Todd Haynes

Laetitia Colambani
2002

I really liked this, it was described to me as the anti-<i>Amélie</i>, fairly aptly.

I liked the structure, with the perspective switch halfway through.

Morgan Spurlock
2004

Man, I've got to start eating more vegetables.

Jehane Noujaim
2004

I'm thinking documentary is the wave of the future.
Control Room is mostly about Al Jazeera's coverage of the war in Iraq. The amateur journalist in me loved getting to see behind the scenes in the media centre (in Qatar). Seeing how the news gets composed in a setting with a completely different bias - it was fascinating.
My favourite part is when the translator starts chuckling at the end of GWB's speech where he asserts how free and safe the Iraqi people are.
What a great moment.

Andre de Toth
1953

My local rep cinema is having 3-D week and I was writing a test during Dial M for Murder.

House of Wax? Worth every penny. I can't decide whether I liked the random paddle ball scene or the random cancan dancer scene better.

Samuel Fuller
1953

When I rented this, the video clerk said "That's a pretty great film."

He was right.

John Huston
1952

This is a sort of noir heist movie. It's an M-G-M thing, so it's not as gritty as the best noirs. (M-G-M had too much prestige, they could afford high-key lighting set-ups.) Buuut, it was still a pretty good heist movie. I liked Sterling Hayden's short ties, flipped up collar and down-home demeanour. He said lots of things like "Stop your crying and get me some bourbon."
Jean Hagen (Lina Lamont from Singin' in the Rain) plays this girl (who has no name but Doll) who's totally devoted to Sterling Hayden even though he's not nice to her. This is normally the kind of character I really hate, but she was really good, managed to make her seem like a person not just a plot device. It's sad she never got more famous.
Marilyn Monroe has a small part too. Both of them were still pretty early in their careers. Good casting, John Huston.

Ernst Lubitsch
1939

Thank you TVO.

This is a movie about a Russian envoy who's sent to Paris and seduced by capitalism in the form of Melvyn Douglas. It's a little bit propagandistic, or would be if it weren't so utterly charming.

Kryzstzof Kieslowski
1994

Widely considered to be the weakest of the Three Colours trilogy, it was the only one I hadn't seen.
It was definitely my least favourite and the weakest. But I really liked Blue and Red.
Still better than other things. It was darker than I expected. The other two both have more positive endings.

Brian Dannelly
2004

"I've been a born-again Christian my whole life."
I'd been excited to see Saved! since I saw the trailer with "Are you down with G-O-D?" and the guy figure-skating with "Jesus" written across his spangled chest. So it was destined to be a bit of a let-down.
It wasn't that it wasn't really funny. Or didn't manage to make fun of the "Christian subculture" while still sort of respecting faith.
And I'm becoming a pretty big Jena Malone fan.
But at the end it turns all sappy and everything ties up in such a neat little bow. It felt like they'd just opened up all these issues but then they didn't know how to tie it up.

On the way home we spent a long time trying to figure out why the mother has an epiphany watching Christian Jeopardy.