Monday Miniatures: Bugonia, Nouvelle Vague, and Cover-Up

Welcome to Monday Miniatures, where I tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been watching in the past week that I wouldn’t otherwise get to share.

The week of Nov. 3-Nov. 9, 2025:

Bugonia, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

How I watched it: In theaters (AMC Americana)

As much of the world did, I fell in love with Lanthimos as a filmmaker after seeing 2010’s Dogtooth. I have greatly enjoyed watching his evolution as a filmmaker and the evolution of his films over the past 15 years. Bugonia represents the director as his most Dogtooth since Dogtooth, and it’s a breath of fresh air – or a sigh of relief if, like I was, you were feeling a little stultified after the one-two punch of Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness.

Bugonia is a tense, electrifying (pun intended, if you’ve seen the movie) thriller about humanity’s dual needs to find something or someone to blame for why things feel so bad right now and for that something or someone to be not our fault and out of our control. All conspiracy theories are born from the need to make order out of chaos, to find meaning in randomness. The proliferation of the internet and, in particular, social media has only made it easier for people selling answers to find a ravenous audience of buyers. Of course, just because you bought it doesn’t make it real, another key fact of the internet age.

I have not seen the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!, on which this is based. I would like to, and my understanding is that Bugonia writer Will Tracy (The Menu) hews pretty close to the original text. That said, there are elements that feel very 2020s. A few examples: 22 years ago, internet rabbit holes didn’t exist the same way they do now; conspiracies in 2003 existed at the fringes of society, not as an essential thread of our political fabric; the pharma CEO played by Emma Stone, girl-bossing and leaning in, could only have come from the past decade.

All of which is to say this feels like an essential film for our moment. Jesse Plemons’ conspiracy-obsessed kidnapper feels real and tragic in the same way it feels to watch anyone construct the architecture of his own demise. You have brought this upon yourself, but that doesn’t make it any less sad that we live in a world in which your brain can break in this way. It is in fact a world that profits and feeds off your brokenness.

There are some missteps in the third act that I have been grappling with since seeing this movie, but the final images are so haunting and poetic, and not just a little prophetic, that I’m willing to forgive a lot. I guess what I’m saying is: It’s good to have Lanthimos back in his wheelhouse. At his best, no one is doing it like him.

Nouvelle Vague, directed by Richard Linklater

How I watched it: In theaters (Landmark Playhouse, Pasadena)

A movie about one of the most iconoclastic filmmakers of all time making one of the most influential films of all time shouldn’t be this darn conventional, but here we are. I was trepidatious based on the trailer that Linklater, in directing this movie about Jean-Luc Godard directing Breathless, would attempt to ape the master’s style. The trailer is cut in such a way to remind one of later-period Godard. At least Linklater does not do that. Unfortunately, he failed to substitute in any style of his own.

Loaded with a Marvel level of Easter eggs, film history buffs will enjoy the dopamine hit of recognition when they see French New Wave figures paraded around for little reason other than to acknowledge that they were there, too. ‘Look! It’s Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy! Did you know they were married?’ The movie even helpfully puts a little chiron on the screen telling you who each person is as they flash by on screen, just so the audience knows the movie knows what it’s doing.

The worst sin this kind of movie can commit, to my mind, is to have the characters be humorously unaware of the future, those moments when the filmmakers try to have a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge metatextual fun with the audience. I call it Pirates of Silicon Valley syndrome, a made-for-TV movie from 1999 in which Steve Jobs berates Bill Gates while questioning, “Windows? What the heck is Windows?” Even as a kid, I knew that was silly.

A lot of this movie, however, falls into that trap, with Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) remarking early and often on how glad they are no one will ever see this stinker of a film they’re making. The moneymen on screen doubt the film will ever make a dime, which I’m sure was true, but you can feel the movie winking.

Kudos to Guillaume Marbeck, who plays Godard, for infusing some of the real man’s anarchic spirit into the film, even if the rest of the movie lacks that same soul. Marbeck captures perfectly what one imagines the young, cocky, but unproven Godard to be like as he made his cinematic debut. As a whole, the movie is fun if you absolutely, positively love the French New Wave, and even then, only just fun enough.

Cover-Up, directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus

How I watched it: In theaters (Aero Theatre)

Poitras originally wanted to make a documentary about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh back in 2005. He declined, and in the ensuing 20 years, Poitras herself has proven to be one of the great investigative documentarians of her time. More than that, she is one of the great chroniclers of individuals standing up for truth (or their interpretation of truth) in the face of overwhelming power and pressure.

