Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (Don Edmonds, 1975)

4/10
You wouldn't think a 70's Nazisploitation softcore trash movie could be quite so boring, but unfortunately, it is. The sex scenes aren't particularly interesting, though the torture and gore is fairly well done. The plot (too much of it!) is plodding and largely a bore, although it does lead to a fairly cool shoot-out at the end. The two best things in this movie are, let's face it, residing on Ilsa's chest. Other than that, not much of note here. It wasn't so-bad-it's-funny, nor was it really interesting in a what-were-they-thinking way. The only unintentional humor came from the actors' accents coming and going (they're German SS officers in a German-based camp...and they all speak thickly-accented English? Okay then). Too often B movies sound like more fun in theory than they are to actually sit down and watch, and that's definitely the case with this one.

The Furies (Anthony Mann, 1950)

9/10
Not so much a western as a family drama set in the west. An overlooked gem from director Anthony Mann, better known for his collaborations with James Stewart. This one is absolutely scintillating, a real example of the right way to adapt a novel. The dialogue is razorsharp and cleverly self-referential (a little too much at times), and is really the driving force of the movie. That and the acting. Barbara Stanwyck is great in one of the strongest female roles ever to grace a 50's western and Walter Huston is excellent in the last role before his death. The cinematography (Oscar winning or nominated) and direction is gorgeous, one of the most evocative black and white westerns I've ever seen. Just a really great movie all around.

The Hellbenders (Sergio Corbucci, 1967)

7/10
I love Spaghetti Westerns and haven't watched one in a while. So tonight I watched The Hellbenders from Sergio Corbucci (director of two of my favorites, Djano and The Great Silence). The Hellbenders is sort of a SW-come-road movie, about a man played by Joseph Cotten and his 3 sons (the Hellbenders) killing a convoy of Union soldiers and stealing the million dollars in cash they were carrying, to bring it back to the South to reform the Confederacy. The movie was made after Django but before The Great Silence and it feels caught between the two indeed - you don't get the in-your-face violence of Djano, nor do you get the artistry of The Great Silence. So it's somewhat unsatisfying in that regard. The best part of the movie is the psychological wars between the father, his sons, and the "widow" brought in to keep the ruse of 4 men lugging a coffin through the desert alive. Joseph Cotten is great and most of the acting is well done, and Ennio Morricone's score is good too. But the dubbing (English-on-English, mostly) really hurts this movie, which is unfortunate.

Poetry (Lee Chang-dong, 2010)

7/10
After reading multiple glowing write-ups I wanted to like this more than I did. You know that feeling when you're watching a movie and you can acknowledge it does everything right but just can't find a way to get into it? That's what I felt. The story is about an elderly woman in the early stages of Alzheimer's joining a poetry class while faced with the dilemma of covering up her grandson and his friends' repeated **** of a 16 year old girl, driving her (the girl) to suicide. The story has plenty to interest and the material is approached in a very restrained, non-sensational manner. The direction and cinematography is beautiful (not a stretch to call it poetic, really) and Jeong-hie Yun (retired for decades, if I'm not mistaken) is tremendous in the role of the grandmother. The film is very nuanced, posing lots of questions and refusing to give easy answers. While I did enjoy it, I just couldn't let myself be as taken with it as I would have liked.
Superficially there are a lot of parallels between Poetry and Mother, both Korean movies about an elderly woman forced into impossible circumstances by the crime of a teenage (grand)son. Where Mother relies more on genre conventions and a bit more "flash", Poetry may be the more technically accomplished film. I still preferred Mother though.

W.R. Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavajev, 1971)

6/10
Kaleidoscopic faux documentary/narrative from Dusan Makavajev, it (to broadly define the movie) focuses on sexual politics in relation to communism and the studies of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, with whatever else Makavejev sees fit to throw in (a girl plaster-casting a penis? A shot of the editors of Screw magazine working in the buff? Why not). It's not coherent and plainly doesn't try to be, and there's only an ebb and flow of interest. I'll bump it a point more than I should have for the ending, which was unexpected and fun, but otherwise, not much to recommend here.

Project Nim (James Marsh, 2011)

7/10
A documentary about a chimp named Nim who, in the 70's, was given to a hippie-ish family to be raised as a human child (as much as possible, anyway) and taught sign language, as a kind of loose science experiment. The film focuses less on the scientific/sociological/anthropological questions and more on the actual tribulations Nim endured in his life as a result of human meddling. Indeed, the story has a built-in drama to it, and didn't really require any great leaps on the part of the filmmakers (the team behind Man on Wire) to bring it to the fore. I thought it was more a damning indictment of human naivety than anything else, and was kind of disappointed at how little scientific attention was given in the film to a chimp learning sign language - this is treated as more of a casual characteristic of Nim rather than the central thrust of the documentary. Judging from the glowing reviews, more people seemed to get swept up in Nim's life story than I did. Oh well.
One thing I really didn't like were the artistic "recreations" that cropped up during the film, probably to take away from the assumed monotony of constantly looking at talking heads and archival footage - when the voiceover of an interviewee is talking about Nim's mother being tranquilized so they could take Nim from her, don't show me a shadowy man in a shadowy room blurrily firing a tranquilizer gun into the camera lens - I'm not 5 years old, I can picture this traumatic event for myself thanks.

The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925)

8.5/10
Like the restored Metropolis last year, it was a treat to see a 35mm print of this with a live orchestra as the closing event of the Fantasia festival. I liked Metropolis better as a movie but this was really good too. The acting was very theatrical so that aspect didn't age so well, but the sets were great and Lon Chaney was a master. His makeup as the deformed Phantom still manages to impress today so that's a good sign. The Technicolor sequence during the Bal Masque was also a treat, and the new score was really good and well done. A very cool experience, all in all.

