2002: Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski)

2002: Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski) 

"It's so easy to laugh.  It's so easy to hate.  It takes strength to be gentle and kind."
- The Smiths

I first heard about Bujalski after reading a great Amy Taubin piece in Film Comment.  I soon tracked down Funny Ha Ha, and when I did, it really took me by surprise.  It was so different from anything else I'd seen coming out of the indy scene.  

Bujalski's film is natural and real but not at all in the way that someone like Harmony Korine might take on naturalism.  There's very little irony here, and the style is unabrasive, observational, and remarkably restrained.  The camera is often handheld but always in a fluid rather than in a shaky, aggressive manner.  Korine and many of his generation wanted to bring the Dogma aesthetic to the states.  Bujalski, meanwhile, seems to be channeling more Rohmer and Jean Eustache.  

Bujalski's casualness can be deceiving, sometimes creating the impression that his cinema is unambitious.  However, I think the way that his writing and direction of actors strips away most of what we think of as "actorly" is not only incredibly ambitious, but also incredibly successful.  Bujalski inspires and excites me, and this is my favorite of his films so far.

Other contenders for 2002:  From this year, I still have some titles to see.  These include: Abbas Kiarostami's Ten, Peter Bogdanovich's The Cat's Meow, Niki Caro's Whale Rider, Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, Rob Marshall's Chicago, and Hong Sang Soo's Turning Gate.  From this year, I really like Spike Lee's 25th Hour, Claire Denis' Vendredi Soir, and Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's The Son.  I love Jim Sheridan's In America, Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things, Todd Haynes' Far from Heaven, and Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her.  And my closest runner-up is Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale. 

4/17/11 I watched David Lynch's The Short Films of David Lynch.  This collection compiles six Lynch short films, Six Figures Getting Sick, The Alphabet, The Grandmother, The Amputee, The Cowboy and the Frenchman, and Lumiere: Premonitions Following an Evil Deed.  I was most partial to The Cowboy, which had the largest dose of Lynch's vintage humor.  But it was interesting to see the early work, and how quickly into his film career, Lynch already demonstrated a great interest and skill with sound and color. 

5/25/11 I watched Niki Caro's Whale Rider.  A bit overwrought and overly sentimental for my own tastes.  But Keisha Castle-Hughes has a great face that Caro uses to very good effect.  

7/6/11 I watched Abbas Kiarostami's Ten.  Kiarostami is one of the medium's all-time great humanists.  But the format here grows old after awhile, and keeps Kiarostami's extraordinary sensitivity and observations a bit too hemmed in. 

12/14/13 I watched Nicolas Philibert's Etre et avoir.  Less disciplined and rigorous than Wiseman, Philibert still impresses with the unique moments he is able to capture.  Watching for instance a young boy realize there are numbers beyond those he already knows feels like something the cinema has never quite captured before, the awakening of a young mind.  Overall the film is a very warm, patient look at an extremely gifted and giving teacher.  

5/1/21 I watched Spike Lee's Jim Brown: All-American.  What I would have thought would be an impassioned look at Brown seems fairly detached and disengaged.

3/9/22 I watched Frederick Wiseman's The Last Letter.  Wiseman's great strength is observing life as it is unfolding, holding up a mirror so we can hopefully see better, feel deeper and think more effectively.  There are some powerful elements in this work but heavy stylization and artifice work against the master's most special gifts and talents.

3/11/24 I watched Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen.  Although I am far from a Loach completist, I have seen several of his films through the years and long been a great admirer of his early film Kes.  Here, Loach seems to be inhabiting some of the same world of Kes while also channeling 400 Blows, a touch of Dardenne rawness and the inescapable doom of Mean Streets.  It's never entirely clear where it's all going.  Loach keeps the danger ratcheted up by keeping the story grounded and the emotions plausible.   

1996: Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen)

1996: Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Roger Deakins began his collaboration with the Coen brothers in 1991 on their film Barton Fink.  The two directors and the cameraman have since proven that they have one of the most vital, important, and powerful artistic relationships of anyone in film.  


All of their work together has great, visual interest, but of everything they have ever done, this remains my favorite of their aesthetic accomplishments.  I'm a sucker, as I've mentioned a couple of times now, for snow-covered imagery.  And this film is about as white as any ever made.  It's a gorgeously controlled work, in terms of its color palette, camerawork, and production design.  Everything seems considered, and everything feels unusually cohesive.  


The Coen brothers just so happen to have one other special collaboration and that's with their composer, Carter Burwell.  His work is always top shelf, but this particular score haunts me as much as any he's ever done.  


