Author: S. Brady Calhoun

Why does a movie enter your life when it does?

Sometimes it’s a gift from God or if you don’t believe in such things then it is the universe bending your way.

When you are broke and suddenly an card arrives in the mail with just enough to get you through.

Sometimes a movie arrives exactly when you need it.

So I’m going to tell you what is going on in my life and then tell you about Minari.

After about 20 years of marriage and work life in my hometown, I took a new job across the country and have moved my wife and children from Florida to Indiana.

And it’s hard. The job is great and challenging. And my wife is working every day with little help and two autistic sons and a baby.

Our lives aren’t for the weak. They weren’t before we left and they especially aren’t now.

But we needed to take a risk and we needed to see how far this career could take us and we couldn’t do either of those things by staying in place.

So here we are facing new struggles and trying to fit into a new community and working towards a goal that may be closer but presents a whole new set of challenges.

Minari was on Netflix. I noted it was well regarded and put it on my list and mostly forgot about it.

It surfaced again with a warning that it was leaving Netflix last night and so I made it my evening entertainment.

Here’s the plot: A young father (only slightly younger than me) moves his family to Arkansas to pursue his dreams of becoming a farmer and being a success in America.

This causes strife with his wife and the drama and humor is doubled when his mother-in-law comes to live with them and help out.

My description is poor as it sort of sounds like a sitcom set-up. But it’s a natural and biographical story written (I assume) by the now grown up child of the parents in the picture.

The story moves with the rythyms of real life. The characters outside the family have their own separate wants and dreams that make them more than writer’s props.

I especially enjoyed how it handled the Korean family attending an all white church. If there was prejudice towards them it seems mild.

But it’s hard to be different in a place like that no matter how much people want to welcome you.

One of my favorite scenes is the morning after a sleepover when the young Korean child watches his new friend and his father hug and interact at a breakfast table.

The dad tells the kid he loves him. Then adds, “Don’t tell your mother I was out all night.”

That’s a scene with so much truth and sand you could plant a flag in it.

Religion and each character’s connection to it is explored. A worker with strange religious habits and a tendency to pray all the time helps the father with his farm. Why? Maybe because God told him to, but also (most assuredly) because he needs the money.

The conflict centers on the parents who have pushed themselves into a breaking point. He won’t relent in his pursuit of his dream. She feels betrayed by a man who has taken her away from her home (twice) and is now asking her to live in a trailer in Arkansas and pretend like it’s a castle.

When they arrive at the new home and she sees the trailer she stops him.

“This isn’t what you promised,” she says.

(I don’t take notes while watching a movie so if that’s not exactly what she said that’s close.)

How do you fix a marriage that faces that kind of problem? She wanted a life with other Koreans in Los Angelos. You took her to Arkansas.

I don’t want to give away their decision but I can tell you I was moved by it and was moved especially now given the massive changes in my own life.

Movies, books, songs and television are like that sometimes. Something so real that you can find yourself connected immensely and emotionally to a young family from Korea who worked as farmers 40 years ago in a state you have never visited.

But the connection is real and the film is a gift from on high.

There is a moment that kicks off the final section of Near Dark that hit me hard.

It was just two characters meeting. One of them invites the other to watch TV. Nothing much happens initially.

But if the story is honest, and you believe in the danger presented by the horror inside the movie, then two characters meeting can knock you out. 

Near Dark is a cult classic from 1987.

The Lost Boys came out the same year and got all the attention. Comparison is a mug’s game but watching this you can see why The Lost Boys is the one that passed into legend.

It has a sense of humor about itself and better special effects and one of the funniest endings of all time.

What Near Dark has though is a stronger metaphor and deeper emotions. Its got a decent romance element and some of the greasiest, most repugnant vampires you have ever seen.

Near Dark’s western elements are a ton of fun and there are some action/horror scenes that are both thrilling and disgusting.

