The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009)

7/10
Decided to see the Swedish adaptation before the U.S. one. If I could describe it in one word, it would be "functional". It does a decent job all around. While I agree with a lot of the necessary storyline cuts and alterations, I do feel like something got lost along the way. I also felt there was zero chemistry between the two leads, and the movie actually starts to sag when they meet instead of crackling as in the book. The direction is average, and I'm looking forward to seeing the style and visual flair Fincher will bring to his adaptation.

My Week with Marilyn (Simon Curtis, 2011)

7/10
This is a pretty good movie boasting another great performance from Michelle Williams - that her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe never descends into cartoonishness (despite Monroe's cartoonish personality) and constantly treads a very nuanced line between sexy and childish, cleverness and borderline outright stupidity, is a testament to both Williams' abilities and the screenplay. I suppose if I had one major complaint, it's that there just isn't a lot here - it's a pretty fluff movie, and when you start to wonder how such a thin story got made into a major motion picture, it's not hard to imagine someone pitching this as pure Oscar-bait for the Monroe role alone. Luckily they were able to create a sufficiently entertaining movie around it, however.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011)

7/10
I feel like this is a movie I might enjoy more on a second viewing - not only to help clarify the plot which I found a bit muddy, but because it just seems like the type that might grow on me. Especially since I found the first 45 minutes or so a real tough slog...characters are reserved to the point of being frustrating (the repeated questions that go unanswered by characters staring pensively into the distance is more annoying than intriguing at a certain point) and the movie is so dry from dialogue to cinematography that it feels like the celluloid it's printed on might crumble any second. The story picks up in the second half and becomes quite engrossing, the acting is top notch (especially Gary Oldman and Colin Firth, the latter criminally underused), and the period detail is remarkable. The ending is a bit of a wash though - with much screen time devoted to the mechanics of the mystery itself, there isn't enough time to develop any of the suspects enough to manifest real viewer interest in the "whodunnit" aspect. Not a bad movie, but pretty flawed too.

Pina (Wim Wenders, 2011)

8/10
A very different kind of documentary by Wim Wenders, featuring some of the best, most tasteful use of 3D I've ever seen. The film is comprised of performances from Pina Bausch's dance troupe of her pieces, as well as the recollections of Pina by the troupe members. What slowly and subtlety emerges is a film about dedication and love. The film is not noisily ecstatic and all the better for it, and immensely enjoyable in the end.

War Horse (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

4/10
I won a couple of passes to an advance screening of Spielberg's latest, and I'm happy to not have paid for it. The story follows that of a horse born on the precipice of World War I - from being raised by a teenage farmhand named Albie, through his entry into the war via the British army, and subsequent owners, protectors and guardians that include two young German defectors, a French girl and her grandfather, a sympathetic horseman in the German army, and others. The film is of epic scope and epic length, but its simple story can't support of the weight of this blockbuster that was built around it. It failed to strike any emotional note whatsoever with me, and was just a big bore. The battle scenes felt slapdash and way too sanitized and the emotions were one-note and hammered home with an ending you could predict upon seeing the commercials. Spielberg also fails to imbue the horse itself with any true sense of personality or character, although characters in the movie all fall in love with it minutes after crossing its path, so I guess we were supposed to as well. Some nice-looking photography aside, there was little to enjoy here.

The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011)

9/10
A silent film that at once overtly apes and pays loving homage to virtually every silent film trick in the book, my only criticism of The Artist is that it's almost too slick, too mechnical, too well-crafted. And there are points in the film where you really wonder if the two leads are going to be able to make the emotional connection necessary for the viewer to truly enjoy the film. Well in the end it wound up working on me...and even if it didn't, it would take a heart of stone to not be able to appreciate how exceedingly clever and joyous the movie really is. I personally can't wait to see it again.
Special mention has to be made for Jean Dujardin who is absolutely sensational in the lead role, and has a face that looks like it was cobbled together from an entire film history's worth of silent film star facial expressions. His toothy smile should get a best supporting actor nomination on its own.

