End of Year MOVIE JOURNAL

[Chris Knipp]

A HIDDEN LIFE (Terrence Malick 2019). Malick departs from his usual themes for a true story of a (now) Christian martyr, Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who in 1943 was put to death for refusing to sign an oath of allegiance to Hitler. This theme involving self-examination and conscience gets the woozy Malick treatment, which doesn't work so well, after three hours, I found the drawn-out action maddening. Some like it though: Metascore 78%. Watched at Albany Twin Dec. 22, 2019.

[Chris Knipp]

CHICHINETTE: THE ACCIDENTAL SPY (Nicola Hens 2019). Is a documentary about Marthe Cohn, née Hoffnung, who is French, Jewish, and 99 years old. She not only served a key function as an informant to the French toward the end of WWII, a function enabled by having grown up fluent in both French and German, but for the last several decades has gone around the world telling her story, accompanied by her American husband, a retired anaesthesiologist. She had been working as a wartime nurse, when the French government discovered her linguistic advantage. Here, she does most of the talking, and she's an impressive old gal. This supplements info found in her 2002 book, coauthored with Wendy Holden, Behind Enemy Lines. Pending release (screener Dec. 2019).

[Chris Knipp]

THE PAINTED BIRD (Václav Marhoul 2019). Czech director Václav Marhoul's remarkable adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's controversial Sixties work is a devastating WWII version of a picaresque novel. It follows a boy from 1939 to 1945, ages six to twelve in an "inter-slavic" invented language to avoid saddling any one Eastern European country with the horrors that occur - too horrible to be taken literally, but how can they be taken otherwise? Through it all the mostly mute boy (Petr Kotlar) is impassive, while seeing eyes gauged out, being beaten, buried up to the neck to be pecked at by crows, be the object of rural sex perverts and a sadistic pedophile, dumped in a manure pit, taught revenge by an ace sniper, put in an orphanage, then, at last, retrieved by his father, whom he may not want to forgive. Gorgeous black and white cinematography helps distance us from the ugliness. The source may have been plagiarized but Marhoul has made it his own. With Udo Kier, Harvey Keitel, Julian Sands, and Barry Popper, among others. This is coming out early next year. Watched on a screener. When the film was released at Venice 14 people are said to have walked out in shock. Metascore 75%. 169 mins.

[Chris Knipp]

LITTLE WOMEN (Greta Gerwig 2019). Every generation needs a new Little Women movie and Gerwig has delivered this warm and loving one, with Saoirse Ronan, her protagonist in her debut feature Lady Bird, as Jo, and Timothée Chalamet and Louis Garrel as notable men in her life, Laurie and Friedrich Bhaer. It's a high-speed, frenzied account. Playing with the chronology, against the advice of my late friend and ace editor Richard Todd, causes confusion about the development of these characters and their relationships. I show this on reporting from a new viewing of Gillian Armstrong's 1994 version, which holds up well. But any adaptation of this bustling novel is a thing of vignettes anyway, and much survives. Watched at Hilltop on opening day, Christmas 2019. Metascore 91%

[Chris Knipp]

UNCUT GEMS (Benny and Josh Safdie 2019). Their brilliant, punishing new study of gambling madness focused on a diamond dealer obsessed with basketball, in a lifetime best performance by Adam Sandler. I cannot recommend it, but it's a triumph for the filmakers and their lead and a compulsive watch. Watched as second of my Christmas Day double bill at Hilltop. Metascore 89%. But this is artistically better than Gerwig's enjoyable but partly botched film that got a 91.

[Chris Knipp]

HARRIET (Kasi Lemmons 2019). A handsome, straightforward telling of the story of Harriet Tubman, Abolitionist leader, escaped slave and leading "conductor" of the Underground Railroad who had blackouts and visions from childhood beatings and talked to God. African American director Lemmons eschews the violent horror of Steve McQueen's more original and powerful but also excessive 12 Years a Slave (NYFF 2013) and focuses instead on this extraordinary woman's anger, courage, and holiness as as she first escapes from the Brodus Maryland farm to The Railway HQ in Philadelphia, then returns to free her family, and mounts 13 more missions recovering 70 people in the 1840's and 1850's. Cynthia Erivo is extremely convincing in the lead. The costumes are precisely accurate but as often happens, the dialogue maybe not so much. The family that had owned Harriet is shown to be economically failing, dependent on their slaves as their most valuable asset, held responsible by neighbors for their own escaped slaves. Some think the film gets too personal about this family but it shows how embedded the "peculiar institution" was. One feels both uplifted and horrified. Watched at Albany Twin New Year's Day 2020. Metascore: 66%.

[Chris Knipp]

1917 (Sam Mendes 2019). Another great period war film from the Brits, like Nolan's Dunkirk, but as dramatically uni-focus as that was many-leveled. Focused in multiple long-shots providing a real-time feel on a couple of lance corporals who must complete an impossible mission across enemy lines in WWI to save a battalion from a doomed "surprise" attack on well-prepared Germans. It's a tour of the Western European Front. Trenches with their rats, lorries, muck and damp, ruined battlefields and farms show Mendes spent his big budget well. Officially out on Christmas, but Jan. 10 in wider venues. Some critics find this too technical, and took off points. But it's horrific, stirring, and richly original. One of the year's best movies. Watched at Sony Metreon, San Francisco, Jan. 4, 2020. See it and find a big, big screen in a full theater. Metascore: 79%. But is a Best PIcture Oscar nominee.