“The Basics of Philosophy” might be the worst film of Paul Schrader’s career. Jack Huston stars as John Jorrinson, a philosophy professor at a small Midwestern college who is erudite, multitalented (he plays piano well enough to teach it), and troubled in ways he can’t or won’t recognize. He’s dating a psychology prof named Rebecca (Sofia Boutella) but has a secret life picking up men at Sidekicks Saloon (where John gets his kicks on the side). The place has a rainbow motif outside, and a rainbow lighting scheme inside, but both are overpowered by hellish red lighting. Because John is sinning, you see.
John also has a disturbing secret in his past, hinted at when a younger man who looks oddly familiar shows up at the funeral of John’s beloved dad, Melvyn (Bill Pullman), a businessman and pillar of the local community, and locks eyes with John. Through flashbacks and present-tense scenes, we learn this man is a former student, Miguel Vasque (Daniel Zovatto), the son of a Mexican-American man who once worked on Melvyn Jorrinson’s estate. The lad was John’s piano student until John groomed and then molested him.
The movie doesn’t treat this as a spoiler, tipping its hand early, then watching fate close around John’s neck. Schrader’s upfront way of handling the pedo material is only slightly more sophisticated than its depiction of Jack’s identity as a gay man, which is strangely retrograde in its details and suffused in a fog of shame that doesn’t seem entirely a function of the story. At one point, Jack asks his former student if being molested by a man turned him gay and is relieved when Miguel says no.
The psychosexual aspects of the story are soon eclipsed by a thriller scenario. This is unsurprising, given that John’s private life is such a moral as well as professional disaster that it’s a wonder he wasn’t blackmailed earlier. Zovatto’s character gets pulled into a criminal plot against John, teetering between vengeful feelings and humanistic objections in ways that seem tied to whatever the plot requires at any given moment. The pressure causes John to fake a sudden desire to marry his girlfriend, in whom he had little interest before.
“American Gigolo” star Richard Gere has a scene as the university president, who knew John’s father, is determined to bring John into the local establishment, and warns him, “You may be gay, but you’re gonna maintain the illusion of propriety.” It’s an effective cameo that doubles as a callback to Schrader’s early years. The hero of “American Gigolo,” Julian Kay, is a social striver who prefers to sleep with rich women and refuses to accept same-sex trysts or any other assignment he considers kinky because they remind him of the period before he became respectable (in his own mind, anyway).
“The Basics of Philosophy” is the latest installment in what Schrader has labeled his “Man in a Room” series, with some written and directed by Schrader and others written only (such as “Taxi Driver”). All follow loners who struggle to make meaningful connections with others and record their struggles in journals. From “Taxi Driver” and “Light Sleeper” through a more recent triptych consisting of “First Reformed,” “The Card Counter,” and “Master Gardener.”
He literally wrote the book on such films: his canonical 1972 film theory book, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, identified most of the characteristics of a Paul Schrader film before he’d actually made one. The last filmmaker in the book’s title, Robert Bresson, directed some of Schrader’s all-time favorites, including “Diary of a Country Priest” and “Pickpocket,” both of which are invoked here. Never let it be said that the former film critic doesn’t honor his artistic inspirations.
Unfortunately, although this one feels as personal as everything else Schrader does, it’s far from a classic on the order of “Mishima” or “First Reformed,” or even a fitfully strong movie in the vein of “The Comfort of Strangers” or “The Light of Day.” The writing tends toward stilted and declamatory. Some of its big conceptual swings just don’t connect.
The biggest misfire is the fantasy sequence in which John encounters one of his inspirations, Baruch Spinoza (Karl Glausman of “The Neon Demon”), in a park and discusses whether individuals are truly capable of change. Spinoza wears a “period” outfit that looks like it was FedExed from the Spirit Halloween Store in Amsterdam. Mel Brooks would have known what to do here.
Technically, “The Basics of Philosophy” is barely professional. Both the present-day color scenes and the black-and-white flashbacks have a harsh, sometimes blown-out, very video look. Huston struggles valiantly to find a person inside a role that’s mainly a pack mule for Schrader’s baggage. Huston’s solution, while not wholly successful, is nevertheless ingenious: he plays most of his scenes smiling, seeming as if he’s about to smile, or holding back a smile, a time-honored tactic of deceivers trying to seem honest and sincere.
Pullman nails his role as a charming patriarch who treats money as a velvet hammer. “Light Sleeper” costar Dana Delaney as the hero’s sister Gloria, Shiloh Fernandez as a gun shop owner that John picks up at Sidekicks, and especially Boutella as Rebecca, do their best to make lemonade from lemons. But this movie is a sour misfire.
With its jump cuts, plain close-ups, matter-of-fact use of real-life locations, and handheld shots taken from just behind people’s shoulders as they move through space, “Diane in the Loop” superficially suggests a missing film by one of the greatest directors of modern neorealist dramas: the Dardenne brothers. As it turns out, the Belgian siblings only produced this movie. But writer-directors Anne Sirot and Raphaël Balboni not only honor the masters but also infuse the tale with dry humor and a playful air of mystery that is uncharacteristic of them, which makes the movie bearable when it goes dark.
