Briefly talk about what you've seen recently

La belle noiseuse - Yes, but...um... Oh, forget it. Worth the four hour length, yes. But I'm not certain if the payoffs really were properly set up. Really, I mean, when Rivette casually explains the ending in a DVD extra, that was completely not what I thought was going on, although it certainly makes sense. So I'm saying that it's good up until the last sequence.

Open Range - this was really good! depends on your tolerance for a little bit of corn here and there (but hey there is far less here than a typical john ford western in my opinion). someone somewhere said it was like a terrence malick wester, and it is to some extent. beautiful, taciturn dialogue and great acting all around. costner even achieves a kind of inspiration with the final shootout.

Monster - very good (both Theron and Ricci) but it's not the type of film I'd want to revisit again.

Y'know it was only last year that I saw The Wild Bunch, and I can't remember a single thing that happened in the movie (though I enjoyed it at the time).

the grandmother - the early david lynch short. i almost cried when i saw this. so beautiful and strange and dark.

eternal sunshine... - i think i've finally given up on charlie kaufman. all the gimmickry about the erasure of memory is shoved in your face to hide the fact that he really has nothing to say. (although i've explored the possibility that the lack of any sort of emotional attachment i had with the characters has something to do with the fact that i've never been in a bad breakup myself, that alone couldn't account for my dissatisfaction with it.)

Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind: Likable film, decent writing and wonderful direction (the minimal use of special effects forces the actors to get into their roles more), though the love story is a little difficult to believe, and there is at least one problem with the continuity (something which really bothers me in a movie more or less ABOUT continuity) - namely (SPOILER)

...that one of the drawings Jim C's character tears out of his journal when he takes his stuff in to the memory erasing company is the drawing he made of Clemintine when they meet for the first time AFTER the memory erasure is complete on the train back from the beach. My girlfriend thinks this was intentional just to screw with people who might notice.

(end SPOILER)

...so not really as creative as Being John Malcovich (though it relies heavily on ideas developed in BJM), but more rewarding than Adaptation.

I will probably see Dogville, The Dreamers, Broken Wings, and Wilber Wants To Kill Himself soon.

One-Way Boogie Woogie - A lot more fun than I thought it was going to be from the description (60 one minute takes of outdoor locations with a static camera), with some clever vignettes and a surprising amount of sex appeal. Also surprisingly inspiring; wish I could view again sometime.

El Valley Centro - Basically the experience that I thought I'd have with One-Way Boogie Woogie; interesting political angle; technical problems kept me from getting into it as much as I'd like but it was still rewarding to have seen it.

Also some flicks from Hong Kong on DVD:

Once a Thief - Shockingly goofy and old fashioned comedy from director John Woo. Some really broad slapstick comedy, especially from Chow Yun Fat, yet also some serious violence. More of a standard HK programmer than I expected, but at least it had Leslie Cheung in it.

Okinawa Rendevous - Pleasant romantic comedy; I basically rented it because it had Faye Wong in it, but her part wasn't very large or particularly illuminating. She has an interesting mystique about her, but I don't know that she's necessarily a good actress. Tony Leung Kar-fai was amusing in it; it also features Leslie Cheung, who was always pretty good in whatever he did.

A Good Lawyer's Wife
The Day A Pig Fell Into The Well
Camel(s)

I really enjoyed all three, but A Good Lawyer's Wife really tore me up. It's an incredible film -- the best I've seen this year, and the single greatest acting job (Moon So-ri) that I've seen in many years. Everybody MUST see this film.

You can read my full write-up here.

Camel(s) is a more experimental feature. Shot on video, it depicts one night with two 40-somethings who are having an affair. However, they seem to lack any connection, nor do they have much to say to each other. Sure to piss off many, this is an incredibly claustrophobic film that is mesmerizing to watch.

The Day A Pig Fell Into The Well is the first film from Hong Sang-soo. While not as good as Turning Gate it is an impressive feature nonetheless.

The one thing almost all these new Korean films have in common is adultery. It seems that everybody in Korea (or Seoul at least) is having an affair. Interesting.

Rented: American Splendor Good movie. Five out of five stars. I love comics and I thought the comic feel to this movie was a lot better than Ang Lee's attempt with the Hulk (which felt too forced). It felt like a documentart, movie, video history, etc all rolled into one.

About the Korea adultry thing... I'm going to have to ask my mom about that. She Korean.

The Ladies Man (1961 Jerry Lewis)
Probably the best Lewis film I've seen thus far. In this one, Jerry swears off women and moves into a giant dollhouse run by an ex-opera star. Wildly creative. I've yet to see Lewis' trademark willingness to bodily embrace and surrender to absurdity and child-like sentimentality more affectively showcased. Jerry (portraying Herbert H. Hebert) passive-aggressively goes to slapstick war with an army of beautiful women.

Only annoying thing is the watermark that pops up periodically on the DVD, but oh well. Oh, and they have an introduction on the disc by Tony Curtis, but I have no idea why he's doing the introduction.

Speaking of Vermont, I'm extremely jealous of all of you who have been able to see the James Benning films because we get next to nothing for art cinema in this podunk little state.

I've been in Maryland on a business trip this week & haven't seen much of anything except for "Tombstone"--it was one of those strange films where some elements in it I thought were pure genius, and others absolute garbage. Homage or not, the random shots of the lawmen on horses, riding towards the camera and randomly firing their guns was unintentionally hillarious, as was cliched "NOOOOOOOOO!" in slow motion as Wyatt Earp rushes into the water during the shootout. It's just hard to take Kurt Russell serious in anything. New found respect for Val Kilmer though.

Last night watched Raising Victor Vargas. A sweet movie that was good when you want nothing bad to happen to anyone.

I dig Val Kilmer in the same sense that my favorite actors (James Woods, Crispin Hellion Glover, Jerry Lewis) tend to be legitimately crazy and I have been rooting for him to make a comeback after awful films like "The Saint" and the one where he's blind with Mira Sorvino. The Salton Sea, in which Val is mutli-tattooed and mohawked, was not the comeback vehicle it should have been. I'm curious if anyone's seen the new Mamet film "Spartan" in which Kilmer stars.

Also, Kilmer has a fine eccentric cameo as an animal wrangler in the interesting Bob Dylan failure "Masked and Anonymous."

I love his Doc Holliday-by-way-of-Oscar-Wilde in "Tombstone" (which is a sort of pop-Western, like a medley of old classics played by a bar-band or something) but find it hard to choose between him and Dennis Quaid's incredible performance in "Wyatt Earp"...

