Actor Spotlight: Al Pacino

Alongside doing the director's spotlights, I'm going to also do some actor spotlights and thought I might as well start with my favorite.

Al Pacino may be the greatest American actor ever. There are others who have claim to the title as well, Brando and De Niro being the obvious examples (and we'll get to them), but Pacino has always been my personal favorite. His power, his vulnerability, his range are all amazing to me. Some might not think of Pacino as having much range, seeming to play the same character or same type all the time, but if you look at the subtlety of his performance in Insomnia against the wildness of his work in Dick Tracy, to his mostly stoic Michael Corleone, his hilarious Tony Montana, and his tragic and beautiful performance in Dog Day Afternoon (his best work) you see him in different voices, different body languages, different styles. He has an amazing range if you really look at him.

I didn't realize that he is now 78 years old, 3 years older than De Niro (whom I'd always thought was older than Pacino), but still working. We don't have much of him left but let's appreciate what he's given us and talk about the mans work a bit.

Pacino's Heat director Michael Mann said "De Niro sees the part as a construction, working incredibly hard, detail by detail, bit by bit, building character … [Pacino is] more like Picasso, staring at an empty canvas for many hours in intense concentration. And then there’s a series of brushstrokes. And a piece of the character is alive.” Some argue that Pacino's brushstrokes are too big, and sometimes I agree but I still think they work for the most part.

Sometimes his big moments aren't even necessarily planned. Hank Azaria has said the iconic "she's got a GREAT ASS!!!" scene in Heat came about because they'd done so many takes and Pacino never went that big, he just did it as a way to break up the energy of the scene, knowing that sometimes drug addicts had big outbursts like that. Then Mann cut a scene of Pacino doing cocaine, and the scene ended up feeling like Pacino wanting to go big rather than his character being an unstable addict. I find that kind of stuff fascinating. A directorial editing choice changed the nature of the acting by taking context out of it, which made the motivations unclear.

Pacino has earned his place in movie history and in my heart as one of the great actors of all time. To those who are only familiar with the pop culture version of Pacino, I would suggest checking out specifically his work in The Merchant of Venice and his own directorial debut Looking For Richard, the former a straight adaptation of one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays, and the latter a half staging of Richard III and half exploration of Shakespeare and why he works and what he means to people.


My ratings of his movies:

1. The Godfather - 10/10
2. Dog Day Afternoon - 10/10
3. The Godfather part II - 10/10
4. Looking for Richard - 9/10
5. Heat - 9/10
6. Insomnia - 9/10
7. Donnie Brasco - 9/10
8. Scarface - 9/10
9. Angels in America - 9/10
10. The Merchant of Venice - 9/10
11. Glengarry Glen Ross - 8/10
12. Scent of a Woman - 8/10
13. Sea of Love - 8/10
14. The Insider - 8/10
15. Serpico - 8/10
16. Scarecrow - 8/10
17. ...And Justice for All - 7/10
18. The Godfather part III - 7/10
19. Carlito's Way - 7/10
20. The Panic in Needle Park - 7/10
21. Dick Tracy - 6/10
22. The Devil's Advocate - 6/10
23. Any Given Sunday - 6/10
24. The Recruit - 6/10
25. Frankie and Johnnie - 5/10
26. Bobby Deerfield - 4/10
27. 88 Minutes - 3/10
28. Gigli- 1/10
29. Jack and Jill - 1/10

Director's Spotlight: Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton wasn't always the listed director of his movies, but read any behind the scenes stories or biographies and it's obvious that he was the director and creative force behind everything he did up until The Cameraman in 1928. Up until that point he'd been and independent filmmaker, but after the box office failure of The General, in conjunction with a divorce and increasing alcoholism, Keaton signed a contract with MGM.

He was able to make The Cameraman, his first MGM production and last great movie, before MGM took away his creative control (his friend and popular rival Charlie Chaplin told Keaton not to sign the contract for that exact reason). MGM was paying Keaton a lot of money, they couldn't have him risking his life with improvised stunts and being his own stunt man (and on several occasions the stunt man for his co-stars). They wanted everything pre-planned and pre-approved. That wasn't how Keaton worked. He got to set and saw what was available and made up the stunts from there. If he had a block on what to do, he'd halt production and set up a game of baseball to help clear his mind. MGM couldn't have that, even from a genius like Keaton.

