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Top 50 Films – the 1970s
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09
Here’s the next installment of my decade by decade Top 50s. Today, the greatest movies of the 1970s.
- Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
- The Godfather Parts I and II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972/4)
- Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)
- Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)
- Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
- Fiddler on the Roof (Norman Jewison, 1971)
- Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1973)
- Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975)
- The Muppet Movie (James Frawley, 1979)
- Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
- Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971)
- McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
- The Black Stallion (Carroll Ballard, 1979)
- Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
- Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
- Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975)
- The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
- Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
- Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978)
- 1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976)
- Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)
- The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973)
- Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, 1975)
- All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)
- The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)
- Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
- The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
- Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977)
- Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974)
- The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi, 1978)
- Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
- The Magic Flute (Ingmar Bergman, 1975)
- Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
- The Rose (Mark Rydell, 1979)
- The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
- Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976)
- The Fury (Brian De Palma, 1978)
- THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971)
- Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978)
- The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
- Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
- Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978)
- 1941 (Steven Spielberg, 1979)
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975)
- Lacombe, Lucien (Louis Malle, 1974)
- Lenny (Bob Fosse, 1974)
- Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
- California Split (Robert Altman, 1974)

Top 50 Films – the 1980s
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09
Here’s the next installment of my decade by decade Top 50s. Today, the greatest movies of the 1980s.
- E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
- Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982)
- Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988)
- The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
- Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
- The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
- Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
- Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980)
- Moonstruck (Norman Jewison, 1987)
- Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Hayao Miyazaki, 1986)
- Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)
- The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen, 1985)
- The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
- Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)
- Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
- Big (Penny Marshall, 1988)
- Hairspray (John Waters, 1988)
- Parenthood (Ron Howard, 1989)
- Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981)
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984)
- My Neighbour Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
- Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)
- Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, 1980)
- An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981)
- Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988)
- Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989)
- Witness (Peter Weir, 1985)
- Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges, 1980)
- The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
- Gallipoli (Peter Weir, 1981)
- Return to Oz (Walter Murch, 1985)
- A Passage to India (David Lean, 1984)
- Prick Up Your Ears (Stephen Frears, 1987)
- Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988)
- Victor/Victoria (Blake Edwards, 1982)
- Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
- Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
- Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant, 1989)
- Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton, 1985)
- High Tide (Gillian Armstrong, 1987)
- Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
- Mommie Dearest (Frank Perry, 1981)
- The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)
- Casualties of War (Brian De Palma, 1989)
- Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982)
- Down and Out in Beverly Hills (Paul Mazursky, 1986)
- Carmen (Francesco Rosi, 1984)
- Diner (Barry Levinson, 1982)
- The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983)
- Yentl (Barbra Streisand, 1983)

Top 50 Films – the 1990s
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09
Inspired by my list of the greatest films of the new century, I’ve decided to go back and do similar lists for each decade of the 20th century. Since the 21st century list covered almost two decades, I’ve decided to limit these ones to 50. First up, the 1990s, which hold up much better in retrospect that I imagined.
- Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
- Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992)
- Six Degrees of Separation (Fred Schepisi, 1993)
- Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990)
- Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow, 1991)
- Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)
- The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)
- Muriel’s Wedding (P. J. Hogan, 1994)
- Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993)
- Show Me Love (Lukas Moodysson, 1998)
- The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
- Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)
- The Iron Giant (Brad Bird, 1999)
- Vanya on 42nd Street (Louis Malle, 1994)
- Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992)
- My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991)
- The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993)
- Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
- There’s Something About Mary (Peter and Bobby Farrelly, 1998)
- Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1996)
- Election (Alexander Payne, 1999)
- In Bed with Madonna (Alek Keshishian, 1991)
- The Straight Story (David Lynch, 1999)
- Home Alone (Chris Columbus, 1990)
- The Wedding Banquet (Ang Lee, 1993)
- The Portrait of a Lady (Jane Campion, 1996)
- Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999)
- Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998)
- Buffalo ’66 (Vincent Gallo, 1998)
- The Witches (Nicholas Roeg, 1990)
- Short Cuts (Robert Altman, 1993)
- A League of Their Own (Penny Marshall, 1992)
- Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996)
- The Matrix (Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 1999)
- Notting Hill (Roger Michell, 1999)
- Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
- Mars Attacks! (Tim Burton, 1996)
- Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995)
- The Grifters (Stephen Frears, 1990)
- Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)
- Secrets and Lies (Mike Leigh, 1996)
- Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, 1991)
- The Big Lebowski (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998)
- Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995)
- Speed (Jan de Bont, 1994)
- Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
- Three Colours: Red (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994)
- Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998)
- Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)
- Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)

My Own Top 100
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08
In the wake of this week’s contentious BBC poll, here is my own list of the greatest 100 films of the 21st century.
