This week on Women InSession, we are joined by film critic Keith Noakes to discuss his favorite films from TIFF 2024! Awards season is upon us, and that means some very exciting films coming to us very soon. Festival season is always fun, and Toronto is one of the best is foreshadowing how the year will play out.
Panel: Kristin Battestella, Jaylan Salah
On that note, check out this week’s show and let us know what you think in the comment section. Thanks for listening and for supporting the InSession Film Podcast!
This year, three recent Best Picture nominees—Dune, Max Max: Fury Road, and Joker are back with a sequel or prequel—- Dune: Part 2, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and Joker: Folie a Deux.
While Dune is just a continuation of the book series like Lord Of The Rings, the other two films are original stories from their pre-existing characters that were made following the acclaim of the first film. There were a lot more than I thought; The Miniver Story is an almost forgotten sequel to Mrs. Miniver, and French Connection II continues the story of Popeye Doyle chasing down the drug dealer that got away in the first film. Excluding those stories with pre-arranged sequels (Avatar, Star Wars) or sequel novels (The Color of Money), here are other sequels that came about from its Best Picture-placed forerunners.
The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
One year after winning Best Picture for Going My Way, director Leo McCarey and star Bing Crosby continued the story of Father Charles “Chuck” O’Malley as the new headmaster of St. Mary’s school. He is forced to team with the stubborn Sister Mary Benedict (Ingrid Bergman) to prevent the school from being closed down as a developer is looking to buy the land the school is on. It is a nearly forgotten Christmas movie, but it is still an old-fashioned dramedy with heart and was successful financially and critically with nine Oscar nominations (and one win for Best Sound) following.
Rocky II (1979)
After winning as the underdog for Best Picture three years earlier, the story of Rocky Balboa returned with Sylvester Stallone, who is now director, and everyone is returning to reclaim their roles. Rocky suddenly retired from the sport, but Apollo Creed, angered by accusations that the match from the previous film was fixed, demands a rematch to defeat Rocky without anyone questioning it. While it didn’t get any Oscar success, the box office numbers counted more with $200 million and the push for a third film, then a fourth, then a fifth (which really sucked), and finally a sixth film. Then came the Creed trilogy and Stallone’s Oscar nomination, his second as Rocky Balboa.
The Godfather III (1990)
The original Godfather was straight out of the book by Mario Puzo while Godfather Part II utilized the chapter of a young Vito Corleone mixed with an original story that pushed this mafia masterpiece along. Of course, both of the two films won Best Picture and established all the newcomers – Al Pacino, Robert DuVall, James Caan, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, and director Francis Ford Coppola – as megastars. So, of course, there had to be a third and final story to tie it up nicely. Coppola and Puzo wrote Part III based on the real-life scandal of the Vatican Bank as well as connected to the sudden death of Pope John Paul I. The plot, however, was criticized by most critics.
While it also got a Best Picture nomination, it is regarded as a total failure to what was a masterpiece series. Besides the fact that Sofia Coppola was a disaster playing Michael Corleone’s father (Winona Rider dropped out at the last minute), Robert DuVall did not come back to play Tom Hagen because of a salary dispute, so a new character played by George Hamilton was written in, but didn’t feel the same. On top of that, Coppola struggled to find an ending until late into post-production, and fought with Paramount Studios over his original title, The Death Of Michael Corleone. At least, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, was a recut version of Part III and received more favorable reviews to the original cut.
The Two Jakes (1990)
It took years to get the sequel to Chinatown going, but the late Robert Towne returned with a new script, with former Paramount head Robert Evans producing it, and Jack Nicholson returning as Jake Gittes. It was a critical and commercial failure, but the story went back years earlier which affected the Nicholson, Towne, and Evans trio. Set a decade after the events in the first film, Jake Gittes has a client, also named Jake (Harvey Keitel), who kills his wife’s lover, and Gittes finds himself embroiled in something much bigger than a jilted lover.
The film was set to go ahead in 1985 with Evans playing the second Jake character, but after terrible screen tests, Towne, who was directing, told Evans he was being replaced days before the shoot. An angered Evans pulled his support from the film, calling off the movie, leading to lawsuits by unpaid members of the crew (sounds familiar) and Paramount taking a $4 million loss on the production. When it was brought back to life, Nicholson became the director and rewrote chunks of Towne’s script while Towne, out of the country, very slowly faxed back newly written scenes which forced the production to wait around, causing the budget to balloon higher than originally planned.
Babe: Pig In The City (1998)
While the first film was directly from the novel by Dick-King Smith, its sequel was an original story in which director George Miller (who co-scripted the first film; Chris Noonan was the director) took the characters and made a fresh tale. Here, with the farm in danger of being evicted, Babe is taken to a sheepdog herding contest where the money can be used to pay off the mortgage. But a comedy of errors leaves them stranded, and the pack, separated from their owner, must fend for themselves in Metropolis. It failed at the box office, and critics were more mild in its praise compared to the first film.
Synopsis:Seventeen-year-old Jeff stays at film director Blake Cadieux’s wilderness lodge after being invited by friend Max’s family. When strange events occur, Jeff suspects something is amiss with the director and his retreat.
Festival fatigue, an uncommon level of exhaustion brought on by the seemingly never-ending practice of watching, discussing, reviewing, and thinking about anywhere from three-to-six movies per day, comes for us all. You just don’t know it’s hit you until it wallops you over the head like _______ did when he _______ _______ with a _______ in _______, a Main Slate selection at this year’s New York Film Festival. It happened to me a few moments ago, when I was two revelatory paragraphs into this review of Phillipe Lesage’s Who By Fire – which will have its U.S. premiere at the festival on Sunday, Oct. 6 – only to find that I was basing my thesis around a note I made about an entirely different film. Assuming I was looking at my chicken-scratched thoughts about Who By Fire, I began to write about one of “its” opening title cards: “In the name of friendship.”
It took me a second before realizing that this title card did not, in fact, appear anywhere throughout Lesage’s drama, but instead in the final film I saw on the previous day and thus took notes for on the previous page, Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language. Good film. I quite liked it! Too bad the only thing it has in common with Who By Fire is that it was written and directed by a Canadian and takes place up North. Command + A + Delete. Time to find a new slant.
Or so I thought. As I pondered the Quebecois Lesage’s epically-tense drama about a young man who tags along on his best friend’s trip to visit his father’s old filmmaking partner, the idea that Rankin, a Winnipegger, raised at the beginning of his absurdist comedy came into focus as a pertinent theme at Who By Fire’s core. The journey that Jeff (Noah Parker) takes with Max (Antoine Marchand Gagnon) and his family – his sister, Aliocha (an excellent Antoine Marchand Gagnon), and father, a writer named Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani) – to the cabin of famed director Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter, magnificent) could very easily be subtitled, “In the name of friendship.” The bonds that Lesage illustrates and unpacks in his film are far more volatile than anything Rankin puts forth in his film, but they are friendships nonetheless. And the complicated ones are often the most fascinating to watch unravel. (Will Bjarnar: 1, Festival Fatigue: 0. Take that, horrid sleep schedule.)
Albert and Blake collaborated back in the day, making enough much-celebrated narrative films that the latter’s successful move to documentary filmmaking still stings the former’s ego. The group of relaxing artists and intellectuals share dinners together in scenes that recur over the course of the film, and as the wine flows and the chicken is carved, spirited debates often evolve into furious arguments, especially between Albert and Blake. During their first meal, Albert asserts that he’s a far better writer than Blake could ever be: “You’re very passionate,” he says, “but that means you want every scene to be rhythmic and contemplative, humorous but tragic… they drag on forever.” Whether or not Lesage is ribbing his own cinematic style here – Who By Fire is his longest film to date, but it’s just as meditative as his 2018 feature Genesis, as well as 2015’s The Demons, which saw him break through as a director – doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that he’s willing to give us individual windows into each character’s psyches the moment they open their mouths. Albert is quick to put his old friend down in an effort to stand tall himself; Blake, the richer, handsomer half of their duo, immediately sideswipes Albert’s children as the reason he’s stopped working on meaningful projects of late. (That is, unless you count the animated series Albert is writing; called Rock Lobster, it’s about a lobster who gets lost in Toronto, and it’s going to be a hit.)
Indeed, Lesage tips his hand early on in Who By Fire, layering his proceedings with a great deal of tension as though he’s itching to run out of frosting before serving up his massive, uber-dramatic cake. But he doesn’t do so in the sense that tells you exactly where his narrative is heading. Sure, an overabundance of long, looong takes – the film begins with an extended oner of a car traveling down a lonely road; no wonder it runs 155 minutes – spell out some things that could ostensibly pass us by as subtle foreshadowing (if not solid clues) were they shown as brief glances. For instance, when he finally cuts away from his opening overhead shot of the family vehicle, Balthazar Lab’s lens lingers on Jeff, Max, and Aliocha, who are crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the back seat; Jeff attempts to brush Aliocha’s hand, a gesture she surely notices and evades before he can make contact. (You’ll never guess which one has unrequited feelings for the other.) Yet this moment, while just the first of Jeff’s pervasive efforts to win the heart of his buddy’s sister, hints at but one of many subplots that surge throughout Lesage’s plot. And while there are a great many – perhaps one too, depending on your patience – each receives its fair share of time in the spotlight, assuring that no one is left to wait for the rest to reach their respective resolutions. They unfold in concert, fueling Lesage’s principal effort to tell a tale heavy on uncertainty and yet deftly light on shock value, no matter how certain some of the shocks may feel when they finally do come to pass.
Lesage is also aware that in order to make the events of his film enjoyable on some level, he has to find ways to ease the straining bonds between his characters with every appropriate opportunity, if not every available one. To be clear, the tension is damn-near constant, but Lesage’s dialogue is often laced with wry humor (humorous and tragic, see?) that alleviates the persistent sense that something sinister could be afoot in this vacation home. When Jeff, desperate to make a connection with Aliocha, learns that her brother caught her watching porn featuring one participant who hits the other, he begins to discuss the books they’re reading, maintaining boyish charm until BOOM, he slaps her out of nowhere and sprints out of the room. (Needless to say, what he was going for didn’t work.) Later on, Albert flirts with a heart attack when a special bottle of wine he brought to share with the group – including a famous actress named Hélène (Irène Jacob) and her partner Eddy (Laurent Lucas), who travel from Paris to join the retreat halfway through – doesn’t taste the way he expected. Ahmarani’s physical acting in this scene – the behavior of a revolted man who may or may not have been pranked by his jealous pal – almost rivals the sequence that will surely serve as the preeminent standout stretch of the film, a prolonged dance sequence ironically set to The B-52’s “Rock Lobster.”
Driving much of Who By Fire forward, though, are Jeff’s inability to operate as freely in a new environment as his contemporaries are able to, Aliocha’s brusque modus operandi, and Blake’s dark side, which Parker, Arandi-Longpré, and Worthalter bring to life with furious vivacity that fuels Lesage’s dramatic sensibilities. For Parker, it’s a remarkable turn in what appears to be his first starring role, though if the emotional range on display here is any indication, that won’t be the case for long. Arandi-Longpré, too, gets the first true showcase of her career here, and as Aliocha, she provides a vital sense of humanity and reality amidst an environment oozing with the pus of toxic masculinity’s wounds. Worthalter, on the other hand, has been a reliable performer on both stage and screen for the better part of the last 20 years, but has seen a surge in castability – as well as popularity in Canada and France – since his award-winning supporting performance in Lukas Dhont’s 2018 feature debut, Girl. If, by chance, you were able to catch this year’s The Goldman Case before it vacated Film at Lincoln Center theaters prior to the start of NYFF, you’re undoubtedly well aware of his tenacity as a lead performer. His work in Who by Fire isn’t just another level for him: It’s another stratosphere.
The same could be said for Lesage, whose aforementioned films The Demons and Genesis were both evident influences on his latest and longest feature: The former is based in part on events from its director’s own childhood, like some of Cadieux’s films in Who by Fire are on his, while the latter focuses on two half-siblings who struggle with their own flailing, ill-defined romances. Those elements are (obviously) at play here, but to see Lesage take on such a massive challenge while mixing so much else – adolescence, lust, rivalries both personal and professional, sexuality, et al. – feels like an invested viewer’s triumph just as much as it is a resounding success for the filmmaker.
It’s clear that he sees himself in many of his characters, and one would only know how much personal intel is poured into this work were they to ask the director directly. That’s what makes it that much braver as a piece of art, not just due to the daunting experience it beckons viewers to take on, but frankly, because most audiences these days tend to be hesitant to invest their time in a near-three-hour intellectual exercise about characters they don’t recognize and lives they might not otherwise invest in. Who by Fire takes the makings of what could have been an overlong, overstuffed, overdramatic melodrama and turns it all inside-out in favor of a richly-stimulating feature about desire and privilege. It may not realize the trappings of life we’re all used to, but it tells a story we can all understand in a way we have yet to see it told. After all, what else do we go to the movies for? You know, other than in the name of friendship.
