海角大神

Monitor film critic Peter Rainer was impressed by several movies that were released this month, including "Roma," Alfonso Cuaron's most personal film, and actor Willem Dafoe portraying Van Gogh.

鈥楢t Eternity鈥檚 Gate鈥� features career-best Willem Dafoe

鈥淚 am my paintings,鈥� says Vincent van Gogh, played by Willem Dafoe in a career-best performance, in Julian Schnabel鈥檚 鈥淎t Eternity鈥檚 Gate,鈥� which follows the artist through his last tumultuous and astonishingly prolific years in the late 1880s in the south of France. Watching this explosively lyrical film, you can believe it.

Schnabel is, of course, a celebrated artist as well as a powerful, if powerfully uneven, filmmaker, and what he captures here is what it must have been like to聽be聽Van Gogh. It鈥檚 an artist鈥檚 imagining of what another artist might have felt. He never does break away from the romantic, madness-of-genius clich茅 that has dogged so many movies and commentaries about Van Gogh. Instead, he embraces it because he believes it authenticates the turmoil that goes into creating great art. Of course, turmoil can also create bad art, but such is Schnabel鈥檚 ardor that I bought into the banality even though I think Van Gogh was a great artist聽despite聽rather than聽because聽of his mental anguish.

I have a bit less sympathy for the ways in which the filmmakers shoehorn conjecture and flat-out mythmaking into the narrative.聽But the film comes to a great and sorrowing finish when we hear Vincent鈥檚 words, 鈥淚 thought an artist has to teach a way to look at the rest of the world. Not anymore. Now I just think of my relationship with eternity.鈥� One of the great achievements of this movie is that, in the end, Van Gogh鈥檚 words enter into our soul with the same force as the paintings. Grade: A- (Rated PG-13 for some thematic content.)

'Roma' is Alfonso Cuar贸n鈥檚 most personal film

Alfonso Cuar贸n is probably the most prodigiously versatile film artist working today. His new film, after a break of five years, is 鈥淩oma,鈥� which he also wrote and served as cinematographer for, and it鈥檚 his most personal, a semi-autobiographical reminiscence, filmed in lustrous black and white, of an upper-middle-class family in the Mexico City neighborhood of Colonia Roma where he grew up in the early 1970s.聽

Its central figure is Cleo, played by a young woman, Yalitza Aparicio, with no previous acting experience. A domestic worker, Cleo lives in a guest house in the back of the family estate and is nanny to the four rambunctious children of Sof铆a (Marina de Tavira) and Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), a physician in a local hospital who, not long after the film begins, walks out on the family, leaving behind a kind of makeshift matriarchy that also includes the children鈥檚 grandmother.聽The focus is almost always on Cleo, which is probably just as well, since Sof铆a鈥檚 grievances are not richly rendered.聽

The fact that Cuar贸n films so much of this film somewhat distanced from the action, with such sparing use of close-ups that it took me a long time to get a fix on what anybody looked like, is no doubt intentional: It鈥檚 his way of memorializing his story, his reminiscence, by fixing it in the mind free of melodramatic ploys. But as evocative and soulful as I found parts of this movie, I experienced these stylistics as more evasion than immersion. Cuar贸n is so careful to avoid overdramatizing the narrative that his steady-state underplaying ends up seeming equally coercive. But this is not how we are supposed to react to 鈥淩oma.鈥� We are supposed to regard it as 鈥渞eal life.鈥澛燝rade: A- (Rated R for graphic nudity, some disturbing images, and language. It鈥檚 in Spanish and Mixtec with English subtitles.)

Orson Welles would likely approve of making-of doc 'They鈥檒l Love Me When I鈥檓 Dead'聽

From the indefatigable filmmaker Morgan Neville, who earlier this year came out with the marvelous Fred Rogers documentary "Won鈥檛 You Be My Neighbor?," comes "They鈥檒l Love Me When I鈥檓 Dead," which chronicles the making of Orson Welles鈥檚 鈥渇inal鈥� film, "The Other Side of the Wind." "Wind" was shot between 1970 and 1976 and was only partially edited. It was beset by legal woes and held in French vaults and labs for almost 40 years. Both Neville鈥檚 film and 鈥淭he Other Side of the Wind鈥� are being released simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix. I would advise seeing Welles鈥檚 film first. It鈥檚 more rewarding and less confusing that way.

Neville鈥檚 film, which draws on interviews with surviving crew and actors as well as behind-the-scenes footage, explores the making of 鈥淭he Other Side of the Wind鈥� (less so the mechanics of its restoration) but focuses equally on Welles鈥檚 mythology, some of it self-made, all of it enthralling.

His film isn鈥檛 just a companion piece to 鈥淭he Other Side of the Wind.鈥� As it turns out, bearing Welles鈥檚 words in mind, it becomes almost a meta version of Welles鈥檚 movie. I would like to think that the great magician himself would have approved. Grade: A- (This movie is not rated.)聽聽

For 鈥楤allad of Buster Scruggs,鈥� Coens travel to Old West

This new movie, 鈥淭he Ballad of Buster Scruggs,鈥� which is in theaters and on Netflix, strikes me as mid-to-upper range Coen fare. It鈥檚 an anthology film consisting of six discrete vignettes set in the Old West.聽

The eponymous first episode, starring Tim Blake Nelson as a singing cowboy and deadly marksman, is also the film鈥檚 best.聽From here on, the episodes are hit-and-miss. Even the good sections have their weak spots.聽

In this new film, the Coen brothers' extraordinary jeweler鈥檚-eye attention to detail, their gift for concocting dialogue in plummy 19th-century vernacular, their lyrical embrace of wide-open landscapes, and their woeful nihilism that conceives of a world where paradise is always on the precipice of ruination are hallmarks of something much more than mere jokesterism. Grade: B+ (Rated R for some strong violence.)

