Flicks with The Film Snob

The Chronology of Water, Kristen Stewart’s first feature film as a director, is an adaptation of a memoir by the same title from fiction writer, poet, and essayist Lidia Yuknavitch. Yuknavitch grew up in San Francisco and Florida in the 1960s and ‘70s, was encouraged by a supportive school coach to become a competitive swimmer, and got a sports scholarship to a college in Austin, whereupon her addiction to alcohol and other drugs derailed her potential Olympics career. She then careened through relationships, sexual acting out, and self-harm, until—moving to Oregon, she discovered that she could write—and after much effort,…

Cambodian director Rithy Panh dramatizes the true story of three journalists who were given permission to interview Pol Pot during the last few months of his murderous regime. At the age of fifteen Rithy Panh managed to escape the Cambodian genocide, but the entire rest of his family—his parents, sisters, and nephews—were murdered. He made his way to Paris, where he got interested in movies, and eventually graduated from film school there. His career as a director has been devoted almost exclusively to examining that terrible period when the Khmer Rouge conducted mass executions of anyone labeled as bourgeois or…

Video artist Joseph Khalil’s first feature length film weaves a multitude of images exploring Black history, society, and culture. The cutting edge Los Angeles-based artist Khalil Joseph is the creator of many video installations in some of the world’s top museums. His short films have brought into focus vibrant dimensions of African American life, history, and culture. You may have seen some of his music videos, most famously the ones for Beyoncé’s 2016 album “Lemonade.” Now in collaboration with a host of Black intellectuals and creatives, he presents his first feature length movie, entitled BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions. “BLKNWS” are…

Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 musical goes backwards in time telling of three friends and their pursuit of fame and fortune on Broadway. I always thought the idea of telling a story in reverse chronological order was a relatively recent one—from Harold Pinter’s play “Betrayal” in 1978, to be exact. But I’ve just discovered that over a century ago, in 1923, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart did it in their play “Merrily We Roll Along.” It starts with the smashing success of a playwright (the main character), and then goes backward in time through each act, showing through this remarkable reversed…

A man searching for his runaway daughter joins a group of misfits on a journey through the desert and mountains of Morocco. When considering the subject of a world in turmoil, and on the brink of disaster, we may want a film to give us temporary escape, or it might try to sublimate our pain and fear in order to invoke transcendence of some kind. But in some rare cases, a filmmaker will choose to face the crisis head on, with results that are always challenging. That’s the method Spanish director Óliver Laxe has chosen for his new film Sirât.…

Carmen Maura plays an 80-year-old woman who has lived her entire life in Tangier, but is threatened with eviction from her flat by her own daughter, who wants to move her to Madrid. We have a way of calling an experience “bittersweet” when it involves both sorrow and joy. Moroccan director Maryam Touzani has fashioned that idea into an explicit narrative method in her latest film Calle Málaga. The title is from a street in Tangier, a Moroccan city right across from Spain near Gibraltar, which has become legendary for its vibrant mixture of cultures. Many Spanish people emigrated there…

A temperamental Mexican chef, one of many immigrants working in a New York restaurant, gets into trouble with his bosses. It’s a pleasure to witness the growth of a film artist in real time, which I’ve been able to do in the case of Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios since watching his first film at a local festival back in 2014. Now with his fourth film, La Cocina, he’s reached a new level. It’s a major work, an impressive and absorbing drama. La Cocina means The Kitchen in English, in this case the underground kitchen of a fictional Times Square New…

Isabelle Huppert plays a French tutor in Korea with an unconventional method, in Hong Sang-soo’s exploration of the odd ways people communicate. I’m fascinated by the films of Korean director Hong Sang-soo. In style, narrative, and intent, they seem unique. He has ideas to convey, but they’re always manifested through the semi-improvisatory dialogue and action of the actors. We see how people navigate their little worlds, and the quirks and subtleties of character they express, yet it all plays out undramatically, as part of the felt texture of everyday life. Isabelle Huppert feels an affinity for Hong’s method. A Traveler’s…

