10 Best Movies of 2015 (Pre-Awards Season)

With movies like Suffragette, The Danish Girl, and Brooklyn out now or soon, you know that we're knee-deep in awards season territory. The last couple months of the year play a comically over-sized role in determining what films will find space on the "Best Of" lists that appear every December like a swarm of attention-seeking reindeer. Unfortunately, top 10 lists are a zero-sum game and the Oscar-contenders generally push out a bunch of quality movies that have played between January and September. But comparing June movies to December movies is a bit like comparing a Dr. Pepper to a Malbec- they're both great but for totally different reasons. Pleasure versus sophistication. Upper versus downer. Consistent versus unique. Hot damn, that metaphor worked better than I expected. Anyways, with that in mind I've decided to compile a Pre-Awards Season Best of 2015 list that features movies with guns, drugs, sex, and swear words- you know, the empty calories that we all crave. Lastly, for reasons only I understand (there wasn't enough room on the list), I've decided to count Sicario as an awards-season movie even though it has guns, drugs, sex, and swear words and came out before The Martian.

[full disclosure: I haven't seen every movie that came out in 2015. My apologies to Shaun the Sheep]

Purposeful Omissions: Fast & Furious 7, Avengers 2, Terminator Genisys, Jurassic World, Mission: Impossible 5, The Gift

Honorable Mentions: Trainwreck, Straight Outta Compton, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Cartel Land

10. While We're Young

This movie made my soul cringe. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play an aging childless couple, trying to figure out where they fit in society. Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried play twenty-somethings hell-bent on making art while living wild and free. Both couples are deeply flawed, and somehow both couples act as a mirror to me, the not-so-young creative-type laden heavy with both dreams and regrets. People act foolishly when they pretend to be young, or pretend to be wise, or pretend to be anything other than what they really are, and this movie showcases that foolishness to hilarious and traumatizing effect. I didn't know whether to laugh or sob. Sadly, the conclusion of this film doesn't tie everything together tidily but the journey there was strong enough to merit a spot on this list. Writer-director Noah Baumbach's dry wit prevails again.

9. Dope

This is a loose film. The script is not tight. Things happen that aren't obviously motivated. Characters make odd choices. Even the genre label falls somewhere between bildungsroman, heist, fish-out-of-water, and probably a few more I'm forgetting. That being said, it was an original, forward-thinking, highly-stylized genre movie featuring a cast of interesting and relatable characters. The basic plot is three nerd-ish high school friends need to figure out how to sell a lot of drugs in order to get a girl, get into college, and not be killed. Classic high school antics, I know. But the whole thing has an amazing 80s hip-hop vibe, despite taking place today (and even having a whole subplot devoted to bitcoins). The setting, the costumes, the music, and the performances worked together wonderfully, even when the story elements and pacing were a bit off. Plus A$AP Rocky has acting chops, who knew?

8. Me and Earl and The Dying Girl

I know this movie has some shmaltz in it and I don't care, I had a great time with this one. The misfit kids who swede their own versions of classic foreign and arthouse cinema are always going to be okay in my book. Most of this movie feels like a cross between Wes Anderson and Phil Lord & Chris Miller- careful compositions and absurd situations. This sort of kids-dealing-with-death coming-of-age concept isn't altogether original so in a movie like this you really have to nail the execution. Well, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon nailed it. The core cast is pretty green behind the ears (as evidenced by their unpolished, rambling Q&A answers I heard after the movie's LA premiere) but they all did a great job and the supporting players were excellent. Having Brian Eno do the score never hurts either. 

7. Inside Out

In today's Hollywood landscape I can't help but give points to a film simply for being an original property. This year gave us Fast & Furious 7, Mission Impossible 5, Terminator 5, Jurassic Park 4, and Marvel Cinematic Universe films 11 and 12. Not to say I didn't like a lot of those films; sequels and reboots and boardgame adaptations can (and do) make for great movies. But yeah, I was impressed by the sheer originality and maturity of Inside Out. It's not my favorite Pixar movie by a long-shot, but it might be the most unique. The world inside a girl's mind is a complex and beautiful place, at times alternating between jolly and terrifying. The abstract journey of Bing-Bong is museum-worthy art in my humble opinion. The movie is not without its problems (the protagonist is very upset by some first-world issues, for example) but overall it's an impressive endeavor and a thoughtful semi-experimental film. Not necessarily a winner for children (this ain't Cars) but that just adds to my fondness of it.

6. The Martian

This is Ridley Scott's biggest movie. Take a second and consider that. The 77-year old director who made Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and more made his most profitable movie this year. That's insane! This movie is not quite as good as some of those I just listed, but it is the only PG-13 one of the bunch so I guess that helped it a lot. This movie stuck pretty close to the beloved sci-fi novel it's based on, but not to a fault. In all honesty, the movie was probably a little better than the book because the visual spectacle was handled with aplomb. It pleased fanboys and newcomers. Matt Damon made a great stranded astronaut-hero, and my one negative note is the casting of Kristen Wiig and Donald Glover (???). Also Jessica Chastain and Kate Mara and Michael Peña were under-utilized, but I actually agree with that choice; if anything I'd like to spend even more time alone with Damon on the red planet. He's dreamy.

5. It Follows

The concept is simple enough: if you have sex with someone who is afflicted, they pass the affliction unto you and it follows you until it kills you. The affliction is manifested as a walking (never running) human of indiscriminate age, sex, and relation to the victim. It can only be seen by the afflicted (and the audience, of course). Throughout this movie the audience learns to never trust a walking human in the background, because more often than not that human is the awful eponymous "it." My ass was on the edge of the seat, my knuckles were clenched and white, and my eyes ceaselessly searched each frame for the monster. Even though the actual scenes of violence were ultimately underwhelming, the pure unbridled tension that existed throughout the movie made it successful. The protagonists' clueless attempts to mitigate the monster were a clever touch as well, and the soundtrack still gives me chills. And they said original horror was dead.

4. Finders Keepers

Making a documentary must be a very anxiety-inducing endeavor. The characters you follow have to be pretty darn compelling for the movie to work, and you won't really know if they are interesting until you start shooting them. With that in mind, these filmmakers struck gold. The stranger-than-fiction premise hooks you right away: a man buys an abandoned storage shed and finds a human foot inside of it. Intrigued already, right? That sounds like the beginning of a mystery movie, but it's actually more of an intimate character study. Finders Keepers is about the embroiled legal (and moral) battle between a shameless glory-seeker who finds a foot and the self-destructive amputee who wants it back, with a healthy sprinkling of their eccentric families and friends who weigh in along the way. This is it folks; a true slice of Americana. There is a bizarre sense of the universal to be found in this very peculiar story. This is an A-grade documentary all the way through. 

3. Kingsman: The Secret Service

I love having fun in a theater. There's a childlike innocence to really getting onboard with a movie in a dark room full of perfect strangers, and I feel like I don't get to experience that emotion too often anymore. Kingsman did it for me. I guffawed openly. There's a real beauty to a successful parody, wherein a movie can poke fun at a genre but still be a worthy entry itself (Cabin in the Woods and Shaun of the Dead are the only others that come to mind). Spy movies have gotten either grim or campy (or both) lately, and those routes kind of suck. Even though it had its tongue firmly planted in its cheek, Kingsman managed to be a fun, funny, high-octane action movie. I would buy this lunchbox! Colin Firth in a scene with The Raid-level of violence and Samuel L. Jackson as a flamboyant supervillain can only add positively to a film like this. And as a wise man once told me, "it's always the old white guy" so keep your eye on Michael Caine. Does a movie like this need spoiler alerts?