- The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
- Best in Show (Christopher Guest, 2000)
- The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002)
- Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
- Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010)
- Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)
- Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)
- Gosford Park (Robert Altman, 2001)
- Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001)
- Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (Adam McKay, 2006)
- Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
- Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015)
- Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar, 2004)
- The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)
- Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
- Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2016)
- Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
- Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)
- Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)
- Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
- Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)
- The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)
- Mother (Bong Joon-ho, 2009)
- Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)
- Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)
- Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki, 2009)
- A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)
- District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009)
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015)
- WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
- Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)
- Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)
- Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
- Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs, 2015)
- No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
- Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, 2007)
- The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)
- Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)
- The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)
- Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011)
- Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003-4)
- Win Win (Tom McCarthy, 2011)
- Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2004)
- Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003)
- Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
- Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009)
- Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener, 2013)
- There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
- Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)
- Room (Lenny Abrahamson, 2015)
- Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)
- Looper (Rian Johnson, 2012)
- The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2007)
- The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
- Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro, 2006)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuarón, 2004)
- Gloria (Sebastián Lelio, 2012)
- Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2002)
- Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007)
- Blue Is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
- Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog, 2006)
- Project Nim (James Marsh, 2011)
- The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
- Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
- Junebug (Phil Morrison, 2005)
- Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 2015)
- Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008)
- Young Adult (Jason Reitman, 2011)
- Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014)
- Another Year (Mike Leigh, 2011)
- Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)
- Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, 2010)
- American Hustle (David O. Russell, 2013)
- Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
- Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012)
- Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, 2013)
- Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004)
- Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2014)
- Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
- Catch Me If You Can (Steven Spielberg, 2002)
- Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007)
- Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)
- Big Hero 6 (Don Hall and Chris Williams, 2014)
- Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)
- Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, 2008)
- The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002)
- The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry, 2006)
- 13 Going On 30 (Gary Winick, 2004)
- Ida (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2013)
- Beginners (Mike Mills, 2011)
- Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez, 2007)
- Higher Ground (Vera Farmiga, 2011)
- Pain and Gain (Michael Bay, 2013)
- A Single Man (Tom Ford, 2009)
- Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007)
- V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2006)
- Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013)
- Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski, 2002)

Movie Diary 10/8/16
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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition (2016) – The opening half hour of director Zack Snyder’s restored cut comprises sequences in three different genres: a disaster movie evoking the dust and confusion of 9/11, a war film set in the African desert, and a horror film complete with women held captive in a basement dungeon – which begs the question of what this movie intends to be. The answer is a salute to Christopher Nolan – specifically The Dark Knight – with its dark palette, its deliberate pace in setting up its various players, and its preoccupation with whether Batman has the right to be Batman. Up until the two hour mark it’s pretty absorbing on those terms, but the last hour is a total miscalculation, from the anticlimactic, vaguely homoerotic tussle between the two heroes (Batman carries Superman over the threshold and flings him on a bed of rubble) to the way Snyder jettisons two hours of careful storytelling in favour of a monster that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie to the completely unnecessary (and temporary) death of a major character so the movie can end on a note of bogus gravity (not one funeral, but two). Very disappointing. **
