Father Mother Sister Brother

 

Writer/director Jim Jarmusch

Jarmusch at Venice

Jarmusch on the set

MOTHER FATHER SISTER BROTHER                B+                                                         USA  Italy  France Ireland  Germany  (110 mi)  2025  d: Jim Jarmusch

If too many people like a film I make, I feel like I’ve done something wrong.

I don’t know where the hell she came from in this case, but I generally bring an idea with me for about a year, sometimes more than one, until I finally start writing, very quickly.  In this case it took me three weeks.

My favorite thing is to wake up and have no plan.
—Jim Jarmusch

This is Jarmusch’s version of an Ozu film, exploring the personality-driven intricacies of complex family dynamics, where it’s all about the silences between the characters, as the emotional weight of the film is the exploration of that undiscovered interiority, creating a quietly contemplative aspect to the viewing experience, which seems like an anti-action, puzzle-piece counterpoint to what we’re used to seeing, funny, tender, and astutely observed, yet more than anything it feels personal and refreshingly honest, told in a triptych style, a technique often used in both cinema and literature, and a device he has used before, which is difficult to pull off as invariably some episodes are stronger than others.  In this case they are brilliantly blended together by editor Affonso Gonçalves, while shot in New Jersey, Dublin, and Paris by two extraordinary cinematographers, Frederick Elmes, who shot the first chapter, and Yorick Le Saux, who shot the second and third.  Like all Jarmusch films, this is an experience where nothing and everything happens all at once, where the key is deciphering the many clues hidden between the lines, as there’s plenty of deception or hidden secrets with parents who are protective of their children.  Strangely rejected by the Cannes Film Festival, many have dismissed this as a minor film, in much the way Haiku poetry is derided in the poetry world, too small, abstract, yet it still paints a vivid picture, suggesting there is something noble about the power of art, which can also be terribly deceptive.  This is indisputably the work of a mature artist growing older, grappling with their own sense of mortality, as this is simply where the mind wanders when you get older, feeling spacious and ponderous and completely unpretentious, where there’s something so ordinary and believable about it, with the filmmaker stating his goal, “We wanted to make a small, quiet film.”  Among the earliest and more memorable discoveries of this filmmaker came with the hard-to-find Mika Kaurismäki documentary film, TIGRERO: A FILM THAT WAS NEVER MADE (1994), with Sam Fuller bringing Jarmusch deep into Brazil’s Mato Grosso rain forest jungle, interacting with the Indigenous Karajá people, a group Fuller met and filmed in the mid 50’s for a film that was never made.  The hip modernism Jarmusch brings to such an isolated and secluded region is hard to fathom, as this presents him in a uniquely different light, seeing him in such a remote area wearing a Ramones T-shirt, literally expanding our conception of an artist.  Singer Tom Waits has been part of Jim Jarmusch’s regular cast since the utterly hilarious jailbreak-on-the-bayou movie, DOWN BY LAW (1986), while other notable films include the three-act STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1984), an example of plotless, low-budget, independent filmmaking, Mystery Train (1989), another triptych, a musical pilgrimage to Memphis, Tennessee, home of Sam Phillips and Sun Records, Night on Earth (1991), with five interconnecting, chance encounter stories involving a taxi cab driver and passengers in five cities, Dead Man (1995), an acid western, and still, arguably, his best film, GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI (1999), a samurai assassin gangster flick, COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (2003), eleven vignettes connected by the titular theme, BROKEN FLOWERS (2005), a cross-country road trip reconnecting with former lovers, THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (2009), an immersion into the haunted, surreal atmosphere of a paid assassin, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), a vampire flick, Paterson (2016), a tribute to New Jersey poet William Carlos Williams via a modern day bus driver, and The Dead Don't Die (2019), another absurdist zombie movie.

