(Theatrical viewing="*"; Repeat viewing="/ /"; Shorts [shorter, em, than 45 mins]="sXX"; past first hundred shorts: t, signifying one in the hundreds digit)
Go to the bottom.
001. (01 Jan) How to Draw a Bunny (John W. Walter, 2002) 54
More or less proves the inability of documentary filmmakers to accurately represent visual art; all misplaced emphases, Walter does Ray Johnson's work a disservice by lumping some of his pieces into the impenetrably abstract (e.g., the hot dog drop) and others into theoretical frameworks (e.g., the striped collages and flat silhouette portraits). Johnson's only remaining concrete attribute is his obsession with incompleteness, and the communicative relationship between artist and patron. The man emerges as a social contradiction: a messenger, a socialite, an unyielding pop-art monster, and yet essentially reclusive. The sly whimsy that unifies his work is frequently told, less often shown. It's disappointing that a portrait of someone so determined to expand the limits of his field feels so... limited.
002. (01 Jan) Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949) 65
003. (08 Jan) Suspicious River (Lynn Stopkewich, 2000) 66
004. (08 Jan) Spanglish (James L. Brooks, 2004)* 59
Brooks' sensibility is best savored in impressively homogenous behavioral patterns: shrill, effusive bursts are punctuated by airy, gratified wisps; simple yet meaningful pleasures, and moments of contentment -- from Leoni's hair blowing in the wind to the stagnant envelope of money, waiting to be clutched -- are briefly earned and quickly, irrevocably dissolved. How reflective Vega and Leoni are of the Real American Culture Clash is irrelevant, in my eyes. Yes, Vega is a stereotype, but her eagerness to express humility through tenacity is compelling. Conversely, Leoni is inviting, eager to please, but ultimately repressive. Satisfying, in its dumb, complacent way.
005. (12 Jan) /Rio Bravo/ (Howard Hawks, 1959) 90
006. (14 Jan) In Good Company (Paul Weitz, 2004)* 30
007. (15 Jan) 6ixtynin9 (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, 1999) 67
008. (15 Jan) Bad Education (Pedro Almodovar, 2004)* 57
009. (15 Jan) Desperate Living (John Waters, 1977) 70
010. (22 Jan) Dear Wendy (Thomas Vinterberg, 2005)* 61
I resent that disliking Dogville, for some, makes me out as a patriot. Von Trier's abstracted pageant of passiveness and betrayal didn't quite legitimately represent anything in terms of living-breathing-humans, be it the US of A, democracy, or even oppression in its most generic, loosely defined form. I guess to appreciate it you have to temporarily disregard the nature of the planet we live on; I wasn't born with one of those. Pleasant surprise, then, that while Dear Wendy retains a similar brutal skepticism of governing systems, its people aren't controlled merely by an overarching structure. Extraordinarily blatant hypocrites (pacifism w/ guns), surely, but this time it's this hypocrisy that lifts von Trier's characters into the real world, rather than pinning them down: the Dandies derive power from this contradiction, and the burden of responsibility that comes with it. They find strength in the fragility of autonomy, and carrying out good intentions through dangerous methods. Victimhood and villainy don't apply; von Trier has finally acknowledged those working out of idealistic hope for a greater, more pragmatic way of living. Better still, when things get chaotic and ridiculous, one very specific act of foolish senility is to blame, not Human Nature. This is still most definitely a Lars von Trier screenplay, but -- perhaps due to Vinterberg's involvement -- his woes seem fairly sensible.
011. (22 Jan) The Forest for the Trees (Maren Ade, 2004)* 41
012. (22 Jan) Unknown White Male (Rupert Murray, 2005)* 47
Amnesia, removed from metaphorical or dramatic purpose, is crushingly self-evident, even boring. Before Doug Bruce lost his memory -- if you take his word for it -- he was a fairly well-off, slightly cynical, good-looking, moderately successful photographer. In other words: Totally. Fucking. Normal. In the Mild Intrigue Dept., Bruce's transformation does make him humble and somber, his willingness to present himself openly in direct contrast with the stereotype of victims' paranoid desperation. Otherwise, all Murray's doc has going for it amidst a slew of similarly themed fiction films is its validity. Like a circus wrangler, Murray boasts "You've seen Memento! Now, see the real thing!"
013. (23 Jan) Brick (Rian Johnson, 2005)* 70
Lots of people are gonna jump on this, but it's so unfair to call Johnson on cribbing directly from Hammett. The anachronisms, abundant and often confusing as they are, are suffused with vivid periphery in a way that transcends mere pastiche. A jock's train-of-thought is prized above his cockiness. Home life, deprived of Bully-esque negativity, is just hilariously mundane. Cliques are a given; their intermingling is essential. Genre bits are a bit wobblier, but no less creative: an inevitable chase-off is played like a tap-dance, while fight scenes are staged with matter-of-factly surreal Buster Keaton physics. This is a sober, downtrodden world -- our hero gets sick, nothing comes of it; one love in place of another goes sour -- filtered through the gauze of nerdy wish-fulfillment. The high school setting continues to feel more and more appropriate.
014. (23 Jan) Forty Shades of Blue (Ira Sachs, 2005)* 48
015. (23 Jan) Kung-Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004)* 83
016. (23 Jan) Steal Me (Melissa Painter, 2005)* 11
This movie sucks.
017. (23 Jan) Lila Says (Ziad Doueiri, 2004)* 58
018. (23 Jan) Green Chair (Park Chul-soo, 2005)* 67
019. (24 Jan) The Dying Gaul (Craig Lucas, 2005)* 49
020. (24 Jan) Pretty Persuasion (Marcos Siega, 2005)* 66
021. (24 Jan) Junebug (Phil Morrison, 2005)* 40
022. (24 Jan) Tony Takitani (Jun Ichikawa, 2004)* 50
023. (24 Jan) Twist of Faith (Kirby Dick, 2004)* 54
024. (25 Jan) Lonesome Jim (Steve Buscemi, 2005)* 46
025. (25 Jan) Nine Lives (Rodrigo Garcia, 2005)* 64
026. (25 Jan) The Aristocrats (Paul Provenza, 2005)* 53
027. (25 Jan) Room (Kyle Henry, 2005)* 51
So this unattractive-enough-that-she-has-to-be-played-reasonably-well-or-else-why-did-this-ugly-actress-get-hired woman leaves her family to embark on a quest to find this room that looks exactly like the one from Michael Snow's WAVELENGTH that she keeps envisioning. And then... er... My 51 feels retroactively generous enough that I am kind of baffled to come up with genuine praise. I think Henry intended this to be some sort of political allegory about attaining personal freedom (i.e., there's a byte of Bush speechifying every other minute) but he also critiques the Modern New Age World (said woman enters therapy session, mistaking it for said room) and reaches for Eternity (which he pungently visualizes through... gasp... fractals!). I dunno. Not quite as dumb as it sounds, but... ehh.
028. (25 Jan) The Chumscrubber (Arie Posin, 2005)* 38
029. (25 Jan) Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)* 59
030. (26 Jan) Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005)* 62
031. (26 Jan) Hustle & Flow (Craig Brewer, 2005)* 43
032. (26 Jan) Between (David Ocanas, 2005)* 26
033. (26 Jan) Ellie Parker (Scott Coffey, 2005)* 60
034. (26 Jan) The Girl From Monday (Hal Hartley, 2005)* 52
035. (26 Jan) Three... Extremes (Fruit Chan / Park Chan-wook / Takashi Miike, 2004)* 45
036. (27 Jan) Police Beat (Robinson Devor, 2005)* 55
037. (27 Jan) How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer (Georgina Reidel, 2005)* 37
038. (27 Jan) Thumbsucker (Mike Mills, 2005)* 8
039. (27 Jan) Reefer Madness (Andy Fickman, 2005)* 49
040. (27 Jan) /Brick/ (Rian Johnson, 2005)* 80
041. (28 Jan) The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005)* 69
Apparently, Noah Baumbach wants to let us all know how much of a dubiously intellectual, misogynistic, pompous smart-ass he was as a teenager. Fine by me. He outright nails the humanist-on-paper-misanthrope-in-life complex so many up-and-coming culture-hounds suffer, and so few acknowledge. The non-diegetic Pink Floyd cue is notably reserved for our hero's escape into the wilderness, rather than swooning over some girl; the Joy of Art is a mechanism for escaping further into his own little hermetic world, rather than making any real connections. The I'll-take-dad-you-take-mom note is well overplayed, I guess, but it's just icing. An allusion to The Wild Child is very telling: Baumbach's choppy, unemphatic editing, his sour, offhand poetry (in the first 7 words of the script, the course of the entire film is encapsulated), and his unflinching self-examination are reminiscent of no filmmaker, even colleague W. Anderson, more than Truffaut.
