Keeping it Together in this Crazy World

How to be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World (2024) - Pochlatko It's all in the perspectives when talking about our mental health, considering the wild and crazy world that we are living in right now. Austrian director Florian Pochlatko plays with this idea in his zany debut feature How to be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World. We see Pia (played drolly by Luisa-Céline Gaffron), a sullen young woman, being discharged from a mental institution and moving back to her childhood room in her concerned parents' house. Mom, Elfie (Elke Winkens), is a voice actor for narrating documentary programs and dad Klaus (Cornelius Obonya) owns a printing company.

Jumbled up timeline and fantasy sequences, you don't quite know what we see on screen is real or not, neither does our unreliable narrator Pia, who is on a variety of colorful anti-psychotic pills. We get to know a little bit of details in Pia's life - her boyfriend Joni (Felix Pöchhacker) has moved on, but Pia is still deeply in love. And it gets a little touchy when she confronts him and his new love. Also Pia is paranoid about men in black suits, very much like Agent Smith from the Matrix movies, following her around everywhere. Are they real or her drug induced hallucinations?

In order to give some stability to Pia, her parents decide to give her a job at dad's company, doing dull office work. They hope that a daily routine would help her. But the real world is not as stable as everyone hopes to be. Increasingly sensationalist tendencies in documentary topics that Elfie narrates - parasite infected zombie snails, wayward asteroids that might collide with the earth, combined with daily atrocities and natural disasters blaring on TV, test Elfie's sanity causing her to crash her car in a traffic heavy motorway. Klaus struggles with his company being taken over by a huge conglomerate called 'Friendly' (a stand-in for Amazon). It's as if there's a very thin line distinguishing being normal and insane. Not only Pia, but everyone slowly loses grip on their reality, as the world keeps spinning out of control.

How to be Normal asks big questions about what is perceived as normal when the world around us is insane. Pia, constantly under pressure to be normal, is trying to hold on to the idea of home and self-worth in the world constantly in turmoil. Pochlatko, like Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once, balances the heady subject with plenty of humor and great visual gags. As paranoid and delusional Pia appears to be, she provides the film's many hilarious moments as she appears as a giant monster with a piece of Gouda cheese across her face lumbering like a Gozilla in the city, or using the post-it notes to cover her face at her job. Gaffron is fantastic as a acne ridden, heavily medicated young woman desperately trying to find a footing and self-worth, so is the rest of the cast with their droll performances.

Can Pia find peace and stop slashing her wrists with a plastic knife? Is there a brighter future for mankind? Pochlatko poses these questions and asks us to contemplate what it means to be sane and normal in the world that is completely nuts.

Symbols

Hysteria (2025) - Büyükatalay German filmmaker Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay's Hysteria touches upon sensitive subjects in modern day, multicultural Germany: racism and representation. The film plays out like a tense thriller until it morphs into a chamber drama where the identity politics within the immigrant community are dissected and hotly debated. Hysteria might not be as subtle as fellow Turkish descendent filmmaker Thomas Arslan (A Fine Day)'s work, or as flashy as Fatih Akin (Head-On)'s, but the film is more direct and piercing in dealing with the complex subject matter. The plot sometimes feels clunky and forced as it gets tangled up in its own intricate web, and the seemingly important loose ends don't tie up neatly by the end. But Hysteria is an anxiety inducing pressure cooker of a film that concludes with the literal fiery end.

Hysteria starts with an arson, a staged one: it is revealed in a long zoom out that the house being torched is in a giant film stage. The film director Yigit (Serkan Kaya) interjects and gives the context to the image - it's the reflection of the arson attacks that took place in Germany in the 90s by the ultra right-wing groups against Muslim immigrant communities that killed hundreds of innocent people. What Yigit is trying to capture is immigrant non-actors’ emotions, going through the aftermath of the arson attack. These extras are culled from a local refugee center for authenticity's sake. After the shoot, it is revealed that the copy of Quran is burned along with other household items during filming and some of the extras are upset. One of them, Majid, walks off the set. So, the driving duty falls on a young and eager intern Elif (Devrim Lingnau). She has to drive extras back to the refugee center and drop off the film negatives (the project is shot on film) to an apartment that belongs to the film's producer Lilith (Nicolette Krebitz) who is also well known, respected filmmaker herself.

