REVIEW:
Nickel Boys
this decade so far has been defined by cinematic self-indictment, yielding personal stories like Aftersun, construction-and-deconstruction blockbusters like Nope, and attempts at American historical repentance like Killers of the Flower Moon. RaMell Ross’s narrative debut is the culmination of these efforts—or potentially just the climax, but undeniably the American film of a generation.
Ross works as director and camera operator, conceiving of the film entirely in literal and metaphysical point-of-view. we see either through the eyes of Elwood or Turner, our two protagonists, sometimes blurring between them. the only interruptions are out-of-body but simultaneously informed by the person we’re watching through—like dreams and memory alike. jumping off Ross’s initial experience with documentary filmmaking, scenes are interspliced with archival footage from real-life history, photos and news items assembled for the setting at hand, and written dream sequences, all spanning across decades between the 20th and 21st centuries. the film cycles through the real (our world) and the manufactured (the film’s world). there’s a conscious decision here to frame the film in 1.33:1—the original aspect ratio standardized for the photo imprint on 35mm film, and eventually the computer monitor screen standard (from the early days of the computer to the introduction of widescreen monitors in the 2000s) known better as 4:3—to bridge the decades across the screen. it also serves as a harsh limit for the audience within the confines of someone else’s viewpoint.
those of a certain age associate the digital sheen of an RGB matrix and VHS scanlines with memory and recollection. using the first-and second-person perspectives, Ross reminds us that the picture in all its forms has been a tool of memory from the very start. Elwood and Turner dream in classic Hollywood films, television, and home movies; via news cameras and NASA footage, still photographs, newspaper scans, and webpages; of straightforward memory and with experimental dream sequences. all is archival. nothing is a straightforward snapshot in time. dreams are piecemeal recollections and revisions of what we know; memory is the active function of the brain which dreams as it rests.
a crack in the glass may show itself as a lack of real development in these characters, from Elwood and Turner to the rest of the boys of the Nickel Academy, from the adults on the outside to the men running the place inside. we see glimpses of their personalities and motivations, but nothing in-depth to be so revealing of their aspirations and desires. it’s likely to be a feature, not a bug. the boys are hidden away from the world, stripped of all meaning but to be slave labor for the era of civil rights marches. they are not allowed to be more than what they are, and they haven’t come very far in figuring out who they are before they’ve been locked up at Nickel Academy. in some cases, they’ll never become fully-fledged people—instead, they’ll be pieces to connect to a horrifying act of American history, dug up in search of some “truth” and presented to a people who refuse introspection. for the employees of the Academy, they’ll consciously never show an ounce of humanity to the boys, and so there’s no reason they can be seen as anything other than evil itself, walking upon this earth. yet, to the outside world that holds no curiosity for an Academy with consistently disappearing juveniles, they’ll simply be seen as upstanding American neighbors. without further info, will you be able to empathize with these boys as realized people?
a turn of the story comes, but it’s both misleading and inadequate to simply call it a twist. in little peeks on the screen and barbs in the dialogue, we see some kind of horror creeping our way. Ross doesn’t lean into building up a moment to gasp at, instead riding the unease of what’s clear to come to make the audience exhale with anguish. at this point, the point-of-view construction has settled in. the audience has long been filling in the gaps of what can’t be seen on the limited field of vision. when the camera suddenly chimes in on the story at hand, an entire world comes into focus. Ross comes to achieve the view of what feels like an all-seeing eye, across time and across all life—the viewer’s eye, processing narrative.
it’s reaffirming and revelatory to see this film on the heels of David Lynch’s passing. how deeply painful it is to remember. how evil it feels to reconstruct the story of a real person through yourself. how terrifying and wonderful that all of our lives are what we conceive out of dreams.
REVIEW:
Licorice Pizza
if Boogie Nights and Magnolia were dispiriting Valley epics about how the carelessness of others can break you down and rot you from the outside in, this is the companion piece to Punch-Drunk Love, surveying the boundless wells of joy that simple affection and acknowledgment can drill out of the nameless figures of the city-state. Licorice Pizza goes a different route from Punch-Drunk, forgoing the dreamlike happenstances and superhero story for a more subtle (but still Valley-weird) coming-of-age one.
