Entergalactic (2022)

I found this non-sci-fi's seemingly irrelevant title confusing, until I learned that it shares the name of the Kid Cudi album that provides the soundtrack. Clearly, this is not my usual scene. I chose to watch for the sake of something different.

New York graffiti artist Jabari (Cudi) is about to get a comic book line for his signature character, Mr. Rager (Keith David), tho his excitement is tempered by the publisher's desire to tone down the darkness. Taking more of his attention is his new partying apartment neighbor, Meadow (Jessica Williams). Neither acknowledges their level of mutual attraction until friends egg them on. Alas, Jabari's ex, Carmen (Laura Harrier), is discontent to be just a friend....

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

The fact that most if not all of the major characters in this picture use the actors' real names led me to assume that it was an indie. IMDb tells me that it was just to avoid confusion for six-year-old lead actress Ana Torrent. But independent or not, this art film doesn't exactly look expensive.

In Spain circa 1940, Ana and her slightly older sister, Isabel (Isabel Tellería), watch a dubbed airing of the 1931 Frankenstein. Ana takes special interest in the scene where the monster befriends a little girl. Meaning to poke fun at her, Isabel says that the monster is a spirit who can be summoned in real life. Ana fully believes it, or at least wants to, and goes looking in a vacant sheepfold. Outside of her imagination, the closest thing she finds to that spirit is an injured fugitive (Juan Margallo).

Pitfall (1962)

This has nothing to do with the 1948 U.S. film noir, let alone the Activision video game series. It's another Hiroshi Teshigahara adaptation of a Kōbō Abe novel. Had I realized as much, I would have put this viewing off longer. Still, this feels pretty different from what I saw last month.

The Netflix description is misleading again. Yes, a stranger in white (Kunie Tanaka) pursues a hapless miner (Hisashi Igawa) in the area of a ghost town near an exhausted mine, but it's not just to "imprison" him there: He murders the miner in the first act, after which the miner is a ghost of the type who can't be sensed by the living or move anything. Despite a warning from a fellow ghost (Ton Shimada), the protagonist wants to find out what the murder was about. The answer is quickly plain enough to me: The miner just happened to look exactly like a union leader (also Igawa), and the killer bribes a witness (Sumie Sasaki) to blame a rival union's leader (Sen Yano). Let's just say there'll be more than two ghosts by the end.

The Face of Another (1966)

Hiroshi Teshigahara directed this in the wake of Woman in the Dunes, also based on a Kōbō Abe novel, so it's considered something of a companion piece. It did not fare nearly as well at the international box office, probably because the modern urban setting felt a lot less exotic than the desert. Also, by that time, people were getting tired of artsy projects like Last Year in Marienbad. Still, I got curious.

Following an accident, Mr. Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai) keeps his head wrapped in bandages not for healing but to spare even his wife (Machiko Kyō) the sight of his burned face. Despite her and others trying to support him emotionally, he remains terribly bitter -- until his psychiatrist (Mikijirō Hira) gives him an excellently lifelike experimental mask. It looks nothing like his original face; they use a mould from a hired stranger (Hisashi Igawa), albeit with results that look rather different from him too. Okuyama takes a while to get used to the mask and tires of the doctor keeping tabs on him and expressing concern that the mask could influence his personality. Indeed, he deliberately hides his identity from everyone else as best he can. Whatever he was like before, he seems increasingly corrupt.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

This was actually my first viewing this month, but I opted to wait until after a scheduled Meetup discussion to write my review. It's the kind of film I have trouble evaluating without a broader perspective.

In modern rural Thailand, Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar), around age 60, has a kidney disorder and knows he is not long for this world. Perhaps that's why the ghost of his wife (Natthakarn Aphaiwong) shows up and sticks around. Soon after, their long-vanished adult son (Jeerasak Kulhong) returns as a sort of glowing-eyed yeti, explaining that he got that way from sex with another such creature, which he calls a Monkey Ghost. Everyone in the homestead -- including Boonmee's nephew and caretaker (Sakda Kaewbuadee), who's not as prominent as the title implies -- acknowledges these surprise guests but is not alarmed. Indeed, things progress quite peacefully toward the conclusion, a mix of the inevitable and the unpredictable.