If you walked into “Diane” without knowing any plot details, you might mistake it for a quirky family comedy with a wistful, slightly sad undertone. The heroine, 28-year-old Diane (Ninon Borsei), initially presents as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl type, wandering the countryside, encountering fellow eccentrics, and letting us know her. She’s a loner by choice, is frustrated by many things (including her inability to finish her graduate thesis), and admits she has difficulty sustaining relationships. By osmosis, seemingly, she has absorbed some of the damage inflicted on her mother (Sandrine Black), who was raped as a young woman but kept it a secret from Diane until a conversation that occurs early in the film. Diane demands to know the perpetrator’s name. Her mother won’t disclose it. She would rather leave the past in the past and keep moving forward with her life.
Many movies explore revenge and/or justice, and how the two concepts risk becoming interchangeable. A lot of these movies revolve around sexual assault, its aftermath, and the general indifference of society when it comes to legally dealing with the crime. This one is free of the usual clichés. The film discusses the crime but doesn’t show it.
The big question here (thankfully never summarized by the characters in dialogue) is whether a victim has the sole right to determine how others should view a crime committed against them, and can exercise veto power over those who disagree. Intergenerational trauma caused by rape is embedded into the story in a way that makes it feel like part of the fabric of life rather than a prompt for online discourse. The horrible ordinariness of the outrage makes it more disturbing, as does the way it must constantly take a backseat to the tedious demands of daily life.
The story turns into a kind of buddy movie with romantic potential when a cyclist (Lucas Meister) enters Diane’s orbit. After a prickly first encounter, they meet each other again, and it’s apparent that they click as classic movie couples should. But this is not one of those movies that establishes the heroine’s negative attitude towards men as a setup to present her with an exception who will win her heart (which would have been pretty gross, anyway, given the main storyline). What the movie does with this relationship is so right in every way that it’s best if you experience it yourself.
“Diane in the Loop” lives up to its title, which alludes to the self-defeating cycles of behavior that keep people from evolving. It also does justice to many perspectives on how to handle an unpunished crime. It’s hard to think of another film on this subject that’s as life-affirming.
“Look Back” is the third telling of a story of the friendship and creative partnership between two young girls who are obsessed with manga, break into the business through pure talent and determination, and forge a partnership that seems ordained by the universe until tragedy strikes. The first telling was the source material for the adaptations: the one-shot 2021 web manga of the same name. The second was a 2024 animated feature co-written and directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama. The third pass is a live-action movie, radiantly shot by cinematographer Senzo Ueno on 35mm film, and written, edited, and directed by one of Japan’s greatest living auteurs, Hirokazu Kore-eda (“Like Father, Like Son,” “Still Walking”).
It’s a testament to the story’s innate power that it can not only support more than one adaptation in a short timespan, but also inspire storytellers to explore the potential of different media (respectively, animation and live-action cinema) with the same focus and inventiveness the fictional duo brought to their beloved manga. The Kore-eda version is a highlight of the moviegoing year, so affecting that it proved impossible to find anyone who saw it at Venice who got through the whole thing without ugly-crying at least once.
The artistic duo consists of a popular go-getter named Fujino (played by Furi Nanase as a girl and Natsuki Deguchi as a young adult) and her friend Kyomoto (Rokka Okada and Aju Makita). They meet when Fujino’s teacher asks her to hand-deliver a diploma to Kyomoto, who was constantly absent and didn’t show up at all toward the end of the spring semester. It turns out that Kiyomoto suffers from agoraphobia so severe that she can barely stand to leave her room, let alone walk to school and spend the day there.
After initial tension, they become friends based on their mutual love of manga, always meeting at Kyomoto’s house and spending many long hours in her room working out original material. With Fujino serving as project taskmaster and drawing the characters while Kyomoto executes breathtakingly detailed backgrounds, the two complete a 42-page story that wins a student art contest, catapulting them into the professional world and earning acclaim for the work’s quality and the artists’ youth.
“Look Back” is mainly an experiential film, investing most of its energy in showing you what it feels like to be in a place and do a thing. We get to know every square centimeter of Kyomoto’s room, become familiar with the girls’ different body language and taste in clothes, shoes and makeup, and spend lots of time watching their art as they plan and create it. Agoraphobic viewers will appreciate the treatment of the condition, as serious but not uncommon, and fully deserving of sympathy.
The scratch-scratching of pen nibs on paper and the squeak of fat-tipped markers are central elements in the soundtrack, along with the roar of storms, the din of city noise, and the seawave hiss of wind moving through grasslands and treetops. Just as you find yourself wondering whether this director is paying tribute to another Japanese legend, Hayao Miyazaki, the movie answers by briefly showing the girls admiring art books from the director’s movies.
The boldest aspect of “Look Back” is the way it deploys live-action filmmaking technology in a way that reminds us of the sweetest and most viscerally involving techniques perfected by Miyazaki, especially the master’s willingness to sideline or suspend the plot and let us bask in a moment, such as the girls running home through the countryside after school or the physical process of penciling and inking pages of artwork and applying screens to get the gradations of shadow just right.
The movie takes a sharp turn into heartbreak midway through, with a twist that’s as shocking as it is believable, but “Look Back” doesn’t cheapen the event’s power by wallowing in it, instead using it as a means to explore how artists use the worst events in their lives as fuel for artistic expression and personal growth.
When was the last time you saw a movie that ended with an affirmation of art’s ability to alchemize suffering into a statement that touches all who encounter it? This is a movie you’ll remember fondly. It might even make you want to buy pens and paper and make comics.
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