April 2012

April 2012

* Christine (Carpenter, 1983)|||||5.5
Happy Together (Wong, 1997)|||||6.5
Neverquiet (Film of Wonders) (Bragança, Meliende, et al., 2011)|||||5.5
The Cabin in the Woods (Goddard, 2012)|||||5.5
The horror genre spoofery is at a dissatisfying disjunction with the moral tale of a rotten worldly system. I felt some chagrin towards the film and its terribly comprehensive exposé of the horror genre as a hollow freak show (so yes, a personal hang-up there - this took a piss out of the genre I love so well I was offended!). But on the other hand, the film is affecting as an apocalyptic tale, an ode to the dead teenager.
So oddly enough, while I of course couldn't not enjoy the gonzo geekery of the climax, it was the previous/other stuff - actually feeling sadness and shock when one of the teens died, that match cut and the Final Girl's beating at the dock, the final nihilistic moment between friends - that makes me really appreciate the film.
Hour of the Wolf (Bergman, 1968)|||||8
* Bless Their Little Hearts (Woodberry, 1984)|||||6.5
When It Rains (Burnett, 1995)|||||+++ / 7.5
Quiet As Kept (Burnett, 2005)|||||+++
The Joy (Bragança & Meliande, 2010)|||||6
Le Skylab (Delpy, 2011)|||||5
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (Harry, 1987)|||||2.5
Film Socialisme (Godard, 2011)|||||6
* The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973)|||||7.5
* Eggshells (Hooper, 1969)|||||4.5 / 5
* The Heisters (Hooper, 1964) (short)|||||+++ / 7.5
Boris Godounov (Zulawski, 1989)|||||6.5

March 2012

March 2012

Gas! (Corman, 1971)|||||6
The Deep Blue Sea (Davies, 2011)|||||8.5
The Woman in Black (Watkins, 2012)|||||3.5
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Buñuel, 1972)|||||8.5
Spetters (Verhoeven, 1980)|||||8
First dick measuring scene. Real cinema.
The Diary of a Chambermaid (Buñuel, 1964)|||||8
L'Enfant (Dardennes, 2005)|||||7
Loft (Kurosawa, 2005)|||||7
* Toby Dammit (Fellini, 1968) (excerpt from 1968 film 'Spirits of the Dead')|||||7.5
The Blue Note (Zulawski, 1991)|||||8
In the Heat of the Sun (Jiang, 1994)|||||7.5
* Terror Train (Spottiswoode, 1980)|||||5
I think this is definitely one of the better 80s slasher flicks.
Moolaadé (Sembene, 2004)|||||7
Statues Die Also (Marker, Resnais, 1966) (short)|||||8
The Wind is Blowing On My Street (Riazi, 2010) (short)|||||6.5
Fugitive Love (Jenkins, 1992) (short)|||||7
Suu et Uchikawa (Carton, 2011) (short)|||||7
Daisies (Chytilovà, 1966)|||||6
Closely Watched Trains (Menzel, 1966)|||||7
Carlos Part Two (Assayas, 2010)|||||7.5
Simon of the Desert (Buñuel, 1965) (short)|||||7
* Duck Amuck (Jones, 1953) (short)|||||++
Coming Home (Ashby, 1978)|||||6.5
Written on the Wind (Sirk, 1956)|||||8
* Vivre sa vie (Godard, 1962)|||||8
The Last Wave (Weir, 1977)|||||5.5
Carlos Part One (Assayas, 2010)|||||7
Mosquita y Mari (Guerrero, 2012)|||||5
Tarrafal (Costa, 2007) (short)|||||7
Damnation (Tarr, 1989)|||||5.5
Hell Night (De Simone, 1981)|||||4

February 2012

February 2012

Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965)|||||8.5
"P.T.A. extraordinary general meeting" (Shokuzai, Japanese mini-series) (Kurosawa, 2012) (TV series)|||||7
Now, Voyager (Rapper, 1942)|||||6.5
"French Doll" (Shokuzai, Japanese mini-series) (Kurosawa, 2012) (TV series)|||||5.5
The House Where Evil Dwells (Connor, 1982)|||||4
* Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966)|||||7.5
Elephant (Clarke, 1989) (TV) (short)|||||6
Everybody's Famous! (Deruderre, 2000)|||||3.5
Storytelling (Solondz, 2001)|||||6
* Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)|||||8
The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (Rossellini, 1966)|||||7
* The Changeling (Medak, 1980)|||||5.5
A Dangerous Method (Cronenberg, 2011)|||||7.5
A film about flailing intellectuals and their circuitous intellectual think, and aware of their desire to change the world and the ironies of their alternating successes and failures to do so. The ending is quaintly sentimental, but it's a wonderful way to end the film after all the film's proper restraint and historical perspective (without forgoing those things, just melding them with the film's ultimate melancholy).
* Bigger Than Life (Ray, 1956)|||||7.5
The Ruling Class (Medak, 1972)|||||7.5
The Wicker Tree (Hardy, 2010)|||||6
This is delightful. If you like your film-making dirty and 70s - spontaneous, non-cookie-cutter, not afraid of honest-to-goodness personality and film-making euphoria - you might be able to forgive the film its numerous failures and embarrassments, and rejoice that Robin Hardy still has the gleeful vision he imbued into The Wicker Man, if now with more outwardly camp goals and compromised [digital age] execution.