042. (28 Jan) Who Killed Cock Robin? (Travis Wilkerson, 2005)* 56
Wilkerson shoehorns his nostalgic, bleary-eyed radicalism into a sorta-kinda-narrative, with mixed results. Playing out a blatantly circular meat-and-potatoes improv debate for minutes on end is trivial; darting the camera around fruitlessly as a character tunes his guitar is criminal. Once the actual music kicks in, however... there's something beautifully generous about including both staunch anarchist Barrett's Dylanesque bloodthirsty protest crooning and Barrett's-bud-slash-enemy-slash-landlord Charlie's Will Oldham-inflected elegiac folk, and the story gains some momentum once Barrett takes action and Charlie takes a stand. Wilkerson clearly cares more about the complexity of occupational politics than keeping his audience occupied, and I gotta say, here he's displayed more personal conviction, if considerably less aesthetic oomph, than in An Injury to One. Kudos for replacing stand-ins for the Left and Right with complex variations on both; and respect, brotha, for a lovely, painful, simple compromise of a final scene. Now go watch The Devil, Probably and get back to me.
043. (28 Jan) Drum (Zola Maseko, 2004)* 32
044. (28 Jan) MirrorMask (David McKean, 2005)* 36
045. (28 Jan) Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004)* 63
Carried by a persuasive collision of entropy/randomness/unexpectedness and a bewilderingly schematic conclusion -- equal credit goes to Araki's cooly salacious style and Scott Heim's novel, which seems cool 130 pages in -- and the provocative distinction between the repression and expression of sexual abuse forming the story's core. Also, hurray for yet another incredible turn from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, masterful at portraying icy confidence, unknowable perfection. Many actors garner praise for opening themselves up, displaying vulnerability, prying haunted depths. Gordon-Levitt is consistently mind-blowing for burying such depths beneath a poker-faced enigma, in this case an alternately traumatized and traumatizing pretty boy.
046. (28 Jan) Loggerheads (Tim Kirkman, 2005)* 42
047. (29 Jan) Sugar (Patrick Jolley and Reynold Reynolds, 2005)* 60
048. (29 Jan) 3-Iron (Kim Ki-duk, 2004)* 57
049. (29 Jan) What Is It? (Crispin Glover, 2005)* 54
050. (29 Jan) Shape of the Moon (Leonard Retel Helmrich, 2004)* 29
051. (29 Jan) Hard Candy (David Slade, 2005)* 23
052. (30 Jan) /The Squid and the Whale/ (Noah Baumbach, 2005)* 69
053. (30 Jan) Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)* 65
Timothy Treadwell is a Klaus Kinski character, trapped inside the body of a personal trainer, or a kindergarten teacher. Jubilant, sunnily blonde, and shockingly heterosexual, Treadwell is the last guy you'd expect to deliver mad, malevolent soliloquies -- esp. in between rounds of baby-talk and affectionate (and perhaps, as a native notes, harmful; animals and men must Stay in Their Places, etc.) self-analogizing to "his" bears. But he's wholly apropos amidst the backdrop of Herzog's cruel and surprisingly ethical (refusing to needlessly exploit a presumably horrific sound recording) indifference: Treadwell's rants against the park services are at once beautifully ludicrous, his demise obviously inevitable yet totally destitute of natural progression.
054. (01 Feb) The Village (M. Night Shyamalan, 2004) 64
055. (04 Feb) Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)* 68
056. (04 Feb) Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (Danny Leiner, 2004) 55
057. (04 Feb) When Will I Be Loved (James Toback, 2004) 75
058. (11 Feb) The Merchant of Venice (Michael Radford, 2004)* 44
059. (11 Feb) Bear Cub (Miguel Albaladejo, 2004)* 67
060. (12 Feb) Buffalo Boy (Minh Nguyen-Vo, 2004)* 47
061. (12 Feb) Millions (Danny Boyle, 2004)* 45
062. (12 Feb) The Edukators (Hans Weingartner, 2004)* 39
063. (12 Feb) Kekexili: Mountain Patrol (Lu Chuan, 2004)* 53
064. (13 Feb) The World (Jia Zhangke, 2004)* 66
065. (14 Feb) The 10th District Court: Moments of Trial (Raymond Depardon, 2004)* 73
065. (15 Feb) The Ballad of Jack and Rose (Rebecca Miller, 2005)* 48
W/O. (16 Feb) Look at Me (Agnes Jaoui, 2004)*
066. (17 Feb) Machuca (Andres Wood, 2004)* 14
067. (17 Feb) Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard, 2004)* 51
068. (18 Feb) 5x2 (Francois Ozon, 2004)* 62
069. (19 Feb) Reel Paradise (Steve James, 2005)* 55
070. (19 Feb) Waiting Room (Zeki Demirkubuz, 2004)* 64
Slinky, sexy ingenue: "What are you thinking about?" [Beat.] Gruff, taciturn artiste: "Nothing." Such is the antidote M. Demirkubuz offers to writer's block: "stop trying, you fool. Let your stony indifference guide you on the ineluctable path towards transcendence." Ultimately -- no, constantly -- too defeatist, but for narcissistic bullshit, this is perfectly formed, intermittently brilliant narcissistic bullshit. As an actor, Demirkubuz plays less a character than a gravitational center, his deadened mug, portentous gait and bulky frame inexplicable chick-magnets, his lovers probing, pondering and discarding him like undercooked chicken. As a director, he hints at magnificently dynamic ways of portraying directionlessness, my personal favorite the protag's off-screen romantic-moral-philosophical-epiphany, underscored by muffled intimations of Beyonce's "Crazy in Love" emanating from a TV. This is a reasonably purty-lookin', formally astute movie, but unlike that other bit of Turkish existential drollery I've witnessed in my lifetime ever, Waiting Room clearly favors keeping its eloquently rigid structure intact over petty distractions like "snow" and "beauty."
