Tag: reviews

THE BRUTALIST (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Brady Corbet
CAST: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 93% Certified Fresh

PLOT: When a visionary architect and his wife flee post-war Europe, their lives are changed forever by a wealthy client.


Maybe I’m a victim of too much hype.  Maybe that’s partly my fault, too, as I waited to see Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist until after it had been nominated for a whopping ten Oscars, including the so-called “Big Five:” Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay.  As a result, my expectations were possibly a little too high.  I admit it.  However, even if my expectations hadn’t been inflated, I don’t believe The Brutalist would have affected me any differently.  It never lost my interest during its 3.5-hour running time, but it never achieved the kind of liftoff I felt I was being prepped for.  At the end, I was left with more questions than answers, which can be acceptable for some films, but for this one, I felt like I was left out of the loop.

In 1947, László Tóth (Adrien Brody), an Austro-Hungarian Jew, successfully emigrates to America, fleeing intolerable conditions at home, but is forced to leave behind his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and his mute niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy).  He was a respected architect in his home country, but now he is part of the huddled masses, represented in a sensational shot as his ship sails past Lady Liberty, the camera tilting so she is upside-down and cattywampus in the frame.  That really got my attention, for some reason.  If you want to really drill down, it could be visual foreshadowing for how László’s American experience will not be quite as stable as he had hoped.  Or maybe director Corbet just liked how it looked.  Either way.

Although László’s overriding priority is to somehow get his wife and niece to America, he must first get a job (after first engaging in a surprisingly frank and raunchy sex scene with a prostitute).  His first safe harbor is with his Americanized cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who runs a custom furniture company with his shiksa wife, Audrey.  It’s through this job that László meets American millionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce), a man who will unwittingly shape László’s life for the next several years.  Harrison has a son, Harry (Joe Alwyn), who looks like a distant relative of the Hemsworth clan and is a condescending racist, let us not mince words, but who, in his own words, tolerates László’s presence because of his architectural skills.  (Harrison wants László to design a community center in honor of his late mother.)

This is all just in the first act of the movie, before the intermission.  The Brutalist moves with a deliberate calmness, in spite of its thriller-esque title.  I was reminded of Doctor Zhivago [1965], as it covers large swatches of László’s life with nice attention to detail, never hurrying, but never losing my interest.  The second act finally introduces Erzsébet, László’s wife, for the first time in two hours (hope that’s not too much of a spoiler).  The plot spins out for the rest of the film as a series of conflicts between László, his wife, Harrison and his son, and the crew building the community center that László has designed.  László becomes more irascible as changes are proposed and approved without his knowledge, plus he must deal with a change in his wife’s condition.  There is a detour to Italy where László and Harrison must decide on which marble to use for the center’s, er, centerpiece, and it’s here where an act is committed that, although it feels like it came out of left field, does not seem too surprising considering the behavior of the perpetrator during the first couple of hours.

As I was watching The Brutalist play out, I was repeatedly reminded of another film, featuring another madman with a single-minded focus, also played out in an earlier era of American history, though it takes place decades earlier than The Brutalist: Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood [2007].  Both films have the same deliberate pacing, the same focus on men of industry, their familial and professional challenges, even the same kind of jarring, atonal score playing in the background during key scenes.  But while The Brutalist is at least equally as well made as There Will Be Blood, the latter movie reached out and grabbed me by the lapels and didn’t let go until the final scene, ending with a bang and not a whimper.  I cannot say the same about The Brutalist.  I give props to the craft of the film, to the filmmakers who clearly had a lot to say and needed the time to say it.  The editors knitted everything together and gave the film a very specific voice.  But as the film’s epilogue played out, and I realized how it was about to end, I sank a little lower in my seat and thought to myself, “Well, this is mildly disappointing.”

Sidney Lumet once wrote words to the effect of, “If your movie is over two hours long, you’d better have a lot to say.”  The Brutalist does have a lot to say about the Jewish experience in post-war America, about the single mindedness of gifted artists, about the casual racism embedded in white America that persists even today.  But I couldn’t get away from the feeling that it could have said it in a movie that wasn’t long enough to require an intermission, that didn’t answer questions that were left unanswered (how and when did Zsófia suddenly start speaking?  where did Harrison go??  what exactly happened on that stream bank between Harry and Zsófia???), and that didn’t leave me feeling as if I’d watched a correspondence course video on American architecture instead of a movie.  Again, it’s well-made and occasionally beautiful to look at.  It’s not a BAD movie.  It’s just not a GREAT one.

THE LEOPARD (Italy, 1963)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Luchino Visconti
CAST: Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon, Paolo Stoppa
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 1860s Sicily.


Visconti’s intimate epic The Leopard evokes the spirit of so many other films, in all the best ways, that it’s hard to know where to begin.

It’s epic in scope and intimacy, like Doctor Zhivago.  The opulent costumes reminded me of Amadeus, and the lush scenery reminded of Barry Lyndon.  The final ballroom sequences must have influenced the wedding party in The Deer Hunter.  The literate screenplay refining tons of background exposition resurfaces in movies like JFK and Nixon.  The theme of a grizzled older man facing his own obsolescence is echoed in scores of Westerns from The Wild Bunch to Unforgiven to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

In short, The Leopard takes bits and pieces of many of my favorite films and consolidates them into an absorbing movie that held my interest from beginning to end, despite its esoteric setting: Italy during the tumultuous years of the “Risorgimento,” when the aristocratic ruling classes were faced with extinction as the middle classes rose up, rebelled, and created a democratic Italy.

We first meet Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster) as he and his extended family are attending vespers in an upstairs room of their palatial mansion.  Their ritual is interrupted by sounds of commotion and argument coming from outside the room; turns out the dead body of a soldier has been found in the garden.  (In retrospect, this seemed to me an elegant metaphor for the entire rest of the film: a family’s stability and comfort in ceremony and formality being interrupted by outside forces intent on tearing down the old order in favor of the new.)

