Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)

6.5/10
The biggest surprise about Tarantino's new movie is how...undistinguished it seems. I may have disliked Inglourious Basterds with a passion, but it was certainly a unique vision. Compare with Django Unchained - if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie. I think part of the problem is that Tarantino is no longer a director who has to make movies - I hesitate to use the term "spinning his wheels" but that's definitely what Django feels like.
It's not all bad though. Some have complained the movie is something of a slog, but I never felt the lengthy running time, which is always a plus. Leonardo DiCaprio is very good, but Christoph Waltz steals the show. Almost to a fault, in fact - as soon as Waltz's character isn't on screen, you start to miss his presence. Particularly noticeable in the scenes where Foxx has to carry the movie on his own. Foxx isn't a bad actor, but Django is such a blank slate compared to Waltz and DiCaprio's characters that he needs to be surrounded with some, uh, colour and suffers plainly when it's not there.
Overall, generally entertaining with some ups and downs. Probably my second-to-least favourite Tarantino movie, but nothing overly atrocious or even memorable, really. Which, as I said, is probably the biggest surprise of all.

Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012)

10/10
Was it the film itself, or the surprise lack of English subtitles that forced me to hang on to every spoken word harder than I've had to since I was a child? And there was so much silence. Masterfully utilized - with no long, contemplative take ever exceeding its perfect length. It was exhilarating and tragic and painful. I was exhausted after it was over, deciding it was a perfect film I don't want to see again for a very, very long time. When the quiet movie ended we rose quietly with wet eyes and exited into the quiet, rainy, snowy, slushy streets and walked back towards home, quietly ruminating on strength and love and courage, sharing reminisces of our own grandparents. Secretly wondering about our own futures. About our own strength. We should all be so lucky to be moved so profoundly by art at least once in our lives.

Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012)

7/10
The biggest thing about Lincoln, for me, is that it confirms that Spielberg has not in fact completely lost his marbles after last year's unbearable War Horse. Lincoln is, by contrast...well, mature.
I don't really have a horse (eesh) in this race - biopics don't generally appeal to me, and history and politics are not my two main fields of interest. Nor do I have much of an affinity for Spielberg. I was mostly interested in the movie to see Daniel Day-Lewis' performance, which was excellent of course (but still behind Phoenix and Lavant, for me). Sally Fields was great as well. Tommy Lee Jones was a little bit predictable in a curmudgeonly role, but he did fine. Everything was fine, really, to the point of feeling mechanical - there were very few surprises and, in the end, if you had to picture a Lincoln biopic starring Day-Lewis directed by Spielberg, didn't you predict it would turn out exactly like this? The emotion it roused in me was pretty faint - I didn't feel the tension or the catharsis when what you knew would happen, happened. Fine, fine, fine; that was my main impression.

Bad Santa (Terry Zwigoff, 2003)

4/10
A lot of people like this movie - I didn't. It wasn't funny and I wasn't hoping for any kind of redemption for Billy Bob Thornton's character, so with very few laughs and no rooting interest, what am I doing here? I will concede that it was a great acting job on his part, definitely the movie's highlight. Otherwise, who cares?

Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, 2012)

9/10
I was beginning to wonder if my heart had deadened to movies as a whole these last few weeks...I haven't seen much (new or old) but what I have seen has not excited me. Maybe it's for that reason that I'm overrating Killing Them Softly...its flaws may be more apparent in a stronger year. But as 2012 winds down and looks more and more like a dud of a year in films, thank god there was this movie. It's not perfect, it's not brilliant, but it was incredibly enjoyable. The political theme may have been laid on too thick for some - indeed, we could probably have cut out a couple of those radio snippets or voiceovers from Bush/McCain/Obama. But I didn't really mind. The atmosphere was incredible (a huge strength of Dominik's previous outing), the soundtrack great (if as unsubtle as the political subtext - VU's "Heroin" while they're shooting up heroin? Really?), and the acting is top-notch. I don't know much about Andrew Dominik but our sensibilities and appreciations seem to be pretty much in line.

Cafe de Flore (Jean-Marc Vallee, 2011)

7.5/10
I would have to think, that in most reviews of Cafe de Flore, the word "ambitious" cropped up quite a bit. I wouldn't disagree. It's an impressive twisting of two seemingly unrelated stories, one in Montreal in 2011 and another in Paris in 1969. In addition to trying to figure out how these stories will come together, we're also tasked with figuring out the stories themselves, which are presented in jagged and knotted forms. To me, there's a thin line between a movie unveiling its surprises organically, and a director intentionally withholding information from the audience to create these surprises artificially. I felt more often than not, CdF fell on the side of the latter. Both timelines, and the grand connection as a whole, are so obfuscated it made me wish more time was spent on the story and a little less time on the surrounding smoke and mirrors. I was reminded of a very relevant lyric by the end of the movie - "the time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say".
But I will definitely say that the smoke and mirrors were impressive. I give the movie a lot of credit for telling a couple of interesting stories in a highly unique manner, and for making the way these stories connected credible. A heap of praise is also deserved for the soundtrack (and for the central theme of the importance of music as well). God knows that Sigur Ros don't need any accompanying pictures to evoke emotion, and "Dark Side of the Moon" already carries 40 years worth of baggage with it. But the movie used this and other music in a very authentic, natural, and credible way - rather than feeling like the director is just bragging about the stuff on his iPod, a la Cameron Crowe.
I don't typically get the urge to watch a movie a second time to better "figure it out", but I did get that feeling with Cafe de Flore. Even though I think I got the general idea, a second viewing certainly wouldn't hurt. I'd also really like to see the director's previous effort, C.R.A.Z.Y., as I've been putting that off for ages as well. If it's half as ambitious as Cafe de Flore, I'm sure it'll be worthy of interest as well.

