Lake Mungo (Anderson, 2008)|||||5.5
Soft for Digging (Petty, 2001)|||||7
Burn, Witch, Burn (Hayers, 1962)|||||6
Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli, 1946)|||||7.5
* Land Without Bread (Buñuel, 1933) (short)|||||++
Ménilmontant (Kirsanoff, 1926) (short)|||||++
The Smiling Madame Beudet (Dulac, 1923) (short)|||||++
At Land (Deren, 1944) (short)|||||++
* Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel, 1929) (short)|||||+
The Innkeepers (West, 2011)|||||6
A frustrating film. Ti West, one of the most promising young makers of horror films, has a crutch in his rather quaint love of horror, and it shows in his films that are alternately fascinating and self-realized, and complacent and middling. The best scene in this film is utterly fascinating, and involves a non-mutual ghost encounter seen through a dominant female, imposing both the ghost and herself on a passive male and passive audience (both male character and us never shown the ghost), and it acts as a brilliant culminating encapsulation of these characters and of emotional texture up to this point, now absolutely locked in the thick of this story about the vying attraction and dread of the extra-ordinary as manifested in two anti-extraordinary people. But this great height of symbolically evocative film-making is an oasis in a sorely temperate film - not a desert, as it is somewhat verdant with personality and cinematic life, but still mostly dry, as the film marches lockstep along stock-creepy painted lines, resisting any bold statements in favor of almost indulgent subtlety (problematic even in West's occasionally shining, abundant investment in buoyant character exploration, which is lovely but excessive and diluting), and the aforementioned quaint horror geekery that is lulling instead of demanding, asking for vague and non-committal familiarity with West's worlds of the creepy supernatural and the banal dead-end worker, but never pushing statements of milieu and emotion beyond lip service and drollery.
This is most clear and damning in an epilogue that should feel absolutely necessary - that should be inherently wrought with catharsis or, if limiting to ask of that, at least implication - yet somehow manages to force feed us pointlessness. It ends with a final shot that is maddening in its almost smug insistence on West's debilitating love of modesty.
The Skin I Live In (Almodovar, 2011)|||||7
Reverse Shot review
Coup d'etat (Yoshida, 1973)|||||8.5
Trigger Man (West, 2007)|||||5
The Baby of Mâcon (Greenaway, 1993)|||||8.5
Le Havre (Kaurismaki, 2011)|||||6.5
Husbands (Cassavetes, 1970)|||||7
I've seen and loved Cassavetes films, he always has a level of abstractness to his films, and in regards to basic plotline, this film seems the most straightforward - but it's weird (the drunken actions and ramblings of the characters), meandering, and avoided context constantly, almost to a point of borderline incoherence. Its commitment to presenting a stretch of time of complete drunkenness and emotional/perceptual chaos is surreal and disorienting enough it rivals Fellini's Satyricon. Admirable film, but it was way too wild for me.
* The General (Keaton, 1926)|||||6.5
* The Kid (Chaplin, 1921) (short)|||||6.5
The Wayward Cloud (Tsai, 2007)|||||7
* Cat's Cradle (Brakhage, 1959) (short)|||||~
* Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage, 1962) (short)|||||+
Time Piece (Jim Henson, 1965) (short)|||||++
* A Movie (Bruce Connor, 1958) (short)|||||++
Grizzly (Girdler, 1976)|||||3.5
À nos amours (Pialat, 1983)|||||8
Bed and Sofa (Room, 1927) (short) (w/ live score)|||||7
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai, 2003)|||||7
The Palm Beach Story (Sturges, 1942)|||||7.5
Daughters of the Dust (Dash, 1991)|||||6
Possession (Zulawski, 1981)|||||8
The Woman (McKee, 2010)|||||6.5
Faust (Murnau, 1926) (w/ live score)|||||8
Revolutionary Road (Mendes, 2008)|||||5
* La Bete Humaine (Renoir, 1938)|||||8
The Amateurist (July, 1998) (short)|||||+++
Sissy Boy Slap Party (Maddin, 1995) (short)|||||+
Kitchen Sink (Maclean, 1989) (short)|||||+
Meek's Cutoff (Reichardt, 2010)|||||7.5
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