The Hit (Stephen Frears, 1984)

7.5/10
Nice U.K. road movie from 1984 directed by Stephen Frears. Terence Stamp is great as the man being led from his hideout in Spain to France to be whacked. Tim Roth (in his first feature role) plays the green, inexperienced helper to a tee and John Hurt is the man in charge with ice water in his veins. They're completed by Laura del Sol, a victim of circumstance picked up along the way. The characters may seem rote but they're all well-acted, Stamp in particular steals the show as the zen-like dead man walking. The movie is darkly funny and features some beautiful photography, reminiscent of Paris, Texas in its dry landscapes (and also the guitar-centric score). I would have liked the film more were it not for the ending, which I thought was a bit botched.

The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011)

7.5/10
The Descendants has two big strengths - first is the acting. George Clooney is reliably great and Shailene Woodley is surprisingly fantastic. The second is the way it deals with its central theme of death and how the reverberations of the life of the deceased continue to affect their loved ones. Most of this material is dealt with in a thoughtful and mature way, and does ask some questions we don't normally think about.
But like director Alexander Payne's last movie Sideways, it also grates at times. One supporting character is particularly corny and insufferable and sometimes things just fit a bit too cutely. For me, both movies had things I liked and things I didn't but were at the end of the day enjoyable, if not revelatory.

The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar, 2011)

7.5/10
This is the first Pedro Almodovar movie I've ever seen. The man certainly is a visual master - every shot is sumptuous, beautifully framed and magnificently photographed. He also draws strong performances from just about everyone in the movie. The story, adapted by Almodovar from a novel called Tarantula, is confounding. It's not that it's hard to follow, but it's told in such a bizarre rhythm that you can almost feel the movie jerking along instead of running smoothly. Maybe that was the goal but personally I found it frustrating, and it also left me feeling fairly distant from anything that was happening in the movie. But I have to give him credit for a completely original, artistic approach to what could have been Human Centipede-type shlock. At the end I found myself liking it more than I thought I would in the early goings, but I had to force myself to stick with it at times, that's for sure.

That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Bunuel, 1977)

8.5/10
Bunuel's final film is pretty straightforward in plot, but there's so many little things that stick in the mind afterward - what's the significance of the characters on the train having all already met? What's with the brown sack Mathieu carries around? Why the backdrop of terrorism, aside from providing a great way to both begin and end the film? Who is in the wrong between Mathieu and Conchita, and how wrong are they, really? Ironically, what should be the biggest puzzler of them all (Conchita is played by two different women, and they interchange sometimes even within the same scene) turns out to have a pretty banal explanation - the original actress quit, and Bunuel couldn't settle on just one woman to embody the character. Both work brilliantly and the changes are never distracting. Anyway I thought it was a really interesting look at the sexual politics between men and women. Alternatingly funny, sad, and ridiculous.
I really have to dig into early Bunuel movies. It occured to me that aside from Un Chien Andalou, I haven't seen anything he's done pre-1960.

World on a Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbender, 1973)

8/10
Rainer Werner Fassbender directed this two-part sci-fi TV movie. It totals more than 3 1/2 hours in length but it really doesn't feel that long at all. Made in 1973, it prefigures some of what would come later in The Matrix and Avatar, but its central conceit (a scientist in charge of a "supercomputer"that replicates society 20 years in the future begins to question his own reality and sanity in turn) could have come from any number of Twilight Zone episodes preceding it. Its most attractive feature is the outlandish set designs, in the "futuristic as seen through the 70's" mode of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris. It drags a bit in the second half but overall it's pretty entertaining if not exactly enlightening.

Radio On (Christopher Petit, 1979)

7/10
A very strange British road movie from 1980, it features a disc jockey taking a road trip from London to Bristol upon hearing the news of his brother's death. It's shot in stark black and white with very minimal dialogue and features a great soundtrack, certainly of its time (Kraftwerk, Devo, David Bowie). It's puzzling to say the least, and I think I'd have to revisit it to find out just how much I liked it. Very interesting though.

Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

8.5/10
The second film in the Drive lineage was Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, an effortlessly cool French noir film that really hit all the right notes for me. It really had it all - smart direction, icy cold performances (especially from Alain Delon), great visual style, good music, and a brilliantly restrained tone. Definitely could grow on me and make me like it even more.

The Driver (Walter Hill, 1978)

7/10
I watched two films in the lineage of 2011's Drive, this being the first. It features an unnamed getaway driver (Ryan O'Neal, adequate) on the run from an obsessed detective (Bruce Dern, awful) and getting tangled up with "The Player" (Isabelle Adjani, mysterious as ever). It's not bad for a 70's curio but I didn't get obsessed with it like I did with Two-Lane Blacktop or Vanishing Point, both of the same ilk. Quentin Tarantino calls it one of the coolest movies ever made but to me it was that exact "coolness" of the aforementioned two movies that was either lacking, or felt too forced in this case.

Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006)

6/10
I found myself liking this movie less as it wore on, as it fell into a lot of clichés and worn tropes. It's a well told story and does shed some interesting light on the situation in Africa, but everything develops pretty much as expected. I didn't really care much for the love story that felt shoehorned in and pretty irrelevant compared to the legitimate conflict it's juxtaposed with. Props to Leo though...he's never acted in a movie that I've truly loved but I don't think it's possible to find a more consistent Hollywood actor out there at the moment. No matter what the movie is, he finds a way to bring it.

Immortals (Tarsem Singh, 2011)

7.5/10
I wanted to see this movie just because of how ridiculous it looked (in a good way) and it pretty much lived up to its billing. Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) certainly has visual flair to burn and Immortals is nothing if not always sumptuous to look at. Everything plays out as expected - the story is nothing new and it's got holes, but it gets the characters from point A to B; the acting is generally pretty good save Henry Cavill, who has the charisma of a mop; and the special effects are of course the highlight. My one complaint was that the movie was actually slower than I expected it to be, especially in the early stages, and the battle sequences are surprisingly brief. Nobody's coming to this movie for a history lesson, so let's get to the killing already!

J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood, 2011)

4.5/10
This is a holy mess of a movie, which would be slightly more forgiveable if it were shorter, but it crams so much into a ridiculous 2h30m (or thereabouts) running time that it becomes a tedious chore about halfway in. There are some good parts (the acting is the highlight) and the movie is interesting just by virtue of Hoover himself and the time he lived in...but this is not a good film. The pace is just completely off - the movie struggles in a big way to find any kind of rhythm or build or climax and it just feels like bits of Hoover's life loosely strung together. And I know a lot of people have mentioned it but the make-up is definitely a problem - Naomi Watts is best, Armie Hammer is worst, and DiCaprio is somewhere in the middle, and too often you're reminded of the fact that you're watching actors in plastic and make-up instead of being able to get lost in the story. Just a weird, forgettable misstep.

Berlin Alexanderplatz (Phil Jutzi, 1931)

5/10
Often overlooked in the wake of Fassbender's version, Alfred Doblin's novel was actually first made into a movie 50 years prior, with Doblin himself co-writing the screenplay. Usefully included in the Criterion release of the Fassbender edition, I decided to see how the same story was told in 80 minutes, versus Fassbender's 898 minutes. As you'd expect...it's a tiny bit skimpier on some details, heh. It really distills Doblin's own story down into a pretty generic tale of redemption and even slight propaganda. In fact, propaganda aside, I can't really see what the point of making the novel into a movie was at this point. It's not often a more recent adaptation crushes the older into dust but I think Fassbender's clearly did that.
As a side note, I feel like I've devoted so much time to a story that I haven't particularly cared for that I might as well say to hell with it and read the original novel too.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin, 2011)

