Letterboxd — Your life in film

Will-o’-the-Wisp Overturns Political Precedent.
Pedro Rodrigues’s surrealist satire turns progressivism inside out.

In response to the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, British synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys recorded “Will-o-the-Wisp” to commemorate desire that can’t be legislated, that resists discipline. Few pop artists are so politically daring, but Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues’s newest work, also titled Will-o’-the-Wisp (Fogo-Fátuo), is even more outrageous.

Rodrigues structures several time-skipping vignettes about the passage of ungovernable political ideas that satirize…

The Little Mermaid’s Revoke-and-Change Agenda.
Disney’s ‘looks-like-me’ movement politicizes entertainment.

Everything is social engineering in the new live-action version of The Little Mermaid. It changes Hans Christian Andersen’s Danish fairy tale — a touchstone of Western culture — and revokes its preeminence, reworking its amphibious Scandinavian heroine’s image to resemble that of a biracial American teenager (Ariel, played by pop singer Halle Bailey) that suits contemporary, racialized politics.

This new version of The Little Mermaid reboots the unaccountably popular 1989…

The White-Supremacist Fantasy of Master Gardener.
Paul Schrader’s pedestrian Taxi Driver reboot repeats his failed spiritual politics.

Know-nothing reviewers have given filmmaker Paul Schrader the appellation “master,” encouraged by his newest film Master Gardener, a semi-autobiographical psychological thriller that confuses social and moral issues — Schrader’s usual affectation toward seriousness.

Joel Edgerton plays Narvel Roth, the film’s narrator, an autodidact who writes doggerel in his private journal, while Schrader shows scenes of him posing as head groundskeeper of Gatewood Gardens.…

The Wit and Resistance of Dotty & Soul.
Leslie Uggams triumphs over virtue-signaling.

In the wearyingly sarcastic Marvel Cinematic Universe flick Deadpool (2016), actress-singer Leslie Uggams made a career comeback playing Blind Al, the elderly black female cohort of the franchise’s irony-afflicted superhero (Ryan Reynolds). Uggams had been a pert civil-rights-era celebrity with Julliard and Broadway breakthroughs among her credits, and showed unsuspected depth as the tough, mistrusting slave Kizzy in the Seventies TV juggernaut Roots. None of this fazed Deadpool…

They Don’t Make Movies Like Lions for Lambs Anymore.
Today, Redford’s hawks-vs.-doves allegory is stranger than fiction.

Esteemed TV-and-print journalist Janine Roth gets an exclusive one-hour interview with Illinois’s Senator Jasper Irving. The politician has summoned the favored reporter for a privileged audience, urging her to produce news coverage boosting his new strategy in the ongoing overseas war. Impressed by the senator’s blandishments, the egoistic journalist argues military strategy and then faces a moment of conscience. Afterward, she is pressured…

Hollywood’s Grumpy-Old-Ladies Genre.
Book Club and 80 for Brady are Post-Pelosi farces.

Unexpectedly, and seemingly out of nowhere, Hollywood has stumbled upon a new genre: Grumpy Old Ladies, the category represented by The Book Club: The Next Chapter and 80 for Brady. Its participants are actresses past middle age: Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen in the former film; Fonda, Sally Field, Rita Moreno, and Lily Tomlin in the latter. Their busiest, artistically significant years are behind…

Hollywood’s Grumpy-Old-Ladies Genre.
Book Club and 80 for Brady are Post-Pelosi farces.

Unexpectedly, and seemingly out of nowhere, Hollywood has stumbled upon a new genre: Grumpy Old Ladies, the category represented by The Book Club: The Next Chapter and 80 for Brady. Its participants are actresses past middle age: Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen in the former film; Fonda, Sally Field, Rita Moreno, and Lily Tomlin in the latter. Their busiest, artistically significant years are behind…

Winter Boy’s Spiritual, Sexual Search.
Christophe Honoré’s post-Covid emotional candor transcends TikTok.

Lucas Ronis (Paul Kircher), the 17-year-old French Catholic pupil in Christophe Honoré’s Winter Boy (Le Lycéen), reacts to his father’s death with grief, depravity, and a suicide attempt. His story is set during Covid, when his schoolteacher mother Isabelle (Juliette Binoche), artist brother Quentin (Vincent Lacoste), and others wear masks yet cannot hide their unhappiness. Honoré says the film is semi-autobiographical, which means its contemporary story derives from…

White Noise’s Paranoia Is Irrelevant, Post-Covid.
DeLillo’s social satire and nihilism can’t keep pace with today’s psyops.

Why did the film version of Don DeLillo’s prize-winning novel White Noise fail? It didn’t simply fizzle at the box office, but after being given a prestige launch as the premiere attraction at last year’s New York Film Festival, the film was overlooked during award season and ignored by the public. This flop is ignominious because White Noise was intended to illuminate the…

Little Richard’s Native Genius.
Political correctness lessens the music doc Little Richard: I Am Everything.

In her mostly adulatory documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything, director Lisa Cortés gives the rock ’n’ roll legend born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon, Ga., his place in history, also putting his life and career in a politicized context.

But the eccentricity that made Little Richard one of the most fascinating and dynamic performers of all time overwhelms Cortés’s enthusiasm and the misguided revisionism…

Tarantino’s No-Sex Talk.
Film culture as dehumanizing propaganda.

Quentin Tarantino’s recent comments on sex and cinema — particularly the lack of sex scenes in his own movies — has exposed the current sexual confusion of mainstream cinema.

Responding to an inquiry by Spain’s Diari ARA, Tarantino confessed, “It’s true, sex is not part of my vision of cinema. . . . If there had ever been a sex scene that was essential to the story, I would have, but so…

How to Spot a Manifesto Movie.
Hollywood’s self-destructive tactic, in which a ‘diversity of tactics’ justifies terrorism.

Some movies and some reviewers are pernicious — a sad fact of this hyper-politicized age when the culture is divided against itself. Moviemakers who approach art as indoctrination are welcomed by pundits, whether in the trade press or the New York Times, who use reviews to enforce partisanship. Not everyone notices, but the new action-drama How to Blow Up a Pipeline makes this…