| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linda Linda Linda - Unrated | Irresistibly charming. Bae Du-na is perfectly cast in Yamashita's deadpan style. Anyone who doesn't like this is an asshole. | November 23, 2009 | N/A | |||
| David Holzman's Diary - Unrated | This has some good ideas, but is too amateurish and simplistic in execution. It poses Godard's quote that cinema is truth at 24 frames/sec (which really doesn't mean anything depending how one defines 'truth'). As far as a mocku-diary trying to be the real thing, the contrived nature of its fictional parts stick out sorely compared to the improvised scenes, especially one where a transsexual hooker tries to pick up the cameraman. From the current perspective all it does it affirm that there is no unique formal quality to non-fiction, and that direct cinema is no more honest than what came before. | November 19, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Visage (Face) - Unrated | I probably need to see this again after getting more acquainted with the Salome story. I can say that this is Tsai's most self-reflexive film, like he's channeling Rivette. It's like the flip side of the coin to What Time..., plus plenty of musical numbers(though they have a more concrete context here), and that only describes part of it. The mis en scene is crazy good, definitely his most accomplished thus far. The problem I had was that it felt too disconnected, with too many major characters, and the Amalric and Baye cameos were pretty pointless. | November 16, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (Gokushiteki erosu: Renka 1974) - Unrated | People who like personal documentaries will dig this. This is about the director chasing after his ex-wife and making her the subject of his work after their divorce. It isn't really direct cinema since the sound is out of sync, calling the verisimilitude of dialogue into question, which might benefit the film because what happens in front the camera is so personal and traumatic. It would be better if Hara puts more of himself into the film instead of only rarely appearing and intruding into it. It contains perhaps the most harrowing birth scene since Window Water Baby Moving. | November 14, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Le Joli Mai - Unrated | Holy shaiza, this is top tier Marker. Following in the steps of Rouch/Morin's Chronicle of a Summer and even surpasses that in its expansiveness and its effortless integration of personal, social, and political to present a snapshot of the state of uncertainty in the minds of the Parisian population at the end of the Algerian war, and its critique of the isolation of bourgeois, their racism and materialism (all in good Markeresque humor). The first half of the film consist of Marker and the cameraman interviewing people from various strata of the population on what they consider happiness (and a whole slew of other topics) to be while adding their own opinions to the conversation. The second half places the interviews within the broader frame of contemporary politics and social concerns with newsreel footage. The associative editing prefigures that of Sans Soleil. Also, Marker, who provides plenty of screen-time to his favorite animal, meets his match when he interviews a costume designer who dresses her cat like a barbie doll. | November 14, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Reminiscences of a journey to Lithuania - Unrated |
Jonas Mekas was the pioneer of the diary film, and this is a three part diary of his memories of being an exile in America and his realization of his adaptation to his new home, a trip 20 something years later to visit his previous home in Lithuania, and a journey to Vienna to visit his friend Peter Kubelka. The first part is fairly conventional 'home video' compared to very herky jerky 2nd part that features a ton of extremely rapid cutting, which was quite beautiful and spontaneous. The extremely unstable 2nd part had a strange effect on me, as the gushing stream of images exhausted my senses to such a state that I floated through the rest of the film in a semi-conscious state, not fully aware what I saw was part of the film or a figment of my imagination.