Wonderful writing per usual by the brothers.  Also two of their most memorable characters for William H Macy and Frances McDormand.  I usually don't champion "ironic noir", but other aspects of this one far outweigh any typical difficulties I might have.  




Other contenders for 1996: From this year, I still have some things to see.  These include: Peter Greenaway's Pillow Book, Edward Yang's Mahjong, and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.  At some point, I need to revisit Catherine Breillat's Parfait Amour! and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's La Promesse as it's been too long since I've seen either of them to know where they'd place on this list.  I really like Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild, Wes Craven's Scream, and Claire Denis' Nenette et Boni.  And I love Hou Hsiao-hsien's Goodbye South, Goodbye, Eric Rohmer's A Summer's Tale, Arnaud Desplechin's How I Got Into an Argument... (My Sex Life), Andre Techine's Thieves, Takeshi Kitano's Kids Return, and Abel Ferrara's The Funeral.  And my closest runner-up is Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible.

9/5/10 I watched Paul Thomas Anderson's Hard Eight.  It's an extremely confident debut, and I was particularly impressed by his work with Samuel L Jackson and Philip Baker Hall.  A little more mannered, perhaps, than my ideal kind of noir.  But I enjoyed it all the same.  

1/12/14 I watched Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's La Promesse.  All of the tight elements that have come to describe the Belgian filmmakers' style of filmmaking are already in order here - the fluid, handheld camerawork, the natural, unforced performances, and the very lived-in wardrobe and locations.  It is a flawless film in many ways, but it is neither as emotional as some of the great Neorealist work nor as transcendent.  

7/21/15 I watched Bobby and Peter Farrelly's Kingpin.  A crass but lovable comedy.  It helps that Harrelson is unusally likable and keeps things grounded even when the brothers push things too far beyond plausibility or funny gross. 

2/22/16 I rewatched Arnaud Desplechin's How I Got Into an Argument...(My Sex Life).  Desplechin's second feature comes with a certain looseness that could belie a unique cinematic intelligence and a nearly unprecedented capturing of uninhibited femaleness.  It feels more akin to a novel in its shape and its courage to let time unfold within its own disheveled set of rules.  "Tenderness is the fear of adulthood", Desplechin quotes Kundera, and this film might be as spot-on as any in the medium's history for capturing that very strange road from freedom to responsibility.   

7/3/17 I watched Adam McKay's Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.  Not my thing but had a few funny moments when one is in the mood to completely shut it off and just be entertained a bit.

1993: Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma)

1993: Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma)
Cinematic from the very get-go.  And what an opening it is.  Black-and-white, slow motion, voiceover, and what music!  A long take, choreographed, beginning with the camera at a dutch angle.  Sensuous, complex, abstract, graphic, many elements of style all brought into some harmonious balance.  I couldn't pull that off.  Most people couldn't pull that off.  De Palma is some kind of master, huh?

And that's just the filmmaking.

At the root of this, one of my favorite crime films of all time, is also a theme that affects me deeply, the idea that one mistake may trap you forever.  If Carlito had just left Benny Blanco alone, stayed out of his way, all would have been okay.  But he made one blunder and could never quite escape it.

It's the only movie I've ever seen that makes you forget about its ending, so much so that you feel all the more duped when it gets there AGAIN. This one moves me in the highest way at every level imaginable.  I admire it, I love it, and I feel it deeply.  And I know it has its detractors, but chalk me up as one of its biggest fans.  


Other contenders for 1993:  From this year, I still have some things to see.  These include Atom Egoyan's Calendar, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Puppetmaster, James Ivory's The Remains of the Day, and Eric Rohmer's The Tree, The Mayor, and the Mediatheque.  At some point, I'll need to revisit Jane Campion's The Piano, Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue, and Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List as it's been too long since I've seen any of them to know where they'd place on this list.  From this year though, I love Akira Kurosawa's Madadayo.  And my closest runner-up is Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence.

4/30/10 I watched Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers.  It wouldn't contend for my top spot.  But like much of Ferrara's work, I sat through much of it thinking it an unmitigated disaster and then emerged with the feeling that it was actually up to something quite interesting.  The first time they try to "snatch" Anwar is particularly strong, as are some of the final moments.   

