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Love Lies Bleeding

Dir. Rose Glass

In Rose Glass’ version of the American Southwest, light pollution is non-existent. Instead, the inky blackness of the night sky is pockmarked perfectly with glittering points of distant stars and planets. It’s a beautiful, unspoiled tableau, standing in marked contrast to the all the griminess of the humans back on terra firma, their hopelessly complicated and messy interweavings casting a pall on those things within the Earth’s gravitational pull. 

It’s that sort of pull that draws feckless gym manager, Lou (Kristin Stewart), to vagabond bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian), new to the small New Mexico town more or less run by corrupt gun runner Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, sporting a low ring of long hair that makes him look like comic book store owner), who also happens to be Lou’s estranged father. 

Lou and Jackie bond very quickly  —  Lou’s pronounced queerness offering precious few options beyond the mewling propositions of fellow gym-worker Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), whose teeth are rutted with yellow stains  — and very adroitly (the sex scenes between them are less about nudity and more about explicit context), just in time for other complications to set upon them. Jackie was in town only as a waystation for her eventual trip up to Vegas for a huge body-building competition, but she quickly gets pulled into Lou’s wobbly orbit, as her sister, Beth (Jena Malone), deals with the horrendous abuse heaped upon her by her husband, JJ (Dave Franco, with an applause worthy mullet). 

When JJ finally goes too far, and lands his wife in the hospital with facial injuries, Lou’s fury translates to Jackie’s now-steroid-addled sense of justice, which she goes to enact on JJ’s leering visage. Now embroiled in the aftermath of her vengeance, Lou and Jackie have to navigate the tricky pathways around, and eventually to Lou’s father’s mansion ensconced up in the hills. 

Glass, whose previous debut feature, Saint Maud, was a marvel of psychological complexity and restraint, has fully embraced the pulpy nature of the material (from a script penned by Glass and Weronika Tofilska), a kind of modern noir, set against a backdrop of queerness (reminiscent, ever so slightly, of the Warchowski’s Bound), and studded with some of Glass’s more enigmatic, lyric visual totems (close ups of giant insects, frequent cutaways to glowing red portraits of some of the principles haunting the drug-addled mind of Jackie). 

There is also a visceral component to Glass’s vision: In one early scene, a fully-clothed Lou, lying on her stomach on a ragged couch, masterbates, as her cat slips between her slightly raised feet to nosh on some microwaved leftovers still on their plastic tray; in another, Lou, who smokes like a Harry Dean Stanton character, uses the smoke in her lungs as a kind of wispy sexual prop. Everything feels grubby and vaguely soiled, the endless detritus  —  from plastic food trays, to empty glass Steroid vials, to the forlorn emotional longing of characters whose lives are little to no consequence to anyone else  —  of human existence crowded around the characters miens like loose particles of ore around a magnet. 

The problem is, grotty isn’t a personality: Too many of Glass’s characters, including Lou and Jackie, are flattened out stand-ins for noir tropes: Both have mysterious backgrounds of violence, but are never illuminated beyond the immediate needs of the plot, which holds precious few surprises, beyond Glass’s more adventurous flights of lyric fancy (a scene near the end plays out as fantasy-fulfillment in a way that is particularly jarring). In some ways, the character’s domiciles  —  Lou’s cluttered apartment, the sweat-soaked gym where they meet  — are more articulated than the characters themselves. 

As such, as much as Stewart and O’Brian lean into their roles, we really don’t know enough about them to be moved by their relationship, one way or the other. Without caring about them, the film loses a lot of steam, so that by the climactic showdown between Lou and her father, the stakes feel far too minimal to make an impact. Other than fulfilling the basic tenets of narrative closure, there isn’t a lot of flame to the film’s ubiquitous cigarette smoke. 