rough draft for As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty: It's difficult for me to write intelligently about a work of this magnitude and power, so here are some incoherent, random thoughts: Like Walden, this film comprises mostly of footage from social gatherings, travels, picnics, daily rituals and activities arranged not in chronological order but by chance as Mekas as he says in the beginning. He describes this film as about nothing, and calls it "a masterpiece of nothing". In a way this claim is justified in that the achronological silent footage taken by his Bolex does not present more than a limited impression of the filmmaker. Yet later in the film Mekas tells the viewer to read the film carefully, claiming that 'he is in every frame'. Thus he is quite deceptive in how he chooses to present himself. More than anything the occasionally poetic voiceovers subtlety hints at an unpleasant past and wounds that he still bears, which is even suggested by the "occasionally ... brief glimpses of beauty" in the title(he equates happiness to beauty). These moments of anguish are overcome by the moments of "ecstasy" of living in NY with his friends and family. Likewise the essence of Mekas' images is stated by the title of another film "Autobiography of a Man Who Carried His Memories in His Eyes". He maintains that he films not reality but his memories, thus merely his point of view of events in his life. This subjectivity is further underscored by an intertitle that mocks the idyllic and perfect picture of domestic life portrayed by the film, perhaps because Mekas cannot capture moments of domestic strife or simply that the significance of these images can only grasped by him, although he later says that the images do not contain any hidden meaning. The many incarnations of his persona: as a family man, filmmaker, poet, film critic, champion of the avant garde, and the self-effacing, boyan-playing fool that are on display in his work gives me a fascinating portrait of the man (not to mention my brief real life encounter), similarly the film's images, sped up, pixilated, superimposed, in conjunction to the intertitles and voiceovers likewise presents many versions of Mekas during the different stages of filmmaking through the conception of the images to their retroactive organization decades later. |
November 14, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Sátántangó (Satan's Tango) - Unrated | Somewhat uneven. The tango-like structure and extremely long dead time are pretty awesome in showing the futile inertia of the community. However whenever some douche in the film opens their mouth it becomes laughable. It's very effective in carving out large chunks of time, which is really above all what the film is about. I'm not sure what the scene near the end featuring the writers discussing the characters was for. I thought I had seen enough rain in this film to last a season, but I left the theater only see it was pouring outside (plus an ominous sound of bell towing). | October 28, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Round-Up (Szegenylegenyek) - Unrated | Yeah, the long takes are nice, even though Jancso may have influenced Tarr the takes here are not as long and dynamic. Jancso really makes some great wide-screen compositions especially that of the vast empty landscapes. I don't know anything about the Hungarian history depicted so much of the background is lost to me and so I didn't care much for the absurd cat and mouse game in the story. | October 23, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Phenomena (Creepers) - R | October 18, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Yeoja, Jeong-hye (This Charming Girl) - Unrated | For most of this I thought it had a chance to make my list. I really dug how understated the material was and the director also makes some excellent impressionistic triggers into memory. The Jeanne Dielman-like stoic neurosis of the main character was right up my alley, but unfortunately the director eventually opted to try to explain the character using a cliched emotional baggage schtick, especially when it's so incongruent with the obliqueness of the rest of the film. To its credit it ends on a very ambivalent note, avoiding the trap of resolving all tension. | October 15, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Madeo (Mother) - Unrated | If Imamura made a genre film it would be something like this. Kim Hye-ja is terrific as the mother in the title, who is a great deal more interesting than the murder at the center of the story. | October 14, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Turning Gate - Unrated | The plot setup is reminiscent of any other Hong film, with the asshole/pitiful male characters, often artists themselves becoming involved with relationships with several women to assuage their own needs and inadequacies. The structure is similar to that of Woman on the Beach, with the male character being chased in the first half to becoming the chaser in the 2nd. Even though the guy here is still an asshole I found him more sympathetic than that of Virgin. It helps that this is one of his funniest and more poignant films. I don't get why Hong uses those zooms in his later films since the aesthetic here serves the purpose perfectly. | October 13, 2009 | N/A | |||
