Twin Peaks, Season 1 (Lynch, et al., 1990)|||||+++
La Ronde (Ophuls, 1950)|||||7.5La Ronde is formally exquisite, but the film's conceit, while finely observed, is just barely interesting. Also, rather like a (500) Days of Summer of the day - too cleverly unequivocal about romance.
* The Woods (McKee, 2006)|||||6
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010)|||||7
Evening Primrose (ABC Stage 67 Episode) (Bogart, 1966)|||||+
The Tree of Life (Malick, 2011)|||||7.5
I prefer all other Malick films, with their sturdier narratives and bolder technique less dependent on fragmentary graphical saturation (nothing quite like Thin Red Line's battle scenes here), but this is certainly a wonderful creation. Talk about recapturing childhood textures. It's the film's biggest boon, how closely it recounts, almost methodically, encyclopedically, all the feelings of childhood.
New Year's Evil (Alston, 1980)|||||3.5
* 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)|||||9
Boarding Gate (Assayas, 2007)|||||7.5
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II (Yates, 2011)|||||5.5
Super 8 (Abrams, 2011)|||||6
Supreme entertainment. If anything, Abrams has guaranteed my butt in a seat for all his movies, just for his lightning-fast filmmaking instincts, creating absolutely dynamic, exciting, and dramatically strong movies and effectively becoming the (if undeniably regressed) heir to the Spielberg mantle by sheer extent of visual adeptness. In matters of substance, Super 8 manages to beguile in a number of ways, mostly fall-out from all the indulgences and personal emotional places Abrams readily throws into his admirably ambitious coming-of-age/family drama/action romp/sentimental tapestry/monster flick melange of a screenplay. Ambition does not mean audaciousness, and Abrams's script and directorial appetites prove first-class escapism and juvenilia and not much more (I'll readily concede, what pizazz it has, though!). Meanwhile, Abrams's sprawling concoction of a story flirts with richness, so that, even if the story kind of disintegrates in the weak final stretch, the soaringly emotional and suddenly the-utmost-ridiculous finale works as an absurdly beatific, beatifically absurd, and vaguely knowing encapsulation of the worth of high sentimentality in escapist cinema, fantastically merging a double-reconciliation of families with a judgmental monster's divinely-tinged magnetic swiping of humanity's petty articles (consumer items, a memento mori, and soldiers' guns - one soldier even clinging to it so desperately he gets served with a moment of small humiliation), all into the ultimate Spielbergian finale and a be-all, end-all of beautiful final fade-outs.
Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage, 1962) (short)|||||+
Let Me In (Reeves, 2010)|||||5.5
* Being John Malkovich (Jonze, 1999)|||||7.5
35 Shots of Rum (Denis, 2008)|||||7
The Food of the Gods (Gordon, 1976)|||||4
The Earrings of Madame de... (Ophuls, 1953)|||||8
* 8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963)|||||8
* Insidious (Wan, 2010)|||||4
Larry Crowne (Hanks, 2011)|||||2.5
Bridesmaids (Feig, 2011)|||||5.5
