December Digest

Mainly took in new release films this month, including two films purposefully omitted from this entry to be discussed shortly in my soon to be published Top 10 of 2020 list. Also, I've only gotten around to three of the five entries in the Small Axe anthology so far, but have also only found Lovers Rock to be the sole thing of note from what has personally shaped to be quite middling fare. Therefore, it's the only film from the series so far that I'll be elaborating on. Another film only documentation for this month.

FILM:

BLUE SEXTET (1971) (Dir. David E. Durston) - Wild movie. Durston's sexploitation whodunit plays like the fully realized version of the fictional film Jake Hannaford (by way of late Orson Welles) directs in The Other Side of the Wind. Hyper stylized Euro-inspired new age fluff. Between this and the only other Durston film I've seen, I Drink Your Blood, I think I may just have to be a completist with the man's filmography (it's rather short admittedly). Of all the films I've seen from the American grindhouse, Durston's clear art cinema influence into the style and craft of his genre work truly pops out as singularly accomplished. A near perfect cross pollination of different filmmaking modes for me personally.

AT SUNDANCE (1995) (Dir. Michael Almereyda & Amy Hobby) - Like a quaint and lo-fi hangout movie featuring a who's who of names from the 90s indie film boom. I imagine that Sundance is no longer the sparse and laid back scene like it's depicted here. Must be hell now.

MINT JULEP (2010) (Dir. Kathy Fehl & Ian Teal) - An actual shame this film wasn't released sooner to the time it was made. I have zero doubt that were it to properly release sometime in the 90s, it'd be one of the more notable "grassroots" indies still being discussed ala a River of Grass or The Watermelon Woman. So far its the only film Kathy Fehl & Ian Teal have directed, but I can only hope we see the duo return with something else eventually. Always down for regional perspectives as well realized as this.

LIBERTE (2019/20) (Dir. Albert Serra) - For being the most sexually explicit film I saw all year, it's also really the least erotic. I've long anticipated getting into Serra's work and while this easily seems to be his most radically daunting effort to date, only ended up contributing all the more to one hell of an introductory first impression. Kind of feel like this didn't need to be longer than its hour and a half running time, but I do also get how that'd end up defeating the film's experiential purpose in the first place. Would make for a great date movie though.

LET THEM ALL TALK (2020) (Dir. Steven Soderbergh) - With every new Soderbergh I see, I come away feeling more & more predisposed in considering the man as one of the very best formalists currently in the game. Aside from Hong Sang-soo, I can think of no other filmmaker consistently cranking out films of individual rigor year after year with the strike accuracy that each manages to hit than miss. This in particular sees the man at his most economic in years making what is coincidentally enough his version of a Hong Sang-soo narrative. Of the widely accessible new release films from 2020, Let Them All Talk ranks as one of the better choices you can spend time with if you're looking for something new to watch.

LOVERS ROCK (2020) (Dir. Steve McQueen) - I think what sets this film apart as the most accomplished from its relatives lies mainly in its presentation of a less didactic narrative format. Where as Mangrove and Red, White, and Blue recall their historical biographies with cold cutting journalistic recollection, Lovers Rock excels in just showing, with a chronological fluidity that perfectly accommodates its core premise. It ultimately allows for McQueen to abstract his information more and relay his narrative as the deeply felt and nostalgic night of (mainly) good vibes it's reverberated as to most who've seen and praised it for being. As smooth as butter.

MANK (2020) (Dir. David Fincher) - Like many others, I'm also baffled at the precedent of this wet blanket of a movie being what Fincher ended up returning to features with after his six years away working in television. Comes off feeling embarrassingly half-assed and its aesthetics are as ugly to look at as they were lazily doctored. Nothing about this feels like it was made by the luminary whose helped define the American cinema of the past 15 years. What a disappointment.

SOUL (2020) (Dir. Pete Docter) - On one hand, I'm somewhat amused by the semi-mature turn Pixar has taken lately, but on the other, I am also, if not more inclined to find the shift aesthetically disposable. I'm simply not a fan of the photorealistic use of computer animation the studio has employed since Inside Out. On a base ideological level, it's artistically useless. Beyond that, the studio's more stylized character (human & non-human) and location designs are so unappealingly limited on the three dimensional plane that it makes me wish that 2D animation was no longer misconceived as the cheap reduction for 3D many current audiences and studios take it for currently. Though these films have grown more ambitious in their premises, the grounds they walk on surely haven't. I feel as if Pixar is trapped in this animation mode they've painted themselves in over the past decade and it (may) only get uglier.