Tried watching both Veronica Guerin and The Magadalene Sisters on successive nights and, in turn, gave up and went to sleep after about a half hour both times. Somehow I didn't realize that Joel Schummacher was responsible for the former until the credits came up--probably wouldn't have bothered if I had known. Pat, boring, predictable, bleh. Magdalene Sisters was a little more interesting, but I felt like I knew exactly where it was going from the first scene.

I liked Eternal Sunshine, though not enough to defend it against those who wanna hate on it. And despite all the praise for Jim Carrey's "understated" performance, he just HAD to go and do one "Jim Carrey" bit (you know the one I mean). Sigh. Likewise, I laughed at a lot of The Ladykillers, but it was a minor pleasure at best. The Coens seem to be attempting to sell out but can't figure out how.

Saw Dirty Pretty Things at last and was fairly impressed. Audrey Tatou was whatever, but the guy in the lead was great, as was Sergi Lopez. There's a great recurring shot, too, of a clock sitting next to a brassy lamp, with all sorts of creamy blue radiosity oozing all over it. Yum. Demonlover didn't strike me as a good film, exactly, but it was a pleasure watching cool Connie Nielsen strutting around looking badass for an hour and a half. And that bit with Chloe Sevigny playing video games naked is already a deathless classic.

I also saw The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, which I find difficult to judge as I haven't seen any other horror films from that period to use as a reference. It was a struggle. I can appreciate its set design, score and special effects, but story and performance wise I felt absolutely nothing.

Now working on Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Clouds of May. Beautifully shot, but I'm still trying to figure out what the hell is actually going on underneath the dialogue.

Onibaba : Dark and effective, though the ending seems rushed. I'm surprised this was from 1964. Seems ahead of its time. Amazing score, too.

F For Fake : Great fun via Welles and his editing table.

Yeah I will give it another shot, the place I saw it (middle of the day in a tiny library cubicle) wasn't exactly the best viewing space either.

Memoirs of an Invisibile Man
Just as dull as I remembered as a kid. I wished better for Chevy and Carpenter. Darryl Hannah was gorgeous though. All and all forgettable yet much better than the Hollow Man.

On deck: The Black Stallion, Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, Charge of the Light Brigade. Is Criterion's Complete Monterey Pop Fest worth the effort?

Purple Rain - I've seen it several times, but it never struck me before how much better Morris Day comes off than Prince. And it's really quite a misogynistic film.

Ripley's Game - Really, really enjoyed it much more than I had a right to.

[And for jay blanchard who asked a long time ago, I'm in Windsor County]

i feel dirty. can't---get---rid--of---dirt.......

seriously though, i thought it was incredible. the grotesque and depravity has always appealed to me in the cinema, probably because i lead such a tame life in reality & i prefer to fulfill any of my baser desires vicariously through film. that's what film's all about anyway, right, being a voyeur? i love todd solondz films, i just discovered gaspar noe & he's one of my favorites now.

the degree of detachment passolini was able to achieve is astounding. the film would not be so frightening if an opinion was expressed, which becomes immediately apparent as soon as the camera moves in. The wide long shots of the orgy rooms reminded me of the hotel in "the shining" and how much more frightening a huge empty space can be than the claustrophobic scenes commonly used in horror flicks.

it's a miracle this film every was made, but i'm glad it was. it was (and continues to be) an immense political and artistic achievement.

As Godard stated in "Weekend", the only way to fight the horror of the bourgeoisie is with more horror.

ikiru- kurosawa at his best maybe? this was really great and sad and happy. it was slow, but well worth it.

through a glass darkly- bergman is the man, this is one of his greats. cant say much more than that.

The Spirit of the Beehive is really one of those films one just has to experience. No talking or writing about it will ever suffice.

Greetings
Early Godardian comedy from Brian Depalma with Gerrit Graham ("Beef" from Phantom of the Paradise) and Robert Deniro as two friends who try to help another friend fail his Vietnam draft exam. Depalma's visual inventiveness is own display, despite a clearly limited budget to prove it, as is the director's career consistent theme of sexual voyeurism. Nice comic riffs on materialism and JFK conspiracy obsession make it an interesting time capsule piece for anyone curious about late 60s America. Apparently there's a sequel to this entitled "Hi Mom!" which I might have to try to track down.

Manson
Exploitation documentary patched together soon after the murders by a filmmaker who shot interviews and footage of "the family" at Spahn Ranch shortly before the Helter Skelter killings. Strangely the film won an Oscar despite, or due to, its psychedelic shock cut scare tactics and its tabloid tv-ish voice overs. If I had been watching a far out fictional film, and not actual footage and interviews with the perpetrators of a criminal atrocity, then I would feel somewhat less guilty about my attraction to some of the Manson family women; hair-cropped and wild-eyed, clutching those rifles.

Anyway, I've only seen a few things recently; most notably the first season of The Office...nice... and rewatching Matrix Revolutions - which I still contend is a much much better film than the conventional wisdom claims.

On deck:
Spider
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Landscape in the Mist

Now I'm about to leave to go see Eyes Without a Face at my university's theater. Will it be as boring as most posters on the IMDB seem to indicate it is? It's been a few years since I saw it last, so I'm not sure how much I'm going to enjoy this...

Oh Woe Is Me - Godard, why must you punish us so? Actually not so horrible once it gets going...too bad it takes half the movie to get to whatever it was supposed to be about. Not that great, either. There's a good reason I'd never heard of this one before.

Spider - Impressive, subtly moving along w/o too much happening, and an ending that doesn't bend over backwards to be gimmicky, but isn't much obvious until just a few moments before the reveal. I like. Too bad there wasn't much Cronenbergian "flesh", unless you count that odd eel-like meal in the bowl that we see for three seconds. Oh, and they filmed a part of it at my local pub. Nice.

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion - I appreciate Woody Allen's attempts at various points in the last twenty or so years of his oeuvre to remake genre works, but this just doesn't have enough going. Too flat, too flacid, too unfunny.

Fear, Anxiety, and Depression - Decent Solondz. Obvious, but forgivable, first-effort pitfalls, but ultimately a well done, if somewhat too tame start to a great career. If you're already a fan, I'd recommend giving it a shot, but if not, don't bother.

On deck:
Landscape in the Mist
The Damned
Return of the Secaucus 7

Impulse -- amazing, surreal trash spectacle starring Shatner with his fazer set on STUN!

Demonlover -- creepy meditation on trust, power dynamics and the banality of evil. The last shot will really stay with you... as you cry yourself to sleep in the fetal position.

