Category: Film

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A black and white shot from Ermanno Olmi's "Il Posto" (1961), with 2 older men and a young man (Sandro Panseri) looking in three different directions. This film is being reviewed by poet and film critic Ezekiel Yu for the automachination literary magazine.

Rude Awakening: On Ermanno Olmi’s “Il Posto” (1961)

The young man played by Sandro Panseri in Ermanno Olmi’s “Il Posto” (“The Job”, in English; or elsewhere titled “The Sound of Trumpets”) fits an Everyman sort of mold, personality-wise, but he also—just slightly, to me—resembles a young Kafka. He has that same dark-browed, thin and angular quality to him, but also a kind of unintrusive watchfulness one might imagine the Czech writer possessed in his late teens/early twenties, coupled with a quaint naivete to his own appeal. More saliently than mere physical resemblance, however, “Il Posto” examines its bureaucracy-enveloped subjects with a satirical edge, though the film is more often than not content to simply depict rather than outright excoriate through Kafkaesque absurdity.

Such a move comfortably places Olmi’s “Il Posto” along the same continuum as the preceding Italian Neorealist movement of his motherland, and such classics as those created by Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. Is it as good as something like, say, De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves”? I’d wager not, as it lacks the earlier film’s emotional heft and larger societal commentary—but so do most films. Hierarchies notwithstanding, “Il Posto” might be one of the best portrayals of what it is like to work one’s first job, and of workplace culture, in general. It also manages to fit in an almost hyper-realistic depiction of young romance without cost to the film’s fleet 97-minute runtime. […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still from Orson Welles's "The Immortal Story," with a figure in high contrast silhouette, staring at a woman lying down, as reviewed by film critic Ezekiel Yu for the automachination literary magazine.

Remembered Depths: Reviewing Orson Welles’s “The Immortal Story” (1968)

A couple years ago I reviewed “The Other Side of the Wind”, the last film released under the name of Orson Welles. It is an absolute tour de force, and the crowning jewel in the career of a man who may very well be America’s greatest director. However, a considerable portion of “The Other Side of the Wind” was completed after Welles’s death in 1985, and though the posthumous production found guidance from the notes he left behind, and one could state with reasonable confidence that their efforts conformed close enough to the spirit of Welles’s direction that overall credit still belongs to him, its chimeric nature makes it difficult to say whether or not Welles himself would have approved of the final cut.

There is, however, no such difficulty with Welles’s 1968 drama “The Immortal Story”, which truly counts as the last fictional feature he directed, from start to finish, and released to the public while still living. It was initially made for French television, and issues with distributors and censors (par for the course, with Welles) bungled its post-production and subsequent premiere so badly that 1) the film played only for a limited time in select European theaters, and 2) certain critics, particularly in Great Britain and the States, rated it poorly enough that it failed to cross over to Anglophone audiences. As a result, The Immortal Story languished in relative obscurity for decades until it was picked up by The Criterion Collection and given a DVD/Blu-ray release in 2016, though to this day I’d wager no one outside of cineastes and Welles devotees are familiar with its existence. […]

Film by Alex Sheremet
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A shot of the women in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986), which includes the director, Dianne Wiest, Mia Farrow, and Barbara Hershey, receiving instructions from Woody Allen, and reviewed and analyzed by the world's leading Woody Allen critic, Alex Sheremet, for the automachination literary magazine.

GREATNESS 101: Analyzing Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986)

Although the popularity of “Hannah and Her Sisters” made Woody Allen doubt the quality of his own film, it remains one of those rare accomplishments that is both truly great, and well-loved — two things that are in fact quite different, for the latter is based on attachments and on whims, which cannot be argued, while the former involves reason, evidence, and objectivity in its claims, which can therefore be evaluated. I do not like (much less ‘love’) the film, for reasons immaterial to it and therefore uninteresting to anyone who wants to know something of the art-work, itself. Yet I still wish for it to be seen; know that it needs to be seen, until its meditations and its wisdom are the viewer’s, and so that future film-makers can use it as a stepping-stone for great characters, complex interactions, subtle ironies, poetic inversions, and ‘twists’ that seem to be mere plot devices, yet say, in fact, much about the characters themselves, and what they have or have not learned. I’d go recommend it, but its enduring popularity already takes care of that. Instead, I’d like to discuss why the film works, for reasons beyond mere love or mass appeal, so that similar things could be observed and championed in Woody’s other films, including those still being wrongly overlooked.