Alana Haim is Alana (juxtaposed against a cast full of the children and parents of Hollywood stars) who finds a charming boy by the name of Gary Valentine. she humors his crush; he manages to bring back some of the fun in her, all buried under the weight of her 20s. unsure of her north, men extract from and reflect onto her—including Gary, who’s got a lot of growing up to do. she tries growing up herself, only to be thrown asunder (literally, from the back of a motorbike) and charmed for more pathetic purposes.
Gary knows what it’s like to be seen. he’s a child actor, regularly bumping shoulders and heads with the world-famous and making sure he’s at least in the room. he can’t help but see Alana. he takes a moment to stare when she sits next to him at the bar to accept his date offer; he sees her behind the bright headlight of a motorbike eight holes away on the golf course, when she falls straight onto her back, and runs full speed to her, only to give her a long, silent look before picking her up onto her feet.
in 1973, Nixon’s America, Joel Wachs runs as a Republican populist for Los Angeles’s mayorship. he’s an expert in seeing people where they’re at: he emphasizes to every reporter that he’s too busy working for everyone to focus on dating one person. (the real life Wachs would establish neighborhood councils for the first time in Los Angeles, getting residents to be, but most importantly feel, more involved in civics.) he gains the trust of Alana by telling her her presence in the office has made him more present with his work. he ends up exploiting her eagerness by using her as an impromptu beard for his aggrieved boyfriend, who he can’t be seen alone in a room with. in the end, Wachs would come in fifth in the race. how could he really see others as they are if he so viciously hid from his own reflection? perhaps voters could tell. in fact, despite two more runs in the next 40 years, he would never become mayor at all.
despite it all, the growing pains and the detours thrown at them, Alana and Gary always spot each other a mile away and will run towards each other. it’s apparent they’ll never be in love, but they’re bonded by some combination of admiration, respect, and care for each other. in other words: love.
REVIEW:
The Brutalist
This review may contain spoilers.
The Brutalist has been sold as an American epic, and is easily mistaken for one due to its runtime and built-in intermission. it’s a much smaller story than that. yes, it’s an immigrants’ fable about how America chews up its lured prey to suck them dry and spit them out. it’s certainly also many other things, including the silent evil lurking just beneath the surface of the nuclear family and—despite what a lot of people say—a more stinging criticism of the Zionist project than most American films from the past two decades. but Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold seem less focused on making grand proclamations, instead honing in on Adrien Brody’s László Tóth as a faltering man but passionate visionary. it’s partially a misstep, treading mostly familiar waters of a man against his vices, the tides, and his own ambition.
instead, what truly gets interesting is latter half of the film, plumbing the deepest undercurrents of American success, Jewish guilt, and practical love. Corbet doesn’t hold back in making sure the Van Buren family’s unraveling feels truly perverse. a scene of László easing Erszébet’s flaring pain is both phenomenally sensual and deeply crushing. but as aforementioned, the film’s anti-Zionist bent is the least obvious and developed idea—and therefore the most interesting.
for nearly the last half hour of the movie, László disappears from view and has his story told for him. it’s Erszébet who confronts Harrison in the end (unfortunately not as harrowing as it could be due to an uneven performance from Felicity Jones); it’s Zsófia who explains his work to a broader audience, and ultimately us, at the opening of a retrospective for László’s career. with the epilogue introduced by a gaudy dance remix of Daniel Blumberg’s theme, transitioning from the darkness of the unfinished Van Buren Center as if the sun came up on, say, a rave near a militarized border of apartheid, Zsófia finally contextualizes the artistic choices László spent much of the film vigorously defending. he’s modeled the rooms of the Center after the prisons he and his family were tortured in by the Nazis. she then, of course, connects the story of this man overcoming all odds to create distinctly Jewish, monumental works to their lifestyle in Jerusalem, ending with the acerbic parable: “it is the destination, not the journey.” it is an absolution of all the sins they’ve committed in participating in the Zionist project; it is a hypocritical erasure of the devastation the Holocaust has wrought upon them. well, at the end of the day, it’s really a dismissive wave away of the genuine exploitation they endured from the paragons of American greed and wrath in order to even begin telling their story of survival.
these themes are blink-and-you’ll-miss it, and is perhaps why there’s so much debate on whether the film is pro-Zionist or not. as nebulous as it is and burdened with decades of emotional context, the epilogue makes clear a criticism of using the Israeli state as the last gasp of retribution.
with such a strong ending, it’s unfortunate that László’s arc as an artist is so flat overall. the end credits song, which blares the lines “one for you, one for me”, is perfectly in line with TÁR as a cheeky but scathing punchline against its own protagonist.
