Projectorheads

Lovers
Pretty bad. Jesus, at least the other Dogme movies had the decency not to use auto focus when filming. Apart from this minor but very distracting detail, the Dogme aesthetic suited it well. I did enjoy some moments, but the acting/direction was very poor. Bad dialogue galore. This is one thing that's really bad about Dogme 95: a lot of the Dogme movies I've seen have obviously been made by talented directors, and even though they're going for a "lo-fi" aesthetic they still have cinematographers (Anthony Dod Mantle for Festen and Julien Donkey-Boy, for instance). Lovers is just a bad student film, but because it religiously followed the Dogme rules it received the certificate (being von Trier's best friend would've helped) and enjoyed a long festival circuit. Even if most people thought it was lame. The actress was mega cute, though. 4/10.

The Place Promised in Our Early Days
I liked the first half a lot more than the second half. Actually, I err, didn't understand the second half at all. I'll rewatch it because I was distracted towards the end, but I did love the lighting effects in this movie. Very innovative and clever for an animation. 7/10.

As Tears Go By
HILARIOUS. It's not a masterpiece at all, and not at all comparable to his later work. In fact, it's hardly recognisable as a Wong Kar Wai film apart from the cinematography and the trademark slow-shutter speeds. Cheesy, predictable, but in good ways. 7/10.

Stroszek
It'd be a 9/10 if it wasn't for some slower/uneventful moments, but for the most part this was great. Bruno S. is a fascinating character. I'm not at all surprised that he's a non-actor that Herzog discovered, though I hear his acting "ability" is better in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Still, he was so sincere in this that he felt real. The ending and the auction scene had me in tears of laughter, holy hell. That chicken dance. Harmony Korine was very obviously inspired by this movie. 8/10.

The Virgin Spring
Enraptured me in the beginning, pretty much up to [SPOILER]the murder scene[SPOILER], but after that it just felt like a rehash of ideas and feelings he had already expressed in other movies (though to be fair, this would've been one of the first). Man, it's sparse, even for a Bergman movie. I liked it but I wasn't bowled over like I always expect from him. 7/10.

The Cranes are Flying (Mikhail Kalatazov, 1957)
Not exactly mind-blowing, but so well-told that it hurts. Sublime photography, a not-amazing but touching story, and an incredibly attractive Russian female lead. Pretty much exactly what I expected and hoped for, and it delivered.
9/10

The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
Ooh, this came close to beating Sunset Blvd. - until it became slightly cheesy towards the end. It was still great, don't get me wrong, but I'm a sadist - I prefer death and pain to everything turning out right in the end. Still, this was really excellent. I was actually surprised by Jack Lemmon, who I'd only seen in Some Like it Hot playing up his campness - based on pictures I'd seen of The Apartment, I expected him to be sullen and cranky. In fact, he's nearly as camp as he was in SLiH, and he kind of felt like the comedy version of James Stewart - just a really approachable everyman. And he does some of the most convincing cold acting I've ever seen.
The form of this film is surprising too; it jumps from comedy, to - actually I won't spoil it, but suffice to say, it jumps. If I had to make a single criticism, it'd be that Shirley MacLaine and Lemmon don't truly gel as a pair, but then again we never really see them being a "pair" as such, so that doesn't matter much.
9/10

American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)
To my surprise, I enjoyed this a fair amount. Maybe I'm desensitised or something, but I didn't find any of the "horror" scenes scary in the slightest; in fact, I found them the funniest points of the film. It's supposed to be a comedy-horror, but hell, I really didn't feel much horror! Patrick Bateman isn't scary at all, probably because he doesn't feel realistic at all. He's a parody of humankind more than an actual, living, breathing person, and every single line and expression he delivers for most of the run are completely false. It's very fun to watch with that in mind; it's just an enormous pisstake of empty, pretentious businessmen who think they're the world but have nothing meaningful to contribute (apparently this is more evident in the film than the book due to the director being female, and I'm - SACRILEGE! - glad of that. I like the fact that a female director took a film that could've easily been a male fantasy - see what's happened with Fight Club - and completely eliminated any glorification in it). To that end, it's slightly disappointing when the end scenes arrive; I knew that the film's internal logic throughout meant that the whole thing couldn't be real, but honestly I would've preferred not confirming it was false - and we also see Bateman's mask slip and he becomes almost human, which is a disappointment and feels like a comedy suddenly starting to take itself seriously.
'Course, this is just my reading of the film, and I'm sure as hell that others would disagree...
7/10