#piers marchant #sweet smell of success #ssos #movies #films #love lies bleeding #rose glass #kristen stewart #ed harris #katy o'brian #jena malone #dave franco #new mexico #lgbtq #pulp

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The second half of Denis Villeneuve's epic adaptation of Frank Herbert's sprawling novel is not without its flaws, but before we get to them, there is call to sing its praises, at least on one specific topic. After a years-long slog of superhero movies with substandard CGI cementing the films as money-grubbing afterthoughts -- like an old, regifted candle wrapped poorly -- Villeneuve's majestic film is a revelation of special effects and cinematography that adds an enormous gravitas and beauty to the proceedings.

It doesn't seem as if it should be so difficult, in this day and technological age, for a high-rolling studio to put the time and effort into its CGI creations such that it enhances and doesn't detract from the picture, and in that sordid process, reveal the chintzy apparatus it's trying to peddle to viewers. Yet, time and again, with big, would-be tentpole blockbusters boasting enormous production budgets, the effects feel flat and unconvincing.

#piers marchant #sweet smell of success #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #Dune part 2 #timothee chalamet #zendaya #frank herbert #austin butler #rebecca ferguson #scifi #dave bautista #javier bardem #christopher walken #lea seydoux #denis villeneuve

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Alas, a sort of minimalist Sundance experience this year -- using the online platform, with its limited access to the feature slate -- as working as a full-time middle school teacher puts a significant crimp in one's travel options. Still, a strong year for the festival made even the limited options pretty wonderful.

#piers marchant #sweet smell of success #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #Sundance Film Festival #Park City #Utah #Black Box Diaries #In the Summers #Good One #Lolla

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About midway through Justine Triet's fascinating, Palme d'Or-winning drama, a pair of characters are making their way down a twisty mountain road in the middle of the night. Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller), a novelist accused of murdering her husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis), is being driven by her lawyer, Renzi (Swann Arlaud), immediately after being sent away in tears from her 11-year-old son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), who must testify either for or against his mother in a couple of days. As Sandra sobs, Triet cuts from her face to a point of view shot of the road, dark and mysterious, dizzying in the headlights such that it feels as if anything can suddenly leap out of the darkness and into view. It's a strong metaphor for the film's raison d'etre, illuminating only briefly and in limited fashion, those twisty things that can come unexpectedly darting out of the human psyche.

Triet's film, part judicial procedural, part family drama, for the most part, plays down the more explosive elements of the genre -- as she has said in interviews, this is much closer, in spirit and tone, to Bergman, than, say, Costa-Gavras -- even as the case becomes a leading story throughout France, with TV tabloids and news shows opining endlessly on the myriad of ever-more-salacious details. Smartly, Triet for the most part, keeps her film within the world of the characters -- the news elements we do see are largely seen as they are being filmed on location, rather than the final product put out for broadcast -- even as the case clearly blows up into something far more magnified outside of the family itself.

#piers marchant #sweet smell of success #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #anatomy of a fall #justine triet #Sandra Hüller #Swann Arlaud #crime #family #france #alps #court case #murder #suicide

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For a film taken with the idea of war, with massive campaigns involving many extras, horses and armaments, and large portions of its extended running time dedicated to the bitter, bloody waging of these full-throat battles, Ridley Scott seems to take tremendous pleasure in showing his titular hero Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix), as a kind of infantilized sop.

During his first battle we see him wage, amid all the clamor of guns and screaming, we subtly hear Napoleon's labored breathing, first, in anxiousness, awaiting the start of the attack, but then with him running toward the enemy's castle-like lair, and straining to climb up the ladders placed by his men to breach the place. He might be a military legend, but in Scott's rendition, he's more like a middle-aged actuary on the first day of boot camp class.

#piers marchant #sweet smell of success #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #Napoleon #ridley scott #france #military #emperor #joaquin phoenix #vanessa kirby #combat #battles

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The MCU death knell continues apace. To be certain, as messy and cobbled together as Nia DaCosta's film may be -- and it's plenty of both of those things -- it's still not quite at the same nadir as the truly wretched "Quantumania" from last spring, but, at this point, it feels like splitting hairs to label one recent Marvel movie objectively worse than another. Kevin Feige's formally grand, cash-hoovering mega-yacht has become a rickety rowboat, taking in an alarming amount of water as the storm clouds roll in.