Elif has a healthy discussion with the extras about what the project is about on the way back to the refugee center. Mustafa (Aziz Çapkurt), himself a theater director back home, thinks Yigit is just perpetuating the victimhood on screen, which has been long prevalent in German cinema - so called "Gasterbeiter (Guestworker) Cinema" or "Cinema of Duty" of the 70s and 80s. These are the films the white liberals can have their conscience clear and make them feel good after viewing. Others disagree, including Elif, a university student with a Turkish immigrant father, who thinks the film is saying something important.

After Elif drops them off, she arrives at Lilith's but realizes that she lost the keys to the apartment. After calling a locksmith, she places several fliers about missing keys around the neighborhood. But she conceals the lost key incident to Lilith for some reason. This little deceit snowballs into full blown paranoia when she gets text messages about the lost keys from a stranger. The texts, with bad grammar and their profile picture and their social media linked to some scary looking Muslim extremist group, Elif, sufficiently freaked out, calls Said (Medhi Meskar), a young immigrant who was an extra in Yigit's film and tells him what's been happening. When Yigit and Lilith come back, to Elif's dismay, they find the footage that contains the burning Quran is gone. Someone broke into the apartment and lifted the footage. Yigit, furious and suspects the extras and calls cops on them. Mustafa, Said and Majid all deny any involvement in wrongdoing.

Lilith, who wasn't fan of the footage and in fear of controversy, convinces Yigit to file a theft insurance claim and reshoot the scene without Quran. The problem solved. But for Elif, the problem is far from solved. She confronts Lilith and Yigit with Mustafa, Said and Majid, and asks for an apology. This is where things get a little shaky in terms of narrative contrivances. While I appreciate the need of seeing frank discussions about how people perceive others and others perceive themselves, class disparities, 'write what you know,' etc., but nothing really gets sorted out in Hysteria. The jarring tonal shift, untied loose ends, underdeveloped motivations and obvious symbolism (not only Quran but actual negative film catches fire at the end) devolve into a melodrama. Büyükatalay has a knack for making an anxiety inducing thriller. But issues don't necessarily get solved themselves even when they are screamed out loud for everyone to hear.

Parti pris

Armand (2024) - Tøndel Halfdan Ulmann Tøndel's scathing primary set school drama Armand features a stunning lead performance by Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World). Reinsve plays Elisabeth, a mother of Armand, a troubled 6 year old kid who is accused of sexual assault on a classmate. The supposed victim is a son of Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), who is a sister of Thomas, Elisabeth's dead husband. The emergency PT conference is called in the backdrop of the empty, old primary school since the school is out for summer. Elisabeth is first seen frantically driving to school, trying to connect to Armand on the phone. With jewelry, makeup, a revealing top and high heels, she exudes a partygirl vibe. She wipes off her lipstick before she enters the school. Waiting there in school are - harried principal Jarle (Øystein Røger), an inexperienced young teacher Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen), and an administrator Ajsa (Vera Veljovic-Jovanovic), as well as Sarah and husband Anders(Endre Hellestveit).

An attempt, led by Sunna, to appease both parent parties and make light of the situation fails miserably as the temper and accusations fly. It's a serious accusation that Armand hit the kid and pulled his pants down and uttered the words 'anal sex'. The situation is too much for a young teacher to handle. Jarle and Ajsa step in. As they weigh in the steps that need to be taken by the school, Elisabeth has a laughing fit that lasts several minutes, as everyone else increasingly feels uncomfortable. It's as if she is sabotaging the process and dragging it out, as if she doesn't want to face the accusations. Sarah is convinced that Elisabeth, an actor, is out to manipulate the situation by creating a drama and making everything about herself, the victim. She urges Jarle and everyone to consider Elisabeth's profession, and in turn her mental fitness for being a mother. Who knows if she has something to do with Thomas's accidental death? Jarle who has known Thomas and Sarah since they were kids who attended the same school, increasingly believes Sarah's opinion of her.

