"Top Ten" List - #6

 6. I Love You, but I’m Not *in* Love with You

I respect these films. If you were to ask me about any of them, I’d say something like “Oh yeah, that’s a great movie!” But I didn’t connect with them the way I did with other films further up the list and I find myself a little envious of those who love them so much more than I do.

The Banshees of Inisherin

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are doing career-best work here. Kerry Condon is phenomenal. And Barry Keoghan is a wonder (I don’t want to say “career best” for him, even if it’s true, because he’s only 30). I loved IN BRUGES and I liked THREE BILLBOARDS more than a lot of folks. And while I mostly liked this movie, it feels more like a play to me (which makes sense, as Martin McDonagh is a playwright). The set-up and premise feel very stagey and theatrical, like a fable or a short story. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the premise: two friends, one decides he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, he tells the former friend not to talk to him anymore and, in fact, if he talks to him at all, he’ll cut off his own fingers. There are clearly some mental health issues going on with Gleeson’s character, and Farrell’s character’s story is an exploration of loneliness (and I do love the parallels with Keoghan’s character). But it all feels a bit too fantastical for me to fully take it seriously. There is some beautiful cinematography but I feel like it’s hard to screw that up given the utterly heavenly location where they’re shooting. Loads of people love this movie, and I liked it fine, but I feel like the performances are the showcase here more than the film itself or its story. (Still in some theaters; available on HBOMax and to rent on streaming services.)

Decision to Leave

I have one big impediment that keeps me from whole-heartedly embracing this. Because it’s gorgeous and twisty and psychological and sad and I should be eating this up with a spoon. It's sort of a departure from a director who is well known for a certain flavor of film, which always fascinates me. But I sometimes have a thing about infidelity stories. Now, there are plenty of movies I love that have infidelity as a central factor in the story (THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING being one of my all-time top fivers and definitely being one of those stories). But the way it’s done here, I found it hard to get invested in the illicit love story because they’d made the guy’s wife such a sympathetic character who’s doing nothing wrong and is completely oblivious for most of the movie. I can appreciate complicated feelings, and I am fully aware (at least intellectually) that the idea of one’s lifelong happiness or passion revolving entirely around one person is to a large degree sentimental nonsense. And of course the guy in this movie is never technically unfaithful to his wife. I just could not get invested in his strange connection with this woman. I do find the ending very effective and sad, but I suspect I was supposed to be a bit more so than I was. It’s obviously beautiful to look at, though, as all of Park Chan-wook’s films are. If you see this, though, check any expectations you might have for a film by this director at the door. It’s quite different from his vengeance movies (which is not a criticism). (Still in some theaters; available on MUBI and to buy on AppleTV.)

The Fabelmans

The trailer had me and had me good. It completely sold me on what a wonderful experience this movie would be, which of course is what trailers are supposed to do. So I was seriously bummed when I didn’t love this movie as much as I expected to. It’s a beautiful, well made film (which one expects with Spielberg) that contains easily one of Michelle Williams's best performances. Paul Dano is lovely and understated. Both kids who play the younger and older version of Spielberg stand-in Sammy are uncannily cast (though the character of Sammy is … I’m just going to say it, kind of a Gary Stu with no perceivable flaws, which is not unusual for an author stand-in but rarely interesting). I just felt like I was looking at someone else’s old photographs – snapshots of moments that I can tell mean a great deal to them but which I can’t fully connect with because they’re incredibly specific and personal and not relevant to me (and not meant to be). There are some genuinely great moments, and my favorite parts are when the movie deals with Sammy’s growth as a storyteller – learning how to manipulate footage in editing to make the audience feel a certain thing, discovering something the camera noticed but that nobody else in the real moment did, and especially the last five minutes (down to the perfect final camera move). But *that’s* his growth as a character – as a storyteller, not a person. I also would have loved if the movie had more time for Sammy’s sisters (I mean, you’ve got Julia Butters, and surely you know what she can do). I wish I loved it more, but it’s by no means a failure. I think Spielberg made exactly the film he wanted to make and it deserves to be seen. It’s just not in the pantheon of his oeuvre for me. Right now, at least. (Still in theaters; available to rent – not cheaply – on streaming services.)