5/10
Sean Durkin both wrote and directed this movie, his debut feature. It's a superb showcase for his directorial skills - not only is the film photographed beautifully (in the kind of hazy, muted style that recalls old Polaroids), Durkin evinces a tremendous performance out of newcomer Elizabeth Olsen and juggles the main storyline and the flashback sequences quite well. It's his skills as a writer that do his film irreparable harm. None of what I mentioned just before can disguise the fact that this is an incredibly vacuous story, littered with clichés from the rapist cult leader to the rote, success-obsessed family Olsen has to fall back on and down to the woman insane herself. There's nary a sympathetic character in sight, and I'm still not quite sure why or if we're even supposed to feel anything for Olsen's character at all. All the beautiful shots and nifty tricks come across as window-dressing for a clearly subpar story. Hopefully on Durkin's next project he either comes up with something more interesting to say, or hires someone who can, because he clearly has talent as director.

Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbender, 1980)

6/10
What can you do when you're in the middle of a 15 1/2 hour long film/TV series/serial/whatever and you're just not that into it? Just keep on pushing through, I guess. There were moments of brilliance in Rainer Werner Fassbender's lengthy adaptation of Alfred Doblin's novel but too few and far in between for me. The story centres around the massive Franz Biberkopf, newly released from prison on account of killing his lover/prosititute, now attempting to go straight in 1920's Berlin. There were things I really liked: the poetic tone of the entire series; the brilliant character Reinhold, the closest thing in the story to an antagonist; the depiction of 1920's Berlin and all the little details like the "KINO" sign constantly strobing into Franz's apartment; his landlady Mrs. Bast; the incredible, dreamlike episode 12 with Reinhold and Franz's new love Mieze; and the surreal epilogue which blew the doors off everything preceding it, reminiscent of what David Lynch did on Twin Peaks some 10 years later. Overall though I was bored a lot of the time - it was hard to see the point of a lot of what was happening on screen, and it seems like an obvious thing to say about a work lasting as long as this one, but it really could have benefitted from being a lot shorter. It's certainly an experience and I'm happy, in the end, that I undertook it, but it's not something I'll be revisiting any time soon.

Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)

8/10
The first time I've been equally impressed by Woody Allen as a director than as a writer, Manhattan has some really beautiful photography...not what I was expecting, to be honest. Black and white really served the movie well. I didn't find it to have the same depth as Annie Hall but it was almost as charming, and I found it more likeable than Hannah & Her Sisters (the only two similar Woody movies I've seen to compare it to).

The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (Stan Brakhage, 1971)

8/10
I've been watching a lot of Stan Brakhage shorts lately. I won't rate each one individually but since the above is half an hour long and a pretty major entry in his filmography, it'll be my jumping off point. It's a brutal, uncompromising depiction of actual human autopsies, worlds removed from the stuff you'd see on an episode of CSI. It builts to a frenetic finish that (somehow) leaves you feeling quite tense. After it was over all I could think of was "wow...what an appropriate title".
Other favorites viewed so far are Window Water Baby Moving, a beautiful and unflinching film about his wife giving birth, and Kindering, a dream-like short with children's singing looped in reverse. Cat's Cradle, Mothlight, Eye Myth, The Wold-Shadow, The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Stars Are Beautiful, I...Dreaming, The Dante Quartet, Night Music, Rage Net, Glaze of Cathexis, Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse and Untitled (For Marilyn) have all been enjoyable on one level or another.

Almayer's Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011)

8.5/10
Not a big hit judging from the people streaming towards the exits throughout the movie, but I liked it a lot. It's a hard movie to peg - it starts out almost like a murder/mystery thriller, then becomes something like a family drama, all taking place in or around Malaysia (although filming took place in Cambodia and none of the actors speak Malaysian despite claiming to be Malaysian - yeah it's weird). The film is very slow, is bizarrely paced, and wholly unpretentious - but I was hooked from beginning to end.