REVIEW: The Last Year of Darkness
originally published on SubstackI’ve never really liked screen depictions of club culture. Too often, they’re overwrought and hold little substance beyond visual flair. Not that eye candy holds no value—Blade’s blood rave is quintessential to “hell yeah” culture—but club and rave scenes sit parallel to sex scenes: important tools to show bonds between characters and their own states of mind, but frequently made artless and left lacking. The Last Year of Darkness is the first raver film I truly love.
A psuedo-documentary set in Chengdu, director Ben Mullinkosson pulls in and out of Funky Town, a club that sits at the ground floor of a five-over-one, vaguely hidden by the walls and noise of a massive subway station construction project. It’s the only way this small place in China’s fourth biggest city can host drag performances and queer parties with regularity, and it’s here that a drag queen, a classical musician struggling with depression, a Russian expat house DJ, and a resident DJ and promoter of a queer night regularly congregate.
We follow this cast of real people in and out of their daytime lives and within the walls of Funky Town, watching both unscripted reality and pre-scripted scenarios with no clear thread. Yihao the drag queen flirts with Gena the bicurious expat (and co-cinematographer) in the chillout lounge after Gena suggests they go on a date. Gena swipes on everyone in the vicinity opening dating apps across two phones, then resigns to downloading Grindr after no success. Kimberly the classical musician discusses self-growth and meditation with a friend in the smoking area, when another friend in the foreground starts feeling sick and desperately tries holding her vomit in; the camera steps back to show her throwing up into a small cup as the conversation continues in the background. Kimberly later reflects on her loneliness over text to her co-promoter for Funky Town’s queer party, Darkle, and in another sequence gives her friends, boyfriend, and the filmmakers a scare on a tall rooftop trying to get close to the edge. The camera’s presence is felt throughout the film but uses a subtle hand, allowing situations to happen naturally across long shots with fluid discussions. In these later sequences, where we’ve become quite close to these characters, it quickly feels wrong to be watching them and knowing so much of these real people.
At a post-screening Q&A moderated by Steven Yeun at Brain Dead Studios, Mullinkosson maintained he had no intent to make a film during his time in Chengdu—he was there in vacation mode on the basis of a fat check from a Meta commercial, looking forward to skating, eating, and partying. It was at Funky Town that Yihao planted the seed with a half-joke, asking Mullinkosson when he was going to make a film about him. Three years of filming and two years of post-production followed; all the while, the subway station got closer and closer to completion.
It’s Yihao who confronts Mullinkosson’s filmmaking by the end. After a drag performance, he paces in his dressing room distraught and confused. He doesn’t even like drag. He hates looking like a girl. He feels exhausted after every performance. He winces at the camera with a crack that it’s drag that gave him AIDS. Suddenly, he directly addresses Mullinkosson: “Ben, I don’t think your documentary can record me or anyone’s real life. I think real life is something you need to feel for yourself.” It’s the only time someone addresses the filmmaker by name.
There’s been a recent line of self-indictment in cinema in the past few years. In Jordan Peele’s Nope, the fictionalized descendents of a real Black man who starred in the first “motion picture” exploit our human instinct to peer at spectacle—until they heroically choose to look away. Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun examines how the moving picture distorts our memory, inherently telling stories even if the camera feels objective; a still camera pointed at the world is still a point of view. In the last year, Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Glazer’s Zone of Interest set the towering examples as critiques of their own medium, asking what the point of telling stories about real atrocities is if we avoid our gaze in the mirror.
Much like these films, despite an acknowledgment of the moral quandary, The Last Year of Darkness is a completed film that’s been released. You have either watched it or have the option to watch it. Mullinkosson admits to finding the moment with Yihao in the edit again and agreeing with him. He also connects it to the sinking feeling he got as he filmed Kimberly on that rooftop where it seemed like she might fall: as Kimberly and her boyfriend argued about their relationship sitting near the edge, Mullinkosson stood behind the tripod and couldn’t parse what was said, thanks to an audio glitch. He intently left the camera alone anyway. In the film, after a long shot over a few minutes (the film’s most extended) of the couple against a wistful sunrise, he finally picks up the tripod and tries to move closer. Suddenly, Kimberly stands up and her boyfriend immediately grabs her. She maintains she just wants to see a better view, protesting at the group surrounding her who insist they have to leave. According to him, Mullinkosson almost ceased work on the film after that morning. It was Kimberly who looked back at the footage and convinced him to leave it in by telling him one thing: “Yihao is the drag queen. I’m the drama queen.” She and her boyfriend later agreed to go into the studio and ADR their rooftop argument for the scene’s inclusion in the film.
