Apparently my first time around with a Laura Poitras doco. This is the media interviewing the media as the original sources take their stories to their graves and thereby avoid deathbed confessions to Errol Morris.
Let me say upfront that interviewing Seymour Hersh was a worthy and thankless task. However there is so much padding — stock 1960s footage including the classic Việt Nam bombing sequence but not the now-controversial napalm girl, typewriter clacking accompanying ancient documentary evidence, grabs from many of his previous interviews — that it seems Poitras and co-director Mark Obenhaus came away with very little usable footage. Hersh refuses to dish on any source who is or may still be alive, leaving us with journalism war stories not so far from the ancient ones spun by Hunter S. Thompson, Woodward and Bernstein. As always with these docos, more dates were needed to anchor things in history.
Hersh is a funny no-sacred-cows kinda bloke. It gets amusing when he starts digging into corporations with Jeff Gerth while Hersh is at the New York Times; they start with Gulf and Western's accounts and proceed to the Times's, so of course he was going to get fired. Hersh is only thin-skinned when they try to discuss his wife or the shenanigans around his cash-in book on JFK and Monroe. His article that broke the My Lai massacre story was published in the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday 1969-11-13; I was sufficiently disengaged to wonder if Roger Ebert had a review in the same edition. Uncharitably it also brought to mind Leonard Cohen's The Stranger Song: the film doesn’t get to the heart of this or any other matter.
The New Yorker years are glossed over apart from Abu Ghraib; this really is a greatest hits compilation. I would've enjoyed more time with several of the auxiliary characters — General Taguba for instance. They don't delve into Hersh's presence on Substack or whether he's given any thought to leaving.
A Critic's Pick by Manohla Dargis at one of his erstwhile employers. She says they interviewed him 42 times for this project. Peter Bradshaw: four stars. He was never cinematically feted, unlike the others mentioned above. Photographic evidence is now obsolete, with all forms of evidence soon to follow (?).
Somewhat idle John Carpenter (Dark Star (1974), The Thing (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986)) completism. He directed a script by Michael De Luca, who apparently had far more success as a producer, and did the soundtrack too: the metal licks are of the era.
The scenario has the writings of a horror novel author (eventually Jürgen Prochnow), bigger than Stephen King, become some kind of metafictional reality; it could be summarised, more or less, with the lines "I think therefore you are" and "God’s not supposed to be a hack horror writer" but that would be to miss the naff/goofy fun bits that kick in after a slow start. Insurance fraud investigator Sam Neill does well to hold it all together in the lead with some assistance from editor Julie Carmen and very straight publisher Charlton Heston. David Warner (Tron (1982)). Frances Bay plays a hotel concierge; she did a fair bit of work with David Lynch.
There's no doubt the whole thing disappears into its own self-satisfaction. I did not enjoy the jump scares that much, mostly because I didn't have enough opportunity to enjoy the extravagant practical effects. I imagine the kids had a ball (c.f. Weapons (2025)).
Roger Ebert: two stars. Janet Maslin.
For Oscar Isaac and, to a lesser and diminishing extent, "written for the screen by"/director Guillermo del Toro. I watched the first twenty minutes or so a while back and put off the rest until now as it is lengthy and did not seem very promising, especially after his previous remakes (Nightmare Alley (2021), Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)).
Isaac finds himself excommunicated from the Victorian high science scene in London due to his ungodly "galvanic" experiments on cadavers of dubious provenance. In the audience (but not with us) is a miscast Cristoph Waltz who has more money than the godly due to supplying arms to some unnamed war on the continent. With those funds and a suitably spooky castle somewhere the modern Promethean tale unspools as it always has, without humour, terminating in some unearnt redemption as monster/Australian Jacob Elordi strides off into the sunset after a requited but unconsummated something-or-other with Mia Goth.
Visually it's mostly gloaming in the magic hour with some hydrophilic stuff recycled from The Shape of Water (2017). The CGI is not particularly good. It's graphic but not violent until it's graphic and violent. Aurally the soundtrack is mostly obtrusive heavy portentous music.
Often I felt like I'd seen most of it before. Elordi often seemed to be the second coming of Clancy Brown though the indestructibility/rapid healing and constructed-superhuman was perhaps more Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. (Can Elordi sing and dance?) There's also a dash of vintage Star Trek, of an adult human-alike learning what the kids already know, autonemesis. Motivation was generally lacking. I doubt this was on many best-of-2025 lists. All of which is to say that the story has been so thoroughly absorbed into the culture that there's little point serving it up straight now.