Vinyl: Tales from the Vienna Underground (Andrew Standen-Raz, 2010)

4/10
Maybe I was disappointed with what this wasn't rather than what it was. There's some stuff in the Viennese arts that interests me from Hermann Nitsch up through Christian Fennesz, but almost none of it was touched on in this documentary, which instead focused on the current Viennese techno "movement", if it can be called such. Unfortunately the movie has a tremendously narrow scope - no attempt is given to explain why this movement is more important than any similar scenes around the world, where it came from, and what it means. A disappointing amount of face time has been given to musicians who can only spew out horrific clichés like "vinyl is like opening a book, CDs are cold and plastic" and "the question all artists have to ask themselves is what's more important - making money or having your music heard". Clichés that, in any event, aren't even Viennese-centric, so who cares? Probably a documentary worth watching on Youtube if you're already a fan of the artists; definitely not one for an outsider to see in a theatre.

Monsieur Lazhar (Philippe Falardeau, 2011)

7.5/10
Canada's entry for this year's Best Foreign Film feels, for all intents and purposes, like an entry for Best Foreign Film. It's cliché, yes, but it does a lot of things right - it's honest, funny, sad, heart-warming, and thought-provoking. It's not anything close to a revelation but it's very enjoyable for the 2 hours it's on the screen.

Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley, 2011)

5.5/10
Sarah Polley's sophomore directing effort shoots for mainstream with Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen as a married couple, with the focus on Williams' budding interest in a next-door neighbor, who offers her a release from her "childish" domestic life. It's not a new story, and it pales in a big way compared to a movie like Blue Valentine. The script (written by Polley) needs work, as some of the dialogue is brutally heavy-handed. But my biggest complaint was with Williams' character - she's not so much quirky as she is a full-blown sociopath, and it's hard to identify with her in any way. The movie is also very geared towards a female audience; as a male I felt pretty alienated at times.

Kotoko (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2011)

6/10
Shinya Tsukamoto's newest, about a mother constantly on the brink of insanity - seeing double (literally seeing 2 people instead of 1), cutting herself (not to die but in "admiration of the body's will to live"), abusing her lover who it turns out may not actually exist, and having nightmares/fantasizing about hurting her young son. I still don't know what any of this built to, aside from maybe an insight into the mind of a woman who could kill her own offspring...it's pretty violent and at times oddly funny, but not entirely insightful.

Land of Oblivion (Michale Boganim, 2011)

6.5/10
Land of Oblivion follows two stories taking place on April 26th, 1986 - a woman and man getting married, and an engineer who works at the Chernobyl power plant. Of course, that's the date the reactor melts down. After the disaster, the movie picks up 10 years later - the wife, now a widow, is a tour guide in Pripyat, and the engineer's son is sneaking into the exclusion zone to try and locate his father. To be honest, the stories aren't interesting, but the filming in and around Pripyat is pretty great, for someone as interested in the Chernobyl disaster as I am.

House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)

8/10
An ultra-slick French film about the last days of a brothel in Paris, it's almost obscenely over the top in style but I guess that's fitting, considering the time. The ensemble is great, as you really get a sense of each individual woman's personality. There's a fantastic scene with (anachronistically enough) the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin" that really won the movie over for me.

Stopped on Track (Andreas Dresen, 2011)

8/10
Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes this year, Stopped on Track is a movie about a man named Frank with terminal brain cancer and his and his family's reactions and tribulations. Shot on digital (and interspersed with footage shot by Frank on his iPhone) it has a very honest, intimate feel. Milan Peschel is great as Frank, and the movie spares no ugly, brutal aspect of Frank's inevitable mental decline and demise. It's very sad, of course, and the movie does get a little cloying, but mostly it's an emotional, beautiful, tragic portrayal of something no family should ever have to go through.

