Behind a Pixar ante litteram semblance, lies a far more intelligent and not cheesy in the slightest gem that tells of childhood, dreams, spirituality, and the war. Set in the bombarded Ménilmontant neighbourhood of Paris, Le ballon rouge follows the improbable friendship between a boy—Albert Lamorisse’s son, incidentally—and a balloon found on the street tied to a lamppost. It is a charming story, almost disarming in its simplicity, and yet so rich and layered. Like most of Europe, France is scarred by deep open wounds. As the world is trying to put itself together wondering how and what next, a garish symbol of youth, hope, and future, comes brightening the gloomy urban grey, and not quite from nowhere, but in a way that suggests it might have been there, unnoticed, for a long time. It just took a child to spot it, and it won’t take a prick to kill it because more will join.
The final spectacular sequence that takes us up in the blue sky, over a city whose stunning beauty has clearly survived the devastation, has an almost dichotomous cathartic power. If on the one hand it fills us with an exhilarating sense of relief and optimism, on the other, it metaphorically hints at the many innocent souls recently lost. And the levity of the film is suddenly burdened with an even more touching unexpected meaning.
Enriched by ingenious visual effects—which I suspect have to be considered all the more remarkable given the times—Le ballon rouge’s vivid photography captures superbly the charm and misery of post bellum Paris. Albert Lamorisse’s documentary sensitivity is apparent. Everyday life minutiae make every shot an old chest full of precious things to discover, and the film a fascinating historical reference as well as a poetic piece of fiction.
Towards the end of the film, Pascal is chased by a gang of little bullies. Desperately trying to leave them behind, he dives into a dark alley gripping the string in his hand as hard as he can. Behind him, the balloon bounces frantically between the walls of the narrow passage. This is filmmaking at its best, an image that moved me profoundly, one that will ever hardly forget.

Melancholy, beauty, resilience, and the times that are a-changin’. L’Apollonide portrays life in a luxurious Parisian brothel au crépuscule du XIXéme siècle from the candid point of view of its girls. ‘Ça pue le sperme et le champagne ici.’
An electrical sense of imminent end flows all other a maze of rooms and corridors. A century is over, leaving some bits behind for good. Habits are evolving. Who’s young is ageing, who’s old is dying, children are blooming unaware of it all. The maisons closes are the last remaining hideout of those who are desperately fleeing the passage of time—the secret place where self deception is sold and bought more than actual desire, where the cildish obsessions of a decadent bourgeoisie are satisfied more than their erotic urges. Uncertainty looms over a sensuous intricacy of fears, anxieties, dreams—some nightmarish, some illusory, other crudely real. ‘Si nous ne brûlons pas, comment éclairer la nuit?’
L’Apollonide is not a flawless film, but its sincerity is captivating, its mise en scène superb, and the love given to both the practical and dramatic insights absolutely enchanting.

Les Quatre Cents Coups seems to presage the cultural revolution of 1968. In fact, its secondary school protagonists will be in their twenties a decade later so the time scale is about right. ‘Elle va être un peu belle, la France dans 10 ans!’ says prophetically the teacher.
The film revolves around the idea of centrifugal versus centripetal forces, sometimes in the most literal sense. Antoine’s rebellious attraction to the outside and the feeling of being chased, trapped, cornered—again, not just figuratively—is given shape by a series of near metaphorical images. The Tour Eiffel in the opening sequence, imposing totem of daring, fights to be seen behind obstructing curtains of buildings. At the fair, in the spinning cylinder thing—whatever that is, I’d love to try it— he is pushed away and yet almost squashed on the curved wall of the exotic contraption. The epic final scene—that long run on the shore toward the sea he’s never seen—is so full of an exhilarating sense of freedom, air, future. But then again, is the long dreamt open horizon the answer, or another boundary in itself?

I have seen the MGM lion roar uncountable times but there’s something particularly exciting when it performs for a Paul Thomas Anderson film. It feels like being pushed back to an age where monumental films were made, except there’s no need to go that far from where I am sitting right now because I know something worthy of that allure is about to start.
It has been called a coming-of-age affair but the whimsically titled Licorice Pizza is more than that, and it doesn’t take longer than the opening to get it. If I ever considered walk-and-talk scenes a bit stagy or mannered, PTA proves me wrong by choreographing actors and sprinklers in a masterfully written sequence that while casting golden shades on the incredible talent of the two leads, frames at once the characters, their wants, and the world they live in.
There begins a picaresque SoCal romantic journey that is also, and rather quintessentially, about the pivotal American Seventies, those of a country trying to come to terms with Watergate, Vietnam, Charlie Manson, and desperately hustle the lost optimism of the previous decade into a new form of energy—the same, incidentally, that will irreversibly affect the entire Western culture.
The only thing that didn’t quite convince me is the parade of celebrities cameos (Bradley Cooper, Sean Penn and Tom Waits in particular, but also Harriet Sansom Harris’ vague caricatured homage to her own role in Phantom Thread). However hilarious, they seem to unnecessarily downgrade the otherwise brilliant comedic side of the film to a slightly cliched level. Minor flaw, if one at all, because Licorice Pizza is nonetheless quite as dazing as cinema can be.