The Golem, or How He Came Into the World (Carl Boese & Paul Wegener, 1920)

7.5/10
I randomly downloaded this 1920 silent film from Paul Weneger years ago, and for some reason decided to watch it a couple of nights ago. It was pretty cool. It tells the story of a village elder/sorcerer in a Jewish ghetto in Poland who, reading the stars, foretells an impending disaster for the Jews. The sorcerer builds a golem out of clay in response, and various misadventures occur. It's interesting as an early example of horror, and some of the sets/towns/buildings look brilliantly gothic. The copy I watched was colored so certain scenes were "painted" a certain color (the sorcerer's lab is green, the town is yellow, blue at night, etc). Pretty neat all told.

The American (Anton Corbijn, 2010)

6/10
Been wanting to see this one for a while. Hollywood goes Slow? I'm in. Well, director Anton Corbijn has a good eye for visuals, impressively filming beautiful landscapes in Sweden and Italy, but as a director, his style seems lacking. Witness Nicolas Winding Refn doing a similar thing much better a few years later with Drive. Heck, even Jim Jarmusch did it better a year earlier with The Limits of Control. Also, both those movies had fantastic soundtracks, something which I thought really let down The American (strange, given Corbijn's history as a music video director and his previous feature on Joy Division).
Finally, I just didn't buy George Clooney in the role of a cold-blooded killer, no matter how hard he set his jaw. With his cocktail party looks and dark brown sweaters, it was a poor fit from day one, though I can see why he would want to try the role.
So it didn't really come together for me, but I can see what Corbijn was aiming for. I think it was an interesting effort if not a success.

Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, 1962)

7/10
After Truffaut's first, Polanski's first. I like "closed room" settings, so Polanski putting a man, his wife, a drifter they picked up and a knife on a sailboat appealed to me. It did drag a bit - the tension builds slowly (sometimes not at all) and comes to an inevitable climax. I won't spoil the ending but I did wish that it had been done differently. As it is, I liked it, but I thought there was something that could've been done to make it more powerful. The soundtrack is excellent, a weird jazzy thing that sometimes seems ill-fitting, but I liked it.

The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)

8/10
It took me quite a long time to get around to this classic. It was good - didn't blow me away but I liked it. It wasn't altogether entirely what I was expecting, but I'm not really sure what I was expecting. I actually found a lot of similarities between this movie and The White Ribbon...not sure if that's a valid comparison or not but there you have it.

Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, 2012)

7.5/10
SLP didn't look particularly great from the thousands of trailers and ads that were crammed down my throat for seemingly the past month or two. The cynic in me has a knee-jerk reaction to those movies Hollywood loves featuring beautiful people whose illnesses are only just so to make them quirky and endearing, as opposed to ugly and offensive. But all things considered, it's a good movie, and it connects emotionally thanks in no small part to Cooper and Lawrence, who are both on the top of their game (although I didn't think Cooper was that amazing. Ahead of Phoenix? No thanks). Robert De Niro was also excellent - no matter how much crap he's been in the last decade, his performance is a reminder of just how good he is.
I found the movie took a turn for the worse right around the "Eagles game" scene (I won't say more for spoilers) - at that point the events lost a bit of their naturalism and started to feel more scripted, with a last-minute plot point shoehorned in to create a false sense of drama. Comparing this to David O. Russell's previous The Fighter, I don't get the sense that he has fully mastered subtlety, but it's a big improvement.
One visual complaint - what the hell was with the sometimes-swoopy camera? Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Three Colors: Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)

8.5/10
Definitely my favorite entry, I think it hits really well on all three aforementioned areas - visually great, excellent acting (Trintignant is superb) and an unexpected but perfectly fitting ending. Maybe Irene Jacob is my least favorite of the three actresses in the trilogy, but she still did a better job than I expected from her precipitous first scenes. She comes into her own during the movie quite well, but has her work cut out for herself opposite Trintignant. A great trilogy with a forgiveably lesser middle link. Blue and Red more than pick up the slack, in any case.

Three Colors: White (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)

7/10
Historically thought to be the weakest of the three, and I agree. It's a nice, very clever movie, but it didn't engage me the way the other two did. The lead actor (too lazy to google his name, Zbigniew something or other?) was great though, and the movie is darkly funny much of the time. Julie Delpy is good, but unfortunately absent for much of the movie...albeit by necessity. Visually this was the least appealing for me, but that ending is pretty remarkable.

Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993)

8/10
Juliette Binoche is always watchable, so that's a big strength. In my opinion, the most visually stunning of the three - I think the image of Binoche standing in front of that blue light/chandelier thing will be burned in my mind forever. Really liked the sudden cutting in of the string sounds...I thought that was a smart way to mirror the sudden pangs of grief. I have to say, though I liked much of the movie, I wasn't crazy about the ending; probably my least favorite ending of the three in fact.

Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012)

8/10
Action movies that aren't strong in their middle acts are a rare breed indeed, and it's Skyfall's strength to a fault. It takes a little too much time doing little in the first act, and trots out the woefully overused reluctant hero trope which, after The Amazing Spider-Man, The Avengers, and The Dark Knight Rises, needs to be murdered immediately. The title credits and opening sequence are exhilerating, but after that, some patience is tried - despite the impressively filmed Shanghai fight scene
. But the heart of the movie is when Javier Bardem shows up as Silva, in an incredible role that rivals even his Anton Chigurh in all-around creepiness and psychosis. Amazingly, the most bracing sequence in the film is not any fight or chase scene, but the first conversation between Bond and Silva.
The final act is good, but not great - while I appreciated the "personal" level the movie aims at (Silva going after M for revenge, rather than the head of some evil corporation trying to get megarich or what have you), it necessarily resulted in a somewhat underwhelming ending.
But overall, the movie does a lot of things really well, and several things exceptionally so. The much-lauded photography by Roger Deakins was good, but considering the hype, I was expecting to be a little more blown away. Same could be said for the movie as a whole, maybe.

Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962)

6/10
My Bond knowledge is non-existent. I saw Quantum of Solace when it came out and that was my first one. Just not a series that has ever interested me. But my brother got a hold of a bunch of burns of the first 10 or so, so I decided to join in on the viewing. Dr. No is, of course, the first one, and it seems like a pretty tentative start. Nothing overly sexy or dangerous or exciting here, in fact it's got a couple of pretty cheesy moments, even for the 60's. In any event, I hear Dr. No isn't even very highly regarded by Bond enthusiasts. But it's kind of cool to see the origins of the whole thing. I'm definitely more looking forward to the next two, From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. Well, and Skyfall, which I'll be seeing tonight...but that's getting ahead.

Letter Never Sent (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1959)

8/10
What a coincidence - I had watched this a couple of days ago and I come in here to find it a topic of discussion. The camera work and cinematography is indeed the highlight of this movie (I've yet to see Cranes, so no comparisons). In fact, it's been suggested that the plot is just a loose excuse to get the central quartet to Siberia (or somewhere suggestive of Siberia) and film them in all manner of beautiful landscape. But it's never boring, and definitely worth a look, especially if your tastes trend toward the more visual side of things. I grabbed it during a 50% off sale as a total blind buy and I'm not disappointed, but it's not often you get disappointed by Criterion either.

White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949)

8/10
Yow. Walsh returns again almost 10 years later and this one is pretty wild. Cagney is in tow again, looking 10 years rougher, and is perfect in the insane, mother-loving ("Made it, Ma! Top of the world!") lead. The plot features a lot of clever twists and turns and it's a lot of fun to watch and to anticipate what shoe is going to drop next. I enjoyed it a lot, might be my favorite in the set (which included The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, The Petrified Forest, The Roaring Twenties and this - good films all).

The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh, 1939)

7/10
Trying to finish off my classic gangster films box set that I bought ages ago. This one from Raoul Walsh features a familiar gangster movie trope - boyhood friends whose lives go in opposite paths. Actually there's three friends here (Cagney, Bogart, and another I don't remember). Cagney of course goes full gangster, the other guy becomes a respectable lawyer, and Bogart is a grey area. It's not bad, but not mind-blowing. It points the finger squarely at the alienation felt by many Americans returning home from the war to an uninterested and harsh society as the cause for this crimewave of the era though, of course, condemns it in the end. I haven't seen that kind of aggressively political stance in many other movies like this, so it was neat.

Room 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2012)

6/10
The Shining is hands down my favorite film of all time. I've watched it at least around 15 times by now, but my level of devotion to it nowhere reaches that of the obsessives featured in the documentary Room 237.
I first became aware of the millions of theories on The Shining via the KDK12 blog by John Fell Ryan, one of the featured voices in the documentary. The film touches on a multitude of crackpot dissections of Kubrick's film - some credible, some laughable. Was the movie, with all its Native American imagery, a metaphor for the American massacre of Indians? Was the movie, with its reference to the number 42, a meditation on the Holocaust? Was the movie, with its moon/Apollo references, an allusion to Kubrick's involvement with the moon landing hoax? If all of this sounds crazy...it is. It's disappointing that so much time is devoted to crackpot, nutty theories when several more interesting observations are dealt with only briefly. One of the voiceovers discusses all the architectural impossibilities of the Overlook - "impossible" windows, hallways that can't logically exist, rooms that seem to loop back onto themselves. Another remarks that, in Hallorann's trip to the Overlook, he passes a red VW beetle crushed by a truck - a reading that suggests Kubrick is openly "crushing" King's source material, for Jack's vehicle in the book is a red VW beetle. These are far more fascinating than any insane observation that, in one of the dissolves of the 1920's picture at the end of the film, Jack's hair fades into his upper lip forming briefly a "Hitler mustache".
Only true obsessives will find half the theories here of any worth - most will scoff and roll their eyes. The only argument some of the crazier notions in the movie have in their favor is the fact that Kubrick was notoriously detail-oriented. Some of what seem like filmmaking inconsistencies (a disappearing chair, Jack's typewriter changing, the clocks being constantly out of synch) could be intentional and an allusion to something deeper. The documentary presents all these with an impartial eye, but more attention should have been devoted to the 'serious' theories. A lot of this winds up sounding like lunacy...admittedly a fitting result for those trapped inside the Overlook, indeed.

Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

7.5/10
Not one of my picks, but I'd never seen it, so what the hell. I hate to use the phrase "I enjoyed it more than I thought I would" because it makes me seem like I was out to hate it, but really, it's just because musicals and romance are not my go-to genres. It was pretty good, though it can't hope to sustain the frantic, breathless pace of the first third or so...so the rest of the movie seems a little slow in comparison. Ewan MacGregor was good and Nicole Kidman impressed me a lot with a range I'd not seen from her. The story is more something to get people into singing and dancing situations and less anything substantial to hang on to (especially when the end is revealed at the beginning) but that's OK. The costumes and sets are eye-popping enough on their own.

Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)

8.5/10
This deceptively simple documentary about actor/director Sarah Polley's family (I don't want to say any more for fear of spoiling a movie that should be seen with as little beforehand knowledge as possible) brings to mind the old onion comparison - the more layers you peel, the deeper it gets. Or something. It is a remarkably clever way to tell what is not only a fascinating story, but what could have easily been told in a much more ho-hum, straightforward style by a less interesting filmmaker. It's warm, heartfelt, funny, emotional, courageous and entirely engrossing. Highly recommended.

The Man with the Iron Fists (RZA, 2012)

3/10
Not my choice for Saturday night at the movies, but what the hell, I'm no stick in the mud. Thought it might be fun. It's not. Most of these "neo-exploitation" flicks that are coming in the wake of Tarantino (producer here) and Rodriguez's Grindhouse - Hell Ride, Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun - simply sound better on paper than in practice and the RZA's directorial debut is no different.
What's most depressing about the movie is that it doesn't even try to stick to any kind of aesthetic - the opening and closing credits are straight out of Tarantino's school for kitschy 70's style B-movie credits, while Wu-Tang Clan and other hip hop permeates the soundtrack of a movie set in some kind of feudal Japan (?) where Russell Crowe dresses alternately like an English general and a Western gunslinger and the main villain (who reminded both me and a friend individually of Dave Chappelle doing Prince) wears John Lennon sunglasses...lest we forget RZA's ridiculous narration ("the motherfuckers had a gatling gun"). The fight scenes aren't bad - sometimes too chaotic and overreliant on the kind of absurd weaponry that seems to be the norm since Rose McGowan's machine gun leg in Planet Terror - but the terrible acting, juvenile script (courtesy RZA, who might not have known any better and Eli Roth, who should have) and overall laziness make it a chore rather than a good time. I'm bummed I wasted my time here instead of at Wreck-It Ralph, Flight or the Cloud Atlas, any of which surely would have been more interesting in some way.

The Sessions (Ben Lewin, 2012)

7.5/10
The Sessions is a good movie that deserves a better marketing ploy - the word "triumphant" is plastered all over posters and trailers and the phrase "the festival success of the year!" only invites irritation. John Hawkes is quickly building a reputation for remarkable consistency and Mark O'Brien is certainly his most challenging and accomplished role to date. A story like The Sessions (a true story, incidentally) seems ripe for Oscar mawkishness and histrionics, but I give a lot of credit to writer/director Ben Lewin for avoiding those pratfalls. The film is surprisingly comedic, which makes up for its rather rote direction. It also deserves credit for impressively detailing all of its minor characters - even those with little screen time feel integral and human. The movie was a little too frenetic at times - with cuts jumping around and narration coming and going, it could have benefitted (and I rarely say this) from a longer running time as it did feel a little rushed and, well, jumpy. Overall though it's a likeable movie with very good performances, an emotional resonance and a surprising amount of laughs.

Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012)

8/10
I had heard some things about Argo playing fast and loose with history, so I went out of my way to avoid reading any of the facts until I saw the movie because, hey, I like a good yarn as much as anyone. And a good yarn Argo does spin - the pacing is tight and the tone is a perfect balance of humour and drama. Affleck, Arkin, Goodman and Cranston were all excellent, and any movie of this era is going to benefit from a more than listenable soundtrack. Really, I didn't have very many complaints. The "runway chase" at the end of the movie felt a little too cinematic (but as I've yet to study the facts, I have no idea if that actually happened or not) and the barely-there thread about Affleck's wife and kid was shoehorned-in, Hollywood schmaltz. The six hostages are little more than ciphers but there was enough going on that you can forgive their lack of character development. Maybe ignorance is bliss and the key to fully enjoying Argo but at the end of the day, sometimes we go to the movies just to be entertained, and I was. Finally a movie worthy of all the premature hype Affleck the Director has been garnering.

Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)

7/10
Holy Motors got quite a bit of buzz at Cannes after, for some reviewers, the "other limousine movie" actually upstaged Cronenberg's hotly-awaited Cosmopolis. Like Cosmopolis, Holy Motors is an assault of style, with most of the action taking place in a limosine prowling through the city (Paris, here). Its passenger is Mr. Oscar, played by Denis Lavant. Mr. Oscar's job seems to involve him taking a number of "assignments" which lead Mr. Oscar disguising himself and completing a multitude of bizarre scenarios - motion-capture, blacklit, dragon-avatared sex, dressing up like a freakish troll character and kidnapping supermodel Kay M (Eva Mendes), playing an old man on his deathbed, making a musical with Kylie Minogue, and picking up his daughter from a party. It's virtually impossible to find rhyme or reason to many of the events, but it remains a pretty fascinating ordeal, though it'll try the patience of many. Lavant in particular is incredible, and if nothing else, you'll want to keep watching the movie just to see how he transforms himself next. I feel like I need to see it at least one more time to start deciphering it though.