071. (20 Feb) /Kung-Fu Hustle/ (Stephen Chow, 2004)* 79
072. (20 Feb) Head-On (Fatih Akin, 2004)* 42
073. (20 Feb) Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)* 35
074. (21 Feb) The Hero (Zeze Gamboa, 2004)* 31
075. (23 Feb) Campfire (Joseph Cedar, 2004)* 49
076. (24 Feb) Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2004)* 68
077. (25 Feb) Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh, 1994) 45
W/O. (25 Feb) Somersault (Cate Shortland, 2004)*
078. (26 Feb) Or (Keren Yedaya, 2004)* 61
079. (26 Feb) /Mr. Jealousy/ (Noah Baumbach, 1997) 65
080. (05 Mar) Head in the Clouds (John Duigan, 2004) 55
081. (05 Mar) The Jacket (John Maybury, 2005)* 63
082. (07 Mar) Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974) 51
083. (07 Mar) Back Against the Wall (James Fotopoulos, 2002) 56
084. (11 Mar) Angel Face (Otto Preminger, 1952)* 66
085. (12 Mar) Hostage (Florent Emilio Siri, 2005)* 53
086. (14 Mar) /The Doom Generation/ (Gregg Araki, 1995) 72
s??. (18 Mar) Guest Room (Skander Halim, 2003) 70
s??. (18 Mar) Family Dinner (Skander Halim, 2002) 58
087. (21 Mar) The King of Comedy (Stephen Chow, 1999) 74
088. (21 Mar) After the Apocalypse (Yasuaki Nakajima, 2004)* 59
089. (21 Mar) Wimbledon (Richard Loncraine, 2004) 43
090. (22 Mar) Wagonmaster (John Ford, 1950)* 62
091. (22 Mar) Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950)* 49
092. (22 Mar) Melinda and Melinda (Woody Allen, 2004)* 57
093. (23 Mar) Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005)* 83
094. (24 Mar) Sequins (Eleonore Faucher, 2004)* 56
s??. (24 Mar) La Vie D'un Chien (John Harden, 2005)* 44
095. (24 Mar) Mila from Mars (Zornitsa-Sophia, 2004)* 22
096. (25 Mar) The Upside of Anger (Mike Binder, 2005)* 51
097. (25 Mar) Two Great Sheep (Hao Lui, 2004)* 45
s??. (25 Mar) /The Raftman's Razor/ (Keith Bearden, 2005)* 68
098. (25 Mar) Duck Season (Fernando Eimbcke, 2004)* 58
099. (25 Mar) Nowhere Man (Tim McCann, 2004)* 54
100. (25 Mar) D.E.B.S. (Angela Robinson, 2004)* 39
101. (26 Mar) Our Brand Is Crisis (Rachel Boynton, 2005)* 46
102. (26 Mar) Murderball (Henry Alex Rubin and David Adam Shapiro, 2005)* 40
103. (26 Mar) They Came Back (Robin Campillo, 2004)* 37
104. (26 Mar) Casque D'or (Jacques Becker, 1952) 89
105. (27 Mar) /Kung-Fu Hustle/ (Stephen Chow, 2004) 79
s??. (30 Mar) The House Is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad, 1963) 86
106. (30 Mar) Q: The Winged Serpent (Larry Cohen, 1982) 68
107. (01 Apr) Sin City (Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, 2005)* 75
108. (06 Apr) The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) 87
109. (08 Apr) Fever Pitch (Peter and Bobby Farrelly, 2005)* 72
110. (09 Apr) /Fever Pitch/ (Peter and Bobby Farrelly, 2005)* 72
111. (06 May) Palindromes (Todd Solondz, 2004)* 54
I got more creeped out than I anticipated because: closest Solondz gets to outright ventriloquism -- viz. Mark Weiner -- is through a nihilistic, socially retarded, "alleged" child molester. He tells the audience growth is a myth, and then rather insincerely assures the film's wounded, unsalvageable Bambi, "I'm not a pedophile." My immediate split knee-jerk reaction to Weiner/Solondz: "hey, you're the only person in this movie with a modicum of insightful observation," and "hey, if you want to build a solid reputation how about not floating there, ineptly gravitating towards the wrong people and blankly staring at women?" Weiner/Solondz craves our doubt of not only his philosophical bile, but his personality, his attitude, his everything. So we have the superiority complex out of the picture. People take shots at Solondz because he's unwilling to believe in his characters' goodness. But he also never makes it clear that his goal is to disprove their goodness. Witness the opening eulogy for Dawn, hyperbolically setting us up for a horrible recording of piano playing, which then turns out to be perfectly serviceable; or Judah's seemingly ambitious my-film-isn't-like-Jackass,-it's-different ravings. The bane here isn't any particular syndrome, issue, or group, but mediocrity; his films' success is predicated on whether we're okay with the tension between our identification with said mediocrity, and disdain of it. The two sides of Solondz -- the one grappling with his own mediocrity (hey, not every filmmaker can be a kind worldly handsome charming genius), and the one exposing the mediocrity of others -- are on full display here. I really do "like" a lot about this movie, but it looks like ass, and the structure is wildly uneven, and the performances are either cartoonishly emotive or cartoonishly blank.
112. (18 May) The Emerald Forest (John Boorman, 1985) 36
113. (18 May) Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005)* 52
114. (20 May) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Garth Jennings, 2005)* 49
115. (03 Jun) Boats Out of Watermelon Rinds (Ahmet Ulucay, 2004)* 16
116. (03 Jun) Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)* 90
117. (04 Jun) The Keys to the House (Gianni Amelio, 2004)* 38
118. (04 Jun) Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)* 56
119. (04 Jun) Swimmers (Doug Sadler, 2005)* 51
120. (04 Jun) Rose-Colored Grey Truck (Srdjan Koljevic, 2004)* 57
121. (04 Jun) A Hole in My Heart (Lukas Moodysson, 2004)* 63
122. (05 Jun) Roma (Adolfo Aristarain, 2004)* 44
123. (05 Jun) Oyster Farmer (Anna Reeves, 2004)* 33
124. (05 Jun) L'Amant (Ryuichi Hiroki, 2004)* 60
125. (05 Jun) Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin, 2004)* 70
126. (06 Jun) The Holy Girl (Lucretia Martel, 2004)* 71
127. (07 Jun) Not on the Lips (Alain Resnais, 2003) 67
128. (15 Jun) Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005)* 47
129. (15 Jun) Howl's Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)* 65
130. (19 Jun) Princess Raccoon (Seijun Suzuki, 2005)* 74
Thank Seijun Suzuki for encompassing within one single shot Snow White vanity, hip hop, and renaissance painting, but if Suzuki's new film was the mere orgiastic Pop Tart that such references seem to make it out to be, it just wouldn't... well, no. There's more. Despite being so schizophrenically protean in his old age, Suzuki's compositions have also grown more stagnant; ala de Oliveira or Godard, with each new film Suzuki's images feel more incontrovertibly there, reducing people to puppets and exalting landscapes to mini-epiphanies, each camera movement swift yet strident, baleful yet utterly pointless. Suzuki can make fluttering grass seem downright convulsive, or the arbitrary movements of a sequined cape monster thing unbearably funny. His genius is the simultaneous admission and ridicule of all set before him: crude vaudeville, self-effacing Brecht, and stately Kabuki are all fair game, as long as they communicate, in part or all at once, an idea, fresh for the dicing. Most of these ideas are either terse and hilarious (e.g. "let's do this hand-to-hand"; "rock-paper-scissors!"; Suzuki promotes pacifism, and makes us laugh at the absurdity of his promotion in the process) or warmly traditionalist (e.g. within the bookends of a romance the narrator declares its very improbability). Ever a worldly aesthete, Suzuki also makes a point of both paying tribute to and wryly undermining western culture, from a martyrdom complex spanning Catholic mythology and Romeo and Juliet, to the strange evolution of contemporary pop music, a bout of abrasive freakdancing directly following a melancholy swoon-fest. The only misstep I see here is a nasty little subplot about a peasant family cannibalizing an amorphous ninja manque. What?
131. (20 Jun) A tout de suite (Benoit Jacquot, 2004)* 60
132. (21 Jun) Wheel of Time (Werner Herzog, 2003)* 43
133. (22 Jun) Who Killed Bambi? (Gilles Marchand, 2003) 61
134. (23 Jun) Wild Side (Sebastien Lifshitz, 2004)* 46
135. (23 Jun) Woman Is the Future of Man (Hong Sang-soo, 2004)* 56
136. (23 Jun) /Mysterious Skin/ (Gregg Araki, 2004)* 69
The toolbox-shaped steamer that is the Film Forum can be thanked for six new points. A sniffle or two may be audible in um, the Eccles, but FF feels like group therapy in contrast. The dichotomy of sexual repression and glowering promiscuity is still faintly conceptually dopey, but the execution remains deeply felt and genuinely daring, drawing no demarcation between consensus and pleasure -- Neil's most cherished memory begins with a refusal, his worst regret with instinctive acceptance. The mutual catharsis in the final sequence feels inevitable conversely because it is so obviously such a coincidental collision of nascent psyches: Neil is at his most calmly doleful w/r/t New York troubles, Brian at his most outwardly emotional following asexual frustration. The pieces fit, because they don't; ditto the carolers, the arriving homeowners, the empty cabinets. It's perfect.
137. (24 Jun) Yes (Sally Potter, 2004)* 44
138. (24 Jun) Land of the Dead (George Romero, 2005)* 28
Reportedly inspired by an adolescent wet dream of acclaimed documentarian Thom Andersen, Land of the Dead audaciously suggests flesh-eating zombies are more worthy of humanization than privileged Americans. Liberal cynicism, where the real antagonist(s) is/are the Ma/en, buttressed ideologically by stodgy anarchy (the protag dreams of a land "without fences," i.e. without civilization) and ludicrously myopic egalitarianism -- heroes look plaintively on at a line of the trudging dead and leave them be; "they're looking for a place to stay too" -- and the climax laughs gleefully as the gaudy pawns of luxury lock themselves in the prison that is Money ("we're fucked"), and cheers when the hobos make it out. Plus an evil midget, a hooker with a heart of gold, and a fat militant named "Pilsberry." This movie hates me; I hate this movie.
