THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE

The Testament Of Ann Lee certainly passes the look test. It’s what some might call visually stunning but it kind of lacks in the typical substance that one might expect from a biopic. Now…I don’t think director Mona Fastvold was trying to make a typical biopic so perhaps this criticism doesn’t concern her. As flawed as this movie is, I find it interesting (interesting can be a good thing). It's part biopic, part dance/performance piece and part musical.
In my personal opinion, this is the perfect response to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Both movies exist on some kind of a feminist spectrum, but Ann Lee is able to do so without all the surface-level “girl power”/“men are dumb simple creatures” messaging that the Barbie does. Another big similarity between the two films is that both movies are centered around female characters that have no interest in sex or romance. Ann Lee preached heavily about celibacy and Gerwig’s Barbie rebelled against the idea of the title character being the romantic interest of Ken. 

A big difference between the two films is The Testament Of Ann Lee doesn’t really think about men in comparison to Barbie. One could argue that Barbie accidentally centers the male characters at certain points. Think about it - Ryan Gosling's performance as Ken is just as synonymous with the Barbie movie as Margot Robbie. Amanda Seyfried completely carries this Ann Lee biopic. There are male co-stars but none are as memorable or as important as her. I appreciate that approach. Barbie tries to provoke and lightly troll a particular type of male at times ("film bros", misogynists, women-haters, loudmouths, jerks, etc). Ann Lee doesn't really concern itself with men. There’s nothing more silly and pointless than putting in a lot of effort to troll a group of people that already can't stand you or don't care what you do. We've reached a point where changing the gender or the race of a character in a story is done mostly now to annoying and poke at people rather than to make a genuine piece of art. There's nothing worse than grown adults like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh crying over updated iterations of things like The Little Mermaid or Harry Potter using female, trans or Black actors. But at the same time, I can't stand people who can only approach art from the standpoint of just bothering or annoying someone. How old are we??

The Testament Of Ann Lee certainly shows the evil that men do while still making women the center of the story. It should also be noted that the different religious sects that the movie focuses on are all based in the belief that the second coming of Christ will be a woman.

I don’t have a "fragile male ego" either. If you think men are big dumb children - fine. Just stand ten toes down on your opinion. Don't dip your toes in and out. Don’t pander to septum nose ring twitter and instagram moms that lie about their life being hard when it isn’t if you only half-heartedly feel that way. It’s phony and disingenuous.

Barbie / The Testament Of Ann Lee

I don't think any of this was intentional but even the moment where we are introduced to Ann Lee's husband is right out of the scene in Barbie where Ken first tries to dance with her...

Barbie / The Testament Of Ann Lee

To Be Clear - I enjoyed Barbie overall but a big portion of that movie plays out like it was made for people that like to mindlessly retweet and reshare lighthearted surface-level “men are dumb” posts all while adoring their husbands and wearing “boy mom” shirts. Hating men and/or thinking they’re trash is perfectly fine I guess. Just be genuine about it. I respect folks that claim to dislike men as long as they really live that life. If it’s just your online persona or something you like to profess only when you’re around other women, then you’re just corny and pandering for nothing.

 

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc / The Testament Of Ann Lee

If I had to compare Ann Lee to something else - I’d say it’s very "Robert Eggers-coded". Eggers is a heavily influenced director himself and he hasn’t done or created anything new in cinema, but I don’t know if there would be a lane for this movie to exist right now without semi-recent stuff like The Witch or The Northman.
And, similar to Eggers' films, Ann Lee has some light Dreyer imagery. While they aren’t identical in any way, the funeral scenes at the end of both films are kind of similar to me (minus the resurrection in Ordet). 

Ordet / The Testament Of Ann Lee

A big flaw with this movie is the weird run time and all the history that is skipped over. This is a highly speculative retelling of the life of Ann Lee - an influential figure in the evangelical movement during the mid-late 1700s. The film starts at her birth and ends with her death which was brought on from complications of a physical attack. In between, we follow her religious journey from joining the Quakers to branching off to the Shaking Quakers to forming her own religious sect; The Shakers. There’s a lot of religious and world history to cover in her story. I wouldn’t have been mad if this was a mini-series or a show on a streaming service for the story to flesh out more (the movie also has voiceover narration that feels like it was tacked on after the fact in order to make it easier to follow).

