D'Angelo day 6
Uncut Gems (Josh & Benny Safdie, USA): 73
D'Angelo saw and loved the new Safdie brothers film too, giving it his highest TFF '19 score so far, a 73 and writing, "Watching it felt a bit like watching Philippe Petit walk the wire between the Twin Towers: exhilarating and nerve-wracking in roughly equal measure. I was pleasantly surprised by Sandler’s paternal gentleness in The Meyerowitz Stories, but it’s hard to imagine him ever topping this majestically self-absorbed performance."This sounds all too like the Safdie brothers; but if Sandler can imbue it with humanistic warmth, that would make all the difference.Lee explains: [Sandler] "plays fast-talking jewelry dealer Howard Ratner, a man who spends his days frantically trying to make money while being followed by the men he owes money to, an exhausting lifestyle he can’t seem to escape.
Wasp Network (Olivier Assayas, Belgium/Brazil/Spain/France): 43. D'Angelo almost cut it when he learned Assayas was gong to recut it. It's about Cuban spies, but boring. Imagine Carlos without Carlos, says D'Angelo. Yes, Edgar Ramirez is on hand, but playing "a dullard this time." "Whatever attracted Assayas to this particular story never found its way onscreen."
To the Ends of the Earth (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan/Qatar/Uzbekistan): 56
"Kurosawa does Coppola—Sofia, that is, removing Bill Murray’s character from Lost in Translation and making it about a young Japanese woman adrift in Uzbekistan. Fascinating change of pace..."
The Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yinan, China): 38
He "rather liked both [Yinan's previous films] Night Train and Black Coal, Thin Ice" but found this "extravagantly empty" and "hated" it. Though "plenty of 'stuff' 'happens'—it's quite a busy film, in fact, replete with lengthy flashbacks and conflicting vendettas" nonetheless D'Angelo felt none carried "emotional weight" "and precious little of it offers much in the way of superficial pleasure, either." So there. I hope I like it better.
He also walked out after 47 mins. on a film about sudden deafness with 12-step overtones:
Sound of Metal (Darius Marder, USA): W/O)
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