Viridiana (Luis Bunuel, 1961)

7/10
I liked it well enough but there wasn't any single thing that really blew me away. Bunuel's depiction of class differences almost seemed a little facile, and kind of predictable. I don't know, I enjoyed it, but it didn't really leave any kind of impression or impact on me, so I guess I was left wanting more.

Faust (F.W. Murnau, 1926)

7/10
I definitely enjoyed the first half more than the second. I didn't know beforehand how Murnau would approach the Faust legend, so I thought there'd be more focus on the struggle for Faust's soul between the angel and Satan, and less focus on stuff like Faust falling in love (and the weird comedy sequence between the old woman and Satan). The special effects were pretty cool for its time for sure, and I liked the aesthetic, so I'm looking forward to watching other Murnau films.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010)

8/10
It was pretty much exactly what I thought a Werner Herzog-directed-and-narrated 3D documentary about 32,000 year old cave paintings would be like. I guess the only surprising thing was how straightforward it was (Herzog "documentaries" often contain outright lies and made-up situations) but when you're being backed by History Television, or whatever it was, I guess you have to play on the right side of the line.
I was a little surprised at how immersed and interested I was in the paintings. You'd think in a 90 minute movie about some old drawings you'd get bored after a while, but I really didn't. Herzog doesn't pose any revelatory questions on the surface but I think the film does a good job of subtly nudging the viewer to ask them of him/herself (about the only unsubtle thing is the score, which is nice, but clearly had the "wondrous and mystical" knob turned to 11). Anyone expecting cold, hard facts might be a bit disappointed as the documentary is definitely Herzogian in nature ("what kind of dreams did these cave-dwellers have?" is given precedence over "what substance did they use to paint them?", for example) but as an avowed fan, I took it all in stride.

Cold Fish (Sion Sono, 2010)

8/10
Further proof (as if Love Exposure didn't confirm it) that Sion Sono is fucking insane, and surely one of the most original directors working today. The ending is just staggering, and something very few filmmakers would have the balls to follow through with in such an unflinching fashion. The acting especially was great; my only real complaint is that I don't think the movie needed to be almost 2.5 hours long...about 20-30 minutes could have been chopped off and made for a much tighter pace.

Night Fishing (Park Chan-kyong & Park Chan-wook, 2011)

7/10
A half-hour short directed by Park Chan-wook and his brother Park Chan-kyong (known together as PARKing CHANce, it seems), filmed entirely on an iPhone 4. It's the story of a man fishing at night and apparently catching and reeling in a live woman, who is a shamanic link to his daughter and mother, attempting to contact him from the land of the living. Yeah it's pretty intricate, and very original. It's almost impossible to think it was filmed on an iPhone because it's stunning to look at. Very interesting and unique.

Kidnapped (Miguel Angel Vivas, 2010)

8.5/10
I haven't caught much of the recent wave of home invasion horrors (The Strangers, Them (Ils), etc) so I'm not sure how this one stacks up against those, but I thought it was pretty great. The story isn't very original (it's almost too reminiscent of Funny Games and Panic Room) but it's directed with a lot of flair, particularly in a couple of split-screen shots that left me breathless, and the acting is tremendous. The movie is shot almost "verité" style with lots of unbroken takes and it works really well, everything comes across as distrurbingly real - helped along by some absolutely brutal violence, comparable to A Serbian Film or Funny Games in its unflinching realism. Definitely not one for weak stomachs...or for those hoping to have their faith renewed in humanity.

Hollow (Michael Axelgaard, 2011)

3/10
Another "point of view" handheld horror, this one very much in a Blair Witch vein, about four friends who spend a couple of days in the country house of one of the members' recently deceased priest grandfather in Suffolk. There they uncover a legend about a 'hollow' and a huge tree that seems to be causing people in the area to commit suicide in disturbing numbers. What's most disappointing about the movie is that it builds a credibly creepy atmosphere, and develops a pretty solid and believable mythos, and then does absolutely nothing with it. There's too much waiting around for the scares to start, and they never really do, even during the climax. Restraint in horror is admirable, but the director almost seemed too afraid to do anything even remotely scary, despite having numerous opportunities to do so. As such, too much of the movie feels like you're actually watching somebody's vacation home movies - lots of waiting around for it to be over so you can smile politely and say "well that was nice".

Last Days Here (Don Argott & Demian Fenton, 2011)

8.5/10
Following on the heels of Anvil! The Story of Anvil comes another documentary about a metal band that should have been dealt a better hand, Pentagram, and in particular their crack-addled, borderline psychotic lead singer Bobby Liebling. The story centres around Liebling and his young superfan/manager/best friend Sean "Pellet" Pelletier, as he attempts to get Liebling off drugs for good and back into touring and recording, as a recent resurgence in stoner rock/metal has seen a spike in Pentagram's popularity worth capitalizing on. Unlike Anvil which used the universal themes of friendship and rejection that everyone could identify and sympathize with, Liebling is a harder figure to pity - he seems determined to everything to not help himself, and bring down those around him at the same time. Were he not so visibly deteriorated and in need of desperate attention (medically, physically, emotionally, you name it) it would be easy to scorn him. There's a "right place at the right time" narrative that flows naturally through the documentary, and it's a real rollercoaster ride with a great payoff at the end (it's probably even better if, like me, you don't know much about Liebling beforehand). Like the Anvil documentary, you don't need to be a fan of the music to get wrapped up in the story, so I'd definitely recommend it to anyone.