Biutiful (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2010)

4/10
The ultimate removal however was Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful, which never makes the slightest effort to engage the audience or make us feel any sort of pity for its put-upon, cancer-addled protagonist Uxbal (played by Javier Bardem with a stone face and fists shoved perpetually into his pockets, as if this alone is enough to invite sympathy). The movie is desperately grave and deals with what should be very emotive topics (human trafficking, impending death, abuse, the struggle to survive, righting our wrongs, etc) but they all glide by without hitting even the most minor of chords. Which is all inoffensive (if disappointing) enough but Inarritu commits one of my few cardinal sins of filmmaking when (slight spoilers) he repeats the mysterious opening scene from the beginning of the film in its entirety at the end - as if his audience is too stupid to realize the significance of such a scene and keep it in mind the entire time that they need it read back to them. Shameful.

White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)

7/10
I don't have a lot to say about this one except that I think I admired it more than I liked it. I also had to watch the movie with no subtitles (I speak French pretty well, but African and France French is a bit trickier) so that probably didn't help. It was very lovely to look at and it was definitely a sad story, but I couldn't help but feel removed from it most of the time. Still want to check out Claire Denis' other stuff though.

David Wants to Fly (David Sieveking, 2010)

7/10
Better-than-expected documentary about a guy (director David Sieveking) introduced to transcendental meditation via a lecture given by his idol (director David Lynch). We follow along with him as he first becomes enamored and later jaded with both the philosophy and the director who led him to it. The movie does a good job of taking us along David's journey, and none of it really feels staged or as if he's going in to the process with an agenda. He comes across as a bit of a naif, and it actually works to the movie's benefit. The movie asks the routine questions about the TM movement's ethics, politics, cultish behavior, etc, but Sieveking seems hesitant to really try to blow the whole thing wide open. Probably because, as the movie implies, he's not sure he wants the myth (both of TM and of Lynch) destroyed himself.

Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino, 2010)

8.5/10
Michelangelo Frammartino's sophomore effort, a delicious slice of dialogue-free slow cinema. The story follows a man, a goat, a tree, and a lump of coal, and is at turns happy, sad, tragic and amusing...Frammartino displays incredible respect and patience and you never get the feeling he's "stretching things out" - like the 'no dialogue' approach, everything feels completely natural and gimmick-free. It seems impossible to describe this one without selling it short but it really is a unique little gem, worth watching if you're looking for something different but wholly satisfying.

Enter the Void (Gaspar Noe, 2009)

6.5/10
This is a frustrator. Gaspar Noe's interminable Enter the Void is a brazenly unique cinematic experience - especially in terms of visual style. The movie is a treat to look at, and comparisons with a drug-obsessed 2001: A Space Odyssey don't seem so ridiculous when you start watching it. After an unbelievable title sequence (watch here) and a tremendous first act, things steadily head south. The second act is less interesting but still enjoyable, but everything falls apart by the third and Noe seems to know it, throwing everything possible at the screen in any order in all manner of gratuity just hoping something good happens. A movie about the life and death of a young drug dealer and the relationship with his sister, there are lots of good ideas here but in no known universe is this film worth 2 hours and 45 minutes of anyone's time. A tighter edit could have made this a masterpiece, as it stands it's just a disappointment made all the more bitter by all the wasted talent on display.

Catfish (Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman, 2010)

8/10
This was a pleasant surprise because I'd never heard anything about it, but it seems a lot of people were mislead by the marketing campaign to believe it's some kind of horrror/suspense movie. The first 30 minutes certainly set the framework for it but then the movie goes in a completely different direction. In short, a 20-something is sent a package by an 8 year old girl named Abby containing a painting of a picture he took for a newspaper. Eventually he becomes tangled in a penpal/email/Facebook/texting friendship with Abby, her mother Angela, and her older sister Megan. I won't say anything else but it's a very interesting story (shot documentary style) that develops in very smart, unflinching ways. The acting is superb, my only nitpick was that the movie felt like it was treading water for the last 20 minutes. Still enjoyed it a lot though.

The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira, 2010)

5/10 This was my first Manoel de Oliveira film. I figured the guy is 102 years old, might as well get started while he's still alive. But really I was disappointed. The plot is a young photographer summoned to photograph the body of the recently deceased Angelica. Soon the photographer's pictures of her seem to come alive and he's being visited by her in his dreams (or are they?). The movie is beautifully shot and often feels like a visual artifact from the 60's (in a good way) and de Oliveira's stoic direction is pitch perfect. However the story is largely uninteresting, the dream sequences are corny, and the ending is milquetoast. Basically I wanted to like this one a lot more than I did, but I won't let it sour me on the rest of the director's oeuvre.