In 1970, a seemingly normal young guy decides to organize a heist of his town’s local art museum. Kelly Reichardt makes movies that focus on the ordinary, telling stories of people navigating their unglamorous day-to-day lives, often as loners or outsiders. That might not sound interesting on the face of it, but it turns out there’s a strange kind of beauty in these lives that usually escape our notice. Sometimes Reichardt has bumped up against genres like the thriller, the period film, or the western, peeking at the reality underneath the form, while casually kicking the genres aside, like so…

The story of an African immigrant in Paris, working under the radar while trying to obtain refugee status. The plight of the migrant, and the refugee, is a central story of our century. Now in a recent film called Souleymane’s Story, we witness three days in the struggle of one young man to win the right to asylum in France, where he wants to live and work. Souleymane, an immigrant from Guinea, played by Abou Sangaré, has an appointment in a couple days to be interviewed by the Office for Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons. He is employed doing…

A film about the leader of The Shakers, an 18th century religious group, uses songs and dancing to portray the fervent spiritual forces at work in the nonconformist Christian movement. We don’t see many film dramas about devoutly religious people—partly, I think, because the main action takes place inside a character, and this is hard to depict on screen. Mona Fastvold faces that challenge head-on in her new film portraying the life of the leading figure in the history of the Shakers: The Testament of Ann Lee. Amanda Seyfried plays the title role of Ann Lee, a young woman in…

A loner who thinks he’s been cheated by a mortgage firm takes the president of the company hostage, in a story based on actual events in 1977. The 1970s have, for quite awhile now, become a common time frame for American period films. That decade saw the youth counterculture emerge into the mainstream in clothing, lingo, long hair, and a tendency towards the weird and marginal, with multiple challenges to the status quo. It’s a fertile setting for satiric commentary on America. Moreover, the ‘70s were a period when filmmaking broke through the old studio taboos, resulting in an amazing…

Jim Jarmusch presents three stories about parents and their grown up children. Jim Jarmusch started out as kind of an eccentric indie filmmaker, but over a career spanning 45 years, he’s become a legendary eccentric indie filmmaker. His latest movie is called Father Mother Sister Brother. It’s an anthology film, three short stories on a similar theme, put together to make one movie. This is a work of a mature artist—it’s about adult children and their parents. It’s composed largely of talking, but most of the humor and significance lie in what is not said. “Father,” the first story, begins…

Chris Dashiell celebrates his favorite films from last year. At the end of a year, film critics start putting out “Top 10” lists or “Top 20,” or whatever. They’re fun to do—going over all the movies you saw in a year and making a list of your favorites is fun. And for people really into films, they’re fun to read as well. But it still gets taken the wrong way, especially since the lists are often framed as “The Best Films of the Year.” Even a very busy movie reviewer can’t see everything, so the claim that a list is…

Jia Jhangke uses footage spanning twenty years to present this portrait of the incredible changes that have taken place in China. Jia Jhangke is, to my mind, the greatest living director in mainland China. His latest work, Caught by the Tides, actually seems to be a completely new kind of creation. We begin in 2001, with candid footage of mostly middle aged women nostalgically sharing and singing traditional songs with each other, including some from Shanxi opera, in a large and plain-looking room. They are former opera singers having a twenty year reunion. The use of songs as a way…

A man seeking refuge in a coastal city of 1977 Brazil doesn’t know that two men have been hired to kill him, in this brilliant portrait of life under dictatorship. The Secret Agent is the name of a new film by Brazilian writer and director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Right from the start with the title, we have ambiguity. It’s not a spy movie—no one is engaged in espionage. Rather, it’s presenting the experience that is prompted by the idea of a secret agent: always be on your guard, danger lurks around the corner, conceal who you are. In historical terms,…

