Review: Hard Truths

Image courtesy of Bleecker Street Media.

Pansy is angry. An aging wife and mother, she often finds herself venting to anyone who will willingly – or more often, not – listen about mostly everything. Occasionally, her anger is righteous – for instance, an incident involving a brazen man who demands that she move out of the parking spot in which she is taking a moment for herself – but more often than not, it’s way out of proportion.

So, she finds herself shouting at supermarket workers, dentists, doctors, employees at furniture stores, her husband, her son, her well-meaning sister, pretty much everyone.

Why is Pansy so angry, her sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), asks during a Mother’s Day visit to the gravesite of their mother, a moment that should have been a somber one, but instead resorts in the typical releasing of Pansy’s vitriol. Why can’t she enjoy life? “I don’t know,” Pansy answers in frustration.

Portrayed by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Pansy is one of the year’s most intriguing characters in one of 2024’s finest and deceptively complex performances. This is Jean-Baptiste’s first role in a Mike Leigh film since his phenomenal “Secrets and Lies,” a Palm d’Or winner that represents the best of British cinema from the past three decades.

But while Jean-Baptiste’s work in that film was of a quiet nature, Pansy is a force of nature. Much like Sally Hawkins in “Happy Go Lucky,” David Thewlis in “Naked” or Brenda Blethyn in “Secrets and Lies,” Pansy dominates every scene she’s in and everyone else merely revolves around her as planets circling a seething, burning sun.

If “Happy Go Lucky” was Leigh’s story of an overly pleasant person – albeit one whose happiness was, perhaps, an intentional mask worn to survive a difficult world – then his latest is a story of an overly unpleasant one. That’s not to say that Pansy isn’t a sympathetic character. Clearly, she’s hurting and the concept that “hurt people hurt people” is clearly at play here.

Just as we never quite knew what was going on under the surface with Hawkins in “Happy Go Lucky,” it’s never quite spelled out what makes Pansy so upset. She claims she doesn’t feel well, but can’t exactly put her finger on what ails her. She has little patience for her husband, a quiet handyman named Curtley (David Webber), or her son, a hulking and mostly silent 22-year-old named Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who lives at home and seemingly has no ambitions.

Pansy spends most of her days vigorously cleaning her home, when she’s not complaining about the service she receives at furniture stores, dentist’s and doctor’s offices, or supermarkets. Scenes vacillate between being laugh-out-loud funny and awkward during her tirades. During one at the dinner table, she goes from attacking charity workers outside of stores to racist police within a few breaths.

At the cemetery, a visit planned by her sister that acts as a sort of centerpiece for the story, it is hinted that Pansy bore the brunt of the pressure from their single mother, while Chantelle – a single mother and hairdresser who seemingly has a joyful life at home with her two grown daughters – felt less of the burden. It was Pansy who discovered their mother’s body at the time of her death.

Throughout the course of the film, we watch as the other characters suffer from workplace indignities, health issues, or various annoyances. Moses is picked upon due to his size by two young men on the street. Curtley suffers a back injury at work. Aleisha (Sophia Brown), one of Chantelle’s daughters, has a massive amount of work dumped on her at her job, while a work-related research project completed by her sister, Kayla (Ani Nelson), is condescendingly dismissed by her boss, despite it being obvious how much work she put into it.

All of these characters suffer their problems in silence. Pansy, on the other hand, can’t let the smallest thing go. She is willing to die on every hill. And, the film seems to suggest, while this may have to do with past traumas, it could very well be because living in the world in this day and age is – let’s be honest – a lot. People are difficult. Work is difficult. Everyday life is difficult. The societal fabric seems to be tearing. The fact that most of us manage to compose ourselves on a daily basis seems like a small miracle.

“Hard Truths” is the best film by Leigh in about a decade. Rightfully considered England’s greatest living filmmaker, his body of work includes such classics as “Secrets and Lies,” “Happy Go Lucky,” “Naked,” “Life is Sweet,” “Another Year,” and “Mr. Turner,” but also a great second tier of pictures that includes “Topsy-Turvy,” “Vera Drake,” and “Career Girls.” His latest, much like “Happy Go Lucky,” is a great film about an outsized personality whose foibles may often provoke a laugh, if only to cover up the pain inside.

