{"id":133852,"date":"2019-02-22T14:11:01","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T19:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=133852"},"modified":"2019-02-22T17:09:20","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T22:09:20","slug":"staff-picks-features-films-and-flicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/22\/staff-picks-features-films-and-flicks\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Features, Films, and Flicks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Still from Lynne Ramsay\u2019s You Were Never Really Here<\/em>. Photo courtesy of StudioCanal.<\/p><\/div>\n

You Were Never Really Here<\/em><\/a> is a disturbing and poetic piece of cinema. I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s my favorite movie of 2018\u2014the experience of watching it was too uncomfortable for that\u2014but even so, it strikes me that Lynne Ramsay\u2019s omission from the nominees for best director at this year\u2019s Oscars is difficult to justify. In You Were Never Really Here<\/em>,\u00a0Joe, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is a tortured, messy veteran and contract killer tasked with tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a senator. Often in movies of this sort, the pressure that builds by the threat of violence is somehow released when that violence occurs. There is no such relief here. In the pauses between violence, Joe returns home to his elderly mother (Judith Roberts) to fret over her health or help her polish cutlery; all the while the violence remains, like a ringing in the ears following an explosion.\u00a0\u2014Robin Jones\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The magic of Nicholas Britell\u2019s score<\/a> for\u00a0If Beale Street Could Talk<\/em><\/a> lies less in its beauty and more in its ability to heighten and blend with the other sounds of the city. I find, for instance, while listening to his music on the subway, that I cannot easily distinguish between the song and the small reverberations and clicks of the train car. His compositions are vulnerable and complex in a way that invites further inflection. They draw my attention outward and produce a cascading noticing: this wind, this siren, this face across from mine. The music, like the film, is not defined by any one thing. It is never glossy or romanticized, but deeply felt. The score draws attention to what is here\u2014both the here inside the film and here, outside. It is an articulation of life against a looming whiteness that continues to enforce and muffle.\u00a0\u2014Spencer Quong<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have spent much time waxing salty about the awards-season snubbing of First Reformed<\/em><\/a>, which I staff picked<\/a> a few months ago. I am here now to decry the deafening nomination silence around Museo<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Alonso Ruizpalacios\u2019s artful, tightly wrought heist film based on the 1985 robbery of more than a hundred fifty objects from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City on Christmas Eve. Museo<\/em> follows the two young thieves during the crime and its aftermath, when they are immediately in over their heads as they try to sell what they\u2019ve acquired, only to find it so rare and precious as to be worthless on the black market. The term heist movie<\/em>\u00a0may smack of gimmickry, but I adore the genre and think it often dredges up something deeply mysterious from within the human psyche. Ruizpalacios\u2019s film is visually beautiful and dynamic while also being tender and thoughtful\u2014I cried through the ending and spent days thinking about it, peeling back the layers of the main character, portrayed by Gael Garc\u00eda Bernal in a performance of quiet intensity and pathos. A.\u2009O. Scott writes<\/a> that while watching Museo<\/em>, he felt he \u201cmight be in the presence of someone who could become the next great Mexican filmmaker.\u201d I agree and believe that the true robbery of Museo<\/em> is that it wasn\u2019t even given the chance at gold.\u00a0\u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ando Sakura, Matsuoka Mayu, Sasaki Miyu, Jyo Kairi, and Lily Franky in Shoplifters<\/em>, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

There\u2019s something quietly devastating about Hirokazu Kore-eda\u2019s Shoplifters<\/em><\/a> that I haven\u2019t been able to shake since I saw it at the IFC Center a month ago. The film, an exploration of what constitutes a family, begins with a father and son shoplifting in a nondescript Tokyo grocery store. On the way home, they discover an abused little girl and end up taking her home with them. Like life,\u00a0Shoplifters<\/em> is fundamentally unfair: characters destroy their bodies in jobs that will never lift them out of poverty, people who really shouldn\u2019t be parents have children, and, by the end, the Japanese legal system rewards those who shouldn\u2019t be rewarded. Along the way, the film slyly hints that something isn\u2019t quite right in the multigenerational family it portrays. I won\u2019t spoil any of the twists\u2014and there are quite a few\u2014but needless to say, not all is as it seems.\u00a0\u2014Rhian Sasseen<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first watched\u00a0Gillian Robespierre\u2019s\u00a0Obvious Child<\/em><\/a> when it came out, in 2014. I was still in high school, and the ragtag group of friends who proposed it crowded around the TV, relishing a rom-com that could satisfy both our blooming personal politics and our small-town desire for a metropolitan social scene. After resurrecting the movie with sleepy boredom during a sweaty afternoon last July, I went on to watch Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) chug wine and mourn the loss of independent bookstores another four times over the past few months. A few of these viewings were with friends who hadn\u2019t yet experienced the glory that is Obvious Child<\/em>, but others were alone, curled up with snacks and the exaggerated hilarity that comes from knowing the punch line before it comes. In a word, Obvious Child<\/em> is cozy. Throughout the film, we see Donna sleeping or napping or crawling into bed with people who love her unconditionally. And while it might seem absurd to describe a movie framed around an abortion as feel-good, Robespierre achieves this precise effect. The abortion Donna chooses to undergo isn\u2019t her greatest anxiety but rather one in a litany of messy highs and lows that includes her job insecurity, her breakup, and her ambition as a writer. I will never stop laughing at the scene in which Donna lurks outside her ex\u2019s apartment, shivering in the cold and counting sips of coffee until he emerges. Jenny Slate is a gift to the world, and\u00a0Obvious Child<\/em> wins every Oscar in my heart.\u00a0\u2014Nikki Shaner-Bradford<\/strong><\/p>\n