Considered a failure upon its release in 1984, David Lynch’s version of Frank Herbert’s novel already displays the bold absurdism that the director would take further in his later films. I told someone the other day that I had seen all of the films by David Lynch. But later I realized that I’d forgotten Dune, from 1984, the one widely considered a failure. The completist in me decided I had to watch it. I’ve grown to like Lynch’s work, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that I enjoyed Dune as well—but somehow it was. Lynch took his chance to…

Grigoriy Kozintsev’s epic version of Hamlet presents the tragedy through stark visual means. Many Russian artists have loved and celebrated Shakespeare. Grigoriy Kozintsev, one of the great directors of Soviet cinema, was among them. I had seen his King Lear, from 1971, and was impressed. But I recently watched his masterwork from 1964, seven years earlier: Hamlet. This time I’m more than just impressed. I think it’s one of the greatest Shakespeare films. The first thing that struck me about this epic treatment of Hamlet was the castle, a massive, awe-inspiring medieval hulk looming over the story like a dark…

The story of a search for the body of a Vietnamese soldier killed during the war is set against the difficult lives of two young men working in a coal mine. Việt and Nam, the second feature film from Vietnamese director Trương Minh Quý, begins with two young men working in a coal mine. The conditions are wretched, their bodies are black with coal, and—as we soon discover—they love each other. Much of the introductory section patiently lets us get to know these two in the customary darkness of their work environment. On a rare break, we see them eating…

Joachim Trier’s drama about two daughters confronted with the father who abandoned them uses acting as a symbol of the ways adult children navigate their families. The premise of Sentimental Value, the new movie by Norwegian director Joachim Trier, has a classic simplicity, similar to some of Ingmar Bergman’s films about families. Two sisters cope with their difficult father when he returns to the scene after the death of their mother. The challenge of dramatizing such dynamics is to make it fresh, to explore new angles of an age-old situation. Trier, and his regular co-screenwriter Eskil Vogt have done that,…

Jafar Panahi’s film about revenge and responsibility tells of a group of people who think they have found the man who tortured them in prison, but won’t take action until they’re certain about his identity. A film style that is deceptively simple with a profound effect—this is a rare and wonderful thing. Iranian director Jafar Panahi has a style like that, and never more than his recent film, winner of the Golden Palm at Cannes, called It Was Just an Accident. The title is from the opening sequence: a man is driving his wife and young daughter home from an…

A detective investigating a series of murders in rural China is confronted with his own instability. “Self-aware cinema” is a nickname, that I just made up, to describe a kind of film that uses its style, genre, and characters to symbolize meanings that go beyond and even subvert the movie’s linear narrative. Well, that definition proves how hard it is to speak clearly about this kind of film. The idea isn’t new, but now it’s become sharper and more prevalent. An interesting recent example is Only the River Flows, from Chinese director Wei Shujun. The story takes place in a…

This 1947 film about a woman who moves into a house that is haunted by the ghost of a sea captain is a tender understated beauty. Somebody asked me recently if I had a “comfort film.” I’d never heard that phrase before. You might even think I would reject the concept, since my customary angle as a critic is to highlight challenging films that might even cause discomfort sometimes. But movies can play many roles in our lives, and I realized that comfort can be one of them. My answer, the first that came to mind, is The Ghost and…

Guillermo del Toro’s epic reimagining of the Mary Shelley novel is a marvel of Gothic style. It was inevitable that Guillermo del Toro, with his love of fantasy, monsters, and everything Gothic, would create a version of Mary Shelley’s great novel Frankenstein. So of course he has, in a style of giant painterly excess that storms the heights of melodrama. What I’m saying is: it’s a thing of beauty. Del Toro is a director in the mold of classic Hollywood in its epic moods. He loves sets, props, costumes, and the craft of art direction. The film’s look boldly evokes…

The life of a family in the Italian Alps in 1944 is profoundly affected by the presence of a Sicilian deserter. Vermiglio, a new film by Italian director Maura Delpero, takes place in the village of the title, located in the Italian Alps near the Swiss border. The time is the winter of 1944, the last year of the Second World War in Italy. We meet a large family scraping out a living in this harsh environment. The father, played by Tomasso Ragno, is the village schoolteacher, with his own children among the students, offering basic literacy and other primary…

