The trend of watching films that I really enjoyed a few years ago and now thinking they are actually not very good at all continues with Requiem For A Dream. American Beauty, Donnie Darko, and Dancer in the Dark: none of them are doing it for me these days. I decided that for Requiem, it is because the film seems to be aimed at a younger, MTV minded audience. Which makes sense, and is probably a good thing, given its message is a capslocked “DON’T DO DRUGS.” And this is a good thing to get ingrained into the heads of a young audience, because, clearly, they shouldn’t do drugs. But I wonder, the entire time that I am watching this film, why a filmmaker in his late twenties or early thirties would want to make a film like this after he made such an interesting film about religion and mathematics in Pi. There are those who argue that Requiem is not just about drugs, but about the entire idea of addiction. But I think that is difficult to argue, given that all four of the characters’ downfall is some form of substance abuse.

A very interesting film could have been made by Aronofsky, with these characters, and maybe even based on this book. If we were shown the motivations for the younger characters to be drug dealers, and were given a more plausible, original path in which the characters end up in tragedy, then I could see myself being moved by the film. The only character who comes close to this is Ellen Burstyn’s Sara Goldfarb. I see that she loves watching television with her lone living room chair stationed directly in front of the television, I can understand her reaction to being notified that she has won a slot on her favorite TV show, I can understand that she wants to be thinner so that she can once again impress people and maybe even find a new man to replace the deceased husband that she so deeply misses. Her methods at attaining all of this are stupid, but believable, and in the end pretty heartbreaking. The younger characters, though, I have no sympathy for. You shoot up in that arm, in that spot again? Of course you deserve to lose your arm. You sell your body for a little bit of coke? Of course you deserve to look like a whore and get fucked in a massive anal orgy. Aronofsky has made one good film to date, The Wrestler, fortunately his more recent one, showing that maybe he is actually learning something from these didactic and unsubtle early films.

This is a strange and compelling film about – I’m not very sure what. What I do know is that Taiwan is experiencing a massive drought, watermelons have become portals into a woman’s vagina, and there is a lot of sex. A woman named Shiang-chyi is attracted to an old friend named Hsiao-Kang(or maybe he’s an ex? or a complete stranger?) who happens to be an actor in pornographic films. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hsiao-Kang’s porno scenes were figments of Shiang-chyi’s imagination. Oh, and there are also 4 or 5 musical numbers spread throughout the film, some where characters are now dragons, or penises, or lost in a field of watermelon umbrellas.
Not to mention a couple of ant attacks. This is a very surreal film that is mostly very entertaining, but I didn’t feel anything for any of the characters, and I wasn’t completely wowed by the intentionally campy showstopper songs. I did laugh quite a bit, and found the whole film to be pretty well paced. This is the first film that I have seen by Tsai, who is supposedly one of the true masters of contemplative cinema working today, so hopefully some of his other films carry a little more weight.

To say that Sleepaway Camp is one of the best horror films ever made is not giving it enough credit. This would, without question, land in a Top 10 Films of the 1980’s list that I would create. In creating a film about adolescence and transsexuality, Robert Hiltzik perfectly realized this film to have its climax be both shocking and explicable. What is misinterpretted as campiness and quirks and 1980-isms proves to be a subtle build-up to what should have been obvious all along. In showing us just how obvious everything is, it becomes questionable. In Todd Haynes’ Safe, Julianna Moore plays a woman who is physically reacting to something, but we don’t know what. The film makes a judgement of what it could be, and halfway through, decides to follow this diagnosis. While it is the most logical conclusion to follow, the fact that it is being followed so closely and matter-of-factly makes the viewer question whether or not the filmmaker is just leading us further and further into a rabbit hole.

When the killer in Sleepaway Camp is revealed, it is one of the most expertly crafted scenes I have ever seen. The triumphant trumpets, the zooms in and out of the killer, the computer distortion, and the hybrid of human and animal wheezing came together to create the only cinematic sensation that has prompted me to physically back away from the screen, while at the same time try to look closer to understand just what exactly it is that I saw. This movie is perfect.