Keaton suffered a slow career downturn from there, never to really recover from other than to have his movies rediscovered in the 1960's and reevaluated as a genius on the level of Chaplin, maybe even above him (easily above him in my book). It's been a slow upturn since then. Though Chaplin is still more famous, because he never really went out of popularity, Keaton is now thought of as his equal (though their friend Harold Lloyd was actually the most commercially successful at the time, of the 3 kings of silent comedy). Keaton's The General was even selected as the 18th greatest American movie ever made in the 2007 AFI Top 100 list.

But what Buster Keaton gave us are the best silent comedies ever made, and some of the best silent movies ever made.


My ratings of his work:

1. Our Hospitality - 10/10
2. The General - 10/10
3. Sherlock Jr. - 10/10
4. The Goat (short) - 10/10
5. The Cameraman - 9/10
6. Steamboat Bill Jr. - 9/10
7. The Scarecrow (short) - 9/10
8. The Playhouse (short) - 9/10
9. Neighbors (short) - 9/10
10. One Week (short) - 8/10
11. Seven Chances - 7/10
12. Battling Butler - 7/10
13. College - 7/10
14. The Balloonatic (short) - 7/10
15. The Haunted House (short) - 7/10
16. The Boat (short) - 7/10
17. The Blacksmith (short) - 7/10
18. The Electric House (short) - 7/10
19. Go West - 6/10
20. The Paleface (short) - 6/10
21. The Navigator - 6/10
22. Cops (short) - 6/10
23. Three Ages - 6/10

And although Three Ages is my bottom ranked movie it has one of my favorite jokes ever: as Keaton is vying for the affections of the girl in the modern section, his rival pulls out his business card and it shows that he's the manager at First National Bank. The girl runs off with the guy and Keaton looks at his own business card and it shows that he's the manager at Last National Bank. I'm not quite sure why such a simple joke has always made me laugh so hard, but it does.

Out of Sight

Out of Sight is the best screen adaptation of legendary crime author Elmore Leonard’s work. Starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez (a few years before she became “J.Lo” and was just a talented up-and-coming actress), with one of the best supporting casts you’ll ever see, Out of Sight was a return to form for indie director Steven Soderbergh. He’d made a huge splash on the movie scene with Sex, Lies, and Videotape in 1989, which took home the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. But his reputation had faltered afterwards with multiple films that didn’t connect with critics or audiences. This cool, highly stylized, perfectly acted movie didn’t quite connect with audiences like the filmmakers expected it to, it made back it’s budget though not a ton more in theaters, but Out of Sight was a hit with critics and other filmmakers. Kevin Smith has called it one of the best movies of the last 20 years, and a true masterpiece of cinema. I agree with him.

Jack Foley (Clooney) has been planning meticulously for a break out of the prison in which he’s currently serving time. Thanks to help from his friend Buddy (Ving Rhames), and stoner extraordinaire Glenn (Steve Zahn), the break gets out not just Jack, but also Chino (Luis Guzman), who gets separated from Jack during the breakout. Jack and Buddy’s portion of the plan then gets interrupted thanks to the happenstance appearance from US Marshall Karen Sisco (Lopez).

Quickly, and in the most iconic sequence of the movie, Jack decides to just kidnap Karen and take her with them, she and he hiding in the trunk together as Buddy drives the getaway car. They develop an intimate report with one another in the trunk, covering topics like bank robbery (Jack’s reason for being in prison) and movies (where Jack and Karen bond over discussing New Hollywood classics like Bonnie and Clyde, Network, and Three Days of the Condor). They have an instant connection, which makes for a complicated relationship between a bank robber and a US Marshall, but a lot of sexy fun for us in the audience.

In a wonderful time-hopping script from Scott Frank (who’d previously written the very good adaptation of Leonard’s Get Shorty, starring John Travolta), we’re introduced in flashbacks and in present time to other characters in Jack’s life, including his ex-wife Adele (Catherine Keener), a magician’s assistant recently out of work and Jack’s communication liaison on the outside; Richard Ripley (Albert Brooks), a rich banker who stupidly brags in prison about a cache of uncut diamonds he has hiding in his home in Detroit; and Maurice “Snoopy” Miller (Don Cheadle), a violent psychopathic ex-boxer whom Jack didn’t like in prison and who antagonizes him outside the joint too. The rest of the supporting cast also includes Nancy Allen, Denis Farina, and even an uncredited cameo from Michael Keaton, who reprises the role of Ray Nicolette, which he’d played the previous year in Quentin Tarantino’s great Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown.

