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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

Criticism of small-d democratic education would also encompass Cantet’s THE CLASS (which I did love, FWIW)

Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

I saw TEACHER’S LOUNGE and remember thinking that it needed to be more pointed — it was a criticism of small-d democratic education that tried to stay within its discourses and thus ended badly. Never heard of the other title.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

Point being … religious nuts are normies even to you like … 20/6/313

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

You’ve been around me enough to know that most of the time around me, you wouldn’t know … [ChecksProfile] religious nut. I cross myself and say grace; I go to Mass during festivals; I sometimes use religious or providential language you wouldn’t; and when religion-adjacent topics arise, I speak thus

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

Well you definitely wanted enough religiosity to make the family less initially sympathetic and/or thought antigay wasn’t enough versus say vaxxers (that would then risk your Ann Lee problem). Seems like to-MAY-to / to-MAH-to to me. But that’s semantics to an extent. However …

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

And if this IS it, Mike … only thinh to do after leaving the film

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

It’s as if Leigh, in the world of the great philosopher Carly Simon, hasn’t got time for the pain. His last film can only be a labor of love and he wants to keep it that way.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

TENDER LOVING CARE is not Pollyannaish about love though; an absolutely key point to avoid sappiness a la Hallmark / Camily Channel. Failures are noted, but they occur offscreen and are spoken of without rancor or bitterness, but with regret from some, loving support from others, and shared humor.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

I’d heard that the film builds overslowly to a corker of a last scene. That (almost) last scene is terrific — “swans” and the camera pullback will stay with me. But I don’t think the buildup is inferior or did that scene is that much superior to the rest.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

Minor point of X’er Briton privilege: I didn’t realize until now that I still know the song “Boiled Beef and Carrots” and the TerenceDaviesesque singing of songs to say goodbye — eye evisceration isn’t total, I learned.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

All these social-worker cases remain grounded even in anger. Amy reacts appropriately even in pushback, and her amour-propre never gets involved. (Even Poppy’s in HAPPY GO LUCKY does, kinda.)

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

But Leigh does not revert to weakness here. Indeed, the film’s high point may be the “dead woman in the park,” which ends and then becomes a humorous anecdote between Amy and Rosie.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

One of those cases is a mother who’s had his chidren taken from her and is a parallel to the FJORD family and even says some of the things I do in my review and the father does in court about childless cat ladies*. (She is clearly WAAAAAAY less functional though.) * nor literally but point was same

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 7h

Many of Leigh’s films are at least somewhat marred by one-scene performances or one character who is just Too Much. He gives himself many opportunities here to screw up in the same way, in that there are several scenes involving visits to cases

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

nb; I can love portrayal of social workers as both evil and good … because both are true at least some of the time. (Politics arises because social discussion is systemic. Can/should we trust the state to love us like our family and friends. My answer is quite emphatically “no.”)

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

Like FJORD this film centers on social workers (with short interludes involving some of their cases; more anon) but … these are very different ones and the L-word is key. These workers are motivated by (a kind of) love for their cases.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

Needless to say in a Mike Leigh film, all the lead actors and actresses (Kate O’Flynn; Alice Bailey Johnson; Marion Bailey; and Paul Jesson — all unknown to me) are perfect and come across as a true family — as Leigh’s famous method encourages when it works well.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

Portraying love requires things hard to get from actors, who are strangers — the longtime intimacy that gives you the ability to complete each other‘s sentences; the knowledge of when to push back and when to pull back; the confidence in shared memory to give only as much of a story as necessary.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

Drama is conflict, so it’s very “easy” to portray hate or rivalry or discord onscreen; portraying love is so much harder. But Leigh has produced, reportedly as his swan song, one of the most convincing ever portrayals of a loving family circle (social worker gal-pals Amy and Rosie, & Amy’s parents)

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

TENDER LOVING CARE (Leigh, Britain, 2026, 9) I don’t have a left eye any more, but I can definitely testify that the left tear ducts are working just fine.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

Certainly the last images imply a happy ending — Holmes has found true love to a sappy piano score behind prison walls. The kind of thing only a Romantic would end this film’s story with.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

Fielder and Oppenheim (especially the perpetually onscreen former) lean hard into this and the film doesn’t let Fielder off the hook as Seyfried is both more explicitly anti-Evans (as he becomes more sociopathic) and suggests that Fielder may have sort of fallen in love with Holmes.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

Suffice to say that I expect to be giving two “actresses” Skandies points for this film. Amanda Seyfried portrays Holmes as she had before. The film centers on (and even ends on) a disputed New York Times quote from Holmes about “a character I created” and “a character they created”

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

you also see early the start and even the middle of Billy Evans’ attempts to take over both Holmes and the film. BUT … it is only in the third hour that the film becomes a true masterpiece as Elizabeth Holmes has just gone to jail so the film has no more access to her. [EXPLICIT SPOILERS HERE ON]

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

I’m not gonna say the first two hours is not a terrific movie. No movie with a deconstruction of the “Who’s On First?” scene isn’t good (especially if it has all the necessary material to make it logical that you would show that to someone and have her explain why it’s funny).