You should never expect a biopic to capture and address everything, but this movie has the time to drag out elements that aren’t all that necessary while speeding through entire periods of Ann Lee’s life that are incredibly important (her various times in jail, the loss of all her children, her travels outside of just New England, etc). The Testament Of Ann Lee has a runtime of 2 hours and 17 minutes which is such an odd length for a movie. I’ve been saying this since the start of this blog but a biopic needs to be an 85 minute film focused on a specific isolated period of time or it needs to be a minimum of three hours if we’re going to cover someone’s entire life like this movie does. The same core team behind this movie was also behind the almost four hour Brutalist. I wonder why Ann Lee wasn’t fleshed out the same way The Brutalist was. I would have loved to see this movie take the same approach as Peter Watkin's Edvard Munch.

I don’t really like this movie but I'm glad that it exists because it can’t be digested or critiqued by simple-minded disingenuous folks like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh. Male and male-centered critics that want to preemptively tear apart a movie for having feminist ideals or not making men the centerpiece can’t really process something like The Testament Of Ann Lee because it doesn’t have an evil central male character to represent all men. Again - this movie is very flawed to me but I'm glad it exists.

DREAM STORY

I’ve been in a real Eyes Wide Shut phase these last couple of weeks. A lot of deep-dive overly analytical videos on the film have been recommended to me on Instagram recently and I have to admit that some of them make some interesting points. 

 

The film also trended on Twitter the other day and it’s being pushed on Tubi (where I ended up watching it). Much like when C-19 shut the world down in March of 2020 and everyone was rushing to post their thoughts/reviews/feelings on Safe, Outbreak, Contagion and other virus-related movies, I think a lot of the recent Epstein and Diddy news has people trying to connect all of that to Eyes Wide Shut and anything EWS-related.

I guess this blog post means I’m participating…


Outside of hardcore Eyes Wide Shut Fans, it seems like folks don’t realize that there are three other film adaptations of the original source material: Traumnovelle. Two films before EWS (Traumnovelle and Il cavaliere, la morte e il diavolod) and one recent adaptation from 2024 (Dream Story). I don’t even think a lot of hardcore Kubrick fans acknowledge this. I didn't even know the most recent adaptation existed until recently. It isn't good but it's also fascinating to me.

You would think someone like me with a blog like PINNLAND would jump at the opportunity to make comparisons and sidebysides, but it’s kind of pointless. Someone also did the work for me (the 1983 Italian version is left out but you get the idea).

  

There is certainly a nice-sized Venn diagram crossover of Eyes Wide Shut cultists and diehard Kubrick fans, but there are separate groups that don’t always intermingle. Believe it or not - there are online communities of folks that are obsessed with Eyes Wide Shut that don’t necessarily care about all the Easter eggs in The Shining or the historical details of Barry Lyndon.

Personally, I find the diehard Stanley Kubrick fans that are obsessed with combing every detail of every one of his films to be the most interesting people. Sometimes they make outrageous claims and their theories are incredibly forced, but I still find them to be fascinating and sometimes incredibly knowledgeable.
The EWS folks have a lot in common with hardcore Boards Of Canada fans. I fall in to the unique Venn Diagram of people that love BoC’s music, Kubrick’s films and Eyes Wide Shut as a standalone entity outside of Kubrick's filmography. About three months ago I joined the Boards Of Canada Reddit group and immediately made the correlation between those people and EWS people.

For those that aren’t familiar with Board of Canada - they’re an electronic music duo from Scotland that relies heavily on Easter eggs, half-truths, occult imagery and anonymity. One could make a fairly easy argument that these elements describe both Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut.

Occult man-made circles, pentagrams, hexagrams, stars and other images are often associated with BoC’s music and Eyes Wide Shut.


Obsessive fandom can sometimes be incredibly informative even if they're base is rooted in batshit crazy theories. I do think it’s important to be overly familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s filmography and style of filmmaking when dissecting Eyes Wide Shut. He’s famous for his attempts at accuracy, OCD-like work-rate and avoiding continuity errors. This makes his work more intriguing in my older age because for someone so supposedly obsessed with “perfection”, there are a lot of possible plot holes and intentional continuity errors in some of his films. I like to think that Kubrick has been messing with his audience on purpose much like how most of the characters surrounding Dr. Harford in the story of Traumnovelle/Eyes Wide Shut have been messing with him (and how Boards of Canada loves to mess with their fans).


