Eleven Months

Holy shit, only one month left of this thing. And I only broke my rules one week (some time back before the oscars I did a week of newer films to try and catch up). Anyway, self-congratulations and retrospect forthcoming upon its completion, along with modified rules for a new year.

Top five films of the month, in no particular order:

Solaris
Control
For a Few Dollars More
Amarcord
Charade

Honorable Mention: The Adversary, Rebecca, The Fly, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Secret in Their Eyes

Rebecca

Rebecca (1940)
IMDB #97 [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032976/]

The Gist:
I spent a good deal of time being annoyed with this film only to find out that I hadn't any need to be. And I don't know how to explain that without giving information about the plot so in case anyone does stumble upon this (doubtful), I will reserve my comments. I will only say that this is a Hitchcock film that doesn't quite feel like his early work in England and doesn't quite feel like the better known suspense films he would be known for in the later stages of his career. I suppose it's a bit of a transitional film then, and as such it makes sense that this is the only film of his to win an oscar for best picture (after all, he was never quite their taste as it were). I don't think it's one of his best films, but it is very engrossing, especially as things came to a close. Not so much in suspense, more because of a genuine interest in the characters. I credit the book more for this though, and can't help but feel that something was lost in the translation which is mere speculation having not actually read the book. It's not that the film was bad, merely that I have some odd feeling that the book could be incredible and the film couldn't quite keep up tonally at times.

Amarcord

Amarcord (1973)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071129/]

The Gist:
Amarcord is one of the stranger Fellini films I've seen. I found it a little off-putting at first, the way the film tries to encapsulate the essence of the town instead of presenting any plot movement (by the way, there is none). This feeling persisted until about a half hour into the film when I felt the rhythm settle itself around two different anchors: 1. A small Italian family and 2. A presumably omniscient narrator character a la "Our Town". Through these two anchors we are given a portrait of Italian life moments before the ruin of World War II had set in. The film did not reference the fascist rule of Mussolini too much. In fact, one elongated sequence of the man visiting the small town was the most it ever figured prominently in the plot. Given the title's translation though (Amarcord = I Remember), you can get the sense of the nostalgia the director is attempting to harness, the carefree moments before death and subsequent financial hardship. The film lacks the primal force of the directors magnificent string of subsequent films in the late fifties and early sixties (8 1/2, La Dolce, Cabiria) but it had these astonishing moments that really blew me away. My favorite was the gorgeous sequence in the fog where the grandfather of the family mused to himself as he wandered around lost about whether this was what the afterlife was like and saying if so he didn't care for it.

The Fly

The Fly (1986)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091064/]

The Gist:
The creation of Brundle-Fly! Half scientist Seth Brundle, half house fly, all crazy manic sugar eating wall climbing body deteriorating goodness. In Cronenburg's remake of the original (something I still haven't seen), we jump rather quickly into a romance between scientist and investigative reporter that is sidetracked by a drunken night where Jeff Goldblum jumps into his teleportation device without much safety precautions verified (it had only turned an orangutan inside out a few scenes beforehand) and gets his genes spliced with a fly and spends the rest of the movie turning into a monster while making odd scientific observations about his process and getting into arm-wrestling matches at the local bar. A good time to be had by all, even though by the end the sheer wig out factor of this film is pretty high. For instance, a jaw just drops off of Brundle-Fly's face and flops on the floor like a fish. That part was pretty gross.

Solaris

Solaris (1972)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069293/]

The Gist:
Solaris is a film that evokes a bizarre poetry about the nature of humanity, of how we connect to other human beings, of our sense of purpose. It follows a psychologist to a space station left in ruins where a crew of 93 or so (I forget the actual number) has dwindled to just two. What has happened to the entire crew is something of a mystery, though we have two cases we know of that we can draw conclusions from (1. a recent Suicide and 2. some rescue mission to the alien planet the station orbits). To make a long story short, the alien planet has some strange consciousness that the station is studying and apparently has the ability to manifest human beings from the astronauts subconscious, thus creating a now immortal replication of the protagonists wife who keeps trying to kill herself and can't. Is this sounding awesome to you yet? Because it should. However, all the fascinating aspects of the plot aside, this film is one of the better films I've ever seen due to all the bizarre risks the director takes: switching back and forth between black and white, strange lyrical sections where the plot evaporates like when you sit and watch some cacophonous ballet of traffic for ten minutes, and so on and so forth. Most importantly, it broods on the nature of life and creation, and this duality of the mystery of our own creation when contrasted with the self-aware creations of the alien planet.

Week Forty-Four

New Queue:

Solaris (1972) - check
The Fly (1986) - check
Amarcord (1973) - check
Rebecca (1940) - check

The Adversary

The Adversary (1971)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066237/]

The Gist:
Satyajit Ray is probably the only Indian director I know by name, a man more influenced by Italian Neorealism and French New Wave and the Swedish art movement (of which I really only know Bergman but I know there's more to it than that) and so on and who doesn't resemble even a little of what Indian cinema is currently known for (ie Bollywood). The first film I saw of Ray's was The World of Apu, which was a great movie experience for me. I don't think The Adversary is as compelling, particularly because through a lot of the film the protagonist feels too passive and because the surrealist imagery feels far to transparent and on the nose (especially when compared to late phase Fellini or Bergman). I do, however, think this is a beautiful film that grows into itself nicely, and whose closing moments truly reflect the work of the master. Particularly when I saw the ending minutes of the film, I knew that Ray had a perfect ending on his hands. That along with the character's emergence into action and the spark of a love interest really validated the film's weaker moments for me.