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Surface Tension

Millree Hughes — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 20:29:05 +0000

Surface Tension Millree Hughes December 14, 2025 - 15:29

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Lynn Chadwick: Hypercycle - Chapter II: Archetype (1963-1977)

Perrotin Gallery, NYC

Til Dec 20th

Herbert Read used the term "Geometry of Fear" in his introductory essay for the show he had curated as part of the British entry for the Venice Biennale of 1952, "New Aspects of British Sculpture."

Lynn Chadwick's pieces from that show, Beast, Bullfrog, and Maquette for an Unknown Prisoner, were in keeping with his theme of sculpture that emanated the collective anxiety of the post-war period.

He would later distance himself from the appellation, believing that his work did not have much to do with the war. I think he was more concerned with alluding to the engineering and architecture of rebuilding, while also evoking the landscape the British soldiers had been fighting for.

The small figures in the Perrotin show appear with their gowns caught in the breeze, advancing on tiny tarsi, ready to fly. This entomological association contrasts with the more industrial structures that appear to be just beneath the surface in other pieces.

"Sitting Elektra II" (1968) is an elegant female figure that resembles a resting dancer, with a bright triangular face and a bob haircut. Her small breasts and a possibly newly fertilized belly are represented on a highly polished square breastplate that contrasts with the rest of the grey figure.

The posture with its broad shoulders and erect head has the quality of theatrical catalepsy. Like a figure chosen from the audience for a hypnosis act.

"Monitor" from 1965 is a tall piece that appears to have a soft, tentlike body with a batwing motif on the surface that suggests the nature of its understructure. It has a more manufactured 'head' It has a more manufactured 'head' made from two thinly separated lenslike structures. These two flat rings look manufactured, almost as if they were found objects. The name helps redirect the gaze back to the viewer. It could be a tower in Foucault's Panopticon system of surveillance.

The dusty, tan-coloured surface re-humanizes the object, making it more tactile.

Chadwick's pieces have a fascinating surface brought about by different firing techniques, ranging from an almost matte ceramic feel to the ashier lead-like surfaces of the figures.

"I actually wanted to produce a sort of touchable object, a tangible object. I really wanted to do that rather than be involved with intangible things like architecture." - Lynn Chadwick

He began his sculptures with a steel skeleton, often adding clay to the interior so that the structure showed through. He would cover the armature, wholly or partly, with a composite of plaster and iron filings, working it with his hands or tools to generate a gesture-scaled surface. This was the master model for lost wax bronze casting. There were a lot of finished experiments made in the Lyppiat studio forge to create the texture and colour of the final piece.

We would all like a little more geometry with our fear. Ours seems to come from all directions with no visible structure behind it. Lynn Chadwick does not make ironic statements through highly polished surfaces, as many of our contemporary sculptors do. His work is intratextual, relating to other elements in this dimension that he has created rather than quoting from other artists. It is a singularly personal work that relies on imagination and observation.

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MARTY SUPREME LIVES UP TO ITS TITLE

Gary Lucas — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:03:26 +0000

MARTY SUPREME LIVES UP TO ITS TITLE Gary Lucas December 9, 2025 - 10:03

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It's kind of humorous, given the Jewish-American hustling theme, if not downright appropriate that A24 are rolling out Marty Supreme on Xmas Day in theaters nationwide, as in this Josh Safdie joint Timothée Chalamet, who I hitherto dismissed as not really up to snuff in his assumption of the Bob Dylan mythos in A Complete Unknown, here ascends to full God-head status as Marty Mauser, Young Jewish Ping-Pong Hustler extraordinaire.

Ostensibly based on the real-life exploits of '50s table tennis hustler Marty Reisman, the half-Jewish-on-his-mother-side's Chalamet astonishes in this shaggy-dog version of Reisman's life and times in a 2-1/2 hour exercise in pure cinematic poetry that easily qualifies as Oscar-bait for Best Film of 2025. It's at the top of my list, in any case. And if there is any justice in the world (there isn't, but hey), Chalamet should win the Best Actor category hands down (and Gwyneth Paltrow as Marty's older woman girlfriend, the slightly faded actress Kay Stone, as well).

An advance screening at the Director's Guild here in Manhattan last week set the breathless tone of the film more or less with an audacious sequence concerning a graphic closeup in situ of one of Marty's sperm cells, after a furious competition with a whole gaggle of spermatozoa, breaking away from the pack to furtively fertilize the egg of his longtime married lover Rachel (played by a winsome Odessa A'Zion), which called to mind a similar transgressive sexual intra-vaginal closeup in French cinema badboy Gaspar Noe's 2010 psychedelic fever-dream Enter the Void.

The film documents the fall and rise of preternaturally gifted self-centered smartypants Marty Mauser, brimming with self-confidence and chutzpah aplenty, with the determination to establish himself as the GOAT ping-pong champion of the known universe by hook or by crook, to rise from the muck of his shabby genteel Jewish Lower East Side milieu, lovingly delineated by production designer Jack Fisk and cinematographer Darius Khondji.