Who by Fire will celebrate its U.S. Premiere on Sunday, Oct. 6 at the 62nd New York Film Festival. KimStim will release it in theaters later this year.
Director:Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias Writer:Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias Stars:Jhon Narváez, Fareed Matjila, Steven Alexander
Synopsis: A voice that claims to be from a hippopotamus. A voice that doesn’t understand the perception of time. Pepe, the first and last hippo killed in the Americas, tells his story with the overwhelming orality of these towns.
There have been plenty of documents about Pablo Escobar’s crimes and illegal actions. But many don’t know about Hacienda Napoles (or Naples Estate in English), an estate that was built and owned by the Colombian drug lord in Puerto Triunfo. With almost twenty kilometers squared of land, Escobar made a zoo of his own, consisting of many kinds of animals not indigenous to his country–illegally transported to Colombia because he had all the money in the world to do what he pleased. He had antelopes, elephants, exotic birds, giraffes, and four hippos.
We have heard of millionaires having their strange choices for “pets” before, most notably monkeys or wild cats. (First, let’s note that it is stupid to have those types of animals in a habitat and whether they are not accustomed to removing them from the wild just to showcase power and wealth.) But Escobar had some of the weirdest selections of animals in his estate. When Escobar was shot and killed in 1993 by the police, the property had a possession war, where the family and local government were trying to seize control. The latter won. However, managing it was too expensive, and most animals were donated to South American zoos.
The exception was the four hippos, also known as Escobar’s cocaine hippos, who got so accustomed to living in that weather and terrain that they left them there. To this day, there are hundreds of hippos around Colombia, and it is all due to Escobar. Many attacks have occurred, with some of them causing rampage and killing several locals. It all seems too unbelievable. But indeed, all of this happened and continues to cause some damage. In Pepe, Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias’ followup to 2017’s Cocote, the Dominican director takes the journey of one of those hippos, both through his wanderings in the jungle and rampage elsewhere, and makes something very intriguing, yet tonally strange, out of it.
The film, titled after one of the initial hippos that Escobar brought, is narrated by Pepe (voiced by Jhon Narváez) upon his death, letting us know that he, alongside his “owner”, Pablo Escobar, has passed away via news footage and audio logs. If you don’t know anything about the history of Pepe, de Los Santos Arias does give you moments to recap how the hippo ended up in Colombia, as the film’s first strand revolves around his home in Africa, which is one of the few things Pepe recalls about his life, and how he was taken away from it, alongside the three hippos. Later, we see his life in Colombia, where he was left alone in a country that was alien to him. Yet, he has been able to live and adapt to its luck.
There’s a hierarchy within that growing community of hippos. His brother, Pablito, named after his now-deceased owner, emulates Escobar’s ruthlessness and coldness and takes over the Magdalena River. Pepe, now exiled, goes elsewhere in search of a home. However, many complications arise; his presence elicits a warning–an uncontrollable animal is on the loose. Everybody he crosses paths with runs in fear of the worst scenario. After an incident with two local fishermen, the government hatches a plant to kill Pepe, much like they did Pablo Escobar–a parallel that is not the main focus of the film, yet adds to the strange nature in which this story abides.
Every scene is before Pepe’s death, most of which is vaguely placed together and focuses on the atmosphere rather than what is happening per se. It may be a hippo crossing the Colombian plains for an hour or so. Yet the way Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias shifts this true tale from unorthodox to existentialist is ever so fascinating, even with its quirks. His vision for this is a story about the nature of life in isolation through the eyes of a sentient hippo, traveling through time and space in the events before his eventual death. The narration here is very dept, albeit a rocky one that puts the film between melancholy and exploration, both in Pepe’s doubts of his own life and the Dominican’s cinematic experimentation.
The former is reflected in his grasp of language, which he takes from his surroundings and switches dialects during the film’s chapters, and in his social observations. Pepe grows aware of the treatment of animals and the human condition in the eyes of an animal who slowly adapts to a country that hurriedly wants him gone. As Pepe looks for a sanctuary after being kicked out of his home country, the Hacienda Napoles, and Magdalena River, de Los Santos Arias examines, through the “infamous” hippo, the souls of the displaced in today’s age. He sees all these nationless people–seeking a safe place to live in prosperity–in Pepe’s philosophical conversations with this floating spirit.
Now left without a home, Pepe is down and out, beyond his climate and living conditions. He sees how the rest of the world goes on with their lives as he remains distanced from the one he previously had. This placement of being a bystander or observer of a fast-paced world reminds me of Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void–the audience watches a vessel of a dream, a ghostly presence seeking a way back to the world or the beyond, go through every nook and cranny, street or club, in awe and haunted by how the world moves on without him. Some people will remain hurt by your loss. But the great majority moves around your loss almost immediately, very coldly.
Both films, Pepe and Enter the Void, shift in different tides, with Noe’s being more frantic and somewhat cruel, while de Los Santos Arias’ is more meditative and nonchalant. However, the two are tied in the breadth of placing the viewer in a trance, experiencing recollections and out-of-body (and mind) scenarios of resurrection through cinema. These characters’ spirits lead them to their destination, whether spiritual damnation or salvation. We already know the outcomes. But it is how their newly-forged notions about their life, existence overall, and society guide their bodies to the eventual death they will meet. There is something transient about the whole thing. You feel it in your gut, even when some lines and narrative choices don’t work entirely. Yet, in Pepe trying to understand the societal rotation of the world, or even death, he taps into our doubts and frustrations.
Although we don’t get that spectral camerawork by Benoît Debie in Enter the Void that feels as if a spirit itself was the cinematographer, many stylistic techniques fit in the dreamy canvas of Pepe. Another film that many will correlate with this one is Robert Bresson’s near masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar, or the weaker remake from 2022, EO. The central figures of the aforementioned films deal with a heavy burden, traded and moved around from place to place as they are stuck in the hands of people who work them harshly, coping with an internal and physical sacrifice and hoping that, one day, they will get to a safe haven.
Spiritually molds with life’s mundanity; the human characters’ theological morality meets the animals’ ethics. In Pepe, this takes a less subtle approach with the narration, which accompanies the hippo’s predicaments. Yet, you feel how this wisdom is giving way to his percipience, even in the limbo state his voice comes from. Pepe may not shake the sentimentality and spiritualness of Balthazar. However, it offers a unique, cinematic treat nonetheless. It is not set in a world of rapture, where one must travel in a purgatory-like setting, but one of curiosity, albeit isolated.
RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys, which is opening the 62nd edition of New York Film Festival, is bound to be both hailed and remembered as one of the most tremendous films of the year. Its reasons for such claims are plentiful. For the purpose of this column, we’ll focus on the partnership between co-writer/director Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray. Nickel Boys, adapted from the Colson Whitehead novel of the same name, employs a first-person perspective for a majority of its runtime. At face value, this might be considered a gimmick. But that preconceived notion simply could not be any further from the truth. What Fray is able to achieve with this film is breathtaking. It’s a striking testament to pushing the boundaries of cinema and visual storytelling to its utmost potential. It’s the type of work that, quite frankly, deserves the Academy Award. It’s a technical feat that will receive loads of recognition over the next year and likely many years to come. But Fray won’t receive such praise simply because it’s so technically impressive. No. He will receive it because it defines the very language of Nickel Boys in such a way that it begs the question of what else can be done within the ever-expanding world of cinema.
When discussing the film, Ross cited some examples of films that utilize first-person point-of-view for reasons beyond what many imagine to be a gimmick. The two that sprung to mind are both stellar examples: Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé) and Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow). These are both films that make the deliberate choice of blurring the line between camera lens and operating character. And it’s no surprise that these films and Nickel Boys have an emotional through-line that is directly connected to the stylistic choice being made. When watching a film, we can perceive ourselves as outside of it. Of course, everything we’re seeing is merely occurring in an image being projected onto a massive wall or one that’s beamed onto our screens. That’s easy for stories rooted in fiction. In stories based on true events, such as Nickel Boys, that line obviously becomes a bit more blurry. Even still, some viewers will have the ability to draw a distinct line between their own reality and the reality of the film they’re viewing. In the case of Nickel Boys, Fray and Ross choose to deliberately erase that line. And some of the ways they go about it are so exciting.
Take one of the most fundamental rules of filmmaking as the primary example: spiking the lens. One of the cardinal rules of cinema is to not look directly at the camera. Only in rare instances is it utilized to great effect. In Nickel Boys, it’s deliberately employed as a way to clue in the audience on how to engage with the film. These characters look directly into the lens when speaking to one another. Therefore, we begin to process the fact that the camera and the character are one and the same. We are seeing the world of Nickel Boys, the Nickel Academy, and all beyond it through the eyes of Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson). This sentiment is something that was echoed by Fred Hechinger, who plays Harper, when discussing the film and its blurring of roles. He made note of the unique ways the lead actors would take on the camera rig, functioning as director of photography and camera operator, while Fray would stand in for the lead actors at times. In a film where the camera’s point of view is designed to be one and the same as that of its characters, behind-the-scenes processes make the film feel realistic and all the more exciting. And what is this column for if not to highlight boundary-pushing achievements in cinematography? But what’s equally impressive is the prospect of how, despite all the technical obstacles to overcome, Ross and Fray are able to catch such beauty in a seamless manner.
It also helps that Fray’s imagery is absolutely gorgeous. Despite all the horror and injustice that Nickel Boys is centered around, Fray captures the world around Elwood and Turner with such a curious and appreciative eye. There are so many moments peppered throughout that one can imagine being left on the cutting room floor in a lesser film. In Nickel Boys, these moments amount to something greater. They serve as a reminder of the inherent beauty to be found in the random going-ons of life. A young Elwood sees two strangers in a store, both accidentally stepping in synchrony. The repeating patterns on a series of dresses. The color bars of a television are displayed through the store’s display window. Only then do we notice the reflection of young Elwood. Then, the strangers begin to form a group around him and watch whatever image will appear next. The extended keychain and accessories of a stranger he’s only just met. Nickel Boys also has a very specific framing device, and in many ways, all these moments and the stylistic choice of first-person POV feel as if they, too, lend themselves to the overarching sentiment of Fray’s work. These are the moments we find ourselves reflecting on after a lifetime.
It’s not until about a third of the way through Nickel Boys that Fray again changes the visual language of the film. Even so, it’s always of a whole with everything that precedes that follows. There is a shift in perspective. A camera rig was set up on the back of the great actor Daveed Diggs, and any section of the film was shot from behind his back. It takes the form of a 3rd person’s point-of-view but is far more connected to the subject than traditional camerawork. All of a sudden, certain cutaways throughout the film begin locking into place. Rather than simply being presented as archival footage, these cutaways operate as flashbacks: glimpses into the neural firings of a protagonist thinking back on life. This switch-up of camerawork also serves a narrative purpose. We are seeing a literal display of a person who has found themselves disconnected from the reality in front of them. As they begin to process the traumatic memories of their past through breaking news or bumping into familiar faces, Fray’s visuals send chills through the audience. It’s a devastating revelation made all the more heartbreaking by the events of the story itself. To see such beauty captured in the face of such horrors, only to then shift the visual language of the film into a literal disconnection and isolation of the world, is a massive swing that pays off exponentially with each new scene. Nickel Boys is achingly intimate, yet throughout its runtime, Ross and Fray remind us that this is but one of countless experiences we have lived. It is an absolute triumph of a film in every way.
Nickel Boys is the Opening Night film of the 62nd edition of New York Film Festival.
Jaylan Salah’s shares the stand-out costume and hair and makeup design from the first half of the year.
A compelling and heavy-set race has emerged for the best-crafted films of 2024. Here, I dig deep into the films I have enjoyed watching, or the ones with the most compelling hair, makeup, and costume ensembles. Whether it is Feyd Rautha’s (Austin Butler) rockstar black, leather and spandex, Bob Marley’s (Kingsley Ben-Adir) dreadlocks, or Longlegs’ (Nicolas Cage) cold, cream, and pasty face—costumes, hair, and makeup elevate a film to a higher level of existence or bury it down in the dumps.
Some films benefit from more coverage detailing the costumes, hair, and makeup work, while others do not.
It makes it harder for a research critic like myself to dive deep and discover all the details of what makes a particular movie special or worth a nomination in the respective hair and makeup, or costumes departments. Nevertheless, it’s always interesting to highlight the perfect film for the right reasons. Some of my least favorite films have incredible work done in the costumes department (sorry, The Great Gatsby), and others whose camerawork and narrative I love are either insignificant or stale costumes and makeup departments-wise (Anyone remember Prince Caspian?)
Here’s my list of the top 2024 Costumes, Hair, and Makeup. Let us know about yours.
