Handicapping The 2024 Oscars

Greta Lee, John Magaro and Teo Yoo in “Past Lives. credit: A24

2023 was a fantastic year for films. Of the films I chose to see this year, it’s tough for me to single out any I didn’t genuinely like. And there’s a disproportionate list of really good films that didn’t get anywhere near the Oscars: After Love, Air, All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt, All Of Us Strangers, Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret, Dream Scenario, Earth Mama, Ferrari, Memory, Palm Trees And Power Lines, Passages, Priscilla, Quiz Lady, Reality, Sharper, Showing Up, You Hurt My Feelings. The Super Mario Bros. Movie – unnominated in animation – came in second at the box office. Number One? Barbie, directed by – wait, let me check my notes – oh, yeah, unnominated Greta Gerwig. Four of the top five Disney box office films were shut out, and only John Williams saved Indiana Jones from being fifth of five. Usually undeserving films squeeze in anyway because of studio / distributor P.R. blitzkriegs during the holidays. This year they’re all good; the old school aged very quickly while Megan Ellison of A24 handed then their asses. The mega-millions franchise films are losing their riz, while smart independents with real money behind them continue to stick around

Admittedly, a number of these films didn’t qualify, as they didn’t have theatrical runs – streaming only. I don’t get why the studios and distributors keep pushing streaming content so much – they don’t make nearly as much money as a healthy movie screen run. Streaming seemed effective and profitable, but Noo…

I also know the nominees are all great films because of how impossible it is to rank them. This is, of course, part of the argument against awards shows; choosing specific winners from such diverse subject matter is, in many ways, self-defeating.

Jeffrey Wright in “American Fiction.” credit: blackfilmandtv.com

Best Picture:

American Fiction – a smartly written, well-conceived examination of how art filters, and filters through, reality, honestly or manipulatively, opportunistically or shamefully. Having trouble negotiating the new shifting landscapes of wokeness and representation, Thelonius “Monk” Ellison is persuaded to take a break from academia. He heads home to Boston from L.A. and reacquaints himself with his family: his aging Mom Agnes (Leslie Uggams),  like-minded sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) and, a bit later, his wild-oats-sowing brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown). Monk stews over criticism that his own books are dismissed as too soft, and not “black” enough. Tired of the bestselling books that exploit and distort lived black experience, specifically the alleged brain-dead doorstop We’s Lives in Da Ghetto by Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), Monk writes his own purple-prose version of a cliched inner-city black crime saga featuring guns, drugs and messed-up families – My Pafology by “Stagg R. Leigh,” maliciously snickering throughout his labors. Of course, the manuscript gets distributed and wildly succeeds. Arthur, his agent (John Ortiz) encourages him to grab the reins and ride this winner home, but despite the satisfaction of proving himself right, he has very mixed feelings, alternately promoting and sabotaging his blockbuster. Some well-measured hilarity ensues, but unfortunate little sprouts of smug condescension still poke through this otherwise masterful and thoughtfully written satire. The performances are flawless throughout, and Cord Jefferson’s debut feature (he came from journalism, then writing television) definitely deserves to be in this league.

Anatomy Of A Fall – “(Justine Triet’s) ensuing narrative is, indeed, the “anatomy” of the Maleski family, and what might have led to Samuel’s death.

“The obvious question is “Did He Jump or Was He Pushed?” – and the obvious suspect for the latter is his wife. Sandra isn’t immediately charged; in fact, it’s pretty clear that the vigorous and efficient police investigation is more about the truth of the circumstances rather than landing on a perpetrator, which is also a pretty good summary of Triet’s narrative strategy as well.”

“Triet here (with her reliable writing partner Arthur Harari) revels in the complexities, the details, the incongruities and the unpredictability of her characters. The film looks great, shot by Simon Beaufils, but isn’t particularly cinematic; it’s too fussy and repetitive, is probably 45 minutes too long, and at one point I exasperatingly decided that they couldn’t tuck in all of the loose ends, gave up, and stuck with the story that the ambiguities were all on purpose.”

Margot Robbie in “Barbie.” credit: Warner Bros.