The Abyss -- technically pretty amazing in this day and age of CGI that they filmed for hours every day submerged under 50 feet of water. But it loses me with all the E.T. crap and heavy handed message.

Ripley's Game -- turned it off after 20 minutes.

Office Space -- Mike Judge should forget about all that cartoon mess and make another live action flick.

The Rundown -- is underrated.

"Kill Rock Stars" video compilation--features "Lucky Three", a great short documentary about Elliot Smith by Jem Cohen as well as some great underground shorts and music videos. Definitely worth the $15.

"Conmingled Containers" and "For Marilyn"--two great, late-period works by Brakhage. what a perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon.

It really is in a similar vein to A Hard Day's Night.

God bless guilty pleasures.

Significantly weaker follow up to the pleasent House Part One. The characters in the first were very likeable, with fine pacing from director Reginald Hudlin. The two new directors of House Party 2 take a borader, nearly surrealist turn with a constant cartoonish sound effects to accompany the awkwardly choreographed, confusing slapstick. Inexplicable nastiness, stereotypes abound mixed with dumbass social commentary. Far too many characters fill the screenplay that was definitely not ready for prodction but Ralph Tresvant and Toni Tony Tonie peform good songs in their pajamas.
Overall, it's like a racist 9 year-old's conception of college life.

i thought it was pretty great! i was kind of shocked how dark it was actually.

I most recently saw:

21 Grams. Depressing but not as depressing as The Hours. Didn't really like it.

Shattered Glass. Really, really liked it. I can't believe it all happened for real.

Kill Bill, vol. 1 All Q.T.'s movies are really bloody and difficult for me to watch, but I thought this was really good. He blends lots of styles into his films and I like that. I liked the anime bit the best.

Paycheck
Not as bad as a lot of people seemed to be saying. I liked it. Not great, but all right.

Breakfast at Tiffany's
Wow, anamorphic widescreen! And a nauseatingly slim lead player! I hadn't seen this for years, and it being Blake Edwards, I had an irrational desire to hate it. But it's really good.

Viaggio in Italia
Well, call it curiosity. It was interesting, and kind of haunting at times, but it's a good case for shooting with something resembling a finished script, I think. Though Bergman and Sanders are worth watching in most anything.

Suspiria
Hadn't seen this for ages, either. I appreciate its good points, but Argento still big-time bugs me in ways I can't articulate.

The Immortal Story
Got the Italian import DVD. First-time view. Hmmm. Aching fidelity to Blixen source and a tight, static atmosphere. A fable for adults, verging on twee in spite of the adult themes. I'm ambivalent.

Last Man on Earth
The original Omega Man. Italian co-production, some bad dubbing, but hey, Vincent Price! 'Nuff said.

Looking forward to...
F for Fake
Brazil import DVD. To complete my Welles set. Another one I saw years ago and thought, 'What the f___?!' I was very young. Nothing shocks me anymore.

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW
Roland Emmerich is pretty safe and passionless and it says a lot that this forgettable film is probably the strongest in his filmography. It's disappointing to see Jake Gylanhall (sp?), remembered for his dark romantic sacrifice for Jenn Malone in the flawed but masterful DONNIE DARKO risking his life in DAY AFTER for truly the most boring girl in the world.
When the stray wolves roam the drifted ship stuck in the New York skyline make their presence known , it made me think that the entire movie would have been better if what was a horror film about smart teens escaping ravenous wolves and not global weather disasters. The style impaired, vacuousness of Roland Emmerich only serves to remind one about the differences between movies that are alive and movies that are dead. However, I'm embarrassed to admit that Dick Cheney's climactic change of heart strangely got to me; raised by liberals I couldn't help be immune to the heartwarming sentamental idealism of this politcal dramatist gesture. Still, the question I have is...does Roland Emmerich make anyone feel anything? Does anyone ever have the desire to see one of his movies a second time? At least Michael Bay has the unignorable style of an amoral fratboy.

House of Flying Daggers - Certainly watchable, but even sillier than Hero when it climaxes in a goofy love triangle. I like the old Zhang Yimou, with more discreet melodrama and Gong Li.

The Heroic Trio--this was pretty fun. is it true it's supposed to be an allegory about the power of a united democratic China? it was also very strange to see Maggie Cheung play such a loudmouth.

A Streetcar Named Desire - usually filmed stage play adaptations aren't my thing ("Virginia Wooolf" is an exception), but this one is a fine one just to compare the different acting styles, vivien leigh's performance is almost campy and unintentionally hilarious to me (I'm just not a huge fan of her style), brando is great/the two other leads are good - they're the reason to watch this imo.

Three Colors Trilogy - honestly wasn't too thrilled with this, other than "Blue"

"Blue" was my favorite - visually and soundwise, a beautiful thing to experience. The swimming pool scenes, in particular. I like binochet more than the other actresses, too.

"White" - just a silly film, but nothing I want to watch again

"Red" - It's easy to make a film about fate and coincidence when you have control of the script and can write about fate making things happen and people having parallel lives, the cafe name having the same name as the retired judge, etc. In any case, not remotely as beautiful as "Blue", nor as emotionally intense or the topics raised anywhere near as interesting as stuff in "The Decalogue." Also, somebody like Valentine seems too good to be true (I dunno, just my opinion). One thing I think it did well was make me feel like the judge listening or watching other people (my role as a viewer and so on). Not a bad film, but not great either.

On deck - Herzog version of "Nosferatu" and the Norwegian version of "Insomnia"

i did manage to see la jetee for the first time this past week and was rather blown away by it. a film that manages to say as much in its silences as in its actual images. am watching 12 monkeys tomorrow for comparisons' sake.

I also rented Bela Tarr's "Damnation", "In the Mirror of Maya Deren" and David Gordon Green's "George Washington" but haven't watched them yet.

Watched 3-hour version of "Betty Blue" (hadn't seen it since truncated version opened in '86). Yikes. The anti-Amelie, but not in the right ways. Like (somewhat less vicious) Gaspar Noe punctuated by slapstick. No wonder Beineix's global career dried up.

i just didn't get what was special about it. It was well made, but it just seemed...well...kind of shallow to me. I'd like to know what i missed.

His Mutual-era shorts are all pretty consistently funny. These were no different.

The spaces between the showstoppers of Crimson Gold are what lend the film its gravity, et al. The brief interlude inside Hussein's dingy apartment is really as central as the scene with the swimming pool.

"The Terminal" DVD: Wow, maybe Spielberg's best film since "Amistad" I know that's a laugh to the hatas) and probably his first successful human comedy -- reminiscent of Lubitsch. (OK, the script isn't as good, but whaddya want, it ain't 1934.)

