InRO Monthly — December 2023

IN REVIEW ONLINE
FEATURES
INTERVIEW WITH FREDERICK WISEMAN — 1
SHATTERED CAMARADERIE: Revisiting Michael
Roemer’s Vengeance is Mine — 9
MOVIES FOR A FREE PERSON: A Conversation
with the Cast & Crew of The Sweet East — 11
DIGITAL NOIR PROPHECIES IN THE CANYONS &
THE COUNSELOR — 15
INTERVIEW WITH FERNANDO FRIAS — 18
RED SEA FILM FESTIVAL — 21
HALLMARK AND BEYOND — 22
KICKING THE CANON
MILLENIUM MAMBO — 23
LOTR: THE RETURN OF THE KING — 25
FILM REVIEWS
IN WATER — 27
GODZILLA MINUS ONE — 27
EILEEN — 27
THE DAUGHTERS OF FIRE — 27
WHITE RIVER — 27
SILENT NIGHT — 27
A MALE — 27
RAGING GRACE — 27
LAST SUSPECT — 27
POOR THINGS — 28
LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND — 28
THE PEASANTS — 28
LA CHIMERA — 28
TOTAL TRUST — 28
CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET — 29
ORIGINS — 29
THE THREE MUSKETEERS: PART I — 29
CONCRETE UTOPIA — 29
THE BOY AND THE HERON — 29
MR. MONK’S LAST CASE — 30
THE LAST WIFE — 30
REBEL MOON — PART ONE: CHILD OF FIRE — 30
THE ZONE OF INTEREST — 30
AMERICAN FICTION — 30
TRAILER OF A FILM THAT WILL NEVER EXIST:
“PHONY WARS” — 30
FINESTKIND — 30
WONKA — 31
GODARD CINEMA — 31
TIME BOMB Y2K — 31
AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM — 31
THE IRON CLAW — 31
ALL OF US STRANGERS — 31
MEMORY — 31
SOCIETY OF THE SNOW — 31
A MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD — 31
FERRARI — 32
THE COLOR PURPLE — 32
THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE — 32
FREUD’S LAST SESSION — 32
THE CRIME IS MINE — 32
DECEMBER 2023

WHAT YOU SEE IN THE FILM IS WHAT I FOUND
An Interview with Frederick Wiseman
1
In 1993, when the third edition of Japan’s biannually held Yamagata
International Documentary Film Festival took place, no one could
have foreseen the seismic impact that this event would have, has
really continued to have, on another country’s national cinema.
That story isn’t exactly obscure anymore, at least for those with
some knowledge of the minutiae of modern Chinese film history: A
handful of young mainland Chinese documentary filmmakers, all
invited to YIDFF ’93 to screen either their first or second features,
by chance attended a festival showing of Frederick Wiseman’s Zoo
and found themselves enthralled with the American documentary
giant’s use of what they’d soon recognize as direct cinema.
Various interviews and oral histories have been published about
this encounter — notably, a recent piece for Chinese Independent
Film Observer by Akiyama Tamako, a translator at Yamagata,
sketches out not only the excited conversations that she overheard
taking place between the young Chinese filmmakers after that
fateful Zoo screening, but also details how the most well-known
member of this group, Bumming in Beijing director Wu Wenguang,
managed to bring back from Yamagata bootlegged VHS tapes of
many of Wiseman’s other films with him to China, where he held
screenings for peers who were not able to travel abroad.
Through my own research on this subject, I discovered that these
VHS tapes were not only screened at Wu’s home, but also copied, at
a CCTV studio nonetheless, and distributed, serving to further the
reach of their influence — and going some ways toward explaining
why so much of the so-called New Documentary Movement in
China bears a striking resemblance to Wiseman’s cinema.
There’s one person, though, who hasn’t commented all that
extensively on this subject, and that’s Wiseman himself. And so,
when afforded the immense privilege to speak with the 93-year-old
filmmaker, I couldn’t resist but take a sizeable detour from the
subject at hand — the release of his 44th documentary, on the
family-run operation of three high-end restaurants in the pastoral
French countryside — to explore his awareness of, and his
apprehension toward, the use of his films in China, from the impact
that he had on that first generation of filmmakers in the early
1990s to the evidence of his influence on Wang Bing, one of the
most prominent documentarians on the film festival circuit today,
Chinese or otherwise.
This interview was edited for clarity and concision.

Sam C. Mac: Thanks so much for doing this with me. You’re in Paris
now, right?
Frederick Wiseman: Yeah.
SCM: I’m really excited to do this interview. I hope you'll indulge me
a little bit of a sidetrack conversation. My research is focused
specifically on Chinese film and Chinese independent film
specifically. And I'm really, really interested to talk to you about
that. We will definitely talk about your new film as well. But I'd like
to talk to you about the influence that you had on young Chinese
documentary filmmakers coming out of the Yamagata
Documentary Film Festival in 1993. Is that okay if we talk about that
first?
FW: Yeah, sure.
SCM: Great. I really appreciate that. So I've looked for other
interviews that you might have conducted on this subject, and I
haven't found that many…
FW: I don't know of any. The whole question of influence is hard for
me to comment on because I haven't seen their films.
SCM: It's more just about understanding that period in time. I'm
aware of at least some of the minutiae of this history, and I wanted
to talk to you about it to see how much of it you're aware of and
how much of it maybe you haven't heard. But obviously, in 1993, at
the Yamagata Documentary Film Festival, you showed Zoo…
FW: Right.
SCM: …And there were three filmmakers that were there at that
festival from mainland China. One was Wu Wenguang, who I believe
you know personally…
FW: Right.
SCM: …and the other two were Duan Jinchuan and Hao Zhiqiang.
Do those other names ring a bell?
FW: No.
SCM: That's fine — one out of three is enough. When Wu Wenguang
came back from Yamagata after seeing your films, he brought VHS
tapes with him back to China. And Hao Zhiqiang, who worked at
CCTV at the time, used his studio at CCTV to make copies of VHS
tapes of your films and circulate them to a number of other young
Chinese documentary filmmakers. When I interviewed Hao this
year, he told me the story about making these copies and
distributing them. And if you'll forgive me a bit of an analogy here,
but you have to understand from talking to these filmmakers, from
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2

my perspective anyway — and I think from their perspective as well
— in a sense you're kind of like the Beatles to them at that time.
There's this huge explosion of interest in your work and you see it
reflected in the films from that time as well. But before I talk too
much — can you tell me a little about your recollection of meeting
some of these filmmakers in 1993, and just what it was like being at
Yamagata that year, based on your own memory?
throttled for a long time and suddenly, and for a period of time, the
possibility of working independently without any government
control or minimum government control may have opened up. I can
see why people would like this technique. You can make a film
about anything as long as there's available light.
SCM: (Laughs) True.
3
FW: I can't remember when I first met Wu Wenguang, whether it
was Yamagata or if he called me up when he was in the States and
came to visit me. I'd have to go over my records, because I don't
remember which came first. [Ed: It would have been at Yamagata
first.] But Wu and I got along very well, and we talked; he came to
visit me up in Maine when I was editing something or other, I don't
remember what I was editing… And I'm a bit ambivalent about the
use of my films in China, because I would've preferred that they
had asked my permission to make copies. I understand — they
probably didn't make too many copies — but my films are very
popular in China, and I think I've only arranged for the sale of one
there. And one thing I share in common with Chinese filmmakers is
that I like to eat. So I understand all the arguments — they didn’t
have much money — but I probably would have given them to them
had they asked. I don't like the idea of just making copies and
circulating.
SCM: I completely understand that concern. The thing I'm
interested in now is talking just about why they were so popular in
China, because I think you understand to a certain extent, but also
because I've talked to these filmmakers… Anyway, what's your
impression of why they were so popular in China?
FW: Well, I don't really know. I've heard they were popular in China,
but I've never…that's about as far as it goes. Nobody’s ever told me
the use they were put to or how they might have influenced them,
and I can't make any judgment about that, not having seen their
work.
SCM: Sure. I understand.
FW: So obviously I'm pleased that they liked my films and the
technique that I use. I know from the one short visit I made to
China [that the technique] is very adaptable to life there. It's
adaptable to life anywhere, but… you know, I'm troubled by talking
about anything that's unique to China. But if I'm correct in thinking
that filmmakers’ — independent filmmakers’ — activity was
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FW: And you don't need much money if you've got the equipment.
SCM: My takeaway from talking to these filmmakers about why
your approach resonated so much with them is interesting
because I think it actually cuts against what you use that approach
for a lot in your own work. And what I mean by that is these
filmmakers… you have to realize, at the end of the 1980s, which
basically you're about a 10-plus-year period into being able to even
see documentaries, because of the Cultural Revolution. And, at that
time, the only documentaries that they were seeing really were
State propaganda, State TV. But there was starting to be a bit of a
development away from that. And filmmakers, especially because
of the change in technology and the more accessible filmmaking
technologies, were trying to do things differently. But what's
interesting to me is I think what resonated with them when they
saw specifically Zoo in 1993 [at Yamagata] is they saw in direct
cinema this ability to make films that are not propaganda, but that
are instead in this observational mode, and in a sense even a
passive observation. Or at least it doesn't have to be read as
politically antagonistic.
FW: I don't think that's accurate. No, passive observation is not an
accurate description of what I do. Because it's passive in the sense
that there's no intervention, but it is not passive in the actual way
the films were made.
SCM: Absolutely.
FW: Because they require thousands of choices.
SCM: Well, I think what's so interesting is that their experience with
it bore this out. So, there's a film called The Square, from 1994. It
was one of the first films that was made in China that was really
clearly influenced by your work, and it was only a year after they
had that exposure to your films. It's an observational portrait of
Tiananmen Square in 1994, and they're trying to just observe what
it's like to see the police presence there and to see the reporters
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there. And they tried to think of this as being not politically
antagonistic. But the State clearly did not see it that way. [Ed: It
was banned.] And so, I think they had this feeling they could use
the aesthetic as a way to not be politically controversial, and the
exact opposite happened. And then you see a change throughout
Chinese documentaries over the course of the 1990s.
The next point I wanted to touch on, and this is really an oral
history question, but you did go to China in 1997, and you gave a
keynote address at a film festival there, and also did an interview
with CCTV. Can you tell me a little bit about what you remember
from that visit?
comments, except insofar as the way I work is, by implication,
contrary to what was usually acceptable in a totalitarian state.
SCM: Do you remember any of the questions or what you talked
about in the interview that you gave on TV?
FW: I have no idea.
SCM: I'd love to find that interview somewhere, but I haven't been
able to.
FW: I know I never had a copy of it.
FW: I hadn't thought about my trip to China for a long time, but I
remember I got off the plane and they had a meeting arranged
already, and I think Wu Wenguang was there, but some high
Chinese official also, they were waiting for me. They waited a
couple hours for me to arrive from the airport and go to the hotel
and take a shower, et cetera, because it was a long trip. I didn't
know in advance that this meeting was to take place. And, it was
naive of me, but I was struck by the sort of obvious hierarchical
nature of the relationship of the people in the room to each other.
But I don't think I had anything startling to say. I talked about the
way I make films, and I responded to their questions, as I would
respond to yours. There was nothing obviously ideological in my
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SCM: And were you able to see… I think I've read some interviews
with you where you have said that you've seen some of the Chinese
documentaries from that time.
FW: I've seen some work by Wang Bing. But only in the last year or
two. And I met with him in Paris. We've met a couple of times.
SCM: That's actually where I was steering this conversation,
because I talked to Wang Bing a couple months ago. He was giving
a workshop at Harvard [Ed: This interviewer works at the Fairbank
Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, where Wang Bing
recently taught a workshop on documentary filmmaking]. So I have
4