3/28/11 I watched Tsai Ming-Liang's Rebels of the Neon God.  A very strong debut from Tsai, full of all his usual themes -- urban isolation, water fetishes, and a keen interest in bodily fluids.  What's most shocking at the beginning is how much verve Tsai's style has.  In fact, it feels like he's riffing more on Wong Kar-Wai for awhile here than Antonioni, who would ultimately become his closest influence.  Not as pure and distilled as some of Tsai's later work, but certainly worth a look.

9/19/11 I watched James Ivory's The Remains of the Day.  I like how there are consistent thematic concerns in each of the Merchant/Ivory films I've seen.  There's an interest in a certain old world order, people's inability to express themselves emotionally to one another, and a respect for one's class, no matter the sacrifice or loss of opportunities it might create.  This film is his most daring narratively, but at times the sheer audacity of the endeavor might lead to a little repetition and awkwardness that would have been avoided with a slightly easier narrative.  Still, I have great respect for the team Merchant/Ivory assembled and the clarity of their approach.  

6/3/12 I watched Manoel de Oliveira's Abraham's Valley.  Beautiful, deep, and Rohmeresque but also distancing for me because of the actor playing Ema.  I have more respect and admiration than I do a deeply felt connection to this one.

8/23/13 I watched Andre Techine's My Favorite Season.  Techine's desire to be real, emotional, subtle, and naturalistic are all there.  But whereas I find his next two features (Wild Reeds and Thieves) to go to daring places while always remaining in the right emotional register, this one seems to veer off at times.  It still has some great feel and depth but just feels minor compared to where he would go next.  

1/16/18 I rewatched Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day.  It is somewhat interesting to see how Ramis handles its non-linear narrative but otherwise it's fairly generic in terms of the rest of its design.

12/21/21 I watched Patricia Mazuy's Travolta et Moi.  A film that I have been wanting to see for more than 25 years is interesting and unexpected.  It captures both the feeling of youth on fire but also explores some of the frustration that ultimately fueled the punk rock movement of the late seventies into the early eighties.  

1/27/22 I watched Paulo Rocha's Oliveira l'architecte.  I've still seen very little of the Portuguese's work but I loved Angelica and look forward to taking in many more of his films.  This was far from one of the strongest of the Cinema de Notre Temps series I have seen but nonetheless I enjoyed spending a little time with Oliveira the person.  

7/4/22 I watched Victor Nunez's Ruby in Paradise.  What jumps out at first view is to think about the historical context in which it was made.  It was the height of American indy cinema and "auteurs" working overtime to emphasize their personal style.  Spike, the Coen brothers, Jarmusch, Hartley, Tarantino all came to the medium with heavily mannered approaches.  In fact, it is hard for me to think of an indy filmmaker, at that time, who was working in a more naturalistic way.  

Perhaps it's the fact that Nunez was 48 when he made Ruby.  Whatever the reasons, Nunez distinguishes himself from the rest of the abovementioned filmmakers by his careful attention to place and character and his subdued use of music, sound, and any other aspect of cinematic style.    

10/23/22 I watched Jon Turteltaub's Cool Runnings.  A sports film targeted mostly at young kids.  It has heart and a few genuinely moving moments but overall a bit too broad for my taste.

1981: Blow Out (Brian De Palma)

1981: Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
I've already penned one essay on this blog, explaining my love for the work of Brian De Palma.  And now we've come to Blow Out, my favorite of all his films.  

1.  Form

I've said numerous times during this countdown that I have to consider myself a formalist.  When I watch a film, the first thing I'm doing is deconstructing and judging the way it's formed.  This definitely comes from all the time I spent in France.  It's the way Langlois wanted the young Turks to think about film at the Cinematheque.  And it's still the way that most French film critics approach the medium.  When it comes to being a pure master of the cinematic form -- moving the camera, using music, using sound, editing to maximum effect -- I consider De Palma, along with Scorsese, to be the greatest of all American directors still working today.  There's a sensuality and complexity to De Palma's approach to film form.  And this is as clear as ever in this film.  Just watch the first five minutes.  

2.  Emotion  

Some have labeled De Palma cold and callous while I've always found him to be a deeply wounded romantic.  And of all the ways I connect to his work, this is where our connection is at its most powerful. Travolta's character in Blow Out seems to me the most personal of all of De Palma's creations.  In other words, the one that emotionally most closely resembles the filmmaker.  It's devastating to consider, and it's devastating to experience.    

3.  Playfulness

De Palma likes to provide thrills.  There's a part of him that thinks the experience should be fun and unexpected, and he's very playful in his work.  Without providing a spoiler, just look at the way he ends this one.  

