Month of Movies: October 2017

Total Films Watched: 11. Close-Up, Tower, Death Proof, Never Let Me Go, Fargo, The Meyerowitz Stories, Them!, Raw, Man With a Movie Camera, Blade Runner 2049, The Loveless.

Top Two Movies This Month: Man With a Movie Camera and Fargo. This is a pretty crowded field for the best movie. I feel a little strange topping the list with another instance of metacinema from the 1920's, but I really enjoyed Man With a Movie Camera. It's a great showcase for every effect that Vertov could achieve at the time, from double exposure to stop motion. But more than that, this is a movie that loves the editor. And it should, since the frenetic pace and constant movement is what makes the movie work so well.

Fargo is also a blast. This was a tough competition for second place, but I think this movie was the most consistently successful. The comedy is pretty successful throughout and it works to ground the occasionally absurd violence in a version of reality. William H. Macy is absolutely perfect here as maybe the most suspicious character in history. Frances McDormand and the rest of the cast is also great, the movie looks impressive, the accent is fun, all the other stock praise that Fargo gets.

Movie Death Match: Best film that came out this month- The Meyerowitz Stories or Blade Runner 2049? I enjoyed both these movies quite a bit and have similar praise and criticisms for them. These are both movies that are incredibly well-cast, with male leads that are more subdued most of the time and some fantastic supporting performances around them. Elizabeth Marvel and Ana de Armas are both great discoveries in these supporting roles. And both movies feel too long and have climactic scenes that don't quite work emotionally. These problems are less significant in The Meyerowitz Stories, and the movie feels like a more consistent whole. But I think I enjoyed Blade Runner 2049 more. The combination of Villeneuve's precise direction and Deakins' beautiful cinematography made this movie stand out more in my mind.

Longer Thoughts About: The Loveless. This 1984 biker movie was the cinematic debut of two future stars- leading man Willem Dafoe and director Kathryn Bigelow. Watching the movie, it's not a surprise that those two would go on to bigger things. The first few minutes of the film establish both of them as immediately confident and talented. Bigelow uses a lot of steady long shots in the first scenes to establish her grounded, dirty take on old biker movies. The shot of Dafoe driving past a woman and her car on the side of the road, only to turn around in the far distance and roar back, is masterful. And Dafoe immediately establishes his own strange charm in the movie. He's incredibly gaunt and he carries himself with enough confidence to sell some questionable lines. He seems completely laid back, until he smiles. That smile of his is just as unsettling here as in Spider-man or his work with Lars von Trier. When he sexually assaults a woman in the first five minutes, it makes disturbing sense for his character Of course this character turns out to be a scumbag.

The other director of the movie is the terrifically named Monty Montgomery. Montgomery didn't direct many more films but started working with David Lynch, producing Wild at Heart and playing the Cowboy in Mulholland Drive. I bring this up because the film's next section is at a diner that immediately reminded me of Twin Peaks. The small-town Americana vibe, the constant use of 50's music and jukeboxes, the teen biker character, the relationship between an older and younger waitress. They even both use a high-angle interior shot to establish the diner. I don't know if there is a direct relationship between the two or if they just happen to be riffing on the same tropes, but it's interesting. The rest of the movie is not that interesting.

The Loveless is a couple of really well-done scenes connected with either characters wasting time or dropped plot lines. This gang of bikers is trying to get to Daytona, but they spend several days getting repairs in this small town and accomplishing nothing. So many scenes involve the bikers just looking for ways to fill time until they can leave, and the movie ends before they leave the town. I understand it's supposed to be a deconstruction, but that doesn't make it interesting cinematically. There's a vague subplot setting up the villainy of this local oil baron that goes nowhere. It feels like a solution to a producer's note about needing more explicit villainy and including black characters in this rural Florida town, but it doesn't affect anything in the film. It's less than eighty minutes and that still feels like way too long. If this was a short film about Dafoe and his biker gang in this town, I would probably recommend it. As is, it's an interesting artifact with some great moments.

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