Enemy (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)

7/10
I really have no idea what to make of this one. I enjoyed it a lot while watching it, and the ending caught me completely off-guard as I suspect it did to most everyone who watched it. I find myself impressed by its brazenness despite being frustrated with it. I unashamedly looked up the movie on Wikipedia right after it ended to see just what the hell happened and I'm not really a whole lot clearer (and I'm not sure I like the explanation) but I remain intrigued.
Jake Gyllenhaal gives a really good performance in the dual role. Despite the identical appearance of both characters the mannerisms, body language and speech Gyllenhaal uses for each really sets them apart. I really liked the mood of the film too - the score is suitably creepy and paranoid and the way the whole movie is awash in this sickly, pallid yellow does a lot for the atmosphere.
As for That Ending, well...I really like movies that pull the bait-and-switch, when you think it's about one thing but it's really about another. I can understand people feeling frustrated or cheated but I like having my expectations subverted. I don't know how much I loved Denis Villeneuve's subversion in this instance but I certainly admire it. Roger Moore, in a less-than-favorable review, says the movie is "essentially a frustrating puzzle without a solution". Which may be true, there may be no solution in the end (or no satisfying one). But the solving process, however futile, is fun and engrossing. The movie is short enough to not overstay its welcome and makes appealing the idea of revisiting it to see if things make more sense on a second go-around. I might do that sooner rather than later. For now this will be a hard one to forget.

Side Effects (Steven Soderbergh, 2013)

6/10
I will confess that for the first 30 minutes of this movie I thought that it was actually Contagion. Not that I put the wrong movie in or whatever but that I thought Side Effects' plot was the plot of Contagion. So for a while I was waiting for Kate Winslet to show up and stuff.
Anyway I just looked up Side Effects on Rotten Tomatoes and to my surprise it has an 83%. Not that it's a bad movie but I guess I expected more "meh" reactions, like my own. It felt kind of thin to me as a movie - like the plot would make for a decent airplane novel, but as a movie, it felt like it was missing some meat. All the acting is good and the twisty plot is entertaining enough, albeit a little implausible at times. There's an interesting dilemma posed about halfway through the movie about the responsibility doctors face in treating their patients but this isn't given a whole lot of attention once another twists takes center stage.
This movie felt like a throwback to the "psychological thrillers" that everyone was obsessed with in the late 90's/early 00's, albeit one of the flimsier ones. I just wasn't terribly thrilled, or even roped in much by its plot. Soderbergh's direction is fine, if rather anonymous by some of his standards.

Powaqqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1988)

6/10
Koyaanisqatsi was one of the first experimental films I ever saw. It was a blind buy at HMV actually, and I bought it more because it was scored by Philip Glass (I was also just getting into experimental music at the time and minimalism was very appealing) than any other reason. It's remained one of my favorites, and I still return to it every now and again.
Criterion recently released the Qatsi film trilogy which I bought despite not having seen the other two before. I watched Powaqqatsi last night and frankly it was kind of a let down. The score (again by Glass) is not nearly as powerful and the images too, focusing mainly on people in third world countries going about their business, are less captivating than they were in the first installment. Powaqqatsi as a whole just feels less "composed". Koyaanisqatsi really was more than the sum of its parts but Powaqqatsi feels like what it is - a series of sometimes-beautiful shots with music laid on top of them. Nothing more nothing less.
I started the final film, Naqoyqatsi, before falling asleep and from what I saw, I'm even less enthusiastic about that one.