to say that I have a book project, it spans from 1989 to 2002, and
Wang Bing made his first film [West of the Tracks] in 2002, which
was a real departure from a lot of other documentary films that
were being made in China prior to that time. And actually, it's a
departure in the sense that it's probably the film that’s the most
like your work than anything else that came before.
FW: The shooting is very much like my work. It's not as highly
edited.
SCM: He uses long takes in a different way, but there’s one thing
that makes it more similar to your work, compared to Wu
Wenguang’s films. Wu did sort of gradually move away from this,
but Wu’s early work — which he says was influenced by you — is
actually more cinema verité than direct cinema, because it
intersperses these very intentional, on-camera interviews. Wang
Bing, though, really moved away from that entirely when he started,
and instead embraced the direct cinema mode.
So I want to transition a bit to how Wang Bing thinks about direct
cinema — since he’s really an endpoint for me in the evolution of
Chinese documentary — to how you think about it. Wang had a
quote from a recent event here at Harvard that I thought was really
interesting, and when I was watching your new film, I was thinking
------------------------------------------------------------------------
about it, and how you might feel about it. It's a bit esoteric. He said,
“in cinema, there's no composition, only time and space.” Now I
know that composition is important to you, but I do wonder, how
important it is in terms of hierarchical considerations. Where does
composition sit exactly?
FW: Well, I care about it a lot. I'm making a movie and I like the
picture to be as good as possible. I mean, whatever my definition
of “good” is. I'm very aware of composition, both during the
shooting and in the choice of shots in the editing.
SCM: On the topic of composition, it has to be a very different way
of thinking when you're shooting in 16:9 as opposed to 4:3. How do
you approach composition when it comes to framing different
aspect ratios?
FW: I mean, it's just the way it looks to me. It's not any kind of
formal process. A Couple was shot in 16:9, but for the
documentaries, I prefer the 4:3.
SCM: Obviously a lot of your films are focused on institutions, but
recent ones have also been pretty focused on the sort of space of
the institution. For this film, though, it does wander, it wanders
outside the institution, or maybe you consider these other spaces
that it goes to an extension of that institution?
55

FW: I don't have the precise definition of institution that I originally
conformed to. So that's not an issue for me. I don't say an
institution has to be a four-story building with 22 rooms. It's more
the feel of the people. City Hall, I mean, I call it City Hall, but it takes
place in Roxbury and Dorchester and Brighton, et cetera. But it's
focused around the activities of the people who work out of City
Hall. And Belfast, Maine is… there's 6,000 people, and it covers quite
a large area. So I'm not wedded to the precise definition of
institution. And I went outside the physical confines of the
restaurants because I thought I wanted to show a sense of the
system, it was important to show the suppliers and the relationship
to those suppliers. And also the manufacturers of the products that
they use, like the cheese or the wine.
SCM: I think it's interesting how it goes outside and then it comes
back inside the restaurant at the end. When you were shooting all
this footage, did you have any sense… I know you often find the
film in the edit, I think that’s what you've said. But did you have any
sense of the structure that you wanted here? Did you always want
to go outside and then come back inside? Or was that something
that came to you when you were putting the film together?
FW: Well, obviously, when I shot the outside stuff, I thought I was
going to use it. I had no idea how I would use it, or where I was
going to use it, but I thought it was important to collect it and
make the decision on how it was going to be used later. Because I
never make, as you just said, I never make any decision. I mean, I
don't really think about structure in any precise way during the
shooting.
SCM I think, in general, you've often said that you don't like to have
a lot of preconceptions going in, you don't want to do research
about the subjects to a certain extent. You want to be able to
discover the subjects of the film by filming the subjects. In this
case, for this film, on a somewhat sliding scale, did you have more
preconceptions or less preconceptions than you've had compared
to your other films?
FW: No, I had no preconceptions, because I think I had eaten at a
three-star restaurant only a couple of times.
SCM: You're ahead of me, then.
FW: I made the original visit and then one other time. But I was
basically completely ignorant.
SCM: Since you were ignorant going into this, what were the
conversations like with the restaurateurs when you said you
wanted to make this film? What were the things you talked about
and the guidelines?
FW: The whole thing came up by chance because I took some
friends of mine there for lunch one day to thank them for putting
me up in their house (which is about an hour away from Troisgros)
during the month of August, in 2020. And when César came over to
the table after lunch, just as part of the routine meet-and-greet, I
blurted out “I make documentary movies.” We considered making a
movie about the restaurant. I hadn't planned to ask, actually; my
documentary spirit was aroused. And he said, let me talk to my
father. He came back half an hour later and said, “Why not?” I
discovered, a year later when I showed him the film, that his father
wasn't there that day — what he'd done, he told me, was look me up
on Wikipedia. And I've never read what Wikipedia says about me,
but I guess he liked it, so he said, “okay.” And then we corresponded
a couple of times, and I went there and I met [the family], and we
exchanged some letters; I waited until the spring of ‘22 to make the
movie. But to go back, to be more precise about the
preconceptions, I had been to the restaurant twice. I knew nothing
about restaurants as I know nothing about most of these subjects
before I start [making films about them]. And maybe even people
think they know nothing about them when it's finished. But what I
learned is what you see in the film.
SCM: I've read you say something to the effect of “the lens doesn't
change the people's behavior.” That interview was from many years
ago, so I wonder if you still feel like that's the case? Do you still feel
like, especially now — your notoriety and prestige has only risen in
the decades since whenever that interview was — do you still feel
like you can make these films and be behind a camera and be who
you are and not have it affect the people in front of the camera
and how they're behaving?
FW: Well, you see the result. I made Troisgros in ’22, and while I like
to think that everybody's heard of me, that's not true. And I think
the explanation is more rooted in human behavior. First of all,
people like the idea that somebody's sufficiently interested to want
to make a movie. Secondly, people aren't good enough actors to
change their behavior — if they don't want the sequence shot or if
they don't want the movie made, they say no. In my experience, it's
extremely rare that anybody says no, either to the getting of
permission, or to the particular sequence. And as to whether
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6

7
people act for the camera, most people are not really good enough
actors to suddenly change their behavior because their picture is
being taken. The level of acting in Hollywood and Broadway would
be much higher than it is, because you would have a vast pool to
choose from. I think the issue is the same as, I don't know whether
you interview a lot of people, but anybody who meets a lot of
people, in order to survive, has to have a good bullshit meter.
Because if you don't, you're going to get conned. And certainly,
when you make one of these movies, if you think somebody's
putting it on for the movie, you stop shooting.
SCM: Yeah, that's what I was getting at basically: Whether or not
you're still looking for those moments when people are sort of
crossing into performance, demonstrating more of an awareness
of the camera. Were there times on this shoot where you were
conscious of that and you had to stop the camera?
FW: No. It's very rare that it happens, but it has happened.
SCM: There were a couple scenes [in Troisgros]… the scene when
they were talking about bullying at the restaurant and having to be
aware of how they talk to each other and things like that; to me
that was an example of where I wondered, "Is that a kind of
conversation that they would be having in the same earnest terms
that they were having it if they weren't on camera?"
FW: That was stimulated by a letter they received from one of the
restaurant associations. They had a big meeting about that letter,
but it was too long to include in the film, so I used the
consequence of the letter, which was the talk of the head waiter
to the staff, because it was more specific. But the restaurant
association circulated a letter among, I guess, lots of restaurants
in France, saying this harassment is a problem. It's worse in some
places than others, but you've got to be aware of it, and you've got
to report back to us what you're doing to deal with it. So, in no way
— it was stimulated by the letter, not provoked by me.
SCM: That's interesting context. The other thing I wanted to ask
about is the last part of the film. Obviously, every part of the film is
intentionally edited by you and you care about what you're
communicating. But for the last part, I really kind of took notice of
how you edited together these sequences where a lot of things that
hadn't been talked about throughout the film are now coming to
the fore: The oral history of the restaurant, the awareness of the
younger generation — there's the speech that the chef gives about
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younger winemakers and being so impressed by the new
techniques that they're using — just this marrying of different
discussions that are taking place. Were you trying to, and I know
you don't like to talk about the statement that you're trying to
make, but if you just maybe talk a little bit about editing that last
part of the film, and whether or not you feel like there were any
different considerations taking place there?
FW: It was shot on different nights.
SCM: Yeah. So it was conscious to put those things together, is
what I was saying.
FW: It was very conscious. From my point of view, every aspect of
the editing is conscious. Or an effort to be conscious.
SCM: But did you feel like, for that section, there were certain
considerations different from the rest of the film?
FW: Well, because I wanted those kinds of…I dunno if “issue” is the
right word, but one of the things the film is dealing with is the
transition from one generation to another. And several of those
conversations that Michel has, you've seen illustrations of that
earlier in the film. For example, where they're talking about the
kidneys and the fruit de la passion, or whether there was enough
sriracha in the fruit de la passion and the preparation of the
kidneys… Michel is giving a masterclass in taste, and César is
there. César makes a face because he's his father. But the face he
makes, he's also saying, “You know, I know all this. You don't need
to tell me this.” And so you get a slight sense of generational
conflict there, but not a serious one, because they got along
extremely well. And in the scene with the guy from the vineyard
who’s turned over complete control of the vineyard to his sons,
Michel then talks about how he was in the process of doing that,
but he hadn't done it yet. And now it's been done. That conversation
was related to the early one about the kidneys, and related to the
one that follows it, where Michel talks about the history of the
restaurant and his father and his grandfather, who in turn passed
it on to him.
SCM: Yeah, that makes sense.
FW: It's a little way of saying all that's very deliberate.
SCM: One quote that resonated with me was when Michel says:
“When you have such a beautiful workspace, you can manage the
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kitchen without raising your voice.” Obviously a lot of people, a lot
of Americans who come to watch a documentary about chefs and
cooking in the kitchen, will have that Gordon Ramsey thing on their
mind, and that kind of stigmatism or thinking about how kitchens
are usually run. What was your impression, in terms of why the way
that this establishment is run is so different than that perception
that a lot of people have about how kitchens are run?
FW: Well, I haven't seen any of those other films. I'd heard that
there was a lot of yelling and screaming in some of them. Not here,
and not because I was present, but because they were very well
organized. The people knew how to work together. Michel, at some
point when there was some visitors in the kitchen, says we don't
have to talk very much because we know how we work together.
And he says that César can convey what he wants by a gesture or
the wink of an eye. So, I mean, I'd been told about cooking shows
and the yelling and screaming, but I hadn't seen them. And what
you see in the film is what I found.
SCM: When he says It's easy to not have to raise your voice when
you're in such a beautiful place — do you take that as a certain
kind of class commentary too, or not class commentary, but
obviously it's a high-end restaurant. Do you think that if you went
to a much less classy restaurant in France, basically, that you
would have experienced something like this? Or do you think it
really is about…
which is just about people. I think you have observed people in a
real-life context, but through a lens, through a camera, more than
probably almost anybody at this point. Just the amount of people
and the amount of films that you've made and the amount of time
that you've been making these films. Are there certain types of
people that you recognize that you gravitate toward? And of those
types of people, do you see yourself in them, or do you see them
more as someone very different than yourself? A very different
type of person?
FW: Well, I mean, I resist any generalizations, obviously, about
people, but I think I probably gravitate toward people whose work I
think is similar to my own, whether it's actors or dancers or the
Troisgros family, because I think they're artists in every aspect of
their work. But it's not only concerned with the taste, but the look.
[The chefs here were] very concerned about plating. One of them
always inspected the plate before it left the kitchen to go to the
dining room, and if a strawberry was a 25th of an inch off place,
they had tweezers and moved it, so that the design on the plate
was as attractive as possible. And at one point, Michel says to one
of the sous chefs, you have to think you're arranging flowers. And
he's talking about arranging John Dory fish.
SCM :I left the film really craving John Dory fish.
FW: I don't have much experience, not at a restaurant. But for
instance, Leo, one of the sons you see in another restaurant, he
didn't [inaudible] me
either. And I don't think
there was a class thing.
He was just simply
saying, it's a great
workspace, and the
countryside surrounding
it was beautiful, which it
is. You see it outside the
windows of the kitchen
and you see it in the
shots of the neighboring
countryside that I used.
SCM: Okay, I only have
one more question,
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8