Armand reminded me of another Scandinavian film with the similar subject, Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt, starring Mads Mikkelsen, a kindergarten teacher accused of a sexual abuse by a young girl, which turns out to be a little lie. A grandson of Liv Ulmann and Ingmar Bergman, Tøndel, a young Norwegian filmmaker, shows his pedigree with Armand. The filmmaker uses those empty interiors to his advantage (with DP Pål Ulvik Rokseth), playing with silhouettes and focus shifts.

Directing the actors, with simmering tensions and emotional turmoil dealing with such a delicate subject, Tøndel shows a firm grasp of working with seasoned actors. For Reinsve, it's a very hammy role, balancing between a seductress and an innocent woman who is persecuted by her looks in a physically demanding role. And she gives it all.

Armand is a tense movie with warring factions calling for blood. But it also leaves some room for poetic moments of reprieve as Elisabeth dances with the school's custodian with a broom and an intense physical altercation fantasy sequence near the end involving Elisabeth and a group of parents who were there to recap the school year with the administration who just heard about the accusation. The scene where everyone's hands are on Elisabeth, poking, nudging and grabbing her, is reminiscent of the scene from Repulsion. In this, it's as if the accusers are trying to get a piece of the accused with their preconceived notion of Elisabeth, the unfit mother. With the strong performance from Reinsve, Armand is a commendable first feature from a promising young director. Armand receives will have limited theatrical release on Friday 2/7 at IFC Center. Nationwide release will follow.

Ghosting

Presence (2024) - Soderbergh Shot entirely in one location with a small camera with a wide-angle lens, Steven Soderbergh's slight ghost tale in suburban America is a well made, well executed little genre exercise. It starts with a POV shot of both in and out of a spacious but empty house in a suburban neighborhood, giving us the layout. The camera lingers behind the half shut closet door looking through the shutter of a second story room then the screen goes to black. This cutting to black happens throughout the film. Rather than cutting to another scene, Soderbergh let the shot end with black screen, like 80s John Carpenter films. It's an effective way to show the time progression. But it might also have to do with the continuous recording time limits in those small Sony cameras he used. A family, consisting of Dad (Chris Sullivan), Mom (Lucy Liu) and their two children in high school, Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Mayday) move in soon after. Mom's insistence about it being in the good school district and their son's swimming career, we can gather that Tyler is mom's favorite.

As they settle in in their respective rooms, we realize that it's the same room that the camera lingered in the beginning is the one Chloe moved in. With her uneasy stares, Chloe might be sensing that she's not alone.

Through the interactions within the family, we find out that there were recent deaths in Chloe's life - two of her close school friends died mysteriously and she is having mental health issues. Tyler being a jock and favorite of mom, her dad tries to be an ally to Chloe, albeit passively. It is also revealed that their controlling mom, always on her laptop, always busy with work, might be involved in some illegal white collar crime and their marriage is not going well.

Tyler's friend Ryan (West Mulholland), a cool kid from school visits and befriends Chloe and they make out when no one's home. Ryan says some creepy things about being in control while he cooes Chloe, "You are in control and you make decisions," while trying to slide in date rape drug in her drinks while she's not looking. Something's wrong about the guy and the ghost/presence, knocks off the drink just in time.

Paranormal activities start happening around the house - things get knocked off, the lights flicker, and it's not only Chloe who experiences these things anymore. So the medium is called. There's a presence in the house and something bad is going to happen - the medium tells the family. Mom is skeptical and the medium lady is not welcome after the first visit.

Soderbergh and his script writer David Koepp concoct a simple story and it's very well realized on screen. As usual, there's not much fat on the plot and dialog and everything is very succinct. That's the thing about Soderbergh though. There is nothing much there. There's no social/political/racial context to the story. There's a little bit on the power and consent related to the husband and wife and also the manipulative serial rapist and his victims, but when all said and done, Presence is not that memorable, just like any other Soderbergh film. Yes it's a cool small genre exercise in a formalist way with the POV, but it's so devoid of any context that it leaves your head as soon as you leave the theater.

