Week Ending 2/23/24
F-Bombs got sound
Another busy week means only two reviews below—thankfully both were great films. I also only got to one episode of season three of TRUE DETECTIVE, so I’m going to have to keep avoiding spoilers from NIGHT COUNTRY for a little while longer.
I do find it funny, though, that there’s been such a divisive response. Especially from original creator/showrunner Nic Pizzolatto. I say that because I was somewhat disappointed with that aforementioned episode. Not because it’s bad (it was actually quite interesting). But because it seems he took the criticism of season two to heart and decided to fall back on the narrative conventions (present-day interviews alternating with flashbacks) that made the first season so popular. To then dismiss Issa López for daring to do something different (which he tried to do with season two himself before back-peddling) is cheap.
While the hectic schedule prevented me from having blocks of time to watch movies, it didn’t erase my free time completely. So, I’ve been filling the few minutes I do have here and there with Cinematic F-Bombs and the discovery that copyright claims on YouTube affect monetization without necessarily earning a takedown notice (most explain how the studio allows you to post clips). And since I’m not doing this to make money, who cares about that?
The result: I’ve begun putting the clips I’ve made my gifs from onto YouTube with the sound on. Maybe those takedown notices are still coming and I’ll end up stopping. Or maybe they won’t and I can start refreshing the website with video clips rather than silent gifs. It’s a matter of testing the boundaries right now to see where the lines (if any) truly exist.
What I Watched:
ABOUT DRY GRASSES [Kuru Otlar Üstüne]
(in limited release; Turkey’s 2024 International Oscar submission)
From the moment Samet (Deniz Celiloglu) arrived at the Eastern Anatolian “wasteland” school taking the first four compulsory years of his teaching service, he believed he was better than his hosts. As a result, he never truly got to know them as more than country bumpkins who he could teach about modernity. And, of course, he never possessed the humility to learn what it was they might in turn teach him about surviving or truly living for life’s sake. Because they have meaning, purpose, and worth beyond any role as Samet’s pet projects. His easy contempt and ridicule say nothing about them, but everything about him.
Not being familiar with Turkish history, I cannot speak about the ways director Nuri Bilge Ceylan and his fellow co-writers Akin Aksu and Ebru Ceylan specifically comment on their country's politics throughout ABOUT DRY GRASSES. I can only talk about the increasing prevalence of people like this central character—people who complain without acting and who pontificate for hours about a subject without ever actually saying what it is they think or feel about it. Everything good and bad happens to them. They could stick a gun to their own temple and pull the trigger, but still somehow blame someone else for their death.
It’s not just Samet either. Yes, he’s the worst culprit as an outsider who thinks himself superior to everyone, but the men from this place are almost as bad being that they are insiders who believe themselves superior to their neighbors. This can be shown via the generational gap of young radicals and older “get off my lawn” types. It also appears on a gendered scale where Samet’s roommate Kenan (Musab Ekici) and their friend Nuray (Merve Dizdar) are concerned—specifically the shift in their dynamic once the potential to sleep with her evaporates. And, of course, there’s also the power structure between teacher and student.
The latter two provide the main story threads. The stuff with Nuray intrigues mostly because of how interesting her character is as a “retired” revolutionary who lost her leg in a suicide bombing and thus has more life experience than her city mouse and country mouse friends combined. Her mere presence causes conflict between the men despite Samet introducing Kenan to her for the sole purpose of playing matchmaker. Jealousies can’t help cropping up anyway, though. These are simple men with simple desires. Men who posture and compete out of boredom and for ego. Men who see everything outside of themselves as a conquest during their pursuit and worthless upon their failure.
But it’s the teacher/student relationship that succinctly reveals the hypocrisy at play. Samet and Kenan (and Nuray for that matter) are all teachers. They exist to steward the next generation forward by educating them in their subjects as well as in life. When their “kindness” becomes challenged, however, the first thing these men do is wonder about their own wellbeing. What does this mean for their careers? What does it mean for their reputations? These are men willfully putting their arms around young girls like Sevim (Ece Bagci) one second before punishing them for admitting it to the principal. And even though their positions as teachers and men give them the benefit of the doubt, they still want retribution.