Also, it dodges a lot of vampire lore in favor of a more simple take. No one ever says vampire in this thing and no one ever makes a stake or uses a cross.

So if you are stuck in a bar with a vile vampire family you are out of luck.

That scene suggested a group of ragged thrill killers way more than a pack of vamps.

What does work in Near Dark is sunlight. You definitely sense that Director Kathryn Bigelow and her special fx crew really liked working with fire and explosions. Lots of explosions in this one’s

Several story points and that one vampire weakness leads to an amazing shootout with the cops where sunlights bursts through bullet holes in a building endangering a bloodsucking gang.

It’s the most famous part of the movie but there is much to admire here for horror fans.

Ultimately, Near Dark’s story gives it something I don’t think I have ever seen before or since — a vampire western. 

Wait, in 1996 Robert Rodriquez directed a script Quentin Tarantino wrote in high school (with more work provided by Robert Kurtzman) that had a bit of western style to it. It was called From Dusk Till Dawn. 

That was an experiment where the first half of the flick was a crime movie and the second half was a horror film with vampires. 

I could never make it through the sequels but I think they embraced the west a little harder than the original.

Near Dark is no doubt a western from the start. But I’m not sure it successfully mixes the genres.

However, when the hero of the movie rides a horse into town to confront an evil gang and certain death … that’s a real cowboy right there.

It begins with the protagonist in darkness. Is he dead? He’s been shot, he’s nearly gone, it’s almost over. 

But he’s not dead yet.

Point Blank then gets on with its grim business as Walker seeks out the man who betrayed him and charges through a host of middle managers in a criminal organization to get back the $93,000 that was stolen from him. 

Based on the Donald E. Westlake book The Hunter this is a gritty, greasy tough guy flick. 

Director John Boorman and star Lee Marvin apparently conspired to make the movie they wanted to make in the face of studio pressure and other problems. 

Boorman was so new at this that Marvin (allegedly) faked a raging alcoholic spree in order to give Boorman more time to figure out his shots.

IMDB quotes Boorman on this.

“One night while filming the finale’s Alcatraz-set scenes, an exhausted and spent Sir John Boorman realized he had no idea what he was doing. Lee Marvin realized it too and asked if the director was in trouble. He told Boorman to leave it to him, and ‘suddenly he was drunk, he was shouting, laughing, and screaming,’ and the production manager approached Boorman saying there was no way they could keep filming. ‘Soon as I was off the hook, the pressure was off; it took me ten minutes to work out the shots, and Lee made this amazing recovery.’”

Wouldn’t it be great if these trivia quotes were sourced from the news articles or whatever they came from.

Given where Boorman was in his career I want to note that the first 20 minutes of this are weak. If the movie had gone on like that I would have given up. 

But something turns inside it, Boorman and Marvin get into a groove and the action sequences kick in and Marvin starts growling at people about his money and the thing becomes a blissful time in crime land. 

There is no extra toppings on this meal. No garnish, if you will. Marvin just starts beating up and threatening guys as he goes up every rung on the criminal corporate ladder. 

My fave part is that at every level whoever he is harassing tells him what he’s asking for is impossible. The next guy up the line won’t pay you either, they say. 

Walker, never wavering in his rage and disgust dutifully responds, ‘someone’s got to pay.’

And then Walker convinces whoever it is that they should reconsider. 

It’s crime movie fun. And there is a lot of fun in watching Walker outsmart his enemies and create situations that lead them to their deaths. 

Walker takes a car dealer for a wild ride but other than that he mostly just threatens and cajoles until someone else delivers the killing stroke. 

Now, we should talk briefly about whether or not Walker is a ghost as this has been a topic of discussion connected to this movie. 

Walker is not a ghost. 

There, I hope that helps. 

Boorman and Marvin’s Point Blank is (I think) to crime movies what Kurasawa’s Seven Samurai is to action films or John Ford’s The Searchers was to the 1970’s directors. A touchstone film that defined a genre. 