SHATTERED CAMARADERIE
9
Before the colonization of
New England by the
forebears of the American
empire, what would come
to be known as Rhode
Island today was principally inhabited by several Native tribes —
among them, the Wampanoag. For the Wampanoag, death was to
be understood not only as a loss, but also as a form of
transference, an exchange to the cyclical nature of the world.
Bodies buried in the earth could be compared to seeds that would
come to bloom in the next season of regeneration. The very ground
which gave birth to all that would rise from the forest floor was
possessed, in this sense, by the spirits of the dead. Every flower,
tree, and blade of grass, haunted.
Michael Roemer’s New England-set film Vengeance is Mine,
originally titled Haunted, tells the story of Jo (Brooke Adams) as she
makes a pilgrimage back home to confront head-on her miseries
on the East Coast before moving to Seattle. Included in
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Revisiting Michael Roemer's
Vengeance Is Mine
this list are her long-lost
biological mother, a
vituperative, dying
adoptive mother, and an
abusive former husband,
Steve (Mark Arnott). In her lowest moments, Jo meets an
unexpected friend in neighbor Donna (Trish Van Devere), her
husband Tom (Jon DeVries), and their teenage daughter Jackie (Ari
Meyers). Donna, initially a welcome mirror to Jo’s own neurotic
tendencies, becomes increasingly unwell as the film progresses.
This ultimately crystallizes as a duel between the two women, each
battling the other in the midst of their own individual gravitations
toward emotional destruction.
Haunted premiered in 1984 as a television movie, in some sense
dooming it to be lost to the annals of history. It was not received
with anything resembling critical praise, nor was it an immediate
candidate for a physical release. In part due to the lackluster
reception, it was also Roemer’s last feature. Only in 2022, when The

Film Desk moved to restore the film and give Haunted its first wide
theatrical run, was it brought back to life in the public
consciousness with a new title — Vengeance is Mine. This year has
brought that very same restoration to a proper Blu-ray courtesy of
The Film Desk and Vinegar Syndrome.
The film’s first half extends an understanding eye to the plights of
both Jo and Donna as burdened women, disgraced and allied by
childhood trauma that has lived out into their present lives. Both
women are tormented by their pasts. For Jo, this return home was
an attempt to reckon with the gnawing wound that’s troubled her.
Conversely, we meet Donna as she is ready to unravel, as if one
pulled string might collapse her completely. It’s at the halfway mark
that Jo’s attention shifts to Jackie, who suffers greatly at the
hands of her mother. Where once she found a girl, she now sees a
reflection of her own distraught upbringing. Jo’s mirror, and so her
attention, has shifted. But Vengeance is Mine’s latter section
shatters this camaraderie, bringing down a hammer on the film’s
established rhythms, as both Jo and Donna frantically scramble
against each other for the affections of Tom and Jackie.
Jackie’s abuse acts as an echo of Jo’s, down to the acts
committed. Early in the film, Steve viciously cuts Jo’s hair in anger,
and the same is done to Jackie by Donna. Poetically, Jackie echoes
Jo’s words literally. In a motel room, Steve tells Jo he loves her. Jo
replies, “I know.” Donna’s declaration of love for Jackie, delivered
after a hailstorm of putrid insults, is met with the same. Without
any real force bonding them, Jo and Jackie have forged a spiritual
connection that is as maternal as it is desperate. Jo says as much
to Tom earlier: “Just so you know, when I was sixteen I had a child,
a girl. I never saw her. When I woke up, she was gone, adopted.
That’s why I want to see Jackie.” Donna can only watch as her
family is stolen by this stranger whom she once considered a
friend, propelling her self-sabotaging behaviors. In short, it’s a film
full of contradictions, resting on uneasy ground occupied by two
volatile forces constantly crashing into one another. These
frequent clashes buckle the foundations of suburbia and wring out
the haunted nature of the roles these women occupy; both victims
to their personal histories, the narratives drawn into these homes
reverberating in misshapen reiterations even decades later. Try as
they might, they are powerless to the “spirits” present in the
neighborhoods and familial structures that birthed their pain.
Palestinian filmmaker and radical film educator Saeed Taji Farouky
speaks on this very challenging aspect of Roemer’s narratives,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
drawing on Roemer's own book, Telling Stories: “To adequately
reflect the chaos of our world, a film must be constantly on the
verge of collapse.” This notion is best characterized by the erratic
behavior of Donna as she descends further into her interior world
and puts at risk everything Jo, and the audience, have come to
care for. But for as heavy as Vengeance is Mine is, the film does
float, its deceptive simplicity hiding a vision all too rare in today’s
cinema. Every landscape, refraction, and close-up has the integrity
of a film earnest to earn its beauty. The images are not showy, but
rather, Roemer’s eye drifts toward the outer bounds of New
England’s allure and the magnetic draw of nature's defiance to the
malignancy at the heart of the suburbs. Driving the film are the
nuanced, intimate performances from the women at its center.
Adams is peerless, hiding a biting distress well, only amplified by
the understated, captivating blocking that feels like a revelation all
these years later. Devere occupies the harder role, convincing us at
once of her humanity and her terror, standing both enormously
over the family and, in a turn, cowering to her own cruelty.
Both women act in inappropriate and callous ways, but what’s most
telling about Roemer’s film is the startling empathy with which
every party is rendered. In an interview with Mubi’s Brandon
Kaufman, Roemer states: “I was always afraid of the melodramatic
aspect of the whole thing. I'm so afraid of melodrama, but I think
I've accepted that it was valid. In Vengeance is Mine, nobody wants
to do what they did. Everybody had to do it.” This fated spiraling
toward chaos is in many ways reflective of Roemer’s philosophy of
stories and life. Roemer, a Jew born in Germany just five years
before Hitler’s ascent, was catapulted into a barbaric and unjust
society. He is frequently critical of the notion that humanity could
have any grasp over their lives; in his mind, people are beholden to
powers beyond them, acts of a god they don’t believe in.
Roemer’s view of death does not easily map onto the beliefs of the
Wampanoag. In fact, his secular approach to the frenzied order of
the world would stand in stark opposition to the former’s view on
the matter — Roemer would hardly stand to characterize the world
as full of spirits. But still, he’s haunted. And in his pursuit of an
emotional truth, Roemer demonstrates the power of these ghost
stories we inhabit in our day-to-day lives. Vengeance is Mine ends
how it begins: in a symphony of emotions running across Jo’s face.
There’s a melancholic radiance to her in this moment, something
that has played out partly as a ghost story and inevitably as a
return. — JOSHUA PEINADO
10

MOVIES
FOR A FREE
PERSON
A Conversation
with the Cast &
Crew of The
Sweet East
11
In Sean Price Williams’ directorial debut The Sweet East, Lillian
(Talia Ryder) snaps to Ian (Jacob Elordi), “I believe that you’re more
enamored in basking in your supposed infamy than winning a
convert to your cause, which to my understanding has to do with
creating a better cause.” A few scenes later, a group of white
nationalists storm a film shoot in one of the many displays of
electrifying absurdity that composes The Sweet East’s
genre-defying send-up of modern-day social stratification and
neuroses.
Broadly-speaking, The Sweet East is a Northeastern picaresque
that employs film critic Nick Pinkerton’s cutting wit to tell the story
of Lillian, a high schooler on a class trip to D.C. who absconds when
a gun-wielding conspiracist starts firing rounds into the ceiling of
Comet Ping Pong, the locus of the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy. What
follows is a down-and-outwardly spiraling series of vignettes that
takes Lillian through America’s concentric communities (or cults),
pushing her, in the pace of her centripetal acceleration, toward the
fringes of the country’s crumbling constitution. Among those she
encounters are Caleb (Earl Cave), a pseudo-punk “artivist” with a
trust fund and questionable mixed-media abilities; Lawrence
(Simon Rex), a white-Nationalist professor with the romantic
sensibilities of Humbert Humbert and the literary sensibilities of a
goth undergrad; Molly (Ayo Edibri) and Matthew (Jeremy O. Harris),
navel-gazing filmmakers; and Mo, a
---------------------------------------------------------------------
hyper-masculine pseudo-militant that likes to pray until sundown
and dance to EDM in the woods. With The Sweet East, Sean Price
Williams and Nick Pinkerton offer something that breathes new life
into indie filmmaking, by refusing to cater to the need for inherent
meaning or tidy categorization that pervades art today.
Fortunately, we had the opportunity to speak with Sean and Nick,
alongside actors Talia Ryder, Simon Rex, and Earl Cave, ahead of
the film’s theatrical release.
Conor Truax: I had the privilege of seeing the movie a few days
ago and really enjoyed it. Nick, you fittingly played a film critic in Al
Warren’s Dogleg earlier this year. One of my favorite lines in that
movie is near the end when Al’s character asks you if his movie has
a pervading thought or idea. And you're like, “no, there's no
pervading thought.” I'm curious what your pervading thoughts were
as you all went about making the film?
Nick Pinkerton: In certain reviews of the film and the way it's been
talked about in some circles, people are like, “what's it trying to
say?”Or, “it's confused about what it's trying to say.” Anytime I see
this, I’m like, if I wanted to say something, I would open my mouth
and say it.
You don't make a movie to express a simple idea. I hope that the
movie is expressing several ideas in any given shot. And that, more

than anything else, our impulse wasn’t to give a sermon, but to
explore many facets of the contemporary world.
You need to give somebody watching the movie room to draw their
own conclusions and make their own decisions. A lot of people are
browbeating Talia’s character and impressing their own worldviews
upon her. And if there's any single idea to come away from it with,
it's that people who impose their worldviews on you extremely
bluntly don't often have your best interests at heart.
Sean Price Williams: We get upset with the gossip. We thought we
made a movie that had some relevance, hopefully, and that's about
it. We're not telling you what to think, we're telling you that you
never know.
NP: As a critic, the films that I respond to are the films that give
me space to reflect on my own life, the world I live in, the way I live
in the world. I think that's a cool, democratic way of making art
rather than coming from some elevated position where you're
lecturing to a viewer, reader, etc.
SPW: We love Spielberg, he's a big hero and a master. But his
movies don't let you think. Serge Daney said something like, “these
are not movies for a free person.” You don't get any time to think
about anything. You're completely manipulated.
CT: And avoiding that gives movies space to grow independent of
their creators with time. To your point about relevance, Sean, the
film is very much a survey of Northeastern culture, and all the
concentric cults or communities there. With
a lot of characters in the movie, I felt a
certain level of recognition in different ways.
I was curious whether there were any
characters in the film that felt very familiar
to people you've encountered, or resonant to
you all.
me so much when I was 17, 18 — this punk that got me into all the
coolest music. Rish's character is not someone I'm familiar with,
but in fact I feel like he’s the character I feel closest to myself.
Then, you know, the crew is all friends. So yeah, it was familiar.
That's what made it so easy to make.
Simon Rex: I took from a few people who are the ones who are the
most outspoken, on their soapbox, sanctimoniously preaching their
belief system without listening at all and just talking, talking,
talking, which I think is what's going on right now in the country.
A lot of people are just talking and not listening and just yelling. So
I just took from several of those and made it my version of that
because I think we all know that archetype of that person who's
just talking a lot. And maybe they're right about some of the facts,
but they're just spewing out statistics and facts and it’s exhausting.
SPW: And that's the problem, and that's what annoys me in general.
Everyone knows the right way, and everyone is right. Even with this
current conflict, all of a sudden everyone is so passionate. But
where have you been? Where did this passion come from for this
thing? I wish everyone didn’t have to be right. Because when you’re
right, you don’t learn anything.
SR: You're not open to being wrong or listening.
SPW: You’re never going to learn.
CT: To the point about everyone being right, one thing that I found
SPW: Yeah, I think all the characters are
familiar. I mean, maybe not entirely. I had a
guy like Simon’s character Lawrence, who at
one point in my life was the most cultured,
intelligent person I ever met. He would bring
me to New York from Delaware and take me
to the opera and things like that. Then Earl's
character was based on a guy that taught
--------------------------------------------
12

