Mulholland Drive ( Read more... )

Despite the fact that almost everything I see is recent, as I don't see much of anything most of the holes in my film knowledge are post-2000. Of those, one of the film aggregate sites says these are the best-thought-of movies I haven't seen ( Read more... )

Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, High and Low ( Read more... )

The Mirror -> Tree of Life, aspects of Fanny and Alexander ( Read more... )

( Recording last week's Stalker impressions before reading others': )

The anti-bushido message of the very fine film Harakiri (1962) applies curiously well to capitalism. Which I guess in some ways approaches feudalism wherever democracy's sufficiently undermined? Don't know enough about him to swear that was Kobayashi's intention though, or whether this was more directly about treatment of WW2 veterans or Hiroshima ( Read more... )

People were easy. Nobody knew anything about them. If it sounded good they took your word for it. They took Joyce’s word for it.

From "On Writing," an outtake from one of the "Big Two-Hearted River" drafts.

Came into my head while trying to figure out enthusiasm for Anderson's trademark cringe-inducingly longheld false notes in The Master. These ( Read more... )

I don't know if I could settle on a top ten movies list, but I've been steady on these eight for a while now:

Fanny and Alexander
Chinatown
Mulholland Drive
Aguirre
400 Blows
Rashomon
Seven Samurai
Yojimbo

They just never fail.

Cabin in the Woods:

Nice. Nice.

A horror movie to etc.

Might just have been serendipity but it leaves you feeling even the clumsiness of the early scenes was deliberate.

Added pleasure of its putting Haneke in his classless, talentless place.

And the alternative Ring ending...

Bravo!

Community improved, Wire crescendoed, Season 2 of The Walking Dead is a waste of time. Seriously - if for some reason you're following that one skip every episode between the first and last. A synopsis will catch you up. Amazingly tedious - as though The Killing bit and infected it ( Read more... )