The supporting cast is really tremendous, but this movie sings because of the performances from Clooney and Lopez. Clooney is the total embodiment of an Elmore Leonard protagonist: he’s quick-witted, smart, funny, but also prone to bad decision making. And Clooney personifies all of these qualities in such a way that we like Jack, we love Jack, but we also know he’s not going to stop robbing people, it’s what he does and the only career he knows.

Lopez, on the other hand, is strong, just as smart as Jack, with a hard nose for the rules, even if she occasionally breaks them herself. I’ll say that she looks gorgeous here, better than she ever looked in another movie. But she’s FAR more than just eye candy, as she is the other Elmore Leonard standard protagonist, the tough as nails, but still wonderfully feminine and sexy female hero. Leonard said that the character of Karen Sisco was inspired by a real life photograph he’d seen in the newspaper of a beautiful US Marshall, shotgun resting on her hip, which she’d cocked to the side (the hip, not the gun). He wondered what kind of woman that was, and Karen Sisco was born. Though far from the white, blonde haired character the novel describes her as physically, Lopez completely nails the spirit of the Leonard character just like Clooney does.

As great as Jackie Brown is, Out of Sight is the best adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s work because it’s the movie that most feels like what reading one of his books is like. It’s funny and effortlessly smooth and Clooney and Lopez have a palpable sexual chemistry that also happens to include their witty banter, showing off an intellectual connection to go with their physical chemistry. Scott Frank’s script doesn’t quite adapt the book directly, there are the expected changes, but he gets down the spirit of Leonard’s writing. The dialog, the sharply drawn characters, the seemingly aimless plot that still comes around in the end and ties everything together. It has it all. And it’s on top of all of that that Steven Soderbergh brings his cool, efficient, intelligent filmmaking style, perfectly suited to this material.

Soderbergh is a truly great director, able to make everything from crowd pleasers like the Ocean’s 11 movies, Magic Mike, and Erin Brockovich, to “important” movies like Traffic (for which he won an Oscar as Best Director) and Behind the Candelabra, mainstream ensemble dramas like Contagion and Side Effects, ambitious projects like his beautiful remake of Tarkovsky’s Solaris or his two part Che Guevara biopic, Che, technical exercises like The Good German (shot like in B&W as though it were Casablanca, but with modern lax censorship of language) and this years Unsane (which he shot on an iPhone), to straight comedies like the painfully underrated The Informant! or last year’s Logan Lucky. He adapts to every story, but his stamp is there on them all. You can just “feel” a Soderbergh movie. And he’s had a huge output over his relatively still young career (almost 30 movies in less than 30 years, as well as two seasons of the Cinemax series The Knick, amongst others). Out of Sight is his best work. It’s just the perfect marriage of star power, great writing adapted from a wonderful source, and expert filmmaking from a director on the top of his game. If you haven’t seen this somehow Hidden Gem, remedy that situation as soon as possible!

Sing Street

 
John Carney’s Sing Street was one of the most unfairly overlooked movies of 2016. It’s the coming-of-age story of Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a teenager in 1985 Dublin, Ireland. His family is falling apart, his parents constantly fight, economic times are tough, he’s being transferred to a new Catholic school full of bullies and harsh administration, and (as we all do at that age) he’s trying to figure out who he is as a person. Conor plays a bit of guitar and writes a bit of poetry, but he doesn’t really know who he is yet. What 15-year-old does? Into the mix, as usually happens in these stories, steps “the girl,” Raphina. Conor asks her to be in his band’s next video, to which she agrees. He then promptly walks away and up to Darren, the only friend he’s made at his new school, and says “We need to form a band.”


Conor gets lessons in music from his hash smoking college dropout brother Brendan (Jack Reynor), and finds a songwriting partner in multi-instrumentalist Eamon (Mark McKenna). Quickly, the boys form up their band (which they call Sing Street) and even have an original song written for the video Conor invited Raphina to be in, which they cheaply shoot in hodgepodge costumes and makeup. The shoot is a success, the song is actually good, and it leads to more of both happening. Conor, of course, falls hard for Raphina, but she has a boyfriend. One of my favorite moments in the movie is when Conor is recounting to Brendan about seeing Raphina take off with the boyfriend, music blaring. This very brotherly exchange then happens:

Brendan: What was he listening to?
Conor: Genesis.
Brendan: He will not be a problem.
Conor: No?
Brendan: No. No woman can truly love a man who listens to Phil Collins.