Marty will not take "No" for an answer, and brashly motormouths and/or connives his way over, under, around and through one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after another–lying, cheating, stealing and seducing down the door to advance his career and make his way into the Table Tennis Championship of the World Finals held in Tokyo, where he is initially defeated. Obstacles overcome on the way to plotting his comeback include general impoverishment (we see him initially working half-heartedly at a shoe store); filial disapproval (a great comic turn by Dylan sidekick Larry "Ratso" Sloman as Mauser's uncle Murray Norkin and his mother played by Fran Drescher, who refuses to take seriously the notion of table tennis as an actual sport); ritual humiliation by predatory paddle-wielding fat-cat sponsor/enabler Kevin O'Leary (a regular on Shark Tank and a dead ringer for Bill O'Reilly); deus ex machine of an ancient bathtub literally falling through the rotting timbered floor of a grotty slum hotel (an appropriation of a bit in Ronald Neame's The Horse's Mouth) onto the southpaw of super-cult director Abel Ferrara, playing a seedy mobster named Ezra Mishkin (and what's in a name, Myshkin being the central epileptic character of Dostoevsky's The Idiot)—the dognapping and liberation of Mishkin's prize pooch entrusted to the safekeeping of Marty and Rachel; and numerous other picaresque episodes piling up one on top of another at breakneck speed which in the hands of a lesser director would prove both beyond belief and human endurance, but in the ambit of Safdie's assured story-telling mastery totally enthralled the audience at the DGA, who were mainly silent throughout this longish film, but dazzled and astonished by Marty Supreme's sheer humanity, wit and pathos, broke into cheers at film's end.

There are numerous cameos from the likes of Sandra Bernhard, Penn Gillette, David Mamet, Pico Iyer, and other notables who populate the world of Marty Mauser. Again, what's in a name—one thinks of both Art Spiegelman's holocaust-centric graphic novel Maus with its plucky Jews as mice, Paul Terry's uber-mouse superhero Mighty Mouse, whose persona Chalamet embodies, and the Mauser itself, a deadly German bolt-action pistol and rifle designed by Peter Paul Mauser in the late 19th century, a favorite of hunters and soldiers which saw plenty of action in both World Wars. An apposite choice of name for the pugnacious Chalamet, self-styled in newspaper interviews in the film as The Chosen One, who refers to himself as "the ultimate product of Hitler's defeat" and who gets off a jaw-dropping line about his first major ping pong opponent Bela Kletzki, a saintly Auschwitz survivor: "I'm gonna do to him what Auschwitz couldn't!" After gasps from reporters all around, he appends that with: "I can say that, because I'm a Jew." Shameless scoundrel that he is (although—spoiler alert—he gets a shot of redemption at the very end), Mauser basically is a more energetic, younger, brighter sexier version of the Safdie Brothers's protagonist the hapless and embarrassing diamond merchant/schlemiel Howard Ratner played by Adam Sandler in their previous film Uncut Gems (written by both Safdies and their regular collaborator Ronald Bronstein). There are many other references to and echoes of that earlier film within Marty Supreme (besides the titular characters' surnames: Ratner vs. Mauser). I loved Uncut Gems, but here, Josh Safdie, going it alone without his brother and with a much more expansive budget of 70 million bucks, has upped the ante by delivering what may be the last word on sports hustling.

Marty Supreme is possibly the most canny portrayal of the American side of the Jew as Striver (a/k/a The Ordeal of Civility) since, well, since Uncut Gems, and before that, the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man. I can't say enough good things about this film, which rockets from one jaw-dropping reversal of fortune after another like the whiplash back and forth of an epic ping-pong match. In Marty Mauser, Josh Safdie has crafted an enduring and ultimately likable despite himself character somewhat reminiscent of Paul Newman's blue-eyed pool shark "Fast Eddie" Felson in Robert Rossen's 1961 The Hustler (although Fast Eddie was never distinctly identified as being Jewish in that film), and of course, Richard Dreyfuss in Ted Kotcheff and Mordecai Richler's 1974 The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

Just unstoppable, like the title character himself.

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WARP

Millree Hughes — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 22:32:51 +0000

WARP Millree Hughes December 2, 2025 - 17:32

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Trespasser no. 4, 2025, Oil on linen over shaped stretcher, 72 x 96 inches

KARIN DAVIE: It Comes In Waves

Miles McEnery Gallery, NYC

Through 20 December 2025

Karin Davie is famous for a suite of extraordinary paintings that she showed in the 00s. They seemed to be her last word on the Stripe Painting, which had been her subject since the early 90s. She cut the stripes loose from the edge, and they recoiled like heavy rubber bands. These large abstract works consist of wildly interweaving fist-sized strokes on a coloured ground. The lines are painted wet on wet, picking up colour as they travel, each brush stroke loaded in such a way as to imply weight and volume and evidence of a light source or sources hitting the surface of the line. She never lets you forget, however, that this is paint speaking the formal language of Art.