Dune: Part Two
Dune: Part Two is wondrous for its stunning hairwork, natural, stripped-bare skin tones, and desert skin. The Fremens, carrying the secret of the desert planet Arrakis, always look like they’re sheltering their face from the sun, with veils covering their entire heads and faces.
Jacqueline West is a poet of costumes. Her individually designed pieces create a supraworld to an existing universe, meticulously crafted from Frank Herbert’s novel to screen by veteran director Denis Villeneuve. From the kaftan-inspired, natural fiber Sietch wardrobe for Chani (Zendaya) to Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson)’s Touareg-inspired, modest costumes made from linen and gauze, West doesn’t hold back in constructing a world out of various shades of beige, nun-like headdresses, and bondage-y House of Harkonnen.
The Dune: Part Two hair game is another story, as told by the Paul Edmonds team. Chani’s hair has to look soft and earthy while seemingly matching the harsh sand and sun that dominate a desert planet like Arrakis. Feyd’s bald head takes hours in the makeup chair but must also accentuate his sexuality and rockstar power. Covering the eyebrows adds to the malicious nature of the character. On a planet devoid of color like Giedi Prime, Lady Margot Fenring’s (Lea Seydoux) hair has to be light blond like the sands of the desert. In contrast, Lady Jessica’s hair has to be longer with multiple extensions and perfectly color-matched to the first film.
All this attention to detail creates a space opera masterpiece, but unlike other sci-fi films where space hair means extra, wild, punky hair, the Dune Universe’s power lies in the subtlety and the ochre and brown desert hues.
Bob Marley: One Love
Biopics will always be kings and queens of costume, hair, and makeup award recognition. In Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Bob Marley: One Love, authenticity and sticking to how real-life figures look and dress have been the key to achieving reggae’s colorful, vibrant world. Although the hair and makeup team based the actors’ looks on their real-life counterparts, they also worked with manipulating particular details. Kingsley Ben-Adir is a giant compared to the real Marley, so the clothing had to create the distinct illusion of a smaller physique, all thanks to the magic of legendary costume designer Anna Biedrzycka-Sheppard famous for Schindler’s List and Maleficent, among other films.
Ben-Adir had to wear a wig to convey Marley’s famed dreadlocks. It could have ended in a farce if not for the magic of hair and makeup artists Carla Farmer and Morris Aberdeen. The makeup team also walked the fine line between the natural, stripped-down nature of the I-threes—Marley’s trio of backup female vocalists providing harmonies to his group— to individualizing every one of them. The makeup team used the clean, natural girl glam look with as little foundation work as possible to accentuate the women’s earthy beauty. Naomi Cowan’s character Marcia Griffiths was glammed up with a touch of mascara, lipstick, and foundation, applied with small fluffy brushes. Anna-Share Blake’s Judy Mowatt was all about defying perfection and showcasing the naturalism of her pregnant character performing on stage, only with a hint of Glossier blush. “k”
The Bikeriders
There’s no denying how The Bikeriders has revived the ‘60s biker culture. Apart from Jeff Nichols’ direction, the hair and makeup team is crucial in bringing the magic to the screen.
Dried grease under the nails achieved the grease and dry dirt look that aesthetic rubbed off on all bikers, covering heavily inked actors with makeup and leaving bikers at their so-called cleanest, still looking unclean. This aesthetic has been Ashleigh Chavis’ mission on The Bikeriders set, making the dazzling Austin Butler less attractive and less distracting from the surrounding biker grunge, ruining Norman Reedus’ teeth, and turning the “very” British Jodie Comer into a tough Midwestern wife.
Costume designer Erin Benach—renowned for designing iconic movie jackets—and her team have created a masterpiece with the costumes, scouring vintage shops and aging jeans to look like they’ve been worn every day for years. Benach and the team over-dyed all the denim (jackets, jeans, and vests) with a blue-green tint to make it look like the bikers haven’t showered or changed. Spraying and painting mud and dirt complimented the look Chavis wanted on the bikers, which was caked dirt and dust, so that these bikers looked worn out, road-weary, and dirty. A great costume designer knows when to overdress or dress down a character, and that’s what Benach does exactly with each actor in the cast, analyzing them according to personality and using the referential Danny Lyon book for guidance.
Longlegs
Longlegs is a polarizing film, but it succeeds in gathering different people around the same campfire, reminiscing on the terrifying Satanist serial killer and his morbid resemblance to the childhood fear of one’s parents. So, creating a character that is a bridge between a nurturing, overarching parent and a washed-up rockstar has been the work of a genius. Mica Kayde’s costume design relies on the contrast between the flour-white faded existence of Longlegs and the darkness surrounding agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), creating a grim environment of buried traumas and sinister omnipresent creatures.
There’s nothing scarier than a faded rockstar glam. The idea of sexy punk hair, makeup, and an overall cooler-than-cool, gender-defying hair and makeup turn into something eerie and morbid as the rockstar loses that aura, that air of youth and captivating visibility. So for the head of the department, Felix Fox and the special makeup-effects artist Harlow MacFarlane to create that look in collaboration with director Osgood Perkins, there had to be toning down of whatever intense theories Nic Cage had for the character.
Cage has been heavily influenced by European cinema, whether in his acting choices or even as he imagines his character, an androgynous person lying in the vicinity of time. The vision doesn’t entirely clash with Perkins’ idea of Longlegs’ face becoming a mask of his identity, the botched plastic surgeries, and the pale complexion, the wild, unruly white hair, all bringing together a being tormented but also sadistic and ravaged by madness like an old-school movie scientist frustrated by the limitations of science, in Longlegs’ case it is the limitations of plastic surgery at the time.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Award seasons present many conversations that make the modern average audience member’s mouth water. Actors spend hours in makeup chairs for a complete transformation, and movie starlets sacrifice beauty for layers and layers of grime and dirt that sculpt their faces as if the characters have wasted years of their lives under the glowing heat of the desert. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga carries the legacy of George Miller’s post-apocalyptic fictional world on its back, Chris Hemsworth’s prosthetic nose, and Anya Taylor-Joy’s bald prosthetic. Giving characters a coppery glow that allows them to shine despite the oil and grease forehead look has been one of makeup and hair designer Lesley Vanderwalt’s main goals. That paint that makes the eyes pop, but that glow that makes those characters shimmer against a highly saturated color grading.
Costume designer Jenny Beavan explains that Miller as an auteur, heavily weighs in on the process before actors are cast, so actors’ involvement becomes less impactful. She describes a wild assembly of old parachutes, tents, and hospital gurneys to use as fabric for the movie costumes to perfectly reflect the harshness of the Wasteland and the dreary effect the desert has on clothes and people, and how savvy the people living under those conditions have learned to become. A pro like Beavan understands fully how to share the concept of the world she is creating through costumes, skulls, and animal bones, but also how to dress a familiar character like Furiosa, whom she, as a costume designer, has grown to love as a particular actress through dressing a different one.
Director: Tyler Chipman Writers: Tyler Chipman, David Purdy Stars: Laura Benanti, Brendan Sexton III, Mariel Molno
Synopsis: Following the loss of his father, a grieving twenty-year-old struggles to hold his family together as an unspeakable darkness plagues his older brother.
Mental health and horror have been deeply intertwined since the earliest days of cinema, forming a dark partnership that reveals the hidden corners of the human mind. Horror often acts as a reflection of our most profound fears and anxieties, turning inner turmoil into something tangible. In this realm, emotions like anxiety and depression take on monstrous forms, emerging as unseen forces that haunt us, whether as creatures hiding in the shadows or as ghostly figures stirring in the darkest corners of our consciousness.
In his feature debut, Tyler Chipman delves into the grim inheritance of mental illness, crafting a narrative that unfurls like a dark shroud around a young teen tormented by a sinister figure hiding in the shadows. The Shade envelops its audience in a bone-chilling atmosphere, a pervasive dread that seeps into every pore, infecting the very essence of being. There are no jump scares here; instead, Chipman offers a slow burn, urging viewers to confront the insidious impact of mental health struggles on the ability to forge authentic connections.
With every frame, the film compels us to peer into the abyss of our own fears, forcing a confrontation with the relentless specters of trauma and isolation. It’s a haunting exploration that prompts us to question the monsters we face not only on screen but within ourselves. In a world that often shrouds mental health in silence, The Shade serves as a grungy elegy, illuminating the profound consequences of our inner demons.
Ryan Beckman (Chris Galust) remains ensnared in the haunting echoes of his father’s suicide, a trauma that festers within him like an open wound, oozing with unresolved grief and anguish. Coexisting with his mother (Laura Benanti) and shielding his younger brother, James (Sam Duncan), from the emotional turmoil that gnaws at his insides, Ryan wears the mask of resilience while battling his own demons.
When Ryan’s older brother, Jason (Dylan McTee), returns home from college, a sinister presence begins to emerge—a crackling-boned creature lurking in the shadows of Jason’s room, an unsettling specter that seems to follow Ryan through the haze of his everyday life. This grotesque entity is no mere figment; it embodies the weight of inherited mental illness, a chilling reminder that such darkness can never truly be vanquished.
As the pale monster creeps ever closer, its oppressive aura suffocating, Ryan realizes the heavy burden that rests on his shoulders: he must shatter the generational curse that binds his family. The stakes escalate into a ticking time bomb, forcing Ryan to confront the beast within, all while racing against the clock to protect James from the harrowing fate that threatens to ensnare him as well. Will he summon the strength to break free from the cycle of despair, or will he succumb to the shadows that loom ever larger?
In The Shade, Tyler Chipman weaves a haunting narrative that draws the audience in a chilling embrace, tightening like a noose as it draws them deeper into the abyss. The character of Ryan, portrayed with raw vulnerability by Chris Galust, pulsates with life through the throes of his panic attacks. Galust’s performance is a masterclass in nuance, inviting viewers to witness the struggle of mental illness reflected in their own shadows. The interplay among Ryan, his younger brother James, and their returning older sibling Jason enriches the film with a profound sense of human compassion, illustrating the bonds that tether us even in the darkest of times.
Every actor contributes to this tapestry, with Laura Benanti delivering a standout moment as her character’s façade shatters, leaving her exposed and vulnerable in a flood of tears. The strength of the cast creates an unbreakable link that anchors the film in emotional truth.
Beneath its horror veneer, The Shade tells a deeply human story, one that feels intimately familiar, as if it were plucked from the depths of shared experiences. Anchored in themes of regret and shame, the film’s spine-tingling imagery unfolds through the atmospheric lens of cinematographer Tom Fitzgerald, whose work imbues each frame with a suffocating dread. The creature—an eerie figure lurking in shadows and crouching in the recesses of bedrooms—serves as a relentless force, clawing its way through Ryan’s existence, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. The true horror of the film lies in this reality: that monsters exist not only in our nightmares but also in the very fabric of our lives, siphoning the vitality from those who suffer.
The Shade resonates as a psycho-drama, probing the depths of despair with a lens that captures the essence of survivor’s guilt. Yet, it falters in its attempt to deliver visceral scares that linger long after viewing. While its haunting imagery is undeniably effective, it lacks the kind of terror that seeps into the marrow of one’s bones, rendering the viewer breathless. Nonetheless, Chipman exhibits a promising grasp of the elements of soul-rattling horror that gnaw at the edges of consciousness. It may not reinvent the genre, but it undeniably sparks a vital discourse on the aftermath of suicide and the unrelenting shadows it casts on all it touches.
On this episode, JD and Brendan dig into Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited epic Megalopolis, starring Adam Driver! Famously this is something Coppola has been trying to make since the early 1980s, but had to postpone due to some unfortunate box office disappointments. After waiting nearly 40 years, he decided to sell his wine business in order to make Megalopolis on his own terms, and oh boy are the results fascinating.
Review: Megalopolis(4:00) Director: Francis Ford Coppola Writer: Francis Ford Coppola Stars: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf
Fall Festivals are upon us, and Venice, Telluride, and TIFF have all begun screening some of the year’s biggest films, marking the start of Awards Season. From now until March 3, 2025 (the day after next year’s Academy Awards), studios will be advertising not only their films but also their talent in front of and behind the screen in an effort to call themselves Oscar winners or nominees. However, the festival season means some speculation can go out the window, and the races become even more chaotic.
In each of my previous Supporting Actor posts, I have not only had Samuel L. Jackson as a frontrunner, but I have been relatively confident that, given his history with the material of The Piano Lesson, likability among his peers, and lack of a competitive Oscar win—he has only been nominated once for 1992’s Pulp Fiction and recently won an honorary Oscar in 2022—this would be his time. While the reactions for The Piano Lesson were glowing, the ones for Jackson’s performance were not. This isn’t to say his performance was bad, but the early sentiment was that he wasn’t given as much material as initially thought. Danielle Deadwyler and John David Washington received the most praise in the film. At the same time, Ray Fisher, who could find a way into this competition, not Jackson, was prioritized among the supporting males. I guess it’s never over until it’s over, but it’s nearing midnight for Samuel L. Jackson’s chances this season.