Barbie – Greta Gerwig’s terrific fantasia works like a Warner Bros. cartoon from the early 50’s – little kids will love it for the visual audacity, music, fun surprises and bigger-than-life characters, and adults will love it for the canny and pointed adult critique of gender roles, commodification, commercialization and disposable culture. But it’s all genuinely smart and funny, and looks great.

Barbie lives in Barbieland with a wide but tasteful assortment of other Barbies and Kens-in-waiting. At some point, Barbie gets a notion of her own mortality, even though her showers are never wet, and her food is never eaten. She makes a break for the real world (unaware that Ken [Ryan Gosling, effortlessly entertaining] has stowed away in the car to stick with her) and they discover that, unlike Barbieland, here the men are in charge, and being female is oppressive and infuriating, when it’s not just flat-out depressing. Her real-world guide turns out to be Gloria (America Ferrara), a secretary at Mattel, who has a cynical and pragmatic daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) and a few ideas of how to update Barbie for how life in the real world has turned out for women. Among other things, they involve cellulite… and mortality.

Meanwhile, after scoping out the real world for himself, Ken brings his newfound discovery of patriarchy (and ponies!) back to Barbieland, and transforms it into Kendom, transforming the other Barbies into cocktail waitresses and the dreamhouses into chapters of Sigma Chi. Barbie is devastated and defeated, but gets a lift from Gloria and young Sasha, arriving in time to revive Barbie and prepare for beach war with the Kens.

Sasha really gets it: “Kendom contains the seeds of its own destruction…Now that they think they have power over you, you make them question whether they have enough power over each other.”

This’ll start to get repetitive, but Barbie is a really good movie; it will nonetheless most likely end the evening empty-handed. But Greta Gerwig is the real deal, a major-league filmmaker who isn’t going anywhere, and just made Warner Bros. and Mattel the #1 box office winner of 2023. She don’t need no stinking Oscar.

The Holdovers – A thoroughly professional filmed entertainment, adapted and shot by seasoned pros, featuring impressive performances by all involved, but especially Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

A teacher (Giamatti) is persuaded to stay with, and supervise, a small group of prep-school students who are unable to go home for the holidays. Their chief-cook-and-bottle-washer, Mary Lamb (Randolph), has worked at the school for years; because of that her son was afforded an education there, but was then drafted into the army and killed.

“Like CODA from two years ago, it’s a comedic crowd-pleaser featuring just enough intelligence, eccentricity and empathy to relate a good story in a way that will challenge or offend absolutely no one.”

Killers Of The Flower Moon – “Leonardo DiCaprio does great work with a not-very-bright character who isn’t all that likeable, yet we’re still hopeful for him near the end. That’s tough – that’s good acting. It’s also the best, most arresting performance in years for DeNiro as well. Again, any other year… As you’ve no doubt heard, Lily Gladstone is revelatory here. She spends much of the latter part of the film in sweaty delirium and is still the heart and soul of the narrative.” She’s one of the film’s best shots for an Oscar, along with Robbie Robertson’s musical score.

William “King” Hale owns a cattle ranch in Oklahoma adjacent to the Osage reservation outside of Fairfax. The Osage discover their land is rich with oil, and commence to making enormous fortunes, which persuades the white establishment there to horn in on that windfall, literally by hook or by crook. Hale’s nephew, Ernest (DiCaprio) marries an Osage woman, Mollie (Lily Gladstone) and makes a home for her while being complicit in separating Mollie’s family from their oil money and abetting murder.

“In any other year, this film would have mopped up six or eight categories. And it’s absolutely a must-see, preferably in the biggest theater you can find. But settling for your TV at home will be just fine if you can avoid the usual distractions. This is incomparable American storytelling… I think I have to rate this thoroughly superb film in the Goodfellas (1990) league.”

Bradley Cooper in “Maestro.” credit: Netflix

Maestro – “(Bradley) Cooper’s second feature film, Maestro (U.S., 2023) his biographical treatment of world-class composer, conductor, musician and educator Leonard Bernstein, and his actress wife and mother of their children Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), has given (Cooper) a far more challenging degree of difficulty to overcome. Once again, God bless ‘im, like A Star Is Born, acting the lead role, writing the screenplay (with Josh Singer) and directing the film leaves us with a patchwork struggling to be a quilt. He has given us a genuinely intelligent film with a lot of interesting visual ideas, a number of impressive performances and a sincere regard for these characters, but there are just too many moving parts, too many spinning plates in the air; the great ideas flash past quickly, the underlying tectonics heave and fracture, and the conclusion of the saga leaves us with far less than the sum of the parts of these two profoundly fascinating characters.”