Snowtown (Justin Kurzel, 2011)

5/10
An Australian movie based on the true story of the country's worst serial killer, Snowtown does a lot of little things right but gets the big picture all wrong. For starters, the acting is generally top shelf, the bleak cinematography (reminiscent of Winter's Bone meeting Gummo) nails the mood perfectly, and the sound design (lots of 90's arcade video sounds) is well done. On the other hand, the pacing falters in a big way - there are long stretches where nothing of consequence happens, or too much attention is given to needless exposition. There are moments of harsh brutality but an over-reliance on scenes involving endangered animals (a pet dog is shot, a killed deer is hacked up, a snake feasts on a mouse) smacks of a director trying to shock instead of telling a story. Again like Gummo, everybody in the story operates in kind of a half-retarded haze, so it's kind of hard for the audience to latch on to anyone, much less sympathize with who we're supposed to. At the end of the day, it's just not very enjoyable or interesting. Not bad for a first feature (I believe) but there's room for improvement.

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (Takashi Miike, 2011)

6/10
I don't generally like samurai movies, but I like Takashi Miike movies, so I gave this one a shot. It's definitely way, way more on the samurai side than the Miike side. It's a remake of a movie I've never seen, and it's in 3D (in what might be the most subtle usage of 3D ever, almost to the point of being useless), and it's definitely the most mature movie Miike has ever made. It's remarkably slow, and its eventual climax doesn't even come close to comparing to, say, 13 Assassins or Audition. It's a movie I admired more than I liked though, as it never really sucked me in. Enjoyable enough though.

Play (Ruben Ostlund, 2011)

7/10
Swedish film about a group of 5 young African-American boys who con a group of 3 other boys (2 white, 1 Asian) out of one of their cell phones. Despite an almost total lack of violence or any other form of physical intimidation, the film shows in cinema-verité style how the 3 victims become almost like slaves to their aggressors. They aren't physically being restrained, and all the action takes place in open, public spaces, generally under the indifferent eye of adults. The film acutely portrays the social hierarchies in the groups - either as two units of 5 and 3, or together as a whole, while never dropping the tension between them. It's a very deft take on the way kids interact with each other, whether in situations of power or submissiveness. But the ending is kind of silly and a simultaneous plot thread about a cradle abandoned on a train is distracting more than anything else.

Trash (Benoit Pilon, 2011)

4.5/10
A Quebec film about a man with a troubled past getting entangled with an 18 year old, drug-addicted prostitute...it really doesn't have anything going for it except some solid acting. The plot is completely unadventurous and never rises above "made for TV movie" quality, the direction is boring, and there's no soundtrack to speak of. A giant meh.

3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (Christopher Sun Lap Key, 2011)

6.5/10
Billed as the first 3D porn movie shown in international theatres, 3D Sex and Zen is surprising in two regards - how genuinely witty it can be, and how little porn it actually contains. There's plenty of sex, but only the softcore variety, and there's a ton of violence. The first half or so is pretty damn good - it's weird, very funny, and constantly entertaining. Unfortunately the last 40 minutes are a downer - the movie starts taking itself too seriously and things get tedious, especially as the ending drags out. Amazingly, given all the crazy stuff that happens in this movie, it's a monstrous success in Hong Kong where it beat out Avatar's first day opening take.

Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh, 2011)

7/10
I'm still trying to figure out if this movie (Julia Leigh's directing debut, not to be confused with Catherine Breillat's The Sleeping Beauty from last year, nor the fairy tale) is deeper than I can get my head around, or if it's just banality obfuscating itself as something more. Emily Browning gives a strong, brave performance in the lead role as a student drawn into a strange world of sleepy, sexless prostitution. There are intriguing ideas here but it's pretty hard to penetrate (no pun intended).

Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2011)

4/10
Alexander Sokurov's "non-adaptation" of the Faust legend is told as something of an adult's fairy take, I really don't know what to make of this one, except that I didn't enjoy it. Too ludicrous, too over the top, too uninteresting to ever get me into it, the best part was the actor playing the Devil as some kind of deformed black humorist. Most of the movie is focused on the Devil and Faust's friendship, and helping Faust get the woman he desires, but it's way too ridiculous to register anything. It won the Golden Lion at Venice which I understood more when I found out Darren Aronofsky was head of the jury...this very much reminded me of an Aronofsky film, and all that entails.

Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)

10/10
Michael Shannon delivers what has to be the best performance of the year (and don't sell Jessica Chastain short either) in an absolutely perfect meditation on mental illness that gripped me from the start and never let me go until its incredible ending, which is still stuck in my mind. Very beautiful and very tragic, I couldn't find a single thing wrong with it.

White, White World (Oleg Novkovic, 2010)

7/10
Serbia's pretty crazy it seems, or at least bleak as hell, judging from this movie (and the memory of A Serbian Film in the periphery). This is a drama centering around a group of people who are related in some way (friends, lovers and family but also pimps, whores, murderers, addicts and dealers, etc). It's hard for the viewer to find a foothold when every character is brutal and unsympathetic, but the story is interesting and well-told (although it requires some suspension of disbelief for its central twist) and it plays out like a Greek tragedy. Of note is that it's also a musical, with characters spontaneously breaking into song throughout. If it sounds cheesy, it really isn't, but I'm not sure it works or adds anything either. I would have felt the same way about the movie without em, so there you have it.

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (Marie Losier, 2011)

8/10
A documentary on Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV's Genesis P-orridge and her partner, Lady Jaye. Together they set about transforming themselves into a pandrogynous entity, getting surgeries to look like each other (Genesis, born a man, has breast implants, and so does Lady Jaye, a woman, etc), and essnetially to become the other. Marie Losier's documentary does a good job juggling the various facets of Genesis/Jaye's life - early 80's industrial music, performance art, gender confusion, current life, etc. It might be a bit too "arty" at times when it should be informative, but it's a very good representation of Genesis/Jaye and everything they entail. You walk out of the movie feeling very connected in some way to the two (one?).

Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

8/10
Lars von Trier destroyed genders via grief in his last movie, now he's doing away with the world altogether, this time via depression. He has a remarkable knack for portraying those emotions (and for coaxing great performances out of women in particular), as well as cataclysmic endings. As far as Melancholia goes, I enjoyed part 1 a bit more than part 2 (where it dragged a bit) but it was definitely enjoyable, even if I wasn't personally emotionally invested like I wish I was.

The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr & Agnes Hranitzky, 2011)

8.5/10
It's funny that all the descriptions of this movie talk about it being about the horse that Nietzsche spared from further abuse and his subsequent 10 years of muteness, because it's really not. Being a Bela Tarr movie, it's about nothing and, well, everything. There's something about this movie that is so transfixing, from the constant howl of the wind to the brutally uninteresting day-to-day motions of the cart driver and his daughter, living in the middle of nowhere. It has a very dreamlike quality to it that's hard to explain, but if you know what you're in for, it's very rewarding.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011)

8.5/10
This must be the most Andrei Tarkovskian movie Andrei Tarkovsky never made...it's actually not very similar to any Tarkovsky movies on the surface but in terms of atmosphere and in conjuring up similar life questions, definitely. A review I read said this movie is the "night and day" of a police investigation and I think that works. I was only a little disappointed that the doctor was made plain the movie's centre in the second half of the film - he was the entire time for me, but I liked it better when he was in the background somewhat. I guess it was a necessity though. There's a heck of a lot to mull over here though.

Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

5/10
Last weekend I rewatched Steve McQueen's Hunger, primarily because a friend wanted to see it but also to revisit it before seeing his second film, Shame. Hunger blew me away all over again; unfortunately, Shame is a pretty big disappointment in comparison. Thank god for Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, who do fantastic work even though they're given some awfully hammy dialogue to chew on. Shame is about a sex addict (Fassbender) whose life starts to come unglued when his younger sister (Mulligan) drops in unexpectedly. What's most vexing about Shame is that for all the edginess inherent in the subject matter, and the director and the actors, it's remarkably boring. It plods along with no apparent direction and then seems to throw all kinds of stuff at the viewer, most of which is unexciting or woefully predictable. One of my most anticipated releases of the year, but it was a dud for me.

