A Stuffed, Legless Duck Production

Yes! Nailed it.

[licks fingertip, makes a "one" in the air]

[congratulates self for being the first person on the planet to make this joke]

Hey, guys. If you're reading this, then you know the drill. I watch a movie. I take copious notes. I spend a few hours crafting a review that sums up my reactions to it. I post said review here (and at my personal now-defunct mirror site). Sometimes it's only two or three paragraphs, sometimes I dive in deeper. There's a screencap or two, more if I feel the film and/or review warrants it. And the subject is always a line of dialogue that encapsulates the film about as well as a single line of dialogue can that can only be 100 characters max. I've been doing this for over ten years. I've reviewed 3750 films. And I need to stop.

I just finished watching Mike Birbiglia's Don't Think Twice, a film I wanted to see when it was in theaters last year, but I was unable to make it up to Indianapolis while it was playing there and it never came down to Bloomington. This is the reality I've lived with the whole time I've been in Indiana. I've made peace with it. If I hadn't made a point of catching Elle while I was back east for the holidays, I would have probably had to make do with seeing that film on video as well. I take less and less joy from reviewing current and recent releases that are already at the tail end of their relevance to the cultural conversation and my reviews of older films have gotten less and less attention over the years -- probably because this community is dying on the vine. What was once a vibrant place to share ideas has slowly wilted as people migrated to other sites and platforms. Well, it's time for me to join that migration.

This will be my last post on LiveJournal. If you've read this far and want to keep abreast of what I'm watching (because I'm still going to watch a lot of movies) and reviewing (because I'm still going to write reviews, just not as regularly), then you can follow me on Letterboxd and Twitter. I've also started a blog on Dreamwidth that I may put to use at some point. Who knows what the future has in store? All I know is my future is no longer here. Be seeing you.

Ever the provocateur, Paul Verhoeven opens his latest film Elle -- his first to be made in France and possibly not the last -- with the sound of what seems to be a violent sexual assault and then reveals it to be just that. Moreover, he replays the incident twice more in the film's first half-hour, first exactly as protagonist Michèle Leblanc (the ever-fearless Isabelle Huppert) remembers it happening, and then as she fantasizes about what she would have done had she been able to turn the tables on her attacker. (In short: She caves in his skull and beats his head to a bloody pulp.) In none of these scenarios does Michèle get to learn the identity of the black-clad prowler by removing his form-fitting hood, so she's just as much in the dark about it as the viewer, but she has some ideas and more than a few enemies.

David Birke's screenplay, based on the novel Oh... by Philippe Djian, is chock full of twists and turns I wouldn't dream of spoiling in this space. I will say that Michèle has what she considers a legitimate reason for not going to the police (the details of which are teased out over a number of scenes until they can no longer be hinted at) and carries on as if nothing happened to such an alarming degree that she can casually mention over dinner with her business partner (with whom she runs a video game company) and their husbands that she was raped in her home in broad daylight. Even more abnormal is the way she can continue carrying on an affair with her partner's husband and begins taking an interest in her hunky neighbor, who gets invited along with his wife and everyone else in Michèle's messy life to the Christmas party she hastily throws together so she can see how many sparks will fly between them. (Suffice it to say, there are plenty. I haven't even mentioned Michèle's vain mother and her absurdly younger fiancé or her pliable son and the psycho girlfriend he moves in with when she gets pregnant.)

All the while, Michèle deals with the day-to-day operations of running her company, which has reached a critical stage in the development of its latest game, and fields disturbing messages from her assailant, who appears to be just as obsessed with her as she's incapable of putting him out of her mind. Then again, I suppose that's a little hard to do when someone wants you to think they could return at any moment and get you all over again. In Michèle's world -- and Verhoeven's when you get right down to it -- there really is no such thing as a safe space.

Considering Ti West shot In a Valley of Violence on 35mm film -- or to be more accurate, his cinematographer Eric Robbins did -- it's a shame few people got to see it projected in that format. And not many more were able to see its Panavision-lensed vistas on the big screen since it only received a token theatrical release back in October. At this point, I'm just happy I was able to squeeze it in before the year was up, which is more than I can say for many of the other films I put on my watchlist in 2016.