The dead body is forgotten very shortly amid the return home of a beloved nephew, Tancredi Falconeri (the dashing Alain Delon).  His return is short-lived as he intends to leave and join the middle-class army under General Garibaldi.  Meanwhile, Prince Salina comprehends the way the wind is blowing in his country and befriends a man, Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa), who USED to be in a lower class, but who is now on the same social footing as the Prince himself.  As the newly instated supervisor of elections, Sedara wields considerable power in the imminent new society on the horizon, and the Prince knows what must be done, despite his misgivings.

From there, The Leopard evolves into a vivid tapestry of life in the rustic Italian countryside, set among some of the most beautiful Tuscan/Sicilian backdrops I’ve ever seen.  Some of the exteriors, showing seas of wheat or olive groves with peasant workers in the foreground, looked like museum-quality oil paintings.  Some soapy material is introduced, but it never panders, never descends into schmaltz.  For example, Tancredi falls in love with Don Sedara’s daughter, the luscious Angelica (Italian knockout Claudia Cardinale), at the expense of breaking the heart of Concetta, one of Prince Salina’s daughters.  We watch as the Prince boldly strides into a seedy quarter of town to visit the rundown apartment of his mistress.  When his priest rebukes him for this transgression against his wife, the Prince explodes: “What do you want from me?  I’m a vigorous man.  I can’t be content with a woman who crosses herself before hugging me!  …I had seven kids with her.  You know what?  I never saw her navel!”

While this dialogue is both funny and not, it highlights the way the Prince has always viewed himself: as a man of noble birth whose behavior is no one’s business but his own, regardless of morality or social niceties.  But this same man is intelligent enough to know which way the wind is blowing and how to modify his behavior accordingly.

Everything concludes with a magnificent ball held by a neighboring nobleman, attended by “anybody who’s anybody” including the Prince, his family, Tancredi and Angelica, and literally hundreds of others, decked out in some of the greatest costumes I’ve ever seen on film.  During this lavish party, some final decisions are made, and the Prince contemplates what will happen to him and his family, and his entire class, after his death.  The live orchestra plays several waltzes and dances by the one and only Nino Rota, the scorer for Coppola’s The Godfather and numerous Fellini films.  As a result, yet another great film is evoked: as the celebrants dance in a line and weave their way throughout the great house, I was reminded of the famous ending of Fellini’s 8½ [1963] and its conga line of circus performers.

Some time ago I read Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Goldfinch.  While it didn’t deliver breathless thrills like a Crichton technothriller, it was nevertheless engrossing.  The language of Tartt’s prose transported me into the world of her hero and his morally complex journey like few other books had before or since.  That’s exactly what happened with The Leopard.  I expected it to be a “spinach” movie [good for you, but yucky taste], so my expectations were a bit low, despite its massive reputation in film circles.  But, like the other Visconti film that I’ve seen [Rocco and His Brothers, 1960], it breaks free of the mold I had created for it and becomes something grand and operatic.  I have a slight issue with the very final scene (I was hoping for something a little less open-ended), but if you have the patience for it – and if you don’t mind watching Burt Lancaster overdubbed into Italian – The Leopard is a treasure worth digging for.

THE WILD ROBOT (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Chris Sanders
CAST: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 97% Certified Fresh

PLOT: An intelligent helper robot winds up stranded on an island populated only by wild animals.  To survive its new environment, it adjusts its programming, with unexpected results.


Just days after watching Flow [2024], a dialogue- and human-free animated film about animals struggling to survive after a cataclysmic flood, I watched The Wild Robot, also human-free, also starring mostly animals, and also about the struggle for survival, but it adds conventional dialogue and an intelligent robot in search of its purpose.  In broad, REALLY broad strokes, they are similar, but don’t bother asking me which one is better.  I give them both a ten-out-of-ten, each for different reasons from the other.  Flow may be literally unique, at least in my experience, but The Wild Robot tames its genre and bends it to its will, creating one of the most heart-tugging movie experiences since Wall*E [2008].  If you’re prone to crying during a movie, this is a three-hanky film, at least.  (Penni went through five, herself.)

On a dark and stormy night, a mysterious container washes up on the shores of an uninhabited island.  Inside is Rozzum 7134, an intelligent helper robot with exceptional physical capabilities and the speaking voice of Lupita Nyong’o.  Hope she gets her royalty checks.  Upon escaping her would-be watery coffin, Rozzum searches the island for the one thing that will give her existence meaning: a task to complete.  The opening scenes get us off to a hilarious start as she tries to complete tasks for various animals, to no avail.  In an intelligent bit of screenwriting, she powers down for a couple of days and, through passive listening, effectively learns the language of the animals around her.  In a lesser movie, this feat might have been handled with the push of a button.  I liked the fact the writers went for something a little easier to swallow, science-fiction-wise.

Through circumstances which I will not reveal, Rozzum winds up as the guardian for a newly-hatched gosling, and as the unlikely friend of a fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal, whose voice was utterly unrecognizable; I thought it was Matthew Broderick).  The gosling imprints on Rozzum, which she finds bothersome.  A helpful mom opossum, Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), warns Rozzum that the gosling must learn to feed itself, swim, and fly by the next fall so he can migrate with the other goose; otherwise, it will starve during the harsh winter.  Presto…a task!

Eventually, Rozzum is shortened to Roz and she names the gosling Brightbill (Kit Connor).  As she undertakes her task of raising the gosling, Roz’s programming…evolves.  She starts to actually care for the little guy.  She starts asking questions that robots aren’t supposed to ask.  She exhibits all the early warning signs of helicopter-momism.  And all the while, she debates whether to activate the internal beacon that will let her makers know where she is…

Because the plot is so dependent on tugging those heartstrings, that’s all I’ll say about it.  Let me talk instead about Wild Robot’s visual style.  The backgrounds and characters are gorgeous, sumptuous, evocative of oil or acrylic paintings.  I could mention two or three specific shots right now that contain some of the most beautiful animated imagery I’ve seen since Pinocchio [1940], but I don’t want to give anything away.  (Hint: butterflies and geese.)  In this way, among others, it shares a lot of DNA with Flow, whose backgrounds and characters also resembled hand-painted objects.  I don’t even want to think about how long it took to create such a painterly style and make it look so effortless and organic.