On the other hand, a person who hasn’t even been on my radar has now jumped into the top 5: Guy Pearce for The Brutalist. Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux (2018) is one of the more divisive films of recent memory, with some calling it a masterpiece while others seemingly can’t stand it. Well, initial reactions to The Brutalist have people more in unison regarding their thoughts on the film, and the consensus is pretty spectacular. Once again, the “masterpiece” moniker is being thrown around; however, it seems like this time it might stick as comparisons to American epics such as The Godfather and There Will Be Blood have been flowing nonstop and across the board, including positive responses for Guy Pearce’s role as Harrison Lee Van Buren, a post-WWII tycoon. Pearce, who has never been nominated before, has entered this category in a significant way, looking for not only his first nomination but his first win as well. Brady Corbet won the Silver Lion – the youngest Silver Lion winner ever and only the fourth American winner – and shortly after, A24 scooped up The Brutalist for US distribution, with an Oscar-qualifying release beginning December 20.
Another film that needed to find US distribution was The Apprentice. In my previous update, I mentioned removing Jeremy Strong, given the uncertainty of whether The Apprentice would even be released this year as many studios declined distribution and whether the legal case brought upon by Donald Trump (the film’s main subject) would force a significant change to the final cut. Both questions have been answered with Briarcliff Entertainment distributing the film, giving it a pre-election release date of October 11, and with former President Trump dropping the legal case in hopes that the film will “fade away.” If the initial reactions from Cannes mean anything, not only will The Apprentice not fade away, it seems as though we could be talking about it for months to come with both Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong firmly back in the race for Actor and Supporting Actor, respectively.
However, like he had to do for so many Emmy seasons before, Strong will have a familiar opponent in Kieran Culkin, with whom he has shared much time on and off screen. Culkin is starring in A Real Pain, and while it might be nearing midnight for some nominees, the chariot has just arrived for others. Now that more films are being seen and performances are being recognized, it is becoming clear who will and won’t be a factor throughout this season, and even though I had my doubts, it looks like Culkin will be among those few.
A pair that is becoming less likely now is Conclave’s Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow. There weren’t any adverse reactions, quite the opposite, but similar to Samuel L. Jackson, they were not mentioned as a highlight. I think it’s safe to say Lithgow is a reasonably long shot to receive a nomination, and while Tucci still is a possibility, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely.
A24 has almost an embarrassment of riches regarding the Supporting Actor category, and as mentioned before, it’s only gotten stronger. Luca Guadagnino’s Queer was, and still is, poised to have a reasonably impactful award run, but the first reactions to the film were more mediocre than believed, with some loving it and others feeling it was too ambitious. Drew Starkey has been singled out by almost everyone involved with the film, claiming this is his “star-is-born” moment, but reactions have been fairly quiet, singling out Daniel Craig’s performance to a far greater extent. If Queer can attract the voters, and if Starkey is given a strong campaign, it is still possible, but with A24 picking up The Brutalist this late, it could mean that their ambitions have moved on. It’s also still possible for A Different Man’s Adam Pearson, who is making the runs, and who could be the main actor throughout the press run, given that co-star Sebastian Stan will also have The Apprentice releasing in early October.
Another A24 release, Sing Sing, has been labeled an Oscar favorite for months, even as far back as the previous Oscars. However, the strategy A24 is taking with it is… interesting. Sing Sing had a run at Fall film festivals last year when it aired at TIFF in 2023, and it made the rounds during some of the Spring festival season, but its release for general audiences has been relatively quiet. Not only that, A24 has not marketed or pushed this film in any way which could cause it to fall behind, and in a year as loaded as this one is playing out to be – we still haven’t heard from films like Gladiator II, A Complete Unknown, The Fire Inside, or Blitz – Sing Sing could be a victim of peaking too early and not riding the wave throughout. If that happens, Clarence Maclin could wind up missing out.
One of the most intriguing situations is Saturday Night, a film that I already believed to be the frontrunner for the TIFF People’s Choice Award – an award which has been pretty telling of a film’s Oscar chances – and after the reactions out of Telluride, I have no reason to believe this won’t take the prize—a massive ensemble filled with legendary actors, both young and old, playing legendary people and comedians. The first reactions to the film didn’t have anyone screaming that the performances would be nominated, but that doesn’t mean there’s no chance for someone like Cooper Hoffman, Cory Michael Smith, Dylan O’Brien, or even Willem Dafoe to hear their name called Oscar nomination morning. I don’t have any of them predicted, but I have to note the possibility.
Who’s Out?
This list is similar to my previous regarding who is in my 10, but the lineup has drastically changed. For starters, I have removed Brian Tyree Henry and John Lithgow. The Fire Inside got some good reactions out of TIFF, but nothing screamed that it would be an awards player or that Henry is a contender; this could change, but for now, he falls just outside the 10. As for Lithgow, the lack of recognition is telling enough, especially when his co-supporting actor contender has not only a better shot but is starting to fall off himself.
Regarding the 6-10 slots, Clarence Maclin falls to six on my list. Will he ultimately end up with the nomination, possibly? Can he still win the Oscar? Absolutely. However, nothing that A24 has been doing has given me confidence in the film outside of a few nominations, and with the studio picking up The Brutalist, they could be too loaded, and Maclin could fall through; there still is a chance, but Sing Sing needs to start making noise soon. Stanley Tucci falls to seven for Conclave, followed by Drew Starkey at eight for Queer. Samuel L. Jackson stays in my ten, but the early reactions have caused me to drop him from a hard one to nine. I guess there is still a possibility, but it’s starting to look unlikely. Adam Pearson stays strong and rounds out the ten.
Who’s In?
Two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington might join an elite group of 3 time Male Acting Oscar winners alongside Walter Brennan, Jack Nicholson, and Daniel Day-Lewis. Gladiator II, even a good movie, is still to be determined as no one has seen it, and very few have even seen actual footage of it outside of the one trailer. Still, based on the trailer and Denzel’s presence as a performer, I have no reason not to put him at the top of my list for now. With a strong campaign, Edward Norton follows him up and could overtake him—a well-regarded actor nominated three times, with his last coming in 2015 for Birdman. The subject matter regarding the 1965 Newport Folk Festival means that Norton will likely have free reign to be animated, angry, regretful, and ultimately sorrowful at the decisions made by his character, Pete Seger. From the trailer, it is obvious he will be a significant part of the film – I’m looking at you, Samuel L. Jackson, and The Piano Lesson – and given he has yet to receive an Oscar win, maybe this is his time.
Guy Pearce shows up on this list for the first time this entire year for me, and since he is in a film that has been seen and has been highly regarded, there is a real chance he could take this from Norton and Washington. I am going under the assumption that The Brutalist will receive a release date this year to qualify; if it doesn’t, it would be a massive mistake on A24’s part. The trio of Pearce, Adrian Brody, and Felicity Jones have all received extremely high remarks for their performances and are all in consideration to win for The Brutalist. I would be shocked if, at this point, Pearce wasn’t in the final five; I think these top three, no matter how you position them, are all reasonably safe for a nomination and are in contention to win.
This brings us to the final two; this pairing could go one hundred ways. I have two of the Roy brothers (if you haven’t seen Succession, you might not get the joke) rounding out the list of five. The Apprentice being granted not only a release but an untampered (we assume) one means that this film catapults back into the Oscar race, at least for Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan. A clip has been released displaying the vintage 80s production design and visual style, and Strong looks fantastic playing Roy Cohn, even in such a small scene. Given the uncertainty surrounding some other supporting performances, he is back into my five. He is followed by Kieran Culkin, who rounds out my list of five. Culkin gets the advantage over Clarence Maclin strictly because people are seeing him. Culkin was in Telluride sporting a lightning strike of a hairdo and speaking with people in Q&As. He has done the campaigning thing plenty of times, especially recently, as he was the star of Succession season 4, which led to his first Emmy win. It’s safe to say he is high on the people’s minds. Regarding both actors, Bryan Cranston can tell you how a strong television run could lead to an Oscar nomination because people just want to see it happen.
Synopsis:With his wife’s disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it’s suspected that he may not be innocent.
The first hour of Gone Girl plays like a true crime show. We see the husband, the prime suspect, going through the motions of his wife’s disappearance. We see the detective’s skepticism about the case. We hear narration from the victim’s private diary. Search parties, new information, infidelity, marital problems, and news media coverage make us feel confident this is something we’ve seen before. And then there’s a switch that gets flipped.
The sly genius of Gillian Flynn’s script, based on her novel, is how easily she lulls us into the security of solving a mystery that doesn’t need solving. Our brains are hardwired to see Gone Girl as another story of an “innocent” man claiming he didn’t kill his wife. We have to put this into context and we want to believe Nick (Ben Affleck) is a liar because we see his infidelity and we know that he’s fallen out of love with his wife. That turn in the story when it’s revealed Amy (Rosamund Pike) is alive is like a bully who pushes us over the back of their toady so we have no way to catch ourselves. We see the bully, but the toady is inescapable.
That Amy reveal accompanies one of the most talked about sequences and speeches in literary or cinematic history. As Amy pontificates on what it means to be a “cool girl,” we see her on the first leg of her journey out of Nick’s orbit. Director David Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth rebuild who we knew Amy to be. Gone is the glamor and the taste. Here is the snacking and the comfort over couture. In that “cool girl” sequence there’s a brilliant show don’t tell as Amy drives to her destination and her narration describes the types of women who could be described as “cool girls.” First she passes a hipster with coke bottle frames and a pompadour. Then she passes two women in a compact with the windows down, hair flying in the breeze, arms and lips flapping along to a pop song. We see these women’s high effort in their facade contrasted with the layers peeled away from Amy and as she passes them leaving them and Nick behind for her new life.
As much as the first act of the film would suggest that we are meant to be in Amy’s camp because of how, admittedly, bad a husband Nick has been, the story, like life, is so much more complicated. We’ve often been fed stories where it’s so obvious who we should be on the side of. With Gone Girl we’re left with two deeply flawed people, neither of whom are worth rooting for. Even in a back and forth in which more and more is revealed, the prospect of liking or being on one side or the other is distasteful.
That’s where Rosamund Pike’s brilliant performance shines. She is so conventionally beautiful that it’s hard, even when she does despicable things, not to sort of melt at the thought of her. She balances our disgust with our darkest desires to see her succeed. Pike makes us want Amy to live her best life somewhere else. She gets to be the anti-hero so many men have played before. Pike is so good at Amy’s manipulative moves, her conniving plans, and her narcissistic tendencies that she completely disappears and it’s only Amy we see. It’s haunting and muted in an unsettling way.
Though, because the film is so unsettling it is hard to completely revere. There are excellent set pieces and a beautiful Fincher moodiness to it, but the resolution is very stark. The film stays true to the source material in that way. There’s also something to be said for films with terrifically unsatisfactory endings, but Gone Girl needed something. There needed to be a way out for one character or the other, a coda that could see us through to a potential redemption, but there isn’t. The film ends where it ends. There are no consequences for anyone and that makes you resent what you’ve just seen even if you wanted neither focal character to really get the upper hand.
Gone Girl is a superbly scripted thriller. In David Fincher’s capable hands it keeps you guessing and builds a palpable tension with every new bit of information. It’s not like most crime procedurals and lives up to the excellent source material. Some of it is slow and some scenes make you wonder if they are entirely necessary to the plot, but as a whole it is a film that is revisitable because of the terrific performances and clues you couldn’t have caught the first time.
Typically, horror films become a lower-budget, higher-profit investment for studios and indie distributors. The genre has a core of dedicated franchise fans, aficionados, and casual admirers who just want a good scare. There is a significant audience for it, and every month, they come in droves to see the latest and scariest. The genre spawns new franchises from original ideas more often than any other. Horror is a genre built and maintained by originality.
In 2023, M3GAN bowed in January to carve out a $95 million gross. In 2022, Nope, Smile, and The Black Phone took in over $90 million apiece. These box office totals don’t count the tens to hundreds of millions brought in by the most recent additions to the Saw,Halloween, and Scream franchises, some of which have been going for 20+ years, all based on an original idea.
Despite all of this success in the last 25 years of Oscar nominations, only four original horror films have been nominated for Best Original Screenplay. The Sixth Sense (1999), written by M. Night Shyamalan; Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), written by Guillermo Del Toro, Get Out (2017), written by Jordan Peele, and The Shape of Water (2017), written by Guillermo Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. Get Out went on to win in the category. Before that, the most significant horror win was in the Best Adapted Screenplay category when William Peter Blatty won for adapting his novel The Exorcist (1973).
