Beyond the Black Rainbow (Panos Cosmatos, 2010)

8/10
This is a hell of a thing to try to make sense of, from all angles - in terms of what comes up on the screen and how it even got made in the first place. I didn't investigate too much but writer/director Panos Cosmatos seems to have no prior film credits aside from being a second unit video assist operator on 1993's Tombstone (?!) yet somehow scraped together the funding to put together one of the craziest, most ridiculous sci-fi mindtrips I've ever seen. Unabashedly influenced by 2001: ASO, THX 1138, Solaris, etc, it tells the very loose story of a young woman being held captive by a strange doctor in a bizarre laboratory in the 80's. The brunt of the filmmaking process was heavily weighted in favor of costumes, set design, special effects and a great soundtrack, and the story suffers dramatically - not that Cosmatos seems to care. The plot is mostly incoherent and the ending is so laughably silly I can't help but feel it was ironic or tongue-in-cheek - in complete contrast to the rest of the movie's stone-faced seriousness. I'd compare it to a really well-made music video - a lot of fun to look at, but completely devoid of depth. If you're willing to overlook that and take it as some kind of arthouse equivalent to a popcorn movie, there's a lot to hold one's interest. Didn't stop a good number of people in my theatre from walking out, but hey. It was still quite an experience.

13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010)

8/10
The best Takashi Miike movie I've seen in ages is also his most mature, although not without callbacks to trademarks from his canon (gross-out comedy, body horror, slapstick and of course, gore). I'm no pro of the genre but 13 Assassins plays pretty much like a straightforward "jidaigeki" (it's a remake of an earlier film), wherein a group of disparate samurai must come together against impossible odds to vanquish some great evil, in this case the demonic Lord Naritsugu. For the first half of the film I almost felt like things were being played too straight, and was getting a little restless, but the gigantic (hour-long?!) action/siege scene makes it well worth the wait. Even if you're not a fan of action and bloodshed, it's almost impossible not to feel your pulse race during the battle, which is incredibly well filmed. Definitely a movie to see, if possible, in a crowded theatre, or at least with a group of friends. Overall a lot of fun.

Rabbits (David Lynch, 2002)

8/10
Back in 2002 David Lynch released a series of eight 5-7 minute shorts on his website, each one seemingly an episode of a surreal "sitcom" titled Rabbits. Unused clips were later featured in his film Inland Empire, to beguiling effect. Your mileage and patience for these shorts probably depends on your tolerance for Lynch at his most overtly bizarre - the characters (three humanoid rabbits) speak in non-sequiturs, but recurring words and themes suggest the lines might be pieced together to form actual conversations. I thought it was fun and creepy, although anyone looking for a deeper significance may only come away annoyed. They're up on Youtube for now (with Spanish subtitles but no matter) if anyone's interested.

Lady Blue Shanghai (David Lynch, 2010)

6.5/10
Another freebie MUBI turned me on to (via Youtube in two parts, part one is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmisZlnyRM), David Lynch's 16-minute Dior-commissioned piece Lady Blue Shanghai. There isn't really much to it, and it's clearly more a piece of advertising than anything else (though clearly advertising done by Lynch and no one else), it has simple themes that might be a little hacky if they weren't such an identifiable part of Lynch's aesthetic. Not a revelation but a nice enough distraction, and the music is the highlight.

Finisterrae (Sergio Caballero, 2010)

8/10
Very surreal, slow, and strangely funny "road movie" from Spain, the debut feature from SONAR festival director Sergio Caballero. Two ghosts (literally two people in big white sheets with black holes for eyes) and one horse have to undertake a journey to Finisterre, literally the end of the world. They are led by the "Oracle de Garrel", a completely unsubtle refernce to Philippe Garrel and his movie The Inner Scar, by which this is heavily influenced. It reminded me a lot of Albert Serra's Honor de Cavalleria and Birdsong (no surprise it shares the same cameraman as Honor) - Catalan dialect, sparse dialogue, long takes, outdoor landscapes, and a very subtle sense of humor. Weird and unrepentingly pretentious, but worth a watch. It's available for free right now on MUBI - http://mubi.com/films/finisterrae

It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934)

8.5/10
It was really good, definitely lived up to expectations. Gable and Colbert both have tremendous chemistry and it's hard to believe just how sexually-charged the dialogue is, considering it was the 30's and all. I thought it dragged a bit at the end; I wish it had a more spontaneous ending that would have kept more in line with the rest of the film up to that point. But still lots of fun.

Psychomania (Don Sharp, 1973)

6/10
For a British 70's movie about undead bikers, I was kind of underwhelmed. The slo-mo opening credit sequence is pretty awesome but from then on it's not particularly impressive. The plot has lots of promise (a biker whose mother made a deal with Satan discovers the secret to coming back from death and shares it with the rest of his gang) but it doesn't really do a whole lot.

Bellflower (Evan Glodell, 2011)

9.5/10
The next time I hear someone pining about the lack of originality in current American film, I'm recommending Bellflower. It's a story about two best friends who share an obsession of building a Mad Max-style muscle car to withstand the imagined apocalypse, and this girl Milly who comes into their lives. Saying any more would be spoiling, but trust me, the movie is way more original than I made it sound. Evan Glodell wrote, directed, edited and starred in this, his debut feature, and it's a staggering achievement. The film is shot in a super-dirty, sickly yellow tinged Super 8 style, which adds a lot to the nauseous, uneasy vibe prevalent throughout the film. The acting on the part of the three leads is tremendous, the original score is fantastic, the script and dialogue incredibly sharp and true to life...I can't remember the last time I saw a movie so beautiful, horrifying, hilarious, heart-warming, tragic and stomach-knotting and doing it all so effortlessly. I'll skim half a point because things do get more than a little over the top and the movie doesn't seem quite sure how or when to end itself, but those are pretty minor nitpicks. Definitely a movie that's going to stick in my head for a long time but for which I'll have no desire to revisit anytime soon.