If you as the type of movie fan who tracks these things back then I think you will see the connections to later flicks.

You won’t have to go far to find a dozen crime movies and crime movie directors (notably Steven Soderbergh but there are plenty of others) who found inspiration out of this. Check out The Limey it’s amazing. 

And I also enjoyed the criminal up against the soulless corporation parts of it. Every empty suit would just give him his money, they want to give him his money but they can’t find a spot for it on the ledger. 

Killing Them Softly nails this bit of American corporate life perfectly with its final speech from Brad Pitt. 

“America is a business” indeed. 

Some of you might find the ending cryptic and it’s certainly part of the reason why the ghost theory came to prominence. 

Walker’s choices in the final moments don’t seem to line up with his goals. 

But I thought it made perfect sense. 

Walker began this journey in darkness and to the darkness he returned. 

As I watched Body Double a particular exchange from Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing kept running through my mind. 

President Bartlett, having been caught up in a minor controversy about an upcoming movie, is discussing a Hollywood director. 

“It’s not that Larry Posner’s movies have gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence. It’s that they suck. They’re terrible. But people go to see them because they have gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence. Now, if we could just get people to stop going to see crappy movies, Posner would stop making them. I promise you.”

That is, of course, too harsh an insult for the great Brian DePalma who has made at least six films that are untouchable in their quality including: The Untouchables (sorry), Scarface, Carlito’s Way, Blow Out, Mission Impossible and Carrie. 

However, the West Wing insult may not be too over the top for Body Double which is a leering tour through sexual obsession and the porno scene in the 1980s. 

It’s not quite porn, although IMDB claims DePalma had hoped to be the first mainstream film to show real sex on screen until the folks at Columbia nixed it. 

It’s not quite Hitchcock either although DePalma is the old master’s greatest disciple. And say what you will about his choices, DePalma understands maybe more than most of his contemporaries how to create Hitchcockian tension on screen. 

Because of the times he lived in Hitchcock was forced to suggest more than he could show. And much of his movies exist in subtext. 

DePalma just ignores all that subtext nonsense and shows you all the text you can handle. 

To be fair DePalma lived in a world where adult theaters competed with regular theaters for audiences who would, seemingly, go to both kinds of spectacles. 

Still, as mashup of Vertigo and Rear Window this had some fun moments. If you enjoy horror movie kills there is a gnarly one here. 

When it happened I thought, “Well, I’ve never seen that before.” 

And I chuckled, the way you do at ridiculously gruesome things that happen in the movies. 

There is definitely a reason why you have probably never heard of the poor lead actor in this film. Meanwhile, Melanie Griffith built a whole career off this first turn as a porn star with a heart of gold. 

She has some matter of fact dialogue that was shocking for its time but not so much in a world where Kevin Smith movies exist. 

You will not be surprised to find out who the bad guy is, nor to discover the shocking secret of the henchman who shows up midway through the thing.

It’s not a mystery, it’s a thriller and the shocks aren’t in whodunit but in other gratuitous realms. 

DePalma had so much talent as a director that he could literally take almost anything and make it into something visually appealing and fun. 

It’s not his talent I question in this instance but I certainly have questions about his taste. 

This was the last DePalma movie I wanted to see. Of his great ones I probably love Carlito’s Way the most. But even his failures are always visually striking and worth checking out. 

A film buddy of mine was upset that I gave Snake Eyes such low marks but the short version is that I’m a story guy and while the visuals are once again amazing the story in that film takes place in a world unbound by logic or reason. 

Here too, a lot of the film lives and dies by how much coincidence you are willing accept. By how much of your disbelief you can suspend to just sit back and enjoy as the flick unspools. 

I let a lot of the nonsense slide on by (really) even when the struggling actor managed to make his way immediately into a porno film. 

Even when the porno film turned into something like an MTV music video. 

Sure.

