Movie review by Greg Carlson

The combination of biographical information and artist statement found under the “about” tab at Ann Oren’s website partly reads, “By dissolving distinctions between plant, animal and human, she asks what it is to be human in an ecosystem immersed in digital culture. Questions about intimacy and identity keep emerging through various audio-visual approaches, while exploring gender, fictosexuality, animality, interspecies and other hybrid conditions.” Those sentiments surely represent truth in advertising concerning Oren’s feature directorial debut “Piaffe,” originally released in competition at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival and now popping up on a number of 2023 “best of” lists.

Beautifully shot on Super 16mm film by Carlos Vasquez, “Piaffe” follows the physical transformation and sexual awakening of Eva (Simone Bucio), a young woman who takes over the preparation of audio for a drug commercial when sibling and original Foley artist Zara ends up in the hospital following a nervous breakdown. The mercurial Zara, played by the nonbinary performer Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, significantly influences the trajectory of Eva’s experiences while remaining a mystery to the viewer. In 2020, Paetau appeared in Oren’s short “Passage,” which screened in multiple festivals and was recognized at Slamdance with a jury prize for Best Experimental Film.

“Piaffe” is an expansion of “Passage.” Both movies address metamorphosis through the supernatural growth of what becomes a luxurious horse’s tail on a human, but Oren uses the longer running time of “Piaffe” to dive more deeply into the ways that her protagonist is affected by radical change that manifests emotionally and intellectually as well as bodily. Any impulse to frame the somatic component of Eva’s mutation within the realm of Cronenbergian body horror is rapidly dispatched by Oren’s attitude, resulting in a kind of liberation that Sophie Monks Kaufman calls “body pleasure.” As the hair on Eva’s tail grows, so too does her sense of self and her way of being in the world.

The erotic influence of the horse is well-documented. In her 2008 thesis titled “Sex and Gender in the Equine in Literature,” Leah Graysmith describes an array of historical treatments, noting, “Perhaps the examples set in classical mythology and by Chaucer and Shakespeare have had an inspiring effect on later literature and cultural expression, or perhaps the continued proliferation of horses representing all things sexual is something intrinsic to culture.” Oren guides her viewers to identify with the taciturn Eva, using the experimentation of the Foley stage as a gateway to embrace the thrilling spark Eva feels once she engages some kinks in a dominant/submissive relationship with fern botanist Novak (Sebastian Rudolph).

Eva’s operation of the fotoplastikon where Novak examines stereoscopic images of plants is just one of Oren’s great visual designs. An antique kind of theater that rotates a set of fixed viewports into positions that pause long enough for the observer to briefly ponder illuminated cards, the fotoplastikon in “Piaffe” is simultaneously suggestive of a peep show, a horse training ring, and a cinematically-inclined zoopraxiscope (Oren has previously acknowledged the influence of “magician of cinema” Eadweard Muybridge). The curiosity inspired by the filmmaker’s sensuously presented fusion of flora and fauna will lead admirers to the special rewards discovered only through repeat viewings.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In a movie year that brought to life an iconic plastic fashion doll and a theoretical physicist who ushered in the Atomic Age, there was no shortage of memorable characters. But for my money, the crown for the most remarkable cinematic creation of 2023 sits atop the head of reanimated adventurer Bella Baxter. Brought to life (after death) by Emma Stone in a comprehensively mesmerizing performance, Bella – who, the story explains, is simultaneously her own daughter and her own mother – takes viewers on an odyssey of the mind and the body.

Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos make one hell of a team, collaborating with a set of top-notch castmates and craftspeople to work up one “diabolical fuckfest of a puzzle” based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray. The screenplay by Tony McNamara honors the grandest themes of Mary Shelley’s infinitely influential “Frankenstein,” catapulting the 1818 touches of the Gothic and the Romantic to a kind of otherworldly, steampunk-influenced fantasia that reimagines the Victorian Era with retrofuturistic eye candy in every direction. As the Victor Frankenstein-esque Godwin Baxter (God, for short, and a nod to Shelley’s papa), Willem Dafoe works all the wonders of rationality beneath a patchwork of facial scars inflicted by his own character’s father in the pursuit of knowledge.

