* Blackmail (Hitchcock, 1929)|||||6.5
Le Joli Mai (Marker & Lhomme, 1963)|||||8
* McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)|||||8.5
Fat Girl (Breillat, 2001)|||||9
Los Olvidados (Buñuel, 1950)|||||7.5
The Koumiko Mystery (Marker, 1965)|||||9
La Jetee (Marker, 1962)|||||8
Night and Fog (Resnais, 1955)|||||8
Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)|||||9
Across the Universe (Taymor, 2007)|||||5
Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)|||||6.5
Kids (Clark, 1995)|||||8
Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (Miike, 2006)|||||7
I'm Not There (Haynes, 2007)|||||7
Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)|||||9
* Targets (Bogdanovich, 1968)|||||8.5
The Orphanage (Bayona, 2008)|||||5
This is England (Meadows, 2007)|||||8.5
The Taste of Tea (Ishii, 2004)|||||7.5
* May (McKee, 2003)|||||7.5
Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008)|||||5.5
Offside (Panahi, 2006)|||||8
Hot Fuzz (Wright, 2007)|||||7
Knocked Up (Apatow, 2007)|||||6.5
3:10 to Yuma (Mangold, 2007)|||||4
Red Road (Arnold, 2006)|||||7
Beloved (Demme, 1998)|||||7
* The Quiet Family (Kim, 1998)|||||7.5
* The Host (Bong, 2006)|||||7.5
The Lookout (Frank, 2006)|||||5.5
28 Weeks Later (Fresnadillo, 2007)|||||5
Thoroughly engaging, recurrently effective as an approximation of the demoralized atrocities of ill-defined militarism, fear, and warfare (whether in war, in the blood, or in the family)... but Jesus if that wasn't one of the more sloppy, slap-dash, and incohesively constructed big-budget mainstream films I have ever witnessed. The film is too frenetic in directing and editing, for the film maintains the same overbearing style throughout and thus loses dramatic coherence (which it does possess at some points) in the quagmire of stylistic excess and a deficient sense of the virtues of a varied pacing and also variance in stylistic composition. The director and editor seemed to only function on two modes: haphazard montage of beautiful imagery and incomprehensible action sequence.
Too sloppy and overdone to be truly good - and the film's really sloppily crafted - but it has a striking thematic heft that makes me see the film as a too somber, too serious UK equivalent to The Host.
Eaten Alive (Hooper, 1977)|||||6.5
The Servant (Losey, 1963)|||||9
Appropriately high strung and scary in its portrayal of the perils of lethargy. One really feels the vapid complacence and subsequent torpor that entails the main character's downfall. Guaranteed to make one want to give up drug-stupored orgies and take control of one's own life!
Love Affair (McCarey, 1939)|||||8
Time (Kim, 2006)|||||6.5
A nicely edgy and upfront appraisal of cruel emotional politics ingrained in serious relationships, but I'm not sure shaky dialogue and overwroughtness assist much Ki-duk's spare directing.
Juno (Reitman, 2007)|||||6
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres (Maiellaro & Willis, 2007)|||||5.5
From Beyond (Gordon, 1986)|||||6
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (Altman, 1976)|||||8.5
The Burning (Maylam, 1981)|||||5
Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix (Yates, 2007)|||||5.5
Black Snake Moan (Brewer, 2007)|||||6.5
The Simpsons Movie (Silverman, 2007)|||||5
Away from Her (Polley, 2006)|||||6.5
* God Told Me To (Cohen, 1976)|||||7
* Death Proof (Tarantino, 2007)|||||9
Who Can Kill a Child? (Serrador, 1976)|||||7
Beautifully filmed, sometimes-silly-sometimes-brilliant low-budget Euro horror.
Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1977)|||||8.5
Once (Carney, 2006)|||||6.5
Eaten Alive (Hooper, 1977)|||||6.5
The Servant (Losey, 1963)|||||9
Appropriately high strung and scary in its portrayal of the perils of lethargy. One really feels the vapid complacence and subsequent torpor that entails the main character's downfall. Guaranteed to make one want to give up drug-stupored orgies and take control of one's own life!
Love Affair (McCarey, 1939)|||||8
Time (Kim, 2006)|||||6.5
A nicely edgy and upfront appraisal of cruel emotional politics ingrained in serious relationships, but I'm not sure shaky dialogue and overwroughtness assist much Ki-duk's spare directing.
Juno (Reitman, 2007)|||||6
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres (Maiellaro & Willis, 2007)|||||5.5
From Beyond (Gordon, 1986)|||||6
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (Altman, 1976)|||||8.5
The Burning (Maylam, 1981)|||||5
Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix (Yates, 2007)|||||5.5
Black Snake Moan (Brewer, 2007)|||||6.5
The Simpsons Movie (Silverman, 2007)|||||5
Away from Her (Polley, 2006)|||||6.5
* God Told Me To (Cohen, 1976)|||||7
* Death Proof (Tarantino, 2007)|||||9
Who Can Kill a Child? (Serrador, 1976)|||||7
Beautifully filmed, sometimes-silly-sometimes-brilliant low-budget Euro horror.
Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1977)|||||8.5
Once (Carney, 2006)|||||6.5
Pleasant, with engaging music. Characters are downtrodden in an admirably subdued way, and it's refreshing how they weigh their options and convictions like real adults, all without losing the sweeping romance that the more typical movie love story would usually throw all its dignity to the wind to achieve. But otherwise... meh? Not sure I find much to take away from this one, especially formally. Have I mentioned I hate musical montage?
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbender, 1974)|||||8.5
Bless that turn of the screw a third into it. I should have seen it coming, but it pushed the movie up from good to great. Fassbinder's strange, ironical formal technique magically clicks when the film's relentless prejudice romance-drama is finally ambushed by realities like the nature of uppity old womanhood, rowdy and prideful young manhood, and stubborn cultural values and language-intelligence barriers. Then it is awesome how the film regresses back to melodrama, then does a back flip again at the last second to serve bummerific immigrant labor social realities.
Django (Corbucci, 1966) |||||6.5
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbender, 1974)|||||8.5
Bless that turn of the screw a third into it. I should have seen it coming, but it pushed the movie up from good to great. Fassbinder's strange, ironical formal technique magically clicks when the film's relentless prejudice romance-drama is finally ambushed by realities like the nature of uppity old womanhood, rowdy and prideful young manhood, and stubborn cultural values and language-intelligence barriers. Then it is awesome how the film regresses back to melodrama, then does a back flip again at the last second to serve bummerific immigrant labor social realities.
Django (Corbucci, 1966) |||||6.5