And I love that not because I have something against Phil Collins, but because that is exactly the type of surely judgmental thing that a big brother taking his little brother under his wing would say. Brendan speaks in absolutes, and Conor takes in everything Brendan says. He listens to the music Brendan gives him, and then begins taking in the influence of those artists. Brendan gives him a record from The Cure and the next day we see Conor’s band walking to school decked out in the pop-goth look of The Cure. And they do that with other musicians too, as Conor takes artistic control of the band, while he and Eamon work together on the musical direction (Eamon tells Conor at one point that he doesn’t care what style they play, he just wants to play).

Conor ends up finding himself through the band and through music. It all started because he wanted to impress a pretty girl, but it took hold of him and became a much deeper experience than that eventually. And this is where the movie really shines. I don’t remember other fiction movies being able to capture the unexplainable joy and soul connection of playing music together. We can watch great concert documentaries, but never had a movie captured that with characters in a way that spoke to me (as someone who has played music for a long time, both in bands and by myself) until John Carney’s 2007 movie Once (which won an Oscar for Best Song in 2008). He then recaptured that magic on a much larger budget with his next movie Begin Again, which is wonderful even if it’s not got Once’s charm.



He then moved on to Sing Street, which is one of the most joyous movies I’ve ever seen. Carney has a way of playing off the looks between band members, the sideways glances and just the energy between the performers. Like in Once, he got real musicians to play the lead roles, which I think made a huge difference. These guys aren’t faking their abilities or their joy. They’re just playing these great songs (which Carney co-wrote, alongside his duties as writer/director of the movie) and we feed off their performances.



In addition to the great original songs in the movie, the soundtrack is packed with great 80’s tunes from The Cure, Motorhead, The Jam, Joe Jackson, Hall & Oates, and even a new song sung by Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine (who previously played one of the main supporting roles in Begin Again). This movie is absolutely packed with music. Carney started out as the bass player in the great Irish band The Frames (led by his future Once star Glen Hansard), before leaving to pursue filmmaking. So he has music in his bones, and it has shown in his three brilliant music driven movies.

Carney gets the music so right, but this movie doesn’t work if the love story falls flat, and thankfully he also wrote two great lead roles in Conor and Raphina. Raphina isn’t just a pretty face, and she isn’t a manic-pixie-dream-girl there only to spur Conor’s character development. Raphina is a fully well rounded character, played in a beautifully heart felt and vulnerable performance by Lucy Boynton. She has her own arc, her own insecurities and strengths and weaknesses. And Conor loves her through all of it. What begins as shallow infatuation with the pretty girl deepens as Conor becomes more himself and grows through his music. I’m not sure if this performance is the beginning of a career for Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, since he is a musician first, but it’s one of the great coming-of-age lead characters.

One of my favorite sequences is where Conor is trying to rehearse a video shoot at the school for a new song, inspired by Back to the Future (which none of the other students have seen). As he did in Begin Again, John Carney allows a little flight of fancy as the film gets a bit of a sheen to the cinematography and we jump into Conor’s dream version of what this video looks like. We’re subtly reminded of this in the closing moments of the movie. I won’t reveal what happens, in case you haven’t seen it, but in the final sequence of the movie, the cinematography gets that little sheen to it again. Is it all happening? Is it a dream? I like to think it’s somewhere in the middle. Like maybe there’s a bit of older Conor looking back into this moment in his life with a more forgiving filter than it might’ve really been happening in reality at that moment. Regardless of how you take it, it’s a powerful and wonderful ending to a movie that wasn’t seen by enough people, but loved by most who saw it. A true Hidden Gem.

Director's Spotlight: Werner Herzog

 
Ah, Herzog. The great madman of movies. He has been a favorite of mine since I first saw Aguirre back in college 15+ years ago. Something about his work just clicked with me. I can't quite define it, but his work spoke to me. I have always looked forward to seeing his work and he works so prolifically that there is still a lot for me to catch up to. His love of fellow madmen, men walking the fine line between genius and madness, and often falling into the latter, is something that no other filmmaker has put on screen so well.