Winner of the Golden Lion (1st place) at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, carefully constructed to allow small details to accumulate, reminding viewers just what it is to be a film poet, it opens with a hauntingly personalized, bass-heavy jazz performance of “Spooky” by British-German singer-songwriter Annika Henderson (aka Anika), Spooky YouTube (2:11), an original Classics IV song from 1967 that essentially establishes the mood and sets the stage for what follows.  Six years since his last feature, the first thing we notice is that Ozu’s pillow shot transitions (The enigmatic 'pillow shots' of Yasujiro Ozu) have been replaced by abstract flickering light passages between episodes, giving us some time to reflect upon what we see happening onscreen, with each of the three sections taking place in the home of a parent where their estranged children come to reconnect.  Opening on a windy, countryside road filled with bare trees and fresh snow on the ground, two siblings, Jeff and Emily (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik, apparently catching the eye of Jarmusch as his favorite Jeopardy host) chat amiably on their way to visit their widowed and reclusive father at his lake house, sharing their assessment that he’s not a very trustworthy figure in their lives, turning out to be none other than a grizzled old, confusing-looking Tom Waits, who provides the film’s most powerful performance.  Jeff seems concerned about his financial situation since the death of their mother, wondering how he’s getting by, leading a hermetic life, where everything appears run down, offering assistance when he can, bringing along a box of groceries, while Emily is more skeptical about just how dire his situation is.  The setting of the house, situated right on a lake, is to die for, where anyone would dream of living in a house like that, with the camera lingering on the giant-sized window overlooking the lake.  Nonetheless, the father mentions there are a multitude of needed repairs, but suggests he’s doing as well as he can, but seems to be playing the sympathy card.  Jeff falls for it hook, line, and sinker, while Emily is rather amused by it all, pointing out that he’s wearing an expensive Rolex watch, which the father quickly claims is a fake, where the real drama comes only after they’ve left, placing everything we’ve seen before in a different light.  The truism that Jeff reveals is that you can pick your lovers and friends, but you can’t choose your own family, which more than ever rings true in these interconnected segments.  Written by Jarmusch, this episode sets the tone for spare, minimalist dialogue, with plenty of embarrassing and uncomfortable pauses in between to convey emotional distance, balancing wry, offhanded humor with a steady drip of information, while always remaining understated and moody, with something of an abstract, rhythmic flow about it.  A choreography of interpersonal relationships, pondering whether we ever really know the people closest to us, it shares the methodology of South Korean director Hong Sang-soo films, the maker of small, minimalist dramas, as both filmmakers rely upon the power of observation, with no sentimentality and no false drama, devising intimate scenes with powerful performances where awkwardness prevails, replete with lies, resentment, and love, where this is like the antithesis of a Mike Leigh film, where so much of this would otherwise be so wrenchingly despairing.  What’s most amusing is that Waits has always had something of a subterranean Beat poet vibe, where even at this late stage in his life (age 76), he’s still got a rebellious streak.    

While this is something of an actor’s showcase, with the filmmaker allowing plenty of empty space and room to breathe, remaining subtle and impressive, with a keen eye for detail, yet it begs the question, when was the last time we really talked to our families?  The moving presence of skateboarders is a recurring motif, seen in slow motion directly in the middle of the country road in the opening, while darting in and out of the streets of Dublin and Paris in the next segments.  A contrast between this youthful endeavor and ruminations on mortality is immediately evident.  Two sisters who couldn’t be more diametrically different, a punkish, pink-haired Vicky Krieps as free-spirited Lillith and the much more uptight, conservatively-repressed, almost invisible presence of Cate Blanchett as Timothea reunite with their imperial mother (Charlotte Rampling), a successful novelist who refuses to speak about her work, for their annual afternoon tea, the only time all year when they actually get together, though they all live in Dublin.  Their relations are nothing less than strained, where it all feels so terribly formal, as the host mother has impeccably arranged finger food with an assortment of delectable pastries in an immaculate house where everything is in place.  The conversation feels distant and camouflaged, a chamber piece of passive-aggressiveness, with each daughter vying for attention while struggling with insecurities in their personal and professional lives.  All dressed in the color red, as if pre-arranged, Father Mother Sister Brother Exclusive Movie Clip - Color ... YouTube (2:07), the domineering mother, offering a sense of cold authority, appears to be very high maintenance, while her children come to represent unfulfilled expectations, which may have led to uncomfortable childhoods, so they fidget around nervously at the table, expressing some disquieting tension, where the picture of perfect décors hides what’s simmering underneath, leaving viewers undoubtedly perplexed by what’s not being said.  The final chapter is notable for the parents not being present, as Indya Moore as Skye and Luka Sabbat as Billy are twin black siblings cleaning out a Paris apartment following the mysterious death of their parents in a tragic airplane crash.  Their closeness is immediately evident, seen hugging, kissing, and holding hands as they meet in a café before visiting a now-empty apartment that Billy has taken great care to save all the belongings, seen in an excursion to a local storage locker, but it’s unclear what they plan to do with it all.  These American émigré parents led extremely private yet unorthodox lives, perhaps involved in some spy stuff with multiple identities, and their unconventional lifestyle has left an imprint on their children, both raised in Paris, inquisitive and extremely well educated, where after going through some old photos, childhood drawings, and multiple fake documents, they both become aware of how little they actually knew about them.  There’s even a cameo appearance from the building landlord, Françoise Lebrun from Jean Eustache’s revered magnum opus The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973), who reveals that the parents died owing three months’ rent, and that she personally prevented the insurance company from seizing their belongings, an act of kindness that suggests she may have known more about them than her own family.  In their memories there is warmth and tenderness, still learning little secrets about their parents while browsing through their things, discovering small unexplained mysteries.  Blending humor and melancholy, capturing the frustrating yet essential nature of family bonds, the film relies heavily on subtext, recurring visual cues, and uncomfortable silences to convey deep-seated emotions and complex histories, with Dusty Springfield singing a riff on the opening song, Dusty Springfield - Spooky (Just Dusty) - 04 02 1971 • TopPop YouTube (2:39), while a musical collaboration between Jarmusch and Annika Henderson creates a haunting soundtrack, Father Mother Sister Brother | 2025 | Jim Jarmusch & Anika | Original Motion Picture Soundtrack | Original Score | OST, with the Jackson Browne song These Days YouTube (3:35) playing out over the end credits, with the delicate voice of Anika sounding like a reincarnation of The Velvet Underground’s Nico.

