Movies that hate their Black characters

Earlier this month I posted that I didn't have a formalized plan, in terms of scheduled viewings, for honoring Black History Month on my blog. Never have. Too close to the end of my ranking year to start up another big project that involves multiple viewings in the very first month after I'm free from that previous commitment. 

However, I do seem interested in digging into issues related to Black representation on film this month, as evidenced by that post and now this one. The unspeakably awful decision by Trump to post the racist video of the Obamas was just the cherry on top -- and should be the cherry on top of his disqualification as president, but we know it will just be on to the next scandal, soon forgotten. 

The thing that triggered the current post was Gaspar Noe's Climax, though I'm using the poster for another movie because I just used Climax on a different post two days ago. 

First off let me say that the representation of Black characters in film is very complicated. I don't need to go into the whole history here, which I did as recently as three years ago. So yeah, this isn't the first time I've written about issues like this on the blog. But we've gone from representing them carelessly, leaning into pernicious stereotypes, to representing them way too angelically, such that a Black character in certain movies can't even be guilty of an impure thought, let alone an impure action.

The good news about maybe the last ten to 15 years is that we've landed somewhere in the middle, where we recognize the disservice we're doing with either extreme, and actively seek to find a middle ground. In other words, to make these characters real human beings.

But there's that part of us that's still in there, that worries when a film seems to be making them too human. 

Take Climax, for example. 

I don't think you can say that Noe is racist, or if he is, he's hidden it so well that he's been able to use Black actors to compose a third or more of his primary cast of about 20 in Climax. Or really, Black dancers, I should say, because the cast are dancers first, actors second. 

But let's consider what some of these Black characters do in this narrative, and again in this post we have CLIMAX SPOILERS. 

The character Dom repeatedly kicks and knees a woman in the stomach, even after the woman has just said she's pregnant. Dom believes this woman has spiked their punch with acid -- she didn't drink any due to the pregnancy -- but it's a pretty big and callous gamble on the idea that the woman is lying about her pregnancy. Dom also participates in an effort to eject a man out of the building and into the snow. That man later dies. 

The character Taylor is obsessed with the romantic life of his sister, five years younger, and as the evening goes on, we learn that this obsession goes beyond that of the standard overprotective brother. He's actually got a sexual interest in his sister that he acts on under the influence of the acid, in addition to telling her that he loves her -- which we take to mean that he's in love with her. He's also just led the lynching party of the man who was ejected from the building with the accusation that he spiked the punch, simply because this man has been dating (and having sex with) his sister.

The characters Kyrra and Cyborg, in the early stages of the evening, have a conversation in which they talk humorously about their sexual prowess and what they would do to various women there. It's humorous to them anyway, and seems harmless at the time despite the graphic content -- it could just be "locker room talk." But later, we see them carrying out these desires -- not necessarily without consent, but with dangerous abandon, and in the middle of the dance floor. These two are also part of the lynch mob of the man they expel from the building, Omar.

To be clear, the remaining characters in this movie are also pretty rotten in their own ways. There are only a few characters who are actually harmless, actually possibly good people either under the influence of LSD or not. And the character who actually spiked the punch is not one of the Black chraracters. 

But assaulting someone with the possible outcome of causing them to abort their fetus, whether you believe the prgenancy is real or not? Framing your sister's boyfriend so you can have sex with her? Talking about violating women and then proceeding to actually do it, whether it's consensual or not?

Yes, these are not good looks for these four characters.

I should say that there are at least three other Black characters who aren't guilty of any shocking behavior, and then there are a number of others who are mixed race. But the four characters above are quite clearly of African descent, on both sides of their heritage.

There is certainly a fair amount of conversation about this on the web. People pointed this out in their reviews at the time. For me, I was so caught up in the other crazy things this movie was doing to really focus in on these unfortunate characterizations. 