Shoeshine (1946)

In its homeland, this is called Sciuscià, a cognate, because that is what the shoeshiners say when trying to get customers. I guess post-WWII Italy had a pretty strong American presence. Regardless, shoeshine has vanishingly little to do with the plot. It's merely how homeless 15-year-old Pascuale (Franco Interlenghi) and younger housed but impoverished pal Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) make money early on, before things start happening. Perhaps the point is that they occupy a humble place in society. And/or that they soon come to wish they had stuck with their first job, which might have sufficed if they weren't saving up for a horse.

After unwittingly taking part in a scam, Pascuale and Giuseppe go to separate five-boy cells in juvie. Since one of the uncaught deliberate criminals is Giuseppe's older brother, Attilio (uncredited, like most of the cast), the duo agrees not to spill. This gets harder when Pascuale worries about Giuseppe's well-being, but Giuseppe is not apt to be grateful, or even forgiving, for being spared at the expense of Attilio. How well can friendship survive in this environment, even with the prospect of escape?

Scandal (1950)

No, this has nothing to do with the 2010s TV series. This is an Akira Kurosawa film from the same year as Rashômon, which would explain why it gets overshadowed.

Somewhat famous painter Ichiro Aoye (Toshirō Mifune) and more famous singer Miyako Saijo (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) happen to stay at the same hotel, and they engage in friendly conversation on a balcony. Alas, it looks juicy enough for photojournalists to spin a tryst tale. Aoye threatens a lawsuit, but Saijo would rather keep quiet and wait for the whole thing to blow over. Editor Asai (Shinichi Himori) believes that Amour magazine will be most profitable doubling down on its false version of events. Aoye hires the first lawyer to approach him, Hiruta (Takashi Shimura), despite the latter having nowhere near the repute of the defense. Hiruta does sympathize, but he can hardly resist Asai waving money at him to take a dive....

Blind Chance (1987)

I don't recall ever learning about this movie before. It may have been recommended based on political controversy: The Polish government suppressed its release for six years, and part of it is still censored with a caption to indicate as much. I sure wasn't tempted by the Netflix description, which seemed way too vague and, in fact, illogical ("three diametrically opposite points of view"?). Regardless, the picture's popularity, including Martin Scorsese's endorsement, held promise.

Young man Witek (Bogusław Linda) has just lost his father and dropped out of med school, but those events have little bearing on the rest of the plot. From the moment he starts running for a departing train for whatever reason, we are treated to three alternate timelines based on what he may do next, particularly with regard to a stranger in his path. Each timeline sees him take a different political stance (communist, anticommunist, or neither) and a different love interest, two of them his exes.

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

An old French classic is already iffy for me; one that gets reviled in some circles is iffier still. I had planned to skip this one, until I got invited to a Meetup group to discuss it. Hey, if it was bad, at least we could harp on it together.

None of the characters have given names, and the setting is ambiguous apart from a fancy resort. What's important to know is that a man (Giorgio Albertazzi) insists that a woman (Delphine Seyrig) had had a romantic liaison with him at a Czech spa and agreed to meet him again around this time, but she denies ever meeting him before. The other man of note (Sacha Pitoëff) evidently disapproves of the first man's actions and challenges him to games of Nim.

Hamilton (2020)

For all the popularity of the Broadway musical, I was reluctant to check it out. Anachronistic music and blatant racial/ethnic inaccuracy in a story based on true events seemed like punchlines, yet it was clearly not played primarily for laughs. Weirdness without humor is often off-putting. Then I remembered liking Jesus Christ Superstar and decided I had no excuse.

This is not really an adaptation of the play but a screening of a 2016 production thereof, complete with the sounds of a then-live audience. It covers a period roughly from the first time Alexander Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also wrote and composed it) met Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom, Jr.) to, well, the last time. You should already know what that means. If you badly need an early U.S. history lesson, let's just say for now that he helped George Washington (Christopher Jackson) in the Revolutionary War and became Secretary of the Treasury.

Design for Living (1933)

This disc came with Peter Ibbetson, which I skipped because I hadn't allotted enough time, it isn't the more popular of the two, and chasing a comedy immediately with a drama didn't feel right. Having a "double feature" on one DVD seems unpromising for the quality of both movies, but DfL is pretty highly rated and has several famous names attached, including director-producer Ernst Lubitsch.