Peter Sobczynski. Dana Stevens spends a lot of words not talking about the movie. "[S]eems designed to be a moody steampunk melodrama." Lots of dazzling practical effects. Marya E. Gates: poor. Jason Di Rosso interviewed Guillermo del Toro and talked up Mia Goth. He liked her earlier stuff but she didn't have much to work with here.
An animated fable from Latvia. Apocalyptic without a clear moral. No dialogue (nothing was spoken in the version I watched). They got many of the cat behaviours right but not all: I've never met a cat with any loyalty not secured with food and the right kind of scratching, or seen one climb down a vertical structure (here a mast). I hadn't heard a feline growl in so long. The other animals mystified me.
I can't say I understood the point of it all. At one point things get a bit transcendental, a bit Terrence Malick as the bird ascends to something-or-other. It won the Oscar earlier in the year for best animated feature film; even so the animation itself struck me as a long way from the state of the art. Over two nights due to a lack of grip.
Calum Marsh made it a Critic's Pick at the New York Times. "[A]voids the sort of whimsy and sentimentality that might plague, say, a Disney movie with the same premise." Carlos Aguilar at Roger Ebert's venue: four stars. Wendy Ide: four stars. All claim there's not a lot of anthropomorphism going on. but really, come on.
Kindle. A lengthy, engrossing everything novel in the spirit of his earlier Parasites Like Us (2003). After a stuttered start I finished it in a few lengthy sessions.
In broad terms Johnson takes us to the Tongan empire of a while back, when they were having a forever war with Fiji, but only after a peppy first-person beginning from a young woman that evoked Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005). Soon enough we're told that she's from that other great tribe of Polynesians, the Māori, and her small, diminishing and amnesiac clan has much to teach the peoples of other islands. This is despite their lack of lineage (they are descended from slaves) and the basic skills of navigation and shipbuilding.
The genocidal war is necessitated by the resource exhaustion, ecological collapse and steady flow of extinctions caused by the overpopulation and cupidity of the imperial centre. Much of this is directly observed by an imported red-shining parrot (apparently tasty) that is sufficiently sapient to comprehend the apocalypse being visited on the ecosphere by humans, a role similar to Ned Beauman's venomous lumpsuckers (2022). This setting draws in all the issues of the present moment as collateral damage: the ill-treatment of women by powerful men, whiplash #metoo, a queen bee, abortifacients ("This allows you to put love first"), excessive lawyering (the matāpule), zombies, ineffectual transactionalism, migration, globalisation, a rejection of isolation, that the future is nomadism ("That there’d been a time before islands, when all was water. That a day would come when the islands slipped back beneath the waves, taking all the drowsy dirt-dwellers with them."). In short, everything is too much excepting technology (just boats, the necessary botanicals and special gifts to individuals descended from the gods) and romantic opportunities.
Many elements of the story evoke Greek mythology; there's a tale told about a journey to Pulotu reminiscent of Orpheus's visit to Hades, and the concept of do-overs was given the same even-handed treatment it received in the MCU, albeit the other way around. I felt the exotic ontology and belief structure was insufficiently explored; life is somehow something extra to Cartesian body and soul, and I wonder if the people of the time considered brains to cause minds, and hearts the same way we do now. What about love? Intriguingly there was no worship, just rank and tapu. The eventual redemption felt unearned.
Johnson obviously did a mountain of research for this book and integrated it very well. However the two-track structure was somewhat flawed: by the time the big events roll around we almost always know their outcomes, and by then the details are not as important or interesting as they would have been earlier in the story. At times it felt we were waiting for the other track to sync up. Moreover Johnson struggled to construct distinct voices for enough of the characters, making it sometimes challenging to remember which track we're on as events converge. The romantic pairings were telegraphed with no subtlety; there's no playing of the field or left swipes, perhaps suggesting sexual egalitarianism or cosmic predestination.
Ian McGuire at the New York Times made enough errors to suggest he skimmed some parts, like the ending which explicitly calls out Kōrero as the titular character. Goodreads e.g. Steven: one for fantasy fans, a "Western story in Polynesian dressing".
More Spierig brothers completism, and my first and last encounter with the never-promising Saw franchise. Also a pointer-of-sorts from Peter Sobczynski's review of Weapons (2025). Execrable. Obviously a money job for everyone.
IMDB has this rated higher than Winchester (2018); I can't agree.
Simon Abrams at Roger Ebert's venue: two-and-a-half stars and a lot of words. So bad it's sorta good (but only sorta). Apparently beneath everyone else's notice.