Scarface (Brian DePalma, 1983)
Jesus christ, DePalma's overrated. I didn't much like Carrie, and the same applies here. I don't specifically have any problems with them, I just find it very difficult to engage with them; they feel surface-level, really disconnected to me. To my amazement, I wasn't even able to enjoy Pacino's performance on the "pure fun" level I'd been promised - he's actually taking it relatively seriously throughout, and that sucked to watch. He was too much of a joke to take seriously like the film wanted us to, but he was too seriously to find truly funny. Goddammit. The only scene where he becomes as whacky as promised is the final scene, which is fun, but that comes after, what, two and a half hours? I mean, really.
On the other hand, I didn't officially become bored, and I watched through to the end. That's a virtue, I suppose. But man, I could stick the knife in further. The music, for instance, is terrible. The direction's nothing special, and the artificiality of the 80s setting is neat but makes no sense surrounded by this "serious" story. I just felt it was tonally inconsistent, and what a surprise, since Carrie was too. Along the lines of what Andres once said, the biggest compliment I can pay this is that it inspired GTA: Vice City.
5/10

Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1968)
Here's my theory on surrealism, based on the scant number of surrealist films I've seen so far; it can be as confounding as it likes, as long as it's enjoyable and funny. Bunuel rules at this; most of his themes I've come to notice after having read up on him rather than in the films themselves. Un Chien Andalou is the ultimate surrealist film, and I had no idea what it meant when I watched it - but that didn't matter, because it was fun, it was kooky, and it was often darkly hilarious.
Color of Pomegranates has only the barest bones of narrative; it is, as the wholly irritating director's intent states at the start, not a telling of a poet's life, but a symbolic representation of one's fami-uh I mean, a symbolic representation of what it means to be a poet. I'm sure some of the symbolism is neat, but I just didn't understand any of it. The images were very pretty, but again, I got nothing from it at all. I'm not annoyed about this, I'm not enraged - I'm just so indifferent that I need to write this many words just to communicate just how indifferent I was to it. I was indifferent to it. I was. I really was. I was indifferent to it.
In fact, it made me like Valerie and her Week of Wonders more, because while being similarly obtuse and obscure, it's at least, y'know, funny. I'm sure Jodorowsky is the same. This, though, isn't. And in fact, while I was watching this, my aunt and uncle often came into the room to retrieve items, and holy hell I felt embarrassed. Every time they came in, it was just some woman doing a silly dance on screen while some guy caterwauled in the background. Not something you want to be caught watching.
I was amused at the fact that the poet looks like Anthony Ainley, though.
6/10

You interpreted American Psycho exactly right. I don't think it's meant to be scary at all, it's just a very dark comedy.

edit: for recently watched movies check my criticker

edit2: my sig links to my criticker now

Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972)
Mesmerizing, beautiful, mind-blowing... yeah not much I can say. 9/10

Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2008)
[SPOILERS] lots of penises get severed and one gets eaten by a dog. Ummm, cool...[END SPOILERS] 6/10

Okay, cool. I just wondered if I had it wrong, because it sometimes seems to have that reputation of "for hip teenage boys" that Fight Club has.

Also, HAHA @ Tweeds' review of Teeth.

