The in my book best of 2019
After the anger that spat and sparked like a gunpowder trail through much of 2018 I found films released in 2019 a bit muted--strange considering how much louder and more urgent world developments have become, from climate-related disasters to the recent escalation in tension between Trump and well everyone else.
Sea of love
I don't think there's much to uncover underneath the surface of Mati
Diop's feature debut Atlantics (Atlantique, 2019) now available on Netflix. It's a love story--young girl Ada
(Mame Bineta Sane) in love with poor boy Souleiman (Ibrahim Traore)
but is promised to wealthy Omar (Babacar Sylla)--and as with all such
stories the two lovers pine for each other for the duration of the
film. Predictable simple trite--and yet and yet and yet
Recyclable Skywalker
Finally, the last installment of this third trilogy that George Lucas a long time ago in an era far far away once cobbled together, from Flash Gordon serials, The Adventures of Robin Hood, World War 2 fighter plane footage (particularly The Dam Busters) and most of all Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (with a brief callback to Yojimbo). The capstone to his grand edifice of a fantasy* franchise if you like.
Does the movie live up to all expectations?
Who's watching this Watchmen?
(Warning: plot twists discussed in detail)
Getting the big question out of the way: Damon Lindelof's new HBO miniseries is fun. Fastpaced, engaging, funny and at times even witty, it ingeniously picks up the various threads of Alan Moore's intricate weave and extends them, introducing patterns and themes of its own to create a new narrative.
Splitting image
Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story starts positively: Charlie (Adam Driver) and then Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) reading offscreen what they like about each other while Baumbach runs a series of images as illustrative commentary. Then the kicker--this is the start of a mediator session where the two are in the process of divorce, and Nicole refuses to read to Charles what she's so movingly and eloquently written. The end of the relationship, not its affirmation.
I heard you make movies
In The Irishman (2019) someone puts a question to Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), the same question that is title of Charles Brandt's 2004 book--the same question one might ask of Martin Scorsese with the same innocuousness, and just the hint of something more.
Eskapo begins with video footage of the days just before Martial Law: eerie,
washed-out images of marching demonstrators and riot police. I've
always thought that in this cybernetic age our memories would appear
as if shot by videocam and with the first few minutes of his film,
director Chito Rono seems to suggest this--the First Quarter Storm as
a collective nightmare, witnessed through the unblinking eye of
television. It's a terrific beginning that sets an ominous tone for
everything that follows.