I also liked the way Wild Robot used its story to make a pointed commentary, but not in the direction I thought it would go.  From the trailers, I assumed it would be yet another paint-by-numbers story about preserving nature or life, which was already covered as well as it possibly could be covered by Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant [1999].  Instead, Wild Robot makes some eloquent statements about the terrifying task of parenthood.  At one point, Roz, who is programmed to solve problems, discovers the task she’s undertaken – raising a gosling, i.e., being a parent – is a task that could potentially never end.  She experiences the fear of almost losing a child.  The joy of watching Brightbill learn to fly, while at the same time realizing that means he will one day migrate.  As I list the plot points here, it sounds like the movie is composed of cliches, but I can assure you, it’s not.  All of these nuances, and many more, are allowed to occur organically without the slightest hint of being nudged along by the screenplay.

DreamWorks has created possibly their best animated film since…gosh, I’ll go all the way back to The Prince of Egypt [1998].  It’s a crowd-pleasing adventure with a point, which is a hallmark of only the best science-fiction movies/stories.  There are real stakes on the line.  There are some actual deaths in the story, which surprised me for some reason, but there you are.  It looks sensational.  It’s smart.  I can’t say enough about it.  The Wild Robot was one of my most favorite films of 2024.

FLOW (Latvia, 2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Gints Zilbalodis
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 97% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Somewhere deep in a forest wilderness, a solitary Cat barely survives a cataclysmic flood by clambering into a boat with an assortment of other animals; their survival will depend on their ability to help each other.


Nearly twenty-five years ago, Disney released an animated film called Dinosaur [2000] that was touted as being an industry game-changer.  The premise was revealed in a stunning, epic-length teaser trailer that fired my imagination.  Some of you may remember it.  Using state-of-the-art CG animation, and with no spoken dialogue, we watched as a dinosaur egg on prehistoric Earth was flipped out of its nest, carried away by scavengers, dropped into a river, swallowed and regurgitated by a fish, then plucked out of the water by a pterodactyl that soared over magnificent real-world vistas and plains before being dropped accidentally into a jungle canopy where the egg was discovered by a family of, I think, prehistoric lemurs.  A reminder: all with no spoken dialogue.

I remember thinking, wow, Disney is going to attempt the impossible: create a feature-length animated movie with no spoken words.  I was stoked.  What an experiment!  Hasn’t been done since Fantasia [1940]! And if anyone can pull it off, it’ll be Disney, right?  Imagine my disappointment when I went to see the movie, the opening scene plays out exactly as shown in the teaser, the lemurs peek through the foliage at the fallen egg, and one of the lemurs opens its mouth…and talks.  Not just human speech, but with a New York-Brooklyn-esque accent that almost sounded like Bugs Bunny.  Dreams shattered.

I mention that story because Flow, the recent winner of the Golden Globe for Best Animated Motion Picture, promised the same thing in its trailer: an animated film without words, starring only animals on a perilous journey.  I was skeptical.

Until I watched the movie today.  Not only does it deliver on its promise (making Dinosaur look shallow and childish by comparison), it sets some kind of crazy bar for mystical, awe-inspiring visuals that I would put on the same level as Avatar [2009] or Dune [2021].  Yes.  They’re that good.  And, according to IMDb, it was all created using only Blender, a free, open-source animation software tool.  Flow is a remarkable accomplishment.

The story opens with Cat wandering a forest.  None of the animals are named, of course, nor were they named by the animators.  They were all referred to simply by their species or breed: Cat, Whale, Bird, etc.  After being chased by some dogs, including a friendly Retriever, Cat curls up in the top floor of an abandoned, expensive-looking forest cabin with nary a human in sight.  Where are all the people?  No answer is given.

With ominous abruptness, a cataclysmic flood sweeps through the forest, leaving Cat and Retriever stranded at the cabin as the waters steadily rise.  Retriever hops into a passing rowboat occupied by the other dogs from an earlier scene, but Cat understandably passes on this opportunity and eventually finds itself sharing a second boat occupied by a grunting, monosyllabic Capybara.

…but this simple plot summary doesn’t begin to do justice to the experience of simply watching this film.  I am super glad I saw it on the big screen first, 3rd row back, so the screen filled my field of view.  The whole movie reminded me of the best oceanic scenes in Finding Nemo [2003], crammed with detail, lavishly rendered, so that you sort of fall into the world.  There are hints to indicate that the forest and the lands beyond, now flooded, were once populated by humans, but they have all disappeared.  Statues of animals.  Top floors of houses still untouched by water, but not for long.  And, on a distant hilltop, a massive statue of a cat, on which Cat must find refuge at one point.

The look of the film is something I’m not going to be able to describe very well.  Partnered with the smooth CG animation itself, the main animal characters nevertheless have a hand-painted quality to their coats and fur.  The virtual camera moves as if being held by a real cameraman, reminiscent of the best scenes in the first Avatar.  There is a magical, spiritual sequence towards the end of the film (you’ll know the one I mean) that took my breath away and rivals anything from Pixar or Studio Ghibli.  I may not know precisely what it means, but to be honest, I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now.  I just know that it is a spectacular scene.  There are subtle hints that this world may not even be Earth as we know it, or when we know it.  Mystery abounds!  I love it.

I must give special mention to the animation of the lead character.  Cat has moments of cat behavior so specific and real that, even if you’re not a cat person or watched umpteen cat videos on YouTube, you will recognize it as being 100% authentic.  For that matter, the same could be said of all the animals in the film.  I must be honest and report that there are times when, viewed through a lens of “is-this-realistic”, the animals behave in a way that does not compute with reality.  I highly doubt a capybara would be able to figure out how to work the rudder of a sailboat…and yet, in this movie, it does, and it’s fine.

Which brings me to the one problem I can imagine some folks might have with the film: the ending.  I can’t tell if the right descriptor is “elliptical” or “open-ended” or “inconclusive.”  Perhaps it’s a plea from the filmmakers for cooperation and teamwork in an age where uncontrollable outside forces are doing their best to prevent it; like these animals, we’re all in the same boat.  Or maybe that’s not the message.  The beauty of Flow is that the ending is subject to interpretation, thanks to the lack of dialogue simply telling us what it means.