Dafoe’s delightful mad scientist is really anything but mad. His frank practicality can stun and even shock assistant/student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), who arrives at Godwin’s home surgery to study Bella – if not to rapidly fall under her spell. God’s unvarnished honesty rubs off on his spectacular “experiment,” as Bella’s uninhibited directness pumps the film full of frequently anachronistic and always hysterical wordplay. In one scene, Max reads aloud a postcard from Bella: “Me good Lisbon sugar tart lick me all day.” He hopes it is all one sentence.

The comic grenades continue to detonate with the arrival of caddish attorney Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a horny and mischievous rakehell whose plan to fornicate with nary a pause (“Why do people not do this all the time?” wonders the equally insatiable Bella) is thwarted when Bella’s emotional intelligence quickly outstrips his. If, as Bernard Dick argues, all horror is in some way predicated on metamorphosis, then the Frankenstein mythology belongs to that genre as much as it does to science fiction. The horror of “Poor Things,” however, lies not in Bella’s physical transformation but rather in her understanding of men and how they operate. A volume of that knowledge will be earned in the Paris brothel run by Madame Swiney (Kathryn Hunter).

As she labors to master language and understand common social behavior, the early Bella glows with an aura evoking both holy foolishness and the incongruous, plain-speak wisdom of Chance the gardener and Forrest Gump. But watching Bella’s rapid education, which accelerates from a huge appetite for “furious jumping” (her words for sexual intercourse) to an appreciation of significant philosophical questions, is one of the movie’s greatest joys and one of Stone’s greatest triumphs as a performer. If substantive change inspired by an arc of experience defines a strong character, Bella Baxter shines as brightly as any diamond. She’s just as tough, too.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of “The Zone of Interest” makes a perfect visual companion to the great political thinker Hannah Arendt’s most quoted concept. Introduced in her 1961 work for “The New Yorker” and then incorporated into the title of the 1963 book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” Arendt’s argument that the Nazi bureaucrat fulfilled his duties without any deliberate sadism  – but rather, a kind of disengagement – continues to ignite debate (for a solid primer see Thomas White’s concise essay for “Aeon”). Glazer uses Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), the longest serving commandant of Auschwitz, to probe the kind of unremarkable and ordinary evil that threatens us again today.

Glazer, whose rigorous stylistic choices have frequently drawn favorable comparisons to Stanley Kubrick, spent years preparing the film, returning the fictionalized version of his central figure (as imagined by Amis) to the historical SS officer who would eventually hang in 1947 for his role as a mass murderer. Glazer sought the support of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, accessing archival material that aided in the construction of a screenplay emphasizing the daily domestic routines of the Höss household overseen by Rudolph’s wife Hedwig (a chillingly effective Sandra Hüller).

Living in a neatly-kept house adjacent to the concentration camp, Rudolph and Hedwig raise their five children with the help of servants and the support of exploited prisoners. Glazer stages a series of scenes in which the members of the Höss family enjoy the leisure and comforts of their station. Swimming, sunbathing, gardening, playing, fishing, and celebrating birthdays mark the passage of time. But any sense of comprehensive peace is shattered by the constant sounds of screams and gunshots coming from the other side of the wall that serves as a barrier between the Höss home and the machine-tooled workings of the death camp overseen by Rudolph.

“The Zone of Interest” sustains our sense of stricken fascination in part through Glazer’s use of hidden cameras placed throughout the set, a technique recalling the filmmaker’s memorable approach to capturing unrehearsed and unguarded moments of civilians whose curiosity brought them to the van piloted by Scarlett Johansson during “Under the Skin.” Other elements, including scenes of a girl presented in the otherworldly glow of monochromatic, night-vision negative (which may for some call to mind the child in the red coat in “Schindler’s List”), intensify the experience as surely as the brilliant Mica Levi score.

Late in the film, Glazer makes a Kubrickian cut spanning decades of time to a series of sobering shots that link past and present in a way that should unnerve anyone who has recently tolerated the extremism of the far-right and the rhetoric of politicians and candidates who espouse nationalism and authoritarianism. Glazer also includes a brief moment that rhymes with an eerily similar scene in “The Act of Killing” featuring another example of Arendt’s concept personified. Rudolph Höss, we notice, is an awful lot like the Indonesian death squad executioner Anwar Congo. We should all hope that we don’t resemble either man.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Bubbling up on multiple 2023 best-of lists and qualified for a possible Oscar nomination as Argentina’s international feature entry (prior to the eventual finalists, the fifteen shortlisted titles will be announced on December 21, 2023), Rodrigo Moreno’s excellent “The Delinquents” is a thoroughly satisfying slice of contemplative slow cinema. A simmering heist movie (in the loosest sense), the film uses the basic premise of an inside job as a springboard to a multilayered critique of clock-punching drudgery and how to break free from it. Moreno’s central characters toil away at a Buenos Aires bank, sleepwalking through the quotidian routines that add up, day after day, to a career of unfulfilling and forgettable labor – but is that all there is?