This is what I ultimately find lacking in today’s depictions of club culture, and more broadly of youth culture in general: real personality. Characters stand in for cultural tropes or archetypes, speaking for both everyone and no one at all. Here, the film has the boldness to present the lives of these real people as matters of fact. It doesn’t matter that there are some pre-scripted scenarios, or that we naturally put up our guards when a camera is placed in front of us—these little performances are the point.
Post-2010s, real-life dance culture has become too self-aware and too self-important. Rebelliousness is culturally tied to a greater good, like punk before dance, erasing specific cause and in great irony becoming for the sake of it. Dancing’s release becomes amorphous suggestion, not something naturally felt or seen in the body. In a search for intention in what’s, at its face, a culture of partying, this sort of empty storytelling has become a ritual of justification: parties advertise themselves as potentially life-changing places of congregation, DJs write essays for Instagram captions after particularly gratifying sets, and dancers everywhere are left searching for the next and bigger high.
What makes The Last Year of Darkness ultimately fascinating is its honest acknowledgment of its own flaws and its insistence on following through regardless. It reflects its subjects in that way: these kids have all found solace in the performance of dancing, deejaying, doing drag with each other; they also know they love drinking, doing balloons, sucking and fucking, and regretting some of it the next day. They sometimes feel crushingly lonely despite seeing each other as community. They may not be saviors to each other in the end but they know things will feel better for now as long as they show up. Yihao continues in his camera confrontation to Mullinkosson: “It’s not political. Nothing. It’s a natural state of being.” These subjects are real people with their own problems that don’t stand in service of a greater story. It’s maybe even morally questionable to see yourself in these people as a viewer.
It helps that Mullinkosson wants you to see these people as real people. They’re his friends. The moral question is something bigger to contribute to, not to remove yourself from. Here is his contribution.
This is the importance of the illusion of objectivity here: Mullinkosson and his editor Bobby Moser mostly present these people and their stories without fluff in the hopes that you connect with them without bias. We meet them like we meet random people in the club, stumbling upon connection. Their natural humor and curiosity is allowed to bleed through—Darkle gets a potentially all-timer last line in “I’m grateful I’ve sucked a lot of dicks in my life.”
Instead of a film that could easily get lost in the darkness of a club, they wisely use much of what they’ve shot outside Funky Town to provide a snapshot of a city. Funky Town eventually closes, after all—the subway station was always going to open, taking down the construction walls and silencing the morning noise.
Once we’ve gotten to know these people, Mullinkosson allows the documentary to become a film. The climax holds the sole needle-drop heart-tugger: Yihao, in the back of a van and presumably on the way to a show in full makeup, starts practicing his lip-syncing to a live recording of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” playing off his phone. We start hearing the music cue in full clarity, but instead of the original recording with a band, it remains Yihao’s choice of the live performance, Bowie simply singing over a piano. Over it, we revisit the cast of subjects: a struggling delivery boy skater from the start of the film meets up again with his friends and talks about embracing his humanity; Gena continues learning Mandarin; Kimberly happily dances with her boyfriend and ends up back on that beautiful rooftop, joyously embracing Darkle and eating with Gena; Yihao picks up his medicine in the daylight. We see Yihao in drag one last time as he enraptures a crowd, trawling the stage to Bowie’s soaring voice, then falling to his knees as the last notes of the piano fade. Yihao’s crowd erupts in applause as Bowie’s audience does too. After 80 minutes of assorted stories, a thesis pokes its head here: is there a life to be had on the margins? Yes, as there always has. There always will be life to live, more to celebrate, someone to love, anywhere you may be.
The film starts on the subway and ends on the subway, approaching one place and following its subjects to another.
The Last Year of Darkness is out now on MUBI.