“Watching him be recognized, and then losing Oscars anyway, will be cruel and unfair this year. But there’s more where this came from, trust me. He’ll be fine, sadder but wiser.”

Oppenheimer – Hollywood’s always happy when a really good movie targeted for adult audiences does well at the box office. Christopher Nolan generally delivers on that, with the possible exception of Tenet, which had Covid running a bit of interference on its theatrical numbers. I still think The Dark Knight is his best film to date, warts and all, but Oppenheimer is damned impressive. The storytelling is admirably tight this time, even allowing for his usual temporal and visual trickery, and it’s clear he’s a director that other actors are happy to collaborate with. This is the expected Best Picture winner, and perhaps rightly so, but I wish he could get a better handle on his female characters. Florence Pugh does what she can with Jean Tatlock, but primarily comes off as pushy and abrupt, and, even in intimacy, is held at emotional arm’s length by Oppenheimer. Kitty Oppenheimer’s marriage to Robert was her fourth, and she was a formidable scientist and Communist herself, a fascinating character that Nolan barely scratched the surface of. It’s Oppenheimer’s film, clearly, but it’s a shame he couldn’t give Emily Blunt a bit more to work with.

Technically, of course, the film is, again, irreproachable. Hoyte Van Hoytema never shies from Nolan’s admirable sense of visual scale and is Nolan’s go-to; this is more excellent work, taken up just after shooting Nope for Jordan Peele. This is Jennifer Lame’s second editing gig for Nolan after Tenet, and she also did Wakanda Forever and Marriage Story for Noah Baumbach. Ludwig Göransson’s score is very good and avoids the bombast of Hans Zimmer while still being boldly evocative. As always, wear earplugs to theaters when you see a Nolan film – that’s just how he rolls.

Best Picture, Director, Actor and Supporting Actor, as well as many technical awards, are faits accomplis on Sunday night, but a shocker upset from Emily Blunt would be a special treat. God bless Da’Vine Joy Randolph, but Blunt, as they say, made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear with her performance, and is way overdue for being recognized for her work.

Past Lives – My personal #1 film this year. It’s Celine Song’s feature film debut.

“Past Lives is a smaller film that absolutely nails its modest but well-conceived ambitions. Song’s inspired-by-her-own-history screenplay (write what you know…) is a superbly rendered short-story that shows us the 24-year connection between two people who have loved each other dearly, from youth to present day, and how their lives nonetheless diverged.”

“Hae Sung sends word that he’ll be taking a vacation in New York, and it would be great to see Nora and meet Arthur. It’s a pleasant surprise, but no one really knows how that 24 years of each other’s voluntary exile is going to express itself. All three are good people, and there’s a delicate graciousness to each of them in their own ways. But there’s an enormous emotional undercurrent of longing and empathy underneath it all. Hae Sung confesses “I didn’t know that liking your husband would hurt so much,” but he, like Arthur, understands and accepts how they’ve ended up here.”

Best seen in a big-screen theater with no distractions, but do what you can – it’s brilliant.

Emma Stone in “Poor Things.” credit: Searchlight Pictures

Poor Things – My #2 choice this year, as creative, involving and entertaining a film as has been released in the cinematic mainstream in years. The book Yorgos Lanthimos adapted for his film, by Alasdair Gray, stretched both Lanthimos and actor Emma Stone well into another league of filmed storytelling. An intriguing reversal on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Bella Baxter’s full-grown woman, seemingly lost to suicide over her pregnancy, has her baby’s brain transplanted to her own corpse by the alternately brilliant and crackpot Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), who nurses her back to a whole new life, albeit one that she must grow up into, starting from mental infancy. Movie magic accelerates the process, of course; Godwin (God for short, of course) assigns his assistant, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to observe and record Bella’s progress over a few years. Bella, of course, can’t be imprisoned in Godwin’s home forever – already restless, she runs off with lawyer and profligate rake Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, stretching out admirably in a deeply goofy turn), and gets a crash course in luxury on a cruise ship and the lower depths of Victorian-era Lisbon and Paris.