The first two adaptions of Traumnovelle are lesser known because they're basiclly B-movies. And on a personal note - they just aren’t very good (the 1983 Italian iteration is quite goofy). The most recent adaptation isn’t good either but it’s kind of fascinating for a variety of reasons.

On one hand, Dream Story is trying to stay true to the source material but with a modern twist. The basic premise is still there. A doctor stumbles upon multiple levels/worlds of sexual perversions after his ego is bruised from learning that his wife has sexual desires for another man (an underground organization of powerful elites may or may not be behind a chunk of the doctor’s discoveries). It’s best to not judge this movie from the trailer. It looks like an SNL skit parodying Eyes Wide Shut. On some level Dream Story does try to take from Kubrick's adaptation but there are some differences.
This time around director Florian Frerichs throws in more surreality, elaborate dream sequences and elements of S&M that aren’t in the other movie adaptions. Eyes Wide Shut certainly plays around with reality and throws in a dream sequences/fantasy, but it’s not the same. Dreams Story has total breaks in reality way more frequently. But because Eyes Wide Shut is also a modern retelling of Traumnovelle starring two major movie stars directed by one of the most legendary filmmakers - Dream Story will always be in the shadow of Kubrick.

Eyes Wide Shut aside, Dream Story does itself no favors. The acting is flat, the chemistry between the actors is almost non existent and Florian Frerichs clearly takes from Eyes Wide Shut as if we don't see it. Sometimes word for word! This is fascinating to me. Has there ever been a cinematic remake/adaptation/reinterpretation that tries to stay true to the original literary source material but also lifts/borrows/steals/copies from one of a previous cinematic iteration? Maybe John Carpenter's The Thing? 


Dream Story is really only made for people that are Traumnovelle/Eyes Wide Shut completists or folks that stay up late and watch random stuff on tubi when they can't sleep. I guess I’m somewhere in between.

LURKER

This wasn’t what I was expecting but I still dug it. About a third of the way in to Lurker I knew this wasn’t going to be the queer stalker movie that the trailer made it out to be. If anything this was sort of a combination of Almost Famous and Nightcrawler. I know these influences to be true because director Alex Russell admitted this…

the first 15 minutes of Lurker plays out like a toxic rendition of Almost Famous...

Almost Famous / Lurker

Matthew and Lou (Nightcrawler) have a lot of similarities as well...

Almost Famous / Lurker

I know some folks are getting tired of new movies constantly being collages of other movies but the tone and overall look of Lurker is very different from Almost Famous and Nightcrawler. 

I know this is a lazy comparison but the way Lurker handles obsession, voyeurism and one very specific scene in the desert towards the end of the movie - one might be reminded of Lynch's Lost Highway...

Lost Highway / Lurker

Lurker certainly has elements of traditional stalking and hints at queerness between the two main characters but this was really about the toxic relationship between a rising indie pop star and his entourage/hanger-oners. If anything, this is less about the way we obsess over celebrities (there’s plenty off movies that explore this), and more about the dangers of who you let in to your circle at a very pivotal and/or vulnerable time. In the film we follow a popular up & coming indie musician (“Oliver”) who forms a friendship with an amateur photographer (“Matthew”). Almost overnight, the fickle and flighty Oliver asks Matthew to be a part of his entourage as a documentarian/photographer without realizing that Matthew is quite unstable. As you can imagine, Matthew’s instability and Oliver’s flightless clash and their relationship turns psychologically abusive on both sides (I say both sides because while Matthew is certainly the unstable one, we soon learn that Oliver is also kind of jerk and inconsiderate to the people around him).