Moreno initially establishes the same kinds of bleak rhythms seen in Mike Judge’s “Office Space” and its sibling “The Office” – the stretches of quiet interrupted only by the sounds of electrical humming and corporate jargon. But unlike the lacerating comedy cooked up by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, “The Delinquents” reveals a more existential agenda. Given his access to large amounts of cash that he moves to and from the vault, Morán (Daniel Elías) at first appears to be the model of trustworthiness and responsibility. Turns out, he has decided to take $650,000 and then go to prison for the crime, trading approximately three years behind bars to net what it would take a quarter of a century to earn (times two, since half will go to a helper).

Morán has clearly spent some time figuring out the angles, so before surrendering to authorities, he targets unwitting coworker Román (Esteban Bigliardi) to mind the duffel bag stuffed with pilfered currency. In the first of several beguiling swerves, Moreno introduces a switch, as the person we assumed would drive the central narrative is set aside for the exploration of another who is equally interesting. The anagrammatic names of the two key men will soon be further entwined by the introduction of Margarita Molfino’s Norma – a playful choice Moreno extends with Morna (Cecilia Rainero), Ramón (Javier Zoro Sutton), and, for good measure, a shot of a comic book cover featuring Namor the Sub-Mariner.

Román is identified as Morán’s likely accomplice by the investigator (a great Laura Paredes) attempting to solve the embezzlement, and Moreno uses the threat of discovery to explore several enthralling ways in which we conceptualize freedom. In a sense, both men pay a certain price for their deeds. Once Román finds his way out of the city and into the countryside, where he will meet up with members of a filmmaking crew particularly attuned to careful appreciation of sight and sound, his own concerns and anxieties about holding the money melt away in favor of an idyll with no price tag. Soon, Moreno dazzles with yet another ripple/echo/switchback that would make Guy de Maupassant and O. Henry proud.

The doubling extends to Germán de Silva, cast as both bank boss Del Toro and as tough inmate Garrincha, mirrored in a way that allows Moreno to ask whether even the simplest and best-laid plan is worth the unforeseen complications of extortion and the threat of physical harm. The altogether leisurely pacing of the film, which clocks in at three hours, works on behalf of the filmmaker’s grand scheme. Split into two segments, “The Delinquents” sustains its expansive length by manipulating expectations and insisting that the journey is just as important as the destination. Additionally, Moreno stuffs the movie with intertextual gifts celebrating Argentina, including Ricardo Zelarayán’s poem “The Great Salt Flats,” Astor Piazzolla’s oboe compositions, and a vinyl copy of “Pappo’s Blues Volumen 1” for the viewer to unwrap.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Australian filmmaker Kitty Green’s brilliant nonfiction movies, including the superb “Casting JonBenet,” laid the groundwork for the director’s recent interest in narrative features. In “The Royal Hotel,” Green reteams with Julia Garner (who starred in Green’s “The Assistant”) for another searing depiction of the ways in which women must carefully navigate a world filled with what one character almost offhandedly refers to as “male attention.” It goes without saying that the particular kind of attention described is very much of the unwanted variety. Based in part on Pete Gleeson’s 2016 documentary “Hotel Coolgardie,” “The Royal Hotel” is as harrowing and thought-provoking as Green’s finest.

Garner and Jessica Henwick play Hanna and Liv, American backpackers who invariably claim Canadian citizenship to soften potential hostility as they make their way through Australia. While the original subjects were Finnish, Green’s point is clear: vulnerable strangers in a strange land intensify the risks facing “fresh meat” (as chalked on a sign at the pub where they take temporary employment). Green makes a point of communicating buddy system mechanisms the young women use to protect one another, but leaves no doubt Hanna and Liv are in over their heads.

