Movies in 2026 60

 

Maggie's Plan, (Rebecca Miller, 2015)

This morning I watched Rebecca Miller's 2015 film Maggie's Plan. I definitely love it, but I did like it, so I'd suggest you check it out (right now it's available on the Criterion Channel in their Julianne Moore collection). It's described as a screwball comedy, and there are certainly aspects of that genre in it, but it also felt very much like one of those lesser Woody Allen movies where a series of educated white folks have enough income and time on their hands to fixate on their personal problems without actually dealing with anything particularly important (I think that sounds harsher than I intended). Greta Gerwig is charming in a very Greta Gerwig role (funny and clumsy and earnest and endearing), and you can't help thinking that it's a pity that she's so good at that role that she never is given the opportunity to play a role that displays how obviously bright she is. Ethan Hawke plays a very Ethan Hawke role, in that he's likeable and smart but obviously mildly fractured and incapable of finding a happy relationship or bringing happiness to a relationship. Julianne Moore is typically good. She's intelligent and emotionally distant and more than a bit fractured (which sounds like a typical Julianne Moore role), but she's also quite funny in the film. It's difficult to make the claim that such an accomplished actress isn't given great roles, but she's also often typecast in darker more emotionally complicated roles (which is hardly something to complain about, obviously). This reads like a negative reflection on the film, which I don't think I meant it to be, because I did like it. There are some great moments. When the Gerwig character says to Hawke that their relationship should have stopped at the level of an affair (he was married to the Moore character) and not led to them getting married she's definitely speaking some serious truth.

Movies in 2026 59

 

Pierrot Le Fou, (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

Recently I decided to give Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou another viewing. I wanted to watch it again, partially because, well, duh, I love movies, but also because I simply didn't like it the first time I watched it five years ago. So, I decided to give it another shot, figuring that maybe I was simply in a mood before which kept me from appreciating it. I always think that this is a real danger with movies, because they're so emotionally driven and also because they blow by in less than two hours, which increases the chances that you might have simply not been willing/able to play your part in the movie experience (as compared to say being consistently in a bad mood for the forty hours that it might take to get through a Dickens novel). So, I did have a different response, in that I think I disliked it more than my first viewing. Obviously, I'm in the minority here, because many folks consider Pierrot Le Fou to be one of Godard's best films. I routinely like the film's stars, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina (including in other Godard films), but in this film I simply didn't care about either of them, and those classic Godard-isms that I often consider brilliant simply annoyed me this time. It's not that I disliked Godard, because I love many of his films (Breathless, Bande a part, Vivre la vie, Masculine/Feminine) but there are other times that I may just like the idea of Godard more than Godard. Or maybe I was just in another bad mood, and I'll check back the next time I watch it with an updated review.

17

 And another week has begun, and my final semester is flying along. As I think I said last week, I'm not feeling too nostalgic and the passing moments don't feel too bittersweet so far. Again, maybe when I'm down to the final two weeks, and the CFL player jerseys are below five, I'll feel differently.  My officemate Erik proposed yesterday that I seemed very much at peace with the end, which he took to be reflective of the fact that I had an rich life planned out (living in Sicily, learning Italian, writing books) and thus it was less of an ending and more of a transition. As usual, I suspect he's right.

Thanks to Khari Jones for loaning me his number 17 for today's commemoration. I didn't know until recently that Jones is a fellow Hoosier, born in Hammond, Indiana. After attending college at UC Davis, he played briefly for the Albany Firebirds (Arena Football League) and Scottish Claymores (World League of American Football/NFL Europe) before heading north of the border. Over his ten years career he was a member of the BC Lions, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Eskimos, and Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He was voted the CFL's Most Outstanding Player in 2001 and led the Blue Bombers to the Grey Cup, although they lost to Calgary. The next year he threw for over 5300 yards and 46 TDs (which is the third most that any CFL QB has ever thrown in a season). Shoulder issues impacted his later career. After retirement he was Offense Coordinator for several teams, and also served as Head Coach of the Montreal Alouettes for four years.

Movies in 2026 58

 

Inspector Nardone, (Fabrizio Costa, 2012)

Previously, I proposed that I was not going to record one episode of an Italian television mystery series (Janet has a long queue of them), but if we watched several of them or an entire series I'd go ahead and include it on this year's list. With that prologue in mind, last night we finished the Inspector Nardone series, which runs twelve episodes, split down the middle between early events and then ten years later. Inspector Nardone is transferred to Milan (because he's hot-headed and doesn't like following orders - there are tropes aplenty in the series), and despite clashes with his hard-headed boss who doesn't like his methods (see above), he puts together a crack team of crime fighters. It ends up feeling more like a soap opera, although, oddly, it's based on an actual historical figure. Sergio Assisi plays the lead character, and he's pretty likeable, although beyond the fact that he thinks Milanese coffee is crap you don't really learn much about what makes him tick. You will not be actively harmed by watching it, and if you're a fan of detective series you might like it, but generally it's pretty forgettable. Janet is mainly employing these series to learn Italian, so expect more to follow.

