Rodney Starnes

Longlegs (2024) Major let down. So many threads going all different directions! The whole thing implausible and tedious. But the reviews, so many said there was merit there. . . ? I failed to see any.

All the Light We Cannot See - miniseries (2023) There can be no doubt that having seen this miniseries, a whole lot of folks aren't going to bother to read the book. For shame, for shame. That's like saying, after seeing snow fall in Picadilly Square, that you feel like reading Dickens is no longer necessary. The book, by Anthony Doerr, is one for the ages. And I do not see why the adaptation couldn't have followed the book more closely, chronologically and otherwise. The book is a royal feast, the filmed version, a picnic in the park.

El Conde (2023) - Pablo Larrain What a beautiful, stark, erotic, poetic, masterpiece. Of the recent films that I have seen, only Out of Darkness (2022) can even remotely compare. (Larrain's Tony Manero (2008) is one of my favorites.) A highly intellectual horror/fantasy/vampire take on a very real dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and the terror that he enveloped Chile in and how, according to Larrain's majestic film, he embodied an evil that transcended mere mortal boundaries. I think El Conde is in the handful of best films ever made. My top ten, without a doubt. I look for the genius in a film, for the full realization of a singular, compelling vision that would be beyond the reach of all but the most determined and talented artists. El Conde surely is Pablo Lorraine's magnum opus, or could be, he's not finished yet. In El Conde I see Wim Wenders, Bela Tarr, Del Toro... the greats. Just as Lorraine himself, has become a legendary film director in a league with the elites.

High-Rise Film (2015) Directed by Ben Wheatley / High-Rise Novel, Ballard (1975) J.G. Ballard Nov.15, 1930 -- April19, 2009 I've read the novel High-Rise, along with most of Ballard's other works, but it was a while ago. I admire Ballard immensely as an original thinker and his cosmopolitan literary style. Shane by Jack Schaefer (1949) and Empire of the Sun, Ballard (1984) are, to me, examples of quintessential existential novels. (Ballard was a heavyweight, to be sure, and perhaps underexplored. RIP) /////////// Does J.G. Ballard think that the heart of darkness can be found in a high-rise? I think so. (Is Brandon Cronenberg's 2023 excellent 'Infinity Pool' Ballard-esque? Without a doubt.) The societal disintegration, psychotic-break-like descent into debaucherous, murderous, almost hallucinatory collective madness that inevitably seizes the occupants of one of the highrises featured in the film is almost orgiastic in and of itself... a perfect storm of concentrated, hysterical human devolution, spiced up with Ballard's signature British humor and wit. Enjoy it for that. Ballard would applaud director Ben Wheatley and the film's effort, whether or not it nailed the book, it captures the spirit. Although, you will be left exhausted. :'

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) This film is inarguably a masterpiece. If you have not seen it, and you appreciate artistry in film, you are surely in for a treat! Of the six Western-themed chapters, or vignettes - although I loved them all, the one entitled ”Meal Ticket” starring Liam Neeson as an unscrupulous traveling impresario caretaker of a legless and armless young adult actor, Harrison, played by Harry Melling, is my favorite. Harrison is carted about the desolate landscape in the back of a covered wagon to give impromptu, nighttime, spellbinding soliloquies from classic sources as varied as Shakespeare to the Preamble of the Constitution, from a makeshift stage - seemingly levitating limbless in midair as he does so, a spectral vision - more of the spirit world this odd angel propped on a chair, with a kind and lucid voice that in a rugged and untamed territory, bespeakes of beauty and intellect... of truth, and the majesty of Life - as the mostly illiterate assortment of curious onlookers, bearded cowpokes and wilderness homesteaders, sometimes only a few, look on transfixed in the flickering glare of a campfire at the supernatural sight before them... not unlike a divinity... a Magi. Afterward, a hat is passed that generally provides only enough income to keep this unlikely duo moving on from settlement to settlement - and sometimes hardly that. The coda to this story is not pleasant. But in my opinion, is one of the Great American allegorical tales, warts and all. It is Steinbeck, Sinclair, London, Conrad, and Melville; It is Biblical in nature, beautiful and barbarous to behold: A brief but poignant, essential existential dramatic statement for the ages. This vignette from the filmBuster Scruggs' should be enshrined as an invaluable artistic contribution to American mythology. Taking it further, ”Meal Ticket” could be readily adapted to the stage and made available in productions worldwide, in a similar vein as The Elephant Man and Of Mice and Men. From an artistic standpoint, it is the most exhilarating, profoundly soul-searching theatrical experience that I have ever had. Reason enough to see the movie indeed, not that the other chapters of this extraordinary film aren't rewarding as well. I will be forever haunted, in the best possible way, by ”Meal Ticket,” part and parcel of the film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

