Flicks with The Film Snob

A documentary by Todd Douglas Miller marking the 50th anniversary of the flight that first landed a man on the moon, features previously unseen film footage and audio from the mission. It was only after the opening credits started playing for Apollo 11 , a new documentary by Todd Douglas Miller, that it suddenly occurred to me that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the...

John Carpenter’s first feature, a low budget science fiction comedy, drily exposes the complete inadequacy of human beings when measured against the cosmos. John Carpenter is known primarily as a director of popular genre pictures, mostly in horror (such as Halloween , the film that made his career), action thrillers, and science fiction. Being a film snob, I haven’t been as receptive to his work...

The story of the early life and career of an innovative German painter dramatizes the troubled history of that country from the Nazi period to its division during the Cold War. Never Look Away, the title of a new film by German writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, is an admonishment to a young artist—everything true is beautiful, so the artist should not avert his eyes from anything r...

A remarkable film from Colombia depicts how a traditional Indian tribe is corrupted by wealth and power through its involvement in the drug trade. Birds of Passage, a remarkable new film from Colombia, combines some very different things into one. It’s a crime picture about the drug trade in South America, but it’s also steeped in indigenous culture, particularly that of the Wayuu Indians of north...

100-year-old films of the British Army in the trenches have been digitally restored and colorized by New Zealand director Peter Jackson, in a stunning and vivid resurrection of the lived experience of World War One. From 2014 to 2018, many nations observed a solemn centenary. It had been 100 years since the Great War, as it was called during the time it was waged—what we now refer to as the First...

Two older women live in a beautiful mansion in Paraguay–but they are facing financial ruin. When one of them goes to prison to serve a short sentence for fraud, the other begins to explore possibilities of which she’d been previously unaware.  The Heiresses is a film from Paraguay, the first movie I’ve seen from that country. Paraguay has a cinematic history, but it’s been small and plagued by lac...

A street kid fights for survival in Lebanon, in Nadine Labaki’s heart wrenching new film. Nadine Labaki is a Lebanese writer-director whose three feature films to date display a strong sensitivity to the lives of ordinary working people in Lebanon, their struggles, resilience, and humor. An actress herself, she is especially adept at bringing out the best in actors. Her latest picture, Capernaum,...

Chris Dashiell names his favorite films that were released last year. There were some miraculous films in 2018. I’ve learned to be grateful, and not to take these things for granted. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón). Cuarón’s masterpiece is inspired by the story of his own family during one tumultuous year in Mexico City in the early 1970s. But he tells it from the point of view of the family’s live-in house...

The tension between communist Poland and the West in the 1950s is reflected in the tortured love affair of a singer and the musician who discovers her. Relationships are hard. Most people know that. Being in love doesn’t guarantee the skills needed to communicate, live together, or work through big issues. Now, if you add to that difficulty an oppressive or intrusive society into which you’re born...

The Coen brothers’ latest film is a story anthology presenting the dark themes behind that most American of film genres, the western. The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have covered a lot of genres in their filmmaking career, and they tried their hand at that most American of genres, the western, in their 2010 remake of True Grit . Now they present another take on the American West, by means of a...

Barry Jenkins adapts a James Baldwin novel about a black couple who won’t let anything, including an unjust arrest, keep them apart. When we last saw writer-director Barry Jenkins, his film Moonlight , which was only his second feature, had won Best Picture and two other Oscars at the Academy Awards a couple of years ago. How does a filmmaker follow up from that? In Jenkins’ case, the answer is si...

The story of two women fighting for influence at the 18th century British court of Queen Anne satirizes the grotesque and demeaning nature of raw power. The Favourite is what they call a costume picture—a film about an earlier period of history that includes a lot of elaborate costumes and sets. Typically, a costume picture appeals primarily to the curiosity of audiences about the past, but The Fa...

