Seen–Said

Film viewing & writing by Joaquin Villalobos ☁️

[seen-said]

Almayer’s Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011, Belgium/France) Moody and mesmerizing. Nighttime photography dripping with enough drama to counterbalance the repeated but withheld Wagner we never get to hear explode. Reminiscent of Claire Denis' best moments in its leanness and sumptuous precariousness. But best of all, Akerman's acute sense and framing of location are still intact, along with Conrad's mystery.  3.5/5

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Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi, 2016, Italy/France) Makes a contrast so plain—from island citizens' creature comforts of grandma's spaghetti, check-ups, and freshly made beds to adrift refugees' internment, dehydration, and death—that the thesis on indifference to human suffering ends up coming across as, well, indifferent. No doubt Lampedusa is rich with contradiction, but this film leans too hard into its "artful" conceit rather than any lasting exploration.  2/5

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Kubo and the Two Strings (Travis Knight, 2016, USA) Characters drawn mostly by what they say rather than what they do. And with dialogue written this laborious and dry, it does a talking monkey, beetle, and climactic centipede fish villain thing no favors whatsoever. At least Pixar finds the right voice and not the current A-lister for that talent. Gorgeous in fits of combat, and even then usually when on paper. I almost wish it could've been told entirely through that device in Kubo's town square somehow.  2.5/5

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Nadja (Michael Almereyda, 1994, USA) Music-videoesque early '90s angst laid thick and engaging enough along its shapeshift. Morphs from an extended vampiric New York version of Melrose Place's moody title sequence to the archetypal charms of Mario Bava. At its best when leaning heavily on the Portishead soundtrack. (And Space Hog over the end credits took me back!)  3/5

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Top Ten Films of 2016

10) Christine (Antonio Campos, 2016, UK/USA) No starring female role this year left me feeling more satisfied yet exhausted, sympathetic and contemptuous, annoyed and amused. Christine is Rebecca Hall’s greatest work and my favorite female performance of the year. There’s a reason she specifically won the ‘Courage in Acting’ award at this year’s Women Film Critics Circle. You’ll see why, and she’s fantastic.

9) Jackie (Pablo Larraín, 2016, Chile/France) There’s something a bit “off” about a lot of Larraín’s latest and Jackie is all the more stronger and memorable for it. It’s that wiggle room that’s most intriguing, between historical accuracy and artistic liberty, public record and private pain, and performance of all kinds: for reporters, for a grieving nation, for us here to covet an icon’s account of Camelot. Imagined histories rarely feel this authentic.

8) Sunset Song (Terence Davies, 2015, UK/Luxembourg) Possibly Davies’ most dismal work to date (but wait, his Emily Dickinson biopic is on its way). Yet it still fills me with his signature warmth and light, no matter how temporary Sunset Song demonstrates that state of happiness and fulfillment to really be. Even as the horrific shadow of war stretches across his canvas, he still holds his faith in our ability to endure.

7) Ovarian Psycos (Joanna Sokolowski & Kate Trumbull-LaValle, 2016, USA) Community. Culture. Awareness. Mobilization. Solidarity. All meaningless buzzwords I loathe but that the documentary Ovarian Psycos made me believe in again, showing each of these talking points translated into concrete action. This stellar example put forth by an organized all-girl Latina bike “gang” watching over their Boyle Heights neighborhood—and more importantly each other—is truly motivating.

6) American Honey (Andrea Arnold, 2016, UK/USA) I just can’t get enough of Arnold’s keen eye for the rough and the poor. Her cinematography is consistently astounding, and here all the more amplified by her foreign, idyllic take on America through the eyes of a lovestruck runaway teenager. A movie shamelessly flooding late-afternoon vistas from an open-top convertible with Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” is a movie after my own adolescent heart.

5) Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro, 2015, Brazil/Uruguay) Mesmerizing with its visual repetition and sounds, striking in the knee-jerk assumptions about a rugged Brazilian vaqueiro it shatters. Iremar’s hands and manner are coarse, but the garments he designs in his free time are delicate and refined. And my god, is he sexy. Neon Bull is really an extraordinary testament to the power of dreams, and how vital it is to nourish them amidst such a barren present.

4) Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2016, France/Germany) Utterly and wonderfully preposterous, and a formidable contender for comedy of the year. Yes, this is quite possibly Isabelle Huppert’s finest hour, and good luck trying to convince me Elle is anything more than Verhoeven simply toying with the dexterity and delicious poise of his muse. He takes everything we love about her, cranks it way up, and lets us have it. You should be grateful.

3) Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016, Germany) In hindsight, I am so thankful Toni Erdmann took up the majority of my election night. I probably won’t laugh like that at a movie for some time, and it’s a reminder to try and not take this (or myself) too seriously. Maren Ade is coming for our invisible, repressive socioeconomic barriers with a sledgehammer, and our clumsy, imperfect loved ones are out there in the verdurous world just waiting to embrace us.

2) Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016, USA) My favorite male performances of the year. All of them. Especially Ashton Sanders as the adolescent Chiron—the wounded heart of this remarkable story—whose every nervous twitch was just too much to bear. Rare is the collective and collaborative talent that can make one line of softly spoken dialogue work as a resounding climax so perfectly. What a rare, beautiful film.

1) OJ: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016, USA) The most engrossing experience I had this year, and I couldn’t help devouring it all in two sittings on the edge of my seat. Edelman masterfully goes full macro and micro on so many of our nation’s awful, repeated contradictions, all through the truly bizarre exception that is OJ Simpson. The often logic-defying symbiosis of race and celebrity in America is infinitely fascinating. Footage of an LA officer’s horse spooked by the verdict’s unanimous and piercing hurrah is still haunting me.

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Top 50 First Viewings in 2016

Faces of November (Robert Drew, 1964, USA)

Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, 1971, USA)

OJ: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016, USA)

One from the Heart (Francis Ford Coppola, 1982, USA)

Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016, USA)

Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016, Germany)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966, Italy/Spain)

The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000, France)

Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2016, France/Germany)

The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983, Germany)

Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène, 1966, Senegal/France)

Society (Brian Yuzna, 1989, USA)

Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973, Japan)

Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro, 2015, Brazil/Uruguay)

Touki-Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973, Senegal)

A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1971, Taiwan)

Happy Birthday to Me (J. Lee Thompson, 1981, USA)

American Honey (Andrea Arnold, 2016, UK/USA)

Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977, USA)

Body Parts (Eric Red, 1991, USA)

Take My Eyes (Icíar Bollaín, 2003, Spain)

Ovarian Psycos (Joanna Sokolowski & Kate Trumbull-Valle, 2016, USA)

Sunset Song (Terence Davies, 2015, UK/Luxembourg)

Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977, West Germany)

A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961, UK)

Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Robert Altman, 1982, USA)

Jackie (Pablo Larraín, 2016, Chile/France)

Angst (Gerald Kargl, 1983, Austria)

Christine (Antonio Campos, 2016, UK/USA)

The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015, USA/UK)

Five Miles Out (Andrew Haigh, 2009, UK)

The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga, 1963, Spain)

Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, 1949, Italy)

For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965, Italy/Spain)

Crisis (Robert Drew, 1963, USA)

Looking: The Movie (Andrew Haigh, 2016, USA) 

13th (Ava DuVernay, 2016, USA)

Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973, Japan)

Designing Woman (Vincente Minnelli, 1957, USA)

Bell, Book and Candle (Richard Quine, 1958, USA)

A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926, Japan)

Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols, 1971, USA)

Sudden Fear (David Miller, 1952, USA)

Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, 2016, USA)

Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950, USA)

Love Exists (Maurice Pialat, 1960, France)

The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi, 2016, Iran/France)

Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont, 2003, France)

Electra Glide in Blue (James William Guercio, 1973, USA)

Henry Gamble's Birthday Party (Stephen Cone, 2015, USA)

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Top First Viewings Dec ‘16

Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, 1971, USA)

Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2016, France/Germany)

The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983, Germany)

Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène, 1966, Senegal/France)

Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950, USA)

[seen-said]

Top First Viewings Nov ‘16

​Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016, USA)

Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016, Germany/Austria)

Ovarian Psycos (Joanna Sokolowski & Kate Trumbull-LaValle, 2016, USA)

Jackie (Pablo Larraín, 2016, Chile/France)

The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga, 1963, Spain)

Worthy mentions: Christine (2016), The Salesman, Arrival, Myra Breckenridge 

[seen-said]

Moonlight Barry Jenkins, 2016, USA One of many bold and smart moves made by director Barry Jenkins in Moonlight is his use of Caetano Veloso's "Cucurrucucú Paloma", the seductive rendition of a popular folk song that's also been used to similar ends by queer-focused filmmakers Pedro Almodóvar and Wong Kar-wai. This is only Jenkins' second feature, and in anyone else's hands, this audacious musical choice—at odds with both the film's nervous symphony of strings and R&B/hip-hop soundtrack—would strike as a misstep. But in this context of a queer identity's long suppression finally peeking out from behind the clouds, it functions like a deeply respectful coda to the liberating desire so central to the work of the masters that Jenkins clearly knows and loves. More importantly, his tenacious storytelling, a remarkable gift for getting disarmingly intimate performances, and a formidable visual elegance predicated on peeling back layered emotions all promise he'll easily earn that reference, as well as an eventual seat at their table.