Inevitable Costa-Gavras and Yves Montand completism following Z (1969). Over two nights as I found it to be hard work, as was doubtlessly intended. Again in French.
In 1952, for reasons unshown, the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia decided to liquidate some of their leaders who were veterans of the Spanish Civil War. This apparently required a show trial. Most were then executed but a few were given life sentences instead. The bulk of the movie involves the interrogation of Montand — essentially wearing him down with privation and repetition over many months. His odd sharp ripostes to his captors, along the lines of why appeals to his being a good Communist and these charges of treason were contradictory, added welcome but insufficient depth to the politics. The scenes involving his wife (Simone Signoret) were well-constructed and sometimes effective (her response to having her house searched, the congratulations from her fellow factory workers to the trial's outcome).
By way of George Orwell, we know how this scenario goes. I hoped to gain some insight into what value these vintage Communist show trials had to these regimes; the charges were so vague, the evidence mostly omitted, that this process could have applied to anyone and should have convinced no one. It's unclear why Montand's character survived but the others did not. It didn't function quite as well as a time capsule. It closes with some footage of the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which in combination with the swift reversals of fortune for the interrogators, showed that this approach to controlling the populace (?) was ineffective, brief and illusory.
Roger Ebert: four stars and an excellent review. Based on the memoirs of Lise and Artur London from 1968 (and once again adapted by Jorge Semprún). "Costa-Gavras has made a point of insisting that the movie is anti-Stalinist, not anti-Communist. For that matter, we had some show trials trying to get themselves under way in this country in 1952." Ironically in both of these movies we're shown states suppressing left-wing political movements. Vincent Canby. All about showing interiority by physicality. Fancy cinematic devices, again due to Françoise Bonnot. André Malraux: "A life is worth nothing, but nothing is worth a life." — a sentiment that did not make it far into the twenty-first century.
A pointer from Peter Sobczynski's review of Wake Up Dead Man (2025) with the warning that it was intricately plotted but characterless, and hence unmemorable. Directed by Sidney Lumet from an adaptation of Ira Levin's stage play by Jay Presson Allen. Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, Dyan Cannon connive in a manner too similar to the superior Sleuth (1972). As you can infer from the small cast and import of the leads there are many switchbacks that are mostly predictable as the movie disappears up its own fundament. Irene Worth's Dutch psychic is a bit tedious.
Roger Ebert: three stars. Reeve's performance "has a light, handsome comic touch not a million miles removed from Cary Grant's." Janet Maslin. Depthless.
Third outing for Rian Johnson's Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) character (after Knives Out (2019) and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)). Again he wrote and directed, again with diminishing returns. Again I didn't really get into it.
The scenario has reformed street brawler/boxer/newly minted priest Josh O'Connor (La Chimera (2023)) sent to a small village somewhere in New York as punishment for punching out some other Catholic Church functionary. There he encounters Josh Brolin in messiah mode and soon enough Noah Segan as a barkeep in a devil-themed bar. Glenn Close keeps the church running. Doctor Jeremy Renner is bereft after his wife leaves him. Mila Kunis, implausible as police. Kerry Washington, a lawyer with a horribly caricatured adopted son Daryl McCormack. Jeffrey Wright! After excess setup there's a murder (surprise) and the explanations start with an hour to go. The exposition is abidingly excessive. The humour struck me as stale.
I had hopes that Johnson would innovate, for instance by having all of them do it, or none. But no, this is really a treasure hunt.
Dana Stevens: better than the last one. Peter Sobczynski: better than the last one.
Niki Savva: Earthquake: the election that shook Australia. (2025)
Sun, Dec 14, 2025./noise/books | LinkKindle. The first half compiles Savva's columns about the previous Parliament (2022-2025) for the Channel9Fairfax entertainment complex; I skipped it as I read enough of them at the time. The second is pitched as an analysis (a second take on history?) of the election campaign and aftermath.
This is one for the insiders, being mostly a review of the theatricals and settling scores for those she spoke with. There is very little coverage of policy, or discussion of the coherency of or tensions in the way we are governed; compare, for instance, with Laura Tingle's concerns about the public service and Hugh White's ways of thinking about geopolitical forces. At some point she says:
It was [Chris] Bowen who told me after the last election that the emergence of the teal independents was for the Liberals what the great split of the 1950s — which led to the creation of the Democratic Labour Party — was for Labor.
which struck me as unusually insightful; Peter Lewis recycled this observation at the Guardian (2025-04-15) without attribution.