The film is thus a fantastic depiction of men’s growing insincerity—even going so far as to take us out-of-frame and through the soundstage in one wild fourth wall-breaking instance that shows Samet to be a hollow façade. He is a well-liked man with authority who weaponizes his privilege in ways that blind him to its existence en route to demonizing everyone else for doing the same if they ever call him out. Samet is allergic to the possibility that the world doesn’t revolve around him. That anyone could voluntarily want to stay in this place or a woman could be friendly with a man without also sleeping with him. He’s a manipulator who ultimately becomes manipulated into facing his own insecurities and shame.
Does he learn his lesson? No. Because he doesn’t need to learn within a patriarchal society that rewards a lack of curiosity and conviction. All he must do is lick his wounds and bide his time before beginning fresh elsewhere. It used to be that we traveled to foreign places in order to educate ourselves and discover new experiences—to foster empathy. Now, more than ever, it seems our ability to hear about and see other cultures has only helped us retreat further into the vacuums of our selfishly myopic bubbles. We close our eyes when the time to open them arrives. We demand satisfaction and terrorize anyone who chooses to satisfy another instead. Because freedom of choice is mine alone … not yours.
- 8/10
ARCADIA [Apkantia]
(playing at Berlinale 2024)
“They drag us behind them like their shadows.”
Yorgos Zois’ ARCADIA is a fantastic subversion of the ghost story wherein the living haunt the dead. Because when you’re dealing with themes of grief and regret, that’s exactly what’s happening. Those who survive hold onto the memory of those who don’t, clinging to the past so they might prevent themselves from moving on or inflict punishment upon themselves for letting them go … regardless of fault. That sorrow makes it so they cannot escape “what could have been” for “what is.” The so-called “unfinished business” we generally ascribe to ghosts is thus placed upon the living’s shoulders instead. It’s their inability to say goodbye, to know why, or to hear that everything will be okay.
What we therefore see on-screen here are two worlds projected upon each other: one layer holding the living as they sleepwalk through their pain and fear while the other holds the visages of those they won’t let go. You have a teenage son forced to listen to his mother’s tears for three long decades. A mother chained to a daughter that never knew her face but still longs for her touch, nonetheless. The German Shepherd forever sat by his master’s side, answering the dog whistle that will never really get answered. And the murderer who’s tortured by the growing hatred of his victim’s brother, which keeps him tethered to a life he never personally knew. Their only respite is seemingly their unwitting jailer’s own death.
It’s amongst these lost souls that we meet Yannis (Vangelis Mourikis) and Katerina (Angeliki Papoulia) en route to identify a body that has just been found. We quickly learn the deceased wasn’t alone. She and her patient/lover were together at the end, his body already identified by his wife. Questions inevitably swirl in both the minds of the police (Vagelis Evangelinos) and the families. What were they doing? How long was their affair? Why did they plummet to their deaths? Who’s to blame? And for anyone who has experienced the untimely death of a loved one knows, answers to those questions don’t always provide the closure one hopes. Because facts are easily twisted by guilt into being the result of the guilty party's actions.
That doesn’t mean we as viewers don’t still want to know. Or that finding out won’t end up being enough after all—freeing both the living from their grief and the dead from their prison. So, we watch as the former struggles to piece together details while the latter discovers their own evidence through unorthodox ways. (Zois and co-writer Konstantina Kotzamani make it so the dead only remember that which the person they are tethered to remembers. Their own accounts of their life can only flood back through orgasm, causing the dead to gather for evening orgies of pleasure and reclamation.) It’s a melancholic journey for all involved since their overlap only becomes tangible via its end.
The result is a beautiful, heartbreaking dream of lost amnesiacs helplessly hoping and waiting to be freed by people who don’t consciously know they’ve become captors. It’s a simple ghost story built upon mankind’s complex psychological need for reason in an unreasonable world—one that gives form to the pervasive thoughts and feelings we too often let drive our lives. Because the dead here aren’t solely victims to the whims of their counterparts’ love and hate. They too held onto their own unfortunate albatrosses when alive. It’s thus a never-ending cycle of cause and effect, real or manifested. Because to live is to hurt. It’s up to you to decide whether that pain pushes you forward or holds you back.