I also love his adherence to what he calls the "ecstatic truth" in the world. So that a scene in Little Dieter Needs to Fly where former POW Dieter Dengler has to go around and open all the doors and windows in his house so that he knows he's not trapped in there, is not literally true, Dieter didn't really do that, but it is a higher truth that Dieter did feel that way. So it becomes not a moment of fabrication in the middle of a documentary, but more of an abstract search for the highest truth. It is because of this approach that Herzog has said he doesn't see much difference between directing fiction and directing documentaries.

Roger Ebert said that Herzog "has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular." And I have to agree.

So, what do you think of the great Werner Herzog's movies?

My list:

1. Aguirre, the Wrath of God - 10/10
2. Lessons of Darkness - 10/10
3. Into the Abyss - 10/10
4. Encounters at the End of the World - 10/10
5. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - 9/10
6. Nosferatu the Vampyre - 8/10
7. Grizzly Man - 8/10
8. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser - 8/10
9. Fitzcarraldo - 8/10
10. From One Second to the Next - 8/10
11. My Best Fiend - 8/10
12. Heart of Glass - 7/10
13. Stroszek - 7/10
14. Land of Silence and Darkness - 7/10
15. Little Dieter Needs to Fly - 7/10
16. The White Diamond - 7/10
17. Lo & Behold: Reveries of the Connected World - 7/10
18. Cave of Forgotten Dreams - 6/10
19. Rescue Dawn - 6/10

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

When I watch this movie, I miss Heath Ledger more than ever. He reached great heights with his Oscar-winning performance in The Dark Knight, which was his final completed performance, but not technically his final role. He died midway through re-teaming with his The Brothers Grimm director (and former member of Monty Python) Terry Gilliam in the dark comic fantasy The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

The role he left behind was that of a mysterious stranger who joins up with the supremely odd theatre troupe of the title character. Thanks to the story, one involving a magic mirror that allows people to enter into a world of imagination partially controlled by Dr. Parnassus, Gilliam was able to recast Ledger's role during the sequences inside the Imaginarium. Gilliam recast it with three great actors who wanted to honor Ledger's memory, and took on the roles without payment (all three deferring their money to Ledger's daughter Matilda). Gilliam has said that many actors (including Tom Cruise) offered their services, but he wanted to "keep it family" with actors whom Ledger had befriended, therefore casting Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell to complete the role.

Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is 1,000 years old, keeping secret from his 15-year-old daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) that he long ago made a deal with the Devil (Tom Waits) to give up any child born to him and the woman he was trying to woo, if the Devil would make him a younger man again. The catch is that the child wouldn't belong to the Devil until its 16th birthday, which for Valentina is quickly approaching.

The doctor drinks away the days, while the Devil keeps popping in to remind him of their deal. Parnassus travels throughout England with his troupe, comprised of sleight-of-hand expert Anton (Andrew Garfield), Valentina, and the dwarf Percy (Verne Troyer), who knows of the deal with the Devil and acts as a kind of sounding board and conscience to the doctor. The group is struggling, attracting very few customers, and not always happy ones at that. One night they save the life of a young man who's been hanged from below a bridge. The man turns out to be Tony (Ledger), who begins to act almost as a pied piper, leading more people to the Imaginarium than have ever come before. Parnassus believes Tony could be a kind of savior, and looks to make a new deal with the Devil to try and save Valentina's life.

This story, from Gilliam and co-writer Charles McKeown, isn't short on invention. Although "deal with the Devil" stories are as old as the Devil himself, it's given a bit of a spin here in a way that stops it from ever feeling like a cliché. There’s also a lot of nuance to the characters, as we initially like Tony, and so dislike the jealous antics of Anton, who obviously has a crush on Valentina, but sees the way she looks at Tony. These feelings deepen and begin to shift as the movie goes on, so that our allegiances are brought into question in a really wonderful way.

Gilliam has always been known for his distinct imagery (often in a fantasy setting), but he is a filmmaker I usually find short on story and character. Here, he is not. I've not typically been a fan of Gilliam’s, even his celebrated visuals, but this movie made me reconsider (I’ve since revisited much of Gilliam’s work and found that my dislike of his non-Monty Python movies hasn’t changed just because I love this one). Although the CGI isn't perfect, and we're not always convinced that the actors and the effects are occupying the same space, the overall feel and impact of the images works the way I assume Gilliam wants it to. And that’s because of the amazing and dreamlike imagery in the Imaginarium. The fact that we don’t believe the effects actually ends up elevating the dreamlike state of those scenes.