Eyes Wide Shut
I think this is a really underrated Kubrick. I mean, Cruise and Kidman aren't that great but it's definitely an engaging and affecting movie, perhaps not a masterpiece but a nice ending to his career. I loved the cult scenes. 8/10.

Told you! It is a very good movie

The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)
The opening scene of this was darkly hilarious and powerful, and I hoped it'd keep that tone throughout; I was wrong. It's funny at points, but it's mostly a serious examination of Maria Braun's marital problems amid the last days of World War II. Still, even if I wasn't as engaged as I would've liked to be, I can't deny that it was a very interesting story. It's almost a reverse Breaking the Waves in some ways. Unpredictable, and with an excellent ending+twist. This is apparently one of the least Fassbinder-esque of his greats, too (he's generally more camp and loves bright colours, apparently), and I've got to admit I'm looking forward more to the campier classics, but this was still very, very good.
8/10

Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989)
I originally gave this a 9 based on the strength of a few scenes alone, but after some reflection I've decided on an 8, because I remembered there were some scenes that I felt dragged on too long, or some plots that felt a bit superfluous. Or at least, they do while watching. Taking a step back from it, one notices that Woody Allen's subplot where he teaches a young girl about cinema and life thematically ties in with the "might is right" discussions held later in the film at a Jewish family full of young kids. In fact, this is the most cynical Allen I've seen yet; although I've heard him praise Bergman in his other films, and although I've known he's a Dostoevsky fan, this is the first time where both of those came into play. Intelligent stuff. There is still, of course, a very funny side to it - in fact one scene, with Allen talking to his sister about a man she dated, is probably the hardest I've laughed in one of his films yet.
8/10

Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
Man, why didn't I watch this sooner? This is definitely up there as one of my upper-tier Hitchcocks, probably about my fifth favourite. It feels a lot like Rope - unshowy direction, but simply a lot of tension, and the audience knowing of a murder/murder plot before most of the sympathetic characters do. And again we have that Hitchcockian trick of making the audience somehow feel tense whenever the killer/s does/do - we want him/her/them (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here) to succeed and get away with it, even if we're not sure why.
The ending runs out of steam a bit, and a couple of the early shots outright stink (errghh rear projection), but apart from that it just flies past. I should also mention that Mr Wendice hilariously looks like a chubby James Stewart from some angles, and also this is the best performance I've seen from Grace Kelly yet (...but sheesh, I still don't get the love for her. I'll just have to put this down to personal tastes, because I'm unlikely to be convinced by any of her other roles).
8/10

Le Ballon rouge (Albert Lamorisse, 1956)
Short and sweet. I don't really know how anyone could dislike this.
8/10

Tale of Tales (Yurij Norshteyn, 1979)
Oh wow, the artistry in this is astonishing. I didn't get sick of the unique visual style at any point while watching this. The story's not entirely clear, but there was enough, I think, for me to follow it fairly well... the wolf wanted to be human, right? ...right?
8/10

The Old Mill (Wilfred Jackson, 1937)
Neat little early Disney short which won an Oscar. It's not dated or anything, but nor is it that fascinating. Mind you, it's as good as some of Pixar's shorts.
7/10

Three Songs of Lenin (Dziga Vertov, 1934)
Oh god, this was painful. Vertov's The Man with a Movie Camera is one of my favourites, but this stunk to high heaven. It's a propaganda film divided into three acts that praises Lenin. In fact, it does nothing but praise Lenin. Act 1 is Russia pre-Lenin, and oh look how dark it is - but luckily "the dawn of Lenin was coming"! Act 2 is about half an hour of weeping over Lenin's grave. Act 3 is contemporary and is the best act of the three, with some characteristically great footage of Russian trains and such to fast-paced editing - but every minute or so it cuts back to an intertitle saying "If only Lenin could see our country now!" Barring the sickening propaganda, it's not even anywhere near as well-edited and fun to watch as Man with a Movie Camera. Avoid.
4/10

