131) World on a Wire (1973)

131) World on a Wire (1973) Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Date Released: April 2010 Date Seen: April 7, 2010 Rating: 3.5/5

I love the sumptuousness of it but the story just isn't that striking. See my review for Slant Magazine.

129) The Good, the Bad and the Weird (2008)

129) The Good, The Bad and the Weird (2008) Dir: Kim Ji-Woon Date Released: April 2010 Date Seen: April 5, 2010 Rating: 3/5

A big, in more ways than one, missed opportunity. See my review for Slant Magazine.

128) The Small Back Room (1949)

128) The Small Back Room (1949) Dir: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Date Released: February 1952 Date Seen: April 5, 2010 Rating: 4/5

Was there anything Powell & Pressburger couldn't do? I mean, the espionage overplot in The Small Back Room is a bit flat-footed but its really not the focus of the film. Powell and Pressburger's consummate drive to experiment and their unparalleled ability to succeed at whatever they tried to do is the real engine of the film. In fact, I remember distinctly that the film's plot had a tendency towards exploring one tangential subplot after another until the viewer begins to want a a return to some semblance of normalcy just as much as the film's alky of a protagonist does. And it works because you want to be lost in Powell and Pressburger's charming patter for as long as you can. The film's depiction of addiction is quaint by today's standards but it makes for good drama. I'll be damned if that nightmare sequence isn't great.

127) The Runaways (2010)

127) The Runaways (2010) Dir: Floria Sigismondi Date Released: March 2010 Date Seen: April 4, 2010 Rating: 2/5

Who even remembers this shitty thing? Its creators love for Joan Jett's formative band doesn't translate beyond its stale and utterly dispensable biopic story. At all. I just didn't care and wasn't really given any good reason to except for the standard biopic line about how "These girls changed rock by making their troubled personalities their art." Blah blah blah alcoholism blah blah blah vampish narcissism blah blah blah lesbian kiss scene blah. Blah. Bleh. Yeah, yeah, Michael Shannon's great, yeah, yeah. But that's because A) he's Michael Shannon B) he's allowed to cut loose and have fun by popping up periodically and exploding while the rest of the actors are shackled to truly dull characters that get more face time because...well, I don't really know. Who gives a flying fart? So glad I brought my flask to this.

126) How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

126) How to Train Your Dragon (2010) Dir: Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders Date Released: March 2010 Date Seen: April 4, 2010 Rating: 4/5

Specific details of How to Train Your Dragon's plot have left me many moons ago because, let's face it, the film's ideas are hardly original. But I distinctly remember being thoroughly disarmed by the film all the same. Its jokes don't always hit home but its genuinely affecting, almost totally immersive and the filmmakers use of 3D is top-notch. If I had to guess, I'd say I connected with Dragon because it was a standard story done very well, the kind of thing that doesn't get enough praise because many dismiss it as very good generic junk. Which is misleading because a film is only really generic if it doesn't do anything with its stock plot. This film does and it makes for a very convincing bildungs roman. With dragons. And vikings.

Half-Time Fun-Time

As of the Halfway Mark:

Top 10:

1) Dogtooth (2009) Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos

2) The Ghost Writer (2009) Dir: Roman Polanski

3) Life During Wartime (2009) Dir: Todd Solondz

4) Lourdes (2009) Dir: Jessica Hausner

5) Anton Chekhov's The Duel (2009) Dir: Dover Koshashvili

6) The Eclipse (2009) Dir: Conor McPherson

7) The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009) Dir: Tom Six

8) The Crazies (2010) Dir: Breck Eisner

9) Mid-August Lunch (2009) Dir: Gianni Di Gregario

10) The Paranoids (2009) Dir: Gabriel Medina

Bottom 10:

1) Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008) Dir: James Nguyen

2) Jonah Hex (2010) Dir: Jimmy Hayward

3) The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) Dir: David Slade

4) Remember Me (2010) Dir: Allen Coulter

5) Videocracy (2009) Dir: Erik Gandini

6) Valentine's Day (2010) Dir: Garry Marshall

7) Stolen (2009) Dir: Anders Anderson

8) Alice in Wonderland (2010) Dir: Tim Burton

9) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) Dir: Niels Arden Oplev

10) Creation (2009) Dir: Jon Amiel

Repertory Top 10:

1) Metropolis (1927) Dir: Fritz Lang

2) House (1977)

3) Orlando (1992) Dir: Sally Potter

4) Shock Coridor (1963) Dir: Samuel Fuller

5) Zodiac (2007) Dir: David Fincher

6) The Prowler (1957) Dir: Joseph Losey

7) Wake in Fright (1971) Dir: Ted Kotcheff

8) Who Killed Teddy Bear? (1965) Dir: Peter Cates

9) Eastern Condors (1987) Dir: Sammo Hung

10) To Die for Tano (1997) Dir: Roberta Torre

125) Close-Up (1990)

125) Close-Up (1990) Dir: Abbas Kiarostami Date Released: December 1999 Date Seen April 1, 2010 Rating: 4/5

The problem with watching a film that has as much cachet as Close-Up does is it's hard not to be too expectant. I don't buy into the notion that your expectations ultimately dictate how you react to a film (prejudices and preferences only dictate your judgment so much, y'know?). But I also just didn't see something here that it seems many others did. True, I was completely caught up in the Wiseman-esque trial scenes in the film and in the playful supposition that this man impersonating Makhmalbaf was role-playing even after he was clearly caught. But I don't see how this film works as anything more than a superficial commentary on the way cinema and life cyclically are inextricable from one another. A very strong film but I can't really speak to the rest, which probably won't keep me up at nights.