Frankly, I’m not too fussed about extracting the message from Flow.  I am too grateful that a film like this even exists to lose sleep over its Deeper Meaning.  It is a film constructed out of wondrous sights that harken back to the days of Pinocchio and Fantasia [both 1940], when animators and filmmakers gave equal weight to story and visuals, and it’s one of the best animated films I’ve ever seen.

MAXXXINE (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Ti West
CAST: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Bacon
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 72% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In 1985 Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.


When I started posting my blissful reviews of X and Pearl [both 2022], I got one response more than any other: “Wait till you get to MaXXXine; it’s the weakest of the trilogy.”  Having just watched it, I would say that calling MaXXXine the weakest film in this trilogy is like calling Return of the Jedi [1983] the weakest film in the original Star Wars trilogy.  You may be technically correct, but it’s still a great ride and a better film than many others in this genre.

Six years after the bloody events of X, we pick up the story of Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) as she auditions for a film role in Los Angeles.  She’s been signed by a devoted but semi-skeevy agent, Teddy (Giancarlo Esposito in a fabulously bad hairpiece), and she has experienced modest success as a porn star.  But she longs to spread her wings in “legitimate” films, because as we all remember, Maxine craves fame more than anything in the world.  As she never tires of repeating: “I will not accept a life I do not deserve.”

Just as things start looking up for Maxine’s career, a package is left on her doorstep…a VHS tape labeled ominously, “For Maxine.”  When she pops it into her VCR, she’s treated to a shot from her filmed but unfinished porn movie from six years ago…evidence which would link her to those horrific murders and endanger her newfound success.  Meanwhile, the infamous real-life serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka “The Night Stalker”, terrorizes Los Angeles at night, not to mention a copycat killer who is branding his victims with pentagrams.  How these murders are linked to Maxine, and when and where John Labat (Kevin Bacon) comes into play, is not for me to divulge.  And one by one, Maxine’s friends and co-workers are turning up dead…

The plot of MaXXXine is nothing new, let’s face it.  What makes it sparkle is the wit and TLC provided by director Ti West and his collaborators.  For anyone who was alive in 1985, this film is like a stroll down memory lane.  I found myself thinking about Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood [2019], with its loving recreation of late-1960s Los Angeles and serial-killer-related plotline.  That’s not to say MaXXXine is ripping off Q.T.’s film, not at all.  Both films have an immense affection for their respective timeframes and have gone to great lengths to immerse us in that culture.

Another filmmaker that came to mind during MaXXXine was Jordan Peele, director of his own trio of horror neo-classics: Get Out [2017], Us [2019], and Nope [2022].  Ti West’s films share a lot of characteristics with Peele’s films.  The Maxine trilogy looks like a million bucks on screen, despite what must have been very limited budgets.  The plots and screenplays are airtight with one or two minor exceptions.  (Peele’s plots are more Twilight Zone than reality, so they get a bit of a pass on plausibility.)  And the characters are intelligent, sharply drawn, and rarely fall into cliched behavior.

If MaXXXine is not quite as terrifying as its predecessors, I’m prepared to forgive it.  Whatever it lacks, it makes up for in its besottedness with Hollywood.  There is a scene where one character chases another through a Universal backlot (oddly deserted, but whatever); they run through various movie sets, including the town square featured in Gremlins [1984] and Back to the Future [1985], winding up at – and I almost could not believe this – the Bates Motel and even inside the Bates house behind it.  Only a director/screenwriter deeply in love with the movies, and horror films specifically, would dare to write a scene like that into their script, and I loved it.  (Trivia note: they had to get permission from the Hitchcock estate first…awesome.)

I haven’t even mentioned the movie’s subtext.  The movie Maxine has gotten a part for is being directed by a woman, Elizabeth Bender (the pleasingly towering Elizabeth Debicki), who believes The Puritan II is her chance to prove that her voice is worth listening to in an industry dominated by male voices, especially in 1985.  If the only way to get people to listen is to make a B-list horror movie with A-list concepts/ideas, so be it.  Two of the best horror movies I’ve seen in recent years were directed by women: The Babadook [2014] and Saint Maud [2019].  And yet, out of over 1,850 movies in my personal collection, only 70 were directed by women.  I guess things haven’t changed that much in the movie industry in forty years.  Discuss.

MaXXXine begins with a quote from Bette Davis.  I won’t recite the quote here, but it implies that an actor isn’t a star until they’re considered a monster.  I hope that’s not true.  But for Maxine Minx…if that’s what it takes, well, then…that’s what it takes.

NIGHTBITCH (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Marielle Heller
CAST: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Jessica Harper
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 59%

PLOT: A woman pauses her career as an artist to be a stay-at-home mom, but her domesticity takes a surreal turn.


[SPOILER ALERT…if you plan on seeing Nightbitch, avoid this review.  This movie, like most movies, works best on the viewer if they have no idea what’s happening or what’s about to happen.  Consider yourself Spoiler-warned.]

Nightbitch shoots out of the starting gate like a thoroughbred – or a greyhound, if you will – but about halfway through, it runs out of narrative steam.  I felt like a gambler watching a horse race, watching my horse lead the pack around the first turn, already spending the winnings in my head, and then my horse fades a bit, then a bit more, and by the time we get to the finish line, I’m tearing up my ticket in frustration.  I needed a WIN, not a PLACE.  There goes my trifecta.

Amy Adams plays an unnamed Mother who has put her promising career as an artist on pause to be a stay-at-home mom while her also-unnamed Husband (Scoot McNairy) pursues his career as a…um…well, whatever it is, he has to travel a lot, leaving Mother at home with, you guessed it, Son (played by adorable twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden).  Referred to throughout the movie as “my guy” and “sport” and “little buddy,” Son is a typical toddler in the throes of the terrible twos: cute for long stretches, maddeningly frustrating for longer stretches.  [Ed. Note: the author is not a father, has no plans on becoming a father, and will never possess the immense dedication it takes to rear a child, so don’t expect him to embrace the chaos of toddler-hood because it ain’t gonna happen.]