2. Mad Max: Fury Road

Let me start off by voicing a contrarian opinion: I think Mad Max: Fury Road is over-rated. It is sitting at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes with over 300 reviews counted. The plot insomuch as one exists is weak. The characters are thin, and their decisions are mostly kinda dumb. Max is an empty shell of a protagonist, almost wholly lacking in motivations and even dialogue. Okay, whew, I got that out of my system. Now for the rebuttal: Fury Road is f*cking awesome. It is balls-to-the-wall insanity on a level not often (or maybe ever) reached in cinema. The monster-truck dystopia with an army of spray-paint-huffing fundamentalists is so gorgeously realized that it's hard to find fault in other aspects of the movie, because why are you looking at other aspects of the movie?! How, even?? There's a blind mutant playing a freaking flame-throwing guitar, and you're worrying about character development? You're nitpicking the script while the kid from About A Boy enters a raging electrical storm, screaming something about Valhalla? That's completely missing the point of this lovely day- I mean film. Charlize Theron is great. Tom Hardy, in his own mute way, is great. This movie somehow manages to appeal to the intelligentsia and frat boys alike. It is a miracle made of explosions, and I'll gladly kneel at the altar. The Holy Boom. Praise thee.

1. Ex Machina

I wasn't sure how I felt about Ex Machina when I first left the theater; it was definitely not what I was expecting. It was a small movie, almost more of a play really. From the posters and the trailers and the Tinder-based marketing scheme, I had expected something bigger. It was only later, once I had come to terms with the fact that the movie wholly takes place inside a mostly-empty compound in the middle of nowhere that I could start to assess just how wonderful it is. Two of my favorite character actors and a rising star get to chew scenery for two hours while talking technology, intelligence, and ethics. Some of my favorite topics! Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson aren't superstars quite yet, but soon enough they will be. They co-star in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and then Isaac is the big bad next year in X-Men: Apocalypse. These guys are going to be huge, and I can't think of any two actors at the moment who deserve it more. Gleeson is the personification of every guy who might end up in this situation: curious, naive, and unable to not fall in love with Alicia Vikander, even if she is a robot. Isaac is like a drunken, philosophizing version of the scientist from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Vikander is perfect as the metallic yet somehow soft and warm and inviting Ava. She came out of nowhere, but her 2015 (Ex Machina, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Danish Girl) shows just how capable she is in big roles. 

This movie is clearly more of a contained story than a harbinger of real things to come, but I still enjoy catching a glimpse into this possible near-future. Movies like Her, Frank & Robot, and Ex Machina are clearly sci-fi... but just barely. It will be mighty interesting in 25 years to look back on movies like this and see how close or far off they were from reality. In the meantime, filmmakers like Alex Garland (who also wrote 28 Days Later and Sunshine) will have to keep terrifying us with these twisted and fascinating possibilities. 

Thoughts on the 2015 Director Breakdown Challenge

Wow- I did it! I set my mind to something, and I did it!

56 films by 13 directors in one calendar year. Actually I finished before November by doubling up in three different months. This project has been a major time-suck but I couldn't be happier that I stuck with it. As a brief reminder, the directors that I watched (in order) were: Jean-Luc Godard, Wong Kar-wai, Terrence Malick, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Robert Altman, Federico Fellini, Francis Ford Coppola, Pedro Almodóvar, François Truffaut, Spike Lee, Michael Haneke, Ingmar Bergman, and Roman Polanski.

I feel much better-versed in the language of film now- some serious knowledge gaps have been closed. And yet, the project was far from perfect. In December of 2014 when I put this little shindig together, I probably didn't spend enough time deciding on who to watch or what films to watch. This is an immense undertaking, and the pre-production could've been handled with a little more care. Why not David Lynch over Wong Kar-wai? How did I pick Alphaville over Week End or Masculin Feminin? Frankly I can't remember. I'm also a little dismayed at how many films I couldn't find via (free) streaming services or on Netflix discs: Day for Night, Short Cuts, Crooklyn, and many more.

That being said, for such a hastily put-together project I'm also pretty proud of how well it turned out. All of these directors have contributed special and impressive things to the art of cinema and I don't regret watching a single one, even if they didn't all agree with me. I discovered that I'm impatient with a certain style of meandering art-house film, and unfortunately that description fits a lot of titles from a lot of the directors on this list. I especially struggled with Wong Kar-wai and Terrence Malick, and it probably didn't help that I watched them back-to-back. Robert Altman's movies are also fairly anti-adrenaline-inducing, and I'm glad that I front-loaded these three filmmakers. If they had come more towards the end I might not have made it.

I actually preferred a lot of the depressing movies on this list to the slow-paced ones. Especially films by Haneke, Bergman, and Polanski. I was either chilled to the bone or moved to tears by some of their movies, but I was never bored (well, maybe once during The White Ribbon). I understand why people don't love to put these movies on on a sunny Saturday afternoon (which is exactly what we did with both The Piano Teacher and The Pianist) because they make you feel shitty, but even when I find the subject matter unpleasant I don't necessarily find the experience unpleasant. I know people (even in the film industry, or perhaps especially in the film industry) who only like to watch popcorn action flicks or happy-ending romantic comedies. That's fine if you're only ever looking for escapism. But then you might forget about the "art" part of cinema that can stretch so many emotional muscles. It's like food- even if you're usually drawn to the sweet (romance/comedy) or salty (drama/action) stuff, I think it gets awfully boring if you don't mix it up with spicy (scary), sour (sad), tangy (experimental), and umami (educational) flavors. There's a whole beautiful spectrum for your palate to experience. The same goes for stylistic choices or black and white films or films with subtitles. Don't knock it till you try it, everyone- you might not know what amazing lovely things you're missing!

My favorite films of this experiment were Contempt, Apocalypse Now, 8 1/2, Jules et Jim, Persona, Repulsion, and all of the movies by Pedro Almodóvar. If you can't tell by that list, I like movies with a certain degree of nastiness in them. I like tension. If I had to pick a favorite genre, it would be Tense. That feeling can come about in psychological horror movies, war movies, or domestic dramas. Tension can rise up and flare in just about any situation, and I like the movies that examine the build-up and fallout that results. I need to give a special shout-out to Almodóvar who made the most colorful, savage, comical, interesting, and intense movies of anyone on this list. I cannot stress that enough. If I hated every other movie I watched this year, this project would still be worth it for introducing me to that man's body of work. 

As the year and the project wore on, I realized I was still missing a few highly-regarded works from these directors. I'd like to fill in the knowledge gaps within the knowledge gaps, and someday soon watch these movies: 

Godard: Week End, Masculin Feminin, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, Goodbye to Language

Almodóvar: The Flower of My Secret, Broken Embraces

Truffaut: Day For Night, Stolen Kisses, The Wild Child, Fahrenheit 451

Altman: Short Cuts, Brewster McCloud, Gosford Park

Lee: Jungle Fever, Crooklyn

Fellini: Nights of Cabiria

Bergman: Cries and Whispers, Hour of the Wolf, Scenes from a Marriage

There are also a number of directors I'd like to add to this list of 13, including: David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Gaspar Noe, Bernardo Bertolucci, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Bogdanovitch, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Errol Morris, Werner Herzog, and Lars Von Trier. Hey that's 11 directors- I could do that in 2016! But maybe I need a year off so I don't burn-out, which almost happened a few times this year.

