Masterpiece...and playing on MUBI, whatdayaknow?

Holy cow—the retrospective discovery of 2011 for me. Playing on film and English subtitled in the New York Film Festival, and a must see.

To + Rear Window + Play Time + callow (and superficial) 30s upper class romcom = terrific, borderline parodic, nearly self-negating formal exercise...

Prepping for FAUST @ Venice!

The greatest of the greats.

The most experimental and extreme of Assayas' feature films—a context which makes the conservativeness of SUMMER HOURS interesting. With only a bare skeleton to show, no script to get in the way, nuances and details are revealed with each screening of this amorphous, abstract thriller. This is pure filmmaking—though pure filmmaking entirely dependent on the acting and persona of the one of a kind Asia Argento.

Shockingly similar to POINT BREAK and even (narratively / thematically) to THE HURT LOCKER. Very interesting intersection of "real genre" and heightened / mythic genre tropes, an experiment Bigelow takes even further, though with less risk for the audience, in POINT BREAK.

Kristen Wiig gets my early vote for best actress of the year.

Watched the long (2h50m) cut in preparation for Cannes. Malick seems a savant here, getting so much wrong at the same time as getting so much right. A gorgeous but deeply inconsistent film.

Seen in prep for catching Refn's film in competition at Cannes 2011 (!).

Especially precise first act, an acute and mirthful but unflattering picture of a marriage between Doris Day and James Stewart.

Peter Lorre was born to be directed by Fassbinder, as this performance proves!

Defines the term "gnomic", even more so than Yoshida's famously cryptic Eros Plus Massacre and Coupe d'état. Pushes narrative, representational cinema towards an extreme of anti-psychology, anti-melodrama, anti-social context. Geometric space reigns supreme as people become dislocated from themselves, from time, from the world.

*The* David Cairns?

As sharp, funny, and masterful as ever. Catching this after seeing so much Rivette helps underline why he liked this movie, and how similar it was in many ways to his own films. No one indulged in and undercut American genre films like Verhoeven, except perhaps Sirk. Is Verhoeven and Cameron of the same generation? Bouncing their films off one another would be an interesting look at genre sensibility.

As fresh, funny, and absolutely grotesque now as it was in 1987. A good corrective to Avatar (technology, themes, and genre).

Made me miss when characters could smoke in movies, also made me momentarily live in a fantasy land where DDL made a movie every year so he didn't have to methoditup. Also: a musical about filmmaking set in Italy that has no filmmaking, bad music and almost no Italy?

I fell asleep and dreamt of a movie where a gun-ho killer falls asleep and dreams of being a sensitive ethnic natural, and how much better that dream world is than the techno-military-corporate materialism of waking life. Then I died in my sleep and the dream became the $300 million reality. Brave idea.

The greatest—and most twisted—love story imaginable. Seeing this @ the Castro theater in San Francisco was an additional please.

Ur-Connery like LOLITA is ur-Mason. Super dark, super perverse, invigorating.

I misjudged the film's use of New Orleans the first time I saw the film; it may function mostly like the location for a TV movie (or show) but it is still quite beautiful and unique. Second time around Cage's performance shines all the more. One of the best movies of the year, no doubt.

Finally saw this! Wonderfully sentimental and sweet, and with a weird self-aware humor I'm seeing in Whale (the only other film of his I've seen is THE OLD DARK HOUSE). Wish the ending could have been as expressive dramatically as it was cinematically. (This movie has the best sets I have ever seen.)

Inconceivably fun, porous, strange, and inventive. Maybe the serial IS the best format for narrative films?

Plays tomorrow (the whole thing!) in 35mm at Yale. A must see! Only 90min away from New York...

New print of this playing in NYC, can't wait to see it! Village Voice has a good piece on the film: http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-11-24/film/small-change-at-ifc-a-winter-portrait-at-alliance-fran-aise

Big, bright, and for the first hour and a half, remarkably fast moving. Tones down the disgusting ideology of the first, and minimalizes the irritating human interactions as well. CGI is still insane and impossible to follow, but for even longer, more expansive fight sequences, which is a plus. Totally worth seeing, on the biggest screen you can find.

Not very good maybe, but one of the most important films of the decade.

Beginning to end stunning compositions. Why are there so few major filmmakers really pursuing digital cinema? Ceylan is certainly one of them. Great opening sequence, just like Climates.

The opening sequence of this movie kills me it's so beautiful.

Along with a precious few others (Gertrud, The Birds, a handful more), this is without a doubt The Greatest Movie Ever.