Set in the mostly abandoned mining town of Denton, Texas -- located in the "valley of violence" as it's called by the locals, a far cry from its namesake's designation as "The Home of Happiness" in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Shock Treatment -- West's first western is about a drifter by the name of Paul who's "just passing through" on his way to Mexico, accompanied by his horse Lady and dog Abby, whose only trick, as he says whenever anyone asks, is "She bites." Unfortunately for all of them, but especially for Abby, while in town they have a run-in with the marshal's cocksure son, who picks a fight with Paul and doesn't stand down when his father, recognizing Paul as ex-calvary, tells him to let the man go on their way. (This being the Old West, the baddies don improvised hoods when they ambush Paul's encampment outside of town that night. Not sure who they think they're hiding their identities from, though, since they take them off almost immediately.)

As Paul, Ethan Hawke is taciturn when it suits him, letting his gun (and whatever else comes to hand) speak for him when it's time to take action against those who wronged him. His primary target is arrogant bully Gilly Martin (James Ransome), but Paul also takes down his three lackeys, Roy (Larry Fessenden), Harris (Toby Huss, the most reluctant of the three), and Tubby (Tommy Nohilly). Attempting to keep the peace, seeing as that's in his job description, is John Travolta's Marshal, who gets around well enough on his wooden leg, but is unable to keep his idiot son in line. That just leaves the womenfolk, namely Taissa Farmiga as plucky 16-year-old widow Mary-Anne, who runs the town's disused hotel with her flighty sister Ellen (Karen Gillan), who's also Gilly's fiancée because it isn't like there are a whole lot of eligible bachelors in Denton to choose from. Suffice it to say, after Paul is through with the place, there are even fewer still.

At a time when the new Star War and an animated film about singing animals are dominating the box office, it's nice to see that audiences are also flocking to see a true rarity: a full-fledged movie musical. Writer/director Damien Chazelle's follow-up to 2014's Whiplash, La La Land is unabashedly entertaining, but it also makes trenchant observations about the value of holding fast to your dreams and staying true to yourself. Chazelle's conduits for these lessons are aspiring actress/coffee shop barista Mia (Emma Stone) and uncompromising pianist/jazz aficionado Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), whose first encounter on a Los Angeles freeway overpass is less than cordial. The same goes for their second almost-meeting when he rudely brushes past her after being given the boot by a strict club owner (the kind of role J.K. Simmons can do in his sleep). The third time's the charm, though -- or at the very least, it isn't as off-putting for either of them.

Over the course of a year, Chazelle charts Mia and Sebastian's ups and downs career-wise as she goes from one mortifying audition to the next, hoping one of them will lead to something other than rejection, and he takes whatever work he can get, however demeaning (including playing keyboards in an '80s cover band) until he can realize his aspiration of opening his own traditional jazz club. At a certain point he suggests she write something for herself to perform -- a seed that blossoms into a one-woman show called So Long Boulder City -- and he entertains taking a steady gig as the keyboard player for a bandleader he doesn't respect. It may not turn out to be artistically fulfilling, but it's hard to say no when serious money is dangled in front of you. That's one of the traps it's possible to fall into while chasing success in Hollywood. Another is winding up demoralized and discouraged before your big break happens. That's the trick: knowing when and how much to compromise and when to stick to your guns.

If any one filmmaker could cure me of the compulsion to watch every movie featuring guys in hoods, it's Ulli Lommel. The film in question: 2005's Zodiac Killer, which Lommel wrote, produced, directed, acted in, and did the cinematography and production design for a few years before David Fincher put his own stamp on the material, the slacker. (Lommel's film actually has a 2003 copyright, which means it sat on a shelf for a couple years before he could find someone to distribute it. Not terribly surprising, really.) While Fincher moved on from Zodiac to other types of films, though, Lommel planted himself on the serial-killer beat, churning out direct-to-video features on the BTK Killer, the Green River Killer, and the Son of Sam, among others. Zodiac Killer was even followed two years later by a sequel of sorts called Curse of the Zodiac, but one Ulli Lommel Zodiac movie is curse enough for me.