In the interest of being completist, here is the final list of movies that I watched, their rankings out of 10, and Academy Awards they won:

• Jean-Luc Godard (January)
• Vivre Sa Vie (1962) - 7.5
• Contempt (1963) - 8.5
• Pierrot le Fou (1963) - 8
• Alphaville (1964) - 6
• Wong Kar-wai (January)
• Chungking Express (1994) - 6
• In The Mood for Love (2000) - 6
• The Grandmaster (2013) - 5.5
• Terrence Malick (February)
• Badlands (1973) - 7.5
• Days of Heaven (1978) - 6 - Best Cinematography
• The Thin Red Line (1998) - 7 
• Alejandro Jodorowsky (March)
• El Topo (1970) - 5.5
• The Holy Mountain (1973) - 6
• Santa Sangre (1989) - 6.5
• Robert Altman (March)
• M*A*S*H (1970) - 8 - Best Adapted Screenplay
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) - 8
• The Long Goodbye (1973) - 7
• Nashville (1975) - 7.5 - Best Original Song
• The Player (1992) - 6.5
• Federico Fellini (April)
• La Strada (1954) - 8.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• La Dolce Vita (1960) - 8 - Best Costume Design
• 8 1/2 (1963) - 8.5 - Best Foreign Language Film, Best Costume Design
• Fellini Satyricon (1969) - 5
• Amarcord (1973) - 7.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Francis Ford Coppola (May)
• American Graffiti (1973) - 7
• Apocalypse Now (1979) - 9.5 - Best Cinematography, Best Sound
• The Outsiders (1983) - 6
• Rumble Fish (1983) - 5.5
• Pedro Almodóvar (June)
• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) - 8
• All About my Mother (1999) - 9 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Talk To Her (2002) - 9.5 - Best Original Screenplay
• Bad Education (2004) - 10
• Volver (2006) - 10
• François Truffaut (July)
• The 400 Blows (1959) - 7.5
• Shoot the Piano Player (1960) - 7.5
• Jules et Jim (1962) 8.5
• The Last Metro (1980) - 7
• Spike Lee (August)
• She's Gotta Have It (1986) - 7
• Malcolm X (1992) - 7
• Clockers (1995) - 5
• He Got Game (1998) - 7.5
• Summer of Sam (1999) - 5.5
• Michael Haneke (September)
• The Piano Teacher (2001) - 7.5
• Time of the Wolf (2003) - 6.5
• The White Ribbon (2009) - 7
• Amour (2012) - 9.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Ingmar Bergman (October)
• Wild Strawberries (1957) - 7.5
• The Virgin Spring (1960) - 7 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Through a Glass Darkly (1961) - 7.5 - Best Foreign Language Film
• Winter Light (1963) - 7
• Persona (1966) - 9
• Fanny and Alexander (1982) - 8 - Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design
• Roman Polanski (October)
• Repulsion (1965) - 9
• Tess (1979) - 7 - Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design
• Frantic (1988) - 6
• The Pianist (2003) - 8.5 - Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Lead Actor
• The Ghost Writer (2010) - 7
• Carnage (2011) - 7

That's 25 Oscar wins (including 8 Best Foreign Language wins), and of course that's not counting all of the nominations, Palm d'Ors, Golden Bears, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, etc. etc. that these garnered. It's a prestigious bunch. Perhaps the most shocking revelation is the lack of Best Director wins, which only 1 director got 1 time (Polanski for The Pianist). I thought auteurs were meant to be honored for their visions! As some of these directors might say, c'est la vie.

Well, I think that's just about it. As mentioned above, there's plenty more cinema to explore and in fact I'm probably going to dive right into David Lynch in November. I'll also try to get my hands on some of the films from these directors that I missed. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment. Delicious, sour, spicy, tangy, rich punishment. As for this blog, it has served me well for the purpose of cataloging this year-long journey but I hope to now expand it and use it for other avenues. I want to publish list-icles, movie reviews, op-ed pieces, and anything else that I fancy as it relates to the world of movies. And with <1 average viewer per day, I doubt anyone cares what I do with this blog! So I'll use it how I please! Thanks for reading, mom and girlfriend!!

Roman Polanski (October)

"I would like to be judged for my work, and not for my life."

Can you truly divorce the artist and his art? This is an ethical dilemma that I struggled with throughout my time watching Roman Polanski's films. If I did not know the morbid, awful details of this man's oh-so-public private life, would I respect the movies more?

Here's what I know about Roman Polanski: he is an outstandingly talented filmmaker. I think that is beyond argument. Before this month began I had seen Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, and Chinatown with the latter two being personal favorites of mine as well as undisputed classics of cinema. Many of the filmmakers I've watched stick with one style or genre or type of movie, but Polanski is a hopper: he makes noir, war, horror, thrillers, and period pieces and they are (generally) perfectly executed. The only other filmmakers who come to mind who can jump around so flawlessly are the Coen brothers and Stanley Kubrick- that's high company. Polanski is an Oscar-winner and he has been nominated for that prestigious award in four different decades; that's longevity in a notoriously shifting industry. For this project alone I watched movies he created from 1963 to 2011, and he's still making them! I for one hope he's got many more to come.

Here's what else I know about Roman Polanski: he was born in France to Polish parents but moved back to Krakow in 1936, where he would endure the Holocaust. His mother was killed in Auschwitz, and in fact 90% (around 3 million people) of the Jewish population in Poland would be killed during World War II. He lived in and escaped from the ghetto and was separated from his father for many years. After the war, Polanski went to film school and became involved in the film industry. He made his first feature Knife in the Water in 1962, which garnered a Best Foreign Film nomination at the Academy Awards. Throughout the 1960s Polanski lived in France, England, and the United States and continued to expand his critically-beloved filmography. In 1969, his pregnant wife Sharon Tate was murdered in Los Angeles by members of Charles Manson's so-called family. He was in London at the time. In 1977, Polanski was arrested at Jack Nicholson's house for the rape of a 13-year old girl whom he had given quaaludes. He was indicted on 6 criminal charges and held in prison for 43 days. After a plea-bargain, Polanski was promised by a judge that he would be put on probation and serve no further jail time. After Polanski realized that the judge was going to renege on his promise, he fled the country and moved to France where he was protected from extradition. Since then, he's been living as a fugitive and the charges remain pending. The 13-year old victim later sued Polanski and settled with him out of court for a large sum. Since that time, the victim has long been an outspoken proponent of Polanski's. She has publicly said the charges should be dropped and that they both would love to put the past behind him. Polanski has been arrested in Europe and held on house arrest as recently as 2010, but so far any attempt at extradition has failed.

Okay, whew! That's a lot of background, right? But it's important not only as a background (to decide whether or not this guy should be in jail or whether or not anyone should watch his movies) but also because the subject matter of his life is present in his movies. For this month I chose The Pianist, Frantic, Repulsion, Tess, The Ghost Writer, and Carnage. The Pianist takes place in the Krakow ghetto during WWII. Frantic is about a man who loses his wife. Tess and Repulsion are both about young girls who are raped or deathly afraid of being raped. See the familiarity with the above story? The movies about young girls being raped were especially difficult for me to watch, knowing the details of Polanski's sordid crime. In fact, Repulsion was easier for me to watch, knowing it was made 12 years before the crime rather than Tess, which was made just a year and a half later. The rumors that Polanski had a romantic relationship with the 15-year old star of Tess made it even more difficult to get through.

But the movies themselves are mostly great. Lizzie and I watched The Pianist first and it ruined our day. It's an extremely vicious look at the savagery of war, and young Adrien Brody definitely deserved his Oscar win (at 29 he was the youngest Lead Actor winner of all time). It's a sad but necessary reminder of how brutal the situation in Poland was, and how easily our fragile society can collapse. Next I watched Frantic, which though enjoyable was the weak spot among these films. I want to make a supercut of every time Harrison Ford clumsily hurts himself in the movie. It's a lot of times. After that came Repulsion which was the surprise super-hit of the bunch. Polanski later said he made the movie simply to fund his next one (the less-commercial Cul-de-sac) but he accidentally created a winner. The imagery was phenomenal; I loved it. Tess was next, and as I mentioned I had a hard time with the subject matter, despite the story being an adaptation of the 1891 novel Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy. The film was beautiful but it felt a lot like Barry Lyndon; painfully slow to watch even though I knew it was gorgeous. It almost feels like watching a series of paintings for 2.5 hours. After that I watched The Ghost Writer which is very well-liked but it felt like a fairly standard political thriller to me. The ending was a lot of fun though. Finally I finished out this project with Carnage, the 2011 adaptation of a play with an all-star cast of Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Cristoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet. This one reaaaally felt like a play (it's just the four of them in one apartment for 90 minutes) but it was still very beautiful and fun to watch. I'd still prefer it as a play I think. And that's technically it for the great director challenge of 2015! I'm going to do a wrap-up post rather than try to stuff it into this (already too-long) Polanski article.

