criticism
inquiries: elliesunlightmoon@gmail.comletterboxd: @aluminist
2024 April 11
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?
2024 April 7
Good One
screened at Los Angeles Festival of Movies 2024a quiet, strong parallel to this year’s How to Have Sex. instead of a ritual holiday in Greece full of incessant partying, a girl ends up on a backpacking trip in upstate New York with her dad and his longtime friend. she comes to empathize with her dad’s recently divorced friend and interrogates her dad’s second marriage with a younger woman. she deftly interfaces with the forest and its streams, its trails, its dirt, and its life. she walks out of it with a reminder that girlhood is so often lonely and womanhood is so often burdensome; it’s the line between and when it should be crossed that she can’t seem to figure out. as a small bit of respite, she pranks her dad by filling his backpack with rocks. hopefully he’s felt some of that weight.
2024 March 18
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.
2024 March 04
Dune: Part Two
originally published on LetterboxdSpoilers ahead!
a tale of jihad fueled on the basis of betrayal. potent to begin with, but falters with an unsure pacing in the latter half when Paul Atreides needs to become sure of himself as the Muad’Dib.
certainly thrilling to watch. watching on IMAX 70mm brings out a beautiful texture to the desert, despite being shot on digital to begin with and transferred to film. one of the rare modern movies that succeeds in excellent color work that brings the sort of awe that old films do. Villeneuve’s choices on which scenes are presented in full-frame are a bit confounding but plenty of them are wonderful to watch.
perhaps surprisingly relevant for the times—in one of the few strong moments in act three, a Fremen child, covered in blood and confused, walks out of a bombed holy site in search of safety. all the while, Paul Atreides and his mentor Gurney Halleck are away to collect their family’s nuclear weapon stockpile, hidden and intact. while Paul insists all this time he fears igniting the holy war in his visions, he has embraced war regardless, searching for revenge.
Chalamet and Ferguson are more than effective in portraying the menacing evil of their characters. it’s the script and direction that eventually lets them down, allowing no intimate moment of true transformation with Paul and Jessica, especially once Jessica becomes the Reverend Mother, after which she becomes one-note. we only see something truly substantive when we’re allowed to actually spend time with them one-on-one in the first half of the film. once the story beats take over, Paul’s ultimate embrace of his prophecy delivers strongly but isn’t as gutting as it should be. by extension, Chani’s heartbroken rebellion doesn’t land as well as it should for being at the heart of the movie (and isn’t helped by a flat performance from Zendaya).
in the end, Villeneuve seems to have lost track of whose lives are at stake here: the Fremen who call Arrakis home and have now given their lives to a bloodthirsty outsider. the holy war becomes the weakness of Part One once again, a general haunting vision of the future with no real substance.
2024 January 08
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.
2024 January 30
How to Have Sex
originally published on Letterboxdi have a particular love for British coming-of-age stories because they frequently get it right: that coming of age is tragic, where the rite of passage is often feeling something so overwhelming and so new that you don’t yet have the language to even describe it. this gets it right.
this is Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut. during the Q&A at Vidiots (great place to view it by the way, thanks to the booming soundsystem), she mentioned she was a cinematographer by trade before tackling this film. it shows—wonderful close-ups that emphasize the subtleties of the performances and vibrant colors throughout.
Mia McKenna-Bruce is insanely good. it’s a great parallel to Cailee Spaeny’s performance in Priscilla, with everything unsaid and held in under the veneer cutting through the screen like a knife. as the movie goes on too, Tara seems to grow younger and smaller as her distress grows. it’s genuinely unnerving to watch, until one of the final sequences in a car where we watch her reflecting on what seems to be her entire life in real time—at which point it becomes simply heartbreaking. a girl not ready to be an adult being forced to cross the threshold anyway.
Walker also mentioned a particular stop of the press tour where she got to sit in on a class of young students who watched the film as part of a lesson on consent. two male students pushed back against the idea that anything wrong had happened in the film. but two other boys, otherwise appearing to be absolute lads, passionately disagreed, discussing what consent and care is supposed to be and what you’re supposed to look out for. it always helps for storytelling to provide that language for us in a revelatory way.
2023 December 25
20th Century Women
originally published on LetterboxdMike Mills always makes novels as movies. their worlds feel so familiar—or you want them to be, where you hope these characters would be in your life. with that foundation, a coming-of-age story that collides with a reflection back on a life lived feels fleshed-out, intimate, but not grandiose. these characters aren’t discovering wide truths about life, even though they swear they are. they’re just living life and learning about each other.
but in a modern world, where the window of modernity is constantly shifting, can we truly learn about each other? the film starts off with a house full of characters at arms’ length from one another in what they know about and reveal to each other. Mills slowly frames their efforts to become closer and come into themselves as people around the books they read, the movies and television they watch, the speeches they hear—and as they keep reciting with confidence what others have observed before them, like Elle Fanning’s delightful Julie often does, they find they know less about each other than before. Lucas Jade Zumann’s Jamie flips through book after book to understand his mother Dorothea (Annette Bening at some of her best), but is shut down time after time.
in one scene, Jamie reads to his mother an essay from Zoe Moss on “The Aging Woman” and Dorothea looks to him, disheartened, asking him, “So… you think that’s me.” he responds no; she whispers, “I don’t need a book to know about me.” she’s right. she’s also stopped providing him with much of her own, let alone providing herself to much in life, asking the world to teach him instead. and perpetually, they yearn for each other’s knowing and understanding without the words in between.
at the very least, they’re trying. that’s the sweetest thing to watch a family do. the credits roll, and “As Time Goes By” (later adapted as the de facto theme song of Warner Bros.) plays over the names of those involved.
2023 October 27
Evil Does Not Exist
originally published on Letterboxdscreened at AFI Fest 2023
sometimes a director uses their stylistic choices against you. not as a cheap trick to surprise, but to directly challenge you as a viewer. along with Killers of the Flower Moon, this is the year’s other shining example.
Hamaguchi’s deliberate dialogue—paced like a play but naturalistic in its content—creates true tension between the protective villagers and the outsiders thrust into helping a predatory company set up shop in town. the townspeople speak bluntly and with resolve; the talent agents fittingly speak like performers, on guard for their jobs’ duties. the film confronts us when we’re allowed a glimpse into their earnest selves: are they telling the truth? either to the people they attempt to convince or to themselves?
through Hana, the child already filled with knowledge and wonder about the beautiful place she gets to live in, we’re allowed visual suggestions of why the villagers would be so tied to this little place: vast woods with diverse foliage, wildlife, and views you can hardly look away from. the camera lingers frequently, and the intents coalesce in a moment as one of the two outsiders stands in the cold and stares off into a sunset, unmoving and undeterred by distractions.
then the hints of natural selection taking place in the woods, carefully placed through the film, come to the forefront. is it tragedy? is it part of life? the film dares you to attach a feeling to it—a justification, a rejection; something past the shock. like how Eiko Ishibashi’s agitated score keeps cutting out in a jolt throughout the film, one moment you’re reacting and contemplating, and the next you’re forced to examine your reasonings. then the brief credits roll and Hamaguchi reminds you of the thesis: Evil Does Not Exist. make of it what you will.