sherlock holmes (guy ritchie, 2009)

I didn't care for many of the lines or a lot of the plot. And the fourth point on the cross is... Oh my! This sort of thing plays better if there's more distance between the audience and the crimesolvers, so that such plot developments are more clearly not the point but just an excuse for the aesthetics to play out. Like in Von Trier's Element of Crime.

But Robert Downey Jr was just too charming for me not to have a good time. And Jude Law was charming too.

The whole time I was watching this, I thought that Lord Blackwood was being played by Christopher Meloni. (The end credits revealed the actor to be Mark Strong.)

the white ribbon (haneke, 2009, in german)

Peepsie!

Handsomely shot. A German village. 1913/1914. 

I was impressed how long the camera wallowed in the cute-sad-cute-sadness of a scared little boy wandering the house at night looking for his big sister.

band of outsiders (godard, 1964, in french)

The guys' coats are such a part of the movie that by the time their faces are masked by stockings, there can be no doubt which man is which.

Claude Brasseur (Arthur) was on the French bobsled team! Every movement he makes is great. The dancing, the impression of how a certain guy he knows walks, the leaping through the car window.

fantastic mr fox (wes anderson, 2009)

Packed with delight. Masterpiece in red, orange, yellow and brown.

Best wiping back off with a towel in a movie ever.

district 13 : ultimatum (2009, in french)

Sequel to 2004's District 13. More parkour. Sweet. Doesn't matter if the nonparkour parts are hokey.

terribly happy (2008, in danish)

Copenhagen cop gets stationed to a small town in South Jutland. The quirky and/or menacing locals tell him over and over again that he just doesn't understand how things are done there. Tiresome.

fish tank (andrea arnold, 2009)

Of course, now I want to see every movie Michael Fassbender has been in.

archer (television, 2010)

Very funny spy-spoof cartoon on FX. Sterling Archer is hot. Like Jon Benjamin, he has piercing blue eyes.

there will be blood (p t anderson, 2007)

Took me two years to see this one. 

"Bastard from a basket" and "I drink your milkshake" are gold.

A man mining by himself. The aloneness and danger of it is impressively nauseating to watch and contemplate.

Feels like 2001 at the start. A world before we made it ours. Each technological advancement at the mine feels like a new bone or monolith.

Those who found the oil fires to be beautiful are directed to Werner Herzog's Lessons of Darkness.

the revenge : a scar that never fades (kiyoshi kurosawa, 1997, in japanese)

Forms a pair with "A Visit from Fate" (see previous post). Sho Aikawa's characters in the two movies have the same name and some of the same history. But are they really the same man? As with Kiyoshi Kurosawa's other Sho-Aikawa-starring pair of movies with guns - "Serpent's Path" and "Eyes of the Spider" - the two movies might roll in two slightly different universes.

Nice longish-distance view of a shootout. Cool car scenes with purposeful Godardly misaligned wacky music. The car is really dirty. Best use of a metal detector in a movie ever?

the revenge : a visit from fate (kiyoshi kurosawa, 1997, in japanese)

The reason I started this blog today = I saw this movie two days ago at the Walter Reade (NYC). Tonight I googled it to find out when it was made. It wasn't on IMDb. But I found this blog entry by a guy who clearly had been at the same show I was at :

http://outdamnedspot.blogspot.com/2010/02/visit-from-fate-begins-badly-with.html

On top of that, the guy follows his post with one relating Kiyoshi Kurosawa's work to Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, which I'm in the middle of reading. The coincidence made me happy and I love the guy's blog so I'll start one. (A less ambitious one.)

This blog's title is not my invention. It's Cinemaniac Jack's complaint about BAM. I hope he won't mind me using it.

So back to the movie.

I always like a Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie and this is no exception. It's an 80-minute movie with guns that forms a pair with "The Revenge : The Scar That Never Fades" (see following post). Sho Aikawa is cool as always. Beautiful sort-of-chase-and-gunfight in dense-ish vegetation.

Fans of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's other Sho-Aikawa-starring pair of movies with guns - "Serpent's Path" and "Eyes of the Spider" - may be happy to hear that "A Visit From Fate", too, has a lady with a cane.