Female Film Critics 24/375
Gone are the cardigans and libraries. Gone the bookish air of a British mystery. Gone the cozy. In their familiar places are technology, a pandemic, wizardry, and glass galore. Writer/director Rian Johnson created a blockbuster with Knives Out, appealing to British mystery fans. He’s now created a much noisier, more intricate, more boisterous mystery but, nonetheless, an intriguing one.
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The Whale is not what you think. Yes, The Whale is the tale of a morbidly obese man, but it is so much more. Significantly, The Whale is about words and writing, teaching and fathering, eating and essaying. The film is a tight and poignant homage to friendship and love with words ebbing like waves on the shore.
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Everyone knows that cats have nine lives. They land on their feet. They flirt with, then skirt, danger. They are charming and flirtatious and ego-centric, furry and purry. And then there’s Puss in Boots — all of the above and more. But, now, he’s down to the last of those nine lives so vaunted in fairy tales.
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Nancy Pelosi has said it before, and she says it again in Pelosi in the House: “You can’t get tired. You can never get tired.” The well-crafted documentary — filmed, written, and directed by her filmmaker daughter, Alexandra — explores Nancy Pelosi’s long life as a legislator. The homage includes warming humor, but, most of all, it includes Nancy Pelosi’s knowing voice and electric self. For all the excellence in Molly Ball’s Pelosi, the biographer could not transliterate Pelosi’s voice to the page. Alexandra Pelosi, exploiting her years as a documentarian and daughter, does that with élan and love and expertise, making Pelosi in the House moving and meaningful.
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Aftersun is definitely a film to be seen in the cradle of a theater — without distractions and with Marshall McLuhan’s understanding of movie-going. The intimacy engendered by a theater supports the intimacy of Charlotte Wells’ work, of her theme, of her camera. Aftersun modeling the French approach to domestic dailyness, requires allowance for full appreciation.
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Turns out the Afterlife is a musical. Who knew? Unfortunately, if Spirited is a model, the Afterlife is tuneless with lyrics as forgettable as a hymn’s 6th verse. We can blame Benj Pasek and Justin Paul for that (some of us are still blaming them for La La Land). We can also blame casting non-singers as leads in a musical.
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Here’s a thought: do not go shopping on November 11. Watch Edward Berger’s version of Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. November 11 used to be Armistice Day until President Eisenhower changed the title in 1954 to Veterans’ Day to honor all who serve. Berger honors them by showing the truth. All Quiet on the Western Front is mostly in English despite being told from a German point of view. Instead of being disconcerting, the English emphasizes the universality of the insanity of war.
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The brand name “Ferragamo” defines luxury. The fascinating documentary, Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, outlines what it took for the 11th of 14 children to become a world-famous shoemaker. The biodoc traces Salvatore Ferragamo’s life from birth in 1898 in Bonito, Italy, to Hollywood, California, to his death in Tuscany at 62 in 1960.
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Story in the subtitle is accurate. Weird tells a story as it follows the lines of most biographies of musicians: the hatred by parents of the new music, the outlying adolescence, the instrument that annoys, the success that surprises, the love interests that aren’t interested, and the adulation in spite of it all.
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In Chicago in 1968, housewife Joy Griffin watches the Democratic National Convention on television. She sees police officers, their heads capped in “blue brain buckets,” beat protesters against the Vietnam War. The noisy news establishes the political climate in 1968, but whispers surround the issue of abortion in the pre-Roe era of Call Jane, a well realized look at reproductive history.
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