I felt she was too generous toward Mark Dreyfus's (anti-)achievements as Attorney General and while I might concur and even enjoy her take on the many heels in parliament there are some that deserve more sober consideration, if only because they might be ruling over us some day soon. Her own values are there but are mostly pushed aside. More context would often have helped; I wish she had mechanically listed party, seat, geography and perhaps provided a capsule bio for each politician she mentioned. Another round of editing may have fixed the typos and missing punctuation. Overall all I got was an expression of the common view (nothing new?), the odd amusing anecdote and that she's better in the short (warm take) form.
Savva stuck with her advice to Albo that he should go this term (from December 2024). She thinks he should be satisfied with about five years on the throne but that assumes he has other things to do than politic and set records of increasing vacuity. The ALP becoming "the natural party of government" has meant that it has adopted a policy suite that would not have embarrassed John Howard. (Scott Morrison's greatest achievement and/or legacy may well have been Albo.) But Howard achieved far more (some good things even!) by this point in his reign. Perhaps someone can press Albo on what he means by "fighting Tories"; one has to wonder what's in it for the rusted-on Laborites.
With Tingle now covering foreign/global affairs it would seem that Savva is the last journo of any standing left in the Canberra press gallery (in my bubble at least). She's a fan of Tom Connell on Sky During Daylight (who is now President of the National Press Club).
The platformed commentariat of Australia appears to be engaging in a great silence about this book. Goodreads: excess #leadershit. Nothing said about how and why Australia is the most secretive democracy in the world. Lacked the connections to do what she's done in previous books (?) so there's a lot more on Libnat failure than ALP success/internecine warfare. Does not get to the heart of the matter, e.g. why Albo was so much hungrier this time around. Her earlier work is superior.
Exotic, pre-war Europe. Margaret Lockwood is the upper class damsel who will soon be in distress. Michael Redgrave (The Quiet American (1958)), because Errol Flynn was unavailable? They meet sorta-cute and the rest is either irrelevant to the ending (they're getting married!) or they are mostly irrelevant to the plot. Director Alfred Hitchcock did not seem to have enough faith in the script (by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the story The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White) to let us in on what was going on until my interest lapsed. There's some saucy dialogue of the "preview of coming attractions" kind between a mostly-auxiliary couple on the train.
Some Spierig brothers completism. After a sneaky and satisfying rewatch of Predestination (2014). They wrote and directed with some help from Tom Vaughan on the script. Also for Sarah Snook (in an entirely unchallenging role). Jason Clarke led. Helen Mirren got top billing. Over two nights due to tedium.
This is the worst thing I've seen by them so far. The premise is that the ghosts of people killed by the Winchester rifle are haunting the wife of the company's founder. Her solution is to build a rambling mansion until Clarke can bring the necessary manliness. If I got it right, the solution to being haunted by vengeful ghosts killed with the Winchester rifle is to kill them with the Winchester rifle.
The cinematography is uninventive by their standards. I quickly got sick of the jump scares. There really is nothing going on here except for Bruce Spence who does well with the little he is given to work with.
Prompted by Jason Di Rosso's interview with co-writer/director Boris Lojkine and lead Abou Sangaré who won a best performance award at Cannes in 2024 and a César in 2025. Delphine Agut was the other co-writer.
Illicit gig working in France by asylum seekers from Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire (I think). This involves figuring out the protocols of the homeless shelters, acquiring a fake account on a delivery platform (at a cost of about 50% of the income), a bicycle and running red lights in Paris in the cold and wet. Sangaré has some well-constructed interactions with a variety of people, humanising the French, and only a very few nasty ones that were not especially racist; it was as if everyone accepted the present moment's need for an underclass, even the gendarmerie. He clearly worked hard, especially in a concluding scene that he totally nailed with some able help from Nina Meurisse (who also won a César for her efforts). It put me in mind of that excellent two-hander interview in Adolescence (2025). This one is not violent but achieves a similar level of emotional charge. She does not ask him about the damage to his face.
The story itself doesn't have many places to go, being a tale of living at the limits of precarity while waiting for the one big event that might change things. (I was glad his bike and phone somehow did not run out of charge or get stolen.) It felt less overtly political than Welcome (2009). The lightly-drawn frenemy, family and horseplaying-buddy aspects evoked Io Capitano (2023). The cinematography is excellent.
A Critic's Pick by Natalia Winkelman: "not only build[s] empathy with its hero's pain but channels its sensation." The scene with the elderly Frenchman on the seventh floor was indeed well conceived. Michael Wood.