In some ways, “Hannah and Her Sisters” revisits the same tropes of Interiors, with a seemingly talented artist, Hannah (Mia Farrow), a ‘sore loser’ and drug user, Holly (Dianne Wiest), and a half-lost woman, Lee (Barbara Hershey), who, perhaps out of envy or resentment, starts an affair with Hannah’s husband, Elliot (Michael Caine). In fact, the film begins with Elliot mesmerized by Lee during a Thanksgiving party, an interesting twist that immediately puts the viewer into the mind of a romantic, subverted by the fact that he’s essentially a creep. As the dinner progresses, Holly asks for money, Lee wonders about Elliot’s feelings, and the three sisters gab while their aging parents sing Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered on the piano — one of the film’s key songs, which turns into a trope whose import only comes later. As Hannah is complimented all around, one gets the feeling that she is both meek and self-congratulatory, for such moments are well-acted enough that one doesn’t know whether she’s puffing herself up at the expense of her sisters, or merely being matter-of-fact. Lee goes back to her apartment with her boyfriend, Frederick (Max von Sydow), an overbearing, misanthropic older artist, while Hannah’s former husband, Mickey (Woody Allen), a television producer, makes his first appearance as a stressed hypochondriac. He’s subjected to endless medical tests due to his constant worrying, at one point even fantasizing about his own impending death due to a non-existent tumor. This, then, is the film’s make-up, for the main characters’ issues are all played against Mickey’s, whose silliness highlights the silliness of their own self-inflicted problems, even as they evade or obfuscate, and downright magnify them as being ‘deeper’ than they really are. Yes, it is a borrowing from earlier films like Annie Hall, but goes beyond it as it approaches similar subjects — death, love, and other human relationships — more deeply, probing, as it does, far more than ‘mere’ romance. […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still from Paul Schrader's film "First Reformed," with Ethan Hawke as a priest standing in black and white garments, staring at the viewer, as reviewed and analyzed by poet and critic Ezekiel Yu for the automachination literary magazine.

His Barbed Vestments: Reviewing Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” (2017)

What would happen if you crossed Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light with Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest? What would that priest look like, if you mixed the latter’s tortured overtures toward spiritual purity with the bleak existential angst of the former?

Paul Schrader seeks to answer these hypotheticals with his First Reformed, the tale of Ernst Toller, a disillusioned, middle-aged reverend (played by Ethan Hawke) of a Continental-era Reformed church in New York who undergoes a profound and militant spiritual transformation after one of his parishioners, who is obsessed with the idea of the world’s inevitable environmental collapse, commits suicide.

I first saw this film when it came out in 2017, and found it to be far inferior to Bergman’s classic, and probably a little worse than Bresson’s, which is solid but likely not among his best. Watching it now, almost a decade later, I stand by that overall assessment, though there are positive elements I missed the first go-around, so put off was I by the writer-director’s brazen lifting of plot points from the older films. Those elements, however, are not enough to save First Reformed from its negative trajectory, as it undeniably bottoms out with a bizarre conclusion involving Hawke and co-star Amanda Seyfried deep-Frenching in the rectory while Schrader’s camera wheels around them to a rendition of the old hymnal “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” […]

Film by Alex Sheremet
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INTERIORS (1978): Woody Allen’s Most Underrated Film?

Woody Allen’s Interiors aimed higher and accomplished more than anything else the director had previously done. The film takes a kernel — a family in turmoil — and shows how characters are affected by it, as well as how they, themselves, are the contributors to the dissolution. Interiors shocked viewers upon release, for it had exactly zero comedic value, and remains one of the heaviest stories that Woody Allen has written to this day. It is also precisely what is so hated in Allen’s work, for he skewers an ‘upper crust’ family in a way that is both poetic and realistic, thus opening Allen up to criticism because ‘they’ don’t like what they see, or simply do not believe it. And yet, for all the superficial difficulty one might have with ‘getting into it’, it is, at its core, a highly complex and well-wrought drama, full of great characters, interesting symbols (the red dress at end; the black, almost cosmic tape during the first suicide attempt), and some really great psychological interplay between three sisters that would not be equaled until Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

Yes, it’s often been derided as Woody aping Bergman, but while Bergman is clearly an influence, Allen is in no way derivative of him. Interiors partly revolves around art and its misuses; its lack of a ‘savior’ element for the characters (Eve, especially); and many of the personages, such as Joey (Mary Beth Hurt), are completely and inarguably American, in the sense that they suffer through American excess and American leisure; all of which (art’s neuroses included) have become a Woody trademark, not a Bergmanian one. Joey, in particular, is a true and fully realized ‘type,’ a ponderous, artistic wannabe that, for all of her detractors in print and online, is completely real, and can appear pretty much anywhere in life, as if from the very thinness of the space she inhabits: art cafes, jazz shows, gallery openings, and whatever else might invite such congregation. In short, the film defines its own moments, not Bergman’s, a truth which has rarely been examined at length. […]

Film by Dan Schneider
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A shot of Nuri Bilge Ceylan in a window (text: "Greatest Living Filmmaker"), the director of "Once Upon A Time in Anatolia," which is being analyzed and reviewed in-depth by film critic Dan Schneider for the automachination literary magazine.