- 9/10
Cinematic F-Bombs:
This weekend sees THE ABYSS (1989), THE LOST KING (2023), MAESTRO (2023), MOMMIE DEAREST (1981), and NEXT GOAL WINS (2023) getting added to the archive (cinematicfbombs.com on Sunday, Twitter on Monday).
New Releases This Week:
(Review links where applicable)
Opening Buffalo-area theaters 2/23/24 -
ARTICLE 370 at Regal Elmwood
CRAKK-JEETEGAA... TOH JIYEGAA at Regal Elmwood, Galleria & Transit
DEMON SLAYER: KIMETSU NO YAIBA - TO THE HASHIRA TRAINING at North Park; Dipson Flix; AMC Maple Ridge; Regal Elmwood, Galleria, Transit & Quaker
DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS at Dipson Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge; Regal Elmwood, Galleria, Transit & Quaker
A HIP HOP STORY at AMC Market Arcade
ORDINARY ANGELS at Dipson Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge; Regal Elmwood, Galleria, Transit & Quaker
PERFECT DAYS at Dipson Amherst; AMC Maple Ridge
“It's a quietly sweet look at a person unbeholden to the constraints of an ever-evolving society's demands—a man who knows himself and is comfortable living within the meager means of that identity.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
RAAJADHANI FILES at Regal Elmwood
RED RIGHT HAND at Dipson Capitol
SEAGRASS at Regal Transit
“An intriguing over-arching unease gives the whole some extra atmosphere as things rapidly devolve towards a point of no return. But it's also an education.” – Full thoughts at The Film Stage.
STOPMOTION at Regal Elmwood, Transit & Quaker
SUNDARAM MASTER at Regal Transit
Streaming from 2/23/24 -
HISTORY OF EVIL – Shudder on 2/23
MEA CULPA – Netflix on 2/23
THROUGH MY WINDOW 3: LOOKING AT YOU – Netflix on 2/23
THE 30TH ANNUAL SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS – Netflix on 2/24
AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM – Max on 2/27
AS WE SPEAK: RAP MUSIC ON TRIAL – Paramount+ on 2/27
CODE 8: PART II – Netflix on 2/28
KIDS ARE GROWING UP: A STORY ABOUT A KID NAMED LAROI – Prime on 2/29
Now on VOD/Digital HD -
ANYONE BUT YOU (2/20)
FREUD’S LAST SESSION (2/20)
“Despite solid performances and an entertaining script built upon flashbacks that show Freud and Lewis's own flaws and hypocrisies, the film mostly just moves in circles.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
HOW I LEARNED TO FLY (2/20)
MEAN GIRLS [2024] (2/20)
MEMORY (2/20)
“Its value is less about plot than the characters and how their respective brokenness has positioned them to be exactly who the other needs to break free from the psychological and/or physical prisons in which they find themselves.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
ORLANDO: MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY (2/20)
THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2/20)
“That's where its power to disturb lies. Not just with you acknowledging the horrific similarities to your own day-to-day, but also the characters on-screen numbing themselves to the truth with varying degrees of success.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
ALL OF US STRANGERS (2/22)
“Haigh beautifully handles the narrative progressions to ensure he doesn't have to jump through hoops distracting us from a truth hidden in plain sight. He knows how to use his script to prevent us from asking questions, but it never feels manipulative.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP (2/22)
“The result might not tread new territory insofar as aesthetic or thrills, but it does present an intriguing choice of which Campbell does well to expose its difficult psychological conundrum. Because in the end, we are trespassing.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
BRING HIM TO ME (2/23)
DRUGSTORE JUNE (2/23)
OCCUPIED CITY (2/23)
THE PROMISED LAND (2/23)
“While that is what the plot provides for a majority of the runtime, the narrative proves so much bigger. Not in external scope, but in the internal growth of a man beholden to unjust rules.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
RED RIGHT HAND (2/23)
From the press kit archive:
