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arthouse

Valley Of The Gods – Lech Majewski (2019)

A bit of a weird film (can I say “arthouse”?) apparently based on a Navajo story. A beautiful valley is inhabited by ‘Amerindians’. It is their valley of the Gods. Nearby is an encroaching city where industrialists have their eyes on some mineral that can be found in the valley. The main company with interest is headed by the wealthiest man on earth who lives on top of a nearby mountain.

John Ecas is a writer with not too much inspiration. Then the project of a biography of this wealthy man (Wes Tauros, played by John Malkovich) comes up, for which he is going to spend some time in Tauros’ castle.

Tauros is not the dogged materialist that you may expect and Ecas also wants to look at the Navajo’s side of the story. Thus a mix between Navajo mythology and utopian/dystopian future Western culture unfolds both in the story and in the way of filming.

An interesting watch.

The Young/New Pope (series) – Paolo Sorrentino (2016 2019)

Sorrentino created two short series about the Vatican, produced by Jude Law who also plays the leading part. I guess he really wanted to play the Pope.

The Vatican cannot decide on who will be the new Pope, so as a solution they pick a young (50 years old) cardinal who can be easily directed. Not so. Pope Pius XIII does everything the Vatican does not want. He is not overly progressive, but rather extremely conservative taking the Church back ages in history scaring away the believers in order to create a mystery that will in the end bring them back.

When Pius XIII is just about to become appreciated he is no longer able to lead the Church and he is replaced by two new Popes in the second series, played by John Malkovich.

The series make an amusing critical view on how the Vatican works. The powerful men behind the scenes, manipulation, politics, the way Italian politics try to interfere, how the outside world (women’s rights, homosexuality, Muslim terrorism, etc.) effects the Church.

All this is done with witty dialogues, uncommon choices of music, a thick layer of ‘artsy fartsy’ filming and themes, a touch of melancholy, humour, sensual women, you get it, this is really a Sorrentino production.

Kajillionaire – Miranda July (2020)

Just as the other film of July that I reviewed, I knew “Kajillionaire” is not my genre, yet somehow it ended up on my watchlist. It took quite some time before I felt like watching it (“The Future” was hard to find to watch, this was no problem with “Kajillionaire”).

So we have a quirky comedy about a family that has creative ways of earning money. They scam insurance. Return items to shops. That sort of things. They live in an office which gets ‘bubbled’ twice or three times a day. Because they are behind paying rent, they try to go to their living office unseen.

During a job the family meets the very expressive Jenny who has a great idea of making money. Then the gang consists of four.

The girl on the cover is -obviously- the daughter. She is perhaps even more awkward than her parents. Jenny tries to get some life into the girl.

Weird situations, odd dialogues. Again July made a minimalist film with subtle humour referring to all kinds of small things in actual daily life.

Amusing, but not great.

Bipolar – Queena Li (2021)

I usually list films by their original title. IMDb.com does too, but in this case they have not listed it at all. The original title is ‘只是一次偶然的旅行’ (‘Zhǐshì yīcì ǒurán de lǚxíng’) which means ‘Just an accidental trip’. Indeed, a way different title from the international title. The original title does give a good summery of the film.

Kun is a young, Chinese woman who goes on a pilgrimage to Tibet. On her way, she ‘meets’ a holy lobster in a tank in a hotel. She decides to take the lobster back to the sea. Rather than driving towards the coast, she drives into the Himalayas.

The film is shot in black and white with every now and then a scene with very bright (hallucinatory) colors. Most scenes are a bit weird, but the film is not as weird or hilarious as some describe it. I would say it is a somewhat quirky arthouse roadmovie.

Gisaengchung – Bong Joon Ho (2019)

In “Parasite” the son of a poor family is hired to teach the daughter of a very rich family. Soon he manages to reel in his sister, then his father and even his mother.

It takes takes quite some manipulating to get all that done, but the family sees an opportunity. The fact that they are all very articulate helps and the family is very easy to manipulate too.

Things go well until their predecessors have a few surprises in stock and things run very much out of hand.

“Parasite” is an amusing film with black humour and a weird story.