Raoul Peck’s documentary explores the life and thought of George Orwell, and how his political insights are relevant today. Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck has been a prominent creator of radical cinema for four decades. Most probably know him best as the director of I Am Not Your Negro, a 2016 documentary using the words of James Baldwin to describe structural racism in the U.S., which got an Oscar nomination. His latest is called Orwell: 2+2=5. It’s about the work of the English novelist, journalist, and social commentator George Orwell, particularly his writings about politics and the threat of totalitarianism expressed…

Terence Davies adapts Edith Wharton’s novel about the price of trying to fit in to wealthy New York society in the early 20th century. The English filmmaker Terence Davies died two years ago at the age of 78. He’s a director I always admired, and an artist that I think has gone underappreciated by general audiences. One of the films I wish more people knew about is his adaptation, from 2000, of Edith Wharton’s great novel The House of Mirth. Rather than using the material as a vehicle for his own concerns, or creating “entertainment” through the distancing effect of…

An aging former revolutionary must try to save his daughter from a racist colonel, in a satiric action film about the current American predicament. We’re living in a time when the news is stranger than fiction. What should filmmakers do in such times? Paul Thomas Anderson, one of our best film directors, has chosen to face this moment by combining the action film with satire. The result is his latest movie, One Battle After Another. In a sort of alternate version of recent history, a revolutionary group called “The French 75” breaks into an immigrant detention camp, freeing all the…

Young men compete in a punishing walking race for which there can only be one survivor, in an adaptation of a Stephen King allegory about male-dominated society. Stephen King, America’s most popular fiction writer, is an expert at writing books and stories that get adapted into films, the majority of which are horror. King’s excellence at horror I attribute, at least in part, to his frank recognition of evil as a powerful force in society. Evil in his books is something we participate in, whether we want to or not. The latest King adaptation is called The Long Walk, directed…

Edward Yang’s second feature, about a couple in crisis because of their different responses to changing conditions in Taipei, was a breakthrough for Taiwanese cinema. Taiwanese director Edward Yang showed a willingness to take risks in his short films, and in his first feature, That Day on the Beach, from 1983. Two years later, in 1985, he released Taipei Story, putting all his money into the project. It failed at the box office, while getting some recognition at international film festivals. Despite its less than spectacular showing, it marked the beginning of a new era in Taiwanese film. Up until…

A teacher at a rural middle school in Turkey is unjustly accused of impropriety by a girl student, but this crisis confronts him with his own lack of awareness. Over the past thirty years, Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan has been gaining stature as one of the world’s best living directors. His style features long takes, wide shots, and minimal camera movement. Lately, though, he’s been making what I would simply call “philosophical” films that examine human nature and culture, moral responsibility, the individual versus the mass, and the doubts and inner struggles that human beings always go through. Ceylan…

A single mother whose kids were taken away tries to win them back, while she considers offering another child on the way for adoption. Earth Mama, from first-time filmmaker Savanah Leaf, tells the story of a young Black pregnant single mother in Oakland named Gia, and played by Tia Nomore. Successfully avoiding tiresome exposition, Leaf introduces us immediately into Gia’s world. First we witness her answering questions at an office in Child Protective Services. Her two children, a boy and a girl, were taken into foster care when the office was alerted to Gia’s drug use. She’s been mandated to…

A drama about the experiences of inmates participating in a theater program at the titular prison, featuring actual veterans of the program. Sing Sing, a film from director Greg Kwedar, is set, as you might expect, in the famous almost 200-year-old New York State prison thirty miles north of the city called Sing Sing, the name being a distorted version of a Native American name for that area. I’ve only been aware of it through old Hollywood prison movies up until now. But this film takes place in the real Sing Sing of today. In a large auditorium in the…

