Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013)

5/10
This was a movie I wanted to like a lot more than I actually did, or maybe one that I thought I would like more than I did. Shot in documentary style with a black-and-white camera and taking place over a weekend of a computer chess tournament at a hotel in the early 80's, it has an appealing retro feel. The story drifts around, spending time with participants in the tournament and other funny/bizarre going-ons at the hotel, but never commits to anything conceptually. It's billed as something of a comedy, but it wasn't particularly funny. A few strands are interesting or humorous, but nothing to write home about. This was a movie that did very well at the Sundance festival earlier this year, and my reaction to it is the same as my reaction to a lot of Sundance-approved films...it's nice and quirky enough for Mom & Pop to think it's different and exotic, but safe enough to risk offending no one. I personally thought it could have done and been a lot more.

As I Lay Dying (James Franco, 2013)

7.5/10
This is James Franco's second directorial effort after his 2011 student film The Broken Tower, and is an adaptation of William Faulkner's novel of the same name. The novel is noteworthy for its stream-of-consciousness style and its unconventional storytelling methods (15 different points of view recount the story). Franco makes some stabs at attempting to recreate those techniques on-screen, such as relying heavily on a split-screen approach and having characters give monologues directly into the camera. I found that generally these techniques worked and weren't distracting, though I could see how one might call them self-conscious and gimmicky. The movie is good, well-acted by all and extremely faithful to the book, and I don't think it would be inaccurate to suggest a lot of the movie's success is derived from Faulkner's words. It's no great shakes but it's a competent, enjoyable adaptation and I look forward to Franco's next book-to-screen translation, Cormac McCarthy's Child of God.

American Hustle (David O. Russell, 2013)

4/10
Being annoyed by a David O. Russell film is becoming something of a masochistic year-end tradition, but I've never been bored by one, until now. American Hustle spreads roughly thirty minutes of entertainment over a painful near-2.5 hours, taking forever to reach a conclusion that's mildly interesting instead of being jaw-droppingly clever. It's representative of the movie as a whole, however - this is a movie that should be so vibrant the screen it plays on should be shaking. The characters should be more interesting, the jokes should be funnier, the soundtrack should dazzle, the con in the plot should thrill...none of these things happen. This feels like Russell doing his best Tarantino impression and failing miserably. What results is indeed a mildly interesting, occasionally entertaining, mostly boring, sloppily-scripted mess.
As far as the much-hyped cast goes, it's hit and miss. Christian Bale and Amy Adams fare best, which is good because they're the center of the movie. Bradley Cooper is all over the place, trying anything in vain to make his character into something. Jeremy Renner either sleepwalks through his role or simply isn't capable of bringing anything more. But Jennifer Lawrence is the true travesty, stuck with an awful, obnoxious character and resorting to painful histrionics to try and make it work. She deserved better, instead of having to lower herself to the gimmickry seen here.
For a movie that lasts as long as this one does, and with so much screen talent, to be only somewhat entertaining in spurts, is simply not good enough.

Moebius (Kim Ki-duk, 2013)

6.5/10
I've never seen a Kim Ki-duk movie, but as I understand it he's South Korea's master provocateur. His early films like The Isle and Bad Guy drew heavy criticism for their perceived misogyny and squirm-inducing violence, often perpetrated on women. It seems he had quieted down in recent years but roared back this year with Moebius, which was banned in South Korea almost immediately (a decision since overturned).
It starts off with quite a bang - a woman discovers her husband's cheating ways. Entering his bedroom with a knife she attempts to castrate him. He fends her off and she, still seething with rage, enters their son's bedroom, castrates him instead and devours the member. The film them follows the son's attempt to have "normal" relationships (proving disastrous for others) and the father's survivor guilt (which manifests itself in curious ways). And the mother's inevitable return.
It is a strange movie, not just for the plot but also for the fact that the 90-minute movie is completely dialogue free. Not a silent movie, just no one talks. There is the obvious reading into silence in the context of abuse, or of abuse victims (and observers), and it's easy to see this as a condemning of South Korean society at large. The title also seems to be a clear reference, not just to the mirrored beginning and ending of the movie (without spoiling anything) but also the cyclical nature of abuse that is without beginning or end.
The movie has a little more to say (no pun intended) about sexual politics, guilt, and abuse than I detailed here, though it's not a grand statement and it's hard to believe Ki-duk isn't mostly just intentionally living up to his provocateur status with the shocking imagery in the movie. The film is even blackly comic at times - a scene involving a (different) castrated member winding up in the middle of a busy street and its owner looking on helplessly weirdly recalls Mrs. Doubtfire doing the same when Robin Williams knocks his mask off a window ledge.
I wouldn't call Moebius a particularly brilliant movie, and it's technically pretty unpolished, but at the very least it's certainly an original and interesting experience

This is the End (Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen, 2013)

8.5/10
The strength of This is the End, of course, depends on how much the idea of spending 2 hours with exaggerated versions of the actors involved appeals to you. If you didn't like these guys before, you certainly won't be any more endeared to them after watching this movie.
Despite the potential for being a massively self-indulgent vanity project goof-off for all involved (ala Ocean's Twelve), Rogen & co. never lose sight of the big idea: be funny. I laughed a lot during this movie, more than I expected to. And while it stops short of any big ideas or coalescing into a major statement about anything, I found that, like Pineapple Express, it has a lot of real and true (and funny) things to say about the dynamics of male friendships, and they crop up in surprisingly poignant ways. The plot meanders a little and the apocalypse, while impressively mounted, doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense (why does Jonah Hill get possessed again?) but the comedy comes fast enough that the small details are easily overlooked.
For me, James Franco and Jonah Hill stole the show, but I also have to give special mention to Jay Baruchel, who I've never really liked in anything before but was excellent here as the straight man.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, 2013)

8/10
One of the rare instances where I think the sequel topped the original (which was also very good)...unfortunately this is Hollywood and we're treated to a two-part finale that's become all the rage when there's money to be made (Harry Potter, Twilight, etc) and hopefully the next two films do the rest of the series justice. When I read the book I was a little let down by the fact that Katniss and Peeta had to re-enter the Games, effectively repeating the main stage from the first movie but I felt like it was better handled here, or maybe it bothered me less because I knew it was coming.
In any case, Catching Fire does a really good job of pretty much everything - the special effects are good, the action is solid (a little less of if this time around, though), it resonates emotionally and everything feels very authentic. It's hard not to feel like most of this is because virtually 100% of the movie passes through Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss, and Lawrence is tremendous in the role, walking a thin line between strength and vulnerability. I feel like the film adaptations would not be nearly as enjoyable without her, and I look forward to seeing what she does with some of the heavier material that makes up the final book.