Her Oscar-winning Citizenfour, about whistleblower Edward Snowden, is the defining document of the post-9/11 surveillance era. She followed that up with portraits of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks (Risk) and Nan Goldin’s battle against the Sackler family (All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, for my money, her masterpiece). Now, she returns to the subject of Hersh at a critical time for truth in politics, guts in media, and the journalist’s own legacy.

Poitras appeared at the Aero Theater on Saturday for an advanced screening of the film and a wide-ranging and thoughtful, if not terribly hopeful, Q&A afterward. I can’t say for certain what Poitras’ approach would have been in 2005, but it is clear two decades of involvement in the geopolitical happenings in this country have informed the filmmaker’s approach to the material.

It would be easy enough to make this film a hagiography of Hersh, whose accomplishments as a journalist include breaking the My Lai massacre, furthering the Watergate investigation, and uncovering evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Poitras, however, is smarter than that and well aware that the past 15 years or so have not been kind to Hersh’s legacy, whether because of shoddy reporting, poor instincts, or single-sourcing some of his pieces. These are all fair criticisms that do nothing to diminish Hersh’s accomplishments, but it takes just one stain to tarnish a brand built on truth.

Instead, Poitras and co-director Obenhaus use Hersh’s reporting to craft a timeline that lays out 60 years of government lies, scandals, and (lending the film its title) cover-ups. From Vietnam to Iraq to today, the machinery of power has operated in much the same fashion. And even in the time of Watergate, it took a monumental amount of effort across a vast network of journalists even to begin to dismantle that machinery. Today, for so many reasons, it feels less possible than ever.

From the perpetuation of conspiracies to the consolidation and conglomeration of media, the debasement of journalism, and the undermining of the very concept of facts, it has never been more difficult to speak truth to power. Poitras has built a career depicting people who preach openness, honesty, and accountability, but at the end of the day, the filmmaker herself may be the greatest practitioner of that which they preach.

Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese

How I watched it: Blu-ray I own

Sometimes, it’s just good to remind yourself why the great ones are great. I threw this on while working the other day and found myself glued to the screen, even still for a movie I’ve seen 40 or 50 times. It never gets old, and the filmmaking remains as vital today as the day it was released. If you haven’t seen this in a while, do yourself a favor and pop it on.

Taxi Driver Week: De Niro, Scorsese, the collaboration

Welcome to Taxi Driver Week at Last Cinema Standing, a week-long celebration of Martin Scorsese's bruising, beautiful modern classic in honor of the film's 40th anniversary and a special screening as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

There are a few keystone actor-director collaborations in cinema history – Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune; Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni; John Ford and John Wayne; Woody Allen and Diane Keaton; Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart; and Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Those six collaborations account for at least 15 of the greatest films ever made. In each case, the artist is great as an individual, but something about their work together brings out the best in each.

Thousands of pages have been filled and tens of thousands of words spilled on all of these pairs, Scorsese-De Niro more than most. Without wanting to be just another leaf on the forest floor, I have to say it is impossible to consider Taxi Driver without looking at it in the context of its director and star’s shared body of work. From 1973 to 1995, they made eight films together, several modern masterpieces, others misunderstood classics, and one underappreciated gem that almost destroyed Scorsese.

Mean Streets (1973)

Their first film working together featured De Niro in a supporting role as the loose-cannon gambler friend of Harvey Keitel’s low-level mafia figure. Mean Streets features all the major themes they would revisit time and again in their careers – crime, the everyday violence that infects people’s lives, the push and pull of religious belief, and the brutality and barbarism of men. Before this, Scorsese had made just two features as a director, and De Niro had appeared in a handful of films, garnering some acclaim for his performance in Bang the Drum Slowly. After, both artists flourished.

Taxi Driver (1976)

By the time they reunited, De Niro had won his first Academy Award for his role as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, and Scorsese had proved he could step outside the crime genre with the wonderfully subdued and insightful Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, for which Ellen Burstyn won the Oscar for Best Actress. Both men were clearly in a groove, and with Paul Schrader’s magnificent script in hand, they made the first of the three stone-cold masterpieces they would make together.

For all of the film’s sinister, lurid atmosphere, it features one scene that stands out as particularly daft, in which a psychotic man with a gun sits in the back of Travis Bickle’s cab outside his wife’s lover’s apartment. The psychotic man is played by Scorsese in his first credited onscreen role, though he had appeared uncredited in three of his previous features.

The scene is mostly ad-libbed by Scorsese, who as a director is trying to get a rise out of De Niro and as an actor just keeps piling on the gory details of the violence he plans for his cheating wife. De Niro barely moves, shifting his eyes slightly to view the man through his rearview mirror, but he never engages him. Travis is a man on the edge, and here, he meets a man who has clearly gone over the edge, and the sequence is deeply disturbing as we witness the kind of monster Travis could easily become.