139. (25 Jun) /Princess Raccoon/ (Seijun Suzuki, 2005)* 67
140. (02 Jul) War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005)* 81
141. (03 Jul) /War of the Worlds/ (Steven Spielberg, 2005)* 77
141. (09 Jul) /Tropical Malady/ (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)* 90
142. (09 Jul) The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard, 2005)* 48
143. (13 Jul) /Make Way for Tomorrow/ (Leo McCarey, 1937) 97
144. (14 Jul) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, 2005)* 55
145. (17 Jul) /Memories of Murder/ (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)* 64
146. (18 Jul) High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)* 67
147. (21 Jul) The Crowd Roars (Howard Hawks, 1932) 66
148. (22 Jul) /Last Days/ (Gus Van Sant, 2005)* 86
149. (22 Jul) The Island (Michael Bay, 2005)* 59
150. (23 Jul) Spanking the Monkey (David O. Russell, 1994) 79
151. (25 Jul) The Corporation (Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar, 2003) 55
152. (25 Jul) Bad News Bears (Richard Linklater, 2005)* 58
153. (27 Jul) The Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie, 2005)* 36
154. (27 Jul) The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (Pirjo Honkasalo, 2004)* 25
155. (04 Aug) /Sherlock, Jr./ (Roscoe Arbuckle & Buster Keaton, 1924) 82
156. (04 Aug) /Citizen Kane/ (Orson Welles, 1941) 99
157. (07 Aug) The Last of the Mohicans (Clarence Brown and Maurice Tourneur, 1920) 59
158. (07 Aug) /Love Is the Devil/ (John Maybury, 1998) 68
159. (11 Aug) The Killer (John Woo, 1989) 49
160. (11 Aug) I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron, 1996) 62
161. (13 Aug) 2046 (Wong Kar Wai, 2004)* 70
162. (13 Aug) Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)* 72
163. (18 Aug) Dil Se (Mani Ratnam, 1998) 42
164. (19 Aug) Raincoat (Rituparno Ghosh, 2004) 50
165. (19 Aug) The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2005) 82
166. (19 Aug) A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Jee-Woon, 2003) 60
167. (19 Aug) Beijing Bicycle (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001) 64
168. (22 Aug) /Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai/ (Jim Jarmusch, 1999) 72
169. (22 Aug) Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984) 63
170. (22 Aug) Tale of Cinema (Hong Sang-soo, 2005) 91
171. (23 Aug) /Punch-Drunk Love/ (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002) 94
172. (24 Aug) /Tale of Cinema/ (Hong Sang-soo, 2005) 91
173. (26 Aug) Tomorrow We Move (Chantal Akerman, 2004) 45
174. (28 Aug) /Dead Man/ (Jim Jarmusch, 1995) 84
175. (29 Aug) /Mystery Train/ (Jim Jarmusch, 1989) 54
176. (30 Aug) A Bittersweet Life (Kim Jee-woon, 2005) 66
177. (30 Aug) Vibrator (Ryuichi Hiroki, 2003) 55
178. (31 Aug) Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, 1986) 69
179. (02 Sep) /Schizolopis/ (Steven Soderbergh, 1996) 58
180. (02 Sep) Bed and Board (Francois Truffaut, 1970) 73
181. (04 Sep) /Down by Law/ (Jim Jarmusch, 1986) 69
182. (06 Sep) /Joint Security Area/ (Park Chan-wook, 2000) 60
xxx. (09 Sep) Wavelengths Program 1 (various, various)
The breakdown: Tscherkassky sets out to prove he is cinema -- not in the Nick Ray, formal apotheosis way, but in the self-deifying, self-reflexive grandeur way -- and kinda pulls it off; haven't seen TGtB&tU but he seems to radically emphasize implicit content (e.g. the voyeuristic gaze of one man demarcating an entire [negative] visual universe for himself; a helpless wounded bird equated with man; a trek through a cemetary as acknowledgment of feeble mortality, &c), and ironically imbue a sense of emotional depth through the removal of any observational or psychological impetus: check out the bit where man and landscape polyrhythmically change texture, or the layering of long and medium shots that express the inadequacy of the former's impression of solitude. It's wicked cool, enervating, and finally haunting. Pruska-Oldenhof's Fugitive L(i)ght twists vaguely "human" images (ultrasound-like shapes; the twinkly orange buzz of light seen through closed eyes) in inhumanly fluid movements, which serve to complement the otherworldly grace of its (in retrospect rather superfluous) archival ballet footage. Dig the translucent sensibility, love the suggestive imagery, could do without the flowery nostalgia. Close Quarters is dark, packed with feline fun, and is edited counterintuitively -- Brakhage anyone? -- but Jennings is noteworthy for shooting the (curious, and still alive) (black) cat like Antonioni shot Monica Vitti, integrating both its literal and neurological opaqueness as compositional elements, fondling its fur and coddling its mind. Re: Kirby, I’m at a(n appreciative) loss; Pyramid Lake Piaute Reservation Exposure is in "polygon and variations," and the slightly more interesting Black Belt Test Exposure in "B&W verse COLOR chorus B&W verse" and so on. Both pieces make the cinema-video dichotomy seem simply puritan, and surely Michael will have more to offer. Barbieri's cityscape is the surprise favorite of the bunch. For those of us who've flown in the extremely recent past, the birds-eye-view-as-eerie-mirror-of-SimCity will be familiar, as will for anyone in touch with the state of contemporary crap cinema the default introductory "And introducing... City X!" tracker. God bless him, Barbieri's photography is nothing like either, employing a mixture of deep space and highly selective focus, conveying both ample 3-dimensionality and scientific objectivity. The De Oliveira is, sad to say, a comparative yawner: big poles indicating sexuality; planes trains and automobiles; the plight of workers-as-machines; that sort of thing. It's cute, but after being galvanized by a font of contemporary-to-the-core A-G films, a bit lacking; I'm a modern boy, my whole life looks like a picture of a sunny day etc.
183. (09 Sep) Banlieue 13 (Pierre Morel, 2005)* 35
Every major character being bold and "unpredictable": predictable. Political commentary: self-congratulatory. Once vaguely rough, eventually tightly sewn up relationship between protags: contrived. I was about to type "but you have to appreciate the audacity of a film that singles out money, not a particular person, as the noxious, transitive agent of villainy," but then I realized: no. You don't.
184. (10 Sep) Takeshis' (Takeshi Kitano, 2005)* 60
I don't have time to tackle this head-on; suffice to say a stream of visual and verbal puns and metaphors gradually funnel into territory too cohesive to dismiss, and too stringently symbolic to embrace wholeheartedly. Kitano films as if begging for either thorough auteurist analysis or reactionary derision. Sorry bud, it's a film festival. Rough thematic outline: "everyone wants a piece of Takeshi," followed by "Takeshi wants to put a piece in everyone," and finally "Takeshi wants to make peace with everyone." What appears sadism develops into an abstract urge to Kill everyone but not kill anyone: corpses wander aimlessly after death, and most of the time Takeshi shoots, Takeshi misses; but they're motivated by a fear of both "real" mortality (i.e. the self-contained, decontextualized WWII flashback [or rather sketch of an idea for a film] where the lurching presence of death, unlike other motifs, undergoes no variation) and failure (i.e. the girl who ambiguously [anyone have the direct Japanese translation of this line?] wails, "I love your work," first left alone and then disappearing herself, first seeming to misunderstand the "fake" Takeshi but then becoming a symbolic arbiter of his work ethic when it becomes clear she "knows" who he is). Basically, Kitano shreds everything he introduces to bits -- including the "real" Takeshi's homophobic encounter with a flamboyant stylist debunked by the earnest convenience-store proposal to "fake" Takeshi -- and then conceptualizes it -- first the caterpillar-within-the-flower icon indicates a fear of transvestitism, then the caterpillar gets its very own dance number. I mean jesus.
185. (10 Sep) Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005)* 74
If R Romance decreases proportionally to the rise of F Freedom, the first segment sees F and R at a point of total harmony, if also fragility, latency, and fear. Remember the insert of May and Chen tentatively [SPOILER]ing each other's [SPOILER]s? That was the most unspeakably beautiful moment in any film this year. What threw me off, and which I now see as essential is the latter segments' foregrounding of tangents and distractions: second's conflicted stance towards political activism and social responsibility, and the third's desultory, fetishistic dearth of either. These cement the film's prickly, insatiable nostalgia for the purity of unadorned tentative longing just as they contradict it in both mood and content. The gestalt would have surely been huge had a bunch of TIFFing philistines not stridently pushed the door of the Paramount 1 open as loud as they TIFFing could, or my neighbor who apparently had to softly Tuvan throat-sing to dispel her boredom. Die, cunt, etc.