When he isn't pushing at Cute Foreign Guy shtick, Hanks is actually bearable, and there's a subtext of criticism of Bush's Fortress America ("All you can do is shop"). Stanley Tucci and Kumar Pallana(the 85-year-old Indian fella from Wes Anderson's movies -- who gets to play more than a joke for a switch) are indelible. Great work by the production designer, Alex McDowell.

I found the 3 airport workers' shtick in the dinner scene particularly charming, and Spielberg keeps the camera static for maximum comedy; he's learned a lot since "1941."

recommended on another thread by ken; the last half of the film is set in the mountains of iceland, and not coincidentally this is where it becomes captivating. beautiful location shooting. the end was very reminiscent of ole rolvaag's "giants in the earth" (written ten years later).

city of sadness (hou hsaio-hsien, 1989):

despite the awkward historical brush-up that preceded the film, i felt like my ignorance of post-war taiwanese history and my inability to understand exactly what was going on with the different dialects kept me at an arm's length, but the long takes and unusual compositions were really terrific. i found myself anticipating the cutaway landscape shots (telephone wires and antennas surrounded by wet, lush forests, etc.) more than anything in the plot.

Luckily I also rented Manhattan which I also, inexplicably, hadn't seemed before. This is a really beautiful film and a loving portrait of New York. I miss pretension.

I saw "Three Days of The Condor" a few days ago. Its got a funky Dave Grusin score, some spine tingling shots of the World Trade Centre, and Faye Dunaway is breathtakingly beautiful. Its also quite pessimistic and dark for a Sydney Pollack film. There are a couple of excellent suspense setpieces as Pollack attempts a bit of hitchcockery. And Max VonSydow is great as a pragmatic euro-assassin. But basically its all about Robert Redford and his hair. Its like a shampoo advert.

The Man with the Movie Camera - really good! I don't care about the propagandist slant it had, a bit surrealistic at times, rapid fire editing and dazzling technique, a load of visual imagery, especially great were the photo-to-action (the athletic scenes in particular), the people's reactions to the camera, and of course, the Russian women and a live birth

The only minor complaint was repetition of some images, and the score on the version I watched was too distracting.

The Strong Man - Langdon's "man-child" persona is hard not to like, highly amusing moments all over the place, great finale; the only major flaws are when Langdon ISN'T in view -- the attempts at drama are awful.

Sunrise - great! the only murnau film I can really get into, though Nosferatu has it's moments too; no need to describe it since most here have seen it, though I feel it's worth mentioning George O'Brien's crazed look before deciding against killing his wife (which really was quite freaky)

On deck are: the outlaw and his wife, dr. caligari, and Diary of a Lost Girl

Fellini Casanova : This just gets better and more moving each time I watch it. I think it's Donald Sutherland's greatest role and it's too bad that the film is still seen as a disaster. Fellini's imagination in full throttle here, too, without any of the preciousness that he occasionally let slip through.

Elephant : Stunning first half and then *pfft*. Amazing looking movie, though.

the part with the rhino....

alright, less facetious - very godard-like in its execution, lots of swish pans and fragmented sound (actually it also reminded me of resnais' toute la memoire du monde with its sweeping camera work). focuses largely on the architecture of the nazi regime as a means of not forgetting that it ever happened, and also maintains an ironic distance from it (the juxtaposition of hitler clamoring about the "gigantic construction" of the nazi war machine is contrasted with images of crumbling remains) that perhaps makes it more powerful.

OTM Jay Vee. I think I've posted on other threads about how much of a failure I thought the "School Shooting on Quaaludes" second half was. I much preferred Van Sant's other release that year, "Gerry".

Fires on the Plain (Ichikawa)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
Hearts and Minds (Peter Davis)
Illusion Travels by Streetcar (Bunuel)
Senso (Visconti)
Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai)
Gojira/Godzilla (Honda)
Fists in the Pocket (Bellocchio)
There Was a Father (Ozu)
The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Fuller)
Privilege (Watkins)
The Lawless (Losey)
Naked Childhood; We Will Not Grow Old Together (Pialat)
The Clay Bird (Masud)
Mother Joan of the Angels (Kawalerowicz)
Raw Deal (Anthony Mann)

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - great..definite classic in my book, great sets and bizarre feel, and..birth of the untrusted narrator?

La Jetee - blown away! Just an amazing little short, visuals from that museum were downright spooky..

Hiroshima Mon Amour - mixed feelings, but worthwhile to see it, went into it with too high of expectations I think

Mucho pre-1920's films - Great Train Robbery, A Trip to the Moon, Lumiere shorts (Entrance of a Train, Demolishing of a Wall, Snowball Fight..), The Golden Beetle, and Nero -- all made for interesting viewing, especially the first two.

Yojimbo - I prefer this over "A Fistful of Dollars" (although, no good lines like, "My mule don't like people laughing") - another solid Kurosawa.

Sanjuro - OK, but the fact this was just some cash-in on Yomjimbo shows, I think. An entertaining watch, at least.

Andrei Rublev- another wow! I saw Solaris beforehand, but this was much better. Tarkovsky works better when he isn't bound by a strong narrative, and this one delivered because of that. Kudos to the pagan fire scene, the opening balloon scene, the attack on Vladimir (and that burning bull!); awesome visuals. Also, the camerawork (the long sweeping arcs, the curiousity of it, the erratic overhead shots). Hard to take it all on the first viewing.

A Night at the Opera - The Marx brothers are so frustrating! This had a few great moments (the room filling up with people, the crazy finale scene with Harpo swinging all over the props controls, the bit about the contract), but most of it was just OK. Groucho, as usual, started to really annoy the hell out of me with the one-liners by the end. I've felt this way about most MB films I've seen.

Sorry for the long list. If you're stilling reading, then hey, thanks for hearing me out.

Le Corbeau - early Clouzot 'thriller' ... town turned nasty and paranoid by poison-pen letter writer. Made under German occupation, good supplements on the Criterion disc.

Blind Shaft - pair of Chinese coalminers adopt young apprentices as 'relatives,' kill them for compensation. One grows a conscience. You can see the climax coming, but brusque, tough and convincing (by a heretofore documentarian).

Ong-Bak - 35 minutes of goofy and fun fights and chases amid lumbering formula plot.

The Nomi Song - Klaus' compelling story maxed to the straining point. Needs more footage! Wait for DVD.

