The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)

9/10
I was really, fully in the grips of this movie from start to finish. I found everything about it absolutely fascinating. If it doesn't win Best Adapted Screenplay I'm going to be shocked. About the only minor fault I could find with it is that sometimes the movie feels just a little too...stylized? Glamorous? Something like that. But it's a small nitpick because everything really was great - the story, the dialogue, the music, the acting (Jesse Eisenberg strikes an incredible balance between being sharp and totally aloof at the same time)...I was really impressed.

Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo, 1964)

8/10
Pretty cool Japanese horror/family drama from 1964. Centers around an old woman and her daughter-in-law. Waiting for their husbands to return from the war and living in poverty they resort to luring samurai to their deaths and selling their armor and weapons for cash or food. The brash friend of both husbands returns with news of their deaths, and starts up a romance with the daughter in law, much to the old woman's (extreme) consternation. I wasn't as in love with it as I hoped to be but I still enjoyed it a lot. The final scene with the woman and daughter was particularly incredible.

The Town (Ben Affleck, 2010)

5.5/10
The more this film is in my mind (including while I was watching it), the more problems I find with it. Affleck certainly has talent as a director, but contrary to Gone Baby Gone, his source material fails him in a big way. Rarely is anything in a movie so off-putting as to when our anti-hero (here Affleck's bank robber) is saddled with all kinds of tropes to force us to sympathize with him - his mother abandoned him and his father's in prison; he wants to Get Away From This Life and Make a Change; he lives by a flimsy Hollywood code of morality and refuses to kill people; the "mob boss" has him by the balls, he's really handsome and really genuinely loves The Girl - all of this is well and good but he's a criminal, and no amount of prettying up can change that. I'll say no more for fear of spoilers, but needless to say I wasn't a fan of the direction his character went in.
I also thought the central relationship was extremely forced (as far as anything suggested in the movie's timeline, the entire thing takes place in the span of 4 days or so) and various plot points come and go only when needed (an incriminating tattoo or Affleck's character's daughter and ex-girlfriend). The ending is ludicrous, mawkish, and the definition of a movie taking the easy way out.
None of this I can really pin on Affleck - as I said, it's his material that doesn't live up to snuff. In fact the movie has its share of strong points - the acting is all-around top notch, the action scenes are exciting and very well-shot, and the pacing never really slows. A bistro scene involving Affleck, Jeremy Renner and Rebecca Hall that has us all guessing how much each knows about the other is particularly worthy of praise. I wish I could say the same for more of the movie though.

Five (Abbas Kiarostami, 2003)

5/10
(Like 8 1/2, not trying to be cute with my rating...OK maybe a little)
Abbas Kiarostami's Five, aka Five Long Takes Dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu, is exactly that - five takes, each averaging about 15 minutes, of various things - a piece of a branch battling with the tide on a beach, a pier and the people walking on it, a beach in winter with dogs frolicking, a bunch of ducks on the beach, and the reflection of the moon in the pitch-black water. Tough thing to rate as it's pretty much what it says on the tin. I can't help but wonder if, like Kiarostami's Shirin, he's playing on the role of the viewer in cinema and the narrative structures that he will inevitably force onto what he's seeing...but then I also can't help but wonder if this wasn't already done by someone like Andy Warhol many years ago. Shirin was far more successful in that regard, Five is little more than a curio.

The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, 2010)

6.5/10
As before, this movie directed by Michael Winterbottom had a pretty impressive cast (Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson) but went nowhere, but it wasn't really hard to figure out why - the brutal, unflinching, and frankly horrific physical violence perpetrated on the women in the movie is cause for any distributor to run the other way. The movie is based on the Jim Thompson novel of the same name and stays true to his (apparent) gritty, no-B.S. realism. The story essentially is Affleck playing the role of a deputy sheriff named Lou Ford with a need to kill - or abuse, at least. A persistent D.A. eventually uncovers his secret but Ford stays true to his demons to the end. It's an interesting enough, very well-acted story (is Casey Affleck getting the consistent recognition he deserves yet?), but the whole time you can't shake the feeling something is missing - like its main character, the movie is too robotic, too removed, and you never really get sucked in enough into caring what happens. Too bad because it had a lot of potential.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (Werner Herzog, 2009)

8.5/10
Produced by David Lynch, directed by Werner Herzog, starring Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Udo Kier and Brad Dourif, at first blush it's hard to figure why this one never got any kind of release...then as you watch it and realize it's absolutely insane, it sort of makes sense. For what's seemingly a mainstream film, it must be one of the most unmarketable ones made in recent history. Inspired by true events, Shannon plays Brad, a young man who goes insane after a trip to Peru (a land where Herzog spent a considerable amount of time) and kills his mother. The film opens with her death and tells itself in flashbacks, as told to Dafoe's detective by his fiancee (Sevigny) and friend (Kier). The movie confounds expectations at every turn, and it treads a fine line between genius and self indulgence, or being weird for the sake of it. As a huge Herzog fan I leaned towards the former, but I can't fault anyone for believing the latter true. What really makes the movie is Michael Shannon's over the top, desperately serious portrayal of a man insane. I'd compare this movie to Herzog's Bad Lieutenant, shot around the same time, but with the weirdness turned up to 11 (which is what I felt lacked with that film). A lot of fun.

It's Complicated (Nancy Meyers, 2009)

5/10
Even though I'm not this movie's target audience, I like the three main actors involved and thought it could turn out funny enough. I laughed a couple of times but that was about it. I dunno, it was decent enough entertainment. Though the movie courts it only semi-seriously, it's tough to sympathize with Streep's character - torn between two handsome, successful, charming men, living in a gorgeous house, owning a successful business, three Stepford children...it's a bit much and you find it hard to really care, but I guess that's part of the fun.