Spark Movie Reviews

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Rifkin’s Festival

Perennially problematic director Woody Allen slid back into American theaters earlier this year with his latest fi lm, originally completed back in 2020. Rifkin’s Festival treads familiar territory in what certainly appears a standard Woody Allen tale of a neurotic American on vacation, but also proves to be a serviceable homage to international cinema. Wallace Shawn (My Dinner with Andre, The Princess Bride) is Mort Rifkin, an aging former Film Studies professor accompanying his publicist wife, Sue (Gina Gershon) to the San Sebastian Film Festival in northern Spain. Mort, taking notice of Sue’s palpable interest in her rising-star director client, retreats inward, focusing instead on his doomed efforts to complete his fi rst novel while simultaneously nursing an infatuation with a young Spanish doctor in lieu of meaningfully addressing his marital woes. Being an academic with a focus on classic European fi lms, his dreams parody notable scenes from directors François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Ingmar Bergman, among others. All of this is very bizarre and charming, especially Christoph Waltz in the role of Death from Bergman’s Seventh Seal (1957). Being Allen’s 50th feature fi lm, it’s these scenes which lend Rifkin’s Festival just enough of an eccentric edge to stand apart from his previous offerings, which is saying something. – Submitted by Patrick Jouppi

Nope

Filmmaker Jordan Peele’s Nope solidifi es his reputation as one of modern cinema’s most thought-provoking writers and directors. His movies subtly explore multiple facets of history, sociology, and psychology without encroaching didacticism. As in his fi rst two fi lms, Get Out and Us, Nope’s protagonists’ lives are altered by situations that baffl e them (and viewers) at fi rst, until connections are made between seemingly random incidents. Introverted OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and extroverted Em (Keke Palmer), heirs to their father’s horse ranch after his inexplicable death, struggle to keep the business going. Their dilemma attracts the attention of former child star Jupe (Steven Yeun), who runs a local theme park exploiting a bizarre event from his sitcom past. The crossings of their multiple paths lead to an out-of-this-world discovery, at once profound, diverse, and ridiculous. What does Eadweard Muybridge have to do with all this? Is that a Brunswick LP label? Who’s “Kattan”? Nope lets its players - and us - unpeel the layers of meaning these collective movie moments present to all participants. – Submitted by Karl Knack

Reviews submitted by Ryan Gage. These great titles and others are available at the Kalamazoo Public Library.