3 Women (Robert Altman, 1977)

7/10
I'm currently reading Kier-La Janisse's "autobiographical topography of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films" House of Psychotic Women, which is so far excellent, and Robert Altman's 3 Women was discussed in an early chapter. I bought the Criterion Blu-Ray a while ago and never watched it, so I made time for it. It's certainly a bizarre, enchanting film. Whether it was Altman's decision or not, lots of credit to whoever decided to put Sissy Spacek and Shelly Duvall in a movie together, two of the most unique female faces ever to make it in Hollywood for sure. I enjoyed the movie, even if it didn't make a whole lot of sense or say very much. I liked the central relationship between Duvall and Spacek's characters. There was a good deal of black humor throughout and I had a hard time deciding which girl I felt sorrier for. The back of the DVD case notes that the two live in an "underpopulated" California town and that's the perfect word for it. The desolate, barely-alive town becomes a character almost in and of itself.

The Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard, 2012)

8/10
I thought it was pretty fun, and very clever. In fact I thought they could have done even more with the genre pastiches and parodies, and it veered off too soon into becoming an "actual" movie (i.e. when the cabin-goers find the lab technicians perpetrating all this violence on them).
I feel like the movie was really close to saying something interesting and insightful about the cabin-goers "becoming" their character stereotypes but it let that thread drop pretty quickly, which was disappointing. But overall it was a lot of fun to see so many well-worn horror tropes being sent-up like this.

12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

8.5/10
When the credits rolled, I found myself thinking that this is was more a great story than a great movie...even though it was a great movie. Does that make any sense? What I mean is that it didn't fall into many of the trappings of conventional cinema, and instead just focused purely on storytelling, and did that job extremely well - which made it a great movie too. But I have to say I was expecting a little more, given the effusive, borderline ecstatic praise the movie has been met with. I wasn't moved to tears and didn't have my belief system shaken to its core or anything that I associate with a really monumental film, as much as I enjoyed it. Maybe it's unfair to press those expectations on a movie just because of the hype it's gotten, but it's inevitable.
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender were as good as advertised, as was everyone else (I was surprised watching the movie at how many "name" actors showed up). The music was actually an unexpected pleasure, a little unconventional but it worked really well.
The movie did give me a lot to think about, however. I mean, we tend to see slavery as a cut-and-dry "white owners, black slaves" situation, especially since that's its conventional portrayal in pop culture (and that was the predominant "arrangement", of course), but the movie did open my eyes more to the complexities of slavery - the different "levels" of freedom, ownership, and so on. And not only how blacks perceive whites and vice versa, but how blacks perceive blacks, which was interesting and important and not something I've ever really considered before.
Overall it's a very impressive work by Steve McQueen, light years ahead of the dreck that was Shame but still just a notch below Hunger in my book.

Lawless (John Hillcoat, 2012)

6.5/10
This movie really nails the atmosphere of 1930's gothic America, not that I was there to experience it or anything, helped along by its really great soundtrack (re-working the Velvets' "White Light/White Heat" as a bluegrass-y number was a very inspired choice). Actually the setting and the soundtrack probably made this a better experience then it had right to be. The script can best be called 'perfunctory' - it's pretty rote stuff with no real surprises along the way, and a few bizarre decisions. Gary Oldman's gangster Floyd Banner sits uncomfortably against the rest of the movie, not on the outside but not integrated well enough either. As far as casting, Jessica Chastain also seems a little out of place. I got the feeling she was playing a part originally intended for Christina Hendricks or somebody. Chastain always brings it as an actress, but I didn't feel she was right for this part. Guy Pearce is very good and very unlikeable as the sniveling deputy.
Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf and Jason Clarke play the three bootlegging brothers, and they all do well enough, although the script trying to occasionally paint Hardy's character as a kind of philosopher-tough-guy was worth a few groans.
Given the players involved, it's reasonable to have expected more from Lawless. It's decent entertainment for 2 hours but outside of its soundtrack, it's nothing particularly memorable either. I also wish they had stuck with the original title and the title of the source material (The Wettest County in the World) instead of slapping a vague, meaningless title like "Lawless" on it.

The Counselor (Ridley Scott, 2013)

7.5/10
There are movies I was born to like, and despite being a critical and commercial flop, The Counselor was one of them. Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author, and he wrote the screenplay, and it stars three of my current favorite actors: Fassbender, Pitt and Bardem. Plus Penelope Cruz. I don't care too much for Ridley Scott or Cameron Diaz, but as long as they didn't interfere too much, I didn't foresee myself not liking it, and I was right about that much.
Actually I'm surprised the movie did so poorly critically, as I found it reminded me a great deal of No Country for Old Men. Okay maybe it wasn't as artistic, but Ridley Scott ain't the Coens either. But it mined a lot of the same territory. You have an everyman (at opposite ends of the wealth spectrum, mind you) involving himself in a drug deal, being way out of his depth, coming up against an unstoppable force. Fassbender's Counselor is a comparable to No Country's Llewelyn, Pitt's Westray is Carson Wells (they might as well have used the same wardrobe), and Diaz's Malkina is Anton Chigurh. Unlike NCFOM, there is no Sherriff Bell as outside respite, this time we're mired in the muck with the creatures themselves.
Thematically the two movies evoke similar questions - questions of mortality, of the decisions we've made, and as kihei perfectly put it, "that we sometimes believe there are still choices to be made long after the opportunity for choosing has passed". No big answers are given except the brutal, expected ones but the conversations that raise these themes (Pitt vs. Fassbender twice, Fassbender vs. the drug lord, Diaz vs. Cruz) are the meat of the movie and the things I could watch endlessly.
My friend who saw the movie with me (and who was the only other person besides myself in the theatre) complained that the movie didn't make clear things like Westray's involvement in the drug deal, or exactly how the deal went bad (the gizmo attached to the truck, etc). My position was that these things don't matter. It doesn't matter how Westray is involved, just that he is. Similarly, in No Country, it didn't matter what happened to Llewelyn, just that it did.
Maybe it's that frustration at not having the basics explained that led to such a poor critical showing? The characters themselves don't have much depth, but their situations and their themes do, to me. And while it wasn't a brilliant movie, I still thought it was very interesting and had enough going for it to warrant a better reception than what it's getting.
Also I'm still stumped regarding McCarthy's position on women - whether he hates them, worships them, is terrified of them, or some combination of all three. Regardless, Diaz's Malkina was a really different, interesting character, and some of the best work Diaz has done in ages.

Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallee, 2013)

7.5/10
Long-hyped on the basis of Matthew McConaughey's radical physical transformation for the role of Ron Woodroof, an AIDS victim who starts his own "buyers club" to get non-licensed and unapproved medicine to others dying of AIDS. At the very least, it delivers on that promise - McConaughey is excellent, and so gaunt as to be frequently unrecognizable. Jared Leto co-stars and is also just as good. Jennifer Garner is in the mix as well but seems out of her depth (trying on a Texan accent exactly once) - even her character feels like an odd fit in the film itself.
I found the movie struggled a lot with its rhythm. It seemed to have a hard time figuring out when to poke fun at the absurdity of the whole situation and when to treat it as serious as it was. As such, the movie never really hits the emotional heights it seems destined for and the tragedy and comedy rub against each other awkwardly rather than meshing as a cohesive feeling.
The pace is also frequently messy, jumping to include as much of Woodroof's (admittedly fascinating) story as possible.
I criticised it a lot but really Dallas Buyers Club is not a bad movie by any means - it's interesting, entertaining, and very well-acted. But it's hard not to feel like there's an even better movie somewhere in here, something that would rise above a merely entertaining showcase for its two talented lead actors.

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2013)

7.5/10
Corneliu Porumboiu is a fascinating filmmaker, but this may be his most impenetrable work yet. Actually it feels less like a movie and more like a series of shorts or experiments that evolved into a full-length movie. However, like in his two previous movies, his dialogue casts a spell, which is good because much of the movie consists of the seemingly mundane conversations between a director and his star actress/lover. There is a lot going on here - a director finding himself in his movie, a director with comparatively little direction, a director cramped by the limitations of his format...but "movie within a movie" talk outside, I felt like Porumboiu had interesting things to say about life itself - like Sangsoo, the repetition of life, and especially how he broke every day actions down further and further (in repeatedly rehearsing a nude scene with his actress) into the very essence of daily mundanity. I was reminded of two quotes - one I'd seen recently in a movie about how you can draw a line from point A to B, then divide that in half and draw a line to the halfway point, and divide that in half and draw another line, and so on until you go insane...and Jim Morrison's quote about the highs and lows of life and anything else being just "in between" - the in between being Porumboiu's prime concern.
I also think this was, like Police Adjective, an incredibly dark comedy...maybe the slowest-moving, least obvious comedy ever, but one nonetheless.

Devil's Knot (Atom Egoyan, 2013)

5.5/10
Devil's Knot is the book that opened my eyes to the West Memphis Three case, and it's not surprising it was eventually turned into a feature film, especially with the recent release of the WM3 stirring up new interest in the case. However, in the intervening years, we've had 4 documentaries on the crimes, so is a big budget reenactment really necessary? This movie doesn't do much to dissuade me from the opinion that it wasn't. Director Atom Egoyan is mostly wasting his talents here, and visibly struggles with the overwhelming material about the case, using multiple devices (voiceovers, subtitles, flashbacks, dream sequences, etc) to cram in as much pertinent info as he can. The result is pretty messy. The courtroom scenes are well-handled and by far the movie's strength, but they sit awkwardly against anything taking place on the outside - witness a particularly cringe-inducing scene in an elementary school, for example.
Egoyan also appears to have had no idea how to end the movie, stopping it abruptly and using text to fill in the "here's what happened since" blanks.
The WM3 story is a fascinating one, but either it doesn't translate to feature film format or Egoyan wasn't the right choice to make the attempt.

Our Sunhi (Hong Sang-soo, 2013)

8.5/10
My first encounter with another renowned director, Hong Sangsoo, went a lot better. I see a lot of Sangsoo fans mentioning this is a "slight" work by his standards, and it does have a light and breezy feel to it, but I thought that was one of its best attributes. It feels a lot like a Woody Allen movie with a clever, self-referencing script that was wry and delicate and funny and touching. It's essentially composed of a series of conversations, often in long and naturalistic takes, between Sunhi, her ex-boyfriend, their mutual friend, and her professor. I can't place my finger on it but I thought the movie also said something profound about the repetitiveness of humanity, our speech and our relationships. Overall it was a very pleasant surprise.

A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke, 2013)

6.5/10
I've heard this is quite different from the rest of Jia Zhangke's work and maybe it was a bad place for me to start because I was expecting quite a bit more. A series of vaguely related stories that eventually come together in a loose way by the end, all concerning money and violence, and most ending rather tragically. My interest slipped as the film went on - the first few characters we met were interesting but by the end I was sort of sitting there thinking, "is this all there is?". I didn't dislike it but I can't say I was too blown away either.