• Repulsion (1965) - 9
• Tess (1979) - 7
• Frantic (1988) - 6
• The Pianist (2003) - 8.5
• The Ghost Writer (2010) - 7
• Carnage (2011) - 7

As I mentioned above, this is technically the end of the road for the great director challenge. I watched 13 directors in 10 months (because I doubled up 3 times). I'm probably going to extend this project to cover a few more directors (Lynch, Noe, Bertolucci, etc.) but the initial resolution is now complete! A full write-up post on my thoughts on the project soon to come.

Ingmar Bergman (October)

"Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God."

Ingmar Bergman reminds me a bit of Werner Herzog in that they would both be dismissed as caricatures if their works weren't so damn earnest and great. Bergman's films (and through them, his views) concerning religion, faith, death, and family are immediately recognizable. They carry his dark signature and for that he is rightly known as one of the greatest auteur filmmakers of all time. They are all in Swedish and mostly in black and white. Having already seen The Seventh Seal, for this project I chose Fanny and Alexander, Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light, Wild Strawberries, Persona, and The Virgin Spring. If this weren't already so ambitious I would've added Cries and Whispers as well as Hour of the Wolf. Luckily these movies mostly run short, so I was able to cruise through the six I chose fairly easily.

I started with the only color film of the bunch, Fanny and Alexander. Netflix sent me the 3.5 hour version and it was only afterwards through Wikipedia that I discovered a 5+ hour version existed. I decided to be happy with the version I saw. Fanny and Alexander is a very good family drama, filled with lively characters (the sexually over-active uncle is my favorite) and monumental performances, especially considering that a few of those performances come from children. It is often depressing, but manages not to get bogged down in hopelessness. Next I watched Through A Glass Darkly and I was surprised at how mature and explicit the story was. A psychologically disturbed girl seduces her brother, for example, and that's just a sub-plot. After that came Winter's Light, which again examined the themes of faith, love, loyalty, and family in a bleak Swedish setting. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this one, seeing as it would probably work even better as a play than a film.

Then I came to Persona. Wow. A lot of Bergman films have horrific elements, but this was the first straight-up horror movie I had seen, and boy did he knock it out of the park. The movie is about a nurse who takes a mute actress to an isolated home to help treat her. Their relationship is extremely complex, tangled up with elements of love, hate, guilt, jealousy, resentment and more. The movie is both shocking and very sad. I loved it and don't know why more horror junkies don't talk about it. It's about due for a remake, methinks. After this I watched Wild Strawberries and about a quarter of the way through realized I had seen it before but finished it anyways. It's an interesting tale of nostalgia and regret. Lastly I watched The Virgin Spring, which also surprised me with its X-ratedness. They show a virgin getting raped and murdered in a 1960 film. Intense. Also, I didn't know until afterwards that The Last House on the Left was a remake of this movie!

All in all, I think Bergman totally deserves his accolades. The movies are tough but generally enjoyable. They're a bit like Haneke's oeuvre- unsettling stories, thoughtful scripts, compelling imagery, A+ performances. It's probably time for me to watch The Seventh Seal again.

• Wild Strawberries (1957) - 7.5
• The Virgin Spring (1960) - 7
• Through A Glass Darkly (1961) - 7.5
• Winter Light (1963) - 7
• Persona (1966) - 9
• Fanny and Alexander (1982) - 8

And then we came to the end: Roman Polanski is the last director of this challenge. Wow. 

Michael Haneke (September)

"I want to make it clear: it's not that I hate mainstream cinema. It's perfectly fine. There are a lot of people who need to escape, because they are in very difficult life situations, so they have the right to escape from the world. But this has nothing to do with the art form."

Bleak. Difficult. Inaccessible. This is the strange, sorrowful world of Michael Haneke. There is beauty in the sadness, and the stories he tells have often not been told before. They aren't easily marketable because they are simple and they are tragic, but they are also powerful and emotional. Going into this month I had seen two Haneke films: Funny Games (the original one) and Caché. The former is one of my favorite horror (horror?) movies ever, and the later is a tense albeit slow-paced thriller. I suspected that his worldview (at least as represented by these films) was rather dark and cynical, but I still felt ill-prepared for the sheer amount of despair in the four movies I chose for this project: Time of the Wolf, The Piano Teacher, Amour, and The White Ribbon.

I watched Time of the Wolf first, and I can say that the opening scene shocked me to my core. I suppose there are other movies that have opened similarly, but I can't think of any that basically ruined my disposition for the entire rest of the day. As I'd find in these films time and time again, the characters in Time of the Wolf dealt with loneliness and (often pointless) violence for the duration of the runtime. The Piano Teacher came next, and I'm not sure what I expected but it wasn't what I got. Isabelle Huppert was amazing and the story about someone desperately trying to connect with another human but without the know-how to do so is fairly universal... but the violence, the bullying, the hyper-sexuality and sado-masochism and rape made it a bit difficult to appreciate. Or rather, all of that X-Rated stuff is what hits you first, and it takes a bit of thinking back on the movie to appreciate the more subtle nuances and emotional performances- but they're there.

I watched Amour next, and even though I basically knew what I was in for I still cried and cried towards the end of the film. As much as Time of the Wolf shocked me, Amour shocked me more. I didn't see the ending coming, and it snapped me out of my weepiness. But Jesus, even before the ending I was in love with Haneke for telling this most-difficult of stories. I have members of my family going through similar circumstances, as I suspect nearly everyone on the planet does, but nobody has told this story. The quote I opened this article with is especially poignant seen in the light of this movie: I don't want to think about the death of loved ones, in fact I want to escape thinking about it. But that's not always healthy, and some art is here to help us examine our own complex feelings. I never want to watch it again, but Amour to me is pretty much a perfect film. I finished the month with The White Ribbon, which somehow managed to out-bleak the other movies, which is a fairly monumental task. I found in Ribbon what I found in all of Haneke's work: brilliant compositions, long slow takes, and some of the best performances (from leads and ensemble alike) that I've ever seen. And all of them left me with a frowny-face, but that's not such a bad thing.

• The Piano Teacher (2001) - 7.5
• Time of the Wolf (2003) - 6.5
• The White Ribbon (2009) - 7
• Amour (2012) - 9.5

Also, I just need to point out that after 9 months of article-writing, I'm finally caught up and writing about the director I most-recently watched. Hooray for me! Next up is Ingmar Bergman.

Spike Lee (August)

"People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world."

It had to be Spike Lee in August, right? Lee's best-known work (and best work, for that matter) is Do The Right Thing which is basically the movie version of the month of August. It's hot, it's sweaty, fuses are short and tempers flare. It had to be Lee in August. Do The Right Thing is an incredibly important movie to me. It had a way of showing people with real faults, mistrusting one another despite living in tight spaces. It showed racial divides without being ham-fisted (like Crash and so many other movies that have tried to address race problems come off). Plus it's like a time capsule- the music, the clothes, the language... and say what you will about Spike Lee casting himself in most of his movies (early on, anyways) but Mookie is a fantastic and relatable character.