Historically, I like to think of Blow Out as the final film of the American New Wave.  The filmmakers would go on to make more great work, but this seems to be the end of a certain era.  And personally, well, it's my favorite film of the eighties.  

Other contenders for 1981: I still have some films to see from this year.  These include: Samuel Fuller's White Dog, Abbas Kiarostami's Orderly or Disorderly, Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way, Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City, Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de Torchon, Warren Beatty's Reds, Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Lola, Jacques Rivette's Le pont du Nord, Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Rat Trap, Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron, and Bertrand Blier's Beau-pere.  I need to revisit Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva, and Hugh Hudson's Chariots of Fire as it's been too long since I've seen any of them to know where they'd place on this list.  And my closest runner-up from this year is Michael Mann's Thief.

7/16/11 I watched Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City.  It's clear that Lumet loves this subject matter, and he gives it an extremely thorough and careful execution.  It is maybe the most detailed police procedural I have ever seen.  And certainly full of top-notch performances, location work, and cinematography.  Just a little too dry at times.  

8/21/11 I watched Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de Torchon.  Intelligent and written in a literary style.  Quirky, with an absolutely excellent performance from Noiret.  But left me a little lukewarm after it all.  

11/23/13 I watched Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl.  A film full of heart that reminds me of Bujalski, Carax, and Hartley.  Gregory is a lovable, vulnerable, goofy young man and Forsyth gives many of his scenes nice space, warmth, and playfulness.  Less austere than some of the other work I have seen from Forsyth but Forsyth's narrative looseness really works in his favor here.  One of the best narrative capsules I have seen of the early eighties and a surprising little gem.  

10/18/15 I watched Penelope Spheeris' The Decline of Western Civilization.  Very interesting look, for its access and intimacy, at the height of the LA punk scene.  Makes me want to get a little deeper into some of these bands and their music.

10/30/15 I watched Andre Techine's Hotel des Ameriques.  One of these films I am not sure yet how to take it.  It is very Hitchcockian, focused on l'amour fou, and possessing a wounded romanticism that the French know how to do better than anyone.  Techine films nature almost as well as Godard and brings out something very special when he works with Deneuve but this one did not fully get me upon first viewing.

12/3/16 I watched Jacques Rivette's Le Pont du Nord,  One of the real pleasures of being a cinephile is discovering a new link to a film that you already love.  In this case it's Carax's Boy Meets Girl and really to Carax's cinema in general.  Rivette's influence seems to be all over.  It's in the way that Carax uses the little seen areas of Paris, the way that he fixates on maps of the city, and in the countless quirky mannerisms of Lavant that run throughout Carax's body of work.  Also, of note is this strange relationship with genre that Rivette seems to have (and I guess Godard did as well, think Pierrot le Fou or Vivre sa Vie).  It's like they don't want to make pure art films but instead prefer adding these trivial crime subtexts to the real meat of their stories producing a formula that ends up being something like - - serious characterization + ironic treatment of genre = playful, thoughtful art.  What is interesting is how some of the New Wave filmmakers get at the poetry of the genre by having fun with it in ways that the original practitioners of the genre never achieved.  I am thinking particularly of where Truffaut ends up in Shoot the Piano Player, Belmondo's final moments in Pierrot and the remarkable last few minutes Rivette gives us between Pascale Ogier and Jean-Francois Stevenin.  And I've gotten all the way here and only begun to mention Pascale Ogier, the most interesting and most tragic early loss for French cinema who in but a handful of films offered up everything that James Dean and River Phoenix did, only to disappear all too soon. 

1/28/17 I  rewatched Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way.  It's been 20 or so years since I first saw this in a bad print at the New Beverly.  It's much stronger than I remember, Bridges and Heard quite impressive and the whole thing in much the same vein as Night Moves.  It is one of the more important final bookends to the American New Wave, artistic with an A list crew at its helm and disheartened that the utopic future for America envisioned by the youth had clearly failed.  

4/16/17 I watched Warren Beatty's Reds.  I was deeply impressed by Beatty's ability to handle a story of this size with such directorial grace and skill.  I found his performance to be as good or close to as good as his typical level but it was Keaton's acting that really got me.  I have never found her as affecting and as deep as she is here.  I could do without the Greek chorus device as I found it took me out of the story more than further embedding me.  But the rest of the style is quite beautiful from Storaro's cinematography to Sondheim's music. 

11/3/17 I watched Ivan Reitman's Stripes.  Reitman has a breezy approach and directorial style which are refreshing and easy to take in at first but the third act has nothing.  