Movies in 2026 57

 

Mafioso, (Alberto Lattuada, 1962)

Last night Janet and I watched a film on the Criterion Channel that we first viewed last year: Alberto Lattutada's 1962 film Mafioso. We first watched it because it was set in Sicily, which is almost certainly our final destination (I include the "almost certainly" designation simply because, well, as the old Persian saying reminds us, "if you want to make God laugh tell him your plans"). However, we discovered that Mafioso is a great film, and not simply because it was one of the first Italian films to actually deal with the issue of the Mafia. It's a odd and I would argue immensely effective film because it starts off feeling like a comedy based on a clash of cultures, but then turns into one of vague existential menace. Antonio (Alberto Sordi) and Marta (Norma Bengeli) Badalamenti leave Milan, where he works as a manager in an auto factory, to visit his hometown in Sicily. Blonde, and Milan-born, Marta and their two adorable blonde children, have never visited his hometown, and they completely stick out. There are several funny moments where Marta adjusts to this strange world, and eventually grows to like it. However, there is a separate thread that takes over the film, as Antonio is is asked by the local don to do a favor for him. I will not give away the ending, although I will admit that references to getting in the box have become part of the shared mythology of our cabin. Highly recommended.

Movies in 2026 56

 

Happyend, (Neo Sora, 2024)

One of the (many) cool things that the Criterion Channel does is feature the occasional interesting independent or international film that has just left the theaters (that's a huge gift for folks in Vermont - and so many parts of the country - who never had the chance to see it in the theater in the first place). With that in mind, last night I watched Neo Sora's film Happyend. It tells the story of a number of Japanese high school students - Yuta (Hayato Kurihara), Kou (Yukito Hidaka), Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi), Ming (Shina Peng), Tomu (Arazi), and Fumi (Kilala Inori) - as they have fun but also face the challenges of living through an increasingly authoritarian school and Japan. Halfway through I had decided to bump one of the films from my Images of Fascism class and replace it with Happend, but by the end I had talked myself out of it. To quote, well, myself, in too many responses to student essays, I just don't think it came together as cleanly as it might have - or maybe just as cleanly as I thought it had the potential to be (the director might well have considered it fully-realized). I guess I felt that the director couldn't decide whether the goal was a commentary on our techno-authoritarian dystopian age or the Breakfast Club. That definitely sounds harsher than it's intended, because I really liked it and I heartily recommend that you watch it (come on, get the Criterion Channel already!). Maybe this is just the teacher in me: we're always more frustrated by A student papers that were a couple more drafts away from brilliance than C students who are giving you all they have.

Why Indeed

 The other night in my Images of Fascism class we watched excerpts from Frank Capra's Prelude to War, the first installment in his Why We Fight US government propaganda series from World War II, and Claude Lanzmann's brilliant documentary about the holocaust, Shoah. They're both essential in different ways, but they also provided the challenge of how much to show so that the students could get the sense of the lesson but also leave enough time to let the students organically sort through the material (such is the life of a teacher). We ended up only watching around eleven minutes of Prelude to War (from around 6:42 to about 18:00, just about when there's around five minutes of marching), and I told the students that they should probably think of that eleven minute stretch as another text for the class.  In that section, Capra, and the US for that matter (it was a government sponsored film produced in the middle of the darkest chapter in American history), defined Fascism and what Fascists do to claim power. The students found it very sobering to watch the US government, in maybe its most assured dedication to the tenets of democracy, essentially defining the actions of our present US government as Fascist. Then we watched around an hour and a half out of Lanzmann's nine and a half hour documentary (that was a real challenge). However, we pulled out some powerful moments, including a Treblinka guard remembering the Jews being told that their skills would be valued at the camp, but first they had to take a quick delousing shower, before being led right into the gas chambers - and a death camp guard boisterously singing the Treblinka song they made all the Jewish workers sing (I swear I can still remember that scene, and I saw it once on public television in the 1980s). After the film, one of my female students, who had clearly been profoundly moved by Shoah, sadly commented, "I just don't know why we have to do all this again." Her statement alone might be the greatest teaching moment of the entire semester. Paraphrasing my daughter-in-law Ali, I guess this is why we have to do the work.