Of Time and the City (Davies, 2008)|||||7.5
Offers the pragmatism I missed in The Long Day Closes. Beautiful digital photography. The archival footage, though, loses one's interest often.
The Long Day Closes (Davies, 1992)|||||7.5
An unrepentant and ambling nostalgia trip, which can only win me over so far, but it's certainly the most highly astute and achingly poignant of the stripe. The most beautiful ending I have ever seen.
Broken Blossoms (Griffith, 1919)|||||6
Mamma Roma (Pasolini, 1962)|||||8.5
Lust for Life (Minnelli, 1956)|||||8.5
The Bad and the Beautiful (Minnelli, 1952)|||||8.5
The Music Lovers (Russell, 1970)|||||5
The Hemingway Night (Mairs, 2009) (short)|||||++
Jenny Mi Amor (Severance, 2011) (short)|||||++
The Master (Anderson, 2012)|||||5.5
Paul Thomas Anderson films all have the distinct feel of big, empty, air-filled vessels. Whereas There Will Be Blood was a big, black, stupidly looming, hot-air-filled Hindenburg, The Master is actually a delicate big red tacky balloon. It's more uneven and far less competent than its predecessor (with pacing issues, lackadaisical scenes, etc.), but it becomes a quietly affirming film by the end, a story of man-as-animal and the suffering and vacant relations that are incurred when we try to delude ourselves otherwise. *spoilers* Most touching is its allowing our main buddy protagonists Pheonix and Seymour Hoffman to be rather unscathed by its finish, even better off, by virtue of the genuine bond and symbiosis they create with each other, all while shrewdly glimpsing us Amy Adams's imperturbably self-shielded Peggy as the one seemingly capable of breaking apart at the seams with a monster inside.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog, 1974)|||||7
And Again (Horne, 2010) (short) (non-fiction essay film)|||||+++
Late Spring (Ozu, 1949)|||||8
Amityville II: The Possession (Damiani, 1982)|||||4
Would've been a slightly-intrigued 4.5 if it didn't suddenly turn into The Exorcist at the three-quarter mark. Before then, this is often shockingly effective... in an awful, abusing kind of way. Even before any evil forces come into the picture, the film is perverse in its presentation of the family unit, with all its repressions and resentments. Besides the broad caricature of the boorish dad whom no one can possibly sympathize, the film has no sympathy either for the sweet (and dumb, small-minded) Catholic mother, the bright-faced, sexually blossoming young daughter, and the cusp-of-manhood, father-resenting young son. And that's not to mention its glorious depiction of the innocent children when the family's two toddlers play an adorable game of PLASTIC BAG SUFFOCATION. Let me applaud Damiani and screenwriter Tommy Lee Wallace (of Halloween III!) right now, they deserve it, and that I really mean. But before it sounds like I'm recommending this movie... it's not terribly good, it's icky and morally obtuse, and I stopped paying it full attention once Priests: The Documentary began.
Amarcord (Fellini, 1970)|||||7
Father of the Bride (Minnelli, 1950)|||||7
Class Relations (Straub & Huillet, 1984)|||||8
Gothic (Russell, 1986)|||||5.5
Landscapes in the Mist (Angelopoulos, 1988)|||||6
The Tall Man (Laugier, 2012)|||||5.5
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