Richard Franklin
1983

I was reluctant to include this in a log of movies I'd actually watched because of the amount of time I spent while this was on discussing Meg Tilly's hairstyle (which we decided looked good on 4 people: Meg Tilly, Pat Benatar, Karen O, and that girl who cut my hair last time) with my brother and/or drifting off to sleep.
But I chose to.
We started watching this because we were changing channels and saw the beginning of the shower scene. "Hey, this is Psycho," we said after about two seconds because we've both seen it many many times.
Then after the murder some credits flashed. "Anthony Perkins in..." etc.
It was bizarre because this director had obviously seen the original about a million times. He kept quoting shots from it. Let's just say Meg Tilly takes a really similar shower.
The plot is Norman gets out of the crazy house and tries to live a valuable life. Then he starts getting weird notes and phone calls from his mother. And people start dying. Is Norman really losing it or is there something more sinister at hand?
The twist ending was pretty weak and, actually, when I think of it, better in concept than it was on film. (I won't tell because I don't want to spoil it for you.)

It actually wasn't that bad. If it hadn't been called Psycho II it would have been a fairly well-executed little thriller with some pacing problems and overly obvious stigmata symbolism. (He gets cut! On his hands! What do you think the director is trying to say?) As opposed to feeling a little like sacrilege, which for a film geek it basically is.

Jim Jarmusch
1986

What I like about Jarmusch is that he throws together these people who don't even seem to come from the same world and then throws them all together and they just talk. (Best example: GZA and RZA meet Bill Murray in Coffee & Cigarettes.)
The weird part is how totally similar the Waits and Lurie characters are. One's named Jack and one's name Zack; the Benigni character is constantly mixing them up. The opening sequence shows them mirroring each other right away. Both are with a woman who's in bed and pretends to be asleep and then opens her eyes as the music comes back in. The way the camera moves across town makes them seem to be somehow connected. Also, then each woman basically gives a (fairly stagey, in both cases) monologue about how stupid the guy is. Plus they exchange jackets and head down symmetrical paths at the end.
I love to look at Jarmusch movies. There's something so clean about the black and white cinematography and so unique about his eye that everything looks a little otherworldly. I could watch the camera pan across the buildings to transition from Jack to Zack in the opening sequences all day.
The scene where Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni and John Lurie start dancing around their jail cell chanting "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!" is one of my new favourites ever.
Lurie starred and did the soundtrack, which was spare and jazzy. And it opens and closes with Tom Waits songs. So for music, Down By Law gets A+.
The actual movie gets somewhere around a B. I liked the first probably two-thirds, but the last part (basically everything following the jailbreak) was touch-and-go for me. (Though it was hilarious when they found the cabin that looked exactly like their jail cell.) It might have been because I was dog-tired but whatever.

John Cassavetes
1959

The whole movie's improvised. The actors even use their real names for added realism. You can see how influential it was, especially in American independent film. It came out around the same time as Breathless.
It's sort like if Kerouac wrote a movie where women were allowed to actually have personalities.

Samuel Fuller
1964

A melodrama about a prostitute who decides to turn her life around in a small town.
It's got sort of a 60s "social problems" film feel, but it's really interesting to look at it in contrast with Written on the Wind, which was a much more mainstream example from a couple of years earlier.
Only instead of hinting at homosexuality, nymphomania and pseudo-incest, The Naked Kiss is like "This is a prostitute. This is a pedophile." It's very honest.
There are some really striking scenes. The opening, where she totally beats her pimp senseless and takes the money she owes him to this wild jazz score, then it cuts to her putting on her wig and fixing herself up in the mirror with this normal normal score, is killer.
There is some dialogue that sounds painfully cheesy, also, but I think that judging something this obviously melodramatic by realistic standards is totally useless. Because it's dealing with a dark world, but it's not exactly the real world and it's so well put together you can't help but like it.

Terry Jones
1979

Totally saved my day from being the most horrible ever.

Jared Hess
2004

I think the dance number is my favourite part. Especially how he starts out with his hands in his pockets.

Also, the awkward scene at the dance with them standing a full arm's length apart? I've been to a Mormon dance - that was not an exaggeration. At all. Which was what was so brilliant about it.

(Also, I'd read this and forgotten, but Napoleon Dynamite is a pseudonym used by Elvis Costello, on the credits of Blood & Chocolate. Apparently this is just a huge coincidence.)

Jonathan Demme
1991

My prof (in theories of genre) described this as a "really really good ordinary movie."
Which it totally is.
I love how they play on the blood-dripping-from-the-ceiling giveaway that was so slick in Rio Bravo. (When Dean Martin schools all the bad guys in the bar who think he doesn't have what it takes because he's a recovering alcoholic, duh. What? My references are so current.)

Luke Greenfield
2004

At one point, about 2/3 of the way in, he turned to me and said "Don't movies have character development anymore?"
Total male wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Girl Next Door apparently quits her porn job to follow her boyfriend around and be supportive.

Douglas Sirk
1956

The boy picked this out, having wanted to see a Sirk picture since he saw Far From Heaven, which I just watched last week.
You can see why Todd Haynes would want to imitate the guy. From a director's perspective, this was just gorgeous. It's classic Hollywood-auteur style. He's working within the dominant style system, but you won't mistake it for anyone else's work.
That Rock Hudson was in it was interesting given Far From Heaven's whole gay husband plot. But the Robert Stack character was closer. Just like the Dennis Quaid guy in Far From Heaven, he started drinking because of anxiety over being the proper husband/father figure. Only with the possibility of sterility substituted for the homosexuality.
Although, his relationship with the Rock Hudson character felt a little bizarre. They were "like" brothers and they travelled together and stuff. And Rock Hudson is totally jealous when he gets married. He says because he's in love with Lauren Bacall. But it would make more sense that he's upset about losing his childhood companion. And also explain why he never leapt into the waiting, slutty arms of Robert Stack's sister for solace.

But then, even a gay man could love Lauren Bacall.

Michael Mann
2004

What a really excellent movie.
There are so many shitty thrillers out there, I didn't really want to see this until about 1,000,000 people (or two) told me it was good.
Tom Cruise was a good bad guy, but I've always privately believed he's an asshole anyway.