To begin with, Lommel's script isn't focused directly on the Zodiac, but rather on nursing home employee Michael (Vladimir Maksic, simultaneously making his screen debut and farewell bow), an impressionable young lad who acquires a gun and decides to start executing the neglectful relatives of his elderly charges. Curiously, the local news leaps to the conclusion that his first killing is "reminiscent of the string of murders committed nearly 30 years ago by the infamous Zodiac, a serial killer still at large," and helpfully refers listeners to a book from the '70s called Hunt for the Zodiac, which Michael dutifully picks up, giving his "dissociative identity disorder" an identity to fixate on. He's even moved to get in touch with the book's author, Simon Vale (played by Lommel), who's introduced in a shoddily written scene opposite forensic psychologist Mel Navokov (David Hess), who announces himself as such by saying "I'm a forensic psychologist, you remember?" while he scrolls through gruesome crime-scene photos and tries to entice Simon into going with him to a strip club. "I think I can do without these photos and your strippers," Simon demurs, but Lommel the director has no compunction about lingering on the former at every opportunity.

He's also fairly shameless about dipping into his own back catalog, having his characters watch clips from his movies on television and raiding them for flashbacks to the Zodiac's supposed childhood. (He even shoehorns in the bathtub electrocution from BrainWaves, which is the dictionary definition of brazen.) More egregious, though, are the scenes where Simon interviews Willie Harman (Gunter Ziegler), the son of Kurt Raab's character from Tenderness of the Wolves, to get material for the new edition of Hunt for the Zodiac he's updating at his publisher's behest. Not only is this a reminder of when Lommel actually gave half a damn about the quality of his films, but Tenderness is a perfectly good standalone work that doesn't deserve to be associated with this garbage heap of a film.

Adding to Zodiac Killer's crimes against cinema are the scenes featuring the Jury of Twelve, a secret society of men in opaque black hoods who gather in what appears to be a hotel lobby to update each other on their activities. (The Twelve's code names, incidentally, are based on the signs of the zodiac, but Lommel only ever shows half of them at a time, which means he either couldn't afford that many extras or he only had six hoods.) A frequent topic of conversation is the Zodiac copycat, whose identity is unknown to them, but not to Simon, who quickly figures out (with the help of an anonymous hacker who uses an NSA program to track Michael's cell phone) that his disturbed young friend is the one getting the city into a lather. From there, Simon starts molding Michael in the Zodiac's image, directing him to a website about the killer's exploits, presenting him with a black hood to help him complete his Zodiac Halloween costume, and even giving him a DVD of The Mikado (the Zodiac's favorite operetta, don't you know) and a knife for Christmas. He also invites Michael over to his apartment, the walls of which have been festooned with plastic sheeting so Simon can reveal his true identity to the clueless kid and murder him in cold blood. All that's left then is for Simon to fill a vacancy in the Jury of Twelve with a petulant Mel (who didn't have much else going on, to be perfectly honest), report the successful elimination of his copycat to them (since he apparently carries out their orders as the Zodiac), and toast a "Happy New Year to all of us." Yeesh.

Strictly speaking, A Christmas Carol is a Christmas Eve yarn, but as I was otherwise occupied that night and on Christmas Day as well, I chose Boxing Day to take in Scrooge, the 1970 musical adaptation of Charles Dickens's enduring ghost story. Directed by Ronald Neame and starring Albert Finney as the penny-pinching miser and unforgiving moneylender Ebenezer Scrooge, this version forgoes brevity in favor of shoehorning in about a dozen songs by screenwriter and composer Leslie Bricusse, some of which I freely admit are catchy as hell. (Then again, I should expect nothing less from the Oscar-winning composer of Doctor Doolittle's "Talk to the Animals.") From Scrooge's anthem "I Hate People" to the rousing "Thank You Very Much" (which gets trotted out twice, as musicals are wont to do), Scrooge's songs are a bouncy counterpoint to the often drab and occasionally unnerving scenes surrounding them.