Smashed (James Ponsoldt, 2012)

6/10
Smashed is an indie-dramedy about a young alcoholic couple. Kindergarten teacher Kate (played by Mary Elizabeth Winsted) is the focus of the film and her attempts to get and stay sober while her husband remains off the wagon.
There are a lot of easy criticisms about this movie, namely its portrayal of sobriety as something that can be achieved practically overnight with little struggle. When Kate wants to get sober, she goes to a couple of AA meetings, reads a book, and voila, success. Her only transgression is when she gets fired from her job (for covering up the lie about an episode that led to get wanting to sober up in the first place) and immediately after that, she's shown recovered and sober again.
Nick Offerman plays Kate's vice principal and a recovering alcoholic himself. A thread about him falling in love with Kate is played for laughs then dropped abruptly - either something was left on the cutting room floor or it was all an excuse to get some foul-mouthed jokes in. Megan Mullally plays Kate's prinicipal and overacts every line to an absurd degree.
All things considered, I should have liked Smashed less than I did, but I actually did enjoy it. This is likely owing almost entirely to Winsted's performance - far better than the movie deserves, her own likeability somehow rubs off on the film itself. And the fact that it was a free screening didn't hurt either.

The Land of Hope (Sion Sono, 2012)

8.5/10
Barely recognizable as a Sion Sono film, The Land of Hope is a drama about three couples affected by radiation fallout from a local nuclear plant explosion - an elderly couple, their son and his girlfriend, and their neighbors. The elderly couple elect to stay, despite their proximity to the contaminated zone, while the neighbors head for a shelter and to hunt for their adult son's girlfriend's parents, and the son and his pregnant, "radiophobe" girlfriend coming to terms with living with radiation. The movie features numerous moments of tragedy and sadness, although I feel like in his attempt to do something dramatic, Sono turns the volume up a little too high - overbearing "dramatic" music threatens to distract too often and the performances occasionally dip into weepy mawkishness. If this were an American director and an American movie, we'd be tagging it "Oscar bait". All that aside, the movie still works - it's saddening and affecting and a refreshing change from Sono's last couple of inconsistent outings.

Rhino Season (Bahman Ghobadi, 2012)

7/10
Bahman Ghobadi's first (I believe) foray into fiction is a deadly serious, artistic affair, telling the story (based on something that happened to a friend of Ghobadi) of an Iranian poet, Sahel, and his wife who are imprisoned for 30 and 10 years respectively. Sahel is released and attempts to piece his life back together. There's no denying the film's beauty and sadness, despite its excessive dryness, but a late semi-twist feels slightly contrived and artless. The ending is marvellously shot though, and pretty unforgettable.

Life of Pi (Ang Lee, 2012)

8.5/10
I've never read Yann Martel's source novel so I can't draw any comparisons, but as a stand-alone flick, Ang Lee's Life of Pi is quite impressive. Any "stranded" films inevitably fall into a lull at a certain point (although the stakes are upped with the presence of the tiger) - something a writer can work his way around by describing the characters thoughts, emotions, feelings, etc. Those things are much harder for a filmmaker to convey, so Lee goes full-bore with mindblowing visuals, making exemplary use of 3D. It may be something of a cheap shortcut if you're a cynic, but it's impossible to deny its effectiveness. The film is absolutely gorgeous and does, in the end, work on an emotional level. I have a friend who wants to see it when it hits full release and I'm looking very much forward to seeing it again.

Clip (Maja Milos, 2012)

4/10
With the worldwide buzz garnered (for better or for worse) by A Serbian Film, it's not much of a surprise that other Serbian films would try to one-up it, or at least hop on the bandwagon. And why not - billing a film as another "shocker from Serbia" is an easy way for festivals to sell tickets. Maja Milos' Clip dispenses with the blood and gore and focuses on sex and nudity - namely full-frontal, explicit nudity amongst barely-legal teenagers. Given Clip centers on one girl and her three friends (mostly centering on them having sex and doing drugs) and the fact that it's directed by a woman, it's easy to paint this as the female version of Larry Clark's Kids...but that was 15 years ago, when it seemed fresh and dangerous. Now it seems trite and obnoxious, existing purely to shock and failing at everything else.

Insurgence (Group d'Action en Cinema Epopee, 2012)

0/10
A zero for content, and a zero for the fact that Insurgence isn't a movie. Rather, it's a collection of footage shot during the Quebec "Printemps Erable" student riots - no narration, no interviews, no context, just "as if you were there" footage from the left-wing Group d'Action en Cinema Epopee. This is little more than "protest porn" - shot by protestors for protestors who only have to flex the minimum amount of brain cells it takes to cheer at rocks being throw at cops, mocking Nazi salutes, and chanting "fuck la police" or "SSPVM".
Without delving too much into politics, I consider myself something of a moderate on the issue of the strike - while I agree with some of the issues the students raised, I was against the strike and especially against the means used to achieve their end. Quebec has a history of thinking more highly of itself than is warranted, and nowhere has that embarrassing sense of self-entitlement ever been more evident than when watching Insurgence - people wearing Canada Goose down jackets and clutching Louis Vuitton taking pictures of themselves next to riot cops with their iPhones for their new Facebook profile picture, without a clue in the world about what constitutes actual oppression, fascism, and Nazism.
It struck me watching the idiocy before my eyes that a right-wing group could have just as easily put out a documentary ridiculing the protesters - and they would have used the exact same footage found here.