Mother is going through an identity crisis, set up in a brilliant opening scene where Sally, the woman who assumed Mother’s job at an art gallery, asks her, “Do you just love getting to be home with him [Son] all the time?”  Mother answers the question with a little more honesty than Sally or anyone had a right to expect, including this tidbit: “I am deeply afraid that I am never going to be smart, or happy, or thin ever again.”  I am a straight Hispanic cisgender male, so I’m here to tell you, I will never understand that mindset, but I am reasonably certain there are untold millions of moms out there who, if they listened to Mother’s opening statement, would say, “AMEN, sister.”

A little later, Mother delivers an internal monologue where she reflects that, as a mother, you can squeeze someone into the world “who will one day pee in your face without blinking.”  Again, I’m not a parent, but I know that’s truth in cinema right there.

After a few more establishing scenes of Mother interacting with Son, who absolutely REFUSES to go to sleep at night or eat anything for breakfast except, apparently, hash brown patties fried in butter, some odd things start to happen.  At the playground, some stray (?) dogs approach her as if she’s their best friend.  Mother notices her sense of smell has become much more acute.  Son helpfully points out that her back is hairy.  And, in a creepy Cronenberg-y moment, she notices a lump growing at the base of her spine just above her rump.  Curiosity gets the best of her.  She heats a needle, lances the lump, and…well, if you remember the title of the film, you have an idea of what pops out of that lump.

This was all wonderfully thrilling stuff as a movie lover.  I’m thinking, “My god, this is a Spike Jonze movie told from a woman’s perspective!  I’ve never seen anything like this!  This is gonna be GREAT!”  Mother starts to enjoy eating a lot of meat.  She starts to play “doggie” with Son, growling and barking at each other like two puppies.  The two of them eat their lunch at a deli with no silverware…or hands, to the consternation of other diners.  Son doesn’t sleep at night, so Mother, in a genius parenting move, buys a dog bed and gets Son to play “doggie” and sleep in the dog bed at night.  Presto, problem solved!

And more and more dogs start showing up at her door, at night, sometimes bringing gifts: small dead animals.  One night she walks outside, starts digging around, and an astonishing transformation takes place…

I know, I know, SPOILERS, I get it.  But it’s important to get across just how brilliantly original the first act of the film is, because the second act is, alas, all downhill.  I am not saying that the film’s message is unimportant, not at all.  I admire the film because of its message, and because it was being delivered in such an original way.  But then we get into conflict with Husband, who is desperately trying to understand why their 2-year-old is now sleeping in a dog bed on the floor, or why their cat suddenly turned up dead on the front porch, or why his wife suddenly wants a separation.  It must be said, Nightbitch is remarkably even-handed with the Husband’s dialogue.  He is not reduced to a 2-dimensional sitcom husband.  When she lays into him for not supporting her career, he fires back with a well-reasoned argument.  Their dialogue could be turned into a first-rate play.

But instead of exploring the surreal nature of Mother’s new condition, the movie settles into soap-opera territory, with only the occasional nod to the mystical incidents in the first act.  I distinctly remember, in the middle of the second act, feeling as if a balloon had deflated in the plot.  I imagine defenders of the film might say, “Well, the second act is where the weird stuff has to take a back seat to deal with the real issues at hand.”  Okay, maybe that’s true from a real-world perspective, but to me, it felt as if the filmmakers were on the verge of showing us something mindboggling, then backed away from the precipice at the last minute.

Does that make me guilty of critiquing a movie for what I wanted as opposed to what I got?  I guess it does, as much as I dislike that tendency in myself.  I feel there are so many different ways the movie could have gone in act two, could have leapt gleefully over the edge of convention and truly broken the mold with this movie.  When it became clear what they were doing instead, my elation evaporated.

I give Nightbitch a generally favorable score, though, based on the mad inventiveness of the first act and the plot in broad strokes, and also on the incredibly brave performance from Amy Adams, who maybe has two scenes in the entire film where she seems to be wearing any makeup.  She also appears to have to put on some weight for the role, which is not something I can ever recall seeing a female actor do.  Male actors have turned that kind of thing into a cottage industry, but when was the last time you saw a woman do it?  That took guts.  Watch Nightbitch for Amy Adams’ performance and for the story, even if the movie doesn’t follow its own plot to a satisfying conclusion.

NOSFERATU (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Robert Eggers
CAST: Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgård, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 85% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The true OG vampire movie gets a fresh coat of paint in this gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her.


Allow me to begin, as so many great films do, with a couple of flashbacks.

2018: The indie band Weezer records and releases their polarizing cover of Toto’s stone-cold classic “Africa.”  While recorded and produced with all the modern techniques at their disposal, fans of both bands say, correctly, that this new version is virtually identical to the original…so what was the point?  Couldn’t they have put some kind of new spin on it, like (for better or worse) UB40 and their cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love”?  Why bother?

1991: Orion Pictures releases The Silence of the Lambs, an adaptation of Thomas Harris’s terrifying psychological thriller.  It goes on to win the coveted “Big Five” at the Oscars: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay (Adapted).  Having devoured the book during one summer vacation, I go to a screening expecting to be wowed.  But…because the filmmakers stuck SO closely to the book (with some minor exceptions), there is little to no suspense for me.  While I am genuinely floored by how well-made and well-acted the film is, I do not experience any of the thrills and chills felt by those viewers who had NOT read the book.  I knew ahead of time what they would find in the corpse’s throat in the funeral parlor, how Lecter would escape from the courthouse, and how Starling would stumble upon Buffalo Bill’s house.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a stellar movie.  But it was never truly scary for me.

Which brings me to Robert Eggers’s long-gestating remake of THE original vampire movie, Nosferatu.  Based on the immortal silent classic of the same name from 1922, directed by F.W. Murnau, the story will be familiar to any serious film/horror buffs, especially since Murnau “borrowed” liberally from Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, without first obtaining legal permission from Stoker’s estate.  How liberally?  Here’s a quote from IMDb: “All known prints and negatives were destroyed under the terms of settlement of a lawsuit by Bram Stoker’s widow.”  The only way the film survived was via 2nd-generation copies from other countries around the world.  Plagiarism?  Or homage?  I would normally say here, “You be the judge,” but the courts seem to have answered that question pretty definitively.