Take, for instance, Scrooge's sit-down with the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley (Alec Guinness), who tells him of the three spirits that have made appointments to see him that night, but not before attempting to scare the humbug out of him first. Marley does this by moaning Scrooge's name, rattling his chains, and appearing in a ghastly visage, but the pièce de résistance comes when they take to the skies over London, which are filled with the souls of damned. That's not quite enough to convince Scrooge to change his ways, though, so his spacious but ill-kept abode (a marvel of art direction/set decoration that was justly nominated for an Academy Award) still needs to receive three more spectral visitors before daybreak.

In the interest of parity, the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present (the prim and proper Edith Evans and boisterous Kenneth More) get about 20 minutes each to impart their respective messages to Scrooge, but the one that seals the deal -- and in roughly half the time -- is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who lets him see for himself what his afterlife in Hell would be like. This five-minute sequence, in which Marley helps Scrooge get settled in and Guinness camps it up gloriously, is the visual highlight of the film, and I'm not just saying that because it throws in four oiled-up, chain-bearing, black-hooded musclemen for good measure. Okay, maybe I am saying that. I'm not ashamed.

Of all the things that 1944's Meet Me in St. Louis has gone down in movie history for -- Judy Garland's renditions of "The Trolley Song" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the latter of which subsequently became a yuletide standard; the spooky Halloween sequence wherein the precociously morbid Tootie (child star Margaret O'Brien) proves her mettle by facing off with the intimidating Mr. Braukoff by herself; the chilly Christmas when, having just been serenaded by her sister Esther (Garland), an inconsolable Tootie runs outside and murders her snow people -- one of its less-showy scenes is the one I expect I will be staying with me. It comes just before the Christmas Eve dance -- the last one in St. Louis for the Smith family since its patriarch (Leon Ames) has accepted a transfer to his law firm's New York office, with the move happening right after the holidays -- for which Esther has been laced into her first-ever corset. To her unmistakable dismay, though, her boyfriend John (Tom Drake) -- literally, the boy next door -- reports he won't be able to take her because his tuxedo is still at the tailor's because he was late picking it up because he was playing basketball with his buddies.

"This is a fine going-away present I'm giving you for Christmas," John says, sheepishly. "I'll bet you really hate me." "Oh, no, John," Esther assures him. "I don't hate you. I hate basketball." Over and above Garland's musical numbers, which are as impressive as you would expect, it is this throwaway moment that really endeared me to her and to the character of Esther, who had taken a lot of things for granted up to that point. Considering how much of an emotional roller coaster the film as a whole is, it's saying something that what really resonated with me was the part where Garland is at her most vulnerable and flustered. And knowing she was soon to marry her director, Vincente Minnelli, it's probable she had a similar effect on him.

Considering how much Lee Chandler's reputation precedes him, it's not too surprising that he wouldn't be eager to return to the scene of his supposed crimes. As played by Casey Affleck in Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea -- the writer/director's third feature and first since the grudgingly released Margaret -- Lee is a man who has internalized his not inconsiderable pain, holding everyone at arm's length with his abrasive manner and general aloofness. As much as he tries to keep himself to himself, early on Lonergan drops a bombshell on him in the form of a phone call informing him his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) has been felled by a heart attack. It takes a bit more time, though, for the other shoe to drop -- namely, that Lee has been named the trustee of his gregarious 16-year-old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges) despite his longstanding belief that he was "just the back-up."

Instead of laying out Lee's backstory in a linear fashion, Lonergan reveals it piecemeal, dropping flashbacks into scenes with no fanfare, trusting the viewer to recognize when Lee is wallowing in the past. In this way, his relationship with Joe is fleshed out and the more fractious one with his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams) is established. (For her part, Randi has since moved on with her life -- something Lee seems unable or unwilling to.) Meanwhile, Joe's ex-wife Elise (Gretchen Mol) gets in touch with Patrick and attempts to repair their bond by inviting him to a most awkward lunch with her extremely Christian fiancé Jeffrey (Lonergan stalwart Matthew Broderick). The key relationship, though, is the one between Lee, who doesn't want to be responsible for anyone else, and Patrick, who's cocky enough to believe he can make his own life decisions, including where to live and what's going to become of his father's boat, which Lee is all for selling. How these issues get resolved may be a little neater than it needs to be, but Lonergan makes sure his characters' victories, however little, are honestly won.