From an objective point of view, you can see how an awards body like the Academy would dismiss the genre. Even though many horror films are original concepts, they aren’t always well written. It’s not just clunky dialogue but missing character motivations and glaring plot holes. It can even be the incomprehensible survival of certain characters over others or how a character takes down the antagonist with an easy, simple solution. There is and always will be schlock within the genre. It’s enjoyable schlock, but schlock nonetheless.
However, when a script can compel the intellectual and primal sides of the brain, it’s time to sit up and take notice. The script for Longlegs, written by Oz Perkins, is taut, thrilling, terrifying, and brilliant. It’s a film that harkens back to the best serial killer thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs and Zodiac and spooky satanic and demonological thrillers like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. Even with these parallels, Longlegs is still uniquely its own.
The plot has enough twists and turns that never let you get ahead. Oz Perkins is a master at the slow reveal. He leaves bread crumbs and shows you pieces of possibilities but never gives up the game before he’s ready. Perkins has crafted a film that gets under your skin and burrows deep into your gut, keeping you in constant unease.
The most sinister of Perkins’ machinations is in Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) himself. He’s an enigma whose face is as slow as any reveal and as terrifying as any evil he perpetuates. Longlegs oozes into the heads of the other characters and seeps into ours as well. He’s the kind of off-putting that gives nightmares. Too much of Longlegs, and he loses his mystique; too little, and he won’t have the impact he needs, but Perkins gives us just the right amount.
It helps that Longlegs’ foil, Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), is also a fascinating character. Perkins imbues Harker with intriguing idiosyncrasies and unique abilities that don’t make her a “Mary Sue” but a highly competent person. She’s a character who’s always thinking, tinkering, and executing. But when she’s completely thrown off her game, the internal struggle written into what she doesn’t say makes her compelling. Perkins takes his time with Harker. The full picture of who she is and her past is so beautifully laid out.
Longlegs is a terrific script. It’s a narrative that winds around and around and around but finds its end again. It’s a perfect example of a well-executed horror story and should be included in every conversation about the 2024 race for Best Original Screenplay. In the vein of the other original horror films mentioned, it is also on track to hit the $74 million box office mark, and a nomination or two could be a way for the Academy, always desperate for more eyes, to catch the attention of those elusive viewers who don’t see the films they love represented enough.
***
Here is where I see the Best Original Screenplay race as of now. Speculation about films that bow later in the year will come, but for now, the list is limited to films that have had their release in theaters or on streamers.
Challengers – Justin Kuritzkes
Ghostlight – Kelly O’Sullivan
I Saw the TV Glow – Jane Schoenbrun
Kinds of Kindness – Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimus Filippou
Director: Todd Phillips Writers: Scott Silver, Todd Phillips, Bob Kane Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Zazie Beetz
Synopsis: Arthur Fleck is institutionalized at Arkham, awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that’s always been inside him.
**** This review contains plot details from Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux****
Two years have passed since Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) accidentally became the figurehead for the angry poor and dispossessed protestors of NYC, no strike that, Gotham City. He’s in the locked wing of Arkham Hospital, emaciated as ever, and relatively calm on the psych drugs he desperately wanted in Joker. The film begins in ‘Looney-Tunes’ cartoon form. There is Joker and there is shadow Joker – to the tune of ‘Me and My Shadow’. Joker is a clown and entertainer possessed and mocked by the violent shadow Joker who attacks people and is more confident than regular Joker whom he strips naked and humiliates on camera. If you are possibly missing the extremely obvious metaphor, Arthur Fleck is fighting his violent tendencies, but fears that without them he is nothing. There is Arthur, and there is Joker.
Arthur’s lawyer Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener) is prepping Arthur for what is purported to be ‘The Trial of the Century’ – killing three Wayne Investments bankers which kickstarted protests against wealth inequality on the ‘mean streets’ of Gotham and shooting Murray Franklin on live television, which made Arthur Fleck famous. There has been a book written about him, a made for television movie, he has fans and followers. The level of his celebrity leads to his cheerily sadistic guard Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) delighting in pushing him to tell him a ‘joke’ to get a cigarette or any small favor. Arthur is all out of jokes, and he’s lost whatever made him Joker – or at least he isn’t sure what it was. Maryanne is trying, through a psychiatrist, to get Arthur to recognize he suffers from a form of schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder. He has been cleared to stand trial and the only way he can avoid the death penalty being sought by the state of New York is to push for an undeniable insanity plea.
Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey – unfortunately a non-character, only recognizable for his in universe name) will be leading the prosecution and the trial will be filmed for all of Gotham/New York State to see. Maryanne and the psychiatrist notice Arthur seems to take an interest in music – or perhaps in the woman who looks him in the eyes and mimes blowing her brains out; the move Arthur imagined Sophie (Zazie Beetz) making when he first met her. Therapeutic music sessions are assigned, and Arthur Fleck meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) from the less restricted psychiatric B Ward.
Arthur has never had a woman look at him and actively want to be around him. However, Lee isn’t really looking at Arthur Fleck, she’s looking for Joker. Lee says her mother is the bitch who committed her for trying to set fire to their house. She’s from the same neighborhood as Arthur, and her father beats her. She knows he knows what it’s like. She’s watched the made for TV movie about him at least twenty times!
If Phillips and Silver were hoping to do something with the notion of the folie à deux – the shared delusion – beyond some well shot and sometimes well-choreographed and adequately sung fantasy musical numbers, it would have been wise to spend more time with Lee to understand what motivates her. Is it hybristophilia? (attraction to people who commit murder or serious physical harmful crimes). Is it a form of rebellion? Is it her innately violent nature looking for release through Joker’s transgressions? Or is she angling for something else?
“I use those stairs,” Lee tells Arthur. The stairs where he heard and danced to ‘Rock n Roll (Part 2)’ in his red suit and full Joker makeup. “I watched the show, and I wished you’d kill him, and then you did.” [sic] Lee gushes over Murray Franklin’s (Robert De Niro) shooting. It takes mere moments for Arthur to admit to Lee to murdering his mother because she deserved it too. The world is all wrong. It’s all wrong – the instant soul mates lament. The only way to live in a crazy world is to… sing and dance!
Here is the thing that Todd Phillips can’t quite decide on, whether he’s committed to making Folie à Deux a good musical. It’s jukebox musical with songs that come from parts of Lee and Arthur’s psyches – some chosen for specific emotional registers, some chosen for “irony”, some chosen because we have already seen Arthur reacting to a particular movie star (Arthur’s previous connection to Fred Astaire dancing to ‘Slap That Bass’) and his immersion in watching Astaire in The Band Wagon singing ‘That’s Entertainment’ which becomes bitter as the film goes on and is sung by Joker and Harley.
As a musical, Folie à Deux is for the most part barely adequate considering the talent and scope Phillips had at hand. Much of the singing is explicitly fantasy – so why so often tone down Gaga’s voice? Phoenix can carry a tune in a certain range, he was nominated for an Academy Award playing Johnny Cash. The grander throwback musical numbers are where Arthur/Joker romances Lee/Harley Quinn in MGM style but with the leading man in clown face make-up and the leading lady hungry for his blood on her lips creating her own crooked smile. There’s no reason anyone should hold back from their biggest and best. The movie cost reportedly up to three times the budget of the original, and apart from the score there isn’t a song that wasn’t originally recorded before 1970. Phillips has said in interviews, “The goal of this movie is to make it feel like it was made by crazy people […] like the inmates are running the asylum.” Only one or two numbers seem like they come from the minds of people gripped by madness. The ‘Joker and Harley’ Variety Show version of ‘Love Somebody’ by the Bee-Gees where Joker starts to get annoyed that Harley isn’t looking at him while singing and addressing the audience instead (it’s a real-world concern Arthur hasn’t dealt with) and a gun comes into play between the two – Joker and Harley are unforgivably dull ‘crazy people’ as Phillips’ goal is to make the audience feel they’re the demented dynamic duo – with singing, as Harley Quinn sure as heck never picks up a mallet. Joker, as Phillips and Silver envisioned him in the first film, became a semiotic nightmare.
Spoilers for the 2019 film, which one can assume if you have read this far, you have seen. Arthur Fleck begins as a very low-end rent-a-clown who had been previously hospitalized for some form of mental illness. It’s 1981 (but also 1973 through to 1981). New York, sorry, Gotham, is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Travis Bickle, sorry, Arthur Fleck, lives with his mother Penny (Frances Conroy) who is a needy shut-in who calls Rupert Pupkin, sorry, Arthur, ‘Happy’ and we later find out she is not his mother (he’s adopted), delusional with narcissistic personality disorder, believes that she had an affair with Thomas Wayne and keeps writing him letters telling him what a good boy his son Arthur is and he should help out his loving other family a little. (Arthur is nobody’s son – he’s one hundred percent ‘nurture’ over ‘nature’ in the film’s simplistic reading of character psychology – he is Gotham’s son). He’s a victim of (memory repressed) childhood physical abuse from his mother’s boyfriend at the time and has an acquired brain injury from that abuse causing pseudobulbar affect behavior. That is the medical term for Arthur’s uncontrollable laughter/crying/and also a large part if we are going by the shown severity of the condition, his rage, treatment resistant depression, and his aural and visual hallucinations and delusions. Add to that mix – and this comes from psychologists and psychiatrists analyzing Arthur Fleck the movie character – unrecognized trauma PTSD. The need to please his mother because she has chained him to her via tactics she doesn’t know how to control because of her NPD. He also has an eating disorder. And finally, the cherry on the diagnosis cake: antisocial personality disorder (which is possibly going to be attributed to anyone who starts feeling all sexy and euphoric after killing people).
Arthur is a sad guy, he’s not a smart guy, he gets angry and doesn’t know where to put it, he does stupid things, he’s doing all he can to be the best person he knows how to be, he gets bullied, beaten, humiliated… put those all together with an inability to speak, outside his delusions, with any woman who finds him attractive, and he was relatable to certain men of varying ages. The level of wish fulfilment they had satisfied when the finance guys, who were bad guys, got shot even if it was at first accidental must have been huge. The moment Arthur proved (in some people’s eyes) he had a ‘moral code’ by killing Randall who was defined as cruel, but not harming Gary who had been bullied because of his height, gave him hero status; not anti-hero status, and not villain status.
Whether or not Todd Phillips intended it or not, he created outside of the diegetic world of Joker as well as inside of it, a man saying; I tried to bring laughter and joy to this cold dark world – and you rich/privileged/pretty/handsome/famous/happy people treated me worse than dirt, so I’m going to kill people and not feel upset about it because you deserve it. And that vision of thwarted masculinity was embraced by a not inconsiderable amount of people across the world.
It mattered not to those who saw Joker as a symbol of their personal discontent that he’s an amalgamation of choose your own ‘it’s not his fault’ grab-bag of issues and legitimate reasons to be upset about the state of Gotham City and cuts to public services, a rise in unemployment, and a massive cost of living crisis in 1981 – because a comic book film is dominant popular culture discourse. It is easier to cherry pick traits from something people already feel a level of ownership over.
Joker claimed he didn’t care about politics; he was just sick of ‘elites’ and we should all be too, especially those who suggest bankers lives matter. One of the myriad problems with Joker is that it so indebted to Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese’s infinitely more complex Travis Bickle. It’s on the record that Phillips and Silver took their main inspiration for Joker from Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy – although they didn’t need to say it, and Alan Moore’s “The Killing Joke” (Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight” is also cited). Travis Bickle’s politics are also not clear because he’s guided by his own depression and insomniac NYC at its worst point of view; he sees the city for what it was in the early and mid 1970s – bankrupt financially and morally. His attempt to assassinate a Democrat presidential candidate came from jealousy and shame. Bickle had taken Betsy, a college educated WASP campaign volunteer, on a date to a porn cinema because that was the only place he knew. Betsy rejected him and refused any attempt he made to reconcile or explain. In Travis’ mind Betsy and the Senator are idée fixe. They represent an America that is unseeing, and Travis is one who sees too much. As a taxi driver on the graveyard shift almost seven days a week, he sees and drives pimps, child prostitutes, and their clients.
Travis becomes attached to Iris, who is a runaway and, at twelve, is working as a prostitute for Sport (Harvey Keitel) . His cache of weapons finds a new purpose as he decides he will save Iris. regardless of whether she wants it or not. He kills everyone involved in pimping out Iris in a shootout. He gets shot, twice, in the effort and when the police arrive, he mimes blowing out his own brains because that was what he was going to do after saving Iris. He isn’t arrested – instead he becomes a media hero for breaking up part of a child prostitution ring and Iris is returned home safe. Later when he is out of hospital, he is driving again and picks up Betsy who is now friendly with him because of what she read in the papers about him. He doesn’t charge her the fare and drives off – but the last image the audience sees is Travis twitching at something he sees in the rearview mirror.