Endless Summer

Du côté d'Orouët (1971) - Rozier Three hardworking Parisiannes Caroline (Caroline Cartier), her cousin Kareen (Françoise Guégan) and Joélle (Danièle Croisy) go on late Summer vacation to Orouët, the coastal town near Nantes. Caroline's mother has a place near the beach they can stay at. For the trio of young women, the late summer is all giggles, sunbathing and freedom in off season at the beach. Then Joélle's work boss Gilbert (Bernard Menez) shows up at their doorstep. It is obvious that Gilbert, who has office crush on Joélle, tracked her down with "Oh I was just in the neighborhood and what a coincidence that we are taking a vacation in the same area!" spiel. He forces his way into the girls' summer house. His insistence can be annoying at times but he has a goofy, nerdy charm to him. He takes a lot of abuse from the girls being the only guy in the group. But their dynamics change when they meet up with suave local sailor Patrick (Patrick Verde), who takes girls sailing in his boat. Patrick ends up with Kareen, but it's pretty obvious that Joélle's jealous. Little tensions rise.

With 2 1/2 hr running time, Jacques Rozier's long winded summer holidays movie with the always watchable trio of lovely working class girls, is filled with shrieking laughter, lazy afternoons, hazy late summer sun and boozy nights. Rozier's not really interested in a melodrama with summer flings. Du côté d'Orouët is more interested in capturing the excitement of summer vacation and its fleeting nature. Mostly handheld sunkissed cinematography has an intimate home movie feel to it.

Undead

Nosferatu (2024) - Eggers Robert Eggers, known for his meticulous yet fruitless research to the subjects he depicts (fruitless because they are fictional stories and characters - The Northman, not historical characters), does it again with Nosferatu- a gothic vampire story told countless times in cinema history before, and therefore there's no meat left to peck on. So how does it fare up against all other Dracula iterations?

Eggers reinterprets unauthorized Murnau version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Nosferatu (1922), with an Eastern European folklore twist that Stoker was inspired to write his book from. So there are slight differences in the foreboding story of the supernatural in the age of enlightenment, but the choices Eggers makes here are not particularly cinematic nor thrilling.

In this new Nosferatu, the undead, Count Orlok is neither a suave Victorian age shapeshifter, nor shriveled up, rodent like creature. He is more like a zombie who is resurrected by dreams of a little waif who burdens herself to save humanity from the plague.

I can't help but compare this new film with Werner Herzog's take on the same story, which is one of my favorites of all time. And Lily-Rose Depp, with all her conniptions and convulsions, is no Isabelle Adjani. In all aspects - cinematography, choice of locations, music, acting (even in intentionally stilted theatrical performances by Kinski, Ganz and Adjani), and periodic and cultural details, Herzog gets that 'ecstatic truth', that Eggers can only dream about bringing from his historical research to the screen. Even the sex and nudity can't liven up this dull, sodden version of the story.

Top 20 Favorite Films 2024

What a tumultuous year! It seemed the world was simultaniously going to the shitter. As I brace for things getting worse from bad, and regroup and pledge my continued resistance in my small ways, I look back at the glorious cinema of 2024. So let's celebrate a little! Happy Holidays people! Click on the titles for full reviews:

1. Caught by the Tides - Jia Jia Zhangke's films over the years have been steadily rising in my year end top list - Touch of Sin (#16, 2013) Mountains May Depart (#7, 2016), Ash is Purist White (#2, 2018). But honestly, everything he's been putting out, since the early 90s', has been solid. As the master chronicler of China's changing times, Jia keeps up with Caught by the Tides, again, starring his collaborator/wife, Zhao Tao, taking the lead in a silent role. And it hit my nerve fully and completely this time. The film charts from 2001 to the pandemic era China. Culling from unused footage from his own films of the last 22 years, Jia, as always, inventively looks back and forward to tell the characters swept up by the times and tides of life.

2. La Chimera - Rohrwacher As usual, Alice Rohrwacher's fable like story is filled to the brim with the colorful rural characters as they scheme, sing and dance around. Arthur finds some sort of redemption after Italia's objection that what he is doing is robbing the souls of the dead people: he is digging the trinkets out of tombs where they are not meant for the eyes of the living. La Chimera is a charming film full of hearts and human warmth.