This is my third Jia Zhang-ke film, and probably my favorite. The characters have a perfect level of melancholy throughout the film to be believable without ever even approaching melodrama. The film follows two characters. A male character searches for his daughter and the mother of his daughter whom he hasn’t seen in 16 years, and a nurse who is searching for her husband, whom she has not seen in 2 years. To make matter worse (and to give this film its plot), the town that both of them are searching in has recently been submerged under water. Jia ‘s usual themes of modernization, nostalgia, and artificiality are present, with occasional, jarring moments of otherworldy sci-fi. The views of the newer buildings in Still Life evoke Antonioni’s L’Eclisse. This is a very relaxing film, I saw it on a flight, and it eased, or numbed, my fears of my plane crashing. The cinematography is among the more beautiful that I have seen this year, and I prefer it to the lensing in 24 City and The World.

The experience of watching this film was actually somewhat painful. The film follows three naive women who are some of the more annoying female protagonists of any film that I have seen. They are giggly, bitchy, superficial, and completely delusional. But, the film has a pretty stellar finale that mostly makes up for almost the entire film that preceded it.

The film has many of the features of the French New Wave, a movement that never really interested me. The film is all shot on location around Paris.

Along with the aforementioned issues I have with the women, the men are almost just as bad. The men flirt with any woman they see, feel them up, harass them in swimming pools, and even bang their heads on tables in restaurants. I despised everyone in this film, which I learned was the point. What happens when young, attractive women are so naive and careless? What happens when men get their way over and over again with the relentlessly submissive women? The last scene of Les Bonnes Femmes happens; and for me, it felt so very good to watch.

1. La Mujer Sin Cabeza (Martel)
2. Wendy and Lucy (Reichardt)
3. Night and Day (Hong)
4. Summer Hours (Assayas)
5. A Light in the Fog (Rezaee)
6. Encounters at the End of the World (Herzog)
7. Melancholia (Diaz)
8. Un Lac (Grandrieux)
9. Soi Cowboy (Clay)
10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Fincher)

*grey signifies that I have now seen this film.

* This is the first time that I have seen this film in any version, so I cannot comment on its similarities and differences with the original, theatrical cut.

I think this film is a mixed bag. First the good, the film looks amazing. A scene near the end when two characters tear through a brick wall to reveal deep space was breathtaking (especially in Blu-ray!). The film takes place entirely at night, and the film noir style that it goes for in its first half is beautifully photographed. The film is also stuffed with great ideas about the past, memories, and individuality. When The Matrix was pointed out to me after the film, it does become very obvious that it is very influenced by Dark City.

To me, though, the strong ideas that are presented in this film are in the background to a film that really just wants to be an entertaining showcase of CGI and an explosive confrontation between good and evil. Almost all of the good ideas in the film are spelled out in expository dialogue from the often annoying Kiefer Sutherland. I kept wanting them to show me these scenes of Murdoch’s memory being shuffled over and over again. They show this once very briefly and I didn’t know what was happening, but I feel like this film would actually have a very good prequel that is all about all of the memory shuffling that takes place before this film starts off (not that they should actually do this, I can settle with thinking of Dark City as a missed opportunity).

The climax of the film spins out of control with Murdoch destroying the evil empire with his mind. On one hand I can appreciate it for its camp value, but it just goes too far, and felt that Proyas took it more seriously than he should have. He could have either taken it further and turned it into something truly fun and hilarious, or stepped back and let the resolution happen more subtly. Instead it lies somewhere in the middle and I was getting borderline angry that I was having to settle for a Hollywood grand finale instead of something more rewarding for the interesting build-up.