186. (10 Sep) Linda Linda Linda (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2005)* 54
Um. What this is is the Waterboysian crowd-pleaser mixed with amusingly empty sub-Jarmuschian digressions (note to self: you can't be a minimalist if you don't love Time) that are in fact more in line with the adolescent spaciness of a Napoleon Dynamite than any of that director's elliptical, associative work. Every now and then, a startling composition pops up (Yamashita's got a good eye for the backs of heads, multiple planes of action, and so on), but on the whole this is negligible. Sigh.
187. (10 Sep) The Quiet (Jamie Babbitt, 2005)* 25
This must be how hating Solondz feels: glibly reactionary social commentary, emanating from a distinctly whiny (and probably repressed) voice; a tewibbow dark side prescribed as "complexity"; an ostensible "discovery" of bourgeois malaise which has in fact been pretty much common knowledge for at least the past 150 years. The two differ in Babbitt's abundant Understanding for her zero-dimensional retards, who inexplicably learn to love or conscientiously die trying. And did I mention the godawful script, wherein characters explicitly and carelessly effuse their deepest, most profound desires nary a hint of campy relish? From the top: Everyone -- yes, men, you too -- is lesbian. Incest is bad, but creates a COMPLICATED LOVE-hate relationship, the VICTIM too intrinsically attached to abscond. Etc.
188. (10 Sep) Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (Mike Johnson & Tim Burton, 2005)* 67
Ravishing, but still missing something: i.e., what binds love and death, or rather the Victor and the Corpse. Piano duet intended to do exactly that doesn't quite; loveably flawed morbidity does develop something, but it's more like compassion or empathy than even the most complacent love (see: Hou, above). On a more general note, Burton either has to stop moralizing or stop being so soft: just like the Spielbergian assurance of the mutated kids marching intact out the gates in Charlie, here death isn't death; it's Death (see: Kitano, above). What remains is still often hilarious, filled with subtle ironies it doesn't nudge in, and an poignant disquisition on the ills of marriage, when it really wants to be; and the final shot's a refreshingly abrupt stunner that gave me chills, but what this could have been was me suppressing The Quiet (oh, and my suburban malcontent. sorry).
189. (11 Sep) A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)* 83
Violence as imitation: gentrified suburbanites re-enacting their lost youth to feel "naughty," and actual youth observantly conforming, watching for implicit signs from the older generation that rebellion is "natural." Where does violence come from, we're inclined to wonder: engrained, ideological complacency, or an adolescent zest for the new and revolutionary? If each generation imitates each other, then each seems inclined to bury their own hostilities; if Cronenberg is clearly giving any kind of message, it’s that those hostilities will still inevitably surface. However, he avoids giving violence an origin (no flashbacks = thanks Dave), only a palpably ambiguous presence. Again and again Cronenberg slaps his audience in the face for relenting to genre conventions -- most notably in the pair of sex scenes, one of which offers a simulated reversion to youth, and another, scary, equally erotic but also repulsive "real" reversion. God knows I hated the smelly, loudly reactive obese dude sitting next to me at the time, but in retrospective his dual responses to those scenes were kind of a godsend: moaning (ew) during the former, woahing and hmming the latter. The lesson: Cronenberg's deconstruction is so sharp, even the philistines can get it. The precarious sense of communal solidarity, which mirrors recent von Trier films but cuts deeper, imo, inspires some of the most evidently conflicted filmmaking in recent memory, e.g. when Good You-Can-Count-on-Me Cop leaves Tom's case to rest, we don't know whether to feel unencumbered relief, or dubious insecurity. Ditto for the gut-puncher of a denouement. {ADDENDUM: It's come to my attention that a lot of positive reviews of this are defending it (from slags on idiotic grounds confusing the austere with the simplistic) as psychologically complex. No. I can't think of any other great film this year -- including Last Days -- which so insistently denies its audience access to rounded, human characters. Cronenberg's formal devices, and his abstraction of feebly constructed characters, couldn't call any more attention to themselves sans neon arrows. Moreover, I'm kind of disgusted by the notion of anyone marching into this film expecting anything resembling a semi-accurate depiction of reality, or anything attempting such. My two cents.}
190. (11 Sep) Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, 2005)* 61
For almost two straight hours, prime Crowe: cross-sections of canned neuroses; moments of intense emotional reflection diffused by lyrical, picayune nonsense; suspiciously esoteric minutiae that only could have been cribbed directly from experience. Bloom is passive and morbidly emo, but the Braff comparisons stop there; as irritatingly trite as the narrated homilies get, they're more general than solipsistic, more observational than depressive. I have fewer problems with the character, frankly, than Bloom himself, who speaks with this creepy combination of preteen trepidation and trailer-voice-guy pretension that just freaks me out. Dunst, to me, seems too obsessively inquisitive to be a purely wish-fulfillment-based figure, but maybe that’s because she reminds me of this woman who took care of my dogs and had multiple hour-long, uncomfortably personal phone conversations with me despite us never having met prior to the first and implicitly opened up a giant can of worms by hinting at an abusive and sexually deficient marriage conceded to out of caprice. Anyway, ignore them both if you must and focus on Paul Schneider’s loser dad, whose movingly insubordinate parenting is criminally’ subordinated to comic relief. And yes, the ending blows -- imagine the final shot of Almost Famous expanded to something like 30 minutes and injected with ejaculatory mix-tape diarrhea.
192. (11 Sep) Manderlay (Lars von Trier, 2005)* 71
193. (11 Sep) L'annulaire (Diane Bertrand, 2005)* 37
Sleep Country, Ca-na-da! Why buy a mattress, an-y where else? I'm not kidding; they changed the jingle.
194. (11 Sep) La Neuvaine (Bernard Emond, 2005)* 47
195. (12 Sep) Sa-kwa (Kang Yi-kwan, 2005)* 59
196. (12 Sep) Revolver (Guy Ritchie, 2005)* 13
197. (12 Sep) Cache (Hidden) (Michael Haneke, 2005)* 68
Only with Haneke could an astute return to form also be deeply unsatisfying. Not in the typically overt Art-Film sense -- see: Lynch -- but certainly not in the lazily-written-Hollywood-schlock sense either. His rug-pulling is undeniably accomplished -- and it's a great, masochistic sort of comfort to see a director grab his audience from the opening to closing credits, never taking a breather -- but on first impression, so formally distinguished as to be nearly ineffectual. It's at once Haneke's most suspenseful and confounding film, a radical fusion of genre and avant-garde tendencies so deeply rooted in both it's difficult to process as either. Haneke's made a masterpiece for himself, but I'm not sure if I can love it; he's always been a tease, but never before has the psycho cruelly transformed the frame into a veritable Where's Waldo? tableaux. And no, I didn’t see shit in the final shot, and my eyes were darting like crazy. Michael, how do you feel about my needs?
198. (12 Sep) Wassup Rockers (Larry Clark, 2005)* 57
W/O. (12 Sep) Into Great Silence (Philip Groening, 2005)*
199. (12 Sep) Bangkok Loco (Pornchai Hongrattanaporn, 2005)* 52
200. (13 Sep) Bubble (Steven Soderbergh, 2005)* 66
... in which our intrepid fest-goer notices a rather blatant symptomatic motif among some of the first-class auteur-work at this year's TIFF: the anti-mystery, which portends twists and secrets only to effectively destroy its own ostensible agenda (cf. Cronenberg, Haneke). A response to the "killer was an amorphous sheepdog after all" ending du jour, perhaps? Soderbergh devalues the trick ending, surely, but also gives his lack thereof an express purpose: this middle-America is one we're used to seeing in Michael Moore documentaries and quirkfests like True Stories, not blessed with its own mini-narrative. He staunches plot mechanics to give a clear, simple voice to the marginalized dreams of the undereducated and overworked. One character's violence, which initially appears to be a straightforward explosion of misplaced jealousy, in retrospect serves all these characters as an elucidation of ambitions otherwise inexpressible.