There's also the case of Gilliam’s actors seeming more believable this time around. The actors and characters in much of Gilliam’s work are caricatures, with no grounding in even the internal reality of the movie. These actors play things for real, making the fantasy (as well as the comedy) that much more effective.

The legendary Christopher Plummer is as good as he's ever been as the ancient Dr. Parnassus, perpetually drunk and gambling, often unable to realize when he’s making a good decision or a bad one. Doll-faced English model Lily Cole brings a youthful energy and wonderful vulnerability to the young Valentina. And as the jealous and squirrelly but possibly goodhearted Anton, Andrew Garfield is flawless. This was the first time I ever saw Garfield, so the fact that he’s blossomed into an Oscar nominated star in the years since this movie is not a surprise to me in the slightest. I wouldn't have suspected it, but one of the most interesting characters and best performances is that of the dwarf Percy, played to hilarious and heartfelt superiority by "Mini-Me" himself Verne Troyer, showing off that he can actually act. Who knew? And Tom Waits as the Devil? Couldn't be more perfect if you tried. That gravelly voice fits so beautifully into the person they refer to as Mr. Nick.

But of course, no discussion of a movie with the sad circumstances surrounding it that this one had would be complete without talking about Heath Ledger and the actors charged with replacing him. Depp, Law, and Farrell’s casting feels much more organic than you would expect going into it. Farrell is the best and darkest of the three (showing yet again that when he’s doing weird, wonderful, non mainstream work, he’s among the shortlist of our best actors), Law is fine, and Depp mostly relies on his star power charisma rather than creating a unique character or anything.

Ledger, though, is again the show stealer, getting us to like Tony without knowing what possible dark secrets lie in his past. His energy and charisma lend the movie an innate watchability. He truly had come into his own as an actor and would've no doubt gone on to become one of the better actors around had he not met his tragic end. Thankfully, not just The Dark Knight will remain as a tremendous, if elegiac, final testament to his talent. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is a wonderful Hidden Gem.

A Ghost Story

Writer/director David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is a particularly odd and beautiful movie. And while it does have a ghost as essentially its main character, it is not a horror movie. It is a meditation on life, love, what we leave behind when we pass on, and finding meaning in those things. Is there meaning in that? During our lives we can’t really know the answers to those things, but through the magic of storytelling we get to explore those existential questions that we all wonder about. A Ghost Story does this as beautifully as I’ve ever seen a movie do it.The story, as far as plot goes, concerns C (Casey Affleck) a musician who lives in a small house in Dallas, TX with his wife M (Rooney Mara). She wants to move, he doesn’t. One night they hear a banging noise on their piano, but when they investigate it, they find nothing. The next day, C is killed in a car accident right outside their home. After M identifies the body at the hospital, a white sheet is placed over his body and she walks away. A few moments later, his body sits up, with the sheet staying on him. He stands, the sheet stays, and we even see that there have become two eyeholes like a child’s Halloween costume. C’s ghost slowly begins wandering around the hospital, seemingly invisible to everyone and everything around him. He encounters a glowing bright light that beckons him to enter it, which he doesn’t do.
The ghost returns to his home and proceeds to watch his wife mourn. In what passes for him like just a few moments, we see him watch her over days, weeks, and months. He can’t communicate with her, and she cannot see him, or give any indication that she can feel his presence. C’s ghost eventually goes to the window and sees another ghost in the house next door. They are able to communicate with one another. The other ghost tells C that she’s waiting on someone to come home, but she can’t remember who. M writes a note, and sticks it in crack in a wall, and then moves out of the house, C’s ghost then watches as another family moves in. The children can feel his presence and are disturbed by it. C lashes out in anger at the family, hurling dishes out of the cabinets. The next occupants of the house throw a big party where a man (Will Oldham) goes on a philosophical rant about how people try to create a legacy, but the universe doesn’t care and it’s ultimately futile to think otherwise.
To keep recounting the plot is not only futile itself, it’s not indicative of the experience of watching the movie. This isn’t a movie where the plot matters, really. This movie exists based on its atmosphere and ideas. C’s ghost experiences time in a much different way than we do. Years are moments to the ghost, and may not even be experienced linearly. We begin to pity the ghost that can’t remember who she was waiting for. We wonder if C remembers M. I think he does. I think one of the things Lowery is saying in the movie is in opposition to the ranting man at the party. What we do in our lives and relationships may not matter to the universe, but it matters to us and it matters to the people we touched.