Best Actress is an embarrassment of riches this year, and neither Lily Gladstone nor Stone deserve disappointment. Nonetheless…

The Zone Of Interest – Jonathan Glazer’s haunting fourth film chronicles the day-to-day domestic life of the family of the supervising Kommandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and their five children. Their home is very nice, quaint, with smallish rooms, but with generously sized gardens that Hedwig is happy to cultivate. It is directly abutting the fence that separates their home from the camp; we never witness any atrocities or other direct military activities of the camp, but the film starts with a black screen and Mica Levi’s ominous ambient music, subtly shifting in tone and intensity, instructing our ears to zero in on the soundscape of the story.

The house is peopled with servants, food and domestic supplies are delivered daily, the children seem happy and healthy, and the Hösses entertain and accommodate other military families in their home and spacious backyard in the summer. They’re a very happy family who has settled into a nice life.

So what is the capacity of these people to ignore what’s going on opposite the wall they plant flowers and vines against? How can Hedwig be comfortable helping herself to the clothes, fur coats and jewelry confiscated from the prisoners? When Rudolph is transferred to another city, Hedwig insists she and the children won’t be going with him – their happy here at Auschwitz. Golly, who wouldn’t be? A chilling and important film based on the writing of the late Martin Amis, adapted by Glazer brilliantly, and ending with a reaction by Rudolf that may or may not be a glimpse of humanity and shame. A must see.

Best Picture – should win – Poor Things, Barbie or Past Lives (dream a little dream…).

                            will win – Oppenheimer.

Best Director – should win – Martin Scorsese.

                            will win – Christopher Nolan.

                            conspicuous in her absence – Greta Gerwig.

Best Actor – should win – Colman Domingo.

                      will win – Cillian Murphy.

Best Actress – should win – Carey Mulligan or Emma Stone.

                           Will win – Lily Gladstone.

Although I must say I saw Poor Things and thought ‘C’mon, who’s gonna beat that,’ Then I saw

‘Maestro’ and found out. All five are fabulous, though.

                           conspicuous in her absence – no one saw it, apparently,

                                               but Sydney Sweeney was superb in “Reality.”

Best Supporting Actor – they were all good, all deserving –

                                            should and will win – Robert Downey, Jr.

Best Supporting Actress – should win – Emily Blunt or Danielle Brooks.

                                                Will win – Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

International Feature – should and will win – The Zone Of Interest.

                                           conspicuous in their absence –

Fallen Leaves (Finland),

                                           The Taste Of Things (France) Omen (Belgium).

Movies – Killers Of The Flower Moon

Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in “Killers Of The Flower Moon.” credit: Landmark Media

“Yeah, Osage are the finest and most beautiful people on God’s green earth.”

So says William “King” Hale (Robert DeNiro), a rich and successful cattle rancher who for years has lived adjacent to the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. It’s just past the worst of World War I, and the Osage, providentially, have begun a fresh new history as the wealthiest people on the planet, or at least in the good ol’ U. S. of A. When a natural gusher of oil erupts from the ground out of, seemingly, nowhere, the Osage know exactly what to do; hire the smartest white people they can find, set up rigs, drill, drill, drill, and have the whites educate them to manage their new industry. While their relationships with the whites are understandably cautious, even cynical, they know they’re going to need to go along to get along until they can run the whole empire themselves. And, make no mistake, it’s their empire. So, under the Osage’ watchful eye, Oklahoma arranges for the white folks to do most of their administrative management. What could go wrong?

In Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon (U.S., 2023), Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) is returning home from service in the war. Still in his military wools, he arrives by train into hometown Fairfax, Oklahoma, and is surrounded on the platform by workers looking for jobs with the drilling rigs. He’s picked up at the station by Henry Roan (William Belleau), an Osage friend doing business with his uncle, William Hale, and they drive through miles of farmland covered with oil derricks. “Whose land is this, Henry?” asks Ernest, clearly a bit culture shocked. “My land,” replies Henry. “My land.”