| White Material - Unrated | This is probably Denis' most conventional film, almost like her doing an action film. I don't her style is well suited for a movie with so much stuff happening in it, it leaves less room to get a feel on her oblique characters, some of which comes across as too obvious. | October 12, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Quiet Man - Unrated | argh, fucking stereotypical Irish behavior and fucking incomprehensible Irish accent. "Sir, her's a good stick to beat ter loverly lady." John Wayne throwing another rock/match/cigarette/Maureen O'Hara to the ground. | October 9, 2009 | N/A | |||
| La Libertad (Freedom) - Unrated | The daily existence of a woodcutter who lives in isolation, hunts and cooks his own meals. Alonso is very interesting because he chooses to define the people in his films through their daily mundane rituals rather than the typical character development in most other films. Like Liverpool and Los Muertos it has its share of mysteriousness but it's not quite as fascinating or moving. | October 8, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Geuk jang jeon (Tale of Cinema) - Unrated | Bring on the bifurcated meta films! I was confounded by the first half and then the rug gets pulled out from under me and while it becomes clearer it's still bizarre and interesting as hell. The true main character is a first class weirdo who gets involved in some pretty awkward moments. I'm not sure if the criticism of life imitating art is all there is to themes. It reminds me of Rivette's Love on the Ground. | October 7, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Sink or Swim - Unrated | Excellent, one of the best autobiographical essay films that I've seen (not that I've seen many). The film is organized into 26 parts corresponding to the letter of the alphabet in reverse order. In each section Friedrich relates episodes of her family history especially the troubled relationship between her and her abusive father through a third person story narrated by a young girl. This creates a distance between the text and the narrative that only increases the potency of the narration. The effect is comparable to that of Sans Soleil, except in reverse fashion. The images and section title cards interact in subtle and direct ways, sometimes serving as ironic contrast and sometimes suggest a narrative of their own. | October 6, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Synecdoche, New York - R | First of all, this is one fucking pretentious movie exploring some ideas that were much better executed in Rivette's films in less pretentious and grand fashion. Second, I prefer more immediate and subtle ways to express the profound ideas in life over Kaufman's bombastic, miserablist approach which make these big contrived tragic gestures to illustrate the most obvious things like aging and mortality. It would at least make the film more credible if it doesn't vacillate between genuine empathy and self parody. Plus with exception to Hoffman character who's obviously a stand in for Kaufman, none of the characters come across as believable. This is pretty much saying again that the film is very heavyhanded in getting its points across. It doesn't help the aesthetics are totally bland with conventional shot-reverse-shots. | October 2, 2009 | N/A | |||
| 36 Vues du Pic Saint-Loup (36 Views of Saint-Loup Peak) - Unrated | October 2, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Intruder (L'Intrus) - G | One of the most formally and aesthetically audacious films of this decade. | October 2, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Otona no miru ehon - Umarete wa mita keredo (I Was Born, But ) (Children of Tokyo) - Unrated | October 2, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Happening - R | It seemed that I have underestimated Mr. Wahlberg's acting chops. What a brilliant performance! It occurred to me while I was watching the deleted scenes (especially the couples 'fight' in the beginning) that if Shyamalan made a romance-relationship film (maybe in a mumblecore style) with Mr. Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel it would be the greatest film ever. I mean, those private, intimate moments between them were easily the most heart breaking parts of the film. The horror elements were fine and all for creating an effective context for those moments, but it could have been so much more. Nothing moves me more than love conquering all... yes, even suicide-inducing allergies. | September 30, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Spring in a Small Town (Xiao cheng zhi chun) - Unrated | A beautifully restrained and moody movie. At first the slow theatrical way the characters talk felt awkward but thankfully all of the emotions were perfectly conveyed with the characters' body language. It's a very feminist film in which the female character's stream of thought voiceovers shifts between past and present tense to express her desperation and stasis. | September 26, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge) - R | Umm, Great? I haven't seen a film as unabashedly romantic as maybe Sunrise. Binoche is so much better here since she's not kept under wraps like in Mauvais Sang. I didn't even notice the parallels to L'Atalante until the ending. | September 26, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood) (The Night Is Young) - Unrated | Kind of a like a much more romantic Nouvelle Vague Godard film with Denis Lavant as his Belmondo and Juliette Binoche as his Karina. The noir heist plot is just an afterthought to the main fireworks between the main characters. Lavant is of course amazing. | September 26, 2009 | N/A |
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