Holy Spider

This is one of those where it makes me too upset and angry to properly enjoy it. It won Best Director at Fantastic Fest and it’s objectively excellent. But the subject matter and the film’s antagonist are infuriating to me to such a degree that I had a hard time watching it (which could very well be the filmmakers’ intention; it’s just not usually an experience I enjoy). The movie centers on a journalist who goes to the Iranian holy city of Mashhad to investigate a string of murders in which a serial killer (called the Spider Killer) has been targeting sex workers, believing himself to be cleansing the streets of immorality. It’s a really good thriller with a real sense of danger, and it’s based on a real life serial killer who murdered 16 sex workers in 2000-2001. Mehdi Bajestani is amazing as the titular Spider, and he’s so smug and self-righteous you want to punch him every time he’s on screen. And the reality this movie presents, where a significant portion of the town are behind him and think what he’s doing is morally just, just makes me want to sit down and cry. Which isn’t a bad thing at all, of course, but it’s the kind of movie that makes me want to protect myself from it. Glad I saw it, but I could do with never seeing it again (which was itself a category a few years ago). (In some theaters; not yet available for home viewing in any format.)

Hunt

Is this a well-made action thriller? Certainly. Did I understand even half of what was going on at any given time? Absolutely not, but I can’t entirely blame the movie for that. This isn’t like THE ROUNDUP, where by just paying a bit more attention (or giving it a second look) could have helped me follow it better. I’m sure this plays very differently for a Korean audience (or anyone remotely familiar with recent Korean history). It’s a movie made for Korean audiences and obviously there’s nothing wrong with that. Americans (including myself) can be so darn selfish when it comes to movies that aren’t specifically catered to them and don’t hold their hands through stuff that audiences in other countries don’t need hand-holding for. This stars and was directed by Lee Jung-jae, who many of you would recognize as the star of SQUID GAME (#456). Fans of that show might also recognize Heo Sung-tae (who plays the treacherous thug Deok-su) in a small role here. The movie deals with actual historical events that happened in North and South Korea in the 1980s, and I am fairly certain I would have been better able to follow it if I’d had even a cursory familiarity with those events. As such, I was lost a lot of the time, but not so lost that I couldn’t appreciate the fantastic action set-pieces and at least a few of the reveals and reversals. (Available to rent on streaming services.)

Pearl

After the credits rolled on X, I was so excited to see the trailer for this and know that this was coming fairly soon. Having now seen it, I liked it fine, but I’m not sure it was necessary. Mia Goth is excellent and she is definitely the reason to see this movie. Her extended monologue at the end of the movie, followed by the absolutely chilling, desperate, “I’m happy, dammit” smile over the ENTIRE closing credits are feats which, in a just world, would see her showered in accolades. She’s genuinely brilliant here. The movie, however, feels a lot like a special feature for an X Blu-ray. It’s beautifully shot, and many people have rightly compared it to a classic technicolor movie or an MGM musical. That’s accurate, but what’s strange to me is that the style choice seems arbitrary. After all, the film doesn’t take place in that time period. Not that I’d expect Ti West to film this like it was an actual 1918 film, but … X is set in 1979 and looks like it was made then. Same with HOUSE OF THE DEVIL – set in 1983 and looks exactly like an early 80s horror flick. And while I get that the style is probably meant to evoke Pearl’s dreams of becoming a dancer and a star, her dreams wouldn’t be likely to look like this because she’s never seen a technicolor musical and nor has anyone else in this time period. It seems like West just picked the earliest style era that could be in color so we could see the blood. Incredible central performance (I also loved the actress who played Pearl’s mother), but I wasn’t as enamored of this as everyone else seems to be. (Available to rent on streaming services.)