In her dynamic new show at Miles McEnery, the stripe is back with a new set of instructions. The show consists of two sets of glorious paintings. Two red wave-like paintings, made up of two joined canvases, and a second group of wavy paintings, each in a predominant colour. They are unusual colours that can appear natural, artificial, or both. All of the second set has a divot cut into the top in the middle of the canvas, as if a giant's thumb has pushed into the picture plane.

"Trespasser No 4" is a particularly lovely golden-haired painting. Lines move horizontally in sensual gestures from one side to the other with a kink in the middle, so that by the time the last line is made, there is a groove or path running vertically through the canvas, finishing at the cut-in divot at the top. As the line moves, it picks up lighter or darker versions of the prevailing colour. The way that darker tones gather in parts of the image makes me think that the shadow of clouds has been cast on Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with Crows." The line sometimes stops firmly before the edge or runs on as if it didn't exist. Drawing attention to the formal limits of the canvas and then sometimes totally ignoring them.

Words have worked for Davie in the past. Not in a literal way that say "container" did for Ross Bleckner with his paintings of the '90s made in the shape of urns. But her '90s pieces were "wavy" Davie's and sometimes "curvy" Davie's. But after the '00s, she began looking inside for inspiration rather than at how she looked from the outside.

"Abstractionists see no more sections, no divisions between different sections of reality, and this is not surprising since reality has been transferred from the outside to the inside of the artist, where experience is all one, and everything exists on the same plane." - Guillaume Apollinaire

Strange Terrain no. 5, 2025, Oil on linen, 60 x 105 inches

A more internal perspective persists in the Red Wave paintings. In "Strange Terrain No. 5," we are reminded of both the sea and the body. These are gorgeous paintings, but she doesn't let you just fall into fairy-tale beauty. She brings you back to the real condition of the body. At one point, a cut opens up between the lines and drips over the undulating surface.

There's a carnal shadow. It's not only a billowing pomegranate sea at dusk, but it's also viscera heaving with the breath, the tissue that covers the ribcage.

Both Strange Terrain paintings are composed of two canvases. It means that when she is painting the horizontal stroke, she has to stop and then continue the line again on the next canvas. This deliberate obstruction asks the question, 'Is the action still authentic if it is made a second time?'

Or in this case, if the line is continued.

It harks back to one of her earlier diptychs like "Ummm….#1 & #2," 1993. Part of the Sidewalk series. Where a curvy form covered by stripes had to be repeated in the second painting.

Ummm….#1 & #2, 1993. Part of the Sidewalk series. Oil on canvas over shaped stretcher. Each canvas: 90 X 60 in

This emphasis on the performance side of painting reminds me of the difference between the guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix and Marc Bolan. It didn't matter whether Jimi was playing with his teeth or behind his back; you took the notes he played to be an authentic response to the music. But in a performance by T Rex at the Rainbow music venue in the early '70s, Marc ran his tambourine up and down the neck of the guitar until he finally ejected the tambourine into the audience. It really didn't matter what the sounds coming out of the speaker were; it was about the performance of the action. Marc was no slouch as a guitarist either, but he sometimes used the guitar as a prop as well as an instrument.

While I recognize that this example is not exactly the same thing, because Karin very much cares about what the painting looks like. I'm just using it to make a comparison between how glam was much more playful with the rock music form in a way that is similar to how the post painterly abstract artists used Minimalism. The exact same thing would be if Marc played an impassioned solo and then reproduced it, immediately note-for-note. That would be very Karin Davie.

Karin's work is about aesthetics and poetry. She asks: can a painted performance be authentic? Is the edge of the canvas the end of this particular state described by the painting? At the same time she's alluding to places and things in an optical way. This line casts a shadow, this one emanates light. This picture reminds you of waves. Consequently, the image seems to shift constantly between different states.

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Tree People

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 17:01:57 +0000

Tree People Chet Kozlowski November 28, 2025 - 12:01

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We see them all over Manhattan just after Thanksgiving. They come in, set up impromptu villages, and are gone in 35 days. Their mission: they're the folks who want to sell you a Christmas tree, and they are the subject of the sweet and exuberant new documentary The Merchants of Joy.

Think about it: you pass by them in the joyous Christmas season but rarely consider what drives them. Director Celia Aniskovich and writer Owen Long profile five families—Greg Nash and his son Little Greg, Heather Neville, Ciree Nash, George Smith, and Jane Waterman and George Nash–and follow them from planting to harvesting to sales on the street. We're with them as they transport goods, negotiate, and seal the deal. Selling trees is not an easy gig: the big stores (i.e., Whole Foods) underprice them ("We have to make four times what we paid for our tree to break even"), yet they keep coming as reliably as the holiday season.

Greg Walsh of Greg's Trees—who resembles Santa with his full white beard (and who plays that role to the hilt)—anticipates his son, little Greg (over six feet tall and camera-shy), taking over the business while diversifying into selling roses during the rest of the year. "You'll never make it just selling trees," Greg contends. George Smith shares the story of finding his soulmate. Tough-as-nails Heather Nevelle holds firm and takes names. Ciree Nash is the information center of the operation. George Nash and Jane Waterman run a family business from which George, at least, is about to retire.