“The Royal Hotel” is not exactly a genre film, but the horror is as tense as anything conjured up by the presence of supernatural monsters, ghouls, or demons. Green’s awareness of her country’s long traditions of outback-set thrillers informs the filmmaker’s sharp sense of timing and staging. Miles from any city and without an easy escape route, Hanna and Liv make the necessary adjustments to convince their new clientele (and themselves) that everything will be alright, even as Green tightens the screws. An excellent Hugo Weaving, as pub owner Billy, inspires little confidence. Drunk more often than sober, Billy knows that attractive young barmaids will help sell more pints – even at the cost of their personal safety.

Once our protagonists get the hang of serving drinks to the small army of working class toughs who blow off steam at Billy’s place, Green introduces another layer of concern as Liv, like Billy, imbibes on the clock with the unsavory characters who would be delighted to see her in less than complete control of herself. The quiet Teeth (James Frecheville) and the leering Dolly (Daniel Henshall) are a study in contrasts, even though we don’t trust either one. Both men keep a close eye on Liv, much to the dismay of Hanna, whose own suitors include deceptively casual Matty (Toby Wallace) and lively partier Torsten (Herbert Nordrum). More than once, Green gets the viewer to freeze while locked doors are forced open.

As a storyteller, Green must be praised for the confident directorial subtlety that synchronizes the point of view belonging to Hanna and Liv with the one held by the viewer. On the thematic issue of how women “handling a room of drunks” is performance, Amy Nicholson argues a terrific point. Green’s ability to make us second guess every choice made by Hanna and Liv instead of firstly interrogating the actions of the men harassing them underlines the toxic pervasiveness of easy victimization and intimidation that permeates too much of world culture.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Saltburn,” the highly anticipated follow-up to “Promising Young Woman” – which earned Oscar gold for Best Original Screenplay – doesn’t quite equal the bite and sting of writer-director Emerald Fennell’s feature debut, but not for lack of trying. The deafening buzz isn’t likely to translate into its predecessor’s award season accolades, but the curious will be drawn to Fennell’s wicked sense of bleak and black comedy, the simmering and fluid homoeroticism, and the fleshy display of shooting stars Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, and their castmates. Fennell puts in the necessary work to balance on the fine line between wealth porn and eat-the-rich satire/social commentary.

The dynamic writer-director-producer–showrunner-performer, who turned just 38 in October, expands both her sense of scale and her shrewd eye for psychologically thrilling tension with the story of Keoghan’s pointedly monikered Oliver Quick, the proverbial “poor boy in a rich man’s house.” At Oxford on scholarship, Oliver obsesses over and bonds with Elordi’s fabulously wealthy golden child Felix Catton, whose family resides in the titular estate, a ridiculously opulent 127-room Northamptonshire palace known in real life as Drayton House. Fennell’s insistence on shooting all the principal domestic action on location, as well as her dogged pursuit of a spot previously unused for film or television, handsomely pays off.

Despite multiple warnings and constant reminders that he will eventually be cast off once Felix tires of him, Oliver makes himself at home, sizing up the pecking order of the staff led by commanding head butler Duncan (Paul Rhys) and the quirky members of Felix’s family: Lady Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), Sir James (Richard E. Grant), sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), and cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe). Fennell’s lacerating wit surges, sparks and crackles through each of Saltburn’s inhabitants, which also includes Carey Mulligan’s “Poor Dear” Pamela, a damaged friend who serves in part as a grim glimpse at Oliver’s possible future.

Fennell cranks up the wretched excess, infusing Oliver with enough mystery to keep the viewer curious about the character’s motivations and the extent to which he is the one doing the using versus the one being used. The filmmaker accomplishes this via several of the movie’s most controversial interactions, which include a slurped-up cocktail of bathwater and ejaculate, symbolic gravesite necrophilia, and, in an acknowledged nod to “Dracula,” some menstrual cunnilingus. The vampiric essence of the latter is already the subject of an intriguing essay by Samantha Bergeson (which also references Chloe Domont’s “Fair Play”) investigating the complexity of gender-based stereotypes and period sex.

