franchise, and not based on a novel or TV show. This is original content. Okay, From Dusk till Dawn(1996) is an influence, along with nods to conventions of the vampire genre, but it’s more about race in the South in the 1930s. This film has many layers.

The following clip is truly amazing. This quote from voice-over heard during the sequence sets the stage: “There are legends of people with the gift of music so true, it can conjure spirits of the past and of the future.” Indeed.

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One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, director & writer)

I first saw this in 70mm IMAX at the AMC Lincoln Square multiplex. Then I learned that it was showing in Vista Vision at a theater near Union Square, one of only four theaters in the world, as unlikely as that seems, that can project a true Vista Vision print. Well, I couldn’t pass that up. It was well worth it. Excellent cast. I especially liked Benicio del Toro and Chase Infiniti, but found Sean Penn’s character and performance a little hard to take. I don’t know if this is a great film, but it’s one hell of a ride.

The following clip is really great. The rolling roads remind me of strips of film. Unfortunately, the clip ends before the sequence is over, but you’ll get the idea.

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Here are the rest of the best.

Anemone (Ronan Day-Lewis, director & co-writer)

Excellent film with Daniel Day-Lewis in his first film after an eight-year “retirement,” co-written with his son Ronan, who also directs. Anemone was shown at the New York Film Festival and opened in theaters even before the festival was over. Curiously, it was in theaters only for a very brief time, blink and you missed it. Hard to understand, considering some of the films that stick around for weeks. Strong performances, including Samantha Morton as his Day-Lewis’ wife, Samuel Bottomley as his son, and especially Sean Bean as his brother.

Available for streaming on Prime.

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Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, director)

Wonderfully bonkers, if not quite up to the epic level of Lanthimos’ Poor Things. I remember thinking during the movie that it would be great if they would end it in a way you’d think they wouldn’t have the nerve to, and then they did it! Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are great, they really go for it.

Available for streaming on Prime and Peacock.

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Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky, director)

I loved this, it had me all the way. It’s like a Coen Bros. movie on speed.

Available for streaming on Prime and Netflix.

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Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Embeth Davidtz, director & co-writer)

Available for streaming on Prime.

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Dreams (Dag Johan Haugerud, director & writer)

Third film in a trilogy set in Oslo, Norway. The first two I saw earlier in the year are Love and  Sex. They’re both very good, but Dreams is my favorite. Engaging characters and an abundance of conversation in all three.

Not yet available for streaming.

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Familiar Touch (Sarah Friedland, director & writer)

With Kathleen Chalfont as a woman experiencing cognitive decline whose son has just moved her into a care facility. She’s a great actress, always authentic. I’ve liked seeing her work for many years, notably as Dominic West’s mother in the HBO series The Affair. She’s excellent here. It’s refreshing that there are no villains, but as with many of the films on this list, a lot of humanity.

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Mark Shakman, director)

When I first saw trailers for this, I thought there was no way I wanted to see it. I’d become turned off to most of the Marvel/DC superhero blowouts. Plus I still had a bad memory of the first Fantastic Four film twenty years ago in 2005. Then the way a friend who’d seen the film described it got me interested. I saw it the next day in IMAX and loved it. It has a lightness in tone, but I didn’t find it silly. Actually reminded me the excellent Incredibles movies. It’s satirical, but not a joke.

Available for streaming on Prime and Disney+.

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Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, director & writer)

Not yet available for streaming.

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Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, director & writer)

It’s been pointed out in several publications that this the film del Toro was born to make. Given his interests and statements over the years, I’d have to agree. Frankenstein has an excellent cast and production values. While I wasn’t quite as transported as I’d hoped to be, this makes a worthy addition to the long list of Frankenstein films. No one does the Gothic thing quite like del Toro. The trailers below are different enough that I wanted to include both.

Available for streaming on Netflix.

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Hamnet (Chloé Zhao, director & co-writer)

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A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, director)

The following is edited from what I wrote after seeing A House of Dynamite at the New York Film Festival last year.