January 2012

January 2012

Psycho III (Perkins, 1986)|||||6.5
Excalibur (Boorman, 1981)|||||6
* Caché (Haneke, 2005)|||||7.5
To Sleep With Anger (Burnett, 1990)|||||7.5
Psycho II (Franklin, 1983)|||||5
Cold Fish (Sono, 2010)|||||6
Europa (Trier, 1991)|||||8
Germany Year Zero (Rossellini, 1948)|||||7.5
Albert Nobbs (Garcia, 2011)|||||4
War Horse (Spielberg, 2011)|||||5.5
The story is okay enough. Survey of war yadda yadda, which is fine and good, but always tilting towards retrograde in the hands of fuzzy, the-values-we-hold-dear, let's-keep-on-holding-them-dear Spielberg.
A Separation (Farhadi, 2011)|||||7.5
Blistering social observation, and an incredibly well-written dramatic tale of moral complexity.
Shame (McQueen, 2011)|||||5
Reverse Shot: "... that he’s gone further and weighed the already heavy film down with the most self-serious molasses-thick score in recent memory (even a habitual button-pusher like John Williams would cringe), is arrogance of the highest order."
Nanami: Inferno of First Love (Hani, 1968)|||||6
Exorcist II: The Heretic (Boorman, 1977)|||||6.5
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Fincher, 2011)|||||5.5
* Zardoz (Boorman, 1974)|||||7
The Son (Dardennes, 2002)|||||7
That Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel, 1977)|||||7.5
Bad Lieutenant (Ferrara, 1992)|||||7.5
S&Man (Petty, 2006)|||||5.5
Oh, Woe is Me (Godard, 1993)|||||6.5

December 2011

December 2011

* The Muppets (Bobin, 2011)|||||5.5
It only took me sitting through it a second time, but I now like Jason Segel's Muppet movie. But I can't ignore how miserable that first viewing was. I think I could pinpoint my annoyance with the film to two major things: 1) The "faux-musical" schtick. Musical numbers filmed like ironic jokes, and the whole (500) Days of Summer, "half-assed-musical" aesthetic that needs to die slowly and painfully. This said, I now want to own "Life's a Happy Song." And 2), the scope of this thing is just so damn small. It is firmly of the age of the internet video, and the movie just feels like a long, Muppets spin-off Funny or Die video. Has the art of puppetry died, or is the never-ending stream of Muppet-high medium shots an aesthetic choice?
Now that I knew the film had nothing more to offer the Muppets universe in terms of scale other than hipster humor, I was able to sit back and process the jokes, the narrative arcs (that I felt were non-existent the first time around, although of course they're about a man-child, and "fitting in"), and the detail of Segel, Bobin and co.'s loving & comprehensive recreation of the Muppets and allusions to their most endearing bits.
But the scope thing really boils it down. There isn't a real movie around this thing. It's a lip service movie through and through, and you can analogize it to an SNL sketch spin-off movie that fails to make it movie-sized. It's all cute jokes and tribute, no narrative edge, and so it manages to have too much story and too little story at the same time. It's watching the 70s-originating Muppets in this somewhat-acceptable 2000s Muppet movie (with the lamest cameos ever) that really makes one miss the dirty, decrepit 70s.
Hugo (Scorsese, 2011)|||||6.5
The Last Laugh (Murnau, 1924)|||||8
The Adventures of Tintin (Spielberg, 2011)|||||5.5
Puss in Boots (Miller, 2011)|||||5
Attack the Block (Cornish, 2011)|||||6.5
Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1987)|||||8
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci, 1972)|||||8
The Sitter (Green, 2011)|||||4.5
'The Sitter' is about the same level of inspirations and idiocies as 'Your Highness,' but while Your Highness at least had the conviction of its homage and production scope, The Sitter is a through-and-through lark and pretty throwaway of a project. Green's thing is throwing things at the screen and hoping it sticks, is funny, and perhaps is even resonant and interesting, and as per usual, it's hit, miss, and "Why are you making this movie???"
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Bird, 2011)|||||7
Rubber (Dupieux, 2010)|||||6.5
Tentacles (Assonitis, 1977)|||||4
1/3 inept/occasionally risible (the movie has an hilariously negative-trajectory moral sense), 1/3 kinda delightful/"Whoa-surprise-graceful-camera-work," and then 1/3 pretty cool creature work. Which I guess makes it two-thirds "I am charmed." over one-third "This is mind-numbing and moronic."