In 'Green Book,' lessons are learned in Jim Crow South

There are certain movies that shamelessly manipulate you and yet, even while knowing this, you fall for them anyway. Such a movie is 鈥淕reen Book,鈥� an audience pleaser of the first magnitude that floated merrily above my many objections.聽Based on true events, the film is set in 1962, when we are first introduced to Frank Anthony Vallelonga, aka 鈥淭ony Lip鈥� (Viggo Mortensen), a cocky Italian-American bouncer at the Copacabana nightclub in New York City whose nickname comes from his genius for talking his way out of anything. Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a classically trained African-American jazz pianist, hires him to be his driver and bodyguard on an extended winter music tour with his trio through the Deep South.

We are told that Doc, who doesn鈥檛 need the money, not to mention the grief, is undertaking this tour because he wants to make a political point. This social-activist motivation doesn鈥檛 really come through in Ali鈥檚 performance, though. And Tony, who is shown in the beginning trashing two drinking glasses in his kitchen because some black workers drank from them, too quickly shucks his prejudices.聽

All these objections, and more, are valid, but as I warned at the outset, they don鈥檛 really matter. This film cuts right through your defenses. That鈥檚 because the performances by the two actors, especially Mortensen, are so hugely entertaining. Peter Farrelly, who directed and co-wrote the script with Brian Hayes Currie and Tony Lip鈥檚 son Nick Vallelonga, also co-directed 鈥淒umb & Dumber鈥� and 鈥淭here鈥檚 Something About Mary.鈥� He knows how to work a comedy sketch (if not moments of high drama, like the one in which Tony rescues Doc from belligerent white patrons in a bar fight).聽Grade: B+ (Rated PG-13 for thematic content, language including racial epithets, smoking, some violence and suggestive material.)

Unreleased Orson Welles film 鈥楾he Other Side of the Wind鈥� arrives

In the summer of 1970, Orson Welles embarked on a movie, 鈥淭he Other Side of the Wind,鈥� that he fervently hoped would bring him back into the Hollywood fold after more than a decade of self-imposed exile in Europe following a string of commercial flops.聽As was too often the case in Welles鈥檚 career, things went horribly wrong.聽Welles died in 1985 without his cherished project ever seeing the light of a film projector.聽

And so, after all this hoo-ha, what do I make of the film, which centers on a legendary, self-exiled director, played by John Huston, as he scrambles to complete the movie he hopes will revive his Hollywood glory? Welles has always been a cinema icon for me, and I approached this 鈥渘ew鈥� movie as one might approach a new symphony by Beethoven. Having seen it, my overwhelming feeling is not exaltation but sadness. I look at this maddening pastiche and think of all the great movies he might have made.

For Welles aficionados, and perhaps only for them, 鈥淭he Other Side of the Wind鈥� will function as a skeleton key to the themes and obsessions of his entire career.聽鈥淭he Other Side of the Wind鈥� comes to us as a kind of time capsule of an era when Hollywood, for a brief time, opened its doors wide to creative risk. It never did welcome Welles, though, and this last, bewilderingly hectic movie from him can best be viewed, I think, not so much as a high achievement in its own right as an indictment of Hollywood鈥檚 criminal neglect. Grade: B+ (This movie is rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, and some language.)

鈥楽hoplifters鈥� asks, what is the true meaning of family?

In 鈥淪hoplifters,鈥� written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda and the winner of the Palme d鈥橭r at Cannes and Japan鈥檚 entry for the best foreign language film Oscar,聽12-year-old Shota (Jyo Kairi) and Osamu (Lily Franky), presumably his father,聽encounter a crying 5-year-old child, Yuri (Miyu Sasaki). She is alone and apparently neglected by her parents. Torn about what to do, they take her back with them, if only to provide a temporary refuge. It is then that we encounter the extended Shibata family, which appears to be a tightknit, impoverished, multi-generational assemblage hidden away from the street, in tight quarters, in a run-down section of Tokyo.聽As the film incrementally unwinds, we discover they are not altogether who they seem to be.聽

Despite all that is good about 鈥淪hoplifters,鈥� I found the central conceit bothersome. I also don鈥檛 think Kore-eda鈥檚 implicit thesis about what truly constitutes a family is such an earth-shatterer. It鈥檚 not exactly news that we don鈥檛 get to choose who our parents or siblings are, or that we can feel deep familial attachments to those to whom we are unrelated.

But in the end, Kore-eda, for all the cooked-up moments in 鈥淪hoplifters,鈥� knows where the heart of his story is. Its final, wrenching fadeout, with little Yuri navigating her bereft new life, is beyond praise. Grade: B+ (Rated R for some sexual content and nudity. In Japanese with English subtitles.)