The Killer (2023) In his own voice-over, in the opening sequence, we hear how disciplined and proficient this hired assasin is and then he proceeds to completely bungle what should have been an easy shot from one window into another across the boulevard, using a telescoped snipers rifle. A woman, not identified, looks to be doing a provacative dance for the seated mark and keeps getting in the way of a clean shot. Eventually, it is she that receives the high-powered round squarely in the back, intended for the man in the room with her, bringing to an abrupt halt her sensuous routine and leaving the man surprised, but unharmed, other than surely a lifelong case of PTSD. Unintended humor got me through this frenetic, high-tech, connect-the-dots revenge film. Following behind the failed assassin with many identities and tricks up his sleeve around the globe as he cleverly identifies and pursues those that have brutalized his love interest in retaliation, can become monotonous after a while. Anyway, the production values are good and there are those that will enjoy this film more than I did.

Unfortunately, the pornographic aspects of Poor Things eclipses the film as a whole. (And it makes me wonder, uneasily so, if it doesn't represent a paradigm shift in what can be expected of top-tier talent in mainstream theatrical releases going forward - a new epoch. If so, in an ironic twist, the plot of Poor Things itself, would seem tailor-made as a corresponding allegorical cautionary tale. A story within a story, or sandwich narrative, as it's called. The embedded imperative, being: Give them your brain, and they will take your body.) Set in Victorian England, its steampunk-styling serves the film's science fiction overtures well. Bella, the Emma Stone character, bearing the brain of her aborted child after a failed suicide attempt, is woefully neurologically deficient and clearly a vulnerable adult, ripe for exploitation - which is not long in coming. We see her completely naked, simulating fornication with multiple naked male partners, touching with her hand male genitalia on one occasion and having sex with other women. Bella's road to self-discovery could have used a lot more levity and a lot less sexual obsession. Bella's wide-eyed childishness, petulance and stilted gait begins to wear thin. Her travels, as part of her all-important 'education' (indoctrination), finds her available at a Parisian brothel. The premise of Poor Things is biologically grim enough initially, but Bella's degradation has just begun. (Margaret Qualley - with her clothes on - makes the most of a limited role.)

The Peasants film - I call it animated-overlay. It's intense. Somehow realer than real. Kinetic, everything alive and in motion - almost psychedelic. A new kind of hybrid - emotion multiplier - cinematic experience. I don't regret for a moment going, but don't think I would rush out to catch another one. Impressionism was never my favourite artistic expression, but this alchemy works - as disorienting as it can be. Vertigo, for some, could come into play as it sweeps you along as if in its stream of consciousness. (Now, standard fare almost seems blase in comparison.) A must-see for serious cinephiles and art aficionados. (If you wear glasses, be sure that you have them with you. I would think any deficiency in your ability to accurately focus on what is on the screen before you will diminish the experience. It is not 3D exactly, but borrows heavily from it. Excellent small village, feudal, peasant-life story that it tells, by the way. Hooray for daring, innovative artistic pursuits! An instant classic!

Saltburn: Impatience turns to resentment as the film's weaknesses and bizarre nature become depressingly apparent. The lead actor and antagonist - supposed beguiler and seducer of both sexes - frankly, is an odd and unconvincing choice to center the film around. He wears a perpetual squint that I found annoying. Saltburn goes from mildly intriguing in the beginning, to outright disgusting. In one excessively vulgar scene in this strange film, a man glides around in a kind of victory swoon, going from room to room stark naked. In another, he's slurping semen, not his own, from bathwater as it circles the drain. (A close-up of that.) And there is more, if you want to go there. There is the grave site self-pleasuring scene . . I don't know who this grotesquery was made for? To each his own, I say - but it sure wasn't me.