I mention this because every version of the Dracula mythology, starting with Nosferatu all the way through the semi-campy Hammer films to Coppola’s famous “low-tech” version and beyond – all of them tell the same story with only minor changes.  Consequently, the thing I look for in those films is not WHAT they’re telling me, but HOW they’re telling it.  Any student of pop culture knows Bruce Wayne’s origin story, so Batman Begins [2005] holds no surprises there, but the story is told extremely well, and so you roll with it, you know what I mean?

With Eggers’s Nosferatu, the production values on display are magnificent.  Eggers gets the mood and tone of a genuinely gothic horror story exactly right, as I knew he would, based on his previous films, especially The VVitch [2015].  The colors are muted to recreate the vibe of a black-and-white film, which paradoxically makes some of the scarier scenes even scarier.  The performances all around are top notch.  Poor Nicholas Hoult is saddled with the thankless Thomas Hutter role, stuck in straight-man mode the entire film; but Lily-Rose Depp had me thunderstruck with her performance as Ellen, Thomas’s wife, and the dependable Bill Skarsgård delivers the goods as Count Orlok, with a proper Transylvanian moustache (right out of the history books, haters) and an accent thick enough to tar ten miles of a country road with.

But let’s think about this for a second.  Those of you unfamiliar with the story of Nosferatu might be thinking to yourselves, “Who’s Thomas Hutter?  Who’s Ellen?  Don’t you mean Jonathan Harker and Mina?”  Well, naturally, those are the names the vast majority of filmgoers are going to be familiar with, not Thomas and Ellen and Count Orlok (which for my money is a much creepier name than “Dracula,” but I digress).

And therein lies part of the problem with this film.  I was so thoroughly familiar with the Dracula story that, even though this new film is a wonder to behold, it held very little suspense for me, since I knew exactly what was going to happen next, beat for beat.  There are, of course, cosmetic differences here and there: Thomas’s visit to a Romani village before he arrives at Orlok’s castle…Orlok’s straight-up possessions of Ellen…the highly effective jump-scares with the dogs here and there.  But I’ve seen it all before, MANY times.

(By contrast, I just recently watched one of the greatest slasher movies I’ve ever seen, X [2022], and it has virtually every slasher-movie-trope imaginable, and yet it somehow managed to transcend its own genre and become some kind of crazy masterpiece.)

In fact, in a very unexpected twist, there actually were two genuinely scary/creepy moments for me, and neither of them featured Count Orlok himself, at least not in the flesh.  They both involved Ellen, Thomas’s new wife, who becomes literally possessed by Orlok’s influence in scenes that legitimately give The Exorcist [1973] a run for its money.  Ellen thrashes about, rolls her eyes into the back of her head, speaks in an unnaturally guttural croak, bends backwards impossibly far – is Lily-Rose Depp a contortionist on the side? – and generally scares the bejeezus out of her husband and the audience.  On the strength of these two scenes alone, in addition to the general excellence of filmmaking craft on display, I would have no hesitation in recommending Nosferatu to moviegoers.

So, yes, despite my disappointments at the story level, given there were virtually no surprises plot-wise, I still give the movie a favorable rating just because it’s so well made.  If it had been created in a vacuum, if there had never been a vampire movie before this one, I believe I would have been creeped out to a much greater degree than I was, and this would have been hailed as an instant masterpiece.  But it is darkly beautiful to look at and wonderfully moody; there are many shots that are very nearly duplicates of shots from the original, which I enjoyed on a film-geek level.  I look forward to Robert Eggers tackling purely original material again.  He knows what he’s doing.

X (2022)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Ti West
CAST: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Kid Cudi
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 94% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make an adult film on a rural Texas farm, but when their elderly hosts catch them in the act, the crew find themselves fighting for their lives.


I like great horror, but I have never enjoyed slasher films, with the clear exceptions of Halloween [1978] and Psycho [1960].  They tend to fall too easily into the formulas lampooned in Scream [1996] and The Cabin in the Woods [2011] and lose all suspense when the stories cave in to ancient tropes and traditions.  You’ve seen one bloodthirsty masked strangler/slasher/axe-murderer jump from behind a tree at night, you’ve seen them all.

So, how do I explain my delight and gushing praise for X, the indie horror phenomenon that turned Mia Goth and director Ti West into industry darlings?  I can only report that, despite following timeworn traditions of the genre, this film somehow found a way to ratchet up the tension to almost unbearable levels.  I’m not exaggerating.  The night I finished watching it, I found it impossible to fall asleep right away.  My mind was racing and rehashing what I had just seen.  It is the creepiest, scariest horror film I’ve seen since Hereditary [2018], and I freaking LOVE Hereditary.

The plot is right out of Slasher Films 101.  The year is 1979.  An aspiring group of wannabe porn stars pile into a van and head to a rural Texas farm where the crusty owner has agreed to rent out his barn and guesthouse, ignorant of this motley crew’s true motives.  The composition of the group reads like the beginning of a dirty joke: a cowboy, a film school graduate, his mousy girlfriend, two strippers, and a black guy (Kid Cudi…yes, that Kid Cudi).

Upon their arrival on the farm, ominous music and occasional breathy noises on the soundtrack tip us off that something just ain’t right…not to mention the blood-soaked prologue.  The elderly farmer, Howard, has an elderly wife, Pearl, but we don’t see much of her at first.  There’s a magnificently tense scene when one of the strippers, Maxine (Mia Goth), skinny dips in the lake behind the farm, unaware of the gator eyeing her from the opposite bank.  It slithers into the lake just as Maxine starts to swim back to the dock.  An overhead shot shows Maxine swimming leisurely, and the gator getting closer and closer, and…I mean, I’ve seen scores, if not hundreds of movies with similar scenes, and very few of them evoked the kind of terror I felt as that gator closed in on Maxine.

