Mathieu Kassovitz
1995

Wow.
This is a really hard hard movie about inner-city kids in Paris. It's like, the anti-400 Blows.
I can't believe Nino Quincampoix directed it.

Pedro Almodóvar
2004

I loved the crap out of this movie. It was self-referential. And it had a movie within a movie.
It was gorgeous. And vibrant. And convincingly 80s.
And it had a little Spanish boy singing "Moon River" to a lustful priest.*
And Gael Garcia Bernal.

*Man, I can just imagine the google results for that one.

Fenton Bailey
Randy Barbato
2005

I know I already blogged about this, but Helen Gurley-Brown says semen's good for your face because it's made of babies! MADE OF BABIES!

This was also interesting, as well as hilarious. I promise.

Billy Wilder
1944

This is one my favourite movies of all time.
I get all sappy when I start writing about it. I'll spare you.

Tay Garnett
1946

This was really bixarre for me somehow. I was expecting something much harder-edged. This is interesting to me, the way it ends, with the priest, etc.
It was good though. All the Lana Turner stuff is iconic. I love that she always wears nothing but white, except in that scene where she's all in black because she's in mourning.

Billy Wilder
1960

I had forgotten how fantastic this was. It was kind of a bizarre choice for a Valentine's Week screening.
I love how the people feel kind of real.
The moment when he's packing up and he finds the gun, which confirms his story of a suicide attempt? Genius.

Alain Resnais
1966

Kind of a thriller about a revolutionary who's getting tired of the fight. But mostly not.
I loved the scene with the floating naked girl.
I think Alain Resnais is probably one of my favourite directors.

Barbara Kopple
1976

It's a documentary about a miner's strike in Kentucky.
She really gets involved in the life of the town, and in the strike. You see the cameraman getting beat up by scab labour thugs. You see the funeral of the boy who was shot by the same thugs.
It made me cry.

It's a total classic in the field and has received lots of official recognition.

And the music is AMAZING.

Dziga Vertov
1929

This was the version with the Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack as opposed to the archived "official" soundtrack. I think it worked better. Possibly because it sounded more organic. The official archival version that is supposedly based on the filmmaker's notes is really harsh and plonky and metallic-sounding. This one made the city much more human and played off the rhythm of the film better.
It's all awesome, because he's showing reality, including the reality of the film's constructedness, so he'll cut to a shot of the editing room, etc.
But the scenes with the woman waking up in the morning played much better for me this time around.

Jean-Luc Godard
1967

So good. It just kind of jumps into people's heads. And then there's a whole section where the director contemplates truth while there's an extreme close-up of bubbles in a coffee cup.
I'm not explaining it very well, but it's good, I promise.