'Wild At Heart And Weird On Top': RIP David Lynch

David Lynch in "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me"

Today, I learned of the death of David Lynch, a singular artist who I’d count among the few who I can honestly say have changed the way I looked at the world and viewed art.

When I was young, I considered myself a “Twin Peaks” fan and will never forget the amount of discomfort I underwent seeing “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” on my 15^th birthday with my parents (who are about as open-minded as parents can be and do not easily squirm at movies).

In my teens, I was blown away by “Blue Velvet” and, in my first year of college, was mesmerized so much by “Lost Highway” that I went to see it multiple times, each time bringing along a new convert to be perplexed and freaked out by it.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I’ll never forget seeing “Mulholland Drive,” arguably the best film of the 21st century, at The Regent Showcase Cinema Palace. This was another that involved multiple screenings. When I lived in New York City, I was crazy enough to sit through “Inland Empire” for two back-to-back screenings. My open-minded folks, while visiting, attended a third screening of that film with me.

In 2017, “Twin Peaks: The Return” was a TV show experience like no other. Upon watching the much-vaunted Episode 8, I wondered how Lynch ever convinced a television network to air what must be the most avant-garde hour of TV ever made. I wrote a long piece about “The Return” here.

I’d always hoped that Lynch’s “Unrecorded Night,” a TV show he announced prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, would finally be realized. Alas, it will never be seen, much like other mythical never-to-be-realized Lynch projects, such as “Ronnie Rocket.”

It’s difficult to sum up Lynch’s work, other than to use the obvious words: nightmarish, surreal, dream-like, absurdist. Another word that best describes his work is intuitive. By this, I mean that what occurs in his films from frame to frame is less the mechanics of plotting, but rather what feels like should happen next. Another way to describe his style is that it operates on dream logic.

Sure enough, Lynch once described how he came up with the sinister, otherworldly Red Room from “Twin Peaks”: He leaned against a hot car and the image came to his mind. He then found a way to insert it into the series. Many of his films, he often noted, included imagery from his dreams.

However, Lynch notably did not like to discuss his films. His responses in interviews to what they mean have been intentionally vague and bland. The DVDs of his films often don’t even have chapter titles. Critic J. Hoberman does a lovely job of summing up Lynch’s life and work in The New York Times.

So, needless to say, Lynch is one of my favorite filmmakers. And it is undeniable that he is among the most unique ever to pick up a camera. He was also an avid painter and contributed wonderfully atmospheric music to some of his films (when composer Angelo Badalamenti wasn’t the one doing it).

“The world is wild at heart and weird on top,” says one character to another in the director’s 1990 Palm d'Or winner, “Wild at Heart.” That’s a great way to describe Lynch’s work in general – and the way that he enabled those of us who love his work to see the world.

Review: The Last Showgirl

Image courtesy of Roadside Attractions.

"The Last Showgirl" doubles as the best performance by Pamela Anderson and the best work to date from director Gia Coppola ("Palo Alto" and "The Seven Faces of Jane"), niece of Sofia and granddaughter of Francis Ford.

Anderson's work here as Shelly, one of the last of her types on the Las Vegas strip, is a genuine surprise. While some might think that Anderson taking on a stripped down, dramatic role like this is an example of attention seeking by all involved, they'd be wrong. It's an impressive piece of work from both the leading lady and director.

In the film, Shelly is a longtime performer in a Razzle Dazzle show, making her somewhat of a dinosaur in the modern world of live entertainment in Las Vegas, such as Cirque de Soleil or racier burlesque shows. A short way into the film, she is notified by longtime co-worker and friend Eddie (Dave Bautista) that the show will soon give its last performance to make way for a flashier, circus-like entertainment group at the casino where she works.

Although she pretends otherwise, Shelly has likely lived a life not completely without regrets, namely due to the fact that she gave up her child, Hannah (Billie Lourd), who mysteriously pops up early in the film, to live with relatives so that she could continue on in the Vegas show. She tells younger girls in the show that the Razzle Dazzle girls were once considered celebrities around town and that they'd grace the covers of magazines or be shuttled around the world for soirees.