REVIEW: Los Angeles Plays Itself
screened at This is Not a Fiction 2024the definitive film about Los Angeles. in the tradition of Mike Davis, Thom Andersen’s video essay starts from simple observation into a sprawling, almost oppressive diatribe on how Los Angeles is portrayed in film and what Los Angeles really is in real life. it’s designed to provoke reaction, in between Andersen’s jabs against Woody Allen and New Yorkers (“the cinematic chronicler of New York’s middle-brow middle class, the people who believe what they read in the New York Times”) and the real historical context he provides to give lifelong residents pause about their own city. its sprawling construction mirrors the city itself, rewarding those who give it a chance and stirring apathy in the skeptical.
its limitation is the shallow focus as a film about films. mostly preoccupied with the appearance of Los Angeles for most of its runtime, it relegates its real and disheartening portrayal of the city to its latter half and as punctuation to its chapters. Andersen’s analysis of Chinatown ends with the brief mention that in real life, the public voted to approve the Aqueduct’s bond measure themselves, despite a local paper exposing the inside dealings between wealthy businessmen two weeks before the vote. it’s just as abrupt with the context provided for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with an offhand debunking that automobile companies were the sole death knell of public transportation—the public had complained of “overcrowding, slowness, discriminatory pricing, and poor service” for decades already. the film then ends up running credits in the same vein, unceremoniously, after a blunt coda contextualizing independent Black filmmaking in the ‘70s.
Andersen refuses to linger on the realities of our city—he recognizes the inherent original sin of Los Angeles, as did Mike Davis, that we are a city that shouldn’t exist, built on desert land and swiping water from elsewhere; and yet, we’re the ones that continue to forget our history just as fast as we make it. we’re the ones who frequently vote on the side of power, disregarding the water wars and corruption of yesteryear. we’re the ones who complain about the unhoused on buses and trains, until board members who drive to work vote to cut service and raise fares. we’re the ones who allow the world to see us as another city entirely, in minds or on screens. take these as a given and the question isn’t of complicity anymore—the city’s here and we live in it. what will we make of it?
REVIEW: Perfect Days
originally published on Letterboxda film that reminded me of my father. men from a certain age get engrossed in their habits, seeking to be moved by the things they choose to be moved by and not by what others choose for them.
Hirayama (Yakusho Kōji) is childless, content with his job as a public restroom cleaner, married to his weekly routines, and leaves his home smiling at the sky above him. he’s content to observe, smiling privately about the colors of the world, the dancing reflections of sunlight, the idiosyncrasies of others. when life inevitably interrupts his rhythm, he’s at a loss of what to do. a man of few words and a small collection of actions starts to show frustration, confusion, and fear in solitude. he becomes sleepless; he has no will to revisit sweet moments with his niece; he searches for peace via Peace-brand cigarettes.
in contrast, whenever he opens up to interact with others, a childlike wonder and innocence spills out. he happily cheers up his niece and a stranger alike; he haphazardly hugs his sister; he cries at his shortcomings. he smiles about the small bits of attention provided by women of all ages. he embraces a game of tic-tac-toe with a stranger he may never meet. without much trying, he brings joy to others. the idea of the pain they may bring him frequently stops him from searching for joy.
this is maybe one of the most beautiful digitally-shot movies i’ve ever laid eyes on. Wim Wenders brings his signature touch of color back to Tokyo, which may be the perfect city for him to film, for the first time in decades. using naturalistic lighting, he uses the sodium glow of the city, the glass reflections on sunny days, and the paradox of grow lights to paint his frames. the boxed-in 1.33:1 frame then makes for a narrow window in which to see the utter beauty of the world.
music remains strictly diegetic too—except for brief bits of sound design during dream sequences—which admittedly can feel a bit obvious but represent a universal truth. it ultimately fits with the themes of the old meeting the young, the conservative meeting the curious. (as an aside, it’s certainly refreshing to see a film about a relatively conservative old man approaching youth and the recursiveness of life with generous interest, not the usual reactionary grumpiness.)
as Wenders can also be, some ideas and interactions are a bit on the nose. but what makes them great are the simplicity and sincerity with which he brings them. very few words and small exchanges feel both universal and intimate, between just a couple of characters. it also allows for the small flashes of contradictions that come along to make your heart completely sink. one of the final moments exemplifies all of this in one extended, shattering sequence.