Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol, 1966)

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Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki, 1966)

8.5/10
As part of Japanese film studio Nikkatsu's 100th anniversary celebration, many Nikkatsu films are touring the world as part of festivals. Montreal is getting 15 of those films (5 now and 10 in October) and one of them is arguably the most famous, Tokyo Drifter. It is postively insane and all the stronger for it, a delusion of eye-popping colors and dreamlogic set to a wild, jazzy score. There was more dialogue and less action than I expected but it was still a lot of fun.

Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)

7.5/10
I don't think I've ever watched such a heavy movie in my life. Holy smokes. This thing is loaded less with the beautiful, hypnotic imagery of Stalker & Solaris (though it's there) and stuffed with exceptionally heavy musings on a bunch of different stuff, primarily art and religion...both individually and taken together. Tarkovsky's portrait of Rublev must be one of the most fully realized depictions of a historical figure ever in cinema, but I'll confess I wasn't exactly pulled in for all 3 hours, 41 minutes. I admired it more than I liked it, really. Still pretty staggering though, I can't imagine myself coming back to it any time soon.

The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1966)

7/10
Very good Spaghetti Western starring Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian, often hyped as one of the best SW's outside Leone's Man With No Name Triology. I don't know if I believe that so much but it is very entertaining and very well directed, but a little lacking in "oomph" at the end. I just felt a bit underwhelmed when it was said and done.
Strangely this is still unavailable as a Region 1 DVD, despite the high profile names involved (Cleef, Milian, Sollima, Morricone). I watched it on the Region 2 Koch (Germany) DVD and the picture quality was, for the most part, crystal clear. There were only two audio tracks though, German and Italian, with English subtitles, so I watched it in Italian despite the fact that most of the actors are clearly speaking English which might have taken away from the experience somewhat.
Unfortunately it seems like some of the scenes were never dubbed into English which may explain why it's taken so long for someone to do a R1 release. That or maybe because the viliain is accused of raping and murdering a 13 year old girl.

Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)

6/10
I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. There were only two scenes that ever really held my interest - the Yardbirds performance and the game of "imaginary tennis" at the very end of the movie. Although afterwards I read Andrew Sarris' Village Voice review and he remarked on the apathy with which Antonioni treats his subject matter (the fact that a photographer has accidentally captured a murder in a park) and I thought that was pretty interesting as well...but as far as the film went - not so interesting.