We spend time with them on the lots, making deliveries, and at home. What emerges is a look at a subculture of folks who resemble vagabonds but are, at heart, serious businesspeople. The Merchants of Joy shows them off to great advantage: We see squabbles over turf when a rival tree company sets up across the street, and are given a window into interpersonal relationships. Each of them has a particular area of expertise. Ciree is especially proud of hiring the "the unhireables," folks who have been in jail, offering them the unique opportunity to make an honest return to society on terms they can live with.

The Merchants of Joy's pacing is jaunty. We move quickly from one issue to the next. It's a measure of the documentarians' skill that we get to know these people quickly, so when one is felled by a cancer diagnosis, it gives us pause. Discussion of long-term goals as well as criminal records keep things lively in the brisk 90-minute runtime.

The Merchants of Joy ends up being a celebration not only of Christmas but of New York City as well. "You're only as happy as you choose to be," one of the sellers asserts. The film trusts that adage, as well as the philosophy that there's "a person for every tree."

__________________________________________

The Merchants of Joy. Directed by Celia Aniskovich. An Amazon Prime Original. Runtime 90 minutes. On Prime Video.

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Awkward in the Heart

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 22:21:19 +0000

Awkward in the Heart Chet Kozlowski November 26, 2025 - 17:21

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We lost John Prine to COVID in 2020, the final stop on a long journey of ill health. He’d suffered bouts of cancer that left him stooped and crooked, a mere shadow of his former self. But, except for a brief respite, he never stopped writing songs and singing them.

The new film You Got Gold documents the time in Nashville, TN, on the occasion of what would have been his 76th birthday, a weeklong celebration that culminated in an all-star concert at Ryman Auditorium, his favorite venue. The party/memorial was put together by his wife, Fiona, and his son, Tommy, who sings “Paradise” with Dwight Yokum.

It’s a joyous tribute that befits his influence. Brandi Carlile, Steve Earle, Bonnie Raitt, and Jason Isbell are amongst the artists who took time out of their schedules to sing his songs and share anecdotes. Good feelings abound. The show includes many standout performances, as Bob Weir and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, The Milk Carton Kids doing “Storm Windows,” Swamp Dogg’s version of “Sam Stone,” and a rave up of "Knockin’ on Your Screen Door" by The War and Treaty.

The show is bookended with filmed performances by Mr. Prine himself, the first from 1978’s Austin City Limits, in which he is a young, scruffy troubadour doing "Six O’clock News," and later from 2019, with his family.

For those of us old enough to remember his debut album, promoted by Kris Kristofferson, it’s a reminder of the subtle, sensitive lyrics for which he’s known (Bonnie Raitt calls him Country music’s Hemingway: no word wasted).

Stars too numerous to mention pay tribute with Mr. Prine’s songs and, as in Lucinda Williams’ "What Could Go Wrong" and Kacey Musgraves’s "Walk in Peace," songs written about or dedicated to him. The film made of the event is fresh and lively, well-directed by Michael John Warren, and full of good cheer. It’s well worth the time spent to remember one of the most exuberant and prolific talents in folk and country music.

The title of this review comes from a story about Kurt Vile meeting Mr. Paine for the first time. His wife, knowing how much he admired him, expressed his discomfort with that turn of phrase.

___________________________________________

You Got Gold. Directed by Michael John Warren. 2025. Runtime 90 minutes.

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Justice For The Living And The Dead

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:55:48 +0000

Justice For The Living And The Dead Chet Kozlowski November 20, 2025 - 19:55

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Time is running out for the girls — now women — of the Magdelene Laundries scandal. Over 10,000 women and girls were confined in the Irish institutions between 1922 and 1996. There they were pressed into slavish work, incarcerated and tortured by the Roman Catholic nuns who ran the places. Since these homes were exposed as a cottage industry of trafficking, the survivors have grown old and infirm. Many have died. If they are to attain justice, it has to be soon.

There’s a desperation to the story of the Magdalene Laundries, which are now in danger of vanishing into history. The remaining survivors of this abuse are ageing, elderly, and vulnerable women who see this as a last chance for redress. Identities have been obliterated, searches have been undertaken, and the statistics are astounding_:one count contends that 57,000 children were separated from their mothers and trafficked to adoption.

The film Testimony uses as its starting point a small cemetery that stands in the way of the sale of High Park, one of the ”Mother and Baby homes” recently sold by the order. Exhumation revealed more bodies than documented, many unknown remains of women and children, marking the site as a clandestine mass burial ground. The incident opened new investigations, primarily by an intrepid group of academics, archivists, and activists. “Time was the one commodity these women did not have,” says Jim Smith of Boston University, who wrote a book about the “architecture of containment,” and never imagined it would launch a cause.

Testimony is more than just a document. It is a call to action, part of a campaign to recruit more women and bring justice to all. Many survivors tell their heartbreaking stories here on the premise that stories = testimony = evidence to counter the unwavering stubbornness of the Irish government to accept accountability.

