Ne Change Rien (Pedro Costa, 2009)

9/10
After watching Pedro Costa's first film recently (Ossos), I jumped ahead to his most recent because I thought it looked like something I would enjoy. It's a documentary in the loosest sense of the word, in that it's a movie featuring real people doing real things - in this case it's the French actress and vocalist Jeanne Balibar rehearsing, recording, and performing songs from a new album with her band. All conventional documentary elements (narration, interviews, background, context in general) are done away with, however. We're left with lengthy shots like this or this, with the start/stop soundtrack of a band attempting to coax music out of nothingness.
I guess how much you enjoy this hinges on how much you like the music but, despite having never heard anything from Balibar or her group before, I thought they were really interesting sonically, and Balibar has a great, smokey voice that lends perfectly to Costa's gorgeous black and white photography. The images and music together are extremely hypnotic, and I really liked the paradoxical dynamic Costa's shots induced...the studio space seems to be both claustrophobically enclosed and, because so much is cloaked in darkness, as wide open as the universe. I'd watch it again in a heartbeat.
The film started as a 12-minute short of the same name, which you can see on Youtube (part one here).

Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)

8/10
Speaking of ridiculously overwrought direction and acting...Andrzej Zulawski's Possession must be near the top of the list of the most completely over the top movies in the history of the medium. Every overly verbose line is struggled through by actors spitting them through heavy foreign accents...that is when they're not screaming, cutting themselves, shooting at others, or breaking things. Released in 1981, Possession is like of a weird mix of David Cronenberg's body horror, Antichrist and Rosemary's Baby. It also contains probably the best enactments of demonic possession I've ever seen, jaw-droppingly acted by Isabelle Adjani. A lot of stuff in this movie probably went way over my head, but I don't think anyone could possibly fully understand it except Zulawski himself. Heck of a ride though.

Nostalgia For the Light (Patricio Guzman, 2010)

8.5/10
A really interesting, original documentary dealing with questions of astronomy, the Chilean desert, and the Pinochet regime. Telling how director Patricio Guzman pulls these disparate elements together in a coherant way would be taking away some of the magic, so I'll leave it up to you to go see it (preferably on the big screen, for the jaw-dropping astronomical shots). I have no idea how Guzman even conceived of such a project but thank god he did. Immensely enjoying.

Crystal Voyager (David Elfick, 1973)

6.5/10
One of the most popular surf videos from the 1970's, Crystal Voyager is a loose documentary following George Greenough's search for isolated surfing locations and the construction of an enormous yacht to achieve this end. This is interspersed with shots of Greenough and friends riding waves in the California sun set to G. Wayne Thomas' gentle psych-pop tunes. The drawback is Greenough's narration, which sounds bored, flat and devoid of all human emotion. The main attraction is the 25-minute closer, shot with a camera strapped to George Greenough's back to create a "you are there" effect, slowed down and edited to Pink Floyd's "Echoes". Whether it's a brilliant piece of avant-garde filmmaking or the end result of a stoned, self-indulgent hippie with too much time on his hands is up to the viewer to decide but I thought it was quite lovely to watch.

Histoires Extraordinaires (Federico Fellini, Louis Malle & Roger Vadim, 1968)