MASTERPIECE: On Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia” (2011)

A few years ago, while reviewing Turkish film director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s 2006 great film, “Climates”, I wrote:

“Climates is a masterpiece, but it is more than that. It is also possibly an augur to even better things cinematically. It is not an overstatement to declare that Ceylan may be the best living filmmaker today. And, if one argues with that claim, then one might only add that he’s the best still at the height of his powers. Yes, Angelopolous’s Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow was great, but he’s been at a high level for decades now. Ceylan, on the other hand, is still in ascent. Watch Climates, and feel his pull.”

In short, I was right. The filmmaker was capable of even greater heights. Yet, this level was only reached after the slight hiccup and regression that was 2009’s Three Monkeys- a good but ultimately unsatisfactory formula film that, despite virtuosic moments, was uninvolving.

Ceylan’s latest film, 2011’s “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia” (Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da), is involving yet existential, crafted yet natural, sublime yet base, based on a true story yet utterly mythic, and a few other polarities that I think readers of this essay will prefer to discover for themselves. That stated, let me tell you what this film is not, despite the gush of praise from critics who have praised it, mindlessly critically cribbing from each other, despite not even remotely understanding the very film they praise. Once Upon A Time In Anatolia is not a police procedural film, nor is it an homage nor riff on Sergio Leone’s cinema. As to the first charge, yes, there is police procedural work that provides the external scaffolding structure of the film, but to state that this film is a police procedural is akin to stating that Huckleberry Finn is a book about the perils of 19th Century river rafting. It utterly misses the point that the film merely uses the scaffolding of the police procedural to dig at the existential issues its characters are dealing with, or, in many instances, not dealing with, even as they tangentially dart in and across their lives… […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A shot from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's cult classic "Pulse," depicting a woman in front of multiple computer monitors, as reviewed by poet/critic Ezekiel Yu for the automachination literary magazine.

Wight Screens: Reviewing Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Pulse” (2001)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 J-horror film Pulse (or Kairo, which translates to “Circuit”) operates on two levels: 1) on the atmospheric level, stemming from the film’s mis-en-scene and sound design, creating a fully distinct audiovisual world from pure “vibes,” and 2) as a traditional genre story, since it presents a baffling mystery involving two separate plots which will purportedly be unveiled over the course of its telling.

Pulse succeeds with the first of these, and fails with the other. Its achievements, however, while not enough to completely rescue the film from its (more or less) mid-tier quality, were enough to earn it the status of cult classic upon its release. There are a number of memorable scenes—including what may be, according to one reviewer, the signature sequence in all of J-horror—and an overall aura that believably captures the anxiety over what was fairly new technology at the time: the Internet, and all its attendant dangers, particularly that of mass social alienation.

Pulse is a ghost story, but calling it a ghost story would be to, in a way, undersell the film; at least in terms of its ultimate scope, which widens out from a tight-knit circle of friends in the Kantō region of Japan to eventually encompass the whole world. This enlargement is ambitious but also turns out to be Pulse’s weakness, as its eeriness is most effective when confined primarily to the situation of the main characters. Like many intriguing mysteries, the payoff turns out to be less compelling than the mystery itself. […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still from Kristoffer Borgli's film "Drama" (2026), depicting Zendaya and Robert Pattinson posing for a photo as they smile, as reviewed by poet/critic Ezekiel Yu for the automachination literary magazine.

The Worst Thing: Reviewing Kristoffer Borgli’s “The Drama” (2026)

If it’s true that you can never really know a person—that between you and another, regardless of familiarity, there stands an impassable gulf no thought or action can traverse—then it stands to reason that even the one individual you have decided to spend the rest of your life with is, in essence, a stranger. And vice versa. The gap between you and them ideally ought to be smaller than the one between you and, say, your Uber driver, but all the same, what your shared intimacy affords is only a shrinking of the gap over time, and not its total closure.

Sure, good sex can momentarily erase any mindfulness of that distance, and I suppose that certain battle-tested relationships progressively learn to work their way around it, so that continual negotiation of its existence further unites the parties in deeper ways than would concerted efforts to abolish the divide outright. Love, here, resembles more an enduring act of mutual concession than it does domination in toto; the conscious preservation of your partner’s inscrutability—meaning, that irrevocable other-ness which is part and parcel of their singularity in the world—ought to make of such mystique a real opportunity for meaningful, long-term intrigue, rather than it be villainized as some willfully obscured portion of the beloved that one must first capture, and then neatly assimilate as a fully known category, in order to legitimately stake out the terms of intimate companionship. […]