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If it\u2019s epic cinema you seek this fall, many marathons await: Martin Scorsese\u2019s sprawling Oklahoma murder ballad \u201cKillers of the Flower Moon\u201d (3 hours 26 minutes); Ridley Scott\u2019s lush and bloody biopic \u201cNapoleon\u201d (2 hours 37 minutes); the ambitious, Jennifer Lawrence-less \u201cHunger Games\u201d prequel \u201cThe Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes\u201d (2 hours 45 minutes). Even \u201cTaylor Swift: The Eras Tour,\u201d that musical behemoth slinking from stadiums to screen, commands a rigorous 2 hours and 48.<\/p>\n
Flip the telescope though, and movies are also getting very, very small. In the discombobulated midst of a strike and a festival season, stand-alone shorts \u2014 a category generally confined to film-nerd niche or career steppingstone \u2014 have suddenly emerged as the passion projects of several name-brand auteurs. Why well-established directors would pivot to a format not exactly famed for its commercial viability feels like something of a mystery, but the presence of enthusiastic benefactors may offer a clue: a vaunted French fashion house, a streaming giant, a Soderbergh.<\/p>\n
The participation of Netflix provides an unusually broad platform for Wes Anderson, who has perhaps most committed to the bit; \u201cThe Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar\u201d<\/a> serves as the quixotic centerpiece of his four-part collection inspired by the endlessly adaptable British novelist Roald Dahl and unrolled on the site over consecutive days in late September.<\/p>\n \u201cHenry Sugar,\u201d about a wealthy wastrel (Benedict Cumberbatch) who finds his purpose in the mystical third-eye teachings of an eccentric yogi (Ben Kingsley), seems designed to fit Anderson\u2019s gifts as a jewel-box maximalist. The starry cast runs full force with his nesting-doll plots and deadpan drolleries, the color palette comes saturated in a Pantone riot of blues, pinks and egg-yolk yellows, and the tone flips nimbly from tender to absurd, more Dahl sweetness than arsenic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At 39 minutes, \u201cHenry Sugar\u201d is easily the longest and most elaborate in the series, and the only one to get a limited release in theaters (with admissions priced accordingly, between $5 and $8). It\u2019s also probably the closest to a sure-thing Oscar nominee, a recognition that may or may not extend to the lovely but evanescent \u201cAsteroid City,\u201d Anderson\u2019s winsome feature-length dip into retrofuturism from earlier this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Pedro Almod\u00f3var, the resident romantic surrealist of Spanish cinema, seems to have less lofty goals for \u201cStrange Way of Life,\u201d<\/a> his featherweight dollop of fashion-cowboy whimsy presented and costumed by the venerable Parisian label Saint Laurent. (It\u2019s not the brand\u2019s first foray into film; they backed the perennial French provocateur Gaspar No\u00e9\u2019s demented 2019 short \u201cLux Aeterna,\u201d which also had its premiere at Cannes.)<\/p>\n The plot, such as it is, rests purely on gestural melodrama, with a \u201cBrokeback Mountain\u201d twist: A stoic sheriff, Jake (Ethan Hawke), and his onetime fellow gunslinger and secret paramour, Silva (Pedro Pascal), are reunited after 25 years apart. The passion between them \u2014 also telegraphed by handsome young doppelg\u00e4ngers in lusty flashbacks \u2014 still burns, but it\u2019s complicated by the criminal urges of Silva\u2019s violent, petulant son (George Steane).<\/p>\n Almod\u00f3var\u2019s gaze is more like a series of fun house mirrors here, passing through classic dime-store-novel narrative, the macho-man canon of midcentury Technicolor westerns and the winky camp of queering it all in circa-2023 couture. (Pascal\u2019s Kelly-green jacket, the production notes take pains to point out, is a tribute to one James Stewart wore in 1952\u2019s \u201cBend of the River,\u201d though its bedazzlement tilts more Ibiza disco than dusty frontier).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For all the novelty of watching two midlife male movie stars declare their love and linger in bathtubs, \u201cStrange\u201d feels teasingly incomplete at 30 minutes, galloping off before it\u2019s hardly begun. It seems smart, then, that it\u2019s being paired theatrically with Almod\u00f3var\u2019s other recent English-language experiment, the more substantial 2020 short \u201cThe Human Voice,\u201d featuring Tilda Swinton as a woman undone by her departing lover (it opens Oct. 4).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The luxe artifice of those films feels several galaxies removed from Godfrey Reggio, the former monk turned avant-garde documentarian whose pointed social consciousness and wordless, kaleidoscopic catalog has made him a sort of gnomic godhead for devoted cinephiles and stoners alike. But Hollywood still finds its way to the Santa Fe octogenarian\u2019s door: Steven Soderbergh, a fan since 1983\u2019s seminal \u201cKoyaanisqatsi,\u201d<\/a> is listed as executive producer on the 52-minute \u201cOnce Within a Time,\u201d and will travel to several cities to promote it. (Reggio is also the subject of a MoMA retrospective with his longtime collaborator, Philip Glass, that runs through Oct. 4, where the new short plays daily before releasing more widely in theaters.)<\/p>\n Set to a clamorous Glass score, \u201cOnce\u201d unleashes a whirling torrent of images, churned into a daguerreotype steampunk fever dream: merry-go-rounds, mushroom clouds, screaming chimpanzees in VR headsets. Mike Tyson appears as a benevolent wizard, and the climate activist Greta Thunberg as a stern bobblehead. \u201cIs it the sunset or the dawn?\u201d an interstitial card demands, as sand runs through a monolithic hourglass; both hope and apocalypse are heavily implied. At 83, Reggio probably knows more than most about the tyranny of time; onscreen at least, if not in life, new rules can be applied.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n