Based on Denis Johnson's novella (2011) of the same name. (I wasn't a fan of his famous collection of shorts.) Mostly for the cast — Joel Edgerton, William H. Macy, Kerry Condon (Breaking Bad (2008-2013), The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)), not Felicity Jones (Rogue One (2016), The Brutalist (2024)) — and the promising-by-their-recent-IMDB-ratings combination of co-writer/director Clint Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar.
American bucolic. In the early decades of the twentieth century, socially-isolated lumberjack Edgerton finds himself in Idaho where Jones unfathomably finds him irresistible. Even after a daughter arrives he disrupts his domestic bliss with long trips, west to the Pacific, east to Montana (something like that), for work. Soon enough the only fathomable tragedy occurs and he resumes his hermitude. (It's not like someone could have stolen his idea for a social network though just maybe they may have thieved a building block concept he dreamt up for his child.) He thoughtlessly avoids modernity, is mystified by a chainsaw. It's mostly one thing after another spiced up with endless flashbacks and flashforwards; he's aware but not that expressive or outwardly reflective. Things land with some healing not via Kelly Condon's fellow hermit (she appears to be facially converging with Toni Collette) but via the wonders of sightseeing from a biplane: ultimately he's "connected to it all".
I felt it was elegiac, sombre hokum, reflecting the mood of the present time, the primordial desire to return to a prelapsarian monoculture. It is a vote against finding redemption or solace in other people (the Condon vector) but inertia definitely leads to hermitude. Some heavy themes treated shallowly.
On the cinematic front Bentley and DP Adolpho Veloso were clearly reaching for Malick's pristine unspoilt wilderness, Rousseau's man in some kind of natural state. There's a sense of it being an uncomplicated, unsophisticated complement of First Cow (2019). On the other hand it stands against Viggo Mortensen's The Dead Don't Hurt (2023) by lacking a target for revenge; nature doesn't test a temperament in anything like the same way. The logging scenes were not a patch on Sometimes a Great Notion (1971) and it generally stood in need of the keen eye and wild inventiveness of a Ken Kesey. Edgerton is good in the lead and surely up for an Oscar nom. Macy with the explosives, an early enviro mystic. Narration by Will Patton! At least some of the soundtrack was by Nick Cave (says IMDB).
Peter Sobczynski: an Academy fight song. Justin Chang summarised it and analysed its deviations from its source material for the New Yorker. Brian Tallerico at Roger Ebert's venue: four stars. Days of Heaven (1978). Peter Bradshaw: four stars. "His emotional life is the tree that falls in the forest without making a sound."
More guff from director/co-writer Noah Baumbach. (Emily Mortimer was the other co-writer and had a minor role as a vacuous something-or-other.) His first project since White Noise (2022) and/or Barbie (2023), depending on what you count.
The cast is amazing. George Clooney led with an orange-man tan, making me wonder if it is now a requirement for U.S. presidential candidates. I was hoping for more from Adam Sandler: there's a feeling that he's barely getting out of second gear for most of it. He had some great scenes with Laura Dern (solid), impassive while her head, hair and hands went in all directions and her face took on all expressions. I would have far preferred to see their Eiffel Tower story. This proves that there is material that even Jim Broadbent cannot elevate. Billy Crudup! Alba Rohrwacher (La Chimera (2023))! Stacy Keach, never sharkier, as Clooney's dad! And of course Greta Gerwig.
The story itself is the purest Hollywood navel gazing. Clooney knows just how much self awareness he can get away with, most days, but age and daughters have caught up to him. His performance was something of a complement to Bill Shatner's Has Been (2004) persona, or perhaps just minor variations on himself. The concluding homage reminded me of the similarly-flawed The Fabelmans (2022) and Hugo (2011).
The cinematography is effective but uninventive. The story is a pile of cliches made even more tedious by repeated tics: the cheesecake, "Can we go again?", the loneliness, Baumbach telling us something then showing how it went down. This telegraphing is indistinguishable from padding. It would've helped if it was in any way funny, like those long-gone Coen brothers flicks. Overlong.
Peter Sobczynski: shallow. If only it went all-in on Sandler's character. Dana Stevens: lifts from Fellini, "pays tribute to François Truffaut and Preston Sturges."
A (director) Jules Dassin jag from Thieves' Highway (1949). Richard Brooks adapted a story by Robert Patterson. Also a bit of Burt Lancaster completism.