#sweet smell of success #piers marchant #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #the marvels #mcu #captain marvel #brie larson #ms. marvel #iman vellani #Teyonah Parris #samuel l. jackson #comics #nia dacosta

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In 30 years as a movie star, Leonardo DiCaprio has played everyone including a mentally challenged man-child, Romeo, historic figures like Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover and slick, unscrupulous con men like Jordan Belfort. Yet he's never played a character more jarringly amoral as Ernest Burkhart, the salty protagonist in Martin Scorsese's adaptation of David Grann's true crime book "Killers of the Flower Moon." He comes to a small, oil-rich town in Oklahoma, and becomes the treacherous, morally reprehensible henchman of his even more corrupt uncle, William "King" Hale (Robert De Niro), en route to destroying an entire Osage family.

DiCaprio has long had a baby face, which served him well as a teen heartthrob and young movie star, but, at times, less convincingly playing more adult roles. Here, the 49-year-old has never looked worse or more convincing. His face wan and puffy, his teeth subtly altered, his mouth perpetually in a De Niro-esque frown, he plays Ernest as the worst kind of duplicitous: Bizarrely unaware of his own utter moral decrepitude.

#piers marchant #sweet smell of success #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #Killers of the flower moon #martin scorsese #osage #Leonardo DiCaprio #robert deniro #lily gladstone #David Grann #FBI #Jesse plemons

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The devil, as they say, is in the details, or in the case of David Gordon Green's "Exorcist" extension, the lack thereof: The film's reasonably creepy first act laboriously sets up what might have been something good and jarring, only for the script to become a mishmash of barely considered ideas that mostly end up as demonic-hued piffle.

#piers marchant #sweet smell of success #ssos #movies #films #the exorcist believer #horror #david gordon green #ellen burstyn #leslie odom jr. #arkansas democrat gazette #Lidya Jewett #possesion #devil #Olivia Marcum #jennifer nettles #Danny McCarthy

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In Christopher Nolan's sprawling bio-pic of the American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (played convincingly by Irish actor Cillian Murphy), famously known as the father of the atomic bomb, the writer/director takes the years of the scientist's education and career leading up to, and past, the Manhattan Project, and breaks his experience down into different layers of sensory experience.

Nolan being Nolan, he also sets these moments as separate time streams -- one involving his academic trajectory from Europe back to the U.S., as the first physicist in this country to introduce the then-novel theoretical concept of quantum physics to a gaggle of students at Cal Berkeley, before becoming the project director of the U.S.'s ultra-secret program to beat the Germans to the creation of the doomsday bomb; another, some years later, after the war, as Oppenheimer, then an outspoken advocate against nuclear proliferation, sits in a government tribunal hearing on renewing his high-ranking security clearance in the face of a series of allegations against him, as being a communist sympathizer; and, finally, a stream not involving the scientist directly, but rather the congressional hearing for the appointment of Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), a government bureaucrat, and former head of the Atomic Energy Commission, after he gets nominated to a cabinet position under standing President Harry S. Truman (Gary Oldman, naturally).

#sweet smell of success #Piers Marchant #ssos #films #movies #arkansas democrat gazette #oppenheimer #christopher Nolan #cillian murphy #matt damon #florence pugh #physics #nuclear bomb #los alamos #manhattan project

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After being told his entire life -- and many, many additional times in the first third of the movie -- that video game sim-racing isn't at all the same as the real deal, the first thing "Gran Turismo" ubergamer Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) tells himself when he gets behind the wheel of a real racing car, about to compete for a spot on an actual, in real life, racing team, is just the opposite: "It's just a game," he says to himself, like a mantra. Nothing he hasn't seen countless times before, in other words, having put thousands of hours in front of his monitor screen running these tracks as simulations.

