Ploy *
Pen-ek Ratanaruang, 2008
Thailand
@ Pacific Place

Slow and somewhat bewildering but lovely all the same.

See also: IMDb

Captain Ahab **
Philippe Ramos, 2008
France
@ Uptown Cinema

Kind of like a fairy tale in the best sense. Very light, nonchalant storytelling that uses setting and mise en scene to communicate some of the story. Wouldn't it be amazing if, instead of simply structuring a (possible) series of films like a three-act unit, sequels or prequels were used to get more directly to deeper themes or to focus better on intangible, ineffable qualities of what we see on the screen. Perhaps that's what the Nolan brothers thought they were trying to do with The Dark Knight, but there are certainly other, better ways this could happen.

See also: IMDb

Eat for This Is My Body **
Michelange Quaye, 2008
Haiti/France
@ Northwest Film Forum

Part Haitian ethnography, part historically symbolic series of set pieces featuring a white French matriarch, her daughter, and a group of Haitian boys. It's profoundly visual: the opening shot is from a helicopter approaching the island over a city, hitting the beach, then neighborhoods, slums, and increasingly scattered huts, and eventually foothills and the barren, stripped mountainsides. Also, there is an amazing food-fight scene featuring a large cake that gets totally demolished; it seems less portentous than most other scenes, but that could be misleading.

See also: IMDb

Casting a Glance *
James Benning, 2007
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

Fascinating in the limited scope of the work. This is foregrounded by the limited perspective of the camera, only revealing a partial view of the landscape surrounding the Spiral Jetty, and never placing it in context for the uninitiated viewer, which would pretty much be me.

See also: IMDb

Loos Ornamental ***
Heinz Emigholz, 2008
Germany
@ Northwest Film Forum

Incredible.

First come a few words in German, and then there are no words at all, only images of Adolf Loos's architecture, arranged in a chronological slide show of long-held video stills inside and outside the buildings, mainly in Vienna. Loos famously eschewed ornament, reducing form to function by exposing beams, stacking grids, and letting materials express their own conditions. This makes for some genteel moments, but there's also the return of the repressed, in perfectly flat and geometric surfaces that nonetheless roar like baroque sculpture because they are made of wildly mottled red or green marble. Drunk on the dream of modernism, you reach the end of the film, where there's only a cube gravestone with the architect's name on it. It's right in the city, and a train passes close behind it.

See also: IMDb | Jen Graves in The Stranger

Continental, or A Film without Guns **
Stephane Lafleur, 2008
Canada
@ Pacific Place

A more wistful, slightly less fanciful, French-Canadian version of Me and You and Everyone We Know.

See also: IMDb

Ballast ***
Lance Hammer, 2008
US
@ Pacific Place

Excellent neo-neo-realist, American regional filmmaking. Understated style serves the powerful material well. Terrific use of locations: store, two houses on one property, etc.

See also: IMDb

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly ***
Sergio Leone, 1967
Italy
@ SIFF Cinema

Amazing in the theater, but not as astonishing as Once Upon a Time in the West. Kind of like the difference between Johnnie To's Election and Exiled, just a difference in the grandiosity, though I suspect this was also less expensive.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

Marie Antoinette *
Sofia Coppola, 2006
US/France
@ home on DVD

I was surprised a bit by my repulsion toward this film. At no specific point is it aesthetically offensive, or less than charming, but the blinkered view of life at Versailles, and the justification that the film didn't need to encompass anything outside the palace since the subject's life didn't either, seem unwholesome. The only direct critique of her incurious ignorance comes in the form of Steve Coogan, brilliant as usual, her advisor and confidant who makes a futile attempt at keeping her abreast of international affairs.

Sofia Coppola and her supporters certainly have a point about the dearth of female filmmakers and film subjects, but why must she evoke sympathy for such vapid, boring young women? In one of the reviews I read it was suggested that Wes Anderson escapes similar criticism because he's male, and thus his bored and privileged men are not given a second thought, but certainly with The Darjeeling Limited if not prior he's fairly self-critical, assuming he's not totally dissimilar to his characters.