The BFG (2016) – Steven Spielberg’s special grasp on childhood was never universal, but rooted in the American suburbs. When he tries – as in Hook – to adapt English stories, he produces a twee sense of unreality. This is not as bad as that misfire, but neither is it good. Indebted visually to the Harry Potter franchise (a nocturnal world of warm lights and deep shadows), it sands off the rough edges of the Roald Dahl original (the giants are more comic bumblers than monsters) even as it skimps on the magic (we see the BFG at work only once). The use of motion capture for Mark Rylance’s BFG seems gratuitous: the giant’s kindly face is human – that of an ideal grandfather – and the digital manipulation adds little in expressiveness. Ruby Barnhill is a good, idiosyncratic child actor: her Sophie is officious, as if in training to take over her orphanage, and almost without physical fear. The best sequence builds to a fart joke involving the Queen. **
Creed (2015) – Director Ryan Coogler makes excellent use of long takes: the first shot begins in the corridor of a juvenile prison and then moves to the canteen, where a fight is taking place. It’s a strategy that Coogler uses again and again, usually from the perspective of Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), who doesn’t feel at home anywhere – who enters every space feeling like a stranger. It’s a terrific passport into this world, climaxing with the first big fight, a beautifully choreographed single shot with the camera moving like a third fighter. It gives the human interactions too an appealing, low-key rhythm. Creed is as savvy a reboot of a beloved classic as The Force Awakens; like that movie, much of the impact here comes from the way it pairs a new protagonist with his aged predecessor, hitting familiar beats while ceding centre stage to a black actor. These movies are expanding the definition of pop heroism (much as Stallone did in the 70s), changing how it looks and its point of view. ***
99 Homes (2014) – This story of how a man, evicted from his home by a predatory real estate agent, learns to take advantage of people in the same situation has its weaknesses: from the opening of the film, which contrasts one such eviction with Andrew Garfield’s honest work as a builder, it’s schematic – a bit pat. The protagonist’s family exists mainly to bear frightened witness to his moral slide, leaving the film basically a two-hander, and Garfield’s eventual crisis of conscience feels a bit arbitrary. Writer-director Ramin Bahrani gets at our emotional investment in the places where we live, however: the evictions are true violations. The film’s main originality is in Michael Shannon’s performance as the devil agent: with his e-cigarette, he’s contained, his emotions pulled inside so as not to expend any more energy than necessary. His evictions are not marked by any special cruelty; neither does he seem to derive much pleasure from the fruits of his work, the mistresses and mansions. Shannon dries out the villainy, turns it into an almost impersonal (market) force. ***

Movie Diary 16/6/16 – Sydney Film Festival edition
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06
The Childhood of a Leader (2015) – Directors from Bertolucci to Haneke have tried to locate the origins of fascism in the nursery, and unfortunately this is no The Conformist or The White Ribbon. The line it draws between domestic and political tyranny is too pat, its depiction of the miserable, withholding rich a cliché. From the stilted discussions of the Versailles treaty to the way the camera occasionally lingers on extras moving awkwardly in the background, the woodenness here seems at least partly intentional – as if director Brady Corbet is mocking his own historical pageantry – but it’s hard to tell to what extent, or what purpose. Tom Sweet is certainly a singular child actor, with his weird air of preoccupation and his long blonde hair (people keep mistaking him for a girl): the movie’s most effective moments follow him as he roams like a feral cat through his family’s big cold mansion. Still, like the story he learns to read in French, this is only ever an exercise. **
Demolition (2015) – With his blackouts and his good, fast cutting, Jean-Marc Vallée has a gift for dissociation, and this starts well, sketching a whole marriage in the space of a car ride, nailing the weird moments of clarity following trauma. But then Jake Gyllenhaal’s grieving husband starts writing a series of confessional letters to a vending machine company, and the stupid conceits pile on: from Gyllenhaal’s tic of disassembling things to Naomi Watts’ manic pixie dream girl to, I kid you not, a merry-go-round in need of repair. Vallée’s informal framing – he goes for obstructed views and a slightly shaky camera so that we seem to catch things accidentally, as bystanders – at least has the virtue of soft-pedalling this stuff. With his self-satisfaction, the smirk that breaks out at odd moments, Gyllenhaal certainly makes a convincing Wall Street type, but his man-child clowning is not as charming as it’s meant to be. **