interesting was how the characters all have an idealistic or almost
romantic sensibility to them in terms of their beliefs, even if it's
totally extreme. Do you think the U.S. is a romantic place, and more
specifically, what is unique about American romance?
NP: I think one of the pervading ideas in the movie was this
utopian tendency. Because America is quite unusual in that it is
based on an idea.
Meaning, it is essentially an idealistic country. It's not a bunch of
people who happen to speak the same language, who live in the
same region. It is trying to build something out of thin air. A castle
on a hill. And I think that's still very much pervasive in the country
today, this utopian thinking.
What's disturbing about that is that a lot of people's utopias involve
not having people who don't share that vision of utopia around.
SPW: I think it's a super romantic place for this reason.The
passionate and fiery people that we have. Of course, there's going
to be conflicts because of that. But in general, I think it's such a
healthy approach, conceptually.
I get so proud of America when I watch How To With John Wilson
because when I see all the crazy people that he finds, I'm like, this
is the only place on earth and the only time on earth when these
people exist.
CT: The film also mentions multiple conspiracies, which are a very
American thing. There’s a quote I really like by Walter Kirn about
QAnon that says “people on the internet don't want to read, they
-----------------------------------------------------------------
want to write.” I'm wondering what you guys think about
conspiracies as a creative medium.
SPW: It’s the imagination of American people without jobs on the
Internet. I love conspiracies when they're great, but I don't think we
should be living by them or anything like that. Whether or not we
went to the moon or not for real, what difference does it make to
any of our lives?
Stories can be really great. Pizzagate is what jumpstarts our movie.
It’s just such an outrageous idea that these people concocted on
the internet with details from John Podesta's living room. The
imagination that it takes for that is amazing. And I think if that’s an
American thing, that's something to be kind of proud of.
NP: Well, I think it's ticked up considerably in the last 20 years.
SR: Americans have magical thinking a lot. I live in California
where there's a lot of magical thinking. But I think it’s a byproduct
of the freedom Americans have over here. Hundreds of years later
and people just can believe whatever crazy shit they want. And, you
know, it does make it what is amazing about America. But also
scary. Like, is it going to be greed that takes human beings out? Or
is it going to be our beliefs that take us out?
This movie seems so relevant to what's happening in the world
right now. The belief systems, and how passionate people are
about them. And it’s like what I said earlier, people are just talking
and not listening. That's what you just said about the QAnon.
They’re writing and not reading, you know. It's the same thing.
NP: An interesting byproduct of the Internet
age is that you can adopt any completely
whack-a-doodle belief system and, if you
want to, find a community that will
reinforce it. If you want to find scholarly
papers that will tell you the Holocaust didn't
happen, you can find that stuff at a click of
a button and you can then enmesh yourself
in this very curated worldview and
immediately have people who will back you
up.
13
CT: One thing that I noticed in the film or
that resonated as well was the fact that
--------------------------------

Lawrence and Mo and a bunch of other characters confront Lillian
for being sarcastic or ironic. In the ‘90s, a bunch of authors
complained about irony and pushed for a new sincerity. Now,
especially with the Internet, everything is hyper-ironic, particularly
on social media. Talia and Earl, you guys grew up on the Internet.
Sean, Simon, Nick, you guys grew alongside the Internet. I'm just
curious how you think about irony as a rhetorical device,
particularly because there is irony in the movie. But there is also
sincerity and beauty.
or his beliefs is interesting to watch. He’s fighting every fiber of his
biological being because he doesn't believe that it's appropriate
and he would think less of her even though he wants to.
NP: He's just not comfortable with his body. He's not a comfortable
physical being. At one point, you told me you played him
prematurely ejaculating.
SR: I forgot about that.
SPW: We’re children of the ‘90s where that was that way. And I
hated it. I hated it then. I just don't jive with irony and sarcasm. I
don't like sarcastic jokes. But it is a thing again.
SPW: That scene is interesting because I just want to know what
Lillian actually wants. I don't know. I get Lawrence’s psychology. But
then at the end, I'm like what was she actually doing there?
Earl Cave: It's just armor. It’s an easy form of a shield.
Talia Ryder: I find irony and sarcasm very funny though. But I
definitely think it’s a form of armor. Especially if you're not using it
for comedic purposes. A little irony sprinkled here and there never
hurts anyone.
NP: It’s a confusion that pops up all the time now with movies. The
fact that the character has a tendency not to take things seriously
and to keep a certain ironic distance is the character. I don't think
that's the position of the film itself. I don't think it's an ironic or
cynical film at all.
CT: Nick, you brought up people responding to the movie and
projecting their own beliefs onto Lillian. Throughout the film, Lillian
finds herself in vulnerable situations with older men on multiple
occasions. But she's able to navigate their desire to her advantage.
Do you consider Lillian empowered? And how do you think about
her being in control versus not being in control?
TR: I think the only time in the film that Lillian doesn't feel in
control, or like she has any power, is when she decides to leave the
school. At the beginning, I think she feels powerless and invisible in
the setting [of the school trip]. I also think at the end with Mo, she
starts to feel trapped. But I think those are the only two times
where she feels like she's not the one in power. And in both
situations, she flips the script to be back in the position of power
again. But I think, at least with Simon and those characters, she
uses her seeming vulnerability and innocence to her advantage in
a cool way. I like that the audience, and Sean, have no idea what
she wants or what she's trying to do at any given moment.
SR: I think the most powerful thing in the world is a beautiful
woman. And you see what happens in this movie. In real life, that
happens. A beautiful woman will just come in and make wars. I just
watched that movie, Napoleon, [and] the whole movie is about him
being pussy-whipped for this younger girl. He comes back from
winning a battle, and he's just like, “where is she?” The most
powerful thing in the world is a young, beautiful woman.
EC: I guess the idea that they don't know that she is in control
makes it more powerful. It makes her able to manipulate the
characters more. My character, Caleb, is more naïve, and she can
easily manipulate him because he doesn't really know that she's
being manipulative.
SR: In the original script, it was insinuated that my character has
sex with Lillian, or could have? We changed it to where it saves her
and makes her a little bit more redeemable as a person. And it
strengthens my character’s moral compass. The fact that he fights
every urge as a man and doesn't do anything because of his values
NP: It's true. Even when I was in high school, it always fascinated
me to see how the dynamic would shift. I could be hanging out with
my idiot buddies, saying the dumbest shit imaginable, then a girl
comes in, and everybody changes.
SPW: The way your friend might talk to a girl on the phone.
SR: You hear that little change in the pitch.
SPW: Those are brutal moments. And now women know that. I don't
think they always knew that. But now they know.
14

DIGITAL NOIR PROPHECIES IN
THE CANYONS & THE COUNSELOR
15
Any discussion of the 20th century’s most brutal novels in
American literature must include Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian
(1985) and Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991). McCarthy’s
novel mines its 19th-century American frontier history (and
mythology) for visceral horror; Ellis’ markedly contemporary satire
transcribes psychopathic Wall Street yuppie Patrick Bateman’s
digressive, reality-blurring musings on murder, sexual conquest,
expensive dining, grooming routines, and Whitney Houston’s
artistic merits. The self-evident tonal and stylistic differences
between these two novels are largely representative of the authors’
respective oeuvres. McCarthy’s voice owes as much to canonical
19th-century American writers like Herman Melville and Nathaniel
Hawthorne as it does to southern Gothic fiction à la William
Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. By contrast, Ellis mixes the crisp
minimalism of Joan Didion and Ernest Hemingway with Stephen
King’s horror-infected realism to offer a chillingly neutral gaze at
modern milieus of privilege and cruelty.
In 2013, veteran auteurs directed original screenplays by both
writers: Ridley Scott helmed McCarthy’s The Counselor and Paul
Schrader took on Ellis’ The Canyons. These digitally shot,
postmodern noirs are substantially different in many respects —
not least because Scott’s picture boasts a much larger budget and
canvas than Schrader’s — but their nearly simultaneous releases
and thematic overlaps warrant critical discussion. Although
---------------------------------------------------------------
Schrader and Scott’s career paths diverged, it’s worth noting the
proximity of their late-’70s directorial debuts: Scott’s Napoleonic
Joseph Conrad adaptation The Duelists was released in 1977, and
Schrader’s labor union drama Blue Collar came out the following
year. Born in 1946, Schrader is less than a decade younger than
Scott, and while the former cut his teeth on academic film theory,
penning Transcendental Style: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (1972), the latter
found his voice through practice, training as a set designer and
prolific commercial filmmaker for nearly a decade before moving
into feature filmmaking.
Both directors leave their fingerprints all over their films — The
Canyons is rife with Bressonisms and perverted scraps of
transcendental style, and The Counselor shows Scott’s pessimism
alongside his obsessions with visual design and environment. Both
films also loudly bear their screenwriters’ trademarks, evidencing
Ellis and McCarthy’s close involvement in development and
production. Scott states that he expected McCarthy to pay a visit to
set, but was surprised when the author lingered throughout the
entire production, with the director’s intuitions sometimes at odds
with the writer’s, which led to occasionally heated conflict. A
similar dynamic exists in The Canyons: Schrader attests that Ellis
sees “too much Schrader” in it, while Schrader sees the film as “all
Ellis.”

“Both directors leave their fingerprints all over
their films… Both films also loudly bear their
screenwriters’ trademarks.
Without doubt, both pictures contain distinctly literary impulses.
Their mutually philosophical focuses are transmuted into the
updated cinematic grammar of film noir, both using genre-codified
signifiers (e.g. the patsy, the femme fatale, the harbinger of death)
to navigate contemporary environments characterized by
transactionality and spiritual emptiness. The Canyons and The
Counselor represent an America unmoored from its own
self-aggrandizing mythologies — the capitalist dream as nightmare
of anxiety and violence. The films are haunted by symbols rather
than subjects, made nowhere clearer than in McCarthy’s naming
The Counselor’s title protagonist (played by Michael Fassbender)
after his profession — he is a nameless intermediary, a metaphor.
Scott’s entire film is folkloric in its simplicity: when the
well-intentioned lawyer protagonist, the titular Counselor, gets
involved in a drug deal to address some personal financial issues,
he sets off a series of unexpected contingencies that result in
several deaths. Schrader’s film is similarly contained: when
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
sociopathic, grownup trust-fund kid Christian
(James Deen) learns that his girlfriend Tara
(Lindsay Lohan) is having an affair with the
star of a low-budget horror film he’s producing
— a struggling actor and model named Ryan
(Nolan Funk) — he orchestrates intensifying
psychological games with emotionally devastating and eventually
lethal consequences.
Considering McCarthy and Ellis’ confrontational novels, it’s worth
noting that while both The Canyons and The Counselor contain brief
explosions of violence, they are primarily cerebral exercises in
semiotics. This is key to what the films are: expressions of ideas.
(Granted, The Counselor includes one of McCarthy’s most terrifying
creations in a fictional execution device called a bolito.) Above all,
though, The Canyons and The Counselor are nihilistic abstractions
whose violences emerge from moral and emotional absences. In
films whose fundamental elements are their dialogue and
environments, Schrader and Scott direct with shared emphases on
deep-focus compositions, capturing the vast spaces that dwarf
their archetypal players. The characters are ciphers of moral ruin
veiled by physical allure, with The Counselor’s darkly sultry
puppeteer Malkina (Cameron Diaz) playing the mirror to Deen’s
sexually confident, power-driven Christian in The Canyons.
16