Other than those mentioned above I’ve seen a lot of DePalma’s output and this was a flick I couldn’t find for a while. 

I guess seeing it explains why the streamers shied away from it.

Sadly, my DePalmathon has gone out with a whimper instead of a bang. 

There are a few left though. Unwatched by me and still out there in the universe. 

Have any of y’all seen Black Dahlia? Is it any good? 

You know a masterpiece when you experience it. 

Think of a great performance of Shakespeare or Beethoven or yes, Days of Heaven. 

In some ways this is the exact sort of thing I usually can’t stand in cinema. It meanders, and it’s underwritten. Director/Writer Terrance Malick wrote a script and gave up on it. Instead, he encouraged his actors to improvise. 

And then he discovered he had real story problems (because it was underwritten and improvised) and spent two years editing it. He only solved his story problem by giving a child character a voice over narration.

That narration is not great. It’s a child with a deep, distinct Chicago patois. At times it made me giggle and I don’t think that was Malick’s intention. 

But it does what it must and connects the disparate parts of the story together. 

The story matters, the story always matters, but this is a visual experience first. 

We get a factory on the front door of hell, traveling by train, and then life and work on a farm in the Texas Panhandle. 

It feels like a pretty great nature documentary. Then it feels like a Cecil B DeMille biblical epic. 

And then it just feels like you are living through some of the actual things that took place in the Bible. 

It’s arresting and amazing.

It’s one of the few movies I have found that I would seek out a theater experience if one ever became available. It truly needs to be experienced in a big screen.  

For the rest of this I require spoilers so please go watch this movie first and then come back. 

Richard Gere’s Bill commits several crimes in this movie but his biggest is having Brooke Adams’, Abby, by his side and giving her away to another man. 

It seems like a solid plan, Sam Shephard’s rich farmer is dying anyway. If she marries him the wealthy farm will be theirs.

Malick presents this not as a horribly betrayal but rather as desperate people finding a way to a better life. Bill and Abby aren’t greedy con artists they’re just on the last rung of society and desperate to hold on. 

But it’s wrong. And eventually the farmer discovers that something is undone in his home. 

And then … there is a plague. 

In Shakespeare the weather often reflects the internal state of the characters. 

Certainly you can think of Shakespeare as the plague of grasshoppers destroy the farm shortly after the farmer learns he’s been betrayed. 

Then a second plague is visited on the farm as a great fire begins to destroy everything. 

And, for a movie that was underwritten I have to give it credit for one line. Abby turns to Bill in the middle of a firestorm and says, “He knows!” 

The line and the delivery and the visuals … perfect. 

So the plagues can represent internal strife but in the Old Testament these things were a punishment from God. 

Whatever their motivations Abby and Bill have committed a great crime. They must pay for their sins. 

Days of Heaven comes from a phrase in the Bible. 

You will recall that Abraham once gave his wife away to Pharoh by saying that she was his sister. 

In response, God visited a plague on Pharaoh’s house that made Pharaoh understand what happened and return Abraham’s wife. 

Here too, Bill and Abby pretend they are brother and sister. 

It all works out pretty well until Bill realizes what he has lost and the farmer seeks a reckoning.

Of course, in the Bible, Abraham got away with it.

I think we should talk about the difference between movie stars and everyone else in the world (including television stars, broadway stars and regular people.) 

Movie stars can make the whole thing work through sheer force of personality. Why? No one knows. 

Would Terms of Endearment work without Jack Nicholson playing a randy, arrogant, astronaut who seduces and then comes to love his high strung neighbor? Yes, of course it would. 

It’s based on a novel by one of Americas greatest writers, Larry McMurtry, and features an Oscar winning performance by Shirley MacLaine and should have won an Oscar performance from Debra Winger. 

Also, it’s Directed by James L. Brooks who brought us The Simpsons and produced a ton of fantastic features. Here he’s just getting started and is at the height of his powers. He’s also responsible for one of the great final Nicholson features As Good As It Gets. 