Heart of a Dog (2015) – Paying tribute to her mother, her dog, and her famous husband, Laurie Anderson’s words are funny and wise (she’s especially sharp on the selfishness of grief, the way we impose our own preoccupations on the memories of those we’ve lost). Her tone as performer is bewitching and complex, serene on the surface but studded with moments of gnomic humour. Unfortunately, Anderson’s images don’t match the power of her words and delivery. Too often they’re merely illustrative – like an avant-garde slideshow – or clichés like the sky glimpsed through branches or droplets of water running down glass. She achieves some nice effects with surveillance footage, however, and the videos of her dog at the piano are a hoot. ***
Julieta (2016) – Leave it to Pedro Almodóvar to turn an Alice Munro adaptation into a series of quotations from Hitchcock: Eve Marie Saint flirting with Cary Grant in North by Northwest, Tippi Hedren arriving in a seaside town, Rossy de Palma’s homage to Mrs. Danvers. Attempting a different register, telling a story with different stakes – a mother who pines after a daughter who has cut all contact with her – Almodóvar can’t help tricking it up with bits of old thrillers. Sometimes he’s too predictable: his good taste in furnishings, for example – a book of Cecil Beaton photographs here, a Francis Bacon there – feels less like a proud parading of influences this time than a spread in a lifestyle magazine. But this doesn’t get in the way of the feelings at the film’s centre: this remains a simple story, well told. ***

Movie Diary 13/6/16 – Sydney Film Festival edition
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Aquarius (2016) – Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film opens with a party sequence that rivals the famous one in Fanny and Alexander for warmth and the precise way it sketches family relationships. With the assured, steady way he moves the camera, his zooms, his attention to faces and feet, his gift for fixing images with pop songs, Filho suggests a less hectic Scorsese, in a way that seems related to the warm Brazilian pop he favours (as opposed to Scorsese’s love of Phil Spector). This is not only a stylistic triumph, however: like Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria, this presents a complex portrait of a woman in her 60s (the marvellous Sonia Braga) – her instinctive solitude, her sexuality, her prickly relationships with family. It’s a social panorama of fast-changing Recife: Braga’s Clara is a member of the ruling class, and the movie does not shy away from the way she takes her privilege as her due. It’s also a profound meditation on the way that memory collects in places and things. I suspect it’s a masterpiece. ****
Certain Women (2016) – Spare, sad, somewhat inert, with closed-off, frostbitten people in the style of Alice Munro or E. Annie Proulx, this is one of those realist works where the silences are supposed to communicate volumes. It’s divided into three segments, and doesn’t catch until the third, where a Montana stablehand (Lily Gladstone) awkwardly woos a visiting teacher (Kristen Stewart). Gladstone’s unfamiliar face is more expressive in this context than those of her more famous co-stars (the other segments are built around Laura Dern and Michelle Williams). The details of her work with horses have a beauty and specificity that counter director Kelly Reichardt’s depressive tendencies (Reichardt even allows a few moments of humour). The movie opens up visually too: where characters in the first two segments are isolated in ugly rooms or have their frames invaded by other people’s feet or Kindles, here the images take in the immense beauty of the Montana landscape. It’s a shame it’s only one-third of the film. ***
Lo and Behold (2016) – Werner Herzog’s obsession – in his documentaries as in his fiction films – is with eccentric visionaries, regarded with a gaze so steady that it can sometimes feel cruel. In this exploration of the origins and potential of the Internet, he finds plenty of eccentrics in the world of tech, but from the first scientist he interviews – a man who goofs a moonwalk down a campus corridor before launching into an excited description of the first computer to computer conversation – the people here are eloquent and self-aware enough that it doesn’t feel exploitative. Many of them end up sounding like mystics. Herzog cites statistics about the huge volume of data we produce daily: it’s an area that’s already beyond human comprehension. He acknowledges this with the film’s magpie structure: ten chapters exploring it from different angles, from robots’ superior capacity for learning to the hazards posed by solar flares. It’s a fascinating movie. ****
Mustang (2015) – Flooded throughout with soft, golden light, with its five heroines lying about indolently – as if drugged by their youth and beauty – creating in their self-absorption a private universe, this in many ways resembles a Sofia Coppola movie. The difference is that these sisters are literally prisoners in their home in rural Turkey, after their free-spirited horsing around offends the mores of their community. We see everything from the perspective of the youngest sister, and in some ways the film is limited by its child’s point of view. The grandmother who confines them (Nihal Koldaş, in a fine performance) is an ambiguous figure – she seems to pull on her headscarf more to placate her neighbours than from any sense of piety – but such subtleties are passed over in what becomes a fairly straightforward escape story – a fairy tale, complete with an evil uncle and a nice young man who comes to the rescue. ***

Love on (the) Top: Beyoncé and ‘Lemonade’
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Marriage is not only – or even mostly – a declaration of love, especially when ambition and money are involved. It’s an alliance, a joining of powers. In the years since the Obamas moved into the White House, their only peers as an aspirational couple have been Jay Z and Beyoncé. Their relationship has been key to their pre-eminence: each partner magnifies the other’s glamour and significance. But where most famous couples, assuming they make their relationship public, take care to craft an image of togetherness, Beyoncé draws attention to marriage’s doubts and discontents. It has become a defining part of her persona; perhaps her great subject.