A very exhausting film to watch late at night. On the whole really impressive, Jia Zhang-ke’s The World, like his 24 City, is basically about the modernization of Beijing. My biggest compliment for this film is that it frequently reminded me of my favorite film, Playtime. The real life “World Park” in Beijing is a giant tourist attraction that exhibits most of the world’s great monuments at an advertised 1/3 of their actual sizes. There are women dancing around the park to music from all around the world, with the women appropriately dressed to matched the corresponding origins (one song is recognizable as the influence for M.I.A.’s “Jimmy”). When the film is looking at the wonders and peculiarities of this massive park and how horrifying it is, the film is spectacular. But the park isn’t really Jia’s main concern.

The film closely follows three or four women who are dancers at the park, and their relationships with friends and lovers. While many of the interactions are very interesting and moving, I thought that most of them were meandering, too melodramatic, or boring. The fact that the film runs almost two and a half hours didn’t help. The film feels way too long by at least half an hour, and I thought that the ending was random and kind of angsty. It was completely the wrong note to leave the film on and left a bad taste in my mouth for a film that I actually liked well enough. I would see this again, and there are enough fun moments to make it a rewarding experience, like the 6 or 7 animated sequences involving flying people and cell phone interactions. The music is kitchy but also very good.

This is one of the more minimal and contemplative films that I have seen come out of the labeled “Contemplative Cinema” genre (or movement?). The film is very formally interesting, lasting barely over an hour, and having no dialogue until the 30 minute mark. The film follows a young man as he cuts down trees to sell to a pole maker and his way of life as he lives alone in a forest. I am assuming that he is a young man, but I had trouble determining his age, as his physique and worn face suggests a man in maybe his mid-thirties, but his clothes, voice, and phone call to alert his mother of his status convinced me that he is probably a teenager.

When I saw Liverpool in TIFF, Alonso was present for a Q & A and let the audience in on a bit of his process. Up to this point, his method of working consists of finding a location first, and then he develops characters and a story that he believes are evoked by that location. This is a very interesting way of working in the sense that the characters feel like they are just as important as the background and the sounds of their surroundings. When I see Liverpool again, I am sure that I will enjoy it much more with this bit of knowledge, as watching Los Muertos and now La Libertad with this in mind making the viewing experience much richer. Aided by the pacing, I am able to imagine what sort of story I would make if I had chosen the same location, and in comparing what I would do to what Alonso has crafted, I can understand him as a filmmaker more than I can many other filmmakers. Filmmakers like Alonso, David Lynch, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who sort of wear their thought processes on their sleeves are easily my favorite to watch.

I watched this Swedish vampire film with a sold out crowd in one of Toronto’s largest movie theatres, Bloor Cinema. The film has been building up a huge momentum, winning top prizes from Austin, Texas’ Fantastic Fest and New York’s Tribeca. After being disappointed that it wasn’t playing in TIFF08, I was relieved to see that it was going to be playing in late October in the closest theatre to my house.

The film is very well paced and set to a pensive and pretty, though a bit repetitive, piano score that gave the film an emotional boost that was pretty moving in a couple of different scenes. The two leads were very convincing, nothing spectacular, but better than good. The photography is a standout, if not the standout. A couple of times I felt that a scene reminded me of a Gregory Crewdson photograph; not as sci-fi, but the color and composition.

The film’s stance on vampires is pretty straightforward. No big reveals or surprises, everything is handled in a very humble, passive way. All of the standard vampire traits are present though: no sunlight, must be invited into a house, flying, blood drinking, etc. The female adoescent vampire asks her to-be boyfriend if he will still like her even if she were not a girl. His reply was a nonchalant “yes I suppose.” In this way, I felt that there was a gay tint to the film. For the boy, the only other option at this point, if this girl were to be something other than a girl, is for her to be a boy, and he doesn’t even care. Later on, when he still doesn’t know that she is a vampire, she crawls into bed with him, naked, and tells him that she is not a girl when he asks if the two of them can “go steady.” He responds that he would still like to go steady with her, even though, again, the only thing that she could be other than a girl is a boy.

The film feels a little bit long, but I was enjoying its length and wanted it to go on for longer. I found that I really enjoyed the two leads, and was reminded of childhood friends and crushes that I had when I was around 10-12 years old.