7/10
I never saw this one before so I recorded it off TV, it was good. Classic Spielberg really. Richard Dreyfuss was great and I really liked how Spielberg made it a family affair (in the beginning at least). He has (had? He doesn't do it so much anymore) such a knack for making even movies about aliens or sharks tie back to family relationships and whatnot. Nothing much to complain about, I enjoyed it.
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.
8.5/10
Bunuel's final film is pretty straightforward in plot, but there's so many little things that stick in the mind afterward - what's the significance of the characters on the train having all already met? What's with the brown sack Mathieu carries around? Why the backdrop of terrorism, aside from providing a great way to both begin and end the film? Who is in the wrong between Mathieu and Conchita, and how wrong are they, really? Ironically, what should be the biggest puzzler of them all (Conchita is played by two different women, and they interchange sometimes even within the same scene) turns out to have a pretty banal explanation - the original actress quit, and Bunuel couldn't settle on just one woman to embody the character. Both work brilliantly and the changes are never distracting.
Anyway I thought it was a really interesting look at the sexual politics between men and women. Alternatingly funny, sad, and ridiculous.
I really have to dig into early Bunuel movies. It occured to me that aside from Un Chien Andalou, I haven't seen anything he's done pre-1960.
9/10
Really funny and really clever. A few hours after I'd finished watching it I found myself still thinking about it, almost already keen to revisit it.
7/10
Nice-looking documentary about waiting for an inevitable catastrophe (the eruption of a volcano on top of an almost-deserted town) that doesn't come.
7/10
Pretty good, surprisingly conventional fare from Werner Herzog. I chose to think of the movie as more a story about a man who has trouble fitting in anywhere outside of institutions rather than a metaphor for the cruel reality of the "American dream" but I guess either works. The famous chicken scene at the end was hyped so much it didn't really register with me, but I'm sure it would've back in '76.
6/10
Any score is fairly arbitrary because this one is basically unrateable. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi's debut feature in 1977 and although it definitely lands in the so-bad-it's-good category, it's also interesting to watch because of just how off the wall and outrageous it is. Obayashi was given a lot of money and the keys to the studio at a time when theatres all around the world were in a depression and he blew the doors off the thing, throwing in as much as he possibly could without any real logic to it. The basic plot is that a girl and six of her friends (all with names like Gorgeous, Fantasy, Melody, Sweet, etc) take their summer vacation to visit Gorgeous' reclusive, bizarre, estranged aunt. One by one mysterious things start to happen...you know the rest. But there's so much weird shit that happens along the way, you have to see it to believe it. I'm kind of surprised this movie isn't more talked about because it's like nothing I've ever seen before, good or bad. It was fun to watch with friends and have a laugh at its ludicrousness, but it did get tedious at times.
6/10
I wanted to like this more than I did...it just sort of plodded along with no real scares or anything. It worked best when the cannibals were hidden away in the darkness. Once you start seeing them galloping along in broad daylight with their ridiculous animal pelts and shell necklaces, the element of fear is pretty much gone. I don't think this one held up quite as well as other 70's horror flicks do.