In the House (Francois Ozon, 2012)

8.5/10
I've never seen a Francois Ozon movie until now. Though I hear this one is something of a departure for him (someone called it Ozon doing Woody Allen with a bit of Hitchcock), I enjoyed it immensely. When a young student named Claude turns in a "what did you do this weekend" homework assignment into the first chapter into an infiltration into his friend Rapha's family life (befriending Rapha, gaining entry into the house, making mild sexual allusions about his mother), his bored, failed-writer teacher Germaine becomes obsessed, both with Rapha's story and in coaching him to becoming the writer he never did. The situations become more and more absurd - what we see on-screen is what Claude has written, but is it what actually happened? Occasionally Germaine, annoyed with Claude's occasional forays into "sitcom" melodrama or cheap thrills, makes him re-write what happened, which is also shown on-screen - so which is the true version? Occasionally Germaine himself shows up in Rapha's house commenting on the action unseen by the other characters.
The blending of the real and surreal is what makes this movie so interesting, and the dialogue absolutely crackles. The movie moves at breakneck speed, which is good because as we become voyeurs to the Rapha house (just like Germaine), we end up constantly curious as to where Claude goes next.
The movie's end deals with Claude looking for a way to end his story, and I got the sense that Ozon wasn't sure how to end his either. The end is a bit messy and even more surreal than anything hither-to, and feels a little strained in that regard.

No (Pablo Larraín, 2012)

8/10
Set in Chile in the 1980's, Pablo Larrain's No stars Gael Garcia Bernal as Rene, an ad-man who gets recruited to help win the "no to Pinochet" campaign. Campaign movies seem almost to be a mini-genre unto themselves. No underplays a lot of what would be blown-up or exaggerated in a Hollywood production. In fact, Bernal's character is deceptively sedate. It's a great performance, completely devoid of grandstanding and the better for it.
The tone of No is quite interesting - it could almost be an absurd black comedy, if the situation weren't so real and dire. There's a part where Rene's son is threatened by "yes" supporters, and he takes him to stay at his mother's house, where she's lodging with her current lover - who is wearing a "no" campaign shirt with the rainbow logo created by Rene. As Rene walks away from the house, you know he's either going to burst out laughing or burst into tears, and neither reaction would be inappropriate.
Slim offerings in the way of history lessons here (Larrain assumes the audience should already know why Pinochet is so undesirable and why winning the "no" vote is so important), which is admirable, but I think it disservices the film a bit too. A little more context would have gone a long way. As such the movie doesn't hit as hard as it maybe could have, but it's still well done and memorable.

Hold Back (Rachid Djaidani, 2012)

7/10
This year's FNC has been rife with annoying technical issues - delayed starts, wrong-language subtitles, and outright missing subtitles. Catimini was a Quebecois film that was missing its English subtitles, though it was a breeze to understand since I have a good handle on Quebecois French. Hold Back was missing its English subtitles and, as it is a Parisienne French film focusing on North African and Algerian characters, the dialects were much tougher to decipher. The plot was easy enough: a young North African woman, Sabrina, intends to marry a black Christian, Dorcy, in modern-day Paris, despite the vociferous objections of her traditional, overprotective brother Slimane. The movie tracks Slimane as he hunts down some of his 40 (yes, 40) brothers, gathering information and opinions and trying to find Dorcy to talk him out of the union, by any means necessary.
Much of the film revolves around Slimane and his brothers' conversations, and judging from the reactions of those around me, most of these were quite funny. I wish I could say for certain if this were so. Regardless, I did enjoy the film (despite the occasionally obnoxiously jittery handheld digital camera work) and am regretful I wasn't able to enjoy all of its subtleties.

Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012)

8/10
A surprisingly moving film that started off kind of off-kilter and eventually settled into a rather conventional rhythm despite its unorthodox style - black and white "silent" film with voiceovers. Of all the movies in the world to be reminded of, it made me think of The Notebook. Not in a bad way, just that the plots share undeniable similarities. I liked it more and more as it went on.
And a quick aside - director Miguel Gomes was present and very funny and self-effacing as he apologized for the quality of the print (Blu-Ray instead of film), looking like he hadn't slept in about 10-20 years.

Dead Man's Burden (Jared Moshe, 2012)

4/10
I keep going to these new, indie western movies hoping someone is going to revitalize the genre. Meek's Cutoff came the closest, but others like The Last Christeros and this one fall well short. This is more a family drama set in the west than a real western, but bares none of the spark of, say, The Furies, an example of such a thing being done a million times better. I won't bother detailing the plot much - a woman, her husband, and her long-absent-since-returned brother squabble over the woman's land - because it would probably be as boring to write as it was to watch. Aside from the grave mistake of being boring, Dead Man's Burden fails in a major way: at least two of the main characters don't look like they belong in a western - they look like they've been pulled from Central Casting and given a layer of grime. The woman in particular has brown roots showing through her blonde hair the entire film - I wonder what brand of salon dye they used in the 1800's? The music for the movie is also terrible, barely soap opera caliber obnoxiousness. Maybe next year someone will get it right...