But it brings us back to our original idea about how to find the middle ground between portraying Black characters as barbarians and as saints. Surely it would be okay for one or two of these characters to behave abominably. But when Noe has negative behaviors he wants to dole out between multiple characters, and he has nearly 20 to choose from, couldn't he have given some of these plotlines to white characters?

I'm not sure how seriously this cuts into my feelings about the movie, but it cuts into them enough to go public with my thoughts about it.

The reason I've chosen The Ballad of Wallis Island as the poster for this post is that there is a different sort of uncharitable characterization of this film's only Black character, one that gave me enough pause that it ate away at me a bit, and made me wonder whether the movie truly belonged in my top ten of 2025.

Just to briefly summarize the relevant plot points, the characters Herb McGwyer and Nell Mortimer, both white, were once part of a successful folk duo, and were in a romantic relationship as well. That was maybe a decade ago, but they've been summoned to the same small island off the British coast to play together once more -- and maybe, at least McGwyer hopes, to rekindle the romantic relationship. 

The only trouble is, Motimer already has a husband: Michael, who is a Black American. He doesn't represent unfortunate stereotypes in the way the Climax characters do; he's an intellectual who favors bird watching. 

But as the story goes on, we also realize that he's bitter and mean. He has one vindictive speech where he dresses McGwyer down for being a has-been, or a never was, and he does it with cruel relish. In a movie with essentially five main characters -- including two who live on the island -- he's the only bad guy. 

The fact that these two movies leave a bad taste in my mouth for two very different characterizations of Black characters gives some idea just how deeply complicated this issue is. I don't want Black characters to be shown as violent and aggresive with insufficient empathy, but I also don't want Black characters to be effete and intelligent ... with insufficient empathy.

So empathy is the crux of the issue here, isn't it? What these five characters have in common is that they engage in cruel behavior thoughtlessly. They are being mean for its own sake, I would say, whether that meanness is actually of a criminal nature, or just emotionally toxic.

Clearly there is a greater risk of Noe being a racist -- the web has other examples of his perceived deficiences in this area -- than the director (James Griffiths) and writers (stars Tom Basden and Tim Key) of The Ballad of Wallis Island. The latter are making a more genteel sort of film to begin with, and they respond to a commendable desire to add some diversity to a cast that might have just as easily been all white. The only problem is, the role they had available for this diversity was the one functioning as the antagonist within the context of the film, and not just an antagonist because he's providing a narrative impediment to the protagonist's goals. He's providing actual malice, some would say unwarranted malice, toward the protagonist.

But then we're back to our original question. Should these characters be saints? Can Black characters never be villains or bad actors?

I think it is a "know it when you see it" sort of thing. If a film leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, maybe that's reason enough to suspect that there's been an insufficient amount of nuance applied to the representation.

If you don't get the bad taste until your fourth viewing -- or you still name the film as part of your top ten, even with the bad taste -- then I guess that tells you how much work on this we all still have to do.

But it also recognizes the inherent complexity I've touched on multiple times. Artists should have the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and maybe, in trying to make this a more diverse world as represented on film, they just haven't done it as delicate a job as they might have. 

Confirmed fourth viewings, and then some

The first time you see a movie, it's out of omniverousness. You want to see anything and everything. Usually you've heard something good about the movie, or you like the director or cast. Sometimes you've heard something bad, and you want to see how bad. Sometimes it's just a Tuesday night and it's sitting there on a streamer.

The second time you see a movie, it's either an endorsement of the first viewing, or an attempt to see what you missed on the first viewing. 

The third time you see a movie, this is probably a movie you really like, maybe even love -- or you could still be feeling around with it, making one more attempt to see what you missed on the first and second viewings.

The fourth time you see a movie? Well, that's the moment it becomes yours. You've stopped trying to make films happen that aren't going to happen. That's the confirmation that it is in your regular rotation, and you probably plan to see it every five years until you die. 