Turtles Can Fly - Pre-Iraq-invasion Kurd camp with a plucky juvenile entrepreneur and more kids with hideous secrets. Far more artful than last year's Osama (another film whose production was a feat), seldom sentimental.

Fuller might be my new favorite cult film director, based solely on this and "Shock Corridor" (which I'm going to see tomorrow).

It was pretty funny too--the cheese factor in full effect.

Ford's "Wagon Master" - I've been reading for 20 years it was Pappy's personal Western of choice -- two slick young horsetraders lead Mormon wagon train to a new settlement. Too much Ward Bond-cussing humor early on, but a top ensemble piece (a la The Sun Shines Bright) and more sex and violence as usual. (A clan of baddies featuring silent beast James Arness and grinning simpleton Hank Twin Peaks Worden.) And young Ben Johnson is quite the hunk. Key scene between the wagoneers and Navajos:

"He says all white men are liars." "He's smarter than he looks."

Dreyer's "Day of Wrath" - The usual burnished, insidious CTD touch applied to Crucible-like machinations in 17th-century Denmark, centered on a hellish minister's family. Didn't cast a spell on me as thoroughly as "Gertrud," but few wasted frames; Dreyer looks like the father of Bergman and Bresson to me. The Criterion supps have clips from the same docs that are excerpted on the Gertrud disc, and the 40-years-later testimony of his actors is a must.

I agree, and I'd throw Tarkovsky in there too, as well as many of the '50's avant-gardists. The somnambulistic/trancelike atmosphere of his films shows through in their work.

i need to see some dreyer, stat.

The Criterion supps have clips from the same docs that are excerpted on the Gertrud disc,
I loved the cameraman's stories that I saw- Dreyer would tell him to do the scene again but to wiggle the branch of bay tree in the corner, little things like that. Also that guy who was in Gertrud (and had the bad liver transplant in The Kingdom saying something about not having to make a conscious effort to talk slower, it just happened automatically when you worked for Dreyer, IIRC.

OTM, spectator bird. This becomes even more blatant when you watch the silent deleted scenes on the DVD I have--the scenes that scared the hell out of me an hour ago seemed tame and funny without the accompanying soundtrack. The later horror flicks learned a good lesson from this--don't give them the option of closing their eyes.

TCM definitely owes a great deal to Hitchcock's "Psycho" in terms of the surreal, jarring soundtrack, dead parents in the attic, ghost town environment, etc.

Also watched Maya Deren's "The Private Life of Cats" tonight & it was one of the cutest films I've ever seen. Probably one of the earliest films that tell a narrative using only animals (with the exception of a silent film I saw on public access once that was cast entirely with capuchin monkeys dressed up in little outfits & riding goats & stuff. If anyone knows the name of this movie please let me know).

i haven't seen "l'eclisse" yet, but you might be onto something since your last sentence pretty accurately sums up "zabriskie point" .

King Lear (1987 Jean-Luc Godard)
The language minded Godard's most star studded cast in a deconstruction of Shakespear's play. Finely atonal dislocations of sound and image, the constant shrieks of seagulls, grey days in a post apocalyptic world in which the great works of literature are lost and have to be reformed from the day to day present tense human truths they speak to.

The Visitor (1979 Michael J. Paradise)
John Huston and Sam Peckinpah act in this vividly goofy supernatural thriller. Kind of a smorgasborg of The Omen- The Birds- and The Exorcist and most definitely produced in the wake of the latter's success. Never boring and works as the playful pardoy of the Exorcist that John Borman's sloppy sequel maybe secretely wanted to be.

It's funny you mentioned "Blood Harvest"--I'd never heard of it before, but one of my co-workers let me borrow it this weekend, along with "Suspiria". He said that BH was the film that made him want to become a filmmaker. I'll watch it soon & give a review.

I've never seen Godard's "King Lear" because I haven't been able to find it anywhere :(

Watched "Finding Neverland" this morning, which was very touching & enjoyable. Great performance by the little kid who plays Peter Lewellyn Davies.

Black Narcissus - Oh, another fairy tale, for the most part. Gorgeous film. Excellent shots with colored light and interior settings. Bizarre, hallucinatory last thirty minutes, climaxing with a very murderous looking Kathleen Byron trying to push another nun off the belltower. "The Archers" really did make some of the best films of that decade -- "Red Shoes" is ace too.

What could (and at times is) be a devastating film gets watered-down by the urge to make it palatable to an audience that wants to feel superior about its compassion for the children without facing anything challenging.

yesterday girl - alexander kluge's first full-length film about a woman who tries to exist peacefully in postwar germany but to no avail. godard fans should definitely try to check this out (i think it's on VHS, but no kluge films are available on dvd far as i know).

water drops on burning rocks - based on a play fassbinder wrote when he was 19 and it kinda shows. a lot of the ideas in this story would be fleshed out for fassbinder's later films (the early seeds of in a year with 13 moons are especially evident), so the four characters aren't really given a chance to fully develop, but still, ozon did a pretty good job with the material and i like just about any movie with a randomly inserted dance sequence in it.

young torless - cute sadistic teenage boys torture one of their own and hang out with prostitutes at a german boarding school while the title character has a crisis of morality. way better than lord of the flies.

isle of flowers - this is probably one of my favorite experimental films ever - funny, cringe-inducing, and almost unbearably poignant "letter to a martian" about human beings and the "garbage" they produce.

When I said more or less the same thing a few years back on a_film_by, the venerable Dan Sallitt replied:

You could argue that the ending to MARIA BRAUN is so obviously and casually tipped off that it's in quotation marks. (Where's that word "Brechtian" when you need it?) Fassbinder doesn't play the ending for pathos or even sorrow - he pushes us back emotionally enough for us to see the abstraction of ending the film with that particular big bang. Maria was identified with both the emotional deprivation and the economic change of the time she lived in: when the emotional deprivation ends and the economic transformation is accomplished, she serves no further symbolic function, so Fassbinder gets rid of her in a big way.

wow, i had almost the exact opposite reaction to this film, right down to loving the score. and i thought that the way he showed the progress of time and ran through the emotions that would be attached to one week, two weeks, three weeks, etc. was done really masterfully. i suppose you're right that it doesn't "build" in any way, but that seemed part of the experience he was rendering: at some moments the experience was incredibly liberating and exciting, at others it was constrained, squalid, and horrible. i suppose the ending was overwrought, though it left me feeling as oddly detached as the children seemed to feel, which was in itself some kind of feat.

as for this:

Kore-eda never manages to convey anything about the feelings of the children that isn't said out loud

watch the oldest child's face when he's plucked from the weeds and invited to play baseball. the acting in that entire sequence is amazingly subtle and expressive.

