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Reviews
Mikey and Nicky (1976)
No question: one of the best films since filming was possible.
Elaine May gets my nod as the best of directors, and this as her best film. Both Cassavetes and Falk offer their best performances. But it's a film about acting, about individual performance....much like the finest stage plays of any generation...so of course it couldn't overcome the sensationalist bent of film promoters and reviewers. Now, 42 years later, it's still magnificent!
Baal (1970)
The antithesis of high-budget computer-generated videogame-influenced movies!
To me, Schlöndiorff's "Baal" is the greatest film of both S. as director and Fassbinder as actor. Also, an astonishingly accurate film version of Brecht's early play. What does it say, and what does it mean? I'm not at all ready to judge. Apparently Brecht's widow opposed the release for about 50 years ... which is as inexplicble as Berg's widow opposing that of the magnificent third act of "Lulu". Thank you all so much.
Kika (1993)
Fantastic satirical comedy
The professional reviewers must be nuts. "Kika"is wildly funny with lots of typically Almodovar twists, gorgeously acted and stunningly filmed. I have seen most of his films, and each is so different that it's hard to compare them, but this is right at the top along with "Talk to Me", "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", and one or two others. I just love it. Were the Oscars not enormously influenced by Hollywood money this would have won best film, actor, actress, and cinematography.
Black Mirror: The National Anthem (2011)
Wonderful! Both gripping...and a belly laugh.
This first episode must be one of the best political parody since the best films of Mel Brooks, as well as astonishingly well scripted and acted. The New Yorker's November 2016 review is deservedly positive. The direction by Otto Bathhurst (master of the mock-horror genre) is well-timed and well- edited. Rory Kinneaer, and Lindsay Duncan as his overreaching assistant, are delightful. Anna Wilson-Jones, in the difficult role of Jane Callow, is more than sufficiently competent to keep the comic possibilities of the script under control.
The only downside is that Netflix apparently pick up the first two seasons for international distribution, so outside the UK one would have to search around for a legitimate source.
In a way that's part of the message, the notion that the digital and TV media present an ever-so- distorted "black mirror".
I just loved it!