This political drama mashes together a rather stock recipe of political scandals, a posh roster of A-list Hollywood-Indie actors and sets the timer of an Ohio state primary for an Obama/Clinton-esque candidate and conjures a satisfyingly tragic view of contemporary politics.  Gosling is typically perfect in his ability to channel soulish depth, which, in this case, mirrors the viewers own experience of being alternately woo’d and stabbed-in-the-back by the Hope and Promise of political newcomers, and while the pacing, the performances, the music and the loving lens make the film a delightful cinematic experience,  the soulish depth is what ultimately makes the film satisfying.

+++1/2

Being Elmo is a sweet, relatively uncomplicated (on its face) documentary about Kevin Clash, a black kid from the Baltimore projects who rises to the unlikely ranks of Sesame Street puppeteer and then to the unpredictable and unforeseen good fortune of having invented the character of Elmo.  While I loved this movie on a personal level ( a story of a creative weirdo who grows up sewing puppets to the beat of his own drum is uniquely resonant for me), and I think the story managed to have a convincingly hallmark – movie sentimentality (I cried for the last fifteen minutes.  Seriously.) and because it successfully exploited the archtypal poles of uber fame (societal elmo craze — culminating in Tickle – Me – Elmo dolls) and racialized poverty (Kevin’s humble beginnings), I also felt like it shrunk from the deeper, more interesting and provocative story that it alluded to only in it’s final moments — and that is the story of how a boy whose parents’ loving support propelled him to unimaginable “heights” failed to give love to the one child (his daughter) he should have until it was (almost?) too late while peddling “love” through a red puppet to the masses — a story that is (?) in today’s vernacular — the new american dream.

++1/2

This film audaciously crafts a narrative that may or may not be about mental illness *and* may or may not be about the end of the world — because (arguably?) the dramatic questions that these two subjects raise actually have plenty in common (?!).  VonTrier mercilessly begs this question by setting up a narrative that, in its formal structure, insists that you compare these two problems, but then simultaneously manages to bravely and insistently attend to human action and interaction in the most mundane (and therefore true?) way — true to the formal and ideological problems that haunt all of his work — Melancholia managed to make me feel sick and winded and desperately involved for the last thirty minutes, which has happened rarely if ever before.

++++

Beginners is a film that, unlike most films that deal with answering the question(s) — What is love, really?  I’m jaded, a little disbelieving, but still interested even hopeful? — refuses to limit its answers to the scope of two people developing a relationship, instead contextualizing the story in a myriad of loves and sadnesses all of which make possible (and difficult) our connections with other humans.  The film’s tone is constructed perfectly – the aesthetic idiosyncracies of the director still providing a delightful counterpoint to the conventionality of the narrative – but the maturity, authenticity and particularities demonstrated in the pacing, the mise en scene and the score (including all the silence and sound design) show monumental growth from his last film (thumbsucker…which I also really loved.)

++++1/2

+++1/2

This documentary refracts its way through a hall of mirrors leading us from Banksy to Thierry Guetta, then from Thierry to Banksy, from Banksy to Thierry to (their sum?) Mr. Brainwash (MBW) —  tracing, all the while, the emergence of a number of different important street artists.  This rollercoaster narrative of post-referential documentation, regardless of its status as a hoax or the documentation of a hoaxter, feels like *both* a respectful introduction to recent street art *and* an erudite commentary on fame-lust and the emptiness of image – consciousness with a lack of commitments to ideas and meanings.

+++1/2

The middle of this documentary feels as perfect as a documentary about the-middle-of-nowhere, Ohio could feel — honest, celebratory, meandering, cyclical, beautiful and mundane; and I’m not sure if the feeling I got toward the middle, the feeling that we had run out of time to meander and were now, finally, going to lean into narrative, I’m not sure if that feeling was more about me and my socialization into the conventions of mainstream film? or if the filmmakers actually teased me that maybe a narrative arc of sorts was about to emerge? So quite honestly, I’m not sure if the film didn’t land its ending, or if its ending was just disappointing in precisely the way that life in the-middle-of-nowhere, Ohio actually is:  both possibilities are not only possible but likely.

++++

Almodovar creates a brilliantly poetic, visually delightful, cheekily salacious, generically enigmatic film that braids together two stories:  one story of men who love and desire unavailble others – the other – a brother and his former-brother-now-sister as they try to find a way to reconcile with their past, with their expectations for each other and with their relationship.  The stories-within-the-stories are levels that seem as unexpected and random (initially) as they seem utterly necessary and inter-connected (finally);  this should not be your first Almodovar film, but if you’ve seen a few and liked them, I’ve rarely seen him be more himself than in this film.

++++