201. (13 Sep) The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005)* 45
Why did otherwise vaguely respectable Cannes folk go for this -- specifically Guillermo Arriaga's prosaic, crocodile-tears screenplay and Jones’ clumsily modulated performance (Hong Sang-soo and Daniel Auteuil wuz robbed, respectively)? Arriaga, ala 21 Grams, arbitrarily juts around time, but the structure, which seems to find ample catharsis in "correcting" the wrongs of the past, denies the flashbacks any relevance or resonance; it's telling that the film is still divided into chronological chapters, at conventional odds with its own hip modernism. Jones wants to examine vigilantism, but -- perhaps not by design -- he encourages it. His character has one or two scenes of ambiguous creepiness that are altogether abandoned by the halfway point, and is way too altruistic and meticulous to compare with Barry Pepper, his ethnocentric, pig-headed mirror image. Jones is grappling with complexities he can't comprehend; his imbalanced bevy of perspectives, not to mention flat, inept visuals, are more John Sayles than Ford.
202. (13 Sep) Backstage (Emmanuelle Bercot, 2005)* 64
203. (13 Sep) The Forsaken Land (Vimukthi Jayasundara, 2005)* 55
W/O. (13 Sep) Duelist (Lee Myung-se, 2005)*
Brakhage? Sheesh.
204. (14 Sep) Where the Truth Lies (Atom Egoyan, 2005)* 44
205. (14 Sep) You Bet Your Life (Antonin Svoboda, 2005)* 65
Once upon a time, six years or so ago, it was my goal to write a depraved, Breillat-esque screen adaptation of Ella Enchanted (don't ask). Surely a story centered around the total relinquishing of individual will-power had perverse, Hathaway-unfriendly potential? This pleasantly surprising slot-filler (go go Neu-Grit and Austria, the second most reliable progenitor for filmmaking talent; my other Discovery choice, Sa-kwa, spawns from the first) comes as close to fulfilling that seventh-grade embellishment as I could hope for post-O'Haver fucking up everything, with its stalwart hero who disdains those without self-control -- e.g. his friend, the father and fellow gambling addict, with an indomitably sentimental attachment to his family just as deleterious to his game as any substance abuse -- but in turn also gives his own up, slavishly operating as the object of his addiction's whims. Georg Friedrich's performance, all desperation overshadowed by unctuousness, is a reason to see this; despite his greasy exterior, when the inevitable sorrowful downfall hits, it hits hard. Svoboda is another, showing impressive control of DV, going for naturalistic and lo-fi without resorting to Dogme-style entropy, and shaping a style as obstinately impetuous as his protag.
206. (14 Sep) April Snow (Hur Jin-ho, 2005)* 62
207. (14 Sep) Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel, 2005)* 78
From the first moments of this oneiric, fractured triumph, Garrel admires the May '68 radicals' searching vigour, and spurns the naive abstraction of their ideas; it's an attitude that only could have been formed by both nostalgic regret and empirical analysis. His film is both discursive and precise, tracking Francois (played by his son Louis, which is more textually apposite than you'd expect, e.g. when the camera comes inordinately close to Francois' face when he laments for a society where fathers and sons can't respect each other, one generation ushered into complacency as the other spurts out) as he becomes not so much disillusioned with his political sincerity as aware of its pitfalls. The most inconspicuously lethargic, hangin'-out scenes are also the most crucial: one likens the fall of communism to religious skeptics, implicitly harkening to Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor's contempt for human insecurities and applying that tragic lack of ordained faith to a political system. But Garrel also necessitates fickle faith in the realm of aesthetic scrutiny: painters, poets and sculptors alike grapple with the temptation of commerce, and ultimately it's impossible to tell when a claim of beauty is True or a petty courtesy; money may be superficial and invidious, but it has a concrete certainty aesthetes can't rely on to extend to art. Paranoid of losing his ideals, Francois succumbs partly to their impracticality and partly to the irrationality of Love and Art. Garrel has made a love letter to the pursuit of individual freedom that at every turn recognizes its absurdity.
208. (15 Sep) A travers le foret (Jean-Paul Civeyrac, 2005)* 68
An intriguing little poem, using some of the fest's most lucid camerawork to craft its most fragmented psychology. Civeyrac doesn't disregard space so much as deliberately destroy its coherence. The camera -- apropos, considering the material -- feels like a ghost, an unconscious observer drifting along characters, sustaining a universal solipsism that only feels apt when its grieving, singularly committed subject, Armelle, is onscreen. Civeyrac's long takes ironically sculpt scenes in bits and pieces: where, say, an Altman would savor sisters whispering about a dude's resemblance to one's lost love, while the dude stands adjacent in the frame (and there are 3 Women parallels here), Civeyrac uses the tracking camera to distinguish and demarcate reality from inner consciousness. Formally compelling, yup, but also a touchingly sophisticated take on grief / illusionism; as Armelle sinks deeper in, her nihilism spreads like an infectious disease, and (seemingly as a result) she finally recants corporeal love to search for something, well, within her mind, stupid's that sounds. And Civeyrac's the perfect filmmaker to take her there.
209. (14 Sep) Gabrielle (Patrice Chereau, 2005)* 48
Sheer miscalculation; good luck, Armond, etc. Material's all about feelings harvested indirectly, realizing things too late, passionless attachment, a couple burying their true and happy selves under the veil of society and stolidity, and whatnot; inconceivably, Chereau goes straight for the jugular, with leaden dialogue, strident performances and comic booky stylistic flourishes: *ZIP!* *I WILL NEVER RETURN AGAIN!* *POW!* *IT IS TERRIBLE AND WONDERFUL!* etc. For all its sentimentality, Son Frere at least had some nicely morose languor going for it. Busy and manic, Gabrielle at first seems the victim of Desplechin Syndrome (minus that director’s emotionally complex texture and cubist editing) but more accurately captures the Tony Scott ethos of overheated penis envy. Then again I heard some pentagenarian type females in my general area huffing "you go Huppert girl" so I guess Chereau is a genius; you win, Armond, etc.
210. (15 Sep) Free Zone (Amos Gitai, 2005)* 63
211. (15 Sep) The Child (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005)* 76
A fellow TIFFer called this "slight," and though I respect his reservations, dude might as well have told me, "I'm a floating unicorn," i.e., this is powerful cinema. Characterizations are the bros. at their most archetypal -- the callous gangster, the wayward mother -- and the film never diverges from quashing said gangster's chances to win our wholehearted sympathies. We're offered catharsis, but no resolution of the voluminous troubles that precede it. Really, I don't quite know what to take from it, but that I'm dying to is a sign that the audience's moral imperative -- and in this particular case, paternal intuition -- takes on as pertinent a role as any onscreen character. Bruno's comeuppance, only defensibly plausible as the result of sheer, downtrodden enervation, requires a leap of faith from the viewer in belief commensurate with his own in action. The Dardennes' humanism can't be called generosity, as the term implies a one-sided exchange; what the brothers find lacking in their characters, the audience is necessitated to fill in for themselves. I heard another, more anonymous TIFF patron going, in a stream-of-conscious invective, "I expect films to either be entertaining or to contribute to society [shut up], Jolene" But, anonymous guy, isn't teaching audiences to accept a minor form of redemption just as valuable as -- and the Dardennes never do this, but some of their contemporaries obviously do -- encouraging absolute redemption? The Child is a lesson in compassion, and as I type, I've yet to absorb it. And let's be honest: I was about to watch freaking Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, so who knows if I ever will. But still, good job, guys.
212. (15 Sep) Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2005)* 53
213. (15 Sep) The Great Yokai War (Takashi Miike, 2005)* 39
Fuck you for stealing two hours of valuable sleep Miike.
214. (16 Sep) A Perfect Couple (Nobuhiro Suwa, 2005)* 64
215. (16 Sep) Heading South (Laurent Cantet, 2005)* 61
I’m not a huge Cantet fan, but this was pretty revelatory w/r/t revealing him as more of an artist than an activist, with a set of moods and obsessions rather than programmed polemics. Held over from Time Out, I suppose, is the critique of capitalism as an enslaving force, this time with Albert the (supposedly Morgan-Freeman-noble, which I don’t quite buy) waiter caught in a job contradictory to the ideals of his ancestors: on the one hand, Albert has an awareness of the hypocritical racism the women unknowingly inflict on their controlling yet passive paramour; on the other, his strength doesn’t extend to his own occupation. But yeah, this is primarily about prejudice, not work; and what of it, mate. With great tact and even-handedness, if not subtlety, Cantet rips apart Brenda’s exoticism by first giving her delusions an identifiable foundation -- i.e., a self-mystified, over-entitled sort of midlife crisis -- and then, ala his other films, observes the destruction that callous solipsism brings about. Cantet condescends to racial double-standards the same way he examined Recoing’s mock-subsistence: with a reserved compassion just toeing the line of derision.