Moonlight is a rare beacon in an often very white, predetermined gay-indie landscape, and it illuminates as such from any path one chooses to follow: as a gay narrative of self-acceptance, as a deconstruction of masculinity and machismo, as empathy for drug addiction's everlasting ripple effect, and especially as a loving portrait of what it means to grow up black in an impoverished America. But for a film setting out to wrestle with all of this—and as it also wrestles within one man, no less—Jenkins keeps these histrionic forces restrained and grounded, and it is Chiron who’s placed front and center. He's a fully drawn and astonishingly realized character spanning three actors in three distinct acts, each compounding the hardships previously weathered behind the despairing gaze of the next performance.

Chiron starts as "Little”, a boy whose defiant silence against school bullies, an addict mother, and the neighborhood dealer offering the best of supportive intentions is ultimately broken by his own blunt questioning of what it means to be the slur his peers use to hurt him. That shame will retain its grip, but it’s under the titular glow one night on the beach where the teenage Chiron first explores this sexuality with his only friend Kevin, a pivotal scene so thoughtfully executed it becomes less about sex and more about healing a soul long deprived of attention. Ashton Sanders’ embodiment of Chiron is the wounded heart of this story and possibly its greatest, his masterful balance of few words and fear in every twitch of his body language is often too much to bear. It eventually is, and his violent breaking point results in his arrest and the dramatic change into “Black”, his adult self that predictably emulates the sole example of unlawful manhood afforded him in his youth. 

This seamless casting and performative consistency across a single figure— continually and gently forecasting his future while echoing his buried past—is what makes Moonlight so impressive. By the end, Chiron is understood as a set of necessary choices that give painful complexity to a flat media stereotype, choices making us understand why survival and an image take precedence over the privilege of getting to be yourself. Jenkins is after my own heart with a film insisting on the circularity of time, always bringing ashore the unresolved, both good and bad. The good for Chiron comes on those first notes of Veloso’s song upon his return to where it all started, in which those two friends ripped apart by circumstance are dumbfounded to see each other again, and what kind of man each of them have become. Black may now be big, but he’s still just as quiet and hesitant as when he was Little, and if the whole thrust of Jenkins’ efforts aim to make Chiron’s softly but courageously spoken conclusion ring with the resounding depth of the whole film, he has succeeded beautifully.

4.5/5

[seen-said]

Top First Viewings Oct ‘16

American Honey (Andrea Arnold, 2016, UK/USA)

Society (Brian Yuzna, 1989, USA)

Happy Birthday to Me (J. Lee Thompson, 1981, USA)

Body Parts (Eric Red, 1991, USA)

Angst (Gerald Kargl, 1983, Austria)

Worthy Mentions: Bell, Book and Candle, A Page of Madness, 13th, Certain Women

[seen-said]

Top First Viewings Sep ‘16

Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro, 2015, Brazil)

A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961, UK)

Designing Woman (Vincente Minnelli, 1957, USA)

Sudden Fear (David Miller, 1952, USA)

Love Exists (Maurice Pialat, 1960, France)

Worthy Mentions: Other People, Twentynine Palms, Ixcanul, Where Is My Friend’s House?

[seen-said]

Top First Viewings Aug ‘16

OJ: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016, USA)

A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1971, Taiwan)

Multiple Maniacs (John Waters, 1970, USA)

Our Little Sister (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015, Japan)

Don’t Breathe (Fede Alvarez, 2016, USA)

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Top First Viewings Jul ‘16

Faces of November (Robert Drew, 1964, USA)

Looking: The Movie (Andrew Haigh, 2016, USA)

Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Robert Altman, 1982, USA)

Crisis (Robert Drew, 1963, USA)

Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols, 1971, USA)

Worthy mentions: Electra Glide in Blue, Cloud Phenomena of Maloja

[seen-said]

Top First Viewings Jun ‘16

Take My Eyes (Icíar Bollaín, 2003, Spain)

For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965, Italy/Spain)

Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015, Iran)

A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964, Italy/Spain)

The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman, 1983, USA)

[seen-said]

Top First Viewings May ‘16

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966, Italy/Spain)

The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000, France)

Sunset Song (Terence Davies, 2015, UK/Luxembourg)

Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977, USA)

Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973, Japan)

Worthy mentions: Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, The Lobster, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

[seen-said]

Top First Viewings Apr ‘16

Fantastic Planet (René Laloux, 1973, France/Czechoslovakia)

Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (John Lee, 2016, USA)

My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964, USA)

River of Grass (Kelly Reichardt, 1994, USA)

Mad Max (George Miller, 1979, Australia)

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Top First Viewings Mar ‘16

Touki-Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973, Senegal)

Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973, Japan)

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (John Huston, 1957, USA/UK)

Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (Toshiya Fujita, 1974, Japan)

Poil de carotte (Julien Duvivier, 1932, France)