But now, the company barely pulls in 20 people per performance and it'll soon be curtains up. Shelly is a mentor, of sorts, for a few of the younger girls in the show - Marianne (Brenda Song) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), whose background has some striking resemblances to Shelly's. Her best friend is a former showgirl named Annette (a brassy Jamie Lee Curtis), who now works two jobs, one of which involves her serving drinks in a bikini and occasionally doing dances to "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

If Shelly's life was once glamorous - at least, that's how she describes it - her present situation is far from it. She's no longer featured as prominently in the show, and when she is given a paycheck that was obviously smaller than expected, you can see the wheels turning as to how she'll pay the rent.

Meanwhile, Hannah is back in her life to a degree after having been raised elsewhere. Shelly's vague on details about who the father was, and there's some obvious tension between the two women that only later reaches a peak when Hannah confronts her after having finally watched her mother's show.

In some ways, "The Last Showgirl" follows a somewhat formulaic route, but its mood and tone are effective and the performances - especially Anderson and Curtis - are solid. Anderson, of course, is best known for her work on the long-running TV show "Baywatch" and she'd occasionally pop up in movies - such as "Barb Wire" - but it's great to see her nab a role that allows her to utilize her talent. It's one of the year's most surprising turns.

Review: The Damned

Image courtesy of Elation Pictures.

If you're looking for something to shake you out of your winter doldrums, I'm note sure that Thordur Palsson's "The Damned" will be the thing. Set in 1871 in Iceland, the film's chilly visual style combined with its gorgeous - but frigid - scenery made up of miles and miles of ice and snow might send shivers down your spine in more ways than one.

The film, which is the first release of 2025, is a horror movie, of sorts, although opinions as to whether it is a supernatural or psychological one may vary. Set in a remote spot, the film follows Eva (Odessa Young), a widow whose husband once ran a fishing station that she took over upon his death, and a group of men as they attempt to catch food for their community, where it is seemingly scarce. Due to the weather, they are unable to leave the spot until it clears up - which could be days or weeks.

One day while preparing to fish, they spot a foreign boat that has crashed in a treacherous spot between two rocks known as The Teeth. There's a debate as to whether they should attempt to save the boat's inhabitants, but the mission is deemed too risky. It's not too risky, however, to make their way out to the boat once they assume its crew is dead to see what they can scavenge.

Surprisingly, upon arriving at the scene of the boat, they realize that some of its crew members are still alive. They jump in the freezing water, hoping to be saved, but a struggle ensues to prevent these crew members from capsizing the boat and one of the foreigners is killed with an axe.

Eva and her crew flee back to their winter home with what they've plundered, but an older woman living there warns them of the draugr, ghost-like creatures of Nordic legend that emerge at night, are fueled by hatred, and attempt to get into their victims' heads. They are often borne out of a tragedy that results in revenge - such as the one involving the men at the crashed boat. 

Shortly thereafter, members of Eva's group begin disappearing or winding up dead. It's difficult to tell whether they're being haunted or - much like in "The Shining" - the isolation, with the addition of some guilt regarding their actions, is causing them to lose their minds. The men begin to turn on each other and one of them counsels Eva that "the living are more dangerous than the dead." A sort-of plot twist late in the film makes the viewer question how much that has been taking place is psychological, rather than literal.

I'll give credit where it's due: "The Damned" is long on atmosphere and has some great locales. On the other hand, it tends to drag a bit at various points after the visit to the boat, becoming yet another in a long line of horror movies in which groups of people are haunted or tormented by something they've brought on themselves and begin dropping like flies. Young is a solid lead and the rest of the cast - which includes Rory McCann of "Game of Thrones" and Joe Cole of "Peaky Blinders" - is good as well.

But other than its locations and cinematography, "The Damned" doesn't offer much that hasn't been done before in this genre. It's intermittently engrossing and well-enough made, but I believe that the best work of this director - who has obvious talent - is likely ahead of him. 

Review: Nosferatu

Image courtesy of 

There have been countless tales of the count since the birth of cinema - but oddly, my favorite film versions of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" tend to be the ones with the name "Nosferatu." There have been some very good versions under other names - Tod Browning's 1931 "Dracula" with Bela Lugosi and Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula," to name a few - but F.W. Murnau's creepy 1922 "Nosferatu" and Werner Herzog's brilliant and atmospheric "Nosferatu: Der Vampyre" remain my favorites.