George (Gary Cooper) and Tom (Fredric March) are friends and struggling artists -- a painter and playwright, respectively -- who nevertheless take a trip to Paris, where they happen to make the acquaintance of fellow American Gilda (Miriam Hopkins), an advertising artist with ideas to improve both men's works. Before long from the perspective of a 91-minute runtime, each man finds out that the other has been seeing Gilda on the sly. Neither wants to let her go, and she doesn't want to let either go, so the trio makes a "gentleman's agreement" to be a circle of platonic friends. This agreement becomes harder to keep when Tom finds enough success to take him out of the city....

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

Oh boy, direction by Robert Bresson again. This time I felt an obligation to watch because it's his most popular work. In fact, it was the highest among the British Film Institute's faves that I hadn't already seen. But that's not very promising to me. Well, at worst, it would be only 95 minutes I wasn't getting back.

Three child siblings adopt a donkey and name him Balthazar. When their family runs into trouble years later, they have to sell him. He has several owners after that, none of them kind. Meanwhile, one of the kids he knew, Marie (played in young adulthood by Anne Wiazemsky), against the advice of others, enters an abusive relationship with delinquent Gérard (François Lafarge), one of his owners. The film focuses about half the time on Balthazar and half on Marie, tho they do share a number of scenes.

The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

Don't read too much into the year of release: Most of the work -- the recording, at least -- was done in the '70s, which is part of why I chose it out of my recent-skewing Netflix list. You might call it Orson Welles' most troubled movie of all, and that's saying something.

The title is also of a fictitious unfinished art film within the film. Its director, Jake Hannaford (John Huston), is "celebrating" his 70th birthday by showing snippets of footage to potential funders; answering obnoxious reporter questions or, more often, having protégé Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich) answer for him; philandering; passing out party gifts; and expressing contempt for the leading man (aptly named Bob Random), who walked away before they could finish. Little does anyone know, as the up-front narration indicates, that Hannaford will die that night.

Dreams (1990)

Wisely marketed by Netflix as "Akira Kurosawa's Dreams," this is my first anthology viewing since...well, another Kurosawa piece. It's also from later in his career than anything else I've seen. I figured I'd like it better than Dodes'ka-den, partly because dreams are bound to be at least close to fantasy.

There are eight stories, generally set in 20th-century Japan. In "Sunshine Through the Rain," a young boy ignores his mother's warning not to go into the woods on a day with the titular weather, because kitsune have weddings then and don't brook human witnesses. In "The Peach Orchard," another boy, missing the peach trees that his family clearcut, sees their strangely human-shaped spirits. In "The Blizzard," four mountain climbers are on the verge of succumbing, possibly to the yuki-onna, before reaching their camp. In "The Tunnel," a former WWII commander walks through a tunnel and meets the ghosts of men who died following his orders and don't know it yet. In "Crows," a budding artist imagines(?) himself meeting an anglophone Vincent van Gogh (Martin Scorsese!) in France and traversing the scenes of several paintings. In "Mount Fuji in Red," a nuclear meltdown rapidly depopulates the volcanic area, with most people deciding they'd rather drown than face cancer. In "The Weeping Demon," on another mountain, radioactivity has effectively turned humans into demons in a Buddhist hell. And in "Village of the Waterfalls," a traveler discovers a contented Luddite village.

Dogville (2003)

Had I paid more attention, I would not have chased the weirdest David Lynch movie I've seen with a Lars von Trier piece. Still, this was one of those culturally significant pictures I'd been putting off for some time.

In what might be the '30s, a stranger named Grace (Nicole Kidman) comes to a remote Colorado town, planning to cross the nearby mountain until local would-be writer Tom (Paul Bettany) sees her and advises against it. Not knowing a better way to elude a gang looking for her, she begs sanctuary. Tom talks all his skeptical neighbors into keeping mum for a period and then deciding whether to send her away. Grace endears herself to them with chores, and for a while, she and the town brighten up each other. But when authorities under the gang's sway announce that she's wanted for crimes, although she couldn't possibly have committed them, the townsfolk become less content with lying to the law and subsequently make life increasingly hard for Grace.