Past the oil fields are grazing cattle – William Hale’s cattle – and Henry delivers Ernest to a warm welcome from his family; Uncle William and Ernest’s younger brother Byron (Scott Shepherd), his Aunt Myrtle and young Cousin Willie. The men go inside, have a whiskey, and Hale, amiably, lays down the law. He will employ Ernest, and give him good work, but the Osage aren’t chatty. They’re friendly, but don’t embarrass yourself. Don’t get liquored up. Don’t talk shit. Ernest confides that “his stomach burst” in the field, which could be diverticulitis or a hernia. Hale gives him a job as a driver; he trusts Ernest, but generally schools him to be discreet. Once he earns Ernest’s trust, and gets him into a working rhythm, he’ll be ready for Hale to give him his other true job; eliminating particular Osage tribespeople to accumulate their interests in the oil for themselves.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in “Killers Of The Flower Moon.” credit: lwlies.com

“Being a driver” essentially means being a cabbie for the Osage clientele in downtown Fairfax, for clothes shopping, lunching, doing business or anything else they may be inclined to indulge themselves with. One of Ernest’s clients is Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), one of four daughters of Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal); she’s taken to Ernest, who is flattered, but it’s not until Uncle William takes notice that the advantages of pursuing Mollie’s favor become apparent. Lizzie Q and her daughters have ‘full-blood estate’ status; if Ernest marries Mollie, and the rest of the family passes before them, then they inherit enormous amounts of continuingly replenished money. “That’s good business,” advises Uncle King, “and legal – not against the law. That’s smart investment.” Investment or romance, Ernest has his heart set on marrying Molly, and they tie the knot at a big outdoor celebration, where we learn that Lizzie’s daughter Minnie (Jillian Dion) hasn’t been feeling well. Hale makes his resources available for whatever she might need, much to the chagrin of her husband, Bill Smith (Jason Isbell). Minnie dies soon afterwards of her “wasting illness.”

Another death follows – Mollie’s party-girl sister Anna (Cara Jade Myers), the wife of brother Byron Burkhart, and the tribe appoints one of the white administrators, Barney McBride (Brent Langdon) to go to Washington D.C. Indian Affairs to provide them with additional law enforcement to stem the killings. His trip doesn’t go well. Bill Smith is now married to Reta (Janae Collins), sister of his late wife Minnie (and Mollie, of course). Clearly, Bill Smith knows a bit about headrights as well. Hale wants Mollie to have all of Lizzie Q’s headrights (for Ernest, and himself), but Ernest isn’t devious or forward-thinking or cold-blooded enough to arrange for that himself. Hale appeals to Ernest’s devotion to his wife and children, and the ‘work’ responsibilities Hale has given to him along with his brother. Hale thinks things are going awry, and he puts the burden and the initiative on Ernest to fix it. (Masonic ritual is a scary/perfect metaphor for Ernest’s place in King’s hierarchy). Hale, nonetheless, hedging his bets, also goes to see Henry Grammer (Sturgill Simpson), rodeo wrangler and moonshiner, for advice on eliminating Bill Smith and Reta in one fell swoop. His solution is impressively thorough, involving Acie Kirby (Pete Yorn), and brings more death, with an additional bit of destruction. Reta and Bill Smith are vaporized, and another sister is gone. Meanwhile, King Hale goes to the cinema, watches the newsreels of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and you honestly can’t tell if he finds it saddening or impressive.

And we’re not even halfway through. Nor have we even gotten to Jesse Plemons (of the newly formed U.S. Bureau of Investigation), nor the lawyer John Lithgow, nor the eccentric lawyer Brendan Fraser. Justice comes fitfully but inevitably to Fairfax, Oklahoma.

Robert DeNiro and Jesse Plemons in “Killers Of The Flower Moon.” credit: AppleTV+

I previously stated that The Irishman (2019) was Martin Scorsese’s best film since The Departed. After much thought, I think I have to rate this thoroughly superb film in the Goodfellas (1990) league. Well-written (Eric Roth and Scorsese adapted David Grann’s reportedly wonderful book), well-shot (by Rodrigo Prieto, Scorsese’s cinematographer of choice, previously employed by Alejandro González Iñárritu) (Prieto shot Barbie this year as well), well designed (irreproachable veteran Jack Fisk), and well scored by the late Robbie Robertson. Another interesting sidebar concerns the number of working musicians taking acting roles here: Jack White, Jason Isbell, Pete Yorn, Sturgill Simpson, and Charlie Musselwhite. It’s not just novelty casting – he wants reliable artists of various interests to diversify the overall creative vibe on-set. And I suspect Robbie Robertson will be in-line for an original score Oscar, despite Oppenheimer’s bombast (Ludwig Göransson) and Poor Things’ dinks, doinks and glissandos (Jerskin Fendrix).

