Unlike some of these movies, where you see the trailers one million times until you get sick of them, I saw the trailer for Vengeance one single solitary time, but that was all I needed, because it definitely looked like my kind of movie. It looked great, but ended up being way better than I expected! The best of all possible outcomes…
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Yes, this is a story about a (punk) rock band, based on an autobiographical graphic novel by the writer/director’s wife, Coco Moodysson, but by all accounts, it is a loose adaption and probably more fiction than not. As a story of people on the margins of mainstream music, though, it couldn’t be more appropriate. We Are the Best! covers about a year in the lives of three early-1980s Stockholm thirteen-year-old girls who form a band despite only one of them knowing how to play an instrument. This is my favorite movie.
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One of the things we’re focusing on is actually returning to our three month seasons. So we’re in the process of confirming most of the titles we’ll show from October to December. I always liked programming a season. There’s a different feeling when you can see a lineup for three months. Like the ebb and flow of the ocean tide. You can see series come and go and how they comment, interact, dialogue with each other.
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I was listening to a movie review podcast and they were mentioning some recent independent films that they hadn’t had time to see yet, one being Neptune Frost, described as a sci-fi musical. I was immediately intrigued. Later that day I was looking to see if anything interesting was playing at the American Cinematheque, and there it was, Neptune Frost, that very night at 10p! Clearly, it was kismet.
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There are, of course, literally hundreds of music documentaries out there with their own well-worn cliches and WATFS is no outlier there. It ticks all the boxes: the band forms, loses members, gains members, finds it’s sound, lots of rock and roll hero stories, missed opportunities, breakthrough, and eventual success. The story is told through interviews with people in and around the band accompanied by a wealth of archival performance footage and photographs. In other words, it’s not breaking acres of new ground here. It simply tells an interesting and entertaining tale over two hours and fifteen minutes.
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One of the problems a film programmer runs into again and again these days (though thankfully not as often as you would think) is how to handle problematic films and filmmakers…
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When I saw the poster for Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, I immediately knew that this was a film I wanted to see. It turns out I was completely right, and I rather wish I hadn’t seen the trailer, which gives away too much. On the other hand, it’s not exactly the kind of film where you don’t know right from the start whether the cleaning woman who wants a Dior gown is going to end up with a Dior gown, so it’s hard to spoil, but there are a few twists, and one nice moment I would rather not have known in advance.
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On the surface, Her Smell bears many of the same rock biography hallmarks that I railed against in last week’s introductory screed but there are significant variations in this film to elevate it above the irritatingly predictable “biopic” template. The most glaringly obvious of these qualities – and one that I think bears mentioning before going on any further – is that it’s a work of fiction…
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One of the fathers of film history, director Jean Renoir once remarked, “The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience and a little love we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man.” One of the prime examples of this in his career is his 1932 comedy Boudu Saved from Drowning, where he doesn’t hold judgement on any of his characters, no matter what walk of life or class they come from.
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All of this is to paradoxically say, I MISS THESE KINDS OF INTERVIEWS AND FILM WRITING. I miss them because they basically emphasize in their form and content that cinema is exciting, worthwhile, and important. And I feel that even more strongly today than I did as a teenager in the throes of discovering incredible movies.
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I’m sure there are a lot of people who will look at the title of this documentary and go, “Oh my God I’m so sick of that everlasting song,” and I’ve got to tell you, I don’t blame them, but they will be missing out on the story of an extraordinary life.
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