New York, New York (1977)

There is really no way around saying this – by this point in his career, Scorsese had developed a drug problem. It did not interfere with his work so much as it interfered with his personal life. The film is an intentionally stylish and artificial ode to classic Hollywood musicals and features De Niro as a saxophone player who falls in love with a singer played by Liza Minelli.

It was a box-office flop – earning $13 million on a $14 million budget – and many critics were put off by the artifice of the whole enterprise, failing to grasp the intent behind it. Probably best known today for its title song, made popular by Frank Sinatra, New York, New York is often regarded as a rare misfire by Scorsese, but that assessment ignores the movie’s greatest virtue as the document of a filmmaker truly in love with film.

Raging Bull (1980)

Indisputably one of the greatest films of all time, it is the peak of both artists’ careers, though it might be more fair to characterize it as a plateau for Scorsese, who in 36 years since has rarely come down much from these heights. It is also the film Scorsese credits with saving his life. After the failure of New York, New York, Scorsese’s drug addiction spiraled out of control, ultimately landing him in the hospital.

While Scorsese was bedridden, De Niro brought him the story of Jake La Motta. The director was unsure if he had the energy or creative passion to make another film, but De Niro insisted. In bringing the rise and fall of La Motta to the screen, Scorsese found an outlet for all the rage and frustration that had built up inside him over the years. He found the creative spirit that had left him in his drugged-out haze. And he found the will to shoot one of the most devastating portraits of a man at war with himself ever put to celluloid.

Meanwhile, De Niro dug deeper than he ever had to find the heart of a man who is by turns disgusting and pitiable. He became the character as no other actor has ever accomplished. Much of course has been made of De Niro’s physical transformation – into the boxer first, then the bloated shell of a man later – but more impressive than that is De Niro’s spiritual transformation. He takes on the soul of La Motta in a way that is terrifying, dangerous, and awe inspiring.

The King of Comedy (1982)

A comedy in the loosest sense of the word, Scorsese has said numerous times this is his favorite performance of De Niro’s. As wannabe comedian Rupert Pupkin, the actor is the simpering embodiment of the Me Generation, a self-actualized, self-important, self-assured blowhard who believes he has everything coming to him because he deserves it.

Scorsese had delved into the dark heart of man before but never with the sharp-edged sword of satire he carried into The King of Comedy. The film has only grown scarier and more honest with time, serving equally well as a rebuke of the current selfie-obsessed, fame-hungry generation and their forebears who clearly suffered the same egomania, a fact they seem all too ready to forget.

Goodfellas (1990)

Feeling they had reached the virtual limit of their artistic collaboration, Scorsese and De Niro parted ways for much of the 1980s, during which time Scorsese made the dark comedy After Hours, the sports film The Color of Money, and the still controversial The Last Temptation of Christ. De Niro went off and made other great films such as Once Upon a Time in America, The Mission, and Midnight Run. But it took another masterpiece to bring them back together.

If The Godfather is the mafia as an allegory for the promise of the American Dream and family loyalty, then Goodfellas is a gritty examination of the machinery that powers that dream. It is about the mafia as a business, where money is king. To quote Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), the ethos is: “Fuck you. Pay me.” De Niro appears in a supporting role as Jimmy Conway, the lifelong hustler who loves the action and the money. Of course, none of it can last. American Dream or not, everyone eventually wakes up.

Cape Fear (1991)

The only remake in the Scorsese canon until he finally won an Oscar for The Departed, this was an ideal project for someone like Scorsese to take on. It does not achieve the same brilliance as its predecessor, a quintessential film noir that stood out as uniquely dark in its time (1962), but Scorsese has no trouble imposing his vision on the material and making the implied horror of the original more explicit.

De Niro takes on the role of Max Cady, originated by Robert Mitchum, an ex-con out for revenge on the defense lawyer who failed to keep him out of prison (played here by Nick Nolte, taking over for Gregory Peck). If there is a weak spot in the Scorsese-De Niro oeuvre this is probably it, but its virtue lies in its commitment to the dirty, disturbing deeds it shows and its argument that no one – neither tormentor nor tormented – is without sin.

Casino (1995)

Their final collaboration thus far, Casino has been accused of being something of a rehash of Goodfellas, but while it carries many of the same beats, it features a totally different rhythm. De Niro is Ace Rothstein, a professional hustler handed the keys to a kingdom. A man who is always in control of his own wants and desires, he wants total control over his world as well, but those closest to him lack his sense of restraint and burn the whole empire to the ground.

