Three Alex Ross Perry films
The Color Wheel,
Listen Up Philip and
Queen of Earth (which I saw previously at the cinema).
The first is very American indie comedy for the first two-thirds (black and white, embarrassment jokes, unlikable egoists as the main characters) and while there is the odd funny scene I was pretty underwhelmed given it’s reputation. Then the last third is totally different, far more interesting and surprises you. A very strange movie.
In my view
Listen Up Philip is the strongest and most complete film of the three, again egoist middle class characters behaving like assholes but the quality of the writing, acting (I’m not sure I’ve even seen Jason Swartzman give a better performance) and pacing raise it above the average. The narration which could easily been an annoying gimmick actually works really well.
Queen of Earth is a movie I feel I should like more than I do, I like the genre of films, descent in madness, (see
Cold Day in the Park, below) and Katherine Waterson and Elizabeth Moss are very good but it just does not quite come together
That Cold Day in the Park - Before seeing this on MUBI and the
BFI list of his underrated films I was not familiar with this Altman picture. Which is a real shame as it is very good. Altman’s body of work is so good that this is not quite one of his essential films - unlike say
3 Woman, which has some similar themes - but it is miles better than anything a lot of directors will make in their careers. Absolutely worth checking out - available on BFI subscribers.
Rosebud - One of Otto Preminger’s last films a sort of espionage action. Despite the dodgy politics (the portable of the Palestinian’s is abysmal) and frequent silliness it is not totally terrible. Worth checking out for Peter O’Toole’s performance (just about the right side of hammy), an appearance by a very young Isabelle Huppert and, brilliantly, Dickie Attenborough playing an English convert to fundamentalist Islam. Also interesting to compare with the recent adaptation of le Carre’s
Little Drummer Girl, very different views and styles on related material.
The Dark Past - One of those 50s films where psychologists can unlock the keys to the mind - it must have been great being a psychologist in the middle part of the 20th century. Here Lee J Cobb manages to resolve the issues of murderer William Holden while being held hostage. Not first class noir but good fun and worth checking out as an excellent example of its type.
Rolling Thunder - One of those films that has a (Vietnam) veteran having to go seek revenge for the killing of his family, but better than the usual fare of that sub-genre. Mostly due to the Paul Schrader script which, as you might expect, has a more psychological angle than most. Tommy Lee Jones has a good supporting role but the biggest surprise is how good William Devane is as the lead. For me Devane was one of those actors that play the sort of rich, smart bad/amoral guys in minor films/TV, like he did in
Knot’s Landing. But here he is really very good, I guess he took the stereotyping to keep in work but it is a shame as he obviously had/has more quality than that.