The true story of forbidden romance between the heir to the throne and a 17-year-old girl in 19th century Austria was brought to life in this classic film from 1936. Anatole Litvak was a Russian Jewish writer in the avant-garde theater of the early revolutionary period in the Soviet Union, eventually getting involved in the film industry there. He slipped out of the country in 1925, it’s not clear exactly how, and ended up directing films at UFA, the big German studio that was the home of Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and many others. He made a few films that…

Two recent films explore new styles and meanings in the horror genre. I think it’s significant that in our current historical moment the most prevalent film genre is horror. It might have something to do with the scariest stuff these days not being in movies, but in the news. Well, there are plenty of routine formulaic horror films, but horror is also attracting new artists that have more on their minds than just saying “Boo!” Many horror films employ supernatural elements, like black magic or demonology. Weapons, written and directed by Zach Cregger, is one of those, but never attempts…

Agnès Varda’s film essay on gleaning explores the many implications of this ancient practice. Gleaning—gathering food left on the fields after harvest—is an ancient tradition in Europe. In France, as we learn in the great Agnès Varda’s endearingly personal film from 2000, The Gleaners and I, gleaning is protected by law, although the laws vary in different provinces, and with different crops. Varda was intrigued not only with this practice, but with all its echoes and implications—our attitudes and policies towards waste; our ideas about property, labor and sustenance; the dumpster-diving of the homeless in the cities; artwork based on…

A young woman professor is challenged by the memory of a traumatic event. Sorry, Baby is the debut feature from 31-year-old Eva Victor, who is the writer, director, and star of this drama about persevering through traumatic events with honesty and humor. Victor plays Agnes, a newly promoted professor at a New England school who is visited by her best friend and former college roommate Lydie, played by Naomi Ackie. Their affectionate ways with each other, their conversations and jokes, convey a genuine rapport. Then Lydie springs a surprise: she’s going to have a baby. The film is divided into…

A woman dying from cancer asks an old friend to be in the room next door when she takes her own life. The Room Next Door, the latest film from the grand artist of Spanish cinema, Pedro Almodóvar, is based on a novel by Sigrid Nunez that I have not read, but the story couldn’t be more well-suited to his style. Ingrid, a successful novelist, played by Julianne Moore, discovers that Martha, an old friend with whom she’s been out of touch for years, a former war correspondent played by Tilda Swinton, has cancer. When she visits her in the…

Charles Laughton’s only film as a director, from 1955, is the dark tale of a criminal (Robert Mitchum) pretending to be a preacher, who marries an unsuspecting woman (Shelley Winters) in order to find money that her deceased husband had hidden, and in the process terrorizes her and her two children. Charles Laughton was a renowned British actor who made it big in Hollywood, but someday wanted to direct a movie. In 1953, Paul Gregory, a producer and long-time friend, sent him a book by a new writer, Davis Grubb, called “The Night of the Hunter.” Laughton was captivated, and…

Documents the German occupation of Amsterdam from 1940 to 1945 by showing us many locations in the city as they appear today, while a narrator tells us what people and events from the Nazi period lived or took place in that location. Try to imagine your country being attacked, conquered, and then occupied by a hostile foreign power. It’s difficult unless you’ve been through it. The most prominent examples occurred during the Second World War, when Nazi Germany conquered most of the European countries, instituting its murderous practices into the fabric of these countries. We have countless testimonies and books.…

Raven Jackson’s debut feature shows the world of rural black Southern life through the eyes of a serious, sensitive girl. A black girl is being taught how to fish by her father. We see a close up of her hands turning the reel. “Not so fast,” he tells her. “Easy.” When she catches a fish she touches its scales with her fingers, feeling its curious texture. We see her face, with intense eyes, serious and still. A younger girl, her sister, is looking on. Eventually the father says “let’s go home,” but the girl pauses to touch the shallow water…