Testimony follows an intrepid band of lawyers, academics, and volunteers known as Justice for Magdalenes. Mr. Smith is joined in these efforts by archivist Catriona Crowe, legal advocate Maeve O’Rourke, and activists Philomena Lee (about whom the 2013 film Philomena was made) and Mari Steed, one of the survivors, to name a few. Midway through the film, a busload of survivors is cheered by protestors, stigmas shaken off, in an exhilarating display that implies something has been won. But it’s only being acknowledged. Long overdue. Proverbial other shoes fall at a rapid rate from there, accompanied by new revelations and shocking statistics, one of which contends that 57,000 children were separated from their mothers and trafficked to adoption during the reign.

Testimony is directed by Aoife Kelleher, who deftly weaves interviews, news footage, and home movies into a damning indictment and vividly displays the frustration that the Magdalene matter has yet to be resolved. Ms. Kelleher has Irish TV series and movies to her credit, and feature films like One Million Dubliners (2014). Testimony is co-written by Ms. Kelleher and Rachel Lysaght.

_______________________________

Testimony. Directed by Aoife Kelleher. 2025. Runtime 105 minutes.

If inspired by Mr. Kozlowski's solid review . . .

you should also check out several stirring fictional films on this topic, such as Small Things Like These and Philomena.

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Nicolas Cage is Jesus’s “Daddy” in The Carpenter’s Son

Brandon Judell — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:56:44 +0000

Nicolas Cage is Jesus’s “Daddy” in The Carpenter’s Son Brandon Judell November 17, 2025 - 10:56

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Making a film is seldom easy. Ask any director. You have to work with or against studio heads, screenwriters, agents, vegan actors, unsympathetic caterers, and those Porta Potty folks. Then, if you're hitched up, at the end of the day, you're obligated to go home and make believe you're interested in what your spouse and kids and their Lububus did all day.

Director/writer Lotfy Nathan, best known for his 2013 documentary on West Baltimore's illegal dirt bikers, had most of that to contend with, plus the Lord, in The Carpenter's Son. Shooting in Greece because Egypt was not welcoming to the subject matter, he and his crew had to reckon with more plagues than a Passover dinner. Thankfully, firstborn sons were spared, but according to press notes:

"Swarms of relentless flies took over the set, followed by an infestation of lice and fleas. To avoid the insects, the film began night shoots, plunging the set into darkness. Fierce storms disrupted filming, closing roads, flooding locations, and killing local wildlife. Frogs arrived en masse and suddenly died . . . . [Then] the day of a major shoot in the leper colony, thousands of wasps descended on the site. Nicolas Cage was surrounded, and multiple crew members were stung. The set had to be evacuated and ultimately abandoned." Almost makes Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote shooting sound like a picnic.

So what got the Lord into such a tizzy?

Well, the film, inspired by the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, opens with rather disconcerting groans. Apparently, Christ's virgin birth was a painful one. Shortly thereafter, his foster dad, Joseph (Nicolas Cage), and his genuine mom, Mary (FKA Twigs), atop a donkey with baby Jesus hidden, escape from the vicinity of Bethlehem. Why? Because King Herod had ordered the slaughter of all boys aged two and under. Known as the "Massacre of the Innocents," Giovanni Boccaccio, centuries later, took a break from writing The Decameron to swear that 140,000 tykes were slaughtered. Wikipedia notes that "most scholars reject the historicity" of the extermination. Ah, there those historians go again. Needless to say, Mr. Nathan showcases one bundled tot torn from his mother's arms and thrown onto a flaming pyre.

[An aside: While researching this review, I came across a discussion concerning whether Jesus burped as a baby and could have suffered from colic. Intrigued, I phoned the noted literary scholar Felicia Bonaparte, author of Will and Destiny: Morality and Tragedy in George Eliot's Novels. The good professor replied, the answer was definitely "Yes!!!" Christ was both completely man and completely God and thus exhibited normal tot behavior.]

With crickets a-chirping and goats a-bleating, years pass by. Wary of their son's identity being discovered, the nomadic family is constantly on the move until Joseph lands a job carving idols.

Well, Jesus (Noah Jupe), now a hormonally charged, strapping adolescent, one day in his new home, ganders through a window hole to witness his neighbor, a mute, lovely lass named Lilith, cleansing herself in the open completely nude. Guiltily awestruck, yet clearly enjoying what he views, he gazes on and on. But at that point, Jesus doesn't know who he is or how he came to be. That will be remedied shortly.

After the above-mentioned ogle, the teen begins teaching Torah classes with a menacing rabbi; brings a crushed bug back to life; is pushed onto a sleeping leper whom he cures to his own surprise; and is almost seduced into evil by a young Satanic temptress (Isla Johnston) who likes to hang from tree branches. Evenings aren't more peaceful. The teen dreams nightly of his own future crucifixion and learns that his real father is not the one he's been sending Father's Day cards to.