If the purpose of Kathryn Bigelow’s film is to scare the hell out of an audience, mission accomplished. An unidentified missile is detected coming over the Pacific from an unknown source, its trajectory indicating it will strike somewhere in the continental United States, most likely Chicago. Once this kicks off, it never lets up, as various governmental agencies race to figure out what’s going on and how to respond. The film gets seconds away from point of impact at least twice, then rewinds to start the clock over in different locations and agencies. The cast is excellent. Not a lot of laughs. It’s especially unnerving, in light of our president’s plans to resume nuclear testing.

Available for streaming on Netflix.

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Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, director & co-writer)

Not yet available for streaming.

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It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, director & writer)

Not yet available for streaming.

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The Life of Chuck (Mike Flanagan, director & co-writer)

I loved this the first time I saw it, and wanted my wife to see it. It was only during my second viewing that I got what was going on. Duh. The first time was great, but now it all clicked in. Maybe if I’d read the Stephen King story first.

There are several set pieces involving dance. I think the one below is the best. It certainly raises hopes that the film is going to deliver, which I think it does.

Available for streaming on Prime and Hulu.

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Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, director & co-writer)

Not yet available for streaming.

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Predator: Badlands (Dan Trachtenberg, director & co-writer)

Terrific sequel to the director’s Prey (2022), which was about as high concept as one could get, with a Predator landing in the Northern Great Plains in 1719 and hunting a tribe of Comanches. It was fresh and inventive and I loved it. The new one is just as good, shaking things up a bit by having a Predator as the protagonist, the “hero.” This is made more viewer-friendly by having Elle Fanning as a wisecracking damaged android who helps the Predator. An odd couple pairing that’s oddly charming at times. Very satisfying ending.

Available for pricey rental on Prime. Cost will go down later.

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Resurrection (Bi Gan, director & writer)

The following is edited from what I wrote after seeing Resurrection at the New York Film Festival last year.

I loved this film, but am unable to describe it in a way that makes much sense. It’s a shapeshifting mashup of many different elements. I’d need to see it again, which I intend to do. Or maybe a dozen times, to get a better handle on what’s going on and how it all goes together. A few years ago I saw Bi Gan’s Long Days Journey into Night (nothing to do with Eugene O’Neill), which is similar to Resurrection in style and structure. I was drawn in and became quite disoriented, at one point not sure what theater I was in or what day it was. With both films I gave up trying to make sense of what was going on and just went with it.

Not yet available for streaming.

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Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Quay Brothers, directors & writers)

From notes I made after seeing this film at Film Forum on September 11: “Unique, mysterious, what the fuck?” And then again on September 18: “Second viewing in a week. Today was the last day of its run and wanted to see it again. Could see it a dozen times and get new stuff each time. Today it seemed rather frightening, felt some anxiety watching it.”

Here’s Film Forum’s description: “The first feature in 20 years by animation masters The Quay Brothers is inspired by stories by Polish author Bruno Schulz (Street of Crocodiles). In a mixture of live action and breathtakingly intricate stop-motion puppetry, the Quays follow the journey of Josef, who arrives at a labyrinthine sanatorium in search of his dying father. Told in seven chapters corresponding with seven prophetic, mystical viewing lenses, the film bends objects, time, and dimensions as Josef navigates the realm between dreams and reality.”

The disorienting effect of this film is very similar to what I wrote about Resurrection above. I think Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass has the logic of a dream. Once I was able to be open to that, to surrender and let go of the need for things to make sense, I was able to just go with it. Still not sure what was going on, and that’s okay.

Not yet available for streaming.

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Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, director & co-writer)

The following is edited from what I wrote after seeing Sentimental Value at the New York Film Festival last year.

