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.

Wong Kar Wai
1997

We were going to watch White, but we couldn't work the VCR in my house.
"Well, I have blah, which is all epic, and then Happy Together, which is about a failed relationship."
(Cheerfully) "Let's watch that."

Scene opens with a fairly explicit sex scene between Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung. (Two of Hong Kong's biggest stars play a gay couple? Would never happen in Hollywood.)
"Oh, they're a gay couple."
"Yeah? Does it matter."
"No. I just didn't realize."

Good though. The imdb user review describes it as very French New Wave. Which for once is apt.

Robert Luketic
2001

Okay. I really like this movie.
It's not exactly getting a Criterion release, but it's great.
It's about how girls can be real people and still wear good clothes. Basically.
It has such a generous nature; the movie likes almost everyone. Even Selma Blair.
It makes me like everyone.
I'm so glad it's on TV on a bimonthly basis, because sometimes a girl's too tired and hot and beerful for Fassbinder.

Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen
1952

They showed this for free out by the lake last night. We were late, but it was still amazing. I'd seen it so many times that it had started to lose its impact. Watching it with a huge crowd of people who laughed in all the right places and clapped after all the big numbers made me remember why I loved it in the first place.
I get so cheesy writing about this movie. My movie-watching companion made a little fun of me when I put my hand to my chest at the beginning of the title song.
Seeing it outside was the coolest ever. There was a light breeze blowing out by the water. The best part was when the wind picked up right at the beginning of the blowing-white-scarf-fantasy-scene.

Stanley Kubrick
1962

I noticed the screenplay was by Nabokov, though Kubrick apparently didn't use all of it, which was probably why this had more of the feel of the novel than the 1997 one, even if it was more faithful to the story.
They did sort of have to de-claw it though, for the censors. The erotic nature of the relationship wasn't ignored, but it was necessarily played down. And they made Lo a couple of years older, which between 12 and 14 makes the difference between pedophile and dirty old man.
James Mason was a perfect Humbert Humbert though. Might have been the role he was born to play. Way more personality than Jeremy Irons. Really fussy and unlikeable and still, oddly sympathetic. Same qualities that made him such a good Hitchcock villain.
I think I liked Peter Sellers as Quilty. He was a little too Robin Williams at times, but since Robin Williams was, like, 10 when this movie was made, I guess I can forgive him.

Federico Fellini
1954

"La strada" apparently is Italian for "the road."
The only other Fellini I've seen is 8 1/2 and some clips in class. This was much more neorealist (aka accessible) than his later work. (This is not necessarily a good thing.) Also, depressing.

Donald Cammell
Nicolas Roeg
1970

This is what happens when a British gangster movie gets crazied up by Mick Jagger and his Frenchwomen. It is something else all right.