A Month in Thailand (Paul Negoescu, 2012)

6.5/10
Some time ago at the FNC I saw a Romanian film called Tuesday, After Christmas about the dissolution of a relationship due to infidelity. It was tremendous, one of my favorites of the year. Maybe I was hoping this Romanian film about the dissolution of a relationship could be a repeat success, but no such luck. During a New Year's Eve party, and without warning, Radu breaks up with his girlfriend of two years. The rest of the night bounces him around as he mopes from party to party with his friends. At some point he latches onto the idea of reconciling with another ex-girlfriend, Natalia, and spends the rest of the night tracking her down (the "month in Thailand" of the title references a vacation Radu was supposed to take with his girlfriend, which he later proposes to Natalia). The movie has some interesting things to say about relationships, but nothing earth-shattering or brand new. All in all it felt kind of pointless.

The Last Time I Saw Macao (Joao Pedro Rodrigues & Joao Rui Guerra da Mata, 2012)

8/10
Written, directed, and "starring" (we never see their faces) João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, The Last Time I Saw Macao is loosely about a man, Joao, called back to his hometown of Macao to save his transvestite friend Candy from the evil forces she's gotten herself mixed up with. Candy is killed, and Joao tries to crack the murder - loosely. This is really a travelogue (think heavily of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil) or essay film with a flimsy investigation/thriller subtext. Personally, I found it the investigation charade pretty unnecessary. The voiceover narrations and still-camera shots of Macao were interesting enough. Some could call the film monotonous, I found it hypnotic.

Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas, 2012)

6.5/10
Coming off the 5-hour Che, Olivier Assayas' new film at first blush seems to be plunged right back into the world of revolutionary politics - this time in 1970's France. Indeed, it's heavy-handed on the politics to a fault, especially once the focus moves away from that and onto the young student Gilles. Gilles, initially passionate about student rights and anti-corruption (his activities range from printing up incendiary pamphlets to hurling Molotov cocktails), slowly finds himself pulled in several directions. He bounces between two girls - one even more fiercely activist than he, another the complete muted opposite - in addition to pursuing his drawing and painting. Gilles becomes increasingly disenfranchised - by the politics within the ranks of his own allies, by his inability to reconcile his political beliefs with his need for a job in the "system" to further his art career, by the two girls in his life. The film takes a long, roundabout way to get to where it's going, and it's not always enjoyable watching it do so. By the end it becomes evident that Gilles is at least in some way an avatar for Assayas himself, and the film feels perhaps too personal or introverted to fully connect.

The Legend of Kaspar Hauser (Davide Manuli, 2012)

7/10
The legend of Kaspar Hauser is a well-known one, thanks in large part to Werner Herzog's interpretation of the story in the 70's. Davide Manuli's film takes a few liberties with the subject matter - Kaspar Hauser is a woman, who washes up on the shore of a near-deserted Italian island, replete with Adidas tracksuits and headphones. The Sheriff (Vincent Gallo) takes her in and rehabilitates her, teaching her how to DJ amongst other things. The Duchess, meanwhile, doesn't believe Kaspar is the real returning king, and dispatches the Sheriff's brother, the Pusher (Vincent Gallo again) to take care of things.
This little summary makes it seem like the movie has much more of a plot than it actually does. Filmed in black and white with a great house (hause?) soundtrack, it's completely ridiculous but plays things straight-faced, much in the vein of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Gallo hams it up and seems to be having a good time, and the movie is funny and absurd enough to hold interest if you have the patience for this sort of obvious goofing off (at one point a boom mic drops plainly into frame). If the trailer on Youtube makes you laugh, you might enjoy it too.

Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012)

8.5/10
Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light has been on my to-watch list forever, and now it's been bumped up several spots after seeing his new one, Post Tenebras Lux. It's taking something of a critical and commercial beating and, indeed, it's not really for everyone. It has its share of moments that are flat-out baffling and push the bounds of ridiculousness. It also has moments of extreme beauty and as a whole can't really be compared to anything I've ever seen before except in inspired in me the same feelings I've had watching Aipitchatpong Weerasethakul's "magic realism". I'm still debating just how much I liked it but either way, it'll be with me for a long time.

The Chemical Brothers: Don't Think (Adam Smith, 2012)

9/10
I never really considered myself a big Chemical Brothers fan - I have the Surrender and Dig Your Own Hole albums on my iPod, but mostly just listen to the singles on them every now and again. When the hype blurb declared this, a concert filmed in front of 50,000 spectators in Japan, to be the first concert film of significance since Stop Making Sense, Gimme Shelter and The Last Waltz, I had to check it out. The claim might be a bit heavy-handed but this is still an absolutely sensational experience, with both music and visuals on a mindbogglingly incredible level. If you get a chance to see this somewhere with the music turned way up, don't pass it up. It is remarkable.

Catimini (Nathalie Saint-Pierre, 2012)

7.5/10
A Quebec film following the lives of four young girls as they bounce around from one foster home to another, some occasionally landing in behavioural correction institutions. With the girls aged 6, 12, 15 and 18, and each story taking place during a specific season, it's easy to read the narrative as a cohesive whole - these four fictional girls easily could be one girl unto herself. The movie is critical of the foster care system, detailing how these kids are taken in only to be spit out again unchanged (or worse), over and over. However, it doesn't get its criticism across by pounding its fist on the table - it's subtle, and all the better for it. Only a charge of pedophilia levelled at one of the male caregivers late in the film rings of shrill and unnecessary melodrama. That and the fact that the few males that do appear in the movie are all scum - I counted 4 males: one a possible pedophile, two were rapists, and one tried to lure a 12 year old girl into his car - lost it some points from me.