Lancaster, once again a jailbird (before Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)), finds himself at the mercy of sadistic and manipulative Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn). Things tend inexorably towards a prison break with all the action jammed into the last five minutes. The best parts of the buildup explain how the five cellmates ended up inside, usually via some entanglement with a gorgeous woman. (There's a stylised image of a woman in their cell who stands in for all of them; I think Dassin and co missed a trick by not having that woman play all the femme fatales. My favourite involved Flossie (Anita Colby), what a doll.) There's a dash of Natural Born Killers (1994) in the riot and politics amongst the prison staff.
The acting was generally fine. Lancaster was a bit inert but does OK with what's asked for. He engaged in some minor acrobatics that show what might have been. Charles Bickford could've used more screen time. Ann Blyth was squandered as some sweet soul.
After a sneaky rewatch of Two Hands (1999) a few weeks ago. Prompted by Jason Di Rosso's interview with writer/directory Mary Bronstein. This led me to expect a performance from Rose Byrne something like Gina Rowlands's in A Woman Under the Influence (1974), and for her character to be unlikeable. Whatever her merits the scenario does not allow her to reach any significant heights, and more problematically, this character is boring as she lacks backstory and motivation.
In essence this mother is left to tend to her only child who has an eating disorder while she tries to function as a therapist. (Husband Christian Slater appears mostly as an annoying voice on the phone and in a brief what-did-you-do ending scene.) A housing disaster causes the mother/daughter pair to move to a motel for most of the movie where they encounter the underdrawn Ivy Wolk at the front counter and co-resident A$AP Rocky who does what he can. (He has one of the few characters that make sense and is totally different from Highest 2 Lowest (2025). He tries to sort her out on the dark web!) She's got a drowning-woman thing for fellow shrink Conan O'Brien (good and somewhat amusing as the straight man in a bent situation) and finding psychedelic experiences in holes. Danielle Macdonald (The Tourist (2022)) went looking for help in all the wrong places. Bronstein herself is flat as the doctor treating the daughter.
I found it hard to watch. Many scenes don't work; one has a hamster in a car that just sequences cliches and too many others are similarly uninspired. The cinematography was often too murky for me to make things out or too annoyingly jittery. I had an abiding sense of waiting for it to get good and it just didn't. Byrne's performance had shades of Julianne Moore's from Magnolia (1999). The body horror tropes evoked David Cronenberg, the apartment horrors Rosemary's Baby (1968), and the scenario just maybe The Exorcist (1973). It's autofic and I should have skipped it (as I have Celine Song’s output): I am not in the target demographic that demands relatability, either in the form of characters recognisably themselves or in Bad Mother variation. The dodgy psychologising and spacey logic tediously aimed to validate.
A Critic's Pick by Jeannette Catsoulis. I acknowledge that it tried to be funny. Dana Stevens: "Uncut Gems (2019) for motherhood." — Safdie brothers adjacent. Byrne is impossible to stop watching. Epic self absorption. Unmodulated script. Relieved when it was over.
A Richard Conte jag from Thieves' Highway (1949). Also some Alain Delon completism. Completely dire.
A black-and-white noir directed by Jules Dassin (Night and the City (1950), Rififi (1955)). Notionally-Greek Richard Conte (later Barzini in The Godfather (1972)) returns to Fresno from the war to find his sweetheart (Barbara Lawrence) waiting and father (Morris Carnovsky) in need of some justice. This leads him to finance a possibly-shonky operation with Millard Mitchell that involves them driving trucks from an apple orchard to the badlands of the markets of San Francisco. There he encounters sharky trader Lee J. Cobb (On the Waterfront (1954), 12 Angry Men (1957)) who has engaged the services of foxy Italianate streetwalker-with-a-heart-of-gold Valentina Cortese (The Visit (1964), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)) to distract him and us at critical moments. Most of the characters are of uncertain virtue.
Things get a bit racy (he gets his shirt off and so does she) and violent. It seems to endorse migrants marrying migrants because those settled in the U.S. for longer just want your money but don't have the courtesy to ask for it. The trucking aspect put me in mind of The Wages of Fear (1953). It's not always engrossing but it was always possible that it could have been.
Kindle. Inevitable after Yilkari (2025). The story goes as the summaries have it. It's written in a very discursive style with an irritating iterative-deepening structure. I didn't get any grip on the horror angle as it is all innuendo; I was more frightened that Lovecraft was going to take as many pages to get out as he took to get in. The epistemics are highly dodgy (it was all a dream) and the time travel aspect not very baked. I wonder why he picked that location in the Pilbara (spelt "Pilbarra" in the text I had) as the site of the happenings.