Licorice Pizza

 

Director Paul Thomas Anderson

Bradley Cooper on the set

 

 

 

 

LICORICE PIZZA                B                                                                                                 USA  (133 mi)  2021  ‘Scope d: Paul Thomas Anderson

A nostalgic 1970’s, coming-of-age, love hurts fantasy, from the director previously responsible for eight features, including HARD EIGHT (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), the last three all set in the San Fernando Valley of greater Los Angeles, yet also There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012), Inherent Vice (2014), and Phantom Thread (2017).  While mostly a personal exploration that feels recognizable and even contemporary, this is a return back to life in the Valley of the director’s childhood, where a common theme throughout Anderson’s career has been a myriad of hustlers and con artists, suggesting he’s a man who enjoys a good scam, including gamblers, pornographers, motivational speakers, oilmen, cult leaders, a stoner private eye, and the dark side of Adam Sandler’s comic persona, which may be a prevalent theme of growing up in Los Angeles, where people never age, apparently, but remain stuck in a kind of arrested adolescence, living in a narcissistic world that revolves totally around themselves, where little else matters.  Anderson tends to take a subset of American culture and use it to explore themes of loneliness, alienation, and a disconnection from family, with Magnolia still thought of as his most epic and intimate film, largely influenced by the death of his father, Ernie Anderson, who was a voice artist, with this director being the only one of his children to follow him into the movie business.  In his more recent films, Anderson’s central characters of Doc Sportello and Reynolds Woodcock were narcissistic, center-of-the-universe figures who felt the world revolved around them, with the director surrounding them with the meticulous detail of their working environment, submerging themselves into it with the entirety of their being.  But then there is the sour relationship between Barry and his sisters in Punch-Drunk Love, the destruction of the relationship between Daniel Plainview and his adopted son H.W. in There Will Be Blood, leading to the tragic figure of Daniel, a staggeringly rich oilman, living alone in his massive house with no one but his servants, and there is Freddie Quell in The Master, a traumatized war veteran whose drunken wanderings and search for any human relationship lead him to a charismatic cult leader, with roots back to the misogynistic pick-up artist/motivational speaker of Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia.  All of this takes us back to P.T. Barnum, an American showman, businessman, and politician remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus, who coined the expression, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”  The consumer culture of Los Angeles, with its vast advertising and show business culture, suggests there’s an ever-growing business founded upon the principle of wanting to take your money, giving rise to start-up entrepreneurs and fly-by-night schemes.  Every new Anderson film reminds us of that lengthy LA Times profile written by Patrick Goldstein back in 1999, The New New Wave - Los Angeles Times, revealing a brash new Hollywood auteur who had the ear of Francis Ford Coppola and dined with Warren Beatty, who wanted to be seen in public with his famous friends and drawn into the spotlight that is Hollywood while exhibiting complete creative freedom and an exacting level of control over every aspect of the production and release of his films, right down to editing the trailer himself.  Shot on 70mm by Paul Thomas Anderson and Michael Bauman, this is lighter and sunnier than previous Anderson pictures, a brightly embellished and absurdly exaggerated remembrance of things past, with long takes, slow dollies, and contemplative pans galore, where movement is a constant in this film, yet what inevitably stands out are those memorable tracking shots of the lead protagonists running, all rooted with Denis Levant in the Léos Carax film Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood) (1986), set to David Bowie’s “Modern Love,” Modern Love - Mauvais sang (2:45), recreated by Noah Baumbach in Frances Ha (2012) with Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha [2013] - Dance in the street - YouTube (1:08).