I saw Gapsar Noe's Climax last night for the fourth time, and if you read to the end of this post, you will get a massive spoiler section on why I watched it last night. But there's plenty of good content before then, so don't turn away too early. 

It's the fourth time in less than eight years, which means yeah, I pretty much love this movie. My first viewing was in August of 2018, and then I watched it again in 2019 (to consider it as part of my best of the decade, though it didn't make the cut) and 2021 (just for fun, or "fun," because there are parts of this movie that are an endurance test). In fact, I watched this movie so frequently early in its existence that you could say my fourth viewing broke something of a Climax drought, as it took another four-and-a-half years -- a lot closer to that "every five years" timeframe I mentioned a moment ago.

This is only a way in to what I really want to talk about today.

When I rewatch a movie, I add it to a Letterboxd list I have. I should say, I add it only if it's not already on the list. If it is already on the list, I change the order so it appears at the top, as the most recent. In the notes, I list the other dates I've rewatched this movie, as well as the original date I watched it, if it's available.

This has grown out of a list I keep in a Microsoft Word document, and that list turns 20 this year.

That's right, it was the year 2006 when I decided I should keep track of when I rewatched movies. The first rewatch I ever recorded was in June of 2006, when I saw it fit to make note of the fact that I had rewatched Ghostbusters. I can't tell you the exact day in June of 2006 that I rewatched Ghostbusters, because for the first year-and-a-half I was doing this, I just listed the month and the year. But then with my Christmas 2007 viewing of The Empire Strikes Back, I started adding the exact date and have been doing so ever since.

What this 20-year period does is it allows me to have an exact viewing count of certain favorite movies -- exact for the ones that have come into existence since 2006 or that I've watched for the first time since 2006, I should say. For others, it is only a "confirmed viewing count."

This is what I'm looking at today.

Now, this post is going to give no love to some of my favorite movies of all time. In fact, it's going to give no love to four of my top five movies on Flickchart, and most of my top ten. Let's stick with four of those top five so we don't get too bogged down on this point. Back to the Future (#2), Pulp Fiction (#3), Raiders of the Lost Ark (#4) and Citizen Kane (#5) are all, obviously, movies I love dearly and have seen many times. However, I happen to have seen each of them only a couple times in the past 20 years, for different reasons in each case, that I don't need to get into right now. For these movies, I have a fairly low "confirmed viewing count."

The extreme example of this is probably National Lampoon's Animal House, which might be the movie I've seen the most simply because we watched it about once a week in my freshman year of college, though perhaps I came in and out on some of those and it may not have been a complete start-to-finish viewing each time. Since 2006? Just a single viewing on February 6, 2009. Probably worth a revisit.

So what I'm looking at today are movies where I can confirm at least four viewings. That means I've rewatched them at least three times in the past 20 years. 

And I think it won't surprise you to know that there are a lot of these -- so many in the case of four viewings that I will just give a big list without delving in any further on them. 

The ones higher than that will get a little more time, because they truly rise to a special level. 

Before I give you the info, I want to start out saying I am embarrassed to confess that only a single film from before I was born appears here , and it was only a few months before I was born. While that is disappointing in some respects, it does reflect a genuine preference in me as a cinephile for films that came out when I was capable of seeing them in the theater for the first time. At the very least I am more likely to revisit those films. I'm not going to analyze that tendency today, just report it as fact. 

There's one other little detail I'd like to make you aware of. I started recording inital watches in 2002, and there are a number of movies I saw for the first time after 2002 that I definitely rewatched in those four years before I started recording my rewatches in 2006. Some of those have also gotten a +1 on their confirmed viewing count because I know the post-2006 rewatches were not my first rewatches of those movies. However, I have given them only one additional confirmed viewing, not multiple like some of them may deserve. 

Let's go in reverse order, with the highest first. There are some lists where it's worth working your way up to the highest, but I don't think this is one of them.