Back when I bought Simpsons season box sets you could listen to commentary tracks from the writers and directors. And, in multiple cases they would talk about how Brooks would look at a story, immediately identify a story problem and then make it better.

That show works (or did in its first 20 or so seasons) because of a lot of incredibly talented and funny people but Brooks was near the top. 

Before we get to Jack you must credit MacLaine and Winger who envelop the prickly, loving, enraging relationship between a mother and a daughter. 

Every part of their stories will make you laugh and then cry. And this movie is very much their stories, I don’t want you to mistake this for a Nicholson vehicle. He’s important but he’s not the movie. 

But he’s also a star and when he shows up, it’s all fireworks. 

He plays an aging astronaut who has spent his life chasing young women and continues to chase them well into his 50s. No, there is nothing new in the sun, not even the DiCaprio dating method. 

But he and his neighbor keep sort of orbiting each other. And then there is a disastrous date and isn’t it wonderful when two people who shouldn’t can’t help themselves. 

There were a host of actors in 1983 who could have made a line like this sizzle on the screen: 

“I’ll tell you, Aurora. I don’t know what it is about you, but you do bring out the devil in me.”

A host of actors, I say, would have made a meal out of that. But there is only only one Jack. 

This is a movie designed to make you cry. And cry I did. MacLaine earns that Oscar in a scene in the hospital when she’s at her wits end. 

I’ll tell you one other moment, that blew me up.

Towards the end, when their romance is supposed to be over MacLaine’s Aurora is at her lowest moment and then she looks up and there is Jack’s Garrett Breedlove. 

I actually heard myself say, “he showed up.” 

And then I cried again.

Who is this movie for?

Certainly not devout Christians who were certain to shun it when it became clear that the preacher at the center of the story is a conman.

Nor atheists, who would likely revolt when the movie shows an active God who (SPOILERS) not only heals people but also brings rain when the faithful need it the most.

Perhaps, it was meant for a select group of bemused agnostics.

Steve Martin plays faith healer Jonas Nightengale (great name!) who ends up stuck in a small farming community and uses his revival show to part the marks with their money.

I can’t speak for movie audiences in 1992 but I know I watched Leap of Faith because of distribution systems.

You see kids, in the before times, we had to watch whatever was on cable television. You would scroll through and then pick something. And on more than one day in the 1990s Leap of Faith was the best of all available options.

I have a lot of affection for this movie which moves me, has a lot to say about true faith and the wicked people who exploit it but isn’t quite funny enough to be remembered as a great Steve Martin film nor dramatic enough to work on that level. 

Early Liam Nissian and early Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meatloaf all do a lot even when they ain’t given much to do. 

And Debra Winger has fun playing the conman’s gal pal and the Sheriff’s love interest.

I like Steve Martin’s cowboy hat a lot and his cowboy boots. Someone should have given him a real western right around this time. He could have made it work.

A lot of the Steve Martin as fire and brimstone preacher stuff plays well. It’s very easy to lose your way here but Martin mostly finds the right note.

There is a miracle of sorts at the end of the film. It happens as Jonas is casting himself out of town because … well it’s never spelled out but I would say it’s because something inside Jonas is changed.

When you get to that ending you might recall that in the Bible Jonah had an encounter with God. And that he too ended up in a heavy rain storm.

This might be the softest, tough guy crime movie I’ve encountered in a while. 

What it’s meant to be is a pressure cooker flick where salty fishermen keep diving into trouble, first with the law and then with real criminals until the story reaches its murderous conclusion. 

But what actually happens is a bunch of knuckleheads keep doing knucklehead things until they get bailed out at the end. 

Then it ends on a supposedly happy note (with maybe one of the most cringey things I’ve seen in a while) and the guys go back to fishing. 

And of course given what the movie shows me about these guys you just know they are all gonna be fried like the scallops not long after the credits roll. 