The Dance of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 2013)

7/10
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s filmmaking career has been erratic at best. This is the first movie he’s done since 1990’s much-hated The Rainbow Thief. Money has always been Jodorowksy’s enemy and The Dance of Reality is definitely made on a budget. It’s something of an autobiographical movie, but a strange one – it focuses on Jodorowsky’s pre-teen youth and especially his relationship with his parents, Jaime and Sara. Jaime, Alejandro’s father, is played by Brontis Jodorowsky – Alejandro’s son. Alejandro himself frequently appears in the movie as well, usually speaking directly to the camera but occasionally interacting with his younger on-screen self. Many of the scenes are, of course, surreal, and it’s impossible to tell what might have happened from what didn’t (the “dance” of the title of Jodorowsky combining the real and the imagined of his real life, his memories, his fantasies, etc.) but it’s also arguably the most straight-forward and honest work I’ve ever seen from him. It goes on for a little too long and gets a bit off track at times but overall it’s a clever, heartfelt, and interesting depiction of a true original.
Worth noting is that the screening was preceded by a short video introduction from Jodorowsky – stark naked, “as cinema should be”. Naturally

Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, 2013)

8.5/10
The last act really turned this movie from a good movie to a must-see…sort of reminiscent of what Zero Dark Thirty did last year, although I still liked that movie more on the whole. Captain Phillips is very good though, impressively maintaining its tension as it moves through a variety of set pieces and scenes. Hanks doesn’t really get to take off as an actor until the movie is almost over, but he does more in that brief time than most other actors do in two hours. I was also surprised to learn the Somalians were non-actors, as they were uniformly excellent. Worthy of the hype, for sure.

Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi & Kambuzia Partovi, 2013)

6/10
I kind of felt wrong going to this one without seeing Jafar Panahi’s previous work, This is Not a Film, made under house arrest and after explicit orders from the Iranian government to stop making movies. But I gave it a shot, and I have to confess that the low score is owing to the fact that I just didn’t get it. It starts out simple enough, with a writer and his dog hiding out in a house and settling in to get some work done. A woman shows up, also on the run from authorities, and resists the writer’s attempts to get her to leave. The film gets stranger when Panahi himself shows up and the film focuses on him living in the house and occasionally interacting with the writer and the woman and other characters who come into the house. My best guess is that this is some sort of paean to the creative process (didn’t I already say that in another review?) mixed with Panahi’s current life and his coming to terms with his current life…but I’m not really sure. I was mostly stumped.

Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)

9/10
This was pretty much what I thought it would be, after hearing the hype for so long, but it still knocked me over, owing in large part to the two performances by the lead actresses – they are phenomenal. The movie may be “about” Adele but what I really loved and felt was a universal sentiment was how far the relationships we form in those formative teenage years are carried with us and help to shape us for the rest of our lives. It’s something I’ve always felt was true and, though I’ve seen a lot of ‘coming of age’ stories, I’ve rarely seen one that encapsulated that feeling as well as Blue did.
As far as the sex scenes, my initial reaction is to say ‘get over it’ on the grounds that it’s ridiculous in 2013 we’re all still so afraid of sex…but I would also argue that in Blue they’re essential and not at all gratuitous. The lust and sex between Emma and Adele was so endemic to their relationship that we would never have gotten the passion we do from those scenes if they were censored or if they were hidden under conveniently-positioned sheets. I feel like anyone objecting to them either forgets what it was like to be a lust-filled, hormone-ridden teenager (sad) or was never one to begin with (sadder).

Gabrielle (Louise Archambault, 2013)

7.5/10
Canada’s entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar…strangely I was expecting worse, but I was also hoping for better. When I heard about the subject matter (a relationship between intellectually-challenged adults and their looming choral performance) I prepared myself for Oscar-y mawkishness. But it’s actually a very heartfelt, fun, and emotionally honest film. It treats its subjects with respect and doesn’t feel exploitative in any sense. But on the other hand I was waiting for a heavy moment or an emotional release that never really came – it just floated by, making me smile but not doing a whole lot else. The movie raised an interesting dilemma when one of the protagonists’ own mother opposes the couple’s relationship on the grounds that they’re “not like regular people”, but this thread is abandoned with no real exploration. I feel like some of the heavier issues were pushed aside to hurry to the feel-good ending. So I had fun, but I wanted more.

All the Wrong Reasons (Gia Milani, 2013)

5/10
Cory Monteith gives his last performance in this movie about four people – a career-obsessed man and his traumatized wife, a single mother barely getting by and a man trying to get his job back after losing his hand in an accident. Their stories interweave, much of the life lessons doled out here involving infidelity, but no insights greater than what one would glean from a soap opera. In fact most of the acting is pretty melodramatic and the script is passable at best – it takes some logic-defying leaps that had me rolling my eyes quite a bit.

Fata Morgana (Peter Schreiner, 2013)

8/10
Not to be confused with the Werner Herzog movie of the same name, although they both take place in the desert in an ambiguous sort of way. Another one where I went in blind, reading only from the description that it was long and slow and in black and white and all that other boring stuff that interests me. It was pretty abstract. I was actually reminded of To the Wonder, but it didn’t irritate me nearly as much as that one did, although it is privy to the same sort of clunky, pseudo-philosophical lines. I really liked the photography, though, and what I got from the movie was a sort of musing on growing old and death and letting go…but I could be way off.

A Field in England (Ben Wheatley, 2013)

8/10
Ben Wheatley is a filmmaker I’ve been missing the boat on, all his previously hyped up features just out of my grasp. I made a point to catch A Field in England and it was very good indeed. As strange as promised, with beautiful digital black and white photography, and a crazy, psychedelic climax that pushes the film from good to really good. I’ll have to check the other ones out stat.

Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (Alexei Fedorchenko, 2012)

7.5/10
I haven’t seen much of Aleksei Fedorchenko’s work, just a short from a triptych I saw last year, so I didn’t know what to expect from this one. It has a curious format – a compilation of some twentyish short stories about girls of the Mari community in Russia, all with names beginning with the letter ‘O’. Almost all the stories deal in some way with the girls becoming women and the rites of passage associated with that – puberty, menstruation, first loves and crushes, and so on. The segments range from the bizarre to the light-hearted to the touching. Nothing mindblowing but fun and interesting to watch.

