An Education

http://nickhornby.campaignserver.co.uk/?cat=5

This movie felt like too naked a depiction of an older man's desire for/seduction of/sexual fantasy concerning a sexual relationship with an underage girl, and as such felt creepy.  The fact that the seducing older man is depicted as unscrupulous and creepy as the movie goes on does not make the movie any more comfortable to watch.  Moment by moment, it was satisfying to watch, and Carey Mulligan as the seduced is amazing, but increasing creepiness led me to stop watching.  Yet works of art can be about pedophilia and still be satisfying works of art: Nabokov's Lolita and Kubrick's movie version of same; or Love Invents Us, the novel by Amy Bloom. Darn. An Education might have had a moral center, but up to the point I watched, it didn't.

Bright Star

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2009/09/24/f-bright-star-review.html

I would almost have labeled this great, because of its unusual, brave, and successful attempt to make a movie about great poetry.  Maybe, however, it's just very good, the acting especially.

The King and I

http://www.evspa.org/king_and_i.asp

You've got to love musical theater to love this, and you have to be willing to be compassionate towards past generations' ideas as what was politically correct or not; given these conditions, this movie is pleasure-packed, moment by moment.  Its songs out of context can seem thin.  In context, they are mostly rich an delightful.  The movie is all about equality v. monarchy and women's rights, and as is more politically progressive than many superficially more PC films made now.  The visuals are so splendid they could almost take away from the story telling, but they don't quite.  They just give pleasure and more pleasure.  Acting award to both principles, Brynner and Kerr.

To Catch a Thief

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview/tocatchathief.htm

The visuals have a pronounced role--there is so much driving along the edges of cliffs that one can't relax.  Grace Kelly's hostility/attraction toward Cary Grant gives a true sense of conflict and tension--this is how to treat the elder Grant (Audrey Hepburn could never be this lethal).  The fact that Grace Kelly is a major good guy is part of the chemistry--who is the bad guy, and how nice v. bitchy is he or she?  Very satisfying.  The fact that Kelly is such a goddess, visually speaking, is part of the unusual fun. Her designer outfits almost cross the line into taking attention away from other aspects of the movie, but not quite.

THX 1138

http://www.benjaminharlow.com/alloftheabove/archives/827

Somewhat tedious, somewhat slow, slightly prurient, a somewhat prone to falling between the stools of high art and pop (that chase scene), but at the same time visually and technically adventurous to a thrilling degree, and committed enough to ideas to give the movie much substance.

Enchanted

http://unebellefille.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/2007_enchanted_035.jpg

A weird movie to categorize and describe--is it cute, is it campy, is it corny?  Yes to all three, and yet there's an intelligence at work, Amy Adams is riveting, and some of the scenes are delightfully so over the top and funny, especially when there's music and dance involved, that I felt I was in the presence of something unusual and valuable. The references to other Disney pop art movies added the spice of post-modernism in a way that could have been tedious but instead was very fun and amounted to a tour de force of an unusual kind.

12 Monkeys

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare11/12monkeys.htm

Acting award to Brad Pitt; Bruce Willis may be a little too Johnny-one-note.  This is sustained mind-bender-as-thriller-mystery, and is like AI that way.  It's in the genre of loving gloss on another movie (La Jetee).  Its tautness is excellent.  Its ending is intentionally ambiguous and, I can't help but think, a cop out.

Mean Streets

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare5/meanstreets.htm

Scorsese does like his acting intense.  The relative ordinariness of the conflict--things are plenty intense, gritty, and dark, but it doesn't feel as if we're on the edge of some kind of emotional apocalypse, as it does in Raging Bull and Taxi Driver--makes me like this movie more than the latter two, even if that sense of emotional apocalypse is what makes them distinctive.

A Night at the Opera

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews19/marx_brothers_boxset.htm

A bit less anarchic, a bit more conventional, in that there's a conventional good guy, and the good guy-bad guy convention is taken more seriously than it is in Duck Soup.  As such it's not as dizzyingly surprising as the latter.  It's still a pretty subversive comedy.

Everyone Says I Love You

http://thisrecording.com/today/tag/woody-allen-week?currentPage=5

Playful and relaxed, and with the fun anything-goes kind of wildness (although in a gentle relaxed way) that the Marx Borthers have and that some of Allen's other movies have.  Its music-and-dance numbers, in their consciously retro feel, and in their outlandish abandonment, call to mind those of Enchanted, but the ones here  have lower production values--contributing to the sense of Allen throwing together a movie in a home-made, as opposed to professional way.

Coraline

The genre of portals between different realities stories and of magical quest adventures will never get old as long as they're done well, as here--these genres must mirror in some important way the way our minds work, especially in childhood.

Sita Sings the Blues

http://www.ninapaley.com/Sitayana/SitaStills3.html

Orlando

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8229460@N04/800870654/

A Fish Named Wanda

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/dvdreviews26/a_fish_called_wanda.htm

Nights of Cabiria

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews8/nightsofcabiria.htm

Billy Budd

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews28/billy_budd.htm

A Streetcar Named Desire

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdreviews21/streetcar_named_desire_dvd_review.htm

Frost/Nixon

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews45/frost_nixon_blu-ray.htm

La Dolce Vita

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare5/dolcevita.htm

Three Kings

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Three_Kings_-_film.png

Sliding Doors

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/gwyneth-paltrow/images/310388/title/sliding-doors-photo

Henry V

http://blogs.dixcdn.com/leftofcybercenter/?m=200808&paged=2

The King of Comedy

http://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/the-king-of-comedy-no-22/

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

http://billsmovieemporium.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/midsummer.jpg

Wives and Daughters

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=4572944656503512466

She's Gotta Have It

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_yzF-kkmf-GM/Sdoku72I41I/AAAAAAAACqQ/bwvQ_QjcEh8/s400/9_sc0051a0bc.jpg

High Fidelity

http://www.nordinho.net/vbull/attachments/media-quizzes/4824d1125648938-high-fidelity-character-you-high.jpg

The Princess and the Frog

All Quiet on the Western Front

http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com

This was originally entered on July 7, 2009, but in looking over the posts in order to label them, I discovered there was a technical problem that I couldn't fix except by re-posting.


A classic, plus a way of learning something about a book I've felt I should have read. 

As a depiction of war that tries to capture its cruel absurdity and the suffering it causes to those who take part, this is a meritorious movie indeed. It was somewhat lacking in narrative drive.  It didn't have one main character to care about--not its fault, but something that also vitiates a sense of narrative drive. Compared to more modern, more explicit and graphic depictions of violence and war, it seems pretty mild; it might even be possible to wonder just where the movie is coming from, since it avoids editorializing and in its way is understated. Even when the rats are fighting the soldiers for their food, the "ick" factor isn't that strong. The plot summary in Wikipedia highlights the absurdity more strongly than the movie seems to. Also things are just a bit stagey.  Honor to the movie, however, for its scrupulous treatment of its topic.

Adaptation

http://thisrecording.com/today/2010/1/29/in-which-manic-pixie-meryl-streep-can-do-whatever-she-feels.html

Duck Soup

http://www.moviemail-online.co.uk/film/dvd/Duck-Soup/

Blues Brothers

https://www.msu.edu/user/constanz/movies.html

Dog Day in the Afternoon

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/protectedimage.php?image=MikeSutton/dog5.jpg