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 8h

However, this is Theranos inventor Elizabeth Holmes who has those round eyes that never seem to blink or betray anything but doe-eyed sincerity unto sociopathy. Like FJORD, this film is about the lengths of the delusions of (here) a person who is a priori and religiously convinced she is a do-gooder

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 9h

(more TK … next movie beginning$

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 9h

Fielder and Oppenheim do also have an eccentric (for a doc) visual style, albeit a very different one from Morris — very heavy on tight close-ups showing half a face, and sometimes only the eye area and alternating between the two parties in a conversation DRAGNET style as if intimacy forces truth.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 9h

Early on, I said to myself “Errol Morris without the Interrotron” based on being the profile of an eccentric with a very practiced story to tell that the filmmaker, who has considerable access and the confidence of the “target,” is trying to “crack.”

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 9h

YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING (Fielder and Oppenheim, USA, 2026, 9) When a three-hour film is mediocre or bad, the last hour is usually the draggiest, as the film has clearly run out of steam and ideas. This film is neither mediocre nor bad. (I was stunned when I saw the time in the hallway outside.)

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 9h

He’s not subtle though. One of my solitary guffaws was the Norwegian flag at the window. (Though TBF it was fairly foreshadowed.)

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 9h

Formally, Mungiu remains a genius in terms of his tight Trinitarian compositions, his choices of what to show and what to leave off screen but refer to later, and in makingthe Xtians their own worst enemy, especially in the face of secularist power.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 9h

That’d make the McCarthyism point stronger. Suspicions and corroboration crystallize and firm up because The Other is untrustworthy on details that would be indefensible if seen independently. But they confirm what The Norm see as much worse, objectively-bad shit.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

A more-skeptical friend said the Christian family is too normal and insufficiently eccentric/offputting for the film not to come across as deckstacking. Even if one accepts the family’s anti-gay stance isn’t unstacking (in 2026 Scandinavia, I do not accept that; esp. given other stuff on Topic H) …

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

Another friend compared this to FOOTLOOSE … which is an effing genius example — both movies are about the outsider bringing in new mores to an isolated monoculture community, prompting a backlash.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

Tou must tolerate private bad shit for people to be free, especially if you accept any version of “positive freedom.” In Rousseau’s memorable turn of phrase, they are merely forcing you to be free.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

I mean … who is going to argue in so many words for a certain amount of tolerance for child abuse, rather than zero? But this is what “zero” looks like and that is the central political dilemma surrounding government power …

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

Yet listen to the first meeting between the family’s mother and the two DFCS workers. They act functionally identically to any cop show interrogation of a suspect (the “your accomplice has already confessed” trope, e.g.) but with the “twist” being the idiom of feminine passive-aggressiveness.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

But the social workers, judges and lawyers, like CS Lewis said about the worst tyrants, always sincerely act and speak in the best interests of their cases (except when they say they needn’t); but they are not like Nurse Ratchet.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

The actresses never play the DFCS officials and teachers in caricatured way, unless one finds their words an inherent caricature. Admittedly I do think they are, which makes this film play like a comedy to me. (I guffawed [alone] numerous times.)

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

It’s not just that FJORD may be the first major film to portray contemporary progressive nanny-state as tyrannical (THE PINK POLICE STATE: THE MOVIE, a friend called it) by centering its Big Other, but also the preciseness of the acting and writing.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

FJORD (Mungiu, Norway/Romania, 2026, 9) Sequel idea … Elia becomes a nun back in Romania and Noora returns a decade later to see her again.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 10h

Seen three films so far at “Middleburg*” and I would be perfectly happy if they were my 1-2-3 for the year. * one was an A24 film but shown at Alamo in commercial release.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 23h

I was thinking of “Morris without the Interrotron” almost right away. And I swear (back me up @christianham.bsky.social ) … the preshow programming included a vintage trailer for F FOR FAKE (though in English, the only title given was VERITES ET MENSONGES)

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

At Middleburg Film Festival for Mungiu’s FJORD, almost certainly with @christianham.bsky.social NGL … not since the Dardennes’ TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT have I walked into a festival screening so convinced this is either going to be my No. 1 film of the year or a crushing disappointment

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

(My status quo began with a fight injury the denouement of which might’ve been avoided under current technology if I’d behaved differently. But if I were born around 1900-20 as these men were, the initial injury would have inevitably ended as it has.)

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Kinda amazing that so many important classic-era directors wore eye patches until you remember the state of medical care / technology in that era. Losing an eye / use thereof wasn’t exactly “common” but it’s not like today.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Friend with whom I shared this asked who these men were and I found I could only name four … top row looks like Raoul Walsh and Fritz Lang; middle row are John Ford and Sam Fuller; but stumped on the bottom pair.

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that critical theory has made its most recent high-profile inroads on the right. But no in the sense that said theories — these glasses will show you the world as it REALLY is — have never even ebbed on the left (the whole base-superstructure in Marx, just to name one)

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Victor Morton @vjmfilms.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

SMDH. At some point (and that one is way past it) … a sandwich becomes uneatable as such. You can’t wrap your mouth around it. Also Giovanni Gentile.

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