7.5/10
A triptych of 40-minute films directed individually by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini, all based on Edgar Allen Poe stories. Vadim's Metzengerstein starts out promising enough with Jane Fonda starring as the young Countess Metzengerstein who falls in love with a rival Baron (played by brother Peter) and accidentally kills him in an act of revenge, leaving her to cling to a mysterious black horse that seems to embody his spirit. The first half of the movie is weird and entertaining enough, with the Countess entertaining guests and holding (very mundane looking) orgies and festivities and whatnot, but the action screeches to a halt halfway through and the last half of the film is mostly Jane Fonda frolicking around with a horse until she decides to kill herself to reunite with the dead Baron. Okay then.
Malle's William Wilson involves the man of the title constantly haunted by a doppelganger of the same name, who usurps and prevents his evil deeds until Wilson (the original) fatally wounds the other. Told as he's dying that the original can't live without the double, and with no one believing his story, Wilson kills himself by jumping off a church bell tower. Brigitte Bardot shows up as Wilson's opponent in a decisive card duel that's far more entertaining than it should be, but overall this segment is pretty flat and uninteresting.
Fellini's Toby Dammit was long hyped to be the star of the show and it did not disappoint. Clearly sourced more from Fellini's brain than from any Poe work (it's based on his story Never Bet the Devil Your Head but it's hard to imagine it shares anything more in common than the title), this one centres around a celebrity film star named Toby Dammit who has indeed sold his soul, or at least his head, to the devil (magnificently cast as a young, attractive blonde girl) in exchange for the grotesque excesses of stardom. Visually stunning - I would be shocked if Terry Gilliam wasn't influenced by this when making Fear & Loathing - and constantly impaling the film culture as he did in 8 1/2, there is a lot to enjoy in this segment. Terence Stamp embodies the worn-out, drugged-out, apathetic Toby Dammit perfectly and the film manages to be genuinely creepy, something the other two never come close to achieving. Definitely worth seeking out in its own right.

Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1973)

6.5/10
Little known U.S. 1971 horror film by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who would eventually go on to direct and produce Howard the Duck, effectively killing their film careers. Messiah of Evil shows lots of promise though, as its a visual overload of Technicolor flair and the set designs are fantastic. The plot is pretty humdrum (a woman visits a strange town to check up on her father quickly realizes things aren't what they seem blah blah) and the action is minimal, so anyone hoping for gore is going to be let down. The plot and execution is actually a lot like Carnival of Souls, maybe mixed with Suspiria's colours and sets and H. Gordon Lewis' Americana weirdness. A neat curio.

Ossos (Pedro Costa, 1997)

7/10
The first Pedro Costa movie I'd seen, and it was definitely a challenge. Not so much in its subject matter or figuring out what's going on, but just in the rigid distance that Costa puts between the characters and his audience. I admired it more than I enjoyed it, but I'm definitely intrigued enough to pursue the rest of his filmography.

Paraiso Travel (Simon Brand, 2008)

4/10
I saw this as part of the ongoing Latin American Film Festival in Montreal, and apparently it was a huge hit in its native Columbia when it came out a couple of years ago. The story centers around Marlon, who emigrates from Columbia to New York with his ultra-sexpot, temptress girlfriend Reina, with (her) promises of a better life and the glory and wonder of America, and so on. Marlon is far more reluctant. Of course the New York Marlon finds is considerably harsher than the one on the scenic posters in the Paraiso Travel "underground immigration office" in Columbia, especially when he gets seperated almost immediately from Reina. The film cuts between the couple's rough and dangerous journey to New York (a journey many real immigrants no doubt have made), and Marlon's struggles to survive all the while searching for Reina.
I thought there were a lot of things wrong with this movie - while Marlon and Reina's journey is a hard one, Marlon's arrival in New York goes about as smoothly as any homeless non-English-speaker's ever has - he spends exactly one night on the streets before he's taken in by the kindly wife of the owner of a Columbian restaurant, he finds work first doing hard labour and eventually in the restaurant, he's given places to sleep for free (none of which are ideal but certainly better than the streets), and he even meets another gorgeous girl as Reina finally starts to become a distant memory. It also doesn't hurt that Marlon looks like he walked onto the screen straight from a modelling gig - he may indeed be the most attractive homeless man in cinema history. This makes Marlon a difficult character to sympathize with, especially after he blows off or displays almost outright ingratitude for these opportunities that other immigrants would no doubt kill for. Add to that the fact that the story doesn't really bring anything new, the emotion is generally flat for the entire film, and everything plays out entirely as one would expect virtually from the get-go, and I didn't find a whole lot to enjoy here (but a lot to write about, I suppose).