9 confirmed viewings
Films: Tangled (2010, Nathan Greno & Byron Howard)
Comment: Everyone who reads this blog knows how much I love Tangled. In fact, this is the 15th time Tangled is getting tagged on my blog, if we are talking accumulated stats. That's nine viewings in just more than 15 years, so I see it more often than every two years. The first five of those were in the first five years of its existence, and I've pumped the brakes a bit in the past ten years. In fact, after last year's ninth viewing disappointed me just a little bit, I am vowing to take a bit of a Tangled break, so I don't know how soon it will get to double digits. However, coincidentally, I only just yesterday was talking about it because I learned of the first casting news regarding the live action version of the movie, with two actors I didn't know in the lead roles and Kathryn Hahn as Mother Gothel. I think this is barely in preproduction, so at this point it doesn't seem likely we'd see it any sooner than 2028. So maybe that'll be a good time to finally make Tangled my first movie to reach a confirmed double digits in viewings. 

8 confirmed viewings
Films: None! 
Comment: We can skip right over this one. Just another indication of how Tangled has dominated my affections during these two decades.

7 confirmed viewings
Films: Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuaron), Galaxy Quest (1999, Dean Parisot), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006, Tom Tykwer)
Comment: I have to tell you that I am cheating just a little bit with this viewing count for Galaxy Quest, for reasons I cannot entirely explain, though I'll try. I've only rewatched Galaxy Quest five times during this 20-year span, which should mean, by the rules I've laid out, that I can only confirm six viewings. Except a memorable feature of my initial Galaxy Quest viewing back in 1999 was that I saw it in the theater on two consecutive nights, that's just how much I loved it. Because this second viewing in 1999 functions effectively as a confirmed viewing, and doesn't require any fuzzy logic like "I'm sure I've seen this three or more other times in the intervening years," I'm going to give it a seventh confirmed viewing. I've probably seen it two other times, in reality, which would equal Tangled, but then would be behind others with a bunch of unconfirmed viewings, which I've already mentioned. 

The two 2006 films finished in my top ten of that decade, with COM all the way up at #2, and they are films I look forward to revisiting as often as I can. Interestingly, both could be higher but the last time I watched either of them was when I watched Children in February of 2022. I last watched Perfume in 2020. 

6 confirmed viewings
Films: Adaptation (2002, Spike Jonze), The Cell (2000, Tarsem Singh), Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry), Raising Arizona (1987, Joel Coen), Spring Breakers (2013, Harmony Korine), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015, J.J. Abrams), Step Brothers (2008, Adam McKay), Vanilla Sky (2001, Cameron Crowe)
Comment: Donnie Darko is worth singling out here because it's one of the ones I mentioned earlier, which got credit for a single unknown rewatch in the years between when I first saw it (early 2003) to when I started recording rewatches in 2006. I may have actually watched Darko as many as three times during these three years, since I was pretty obsessed with it in those first years after watching it, ultimately still fond enough of it seven years later to name it my #1 of the decade. Subsequent viewings have been fewer, but I still do catch up with it every four or five years.

Raising Arizona is, of course, my #1 on Flickchart, but I specifically draw out viewings of this to about every four years just so I can savor it on each viewing and never get tired of it. (See: Tangled.) The only other one from this group that I'll spend an additional comment on is Spring Breakers, which was on a viewing pace similar to Tangled in the first x number of years after it came into existence. But after watching it as the final movie I was vetting for my best of the 2010s -- it came in second to Tangled for the entire decade -- I haven't seen it again since. That was December 30, 2019. I haven't lost any love for Spring Breakers, it's just not come up again for an organic viewing since then -- but that indicates how much higher it could be if I'd kept up anything like my original pace.

