La Dolce Vita ***
Federico Fellini, 1960
Italy
@ Northwest Film Forum

I can understand now why this is viewed on the same level as 8 1/2, but it reinforces why Fellini will never quite be one of my favorites. His dreamlike scenes are magical in their own right, but somehow fail to cohere into a thematic structure that really resonates with me. This sounds idiotic as I type, but it's at least very close to what I feel watching his films.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

Breathless ***
Jean-Luc Godard, 1960
France
@ Northwest Film Forum

Godard should be required viewing for any potentially suicidal cinephiles. He's kind of a litmus test in that if you can see his films and not get excited about at least the possibilities of film if not culture in general or life on the whole, then I suppose it really may be time to pack it in. I get the same feeling from different kinds of stuff in different media (music, novels, etc.) but perhaps it's simply from an exquisite expression of, "But maybe life is really like this?" Even if by now many or most of Godard's experiments have been digested and/or adopted by some wing of the modern cinema, his insistent restlessness with form and the devilish glee with which he goes thumbs his nose at accepted values delight me constantly.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

My Blueberry Nights *
Wong Kar-wai, 2008
US
@ Regal Meridian

Critics have suggested a variety of reasons why this might reveal that Wong is nothing but a purveyor of Chinoiserie, appealing to the guilty liberal in us film buffs, but I suspect if it's less entrancing than his other work (and I do) it's that he's working with an entirely new cast in entirely new locations, and given that he tends to work either with actors or a city, Hong Kong, he knows well, or both, it's not hard to see why this might fail to register at the same level.

See also: IMDb | GreenCine Daily

Gerry *
Gus Van Sant, 2002
US
@ home on DVD

Really, what can you say about this film? It just kind of is.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Chop Shop ***
Ramin Bahrani, 2008
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

From the sadly deposed Nathan Lee in the Village Voice:

Ale's pursuit of his dream van and mounting unease over Isa's extracurriculars are never directly confronted, but rather subtly insinuated into their relationship through his vigilant commitment to alternative sources of income. Ten more minutes and Bahrani might have tipped to the maudlin, but Chop Shop resolves its poetry and plot in an abrupt, pitch-perfect non-denouement.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | Jason Anderson review in CinemaScope

Amelie *
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001
France
@ Egyptian Theater

Well, at least I don't feel bad for avoiding this movie previously. The smothering sensory overload was fun until it got old, and then it was a long ride to the end.

See also: IMDb

Forgetting Sarah Marshall **
Nicholas Stoller, 2008
US
@ Pacific Place

One wishes that these guys would hook up with a great director at some point, somebody with a real flair for the visual. Otherwise, I've got no complaints.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Terror's Advocate **
Barbet Schroeder, 2007
France
@ home on DVD

I'm a sucker for logical contrarians, so I have a hard time being revolted by Schroeder's failure to castigate Jacques Verges here. This is a great, if brief, history of modern terrorism, and illuminating in so many ways. The connections between ex-Nazis and the PLO, Baader-Meinhof, etc. was particularly interesting. Anyone who takes any ideology, fighting for the oppressed for example, to such a scandalously logical end seems valuable for study and an implicit critique of travelling unthinking down what seems at the start to be a righteous path.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Muriel **
Alain Resnais, 1963
France
@ Northwest Film Forum

From a 2000 article on the director by Greg Solman in Film Comment:

For Resnais, filmmaking is an act of orchestration... [he] lyrically plays film fragments.

Characters' lives are marked by their attempts to censor, invoke, forget or filter the past.

Resnais was first a cinematographer and a film editor - in essence, trained as a visual musical artist, insofar as editing is akin to composing music with images. Possessed by the theme of remembering, his movies work in the mysterious manner of music. They're fascinating, but often formally perplexing upon first encounter. They're considered difficult, challenging films, but yield more meaning and make more sense upon revisitation, re-encountered with the aid of memory.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

The Darjeeling Limited ***
Wes Anderson, 2007
US
@ home on DVD

I thought this would benefit from a second time around, and it certainly did. What felt a bit herky-jerky in terms of plot twists the first time around seemed smoother and more obvious, so Anderson's style seems assured and controlled rather than oddly quirky.

What was also more apparent is that Anderson's flair for visual detail extends beyond simply art direction or intricate sets (the Tenenbaum's house, Steve Zissou's boat, the train here) to the larger physical setting. He obviously delights in the desert, hills, and countryside the movie rambles through, and makes excellent and specific use of the surroundings, certainly a mark of many great on-location films, but a failing that is often overlooked in a lot of just pretty good stuff by perhaps more literary-minded critics.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | First viewing

Alien **
Ridley Scott, 1979
US
@ Egyptian Theater

Wow, did the guy next to me ever have some awful breath. Also, I sat down (in the most desirable row) two seats away from the only other person in the row. These two dudes come in and sit right next to me, leaving a couple seats open toward the aisle. Then the original "only other person" is joined by her two friends who sit to her left, leaving me squeezed between two groups even though the row was only half full. I was baffled.

I was struck by how, in some ways, horror is an essentially empty genre. That is, in most genres the protagonist wants something, strives to get it, and then succeeds, achieving a goal of some sort, perhaps many sorts. But in horror, the hero is having a fine time as it is, then normalcy is disrupted by the horrific monster, and the objective is to restore normalcy or escape to somewhere resembling it, simply to obtain what's been lost over the course of the film. There's something kind of nice about that.

See also: IMDb | Manohla Dargis review (2003)

Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness *
Laurin Federlein, 2008
UK
@ Northwest Film Forum

From Variety:

Fritzed-out look is that of a TV set on its last legs, with the Scottish hills a kaleidoscope of changing hues, and the lead character's incongruous presence emphasized by backgrounds frequently burnt out to white. Rest of tech and design package is poverty row to perfection.

See also: IMDb | Variety review

Strangers on a Train *
Alfred Hitchcock, 1951
US
@ Central Cinema

Less contrived than I remember. This time I had to wonder why we're interested in Guy Haines, though. He never really does anything nice for anyone, and he gets what he wants in the end via Bruno's insane plan, but doesn't seem to acknowledge that. Shouldn't Bruno actually be the tragic protagonist?

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

Boarding Gate *
Olivier Assayas, 2008
France
@ Northwest Film Forum

I had hoped to pair this with Zidane, but the crowds for that were insane. They'd booked two extra screenings today, and the 9:15 had sold out before the 7:15 even opened.

This seems to be nothing more nor less than exactly what it ought to be. Well, maybe it could be a little more bracing. But then, part of the point seems to be that international blackmailing and skulduggery is perhaps less glamorous than simply exhausting and confusing.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

La Promesse ***
Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 1996
Belgium
@ home on DVD

Excellent, of course. I was reminded during a scene where Igor is driving the van of Bresson's dictum: "When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it." The camera stays on Igor's distraught face the entire time as we hear Assita exit the van and close the sliding door. They maintain focus on Igor while developing the surrounding story very effectively. Jeremie Renier looks much the same on the motorbike as he does ten years on in L'enfant. Actually, I think this film probably deepens that one quite a bit in terms of the differences and similarities between Renier's characters, the plights of the children, etc.

See also: IMDb

Quantum Hoops *
Rick Greenwald, 2008
US
@ Landmark Metro

Pretty much what you'd expect, with some sub-Explosions in the Sky type stuff on the soundtrack. Nails the "winning isn't everything" angle about as well as any sports movie I've seen.

See also: IMDb | Official site