4/9/20 I watched Peter Bogdanovich's They All Laughed.  The most favorable thing I felt was that it is a detective film that feels almost completely fresh and devoid of cliche.  Unfortunately I never quite understood what Bogdanovich was trying to say and never connected with any of the characters.  

7/22/20 I watched Albert Brooks' Modern Romance.  My favorite of the Brooks' films I've seen so far.  It was most impressive in how honest it felt with respect to the director's less redeeming compulsions.  Somewhat in line with Woody Allen's work yet seems a bit more serious about its faults and has a heavier director's touch than Allen's films.  

9/6/20 I watched Jacques Rivette's Paris s'en va.  Some behind the scenes footage of Rivette's Le Pont du Nord never felt all that interesting. 

11/15/21 I watched Abbas Kiarostami's Orderly or Disorderly.  I saw a very poor print but what jumped out at me for the first time was how formally close Kiarostami could be to Tati's late work.  The colors, the framing, the way Kiarostami composes "order" had me thinking of Playtime and some of Tati's other final work.  

1/2/22 I watched George Cukor's Rich and Famous.  Cukor's final film is yet another interesting final work by a great director.  It feels personal and likely that Cukor must have known it could very well be his last work after a career of making films for over 50 years.  Like some other directors' final works, it feels like it wants the spectator to be outside of it, thinking about it, as much as it wants to give an audience a ride.  Considered as such, it is not very entertaining, however the final moments take on a weight that justify the two hour experience.    

3/13/22 I watched Walter Hill's Southern Comfort.  An interesting mood piece from Hill on Caddo Lake in my North Louisiana backyard.  Hill's style feels a bit disjointed and scattershot but the crew assembled is quite interesting and a couple of scenes almost jump off the screen between the dense Spanish moss and the music of Ry Cooder.

Some of My Favorite Endings

Inspired by Greg Ferrara's wonderful post this morning over at Cinema Styles (http://cinemastyles.blogspot.com/2010/01/monday-morning-mumbles.html), I've decided to put together a list of my favorite endings. Someone I was sitting with on a panel once said, "You really write a movie for the final five minutes.  And if those moments work, then everything else just kinda falls into place."  I never really articulated it in that way.  But I do have to admit, the final five minutes of a movie are more important to me than everything else.  

Here's my list, as I can best remember them (not in any specific order):

The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949)
The Soft Skin (Francois Truffaut, 1964) 
Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975)
King of New York (Abel Ferrara, 1990)
La chienne (Jean Renoir, 1931)
Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981)
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma, 1993)
The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983)
Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994)
Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970) 
Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)
The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)
Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)

Favorites of My Favorites #6 -- Brian De Palma

When Andre Bazin and his gang of French New Wave proteges were first starting out, they were on a mission.  It was a mission to shift the way the world thought about film.  They wanted people to give cinema (a relatively new medium) the same considerations they had long given the other arts (sculpture, literature, music, painting, drama, and architecture). 

To achieve this mission, it was important for them to determine, “what is cinema?”  What makes it unique from all other arts?  What is purely cinematic?   Some of them argued it was the ability to edit that distinguished cinema from the other arts.  Others, like Rohmer, said cinema was the art of “space”.

Though the idea of cinema as a form of art has not prevailed as they once hoped, the term "cinematic" has found itself a place in our vocabulary.  Maybe it means something a little different to each of us, but I would imagine for most that it conjures up images of something that is dazzling, exciting, and visually pleasing.  Something that can’t quite be replicated by any other medium or any other artform. 

Cinematic is the best word I can use to describe the work of Brian De Palma.  His films do more storytelling visually than maybe any we have ever had in the history of the medium.  I find his use of the camera hypnotic and certain of his films absolutely masterful.   He can elongate time in a scene, building moments slowly and patiently in a classical (concentrated) rather than modern (fragmented) way.  In fact, I feel that Quentin Tarantino (a long time fan) probably learned this from De Palma more than anything else (take a look at the way he builds the Gimp scene in Pulp Fiction or the opening scene and the incredible basement tavern scene in Inglourious Basterds). 

In a sense, I would put De Palma and Michael Mann in a similar category.  And probably Martin Scorsese, as well.  They are all very accomplished stylists.  However, I also think they all adhere to the tradition of the “existential hero” rather than that of the “ironic hero”.  Here’s the idea, as articulated from the always wise Paul Schrader:

“And so when the ironic hero supplanted the existential hero, when I first saw "Pulp Fiction," I really thought that was the end of my tradition, which was an existential kind of tradition. The dilemma of the existential hero is, Should I exist? But the dilemma of the ironic hero is, Does it matter? I personally felt that the ironic hero is so thin and unnourishing, and I was wondering how long he could really drive movies commercially before people would just get tired of him and his precious kind of winking at you and jabbing you in the side, his preening detachment.”

