I happened upon this hidden gem while in pursuit of director Magnus Von Horn’s 2024 feature, The Girl with the Needle. At first glance, Von Horn’s two movies are quite different… one is set in the modern world of social media influencing, the other, in the dark days immediately following the end of the first world war. The common thread? Each tells a story from the perspective of a young woman, struggling to survive in difficult circumstances.
After taking a week off to recover from a surgery, I was really happy to be back, and was gratified by the healthy turnup! More Von Horn next week?
As Ryan Lattanzio summarized in his IndieWire revew: Bird is not Arnold’s best film — how can you top the cross-country raptures of “American Honey” or the final synchronized dance to Nas in “Fish Tank”? But it’s certainly her most ambitious in terms of willingness to stretch her creative reach beyond the social-realist-only confines of some of her early work.
That’s a good way of looking at it. Andrea Arnold’s empathetic observation of youth, particularly those in hardscrabble circumstances, has always been spot-on, in much the same way as that of the Dardenne brothers, but with a very British flavor. Barry Keoghan, and newcomer, Nykiya Adams shone, as did Franz Rogowski, as Bird. Rogowski is a German actor who was born with a cleft lip. His cleft was surgically closed, resulting in a slight lisp. He first appeared on our screen (well, it was the previous screen, at MovieNight, in Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria… maybe time for another look?). His career has gone from strength to strength.
Since I had a surgery scheduled for 6am on Friday morning, it seemed sensible to move NewScreen to Wednesday this week. We had an unexpectedly great turnout tonight. Thanks everyone! See you next time.
It was great to be able to show this ancient gem to people who hadn’t seen it. Apparently Sunrise flopped at the time of its release, due to the rising popularity of “talkies”. I wonder if any of those could possibly be as memorable. Another interesting fact: the studio insisted on a happy ending, which Murnau was against, but eventually caved.
Did we just watch Sean Baker’s magnum opus tonight? I believe this is the case, although I hope the definition might be only temporary (I admit that I don’t know whether that works). Dressed up at times as a laugh-a-minute rom-com, Anora is at heart a study of a young woman whose life is bereft of love, friendship, and tenderness. When a Prince Charming appears on the scene, she dives in, hoping for the best.
I’m guessing that you probably know this doesn’t work out but it’s a heck of a journey, all the way to the devastating last scene. Speechless.
Remember that night we spent together a while back?
Another plot with a surprising twist, Iris Kaltenback’s The Rapture (Le ravissement) demonstrates just how difficult it can become to maintain a spur-of-the-moment deception. That’s kind of enough said… no spoilers here.
Our short tonight was one of our all time favorites, Over Time, directed by Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, and Damien Ferrie.
The critics largely panned this, and I admit that it took me a while to get around to watching it for that reason, but… Lanthimos is Lanthimos, and when a best friend described her reaction to this as “flabbergasted” last week, I just had to watch it then and there. “Flabbergasted” was a perfect term.
I imagine that this project was hatched during the making of his last film. As he often does, he retained most of the actors from the hugely successful Poor Things, and went on to make Kinds of Kindness with them. I suspect there was a lot of input from this stellar cast, Emma Stone in particular (this is just me speculating…). Mark Ruffalo, who was brilliant in Poor Things, was swapped out for Jesse Plemons, who took it to a whole ‘nother level(s). “It girl” Margaret Qually graduated from bit part (Dafoe (as “God”)’s new experiment at the end of Poor Things) to powerhouse character(s).
One of our guests tonight had seen Kinds of Kindness before, and wanted to see it again, suspecting that a second watching would bring more focus. He was right.
In the meantime, I found this article that, aside from one minor inaccuracy*, explains a lot.
*The hair caught in the swimming pool pump was not one of the synchronized swimmer twins’.
Anna: What are you doing? Sean: I’m looking at my wife.
Jonathan Glazer’s Birth has lived on vividly in my memory since first seeing it and then screening it at MovieNight, in the old place, in the old days. Our Black Friday screening pulled in a great group of folks, and Nicole Kidman’s performance was mesmerizing.
Our short tonight was the ever-frantic “Tanto”, by Cassie Marin, directed by King She.
Thanks to Greg for bringing this relatively unknown 2023 slasher flick from J.T. Mollner to my attention. I say “relatively unknown”, but it seems that it is gaining recognition and expanding its fan base daily. Strange Darling is a smart, extraordinarily well constructed puzzle piece, doled out in six tight, non-sequential chapters. It totally blindsided me.
Our recycling of shorts continued this tonight with Paul Trillo’s surreal AI-generated animation, Thank You For Not Answering.
“Wouldn’t you like to know how it feels to kiss yourself?”
After last week’s roller coaster ride of The Substance it was good to lighten up tonight. My Old Ass is, after all, a rom-com-dram, coming-of-age, and in some ways even a tad Hallmarkian, but packs a surprising gut punch. Tears were shed. And laughs were laughed.
Taking advantage of the main feature’s relatively short run-time, we showed one of our longer shorts: Little Red Riding Hood, directed by David Kaplan, and featuring a very young Christina Ricci. Wonderful, as always.