One hopes these two brilliant artists find their way back to each other – they of course are good friends, and rumors swirl constantly of a ninth collaboration – but if Casino stands as their final work together, it is a fitting capstone. It features all of Scorsese’s typical preoccupations – all those things we mentioned back in Mean Streets – and a De Niro performance that proves subtly captivating and stands up well alongside his best work.

Both men obviously found great success outside their working relationship, and it is probably for the best the collaboration ended before it was allowed to become stale or repetitive. However, when the modern history of film is written, scholars will talk about the work of three different artists – Scorsese, De Niro, and the unparalleled output of both men together.

New movie review: Black Mass

Johnny Depp stares down Joel Edgerton in director Scott Cooper's Black Mass.

The gangster movie is a hallowed tradition in American cinema. Popular since the start of the sound era, movies about lowlifes and criminals have never really gone out of fashion as other genres have waxed and waned – think westerns or musicals. Audiences have always craved stories about the darker side of life, and filmmakers have never been shy about making those stories. The template was set by William Wellman’s excellent The Public Enemy (1931), starring James Cagney, and little has changed since.

The last all-time classic gangster movie was probably Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, and that celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. Cinemas have seen hundreds of crime movies since then, most of them heavily inspired either by Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino, but few of those films have had anything new to say about the genre. Eight decades on, directors still struggle to leave a mark on the form Wellman perfected.

Now we have director Scott Cooper’s foray into the genre, Black Mass, based on the true story of Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp) and his tyrannical reign over the city’s underworld. Bulger, whose story was repurposed and fictionalized for Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed, was a low-level crime figure with friends at the FBI. His law-enforcement connections – in particular his friendship with FBI agent Jack Connolly (Joel Edgerton) – allowed him to rise to prominence with the Irish gangs and take out the competition in the Italian mafia.

Depp plays Bulger as a cold psychopath whose mood can change from congenial to confrontational in an instant, and it is startling to watch as a compliment over dinner suddenly becomes a threat. To portray Bulger, Depp is hidden behind layers of makeup and prosthetics, as well as colored contacts that never stop being distracting. Still, underneath all that, Depp is able to find the core of Bulger and delivers a nuanced performance that ranks among the actor’s best work. It is first time in years Depp has played a character worthy of his talents, which is refreshing, but the same cannot be said for the movie.

Depp and Edgerton in Black Mass.

While Depp is able to dig below the surface and find substance in Bulger, Cooper and co-writers Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth fail to find any deeper meaning in the story overall. The great gangster pictures such as Goodfellas or The Godfather or Little Caesar have great themes tying their stories together, usually something about greed, corruption, power, or all three. Black Mass features those elements, but the filmmakers seem uninterested in exploring them. They are there for the illusion of depth but offer little tangible value.

The true tale of a federally sanctioned mob boss is inherently interesting, but the film never comments on the implications of all this collusion and corruption. There is no consideration of what it says about our culture that the government was willing to let a pack of psychopaths roam the streets just for the chance to take a different set of psychopaths off the streets. There is a cautionary tale in the Bulger-Connolly story that speaks to the pitfalls of loyalty and trying to choose the lesser of two evils, but the film never gets there, buried as it is beneath the artifice of genre.

None of this would be unforgivable if the film worked as an entertaining thriller, but in most regards, it is not that either. Depp infuses his scenes as Bulger with a go-for-broke, anything-can-happen energy that is sorely lacking from the rest of the film, which starts to drag anytime Bulger is not on screen. Because Bulger succeeds to the extent he does only with Connolly’s help, the filmmakers are right to split time between the two men’s stories. However, the character of Connolly is so dramatically inert that his half of the film is bereft of intrigue.

Edgerton is game, as always, but Connolly is treated as nothing more than another Bulger henchman, albeit one with a badge. His fate is so tied up in what happens to Bulger that the audience is never given the chance to relate to Connolly as an individual, though at least Connolly is given a semblance of personality. The rest of the cast mostly exists just to orbit around the black mass at the center of the story, there either to be killed by Bulger or inform on him to the U.S. Justice Department.

And inform they do in what turns out to be the film’s biggest misstep. Black Mass is a structural mess as the writers attempt to frame the story as flashbacks told to the government by former Bulger associates. There is nothing wrong with this style, per se, but the film drops it and picks it back up almost at random. We get flashbacks directly related to the informers, but we also see Bulger and Connolly engage in actions no one else would be privy to, begging the question of how the informers would know what happened. It is distracting and unnecessary, and it interrupts whatever rhythm the film is able to find.

Cooper is a fine director, and his 2013 sophomore feature Out of the Furnace still has the power to stun, but all the personality he showed in that film is missing from this effort. There is nothing about Black Mass to distinguish it from similar films that have come before or that will come after. It is one of the perils of genre filmmaking to get lost in the genre and come out feeling generic.

See it? No.