Everything good or great about it is a function of the story itself. It's almost impossible not to respond to the children and their situation, but it needed something more to be a great film.

Gloomy Sunday I recently bought this film after watching it in the theater. I'd compare it to Hotel Rwanda when discussing its affect.

Spellbound A documentary about the National Spelling Bee, which made me cry.

Falling Angels A cross stitch in between The Ice Storm and Ghost World.

Tonight I watched Biggie and Tupac and was very pleasantly surprised. It's very much a film that's there and the man-on-the-streetisnhess works incredibly well, given the timeliness of the sbject matter. Surprising!

Man, how I loathed Ken Park (and I liked Bully).

Strictly Dishonorable (1931) - an adaptation of a Broadway comedy by Preston Sturges. Cute... Lewis Stone steals it as an ex-judge barfly. Gets points for using West Orange, NJ as a metaphor for Hell.

hahah i was in a spelling bee last night! the girl from pennsylvania from spellbound hosted it (she goes to my school) (myla goldberg spoke too - they're turning bee season into a movie with richard gere and juliette binoche (!!!))

(i got out on "syllepsis" in the 2nd round :( )

and yeah spellbound is great - it's like a christoher guest movie but a) real and b) funnier) (and i like chris guest) (and parentheses too apparently)

I'll second that.

A Man Escaped -- Bresson style without any of the interesting content. Effective in building tension, and excellent portrayal of the prisoner who is determined to escape. Only became really interesting when the new prisoner came into the cell (the repetition of some things got old). Didn't quite grab me as much as the next one here, or Diary (which I was blown away by..)

Pickpocket -- Ah, there we go. Better. A good dose of existentialism, crime/punishment, and some nifty pickpocketing scenes. A more compelling main character to observe, too. He seemed to really act on compulsion, most of the time; had some odd relationships, too.

Didn't realize B was such a huge influence on Schrader. But now, I see why/how.

Damn, I like A Man Escaped lots more than Pickpocket.

It frightens me that I'm agreeing with Dr Morbius so much lately.

Also watched "On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate", which I really enjoyed, with the exception of a couple of pretentious or awkward dialogue moments. That could very well be the result of bad translation on the subtitles, which seems likely because the rest of the film is pretty masterful.

and jay i dont get the scorsese comment at all!

Are the other Tati 'Hulot' films as good as this?

This isn't meant to be a slam against Scorsese--I think he's a terrific filmmaker. I just think he could learn a thing or two from Wong.

Allegedly yes, though they're not as... um... all-caps as Playtime.

Gilliam's "Brazil" -- The second half most definitely flags, which wasn't my opinion in 1985. And the European cut is too long.

Araki's "Mysterious Skin" -- One of the performances of the year by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a strutting but wounded cocktease of a Kansas teen hustler. All the other perfs (save Bill Sage as the predatory Little League coach) are all either passive or inscrutably rendered in '90210' fashion.

Yi Yi: When I started to watch this, I was a bit turned off by two things: 1) netflix apparently sent me the winstar fox/lorber version which has super-shitty video quality -- it looks like a worn VHS tape on a bad TV; 2) the tone set by the opening credits, which made me feel a bit underwhelmed/bored. I decided to go on watching it anyway, and about 15 minutes later I'd forgotten about all that and was already completely drawn into the lives of the characters. Unfortunately the disk was also damaged, and my DVD player choked only 40 minutes through! I'm having trouble dissecting what exactly is so special about this, probably due in large part to my unfamiliarity with Asian cinema the language... but I'm so anxious to see the rest, I'm going nuts.

All About Lily Chou-Chou: Sprawling and mesmerising. I'm surprised at how much I liked the music. The short "reload" sequence used throughout was a little annoying even if it acheived its intended effect, but that's a small gripe.

Tarnation: What a trip. It was an utterly foreign movie-watching experience to me, yet it wasn't difficult to digest at all. By turns funny, fascinating, and heartbreaking. Could be seen as a somewhat narcissistic endeavor, but that's not something I took issue with.

Julien Donkey-Boy: I can't seem to form a single opinion on this. There were aspects that I admired and parts that were quite funny (mostly courtesy of Herzog), but there are also aspects I have issues with. I'm glad I watched it, but I'm not so sure that I actually liked it. (Actually, the same could be said of Happiness, but for different reasons). Oval on the soundtrack was a plus though, and it was used well.

Downfall-
Hitler's final days rendered with reailistic detail. Pretty fun througout though I wish more people could see, Hitler: A Film from Germany which I bought from subterranean cinema this year. Overall thematically more coherent than I was expecting as it nicely visualizes moments when the Third Reich had to put into action their absolutist ideas of self sacrifice in the face of failure.

Crash-
Some old white liberal really liked Magnolia so he remade it with a message of nice guy racial tolerance. Not seeing the racism, I guess, in the Arab and Asian steriotypes presented therein. The whole thing feels leftover from the early 90s for some reason. Rapper Ludacris, surprisingly good, as is Tony Danza's tv producer cameo, and Sandra Bullock needs to only play unlikeable people from hereafter. Oh, and it ends with an Aimie Mann (or a reasonable facsimilie) song on the soundtrack. Yuck!

thought it was going to be more hardcore and brutal and reductionist/harsh in tone after seeing the 1st 20 mins or so - but it all went a bit errol flynn as it went on
(a clip of a battle scene from the jovovich joan of arc film seemed to have more of that blood'n'muck aspect about it - but i have not seen the film)

the evident uselessness of 'god's will' as any kind of discriminating explanatory function rendered the depiction of any of the characters using it in anything other than an aware and self-serving game-playing political tool somewhat incredible

scott seems to like the striking look of ornately metal-masked characters - the king here, a gladiator in one of his previous - probably just as well he isn't doing an adaptation of Iron Man, we'd probably get Stark's moustache on the outside of the helmet

The Fire Within - 1963 Louis Malle psychodrama of suicidally depressed alcoholic (Maurice Ronet) visiting rich friends. Had never even heard of it, straight and grim without as much chest-beating as much Bergman of the era. Crisp b&w by Ghislain Cloquet (Linc Ctr had a fine print).

Kings & Queen - Emmanuelle Devos was too much of a cipher, I was grateful for Mathieu Amalric's goofy tantrums. The jump cuts n' all are cool, and it's a recovery from the dire Esther Kahn, but I really don't know what Desplechin's after besides family often resembling desperate strangers.

