Month: November 2023

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The Holdovers

The Holdovers

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We’ve all met a person like Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) in our lives, perhaps more than one if we’re particularly unfortunate.  He’s a stickler for the rules, insisting that whatever is to be done must be in accordance with the policy manual.  Any deviation from the established order must be penalized.  If your Paul Hunham probably wasn’t a teacher, he probably was a colleague at work, a relative or a friend of a friend.  You do your best to tolerate people like this as best you can until you are free of them, because there’s no way around them.  Their sole purpose is to make your life miserable by enforcing the rules and then seeing you are called out for failing to do so.  (Full disclosure: I’ve been a taskmaster from time to time.)

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Priscilla

Priscilla

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Priscilla opens with a signature Sofia Coppola montage.  Threaded with the credits are images  of personal items that belong to the eponymous character, as well as close-ups of her applying eyeliner and false eyelashes.  As it turns out, the special event in question is not just a very consequential one in Priscilla Presley’s life, but also one of the few instances where she will have the attention of the media.  When you’re married to The King of Rock & Roll, you have to make the most of what few opportunities have to make a good impression.  The irony of the event and Pricilla’s preparation for it speaks volumes about how dramatically her life had changed in the eight years since she met Elvis.

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The Marsh King's Daughter

The Marsh King’s Daughter

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There’s a key moment in The Marsh King’s Daughter, when Jacob (Ben Mendelssohn) hands his daughter Helena (Brooklynn Prince) a rifle and tells her to shoot a female wolf.  She takes aim but hesitates because a wolf cub is pawing at the ground.  Both wolves are starving, Jacob explains.  Helena lowers the rifle and asks, “What will become of the cub?”  Jacob says that the cub will starve and die, and tells her again to shoot the wolf.  Helena lowers the rifle once more, and the wolf edges closer.  Jacob grabs the rifle and shoots the wolf and its cub.  “You must always protect your family,” he tells her.  The next morning Helena scratches that message on a piece of wood that we later learn is a punishment pit.  Jacob has thrown her down there so that she will not make that mistake of choosing anything over the family ever again.  What Helena doesn’t know is that her “family” is built upon a monstrous lie, one that her father has spun to rationalize how he treats them.

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Skinamarink

Skinamarink

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Skinamarink does something that I found uncanny.  It reminded me of what it was like to wander around the house late at night as a child while my parents were asleep or otherwise preoccupied.  There’s the sound of bare feet on carpet, lights being flicked on, the muted rush of water from the toilet.  It also captures all the different sources of light that keep the fuzzy darkness at bay, from the blare of ceiling lights, a solitary night light shining in a hallway and shimmering television screens.  Within this nocturnal landscape, pajama-clad children play with toys in their rooms, in hallways or wherever the mood strikes.  The movie captures all of these moments brilliantly.

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