Cousins, Mark (Filmmaker)

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    ‘My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock’ Review: Director’s Commentary

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    A richly detailed essay film imagines Hitchcock commenting on his own oeuvre over a mesmerizing daisy chain of clips.Alfred Hitchcock’s voice remains indelible, like a droll bloodhound trying to hypnotize you over tea. Mark Cousins’s richly detailed essay film “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock” imagines the director commenting on his own oeuvre over a mesmerizing daisy chain of clips, with an insider’s knowledge of filmmaking.Lest that premise induce suspicions of artificial intelligence: The impressionist Alistair McGowan reproduces Hitchcock’s plummy drawl. But the insights belong to Cousins, a world-class close reader known for his mellifluous journeys through film history and cinephilia. Over sinuously edited, high-quality clips, his Hitchcock addresses playful and piercing observations to the audience in virtuosic variations on themes: escape, desire, loneliness and so on, from both famous and lesser-known films.Hitchcock’s work here suggests a series of dreamlike passageways through seemingly ordinary worlds where desire and danger open new doors. A typical riff mingles the cinematic and personal: Hitchcock’s “escape” from his British stomping ground to America; the escapist painterly countrysides that recur in his films; and the narrative traps his characters must cheat, like when Paul Newman flees a theater by shouting “fire” in “Torn Curtain.”The resulting director’s commentary from beyond the grave should send any viewer supermarket-sweeping Hitchcock titles onto the queue. Yet whereas scenes like Ingrid Bergman murmuring “you love me” to Cary Grant in “Notorious” are still jaw-dropping, the voice-over conceit can become stifling, and arguably limits our critical point of view.But as Alma Hitchcock reportedly encouraged her creative partner and husband: “Be interested.” Cousins’s attuned eye and ear keep us interested afresh in the Hitchcock magic.My Name Is Alfred HitchcockNot rated. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Storms of Jeremy Thomas’ Review: A Transgressive Producer

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      Thomas’s dedication to pushing the envelope of big-screen entertainment is the focus of Mark Cousins’s latest documentary.If you’re familiar with a certain streak of transgressive independent cinema, you’re likely familiar with the films of the producer Jeremy Thomas, even if you don’t know his name: Jonathan Glazer’s “Sexy Beast,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor,” Nagisa Oshima’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” with David Bowie, and several works byDavid Cronenberg and Nicolas Roeg, including Cronenberg’s controversial adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel “Crash.”Thomas is, by all accounts, a filmmaker’s producer, and his dedication to pushing the envelope of big-screen entertainment is the focus of Mark Cousins’s latest documentary, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas.”Cousins, the man behind the behemoth documentary series on the history of cinema, “The Story of Film,: An Odyssey,” seems more than determined to make Thomas into a household name.Presented as a road movie, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas” follows the two men as they wind their way through France toward the Cannes Film Festival, where Thomas is promoting his latest project, Takashi Miike’s 2019 crime thriller “First Love.” Cousins presents the audio of his interviews with Thomas over footage of their travels — in subject-focused chapters titled “Sex,” “Politics,” and the like — edited together with clips from the films Thomas has produced and a plethora of other cinematic references and influences.The whole effort comes across more as an advertisement for Thomas’s genius — and Cousins’s obsession with him — than a true portrait of a discerning producer of outsider cinema. Even Tilda Swinton, a star of the Thomas-produced Jim Jarmusch film “Only Lovers Left Alive,” can only offer platitudes, characterizing Thomas as a “storm” within the industry.You may come away from “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas” thinking of him as a fascinating man, but perhaps not as the cinematic prince that Cousins insists on crowning him.The Storms of Jeremy ThomasNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Story of Film: A New Generation’ Review: The Case for Modern Movies

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      The latest installment in the filmmaker-critic Mark Cousins’s survey of movie history focuses on 21st-century developments.A decade after presenting a guided tour of cinema history in the 15-hour docuseries “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” the filmmaker and critic Mark Cousins checks in on recent developments in “The Story of Film: A New Generation.”This latest installment is a gratifyingly international survey in which Cousins, who narrates, applies his analytical eye to movies that are still settling in the mind. If you feel like you haven’t fully absorbed such significant films as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Cemetery of Splendour” (2016) or Mati Diop’s “Atlantics” (2019), Cousins’s consideration of their visual strategies will make you want to watch them again.Cousins’s assessments offer plenty to argue with, but it’s possible to enjoy “A New Generation” without agreeing that “Booksmart” “extends the world of film comedy,” as he claims, or that a shot in “It Follows” merits comparison to the camerawork in Michael Snow’s landmark experimental film “La Région Centrale.”Despite leading with “Joker” and “Frozen,” Cousins goes well beyond titles familiar to western audiences, with Indian cinema (“Gangs of Wasseypur,” “Reason”) coming in for particular praise. He also highlights works that test the boundaries of what qualifies as cinema — Beyoncé’s visual album “Lemonade,” Tsai Ming-liang’s virtual-reality experiment “The Deserted” and the interactive “Bandersnatch” episode of “Black Mirror.”If anything, technological shifts — there’s discussion of the iPhone-shot “Tangerine,” and of “Leviathan,” in which, according to Cousins, the filmmakers literalized the concept of a fisheye lens by attaching cameras to fish — get short shrift. When Cousins says that lockdown gave people time to watch “far more movies,” and that “when public life returned, we marched to the movies again,” his “we” does not entirely comport with box office realities. “A New Generation” means to look forward to a bright future of moviemaking, but it’s possible it’s a future that may not come to pass.The Story of Film: A New GenerationNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. In theaters. More