A pub owner in a depressed town in northern England helps welcome Syrian refugees into the community. British director Ken Loach announced his retirement a couple years ago, at the age of 86. Like everything else in his remarkable career, this was a modest and well considered decision. With 26 feature films, plus numerous shorts and TV programs, he’s been an important presence in cinema for 60 years—one of only ten directors to win the Golden Palm at Cannes twice. But because he never stopped making movies about the lives of working class people, their problems and underlying issues; and…

A parody of a host of film genres displays Wes Anderson’s style at its most avant-garde. I’ve talked a lot about Wes Anderson over the years. In fact I’ve reviewed seven of his films on this show. I’m at the point where I want to just assume you know something about his work by now, and that I don’t have to keep describing his style and methods, such as sets that look like marvelous intricate toys, everything in bold colors, block-like patterns, with the camera either facing the actors head on or from the side, precise geometrical movements, the love…

A romance of 19th century France, in which a famous chef comes to rely on his female assistant to carry out his culinary ideas. Food films: movies that tell stories about cooking and eating, are a popular genre. When I think of the best ones, Babette’s Feast and Tampopo immediately come to mind. There are others. Now we can add The Taste of Things, from Vietnamese-French director Trần Anh Hùng, to that list. The Taste of Things begins at a French country estate in the late 19th century. Eugénie, an older woman played by Juliette Binoche, is smiling while she…

A bold adaptation of a famous Czech novel about brutal conflict in 13th century Bohemia, and the struggle between power and innocence. Marketa Lazarová, the 1967 film by Czech writer-director František Vláčil, opens on a vast winter scene, wild horses running in the distance. A deep-voiced narrator says we are being told a series of stories that were assembled “almost at random.” We are plunged into a world of ragtag medieval warriors: stealing, fighting, and killing as they roam through a snow-covered landscape. It turns out that when the film says the stories are random and unworthy, it is seeking…

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Gregory Peck plays a general assigned to toughen up an American aircraft bomber group in England during World War II. During World War II, Hollywood made a lot of war films. There were some good ones, and some not so good, but they were all presented in the spirit of patriotism that was a requirement during the fighting, and so almost every one of them could be called a “flag waver.” Nothing wrong with that, except that the reality of war was softened for homefront audiences. On the other hand, in the years right after the war, from the late…

Martin Scorsese’s 2019 documentary covers Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour from 1975, and Simon Weitzman’s recent doc presents the life and career of Tucson native and rock n’ roll tour manager Chris O’Dell. Bob Dylan’s 1975 “Rolling Thunder Revue” was a unique idea for a concert tour. Dylan and his band at the time (which included the violinist Scarlet Rivera) were the headliners. Joan Baez and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott were also on the bill. Allen Ginsberg came along as a spiritual guide, and he recited some of his poetry in the shows. Various other guests hopped on the bus…