Other than DTRT I had also seen (and very much enjoyed) 25th Hour and Inside Man. Very different movies, but both had qualities that I appreciated. For this project I wanted to go back to Spike Lee's early days when he was making such a huge splash on independent cinema. Dude has made a ton of movies, so I chose the ones that I thought were most famous: Summer of Sam, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Clockers, She's Gotta Have It, and Crooklyn. I chose... mostly well. I didn't need Clockers (although it is Mekhi Phifer's first movie) and I probably should've added Jungle Fever and maybe one more, Bamboozled or Mo' Better Blues or something. Also Netflix didn't have Crooklyn dangit.

I started with Summer of Sam, which is a helluva ride. I love Adrien Brody and John Leguizamo's characters but the film was all over the place. Murder, drugs, clubs, sex... those aren't bad elements to have in a film but it felt awfully disjointed. Malcolm X was probably longer than it needed to be and the beginning felt like a very weird West Side Story-esque musical; not based in reality at all. But over the course of the 3.5 hour epic the story really came together. I didn't know much about Malcolm X going into the movie and by the end I was curious to learn even more. Crooklyn was underwhelming, as I mentioned, although Harvey Keitel puts in some good work in the "white cop with an idea" role and the twist did catch me off-guard. She's Gotta Have It is Lee's first "joint" and I can see why it put him on the map. It was unflinching and it looked at sexuality and responsibility in an engaging way- with black three-dimensional characters in lead roles! I didn't love it but I liked it and can see why it was pretty ground-breaking for the era (and budget!). Lastly I watched He Got Game and loved it! Ray Allen and Denzel Washington are both incredible in this father-son story, and the basketball star cameos are all great. This movie takes place in a universe where convicted murderers are set free and universities can tempt prospective students with sex and cars, but ignoring all that this movie is very fun.

Spike Lee has always tried to keep pace with Woody Allen in terms of movie outputs, and just like that old New Yorker Lee has struck movie gold many times. But maybe (t)he(y) should focus a bit more on the quality of each one rather than putting >1 out every year.

• She's Gotta Have It (1986) - 7
• Malcolm X (1992) - 7
• Clockers (1995) - 5
• He Got Game (1998) - 7.5
• Summer of Sam (1999) - 5.5

September brings us the bleak world of Michael Haneke, and I'm finally caught up with the present!

François Truffaut (July)

"I have always preferred the reflection of life to life itself."

Being a Godard lover, I don't know why it took me so long to watch any Truffaut movies. I had seen a total of 0 going into this project- that's shameful. Choosing which of his movies to watch was a little tricky, but there were a few I knew I couldn't miss: The 400 Blows, The Last Metro, and Shoot the Piano Player being chief among them. I also tried to toss in Jules et Jim and Day for Night but inexplicably the latter is not available on Netflix discs. C'mon Netflix, that's an Oscar winner!

Watching Truffaut is interesting for a variety of reasons. For one thing, much like Fellini his films are highly autobiographical. They feature kids with bad home lives or hopeless romantics. Even the bigger films have his style- a trademark mix of the light-hearted and the melancholy. He also helped found the French New Wave movement, although (other than Shoot the Piano Player) his films are not very experimental. Truffaut and Godard had an interesting relationship (he helped write Breathless) which eventually devolved into outright and public denunciations. Strange because their contributions to cinema are so contemporary and entangled...

Anyhoo, The 400 Blows was sad but great. It featured Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine Doinel, a sort of alter-ego character representing Truffaut. The director would return and use that character (and actor) many times throughout his career. In this one he was just a child- a bit of a mischief-maker whose circumstances go from typical boyish antics into a much darker place. Truffaut was not one to shy away from a tragic story, even (especially) when it was his own. The Last Metro was a radical change of pace, a story about a Jewish theater director hiding out in a basement while his wife directs a large production. The love triangle is atypical and the portrayal a bit surprising. I liked it! Shoot the Piano Player is a gangster movie that doesn't take gangsters seriously. As I mentioned, it was the most New Wave-y of them and I appreciated that. Lastly, Jules et Jim was a decades long love story about a friendship twisted into something ugly by the introduction of a pretty woman. I wasn't expecting this one to be my favorite, but something about these small, personal, havoc-ridden love stories really speaks to me. And the music was incredible! "Le cimetiére" by George Delarue rocked my socks (in a slow, sad way); Youtube it if you don't believe me.

Overall, I found Almodóvar a verrry tough act to follow but Truffaut carried it admirably- these are damn good movies that I'll one day revisit. Now to get my hands on Day for Night and Fahrenheit 451...

• The 400 Blows (1959) - 7.5
• Shoot the Piano Player (1960) - 7.5
• Jules et Jim (1962) - 8.5
• The Last Metro (1980) - 7

Next month we're (briefly) back to English-language films with the movies, ahem, I mean joints of Spike Lee!

Pedro Almodóvar (June)

"I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it's to show one emotion."

I didn't exactly outline a thesis when I set about this project, but my goals were probably to become a more learned film-lover and to discover new films to love. So far all of the movies have helped to satisfy the former, but not all of them the latter. With Almodóvar, I can say without hesitation that I have found new films to love.

Why have I not seen these movies before? I feel like my friends, my university, and everyone else I can point a finger at has let me down in a tremendous way (except Dusty and Lizzie, who unabashedly love this man). Going into the month of May I had seen two Almodóvar films: Dark Habits (thanks Dusty) and the recent body horror/thriller The Skin I Live In. Seeing Dark Habits first was probably a mistake, because while the movie is fun, it is also campy and not altogether great. I should have had that impression washed away, however, by The Skin I Live In which I loved to pieces. Shame on me for not touting that one to all of my horror movie friends. Anyways, for whatever reason those are the only two films of his I'd ever seen and they aren't very indicative of the rest of his body of work. For this month, I chose five films: Bad Education, Talk to Her, Volver, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and All About My Mother.

Wow. Wowie. Wowza. How much praise can I heap unto these films before my hyperbole destroys the credibility of my reviews? Well, I can't help it. Pedro has done something incredible with his body of work. He tells colorful stories imbibed with a sense of magical realism, and yet the characters are grounded and three-dimensional. He tells stories about people, and it doesn't matter their gender, sexual orientation, age, or socio-economic class. He happens to be touted (rightfully) for telling amazing stories about women and members of the LGBT community, but he never calls attention to their minority status or in any way comes off as preachy. And yet how can you not praise the man for giving voices to all of these characters who are so often-relegated to minor or stereotypical roles? You have to praise him, but at the same time you hardly notice because the characters don't draw attention to themselves in that way. They are just a part of the story, and the stories are complex and engaging. There are passions, violence, romance, revenge, addiction, seduction, ghosts, harassment, murder, food, and family dramas! The stories are like novels, stuffed to the brim with characters whose journeys are filled with twists and turns that are exciting but not implausible. And it all feels so perfectly Spanish! The settings, the language, the food, the culture, the colors... and the compositions are stunning, worthy of being framed. And these films don't shy away from the inherent darkness present in families, in societies, and in Spain. These are often disturbing, traumatic films. And so I love them even more.

I am so happy to have discovered this body of work, and sad that it took me this long to do so. I won't get into the details of each film, they demand to be watched and in my case, re-watched. I will say that Bad Education and Volver particularly tickled my fancy, but even Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown (which I enjoyed the least of the group) was great. There were no misses.

• Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) - 8
• All About My Mother (1999) - 9
• Talk to Her (2002) - 9.5
• Bad Education (2004) - 10
• Volver (2006) - 10

I need to say two more things, here in the space usually reserved for a short note about who's up next. One, I just realized that he made those four movies in a row in a 7-year span, and that's frankly unbelievable to me. I would put that up there against any four movies that a director has made in a row as the best 4-in-a-row streak of all time.* And two, I can't express how happy I am that these movies are so much fun to watch! A lot of directors and movies that are well-regarded are also very inaccessible. That's not a knock on them, necessarily- not all movies should be popcorn flicks. Some movies are convoluted, dry, meandering, abstract, absurd, or otherwise not-easy to watch and that suits their purposes and intentions. But these Almodóvar movies are doubly impressive to me that they can be artsy and enjoyable (popcorn-y even) movies at the very same time. Bravo!

Up next is Truffaut!

*Other than Coppola with Godfather, Conversation, Godfather II, and Apocalypse Now. Can't forget about those four. Whoops.

Francis Ford Coppola (May)

"I think it's better to be overly ambitious and fail than to be under-ambitious and succeed in a mundane way. I have been very fortunate. I failed upward in my life!"

Francis Ford Coppola is a difficult filmmaker to write about in the scope of this project. Going into 2015, I had already seen The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and The Conversation. They happen to be three of my favorite and most-respected movies. With this in mind, I had very high hopes for Apocolypse Now (which I had seen parts of here and there) and didn't really know what to think of Rumble Fish, The Outsiders, and American Graffiti (which Coppola only produced).

I watched Apocolypse Now first and loved it. Loved it. It's the best movie I've watched this year with astonishing performances throughout. When you read about the turmoil behind the scenes, it's even more amazing that such a wonderful polished product came out the other end. This film easily could've never made it to print, like another Lost in La Mancha. I haven't gotten my hands on the making-of documentary Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocolypse that Francis' wife Eleanor directed, but I'd like to. In fact, I was so smitten with the movie that I grabbed the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and read it within about 36 hours of finishing the movie. I might catch flak for this, but I preferred the film to the source material.

Anyways, after watching that triumph, I turned to American Graffiti. What can I say about this film? It's a classic, and it always makes me smile to know that teenagers have been doing the same stupid things for about 75 years. The back story to this one (and honestly, the whole story of the Coppola-Lucas-Spielberg friendship) is also quite fascinating, and led directly to the production of Apocolypse Now. I doubt I'd ever need to re-watch this one, but I'm glad I've seen it the whole way through now.

Which leaves us with the two S.E. Hinton adaptations, The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, released in the same calendar year. I don't really know what to make of these movies. They're both decently well-liked, and the former has a truly stellar ensemble cast. I'm glad I've seen the "stay golden, pony boy" line now with my own eyes. But frankly, I found these movies odd, scatterbrained, and often dull. The denim-gangs-getting-into-trouble story was similar in both films, and I was thoroughly confused by the chemically-colored fish in the otherwise black and white Rumble Fish. Mickey Rourke was quite good-looking in his day, though. That's about the highest praise I can shell out for these movies.

• American Graffiti (1973) - 7
• Apocolypse Now (1979) - 9.5
• The Outsiders (1983) - 6
• Rumble Fish (1983) - 5.5

The Coppola name/family is now basically an entire industry in Hollywood, but the patriarch who started it all hasn't made a well-liked movie in about three decades. After making some of the most beloved movies of all time, that's a pretty tough break- sorry Francis. Anyways next up are the fantastic films of Pedro Almodovar!!!

Federico Fellini (April)

"All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography."

Watching Fellini's films is a wild ride through a history of the man, a history of film technique, and history itself. As the above quote suggests, Fellini left a lot of himself in each of his works, but over the course of his life the style of his work changed radically. He came out of the age of Italian Neo-Realism in which films were severely "authentic" in stark contrast to the French New Wave stylizations that would follow. His early films in the 1950's were of this type, including La Strada which was one of my favorites. The man himself might disagree with these characterizations and categorizations, having once said "realism is a bad word. I see no line between the imaginary and the real." Moving forward in time, Fellini would go on to create some of the most beloved films in all of cinema, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and Amarcord. As expected, I enjoyed these movies as well.

As I mentioned, Fellini started out in realism and then migrated towards more stylized artsy fare. His work can be divided into eras and decade: realism (50s), stylization (60s), and nostalgia (70s). La Dolce Vita was the bridge between the first two groups, and caused quite an uproar upon its release due to its fervent sexuality. The films tend towards the long-side, but they have a kind of necessary momentum to them that fuels them forward from the start to the end. Apparently Fellini filmed chronologically and didn't review his footage before moving on to the next scenes. Ray Bradbury quoted him as saying, "Don't tell me what I'm doing. I don't want to know." His artsier movies, 8 1/2 and Fellini Satyricon are easy to get lost in. There are dreamlike visuals that demand study, but the next scene is underway before the last is clearly understood. In 8 1/2 this momentum works. Many filmmakers have tried to make a "meta" movie about filmmaking (this was Fellini's 8 1/2th film, having made 7 and a short before this), but few have succeeded in making it so dramatic, so complicated, so compelling, and so gorgeous. In fact I can't think of any, other than maybe Contempt which I watched earlier for this same project. On the other end of the spectrum, I found Fellini Satyricon (so named because "Satyricon" had a copyright issue) to be sloppy and extremely difficult to stay engaged with. The visuals are striking, for sure, but the plot and story (mostly just ancient myths) were all over the place. Though it came last, I actually watched Amarcord first. It surprised me with its frank look at religion, sexuality, and other such themes subtly tucked into a bildungsroman story in a small Italian town. It was funny too, which I always appreciate.

I had never seen any Fellini before this project, and now it's easy for me to understand why the man is so highly regarded. He dealt with depression and other demons throughout his life, but he never hesitated to turn the script and camera inward to take a serious and interesting look at himself through the lens of art. He shared this art with the world, and the world is better for it.

• La Strada (1954) - 8.5
• La Dolce Vita (1960) - 8
• 8 1/2 (1963) - 8.5
• Fellini Satyricon (1969) - 5
• Amarcord (1973) - 7.5

Next up is Francis Ford Coppola. 

Robert Altman (March)

"Maybe there's a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people."

My lack of familiarity with Robert Altman's body of work was deeply troubling to me leading up to this little experiment, so he was one of the few directors I had chosen for the list right from the start. The only Altman I'd seen before the month of March 2015 was Popeye, and even that I don't remember at all (probably for the best). But Altman's big hits had always loomed over me begging to be seen, so of course I had to choose MASH, Nashville, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Beyond those three I wasn't quite sure- I had been reading a bit of Raymond Chandler so I threw The Long Goodbye on there and I confused Raymond Carver with him so I also added Short Cuts to my queue. Even after I realized my mix-up I was excited for that one but alas, Netflix did not have it available (even on disc! the horror!). I wanted one more so I chose The Player over Gosford Park, being a fan of Hollywood meta-strories and Tim Robbins and all.

Of course, I would soon find out that Altman is just as meandering as Wong Kar Wai or Terrence Malick on their slow days. The movies aren't plotless per se, but they do have an interesting "let's-just-see-what-happens" sensibility. I liked these better than the other guys' though, and I'm having a hard time articulating why. Perhaps it was the casting: Elliot Gould, Warren Beatty, Tim Robbins, and other effortlessly charismatic leading men can't help but enrapture an audience. Also, the dry humor and self-awareness sprinkled throughout these movies meant you could never quite get bored, even if the anti-story began to drag. At any rate, I can see why MASH, Nashville, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller are all pretty much universally lauded as classics, and I also enjoyed The Long Goodbye and The Player.