The Counselor’s spiky-haired
patsy, Reiner (Javier Bardem),
leads the Counselor through
crowds of sexy partygoers into
his opulent Texas estate while
his sociopathic girlfriend
Malkina coolly plans his demise.
Similarly, the arrogant Christian
asserts that “nobody has a
private life anymore” as he
swaggers through his
high-windowed palace,
monitoring his partner Tara’s
movements, all the while
arranging hookups for her via a
fictional phone app called
Amore.
17
The films overlap in their visions of existence as economy under
21st-century America’s digital capitalism. The Counselor was the
second film Scott shot using the Red digital camera after
Prometheus (the director enjoyed the convenience of color
correction this new technology affords), and the film’s lush
classicism contrasts with The Canyons’ harshly contemporary, Arri
Alexa-lensed images, digital photography is a key aesthetic
element in both films. Both present their contemporary landscapes
as defined by metaphoric ruin and detritus: The Canyons opens
with a montage of derelict movie theaters; The Counselor depicts
cocaine transported across the sun-cooked border in a sewage
truck and — in what might be its bleakest moment — shows a snuff
film victim disposed of in a landfill. Both narratives hinge on the
transactionality of individuals and relationships, their worlds
populated by characters representing units of currency such as
business acumen (The Counselor’s title protagonist), industry
connections (Christian in The Canyons, Westray [Brad Pitt] in The
Counselor), sex (Tara and Ryan in The Canyons), and
deal-gone-wrong collateral.
Further, both films chart their relationships’ currency-tinged
dynamics within the ubiquitous paranoia of digital communication
surveillance and the eroding privacy therein. Scott and Schrader
signal this theme with wealthy characters’ mid-century modern
mansions whose glassy bodies commingle exteriors with interiors.
Amore plays a central role in The
Canyons’ opening scene, which
outlines the plot’s pervading fixations on sex, commerce, duplicity,
surface-selves, and the digital. While out for a bougie dinner with
his assistant Gina (Amanda Brooks) and her partner Ryan, Christian
flippantly proposes Amore candidates to Tara. Given that Ryan, who
has been hired to act in a film Christian is producing, is having a
secret affair with Tara, the scene finds the illicit lovers enacting
two levels of duplicity: faking respect for Christian while also
feigning indifference to each other. This scene immediately
reveals The Canyons’ connections with Ellis’ Chandler-tinted
Imperial Bedrooms (2010), the Hollywood-set meta-sequel to his
debut novel, Less Than Zero (1985): both works envision Hollywood
as a fading illusion defined by deception and exploitation. In one of
The Canyons’ tensest scenes, Tara’s bedroom smart TV
disseminates text messages from one of Christian’s exes, warning
her of his abusive past. The Counselor also finds its grimmest
moment in a menacing message from an anonymous sender — the
title character sees his traumatized reflection on a
sharpie-scrawled snuff DVD.
As demonstrations of strong literary voices filtered through equally
pronounced cinematic perspectives, The Canyons and The
Counselor present a fascinatingly specific 2013 double-feature.
Over a decade later, both films signal prophetic visions of
breakdown — in empathetic corporeality, in cinema genre legacies,
and in the capitalist American psyche. — MIKE THORN

A gangster movie, a story of post-colonial alienation, a broad satire
of academia, and a romantic comedy, Mexican director Fernando
Frías’ latest film, I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me, is many films
in one. Told via a labyrinthian plot structure that juggles a handful
of different epistolary narrators, it’s the story of a Mexican grad
student, Juan Pablo (Dario Yazbek Bernal), who gets extorted into
helping a group of international gangsters right before he leaves to
study in Barcelona. Based on Juan Pablo Villalobo’s novel of the
same name, the film is literary in all the best senses of the word:
filled to the brim with sharp, humorous detail; powered by
dynamic, multi-faceted characters; and narratively dexterous and
inventive. I caught the film at the Black Nights Film Festival in
Tallinn ahead of its Netflix premiere and spoke with Frías
afterwards.
Joshua Bogatin: So, how much of the narrative structure of the
film and the constant playing with literary form was in the novel
itself and how much did you expand on that?
Fernando Frías: Well, the literary structure is completely different,
but there was one key element I took, which is the meta-fiction
aspect of it. Villalobos’ book is always in the first person and keeps
losing narrators as it moves along, but in the film I couldn’t lose
narrators because you need to have a vehicle for the narrative. I
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A CERTAIN
CIRCULARITY
An Interview
with Fernando
Frias
had somewhat of a
passive protagonist who
internalizes everything,
but I wanted to keep him
through almost the whole
thing. So what I decided to
keep was the absurdity
and the storyline, but
change the structure. I
built a world in which
these characters could
resonate with each other
at the same time, rather than having each episode occur distinctly
like the way they’re spread across different chapters in the book.
JB: It’s interesting that you talk about mixing all of these different
first-person narratives into one story, because I think that, while
there are multiple subjective perspectives in the film, visually you
create a lot of objectivity and distance. Characters are always
being framed inside surrounding details of the world and the
reality of the space is very important. How did you develop the
visual language of the film?
FF: I am obsessed with the idea that sometimes we need to see
less to feel more, and so I try to
stay away from being too
didactic. I don’t really like when
logical information is served to
you in the same narrative device
or mechanism that serves you
emotional information. I build
the visual world of my films first
by trying to obstruct visibility,
but I don’t know quite why.
Metaphorically it also works in
this story because none of the
characters have a full view of
the situation, they all only have
partial information. So the space
is filled with frames within
frames, which give you the
pieces of the puzzle each
character represents, framed by
their own interest and situation.
18

FF: Exactly. These
limitations inspire me to
interconnect spaces and
have to be interesting in
a way. It’s kind of like a
childish mission I have:
let’s find which space
gives us the biggest
challenge. It’s all about
having fun and being
playful, but also of
course, first of all,
serving the story.
19
JB: That’s interesting because I’ve been thinking a lot about that
shot in Guadalajara where he’s at the party and the maid is framed
in one half of the frame while the party guests in the other room
are framed on the other half. It creates a very funny, ironic effect. I
imagine it must feel very different in the novel because, if it’s all
first person, how do you get that same play with objectivity and
context?
FF: Exactly. In that scene, for example, there’s nothing about class
intrinsic to it. Working with my cinematographer Damián García,
we both know that it’s important to tell where we are and the
context of the place without spoon-feeding it or simply leaning on
having bland extras just moving around. It’s a way of showing the
world.
Every time I’ve made a film, the producers tell me, “Why do you pick
the most difficult locations?” With the apartment in Barcelona, they
told me, “You can build it on a stage,” and I said, “No, I want to do it
the real way.” Those limits inspire me, I like having to frame in a
way where I have to live with the architecture. It works for me
precisely because the limitations make me more creative. For
example, there’s a shot in the apartment in Barcelona that
Valentina moves into where she leaves the entrance, and there’s a
pan, then she just reappears again in a neighboring window.
JB: Yeah: she walks out of the shot, we pan, and right away she’s in
her room. The apartment, which we’ve never seen before, suddenly
feels incredibly tiny.
scouting process like?
JB: What is your
shot-listing and location
FF: I don’t even know how to describe it because it's different for
each scene. Sometimes when I work with episodic television and
they have a lot of VFX, I think it needs to be very storyboarded, but
in this case there was no storyboard or shot-list. We rehearse a
scene so we know what it looks like, and then I normally start with
the frame that has the power to contain the whole scene; it can’t
be too explicative and it’s got to be interesting, appealing, and have
that range to become something different.
JB: Did the novel have the same framing device as the film where
the homeless man finds the manuscript in the trash?
FF: No.
JB: Where did that come from then?
FF: Well, I wanted a certain circularity to the film with the
beginning and end. Also, at the same time it’s an absurd film that
literally throws itself to the garbage. I don’t know why I thought of
the trash, but it made sense for me because the way I tell the story
is purposefully confusing in a way. You are watching the first draft
of a wannabe writer who’s living a ridiculous and dangerous
situation, and also he’s not the best writer because it’s the first
time he’s writing something. If I wanted the film to feel like that,
but to also be perfectly clear, it would feel artificial in a way. So I
wanted the film to honor the structure of what the character is
able to communicate, but also to dance with the switching
-----------------------------------------------------------------

narratives. So when at the beginning the homeless man finds his
manuscript and starts reading it, he gets bored and throws it up
into the air. It’s not put together, so the pages fly away in a random
order and they come flying in front of the lens, covering it up.
That’s announcing: this is how I’m going to let you know the story,
trust me that it will land somewhere. I’m balancing genres and
tension, but also purposefully deflating the tension to indulge in
humor when it feels flat. So I’ve already told you from the beginning
that it’s going to be like that because the book ends up in the trash.
JB: Yeah, for me it made the whole film feel like a giant joke
because it gives the story this air of absurd futility. That also
connected with me to his thesis on “the limits of humor in Latin
American literature” and that question of what can we laugh at.
From the beginning, the movie telegraphs its punchline, so the
question lingers throughout: “Should we be laughing at this?” How
did his thesis and the idea of the limits of Latin American humor
connect with your understanding of the film?
FF: Well, that’s the essence of the film: what are you able to laugh
about and what aren’t you able to? And someone in the film says, “It
depends.” Depends on what? It depends on who is telling the joke.
If it's the victim, he might be allowed. In Mexico, we tend to laugh
about ourselves; it’s inherent to our culture and in general to many
Latin American cultures.
In the film, I am touching upon violence in Mexico, people getting
disappeared, and the clichés that come along with those. You know
the bad guy is like coming out from… in Spanish I’d say malo de
malolandia [translation: bad guy from bad guy land]. It’s the
classical, cliché thing, but look at the world we live in today. If
someone told us 20 years ago Trump was going to be President, I’d
have a hard time buying it, yet it happens. Or look at the huge
appetite for true crime documentaries now and the way it’s
standardized the way we tell stories. We seem to be, as audiences,
obsessed with finding the secrets and dark forces that lie behind
everything. So I’m trying to comment on that and, at the same time,
to say that there is this other moment in which we are living in
which everything has to be relevant. It’s like with political
correctness and the idea of who gets to represent whose story or
the idea of quotas. I feel like it doesn’t come from values and
truthful conviction; it’s more about wanting to be on the right side
of the story and that it’s something marketable. You want to be able
to say, “Oh, this film was made by this sort of person.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Festivals work like that. If you come from Mexico, you’re expected
to do misery porn or explicit violence without even much context.
So I’m trying to comment on this and joke about it. This film is all
about how we see the other, and that’s kind of infinite.
JB: How important was it to you to have this satire of academia?
FF: Yes, we wanted to make fun of academia, of how useless it is
and this ridiculous idea about “how deep you can go.” There are
subjects of study that are very interesting, but it just lives in its
own world, hardly expanding outside that, contributing to anything,
or changing anything. There are many institutions right now
pushing for certain changes in the world, but with their hands tied
just because of the way politics work. So there’s an absurdity there
and a space for humor out of that ultra-specialization.
JB: I also felt that he sort of Europeanizes himself a little bit as he
moves through the academy, becoming a gender studies major and
trading on his own identity more throughout the film.
FF: Well, yes, because he’s forced to find angles to connect with the
mission. And I don’t even understand that mission very well, but
that’s the point.
JB: Was it a struggle to get the pacing of the film right? I also
admired how little time you spent introducing characters. Even
very important characters seem to simply show up, caught in
medias res, and you just discover who they are later.
FF: I like arriving late and leaving early. It’s a cliche, but it’s true.
The other thing is that I wanted the emotional information to go
one step ahead of the logical information. The logical information
is always there, but it’s catching up with you. I wanted the
absurdity of making the audience keep asking who this person is,
what am I looking at, and then only later connecting it together.
That’s how real life is: I see you with someone else and I don’t know
who it is, but maybe the next day I run into you again and you
introduce me to that person and I connect it with you. I don’t like
films when they’re just pure drama or tragedy. At the end of the
day, you’ve experienced a lot of joy and maybe frustration, a whole
spectrum of emotion, and I want films to feel like that. In order for
them to land in a real way that’s connected more to our senses
than our consciousness, I want that aspect of real life.
20