Robert Eggers' adaptation of the Stoker novel has much more in common with these latter two films as it is artfully rendered and more cryptic than your average Hollywood adaptation of the story, although it veers off from the novel a bit (never a complaint in my book). There are some breathtaking shots here - the most memorable is the approach via coach through the Carpathian Mountains toward the count's castle.

There's not much of a point in describing the plot in depth here, since most viewers and readers likely know it. Of course, every version differs slightly, but suffice it to say that the film starts with Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) traveling to Count Orlok's (Bill Skarsgard) castle to make a land deal on a new home to which the count will relocate in Germany.

Meanwhile, Hutter's wife, Ellen (Lily Rose Depp) is having night terrors in which a voice - that of the count - calls to her to submit to its will. Without going too much into it, Ellen has long been tormented by the count, and not just due to her husband's visit to his castle. Orlok's coffin is transferred via boat and he kills all aboard before it reaches its destination. Once there, a plague overtakes the town and a local doctor (Willem Dafoe) recognizes that it's the work of an evil force.

There are some curious changes to the story. Instead of the Harkers and Van Helsing, here we have the Hutters and Albin Eberhart (Dafoe). The ending of the story is more tragic than that of the original novel. Eggers' film is certainly gorier - this film's Renfield character pulls an Ozzy Osbourne on a pigeon - and more sexual than Stoker's novel.

Eggers comes at the material with a painterly touch and the film is filled with gorgeous imagery. One of my favorite shots is of Nosferatu reaching his hand out of a window and it appearing as if it were devouring the entire German town in which he has relocated.

Eggers' work is primarily period piece horror films that deal with folklore and mythology. His debut, "The Witch," was an entrancing tale of witchcraft in the Colonies, while "The Northman" was a gory viking epic. My favorite of his was "The Lighthouse," a seriously weird mythological horror film set in the late 1800s in New England.

"Nosferatu" seems like a natural choice for the filmmaker. It might not be the greatest movie ever made about the count - that's a tossup between the Murnau and Herzog versions - but it's a unique artist's inspired take on a timeworn classic. 

Review: A Complete Unknown

Image courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Although it's a bit on the nose, there's a scene in James Mangold's "A Complete Unknown" that adequately sums up the film and the life of its subject, troubadour Bob Dylan. 

"I wish they'd just let me be," he says to a stranger, who turns out to be Mike Bloomfield, of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, in an elevator. "Be what?" Bloomfield asks. "Whatever it is that they don't want me to be." 

In this case, what they want him to be is an acoustic folk singer, but Dylan later shocks them all when he goes electric in an iconic moment at the Newport Folk Festival of 1965. In the late 1970s, his music took a religious turn. In recent years, he has recorded American standards. Whenever people want one Bob Dylan, he gives them another.

Although Todd Haynes' remarkable "I'm Not There" is still the definitive statement on the chameleonic folk singer-turned rock star because that picture captured his essence through a series of vignettes portraying Dylan as all of us, Mangold's film portrays him as a more singular being, one who doesn't take kindly to direction, even when it's provided kindly - in this case, through the mentorship of Pete Seeger (Edward Norton).

Dylan has been portrayed many times on film - whether it's Haynes' phantasmagoria, Martin Scorsese's straightforward "No Direction Home" or the more pranksterish "Rolling Thunder Revue." There's the more sarcastic and prickly Dylan in D.A. Pennebaker's "Don't Look Back" and even the wacky "Renaldo and Clara." Timothee Chalamet does an outstanding job of channeling Dylan in Mangold's film, even convincingly singing the songs himself. 

Like many films about unique artists, "A Complete Unknown" covers a specific period in the artist's life - in this case, from his mysterious arrival in New York City in the early 1960s up until that groundbreaking moment at the Newport Folk Festival. In the film's beginning, Dylan shows up at a hospital to meet his hero, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), and serenades him to "Song to Woody," which he wrote, and impressing Seeger, who's there to visit.

Seeger takes Dylan in and helps him to get some gigs, where he runs into Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), with whom he has an on-again-off-again relationship, and meets Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a fictionalized version of Dylan's first New York girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, who is on the cover of Dylan's first great album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan."

The film portrays Dylan as a genius who is quick with a barb - he says that Baez's music sounds like an "oil painting at the dentist's office" - and is not above using his friends occasionally (he defends allowing Baez to cover his "Blowin' in the Wind" because it will help to raise his profile). There's a warmth to his friendship with Seeger, which makes their eventual clash all the more heartbreaking.