The best actress category at the Academy Awards this year is a group of five phenomenal women (Yalitza Aparicio, Glenn Close, Olivia Colman, Lady Gaga, and Melissa McCarthy) at the top of their game. I can\u2019t truly grouse about this, can I? But grouse I will, because Toni Collette\u2019s performance as an\u00a0anxious miniatures artist and bereaved mother in\u00a0Hereditary<\/a><\/em>, my favorite film of 2018, is the kind of feat that cements a legacy, and I\u2019m appalled she wasn\u2019t recognized by the Oscars this year. Make no mistake\u2014Collette has always been incredible. But this particular role encompasses so many extreme moods\u2014blinding anger, heart-splitting terror, and the lowest, purest agony\u2014that in the hands of a lesser actor, the film would fall apart. That it doesn\u2019t is a miracle mostly attributable to Collette. In one scene, grieving the death of a family member, she writhes on the floor, inconsolable, screaming and howling over and over: \u201cI can\u2019t! I can\u2019t! I just want to die!\u201d Never has grief onscreen been this terrifying, this gut-wrenching and real.\u00a0\u2014Brian Ransom<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Still from Ari Aster\u2019s Hereditary<\/em>. Photo courtesy of A24.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, to celebrate (or at least acknowledge) the Oscars, the staff of \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 goes to the movies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[21092,20956,49702,13861,35,49705,14631,8892,412,49721,23702,29649,49699,49719,49720,30289,49714,79,42927,49707,6696,49713,49716,2019,49703,49704,34464,49709,995,9036,49718,38318,9167,1945,49712,49698,49697,4071,504,49696,11193,3286,16607,202,49701,46,49706,49700,49711,47332,6319,1870,354,7958,3988,7957,16932,3413,49708,4608,11745,2648,49722,883,49710,18034,203,1947,49717,7592,15163,14787,49715,49695],"class_list":["post-133852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-a-o-scott","tag-agony","tag-alonso-ruizpalacios","tag-anger","tag-art","tag-art-heist","tag-boredom","tag-childhood","tag-comedy","tag-comfort-films","tag-commute","tag-commuting","tag-contract-killer","tag-cozy-art","tag-cozy-movies","tag-devil","tag-donna-stern","tag-film","tag-first-reformed","tag-gael-garcia-bernal","tag-ghosts","tag-gillian-robespierre","tag-glenn-close","tag-grief","tag-heist","tag-heist-film","tag-hereditary","tag-hirokazu-kore-eda","tag-hollywood","tag-horror","tag-horror-films","tag-if-beale-street-could-talk","tag-ifc-center","tag-japan","tag-jenny-slate","tag-joaquin-phoenix","tag-judith-roberts","tag-lady-gaga","tag-literature","tag-lynne-ramsay","tag-melissa-mccarthy","tag-mexico","tag-mood","tag-movie","tag-museo","tag-music","tag-national-museum-of-anthropology-in-mexico-city","tag-nicholas-britell","tag-obvious-child","tag-olivia-colman","tag-oscars","tag-recommendation","tag-recommendations","tag-rom-coms","tag-romance","tag-romantic-comedy","tag-satan","tag-scotland","tag-shoplifters","tag-shoplifting","tag-snacks","tag-soundtrack","tag-staff-pick","tag-staff-picks","tag-stealing","tag-terror","tag-thriller","tag-tokyo","tag-toni-collette","tag-tv","tag-united-kingdom","tag-violence","tag-yalitza-aparicio","tag-you-were-never-really-here"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff 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