Scorsese and Schrader agree that the ending is stating that Travis Bickle is given a temporary reprieve from his inevitable violent death – he is fundamentally broken. In 1981, John Hinkley, Jr., who staked Jodie Foster because of his obsession with Taxi Driver, decided the best way to impress her was to shoot Ronald Reagan. He wounded the then President and paralyzed a member of his cabinet. He was 25 years old and suffering from extreme mental illness. He was not convicted of the assassination attempt due to insanity. He did, however, spend almost all his adult life in an institution. He has almost 70 thousand followers on Twitter. Martin Scorsese was so distressed by the notion that Taxi Driver and Travis Bickle had become a beacon of behavior that would be emulated, he considered giving up directing.
Todd Phillips decided to make a digestible Happy Meal version of Taxi Driver for comic book readers. “I wasn’t thinking about the broader message in the film,” says Phillips in a mini documentary which comes with the disc. His goal was to make a “Different kind of origin story for a comic book character. He landed on The Joker and wanted it to be a character study of “Why he’s like that, what made him?” It made a huge amount of money and garnered Joaquin Phoenix a best actor Academy Award and best score. Of course, he pushed for a sequel – it’s money in the bank. Or not, because there is nothing for fans of the original film, for whatever reason they liked it, to be found in the sequel.
The penultimate scene of Joker has Fleck seeing the riots he inspired and now takes ownership of revelling in the chaos, seeing the business that made him pay for a signboard he was assaulted with being looted. “It’s beautiful.” He’s dancing on a car as Gotham Square rioters cheer him. Joker dances too in the final scene, bloody hospital booty footprints suggesting he now kills purely for pleasure (if it is real because that’s not Arkham it was). Circling back to why Joker is substantially a different person from Fleck is something Phillips and Silver have been laboriously pondering, because without Paul Schrader and Paul D. Zimmerman’s homework to copy from, they’ve got next to nothing to work with. In the writing stage of Joker, the profile Phillips started with was “He’s an egoless narcissist. Joker is pure id. Arthur is the ego the mask that he has to wear […] but it is in reverse because he puts on a mask to become who he truly is.”
Revolutionary building character blocks pinched from Freud for Dummies that he repeats in Folie à Deux with added Lady Gaga song titles and album titles which Todd needs to ensure are chapter titles for the blu-ray release because they’re begging to be included as more of his “I am really going meta here” schtick. Put Arthur on medication and he’s not ‘happy’ but he’s also not spiraling. He’s in a filthy locked ward in Arkham and he’s been ‘conditioned’ back into submission. He’s malleable, he’s not a genius, he’s no ‘clown prince of crime.’ He’s a person who wants to be told he’s a good boy or a big man, and he is fighting a primal injustice – and Lee provides all three of his ‘ego’ states for him. His id state is the base desires for love (romantic, sexual, social), succor, and the permission to lash out when he doesn’t get those needs met. His super-ego was given bad information by liars, and hypocrites, and the rules of civil society are uncivil, therefore he is not bound by them. His ego state whenever he has Lee to love him with honesty is stable. If she is dishonest or disapproving, he is immediately anxious. Steve Coogan’s television confrontational and sensationalist reporter Paddy Myers claims Fleck is, “The low IQ” garden variety misfit type. Or, Myers badgers, is Fleck trying to use the insanity plea as an obvious escape for the death penalty? Phillips gives Fleck/Phoenix his ‘this is one core tenets of the film speech’ in response. Something along the lines of ‘You don’t care either way as long as you get from me something that will get you ratings.’ ‘You need me to be famous, now.’
Fleck isn’t taking his psych meds (something Lee suggested post fact – she’s keen on getting Joker out to play in public). There’s been a bit of light arson by Lee for fun and distraction and a photo opportunity, and then at some point in the film actual physical sexual intercourse. In the pantheon of unsexy sex scenes Phoenix and Gaga have been involved in (Napoleon and House of Gucci) the dismal four to six seconds in the film is supposed to tell you a lot about what you already knew of Fleck and clue you into Lee – or it’s just depressing.
The court date is almost upon Fleck and Lee tells him because after their love affair has been made public her parents are forcibly discharging her from Arkham. “They think you’re a bad influence on me.” But she will be there every day at the trial. They will “build a mountain” together. Nothing can spoil their dreams. Everything will work out if he’s Joker. Lee’s been busy being Joker’s girlfriend to media outlets. The ‘Free Joker’ movement is out in force. Lee, now turning up dressed as Harley Quinn, doesn’t want Maryanne Stewart representing Fleck. She’s getting in the way of Joker. Arthur’s journals are read out as evidence and Sophie is called to the stand (both are specifically Arthur’s shame). Sophie speaks of how she has been collateral damage despite only interacting with him twice that she can recall. She does remember Penny, his mother, telling her that he “wouldn’t hurt a fly” (Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock referenced, Psycho for the two identities, and murdered mother issues). Eventually Lee gets her way and Joker/Fleck petitions to be his own defense counsel.
Joker struts and frets his hours on the court floor with Judge Rothwax (Bill Smitrovich) doing what he can to handle Joker’s ‘antics’ – which aren’t crazy enough to convince the jury of an insanity plea – but they are enough for the people watching at home to see his biggest ever live performance. Someone else is gaining notoriety via association, someone who isn’t being beaten by Jackie Sullivan or thrown in solitary. Someone playing for keeps. Joker is neither an eloquent nor an eminent jurist. His strategy is to pronounce he is above the law of small-minded men, and rotten social institutions like Arkham that have taken his dignity and tortured him – (again) straight to the camera recording the trial. He shouts he’s free! Gary Puddles (a great performance by returning actor Leigh Gill) says he wanted to think Arthur was better because he didn’t laugh at him. Tearful entreaties from the closest person Arthur had as a friend means nothing to Harley-charged Joker. Joker mimics Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) in To Kill a Mockingbird and rests his defense case at the same time as Dent rests the prosecution’s.
Some of the court scenes are played out in fantasy musical form. Beyond violence perpetrated on inmates, patients, and Fleck himself – and a fizzle that is supposed to be a possible grace note from Phillips; it’s Joker and Harley doing a rendition of Judy Garland’s ‘Come On, Get Happy’ where in his mind he slashes and pulverizes the court, and Harley wipes arterial blood across her mouth in a big smile.
There is a sting in the tail, two, perhaps three, in Folie à Deux but after all the mediocre proceedings getting to that point (one of the ‘stings’ is revealed long before the end) the film is ultimately a “shrug.” The primary question of the film is asked in the cartoon at the beginning of the film and answered there. So, what is the point of Joker: Folie à Deux? If it’s to show off Lawrence Sher’s cinematography – great job! If it is to prove Joaquin Phoenix can lose more weight to play a role – gold star! If it is to make some kind of meta commentary about how people treat murderers and criminals like celebrities and trials like entertainment, that’s facile repetition. If Phillips in interviews says it is Shakespearean, the correct response is “Insufferably smug and self-indulgent director compares cash-grab sequel to Shakespeare because it’s a basic template plot.”
Harley Quinn has remnants of Paul Dini’s and Bruce Timm’s creation, the name, the romantic and possessive interest in Joker, and the interest in abnormal psychology. Lady Gaga, The Fame Monster, should be a natural fit for Phoenix’s freak. When a movie is giving better and snappier character lines to an Arkham guard, regardless of whether he’s played by Brendan Gleeson, than in it is to the megastar ostensibly playing the manic ball of malice with a mallet, it is wasteful. Lee may exist in Arkham as a dirty haired with too much regrowth inpatient with a non-descript hospital styled gown and fluffy cardigan – that’s okay. But in the fantasy musical sequences she could be introducing Joker to some of the CBGB’s stable: Blondie, The Cramps, The Ramones, The Talking Heads, and Patti Smith. It’s 1983. When she gets out into the real world, her basic Debbie Harry bob haircut and slightly ripped tights would be invisible, so too her smudged harlequin makeup, so it’s a plot imperative for her to be seen next to Joker. The movie wants the mix of ‘through the ages’ musical fantasy, asylum ‘chic’, and gritty realism but forgets that Punk and New Wave were part of the street culture except in some crowd scenes. Why So Serious, Todd?
The way Arthur Fleck’s mind would conjure romance is based in his nostalgia for a more ‘civilized’ time. He was taught about the aspects of correct human social interaction through a television screen or songs. Joker’s mimicry of a grand Hollywood dame as he confesses to the murders of the bankers on Murray’s show is his Bette Davis/Katharine Hepburn moment. Too old/tired/legendary to lose anything by telling people what she thought of the dead and the living. Joker was planning on televised suicide, but Margot Channing would kill. Arthur/Joker needs the past, narrative logic dictates Lee needs Joker – hence joins in his fixation. Ironically the present and the future protesters/rioters/acolytes crave a figurehead who has a complete lack of interest and curiosity about them. Although there are always exceptions.
“He has music in him,” Phillips said of Phoenix’s original performance as Fleck/Joker. He said of Phoenix he’s never encountered such an agile actor. The moment they knew they had in combination found the Joker as distinct from Fleck is a dance Phoenix improvised to a cello piece from Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score in the bathroom after Fleck shoots the trio on the subway.
Maybe Joaquin Phoenix wanted to experiment with form and dance more and that was his stipulation for signing on for Folie à Deux and breaking his rumored no serialized film cycles or sequels rule. The general confusion will come from the audience who are expecting Folie à Deux to be more of what appealed to the people who contributed to the massive box office and awards success of Joker. It is not weird enough for Phillips to claim Arkham “crazies” are the authors of the work – unless one counts the choice to have the restricted ward for the criminally insane populated by a group of jazz musicians playing and ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ a maddening number of times (spoiler alert the more maddening, means it’s not real).
Why so many words dedicated to Todd Phillips and his comic book films that blush at the fact they are based on comic book characters despite him choosing to do them and pitch them? Joker was and remains a curious cultural phenomenon. A patchwork movie with an undeniably great performance by Phoenix that became more than the sum of whatever parts were present or inferred. A sequel which is a musical with a vocalist who is renowned for outré performances and presence being directed to “Do what you are famous for but do it predominantly as the dollar shop version.” The lead actor who won an Academy Award, and Golden Globes Award for the same part and set the specific terms for his involvement giving a feedback loop then fade out performance. Gotham is sacrificed for two locations and soundstages. So many words because Joker: Folie à Deux is cheap. It cost a lot, but it’s cheap. Joker fans retrospectively wondering if they genuinely enjoy the first film, cheap. Because they’ve been given a movie decided upon by three obnoxious bankers salivating at projected earnings on the subway.
Here’s a joke: What do you get when you cross a comic book asylum courtroom drama musical made to immediately capitalize on your brand loyalty?
Synopsis:Made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective, this documentary shows the destruction of the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli authorities and the unlikely friendship that blossoms between Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham.
On the morning of September 20, as I walked toward Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater for my first New York Film Festival press screening of the day, I came upon a post on X/Twitter that referenced one of the films on my docket. “Heads up @TheNYFF press and industry,” Film Workers for Palestine wrote. “When you attend today’s 4:45 screening of NO OTHER LAND, you should know what is happening to Basel Adra, one of its directors. it happens in the film and it continues to happen, today. this horror can be stopped, and it must.” Their tweet was quoting a post by Adra himself – the film’s primary subject in addition to being one its four co-directors – featuring a photo of a blindfolded man sitting outside a small building, with a group of soldiers gathered around the corner. “This morning several occupation soldiers invaded my home and kidnapped my father toward the illegal Havat Maon outpost,” Adra wrote at 3:00 a.m. EST. Six hours later, he followed up: “I’m showing our documentary No Other Land in the NY Film Festival this week, about my dad and our life under occupation in Masafer Yatta [Adra’s home in Palestine]. Things only got worse since we made it: Today my dad was kidnapped by soldiers, blindfolded, tied for hours inside a settlement for no reason.” The picture in the post is zoomed in even further than the first; his father, blindfolded and bound, is front and center.
For the remainder of the day, through showings of two post-mortem works from Jean Luc Godard, the debut narrative feature from Neo Sora, and a hallucinatory medieval drama by Athena Rachel Tsangari, these pictures and posts endured in my mind as painful reminders of the horrifying reality that has persisted in the West Bank since long before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resurfaced in the current zeitgeist. It did so, primarily, through mainstream media’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war that began in October of last year, a conflict that led people to choose sides over which country’s people were more deserving of death. Yet those mental images hardly capture the events that unfold over the course of No Other Land, a desperate flare disguised as a documentary that is almost entirely made up of footage collected by the directing collective of Adra (a Palestinian filmmaker), Yuval Abraham (an Israeli investigative journalist), Hamdan Ballal (a Palestinian filmmaker), and Rachel Szor (an Israeli filmmaker) – all first-time directors who also co-edited the film. While the film partially spotlights the unlikely bond between Adra and Abraham, which was forged when the latter traveled to Masafer Yatta, a grouping of 19 small Palestinian settlements in the southern West Bank, to cover the atrocities being committed by his own country’s military, much of its runtime features firsthand accounts of said atrocities, from video of Israeli troops tearing down a primary school as captured on Adra’s camera and/or cellphone to accounts from Masafer Yatta’s citizens, many of whom have seen their homes destroyed in order for the military to build yet another training ground on their land.