5 confirmed viewings
Films: Elf (2003, Jon Favreau), Fantastic Planet (1973, Rene Laloux), First Reformed (2018, Paul Schrader), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008, Nicholas Stoller), Henry Poole is Here (2008, Mark Pellington), Inside Out (2015, Pete Docter), Kissing Jessica Stein (2002, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld), Lost in Translation (2003, Sofia Coppola), Major League (1989, David S. Ward), Moon (2009, Duncan Jones), mother! (2017, Darren Aronofsky), Ruby Sparks (2012, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris), Run Lola Run (1998, Tom Tykwer) This is Spinal Tap (1984, Rob Reiner), Titanic (1997, James Cameron)
Comment: Getting a lot more titles now, unsurprisingly. This is Spinal Tap just made it into this group a few weeks ago, though of course there are lots of repeat viewings of this top ten movie on Flickchart littered throughout the pre-2006 days. First Reformed and mother! are notable for getting to five viewings in only a brief nine years of existence -- even though I listed the release year of First Reformed as 2018, it's usually listed as 2017 because that's when it appeared at festivals. It was my #1 in 2018. (I'm hugely inconsistent on how I handle this, for some reason. Run Lola Run, which also appears here and is in my top 20 on Flickchart along with being what I anointed my #1 out of all my movies that I've ranked #1 for a given year, was actually my #1 of 1999, but I've listed its 1998 German release year here. Who can understand how my brain works, though I think the distinction is between whether it's a foreign film or a domestic film.) Henry Poole is probably the most surprising inclusion here, as I loved this movie enough that I overloaded on viewings of it soon after I first saw it -- though have not now seen it in ten years. 

4 confirmed viewings
Films: Agora (2009, Alejandro Amenabar), Beyond the Hills (2012, Cristian Mungiu), Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu), Bound (1996, Lana & Lily Watchowski), The Cable Guy (1996, Ben Stiller), Climax (2018, Gaspar Noe), Creed (2015, Ryan Coogler), The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Irvin Kershner), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994, Mike Newell), A Ghost Story (2017, David Lowery), The Guru (2003, Daisy von Scherler Mayer), Idiocracy (2006, Mike Judge), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, Joel & Ethan Coen), The Iron Giant (1999, Brad Bird), Monty Pyton and the Holy Grail (1975, Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones), 127 Hours (2010, Danny Boyle), Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho), A Separation (2011, Asgar Farhadi), Sideways (2004, Alexander Payne), The Skeleton Twins (2014, Craig Johnson), The Social Network (2010, David Fincher), Starship Troopers (1997, Paul Verhoeven), The Story of Us (2010, Rob Reiner), Tanna (2015, Martin Butler & Bentley Dean), There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson), Time Bandits (1981, Terry Gilliam), Under the Skin (2014, Jonathan Glazer), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007, Jake Kasdan), War of the Worlds (2005, Steven Spielberg), Watchmen (2009, Zack Snyder), What We Do in the Shadows (2014, Taika Waititi)
Comment: Was it even worth listing all those out? Well, I've just done so, no taking it back now. 

I'm a little self-conscious about having done this exercise, because part of me is worried that knowing the number of times I've watched a movie -- bringing it to the forefront of my thoughts, as an exercise like this does -- makes me less likely to commit further rewatches on a purely organic basis. Like "Wow I can't believe it's been seven years since I watched Spring Breakers, I really need to change that." The beauty of not knowing is that the rewatches represent only a true desire to see that movie in that moment you choose to rewatch it. If I'm conscious of the horse race aspect of it, something pure is lost.

But what can I say. I'm a stats guy. I always will be. I'm maybe even more of a stats guy than I am a movie guy, but shhh, don't tell anybody. 

Okay, now it's finally time for the SPOILER section I mentioned earlier.

This SPOILER section relates to both Climax and to the other movie I saw yesterday, Sirat, so if you haven't seen either of these movies, DO NOT GO ANY FURTHER.

I'm serious. This is your last warning. Though I'll also give a new heading in case you'd like a more definitive line of demarcation.

The thing that made me rewatch Climax after watching Sirat

So both of these movies can be described as "a movie about dance music where the kid dies."