The visuals of the movie are really striking. The image of the ghost, which might seem at first glance to be childlike or even comical, is initially haunting and eerie. It gave me goosebumps. Eventually, as we watch, it becomes melancholy and wistful. The ghost seems sad. Although he can’t emote anything, we can feel it. We sense it in the atmosphere of the movie. We get it through the small amounts of body language that Affleck is able to portray through the costume. This ghost has a lot of feelings, but I’m not sure it always understands them. I also began to wonder if the ghost remembered that it used to be human, or even what that meant to him in the stage of existence he is in now.
Though only made on a budget of $100,000, it doesn’t show. The movie is beautifully shot, edited, and acted. The simplicity of the ghost costume becomes an asset, not a hindrance. It makes for some really striking images, this ghostly being in the middle of a skyscraper, on a construction site, or even just watching his wife mourn. There’s a scene, much maligned by the movie’s detractors, of M eating a pie while C’s ghost looks on. If you’ve ever experienced real grief, you’ll recognize the numbness in Mara’s extraordinary performance as truly an embodiment of loss.
Lowery is also benefitting from the low budget by being able to work with some big ideas here. Life, love, loss, all the weightiness of the questions of our existence. It makes the movie work on an almost primal level for me. That’s not something you usually get in bigger budgeted movies. Lowery has said he conceived of this while in post-production on his previous movie, the 2016 remake of the Disney classic Pete’s Dragon. He enlisted Affleck and Mara, the stars of his first movie Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, who worked for nothing to be able to make this movie happen.
I haven’t seen either of Lowery’s previous movies, but after watching this one, I look forward to catching up. He’s a talent I will certainly be keeping up with from now on. We don’t get a lot of meditative movies who want to explore the nature of memory, love, and even time. We should embrace these when we find them. I love to talk about films like this, slow moving films that have something to say and yet don’t dictate that to the audience. It’s a movie with a lot to say that could even end up meaning different things to each of us in the audience. This is another wonderful Hidden Gem.

Director's Spotlight: Alfred Hitchcock

The most famous of all filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock. The director I've seen more movies from than any other, I've got 29 rated here, but I know I've seen more I just can't remember what my ratings for them were and don't remember them enough to get a close rating so I just went with this list.

Hitch is quite probably the most influential filmmaker of all time, and certainly the most referenced in the work of other filmmakers. He was also a populist with a television show and big box office. Hitch proved that you could have the commercial success and still have people like Francois Truffaut fawn over you artistically. And in the last decennial Sight and Sound poll in 2012, Hitch's Vertigo became the first movie to dethrone Citizen Kane at number 1 since the 1952 poll.

So much has been said about Hitchcock over the years though, let's just say what he means to us. For me, he's a surprisingly emotional filmmaker. Vertigo moves me every time I see it. Yes it's a waking nightmare that descends into death and madness, but it's also the story of a really lonely guy losing himself because people fucked with his mind and heart. Notorious is a great love story of people not communicating enough to realize that they're both sacrificing themselves for the other one and would be happier if they didn't. And the way Hitch played with fear, it's very affecting emotionally the way he'd use suspense and horrific situations. He knew how to elicit emotions from his audience and manipulate in just the right way as a storyteller. He's never been bettered in that way.

My ratings of what I've seen from the Master of Suspense:

1. Vertigo - 10/10
2. Notorious - 10/10
3. Strangers on a Train - 10/10
4. Psycho - 10/10
5. Frenzy - 9/10
6. Foreign Correspondent - 9/10
7. Rear Window - 9/10
8. Shadow of a Doubt - 9/10
9. North by Northwest - 8/10
10. The Birds - 8/10
11. The Lodger - 8/10
12. The 39 Steps - 8/10
13. Rebecca - 8/10
14. Rope - 8/10
15. Lifeboat - 8/10
16. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) - 7/10
17. Sabotage - 7/10
18. Suspicion - 7/10
19. Saboteur - 7/10
20. The Lady Vanishes - 7/10
21. Dial M for Murder - 6/10
22. To Catch a Thief - 6/10
23. Marnie - 6/10
24. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) - 6/10
25. Spellbound - 5/10
26. Torn Curtain - 5/10
27. Topaz - 5/10
28. Under Capricorn - 4/10
29. Jamaica Inn - 3/10