Perhaps it's just that I have a distaste for lavish films about the hassles of aristocracy (see Visconti's The Leopard, for instance), but now (or two years ago) more than ever seems an odd time to attempt to restore the reputation of a cruelly incompetent and neglectful ruler, damning her own country while money is being spent on a war abroad. I mean, isn't the queen pretty much just "clearing brush" at her second home for most of the second half of the movie? I can imagine someone shipping a framed edition of the Rousseau passage she quotes down to Crawford, Texas as a gift to our current out-of-touch leader.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic | Rob Nelson review

Flight of the Red Balloon ***
Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2008
France
@ Crest Cinema

I enjoyed the reading of the painting at the end, both as a clue to the kid's interior life but also to our reading of the film. Some lady asked me as I left whether it had been a good movie, to which I replied yes, but it was clear that she wanted to know whether it was a good "movie" with a familiar narrative arc, clear resolution, etc. To which I had to say no, though I also tried to explain what it was that I thought made it good outside of that framework. The pacing, the choice of what to show or not, the misunderstandings between people who know each other both too well and not quite enough. The performances not in the service of some overdetermined goals or conflicts.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

The Magnificent Seven *
John Sturges, 1960
US
@ SIFF Cinema

I feel like this movie gets talked about a lot, but I couldn't tell why. It's fun sometimes, but the acting is pretty glib and the directing nothing spectacular.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

Shotgun Stories **
Jeff Nichols, 2008
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

Overall pretty excellent. At times almost too earnestly regionalist. I guess I might agree that the resolution isn't brutal or fascinating enough to really bite, even though it's still pretty grim. It may be somewhere between a simple meditation on the inevitability and randomness of death and a really cutting rural tragedy. Still excellently memorable and hopefully indicative of great(er) things to come from Jeff Nichols.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Son of Rambow **
Garth Jennings, 2008
UK
@ Regal

Admittedly the plot isn't much more than cute, but this must certainly be one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. The photography is absolutely stunning throughout. More impressive that it's not really much of a landscape film, and the lenswork focuses mostly on the functional and the everyday rather than textbook examples of the cinematically picturesque.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Jon Hurwitz/Hayden Schlossberg, 2008
US
@ Pacific Place

If comedy is largely the act of surprising the audience, with clever wordplay or unexpected situations or whatever, this feels like an utter failure. It's also an issue that the template for their adventures is so much less mundane. Finding a cheetah near the Jersey turnpike is hilarious, but stumbling upon a bottomless party at a mansion in Miami much less so. When the outline of the movie is already so outlandish, the gags fail to stick out. Particularly when they almost entirely mirror those in the first movie. Maybe this would be funny if you'd heard someone make a poor attempt at outlining the first movie at a party, giving you just enough incentive to see it but not enough prior knowledge to be bored.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

The Promotion
Steve Conrad, 2008
US
Preview @ SIFF Cinema

How does this movie go so consistently wrong, or if not quite that, how does it manage to be so boring? How is Fred Armisen's tiny role as the store manager better than both lead roles by Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly? Why is Jenna Fischer cast in a role that seems almost entirely unnecessary? Has Jason Bateman ever made a less interesting cameo? This feels entirely like some sort of by-the-numbers comedy written straight from a screenwriting manual, then directed by a precocious but very polite high-school student. There seems to be a lot of potential here, but except for a few bits of physical comedy and the self-help-tape gag, it's mostly squandered.

See also: IMDb

Night of the Hunter *
Charles Laughton, 1955
US
@ SIFF Cinema

I didn't quite get what the fuss is about here. It seemed more like a cult item than any sort of confirmed classic: ie it's more memorable for it's oddness than any simple measure of excellence.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

8 1/2 ***
Federico Fellini, 1963
Italy
@ Northwest Film Forum

I found this possibly less amazing than last time but that may be appropriate as it's Fellini, who I appreciate but who also never totally lines up with my idea of what cinema ought to be. Probably if I waited another ten or fifteen years to see it again the film would regain some of its power.

See also: IMDb | TCMDb

Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains **
Jonathan Demme, 2007
US
@ home on DVD

This works fairly well both as a primer on Jimmy Carter the public figure, though it's not exactly thorough in that regard, and very well on Jimmy Carter the citizen. Both are of course up for interpretation and this is just one view. It almost feels like a trifle.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Iron Man *
Jon Favreau, 2008
US
@ Cinerama

Doesn't it seem a little strange that Tony Stark assumes keeping his weapons solely in the hands of the US military will in any way limit civilian casualties? He also never seems concerned about tactical advantages, only that "American lives" might be taken. This may be an unusually stylish superhero movie, but it's also alienating and spiritually empty in a way that, say, the Spiderman or Batman stories never approach.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Blade Runner **
Ridley Scott, 1982
US
@ Egyptian Theater

Visually and aurally stunning. Very glad I got to see this in the theater. I had to wonder from time to time if all the smoke and fog was a way to hide flaws in the set, kind of like in 3D video games when the processor can't draw the world fast enough. In general, though, the atmosphere and architecture are so fantastic that it feels as if the detais of this particular story are somehow a letdown. Not that there's a problem with the basic Replicant<->monster<->human continuum/conflict, but that some bits, like Sebastian's toy pets, and much of the chase near the end seem cartoonish rather than astonishing.

See also: IMDb