Phantom Thread - which started at Christmas - tells the story of Reynold and Alma in England in the 1950s. Reynold is a fashion designer, a maker of awesome and very exclusive dresses, an artist - and he is very willful & abrasive. Alma is a waitress. They become a couple and the film focuses on a love story between two very different characters, a very special version of the beauty and the beast and a little bit like George Bernard Shaw’s "Pygmalion". "Phantom" is a meditation about fashion, art, craftsmanship, perfectionism, luxury, food & devotion. Every shot was painstakingly crafted like the exquisite creations of the dressmaker. Director Paul Thomas Anderson, who also wrote the script, gave the pair witty dialogues spiced with a sharp humor. It is remarkable that Anderson did also the cinematography, not even Stanley Kubrick & Alfred Hitchcock did that. He delivered a feast for the eyes. I watched the 70 mm version in New York´s AMC Loews Lincoln Square theater and got enchanted by the film`s visual magic (image below).
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri also started in December. A grieving mother blames the local cops for not solving the case of her daughter who got abducted, raped & murdered. She rents three billboards, to shame them and to revive the interest in her daughters case which starts a series of events. "Three Billboards" belongs to the black comedy`s which cast a light on America´s hinterland, filled with peculiar characters. The film is about grief, persistence, revenge & punishment but also about forgiveness and mixes violence with humor. There were two outstanding performances: Frances McDormand as the grieving but tough as granite mother and Sam Rockwell as an aggressive moronic and insecure province cop. Ben Davis`s superb cinematography magnified the film`s strengths.
Earlier last year I saw 2 movies which fascinated me as well:
I enjoyed Blade Runner 2049: Set 30 years later than the original the new film follows again a Los Angeles Cop, who is hunting & killing humanoid robots. The film is set again in an alternate world with a broken down economy & environment combined with an advanced technology. The plot touches again philosophical questions about identity and the reliability of memories. I indulged into the outstanding esthetics. Director Villeneuve, cinematographer Roger Deakins and their crews created a work of fine art. Their visions are filled with tableaux & images which reminded me of the works by Richard Serra, Anselm Kiefer, Anish Kapoor, Gerhard Richter & other contemporary artists (image on top of this post).
I was also fascinated by A Ghost Story - an interesting take on the afterlife topic. A man got killed and exists furthermore as a ghost, watching how the world around him is changing. The film is very slow and the audience has time to observe the ghost. In the begin I was a bit irritated because the ghost was just someone covered with a white sheet - with two black holes for eyes - like a ghost in a children`s theater. But I got fast used to that and then it made sense. More and more I could see the world with the ghost`s eyes.
Camouflaged Tales Of Sex & Violence
The movie year 2017 had some films which weren`t as strong as the above mentioned but quite enjoyable:
The Beguiled. Sophia Coppola shot a remake of a Southern Gothic psycho drama from 1971. During the American Civil War a wounded & deserted soldier got shelter in a girl´s school deep in enemy country. The place is very isolated, there are just the females and the young man, which sets off a chain of natural and unfortunate events created a kind of fairy-tale world. Some scenes reminded me faintly of Brothers Grimm`s original fairy tales, like "Cinderella", "Little Red Riding Hood" & "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats", which often are camouflaged tales of sex & violence. Are there fairies & witches? Cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd intensified these impressions with blurred & misty images which created a somewhat spooky scenery.
Atomic Blonde is a spy film set in Berlin in 1989, when the Berlin Wall was crumbling, the last days of the Cold War. A female British agent (MI6) reports about her recent mission in Berlin which went messy. The frequent very rough but aesthetically choreographed fight scenes reminded me of Chan-wook Park`s masterpiece "Oldboy", but they were even more brutal & explosive. The glances on Berlin`s rapid & peaceful transformation gave the film a special quality. I was fascinated by Charlize Theron who combined beauty with fierce violence. In some scenes she acted like Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction.
Alien Covenant was not as strong as the first three Alien movies but watchable. The animated predatory creatures moved extremely swift and hyper-aggressive. That caused intense horror/action scenes, the strength of the movie. The film was partly set in an awesome landscape. I liked Michael Fassbender who had an interesting double role, but I missed Sigourney Weaver`s character Ripley badly.
I, Tonya tells the story of Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding who got in the
year 1994 a live-long suspension from her sports because of an alleged attack on her rival & Olympic team mate Nancy Kerrigan. The comedy-drama looks like a TV show with a lot staged interviews and flashbacks. I cared about Tony, a redneck girl, who got drilled & bred by a white trash and hyper-ambitious mother and chose an abusive boyfriend & husband with dubious friends. The reckless & moronic behavior of some characters reminded me of the movie "Fargo" even though the story lines are very different. Allison Janney as the hyper-tough mother will linger in my memory for a while.
The Most Overrated Film Of The Year
Unfortunately I also saw the most overrated film of the year: The Shape of Water. The movie has a ridiculous plot: A woman, who works as a cleaner in a classified government facility, starts a romance with a human shaped amphibian creature, which is captured there. Director Guillermo del Toro tried too many things, making a funny, romantic & erotic horror comedy musical and he wanted to cater the PC crowd by overstuffing the plot with too much empathy. "The Shapw" is kitschy, inconsistent and the special effects are pedestrian. The leading amphibian figure, played by an actor covered with a ridiculous mask, looked pathetic & ridiculous, like a character in Punch-and-Judy show for little children. A waste of time & money.
Stay tuned!
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