Her best albums explore this through different prisms. On B’Day (2006), money is both a metaphor for the dynamics of a relationship and a necessary strategic calculation when two wealthy people get together. “Upgrade U” offers a partnership that’s as much financial as romantic (“I’mma help you build up your account”); the litany of updates she wants to make to Jay’s wardrobe is both a metaphor for how relationships stretch people and a description of their luxurious lifestyle. In “Ring the Alarm”, infidelity is, literally, burglary, an occasion for sirens. (The album contains some of her best vocal performances, with the excitement of a musician testing the limits of her instrument, like the repeated “Yes!” that climaxes “Suga Mama”.) On Beyoncé (2013) it’s sex as physical act and emotional expression. It ranges from the playful sense of her body as bounty in “Blow” to the insecurity that lurks behind the limousine shenanigans in “Partition” (“I just want to be the girl you like/The kind of girl you like is right here with me”). On her latest, Lemonade, it’s the fallout from infidelity.
It’s impossible to say to what extent this music is autobiographical, and it doesn’t really matter. Like Janet Jackson and Madonna before her, Beyoncé has made certain biographical facts a key part of her persona. For Janet, it was the escape from the Jackson compound to Minneapolis depicted in the “Control” video; for Madonna, the death of her mother and her difficult relationship with her father. In Beyoncé’s case it’s a father who was also her manager and a husband who’s also her business partner. There’s a special excitement when a famous person opens up her life in this way: the ordinary conflicts assume a mythic size and sweep. At the same time the star is humanised, like us. Their songs and albums are not merely the latest items off the conveyor belt, but new chapters in an ongoing story.
When Beyoncé’s music lacks this personal element she subsides into dull professionalism, as in 4, a good-enough collection of songs that lacks the special jolt when pop music meshes with persona. Earlier in her career – the Destiny’s Child days – her main limitation was a rather narrow sense of entitlement, asserted but not enjoyed. That’s why “Bootylicious” was such a breakthrough: Beyoncé was as self-possessed as ever, but with a new capacity for humour and pleasure. The professionalism puts some people off: they see her as another former child performer dutifully hitting her marks. But that Virgo self-discipline and mania for order – this is the woman who famously archives every extant photo and bit of footage of herself – is fascinating in its intensity of expression, especially when it butts up against things it cannot control. Like feelings, or a straying husband.
Beyoncé makes interesting use of that treasure trove of images. On one hand there’s a sort of pettiness to the former child performer who makes so much of a talent show she lost, as she does on “***Flawless”. (She certainly won in the long run.) But then the footage she includes of her father in the Lemonade film makes personal the ambivalence expressed in “Daddy Lessons”: as a child, even family intimacy was performed for the cameras. In this she’s an emblematic figure for anyone who curates a self on social media and for the generation of kids growing up in semi-public on their parents’ Facebook pages.
Lemonade is far more concise than its predecessor, with a clear narrative arc from suspicion to anger to wary forgiveness. The “visual album” format seems intended, at least in part, to force us to experience it as a whole, not just a collection of tracks. The concision applies to the song lengths as well: most of the album’s twelve songs run under four minutes, without any of the interludes that stitched Beyoncé together. One of the most impressive things about it is its generosity: “6 Inch” is an empathetic tribute to the other woman’s beauty and industry (“She worth every dollar and she worth every minute”); “Love Drought” struggles to acknowledge the straying partner’s good intentions (“I’m trying to be fair/and you’re trying to be there, and to care”). It’s this emotional fullness that gives the moments of fury such punch: the contemptuous way she spits out “Try not to hurt yourself,” the sudden access of anger in the measured piano ballad “Sandcastles” (“Bitch, I scratched out your name and your face”). “Don’t Hurt Yourself” is the apogee; it’s an illustration of her collaborative approach to building music (chorus sung by Jack White; drum sample from Led Zeppelin) and a brilliant, mocking evisceration of male rhetoric. “When you hurt me, you hurt yourself,” Jack White sings on the first chorus: he’s every man who uses a woman’s identification with a relationship as a licence to get away with shit. When Beyoncé voices the same words in the second chorus, mixed so her voice is almost indistinguishable from White’s, it’s a reproach for the man’s failure to make that identification, for his selfish refusal to perceive them as a unit.