The Last of the Unjust (Claude Lanzmann, 2013)

7.5/10
In 1985 Claude Lanzmann released Shoah, a 9-hour documentary on the Holocaust. While researching the documentary he met Benjamin Murmelstein, the only surviving Elder of the Jews from the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He filmed a week's worth of conversations with Murmelstein, but wrestled with what to do with the footage until recently, when he edited it into the Last of the Unjust (a term Murmelstein uses to refer to himself).
So, effectively, this is a 3 hour conversation between Lanzmann and Murmelstein in 1975, with occasional excerpts of Lanzmann in present-day visiting some of the sites mentioned. I won't summarize Murmelstein's life here but it's certainly an interesting film and Murmelstein is a very complex individual with a fascinating story to tell. He comes across as incredibly intelligent, self-aware and wry. I wouldn’t dare pass judgement on him.

Interior. Leather Bar. (James Franco & Travis Mathews, 2013)

7/10
Al Pacino starred in a movie in 1980 called Cruising, about a cop going under cover in New York's gay and S&M scene. Roughly 40 minutes had to be cut out of the movie for it to get the MPAA's approval, and those 40 minutes have purportedly been lost forever. James Franco and Travis Mathews set out to "reimagine" what that footage would have been. Interior. Leather Bar. is not that footage, however, but a documentary about filming that footage - so most of it centers on the casting process and how the participants (straight and gay alike) feel about essentially shooting gay S&M porn, focusing in particular on the straight actor playing Al Pacino's part, Val Lauren.
The question raised almost immediately is if this is an authentic documentary or not - everything seems a little too perfect, with Lauren's vague homophobia being the perfect foil for Franco to come in, deliver some "we are the world" speech, and see the light. It's also incredibly self-reflective - in one scene we see Lauren, sitting alone in a parking lot against a brick wall, reading aloud from the script for "Interior. Leather Bar." which describes how the Pacino character is reading the script alone in a parking lot against a brick wall. At another point we hear a voice "directing" a conversation between actors that initially appeared to be just a casual conversation.
What blunts the film is its hour-long running time. Rumor has it Franco's schedule only allowed 2 days for shooting, so this is what we get, rather than a complete film. There are interesting questions posed and the film is shot in a nifty way, but it's hard not to feel like it's only half-baked.

Story of My Death (Albert Serra, 2013)

4/10
Albert Serra's first two movies, Honor de Cavaleria and Birdsong, are among my favorites, retelling the journeys of Don Quixote and the 3 Wise Men respectively. Story of My Death features two more historical characters, Casanova and Dracula. Like his previous two, Story of My Death is very slow and very long (about 3 hours). Unlike his other two, it features a lot of dialogue - this is a hideous miss on Serra's part. Casanova takes up the first 2 hours of the movie, and it's a slog - annoyingly reciting Serra's lousy speeches on women, religion, history, as well as eating food forever, laughing like an idiot, having sex like an idiot, and taking a straining dump. He's a terrible character and the movie is only slightly saved by the appearance of Dracula and the threat of something - anything - happening. If you lopped off the first hour entirely, you might convince me that this is a good movie. As it is, it's borderline unwatchable.
The one "new" thing Serra did get right was the music - there are about 4 music cues in the movie (as opposed to none in the other 2, by my memory) and they're all exquisite. But as far as branching out into dialogue and conversations - keep em mute if this is the best you can do.

Heli (Amat Escalante, 2013)

7/10
Mexico's entry for Best Foreign Language Film focuses on a teenager named Heli, his wife, their baby, his sister and his father, all of whom live together in relative poverty. Heli's sister's boyfriend steals drugs from the Mexican government, planning to buy their way out of town. Heli gets caught up in it and the government immediately catches on and generally makes their life miserable.
It's a well-made movie, also tough and contains some pretty disturbing and graphic scenes...it serves as a hell of an indictment of the Mexican government but I didn't think it imparted much about its characters and how they responded to their experiences in the film. It felt a little inert in that sense, and it's a movie I don't think will resonate with me for very long. Strangely, it won the "Louve d'Or" as the best film in the festival's main competition, so I guess not everyone shares my opinion on its staying power.

Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, 2013)

8.5/10
Stranger by the Lake, written and directed by Alain Guiraudie, contains some of the most frank and graphic depictions of sex I’ve ever seen in a commercially-released movie. It’s also a great movie, a slow-burning thriller that was actually quite reminiscent of the aforementioned Tom at the Farm. This one takes place entirely (over the course of about a week) on a secluded beach in France that gay men use for cruising. The protagonist, Franck, takes interest in a man named Michel just before witnessing him drowning his lover in the lake. At the same time, Franck befriends an older man named Henri, a visitor to the spot uninterested in sexual relations. The movie details Franck’s relationship to both and his own feelings, while also serving as an ominous metaphor for the dangerous and sometimes thoughtless world of cruising. I loved the lake and beach as a “locked room” setting (the characters arrive in the day and leave at night and off-beach events and occasionally referred to, but 100% of the movie takes place there) and the cinematography and sound design were stunning. It was tense, erotic, even a little scary…highly recommended.

Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz, 2013)

7.5/10
I didn’t really know what to expect from Filipino auteur Lav Diaz’s newest, except to steel myself for its 4 hour, 15 minute runtime. I expected slowness, and Norte has its share of long takes, but they rarely feel excessive or unnecessary. The movie has a remarkably “organic” feel – the story is not overly complex, just given plenty of room to breathe. Essentially it transports Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment to the present-day Phillipines. Its “Raskolnikov” descends much further, but is counter-pointed by the ascension of one of the victims of his crime. The movie is an artful exploration of political, religious and social motivations, and surprisingly watchable and engaging given its length – it just didn’t floor me like I expected it to from the post-Cannes buzz.

