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RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- We found Kiyoshi Kurosawa's semi-serious, semi-tongue-in-cheek sci-fi film Before We Vanish one of the best premieres of last year. The trailer for the American release plays it straight, but captures the wry verve of the film. Highly recommended.
- We adore the output of Poverty Row studio Republic (Driftwood, The Inside Story, I've Always Loved You), but rarely have had the chance to see the movies on celluloid and looking good. So we'll be front row, center for the Museum of Modern Art's "Republic Rediscovered" series, curated by Martin Scorsese. But just as good as any of those 1940s classics is the trailer for the retrospective, cut by filmmaker Gina Telaroli.
- The first look at Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, Gus Van Sant's new film, set to premiere at Sundance. It stars Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, and Rooney Mara.
- The Cinémathèque suisse has paid homage to Jean-Marie Straub by commissioning a series of tribute videos by such luminary friends as Bernard Eisenschitz, Jean-Charles Fitoussi, Valérie Massadian, Peter Nestler, and Jean-Claude Rousseau.
- For the 40th anniversary of the blood red giallo classic Suspiria, the maestro Dario Argento offers commentary in a new video by Sight & Sound.
- With the release in cinemas of Guy Maddin's new film The Green Fog, we discovered the Canadian filmmaker has put online the searing 2015 satire of filmmaking, war, and war filmmaking, Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton. A truly bizarre and darkly humorous happening.
- Pedro Costa as cut a trailer for a retrospective at the Cinémathèque française devoted to one of the great Portuguese filmmakers—and one of Costa's mentors—Paulo Rocha.
RECOMMENDED READING
Poster by Midnight Marauder
- One of the best and most effusive articles on Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread (other than our own, of course), is Geoffrey O'Brien's rave for the New York Review of Books:
It is indeed a triumph of stitchery, combining disparate colors and textures into an apparently seamless garment. To watch it for the first time is to be continually teased by contradictory possibilities, waiting for the moment when one of the characters will be revealed as a psycho-killer, or when all will turn to smiles with the realization that love conquers all. Initial reviews revealed a certain puzzlement with its evasion of easy categorizing. Love story? Gothic melodrama? Psychological study? Ghost story? Fashion show? Comedy of manners?
- A great film flying under the radar of most is Let the Summer Never Come Again (2017), the epic feature debut of Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze. Kelley Dong, at Reverse Shot, pinpoints its unusual accomplishment:
...Let the Summer Never Come Again gracefully strips love down to the fact that it starts and persists. There are countless questions regarding love and narrative, love and cinema, love and cinema and war. Asking them often becomes a poetics unto itself. But Koberidze has taken a grand step in form, forward and out of the cave, and it seems he has arrived at his answer.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- We've started a 5-part dialog between Mike Thorn, Isiah Medina, Chelsea Phillips-Carr, Isaac Goes, and Neil Bahadur about George Lucas's first six films in the Star Wars franchise.
- Recent reviews on the Notebook include those for Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World, Guy Maddin's The Green Fog, Jaume Collet-Serra's The Commuter, and Steven Spielberg's The Post.
EXTRAS
- The band Sparks pays tribute to the maverick Hong Kong director Tsui Hark.