Alien: Covenant, dir. Ridley Scott (2017).
GRADE: C+
Esteros, dir. Papu Curotto (2016).
Two childhood friends reunite and return to the rural Argentina farm where they had flirted with the idea of a sexual relationship. One friend has long bangs, the other closely cropped hair — guess which is an artist and openly gay? The denouement is as believable as the stubble.
GRADE: C+
* Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, dir. David Lynch (1992).
My introduction twenty-four years ago to a series I didn’t watch in its regular run shares awful, ungainly scenes with terrifying must-see ones, none so terrifying than David Bowie in Tin Machine flowered shirt dissolving before a glimpse of garbongozia. Less coherent than Mulholland Drive, Fire Walk with Me nevertheless is Lynch’s best film between Blue Velvet and The Straight Story: the most lurid teen-gone-bad film in history.
GRADE: A-
The Tree of Wooden Clogs, dir. Ermanno Olmi (1978).
Reissued in excellent Criterion-o-Scope, this Palme d’Or winner has an unnerving serenity: pigs get slaughtered, the seasons change. The best bits: the peasant father inching closer to picking up a dropped coin but ignores the socialist in the square calling for revolution; and a married couple that moves to Pisa register their mounting sexual anxiety.
GRADE: A
* In a Year of 13 Moons, dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1978).
GRADE: A
Humanizing The Vacuum 