Why Don't You Play in Hell? (Sion Sono, 2013)

9/10
Ever since Love Exposure, Sion Sono has been on something of a downward slide for me. In the bunch of his movies I’ve seen since (Cold Fish, Guilty of Romance, The Land of Hope) he’s been interesting, but failing to reach the heights of Love Exposure. So it was a thrill to walk out of Why Don’t You Play in Hell? wondering if it was even better than Love Exposure. It’s definitely the most similar, an absolutely frenetic piece of work that proceeds mostly at breakneck pace. The plot is typically insane – a yakuza must shoot a movie for his imprisoned wife featuring their reluctant daughter relying on a group of cinema diehards called the Fuck Bombers praying every day for their chance to make their masterpiece. To say any more would be unfair, but Sono crafts a frequently hilarious, smart, ridiculous, gory, intricate work that is just a blast to watch. It’s both a love letter to movies and a sharp criticism of Japanese cinema in the present day, and like Love Exposure, it simply has to be seen.

Jealousy (Philippe Garrel, 2013)

6/10
I’m a big fan of Philippe Garrel’s 1968 experimental film Le Revelateur, and I’ve always wanted to see his 1972 film that looks even crazier, Le Cicatrice Interieur. I haven’t heard much of him in the intervening years so I checked out Jealousy, his fourth consecutive film starring his son Louis. Louis plays an actor with an ex-wife, a new girlfriend, and a young daughter. The film focuses mainly on Louis and his girlfriend’s indiscretions and the titular emotion it evokes in both of them, but briefly touches on the jealousy felt by his ex-wife at their daughter’s new relationship with Louis’ girlfriend. It’s a pretty rote examination of jealousy, almost entirely unremarkable save for the charming performance of the young girl playing the daughter. With a paper thin plot and barely clocking in at over an hour in length, this feels like a minor effort indeed from someone who did some way more interesting things 40 years ago.

Tom at the Farm (Xavier Dolan, 2013)

9/10
Keeping Xavier Dolan’s last movie, Laurence Anyways, in mind, I expected a little melodrama in Tom at the Farm, and I definitely got it. But I found it to be refreshing, not self-conscious and not ironic and it made for a stronger movie. The workings of the film itself are very interesting, as what initially starts out as a contemplative study of homophobia and attraction and family relationships gives way to something approaching a thriller, which could have been very messy in the hands of a clumsier director. Instead Tom at the Farm maintains its tension almost impeccably, relying on incredible performances from its small ensemble cast, and is consistently enthralling. The use of an unsubtle string score was another gamble I felt paid off, really pulling you into the atmosphere of a psychodrama in a Hitchcock/Herrmann style. I feel like the ending was a bit of a misstep, or perhaps I built myself up too much for a final reveal or twist that was never in the cards. That tiny quibble aside it’s an excellent movie.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears (Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani, 2013)

6.5/10
I haven't seen it but I have heard a lot about Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani's previous feature, Amer, as an extremely stylish ode to giallo movies. When this was announced, with its ridiculous title and promise of ridiculous things within, I decided to go with low expectations. The film, unfortunately, met those expectations. It's a visual feast, from setting to effects, and it has some scenes that will stick with me for a long time - a body possession scene in particular is the best of its kind I've ever seen. The plot starts promising enough (a man's wife disappears inside their apartment with rumors of other disappearances leading to speculation that the building itself is consuming people) but it quickly goes way off the rails and I'd pay good money to anyone who was actually able to explain the plot coherently. The ending is more silliness tacked on to silliness but at an hour and a half running time, the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. Fun to look at but not much else.

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (Ben Rivers & Ben Russell, 2013)

8/10
I didn't know much about this one going in, and when it was over, I didn't know much more about it. It's directed by experimental video artist/filmmakers Ben Rivers and Ben Russell. Rivers is known for blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, and ASTWOTD follows suit. Its loose center is a man played by Robert A.A. Lowe, best known for making music under the name Lichens. In the first segment he's shown living in a sort of hippie commune on an island in Estonia. In the second segment, he's off on his own in the wilderness of Finland. In the final segment, he's performing in a black metal band in Norway. At no point does the question of a plot come up, and the film felt to me like a sort of recreation or paean to the mysticism of creation. The film is an extremely slow and measured pace (the black metal concert scene appears to be one continuous shot that must go on for at least half an hour) but is extremely hypnotic. Russell and Lowe were on hand for a Q&A afterwards and despite coming across as very genial and enthusiastic, clarified precious little about the actual movie. Which was okay too, because I liked it.

The Sixties Quartet (Jonas Mekas, 1990-1999)

7/10
More from the Mekas retrospective, this was a compilation of 4 half-hour-ish short films from Mekas shot in the 1960's and released in the 90's. The first was "Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships and Intersections". The first half or so was dubbed over with live audio of a static-filled, droning VU performance of "I'll Be Your Mirror" that I enjoyed quite a bit. Much of the footage was Warhol at home, on vacation, and occasionally at work.
The second film was "Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas" and was probably the one I was least interested in, not knowing much of George Maciunas. There was some cool footage from early Fluxus happenings though and seeing the likes of George Brecht, Nam June Paik, Yoshi Wada and even John and Yoko was fun.
The latter were the stars of the next one, "Happy Birthday to John, with John Lennon and Yoko Ono" and the title is very self-descriptive, featuring footage shot of a birthday party thrown for Lennon. It was cool to see some rare, casual footage of monstrously famous people, and wondering at the discourse taking place between John and Miles Davis in the garden at John's birthday party was a treat.
"This Side of Paradise with Jackie, Caroline and John Kennedy Jr." (aka "Scenes from an Unfinished Biography") was the last film, featuring footage shot from a vacation Jackie Onassis took shortly after John Kennedy's death as something of memoriam for Jackie and John's children. The idyllic vacation footage from a beautiful place featuring more hugely famous people being themselves was exhilarating, even if much of the footage here was repeated from the Warhol film. Glad I got to see these, they were a treat.

Reminisces of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas, 1972)

6.5/10
A quasi-documentary directed by Jonas Mekas as part of a retrospective of his work, the film features footage from the 50's, 60's and 70's as shot by Mekas and detailing his life in the turmoil of Lithuania, his exile to America, and the return to his home country. It has more of a "home movie" feel than a documentary feel and, coupled with Mekas' slow, halting English voiceover, it can be a struggle to keep your attention held, but it had its interesting moments. Jonas attended the screening and gave a cool Q&A afterward, which was very impressive considering he's 90 years old!