Despite its reputation of simply being a turd (and with the occasional permission to check out of the film when it's being tedious), I'm solidly cataloging this in my "So bad it's good" file.

TrollHunter (Øvredal, 2010)|||||4
Hunger (McQueen, 2008)|||||7.5
Winter's Bone (Granik, 2010)|||||5.5
The Muppets (Bobin, 2011)|||||4.5
Recessive (Kibens, 2011) (short)|||||++ / 6.5
The Haircut (Choi, 2009) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
The Call to the Post (Higdon, 2009) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
Sundown (Rentis, 2009) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Renoir, 1936)|||||8
A Day in the Country (Renoir, 1936) (short)|||||7.5
Thompson (Tippet, 2009) (short)|||||+ / 6
Finish Line (Chen, 2010) (short)|||||++ / 7
Andy (Ahn, 2010) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
Dos, Por Favor (Two Please) (Euresti, 2010) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
17 Meters (Schoenbaum, 2011) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
Light Escapes Through the Intervals (Tasaka, 2011) (short)|||||+ / 6
Nancy and the Dapper Toad (Samuels, 2010) (short)|||||++ / 7
Sully (Gupta, 2010) (short)|||||++ / 6.5
Forever's Gonna Start Tonight (Hittman, 2011) (short)|||||+ / 6.5
Storm Tiger Mountain (Cummings, 2009) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
Bygone Behemoth (Chaskin, 2010) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
A Serbian Film (Spasojevic, 2010)|||||5
Scarface (Hawks, 1930)|||||8
Bomb It (Reiss, 2007)|||||6.5
A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief (Reiss, 1988)|||||5

November 2011

November 2011

Skhizein (Clapin, 2008) (short)|||||+++ / 7.5
Dog (Templeton, 2001) (short)|||||+++
Peter and the Wolf (Templeton, 2006) (short)|||||+++ / 7.5
Anna & Bella (Ring, 1984) (short)|||||++ / 7
The Cathedral (Baginsky, 2002) (short)|||||+
Dreams and Desires: Family Ties (Quinn, 2006) (short)|||||+++ / 7.5
Food (Svankmajer, 1993) (short)|||||+++ / 8
Tower Heist (Ratner, 2011)|||||4
* Kung Fu Panda (Osborne, 2009)|||||5.5
Monsters vs Aliens (Letterman & Vernon, 2009)|||||4.5
* Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hand, 1937)|||||7
Melancholia (von Trier, 2011)|||||8
A welcome return by Trier to his Dogme vivacity (over Antichrist's aimless formalist portent). I've long held high-nosed, negative opinions about ceremonies, from graduations to weddings (told myself I had to see this in preparation for the holiday), so the film being prominently an evisceration of any and all worldly contrivances and trivial sentimentality makes von Trier's screenplay an incredibly satisfying work of deep snark. A movie about the Death of Bullshit (i.e. the world).
Gap-Toothed Women (Blank, et al., 1987) (short)|||||++
God's Angry Man (Herzog, 1980) (short)|||||++ / 7
Happy Feet Two (Miller, 2011)|||||8
Mimic: Sentinel (Petty, 2003)|||||5.5
Mimic: Sentinel, aka Mimic 3, is very low-budg and inadequate, with a script that hardly comes together (very little narrative pay-offs in the end), spurts of questionable performing, and some disappointing fumbled build-up, but ultimately, this J.T. Petty guy is a marvelous filmmaker. The first half of the film is fantastic, it's only when the horror sets in that he and the film begin missing marks.
L'Atalante (Vigo, 1934) (short)|||||7.5
Zero for Conduct (Vigo, 1933) (short)|||||++ / 7
Bullhead (Roskam, 2011)|||||5
Lola (Fassbinder, 1981)|||||8
Bush Mama (Gerima, 1979)|||||7.5
Snake Feed (Granik, 1997) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
Nocturne (Von Trier, 1980) (short)|||||++ / 6
Feelings (Solondz, 1984) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
Carmen (Payne, 1984) (short)|||||++ / 6.5
Doodlebug (Nolan, 1997) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
Barn (Mangold, 198?) (short)|||||+ / 6
Russian Ark (Sokurov, 2002)|||||8
The Fly II (Walas, 1989)|||||3
Martha (Fassbinder, 1976)|||||7.5
Sisters of the Gion (Mizoguchi, 1936)|||||7.5
I'm Here (Jonze, 2010) (short)|||||+ / 5.5
Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997)|||||7.5
* M (Lang, 1931)|||||8.5
Lucifer Rising (Anger, 1972) (short)|||||++
The Red Balloon (Lamorisse, 1956) (short)|||||+ / 6.5

October 2011

October 2011

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