While Mangold's film may not be as inventive as "I'm Not There," it's an engaging music biopic with a terrific lead performance, great supporting performances (Norton especially), a lot of great music, a compelling depiction of the New York City folk scene of the early 1960s, unique takes on historic events (the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance), and a few surprise cameos of legends - Johnny Cash and Dave Von Ronk, to name a few.

There are a lot of great moments involving the creation of Dylan's music, from a rousing moment when he performs "The Times They are a Changin'" for the first time to an audience at the Newport festival to smaller moments, such as when Al Kooper introduces the organ in "Like a Rolling Stone" or when Dylan buys a siren whistle on the streets of New York and puts it to good use in "Highway 61 Revisited."

"I'm Not There" not only remains the definitive Dylan movie, but likely the best and most unique movie ever made about a musician. Therefore, I thought that making a straightforward Dylan biopic was probably unnecessary after that former film did such a fantastic job of capturing his essence. But I was pleasantly surprised by Mangold's film. It does about as good a job as one could do in trying to sum up the life - or, at least part of it - of someone who has gone out of his way to defy classification and easy summarization. 

Review: Babygirl

Image courtesy of A24.

Halina Reijn's offbeat and kinky "Babygirl" features a solid leading performance from its leading lady, Nicole Kidman, as well as plenty of intriguing moments and an interesting storyline about a woman in power who comes to find that she doesn't need to seek permission from anyone.

That being said, the catalyst at the center of the earth-shattering upheaval in Romy's life - an intern named Samuel (Harris Dickinson) - is a bit of an enigma to the extent that we never really learn what his motivations are or what he gets out of the bargain, other than the obvious.

As the film opens, Romy is a CEO and founder of a company that manufactures robotics for warehouse delivery systems, thereby removing the need for humans. She projects confidence and has a young assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde), who wants to follow in her footsteps as a powerful woman at the head of a company.

At home, Romy is seemingly unfilled with her sex life, namely due to the fact that her seemingly nice-guy husband (Antonio Banderas) isn't interested in such bedroom behavior as placing a pillow over her head while having sex. After a tryst early in the film, she sneaks off to the bathroom to watch porn on a laptop. Ironically, her husband is a theater director overseeing a production of a Hedda Gabbler play about a woman who is unhappy in her marriage.

Things take a turn for the strange when Romy spots Samuel, the intern, and is immediately taken by him. His behavior toward her is, by all workplace standards, alarmingly inappropriate. Upon her first meeting with a pool of interns, he asks probing questions and, as time goes on, he continually engages in behavior that is probably frowned upon in a workplace.

Eventually, an unspoken game begins between them, starting when he orders her a glass of milk from across the room when workers from the company are at a bar. She defiantly drinks it down, and on the way out the door at the end of the night, he whispers "good girl" to her. In a later scene at a hotel room, she crawls on the floor and laps up milk from a plate upon command.

On the one hand, "Babygirl" is - much like another 2024 movie, "The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed" - a film about a woman involved in a relationship built around domination, but it's also about the balance of power. Romy believes that she, as a person in a position of power, would be seen as a villain for having a sexual relationship with an intern, who seemingly holds no power. Then again, as Samuel tells her, he holds power over her if he threatened to reveal their relationship to anyone at the company.

Further complications ensue - Romy and Samuel's relationship continues to threaten her increasingly dysfunctional home life, while it also comes out that Esme is having a relationship with Samuel, albeit one that does not involve domination. 

The element that makes "Babygirl" mostly work is Kidman's solid lead performance. Its biggest issue is that Dickinson's character is enigmatic almost to a fault. He exists solely for Romy to use as a method of liberation if that, indeed, is what she is seeking or achieving. Otherwise, Samuel is a cypher with seemingly no motives or purpose.

Reijn's previous film was the horror movie "Bodies, Bodies, Bodies," which had a great punchline of an ending but was an otherwise rote slasher movie with some arthouse pretensions. "Babygirl" is a step up, undoubtedly, and Kidman's performance is among her best in recent years. Even if the film doesn't work entirely, it's unusual and provocative enough to remain interesting throughout.