Robert Flaherty
1926

It's subtitled "A Romance of the Golden Age."
It's very pretty and relaxed, could almost be called lyrical.
But it's also pretty dull. Those Samoans sure do lead an idyllic life. And the women's traditional costume, it shows their boobs.
Seriously, so boring. Also, the big painful tattoing ritual that Moana undergoes at the end of the movie? The practice was dying out. They staged it specifically for the movie.
This was the first movie to have the word "documentary" attached to it.
Michael Moore doesn't seem so bad.
I think I hate Robert Flaherty.

Robert Flaherty
1922

It's about Nanook. He lives in the North. It's cold. He hunts a lot.
A lot of the scenes were staged. They pull a dead seal out of the water.
Whatever, they can do what they want.
You don't really get annoyed about how exploitative this was until you find out that Nanook died of starvation two years after the movie came out.

Rebecca Miller
2002

This is one of those movies where it's actually just three vignettes. Separately the vignettes were all quite good and there are definite linking factors in the structures of the vignettes. But still. Vignettes? I don't know. I wasn't sure of the larger point or if there was one.
Also, I think I liked that there was a male narrator. As if even though it's a woman's movie, there's still the sense of male authority. (The same male authority that the woman variously are chafing under.) I think.
All three of the leads were really good, even Kyra Sedgewick, which surprised me because I didn't know she could act. My favourite was still Parker Posey (natch).

Michael Almereyda
1995

It's about vampires. In New York City.
It's very ironic.
It has Pixelvision.
I think I liked it.
The director went on to do Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke.
Seriously.

D.W. Griffith
1919

Good melodrama. The print we watched in class was gorgeous; I love the colour tinting in those old films, the whole thing looks so lush.
Lillian Gish was amazing. She is what Gloria Swanson is talking about in Sunset Boulevard when she said "We had faces then."
The only thing, the thing that made it hard to watch and took away from the still-charming sentiment, was how much its attitude toward race has aged. For one thing, pretty much all the Chinese people in the film are actually Chinese. Except for the hero, Cheng Huan, who is referred to in the intertitles as "The Yellow Man" and is played by . Richard Barthelmess. He looks even less Asian next to all the actually Asian extras.
Lines like "Why are you so good to me, Chinky?" Meant to be affectionate. Now, kind of horrible.
Visually beautiful though.

Richard Kelly
2001

Good as always.
"Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion."
I'd forgotten how good Drew Barrymore was in it. Maybe all she needs is the right director and/or script.
Question: does Jena Malone always basically play the same character, or is that just me? Something about school uniforms. I dunno.

Samuel Fuller
1963

Constance Powers x awkwardest striptease EVER + feather boa + racist black guy + nympho attack! + fake incest / electroshock therapy x 60s asylum + murder + Pulitzer Prize = AWESOME

Michael Mann
1981

There's some crazy pacing issues with this. I noticed the same thing with The Insider. Mann is very intent, but it always feels like his movies are much longer than they actually are. The story of this (and say, something like Collateral) aren't really that different from any other Hollywood stuff, it's just the way it's presented.
The score, by (seriously) Tangerine Dream, hasn't aged well, making it feel even more like a product of its time.
Everyone's really good in it: James Caan is always good, Tuesday Weld is his wife and Willie Nelson plays his prison "father-figure." (I think there's some homoerotic subtext there.)

Alfred Hitchcock
1954

I had, of course, seen this one a million times or so, so it wasn't exactly new.
I'd forgotten how good it was though.
Those fight scenes at the very end are so gritty for 1954.
Grace Kelly is radiant. (I love the dynamic of her relationship with Jimmy Stewart, even at the end. And the way he's so much more interested in her once she gets into the whole "Let's solve a crime!" caper.)
Everything, as with Hitchcock always, is just so.

(Hitch will always have a special place in my heart. If it weren't for him, I never would have read Robin Wood in high school and I might not be doing what I am now.)

Sam Raimi
2004

Everyone keeps saying how this one was so much better than the first one.
It was really good; hit all the right notes; etc.

I guess I just liked the narrative sweep of the first one better. Felt more classical.

Still, rock on, Tobey.