Movies
The best movie I've seen since,
um, Black Narcissus: Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. I love all his films but this is his best
and the new print they've recently released is gorgeous.
Russian Ark. An astonishing film. There
is nothing else like it. A 90 minute single steadycam take.
To Joy. Early Bergman. He was already great.
Animal Kingdom. A tough, gritty, yet poetic Australian gangster film.
Never Let me Go
(a philosophical sci-fi film) from the Ishiguro novel.
Sacha Guitry
Funny Games (Haneke, either version,
though I prefer the original German)
Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire
Bunuel's Tristana
Bunuel's
L'age D'or
Best film since I've seen Army of Shadows: the Russian WWII film, Come
and See. Maybe the best anti-war film ever.
And another WWII film, Overlord. Poetic would be the
right word.
Seems like everything I've seen lately that's great is old. I can't remember the last new
film that hit me hard. Here are some great old films I just saw for the first time: Gilda, Major Barbara, Stalingrad,
Camille, In this our Life, Random Harvest, Battle of Algiers.
Two very good new foreign films: The Dinner
Game (I cringe at the ads for the American remake), The White Ribbon.
Cheneau's Intimacy
Everybody's
Fine
Michael Moore's important Democracy: a Love Story.
Fugitive Pieces
Fair
Game (tell me again why Cheney is not in prison)
District 9.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
In
the Loop.
Them. A truly creepy thriller. (Not the giant ant movie, though, naturally, I love it,
too.)
Playtime. A mind-expanding movie. Tati was a genius.
The amazing Up. Pixar's
best movie since the first Toy Story.
The almost equally amazing 9.
An astonishing
Czech film, Daisies. If you can find this it will delight you. I have not seen another movie like it.
I
am Curious (Yellow)
Also, been watching a bunch of Robert Bresson movies. Good stuff.
All Night
Long, a marvelous jazz version of Othello, with a slimy Patrick McGoohan, and cameos by musicians like Dave Brubeck and
Charlie Mingus. One of the best jazz movies ever....and it's not available on DVD in the US.
Man on Wire.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. For my money, better than The Reader.
Nothing
but the Truth: a newspaper drama, very well done, shot in Memphis, and starring the resplendent Kate Beckinsale.
Becker's
Le Trou.
Blues in the Night, a great little jazz noir (and maybe the only film that can be so
labeled.)
Quai des Orfevres.
Haneke's The Castle (might be the best Kafka on film.)
Tarsem's The Fall.
Wendy and Lucy: a woman and her dog. Michelle Williams is great.
Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh's brave look at the difficulty of being, well, happy.
Religulous.
Bill Maher is very very funny.
The astonishing, moving Nothing But a Man.
Ira Sach's beautiful
Married Life.
Konchalovsky's wondrous House of Fools.
The Devil and Daniel
Webster (great old fantasy flick with Walter Huston as Scratch.
The Coen Brothers' return to glory No
Country for Old Men. And their Burn after Reading.
The Spirit of the Beehive (this is such
a beautiful film....it's really unlike anything else I've seen)
The best new movie I've seen in a while,
Haneke's remake of his own German thriller, Funny Games, with Naomi Watts.
Green for Danger.
A neglected British who-dun-it.
Ozu's Tokyo Story. Subtle, stunning.
Breakfast on Pluto,
Starting out in the Evening, The Fifth Horseman is Fear, May Fools (Malle), Sleepwalking, Cassandra's
Dream, I'm Not Afraid, Lars and the Real Girl.
Waitress (totally beguiling, featuring a completely
winning performance by Keri Russell....an utter tragedy that Shelly would concoct such a life-affirming movie only to die
before ever seeing it released)
Malpertuis. This is one whacked-out horror film, a sort of Gormenghast
meets Hammer concoction. Anyone else seen this and wanna talk about it?
Plan 10 from Outer Space (Because
it has the luminous Stefene Russell in it, that's why.)
Cloverfield. The best monster movie in years.
Killer of Sheep.
Tom Tykwer's Perfume: such a great novel, seemingly unfilmable,
made into such a great movie, by the wonderful director of Run, Lola, Run.
Ossessione (Visconti's
first film, a version of The Postman Always Rings Twice that surpasses every other version)
Who
Gets to Call it Art: a fine documentary about the New York art scene, circa the 1960s...also Who the &$%# is
Jackson Pollock?
The Oh in Ohio (the resplendent Parker Posey....and if anyone can get me an introduction
to Mischa Barton I'll give them my signed Zora Neale Hurston first edition copy of Tell My Horse)
And the 3rd
Bourne movie. Say what you will this trilogy works as one long smart action film. An amnesiac's trip back to his parentage.
Antonioni's L'eclisse
Captain Beefheart: Under Review (great, strange documentary
about the great, strange Don Van Vliet)
Play it as is Lays (Tuesday Weld is luminous)
Tell
Them Who You Are (Mark Wexler's documentary about his dad, the director/cinematographer/radical)
Rapture
(a wonderful, neglected classic, starring Melvin Douglas and a startling Patricia Gozzi)
Port of Shadows
(Marcel Carne)
Sketches of Frank Gehry (Yeah, I didn't care about architecture going in either)
Valmont (doesn't have the deliriously wicked Malkovich, which the other version does, but has
a very sexy 15 year old Fairuza Balk and the wonderful Annette Bening)
Shopgirl (Steve Martin) Surprisingly
tender and surprisingly beautifully made.
William Eggleston in the Real World (fascinating and sad, esp
if you knew Leigh Haizlip)
Bright Young Things (a simply dead-on version of Waugh's Vile Bodies...may
I publicly profess my love for Emily Mortimer?)
Grey Gardens (has anyone else seen this very curious document?
it made me squirm...maybe in a good way)
Corey's unrecommendations (movies that make you say blech):
Tarantino's
and Rodriguez's Grindhouse films. Someone take the cameras away from these guys until they grow up.
Get
Smart. If you make a movie based on a comedy TV series you should try to make it, you know, funny.
Bad
News Bears (what was Richard Linklater thinking? this is only marginally better than Billy Bob's execrable Bad
Santa)
The Pink Panther (Steve Martin version--Oh my God, is this really that bad? Yes it is!)
The
Holiday (Jude Law should know better; Cameron Diaz, well, you don't expect her to know better)
Failure
to Launch (a concept so ricekty they can't even stick to it....and such a lifeless execution [now, there's a
nice turn of phrase])
Four Brothers (just in case you thought Singleton was a better director than his
protege Craig Brewer)
Firewall (a stupid thriller from the same doofus who directed the stupid love story
Wimbledon)
Syriana (an important movie that's a little confusing....I never did figure out
what Jeffrey Wright was doing)
Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It's time to tell Kevin Smith that he is
not funny.
A film so bad I cannot type the whole title and I am so so sorry I gave the makers of this mess my money:
Hot Tub T....
Little Black Book (here's my confession: I have the hots for Brittany Murphy and
her lack of talent diminishes it not)
Elizabethtown (bad even if you go in with low expectations)
John
Ford's Tobacco Road (I am constantly amazed at what Hollywood thinks the South is like. Other bad films in this
category, The Reivers, God's Little Acre.)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:
an updating of Forrest Gump, like we wanted that. Curiously boring.