Four people and two generations in front of a telly, the remote not in my hands. I couldn’t cope with another film like Disney’s nauseating Encanto. None of us could really, so I blindly play a trump card.
Aaron Sorkin writes for the stage making it look like cinema—or he writes screenplays as if they were plays. I have always found his idiosyncratic virtuoso dialogues more fun to read than to watch. His characters’ wittier-than-life eloquence often feels a little too impeccable even for a representation of life like cinema is, no matter how realistic it might appear.

BOB: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to pitch.
MADELYN: But I pitched it faster.
BOB: By interrupting me.
MADELYN: How do you think I got to be a woman in a comedy room?

Then again, ‘what you gotta understand’ is that this is Aaron Sorkin—one of the few working writers to really have a distinctive style, and also one of the best at picking a moment out of somebody’s lifetime making that fraction of history into a beautifully structured, rewardingly intelligent story.
To all the above, for better or worse, Being the Ricardos is no exception—it is in fact his most convincing work among those he both wrote and directed.

Even though the spider-verse thing does bring some kind of a positive mix of spice, surprise and nostalgia to it, the only redeeming features of the experience were the wonderful end title sequence designed by Karin Fong, the excitement of my two little associates before the film started (or, say, before it admittedly faded about an hour in), and Jon Favreau. Generally speaking, the real limitation of superhero movies is live-action. However well written the script—which isn’t necessarily the case of the flamboyant No Way Home—anyone in a tight garish onesie would look like a loser or a cosplay at best, whatever the difference. Superheroes live, and are such, only in comics and animation. Convincing exceptions are very few and none of this Marvel generation is on track to be one.

The Woman Who Ran hides a clever, profound complexity behind stunning minimalistic appearances. To the irony of the title, the protagonist is temporarily on the run from a seemingly perfect relationship that doesn’t feel enough like life. A candid, attentive listener, she indirectly experiences joys and troubles of some old friends, who also lead apparently ideal lives, as they naturally surface during lengthy conversations. I wonder if solace is what she is unconsciously after as she discovers imperfections in unexpected places. Even the music, strangely hinting at vague diegetic qualities, seems to come from some abstracted vintage device. And so is the ending, which soothing images are actually those of another film. Stroke of genius.
On a different level, the theme of menace looms all over the story. That of men, often depicted as inept creepy figures. That of nature, somehow referred to through feral vignettes of fluffy ravenous felines and abusive chickens. And that of the environment—silent mountains, misty landscapes, technologically efficient architectures hiding mysterious inaccessible floors.

I take my seat less than forty minutes after waking up. I am still chewing breakfast as the coffee I had no time to take at home lands on the side table just in time for the lights to dim. Just a few more souls scattered in the cinema, I casually notice. It’s a Monday morning after all, quite a treat to be here legs crossed in front of a screen.
Joel Coen’s take on Macbeth is paced by the leaden thumping of dense drops of water, wine, blood. Veering away from easy expectations, maybe the cliché, his elegant vision replaces the gore, the filth, the murk, with mist, clouds, and crows. The Tragedy of Macbeth exists in a surreal space between stage and set, and within the harsh lines of a near brutalist architecture somewhat reminiscent of Ken Russell’s The Devils or Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Although at first sight I thought Denzel Washington too naturally charismatic for the role, my scepticism partly crumbled at his bravura slowly surfacing in Shakespearean waters. But it’s the two main female performances to have literally blown me away—Kathryn Hunter creepily contorting into the three witches, and of course Frances McDormand, a phenomenal Lady Macbeth carved in stone.

Here is another I would have probably skipped and I’m glad some obscure pre-festive mood made me not.
On the one hand The House of Gucci is not just a house of impressions but one of caricatures. In fact, it’s not even just a house but a tent, a proper big top with clowns in it. On the other hand, and right because of all the above, Ridley Scott’s detour into bourgeois family hell is also a greatly entertaining film. And if Al Pacino and the masterfully disguised Jared Leto bring the ironic element to the extent of farse, I must admit I couldn’t wait for them to be on screen. Overall the portrait of the Gucci family might be unflattering and certainly not quite tactful considering the sad unfolding of the events, but it’s hilarious and nicely cinematically rendered.
Passing over a few cheesily catchy dialogues (did I really hear Lady Gaga and Adam Driver exchange the lines, ‘I didn’t realise I married a monster.’ / ‘No, you married a Gucci.’?) The House of Gucci’s main flaw is a common one of biopics to pursue more facts, however juicy, than characters. The result is a story told by a relatively one-dimensional and unloved ensemble of misfits in which the most likeable seem to be marginal figures such as that of a greedy Iraqi financier and a rising star designer. But Tom Ford, no surprise, is shining in any incarnation.