If that isn't enough for one Biblical epic, there are peaches poisoned by live scorpions; hills stirring with Satanic whisperings; the breaking of an idol; horror scenes that will freak out viewers suffering from ophidiophobia; and a sightseeing trek to view those already being crucified. Most enjoyable, though, is the feverish confrontation between Joseph and Mary, where she is asked whether Jesus was fathered by a Roman.

Truly, the reason most of us skedaddle nowadays to a Nicolas Cage film is that we're hoping to view another episode worthy of being added to his already top-heavy collection of absurd thespian moments. Or as Ben Walsh titled his Independent review of Season of the Witch (2011), "Nicolas Cage: From the sublime to the ridiculous."

May I here cite the too-oft-requoted Cage evaluation of his own career that opens Walsh's article: "I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion."? Mae West might have responded: “That's the right attitude, boy! Mmmmmm. Be like me. When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better." With scraggly tresses, an untrimmed beard, mournful eyes, and a mouth besieged by woe, Cage's Joseph, attired in a ratty toga, does let loose several times. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" he screams on learning Jesus has committed a miracle in public. "Without my protection, you would be dead." The screenplay even has Joseph explaining to the questioning Jesus why he's pouring some dirt in front of his hut: "If an evil spirit were to enter the house at night . . . the footprint of a rooster will appear in the sand." And one does.

Now, how you react to all of this depends possibly on how many films you've seen over the past 12 months. For example, the Metro's Tori Brazier shouts: "Nicolas Cage's Jesus horror movie is the most profound film I've seen in 2025." She's probably seen too few. If you are a devout Christian, you might scream, “blasphemous!" or be totally intrigued by this at-times bloody fantasy of Jesus' formative years. If you are a bit cynical, you might just chuckle a bit or look at the carryings-on with disdain. Is The Carpenter's Son too campy or too sincere? It's probably both.

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“Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain” But My Sister?

Brandon Judell — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 02:37:29 +0000

“Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain” But My Sister? Brandon Judell November 3, 2025 - 21:37

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drama

“What can I say?” asks Vittoria (Monica Vitti) of her lover in Michelangelo Antonioni L’Eclisse (1962). “There are times when holding a needle and thread, or a book, or a man, it’s all the same to me.”

After DVD-ing five of the maestro’s offerings in a rather brief period, I can confidently note that no one can surpass Antonioni when it comes to celebrating romantic and social dislocation in world that might just end when you turn the corner. As for loving, supportive families, gondola elsewhere,

But if the latter is your need, try out writer/director Oscar Ruiz Navia’s unexpectedly comforting 15-minute docu-short, “Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain”(“Va Se Ven Los Tigres En La Luvia”) that was showcased at this year’s New York Film Festival. Dealing with different sorts of dislocations . . . those of space. . . of time . . . of possibilities, the film bears up to numberless viewings, on each occasion rewarding you with new interpretations, often those intended by the director and others sired by your psyche. Consider “Tigers” a visual poem of sorts. Or a cinematic Rorschach test.

The short is comprised of discovered home movies shot over decades in Columbia, scenes now intercut with current Montreal locales where Navia relocated to write and study film. There are also voiceovers including one supplied by a Canadian spirit guide and there’s some piano tinkling by children letting loose on the ivories.

Please note that “Tigers” is a memorial to the director’s sister, Ana Maria Ruiz Navia, who died in 2023 at the age of 37.

“Ana Maria Ruiz Navia (whose nickname was Anita) used to be not only my sister but my producer,” Oscar emailed me. “We were partners at Contravía Films, our company, even as she got cancer and struggled with this illness. At the end, after she unfortunately passed away, I decided to make a movie about my loss and my new arrival in Montreal, where I moved to start a new chapter of my life. I had collected many WhatsApp voice messages in the last two years. This is how I started to create this film.”

“Tigers” opens with various static shots of barren railroad tracks in Montreal, although we hear the rumble of ghost trains going by. (Are those the disembodied sounds of past journeys?) Then appear various ill-kempt streets also devoid of the living.

“I shot all the places surrounding my current apartment, literally places in my neighborhood,” Oscar recalls “The juxtaposition [with the footage of my family and the audio] is because I moved to Montreal when Anita passed. So I had to deal with deep grief when I just arrived in a new country. I wanted to show my present throughout with image . . . and my past-memory throughout with sound.”

Cinematographer Charles Duquet, who along with Pablo Álvarez-Mesa, shot Tigers, added in a separate email: “The concept behind the location choices was simple. Since the beginning of his stay in Montreal, Oscar paid attention to the places he'd walk by every day. Since the passing of his sister, these public places also became spaces of mourning. Our initial goal was to portray these places with delicate and fixed images, gathering material that would allow him the freedom to find further meaning with his sound recordings and archives. During the shoot, Oscar and I would walk the city together and get to know each other through discussions about family, filmmaking and Montreal seasons. It was somewhat close to what we call in French a déambulation, a walk without a precise goal, or in this case a fixed shot list. Oscar had places he wanted to film, but the way we would film them was decided in the moment, depending on the weather, the time of day or whether there would be people (or not).”