At 3 hours and 26 minutes, I honestly don’t think there’s a throwaway frame in the entire movie. Leonardo DiCaprio does great work on a not-very-bright character who isn’t all that likeable, yet we’re still hopeful for him near the end. That’s tough – that’s good acting. It’s also the best, most arresting performance in years for DeNiro as well. Again, any other year… But, as you’ve no doubt heard, Lily Gladstone is revelatory here. She spends much of the latter part of the film in sweaty delirium and is still the heart and soul of the narrative. She already has a Pacino-like gravity and brings a hearty sense of humor where there doesn’t seem to be an opening for it.

In any other year, this film would have mopped up six or eight categories. And it’s absolutely a must-see, preferably in the biggest theater you can find. But settling for your TV at home will be just fine if you can avoid the usual distractions. This is incomparable American storytelling.

The 2024 European Union Film Festival – Man Bites Dog

Benoît Poelvoorde in “Man Bites Dog.” credit: filmschoolrejects.com

Made over thirty years ago, Man Bites Dog (C’est Arrivé Près De Chez Vous, or It Happened in Your Neighborhood) (1992, Belgium) seemed like a grisly goofball provocation, with the insolence and audacity of a young John Waters or George Romero. It was not for the faint of heart, nor is it now. But it was alarmingly prescient, presenting a charismatic smart-assed psychopath gleefully committing robberies, murders and various other Class A and B felonies while being filmed for a documentary devised by Ben, the unrepentant serial killer (Benoît Poelvoorde), a producer/reporter and participant (Rémy Belvaux), and their cameraman (André Bonzel). Sadly, they lose a few sound-people along the way, but they are undeterred.

Ben acts as the master of ceremonies, giving us ongoing commentary on his methods and personal preferences. He introduces the audience to his family – Mom runs a successful bakery and seems to be supporting Ben’s chatty grandparents as well. They all fawn over memories of young happy Benoit, seemingly unaware of his cold-blooded occupational pursuits nowadays. He strangles a random woman on a commuter train to demonstrate how he wraps his dead victims up before throwing them into a nearby river, meticulously explaining how he calculates their weight and figures how much other material he’ll need to add to keep them submerged after the body starts bloating. Next up, he beats a postman to death; he tries to do this early each month in order to make off with pension checks.

The atrocities keep escalating, with breaks in-between to introduce his old friend Valerie (Valérie Parent) from school, the professional flautist he used to accompany on piano, or treating the film crew to cocktails at his usual bar with his favorite bartender Malou. Like Valerie and Malou, the two filmmakers strike a balance with staying on Ben’s good side while not doing anything to upset him. Ben insists Rémy and André accompany him to a fancy restaurant for mussels (moules marinières) and drinks, and proceeds to make himself sick, making an overindulgent scene, a common dilemma for Malou as well.

Valérie Parent and Willy Vandenbroeck in “Man Bites Dog.” credit: theotherfilms.blogspot.com

As train-wreck / car crash fascinating as Ben can be (he recites improvised poetry about pigeons while chasing and firing at a rival killer through a factory), the complicity of the two documenting crew members starts to escalate as well. Watching Ben work both sides of the narrative, with his charm and consistency slowly softening the effects of his violent psychosis, Rémy and André continue to normalize Ben on film until all three participate in an especially horrific rape and murder. Now add the revelation that an Italian assassin with a grudge is pursuing Ben, and all three of their futures look bleak and inevitable.

We all have a penchant for true stories and colorful villains, whether Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer or Jeffrey Epstein or Henry Kissinger or Roger Stone. These three young filmmakers had some very forward-thinking ideas about how media can soften, distort and normalize villains and atrocities that we nonetheless see and hear about every single day, until they just become part of the wallpaper in our lives. The film lures us, early on, into thinking this is all pretty interesting, yet challenging. But the filmmakers are very smart about not glamorizing the violence, towards others or for its own sake, while warning us about its effects in a patronizing or hypocritical way. A great deal of it is pretty hard-to-watch, and alpha-preener Ben most definitely wears out his welcome, as he should. I referred to George Romero earlier – the director’s admired, by me and others, for his unerring moral sense of showing us very bad things without luring us into that amygdala-driven identification with them.