Belle de Jour (Luis Bunuel, 1967)

7/10
For a Luis Bunuel movie that I didn't know a whole lot about going in, I was surprised at how straightforward it was. Catherine Deneuve plays a high society woman who on the surface seems to have it all, except she can't bring herself to be physically intimate with her husband - but she repeatedly fantasizes about being sexually used, abused, debased...to the point of working for a "classy" whorehouse in the afternoon while her husband is at work (hence being given the alias Belle de Jour). Once she is able to live out her fantasies, ironically, she is drawn closer to her husband, but of course, tragedy is a step away. This is adapted from a novel which may explain why it isn't quite as off the rails as the Bunuel I've seen, but it does deal with themes that seem to be up his alley. Deneuve is fine but I thought Pierre Clementi stole the show as the jealous gangster who falls for Belle de Jour. I can only imagine how the rape/S&M/abuse fantasies (from an upper-class woman, no less) went overi n 1967.

Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr & Agnes Hranitzky, 2000)

9/10
I put off watching this for so long because, having read so much about it, its style, etc, I knew I'd end up loving it...the point where I almost felt like I'd already seen it. But I hadn't, so I watched it, and I indeed loved it. Subpar DVD transfer aside, this is an extraordinarily beautiful, very original, and brutally sad movie. A lot of so-called "slow cinema" tends to make for a viewing experience that, while it's enjoyable, is not usually something you want to repeat any time soon...but I feel like I could watch this movie again tomorrow and be excited for it all over again.

The King of Marvin Gardens (Bob Rafelson, 1972)

6/10
"Nothing happens" in much of the BBS films but even less so here. Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern play a couple of brothers, Nicholson the younger, straight-laced, depressed one and Dern the older, scheming extrovert. Ellen Burstyn and Julia Anne Robinson are the women in the middle. Dern summons Nicholson to Atlantic City where he's hatching a doomed plan to develop real estate on an island in Hawaii. The film is bookended by a couple of great, sad monologues by Nicholson and it's always watchable due to the acting of the leads, but it's just not terribly interesting. I did find it nailed the curious dynamic between all brothers close in age quite well, and the ending threw me for a bit of a loop. And it had Scatman Crothers! But that wasn't quite enough to get me too excited about it at any point.

Fando y Lis (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1968)

6/10
Jodorowsky's first film, still weird as anything though. Loosely put, the film follows a couple of lovers in a tumultuous relationship who embark on a journey towards the possibly nonexistent town of Tar, in search of perfection. It's kind of an extremely warped road movie, with one review I saw describing the landscapes as "bombed-out Fellini sets" which seems apt...I think I need more time to mull over it but it was certainly interesting.

Jodorowsky presented each of the films and, at 82 years old, has an impressive amount of intensity. He told some interesting stores, particularly about how he couldn't get Fando y Lis or El Topo made by any of the Mexican production companies except one that produced short films...so he was told to divide each movie into four parts so they could be released as four consecutive short films, which explains why both have four acts. And when introducing Fando y Lis, he had a particularly great line: "I hope you understand this movie, because I never could".

He also mentioned that the long-rumoured Son of El Topo movie is in the works, and apparently he's financing it out of his own pocket, but like any Jodorowsky project, who knows if it'll ever come to fruition...

Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989)

8/10
I liked this probably a lot more than I should have. Made in 1989 and more straightforward (though that's not saying much) than Jodorowsky's classic stuff, Santa Sangre plays almost like his take on a Dario Argento giallo. And like Argento's movies, Santa Sangre's failings are similar - spotty acting, corny dialogue, unintentionally funny special effects, etc. But the core of the movie is so earnest, so honest, and so foolishly charming that it won me over. Although my friend hated it and would have walked out if he went alone, so that gives an idea of the dividing power it has...