The Clock (Christian Marclay, 2010)

10/10
6:00pm-11:00pm
I have been chomping at the bit to see Christian Marclay's The Clock since I first read about it after it won the Silver Lion at Vienna way back in 2011. It finally made its way to Montreal's Musee d'Arts Contemporain for a couple of months and I caught 5 hours of it last night.
If you haven't heard about it, The Clock is a 24-hour long video compilation culled from clips referencing time from thousands of movies, and playing out in real time. So, for example, when it's 7:23pm in real life, The Clock is showing a clip from a movie when it's 7:23pm (or thereabouts). But it's much more than just a collection of clips of clocks smashed together. The clips are edited together in incredibly cleverly ways, often including overlapping or mixed sound, that makes the whole thing feel like a giant, neverending film experience taking placeover the course of a day. Marclay also manipulates the scenes in clever ways - a character in a French movie from the 50's picks a phone and dials a number at 8:11pm, and the call is answered by Fox Mulder at 8:11pm in the 2000's, and so on.
And the longer you watch it, the more references you catch. For example, at 6:30pm, a character might make reference to having to eat dinner in a half hour. At 7:00pm, if you pay attention, you'll likely see a clip from that same movie of the character doing just that. It's this kind of hunting (as well as the fun in recognizing clips and figuring out what movie they're from) that makes it so easy to keep watching. Despite being constantly aware of the passing time, the 5 hours I spent genuinely blew by, until the last half hour when my stomach kept reminding me I hadn't had dinner yet.
Another fascinating thing is to see what common actions happen at a given time across a multitude of movies. When I came in at 6pm, there were a lot of scenes with people coming home from work, or commuting, or sitting down to dinner. At 7-8pm, a lot of scenes of people getting ready to go out or children being put to bed. At 8pm there were a surprising amount of scenes at the theatre. From 9-11pm, lots of stuff taking place in bed (rarely sexual, however), lots of plots being hatched behind closed doors under cover of night. The shift in tone, from the lightness of the evening to the darker themes that permeate the film events that occur at night, is also very noticeable. Another thing The Clock maybe points out unintentionally is just how many plot points in movies revolve around characters being late for something.
I'm planning to head back to The Clock next Saturday to catch it during the day. I would really like to see what clips Marclay came up with for the obscure 2am-5am times, and even though the museum does give it a few full 24-hour showings, I doubt I'll be able to make it to those. Hopefully one day we'll be able to access it on the internet at our leisure, kind of like the 24-hour music video for Pharrell Williams' "Happy".
All that to say, if you have a chance to see The Clock somewhere near you, don't miss the opportunity. It is a completely unique, fascinating and overwhelming experience. Here is a bootleg clip someone made from 10:15pm to 10:35pm if you're interested in a sampling.

10:00am-4:00pm
I went back on Saturday and watched from 10:00am to 4:00pm and enjoyed myself again immensely. The major difference is the wide variety of things that take place during the day, I found it considerably more wide open than the earlier night scenes that I had seen. Lots more outdoors stuff, obviously. And a surprising (but I guess it shouldn't be) amount of train scenes. As expected, lots of classroom and office scenes too.
One thing I enjoyed watching was the progression of characters waking up. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the brunt of them, which I imagine take place between 6am and 8am, but it was still fun to see. Almost everybody waking up after 10am in a movie is either lazy or late (like real life, more or less). Marlon Brando had a good one at 11:30am from a film I didn't recognize where, upon being handed the newspaper, remarks with some bemusement that other people must be awake as well. The latest I remember before I left was Jeff Daniels at 3:30pm.
I'm more curious than ever about the 1am - 5am ish timeslots, so I really hope this gets streamed over the internet or something one day. Or that it comes through Montreal again and I can commit to staying overnight to watch it.

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.

Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)

10/10
Michael Shannon delivers what has to be the best performance of the year (and don't sell Jessica Chastain short either) in an absolutely perfect meditation on mental illness that gripped me from the start and never let me go until its incredible ending, which is still stuck in my mind. Very beautiful and very tragic, I couldn't find a single thing wrong with it.

Satantango (Bela Tarr, 1994)

10/10
When you spend almost 7 and a half hours in a theatre co-existing with a piece of art (okay call it "watching a movie" if you like), it's pretty hard not to at least force yourself to give it a perfect score, if not for justification that you didn't just waste a perfectly good Sunday on the thing. But that's not the case here as this movie fully deserves a perfect score. Unlike a movie that has so much plot it can't afford to lose a second off its running time (Erich von Stroheim's original cut of Greed, for example), Satantago could easily be compressed into 2 hours, possibly less. The plot is such: a broken-down, poor Hungarian town with a population of about 15 has come to the end of their harvest season - the villagers wait to collect their year's worth of wages and depart, but hold off when they hear that an ex-villager presumed dead, Irimias, is returning to town. The villagers have a shared fear and respect of Irimias, cautiously optimistic that he has a plan to lead them and the village.
That's pretty much it. Roughly the first four and a half hours is dedicated to the villagers anticipating Irimias' arrival. We see events in the village through their eyes, often with overlapping points of view. The shots are brutally long (some lasting up to 10 minutes in length, unbroken) and the sequeces are longer - we spend about 45 minutes, if not more, following the town doctor on his journey to get more brandy. Then at least half an hour with a young girl who, ignored by her mother and exploited by her mother, abuses and poisons her pet cat. A good half hour watching the townspeople get drunk, dance, and sing, as they await Irimias. And so on. By the movie's end you feel like you've been forced to live with these people, and in a way you have.
In the end it's impossible to say what the movie is "about". Without being too cliché, life. Moreso than any movie I've ever seen. This is a movie filled with nothingness but one that ruminates on everything. I encourage anyone with any kind of appreciation for cinema as art to go and see it if you have a chance (or buy the 3-disc DVD). It's something that's going to stay with me for the rest of my life, undoubtably.

Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2010)

10/10
Simply put one of the best movies of the year, and an absolute crime if it doesn't get greater attention outside Canada. The story: the mother of twin twentysomethings Jeanne and Simon dies, and leaves behind a will stipulating the two deliver a letter each to their other brother and their father. The caveat being that the twins had no idea they had a brother and have never met their father.
Two journeys are told at once - Jeanne (and later with Simon)'s attempts to track down her long lost family in her mother's native country (fictional but a stand-in for Lebanon, it seems), and in flashback, the tribulations their mother went through in this same country years before.
There are plenty of twists revealed to the audience before the characters, which is a clever and disarming tactic because the wallop of an ending hits like a freight train when it's revealed to all. My only minor gripe is that director Denis Villeneuve sometimes shows a lack of faith in his audience, over-exposing things with unnecessary after-the-fact voiceovers. And the plot, while magnificently constructed, requires a certain suspension of disbelief to imagine all these events occuring the way they do.
But that doesn't take away from the enjoyment of the movie itself which is gripping, harrowing, and tragic in every sense of the word. Go see it.

The Room (Tommy Wiseau, 2003)

10/10
As a "so bad it's good" movie, The Room is as bad as it gets. A Plan 9 for the 21st century? I didn't laugh this much at most intentional comedies I've seen lately. Written/directed/produced/starring Tommy Wiseau (who bears a striking resemblance to Phil Hartman's Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer from SNL and talks like a foreign stroke victim impersonating Christopher Walken), The Room is best described as a film made by aliens trying to approximate what humans would do when making a movie, because that's what it feels like. It's almost unfathomable that somebody (Wiseau) could have thought any of this was actually halfway decent, yet the movie is so genuinely inept on every level there's no possible way it was intentional, despite Wiseau's current claims. A lot of "so bad it's good" movies don't live up to the hype, or they get tedious as the film wears on and become less enjoyable - not this one.

Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)

10/10
I don't even know what I could say to possibly do it justice. I'll be the first to admit I don't understand everything but I've rarely been so fully entranced by a 2h30m movie. This is cinema as art in its highest form. Still under its spell. I got nothing.

A Colt is My Passport (Takashi Nomura, 1967)

10/10
Last Nikkatsu movie, and hands down the best one. Combines all the over-the-top humor, romance, double-crossing, and violence from the previous four. The story isn't new territory but the story is told very well, the film is directed with flair, the soundtrack is exceptional, and Joe Shishido's moody main character seems to be both inspired by and sowing the seeds for the Spaghetti Western anti-heroes of the era. In fact it's hard to believe this movie was never remade as a Western because it's certainly ripe for it. If you want all the best of the Nikkatsu movies in one 84-minute chunk, start here.

Dead Snow (Tommy Wirkola, 2009)

10/10
I had so much fun watching this movie. Seeing it with a rambunctious festival crowd probably helped, and the fact that I thought it was a straight horror at the start made the funny parts that much funnier, but even so, it was a blast. The plot is all-too familiar: a bunch of attractive young people isolate themselves at a cabin in the (snowy) woods, they receive an ominous warning from a mysterious stranger they dismiss as being crazy, and then the zombies attack. The Nazi zombies, I might add. Which has at least some relevance (Nazi Germany had a very large presence in Norway during the war) but really, is not quite integral to the film. And seems to have some people up in arms, especially with the way the film ends. Whatever. If you can't watch this movie without laughing your head off, wincing at some of the gore and kills, and get a good jump scare every now and then, you don't have a pulse. A perfect mix of horror and humor and probably one of the best zombie movies I can think of in recent years.

Love Exposure (Sion Sono, 2008)

10/10
Jesus...fucking brilliant movie written and directed by Sion Sono. Any attempt to summarize the plot will completely fail to do the movie justice, but basically it's the story of a 17-year old guy looking for the love of his life and then trying to be with her once he finds her. But it's so, so, so much more. Considering the movie is 4 hours long, it would have to be. But honestly, if my ass wasn't so sore, I wouldn't have known it was 4 hours, and not a moment is really wasted. The script is insane, but it's hilarious and sweet and stomach-turning and throught-provoking all at once, and the two main leads are great too...I don't really know what to say except if you get the chance to see it, don't be intimidated by its running time - go!

Troll 2 (Claudio Fragasso, 1990)

10/10
How could it be anything less? Most "so bad it's good" movies unimpress me but this one was hilarious. You can't go more than 3 minutes without seeing or hearing something that makes you think "how could anybody actually think that was good?". Very highly recommended.

The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943)

10/10
Absolutely loved it. Everything about it was perfect. A simple story and lesson that remains relevant even today. Go rent it.

Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008)

10/10
Totally great...Jonathan's review basically sums it up for me too. Really moving, and so sad.

Sukiyaki Western Django (Takashi Miike, 2007)

10/10
This movie was a fucking blast from beginning to end. It's a Spaghetti Western directed by Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q, etc) and the entire movie is done with Japanese actors speaking in phonetic English, with English subtitles. It's hilarious, the action is awesome, and the plot is surprisingly coherant. It's not a remake of Sergio Corbucci's Django but it uses similar devices (the name Django, the machine gun in a casket thing). Without a doubt the best Miike movie I've seen in a long time. Oh yeah, and Quentin Tarantino plays a sukiyaki-eating master gunslinger. Right on.