Fennell indicated an interest in manipulating audience sympathy to align with unlikeable and abhorrent people, and this element of “Saltburn” links the film to the work of Hitchcock. It’s no fluke that multiple comparisons have also been made between Fennell’s movie and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” but the homages, twists, and inversions extend to “Brideshead Revisited,” “The Great Gatsby,” “Jane Eyre,” “My Summer of Love,” “Burning,” “Parasite” and others. The soundtrack is equally evocative, using bullseyes from MGMT, Pet Shop Boys, the Killers, and many others. The centerpiece song, however, is Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 club banger “Murder on the Dancefloor,” which propels the most talked-about scene in a movie bursting with them.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Aired just one time on CBS the evening of November 17, 1978, “The Star Wars Holiday Special” was the first sanctioned, long-form Luscasfilm media extending the cultural phenomenon of the blockbuster movie directed by George Lucas. Over the years, the show’s reputation spread through word of mouth and bootleg VHS dubs sold at sci-fi conventions until the internet made access easier. Filmmakers Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak celebrate the 45th anniversary of Life Day with “A Disturbance in the Force: How the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened,” a feature-length, behind-the-scenes documentary dive into the factors that would shape the mythology and fuel the infamy of one of the most ill-conceived variety productions in the era of “The Paul Lynde Halloween Special” and “The Archie Situation Comedy Musical Variety Show.”

While it can charitably be said that “Disturbance” is mostly for fans of “Star Wars” and/or movie and television history, the subtitle of the doc represents real truth in advertising. The account of the origins, execution, and reception of “The Star Wars Holiday Special” is so painstakingly communicated, the viewing experience never approaches the giddy head-trip or eye candy of Cinefamily’s “Star Wars Nothing But Star Wars,” a far more satisfying assemblage of scraps and spare parts salvaged from the bowels of the period’s seemingly endless supply of embarrassing cross-promotions and tie-ins.

The movie’s greatest deficit, however, is the altogether obvious and narrow panel of talking heads clamoring to uncork comic quips and zingers between the historical recollections of the survivors who actually worked on the show. While not likely a deliberate sin of omission, Coon and Kozak ignore the diversity of the global fanbase; women and people of color are as scarce here as they were in the original film. Celebrity guests include Kevin Smith, Patton Oswalt, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Seth Green, Gilbert Gottfried, Taran Killam, and others. The collective impact of their sizable screen time nudges the package in the direction of something like VH1’s “I Love the ‘80s.”

Far more valuable and less annoying is the participation of various team members who contributed – directly or indirectly – to the special’s creation. Folks like Steve Binder, Miki Herman, Leonard Ripps, Bruce Vilanch, and Bob Mackie end up softening some of the expected and longstanding ridicule aimed at the special. It is within this framework that “Disturbance” finds some success. Coon and Kozak skillfully arrange these anecdotes to contextualize the big picture question “How Did This Get Made?” via a savvy understanding of Lucasfilm Vice President of Advertising, Publicity, Promotion and Merchandising Charley Lippincott’s gift for concocting ways to keep the “Star Wars” machine chugging along.

As a result of the anything-goes mentality of the moment (we are smartly reminded how difficult it can be to even recall the Star Wars universe when it was brand new) and the lack of any direct, creative involvement by Lucas, “The Star Wars Holiday Special” turned out to be the gift that has kept on giving. Bea Arthur’s cantina tribute to Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Diahann Carroll’s porny proto-VR fantasy. The untranslated Shyriiwook spoken by Chewbacca’s family for what feels like forever (I’m still worried that Lumpy will fall off that railing). Jefferson Starship’s “Light the Sky on Fire.” Harvey Korman, happily attired in cosmic Julia Child drag, preparing Bantha Surprise. Hamill, Fisher, and Ford. The inaugural mass media appearance of Boba Fett in Nelvana’s Moebius-influenced cartoon.

Hey, this thing sounds pretty good.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Focus Features gets a nifty opening credits layout as part of a throwback sequence capitalizing on the heavy New Hollywood nostalgia that suffuses Alexander Payne’s comic melodrama “The Holdovers.” Reuniting with “Sideways” star Paul Giamatti, Payne’s new movie is his first feature since the bizarre 2017 sci-fi misfire “Downsizing.” Closer in spirit to the more intimate emotional nakedness of “Nebraska,” “The Holdovers” lacks the lacerating satirical edges of debut “Citizen Ruth” and “Election” (my personal top pick of the director’s movies) in favor of a heartwarming, Christmas-themed (com)passion play. In another variation on the “grouch with a heart of gold” formula, Payne makes the most of Giamatti’s rapport with newcomer Dominic Sessa and a superb Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

In the winter of 1970-1971, Giamatti’s Paul Hunham teaches classical history to ungrateful, privileged boys at Barton Academy in New England. Paul’s fondness for tobacco pipe and whiskey glass steadies his nerves and masks the unfortunate odor caused by the trimethylaminuria that causes him to emanate a fishy reek. With no family and nowhere to go during break, he’s an easy mark to accept the thankless duty of looking after the small group of students who spend the holiday on campus. Soon enough, the number of holdovers dwindles to a single charge: the surly Angus Tully (Sessa), who can’t conceal his anger at being left behind while his mother and her new husband jet to sunnier climes.