Over one such shot taken when the grounded autumn leaves already had lost their colors, we hear Anita for the first time: “Well, my pretties. I’m gonna sleep now. I’m here with my mum. She is already asleep. I love you all very much and have a good rest.”

We afterward find ourselves at the Le Jardin de Sculptures Crépuscule (the Twilight Sculpture Garden). Rusted artwork atop a dozen or so concrete bases are easily mistakable at first glance to be tombstones for the creatively dead.

Back to the past: the 14-year-old Anita is playing joyfully with a movie camera. She shoots herself in the mirror and swerves past the toilet into another room with family photos and paintings. Next it’s into her father’s office where Oscar is sitting at the desk.

She’s asked to shoot a closeup. “What’s a closeup?” Anita quickly learns and begins filming Oscar’s shoes and the mole on his arm and a dog with ticks. Great careers have often begun with home movies. Ask Spielberg.

Minutes later or earlier, the linear is forsaken here, the adult Anita’s leaves a tear-filled chat on Oscar’s phone, calling him by his nickname: “Hey, Papeto, today I got my medical results. The disease is progressing negatively . . . However, the good thing is that I have full faith and I will do my best to recover. Let’s go for it.”

Skip to an amusement park, where all the siblings are together chatting about roller coasters. Older sister Carmen is at that moment behind the camera when she asks her sister who is then decades away from cancer: “Anita, what do you want to say for posterity?”

Oscar chimes in: “Everything is for posterity.”

Finally, Marie-France, the aforementioned medium, arrives in voice only at the end of “Tigers.”. “This is a real recording of when I visited her when I just arrived in Montreal,” Oscar wrote. “We spoke in English because at the time my French was not the best. Marie-France unfortunately also passed away two months ago. She connected me with Anita when reading the tarot.”

Anita had not deserted Oscar, Marie-France discovered: “Anita says, ‘I will come during your sleep and will help your heart to be more happy. . . Why did Anita leave so early? Thirty is not a very old age. Actually, she has another reincarnation ready so she had to leave early to rest. She will rest most probably thirty to forty years which is nothing there.”

Then Anita will come back and wouldn’t it be something if she in her new persona gets to view hers former self in “Tigers.” Oscar should have chimed in, “Everything is for posterity, especially the gift of film.”

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Makers Mark

Millree Hughes — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 01:51:41 +0000

Makers Mark Millree Hughes October 31, 2025 - 21:51

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Art Review

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painter

Stretch, Hold, Release
Picture Theory at 548 West 28th Street, NYC

The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition." - Walter Benjamin

AI is not regarded as a tool by artists the way the tools of the past were: burnt willow sticks, polished lenses, and Photoshop, because it’s seen as a threat to the artist’s existence.

Walter Benjamin's "Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is in full flow. Music, images, and books are being created to order by producers. Soon, just as Spotify is making its milquetoast music, Netflix wants to generate ambient, half-digested TV using AI and other means. It will be created according to the digitally tracked needs of the public in the service of the corporation. Mechanical Reproduction intends to obliterate the ‘who’ of art making.

Craft-based art returns the focus to the object—how it was made, where it was made, and by whom it was made.

At Picture Theory, the gallerist Rebekah Kim has curated a show of craft-based art called "Stretch, Hold, Release."

The relationship of the artist to where they are from is significant here. Unhitching art from its tethering post of origin has been useful for corporate-made content. It wants to make a global product from a global culture. The specifics of the place make it harder to control.

Luis Emilio Romero paints Guatemalan fabrics, going as far as to imitate the raised stitch in paint. They remind me of Scottish Tartan, '60s hard-edge abstraction, and city plans. However, here, all the shapes and colors that comprise a traditional woven piece can refer to animal, plant, or cosmological patterns. It’s a metaphor for the Mayan worldview.

Lior Moran is an Israeli artist, raised in a country partly populated by people who came there because they had to hide their religion, now caught in a terrible darkness where the objectives on both sides are hidden. He takes found objects or makes sculptures that he hides under a velvet canvas. He shaves off the protruding planes, creating an inverse shadow. He uses twilight colors in his work. They are then bound along the side with a flesh coloured belt that sometimes has a buckle, like a bundle wrapped for a hurried exit.

The multiple handles and thick knotted rope, the little pinafores that she makes for her examinations of Peruvian pottery, draw attention to the utilitarian character of Terumi Sato’s own Japanese ceramic traditions.

Elisa Lutteral is an Argentinian artist born in New York. She is represented here by hanging lengths of woolen fabric with a glove at each end. In the video, the glove-wearing performers are positioned in a specific location from the camera's perspective. The resulting braid is achieved by their movements around each other. It’s an improvised group performance of one of the first crafts that we learn as children.

JaLeel Porcha’s contribution is the least didactic in the group. It’s a deep-pile hanging rug. It appears to represent a clearing in the woods, featuring two black children and a pond, perhaps. He’s influenced by the illustrators of classic American children’s books. The nostalgic quality is enhanced by being a knitted piece, which adds an ironic element to its shadowy mood.