In this fact-based story set in 2011, Jann gets to take part in a promotion from Nissan, helmed by marketing whiz Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), where, among nine other gaming competitors, he's invited to Nissan's sponsored GT camp, where he gets a shot at true immortality that most "Gran Turismo" game devotees (who are legion) can only dream about. Led by irascible head instructor Jack Salter (David Harbour), the prospective drivers are treated with outright disdain by the pit crews, mechanics, and other, already established racers, not the least of which is Salter himself, who informs them on their first day that he doesn't actually believe any of them can make it.

#sweet smell of success #piers marchant #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #gran turismo #f1 racing #europe #video games #archie madekwe #orlando bloom #david harbour #jann mardenborough #Djimon Hounsou) #Kazunori Yamauchi #Takehiro Hira

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Celiné Sciamma's charming film, "Petit Maman," is carefully set in early fall, a particularly enigmatic period of time where everything is in transition between summer joy and winter solemnity. We meet 8-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) as she's bidding adieu to the women in the nursing home in which her grandmother has just passed away. Along with her grieving mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse), and lackadaisical father (Stéphane Varupenne), the young girl goes to her grandmother's house, where her mother grew up, in order to clear it out for the last time.

Wandering in the woods, she runs into another 8-year-old girl (Gabrielle Sanz), who turns out to be, by some unexplained dint of fate and magic, to be her own mother, only from many years before. Naturally, the two hit it off immediately, and spend the few days they have together playing games, making pancakes, going for a raft ride, and enjoying each other's company.

#sweet smell of success #ssos #piers marchant #films #movies #criterion #arkansas democrat gazette #petite maman #celine sciamma #Joséphine Sanz #Nina Meurisse #Stéphane Varupenne #Gabrielle Sanz #blu-ray

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Just a few minutes into “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated, product-based film, the titular star (Margot Robbie) walks on water. Not like that, at least, not directly. She’s just making her way out of her immaculate Dream House, and happens to step over the resin-coated surface of her “swimming pool,” which proves as devoid of physical sensation as her glass of “cow’s milk,” she pretends to drink in the morning, the toasted waffle she never actually consumes for breakfast, and the “boyfriend,” Ken (Ryan Gosling), whom she refuses to kiss, or even very much acknowledge (to make things easy, we shall refer to this Ken as “Ken Prime” going forward).

As we begin, her life is seemingly perfect, surrounded by friends, all of whom are also named “Barbie,” though in different guises and configurations, her outfits are plentiful and varied, and her days are spent idling around in a sort of bland utopia. She goes to the beach to see more of her “Barbie” friends, along with Ken Prime (whose sole occupation, to his consternation, is “beach”), and the various other Kens, including one Ken (Simu Liu), with whom Prime has a simmering jealous tension. She spends the day there, cavorting around, before packing off back to her Dream House for yet another giggly girls’ night, ditching poor Ken Prime in the process.

#piers marchant #sweet smell of success #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #Barbie #greta gerwig #margot robbie #ryan gosling #simu liu #will farrell #mattel #toys #pink #dolls #kate mckinnon #michael cera #comedy #feminism

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Consider the idea that the now nearly three-decade old franchise serves as a generational time capsule, not just for Tom Cruise (who started the series as a hunky 33-year-old, and now, is jumping off cliffs on motorcycles as a sexagenarian), but also for summer blockbuster tent poles in general.

For my money, the finest action franchise in cinematic history saw its seventh installment, "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning, Part One" open Wednesday.

To help bring you up to speed, we've encapsulated the previous installments in one quick, handy guide.

#sweet smell of success #ssos #piers marchant #film #movies #mission: impossible #mission: impossible II #Mission: Impossible III #Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol #mission: Impossible Rogue Nation #Mission: Impossible Fallout #Tom cruise #spies #IMF #Ving Rhames #simon Pegg #rebecca ferguson #Brian De Palma #John Woo #J.J. Abrams #brad bird #christopher mcquarrie #arkansas democrat gazette #M:I

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We live in a peculiar, in-between era, in which movie studios and other content creation concerns have yet to figure out exactly how things will shake down for them in the new world order of ubiquitous streaming platforms.