Lurker shows how easy it can be to infiltrate a rising young celebrity's entourage as long as you calculate each move and say the right things like Matthew. At first, Matthew doesn’t tell Oliver everything he wants to hear. Instead of being a “yes man”, Matthew is honest and offers seemingly honest criticism about Oliver’s music which makes him stand out from the rest of the “yes men” and vultures trying to latch on to his success. It should be noted that Oliver’s pre-existing entourage of yes-men and yes-women are also to blame for the events in the movie. Early on they see how unstable Matthew is and instead of warning Oliver, they say nothing and invite this weirdo in to the group.
Eventually Oliver starts to realize how “off” Matthew is but instead of completely cutting him off, they develop this weird on again/off again toxic friendship that continues after the credits role. The last 10-15 minutes might turn some folks off. I’m not completely sold on the ending myself.

In a year of unnecessarily long movies with 2-1/2 hour runtimes, it was nice to finally watch something that sticks the landing in under 100 minutes (I have no issue with long movies when the story calls for it but there’s no reason for movies like The Accountant 2 or Weapons to be over two hours long).

PERFECT DAYS - SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL *UPDATED*

 

A Hen In The Wind / Perfect Days

Last year I shared my thoughts on Wim Winders' Perfect Days and it's connection to the work of Ozu (click here to read). Not every cinematic comparison could make it in to the original post. After a while, a lot of Ozu's signature shots can get pretty similar/redundant and I didn't want to repeat myself. 

Below are the cinematic parallels that I saved from the cutting room floor...

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Tokyo Twilight / Perfect Days

Tokyo Twilight / Perfect Days

Tokyo Chorus / Perfect Days

Tokyo Chorus / Perfect Days

An Autumn Afternoon / Perfect Days

A Hen In The Wind / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Dragnet Girl / Perfect Days

End Of Summer / Perfect Days

End Of Summer / Perfect Days

End Of Summer / Perfect Days

Tokyo Story / Perfect Days

The Flavor Of Green Tea Over Rice / Perfect Days

An Autumn Afternoon / Perfect Days

Tokyo Chorus / Perfect Days

A FEW WORDS ON PERFECT DAYS *UPDATED*

Wim Wenders’ latest is one of those films that’ll be miscategorized as “simple”, “light” or even “boring” to those that watch it casually or on a surface level. But beyond the time-filling hobbies and Jeanne Dielman-esque day to day routines of the film’s main character lies a heavy story about regret and making peace with the past.

Putting aside the excess baggage and semi-ambiguous family drama of the film’s main character, I find myself wanting to live the life of someone like Hirayama. He’s a simple man that takes pride in his job, loves music on cassette and spends his free time taking photographs of trees. Having outlets & serious hobbies other than your job/work/career is incredibly important to one’s sanity. I can personally attest to this. My obsession with digging for things like music & movies keeps me sane. Hirayama’s love of photography, trees, physical media and cozy local bars keeps him sane. If he didn’t have those things he would be left alone with his thoughts of loneliness and the strained relationship with his family (it should be noted that his niece does make an effort to have some kind of a relationship with him).

Under a different director, the character of Hirayama would be a cartoonish iteration of Robert Crumb or Harvey Pekar. A curmudgeon that hates his own hobbies and prefers to be alone due to his hatred of most people. But Wim Wenders shows the positive side of niche hobbies and spending time alone. 

Interestingly enough, Perfect Days is a film that plays in to my personal hobbies and healthy obsessions. On one hand, this is very much Wenders’ own movie but it also serves as a love letter to one Yasujiro Ozu. There’s lots of visual comparisons to be made form this film.

Autumn Afternoon / Perfect Days

of course Ozu's Spirit looms largely over the movie - Wim Wenders, Tiff.net

Tokyo Story / Perfect Days

I saw TOKYO STORY, and I stayed for the next three shows [of Ozu's films] that day until I stumbled out of the theatre late at night. I'd never seen anything that had so much shaken my world - Wim Wenders, AnOtherMagazine

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

A Story Of Floating Weeds / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Equinox Flower / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Good Morning / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Tokyo Chorus / Perfect Days

Late Spring / Perfect Days

Good Morning / Perfect Days

Good Morning / Perfect Days

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family / Perfect Days

Tokyo Story / Perfect Days

I’ve never taken Wenders for a Tarkovsky guy, but this particular moment from Perfect Days (on the right) feels like an homage to the highway scene from Solaris (also shot in Japan).