Loved it!!! Probably my favorite film of those I saw in the festival. Stellan Skarsgård is especially good as famous director who wants to make an autobiographical film with his estranged daughter Renate Reinsve, previously seen in Trier’s The Worst Person in the World. With Elle Fanning as an American actress also cast in the film Skarsgård is directing. Lots of deep feeling in this.

Available for streaming on Prime.

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Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, director & co-writer)

Available for streaming on Prime and HBO Max.

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Splitsville (Michael Angelo Covino, director & co-writer)

Very funny. The extended clumsy fight between the two guys near the beginning is a complete hoot.

Available for streaming on Prime.

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Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (Scott Cooper, director & writer)

The following is edited from what I wrote after seeing this at the New York Film Festival last year.

Scott Cooper is a strong director. I love his first film, Crazy Heart (2009) and later Hostiles (2017). His being the director/writer here is what got me past my initial ambivalent feelings when I first heard about it. Jeremy Alan White had the almost impossible job of recreating Bruce Springsteen, made more challenging by the fact that Bruce is still here. That it centers around the making of the Nebraska album was significant. I love that record. Knowing now that it came out of Springsteen’s deep depression at the time makes it more meaningful to me. I have some reservations, mainly about the fictional girlfriend, but the movie works much more than it doesn’t. It’s its own thing.

Available for streaming on Prime.

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The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, director & co-writer)

Here’s what I wrote on FaceBook after seeing this film: “Saw The Testament of Ann Lee yesterday. Felt like walking out several times during the first hour, but glad I stayed with it. Amanda Seyfried is totally committed in her portrayal of the founder of the Shakers and their efforts to establish a utopian community in this country at time of the Revolutionary War. She and her followers seem like bonkers fanatics, but the film doesn’t judge them at all. Very strange movie. Don’t know if I liked it, but was impressed. And then there are the musical numbers. You had to be there.”

I still don’t know what to do with this film, where to put it. I just know, in ways I don’t understand yet, it’s really different, very serious, and definitely worth the time.

Not yet availabe for streaming.

Not yet available for streaming.

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The Virgin of the Quarry Lake (Laura Casabé, director)

Set in Argentina in 2001, this is a very unusual coming-of-age story that becomes a horror movie, with scenes and feelings that me think of David Lynch’s films and the Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton I Walked with a Zombie. It has moments of lyrical beauty as well as intense violence and a dark Voodoo magic that suggests ancient ways. I’ve seen it twice, and it has really stayed with me.

No theatrical release date as yet.

The following clip gives a sense of the ominous tone that runs through the film.

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Other films of note from last year

 April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, director & writer)

Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach, director & co-writer)

 Koln 75 (Ido Fluk, director & writer)

 Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho, director & co-writer)

An Officer and a Spy (Roman Polanski, director & co-writer)

The Phonecian Scheme (Wes Anderson, director & co-writer)

Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, director & co-writer)

Weapons (Zach Cregger, director & writer)

Where to Land (Hal Hartley, director & writer)

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Okay, that wraps it up for now. Stay tuned for the next one. — Ted Hicks

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I’d like to close out 2025 with some random images that are about as appropriate as anything else for the year we’ve just been through. If any of this ends up making any sense, it’s only by accident, believe me. Here we go.

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Jean Cocteau, New York City, 1949.

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And to end on a positive note.

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Well, that does it for another year. Keep calm and carry on, fingers crossed. See you in 2026. — Ted Hicks

P.S. The “Trump Promises Kept” photo was taken by my friend Alvis Upitis, to give credit where credit is due.

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As with previous Face Time posts, there’s no theme or organizing principle to these photos of actors, other than that they all have the Look, faces that hold the screen and our attention, then and now. Looking at these images today, much of their power comes from our shared history of seeing these people on the screen and the roles they played, the films they made, and the associations that come with that. I’ve included a few directors as well. Some shots are candid, most are posed. In many of these shots, it’s about their eyes, looking directly into the camera, and at us, making contact. I’ve indicated photographer credits when I know who took the shot.

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Yul Brynner, displaying his trademark intensity as Rameses in The Ten Commandments (1956).