Admittedly, I’m a fan of some of the directors that make movies with ironic heroes.  However, one of the real pleasures I derive from Mann, Scorsese, and De Palma, is the way they make me really care about the lives of their characters.  When they die (as they often do), there’s a tragic depth of feeling that the “ironic” school of directors simply don’t provide.

From all accounts, De Palma is still an avid cinephile, and I think that explains some of his enduring modernism.  He is also playful and irreverent, and I think that has allowed him some of his longevity in the business.  I accept that he has his detractors (much of this coming from his desire to blend genres and his combination of somewhat disparate influences – Hitchcock, Film Noir, Argento).   But, ask me to show someone “cinema”, and I’ll probably throw in a De Palma film before almost anything else. 

BRIAN DE PALMA (in preferential order)

1.  Blow Out

2.  Carlito’s Way

3.  Dressed to Kill

4.  Body Double

5.  Femme Fatale

6.  The Untouchables

7.  Phantom of the Paradise

8.  Mission: Impossible

9.  Greetings

10.  Carrie

11.  Casualties of War

12.  Obsession

13.  Scarface

14.  The Fury

15.  Hi, Mom
16.  Snake Eyes watched 1/23/10

17.  Redacted

18.  Sisters

19.  The Bonfire of the Vanities

20.  Mission to Mars

21.  Wise Guys

22.  Raising Cain

23.  The Black Dahlia
24.  The Wedding Party watched 1/30/10

25.  Murder a la Mod watched 1/23/10

Never seen:

Snake Eyes

Home Movies

Murder a la Mod

The Wedding Party

Get to Know Your Rabbit

Dionysus

Show Me a Strong Town and I’ll Show You a Strong Bank (short)

The Responsive Eye (documentary short)

Bridge That Gap (short)

Jennifer (short)

Woton’s Wake (short)

660124: The Story of an IBM Card (short)

Icarus (short)

Favorites Update and A Little More Lullaby

A week ago, I started a new series entitled "Favorites of My Favorites" where I list, in preferential order, the films of my favorite filmmakers. So far, I've done an entry on Jean Renoir, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Mann, and Leos Carax.  Next up are Brian De Palma, David Lynch, Abel Ferrara (I already can't wait for the comments on that one), and Jim Jarmusch.  Others as I look ahead will be Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Bresson, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Francois Truffaut, Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, George Cukor, Jacques Becker, Orson Welles, Michael Cimino, Maurice Pialat, Wim Wenders, Abbas Kiarostami, Jonathan Demme, Sam Peckinpah, Alfred Hitchcock, Kenji Mizoguchi, Roberto Rossellini, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ernst Lubitsch, Robert Altman, William Friedkin, and Fritz Lang.

I expect the next few entries up in the next couple of weeks.  And then the others will follow throughout the rest of the year.

Also, just in, another really nice piece on The Last Lullaby:

http://dvdlateshow.blogspot.com/2010/01/last-lullaby.html

De Palma and Femme Fatale

It's impossible to see everything.  And now that more movies are being produced per year than ever in the history of the medium, it's only getting harder.  Things slip through the cracks.  The noise gets us.  And we can't help but miss a couple here and there.

I've always been a huge fan of Brian De Palma.  No one can move the camera like he can; there's a sexiness (if I dare say) to his camerawork that I don't really think anyone can match.  Plus there's a real interest in telling the story "visually" as much as he possibly can.

I love Greetings, Phantom of the Paradise, Obsession, Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, Casualties of War, Carlito's Way, and Mission: Impossible.  Somehow I missed Femme Fatale when it came out (Actually, that's not totally true.  I walked out of the theater after the first thirty or so minutes.  Testament that sometimes we must revisit.)

Well I finally caught up with it and loved it.  It's absolutely pure De Palma -- playful, sadistic, exuberant, heavy on the melodramatic music, and masterful in its use of the medium.  It's by far my favorite of his films in a really long time.  And if you're a fan of Mulholland Dr, check it out.  I think De Palma might have really loved the Lynch film, too.


*Thanks to Jeremy Richey and his Moon in the Gutter blog.  He recently listed Femme Fatale as one of his favorite films of the decade.  I couldn't agree more and owe him for the revisit.