Look I told you to stop reading.

So in Climax, this big group of professional dancers -- like almost 20 -- are housed together in what I understand is a school, in the middle of a blizzard. They're practicing this incredible number for an upcoming dance competition, and if you think I use the word "incredible" lightly, watch the first ten minutes of Climax and you will see that I do not exaggerate. While none of the dancers offers an exact duplicate of what another offers, they all have an astonishing ability to contort their bodies and to bounce with the beat. Not only is there this great opening, set to "Supernature" by Cerrone, but there's another sequence at about the film's midpoint -- just before things go off the rails -- that captures their dance moves from the God's eye view of directly above where they're dancing.

Then someone spikes the sangria with acid, and everything goes to shit.

This particular post does not require us to delve into all the ways the things go to shit, but they are impressive. It does require us to talk about what happens to the only kid present, who appears to be about six years old -- maybe as young as four -- and is the son of a woman who is not dancing, but was once part of this group. 

When she realizes she is unexpectedly high on acid, has never had it before, is super freaked out and does not know the best way to handle it -- and that her son also drank some of the punch -- she takes the little boy and locks him into an electrical closet, so no one can do anything to him and so he can't do anything to himself. (The flaw in the logic of that last assumption is going to soon become tragically clear.) Terrifyingly, we hear his screams to be let out echoing throughout the space, just one of the features of the descent into hell that Climax becomes. 

She's told him to stay clear of that box against the wall because it could kill him. So it's not like she's taken no precautions. But she's also lost the key she used to lock him in, and because everything is so chaotic and because there's a saboteur in their midst, it isn't clear whether she's going to find it in order to finally let him out.

At some point a few minutes after we've last checked in with this plot, the electricity shorts out -- and there's only one conclusion of what happened. One of the other dancers -- who, even before they were dosed, were pretty short on empathy -- shouts out "Tito got fried!" And indeed, that's what happened.

Grim.

Though maybe not as grim as what happens in Sirat, which is why it's dividing critics between those who have decided it's among the best of 2025 and those who are decidedly mixed, perhaps even negative, on it.

There are some big surprises in Sirat that I don't need to spoil, but I do need to spoil this one, and you can't say you haven't been warned -- though I did already give it away. 

A father and his early teenage son are trying to track down their daughter/sister at a desert rave in Morocco. They don't find her at this rave, nor do they even find anyone who knows her, but given her movements in such circles, they think there's a good chance they may find her at the next scheduled desert rave, closer to the border of Mauritania. Which is going to be difficult to get to, given the terrain.

Against their better judgment, a group of five other ravers across two large vehicles, a bus and a truck, allow the man and the boy to follow them in their small and ancient vehicle that's not cut out for this sort of environment. The man's inadequate vehicle comes into play in what happens to his son, but not in the way they expect. 

While the adults are all working to push one of the trucks out of the place that it's been caught in a dip in the road, finally succeeding, the boy -- and his dog, we should point out, who has already had a bad trip himself from eating some human shit containing LSD -- are waiting in their vehicle. For reasons that are not entirely clear except for "shit happens," the vehicle starts to slide backward on the incline. The boy is not old enough to think on his feet and does not pull the handbrake. The car pitches over the side of an embankment and down, down, down, hundreds of rocky and sandy feet below to its ultimate demise, and the demise of the kid and the dog inside.

Grim. Fucking grim.

I think it hits harder in Sirat because the movie is not already set up as a black comedy with a wicked sense of humor, as Climax is. And it's laced with bitter irony because the man is desperately trying to find his daughter, missing five months now, and in the process loses his sweet and earnest younger son as a result of taking imprudent risks. Not to mention the dog.

Both movies are a voyage to hell fueled by drugs and music in their own way, and they made an interesting double feature -- though maybe not to people who love kids and/or dogs. I guess that makes me the sick pervert who doesn't love either? 