That’s precisely what Adra and co. expose, though to anyone whose head has been above ground for the last few years, the footage seen here should come as no surprise. Not that a general grasp of international politics makes No Other Land any less harrowing. The film begins with Adra’s voice, as he recalls his first memory: When he was five years old, he was awoken by flashing lights and loud voices, as police raided his home and arrested his father for the first time. He then rattles off his first memory of a protest, the moment he recognized that his parents were activists. “My father is invincible,” he says, speaking to the mindset he once held. Whenever the film isn’t explicitly trained on conversations, arguments, or full-on terrorism in which we can hear multiple parties having a person-to-person exchange, Adra serves as the film’s voiceover track. He notes things like, “The place you were born in, you can never forget,” and “This is a story about power,” a remark made in reference to the one time Tony Blair, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, walked through Masafer Yatta for seven minutes, an act that saw the cancellation of multiple demolition orders. Essentially, if a past world leader comes to town, the Army packs up shop. If not, they bulldoze a family’s home, telling a mother whose daughters remain inside, “It doesn’t matter. Move.”
What may stick with audiences most, though, is one of Adra’s first expositional statements: “I started filming when we started to end.” It was the summer of 2019 when he first trained his camera on the crimes against humanity being committed by camouflaged vessels in his hometown, those who have a similar frame to that of a human being yet no soul to be found. It was also when Abraham initially arrived in Masafer Yatta to work on his first story, only to be met with a significant amount of understandable reticence. After all, an Israeli journalist entering Palestinian lands as they are being ripped from the clutches of those who call them home doesn’t exactly inspire an urge to share detailed reports of the cruelty from which they’ve suffered. But the dynamic soon softens, first in the Adra household, as Basel’s father welcomes Abraham into their home for tea, leading to Basel and Yuval’s working relationship. Others from the village, however, don’t warm to Abraham’s presence as easily; one man asks, “Arabs build for you, and you destroy for them. Why, Yuval?” He’s unable to believe that anyone from Israel could possibly have a dissenting opinion to that of their country’s armed forces. This particular argument continues over the course of the film, as the two work together on manual tasks around Masafer Yatta, airing their disagreements and common ground in an effort to further understand one another. It’s one of a few charming anecdotal elements scattered throughout an otherwise gutting film.
That being said, the film’s other lighter moments always seem to come in the aftermath of hardship. Adra, Abraham, and others wear party hats, blow up balloons, and listen to music one night, but it’s in celebration of Basel’s father being released from yet another arrest, a recurrent concern that, evidently, continues to this day. Adra and Abraham can joke about how insignificant Abraham’s deadlines are in comparison to the things happening outside their front door, only for their cameras to capture the near-murder of one of Adra’s family friends moments later. It feels wrong to judge a film of this nature on a critical basis simply because of how imperative and pertinent its very existence is, but No Other Land masters its tonal balance and deploys its vérité style so authentically that it is sure to stand out amidst a slew of talking head-heavy documentaries that attempt to posit a general understanding of these issues rather than making an effort to truly witness them. Of course, it’s no privilege for Adra, Abraham, Ballal, and Szor to be so close to the scene, but it does make for a film that feels more indispensable than anything to come before or after. Frankly, nothing has compared, and nothing will. If you have a pulse, it should be considered required viewing.
A few facts: No Other Land will have played in eight film festivals since its Berlinale premiere in February once it screens on Oct. 3 at the 29th Busan International Film Festival. Critics have adorned it as one of the year’s best films and have called it, almost universally, the year’s best documentary. Starting on Nov. 1, it will begin a one-week qualifying run at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center – the home of the New York Film Festival, the seventh of those eight aforementioned showcases – and therefore will be eligible for consideration at the Oscars and will undoubtedly see it land on many year-end best-of lists. Even still, the film lacks distribution; a day after Adra’s post, IndieWire’s David Ehrlichtook to Twitter to say, “I’ve talked to so many distributors I won’t name who think this movie is incredible but for whatever reason won’t release it (even though one told me today it’s a slam-dunk Best Doc nomination)… someone/anyone step up.”
It’s true that the courageous Israeli-Palestinian collective behind this work of activism – because it’s more than just a film – have made a movie that hovers above any other documentary I’ve seen this year, and, in many ways, is the best thing I’ve seen all year. But it’s more than great, transcendent, essential, or whatever other distinction one wishes to apply to it in their assessment. No Other Land is a series of shattering images and acts that directs a flood light toward the malicious acts one nation’s militia is happy to execute in order to punish another, from soldiers teaming to fill a water well with cement to the film’s final frames, which feature perhaps the most vicious of all crimes committed on screen over 95 minutes. It can be strangely hopeful: Abraham was willing to risk his own life, defying his government in order to aid innocent people in their fight against injustice; Adra, meanwhile, remains in Masafer Yatta, continuing to organize efforts to save his home despite the many attacks it continues to suffer from outside forces. Yet that hope, as it attempts to creep into the frame throughout, is swiftly swept aside, another demolition unfolding down the road, gunfire ringing through the fills from a nearby settlement. “We need people to make a change,” Adra says late in the film. “They watch something, they’re touched. Then what?” Perhaps turning No Other Land into a document that is eternal as it is vital could get the ball rolling. So, step up. Someone. Anyone.
On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss the beautiful Chris Sanders animated film The Wild Robot! This is a film we’ve been looking forward to all year. Dreamworks’ reputation isn’t quite to the level of its peers, but there was something about it that seemed special. A feeling that was amplified once it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to rave reviews. And it did not disappoint at all.
Review: The Wild Robot(4:00) Director: Chris Sanders Writer: Chris Sanders Stars: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor
Synopsis: A self-portrait of the director and his oeuvre, revisiting in free-form more than 40 years of the author’s filmography.
One of the filmmakers heavily inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s work is Leos Carax, known for the films Holy Motors, The Lovers on the Bridge, and Mauvais Sang. Carax’s latest work is a short film called It’sNotMe (C’estpasmoi, playing in the Spotlight section at this year’s New York Film Festival). Carax is a filmmaker who can be called his disciple in many ways more than filmmaking. It’s Not Me (C’est pas moi) takes inspiration from the French-Swiss director and sends him a lovely goodbye by referring to him stylistically and via a voicemail Godard once left him. Although this is first and foremost described as a “self-portrait” of Carax, covering everything from his film work to his political stands, Godard’s spirit is felt through the film’s entirety, like a ghost wandering through the world watching those it once cared for.
From the flashy editing to the collage-like structure, you sense Godard through Carax’s filmmaking, especially after seeing Scénarios (and the process behind it), which plays at the festival and in the same section. You immediately attach the two, almost like a double bill: the two sides of a goodbye–the signalizing and the departure, one an affirmation and the other honoring the one who left. A tragic note accompanies the imagery–both old (taken from record footage of newsreels, cinema, his old work, and the internet) and new (scenes recently shot by Caroline Champetier, including Dennis Lavant’s Monsieur Merde and Carax’s daughter, Nastya Golubeva Carax)–which the French director intertwines with some comments about everything in his mind.
Everything seems to be taken out of his psyche and rearranged frantically to form a cine-essay of some sort because one of the first questions we hear “Where are you at?” to which Carax responds with: “I don’t know”. A spark of sincerity is haunted by the melancholy that pours all over his films, some of which appear here in newly restored prints. The creative mind is fractured by the existential question about what defines you; Carax answers the only way he can, via the power and prose of cinema. In one of the few scenes that Carax is in, we see him on what is meant to be his deathbed–reflecting on time, memory, and immortalization through cinema employing a single, piercing frame that also evokes this sadness for the passing of Godard.
It is nearly impossible to separate Scénarios from It’s Not Me; the two shorts complement each creative mind and worries in the format they helped grow into a beautiful, potent, and expressive medium. Even the project’s background is tied. This short was meant to be part of a Paris Pompidou Centre exhibit, yet several issues prevented it. Another similarity with Godard is that he almost did an exhibition there but removed himself due to creative and financial disruptions. These are condensed pieces of work. Many of their thoughts are thrown rapidly–everything they can say will be said. The difference is that Scénarios was Godard’s last chance.
Carax, now sixty-three years old and one of the most fascinating cinematic voices in my book, looks back at his experiences and history to evaluate the world today via eyes that are both hopeful and saddened at what’s becoming. He thinks about the crumbling art world and the inhabitable future for his daughter. Carax wants both to be fixed as soon as possible. But he recognizes that much is left to do; many things are left to be said and explored. This is not his “final warning” like Godard, yet it is an overall alarm told through his dream-like collage about the past in all its nostalgic and haunting glory and the troubled now. By the end, he does have an answer to the initial question that prompts this cine-essay.
He leaves it to himself, at least vocally. Visually, however, he is everything that shapes his essence: the paintings, films, records, heroes, and family that leave him with a coveted trophy room. And with his answer, my mind went to The Smiths’ song ‘Rubber Ring’. The song is about coming of age, more so the challenging period of being a teenager who shapes their personality depending on what they like. The second verse contains the following lines: “The passing of time and all of its sickening crimes is making me sad again. But don’t forget the songs that made you cry. And the songs that your life. Yes, you’re old now, and you’re a clever swing. But they were the only ones who ever stood by you.”
Morrissey says we should never forget what shaped us during our early years, even if the impact or admiration may have diminished over time. For Leos Carax, those influences include Ernst Lubitsch, Jean-Luc Godard, Howard Hawks, Sparks, and many others. He has never forgotten them, as evidenced in his filmography and collaborations. Nevertheless, Carax showcases the boldness and freeform tangibility we admire in his work, continually pushing boundaries while honoring the cinematic traditions that inspired him. Each film reflects his unique vision, blending nostalgia with innovation in a personal and expansive way. And It’s Not Me reflects that with a dreamy pattern. (As a bonus, you have Baby Annette dancing to David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’.)
Synopsis: Returning to Saint-Martial for his late boss’s funeral, Jérémie’s stay with widow Martine becomes entangled in a disappearance, a threatening neighbor, and an abbot’s shady intentions.
Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, part of the Main Slate of the 62nd New York Film Festival, begins with a long drive down a winding road. As the opening credits roll, we eventually end up at a village bakery. But the circumstances under which this drive is taking place are anything but sweet. Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) steps out of the car, and walks into the house directly next door. It’s the house of his former mentor, Martine (Catherine Frot), a wife who is now a widow. Martine welcomes Jérémie in with open arms despite the unfortunate reason for a visit. Her husband has recently passed, and Jérémie has returned to the village he grew up in for the funeral. It appears to have been some time since anybody last saw Jérémie. But one of the ironic truths about death is that it inherently brings people closer together. And it’s in this irony that Guiraudie crafts a film full of entanglement, desire, drama, thrill, and surprisingly, comedy.
Misericordia’s ability to balance all these tones is nothing short of a miracle. In that regard, it’s a truly odd film. But that should be taken as a compliment! It never stretches itself too thin. Its varied tones only clash against one another by design. And the reasons for these clashes are basically stated outright by the local priest (Jacques Develay). Upon bumping into Jérémie at one point in the film, he criticizes Jérémie for considering an easy solution to his complex problem. “The world has gone to the dogs… and we all know it.” Still, the priest points out that despite this fact, we enjoy our lives in the face of such madness. It feels like Guiraudie could be delivering this message directly to camera through his characters. The easy solutions in life are never as intriguing as the intricate dilemmas that force us to reckon with who we are and what we want as individuals. And it’s in the myriad of Guiraudie’s thorny dilemmas that he makes an absolute meal out of Misericordia.
One would expect from the opening scene or two that Misericordia will remain a steadfast drama. Yet fairly quickly, it pivots into an oddball comedy of sorts. Jérémie has a bit too much wine as the night is winding down, and Martine insists that he spends the night. It’s a kind gesture, with Jérémie reluctantly accepting to spend more time with the clearly grief-stricken and lonely widow. And it’s here that the film truly begins. Because Jérémie just sort of hangs around from then on. He walks through the forest and the streets of his old village. He tries to strike up a conversation with Walter (David Ayala), somebody from his past, by just lurking outside his home. He roughhouses with Martine’s son, Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand), a childhood friend who is known to have a bit of a temper. It would appear that Jérémie is dredging up the past the longer he hangs around. So, is it a shock that eventually the people around him begin to wonder why? Not at all, considering Guiraudie builds this intrigue of the film with ease. Kysyl turns in a role that is simply impossible to read. He provides us no evidence of any malice or ulterior motives. He is shown to be incredibly convincing though, judging by the humorous lengths to which he pushes his kind hostess. It’s only shortly thereafter when Misericordia really begins to turn its wheels. In a film so full of surprises, the first act being a comedy of bending social norms morphs into two final acts full of gripping thrills.