Miss Violence (Alexandros Avranas, 2013)

7/10
This is a Greek film that was met with some controversy when it screened at Venice, and not without merit. It's a dark and pretty disturbing film. The plot is reminiscent of a Greek sensation from a couple of years ago, Dogtooth; a film I enjoyed very much. Miss Violence also centers around a father with an extremely unconventional way of raising his children and grandchildren. Where Dogtooth was a bit more surrealist and darkly comic, Miss Violence aims for the unsettling and harrowing. That doesn't make it a better movie, in my opinion, but it's not too bad in its own right as a harsh criticism of Greece as embodied in a patriarchal figure eating its own.

To the Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)

4/10
As much as I like Terrence Malick, most of his movies make me cringe at some point. That's the risk you take in being a poet, or being a romantic, as Malick likely considers himself (and he has a good claim to both titles). But To the Wonder is like Malick without a filter - a 2 hour stream of the worst bits to ever worm their way into his movies. The constant voiceovers are an unending source of embarrassment, coming off completely mawkish and juvenile. They would appear clunky in anyone's debut feature, but for a vet like Malick, they're unforgiveable. The characters flit and romp and carouse in every scene to the point of obnoxiousness, and god help me if Ben Affleck picked up a cheque for his "performance" in the movie.
Every now and then you get a glimpse of the good Malick can do - I really liked the sterile suburban housing setting, some images are indelible (a girl playing hopscotch in the sunlight pouring through a window) and Malick is still a fantastic documentor/recreator of something classically American in cinema. You can usually count on his pretty images to pick up the slack when Malick's storytelling falters, but they can't bear the entire weight, and even they start to appear cheap and repetitive as the backdrop for a wholly uninteresting, uninvolving and emotionally inert movie.

Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron, 2013)

9.5/10
Werner Herzog once said of movies, "we are surrounded by worn out images, and we deserve new ones". As far as new images go, Gravity fits the bill better than anything I've seen in recent memory - it's hard to even believe that this was a movie, made in a studio somewhere. It feels, more than anything, like a genuine documented excursion into space with the viewer being taken along for the ride. I guess the only thing to remind you that it isn't real is the presence of Clooney and Bullock. I don't have a problem with either of them, and they're both very good in the movie, but it is the one thing on screen to constantly remind you you're watching a movie. Maybe casting two unknowns would have been the better choice? Although, then, no studio would have bankrolled the effort. So I get the conundrum. All things considered it's an excellent movie, a breathtaking (almost overwhelming) experience, and something that will undoubtedly be seen as a cinematic landmark for years to come. I wouldn't have a problem with this winning Best Picture at all.

Rush (Ron Howard, 2013)

8/10
It occurred to me when typing the above that this is a movie that deserves a better (or at least a more original) title than....Rush. At the very least it's an accurate description of the feeling watching the racing sequences - those are tremendously well done and really give you the exhilaration of being there.
Rush is going to draw inevitable comparisons to Senna, and for the first hour or so it doesn't do a whole lot to distinguish itself (again, in-car sequences aside). The period setting (recreated here, historical in Senna), the two conflicting drivers with charisma, their off-track pursuits...it's all well done, but familiar.
Where I felt the movie really set out on its own and succeeded was in the last hour or so - basically everything from August 1 1976's "decisive race" onward. The August 1 race is tension-filled, especially if you don't know the story as I didn't, and the aftermath brings a lot of welcome gravitas to Hunt and Lauda that was missing in the broad strokes that defined them in the first half. Maybe the ending was a little more protracted than it needed to be, but not by much. After recently seeing a couple of movies with final-act let-downs, it was nice to see one that took it up a notch instead.

World War Z (Marc Forster, 2013)

6.5/10
I haven't read the book, so I'll steer clear of that discussion entirely, although from what I understand they pretty much only share a name in common.
This is a strange movie, because despite its checkered production, it does a lot of things right. Better than probably any zombie movie I've ever seen, it did a great job showing a zombie epidemic on a truly massive scale. Not just in the globe-trotting scenes but in the sheer amount of zombies and how quickly entire major cities are overrun. I liked how the movie hit the ground running and the pace made for an exciting middle section that pulled me along nicely as Pitt's character zipped around looking for a cure. The final act really let the movie down, and felt like it was stitched in from a previous, lesser version of the same movie I was just watching. The "stealth mission" in the hospital to get the MacGuffin was weak, the ending was telegraphed from a mile away, and it includes one of the most weirdly jarring instances of product placements I've ever seen. I won't spoil the ending but it's the one you knew you'd get 5 minutes into the movie anyway.
The movie relies on way too many tropes for its own good - Pitt as the retiree called to do One Last Job, his daughter with the useless ailment that vanishes from the storyline a half hour in, the gruff army badass...it's hard not to feel like these are pieces cobbled together from the many revisions the script endured...and even harder to not roll your eyes when they show up.
Interestingly the zombies are treated pretty anonymously - no gruesome set pieces, no crazy kills, almost no gore and a minimal amount of blood. I'm sure it was done to lock down a PG-13 rating but I think it served the film well too - too often zombie movies can feel "too cinematic", self-consciously one-upping prior zombie movies in makeup or in CGI or distracting set pieces. Here it felt like a bit more of an authentic treatment of zombies as an epidemic and not just a way to shock or scare the audience.
Considering how disastrous the movie was expected to be and how much it apparently strays from its source material, it's pretty passable entertainment. It could have been a lot more, but I guess it could have been a lot worse too.

Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

6/10
Shane Carruth's first feature, Primer, gets talked about a lot in "must see messed-up movie" discussions, but I haven't gotten around to watching it yet. Primer came out almost 10 years ago and this is Carruth's first movie since, in which he directs, stars, produces, edits, and composes the score for - and probably some other things in there too. I don't know if Carruth has been working constantly on Upstream Color in the years since Primer but it's clearly a labor of love and no doubt took a hell of a lot of work to put together, and as a standalone achievement of independent cinema, it's very impressive.
As a movie, I was a little more underwhelmed, especially given the heavy critical acclaim it's getting. I started out quite enamored with it but found my interest waning as the story went on. Despite the movie's experimental, non-linear style, it feels less like an aesthetic choice to complement the happenings on screen and more like a device to mask what's actually a pretty straight-forward (although certainly bizarre) plot. I checked Wikipedia after to see if I was missing some grand metaphor or something that would really make everything click together and it wasn't the case, there was just less to the eye than I thought there was. Or would be.
I felt like Carruth was channeling Terrence Malick pretty heavily, which is a dangerous thing for anyone to attempt, but he pulls it off well - the whole movie has a dreamy, surrealist atmosphere (aided in large part by the score, which fits perfectly) that could certainly feel a lot more clunky in the hands of a less deft filmmaker.
I didn't really love Upstream Color but I'm glad it exists and I'm glad Shane Carruth exists and hopefully he keeps making movies like this because, if nothing else, he's certainly an interesting voice and I'm sure I'll see eye-to-eye with him sooner or later. Maybe even as soon as Primer, which I'll now have to investigate.

Don Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 2013)

6.5/10
Don Jon is Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut. He also produced it, wrote it, and stars in it. All that considered, it's a pretty good effort. It's very watchable, never boring, and the acting is excellent - the Italian Jersey accents sound a little forced at first, but the cast pulls them and the roles off. It's a movie about a guy named Jon, addicted to porn, and his relationship with Barbara, addicted to romantic comedies. It's a clever premise that lays a lot of ground for an exploration into male and female sexuality and the role pornography (and movies, and the media, and commercials) plays in our expectations from the opposite sex, ourselves, and how it affects the rest of our life. Regrettably, Gordon-Levitt avoids most of the heavy questions and, despite lampooning the airiness and unreality of porn and rom-coms, opts for a painfully hackneyed resolution himself.
Maybe I set my own expectations too high in wanting JGL to dig deeper than he did. I respect him for trying to make a movie that takes risks, but I feel like he only did half the job. In the end it seems like he had less to say on the subject than I thought he would, which was the most disappointing thing.

Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2012)

8/10
I don't know much about Jem Cohen, writer/director of Museum Hours, but I understand he was/is primarily a visual artist. I'm not sure if this is his first feature film, but I think it is. Museum Hours obviously owes a lot to Cohen's art background, being mostly set in a museum, featuring long takes of the art within and the landscape outside, and even including a lengthy diatribe centering around the museum's Breughel paintings. You would expect such a film, especially from an inexperienced feature film maker, to be exceedingly dry. Museum Hours is slow, but not dry at all. It feels very alive, treating not only its subjects (museum guard Johann and fish-out-of-water Anne) very humanely but the art as well. It manages to be mature, philosophical and slow, but it's never boring. Cohen engages the audience instead of lecturing them. I found a quote on his Wikipedia page where he says "art is something people do like breathing" and his movie represents that philosophy very well, free from pretension. I found it inspiring and enjoyed it very much.

Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)

8/10
Woody Allen's last two movies were pretty fluff affairs - To Rome with Love was the instantly forgettable kind and Midnight in Paris was the excellent, Oscar-nominated kind. Based on that alone I wasn't totally prepared for Blue Jasmine, one of most nuanced, complex, and, well, depressing Allen movies in years. Everything you've heard about Cate Blanchett's performance is true and she could end up with the Oscar for it, but the cast as a whole is incredibly strong. It's to Allen's credit that Blanchett's Jasmine is so oblivious, ignorant, and downright unlikeable when you get down to it...yet you also manage to feel a considerable amount of empathy and pity for her. A very complex "anti-heroine" that I'll still be thinking about for a while afterwards.

The Words (Brian Klugman & Lee Sternthal, 2012)

3/10
I think this came out last year, and seemed mildly interesting from the trailer, but it got terrible reviews. It was on TV the other day so I watched it, and it deserves all the terrible reviews it got. It uses a three-layered approach (Dennis Quaid/Olivia Wilde tell a story about Bradley Cooper/Jeremy Irons telling a story about...two actors I didn't recognize telling a story) to say absolutely nothing interesting, and the film itself is a total bore. I'll give 3 points for the cast, who all deserved much better than this.

The Attack (Ziad Doueiri, 2012)

7.5/10
An interesting movie about an Arab surgeon in Tel Aviv named Amin who discovers that a recent suicide bombing was perpetrated by his wife of 15 years. The brunt of the movie is him coming to terms with this fact and searching for answers.
It's a good movie, technically well made, very well acted, and dances a very delicate political and religious line but without ever really passing judgment. In fact the movie almost keeps Amin at arm's distance - for someone who lost his wife of 15 years and who was harbouring feelings completely foreign to Amin, his grief doesn't get much screen time. Maybe the writer was afraid that if you show Amin weeping over a suicide bomber's death (even if it was his wife), it would already be asking the audience to empathize with a monstrous act. By the same token, the movie also impresses in its refusal to provide Amin (or the audience) with simple answers, but this too proves somewhat distancing, leaving the movie and its story, with such potential for emotional impact, a little dry.
Also I looked up afterwards who did the music because I would have sworn on anything you put in front of me it was Explosions in the Sky. Turns out it's a guy named Eric Neveux doing a very believable Explosions in the Sky impression. Regardless who it was it fit the movie very well.

Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013)

7/10
Given some of the criticism I've heard about it, I was expecting worse. In reality, it was pretty good. At the very least, I was entertained, and I didn't find Blomkamp's social commentary too heavy-handed. It was a little goofy at times, and there were some issues with the tone - in the early-going it felt entirely too mechanical, and then tried to make up for lost time by pouring on the cheese, which was unnecessary. Jodie Foster's performance can best be described as 'distracting' (what was the point in giving her a weird French accent?). Sharlto Copley was excellent and Matt Damon was reliable as ever. It wasn't quite the revelation District 9 was but I guess Blomkamp set the bar too high for himself with that one. Elysium is still a pretty respectable follow-up performance.