Every month, Establishing Shot brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited.
Ed. note: Establishing Shot will be “dark” throughout July as the Cinema takes a short break, but rest assured we’ll be back in August with all of the great, original writing you know and love!
Chris Forrester, contributor | Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978)
Chantal Akerman was largely — and, to be clear, quite deservedly — known for her durational feminist masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 quaix du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and unfortunately less so for its fiction follow-up Les Rendez-vous d’Anna, a quainter and more melancholy companion piece of sorts that adopts the same stylings and formalisms to observe the existential loneliness of a filmmaker touring Europe to promote her work. In Dielman, the film’s beating heart was Delphine Seyrig as the eponymous character, and in Anna the same is true of an equally magnetic Aurore Clément, whose forlorn gazes lend this portrait of contemporary alienation an aching humanity.
Ever the formalist (and one of the finest ever, I might add), Akerman observes the routines and rhythms of Anna’s life with an astuteness both precise and poetic, chronicling a series of encounters across West Germany, Belgium, and France that’s hardly transformative but reverberates with meaning all the same. Perhaps even more so than the more celebrated masterpiece before it, Anna is a beautiful showcase for Akerman’s masterful unions of tone, content, and form, through which Akerman further cements herself as one of the great chroniclers of modern malaise and female loneliness.
Note: a trailer for the film couldn’t be found, but here is a clip instead.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | Thelma (2024)
Thelma is the most delightful new movie I have seen this year. It gives 94-year-old actor June Squibb the best role of her career and has some of the most satisfying sequences I have watched in a while. If you can, go see it immediately.
The movie is about Thelma (Squibb), a woman in her early nineties who lives a quiet life until she gets scammed out of $10,000. She sets off on a journey across Los Angeles on a scooter with her friend Ben (Richard Roundtree in his final role) to get the money back. As she gets closer to confronting her scammers, Thelma proves that you’re never too old to get revenge.
Squibb gives an exceptional performance as Thelma. She has perfect timing, which she uses to expertly deliver her hilarious lines, but she also excels in the film’s more dramatic moments, which make Thelma more complex and feel like a real person. For me, it’s not a stretch to say that Squibb’s performance is one of the best of the year so far. The supporting cast is fantastic, too. Roundtree is very funny as Ben, who feels like a far cry from his most famous role, the titular character from Shaft (1971). Fred Hechinger is great as Thelma’s grandson Daniel, and he has wonderful chemistry with Squibb. Every person in the cast of Thelma feels right for their part.
In addition to its very good cast, Thelma also has one of the best third acts in a movie which I have seen in a while. Everything falls into place as Thelma does things which made me laugh and cheer. I won’t say much more about them other than that it’s best experienced in a movie theater without any prior knowledge of what is about to happen.
Michaela Owens, Editor | The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
As anyone who knows my movie taste might guess, filmmaker Ken Russell isn’t exactly my speed. But, as anyone who knows my movie taste can attest, Hugh Grant is absolutely my speed, and so I finally watched his only collaboration with Russell, The Lair of the White Worm.
Based on a Bram Stoker novel, the film begins with archeologist Angus (played wonderfully by Peter Capaldi) discovering a large serpent-like skull in the yard of a rural English bed-and-breakfast run by two sisters whose parents recently went missing. At the same time Angus starts to wonder if the skull is connected to the local legend of the d’Ampton Worm, a mythical creature who was felled centuries earlier by an ancestor of Lord James d’Ampton (Hugh Grant in all his floppy-haired glory), the glamorous, mysterious, and impeccably dressed Lady Sylvia Marsh (a perfect Amanda Donohoe) returns to town as she seeks human sacrifices for the snake god, Dionin.
The great fun of The Lair of the White Worm is that it isn’t trying to take itself seriously at all. Ken Russell himself once said, “Audiences don’t realize my films are comedies until the last line has been delivered, and even then, most people don’t appear to get the joke. I would like to state that I actively encourage the audience to laugh along with White Worm.” I mean, when a movie has Hugh Grant playing Turkish music on giant speakers, enticing Lady Sylvia to slither out of a basket and through her house like the world’s sexiest snake, you know this movie is aware of what it’s doing. While I will admit I found the sister characters to be completely bland and irritating, especially in comparison to the fabulous Donohoe, the rest of the film is such a goofy good time that I can forgive their boring “damsels in distress” act.
Honestly, just give me peak ’80s Hugh Grant and I can forgive anything.