It’s best to not have this initial revelation spoiled, but it’s arguably the one time where it feels like Guiraudie makes a slight misstep. Much of the film revolves around the notion that Vincent is a hot-head in more ways than one. It’s often spoken around in vague terms (a key element of this film), but one might get the sense that the village is a bit fed up with his behavior and demeanor. The only issue is Vincent is never really shown to act in this way to an extreme degree. He’s a bit odd, but more than anything, the development of his character feeling so rushed puts a damper on Misericordia, if only momentarily. Still, the film finds a way to quickly move past such an issue. From here, Misericordia hits its stride as it adds more weight to its shoulders with each passing scene. And just when you think it couldn’t possibly carry anymore, Guiraudie dumps all of it onto the audience and leaves us to walk out of the theater with our heads spinning and thoughts racing at the patient madness we just witnessed.
Guiraudie uses the rest of Misericordia to essentially provide a consistent set of interrogations for his audience. And this is meant morally, but also quite literally. It feels like every single scene of the film is either an establishing shot of Jérémie, or of characters interrogating one another. The entire film has this eerily patient tone, and yet, so many sequences capture some sort of shocking revelation. Only Guiraudie never calls attention to them. He merely lets the newfound information wash over the viewer. It appears as if these characters already know everything about one another. These reveals are designed for us, the omnipotent audience. And it’s in that idea of characters already knowing everything about one another that Guiraudie hides his thesis.
Misericordia depicts what occurs when nothing is stated out in the open. As I wrote earlier, Jérémie acts as a bit of a cypher in this film. Over time, we learn a thing or two about him; primarily just his desires. And these personal cravings, and all the longing in the film, are what Guiraudie chooses to focus on. They all remain hidden at the outset of the film. Often hinted at, it’s almost as if all those involved are too afraid of saying anything incriminating. To do so would disrupt the “natural” harmony of the small village. And yet, when these desires are spoken around and never embraced, we see a series of consequences play out. They range from thrilling, to frightening, to funny, to sexual. We may never know what the characters of Misericordia truly want. And much like reality, who knows if they’re even completely sure of it. But one thing is for certain; Guiraudie captures the inherent mess that comes with unbridled desire. And it’s arguably never been more enticing and mischievous to chase than in Misericordia.
Misericordia is screening as part of the Main Slate of the 62nd New York Film Festival.
Synopsis: The story explores genesis and decline through fragmented notes and images, haunted by death. The second part depicts the director completing his farewell work, a self-portrait of his mortal end.
Jean-Luc Godard is a master who gave birth to many cinematic movements–particularly the highly influential French New Wave along with François Truffaut and Eric Rohmer–and filmmakers worldwide. That is why everyone was mourning when the French-Swiss legend passed away two years ago, even those he rubbed the wrong way or who were not into his work. This is not only because of him per se but also because of his footprint in cinema and his tall figure. The force and impact his films, words, essays, and creativity had on the world was unlike anything you have ever seen. This is presented in the last short film Godard made, which he finished a day before his assisted suicide, Scénarios (screening in the Spotlight section at this year’s NYFF, paired with Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario”).
Scénarios and Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” is one last project and goodbye from a legendary filmmaker who has never lost his creative fire during his seven-decade career. This comes after what we thought would be his “aurevoir” in Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: “Phony Wars”. This final short encapsulates his ingenuity in a small yet artistically vast package. Knowing that he finished this a day before his death adds another layer to Scénarios, as Godard’s voice graces us for one last time. You feel this whisper in his breath that the end is coming near. There have been many projects made by artists near their deathbeds, and you can feel that in their output.
Some notable examples are Leonard Cohen’s ‘You Want It Darker’, David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’, and last year’s Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus–all fascinating pieces of work with a haunting, indelible feeling. Scénarios is another addition to this list that culminates the artist’s career through the great separation by showing the audience, listeners, and fans why they were legends in their own right and some of the most ingenious minds in the art world. Scénarios is an 18-minute short, constructed via a collage style, similar to Godard’s previous works, Phony Wars and The Image Book, but played with a more personal tone. Images and clips of the past are interlaced with new makeshift designs; haunting war photography and a scribbled self-portrait of Godard are some of the snapshots intertwined to create an experience like no other from the French-Swiss master.
War and death are at the center of the project via the ingenuity and unimpeded political jobs Godard throws at the U.S. army and Macron. Godard has never been subtle about his critiques of society, culture, and politics. He goes straight to the point and strikes with his piercing imagery. Like in Film Socialisme, he sometimes uses a more illogically cryptic route to deliver his commentary. (I have read that he placed scattered subtitles at the Cannes premiere so the English-speaking audience couldn’t understand.) But he has learned from these experiences and, in comparison with the 2006 film, Godard has a more persuasive voice when doing these types of projects. This is more prevalent in the short accompanying Scénarios, Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario”, where Godard creates the headlining short as if we are a fly on the wall.
The camera lets us into his apartment, and we hear him describe the scrapbook of purposefully scattered images we had seen previously. His graveled voice as we listen to how everything is going to pan out provides a sort of haunting feeling, especially since we know that not long after, he passes away. Just by looking at him, you don’t notice that he is unwell. However, his thematic exploration of time, life, and death upon each direction he gives to longtime collaboration and editor Fabrice Argneto does hint that the end is coming near–us glimpsing through the past and noticing some hidden meaning behind his pronunciations, images, and the “final warning” tag attached to Scénarios about the world in irredeemable territory. The final words spoken as the camera sticks to his face are “Okay,”… and that expression tells the complete story. This is the end; the screen turns black as he gives us his cinematic resignation letter.
He blesses us with a deep dive into the mind of a legendary filmmaker’s creative and emotional psyche while doing unintentional segue ways about his last few days alive, reminiscent of Cohen, Bowie, and Sakamoto’s curtain-closing works musically, yet somehow more eerie. A strange sentiment is attached if you look back to his older work after watching this dual piece. What was his process like in many projects Godard did as he got older? Was it similar to this? How did he change? It will remain a mystery for the most part, as many books and reports about him (like ‘Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard’ by Richard Brody) provide a light into his creative composure from an analytical point of view.
Yet, something like this, where we are behind the scenes and guided thoroughly, will never be obtained again. Neither cinematic essay, book, or reports about him will reach this emotional threshold of poetry through film. Scénarios does something that the entire Godard filmography has not achieved. And that shows the legend at his most vulnerable for the first time in a career where he has always been resilient and with plenty of self-control. Seeing him quoting some of the exemplary lines of his 1968 feature, Contempt, is an example of Godard’s prompting that this is where he leaves us. As he says farewell, his memorable face is immortalized by all the cameras and celluloid prints in a blur. Inspired thousands and moved millions, Godard’s voice will forever be a part of cinema’s vast, rich history.
This week on the InSession Film Podcast, we talk about our favorite ambitious, yet flawed movies and why we deeply admire them over mundane mediocrity! We also talk about the current state of cinema discourse and offer up a few thoughts on the late-great Dame Maggie Smith.
– Box Office / Recent Actor Deaths (4:3) We open the show this week with our weekly segment “Is the Parade On or Off?” talking about the box office. The Wild Robot opens huge for a non-IP animated film and Megalopolis may go down as one of the biggest flops of all-time (expected, but still funny). We then talk about the great Maggie Smith, Kris Kristofferson and John Ashton, who all sadly passed away this last week.
– Cinema Discourse (37:41) Over the weekend, the great film critic Sean Fennessey had a thread on Twitter talking about the current landscape of cinema discourse, and how it’s reflective of an “overinduldged electorate.” It was a fascinating perspective that we felt inspired to talk about further, and how hopeless the conversation around movies feels most of the time.
– Ambitious “Failure” Movies (1:03:20) Using Megalopolis as inspiration, we wanted to talk about our favorite movies that are ambitious in its filmmaking and craft, even if that comes at the cost of logic and coherency. There’s something about these bold movies that are still fascinating despite their messy qualities. Meaning, there’s still a lot to love with them most of the time.
If you want to help support us, there are several ways you can help us and we’d absolutely appreciate it. Every penny goes directly back into supporting the show and we are truly honored and grateful. Thanks for your support and for listening to the InSession Film Podcast!
Director: Jim Hosking Writer: Jim Hosking Stars: Sky Elobar, Gil Gex, Carl Solomon
Synopsis: Two musical legends gather at a Scottish Cottage on The Mull Of Kintyre for a tense summit to discuss a potential collaboration that will ultimately result in a Global Number One smash hit single.
On the shores of Mull of Kintyre in the early 1980s, two musical legends meet. For the purpose of this review, we will call them Paul McCartney (Sky Elobar) and Stevie Wonder (Gil Gex), predominantly because they are meant to be some version of Paul and Stevie, although Jim Hosking never names them. The film opens with the same panning shot employed in the film clip for Wing’s excruciating ‘Mull of Kintyre’ where the McCartney’s spent a lot of the video showing off how nice their rural “Scottish cottage” and private ownership of a tip of the Scottish coast was. All woolen jumpers, Linda’s terrible harmonies, and wellingtons.
Stevie is rowing to shore and Paul stands nodding. He doesn’t do much to help as Stevie gets out of the boat laden with three large suitcases but does get him into his yellow Land Rover with the number plate ‘NUGG3T’ after Stevie has struggled up the beach. Finally in Paul’s SCOTTISH COTTAGE the two sit down to chat over a cup of Lapsang Souchong (that’s a smoky brew, a fancy brew), and Stevie is distinctly out of sorts. How was the journey Paul asks? “It was a very, very, very, very, long journey,” is the reply. The tea tastes like pee pee according to Stevie, which upsets Paul who demands a retraction. One Stevie gives but only because he wants things to go smoothly.
Things do not go smoothly. To begin with, Paul is achingly dull. He natters on endlessly about the different varieties of vegetarian ready meals “By the Wife” (the standee of Linda as a veggie sausage is priceless) and tries to keep a lid on how many “Wee Willy’s Big Frisky Whiskeys” Stevie can have. But the “Man, the myth, the legend” needs to relax, so they have a puff or two on one of Paul’s doobie woobies before Paul sings the entire menu of ready meals acapella to Stevie.
“Oh, you can sing, can you?” Stevie sneers. “Yes, some say I’m quite good.” Paul replies. “I’ll be the judge of that!” Stevie retorts. When it comes to brass tacks, Paul doesn’t know why Stevie even came to his SCOTTISH COTTAGE. Apparently, it’s an act of charity – Stevie is there to help Paul out. “Listen, mate, I don’t think you know who you’re speaking to. It’s me. The cute one.” Stevie gives him a thumbs up and a head wiggle, before Paul goes off telling Stevie he doesn’t even like his music, it’s cheesy and that’s coming from him. He threatens him with his cheesy feet. Stevie tells him Paul is jealous because Stevie can play every instrument (a joke related to the 1982 film clip for ‘Ebony and Ivory’ in which Paul is playing every instrument) and the two head off to what they think are separate beds for the night.
The genius of Paul Hosking’s two hander is that it’s utterly pitiless. It’s hard to say what Stevie Wonder did to deserve such derision beyond the ridiculously simplistic duet with Paul McCartney (music can change the world!), but it’s fairly easy to see why people found McCartney and his roleplaying as a farmer cringeworthy. Of course, the two never met in Scotland, and if they did it would unlikely have been in the rundown SCOTTISH COTTAGE instead of the huge property it became after McCartney first bought it in the mid 1960s as a tax haven.
Nevertheless, if you know anything about Jim Hosking and his previous work The Greasy Strangler and An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn you know that repetitive jokes, heightened absurdity, merkins, prosthetic penises, and icky feet are just the tip of the weirdo iceberg.
If Stevie Wonder making Paul McCartney provide him with the perfect hot chocolate with five agreed upon ingredients (because he almost drowned in earlier) and then demanding foot strokeys (no toe sucking), psychedelic trips with a huge frog guiding them, breaded vegetarian meals and nugget slide, two sheep with Paul and Stevie’s faces bleating Ebony and Ivory until they expel some abject fluids, and hand holding and naked skipping is your deal… well… Paul Hosking delivers.
Sky Elobar and Gil Gex hold the film together with whatever brown sauce Brits love to smother their breakfast foods with. Their bravura and ridiculous performances are comparatively tame for a Hosking film, but they’re non-stop hilarious. Ebony and Ivory is absolute nonsense and absolute brilliance, and if you don’t start choke laughing at some stage, get the person next to you to check your pulse.
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