While these protagonists are significantly younger, it nonetheless offers Anderson another glimpse into the myriad of his youth, using real-life stories told to him from childhood friend Gary Goetzman, a hero and mentor of Anderson, now a film and television producer, but he was a child actor who starred in a Lucille Ball film YOURS, MINE AND OURS (1968), appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, and eventually started a waterbed company and a pinball arcade, as depicted in the film, actually delivering a waterbed to the home of Jon Peters, a former Hollywood hairdresser to the stars and rampant womanizer, supposedly the model for the Warren Beatty film SHAMPOO (1975), also a former partner of Barbara Streisand.  The outlandish sequence of events becomes the framework for the film, always exhibiting a masterclass of topical musical selections, as this boy meets girl scenario is based on an improbable romance, which is more of an extended flirtation between a 15-year child actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a girl ten years older than him, Alana, Alana Haim of the pop band Haim, a sisters pop rock group, with the Anderson-directed music video preceding the film in theaters.  While the phrase Licorice Pizza is never used in the film, it is named after a former chain of record shops in southern California, basically an excuse for Anderson to visualize a series of anecdotes immersed within that whitewashed urban landscape where minorities don’t exist except on the margins, offering a sharply detailed and satirically motivated, yet wry commentary on growing up fast, creating a netherworld between childhood adolescence and adulthood, a place both groups seem to linger for a prolonged period of time, a place between Hollywood and suburbia, becoming a purgatory of lost dreams and adolescent fantasy.  Let’s call it Encino.  Gary is something of a high school hustler and a schemer, possessed with charisma and charm, always coming across as overly familiar, on a first name basis with everyone he meets, as if he’s known them forever.  Alana, on the other hand, feels stuck, working as a photographer’s assistant, yet bored, having no ambition to aspire to anything else, having never quite found her place in the world, so she’s kind of going through the motions.  When Gary immediately hits on her while waiting in line during high school class picture day, she disparages him as just a kid, yet his go-getter attitude is truly inspiring, swooning interest, as if romantically infatuated, immediately asking her out to dinner.  While they immediately click in wisecracks and satirical comebacks, she actually has fun with the verbal sparring, as the kid more than holds his own, surprising herself by actually showing up, but what does she have to lose?  It’s not like anything better is going on in her life, surrounded by older sisters who pretty much frown upon her anyway, with her actual family playing themselves in the film, while Anderson’s own family, including his four children and their friends, all play bit parts as well.  Why not also include Leonardo DiCaprio’s dad, Tim Conway’s son, and Steven Spielberg’s daughter, and feature the Mikado Restaurant, the first Japanese restaurant in the San Fernando Valley, and the now defunct Tail O’ the Cock restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, just a block west of Coldwater Canyon, a place where stars ate while working at nearby Warner Bros. Studios and CBS Studio Center, but their specialty was serving martinis, including the traditional business meeting three-martini-lunch.  Both Gary and Alana are reckless and impulsive, easily carried away by stupidity, wanting to be somewhere, but really finding themselves nowhere at all, with Gary completely full of himself, thinking the world completely revolves around him, while Alana remains stuck in an existential crisis, wondering why on earth she’s hanging out with a 15-year old kid and his friends.  Yet they have fun together, taking a plane ride to New York where she acts as his chaperone for an appearance on a television talk show, with Lucy Doolittle (Christine Ebersole) doing her best Lucille Ball impression, growing thoroughly exasperated by his prankish behavior, perhaps putting the kibosh on his child acting career, where once you enter puberty, you’re done.    