MIFF: Opening night not on opening night, and Oh Noe you didn't

It's my fifth MIFF but I'm still experiencing firsts.

Never previously had I seen the opening night film at the Melbourne International Film Festival. This year, I did.

I just didn't see it on opening night.

An encore screening of Paul Dano's Wildlife, which kicked off the festival on Thursday night and which my wife saw that night, was my opening film of a Saturday night double feature. I followed it with the latest gasp-worthy film from Gaspar Noe, Climax.

Wildlife actually represented a second first for me, as it was closed captioned for the hearing impaired. I haven't seen a film presented that way at the festival before -- I don't think I've ever seen a film presented that way, period. I'm not sure how many different films they give this treatment during MIFF, but it makes sense that the opening night film would be one of them. It was a bit distracting, of course -- your eye is trained to flick down to the bottom of the screen to glean information from the subtitles, even if you don't need that information -- but I got used to it eventually. I don't think it impacted my enjoyment of the film. Other things impacted my enjoyment of the film -- like, the quality of the film -- but more on that in a minute.

I'm not entirely clear on why this was selected for the hallowed position of festival opener, it being directed by an American and starring two other Americans (Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan). It does, however, also star Ed Oxenbould, a teenage actor who is indeed Australian. Wouldn't necessarily seem like enough to earn this plum status in the festival, but okay.

Oxenbould actually introduced the film, which was kind of cool, and gave me a little sense of that opening night razzmatazz. He was sticking around for a Q&A after the session.

I usually stay for the Q&A, if I have time and I like the film. But I had only 50 minutes between my two screenings, during which I had to grab some dinner. And, I did not like the film.

I do plan to review this, so I'll just say for now that Dano was fighting an uphill battle making a period piece set in 1960 about a family living in Montana. In order to make it distinctive, Dano needed to really do something unusual with that essentially bland material. Uh uh. It's a story of a kid (Oxenbould) trying to navigate the growing estrangement of his parents, but it makes the fatal mistake of focusing almost none of its energies on the kid himself. We know nothing about him. All we know is that he's really concerned about his parents separating and devotes almost all of his available bandwidth to fretting about them. Oh, and to being very nice. Among many unbelievable things in the film, it's hard to imagine why such a nice boy would have been the offspring of two assholes.

It's especially a shame as I love Dano as an actor, as written about at length here. His choices as an actor are much more interesting than his first choice as a director.

I cleansed my palette with some McDonald's (hope my wife isn't reading this) and then it was off to hope I could keep it down in a Gaspar Noe film.

Oh my.

Some context: I love two of the three Noe films I've seen, those being Irreversible and Enter the Void. I have not seen I Stand Alone and I think Love is just meh. Which is especially surprising given that "meh" is not the reaction you expect a Noe film to elicit. (Look, it has real sex and a part where a penis ejaculates at the camera, which was in 3D when people saw it in the theater. So it's still Noe. I still found it meh.)

Climax is in the same ballpark as Irreversible and Enter the Void in terms of quality.

I don't want to say too much about it. I will probably also review this because I just have to write about it. I've got a lot to say. But for those of you just innocently reading my blog who did not want a Climax review, I think it's best to advise you to go in cold.

I will say that the film contains some absolutely incredible dancing, as it is about a bunch of dancers. And by dancers I don't mean ballet or ballroom dancers, but breakdancers? hip hop dancers? I'm not sure the best way to refer to them. Anyway, they are genetic freaks, some of whom can contort their bodies and do crazy things with their arms, as though shoulders are just a suggestion rather than a limiting factor in their movement. And needless to say, probably, since it's Noe, much of this stuff is shot in one take and from a crazy angle.

I will also say that if you don't like Irreversible and Enter the Void, I don't think this is going to be the one to win you over.

Okay. With 40% of my MIFF viewing completed in just over 24 hours, I'm now off until Wednesday.