Elena (Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2011)

7.5/10
Andrei Zvyagintsev's The Return was an atmospheric, chilling family drama. Elena sticks even closer to the family theme, about a woman named Elena, an older woman married to (but mostly playing housekeeper for) an even older, rich man, her parasitic son's family, and how she's going to come up with the money he needs to put his son (Elena's grandson) through college. If the story isn't the freshest thing you've ever heard, the movie succeeds on the strength of Nadezhda Markina's excellent performance in the title role and Zvyagintsev's subtle direction. Philip Glass' score is also a big strength.

Guilty of Romance (Sion Sono, 2011)

6/10
Sion Sono's newest, written and directed for his "muse" Megumi Kagurazaka (who also appeared in Cold Fish and the upcoming Himizu). The story is familiar enough - a bored, ultra-conservative stay-at-home wife, seeks thrills by discovering her own sexuality while her husband is at work. Being a Sono movie, the film goes all over the place, but it actually remains surprisingly predictable. There's definitely some interesting stuff here but on the whole it feels half-baked and slapdash. Despite their similarities, Sono doesn't usually remind me of Takashi Miike, but this movie did feel at times like one of those lesser Miike works that he seems to churn out while he has something bigger in the pipeline.

The Last Christeros (Matias Meyer, 2011)

4/10
A movie about a group of men in 1930's Mexico who refuse amnesty and are on the run from the Mexican government, simply because they wish to continue practicing their faith. Billed as an "existentialist Western" (because all slow movies have to be existential), it doesn't really do anything aside from a handful of nice shots and evocative sound design. It's a slow movie that seems to think, by being slow, it doesn't need to do anything else. As someone who likes anti-Westerns, road movies, and slow cinema, this should have been right up my alley, but it left me cold. It reminded me a lot of Albert Serra's Birdsong, but the world doesn't need more than one Birdsong.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010)

8.5/10
There is a certain point in Exit Through the Gift Shop (though it happens sublimely so it's likely a different point of the film for every viewer) where you figure out what's going on...and then, maybe a little bit later, the full-scale realization of what's going on hits you like a ton of bricks. For me the first came when I was watching Mister Brainwash's gallery opening and it was dawning on me just how awful, derivative, and puerile his art was. So, okay, it's intentionally bad art as social commentary. Fine. Then the second realization comes when you start to think that all these people really did show up at the gallery, bought his art, got his name in the papers, and the ultimate capper, that he's designing album art for a Madonna greatest hits collection...and the magnitude of the everything hits you like a ton of bricks.
This is a movie that goes way, way beyond words like "hoax", "mockumentary"...in fact, without exaggeration, I think it redefines the very word "hoax". It reminds me of the last lines of Pink Floyd's "Jugband Blues" - what exactly is a dream, and what exactly is a joke? Not the kind of movie that you'd want to watch over and and over again, but still one that will keep you up nights turning it over in your mind.

The Ides of March (George Clooney, 2011)

8/10
This is a movie with a well-told, tightly wound story that moves along briskly enough that one never loses interest, and features undoutably some of the finest acting you'll see in a movie all year. Clooney, Gosling, Giamatti and Hoffman are all incredible. The dialogue is really snappy, I was reminded of The Social Network in that regard more than once. The problem is that for a movie that does so many things well, instead of ending with a bang, it just sort of seems to fade out. Even as I was watching it I was wondering what they could do for an ending that wouldn't be either melodramatic or insufficient, and I don't think the writers ever answered that problem themselves. The acting is great but the movie itself doesn't really go out of its way to sear itself into your brain. Subtlety is good, but only to a point.

50/50 (Jonathan Levine, 2011)

8/10
There seems to be one of these every year, a movie that doesn't break any new ground at all but is well-made, well-acted, thoughtful and heartfelt enough to break through to the most cynical reviewer, even if it doesn't offer any revelations. There's really nothing not to like about 50/50...it's a mature movie about a difficult subject and it's easy to get caught up in its honest emotion. I don't know how long it'll stick with me but it did the trick for the two hours it was on the screen.