Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)

9/10
Only the second Woody Allen movie I've ever seen, so don't use me as a barometer. I walked in unenthused and prepared to not like it (the first 10 minutes or so didn't really endear me) and walked out feeling as charmed and as filled with starry-eyed wonder as the protagonist Gill, played effortlessly by Owen Wilson. The plot isn't anything new (a disaffected, struggling writer sejourning with his bourgeoise wife in Paris starts to question his life's direction) but it's presented in a very clever way - Wilson's midnight walks around Paris find him in the past, encountering his heroes from the art world and in particular Adriana, a woman similarly out of step with her own era and searching for a sense of self.
Any movie featuring time travel is bound to include one self-conscious wink-nudge joke for the audience's benefit (e.g. Back to the Future's "President Ronald Reagan - the ACTOR?") but Midnight in Paris has the sharpest one I've ever heard involving Gill suggesting to Luis Bunuel...well I won't spoil it.
The entire movie is very light and breezy, but incredibly tight and clever. There's a bit of inanely expository dialogue, some broadly painted characters, and the ending is a bit cornball, but it's so fun and so charming it's hard to really care too much.
The movie also works well as a 90 minute infomercial for Paris because man do I want to go now.

Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1957)

7/10
There are many likeable things in this movie, from the acting to the lovely noir photography to Miles Davis' score to the little twists the story takes, but overall I couldn't help but feeling a touch let down by the end product. Its ending is disappointingly conventional for the lead up. I wish the film had ended as the camera pulled away from the bistro coffee shop (I won't say any more so as not to spoil), that would have really knocked me out I think. It was good, but didn't blow me away.

Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)

8.5/10
The story went in a different direction than I had expected and was more sentimental than I thought it would be, but it was still very enjoyable. Harry Dean Stanton's character goes through a rare, true "transformation" in the cinematic sense of the word and two of the scenes - the home movies and the final telephone conversation in the "hotel booth" - are just blistering. Ry Cooder's score was also exceptional.

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)

7/10
(Final Cut version)
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly disappointed. The technology and visuals wear extremely well, but I think other elements suffer - particularly Rutger Hauer's performance and Vangelis' score, both of which constantly teeter on the brink of ridiculous. The pacing in this movie is very...jarring, I guess? I felt like it never really found a rhythm. I don't know if there are a lot of differences between this version at the theatrical/original one (this was my first experience with the film in any form) but it felt like a movie that had undergone quite a few edits/revisions. I think this is a movie that if I saw growing up, I would love and overlook its flaws, but I find it harder to do so now. It's still fun and I'd watch it again at some point, for sure.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Robert Zemeckis & Richard Williams, 1988)

6/10
I'd actually never seen this before, at least not recently and in full. Its achievement in blending live-action and animation is still impressive and pretty seamlessly done, especially considering it was 1988. It's also far riskier than anything that would be allowed in a similar film made today, especially one that has Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse making appearances. But it's not a particularly good movie per se - Roger Rabbit is an overwhelmingly irritating main character to be saddled with for 90 minutes and Bob Hoskins, for most of the movie, displays the charisma of a brick. Considering those two dominate the screen time, I was left desperately searching for something likeable (Jessica Rabbit, anyone?) The plot is more muddled than it has to be, but the set pieces entertain well enough.

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.

Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003)

9/10
I really didn't know anything about Dogville going in except that it starred Nicole Kidman as a woman on the run in a town called Dogville...so I was quite startled by the way the movie is presented, which is on a large soundstage with buildings, scenery, even the town dog outlined in paint (see here). At first I thought it was a bit gimmicky but by the end I thought it was brilliant, as was the story, which surely has to be the pinnacle of Lars von Trier's writing abilities. And the acting is fantastic all around, because it has to be - there's not much else on the screen to look at if you're not looking at the actors. The movie itself has to be one of the harshest takes on "Americana" as there ever has been, and the end credits featuring David Bowie's "Young Americans", while as subtle as a sledgehammer, work perfectly.