Why?  This isn’t even a monster movie about a killer gator, it’s a – let’s be honest – formulaic movie with creepy old people and a slew of young people just waiting to be dispatched in hopefully creative ways.  But something about how Ti West directed this film got right under my skin, in a good way.  Even in the gloriously retro scenes when the ersatz film crew is shooting a sex scene, there is still an undercurrent of unease over the whole enterprise.  (And by the way, if I were to make a list of things I didn’t think I’d ever see in a movie, a topless Brittany Snow in a brief-but-raunchy sex scene would be really close to the top.)

It’s hard for me to describe the intensely creepy atmosphere in writing, especially because I want to preserve the film’s surprises for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet…and boy, I wish I could be there to watch it with you.  There’s the scene in the farmhouse between Maxine and the farmer’s elderly wife, Pearl, where you have absolutely every reason to believe it’s about to turn all Texas-Chainsaw, and then the scene abruptly pivots.  Pearl looks like your stereotypical crazy old lady; that’s the best way I can put it.  I seem to remember a few characters who looked like her in the background of Shutter Island [2010].  We learn a little bit about Pearl’s past, and we can see that she’s sharper than she looks…or maybe she’s just crazy.  I’m not sayin’.

When things heat up around the halfway mark, the tension factor skyrockets.  I learned a phrase a while ago that captures it perfectly: the film becomes a stress sandwich.  Situations arise that we’ve all seen before, but in this movie I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen next.  When Jackson (Cudi) searches the lake at night and makes a creepy discovery right out of Hitchcock.  When “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays at a critical moment.  When Lorraine (Jenna Ortega…yes, that Jenna Ortega) goes to the cellar looking for a flashlight.  When a soundly sleeping Maxine gets some unwanted physical contact from a nocturnal visitor.  (That sound you just heard is me shuddering.)

I could write more about the plot, but I would give something away, I’m sure.  To call the film’s finale satisfying is a vast understatement, right down to the very last line that, in my book, is as perfect as “Nobody’s perfect!” or “Tomorrow is another day!”  Ti West has created a slasher movie for people who hate slasher movies, and it’s one of the best modern examples of the genre that has ever been made.

(P.S.  Don’t spoil this for yourself by Googling it or anything if you don’t already know, but make sure you watch the closing credits.  When I saw the name of the performer who plays “Pearl”, my jaw dropped.)

BLACK ORPHEUS (France, 1959)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Marcel Camus
CAST: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lourdes de Oliveira
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 88% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The Greek myth of Orpheus and Euridice is translated into a modern-day story (with an all-black cast) set in during Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro.


In the first two-thirds of Black Orpheus, there are scarcely more than 2 minutes strung together at a time without some kind of music or sound effects thumping away in the background.  This gives the film a subtle real-world backdrop, which is good, because Black Orpheus is a fantasy through and through.  Critics, now and at the time of its release, complained that French director Marcel Camus ignored the reality of the Brazilian favelas, or slums, in favor of depicting Rio as a non-stop party.  This is a valid point.  However, I believe that, in this movie, reality has no place.  This is a love story, a myth, a tragedy, and a travelogue all rolled into one.  Reality must take a back seat in movies like this.

(And, heck, somebody must have liked it because it won both the Palme d’Or at Cannes AND the Best Foreign Film Oscar that year, a rare feat.  True, there were extenuating circumstances [numerous French critics had problems with the emerging French New Wave], but let’s not turn this into a classroom, shall we?)

If you’re familiar with Greek mythology, then the plot of Black Orpheus is nothing new.  Orfeu (Breno Mello, a non-professional actor) is a streetcar conductor engaged to the sexy, vivacious Mira, but he is not exactly thrilled about it.  Meanwhile, Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn, who actually hailed from Pittsburgh, not Brazil) gets lost in the city on the way to visit her cousin, Serafina, who lives in a ramshackle favela neighborhood.  She asks Orfeu and his boss, Hermes, for directions, and for Orfeu it’s love at first sight.  The rest of the movie will involve Orfeu wooing Eurydice, who worries about a strange man who might be following her, while trying to ditch Mira, with Serafina’s help.  Also assisting Orfeu, while acting as a Greek chorus in miniature, are two street urchins, Benedito and Zeca, who envy Orfeu’s lovely guitar playing, which Orfeu claims is what makes the sun rise every morning.

Apart from the story itself, the things I noticed at the outset were the presence of riotous colors in the costumes and the Brazilian countryside, and the music.  Lots and LOTS of music, but not a great deal of songs.  Black Orpheus is billed as a musical, but I’d have to say it’s a quasi-musical.  In a standard musical, characters break out into song, and no one notices because otherwise we’d be watching a play.  In Black Orpheus, every song is diegetic…someone asks Orfeu to play a song on his guitar, for example, or the Carnaval participants sing a rousing song while on parade or at a huge dance.  And I want to mention again that, while Orfeu is singing a quiet song to Eurydice, the constant percussion of the Carnaval pulses behind it, completely at odds with his song.  You would think it would become a cacophony, but it doesn’t.  It makes his quiet song much quieter, which may sound counterintuitive, but it works.

The mythic tone of the story keeps the film from flying off into ridiculous territory amid all the revelry.  Without mythology, Black Orpheus would be a soap opera.  A pivotal scene occurs during a massive dance contest, as Eurydice has disguised herself as her cousin, Serafina, so Mira doesn’t recognize her.  But Mira sees through the disguise and threatens to kill Eurydice.  Mira chases her, and unseen by anyone else except Eurydice, a man dressed all in black wearing a skull mask follows them both.  This is Death.  Earlier he had nearly chased Eurydice off a cliff, but Orfeu had saved her.  “I am not in a hurry,” he said, “we shall meet soon.”  With that in mind, his presence during this second chase is tinged with suspense.  It’s a very Hitchcockian element, the threat of danger juxtaposed with a dance or a party.  Good stuff.

So, it’s fair to say I enjoyed this movie a little more than I expected to.  But the bonus features on the Blu-ray brought up an interesting point.  Detractors of the film pointed out that, despite taking place mostly in a slum, the actual reality of those slums (both then and now) is anything but festive, no matter how much bossa nova music you play or how many songs you sing.  It’s highly unlikely these people would have had the wherewithal to create such stylized, colorful costumes while having to deal with the reality of poverty, all while looking down the mountainside at the distant concrete high rises of the higher classes.