Song Without a Name, the feature debut, from 2019, of Peruvian director Melina León, starts in 1988, with newspaper headlines describing Peru’s financial collapse and the catastrophic inflation that followed. This was a time of conflict between the government and a Maoist terror group called The Shining Path. In a small cabin within a stark mountain vastness, a fire blazing, a group of native people, Quechuans, are praying and singing while a young man, Leo, dons the beautiful costume of a traditional Andean musician. He’s leaving for the town of Iquitos to work a manual labor job while hopefully also making money playing music with local groups. Among those gathered we see a young woman, Georgina, who is in the late stages of pregnancy. She is Leo’s wife, and is going with him to Iquitos to work. In the windy morning they climb the steep hill leaving home, the black and white photography and the spare, almost abstract landscape making this all look like a fearful dream. After reaching the town, Leo works in a warehouse, while Georgina sits on a street corner selling potatoes that have been assigned to them by Leo’s bosses. It’s a difficult adjustment, where they have to speak Spanish to get by, which they don’t know that well, instead of their indigenous language Quechua. They don’t usually get to see each other until the night time. One day, Georgina hears an announcement on the radio. There is a free clinic in Lima that will provide childbirth care and delivery. Experiencing the beginning of labor pains, she takes the 2-hour bus ride, alone, to the address given on the radio. The austere looking clinic is in one room of a large, official looking building. Georgina is there coached through a difficult childbirth. “It’s a girl,” they say, and then the mother loses consciousness. When she awakens later and asks for her baby, they say she’s in the hospital. The next day, despite her frantic requests to see her child, they drag her out of the clinic and lock the door. In the coming days she will return, eventually with Leo, and keep banging on the door. No one answers. It takes some time before Georgina can grasp the terrible truth that her baby has been stolen. At the police station, they shrug their shoulders and say they can do nothing. Georgina’s grief is conveyed in heart rending fashion by first-time actress Pamela Mendoza, whose intense determination and emotion carries the film. Eventually she goes to one of the Lima newspapers, and a young, very serious reporter played by Tommy Párraga, decides to investigate. The movie then explores his experience, as a member of the press, of Peru’s social and political malaise. One notices immediately that León’s style is not at all traditional. She’s committed to an expressionism that magnifies the feelings of her characters, and her visual strategies are daring. The story is based on a real case from that time, with implications far wider than this one woman. The combination of the “solving a mystery” type story with the avant-garde visual technique is spellbinding. Without reservation, I’ll say this is a great film that has not become as well known as it should be. And the profound meaning of the title, Song Without a Name, is eventually revealed, to devastating effect.

In August of 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed in a concert at Madison Square Garden. This was a benefit for mentally disabled people, in response to a recent TV program that had exposed neglect and abuse of patients at the Willowbrook hospital in Staten Island. Well, as it turned out, this was the only full-length concert that John Lennon would do in the years after the Beatles disbanded. He showed up as guests in other people’s concerts, or in brief gigs, but this show was headlined by him and Yoko, and included other artists as well, including Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack. The recording was eventually made into an album released in 1986, after Lennon’s death, called “Live in New York City.” But now film from that concert, with an excellent soundtrack remastered by Lennon’s son Sean Ono Lennon, has emerged in a new documentary entitled One to One: John & Yoko. This could have just been made into a concert film, which considering the quality of the sound and image, would have been fine. But veteran director Kevin Macdonald, famed for his innovative documentaries, is the leading creative spark behind this movie, and he decided to use the concert as a kind of focal point for that brief tumultuous period in America, 1971 and ‘72, when John & Yoko first moved to New York and became part of a vital artistic and political scene there. We open with Lennon’s rocker “New York City,” in a dynamic performance with his band at the time, Elephant’s Memory. Interwoven with the songs, which include breathtaking versions of Instant Karma, Imagine and Mother, is a fascinating collection of footage and audio excerpts from that period. Macdonald’s starting point is John & Yoko’s moving into a Greenwich Village apartment in 1971, where they would spend a lot of time watching TV. A collage of amusing TV ads and parts of various shows of that time is accompanied by news clips of a nation going through some difficult changes. We see that the Vietnam War was still raging. We watch coverage of the uprising at Attica State Prison in ’71, about which Lennon wrote a song. In contrast to the countercultural movement, we see lots of Richard Nixon and his campaign for reelection in ’72, and George Wallace running for president again, and getting shot, and too many other events to mention. Macdonald’s tapestry includes the great and the trivial, and there are funny excerpts from phone calls between John, Yoko, and various other people in their lives. It’s a fiercely evocative portrait, both joyous and sad in retrospect, of this remarkable time. In leaving the Beatles, John sought to discover who he really was, unimaginable fame having sort of frozen him into a life that didn’t feel free. Yoko Ono wasn’t just someone he fell in love with. She was an experimental artist, part of a vibrant avant-garde movement that awakened something in Lennon that felt to him like a new birth. His awareness became radical, and in Yoko he found a partner that could see him and help him realize his potential. One to One: John & Yoko is essential viewing for those who want to get to know the power of these two amazing people, and to reckon with a time when millions were crying out to just give peace a chance.