It will be interesting to see what the future of this marriage – this alliance – is. Beyoncé is certainly the prime mover now as an artist; Jay Z’s last good album is five years behind him, and that only with Kanye West to prod him along. Whatever happens, she is likely to make compelling music out of it.

Movie Diary 9/3/16
9
03
Carol (2015) – Where Far from Heaven begins in the branches of a tree, looking down on suburbia, Todd Haynes’ new film opens on a grate and moves up to take in the big city: it’s a chillier, more urban film. The change in tone reflects the different characters of Haynes’ leading ladies: where Julianne Moore’s transparency laid bare her experience of the stultifying suburbs, Cate Blanchett’s gracious manner is so exaggerated that it draws attention to her performance of gender. The 50s story – from Mad Men to The Master – is basically a genre unto itself now, and Haynes is across the period details without offering up many stylistic flourishes. Stretches of the movie – particularly those depicting Rooney Mara’s life in the city – are quite bleak; this isn’t a film that’s out to seduce you. This extends to the love relationship at its centre. Phyllis Nagy’s script is clear-eyed about the imbalance of power between the two women: the gap in age and class leaves Mara’s Therese always the junior partner. It’s a thoughtful film that keeps you at arm’s length. ***
Room (2015) – The movie uses its extreme situation to explore basic questions of identity – how our sense of reality is shaped by the stories we’re told, the way we invest our environment with emotion. Five year old Jack (Jacob Tremblay) misses his place of captivity when he escapes it, and it’s no wonder: in that tiny space he can endow each object with cosmic significance (director Lenny Abrahamson makes the shabby furniture seem totemic), meanings that are lost in the wider world’s jumble of places and things. You could argue that the movie oversimplifies the impact of trauma: Jack’s recovery is depicted as fairly straightforward, a matter of being surrounded by kindly adults. It doesn’t sentimentalise the central mother-son relationship, though: it is to some degree (even if unavoidably) unhealthy, and Brie Larson puts plenty of sour notes into her performance – her impatience with their unbroken intimacy, her readiness to use her son as a prop, her mania for control. ****
Spotlight (2015) – Forty years ago, All the President’s Men set the tone for most subsequent conspiracy stories: phone taps and telephoto lenses, inscrutable office buildings, late-night meetings in parking garages. Tom McCarthy’s film breaks with those paranoid atmospherics and in some ways is scarier for it: this conspiracy lays in plain sight, a sort of social compact in Catholic Boston, and the people responsible are not shady functionaries but pillars of the community. The tone is so straightforward that Mark Ruffalo’s big moment of outrage (he reprises his choked Larry Kramer from The Normal Heart) feels like grandstanding. McCarthy achieves something like the clarity of good journalism; he and the (uniformly excellent) players subordinate themselves, as reporters do, to the story. ****
Steve Jobs (2015) – This mostly plays to Aaron Sorkin’s strengths – the glamour of people who are good at what they do, his gift for synthesising large amounts of information and spitting it out as screwball repartee. Danny Boyle is a good match for him too: their motors both run fast. The (literally – it could be a play) three act structure is a welcome break with the biopic format, but it’s also somewhat repetitious: in the third act Sorkin has Jobs (Michael Fassbender) crack a joke about how everyone in his life picks on him ten minutes before each product launch. The bigger problem is that the conflicts don’t really develop – Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) is still hanging out for a thank you 15 years after we meet him – and so a certain stasis sets in, as the characters keep having the same conversations. It’s a fascinating, ambivalent portrait of Jobs nonetheless – a man who liked to think of himself as an artist but reserved his greatest excitement for sales figures, the visionary who saw computers as an expansion of human capacities, but only on his terms. ***
Meeting
12
02
The moments after meeting
when everything’s performance.
Each gesture chosen
with an actor’s tact,
on the small ground
of acquaintance
where each passing minute
adds to the
sum of knowledge.
You, so far. Me.
The massive field of life
contracts
into something shapely,
like a story. I
watch you,
gauging my effect,
this novel self
that you elicit.
Time may alter
these perceptions,
but not the premise,
not the promise
that you hold out
like a round of drinks.
A few strokes
and you’re done.