HESITATION WOUND
Selman Nacar
“Nacar shoots the trial through a series of long, unbroken handheld
shots that move only slightly across their minutes-long
compositions, switching from simply capturing the mundane bustle
of the courtroom at one moment to tense, sustained close-ups of
Canan as she gives her closing arguments in the next. Aided by
some sharp work with shallow focus and an agile use of extras who
always seem to be shuffling in the background or appearing from
the edges of the frame at the tensest moments, Nacar builds a
remarkable amount of tension in a very simple dramatic
framework. What’s most effective about Hesitation Wound is also
Nacar’s refusal to ever let this tension uncoil and the pressure
subside. Eventually, we leave the courtroom again, the trial still
underway, but with no more certainty as to its outcome or to the
defendant’s possible innocence then when we first entered.
Ultimately, when storm clouds appear in the film’s closing
moments, arriving over a landscape shot filled with ambiguity, it’s
obvious how little it matters that we’ll never find any resolution —
the end is coming, who cares how it gets here?” — JOSHUA
BOGATIN
HAJJAN
Abu Bakr Shawky
“Largely a routine melodrama treading familiar terrain, Bakr
Shawky is able to imbue the film with a remarkable sense of
pacing and character development that allows the whole thing feel
genuinely lived-in, allowing for significantly more nuance and
depth than expected for such material. Even Jasser, introduced in
cartoonish villain mode sporting a vicious sneer and snake-like
eyes, is allowed a significant amount of screen time to develop into
someone much more complex. Long scenes of Jasser arguing with
his wife about their “marriage of convenience” and his pursuit of
social glory despite his lack of talent, humanize him and create a
very rich world far from the Manichean order of most family
movies. Bakr Shwaky shies away from overplaying the
melodramatic aspects of the story throughout, encouraging
performances from the child actors that are remarkable in how
subtle and underplayed they are. First-time actor Omar Al Atawi is
adept at affording Matar restraint, conveying depth simply through
action and, at times, touching the Bressonian.” — JOSHUA BOGATIN
INSHALLAH A BOY
Amjad Al-Rasheed
“Ultimately, that’s the essential problem with the film. Inshallah A Boy is in many ways a very good movie that will certainly please its
audience and that deserves to be seen widely for many reasons, but that begs a further question: why should a film so focused on
conveying misery and social injustice be so eager to please viewers? It’s more than a little frustrating when at the end of the movie, after
spending two hours watching Nawal’s situation spiral down into ever more dire circumstance, a happy ending is suddenly spun out of
nowhere and Nawal becomes so flush with empowerment that she even slaps a catcaller on the street. Inshallah A Boy wants to mire in the
dismal circumstances of women in Jordan, but doesn’t want to leave us feeling down. It asks us to root for the underdog, only to show us
that they’re actually the home team. But no one wants to leave a movie feeling genuinely like crap; audiences don’t want it, festivals don’t
want it, and filmmakers relying on government grants don’t want it. What they do want is to make you feel good about yourself and better
about all the little bad parts of the world at the same time. According to these metrics, anyway, Inshallah A Boy definitely delivers.” —
JOSHUA BOGATIN
21

HALLMARK AND BEYOND
Quick Takes on a Selection of 2023 Holiday Films
DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW
“Here’s hoping [director Tim Story] scored a nice fat studio
paycheck, because no one else is getting anything out of Dashing
Through the Snow, least of all audiences looking for a yuletide good
time.” — STEVEN WARNER
DIRECTOR: Tim Story; CAST: Ludacris, Lil Rel Howery, Teyonah
Parris, Madison Skye Validum; DISTRIBUTOR: Disney+;
STREAMING: November 17; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 30 min.
CANDY CANE LANE
“Candy Cane Lane is so anonymous as a festive offering — a prefab
assemblage of holiday parts at best, A.I. spittle at worst — that
there’s no room for any directorial signature at all, despite the
outrageously bloated… two-hour runtime.“ — LUKE GORHAM
DIRECTOR: Reginald Hudlin; CAST: Eddie Murphy, Tracee Ellis Ross,
Jillian Bell, David Alan Grier; DISTRIBUTOR: Amazon Studios; IN
THEATERS: November 24; STREAMING: December 1; RUNTIME: 2
hr.
GENIE
“Let it be said, though, that Genie does contain one of the most
unhinged scenes featured in a motion picture this year... It’s
damning that such foolhardy tomfoolery is a welcome respite from
the one-note drudgery that entombs the rest of Genie. Everyone
involved should have wished for a better movie.” — STEVEN
WARNER
DIRECTOR: Sam Boyd; CAST: Melissa McCarthy, Paapa Essiedu,
Marc Maron; DISTRIBUTOR: Peacock; STREAMING: November 22;
RUNTIME: 1 hr. 32 min.
THE SHEPHERD
“Softley’s film is a deeply flat affair, and offers little of what viewers
clammer or in their Christmas cinema. In the absence of any
technical bravura and emotional foundation, The Shepherd lives and
dies according to its supernatural tilt, which is met with
baffling incuriosity; it’s the movie equivalent of an affectless
monotone.” — LUKE GORHAM
DIRECTOR: Iain Softley; CAST: Ben Radcliffe, Steven Mackintosh,
John Travolta; DISTRIBUTOR: Disney+; STREAMING: December 1;
RUNTIME: 38 min.
THE SECRET GIFT OF CHRISTMAS
“To put it in holiday terms, those who prefer their eggnog spiked
would be wise to check out The Secret Gift of Christmas, a yuletide
Hallmark concoction so self-aware of its own ridiculousness that it
borders on parody… in a sea of sameness, The Secret Gift of
Christmas arrives as a lifeboat of blissful self-awareness. A
Hallmark holiday classic is born.” — STEVEN WARNER
DIRECTOR: Christie Will; CAST: Meghan Ory, Christopher Russell,
Aria Publiocover, Jenn Grant; DISTRIBUTOR: Hallmark;
STREAMING: December 24; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 30 min.
THE NAUGHTY NINE
“Strangely, given its story, The Naughty Nine’s brand of whimsicality
actually situates it more comfortably as a family-friendly watch
than a pure Christmas movie.” — AYEEN FOROOTAN
DIRECTOR: Alberto Belli; CAST: Winslow Fegley, Danny Glover,
Camila Rodriguez, Clark Stack; DISTRIBUTOR: Disney+;
STREAMING: November 23; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 30 min.
CHRISTMAS BY DESIGN
“If Christmas by Design manages to be among the more convincing Hallmark flicks this year, it’s not only for the easy chemistry… its
cheerful ambiance, or visual vibrancy, but rather for the relatable and homey warmth that can be felt in the local hangouts, including an
aw-shucks diner, a cozy bar, and the Christmas market.” — AYEEN FOROOTAN
DIRECTOR: Max McGuire; CAST: Rebecca Dalton, Jonathan Keltz, Joanna Douglas; DISTRIBUTOR: Hallmark; STREAMING: December 29;
RUNTIME: 1 hr. 24 min.
22

KICKING THE CANON
23
MILLENNIUM MAMBO
Hou Hsiao-hsien
Millennium Mambo, Hou Hsiao-hsien's 2001 romantic drama,
premiered at that year's Cannes Film Festival where it received a
rather muted response, even from admirers of the Taiwanese
auteur who was coming off the 1998 period film Flowers of
Shanghai. In an otherwise mildly positive review for the New York
Times, Elvis Mitchell said the film "feels like an episode of The O.C.
directed by Wong Kar-wai" — a sentiment which reflects the
contemporaneous critical tenor fairly accurately, with many seeing
the effort as a failed attempt at garnering a new, younger
audience. Its reputation as a minor entry into Hou's body of work
stuck around for a long time, with a 2008 Reverse Shot piece
written by Chris Wisniewski bemoaning the "'minor' label so
frequently applied to it."
The film did, however, find an audience eventually, and looking
back, it's somewhat perplexing that Hou's lush neon fantasia wasn't
celebrated upon release. It's a rare film that succeeds at sinking its
hooks into an audience from the very first reel: opening on a
tracking shot of fluorescent lights that suggest a road tunnel, the
camera glides down to reveal an illuminated overpass and a
------------------------------------------------------------
young woman, Vicky (Shu Qi), traversing its seemingly endless length
in slow motion as gauzy electronica pulses in the background.
Vicky's voiceover, delivered from the then-future of 2011, looks back
at her life a decade prior as she outlines her tumultuous
relationship with Hao-Hao (Tuan Chun-hao). "She broke up with
Hao-Hao, but he always tracked her down," she recounts, her
distance to the events emphasized by the third-person narration.
While there is a gentle narrative pull to Millennium Mambo's
recollections of parties, relationship drama, petty crime,
lovemaking, and night-time car rides, the episodes of Vicky's life are
fragmented — her narration by turn precedes, accompanies, and
follows the events' depiction onscreen, for instance — which imbues
the film with an ethereal quality that is further heightened by the
pervasive techno soundtrack. Vicky is like a moth to the flame when
it comes to shady boyfriends and nightclubs, and Hou lets her play
out these moments again and again, the elliptical storytelling
suggesting an endless cycle of bad decisions. When she eventually
falls in with Jack (Jack Kao), an older mobster with a more
benevolent aura than the unhinged Hao-Hao, one can't help but
wonder whether or not something will cause that relationship to
sour as well.

Especially to a younger audience, Vicky's taste for that particular
type of lifestyle (and man) might be understandable since Hou is
more than willing to acknowledge the glamour and sensual allure it
holds. But the frequent repetition also renders them exhausting
and ultimately hollow, a feeble attempt at staving off the malaise
that life at the end of history has saddled the characters with.
Millennium Mambo plays much like a music video from the era:
beautiful to look at, light on plot, and heavy on vibes — although
Hou's pop cinema wasn't without peer. As hinted at by Mitchell, the
filmmaker looked to the neon-drenched likes of Chungking Express
(1994) and Fallen Angels (1995) — both directed by Wong Kar-wai —
but also the lonely cityscapes of Edward Yang's Taipei Story (1985).
There are also traces of Lin Cheng-sheng's 1997 drama Murmur of
Youth, which itself took cues from Hou's own Daughter of the Nile
(1987), making for an interesting intertextual exchange between the
two filmmakers.
Millennium Mambo's cinematographer, Mark Lee Ping-bin, who had
lensed Wong's In the Mood for Love the year before, shot the film on
35mm but deliberately gave it a soft digital sheen — José Luis
Alcaine would repeat that trick when shooting Brian De Palma's
Passion (2012) — which, coupled with the production design, has
elevated the film into an aesthetic marker of the Y2K era. But
unlike so much art and media from the time, it isn't mere nostalgia
that has made it so enduring: coupled with Shu Qi's mesmerizing
screen presence — her mysterious glances at the camera during
the opening manage evoke romantic longing, freedom, and
memories of long nights out — the film’s prime achievement lies in
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
KICKING THE CANON
“But unlike so much art and media
from the time, it isn’t mere
nostalgia that has made
[Millennium Mambo] so enduring.
how it both captures and transcends its historical context.
(Wisniewski's Reverse Shot piece smartly notes that the film "[tells] a
story set in the present as a period piece.")
It's extraordinary how much Hou's vividly rendered 2001 still
captures the hangover from a promised future that never
came,channeling the end-of-history melancholy also conjured by
Ryū Murakami's Tokyo Decadence a decade earlier and the digital
lo-fi of Jia Zhangke's Unknown Pleasures a year later. Loneliness,
ennui, and spiritual emptiness run rampant in the gorgeous, glittery
prison of the modern world that Millennium Mambo traps its
characters in — toward the end, characters are even seen through
the cold, omnipotent eye of a surveillance camera — and the
detached style with which Hou approaches this hazy trip down
memory lane forms a fascinating contrast with the emotional
resonance its final moments nonetheless achieve.
Vicky drifts from one moment to the next in an unceasing pattern of
youthful thoughtlessness, a conceit which, in lesser hands, could've
easily made for a trite cautionary tale or even a reactionary warning
of societal decay. But the third-person
perspective, which implies an ambiguous
remove from her difficult past, also suggest
the possibility of change while
acknowledging the past selves we leave
behind. During the film's final moments,
Vicky looks back at her relationship with
Hao-Hao one last time, remembering a tryst
with her former beau during which she
imagined him as a snowman, doomed to melt
away when the sun comes up. "Making love
was sad that day," she says. "Even years
later, she still remembered it." And yet, as
she moved on, the memories became the
only thing tethering her to the sorrow she felt
10 years ago. Hou's vision is bittersweet —
but it is not hopeless. — FRED BARRETT
25 24