3. The Human Surge 3 - Williams Eduardo Williams, with his minimalist/maximalist free-flowing aesthetics, with acute observations of the world here and now, with a great deal of sense of humor and compassion & tenderness toward its subjects, emerges as one of the most daring, important filmmakers working today.

4. Grand Tour - Gomes Grand Tour exists on its own floating cinematic biosphere outside spatio-temporal continuum where past and present intermingle, in the context of first-world colonialism and the old-world sexism. It's another delicious concoction from Gomes.

5. All We Imagine as Light - Kapadia Fluidly switching from documenting what it's like living in bustling Mumbai to the melodrama of these three women with their emotional and economical insecurities, All We Imagine as Light comments on many social and political issues in India. The early voice-over suggests that at least one of the family members in each household from the country leaves home to go to work in Mumbai. Anu wears burqa to have a secret rendez-vous with Shiaz in his predominantly Muslim neighborhood, which is an indicative of Modi's right wing Hindu government making it harder to reconcile between Hindu and Muslim relationship. Parvaty attends worker's rights meeting at night and Prabha and Parvaty clandestinely throw stones at the billboard advertising near Parvaty's house, that reads, "Class is privilege reserved for privileged." Kapadia's tapestry of sensorial storytelling and sociopolitical commentary of Mumbai is on the level of Jia Zhangke's observations on changing Shanxi province he frequently depicts in his films.

6. Cerrar los ojos/Close Your Eyes - Erice More than anything, Close Your Eyes is a tribute to cinema- the strange power of it that mesmerizes and enraptures us. Erice understands the iconic power of image. He understands time passing and its melancholy as well. Sad king indeed.

7. A Traveler's Needs - Hong A Traveler's Needs has much in common with Wim Wenders's Perfect Days. These protagonists are people of very limited means and ambitions. They just float around living life as truthfully as they can. Never looking backwards but always forward. There's some sort of universality here - Wenders directing in Japan seeing the world through the eyes of Koji Yakusho and Hong directing and seeing the world through Huppert's eyes. Gentle, living by the moment, enjoying the surroundings - nature, sleeping, drinking, small human interactions.

8. The Shrouds - Cronenberg As always, Cronenberg meshes both our skepticisms and fascinations about the advancement of technology into a great, thought provoking film without ever succumbing to sentimentality. Added layer in The Shroud is self-reflexivity in grief (Cronenberg lost his wife in 2017 and with Vincent Cassel with his silvery spikey hair, closely resembling the director). There's plenty of humor in The Shrouds, but the grasping at the loss of a loved one and the hard act of letting go of the earthly, bodily attachment rings true.

9. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat - Grimonprez During the Cold War, the US and Europe were seeing the world in dichotomy, quick to accuse voicing injustice as a communist activity. And how it became the prevalent mantra of the public even now. Boppers knew. Malcolm X knew. People protesting the European’s and CIA's roles in Lumumba's death in Harlem knew. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat is a tremendous film.

10. Afternoons of Solitude - Serra Serra's aim is capturing the purity: the purity of the ritual, the purity of the filmmakers who haven't had any prior experience with bullfighting, the purity of worship, the purity of self-assurance. It's a hard to sit through experience but another worthy effort from one of the most adventurous filmmakers of our time.

11. Samsara - Patiño There are two parts, er, three parts to the film: first part takes place in Laos, the second part, we are supposed to close our eyes for 15 minutes, then third part in Zanzibar. His gamble pays off. I'd love to experience this film on a big screen with other people and perhaps fall asleep and not feel ashamed to do so. It's that kind of film.

12. Here - Devos There's a little magic about the film. The mysterious seedlings that glow, the sound of nearby train running replaced by rustling of the trees and unseen birds, the well timed rain showers, etc. The little romance between the two charcters are so understated and happens literally off the frame, yet so sublimely lovely. Remember, making soup for somebody is the most romantic thing to do.