El Sanatorio (Miguel Alejandro Gomez, 2010)

8/10
Apparently Costa Rica's first ever horror movie. Presented by the director himself, who looked to be no more than 16 years old (he's actually 28), a very likeable and earnest young man. El Sanatorio is another entry in the growing "handheld horror" genre a la BWP, Paranormal Activity, The Last Exorcism, [REC], et al. The story is a classic horror trope - a group of people make a documentary about an abandoned sanatorium that's said to be haunted, and wind up with more than they bargained for. The movie, despite the wonky subtitles, is actually laugh-out-loud funny, and does a good job creating believable characters. It takes a while for the spooky stuff to go down, and it hits like an avalanche when it finally does, to the point that I was left wanting more (the movie clocks in under 80 minutes and feels like 60). The scares are good, if too few, and do seem to be heavily indebted to Paranormal Activity, but there are nice moments all around. Everything is done competently and credibly, and I enjoyed myself.

The Wicker Tree (Robin Hardy, 2010)

0/10
These revistitation projects never work, but you always hold a little sliver of hope that the director won't totally embarass or cheapen his previous work. Robin Hardy's sequel to the Wicker Man is just disastrous on every single level. I would posit that it's actually worse than the Nick Cage Wicker Man remake because at least that one was hilarious. The film bears so little in common (thematically, stylistically, etc) with the Wicker Man I wanted to stay for the director Q&A and ask him if he'd ever seen his original film.
The less I say about this POS, the better. The characters are completely ludicrous, the plot is barely existent, the music (sing-a-longs, more like) are pathetic compared to the original, the constant jabs at religion are childish, the comedy is ill-conceived and lands with a thud, and there isn't a single ounce of anything creepy or haunting or remotely similar to the atmosphere of the original. Even if you don't compare it to the Wicker Man and consider it on its own, it's got less than nothing going for it. Just depressing.

The Theatre Bizarre (Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Douglas Buck, Jeremy Kasten, Karim Hussain, Richard Stanley & Tom Savini, 2011)

7.5/10
A horror anthology featuring seven different directors contributing their shorts, it was mostly what I expected - fun and gory and nothing too earth-shattering, but nothing to hate either.
The first one was Richard Stanley's The Mother of Toads, about a naive American couple vacationing in France being suckered in by a strange old woman who turns out to be the titular mother in question. The plot is thin and everything's reminiscent of a Dario Argento film, good and bad.
Next was Buddy Giovinazzo's I Love You. A woman is trying to leave her possessive, paranoid husband and when he finally gets her to tell him why, she reveals a lengthly list of one-night stands, flings, and relationships conducted behind his back. The acting is on two wildly different levels (the woman great, the husband brutal) and the whole thing is a build-up to a very overdone twist, but a suicide as the final money shot is really well done and worth waiting for.
Tom Savini's Wet Dreams is about a wife's revenge on her physically abusive husband, told via what may or may not be dreams the two of them are having. It's unapologetically incoherent ("surreal", if you will), but the gore is well done and it has a great sense of humor.
Douglas Buck's The Accident is about a woman answering her daughter's questions about death after the two of them witness a young motorcyclist crash on the road ahead of them. It contains barely a trace of anything remotely 'horror' related but even that aside, it's not terribly interesting and just seems wildly out of place here. Reviewer shorthand would probably call it "haunting" or "atmospheric" but it really wasn't either. "Elegiac" maybe.
Karim Hussain's Vision Stains has a really promising premise - about a woman who kills other women, extracts the fluid from their eyeballs and injects it into her own, allowing her to see their memories and write their stories. Unforunately, maybe due to the time constraints, it doesn't really go anywhere interesting. But the eyeball effects are well done and sure to make anyone cringe.
David Gregory's Sweets is the last and best one, about a candy-obsessed couple on the last legs of their food-fuelled relationship, which has become degraded and disgusting, and an ensuing surreal "Grand Guignol" of food and gluttony. It's gross, often hilarious, bizarre and original.
The stories are all strung-together and bookended by Jeremy Kasten's Theatre Guignol, featuring a girl who goes to a broken-down old-timey theatre where a mannequinish Udo Kier presents each of the stories, accompanied by a mannequin representing the story to come. The colors are beautiful and everything comes across appropriately campy and creepy.

Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)

7/10
Pretty funny that this drummed up such hysteria on release. It seems tame by today's standards. I enjoyed the movie well enough but wasn't really blown away by anything. Brando's an amazing actor but it's easy to see he was going through the motions here...although maybe that's what made him amazing, I don't know.

L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)

7/10
The third Antonioni I've seen and the third to not really impress me but I liked this one more than the other two (L'Avventura and Blow-Up). I still don't think it was anything to gush over. The black and white photography was beautiful and Monica Vitti has an incredible presence, but I was bored for a lot of it to be perfectly honest.

The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)

7/10
Everyone talked about how great this was and I didn't really see it, to be honest. It was fun, but the script was nowhere near as sharp or as witty as Pixar's best. It was more just a marvel of animation more than anything. And was I the only one who thought Jason Lee was totally ill-fitting as the villain's voice actor?

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbender, 1974)

7/10
It was good but a little...hmm...dated? I don't know. Maybe we've been beaten over the heads too much with the "love that society frowns upon" story since the movie came out. I mean it was well-acted and all, but I was just left feeling kinda blasé about the whole thing. I think the colors in this movie impressed me more than anything, which is maybe a weird thing to say.