I will say that the movie kept me engaged and I really enjoyed Tommy Lee Jones slipping comfortably into another one of his salt of the earth/sorry I was a terrible father roles. 

Ben Foster is also respectable as a grizzled captain of men / older brother. And I thought Clayne Crawford was a firecracker as the heavy. 

But it’s soooo blunt and heavy handed. 

The movie takes great pains to explain what “finest kind” means in the vernacular of this fishing community. It’s kind of cool and they never should have explained it. Or if they were going to it should not have been explained in such a way that it was basically like a spotlight pointed at the audience going, “See, see this is it. Pay attention!”

Another is when the characters take one phrase of wisdom from Jones’ character and repeats it until you just want to sink. 

However, I liked a lot of this and can see why everyone thought it could work. It’s a movie they would have made in the 1990s that probably would have been a mid level hit at the theater. 

And when I say soft consider this: the characters need $100,000 to get a boat back from seizure. At the end of the movie one of the characters borrows it from his dad, who wants him to become a lawyer and stop fishing. 

The dad has a sudden change of heart and comes up with the money.

The movie also spends some of its resources pointing out that Jenna Ortega’s Mabel is from the wrong side of the tracks. 

In the end she is welcome into her new boyfriend’s family by his loving mom who grew up in those some bad neighborhoods. 

Sofffttt. The movie is soft. 

But, I gotta say I thought most of it worked really work well. It wasn’t until the obvious twists in the second half and the easy resolutions to the everyone’s problems that I really thought this thing lost its way. 

And then there is that ending. Woof.

The great Quentin Tarantino once again became the talk of the internet when it was announced that his upcoming movie, The Movie Critic, was cancelled and that he will instead find another project to be his 10th and final film.

Twitter was full of comments from movie fans who were, like me, disappointed. And they were full of what I can only describe as fannish nonsense.

The first line of attack was on the idea that Tarantino has said for years that he would stop at 10 films and retire as a movie director. Tarantino has already written one (very good) book of film criticism and he has also joked that he could always direct a limited series for television.

This collection of wit and wisdom came from a number of people, famous, infamous and somewhere in between. I have paraphrased a general collection of this:

“You don’t have to follow a stupid rule you made up.”

“Martin, Steven and Ridley are still making bangers in their 80s!”

“He psyched himself out because it’s his last movie but he doesn’t have to stop. He could make 10 more after this.”

These are the bleatings of incredibly entitled and incredibly boorish fans.

Writer Neil Gaiman said all this better than me when answering a fan question about George R.R. Martin’s final novels in the Song of Fire and Ice series: “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.”

Pretty simple right?

Tarantino made a bunch of movies you like and he’s maybe going to make one more but after working toward getting The Movie Critic together he decided (for some unknown reason) that this wasn’t it.

Be sad about that? Sure. Join me in the traditional rending of garments and sitting in ashes. I weep with you that we shall probably not get a new Tarantino next year.

Go online and whine that a guy who can do anything he wants with his life is choosing to do something else? How about no. Be better than that.

Also, suggesting that Tarantino psyched himself out is pitiful stuff. You don’t know why he does anything anymore than I do. Maybe an actor he wanted turned it down. Maybe he looked at the script again and saw something he couldn’t fix on set. Maybe a trusted reader looked at it and felt it wasn’t there and Tarantino got spooked.

Maybe he wants to summer in France. Maybe he wants to catch up on The Simpsons.

Quentin Tarantino does not owe you a movie and he can do what he wants with his life.

Longtime Tarantino fans ought to know better. There was supposed to be a movie about the Vega brothers (which would have existed in the same universe as his early movies). And he talked a lot about Kill Bill 3 which would center on the daughter of one of The Bride’s victims.

And, ultimately, we got bupkis.

That’s the way it goes creatively. Having a cool idea is not the same thing and making a multi-million dollar movie. We all have cool ideas, few of us can successfully turn them into novels, tv shows, or movies.