Julian Schnabel’s portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, beautifully portrayed by Willem Dafoe, focuses on the subjectivity of a painter for whom art was the only reason for living. By my count there have been at least eight films dramatizing the life of Vincent Van Gogh—such is the fascination surrounding the great Dutch painter, virtually unrecognized in his time and who died tragically at the age of 37....

A romantic comedy from classic Hollywood about a little store in Budapest and the people who work there, exemplifies what was known as “the Lubitsch touch.” There are some old movies that I will watch during the holiday season. This year I was reminded that if I were asked to name a film exemplifying the best writing and direction from the classic Hollywood era—there’s one I would think of right a...

The story of a servant for a well-off Mexican family in the 1970s, told through a unique style that lends an epic quality to the main character’s everyday life. I just saw a masterpiece. I don’t get to say that too often, at least not about new films. What I just saw is Roma , the latest movie written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The title, Roma , refers to the name of a middle class neighborho...

Tells the story of astronaut Neil Armstrong by emphasizing the grief at losing his little daughter, and his subsequent shutting down of emotions and immersion in his work. First Man, directed by Damien Chazelle, is the story of astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. It covers his career from being a test pilot at Andrews Air Force Base in 1961, all the way to the Apollo 11 mi...

Blindspotting deftly mixes realism with theatricality to portray the struggles of being black in the city, while Widows features a multi-ethnic group of women planning a big heist. In a year when racially conscious American films grabbed the spotlight, two that have got a lot of attention (well-deserved) were Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You and Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. But there was another t...

A mysterious triangle evokes the mystery of human emotions under stress, in South Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s new film. Passion contained, rage suppressed, the cruelty and disappointments of life forever pushed down and out of our conscious awareness until, it seems, some kind of terrible explosion must occur—all this is the undertone of South Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s new film, Burnin...

John Cassavetes’ acclaimed film from 1974 features Gena Rowlands in the title role as a woman who can’t fit into the narrow role of a wife that is expected of her. A Woman Under the Influence , released in 1974, is regarded by many as the finest achievement by the independent filmmaker John Cassavetes. It got him an Oscar nomination for Director, and a Best Actress nomination for his wife, the gre...

Melissa McCarthy gets to stretch beyond her comedy roles in this portrait of the writer Lee Israel, who got herself out of debt by forging letters supposedly written by famous dead authors and celebrities. Can You Ever Forgive Me? is an ironic title for an ironic true story, that of Lee Israel, the author of several well-received biographies in the 70s and 80s, whose personal and financial misfort...

The Loft Cinema’s 2018 Film Festival promises to be a great one. For a medium sized city, Tucson sure has a lot of film festivals. We live in a film-loving community, I’m proud to say, and each festival has a special flavor. Now, I don’t want to seem like I’m playing favorites, but I do have to admit that there’s one local festival that seems designed just for a film snob like me—an 8-day event fe...

Mario Monicelli’s 1963 comedy/drama about a strike by factory workers in 19th century Turin is not as well known as it should be. The other day I stumbled on a hidden gem, as I sometimes do in my restless curiosity about worthwhile films that are not so well known. From Italian director Mario Monicelli, released in 1963, it’s called The Organizer . The setting is the northern Italian city of Turin...

A documentary illuminates the life, and especially the bold work, of the groundbreaking Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is one of the foremost innovators in modern painting and design. One of her work’s most characteristic elements, although by no means her only one, is the dot. Colorful dots fill her canvases and exhibitions, in such profusion that they look like the st...

In his first English language film, Jacques Audiard gives us an interesting and off-beat take on the outlaw Western genre. When I first saw the preview for a new Western film called The Sisters Brothers , I thought it was a comedy—first because of the title, in which the two brothers who are the main characters have the last name “Sisters,” which of course causes confusion, and because one of the...

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ second film dramatizes the infamous 1985 robbery of ancient Mayan artifacts from Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology, in a fascinating character study of the heist’s young leader, played here by Gael García Bernal. A few years ago, Mexican writer/director Alonso Ruizpalacios made a splash on the world film scene with Güeros, which I saw at a local film festival. It h...