Antiviral (Brandon Cronenberg, 2012)

5/10
Antiviral is the debut feature from Brandon Cronenberg, son of David. What's surprising is how similar its themes are to the work of his father - specifically body horror, bizarre fetishes, and celebrity obsession.
Its plot centres around Syd, the employee of a clinic in the unspecified future that sells viruses and diseases from celebrities to their obsessed fans. Syd also deals samples of these diseases to the black market, smuggling them out of the clinic in his own body and cracking their encryption in his home. When mega-celebrity Hannah Geist is revealed to be ill, Syd naturally co-opts her blood, realizing only later that someone has poisoned her, and now he's dying from the same mysterious ailment she is, and has to find some way to stop it - or at least deal with it.
Antiviral is on shakey ground from the start - at no point does it attempt to explain why people would want to infect themselves with celebrity diseases. We're just to assume that, In the Future, this is what we do. On the other hand, Cronenberg spends a lot of time explaining and developping seemingly insignificant or unnecessary plot points, which feel introduced only to overcomplicate things (the encryption, namely). The movie jerks about rather than ever settling into a comfortable flow, even if it always looks immaculate when doing so (this non-specific Future is the same one where everything is brightly white and well-lit, Stepford style).
I should also call attention to Caleb Landry Jones' performance in the lead role. If ever any performance on the planet needed reeling in - it was this one. I don't blame Jones - he does a great job. But Cronenberg is clearly pushing for too much. Jones spends almost every single frame heaving and sobbing and straining and vomiting and contorting. When the volume is at 11 the entire time, it's tough for anything at all to register.

Ana (Ouananiche, 2012)

3/10
Or, when short films preceding a feature fails. Before I talk about the movie, can I talk about film festivals? OK. The screening begins at 9. But it never really begins at 9, because everyone's gotta shuffle in. So maybe 9:10. But of course, the movies need to be introduced, by two separate people. So maybe at 9:20 the short film that, let's face it, nobody really paid to see, begins. I will admit to being prejudiced against short films - rarely do I find them entertaining or memorable. I've seen countless at festivals over the years, and only a handful have ever really stuck with me. And, to be fair, Ana is not a terrible movie. Actually it isn't even a movie, it's a "live remixing" by Quebec artist Ouananiche of a movie called Amer. What this means is that frames are looped and manipulated and beats are derived from the sounds on-screen. This is interesting to watch for a bit on Youtube at home when you're killing time. But to sit through it for half an hour while you're waiting for the movie you paid money to see to start so you can hopefully get home at a semi-reasonable hour, how can it stand a chance? It doesn't help that so many of these beats develop exactly the same way and reach exactly the same conclusion, coming in repetitive 3-4 minute chunks rather than a nicely composed 30-minute piece. Short films preceding feature films is a tricky endeavour - a bad experience could sour the viewer on whatever else is to come, which may be what happened to me for...

I Hate But Love (Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1962)

8/10
The more I dig in, the more the Nikkatsu studios are starting to seem like an endless treasure trove of wildness in Japanese film. I didn't know much about this one going in, but it's startlingly vibrant (especially juxtaposed with what preceded it - see above). The crooked-teeth Nikkatsu star Yujiro Ishihara plays a TV star with a non-stop schedule, kept strictly by his manager and semi-girlfriend (the couple have a no sex pact), the crooked-teeth Ruriko Asaoka. Increasingly dissatisfied with his celebrity life and questioning the meaning of love, Ishihara meets a woman who needs a driver to bring her cross-country lover his Jeep for the hospital he works at. Ishihara, blown away by the concept of long-distance love and searching to do something selfless and "humanitary", forsakes his contracts and TV appearances to drive the Jeep. His manager tracks him across the country, as do reporters and the general public, with opinion swaying from national deserter to folk hero. The movie calms down in the second half when it becomes more of a road movie, and also gets surprisingly dark at times. But it's always interesting, frequently funny, and pretty far out there.

Jiraiya the Ninja (Shozo Makino, 1921)

8/10
Or, when short films preceding a feature works. Jiraiya the Ninja is a 21-minute fragment of a 1921 Japanese film about the legendary, mystical samurai Jiraiya who can transform himself into a frog. Of course, the special effects are very rudimentary, but still really cool. The movie is hard to follow - despite being a silent film, there are only a handful of intertitles, and the on-screen conversations don't make things obvious. I don't know what was lost from the rest of the film, but maybe it would have made for easier understanding. Either way, a really cool history lesson and a fun watch. The live accompaniment of percussion and chimes was a nice touch.

Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938)

6.5/10
Gangster film from the 30's featuring James Cagney is his first real star turn (he is quite good) and an underused Humphrey Bogart. It deals with a common trope in the gangster movie era, that of the two childhood friends whose lives go in completely opposite directions (Cagney of course becomes a crime world king while his pal becomes a priest). Caught in the middle are the Dead-End Gang, a group of kids increasingly turning away from wholesome endeavours like basketball at the rec centre to follow in the footsteps of gangster idols. Personally I found it lacked action and the good/evil struggle felt played out, but it made up points with its remarkable, unexpected ending that leaves you wondering about Cagney's character's true nature.

Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009)

8/10
Finally got around to this one from Refn...it was good, exceptionally stylish (becoming a trend it seems) and very reminiscent of Herzog's Aguirre so of course I liked it. Mads Mikkelsen was also pretty great in a non-speaking role and I'm looking forward to seeing him in The Hunt where he won Best Actor at Cannes. The cinematography is beautiful, making me kind of wish I watched it on Blu-Ray instead of Netflix and the sound design is sharp too.