Paul and Angus let fly all manner of colorful insult and withering put-down even as the requirements of basic civility at shared meals yoke them together. Randolph’s symbolically-monikered Mary Lamb, who runs Barton’s kitchen, also remains in residence. A longtime staff member grieving the death of her young adult son (and Barton grad), who died while serving in Vietnam, Mary mediates the animosity between the males. The threesome will eventually take a road trip and Payne, unfortunately, loses track of Mary for a long stretch once she is dropped off at her sister’s residence.

Randolph, who steals all her scenes, is sorely missed even if her absence allows the mechanics of the plot to bring Paul and Angus to a place of mutual respect and an understanding that they are a lot more alike than they are dissimilar. Payne, who was inspired by Marcel Pagnol’s 1935 “Merlusse,” cares less for the story beats than he does for the atmosphere and the vibes, which pay homage to everything from Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore” (which also used “The Wind” by Cat Stevens) to Anderson inspiration J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” In one scene, Paul disrupts a screening of “Little Big Man,” but Payne at least has the good sense to include a disgruntled patron who admonishes the interruption.

Some critics have griped about a perceived lack of sincerity in Payne’s delivery. Justin Chang, for example, wrote that the movie “seldom stops trying to convince you how sensitive it is, even as its mix of coyness and overstatement, its clunky tonal seesaws between humor and pathos, and its pride in its own good liberal conscience suggest that it hasn’t begun to think through its characters and their circumstances at all.” I don’t believe I saw the same film, since I would argue that the characters and their circumstances – Mary schooling Paul on the raison d’être of “The Newlywed Game,” a lonely mitten floating by, Angus discovering an unexpected romance during a Christmas party – are the finest aspects. In the margins, “The Holdovers” is a great hang.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Several reports discussing behind-the-scenes communications and differences of opinion between Priscilla Presley (credited as one of the new film’s executive producers), the late Lisa Marie Presley (who died in January), and others with financial and personal interests in the legacy of Elvis add a fascinating intertextual layer to Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla.” The movie’s title and the director’s filmography should offer strong indications of the principal narrative concerns; based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” the point-of-view belongs to the woman who would eventually marry and divorce the King of Rock and Roll.

Coppola’s own personal experiences with the pitfalls, privileges, and alienations of life in the spotlight have already informed several of her strongest movies, including “Lost in Translation” and “Somewhere.” “Priscilla,” however, walks right to the edge of the celebrity abyss, asking viewers to experience the strange and impossible orbit of the superstar through the eyes of the naive teenager who was just 14 years old when she first met Elvis. The ten-year gap between the two is not presented as a significant barrier to the exploration of a romantic relationship, and Coppola notes the curious hesitancy of Elvis to have sexual intercourse before marriage as well as the willingness of Priscilla’s mother and stepfather to permit their child to “date” an adult.

Recently, Priscilla has used the “it was a different time then” line in defense of the courtship, which began in 1959 when Elvis was completing military service in Germany, but much of Coppola’s filmmaking depends on the otherworldliness of Priscilla’s status as a kind of collected object simultaneously admired and reviled by Elvis. The meticulous production design by Tamara Deverell, the art direction of Danny Haeberlin, the set decoration by Patricia Cuccia and the costuming of Stacey Battat combine with Philippe Le Sourd’s cinematography to render Graceland as Priscilla’s gilded prison during the long stretches when Elvis was off performing or shooting movies with Ann-Margret or Nancy Sinatra.