I Lost My Body (2019)

The announcement of Academy Award nominations was the first I'd heard of this Netflix-adopted feature. I didn't bother to learn much about it in advance. The title told me to expect drama, and I knew it was foreign if not French.

Oddly enough, the "I" of the title refers to an entity incapable of verbal communication: a severed right hand that has mysteriously taken on a life of its own. (This isn't a backstory for the Addams Family's Thing; the skin's too dark.) Retaining more than just muscle memory, it sneaks out of a lab fridge in search of the rest of its body, a young man named Naoufel (Dev Patel in the English dubbing). Scattered throughout the movie are flashbacks in the life of Naoufel, the early ones appearing in black and white, often with a camera focus on his hand.

Lust for Life (1956)

To honor the late Kirk Douglas (again), I selected one of his most popular movies that I hadn't seen yet. Only after it arrived did I realize that it was about Vincent Van Gogh, a notoriously unhappy soul who died of violence, making this my most questionable postmortem viewing since The Fisher King in the wake of Robin Williams. Then again, Douglas did tend to play unhappy souls, many of whom died of violence, so maybe this was appropriate.

The story begins with Vincent's attempt to follow in his father's Dutch Reformed ministerial footsteps. In tending poor miner families at considerable cost to himself, he garners the ironic scorn of clerical elders. Alas, he decides it's not the life for him, and after discovering Impressionism, he decides to jump on the Post-Impressionist bandwagon. Drawing and later painting seem to him the only fulfilling experiences, but not consistently. As a then-little-known novice, he needs the support of brother Theo (James Donald), cousin-in-law Anton Mauve (Noel Purcell), and postman Joseph Roulin (Niall MacGinnis) to make ends meet.

Blow-Up (1966)

My only previous sample of director Michelangelo Antonioni was L'Avventura, which was by no means an adventure movie. That may explain why I had told Netflix I was not interested in his first English-language feature. But sometimes I open my mind further and add previously nixed entries to my queue. And after all, this one inspired The Conversation, which I liked.

Thomas (David Hemmings), a London fashion photographer, takes some shots of an affectionate couple at the park. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) doesn't want anyone else to see those pictures, but Thomas feels no obligation to surrender them. Later, after, y'know, blowing them up, he discovers the probable reason for her objection: There's a gunman hiding in the trees....

The Prophet (2014)

I read the Kahlil Gibran book long enough ago that I don't remember much of it, but I know I liked it. It presents some pretty unusual takes on philosophy, and even in the few places where I disagreed with title character Al Mustafa, I could enjoy the poetic presentation. Of course, there isn't much of a plot to the book, so any screen adaptation would have to add to it.

Indeed, Mustafa (Liam Neeson) isn't even the primary focal character in this movie. That honor goes to Almitra (Quvenzhané Wallis), a prepubescent girl who has said nothing in the two years since her father's death. Feeling unwelcome at school, she stubbornly follows her mother, Kamila (Salma Hayek, also a producer), whose job is to care for Mustafa during his house arrest. It's fortunate that Almitra didn't wait any longer to make his friendly acquaintance, because a surly sergeant (Alfred Molina, again with Hayek) shows up to usher him to a ship to his homeland, essentially changing the sentence to exile from his present environs. Many villagers slow their travel to the harbor, expressing gratitude to Mustafa and listening to any wisdom he has to offer. But Almitra overhears that the sergeant has a nastier plan for him....

Loving Vincent (2017)

This is the first time I've known an animated movie's DVD to show trailers only for non-animations. They don't even look similar in theme or genre. Either the distributor doesn't offer any other animations, or LV is really in a class by itself. I suspect the latter. Not many animations are so geared toward grown-ups (it's PG-13), and absolutely no others have been 100% hand-painted.

It's 1891, about a year after the untimely passing of Vincent van Gogh. His mailman, Joseph, who was also a friend and posed for portraits, has tried and failed to deliver his last letter to his brother, Theo. The protagonist is Joseph's son, Armand, who sees little point in the belated delivery and would rather drink all the time, but he still honors his dad's request. Theo turns out to be dead too, but instead of going straight home, Armand begins a series of interviews to try to figure out why "your loving Vincent," whom he barely knew despite posing in his teens, would commit suicide mere weeks after an optimistic letter -- if it even was a suicide.