Unlike some of the other directors I've watched for this project, Altman seemed to have a lot more fun behind the camera. Certain elements are definitely carefully plotted, but a lot of the time it felt like he let the actors slip into character and then just rolled film. How much of the aforementioned films were actually improvised is unclear, but perhaps that's a testament to how comfortable everybody really was that I can't tell! Anyways, these movies have definitely aged a bit (MASH in particular has quite a bit of racism that I wouldn't want to expose my hypothetical children to) but Altman has made a strong case for himself and is my second-favorite director from this project (behind Godard) so far. Note to self: if I ever make a movie, make sure to cast a ridiculously charming and handsome lead. Other note to self: find and watch Brewster McCloud; that movie sounds totally bonkers.

• MASH (1970) - 8
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) - 8
• The Long Goodbye (1973) - 7
• Nashville (1975) - 7.5
• The Player (1992) - 6.5

For April: Fellini!

Alejandro Jodorowsky (March)

"My films are like clouds: their meaning keeps changing every minute."

There is only one reason Jodorowsky made this list of directors, and that is because I read Dune last year and became wholly obsessed with it. The timing of this obsession serendipitously coincided with the release of Jodorowsky's Dune, a documentary about the failed adaptation Alejandro tried to produce back in the day. The documentary showcases the director's gigantically ambitious plans for a film version of the classic novel; it also is a wild ride through the psychedelic art, music, and science-fiction movements of the 70s. Dali, Pink Floyd, and Geiger are all involved- seriously everyone should see this doc. Anyways, in the movie there are some brief clips from Jodorowsky's other works, and the sheer strangeness of those visuals intrigued me enough to seek out more.

Which brings me to the works themselves: El Topo, The Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre. It's extremely difficult to review these movies in any sort of sensible way. They are so far "out there" in terms of their storylines and visuals that there is little I can compare them to. Jodorowsky is a mystic and a surrealist who doesn't shy away from the absurd or the obscene. There is graphic depiction of animal slaughter, sex, incest, and that's only scratching the surface. All three movies are very different, but each share striking visuals and themes such as family, perseverance, and religion. There is also usually a quest element. Beyond that I can only say that these are basically acid trips in cinema form. In fact, El Topo is one of the original "acid Westerns" which I can honestly say is a genre I had never heard of until I Wikipedia'd this movie.

Giving these films a numerical rating strikes me as exceedingly pointless. They shouldn't really be compared to any of the other movies I'm watching as a part of this exercise, except for maybe Satyricon by Fellini. People who happened to be in the room with me while I watched these called them "easily the weirdest movie I've ever seen" and (other than maybe Holy Motors) I can't think of much to disagree with them. By the way, these films aren't exactly meandering or plotless; in fact the story in Santa Sangre (of a circus boy who must act as his amputee mother's murderous hands) was very captivating and I think ripe for a remake. But they're so damn weird it's somewhat easy to forget that you're watching a movie with a distinct beginning, middle and end. One thing's for certain: the movies are better after having watched Jodorowsky talk about his process (in the documentary) because he's not simply a madman- there is a spark of genius lurking somewhere beneath the absurd.

• El Topo (1970) - 5.5
• The Holy Mountain (1973) - 6
• Santa Sangre (1989) - 6.5

By the way, everyone should peruse Jodorowsky's quotes; I had a helluva time just picking one out for the head of this post. I also enjoyed, "I am like the rain, I go where I'm needed" and "Failure doesn't exist. It's only a change of direction." I for one am quite glad that that crazy old man is still out there trying to make art and movies. P.S. Robert Altman is on deck for March. 

Terrence Malick (February)

"I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always 'let it keep rolling.'"


Terrence Malick's films make Wong Kar Wai's looks downright compact. Malick is famous for shooting hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage and then editing until the last possible minute before the premiere. After starring in a more recent Malick flick (To The Wonder), Ben Affleck tellingly said, "Terry uses actors in a different way- he'll [have the camera] on you and then tilt up and go up to a tree, so you think, 'Who's more important in this- me or the tree?' But you don't ask him, because you don't want to know the answer." Earlier in the same interview, Affleck had also mentioned, "...I realized that he was accumulating colors that he would use to paint with later in the editing room." Painting in the editing room seems to be the name of the game for Malick, who often cuts away from "action" (little that there is) to scenery or wildlife. He also loves to utilize voiceover, which adds to the surreal dreamlike quality of these movies. His films are highly stylized art pieces, often hewing closer to visual poems than narrative fiction with clear distinctions between beginning, middle and end. For the most part, somehow, he can usually make it work.

And say what you will about the guy, but damn can he put together an impressive cast. Over the years he's worked with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Jessica Chastain, Martin Sheen, Ben Affleck, Sissy Spacek, Richard Gere, Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Adrien Brody, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Jared Leto, John Travolta, Nick Stahl, Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem and more. And that's just in 6 or so movies, and sometimes his A-list actors end up on the cutting room floor! It's mind-bending.

ANYHOO, going into this project I had seen The New World (I didn't enjoy this movie but it was lit naturally and looked beautiful) and The Tree Of Life (I actually denied having seen this because I couldn't make heads or tails of it or my emotional response to it. I think it was... good...maybe?). After decades of incredibly sparse output (2 movies in 30 years), Malick would release 3 movies and schedule 2 more in the 2010s. These new ones were not on my must-see list. Rather, I went back to the beginning and watched his first three movies: Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line. 

Badlands was very good, and you can tell it was made in 1973 because it somehow has a PG rating despite being about patricide (although I guess some Disney movies are as well). Martin Sheen is a great Rebel-without-a-cause-style Canadian-tuxedo-wearing badass, and Sissy Spacek is good as his impressionable young love interest. The song from True Romance is at play here too, which my old roommate Andy was shocked to discover. The movie meanders a bit. Days of Heaven was less enjoyable to me, although it's fun to watch a young Richard Gere and the scenes at the farm (especially with the fire) were all beautiful. The movie meanders quite a bit. The Thin Red Line is the meandering-est of all and was pretty difficult for me to follow closely. Apparently the movie went way over-budget, and I feel like most of that is because Malick assembled one of the greatest ensemble casts in movie history but spent hours filming iguanas. But that's his style and the movie was nominated for 7 Oscars, so what do I know? Anyway it was nice to finally watch these but I doubt I'd ever feel very compelled to rewatch them. Cheryl Gibson said to me they're a bit more like computer screen savers than movies, and depending on the moment and the movie I pretty much agree with her. They're damn poetic screen savers though.

• Badlands (1973) - 7.5
• Days of Heaven (1978) - 6
• The Thin Red Line (1998) - 7

Next up is the weird wacky world of Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Wong Kar Wai (January)

"I'm not coming from film school. I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity. I saw, "Well, what if I make a film in this genre? What if I make this film like this?'"

Making this list of directors was an extremely inexact science, so I can't remember exactly how Wong Kar Wai ended up on it. I do know that I had never really heard of him before and I definitely hadn't seen any of his movies, so this would be a totally novel experience. I chose four of his movies, Chungking Express, In the Mood For Love, 2046, and The Grandmaster but in the end I would only watch three. Full-blown honest opinion: these movies failed to really hold my attention. Wai is known as a "Hong Kong Second Wave" filmmaker alongside Fruit Chan and others, but I've seen some of Fruit Chan's movies and they are frightfully engaging. Wai's movies (like a few other directors' I would come to watch) tend to meander through (admittedly lovely) set pieces and the plots are thin, to be generous. I know I'm being overly harsh here because there were definitely things to appreciate in these movies, and I'm probably failing to acknowledge the backdrop of making art under an oppressive or semi-oppressive regime, but I don't really know enough about the cultural context to weigh in on that side of things.

So, onto the movies. Chungking Express features two stories about lonely men in a densely packed city (mostly in a train station / bazaar). The film does a great job of juxtaposing these sad men against bright, neon lights and poppy (often American) music. I almost wish I had watched the movie without subtitles because there are no shortage of interesting compositions. That said, I fell asleep watching it. My favorite scene involved a recently dumped cop who buys canned pineapples everyday with an expiration date of May 1st, that date representing the final expiration date of his old relationship and chance for love rekindled. Then he eats all of the pineapple at once. I can't adequately explain why I enjoyed this so much.