Martha Marcy May Marlene – Sean Durkin (2011)

In this fairly typical arthouse film we mostly follow Martha who has been in some sort of commune from which she escaped and fled to her sister.

The film tells but parts of the story. We do not know how Martha came to join the cult. Nor do we find out what exactly caused the trauma she has. The film jumps back and forth between the present and events in the two years that Martha lived on the farm. What is well done is that the past and present start to run through each other. And then the film just stops.

The film is alright, but it should have been less ‘artsy’ and just tell the story it wanted to tell.

Youth * Paolo Sorrentino (2015)

Like with the last reviewed title of Sorrentino, this latest film is a pompous and pretentious drama. “Youth” is very much in this Sorrentino style and as with “La Grande Bellezza” it is well-done, but not entirely my type of film.

We mostly follow two old men who celebrate their holidays in a luxery resort in Switzerland as they have done for decades. Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is a retired orchestra director and Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) an aged, but still active film director. The two talk about getting old, the pains that come with that phase of live and of course they look back at their lives. This is done with amusing dialoges and in the settings of the extreme luxery of their Swiss hotel. There are other guests as well of course. Ballinger’s daughter is also his manager, even though he thinks his carreer is done with. Boyle is still working on a film which he supposes to be his last one.

Sorrentino again uses long shots, lengthy dialogues, nudity and portrays the enstrangement and solitude of some of the characters in a melancholic and yet lightly humorous fashion. This makes “Youth” comparable to his previous title, but also for example a film like “American Beauty”.

Birdman * Alejandro González Iñárritu (2014)

A fine film indeed! I expected a bit of a weird drama and “Birdman” indeed is a bit of a weird drama, but not as weird as the poster and trailer suggest or perhaps just differently and more subtlely.

Riggan is an actor who made fame with the pompous Hollywood comic-scifi franchise Birdman. We find him later in life running a theatre in the hip theatre scene of New York trying to perform the play of his life. Things do not entirely go as planned especially not when Mike comes aboard.

Birdman appears to not only be Riggan’s old movie-character and Riggan also is not an ordinary man thus the film has nicely surreal elements from the beginning. The film is shot with flying cameras and threatre-like drama so both in form and content “Birdman” is certainly a film to see.

The Grand Budapest Hotel * Wes Anderson (2014)

This highly acclaimed film was not too high on my wishlist, but my girlfriend already saw it and thought that I should too. It is a nice film indeed.

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” has a bit of the atmosphere of “Amélie“; slightly absurdistically surrealistic, both romantic and somewhat tragic and with colourfull stages and weird characters and situations.

A writer goes to the gone-glory Grand Budapest Hotel where he meets the owner. This owner tells him the story of how he came to possess the hotel. A weird story about the “legendary concierge” Gustave H. unfolds. This extremely distiguished gentleman seems to be the main reason for the rich and famous to come to the hotel. When a customer of his dies and leaves Gustave a priceless painting, the family of the deceased opens all cabinets to prevent the concierge from obtaining the most valuable item of the legacy. Gustave and his favourite bellboy try to clear Gustave’s name.

The film contains a range of famous actors in unlikely roles which certainly adds to the amusement of the film. For the rest, it is a film for people like light, but ‘high brow’ comedy and the slightly surrealistic films like those of Jeanne-Pierre Jeunet or Paul Thomas Andersson.

The Tree Of Life * Terrence Malick (2011)

“The Tree Of Life” is what you can call a “difficult film”. It is extremely “artsy fartsy” and thus probably not for everyone. The film opens with some pretty heavy scenes about a family that lost their oldest son. The family is very religious and some three quarters of an hour follow in which the parents wonder how God could have done such a thing. Malick comes with very long earth and space documentary scenes, the purpose of which is not entirely clear to me. Does Malick try to set the death of the boy against the grandeur and magnitude of Creation? After much amazing imaginary, the film turns back to being a film and we learn about the history of the family. Malick keeps using a minimalistic approach with long stretched scenes and little dialogue.
I guess “The Tree Of Life” is a ‘love it or hate it’. I find the approach daring, perhaps overdone, but why should every film be the same? Interesting for sure. Not much of a ‘feeling good’ film, but what the heck?