13. I Saw the TV Glow - Schoenbrun You hoped that there was life beyond the suffocating High School years; you have aspirations and ambitions, to be somebody. But as you grow older, you find life under capitalism is just as suffocating, as if you are being buried alive. This is the feeling Schoenbrun captures so well with I Saw the TV Glow.

14. Inside Yellow Cocoon Shell (2023) - Pham The present melds with past and reality blurs with dreams, Inside Yellow Cocoon Shell presents the waking dream that is fleeting human life. The last third of this languid 3-hour film is Thien looking for his brother in the neighboring village. His motor bike breaks down and Thien has to take shelter in a snack stop. There he engages with an old woman who asks him why he had forsaken his soul and proceeds to tell him her near death experience. Is Thien really looking for his brother? Or is he in a spiritual journey to find himself? With the backdrop of colorful Vietnam and its western and eastern influences and its tumultuous history, young director Pham paints a very arresting picture of one man's journey to find himself and leaves room for us to contemplate and embrace life's mysteries.

15. Dahomey - Diop Dahomey is a spiritual heir to Alain Resnais and Chris Marker's 1953 essay film, Statues Also Die (1953) about how colonialism affected the way African Art is perceived and also Abderramane Sissako's Bamako (2006) in terms of self-determination and awakening of African consciousness through debates in the globalized world. It's a hopeful avant-documentary that needs to be seen widely.

16. Oddity - Mc Carthy Horror genre is having a good year with many successful releases. Some of them are very good. But I find most of them overhyped and not at all scary. Irish director Damian Mc Carthy, whose sleeper hit debut Caveat (2020), a 'haunted house' genre, was in my opinion, both original and scary horror film in an ominous remote island setting. He comes up with perhaps the scariest film of the year. There are many truly terrifying moments in Oddity. The sense of unease Mc Carthy creates has no equal. It's his effective filmmaking - unnerving framing, sense of claustrophobia and timing that really pays off. His playing with the expectations of the audiences provide many spine tingling moments.

17. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - Miller Come to think of it, Max and Demetus are just the flip side of the coin. He carries a teddy bear chained on his front, as a reminder for his wife and child who died, just like Max's. Even though they are from similar origins, Max bowed to avoid the human race and lead a solitary scavenger existence, Demetus became an all-out tyrant, relishing in chaos with joie de vivre attitude. It's the fleeting joys of destruction and cruelty he is after. And why not? Furiosa doesn't know it yet, but as we witnessed in the previous film, the Green Zone is gone. We know that she has to deal with the political bullshit of controlling and governing over marauding citizens of citadel. Who wants to deal with that? But I hope Miller keeps making these. It's loads of fun.

18. Monster - Kore-eda What seemingly starts out as a rashomon style abuse accusation in a school drama, Kore-eda's new film Monster is actually about something completely different. It's a massively poignant lovestory and an indictment of the bigotted society where people assume the worst in each other. As is the case with Kore-eda films, he gets the most outstanding performances out of young actors. Both Kurokawa and Hiiragi shine in their demanding roles emoting in their uncertain stares and silences.

19. C'est pas moi - Carax Carax is not a visual essayist commenting and reflecting on the state of the chaotic world we live in - maybe only a little bit but not in Godard's sense. The film is all about him. And it's beautiful and glorious. It builds up to a stormy solo piano session of the theme from The Young Girls of Rochefort, played by his daughter, Nastya - perfectly capturing the essence of Carax's career, his sentimentality, his art and beauty haunted by the ghosts of the past (including but not limited to departed: Golubeva, Guillaume Depardieu, Escoffier, Godard). C’est pas moi is the best cinematic self-portrait of an artist you can wish for.

20. Shadows of Fire - Tsukamoto The first half plays out like a tight chamber piece, taking in one small room with a nameless young war widow (Shuri), surviving by selling/trading her body for goods in a firebombed building, a PTSD suffering young soldier who clings to her for a good night sleep and a young street urchin whom she pours out her maternal instinct to. The second half tells another guilt stricken returning soldier trying to find the redemption with the help of the boy. Stark, and unflinching and masterfully directed and top notch acting from everyone involved.