While there’s a sweet innocence to their growing relationship, never devolving into sex, it’s a passionate affair nonetheless, with Alana helping out on his grandiose, get-rich-quick moneymaking projects, joining in on the genuine enthusiasm, where at least for a short while they feel like they’re actually doing something important, fulfilling an order or providing a service, yet Gary remains something of a goofball, while Alana always remains outside the showbiz world that he thrives in, something he braggishly reminds her about all the time, yet she has the chutzpah to remind him, “You’re not my director,” so there are rough edges that at least suggest to viewers this will never work.  Yet somehow, it does, even if the attraction is largely lopsided at first, buoyed by male hormones, yet there’s no one else in her life filling the void, often leading to moments of petty jealousy and extreme disappointment.  Arguably the most emotional sequence happens on her own, attaching herself to a struggling mayoral campaign of Joel Wachs (Bennie Safdie), where she’s called late at night to meet him in a restaurant, only to discover he’s gay, and that she’s been unceremoniously called upon to escort his gay lover home, Matthew (Joseph Cross), both clearly embarrassed at having to hide who they are, offering him a hug when no words could possibly capture that feeling of deflation.  Still, the couple captures the complicated emotions that come with an untraditional relationship, exploring all the ecstatic highs and devastating lows of young love, with Alana questioning what her future will look like if she continues hanging out with him.  Gary is used to the rigors of being a child star, but discovers he’s in no way prepared for adult responsibilities, while Alana is also put in an uncomfortable position, learning that she hasn’t quite figured out what she wants to do, an age-old dilemma for teenagers and budding adults.  She’s embarrassed to have awkward conversations with her family about her ambivalence regarding having no plans for the future, yet both characters realize that they have much more in common than they initially expected, with both exhibiting a fierce independent streak.  While Gary and Alana are more mature and self-sufficient than most other romance films about young adults, they aren’t sure how to express their feelings for each other, as he is very open and often manically expressive, while she is more reserved and emotionally closed off.  This certainly bears a similarity to Tarantino’s equally nostalgic trip down memory lane in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019), but there’s no historical revisionism going on here, with Anderson creating a warmer, hilariously deadpan comedy filled with absurdist moments that may have more in common with Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998) with its 15-year old protagonist (also born into Hollywood royalty) with romantic aspirations who similarly speaks to adults as if he’s on the same level and has his own harebrained schemes that run amok, or the self-deprecating humor of Submarine (2010), which follows a lonely 15-year-old who makes a checklist of everything he wants to accomplish by the time he graduates high school, where at the top of the list is having his first relationship, which doesn’t exactly go as planned.  And of course, the granddaddy of all nostalgia films is American Graffiti (1973), with a wall-to-wall musical score referencing the 50’s, similarly exploring the music, culture, and social changes that defined young people during this particular period in history.  Although layered in humor, Anderson tells an authentic story about real people, whose hopes, fears, and emotions are genuinely realistic given the circumstances they are in, a skill Anderson shares with one of his contemporaries, Richard Linklater, the unofficial king of hangout movies and maker of Dazed and Confused (1993) and Everybody Wants Some !! (2016), both revealing the hilarious and heartbreaking mistakes that young adults make when left to their own devices with no adult anywhere to be seen.  While Gary and Alana are very naive, they may have more wisdom than any of the adults in the story, revealing something about fading Hollywood movie stars, like the heavily inebriated Sean Penn as an aging William Holden and Tom Waits as filmmaker Mark Robson, or the breakout performance of Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters, embellished with a comic exaggeration, as they cling to their youth with a kind of delusional obsession by continually reliving past glories, apparently lost without them, pathetically viewing them as highlight reels on a continuously repeating cycle, sadly embellishing their stories over cocktails to anyone willing to listen.  Although looking back at a pivotal decade of social change in this country, where the divisive stain of the Vietnam War was still everpresent, the environment Alana faced included the Women’s Liberation Movement in full swing, Roe v. Wade had recently legalized abortion, more women were college educated than any other period in US history, yet only 13.3 per cent of those with a BA degree entered the work force, while the oil crisis was an alarming reminder that economic stability was not certain, which may explain why Alana is queasy about the future, yet Anderson doesn’t really address any of that, which may reveal his limitations as a director, never really addressing social concerns, creating instead an apolitical film that is a reminder of what it feels like to be young.  Despite the wide breadth of years between them, they bring an unbridled enthusiasm to the screen, free to screw up and make mistakes on their own, with a tendency to pull the audience in with the rush and mad exhilaration of a wild ride.