Entr'acte (Rene Clair, 1924)
I feel a bit weird that my first Clair film is a nonsensical short that doesn't sum up his style at all, but hell, it was freely available. Also, it's great and gets better as it goes along. A lot of fun.
8/10

A Study in Choreography for Camera (Maya Deren, 1945)
Maya Deren shows us a ballet dancer for 2 minutes. Yes, that's really it.
3/10

A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist (Peter Greenaway, 1978)
This film is nothing but narration over a camera panning over lines on artworks whilst cutting to footage of birds every now and then. That sounds like the worst thing ever, but amazingly it's great - due chiefly to the narration. The narrator tells a bizarre, witty story with the aid of the pictures about his journey in life and his journey towards "H" - either heaven or hell, he'll find out when he gets there.
8/10

Junkopia (Chris Marker, 1981)
Marker shows us some sculptures made out of stuff found in the sea. Some nice sculptures, but we've got Google Images for this nowadays.
6/10

Hakob Hovnatanyan (Sergei Parajanov, 1967)
Urrrgh, Parajanov, stay away from the goddamned tributes to painters. The first half of this is just pictures of the paintings with some music, and the second half is... a cat on a carpet, and some horses walking a bit.
4/10

Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
I feel guilty not liking this more than I did. The fact is, this is a well-performed, well-cast story, filmed elegantly, told elegantly (it's a Noel Coward play) by Lean. I can't really fault it, but... hmm, those accents. It's so personal that it's almost pedantic, but I just couldn't believe in the characters because their British accents were so haughty. The lovers either sounded emotionless or completely OTT throughout, but they at least had an air of subtle dignity. The other characters though, hooboy. I realise they're meant to be annoying on some level, but I can't tell you just how much I wanted to throw things at the screen whenever Myrtle Bagot or Dolly Messiter appeared.
7/10

Kanal (Andrzej Wajda, 1957)
Gripping, intense and depressing. Without wanting to reveal the plot; the first half was good, but it seemed fairly standard war-film-fare with some great shots. But then the second half came, and it's really its own thing. I'd go so far as to say this is probably one of my favourite war films, and there's quite a lot of competition for that title! All Quiet, Apocalypse Now, The Thin Red Line...
9/10
Oh yeah, and Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds, released the following year, is apparently similar but even better. I cannot wait.

I watched The Book of Mary, which was great. It's a short film by Anne-Marie Miéville about a girl dealing with her parents' divorce, and it was originally screened as the introduction to Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary. Its synopsis on Criticker made me laugh:



I dug it. 8/10. It's funny that it was screened prior to Hail Mary, 'cause there's a scene towards the beginning where Mary is watching Contempt on her television. It's amusing seeing a Godard film within a film by Godard's wife, and then remembering that it's a companion piece to a Godard film written by the both of them.

2:37 (Murali K. Thalluri, 2006)
Contrary to most reports this film is nothing like Elephant. It might be set in school, based on a true story, begin with a shot of the sky, feature long steady cam shots that follow students down corridors through changing light conditions and occasionally out into the bright outside world where the exposure has to be changed, use titles whenever a character is introduced, have an overall non-linear time-line but each character's story is told in a linear fashion, feature the use of scenes repeated from different characters perspective thus revealing who else was involved in the scene, have homosexual main characters, have scenes with students showering in the communal showers that apparently all Australian schools have, feature discussions in class about homosexuality, have a scene in the girls bathroom with a bulimic character purging herself, have a shot early on with a Mercedes Benz driving to the school... Actually, scrap that, it is EXACTLY like Elephant. But not as good. While there are serious issues presented in this film, they are handled fairly poorly and rely a lot on shock value and scenes of the actors crying. 6/10

EDIT: OK, its not technically based on a true story, I thought it was because of the "Dedicated to" at the end. It turns out the director/writer wrote it after he attempted to kill himself. So it is more of a response to an actual event rather than being based on an actual event. Sorry.