Observed through the windows of the House, this mid-winter month:
--Your proprietor can't believe it took a second viewing to grasp how wonderful (and
how squarely aligned with his interests) Powell/Pressburger's BLACK NARCISSUS is. It's an exotic Technicolor travelogue, for sure, and a marvelous tale of culture clash, but in the end it's a Gothic horror through and through. The thing finally became a favorite, and kicked off a year of rep viewing on a perfect note.
--Similarly pleasing was THE COMMUTER, the first 2018 movie enjoyed this year. After so greatly enjoying THE SHALLOWS year before last I excitedly boarded the Jaume Collet-Serra train, joining a small but growing cult around the man's work and technique (among other things, JCS fans seem nicer and refreshingly less strident than the Nolan cult). THE COMMUTER sees Liam Neeson (in his fourth film with JCS) as a worn-out, increasingly desperate Everyman forced to seek out a passenger who doesn't belong on his train, for reasons that he (and we) slowly determine to be more and more sinister. Whatever fundamentals we lose through JCS' approach are more than made up for with some gorgeously stylish flourishes (here including a marvelous and efficient portrait of a marriage during a gracefully packed opening credits sequence, and a marvelous done-in-one fistfight). Perhaps because I wanted to be taken in I was engaged, even enraptured, throughout. If this movie establishes a baseline of quality through the year, then we're pretty much set.
--It feels strange, however, to prefer THE COMMUTER to PHANTOM THREAD, the latest work by Paul Thomas Anderson. It's a keenly, hermetically designed tale of a mid-50s fashion giant (Daniel Day-Lewis) whose routine is unraveled by the arrival of a quiet, but equally formidable woman (Vicky Krieps). As meticulously artful a work as it is, there's something stifling about its perfection. It helps that the movie is dryly but deliberately funny; among other things, Day-Lewis seems to have the lead in THE RON MAEL STORY all sewn up with his fastidious performance here. And its portrait of a powerful romance threatened by an unwillingness to shuck off interiority was a painful reminder of this viewer's own mistakes in that arena. But there's a sense of experimentation and risk-taking that's missing here, which is keenly evident in my favorite Anderson films such as MAGNOLIA and PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (it certainly abounds in THE COMMUTER), which I realize is one of the main things I go to movies to experience. I'm pleased to have seen PHANTOM THREAD in its artisianally-preferred 70mm film format, and can't imagine it being anywhere near as satisfying otherwise. I may yet revisit it, and find my eyes opened to its greatness (as I did with BLACK NARCISSUS), but at the moment THE COMMUTER is the new movie that resonates most powerfully.