KICKING THE CANON
LORD OF THE RINGS:
THE RETURN
OF THE KING
Peter Jackson
25
The great director Paul W.S. Anderson expressed irritation in his
commentary track on Alien vs. Predator (2004) to the common
descriptor used to label films with relentless energy and unceasing
action as “roller coaster” rides. The description misses the source
of the thrilling catharsis of amusement park rides: the anticipatory
climb before the descent into action. A binary of action can be
inferred from Anderson’s casual opining: those that synthesize the
action with other artistic ambitions, and those that use action as
both a means and an end. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King, one of the highest-grossing films ever made
and the culminating entry of the modern epic, challenges that
binary. It’s both a roller coaster in the more accurate description
and an onslaught of what can only be called big filmmaking — the
type we should resist applying the amusement ride analogy to in
the first place. In this, The Return of the King is about as pure of a
spectacle as Hollywood has ever produced: able to capitalize off
two films of ascension only to offer pure thrill for nearly four hours
(in the extended edition). For better and for worse, Jackson’s
demonstration of episodic filmmaking’s ability to have its cake and
eat it too has proved an artistic decision that continues to
reverberate through 21st-century blockbuster filmmaking.
Few movies have ever loomed so large over an era and type of
filmmaking as Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. And like all multi-part
films, no entry in the trilogy stands on its own — and this will
always be their great bane. With that caveat aside, The Return of
the King stands apart from The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two
Towers not just by virtue of satisfactorily closing out the nine to
----------------------------------------------------------------
eleven hours (depending on which editions one prefers), but also
for the complete pivot to pure spectacle. It also benefits from
featuring several largely self-contained narrative and character
arcs: the riff between Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin), the
realization of Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) as the face of a
monomyth, the development of Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and
Pippin (Billy Boyd) into individual personalities instead of
interchangeable comedic reliefs, the entirety of Denethor’s (John
Noble) tragedy, and the best of Sméagol/Gollum (Andy Serkis). The
strength of these individual threads are served well by the film's
writing structure, which meets the climax of Jackson’s vision and
helps establish the final film as a classic blockbuster.
The Return of the King also carries over the best qualities of the
two previous films — otherworldly production design and location,
the exponential weight of the ring on Frodo, and, of course, the
upscaled epic action — but sets aside or resolves the worst
elements of its predecessors: tedious exposition, the entertaining
though vacuous banter amongst the fellowship, and the fraught
editing back and forth between the more important quest of the
ring bearer and the comparatively weightless squabbles between
the various kingdoms of Middle Earth. That latter dichotomy
doesn’t disappear with the final film, but instead, the
non-Frodo/Sam plots, at last, accumulate dramatic weight that not
only complements but flows naturally from their ventures into
Mordor. The large-scale abandonment of J.R.R Tolkien’s interlacing
structure — an alternating tapestry of narrative threads across one
chronology — simplifies the first two “books” but augments the
---------------------------------------------------------------------

final entry and ushers us into an astonishing Homeric climax as
Jackson’s more traditional chronology reaches its finale.
While the director is often credited for his prescience into the
future of Hollywood (though, perhaps, he was just shaping it), less
appraised is his appreciation and indebtedness to the past. In
particular, The Lord of the Rings does not exist without Fritz Lang’s
Die Nibelungen (1924), the first great multi-part operatic fantasy
series. Most obviously, both are based on famous literary works set
in Euro-normative medieval societies involving a magic ring that
grants its wearer world dominion. Both are larger-than-life
adaptations that swell through romance and death, kingmaking
and regicide. Likewise, they both make liberal use of indiscrete
symbolism and hyper-legible stylistic choices — the sort of
directorial choices that are so obvious yet so effective that they
democratize the decoding of their images. Jackson follows Lang’s
lead in creating massive sets, a special dependency on special
effects, and in emptying the source material of most of its
spirituality and political ideology. They also both amounted to
monster runtimes that forced serialization: Lang’s production was
divided into two, while Jackson followed the tripartite structure of
Tolkien’s saga. He even looks to the Austrian “Master of Darkness”
for a lesson in the efficiency of dramatic lighting in creating a
coherent fantasy world. Lang used bold contrasts that approached
impressionism at times, whereas Jackson mostly uses hard key
lighting and often innovatively combines it with various degrees of
edge fill and backlighting to create an angelic or halo effect; this is
especially common in his presentation of the elves, who are the
most divine and sinless of the races of Middle Earth. A more
meaningful distinction between Lang's and Jackson’s approach to
fantasy filmmaking comes in their opposing impressions of
modern life. Lang embraces it: having medieval castles resemble
20th-century skylines and performing a kenosis of almost all
things supernatural. Jackson’s general fidelity to Tolkien disdains
all things about modernity — the utopia of the rural Shire with its
neat family lives stands in contrast to the evil of the more urban
landscapes of Mordor (for another example, see the green pastures
of the former vs. Sauron's campaign of deforestation in The Two
Towers). The collapse of these large, dark urban monuments of evil
upon the ring’s destruction begins the process of land's renewal.
And in one final lesson from Lang, the scale of the production
design is among the most impressive found this century. The
previous film’s high point in terms of the sets, art, and production
design, and more specifically architectural ambition, was
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KICKING THE CANON
emphatically located in Isengard, with its fantasy gothic exterior
and skinny, phallic creepiness; its nadir, on the other hand, was
found in the claustrophobic stronghold at Osgiliath where Jackson
seems either unwilling or, more likely, unable to show more of the
besieged castle than two or three small corners. But The Return of
the King’s expression of the imposing and vast capital of Gondor,
Minas Tirith, and the endless overpowering pit of Mordor minimize
the greatness of Saruman the White's Isengard. (The aftermath
early on of the watery destruction of the fort still impresses,
though it’s nearly entirely omitted from the theatrical version.)
Elsewhere, Shelob’s webby and cavernous lair, shot by
cinematographer Andrew Lesnie in a blue-green tint, entrenches
the camera as much as it does Frodo; the giant spider’s cave is
claustrophobic and labyrinthine, yet also, contradictorily, the path
of escape is always quite legible. The geometric interior takes
inspiration from German Expressionism, an influence that
reinforces Jackson’s bend for a spectacle of danger.
Mordor, meanwhile, resembles Peter Paul Rubens’ poetic
chiaroscuro and vertically structured painting The Fall of the
Damned. Jackson builds off the black, red, and gray chalks of
Rubens’ depiction of bodies being tossed and tumbling into hell and
adds a volcanic center and two discernable faces, Sam and Frodo,
to the visual. When the two wear orc disguises and pass through
the horde on their way to Mount Doom, the crowd of orcs, from
their lowly hobbit perspective, even retain a degree of the
verticality from that artwork and its hellbound bodies. The feelings
conjured simply through its artistic atmosphere are that of a
soul-crushing apocalypse: both a personal scourging and collective
expiration. The depth of texture — and depth of focus, something
lost to many of the 21st-century CGI adventure films that take
inspiration from Lord of the Rings — of Mordor presents an evil as
boundless as the horizon line; at the same time, the color contrast
with the earth tones of the shire folk makes its destruction into a
red and black fiery abyss also feel personal. In retrospect, no
alternative art designs of Sauron’s base of power would have been
able to replicate the morally demanding and mythical milieu of
Jackson’s Mordor. Indeed, we should count ourselves lucky that The
Return of the King arrived when it did. Any earlier, and technological
progress would have hindered ambition; any later, and the studio
system would have likely squeezed any idiosyncratic vision dry,
just as it did with Jackson’s subsequent The Hobbit trilogy. But it
did come at the right moment, and big-budget filmmaking will
never be the same because of it. — JOSHUA POLANSKI
26

design is among the most impressive found this
century. The previous film’s high point in terms of the
sets, . art, and production
IN WATER
Hong Sang-soo
FILM REVIEWS
RELEASE WEEK: NOVEMBER 27 – DECEMBER 1
“Even more so than in The Novelist’s Film, in water explicitly takes
Hong’s way of artmaking as its raison d’être… So, it’s fascinating to
see how, if not his mindset, then how his process is imparted onto
someone on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of life and
experience… unlike Introduction, there is no adult balance to
counterbalance the faces of youth, but only the continually adrift
director, reflective beyond his years, carving out a world-weary
niche all the same.” — RYAN SWEN
DIRECTOR: Hong sang-soo; CAST: Shin Seok-ho, Ha Seung-guk,
Kim Min-hee, Kim Seung-yoon; DISTRIBUTOR: The Cinema Guild;
IN THEATERS: December 1; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 1 min.
27
GODZILLA MINUS ONE
REVIEW BY: Esmé Holden; DIRECTOR: Takashi Yamazaki; CAST:
Ryûnosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki;
DISTRIBUTOR: Tôhô International; IN THEATERS: December 1;
RUNTIME: 2 hr. 5 min.
EILEEN
REVIEW BY: Selina Lee; DIRECTOR: William Oldroyd; CAST:
Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland;
DISTRIBUTOR: NEON; IN THEATERS: December 1; RUNTIME: 1 hr.
36 min.
THE DAUGHTERS OF FIRE
REVIEW BY: Daniel Gorman; DIRECTOR: Pedro Costa; CAST: Alice
Costa, Karyna Gomes, Elizabeth Pinard; DISTRIBUTOR: The Cinema
Guild; IN THEATERS: December 1; RUNTIME: 9 min.
WHITE RIVER
REVIEW BY: Joshua Polanski; DIRECTOR: Ma Xue; CAST: Yuan
Tian, Xu Weihao, Song Ningfeng; DISTRIBUTOR: Film Movement;
STREAMING: December 1; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 31 min.
SILENT NIGHT
REVIEW BY: Matt Lynch; DIRECTOR: John Woo; CAST: Joel
Kinnaman, Scott Mescudi, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ha;
DISTRIBUTOR: Lionsgate; IN THEATERS: December 1; RUNTIME: 1
hr. 43 min.
A MALE
REVIEW BY: Steven Warner; DIRECTOR: Fabián Hernández; CAST:
Dylan Felipe Ramírez Espitia, Jonathan Steven Rodriguez, Juanita
Carrillo Ortiz; DISTRIBUTOR: ddd; IN THEATERS: December 8;
RUNTIME: 1 hr. 22 min.
RAGING GRACE
REVIEW BY: Daniel Gorman; DIRECTOR: Paris Zarcilla; CAST: Max
Eigenmann, Jaeden Paige Boadilla; DISTRIBUTOR: Brainstorm
Media; IN THEATERS: December 1; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 39 min.
LAST SUSPECT
REVIEW BY: Noel Oakshot; DIRECTOR: Zhang Mo; CAST: Zhang
Xiaofei, Lee Hong-Chi, Kara Wai Ying-hung; DISTRIBUTOR: —; IN
THEATERS: November 10; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 59 min.