216. (16 Sep) Everlasting Regret (Stanley Kwan, 2005)* 40
Hey remember that scene in Broken Flowers when Bill Murray tries to talk philosophy to his presumed son and comes off as both na’ve and inadvertently Taoist. That was awesome. Remember when Stanley Kwan had nothing to say about exquisitely shot and also boring-ass Chinese history but nebulous Rosenbaum-ready banalities. That was not.
217. (16 Sep) The Notorious Bettie Page (Mary Harron, 2005)* 43
Such a shallow gloss-over that it’s hard to even attempt a comparison of Bettie to Harron’s other protags. Okay, so Bettie is an Oblivious Icon, cf. Bateman and Solanas, but the most interesting thing about her is clearly the ineffable transitivity that got her from Jesus freak to pin-up queen and back again. Mol goes for the constancy approach, i.e. wearing a complicitly jolly smile and recklessly diving in, and while I theoretically dig the idea that can-do voracity transcends moral piety, the film doesn’t really fulfill that. It psychologizes (the rape), contextualizes in the moral world (the boyfriend’s confrontation), and engages in pseudo-nostalgia of a baffling, frivolous sort. Worse, Bettie doesn’t seem to be ultimately affected by any of these tangents, but she’s hardly an impervious wall of complacency either, feeling pangs of doubt when required. This thing is a mess.
218. (16 Sep) The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005)* 58
Misleading reference point #1: the Dardennes, who likewise cram their films with contemporary social and political relevance but do so in a much more compact format. By contrast, Puiu is all breadth, no depth; one imagines Jean-Pierre and Luc fastidiously mining through Cristi's Goldfish Mixer, parting Parmesan from Cheddar. Misleading reference point #2: Rohmer, and this is thanks to the film's part in Puiu's planned Six Tales of Bucharest which according to Ms. Q&A Actress (whom I, intensely weary at this point, in no small part due to a certain outrageous Asian auteur and his overlong hunk of kiddie grotesquerie, somehow did not recognize from the picture itself; and whom I should also mention, just for personal reference's sake, was smokin' hot, moreso than anyone recognizable onscreen, and seemingly semi-responsible for the crowd's shockingly enthused response at a film at least as challenging as the damned-with-faint-praise Forsaken Land or Perfect Couple) is all about variations on the theme of Love. Um, what? I guess she meant between the nurse and Lazarescu? But this is not the complexly articulated, gorgeously latent type of Love we find in Rohmer's films; it's clinical, hesitant, and barely-there. Then again, so was I; FUTM etc. Still quietly extraordinary as a portrait of near-instantaneous mental deterioration; its single-minded ferocity as a psychic Journey would seem to call for the frenetic Noe approach, but Puiu remains an acrid, unforgiving fly on the wall. I need to see this again, by the way; sorry, haters.
219. (17 Sep) Time to Leave (Francois Ozon, 2005)* 41
220. (17 Sep) Citizen Dog (Wisit Sasanatieng, 2005)* 49
221. (17 Sep) Drawing Restraint 9 (Matthew Barney, 2005)* 27
222. (17 Sep) Mary (Abel Ferrara, 2005)* 67
223. (17 Sep) House of Sand (Andrucha Waddington, 2005)* 51
{WARNING: COMPLETELY UNRELIABLE!} My notes, 20 minutes into this movie: "the febrile worldview of a Mann western -- trapped by but also biologically inclined to protect vast, oppressive landscapes -- filtered through the long-shot, long-take, eyes-on-side-X-of-the-screen Tarr aesthetic." Yup. I also scribbled crap like this: "Iranian-movie histrionics." "Madness -- Herzog." And here's a real kicker: "last shot of Hidden." Huhh. While, if I'm to trust myself, there's no denying the initial formal mastery Waddington exhibits here, there's also no denying that I fell asleep for an indeterminate amount of time and when I woke up some not-very-interesting, not-very-rigorous stuff was going on, so there. Despite the hazy response, thanks much for the rec folco.
224. (17 Sep) Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)* 24
Eurotrip meets Audition, lacking the former's high spirits and the latter's bitonal purity; kinda makes me dislike Miike and Park's Cinema of Cruelty even more than I have recently (see: two days ago) to see an Eli "I-can’t-believe-I-wrote-the-film-in-three-weeks" Roth shamelessly purloin (and of course, tame) the tricks of their trade, not to mention brag about said thievery during a startlingly arrogant pre-film intro. It goes without saying that A History of Violence decidedly shits all over this film and its ilk. In this case, since a presence like Cronenberg wasn't available to galvanize the audience into self-awareness, I did my best to substitute, squealing "revenge!" at an applause-yielding turn of the tables. It, um, didn't seem to work. Convincing Motivation 101 Dept.: "I always wanted to be a surgeon... they never let me..." -- *snip* *snip*. Almost Worth Seeing Dept.: mercy-amputating the melting eyeball.
225. (21 Sep) Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982) 44
226. (21 Sep) As Tears Go By (Wong Kar-Wai, 1988) 45
227. (21 Sep) The President's Last Bang (Im Sang-soo, 2005) 69
I should probably note, under bizarre circumstances, I watched the first 80 minutes of this film twice (!) the week before TIFF and just now caught up with the final 20. Big thanks to Jeremy for the new disc.
228. (21 Sep) Even Dwarfs Started Small (Werner Herzog, 1970) 20
229. (22 Sep) The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974) 73
230. (23 Sep) Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-Wai, 1991) 66
231. (23 Sep) Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983) 56
232. (24 Sep) /In the Mood for Love/ (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000) 80
233. (24 Sep) Clean (Olivier Assayas, 2004) 64
234. (26 Sep) Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988) 47
235. (27 Sep) Fast Company (David Cronenberg, 1979) 50
236. (28 Sep) The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924) 42
237. (29 Sep) Faust (F.W. Murnau, 1926) 57
238. (29 Sep) Tartuffe (F.W. Murnau, 1926) 62
239. (29 Sep) King of New York (Abel Ferrara, 1990) 70
240. (30 Sep) Scanners (David Cronenberg, 1981) 46
241. (01 Oct) Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971) 38
242. (02 Oct) From Beijing with Love (Stephen Chow, 1994) 54
243. (03 Oct) /Oldboy/ (Park Chan-wook, 2003) 55
244. (03 Oct) /Oldboy/ (Park Chan-wook, 2003) 48
245. (06 Oct) /eXistenZ/ (David Cronenberg, 1999) 72
246. (07 Oct) /AI/ (Steven Spielberg, 2001) 63
247. (08 Oct) Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney, 2005)* 65
248. (10 Oct) Shivers (David Cronenberg, 1975) 64
249. (14 Oct) Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) 47
250. (14 Oct) Rabid (David Cronenberg, 1977) 53
251. (14 Oct) 1941 (Steven Spielberg, 1979) 68
252. (15 Oct) The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979) 71
253. (15 Oct) /Saving Private Ryan/ (Steven Spielberg, 1998) 74
254. (16 Oct) Always (Steven Spielberg, 1989) 51
255. (17 Oct) /The Third Man/ (Carol Reed, 1949) 70
256. (20 Oct) Ana and the Others (Celina Murga, 2002) 75
257. (21 Oct) Ma mere (Christopher Honore, 2004) 63
258. (21 Oct) Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976) 79
259. (21 Oct) Close to Leo (Christopher Honore, 2002) 52
260. (22 Oct) Opening Night (John Cassavetes, 1977) 67
261. (22 Oct) Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski, 2003) 80
262. (22 Oct) The Convent (Manoel de Oliveira, 1995) 29
263. (24 Oct) The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974) 34
264. (25 Oct) The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park and Steve Box, 2005)* 53