Solaris / Perfect Days

There’s even a coincidental connection to Wenders’ former mentee Jim Jarmusch (I like to imagine these two guys exist in the same universe)

Paterson / Perfect Days

 

Perfect Days feels timeless with tons of replay value and is slowly becoming my go-to movie to put on when I can’t think of anything else to watch.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

I went in to this with low expectations and came out pleasantly satisfied. Rose Glass’ sophomore feature didn’t break any new ground but it’s certainly a solid popcorn movie. I think some people are eager to make this out to be something more than it is due to the sexuality within the film but at the end of the day it’s nothing more than a fun crime story. And that’s totally fine. Contrary to what a lot of critics try to push nowadays, some movies exist for entertainment and/or a momentary escape. Everything isn’t some radical or political statement. On a surface level, Love Lies Bleeding rests somewhere between the cinema of Nicolas Winding Refn and a more polished/mimicked iteration of early Gregg Araki. I was eager to compare this to stuff like Wild at Heart & Thelma & Lousie but Glass herself made a point to avoid tapping in to those films. Also, making that kind of comparison is like calling something that’s slightly weird; “Lynchian”. It’s cheap. 

Speaking of cheap and things being incorrectly labeled as “Lynchian” – there is a shot of a dark road at night in Love Lies Bleeding so I’m sure some critics jumped at the chance to compare it to Lost Highway.

Because so much of the DNA and ingredients of [Love Lies Bleeding] is so easily connectable to so many other films — Wild at Heart, Thelma and Louise, True Romance, anything with two lovers with guns and murder in extremity — I was wary about not wanting it to [revisit them] – Rose Glass, Hollywood Reporter

At this point, a movie like Thelma & Louise is so popular that you can’t avoid some type of subconscious influence but there’s no unique connection between the two films outside of the desert and two women kind of on the run…

I've never seen Thelma and Louise but that's so famous that even if you haven't seen it, you sort of feel like you have, so I'm sure it has an influence somewhere – Rose Glass, Theskinny.co.uk

Again – this feels like it was birthed from someone trying to pay homage to Gregg Araki with way more budget and a bit less grit. That may sound a little harsh but even with criticisms like that, I really did enjoy Love Lies Bleeding overall. I couldn’t find any interviews where Glass name-drops Araki as a source of inspiration but some of the similarities in the movie, intentional or not, are undeniable…

Doom Generation / Love Lies Bleeding

Doom Generation / Love Lies Bleeding

While the basic romance/crime story has been done before to some degree, Glass throws in things like female bodybuilding and random moments of surreality to try and stand out from other sweaty cigarette stenched crime capers (if you’re looking for a more direct comparison, Love Lies Bleeding is definitely a first cousin to something like Bound). There are a handful of scenes in this movie that seem a little random for the sake of being random but I’m honestly not mad at that.

This story is set in the 80’s and for someone not even born in that decade, Glass does an excellent job of not falling in to the trap of dressing all the characters up in neon windbreakers & rayban sunglasses. It seems like whenever a filmmaker wants to set a film in the 80s, the first thing they do is make everything neon & cheesy. The 80’s was not all MTV, Boy George & Madonna. I was born in 1981. My memory of the 80’s was a lot of cigarette smoke, ugly carpets (that trapped in all the cigarette smoke) and the color palettes were often browns & oranges as apposed to neon pinks & yellows. Again – Love Lies Bleeding has a bit too much sheen for a seedy 1980’s Reno, Nevada crime story, but there is a genuine attempt at trying to capture the 80s. The smells, the ashtrays, the faded jeans, etc…

The small handful of cinematic references that Glass openly pulls from are also a bit outside of the box. Instead of the aforementioned Thelma & Louise or Wild At Heart, Glass pulls from sources like Paul Verhoeven and 1960s B-movies. These influences are even more interesting to me because her first film, Saint Maud, pulled from folks like Bergman & Polanski (a lot of people claimed there was Tarkovsky in Saint Maud but according to Glass, she wasn’t very familiar with his work at the time).

Showgirls was just one of those films that I remember watching when I was probably too young to watch it quite late one night on TV - Rose Glass, The Hollywood Reporter

Showgirls / Love Lies Bleeding

Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman / Love Lies Bleeding

Contrary to what one might assume, the Refn similarities lie in the music and the random spurts of violence and not the fascination with trying to replicate the 80’s as some sort of Andy Warhol/David Lachapelle/pop art fever dream.