End of the year 2024 Movie Journal

[Chris Knipp]

Early January 2025:

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LOVE SONGS/LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR (Christophe Honoré (2007). On my own DVD. Though Manohla Dargis later called this an "odd, witty, touching film," noting how it evokes Godard and Truffaut, other American men around me at the press screening seemed to have no use for this and it felt like my secret pleaasure. The songs by Alex Baaupin are in a literate, wispy, very French style and it's shot in a gray, wintry Paris around the Bastille neighborhood. That and the plot line evoke a kind of sublime melancholy and a turn toward gayness. When his girlfriend dies Louis Garrel, in a prime early role, turns to a young gay lyçée boy (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), who has developed a crush on him, for solace. This was after MA MÈRE, REGULAR LOVERS, and DANS PARIS (the latter I saw 'dans Paris,' in Paris, too). LOVE SONGS was in Competition at Cannes and won the César for best musical film. Leprince-Ringuet, Garrel, and Léa Seydoux all cropped up again together in Honoré's LA BELLE PERSONNE the next year.

[Chris Knipp]

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NICKEL BOYS (RaMell Ross). See my revised review of this powerful reimagining of the Colson Whitehead novel. The POV shooting somewhat in a Terrence Malick manner can be questioned,many specific factual details of the novel are lost, but the effect is visceral and the San Francisco audience yesterday (Jan. 5, 2025) was on the edge of their seats. Metacritic rating: 91%. (This was in the pre-Oscar top ten but has dropped below.)

[Chris Knipp]

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BIRD (Andrea Arnold 2024). A teen girl wandering a slummy rural area between two parents, searching security that's lacking, naturalism winding up with a strong supernatural solution where a man called "Bird" (Franz Rogowski) turns out the be a giant bird, when needed, and a little bird carries a note up to a second floor window. There is another good role for Barry Keoghan as a multi-tattooed nutter who sells hallucigenic frog slime to fund his impulsive marriage, and some vivid non-actor kids. Arnold's sense of the danger of disorderly parents is here, and this was a tough, complex shoot for Arnold, but Peter Bradshaw's right when he says, "it’s a minor Arnold, with fluency and energy." I have wanted to see it since all the publicity from Cannes. Availble on Apple, Amazon and Fandango. But first see ARnold's important 2009 FISH TANK. Metacritic rating: 74%.