Vibrantly, Robin Campillo tells the story of the individuals behind ACT UP- Paris- an early 1990s HIV/AIDS rights activism group. Much of the film is set in a lecture hall. It is like watching a great debate, authentic and intelligent. This is elevated and emotional discourse. The story is about the group, the collective, but Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as Sean is certainly the most dominant thread. Adele Haenel from Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) plays Sophie as part of the group as well. Biscayart gets a fantastic scene on a train early in the film. “I live

This very loose adaptation of Kipling was the very first Disney animation project after the passing of Walt Disney in 1966 The strength of the film is two fantastic songs and some of the vocal talent involved. The Bare Necessities (which really became the blueprint for Hakuna Matata- they even both find food under a rock)- was written by Terry Gilkyson and performed by Phil Harris. I Wanna Be Like You was by Richard and Robert Sherman (from Mary Poppins) back with Phil Harris performing again and this time a duo with Louis Prima. These two songs come within

  There may not be a better opening eight-minutes in cinema history than the way auteur, and enfant terrible, Lars von Trier starts his 2011 masterpiece Melancholia. The film begins with a slow-motion montage of cinematic paintings accompanied by Wagner’s excerpts from Tristan und Isolde. Included in the montage are the Last Year at Marienbad-like lawn with sundial shot, the three characters with the moon, sun, and melancholia, the shots of Earth and melancholia in space, Kirsten Dunst laying in the water in her dress, the falling black horse… simply sublime cinema art. These aren’t just jaw-dropping random images—they

Francesco Rosi’s The Mattei Affair centers around the mysterious plane crash of real life business tycoon and leader Enrico Mattei Rosi’s film is no straight biopic or docudrama— he uses the crash as the center point and bounces the narrative around that event, before and after. His collage is a little tough to get a hold off at first- he’s cutting to the exterior of a high rise at night, a wall full of televisions… in some scenes it is a flashback of Gian Maria Volente (from A Fistful of Dollars- almost unrecognizable here as the cleanly shaven Mattei)

Pasolini’s dedication to shooting in these various, gorgeous locales is admirable. Without a star (though his male muse Franco Citti is here flying around in a small role as a demon), Pasolini made a semi-soft porn-- a string of erotic tales shot in areas such as Yemen, Iran, Ethiopia and Nepal. It is a Morricone score but there’s not a lot of music here covering the 2+ hours, and Dante Ferretti did the production design (Salo, Casino, Age of Innocence) but this isn’t Salo. The location scout did as much to design the production here as anyone else. Non-professional

Radha Blank’s black and white The Forty-Year-Old Version is an authentic portrayal of an artist’s struggle. Blank plays herself in this highly autobiographical story about a playwright, a teacher, and poet/rapper. I adore the logo and titles that look like a 1990’s hip-hop album Though she is the writer, director and actor—it is not a total one woman show. There is plenty of room for fine performances from Peter Kim as Archie. Archie is Blank’s best friend. Oswin Benjamin excels as well as D. Benjamin plays D as a soft-spoken, confident introvert—playing well off Blank. Blank’s own actual brother

Super Dark Times is a flawed, but encouraging debut from Ken Phillips. A major strength of the film is the photography—particularly in the early moments of the film. Phillips shoots these gorgeous bare trees of upstate New York. He shoots the fog hanging on the lake and has several magic hour silhouette cinematic paintings (see above) that command your attention (and the immediate researching on your phone of who Ken Phillips is and hoping he has something new coming up soon). Still, these are fleeing moments in the film—not a dominant portion of the running time by any means.

James Wan’s The Conjuring starts, effectively, in medias res with the Annabelle prologue before the “true story” titles and the magnificently designed “The Conjuring” logo slides down. The strong start continues with Wan’s active camera pushing through the haunted house to the window as the station wagon of the Perron family (led by the talented Lili Taylor) arrives. Like Wan does with The Conjuring 2 (2016)—and this film here, the first, simply is not as good as the sequel- he makes a real effort to have the camera twirling (like a spirit) in the house, there’s one shot early

Godard’s modern day retelling of the story of the Virgin Mary marvelously weaves in his patented cutaway editing arrangement. The film was quite controversial at the time—and beyond just Godard’s use of nudity (his actresses in the 1980’s rarely wore pants). Like Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) most reviews at the time not taking it from that angle. Canby noted that the controversy would sell more tickets than the movie and he’s probably right- though Godard isn’t interested in an audience, and never has been. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/07/movies/film-festival-godard-s-hail-mary.html It is 72-minutes. That’s brief even for Godard. If you’ve seen

Animation, outside of Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon, often lacks the singular artistic voice. That is not the case with Soul. Soul is clearly the companion of 2015’s Inside Out and the work from the creative mind Pete Docter. The story questions the life of the fedora-wearing, jazz teacher Joe. Joe is an aspiring musician. An accident befalls Joe and we’re quickly in the sub-genre of post-life examination films (if you enjoy this subject, you should seek out Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life or even Capra’s masterpiece It’s A Wonderful Life). Docter goes back to the dark color blue

Tout Va Bien has far too much brilliance in it to ignore, and far too many problems in it to rank amongst the best work of the great French master. Godard throws away fifty (50) of the available 95 minutes. Tout Va Bien, with its justifiably memorable supermarket tracking shot, will also be forever synchronized with Weekend (1967) and Godard’s traffic jam shot and sequence in his final masterpiece. Godard brings his postmodern reflexivity to the work right from the very beginning with his movieclapper on the audio track before the trademark red, white and blue titles smack you

In First Name: Carmen the Godard stew is as easy to decipher as it has been since the 1960’s. It is still scattershot and montage reliant, but you can trace the director (Godard himself), the two young lovers, the orchestra, the waves and traffic—all melding together. It is avant-garde of course—but it isn’t a complete essay muddle. Beethoven and Godard’s love of classical music is front and center.  Any film with fine imagery and this much Beethoven is going to be solid at the very least. In characteristic fashion (talk about an auteur trademark!) Godard often drops the dialogue