You know how there are times in your life when you say what's on your mind and immediately wish you could take it back but it's too late, and other times when you need to say something but don't because you worry it will alter your life irrevocably? Well, Ira Sachs encapsulates both of those dilemmas elegantly in Little Men. The men in question are Jake Jardine (Theo Taplitz), a budding artist, and Tony Calvelli (Michael Barbieri), an aspiring actor, who become fast friends when the former's grandfather dies, prompting the Jardines to move into his Brooklyn apartment, which so happens to be over the latter's mother's struggling dress shop. The extent of that struggle becomes a bone of contention between the two families when it comes out that Jake's grandfather hasn't raised the rent in years. Clearly something has to give, and the boys would rather it not be their friendship.

Among the actual adults in the equation, economic anxiety is the overriding factor in their interactions. Jake's father Brian (Greg Kinnear) is a none-too-successful actor whose career is effectively subsidized by his psychotherapist wife Kathy (Jennifer Ehle). Meanwhile, Tony's mother Leonor (Paulina García) fruitlessly tries to stave off the inevitable by ducking out of conversations with her new landlords, especially when it appears as if the discussion is going to turn to financial matters. Unfortunately, when she does get backed into a corner, she's prone to saying things that only exacerbate the situation, compounded by Brian's aversion to confrontations. "I just don't want this to get ugly," he says right before they start eviction proceedings, all but guaranteeing they will. As for Jake and Tony, their protest takes the form of giving their parents the silent treatment, a gambit that backfires spectacularly.

Not that there's much in the way of pyrotechnics to be found here. Sachs's script, written with regular collaborator Mauricio Zacharias, pointedly avoids emotional outbursts. Instead, the big moments are kept to a minimum, allowing the cast (which also includes Alfred Molina as Hernan, Leonor's friend from Chile) to deliver unforced, naturalistic performances. This is especially true of Taplitz and Barbieri, both making their feature debuts. Barbieri already has a couple of high-profile projects lined up (including the latest Spider-Man reboot), but I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of both of these little men in the coming years.

One of the most moving concerts I ever attended was the one performed by Laurie Anderson in Philadelphia just days after the 9/11 attacks. (Yes, she did "O Superman," and yes, the part where she sings "Her come the planes" sent a chill down my spine.) In her idiosyncratic essay film Heart of a Dog, Anderson touches on what it was like to be in lower Manhattan in the days and weeks following that catastrophic event, and to observe the installation of the surveillance state we continue to live in -- and with -- to this day. Those memories are intertwined with the circumstances surrounding the death of her mother and her close relationship with her dog Lolabelle, a rat terrier that she treats like her own child. (She even opens the film by describing her dream of giving birth to Lolabelle and shows off the dog's artwork and includes excerpts from her musical recitals like any proud parent would.)

As whimsical as some of this sounds, Anderson never loses sight of the film's melancholic underpinnings, especially in the second half after Lolabelle's passing. "The purpose of death is the release of love," she narrates, but what goes unspoken is that two years after Lolabelle, Anderson also lost her husband, Lou Reed, who appears briefly and to whom the film is dedicated. Even if she never articulates them directly -- that's never been her style, really -- Anderson's feelings of grief and pain come through loud and clear. Heart of a Dog is a wonder, and I thank her for sharing it with us.

Another wonder was Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang's idea for the "Sky Ladder," which he envisioned reaching 500 meters into the sky suspended from a hot-air balloon so that it looks like a chain of fireworks stretching from the Earth into the stratosphere. It was such an enormous undertaking that it took four tries (the first all the way back in 1994) before the stars aligned for him, and director Kevin Macdonald was there for the final lap to observe and document the process. The result is Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, a Netflix original that does an admirable job of summing up the artist's career and his complicated relationship with his homeland, for which he devised the pyrotechnics for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. It also draws a line between his father's calligraphy and Guo-Qiang's art, and touches on the impact of China's Cultural Revolution (from which "nobody escaped unscathed") on his childhood. That may partially explain why he chose to move himself and his family to the U.S. in 1995, but in the end he had to go home to make Sky Ladder a reality.