Clouds of Sils Maria (Assayas, 2014)|||||7.5
Saudade (Rousseau, 2012) (Short)|||||++
Exodus: Gods and Kings (Scott, 2014)|||||3.5
Repo Man (Cox, 1984)|||||7
Cremaster 2 (Barney, 1999)|||||7
Cremaster 5 (Barney, 1995)|||||5.5
Invaders from Mars (Menzies, 1953)|||||4.5
Unexpectedly no-nonsense thrills from a film purportedly about a kid, for kids. Killing little Cathy and an assassination attempt automatically makes this the hardcore version of Tobe Hooper's dreamy Spielbergian remake. Scientific progressivism & American moral rationalism is dialectically, glowingly touted while the "cold" Commies, umm, "have their reasons," making this the ne plus ultra of "Those were the good old days... or were they?" cinema.
Outrage (Kitano, 2010)|||||6.5
Big Eyes (Burton, 2014)|||||6
Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda, 1958)|||||6.5
Recount (Roach, 2008) (TV)|||||4
* Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)|||||9
Liverpool (Alonso, 2008)|||||7
The Quiet Ones (Pogue, 2014)|||||4
* The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963)|||||9.5
I devoted much adolescent thought to The Birds, but it needed none of that bit-chomping, psychoanalytical, thesis/support-driven discourse. It is simply stunning at every turn and, by the end, utterly moving on a level of complete artistic experience, making my callow, erstwhile attempts to concede that tiny note of Melanie and Lydia Brenner giving in to each others' embraces at the end as "sentiment" seem like the greatest misunderstanding of a work of complete and total sight. The Birds is one of the truest achievements of the cinema, our good work's truest testament to an existence of doubt and pain.
* Interstellar (Nolan, 2014)|||||6
It Follows (Mitchell, 2015)|||||5.5