An object that has only been created by hands and shows ´where’ and ‘when’ it is made and ‘what’ it is made from is crucial to understanding ‘what’ it is. Without these interrogatives being answered, it probably isn’t Art at all.

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That Face And Its Consequences

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 17:25:01 +0000

That Face And Its Consequences Chet Kozlowski October 27, 2025 - 13:25

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Film Review

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drama

Before we see Hedda’s face, we see her in her surroundings. Under the shadows of night, she emerges from a dark lake, shedding rocks from her pockets. From a distance, we watch her run into a magnificent mansion. Inside, dwarfed by the size of the rooms, she darts up the stairs to her boudoir, dresses for a ball, then stalks through the various rooms. Preparations are underway for a grand party, and she’s making sure everything is right. We see her in a long shot, then through frosted glass. Finally, she settles down, and we see her face in a mirror. And what a face it is.

Hedda is played by Tessa Thompson, an actress best known as Valkyrie in the Thor movies and Avengers: Endgame. And that’s quite a face she has: big eyes, eyebrows like knives, high cheekbones—the beautiful face of sheer malevolence.

Let’s pause here to praise Ms. Thompson for having the cajónes to play Hedda. Hedda is based on Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler. Ibsen is known as the Father of Realism, portraying the cruelties of striving and privilege in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. He wrote complex female figures (see also Nora in A Doll’s House), which presaged a new social order. Hedda Gabler is one of the most coveted roles in theater. The part requires range, and Ms. Thompson has that. She makes Hedda headstrong, conniving, with a finger in every pot.

The plot in a nutshell: Hedda (Tessa Thompson) has married George (Tom Bateman), whom she doesn’t love, for his social status. To maintain that status, George must get a professorship at a prestigious university; otherwise lose everything. Hedda throws a lavish party to lure Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch) to hire her husband. George’s chief competition is his former colleague Eilert, who, newly sober, has written a book that will tip the scales. He has a muse and savior in Mousey Thea (Imogen Poots), who is also in attendance. Turns out Eilert, besides being George’s former colleague, is also Hedda’s former lover. And so, busy Hedda contrives to a) relieve Elbert of his sobriety and b) steal the prized manuscript and destroy it.

While we’re talking cajónes, let’s praise Nia Costa, the director, also of the MCU (The Marvels). She approaches this material with ferocity and mixes us a primal stew of psychological conflict.

Ms. Costa dutifully credits Ibsen as the primary writer, herself as the second, and has made some radical revisions to the story. First, Hedda is a woman of color, her exoticism scandalous yet arousing to her guests. She conducts a not-so-secret affair with Judge Brack (Nicolas Pinnock), the only person of African descent in attendance, under her husband’s nose.

The second change: Elert, George’s rival, is now Eileen, a lesbian and former lover of Hedda’s, played expertly by Nina Hoss, memorable as Cate Blanchett’s lesbian lover in the film Tår. Eileen is stately and reserved. She wavers between domesticity and the wild mind under which she wrote the book (the scene in which she crashes an all-boys meeting in the library is amazing). Thea (Imogen Poots), her confidante and keeper, has left her husband for this woman, this artist. She becomes aware of and resolves to foil Hedda’s plan of destruction. Thea calls her out, and Hedda cattily counters: “Do you resent fun, you miserable creature?”

My notes call Hedda a “hip-hop Downton Abbey,” even though no hip-hop is heard (more about the soundtrack in a minute). The film has hip-hop’s energy: the camera swoops and careens amongst the guests at the party. Composer Hildur Guonadóttir punctuates the action and Hedda’s scheming with an insistent drum tattoo. The kinetic choreography of Steadicam and actor blocking really should be seen on the big screen to appreciate. That’s by cinematographer Sean Bobbit and editor Jacob Schulsinger under Ms. Costa’s direction. A dance sequence, with Hedda initiating couplings, comes close to the one in Sinners, a riveting tableau of figures in motion.

Hedda’s psychology goes deep. The theme of identity runs under everything. She proclaims when cornered, “Sometimes I can’t help myself. I just do things.” Who is this Hedda? Who is Eileen, and what do they mean to each other? What happens to Hedda once she seeks to fuck things up? “Before you were domesticated, you were like fire.” Mirrors are everywhere, and much is made of dressing and disrobing, constant costume changes, switching selves (Costume designer Lindsay Pugh keeps things ornate but not ostentatious).

But that face. So much of it is about that face. It’s not a spoiler to tell you we end with a stunning closeup of Hedda’s amazing face. And then... the screen goes black. And up over the closing credits comes the disco beat of Roxy Music’s Love is the Drug. Say what? Ending with such an overused song is easy irony. It’s the one discordant note in a whirlwind of a movie. Why does Ms. Costa give us an intelligent and absorbing film, then wink at us, telling us not to take it seriously?

Hedda. Directed by Nia Costa. 2025. From Amazon MGM Studios. Runtime 107 minutes. In theaters and on Prime Video.