Man Bites Dog, an honest trip-through-the-mill, isn’t interested in convincing you of anything other than how despicable man’s inhumanity to man genuinely is, and how its seeming eternal presence wears down our better selves. Its black humor is only there to help the medicine go down.

“Man Bites Dog” will be screened on Sunday, March 3^rd at 1:30 pm.

The 2024 European Union Film Festival – Omen

The European Union Film Festival, a longtime fixture of the Gene Siskel Film Center, is slowly but surely building back from both the pandemic and some artistic and administrative changeover over the last two or three years, as is typical in any fine arts organization in the U.S. This year’s festival runs from March 1^st to the 10^th, and will feature, each year, films from the country that holds the presidency of the E.U. This year that’ll be Belgium, and there’s a great combination of recent films and a few modern classics.

Marc Zinga in “Omen.” credit: Wrong Men

There’s an enormous amount of crossover, and separation, between countries and cultures just in Europe alone. Now imagine those same outer boundaries as the conditions of colonizers and colonized, here exemplified with African culture, but indicative of any other diverse population – South Asian, South American, Middle Eastern. There’s a sense of what’s established here, what constitutes family, morality or bad and good here, and the scary idea of what things must be like there, at either end of the equation.

The opening night film is Omen (Augure) (Belgium / Congo, 2023). Baloji is a Belgian rapper, writer and filmmaker who draws from his own Congolese heritage to craft a superb film about Koffi (Marc Zinga), who left his Congo family behind to live in Belgium. But having found his ideal partner, Alice (Lucie Debay), who is early on in her pregnancy (with twins!), Koffi feels it’s only right to return to the Congo to introduce her to his family and, hopefully, get some manner of reconnection and/or blessing from them. Koffi is frank with Alice about the culture shock she may face, but she’s respectfully game.

Believe me, the ‘Congo’ that Baloji conjures here is both fascinating and foreboding. Koffi’s sister Tshala (Eliane Umuhire) ostensibly will meet them at the airport and put them up, but she’s a no-show, and Koffi rents a car and keeps calling her to establish where he’ll be staying with his pregnant wife. Koffi’s mother, Mujila (Yves-Marina Gnahoua) will barely acknowledge him – Koffi bears a dark stain on the side of his face that Mujila, at his birth, decided was (and still is) the ‘Mark of the Devil.’ He and Alice arrive at a family gathering, glared at by Mom, taken down a peg or two by his territorial uncles (she’s pregnant AND white?!) (with, incidentally, no sign whatsoever of their brother, his father), and commits a faux pas that furthers his undeserved reputation as the Absolutely Evil expatriate betrayer of all that is Congolese familial ritual tradition.

Marc Zinga and Lucie Debay in “Omen.” credit: Wrong Men

We’re also introduced to two consistently resentful and malicious teenage gangs, and the best I can describe them without spoiling your own discovery of them is an amalgam of George Miller, Alejandro Jodorowsky and the Mardi Gras. Like many gangs of the sort, there’s serious danger of disfigurement or death for either side, but there’s also an ongoing sense of the malleability of gender and/or gender signifiers, and sinister carnival affectations alternately disguising or parading their indulgences. They seem to be subversion personified. Paco (Marcel Otete Kabeya) is the leader of the Goonz, dressed entirely in pink dresses and/or lingerie, living in an abandoned school bus, while their rivals, in black with makeshift gold crowns, have captured one of Paco’s female gang members (he’s already mourning his younger sister, Maya) and will indeed do their worst unless Paco decides to confront his rival leader one-on-one.

It’s a free-associative miasma of national identity, tribalism, cold survival, family structures, friendships, violence, loyalties and love (even when love doesn’t seem like a great idea, but it hangs on tenuously nonetheless). I enjoyed Baloji’s film immensely – it was a great year for International Films that didn’t make the Oscar cut, too, as this film ended up. Wildly creative, undeniably entertaining, and, at times, genuinely terrifying. What’s not to like?

“Omen” (Augure) opens this year’s EUFF on Friday, March 1^st at 7:00 pm.