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.