Does Black Orpheus ignore reality?  Well…yes, it does.  Myths, by definition, have little to do with reality in the first place.  Would it have been possible to tell this mythical story, retaining its coincidences and absurdities and supernatural elements [especially towards the end], while also keeping its feet firmly on the ground and making a socially conscious statement about the horrible living conditions in Brazil?

I don’t think so.  Or, if you did, it wouldn’t be held together very well.  Black Orpheus is simply re-telling a very, VERY old story and re-imagining it as if the Greek gods had lived atop Sugarloaf Mountain instead of Olympus.  When you start with that kind of premise, reality goes out the window.  You have to focus on the story’s emotional beats, the pleasant assault on the senses and, occasionally, logic.

This opens a whole separate argument: is it a film’s responsibility to BE authentic, or just to FEEL authentic?  For example, Titanic [1997] feels authentic to me, a layman, but I’m sure historians and other experts could point to any number of things that were simply not true in the film.  Fair enough, but that doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the film as it was presented to me.  It FELT authentic, and that’s enough for me.  The only way to make a movie like that 100% authentic would be to turn it into a documentary.

Black Orpheus FEELS emotionally authentic to me, a layman, who is not a social anthropologist.  I look at the colors and vibrancy on display, visually and in the story itself, and while a small part of me acknowledges, “This isn’t real life”, another part of me says, “Well, if I wanted real life, I wouldn’t be watching a movie, would I?”

CARMEN JONES (1954)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Otto Preminger
CAST: Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey, Brock Peters, Diahann Carroll
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 75% Fresh

PLOT: The Bizet opera Carmen is translated into a modern-day story (with an all-black cast) of a sultry parachute factory worker and a GI who is about to go to flying school during World War II.


Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones will be (or OUGHT to be) remembered for many things, but the thing I will remember it for the most is the dynamic presence of the sexy, sultry Dorothy Dandridge in the titular role.  She may not have done her own singing – nearly all the major characters’ singing voices were dubbed by opera singers – but, by God, she knew how to own a role.  In the first five minutes, she steals the movie lock, stock, and barrel when she performs that first aria in the mess hall.  It’s like watching a Marilyn Monroe film: everything around her pales in comparison to her sheer magnetism, although with Dandridge (at least with the character of Carmen), you can see an intelligence behind the sexiness.  Dandridge thoroughly deserved her Oscar nomination.  A quick Google check shows she had some stiff competition that year: Grace Kelly, Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn, and Jane Wyman…although how Kelly pulled out a win over Dandridge AND Garland will forever remain a mystery to me.

ANYWAY.

In this modern retelling, Carmen Jones is a factory worker during World War II, making parachutes for the war effort.  During the opening aria, she sets her sights on Joe (Harry Belafonte), a naïve GI in love with a country girl, Cindy Lou, from his hometown.  If I’m being completely honest, nothing in the film matches the simmering sexual energy of this opening number.  Carmen slinks from table to table in the mess hall, modestly dressed, but with complete knowledge of exactly how to work with what’s available.  She flirts shamelessly with Joe, right in front of Cindy Lou.

Later, Carmen gets in a knock-down, drag-out catfight with Frankie (Pearl Bailey, the only principal actor whose singing voice WASN’T overdubbed) and is arrested by the MPs.  Joe, who was just about to elope with Cindy Lou, is ordered to drive Carmen to a town some 50 miles away, since the Army can’t put civilians in jail.  This sets up another opportunity for Carmen to flirt with Joe, as she does everything but unbutton his pants during their drive.  The more he resists, the more she wants him.

…but I don’t want to simply summarize the plot, which was a mystery to me since I have never seen a production of Carmen.  (The ending is mildly pre-ordained, because, hello, it’s an opera.)  I want to express my admiration of this film, particularly for its ambition.  I’m no film scholar, but I’m prepared to bet that in 1954, there weren’t an awful lot of big studio films being directed by A-list directors featuring an all-black cast.  The fact this film exists at all is, I think, a minor miracle.  I won’t attempt to put words in the mouth of anyone in the black community, but at that time in cinematic and American history, I have to believe this was seen as a giant leap forward, AND a giant risk.  (There is probably MUCH more to this story, but I do not want to turn this article into a research paper.)

Otto Preminger’s directing style in Carmen Jones also deserves recognition.  A factoid on IMDb trivia states: “This film contains just 169 shots in 103 minutes of action. This equates to an average shot length of about 36 seconds, which is very high, given the 8-10 seconds standard of most Hollywood films made during the 1950s.”  This is important because those longer shots create, in many places, an illusion of watching a stage performance.  For instance, if I remember correctly, that opening aria that I keep going on about – Dandridge is SMOKING – runs for about 4-5 minutes and has only three total shots.  Towards the middle of the film, there’s an astonishingly long take that travels from a bar across the room to a table, following a group of five people, all singing simultaneously at multiple points.  The shot lasts just under five minutes, but it feels much longer.  It’s a brilliant piece of work.

The tragic arc of Carmen Jones may seem inevitable, as I said before, but it remains an entertaining watch.  You can see the dominos falling, and you bemoan the choices Joe makes as he falls under Carmen’s spell, but I mean, LOOK at her.  There’s a scene that I’m sure would bear the Tarantino stamp of approval as Carmen paints her toenails and coyly asks Joe to blow on them for her so they can dry faster.  Dayum.  Show me a straight man who wouldn’t fall for that kind of treatment from a woman who looks like Dorothy Dandridge and I’ll show you a dead man.

If I wanted, I could get nitpicky about Carmen Jones.  Has it aged well?  Not exactly.  Does it feature great acting aside from Dandridge?  Not exactly.  Does it look natural to hear an operatic tenor burst forth from Harry Belafonte’s mouth?  Not exactly.  But Carmen Jones is a landmark of black cinema in an era when schools and government buildings still had segregated water fountains and restrooms.  Based on that fact alone, I consider Carmen Jones to be a vital step in Hollywood’s painfully slow racial evolution. (It is also a painful reminder of a career that might have been; Dandridge died 11 years later at only 42.)