In The Mood For Love came next and was similar in its interesting compositions and not-so-interesting storylines. I'm probably in the minority with that opinion- the film was nominated for a Palm d'Or after all. It's a period piece that takes place in the 60's about a man and a woman who decide their respective spouses have been seeing other people and strike up a romance themselves. The sets are busy, the shots are eye-catching, and the costumes are quite nice. Something about the pacing and the dialogue simply failed to engage me I suppose. I have friends in the film world who absolutely swear by this director or call him their favorite but the draw just isn't there for me. After watching this one I managed to watch The Grandmaster which was an extremely artsy take on the oft-told Ip Man story. The cinematography in this one felt quite different from the former two (not in a bad way) and garnered Academy Award nominations for cinematography and costumes. Despite being a martial arts movie with plenty of slo-mo fighting scenes, it still felt dull to me throughout. I bailed on 2046 and any other aspirations I had after having felt that I had given this director the old college try- we just didn't quite click.

• Chungking Express (1994) - 6/10
• In The Mood For Love (2000) - 6/10
• The Grandmaster (2013) - 5.5/10

Jean Luc-Godard (January)

"All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun."

Going into my 2015 director's challenge I already knew I would enjoy seeing more Godard. Breathless is a classic for a reason and Band Of Outsiders is one of my absolute favorites. Realizing how little of Godard's work I'd seen was actually part of the impetus for this whole experiment, so "thanks" you old French weirdo.

For the vast majority of these movies, Netflix discs would be the option that served me best. Being an eager beaver however, I decided to rent Contempt on my iPad and watch it on the plane ride from Chicago back to L.A. on January 4th. This was not my wisest move- Contempt has a lot of female nudity. I dimmed the screen and hoped the people sitting on either side of me weren't too nosy. The movie itself was wonderful; there was a lot to digest. It is apparently based on a book, but the characters are also meant to represent Godard, his wife, and the film's distributor (or perhaps all Hollywood types). The French New Wave directors didn't play by cinema's rules and Godard took an unsubtle jab at all executives, distributors, and producers who would dare insert themselves into the creative process. Moreover, the main characters' dilapidating marriage provides an essential emotional core to the film which might otherwise be construed as pseudo-intellectual or overtly meta. Casting Fritz Lang as the director of the in-movie movie (whose characters' drama also parallels the drama of the actors playing them) is another nice touch.

The story, the script, the casting, the locations, the color palette, the meta-narrative, the pacing, etc; everything is working here. There are so many individual elements that can elevate or detract from a movie's success that Godard just doesn't seem to worry about- he really makes it look effortless. My friend Dusty once complained that it seemed like Godard could shake his arms and classic movies would fall out of his sleeves. Contempt is a prime example of that.

Pierrot le Fou was my next favorite of the four I watched. Godard isn't the only director to work with an attractive actress, marry her, and then cast her in a bunch of stuff (looking at you Fellini) but it's hard to argue that there was a more effective pair than Jean-Luc and Anna Karina. She shines in Pierrot as the flighty, sing-songy lead, and I might describe this movie as the New Waviest of all that I watched. Karina is grand in Vivre Sa Vie as well; the movie about the rise and fall of a prostitute told in twelve chapters. She also appeared in Alphaville which was my least favorite of the four I watched, but that's not to say it's bad. Alphaville was apparently quite influential to a lot of sci-fi that followed, despite having no visual or practical effects whatsoever. Dystopian YA movies of today, take note.

Even adding these four movies to the two Godard's I'd already seen, I'm still woefully ignorant concerning most of the auteur's prolific body of work. One day I'll circle back and see Two or Three Things I Know About Her and Week End. It's also worth mentioning that Godard was making more than one movie a year for most of the 60s- like I said, putting out classics for him was like changing the linens is for me. Twice a year plus we make it look easy.

• Contempt (1963) - 8.5/10
• Vivre Sa Vie (1962) - 7.5/10
• Pierrot le Fou (1965) - 8/10
• Alphaville (1964) - 6/10

To close, here are a few more indicative Godard quotes that I enjoy:

"Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world."
"I pity the French cinema because it has no money. I pity the American cinema because it has no ideas."
"I don't think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can't kiss a movie."

Keep doing you, Jean-Luc. Next up, Wong Kar Wai.

Overview of the 2015 Director Breakdown Challenge

I probably should have made this post on December 31st, 2014 rather than midway through March, but here we are and what're ya gonna do. My new year's resolution this year was to close some gaps in my movie-knowledge by watching some of the classics that I had missed over the years. Rather than throw darts at the "1001 movies you should watch before you die list," I decided to break it down by directors that I appreciated (or who I assumed I would appreciate) who had three or more movies that I hadn't seen yet. Then I could choose 12 directors and knock one out each month.

I scoured the internet for "best-of" lists to narrow down my potential candidates, but in the end it wasn't too tricky. There aren't that many directors who have a very large ouevre, are extremely critically-acclaimed, and are mostly-unwatched-by-me. The ones I did find were mostly white(ish) males, but that group has held the overwhelming majority in this 100-year old industry so I guess that shouldn't have surprised me. In the end I got it down to 13 candidates and decided I could bleed into 2016 if need be. Here they are in alphabetical order, although I've been choosing which one to watch at random:

• Pedro Almodovar
• All About My Mother
• Talk To Her
• Volver
• Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
• Robert Altman
• The Long Goodbye
• MASH
• McCabe and Mrs. Miller
• Nashville
• Shortcuts
• Ingmar Bergman
• Cries and Whispers
• Fanny and Alexander
• Persona
• Through A Glass Darkly
• Wild Strawberries
• Francis Ford Coppola
• American Graffiti
• Apocalypse Now
• The Outsiders
• Rumble Fish
• Federico Fellini
• 8 1/2
• Amarcord
• La Dolce Vita
• La Strada
• Satyricon
• Jean-Luc Godard
• Alphaville
• Contempt
• Pierrot le Fou
• Vivre Sa Vie
• Michael Haneke
• Amour
• The Piano Teacher
• Time of the Wolf
• The White Ribbon
• Alejandro Jodorowsky
• The Holy Mountain
• Santa Sangre
• El Topo
• Spike Lee
• Bamboozled
• Clockers
• Crooklyn
• He Got Game
• She's Gotta Have It
• Summer Of Sam
• Terrence Malick
• Badlands
• Days of Heaven
• The Thin Red Line
• Roman Polanski
• Carnage
• Frantic
• The Ghost Writer
• The Pianist
• Repulsion
• François Truffaut
• The 400 Blows
• Day For Night
• Jules and Jim
• The Last Metro
• Shoot the Piano Player
• Wong Kar Wai
• Chungking Express
• The Grandmaster
• In The Mood For Love

Whew- that's quite a list! There are a few I maybe saw when I was very young, but they qualified because I cannot remember a single thing about them. I also have seen a number of great movies by these directors (Do The Right Thing, Breathless, Chinatown, etc.) but clearly still missed a lot of their work. Most of them I don't have any excuse for not seeing yet- and that's why I'm doing this! Hooray for filling knowledge gaps!

Once I got started I noticed that many of these directors were from different parts of the world and I decided to try to pair some cuisine with my cinema- that half of the experiment hasn't been going so well (although I'm still trying to make it work). The movie watching has been going swimmingly however; in January I knocked out Godard and Wong Kar Wai, in February (short month) I watched Malick, and earlier this week I wrapped up Jodorowsky. I'll do a full post per director after this initial post (I owe them that much) and then hopefully post more regularly as I go along. Next up: Robert Altman!