Reviews of the Bosch

Celebrated American author Flannery O’Connor published two novels and dozens of short stories and novellas in her lifetime. Yet for whatever reason, John Huston’s Wise Blood from 1979 is the only movie adaptation of her work, namely her first novel. A couple years ago, Ethan Hawke semi-adapted some of her stories into the fabric of his biopic Wildcat , but there they are presented in a context apart from themselves. Wise Blood is the only case yet of her story unfiltered -written and produced by Benedict and Michael Fitzgerald, who knew O’Connor personally, as an apparently very faithful translation of her narrative style and voice. It is an intriguing movie -a good one- though I understand at its conclusion why there have not been others. Wise Blood is a dim satire on both religiosity and atheism. It is about a young man called Hazel Motes, played by a still very baby-faced Brad Dourif, who has returned from war disillusioned by faith and inspired to channel that through his own f...

In their trips in a boat out on the lake, Esi’s father would tell her stories that only made sense if you knew the ending. In The Burial of Kojo , Esi tells us a story that we already know the ending to, by virtue of its title -a way of keeping her father’s spirit alive even through the structure of how she presents his narrative. It’s a perfectly poetic choice in a very poetic movie. The Burial of Kojo was the feature debut of Ghanaian director Blitz Bazawule, before he became a creative partner to Beyonc é , directing her visual album Black is King -a companion to her Lion King soundtrack, and subsequently the movie musical version of The Color Purple . Those almost certainly wouldn’t have come without this film though, a much more interesting movie (at least compared to The Color Purple ) that infuses a sense of grand spiritualism and magical realism into a story of some grit and grounded circumstances. A beautifully haunting and enigmatic parable of a movie. It gets a lot of tract...

There is an ethical question hanging over  Portrait of Jason , especially towards the end of the documentary. Is it justifiable to capture a man deteriorating under the influence on camera and provoking with some cruel words certain reactions out of him? It’s a level of manipulation, arguably exploitation that is especially wrong when trying to produce a work of authenticity, like documentary filmmaking is meant to be. And yet, there’s not a whole lot here that can definitively be called authentic. It might just be 105 minutes of bullshitting -we’re not meant to know. In any case, both director Shirley Clarke and subject Jason Holliday have been dead for quite some time and the 1967 movie exists as perhaps the central testament to both figures, whatever the issues and qualms about its making there may be. It is a minimalist and avant garde but still shrewd piece of filmmaking that does allow Clarke to construct a narrative out of a performance very broad and charismatic. It is esse...

Nobody puts any real effort into making action movies look cool anymore. They still can, but incidentally so. John Woo, whatever else you might say about him, certainly cared. Are half the things that the characters in this movie do while gunning each other down practical or even all that effective? No. But the imagery is really exciting to watch regardless. Hard Boiled was Woo’s last film in Hong Kong before he formally made the transition to Hollywood and it is popularly regarded as one of his best movies (alongside his original The Killer a few years before). It is one of the defining films of the Hong Kong action genre and for good reason -its filmmaking and stunt choreography is highly inventive and extremely kinetic in a way that is palpably influential across the action film spectrum. It may be one of the earliest “gun-fu” movies and had a major role in solidifying the global star power of its two highly charismatic leads. An adequate trade-off for what is not a particularly st...

“I’m warning you, you’re about to see a real hot mess.” Queens of Drama  certainly has the right title. It is one of the most bombastically over-dramatic movies I have seen and its chief characters and their extremely turbulent relationship certainly appears to be the driver of most of it. It is also about pop stardom in a distinctly 2000s style with the glitz and the glamour and the broad-sweeping musical hits ,  which feels appropriate. And it is incredibly queer, in both its story and design, likewise hinted at. Even still, I didn’t quite expect what it was. The movie is overbearing, intentionally so at times, and fairly chaotic in its satire that doesn’t gel with its earnest central precepts. But those are still engaging and powerful on their own, backed up by a hyper-saturated aesthetic that both captures the mood of its reference points and, under thoughtful direction from Alexis Langlois, looks wonderfully pretty. Some of the major disconnect comes in the framing device...

Very little happens in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days  -the movie that is. And what does happen is taken very mildly -the most significant developments to its plot take place off-screen, and the characters’ emotions even around harsh themes are subdued. And yet the film has a power to it, akin to something like Jeanne Dielman  -the great icon of minimalist cinema- because it is perfectly in tune with the sensitivity of its subject, especially in Romania in the 1980s. Cristian Mungiu was not the first filmmaker to apply this kind of quiet and discreet tone to a film about abortion in a time and place where that form of medical care was illegal. Another movie it has a lot in common with is Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake  from 2004. But Mungiu’s 2007 film, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes that year, is undoubtedly more haunting -because it speaks not only to abortion, but the broader hostilities facing vulnerable young women in that time and place. It is 1987 in a small Romanian to...

Rainer Werner Fassbinder really knew how to make the most of a set-piece, huh? There is one scene under the opening credits of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant that is a distinct exterior shot. Everything else across a great span of time takes place in the gaudy apartment of the titular character, adorned with nude statuettes and a giant painting on the wall behind the bed of the Nicolas Poussin piece Midas and Bacchus  -a highly symbolic work for the purposes of the story, uniting the famous Greek hedonist with the king so ubiquitous with wealth and status he could turn anything into gold. Their avatars are women here, but function in a similar way, including in their curious relationship to each other. It is somewhat comforting to see a movie from 1972 that is not only about a lesbian romance but a very messy lesbian romance. It’s nearest analogue may be The Killing of Sister George  from four years prior, but that film was a lot more campy and treated its same-sex relatio...

The Young Girls of Rochefort  might be the comfort movie of the French New Wave. It's certainly one of the bubbliest and most spirited -a film by Jacques Demy that follows up on his masterful The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , with which it has a lot in common -the big exception being a tone of bliss and optimism to replace bittersweet regret. It is a movie with a summer festival and big dance numbers and a broadly grinning Gene Kelly. What miseries there are in the characters are dispelled by the end -it is perhaps a purer tribute to old Hollywood musicals than Demy's last film, imbued with all of his and composer Michel Legrand's signature charms. Set in the port town of Rochefort, the story concerns two twin sisters, Delphine and Solange played by real sisters (though not real twins) Catherine Deneuve and Fran ç ois Dorl é ac -the former blonde, the latter redheaded. They work as ballet instructors but dream of finding love and moving to Paris. Over the course of a weekend the...