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Gena Rowlands

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Boris Karloff, in the 1920s, and later.

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Vincent Price and Anna May Wong, 1937.

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Anna Magnani

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Sofia Coppola

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Marilyn Monroe, top photo by Carl Perutz, 1958. Showing something more vulnerable below that.

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Robert Redford

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Two Dames – Maggie Smith and Judi Dench.

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Michael and Shakira Caine. Below, with Candace Bergen for The Magus (196).

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Isabella Rossellin, photographed by Mikael Jansson, 1998.

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Rachel Weisz, photographed by Alasdair McLellan.

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Charlotte Rampling

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Jeanne Moreau

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Oskar Werner

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Harry Dean Stanton, photographed by Gabriel Olson.

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Jack Nicholson, Five Easy Pieces (1970).

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Ben Gazzara and Alain Delon

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Buster Keaton, photographed by Richard Avedon, 1952. Below, David Bowie with Keaton biography.

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Sterling Hayden

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Jenny Agutter, then (1976), and now, Call the Midwife.

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William Shatner

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Tallulah Bankhead

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Monica Vitti

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Dennis Hopper, Polaroid by Andy Warhol, 1977.

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David Lynch

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Natalie Wood

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Elizabeth Taylor

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Juliette Binoche

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Julie Christie, Fahrenheit 451 (1966).

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Two views of Catherine Deneuve.

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Audrey Hepburn

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Natasha Kinski

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Peter Cushing, photographed by Terry Fincher, 1983.

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Claudia Cardinale

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Tuesday Weld

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Isabelle Adjani

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Okay, that’s enough for now. See you next time, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!! – Ted Hicks

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Previous Face Time posts may be accessed here:

Face Time – The Classics, Part 1 (11/11/2021)

Face Time – The Classics, Part 2 (11/12/2021)

Face Time – The Classics, Part 3 (11/16/2021)

Face Time – The Latest Edition (6/30/2024)

Face Time – The Next Batch (9/26/2024)

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Previous editions of this series consist mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. This special edition focuses on filmmakers and actors smoking. Some shots are candid, while some are obviously posed for promotional purposes.These come from a time when smoking was endemic in our culture. I grew up in the 1950s when it seemed like everybody smoked — my parents, their friends, people in movies and on TV. No-smoking bans were years in the future. Health concerns about smoking  got little if any attention. Cigarettes were props, a way of shaping an image. Being photographed holding a cigarette or having one hanging out of the mouth could add a sense of glamor, sexiness, or mystery. I think that’s at work in many of these photographs, though in the more candid shots, the person just happened to be smoking at the time.

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David Lynch and Jean-Luc Godard.

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Stanley Kubrick, shooting Dr. Strangelove (1964).

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Jacqueline Bisset

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Natalie Wood blowing smoke with Michael Caine.

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Bette Davis, photo by Ron Galella.

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Brigitte Bardot, photo by Terry O’Neill.

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François Truffaut, shooting Fahrenheit 451 (1966).

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Akira Kurosawa, elegant as ever.

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Marcello Mastroianni, photo by Bert Stern 1963.

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Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve.

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James Dean at a lunch counter. Lonely photo.

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Jacques Tati, Paris 1955.

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Romy Schneider

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Romy Schneider and Alain Delon, who looks like he just went a few rounds.

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Anouk Aimée

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Ingrid Bergman

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Catharine Deneuve and Luis Buñuel.

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Federico Fellini

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Jean-Pierre Léaud

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Julie Delphy and Charlotte Gainsbourg, maybe not so glamorous in these shots.

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Sophia Loren

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Shelley Duvall

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Peter O’Toole

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Gena Rowlands. I don’t know, this might be from a film, which would bend the rules, but I really like the shot for this post. Besides, it’s a great shot, isn’t it?

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Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn, photo by Annie Leibovitz.

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Okay, I think that’s enough smoking for now. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

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