RELEASE WEEK: DECEMBER 4 – DECEMBER 8
POOR THINGS
Yorgos Lanthimos
“Where Frankenstein; or, The Modern
Prometheus saw modernity as fraught with
the perils of rationalism outreaching itself,
[author Alasdair] Gray’s postmodern
interpretation imagines a stab at personal
liberation precisely through rationalism
reaching its logical end. Taking Gray’s text as
its starting point, director Yorgos Lanthimos
and screenwriter Tony McNamara further
extirpate Frankenstein’s Gothic influence and
fashion, in lieu of it, a whole other landscape
of bubblegum unreality. Poor Things, winner of
the Golden Lion at Venice this year, possibly
marks Lanthimos’ most grandiloquent work to
date and is all the better for it.” — MORRIS
YANG
DIRECTOR: Yorgos Lanthimos; CAST: Emma
Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy
Youssef, Christopher Abbott; DISTRIBUTOR:
Searchlight Pictures; IN THEATERS:
December 8; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 21 min.
LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND
REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Sam Esmail; CAST: Julia
Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, Myha'la Herrold, Kevin Bacon;
DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; STREAMING: December 8; RUNTIME: 2 hr.
20 min.
LA CHIMERA
REVIEW BY: Ryan Swen; DIRECTOR: Alice Rohrwacher; CAST:
Josh O’Connor, Alba Rohrwacher, Isabella Rossellini, Luca
Chikovani; DISTRIBUTOR: NEON; IN THEATERS: December 8;
RUNTIME: 2 hr. 10 min.
THE PEASANTS
REVIEW BY: Joshua Polanski; DIRECTOR: DK Welchman & Hugh
Welchman; CAST: Kamila Urzedowska, Robert Gulaczyk, Mirosław
Baka; DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Classics; IN THEATERS:
December 8; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 54 min.
TOTAL TRUST
REVIEW BY: Noel Oakshot; DIRECTOR: Zhang Jialing; CAST: —;
DISTRIBUTOR: Film Movement; IN THEATERS: December 8;
RUNTIME: 1 hr. 37 min.
28

CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET
REVIEW BY: Esmé Holden; DIRECTOR: Sam Fell; CAST: (voices)
Zachary Levi, Thandiwe Newton, Imelda Staunton, Nick Mohammad,
Bella Ramsey; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; IN THEATERS: December 8;
STREAMING: December 15; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 37 min.
ORIGIN
REVIEW BY: Travis DeShong; DIRECTOR: Ava DuVernay; CAST:
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash, Vera Farmiga;
DISTRIBUTOR: NEON; IN THEATERS: December 8; RUNTIME: 2 hr.
15 min.
THE THREE MUSKETEERS: PART I — D’ARTAGNAN
REVIEW BY: Joshua Peinado; DIRECTOR: Martin Bourboulon;
CAST: François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Pio Marmaï, Eva
Green, Louis Garrel; DISTRIBUTOR: Samuel Goldwyn Films; IN
THEATERS/STREAMING: December 8; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 1 min.
CONCRETE UTOPIA
REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Um Tae-hwa; CAST: Lee
Byung-hun, Park Seo-joon, Park Bo-young, Kim Sun-young;
DISTRIBUTOR: 815 Pictures; IN THEATERS: December 8;
RUNTIME: 2 hr. 10 min.
THE BOY AND THE HERON
Hayao Miyazaki
“To close with a gambit, The Boy and the Heron may very well indeed be Miyazaki offering his own engagement with a spate of
inter-dimensional and time-bending tendencies in Japanese animation that gained some prominence with Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name.,
and in its own way closing a loop of influence that leads back to himself. These films have similarly explored questions of escaping
repetitious cycles and balancing a sense of individualism with national and natural fate; and it may be that here we have a declarative
statement with regard to the difficulty, joy, trepidation, and relief that come in sitting comfortably with one’s own answer to that question
that places us between being and nothingness: how do you live?.” — MATT MCCRACKEN
DIRECTOR: Hayao Miyazaki; CAST: (voices) Luca Padovan, Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan; DISTRIBUTOR: GKIDS; IN
THEATERS: December 8; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 4 min.
29

MR. MONK’S LAST CASE
REVIEW BY: Greg Cwik; DIRECTOR: Randy Zisk; CAST: Tony
Shaloub, Melora Hardin, Ted Levine; DISTRIBUTOR: Peacock;
STREAMING: December 8; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 37 min.
THE LAST WIFE
REVIEW BY: Joshua Polanski; DIRECTOR: Victor Vu; CAST: Kaity
Nguyễn, Thuan Nguyen, Quang Tháng, Kim Oanh; DISTRIBUTOR:
3388 Films; IN THEATERS: December 8; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 12 min.
RELEASE WEEK: DECEMBER 11 – DECEMBER 15
REBEL MOON — PART ONE: CHILD OF FIRE
Zack Snyder
“At least all this plot is welcomely broken up by Snyder’s action,
punctuated by his trademark speed-ramped tableaux. There’s a
remarkable clarity to it as always, and he’s working as his own DP
here… and he offers his cast the chance to finally shut their
mouths and get to work doing what they were hired for: to look
awesome posing. That said, it’s unclear that another hour of story
will be worth slogging through to get some extra action.Rebel Moon
is clearly full of enthusiasm and fueled by earnestness, but Snyder
is totally lost in the weeds, especially regarding the needless
promise of so, so much more of what already doesn’t work here.
For all his sincerity, he’s poured his heart into something that’s
just… air meat..” — MATT LYNCH
DIRECTOR: Zack Snyder; CAST: Sofia Boutella, Djimon Hounsou,
Ray Fisher, Bae Doo-na, Ed Skrein; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; IN
THEATERS: December 15; STREAMING: December 21; RUNTIME: 2
hr. 15 min.
THE ZONE OF INTEREST
REVIEW BY: Lawrence Garcia; DIRECTOR: Jonathan Glazer; CAST:
Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Medusa Knopf; DISTRIBUTOR: A24;
IN THEATERS: December 15; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 46 min.
TRAILER OF A FILM THAT WILL NEVER EXIST:
PHONY WARS
REVIEW BY: Daniel Gorman; DIRECTOR: Jean-Luc Godard; CAST: —;
DISTRIBUTOR: Kino Lorber; IN THEATERS: December 15; RUNTIME:
20 min.
AMERICAN FICTION
REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Cord Jefferson; CAST:
Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, Adam
Brody; DISTRIBUTOR: Amazon MGM Studios; IN THEATERS:
December 15; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 57 min.
FINESTKIND
REVIEW BY: Zachary Goldkind; DIRECTOR: Brian Helgeland; CAST:
Jenny Ortega, Tommy Lee Jones, Ben Foster, Toby Wallace;
DISTRIBUTOR: Parmaount+; STREAMING: December 15; RUNTIME:
2 hr. 6 min.
30

WONKA
Paul King
“We’re aware we are watching Chalamet acting as Wonka rather
than believing in the depth of the character in and of itself, though
this likely won’t be as much of an issue for the children
unacquainted with his mature, profile-building performances. So,
while Wonka never reaches the level of genuine movie magic, like
the best sweet treats, it offers a flavorful diversion substantive
enough to not immediately melt in your mouth..” — TRAVIS
DESHONG
GODARD CINEMA
REVIEW BY: Daniel Gorman; DIRECTOR: Cyril Leuthy; CAST: —;
DISTRIBUTOR: Kino Lorber; IN THEATERS: December 15;
RUNTIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
DIRECTOR: Paul King; CASR: Timothée Chalamet, Hugh Grant,
Keegan-Michael Key, Calah Lane; DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros.
Pictures; IN THEATERS: December 15; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 56 min.
TIME BOMB Y2K
REVIEW BY: Daniel Gorman; DIRECTOR: Marley Mcdonald & Brian
Becker; CAST: —; DISTRIBUTOR: Max; IN THEATERS: December
15; STREAMING: December 30; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 24 min.
RELEASE WEEK: DECEMBER 18 – DECEMBER 22
AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM
REVIEW BY: Matt Lynch; DIRECTOR: James Wan; CAST: Jason
Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole
Kidman; DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros. Pictures; IN THEATERS:
December 22; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 4 min.
THE IRON CLAW
REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Sean Durkin; CAST: Zac
Efron, Holt McCallany, Jeremy Allen White, Harrison Dickinson;
DISTRIBUTOR: A24; IN THEATERS: December 22; RUNTIME: 2 hr.
10 min.
MEMORY
REVIEW BY: Conor Truax; DIRECTOR: Michel Franco; CAST:
Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Josh Charles, Brooke Timber;
DISTRIBUTOR: Ketchup Entertainment; IN THEATERS: December
22; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
SOCIETY OF THE SNOW
REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: J.A. Bayona; CAST: Enzo
Vogrincic, Esteban Bigliardi, Agustín Pardella; DISTRIBUTOR:
Netflix; IN THEATERS: December 22; STREAMING: January 4;
RUNTIME: 2 hr. 24 min.
31
ALL OF US STRANGERS
REVIEW BY: Lawrence Garcia; DIRECTOR: Andrew Haigh; CAST:
Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell; DISTRIBUTOR:
Searchlight Pictures; IN THEATERS: December 22; RUNTIME: 1 hr.
45 min.
A MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD
REVIEW BY: Morris Yang; CREATOR: Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij;
CAST: Emma Corrin, Clive Owen, Harris Dickinson, Brit Marling,
Joan Chen; DISTRIBUTOR: FX/Hulu; STREAMING: November 14

RELEASE WEEK: DECEMBER 25 – DECEMBER 29
FERRARI
Michael Mann
“There is no action without consequences in Mann’s cinema, and with Ferrari he asks us to consider them all — the glory and the tragedy,
the beauty and the ugliness, what we make of ourselves and what we leave behind.” — BRAD HANFORD
DIRECTOR: Michael Mann; CAST: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Patrick Dempsey, Gabriel Leone; DISTRIBUTOR: NEON;
IN THEATERS: December 25; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 10 min.
THE COLOR PURPLE
REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Blitz Bazawule; CAST:
Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman
Domingo, Halle Bailey, Corey Hawkins; DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros.
Pictures; IN THEATERS: December 25; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 20 min.
FREUD’S LAST SESSION
REVIEW BY: Joshua Peinado; DIRECTOR: Matthew Brown; CAST:
Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries. Jodi Balfour;
DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Classics; IN THEATERS: December 22;
RUNTIME: 1 hr. 48 min.
THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE
REVIEW BY: Andrew Dignan; DIRECTOR: Ilker Çatak; CAST: Leonie
Benesch, Leonard Stettnisch, Eva Löbau, Michael Klammer;
DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Classics; IN THEATERS: December
25; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 34 min.
THE CRIME IS MINE
REVIEW BY: Andrew Reichel; DIRECTOR: François Ozon; CAST:
Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Isabelle Huppert, Rebecca Marder, Dany Boon;
DISTRIBUTOR: Music Box Films; IN THEATERS: December 25;
RUNTIME: 1 hr. 42 min.
32

Photo Credits:
Cover - Warner Bros./DC Comics; Page 1 - Wolfgang Wesener; Page 2 - Zipporah Films; Page 4 -
Zipporah Films; Page 5 - Zipporah Films; Page 8 - Zipporah Films; Page 9 - Vinegar Syndrome;
Page 11 - Utopia; Page 12 - Leia Jospe; Page 13 - Utopia; Page 15 - IFC Films/Kerry Brown/All
Star/20th Century Fox; Page 16 - 20th Century Fox; Page 17 - IFC Films; Page 18 - Delia
Martinez/Netflix; Page 19 - Netflix; Page 21 - Red Sea International Film Festival; Page 23-24 -
Palm Pictures; Page 25 - New Line Cinema; Page 27 - Jeonwonsa Film Co.; Page 28 - Searchlight
Pictures; Page 29 - GKIDS; Page 30 - Clay Enos/Netflix; Page 31 - Warner Bros.; Page 32 -
Lorenzo Sisti/Forward Pass; Back Cover - Kino Lorber