As ever, Hollywood is throwing money at things and peering through their fingers to see if any of it still works like it used to before the covid year. To that end, this summer promises to be an acid-test, as it were, of different cinematic options, from the superhero epic ("The Flash"), and the action-tentpole ("Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part 1"), to the return of the raunchy comedy ("No Hard Feelings").

Whether any of this works is anyone's guess -- though things are decidedly not looking good for "The Flash" at least, so far -- and I can well understand why Hollywood is quaking in its collective designer boots at the prospect of not luring all those movie audiences back to the cineplex.

Still, the state of cinema at large, even in these confusing, off-kilter times, remains eternally viable. In the past six months, there have been a myriad of powerful releases (albeit less so from the big studios), the best of which propel the art form forward, as they prove, over and over again, the potency of the form. Here are the 10 best films I have seen so far in 2023. Many of these will be seen again in my final list at the end of the year, but who knows what will come next?

#sweet smell of success #piers marchant #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #best films of 2023 halftime #skinamarink #the blackening #infinity pool #spider man: across the spider verse #past lives #you hurt my feelings #showing up #radical #sanctuary #beau is afraid

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This year's edition of the Tribeca Film Festival featured an assortment of tantalizing possibilities, many of which, alas, I wasn't able to take in. (FYI: It is a terrible idea to have a family reunion at your place the week of Tribeca.) Still, I got to watch a decent selection of flicks, some good, some less so, and one curious documentary absolutely bewitching, so I can't complain.

Here's a cross-section of capsule reviews of some of the films I did get to squeeze in between family commitments, including the doc that proved to be wholly unnerving -- in the best kind of way.

#piers marchant #sweet smell of success #ssos #films #movies #arkansas democrat gazette #tribeca film festival #new york #rather #dan rather #one night with adela #hugo ruiz #stan lee #marvel comics #The Gullspång Miracle #Maria Fredriksson #documentary

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It's as if Christopher Nolan was inspired by Lewis Carroll -- "Inception" meets the Mad Hatter. It's challenging to wrap your head around (at least for this spatially challenged critic), such that it's difficult to keep any of its distinct layers together. Instead of watching the film as one might a series of transparencies laid perfectly over one another, it's more like a disparate collection of finely detailed dioramas strewn about on a wonderfully antique table.

#sweet smell of success #piers marchant #ssos #films #movies #asteroid city #wes anderson #jonathan schwartzman #scarlett johansson #jeffrey wright #matt dillon #tilda swinton #ed norton #liev schreiber #willem dafoe #margot robbie #teleplay #new mexico #aliens #stargazers #arkansas democrat gazette

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The word out of Sundance, this past January, was that Celine Song's debut feature "Past Lives" was an absolute masterpiece. One critic I'm friendly with maintained it wasn't just the best film at this year's festival, but the best film they had ever seen at Sundance, period. With every rapturous declaration, I gnashed my teeth further: While a great deal of Sundance was available to critics via the virtual portal, this film was one of the few exceptions. Its distributor, A24, had made it so, and were even more unwavering when it came to the flood of press requests for a screener after its premiere. It made a few brief rounds at Sundance in-person, and then the studio shut it down until months later, upon its release.

At the time, I was aggravated by this policy, but, now, having finally seen it, I think I understand their reasoning. As wonderful as it is, it's not the sort of awe-inspiring cavalcade of energy and ideas that, say "Everything Everywhere All At Once," another A24 film you might have heard of, was. As much as it earned critical canards by the bushel in Park City, I think it was wise for the studio to let the ground cool a bit before releasing the film to the rest of the world.

It offers echoes and reverberations, to be sure, but, in keeping with its Buddhist thematics, instead of a boulder splashing into a lake, it's more like a leaf, reddened by the lower temperatures of fall, gently gliding down upon an otherwise placid rain puddle.

#sweet smell of success #piers marchant #ssos #movies #films #arkansas democrat gazette #past lives #sundance #celine song #a24 #greta lee #tee yoo #seoul #new york #korea #john magaro #in-yun