The Joy of Life - Likely my favorite feature of the year so far. Butch dyke narrator with tenuous sex life, gorgeous San Francisco dusk and dawn shots, Golden Gate Bridge suicides.

http://www.mediarights.org/news/articles/report_from_sundance_2005_documentaries_in_action.php?page=3

The White Diamond / Wheel of Time - 2 recent Werner Herzog nonfic forays, the first a lush DV expedition with a holy fool / aeronautic engineer into the Guyanese jungle with an experimental airship; much sublime imagery and human surprises. The second is a more familiar but
watchable Buddhist pilgrimage / Dalai Lama vehicle, mostly shot on 16mm.

is this the film where the director got permission to train cameras on the bridge for 24-hour periods, surveillance-style, and caught a lot of people jumping to their death, thereby making city officials really furious when they figured out what was going on? because i read something about that... but this could be totally different. it sounds intriguing at any rate.

No, nothing so graphic. All the suicide material is in the narration. Apparently the city is finally moving on a barrier for the span though.

http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=220

"The Manson Family"-- The newest Manson family film, by Jim Van Bebber. I actually liked it quite a bit more than I expected. Although flawed (overdramatic actors, cheesy meth-punk Manson fans in modern day killing a newsman doing a story on Charlie, etc.) the film succeeded on two important counts.

Firstly, it addressed the whole "Manson Cult" thing both not-so-subtly (said meth-punk group) and in more subtle ways (recreated "interviews" with family members from their jail cells today, shot off of televisions to look like bad VHS dubs of documentary footage purchased from Subterranean Cinema or aes-nihil.com).

Secondly, it was the first Manson flick I can remember that addressed the lure of sexuality as being a much stronger influence than psychedelic drugs or Charlie himself. I've heard critiques of this film complaining about the amount of skin, but I don't feel it was gratuitous at all. It's obvious that it was the orgies that kept Tex and the other male members (no pun intended) around, and it was Manson's role as pimp rather than preacher that kept the guys around.

"Audition"-- I'd seen one Miike film before this ("Ichi the Killer", which I liked but didn't love) so I thought I knew what to expect. Instead, I watched what seemed like a pretty standard narrative about a man who lost his wife & tries a rather sad way to find a new one. And then the film completely turned on me--vomit eating creatures in bags, sadistic ballet teachers, long needles & sawed-off limbs...wow. It was clever and visually interesting (especially the bag), but overall it didn't really leave much of an impact on me. The exploration of the woman's psyche and past seemed pretty superficial, as well as the character development of the lead male character.

"The Piano Teacher" -- This was the first Haneke film I've seen (I rented "Time of the Wolf" but haven't watched it yet) and I was greatly impressed. An incredibly strong story that was translated brilliantly to film and wonderfully casted. Haneke builds an incredible atmosphere that really draws you in to the work. The lead character's walk through the mall to the pornography shop was effective in defining the character's distance/animosity towards everyday conventions, yet the shop shows her deep desire to be a part of it. This is one of the most perfect films I've seen in a while.

I've wanted to see the Manson Family for a while, I'm planning to purchase the DVD, along with "George Baitalle's Story of the Eye" next week. Van Bebber and Andrew Repasky McElhinney are two of the more exciting independent feature filmmakers around now I think.

"The Piano Teacher"
amazing performances by Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel, it didnt show too much and managed to really touch me.

"Paris, Texas"
great. i loved the photography, especially in the desert. i watched the whole thing twice, once with Wender's commentary, which is really insightful.

Hustle & Flow - likable, great music, nothing amazing

Synopsis: Cobain wanders around muttering a lot, evidence of his genius, insulated, by drugs and liquor, from all the "phoniness" that besieges his "realness" (booking agents, bummy hangers-on, Boyz II Men videos). No one really cares about Kurt, and not a soul in the theatre either, and then he offs himself. Comic relief provided by young mormon twins and a yellow book ad salesman, both of which would pretty much be pat indie comedy a la Napoleon Dynamite if it weren't for the latter's staggeringly good acting. Comic relief also provided by a stupefied Kurt doing a freshman dorm-style looping pedal jam with himself.

"On the Outs" - DV melodrama of three drugging young Jersey City women, in and out of detention. Reasonably gritty/fake, one fine lead perf (the gal from Raising Victor Vargas) and one stinker.

"Caterina in the Big City" - overdetermined metaphorical comedy of rural teen moving to Rome. Effective star and mise en scene, all else lacking.

"Rize" - fun, truthful when it sticks to verite and not splicing in African folk ritual (egad).

Woody Allen didn't make a film that sorta sucked til "September" (1987).

Oh no she din't.

And EvAboutSex features one of Tony Randall's best roles. "I attend New York University..." "We're in!" (the only skit that dies painfully is Lou Jacobi cross-dressing)

The only good thing about Sleeper was the architecture.

Today I watched "Interiors" and "The Purple Rose Of Cairo", which were both great, especially Cairo.

Being too old to have seen any value in The Facts of Life, I usu try to forget Charlotte Rae (tho she dances w/ Treat Williams in "Hair").

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/22/wanda.html

"Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque" - Knew the name for ages, got most of what I needed to know about the Father of Preservation here (except that he was reportedly gay, which goes unmentioned to play up his fractious, shiftily passionate relationship with partner-in-emulsion Mary Meerson). Somewhere between the attempt to bury him in '68 and his ill-fated cinema museum things get a teeny bit parochial -- but this cut is apparently 90 minutes shorter than the original. Best quote is where he dismisses note-takers at screenings as misguided -- what would New York's Cinemaniacs think? (and my God, they gave him an Oscar in '74; imagine that happening now.)

http://www.filmforum.org/films/henri.html

"Mouchette" - I'd forgotten about that hand-biting in the fight in the forest, which got quite a yelp in the audience. And those chiming bells come in at precisely the right split-seconds in the last reel.

"Gabrielle" - Solid Chereau, with the kind of grotty, messy emotions spilling all over the decor only the French seem to do dependably in period films. Huppert to Greggory: "I'm sick at the thought of your semen inside me." Dependably dumb Lincoln Center Q&A followed with Chereau accused of endorsing marital rape.

"Three Times" - Medium Hou three-in-one, with the middle (a dialogue-free 'silent' w/ title cards) best, lackluster contemporary closer.

"Forty Shades of Blue" - The Russian gal steals it from Rip Torn.

"Junebug" - Chicago couple visits his Southern family; Alexander Payne-ish without the recent condescension. Played with straight civility by Embeth Davidz, with Amy Adams sweetly reckless, Celia Weston complexly mistrustful, Scott Wilson perfectly watchful.