265. (25 Oct) /Faces/ (John Cassavetes, 1968) 88
266. (26 Oct) Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991) 92
267. (28 Oct) /Crash/ (David Cronenberg, 1996) 62
268. (28 Oct) /Saved!/ (Brian Dannelly, 2004) 54
269. (29 Oct) /Spider/ (David Cronenberg, 2002) 68
DNF. (29 Oct) Voyage to the Beginning of the World (Manoel de Oliveira, 1997)
270. (31 Oct) Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973) 95
271. (31 Oct) /Badlands/ (Terrence Malick, 1973) 95
272. (04 Nov) The 40 Year Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, 2005) 29
273. (05 Nov) The Brothers Grimm (Terry Gilliam, 2005) 49
274. (05 Nov) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black, 2005)* 65
275. (05 Nov) Zim and Co. (Pierre Jolivet, 2005)* 33
276. (05 Nov) Capote (Bennett Miller, 2005)* 89
277. (05 Nov) Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1955)* 70
278. (06 Nov) New York Doll (Greg Whiteley, 2005)* 42
279. (06 Nov) Paradise Now (Hany Abu-Assad, 2005)* 59
280. (06 Nov) Repast (Mikio Naruse, 1951)* 69
281. (06 Nov) Sound of the Mountain (Mikio Naruse, 1954)* 74
282. (07 Nov) The Driller Killer (Abel Ferrara, 1979) 67
283. (08 Nov) The Blackout (Abel Ferrara, 1997) 64
284. (09 Nov) The Sugarland Express (Steven Spielberg, 1974) 57
285. (10 Nov) Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981) 48
286. (11 Nov) The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985) 26
287. (12 Nov) Hell (Denis Tanovic, 2005)* 62
288. (12 Nov) Bee Season (Scott McGehee and David Siegel, 2005)* 56
289. (12 Nov) Flowing (Mikio Naruse, 1956)* 67
290. (12 Nov) Late Chrysanthemums (Mikio Naruse, 1954)* no rating
291. (13 Nov) Summer Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1958)* 78
292. (14 Nov) /City of God/ (Fernando Meirelles, 2002) 1
293. (14 Nov) Assisted Living (Elliot Greenebaum, 2003) 46
294. (16 Nov) Dangerous Game (Abel Ferrara, 1993) 45
295. (16 Nov) Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg, 1987) 60
296. (16 Nov) 10 on Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2004) 57
DNF. (17 Nov) Kontroll (Nimrod Antal, 2004)
297. (17 Nov) A Lot Like Love (Nigel Cole, 2005) 50
298. (18 Nov) Fear City (Abel Ferrara, 1984) 52
299. (20 Nov) /A Bittersweet Life/ (Kim Jee-woon, 2005) 66
300. (20 Nov) New Rose Hotel (Abel Ferrara, 1998) 59
301. (21 Nov) Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski, 2005) 95
302. (23 Nov) Kids Return (Takeshi Kitano, 1996) 43
303. (23 Nov) /Days of Heaven/ (Terrence Malick, 1978) 83
304. (24 Nov) Mondovino (Jonathan Nossiter, 2004) 66
305. (24 Nov) The Ice Harvest (Harold Ramis, 2005)* 68
306. (24 Nov) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Mike Newell, 2005)* 59
307. (25 Nov) Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005)* 61
308. (25 Nov) Samurai Rebellion (Masaki Kobayashi, 1967)* 46
309. (26 Nov) Just Friends (Roger Kumble, 2005)* 55
310. (27 Nov) Syriana (Stephen Gaghan, 2005)* 41
311. (27 Nov) Jarhead (Sam Mendes, 2005)* 64
312. (27 Nov) When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse, 1960)* 65
313. (28 Nov) It's All Gone Pete Tong (Michael Dowse, 2004) 42
314. (30 Nov) Primo Amore (Matteo Garone, 2004) 67
315. (01 Dec) Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989) 50
316. (02 Dec) The Fluffer (Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, 2001) 69
317. (02 Dec) Mindhunters (Renny Harlin, 2004) 56
318. (03 Dec) My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2004) 47
319. (03 Dec) River of Grass (Kelly Reichardt, 1994) 63
320. (03 Dec) Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986) 37
321. (05 Dec) /The Thin Red Line/ (Terrence Malick, 1998) 53
322. (05 Dec) The Sticky Fingers of Time (Hilary Brougher, 1997) 65
323. (05 Dec) /Deconstructing Harry/ (Woody Allen, 1997) 62
324. (06 Dec) Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Doug Liman, 2005) 43
325. (06 Dec) Walking and Talking (Nicole Holofcener, 1996) 60
326. (06 Dec) trans (Julian Goldberger, 1998) 57
327. (06 Dec) Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) 66
328. (07 Dec) /Annie Hall/ (Woody Allen, 1977) 81
329. (08 Dec) Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2002) 77
330. (09 Dec) Hollywood Ending (Woody Allen, 2002) 67
331. (10 Dec) Winter Solstice (Josh Sternfeld, 2004) 44
332. (11 Dec) A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989)* 75
333. (12 Dec) Up and Down (Jan Hrebejk, 2004) 51
334. (12 Dec) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Andrew Adamson, 2005)* 46
335. (12 Dec) Far Side of the Moon (Robert Lepage, 2003)* 58
336. (12 Dec) The Island (Kaneto Shindo, 1960)* 68
337. (12 Dec) Gate of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)* 41
338. (13 Dec) Four Friends (Arthur Penn, 1981) 11
339. (13 Dec) Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (Jean Eustache, 1966)* 82
340. (13 Dec) Brigitte and Brigitte (Luc Moullet, 1966)* 63
341. (13 Dec) Paris Is Ours (Jacques Rivette, 1960)* 70
342. (14 Dec) Images (Robert Altman, 1972) 43
343. (14 Dec) Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)* 79
344. (14 Dec) Saboteur (Alfred Hitchcock, 1942)* 73
345. (14 Dec) Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)* 63
W/O. (14 Dec) Something to Remember Me By (Patricia Ferreira, 2005)*
346. (15 Dec) Sunday (Jonathan Nossiter, 1997) 59
347. (15 Dec) The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)* 64
348. (15 Dec) Song of the Fisherman (Cai Chusheng, 1934)* 24
349. (15 Dec) Intentions of Murder (Shohei Imamura, 1964)* 69
350. (16 Dec) Another Woman (Woody Allen, 1988) 35
351. (16 Dec) C.R.A.Z.Y. (Jean-Marc Valee, 2005) 68
352. (16 Dec) The Sky Turns (Mercedes Alvarez, 2004)* 71
353. (16 Dec) The White Diamond (Werner Herzog, 2004) 65
354. (17 Dec) The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1951) 18
355. (18 Dec) /Everyone Says I Love You/ (Woody Allen, 1996) 61
356. (18 Dec) Same Time, Next Year (Robert Mulligan, 1978) 36
357. (18 Dec) Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977) 75
358. (18 Dec) King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005)* 62
359. (18 Dec) As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (Jonas Mekas, 2000)* 54
360. (19 Dec) Interiors (Woody Allen, 1978) 65
361. (19 Dec) Murder! (Alfred Hitchcock, 1930)* 56
362. (19 Dec) The Ring (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)* no rating
363. (20 Dec) Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)* 57
364. (20 Dec) Masculine-Feminine (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966) 92
365. (21 Dec) /Sweet and Lowdown/ (Woody Allen, 1999) 66
366. (21 Dec) Throwdown (Johnnie To, 2004) 48
367. (22 Dec) /North by Northwest/ (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)* 85
368. (22 Dec) /Mighty Aphrodite/ (Woody Allen, 1995) 58
369. (22 Dec) The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)* 76
370. (22 Dec) Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)* 70
371. (23 Dec) Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005)* 66
372. (24 Dec) The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955) 72
373. (24 Dec) The Intruder (Claire Denis, 2004)* 48
374. (24 Dec) Shakespeare-Wallah (James Ivory, 1965) 47
375. (24 Dec) The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975) 67
376. (25 Dec) Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2004) 56
377. (25 Dec) The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)* 53
378. (25 Dec) The White Countess (James Ivory, 2005)* 46
379. (25 Dec) /Peeping Tom/ (Michael Powell, 1960) 83
380. (29 Dec) /Capote/ (Bennett Miller, 2005)* 76
381. (29 Dec) /Mutual Appreciation/ (Andrew Bujalski, 2005) 95
382. (31 Dec) Shock Corridor (Sam Fuller, 1963) 49