April 2015

April 2015

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

March 2015

March 2015

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (Gibney, 2015)|||||5.5
Shock Treatment (Sharman, 1981)|||||6
Listen Up Philip (Perry, 2014)|||||6.5
* Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Craven, 1994)|||||5.5
Interior. Leather Bar. (Mathews, Franco, 2013)|||||4
An Honest Liar (Measom, Weinstein, 2014)|||||5
John Wick (Stahelski, 2014)|||||4.5
Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)|||||5
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Ford, 1949)|||||6.5
* Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)|||||5.5
Citizenfour (Poitras, 2014)|||||6
Cymbeline (Almereyda, 2014)|||||5.5
* Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959)|||||6
* Rabid Dogs (Kidnapped Edit) (Bava, 1974)|||||5.5
The Purge: Anarchy (DeMonaco, 2014)|||||4
The Purge (DeMonaco, 2013)|||||4
... And God Spoke (The Making Of) (Borman, 1993)|||||5
Capote (Miller, 2005)|||||5
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Apatow, 2005)|||||3.5
Crank (Neveldine/Taylor, 2006)|||||5.5
The Thoughts That Once We Had (Andersen, 2015)|||||7.5
Where is the Friend's Home? (Kiarostami, 1987)|||||7
* AVP: Alien vs. Predator (Anderson, 2004)|||||3.5
Cinderfella (Tashlin, 1960)|||||6
The Parallax View (Pakula, 1974)|||||6.5
Timecrimes (Vigalondo, 2007)|||||5.5

February 2015

February 2015

Sex Tape (Kasdan, 2014)|||||2.5
Tomboy (Sciamma, 2011)|||||6.5
Elena and Her Men (Renoir, 1956)|||||7.5
Thief (Mann, 1981)|||||7
Manhattan Baby (Fulci, 1982)|||||5.5
Art School Confidential (Zwigoff, 2006)|||||6
* Bullitt (Yates, 1968)|||||6
Girlhood (Sciamma, 2014)|||||6.5
Djinn (Hooper, 2013)|||||6.5
Matador (Almodóvar, 1986)|||||6.5
The Cyclist (Makhmalbaf, 1987)|||||6.5
Jupiter Ascending (Wachowskis, 2015)|||||5
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Naruse, 1960)|||||7.5
* Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971)|||||7
* The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)|||||7
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Richter, 1984)|||||4.5
Whiplash (Chazelle, 2014)|||||5.5
Bully (Clark, 2001)|||||7

January 2015

January 2015

Universal Soldier (Emmerich, 1990)|||||4.5
Winter Sleep (Ceylan, 2014)|||||7
Mr. Majestyk (Fleischer, 1974)|||||5
The Don is Dead (Fleischer, 1973)|||||5.5
The Girl (Jarrold, 2013) (TV)|||||5
Goodbye to Language 3D (Godard, 2014)|||||6.5
Election (Payne, 1999)|||||6.5
Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki, 2003)|||||6
The Last Run (Fleischer, 1971)|||||6
The New Centurions (Fleischer, 1972)|||||7
The Thing (Heijningen, Jr., 2011)|||||3.5
* The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)|||||7
The Emerald Forest (Boorman, 1985)|||||6.5
* Doppelgänger (Kurosawa, 2003)|||||7.5
* Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam, 1998)|||||5.5
* Exorcist II: The Heretic (Boorman, 1977)|||||6.5
The River (Tsai, 1998)|||||7
* The House on the Edge of the Park (Deodato, 1980)|||||5.5
Late August, Early September (Assayas, 1998)|||||7
The Producers (Stroman, 2005)|||||4.5
Mr. Turner (Leigh, 2014)|||||6.5
* Scanners (Cronenberg, 1981)|||||6.5
Lisztomania (Russell, 1975)|||||5.5
* Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014)|||||5.5
Female Trouble (Waters, 1974)|||||6
See No Evil (Fleischer, 1971)|||||5.5
10 Rillington Place (Fleischer, 1971)|||||7
Monkey On My Back (De Toth, 1957)|||||6
Force Majeure (Östlund, 2014)|||||5
The Nomi Song (Horn, 2004)|||||5.5
The Assassination of Richard Nixon (Mueller, 2004)|||||4.5
* Stuck (Gordon, 2006)|||||6
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (Newland, 1973) (TV)|||||4.5

December 2014

December 2014

The Dead Zone (Cronenberg, 1983)|||||7
Into the Woods (Marshall, 2014)|||||5
Pitfall (De Toth, 1948)|||||7.5
HealtH (Altman, 1980)|||||6.5
Nine to Five (Higgins, 1980)|||||5
Blissfully Yours (Weerasethakul, 2002)|||||7.5
The Interview (Rogen, Goldberg, 2014)|||||4
The Day of the Jackal (Zinnemann, 1973)|||||6.5
The Homesman (Jones, 2014)|||||6.5
Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014)|||||5.5
The Babadook (Kent, 2014)|||||5.5
Maps to the Stars (Cronenberg, 2014)|||||7
Meet the Feebles (Jackson, 1989)|||||5.5
United 93 (Greengrass, 2006)|||||5
The Wiz (Lumet, 1978)|||||3
American Movie (Smith, 1999)|||||5.5

November 2014

November 2014

Hamlet 2 (Fleming, 2008)|||||4.5
* Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983)|||||7
A Midwinter's Tale (Branagh, 1995)|||||5.5
Hair (Forman, 1979)|||||5.5
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov, 1964)|||||7.5
Floating Clouds (Naruse, 1955)|||||7.5
* Day of the Dead (Romero, 1985)|||||7
Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990)|||||7
Satan's Cheerleaders (Clark, 1977)|||||3
From What is Before (Diaz, 2014)|||||6
Tora! Tora! Tora! (Fleischer, et al., 1970)|||||7.5
Interstellar (Nolan, 2014)|||||6.5
Fantastic Voyage (Fleischer, 1966)|||||6
Dracula (Melford, 1931)|||||4.5
More polished, but Browning's version is better. 
Birdman (Iñárritu, 2014)|||||6
Guyver (Wang, 'Screaming Mad' George, 1991)|||||3.5

October 2014

October 2014

Violent Saturday (Fleischer, 1955)|||||7.5
* Snowpiercer (Bong, 2013)|||||6.5
The Loved One (Richardson, 1965)|||||6
The Aviator (Scorsese, 2004)|||||6.5
* Noah (Aronofsky, 2014)|||||5.5
Giuseppe Makes a Movie (Rifkin, 2014)|||||5.5
* The House by the Cemetery (Fulci, 1981)|||||4
A Million Ways to Die in the West (MacFarlane, 2014)|||||3.5
Basic Instinct (Verhoeven, 1992)|||||6.5
The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (Six, 2011)|||||4.5
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Mitchell, 2001)|||||7
The Dark Backward (Rifkin, 1991)|||||5.5
The Cobweb (Minnelli, 1955)|||||7
Gone Girl (Fincher, 2014)|||||7
Night of the Ghouls (Wood, 1959)|||||2
Killer Joe (Friedkin, 2011)|||||6
* Breakfast at Tiffany's (Edwards, 1961)|||||5.5
Heaven's Gate (Cimino, 1980)|||||6.5