Finally, this idea that Tarantino imposing a 10 movie rule on himself is a bad idea comes from people with no skin in the game who have not considered the full ramifications of a creative life.

The idea seems to be, “Just keep making them and everything will be fine.”

Except, that’s absolutely not true. Directors and writers get thrown out of the business or thrown into director jail all the time.

Ask Coppola about life after Godfather Part 3. That’s a perfect example of a movie everyone thought they wanted until it actually came out.

Brian DePalma, one of the greats, was out after his flops in the 1990s. Same goes for William Friedkin.

And, today, it can happen not because of a flop but simply because the vocal online audience turns on someone. I’ll be interested to see if Taika Waititi gets another shot at a big Hollywood production.

Same goes for the Game of Thrones producers who delivered an (admittedly) bad final season of a great show and are now permanently shunned.

You are only as good as your last one. And all of these “fans” who are upset that Tarantino isn’t delivering the next thrillotainment will toss him to the wolves the very second he screens a dog instead of classic.

Hey, I would take 10 more Tarantino movies too. But I hope I have enough respect for the man and the process to live with whatever he decides to do with his one life.

I think we should start with a song. 

Have you ever heard Common People? Originally by the band Pulp I first heard a cover by the great William Shatner and it struck a deep chord. 

The song is about a rich girl who wants to sleep with a poor boy because she thinks he’s fashionable and dangerous. The boy rejects her. She can’t really live in his world. 

Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you’ll never get it right
‘Cause when you’re laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah

The men and women in La Chimera are not exactly common people but they are strikingly poor and they have a fine plan to make themselves rich. 

They’re graverobbers. 

Despite making decent money from their illegal activities, poverty abounds. The movie suggests that most of them are poor because they refuse regular jobs. Arthur, the protagonist, does this early on. 

In their poverty though, everyone seems to live for the moment. I’m not sure I would trade places with these people but Arthur’s group is the life of the party. Anytime they get together and drink or dance or even when they are stealing from the dead it looks like they’re having a hell of a good time. 

Even Arthur, who is hung up on an old girlfriend and beaten down by life and has the mood of a whipped dog sometimes seems to find joy. He has a sweet romance with a young mom and tries to maintain friendships with his neer-do-well friends and a woman who is essentially his ex-mother-in-law.

If crime and romance were the sum total of the La Chimera that would be enough. 

There’s bits of an intriguing crime story here that plays out throughout the flick and reaches a sensible conclusion. The romance too, rises and falls and finds a comfortable ending. 

And then there is the spirituality that also flows through the movie. 

One character wakes another up while he was sleeping. “Now you will never know how the dream ends,” he chuckles. 

At another point the group of grave robbers encounters an honest woman who curses them. 

And Arthur has a spiritual connection with a statue that the group finds in a grave. 

“Human eyes were not meant to see this,” he says. 

There is also an otherworldly encounter that I am doing my best not to spoil. But when it happened it took me from amusement into another realm. 

I knew I was in good hands early on after Arthur has a fight on a train and is watched closely by a row of travelers who then disappear into their cabins when he turns to look at them. 

And then this encounter later turned the screw. 

The movie ends with a scene that has deep meaning. Not just for Arthur but for us. 

Josh O’Connor is impossibly cool as Arthur, you will want to run away with Carol Duarte’s Italia and Vincenzo Nemolato immediately made me want to be his best friend. Even if he was, perhaps, a beast. 

And, Isabella Rossellini, is pitch perfect as an Italian grandmother who wants to ditch her daughters and adopt Arthur and Italia. No surprise there, Rossellini is a screen legend, but she can still grab you with just a look. 

Director Alice Rohrwacher and writers Carmela Covino and Marco Pettenello have delivered a low key masterpiece here. 

Haunting, lyrical and full of mystery.

Every film geek you know is gonna have this high on their lists at the end of the year. But, they are not wrong.