Also I watched Cronenberg's "Rabid" and was underwhelmed but it made for great MST3K-styled viewing.

The Apple: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080380/
This is an important film if you like to watch bad movies and laugh at them.

The Party Animal: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087889/
This is a slightly less important film if you like to watch bad movies and laugh at them.

Left Behind: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190524/
This was a hoot!

Riding the Bus with My Sister: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420128/
The copy my housemate bought off the Internet was an Emmy screener copy. Ha! Rosie O'Donnell gives the worst performance I have seen in recent memory, and Andie MacDowell is almost as bad! "DIRECTED BY ANGELICA HUSTON" is something I repeatedly said aloud while watching this pile.

Yor, the Hunter from the Future: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084935/
Yor is a much bigger pimp than Conan, believe that.

If you haven't seen the last fifteen minutes (which are complete lunacy), you haven't really seen it.

Body Melt - 80s-style cheapo body horror splatter from Australia. Kinda psychedelic, kinda totally incoherent. Fucking rad.

"The Ten Commandments" was rather nice.

Sick days are great for movies.

Been catching up on miscellaneous new releases DVDs inexplicably in my parents' collection.

Harry Potter 1 - was alright, but nothing special in my book.

X-Men 2 - I only remember Part 1 being extremely boring for so much of the first half that the rest of the film seemed a lame attempt to catch up. The sequel, however, is exactly what the X-Men films should have always been. The White House scene, Magneto's prison break, and pretty much all of the last 40 minutes were perfect.

Daredevil - the less said the better. If the director's cut really adds to the film, I pity the souls who caught the theatrical release. Kudos to Affleck for remaining the only key member of the film opposed to a sequel.

All That Jazz - if only all musicals were as good as this! Still as revolutionary as when it was released, IMHO.

Female Trouble - Pink Flamingos may be the more-cited one, but to me, this is the quintessential pre-Hollywood Divine film.

Long Live Death - a curiously neglected reminiscence of Greek tragedy, based on the director's childhood during the Spanish Civil War. A clear influence on Spirit of the Beehive and Pan's Labyrinth. I believe that Jodorowsky and Arrabal also were close; Fando and Lis is an adaptation of Arrabal's book.

In the last week or so, I watched:

La Balance- A Trashy French thriller from the early 80s. Nathalie Baye plays a hooker caught in the middle of a street war between the vice squad and a mobster with a nack for wasting informers. It's practically a crime film buffet unto itself--part noir, heist film, police procedural, and revenge film. Highly entertaining, altough the ultimate denouement is kind of cheesy in a very 80s way. I wonder if William Friedkin was paying as much attention to films like this when he did To Live and Die In LA as he had with numerous new wave classics when he shot The French Connection. Includes an extremely homoerotic execution scene.

Story of Women-Had missed this during the Huppert fest last year. Luckily, this is one of the few titles from it that has received a wide DVD release. Claude Chabrol directed this "based on a facts" account of an occupation-era abortionist. Since the story is kind of famous (the inspiration for Huppert's character was one of the last women to be guillotined), you already know how ugly it will end. But Chabrol's (and Huppert's) simple but detail-heavy touch cannot be denied. The DVD has a terrific selected scenes commentary from Chabrol that's basically a film school in 20 minutes. BTW, a belated RIP for Marie Trintignant.

Black Orpheus-Opening night of the local stop of the Janus tour. Good fun, great music and dancing, altough the symbolism had no subtlety whatsoever, which in end was probably appropriate.

Walkabout-More from the tour. I trust everyone's familar with this one, eh? A fairy tale with boobies, and the best Roeg I have seen. Loved the use of "Gasoline Alley" during the father's suicide. Best use of a song I've seen in anything--new or old--in a while.

Cruel Story of Youth-Finally seen by me thanks to TCM. Early Nagisa Oshima, before he got really wild. Some people consider this a Japanese Breathless, which makes sense in hindsight, altough I'm not sure if that's what Oshima intended. Amazing cinematography. It's too bad Oshima's 60s stuff hasn't really been widely revived in rep or given a lavish (and legal) DVD treatment. Otherwise, he'd be regarded as highly as Godard or any other 60s autuer one would care to name.

Pick of the bunch: Had to say. La Balance was the most entertaining, while Story of Women and Walkabout cut deepest. Call it a draw.

All That Jazz - if only all musicals were as good as this! Still as revolutionary as when it was released, IMHO.

Female Trouble - Pink Flamingos may be the more-cited one, but to me, this is the quintessential pre-Hollywood Divine film.

Yes and yes.

Recently...

Les Assassins De L'ordre : Jacques Brel(!) as a judge trying to get to the bottom of a police corruption scandal. Zippily directed by Marcel Carne. But Brel is the main reason to watch.

Franz : More Brel, this time also directing and co-screenwriting. He plays an introverted oddball in love living in a rooming house full of other oddballs. One minute it's a love story, the next a comedy and then you have a neat little heartbreaker of a tragedy on your hands. This one's all over the map but stick wih it and it'll pay off - again - because of Brel's remarkable performance. Paraphrasing Miles Davis: "That cat was a motherf***er".

The Phantom Carriage : Haunting and intense. The way he directed without going into the over-the-top melodrama inherent in most silents is tremendous.I need to see more Sjostrom silents.

Oh, yeah. And then there's the Warner Film Noir Classics #2 box set (Narrow Margin is especially WHOAH) and the three films watched out of the Eclipse Late Ozu box, which I'm still savoring before I jump on to the final two films.

OTM about The Phantom Carriage. A seriously overlooked silent classic. (As is most all of Sjostrom's work.)

Harry Potter 2 and 3 - I'm not gonna read the books, but I did read their summaries on Wikipedia out of casual interest. I figured better to read the whole story arc and THEN watch the films. (Actually, I'd already seen a couple upon release, but I don't remember which...) Anyway, out of all of them, I think it's a close call between 2 and 3 for the best yet. I think that the first one spends too much time setting up the whole story and laying down the conventions to actually hit the high notes, which is understandable. 2 and 3 take the template and twist it in new ways. 2 wins for humor, but 3 wins for darkness.

Transformers - was doing decently well for a Mickey Bay film until the big robot FITE towards the end. The robots are too spiny and baroque, they're constantly transforming, they're mostly gray so I have no idea who is who, the camera is shaking all over the place, and the edits are coming about one cut a second. I can't be bothered to care anymore.

family home movies - Imma gonna need to tweak the color balance on some of these...