Coppola has always capitalized on strong musical knowledge and an ear for dead-on perfect soundtrack selections. “Priscilla,” with assists from guru Randall Poster, Phoenix, and Sons of Raphael, eschews Elvis recordings in favor of the filmmaker’s previous tactic implementing anachronistic needle-drops that manage to convey the emotions of a moment with pinpoint precision. The time distance is not as great as the span between New Order/Siouxsie/Bow Wow Wow and the doomed queen in “Marie Antoinette,” but I loved hearing the Ramones, Dan Deacon, and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith alongside selections from Brenda Lee and the Righteous Brothers.

Coppola uses her screenplay to confine and restrain the emotional eccentricity of the connection between Priscilla and Elvis. While Lisa Marie wrote prior to her death that the screenplay painted her father as “a predator and manipulative,” Coppola plays with contemporary attitudes on grooming, resisting urges to construct psychological explanations for the choices made by or for Elvis (Colonel Tom Parker only merits the tiniest corner of story real estate here). This approach intensifies the mystery of the recording artist as seen by Cailee Spaeny’s childlike Priscilla, and the towering, lanky, and occasionally somnolent Jacob Elordi is a stark contrast to the Elvis imagined by Austin Butler and Baz Luhrmann in the 2022 biopic.

Elordi may look giant-sized next to Spaeny, but his Elvis – without the benefit of familiar, potent tunes and on-stage performance charisma – is more human than many of the previous screen portrayals. Indeed, this is an Elvis whose comfort with sending a scout to procure young women aligns him with a sizable number of rockers yet to answer for their sexual predation. This is an Elvis whose reliance on pills, and willingness to push those pills on his teenage target, sees his long shadow shrink. In this woozy fairytale fantasy that will never be happily-ever-after, Coppola suggests we sit with some discomfort and rethink a few things.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Despite accusations that not a lot happens in “Showing Up,” the Kelly Reichardt feature starring Michelle Williams that debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, admirers of the brilliant filmmaker’s impressive oeuvre won’t be dissuaded from spending time in the Reichardt cinematic universe. Reichardt’s feel for and investment in carefully observed minimalism has invited frequent critical placement within the slow cinema movement, but her characters are always so vitally invested in their own challenges that what “happens” is secondary to the ways these individuals come alive to the viewer.

“Showing Up” was released theatrically by A24 in April, but this week’s nominations for Best Feature and Best Lead Performance from the Gotham Awards should generate some fresh interest in the movie. In her fourth film for the director, Williams plays Lizzy, a sculptor whose mundane administrative work (her boss happens to be her mother) at her alma mater – filmed at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, which ended operations in actual life in 2019 – covers the rent on the modest place owned by landlord and frenemy Jo (Hong Chau), a rival artist seemingly incapable of making arrangements for Lizzy’s hot water heater to be repaired.

Like so many creators who figure out how to keep the electricity on, Lizzy’s day job is less important to her than making art. The beautiful, small-scale clay sculptures of women that Lizzy is preparing for a solo show at a local gallery were made especially for the film by Portland-based sculptor Cynthia Lahti. Min Chen describes the pieces as “imperfect ceramic figures, gnarled in form and glazed with surreal hues, their sensibility tending toward abstraction as much as outsider art.” Full disclosure: I always love learning about artists whose work “performs” in fictional space, and Lahti’s gorgeous objects are a key to understanding Lizzy’s interior self.

The simmering tensions between Lizzy and Jo are underlined by Reichardt with sly comedic sensibility. The running gag of Lizzy’s nonstop complaints about her inability to take a warm shower is pure Reichardt – first world problems, we might think at first, but most people we know would be equally grumpy in Lizzy’s circumstances. Of course, Lizzy’s passive-aggressive behavior reveals a deep-seated frustration at Jo’s more successful art practice. When Jo rescues a pigeon attacked by Lizzy’s cat, the treatment of the injured bird simultaneously escalates Lizzy’s resentment of Jo and ties the two women together as they take turns looking after their grounded patient.

Reichardt has poetically called her films “glimpses of people passing through,” but that modesty masks the depths of the hearts and souls we meet. In “Showing Up,” the “art life” frustrations experienced by Lizzy are rooted in her complicated family relationships. We instantly empathize with the complexities inherent in Lizzy’s conflicted attitudes regarding her brother Sean (John Magaro), who struggles with mental illness. Lizzy’s divorced parents live in denial of Sean’s deteriorating health even as they unnecessarily praise him as an artistic genius. The microaggressions suffered by Lizzy don’t always lead us where we think the story will go. She’s a bird with a broken wing.