2004: Complete Viewing Log

I think I must've liked the second half more than you. I'm not always the hugest fan of slo-mo, but there was something about the slo-mo long takes in Thriller that appealed to me. I really loved how it wasn't cutting around a lot -- how it held on the frame while bodies fell completely out of it in surreal prolonged time. And I think that in the last few minutes, the movie achieved some sort of mastery -- somehow, it switched from exuberantly overplayed to sublimely underplayed for her final revenge, not even showing the gory "money-shot", instead remaining on her face.

Granted, I watched the movie with a roomful of friends the first time, and it was a fun time. But I re-watched it soon after in order to make sure that my relatively high opinion of it wasn't just high because I was responding to the environment I was in. I still found it fascinating, very watchable, and even very interesting and intriguing.

Thanks!

Deep Red is easily my favorite Argento. I was relatively new to him this year, having only seen Suspiria a few years back and not having been wholly impressed by it, but I watched three or four of his flicks this year and really started appreciating his style. I've yet to return to Suspiria, despite pestering from my horror-lover friends, but I've got a feeling I'll like it more.

About the only things I remember about it are pretty colors, lots of wrinkled flesh, and an uncanny resemblance between the lead actress and Frances O'Connor, which bothered me to the point that I paused the movie and ran to IMDb thinking that, POSSIBLY, it was her and perhaps she's stumbled upon some really potent Oil of Olay or something. :).

I did, but if you'll notice by the numbering, four of them were Guy Maddin shorts. Still, four features and four shorts in a day ain't too shabby.

"Shark Tale" is really pitiful. The slums. I just can't remember the last time a movie made me feel so bad for the children viewership. Even though they seemed to be enjoying it, I know deep down in their little hearts, they were just as angry with it as I. :)

Have you looked at Facets Multimedia? They have an online subscription service for VHS and DVDs of all sorts. It's billed as "your source for world cinema on video": http://www.facets.org/

I see the rarer movies in a variety of ways. Everything from importing, to bootlegs, to taking drives down to L.A. to see repertory screenings (I don't live very far away). I have a couple of really great independent video stores around me that carry pretty much so anything that was ever released on VHS or DVD at some point in time. You'd be really amazed at how many movies people usually consider very rare actually WERE distributed on video at some point, but have just been out of print for ages.

Unfortunately, lots of the really really hard to find ones fall into your caveat category -- if you don't live in a big city (and even if you do, in many cases), bootlegs are generally the only way to see many of them. And even though lots of bootlegs are quite good quality, going all-out and purchasing them is usually the only way to get them because most video rental places don't carry them. I don't purchase bootlegs very often, but sometimes if I'm just dying to see a movie, it's the only way to go.

A couple of minor changes to concur with your thoughts. After a couple more partial viewings, "Spider-Man 2" has slipped a bit. I never really liked it a whole lot to begin with, but I like it even less now (I agree with your comments about it). I'd put my rating for it at about 43. And "Eternal Sunshine" has improved every time I've watched it. I think I forgot to note a fourth viewing of it when it was released on DVD, and my rating for it now is 86 -- my favorite of the year so far.

Hmmm... what's 'One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich' and what's 'very good' about it?
"One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich" is a documentary by Chris Marker (who happens to be one of my favorite documentarians) about Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (who happens to be one of my favorite filmmakers), so it's kind of a match made in heaven. For much of it, the tone is that of a critical essay, evaluating Tarkovsky's body of work by exploring his themes and obsessions, but Marker's narrative prose is as haunting as ever and it never feels like an academic analysis. It comes off more like a deeply personal exploration of a man through his films. I really love this movie.

How many movies have you actually rated on your current scale, do you think?
I've been using it since the beginning of 2003, so I guess nearly a 1k.

Holy crap. I must see Hedgehog of the fog.
Yuri Norstein made some of my favorite animated movies ever. Coincidentally, his movies kind of seem like what Tarkovsky would've made had he tried out the animation medium.

I can't really make out whether or not you have favorite genres. Do you?
I don't think I've latched onto any specific genre as a personal favorite. I enjoy most of the staple genres of classic Hollywood -- westerns, noirs, melodramas, etc. -- but I can't say for certain that I prefer one to the other. One exception would be the musical, which is by far my least favorite type of genre film.

I don't know if it's a "genre", but one type of film that I love is art sci-fi, or chamber sci-fi. Something like Eternal Sunshine would fall into this category, as would Chris Marker's movies and some Alain Resnais. I like the thought of not experiencing the BIGNESS of sci-fi, but feeling its influence in a smaller setting.

Documentaries are hit-and-miss with me. I usually find the subject fascinating, but there are very few documentary filmmakers that are operating on a really cinematic level. I usually feel like I've watched a news piece, not a film. I think that's why I prefer the "fly-on-the-wall" documentary approach -- talking heads take me out of the experience and make me feel like I'm watching the History Channel (which I really like, btw :)). There are exceptions, of course, and overall I usually see a couple three documentaries every year that really stand out for me, so it's not so bad.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to see "Tropical Malady" in a theater yet, but I imported the recently released Thai dvd, which is actually very good quality (and very cheap to buy). Only annoying thing is that the directors commentary isn't subbed. :(

Wow, you're the real Napoleon Dynamite! :)

Seriously though, I'd doubt if anyone who grew up in the late 80s/early 90s wouldn't find at least some of the stuff eerily recognizable, mostly because it was so grotesquely caricatured in the movie.

I actually found the first thirty minutes or so pretty damn funny, but once I realized that it wasn't going to do ANYTHING different from what it'd already done, it fell apart for me quickly thereafter.