Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack
1925

Still in the bullshit ethnography vein. This one was the least painful.
The film follows this huge Persian Nomadic tribe as it makes this insane journey across these mountains. I've gotten really cynical about this sort of thing, but they couldn't have staged most of this stuff and they shot it gorgeously.
And they actually went on the trip too.
Could have done without a lot of the cutesy intertitles though.

Edward S. Curtis
1914

(Original title: In the Land of the Headhunters)

I fell asleep during this. You can tell the director came from photography because there are some gorgeous compositions where you see landscape and whatever. Then there are really dull ones where everyone just sits and talks for endless intervals.
Bah.

Jim Jarmusch
1995

"Are you William Blake?"
"Yes I am. Do you know my poetry?"
POW.
So good.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder
1981

Weird.
I liked how von Bohm's eyes were always lit so they'd look extra-blue and twinkly.
Very odd. It wasn't really about her so much as about von Bohm. I don't know why they didn't just call it von Bohm.
Great art direction.
Really cynical happy ending.

F.W. Murnau
1922

That scene? Where he rises out of the coffin? With the long nails? It's pretty cool.
I don't know. It's very short and we watched it at a weird projection speed. (I think 24 f/s instead of the 18-20 that it would have been shot at.) But, it's a visually compelling Draculadaptation. (Dracula adaptation.)
It makes me want to see Shadow of the Vampire again. Which we are. In this class. I love my life.

Walter Lang
1957

One of the Hepburn-Tracy comedies I hadn't seen. Though Audrey was on my purse, I've always really aspired to be Katharine Hepburn when I grow up. In high school, I used to wear loafers and slacks all the time.
Not A+ material, but the two of them were excellent as always.
I love the scene where they're sitting up between the bookshelves, drunk on champagne at the Christmas party. Most of it's just done in a two-shot, but then when she's getting up to see her lame boyfriend, it cuts to this weird slightly high and off to the side angle and there's this perfect pause where you both know they sort of don't want to get up.
I still kind of want to be Katharine Hepburn when I grow up.

Jean Renoir
1939

I got to see this on a decent-sized screen because it was part of a conference on French film in the 1930s.
I hadn't seen this film in three years (since Intro to Film); I'd forgotten how good it was. I got way more out of it this time. There's so much to this movie, I can't begin to sum it up.
So good.

Roy William Neil
1946

At the end of the screening, my prof (who is my favourite prof ever and I'm in total awe of) said, "So, this was an ordinary film." I laughed and said (oh so wittily) "It sure was."
Ugh. He knows who I am though.
At one point, I leaned over to my film class friend and said "Apparently everyone in England thinks Sherlock Holmes is so smart because they're all idiots."

Conan Doyle? I don't think would be so proud.
(I was never really into Sherlock. I've read a couple of short stories. I guess they were all right. I like my detectives much more hard-boiled and bitter and less smug. I do want to see the Billy Wilder one though.)

Wong Kar Wai
1995

It's Hong Kong at night.
There's lots of blurry camera. And that waterfall sequence with him just looking at the girl and she's just sitting there, oh, oh.
And the masturbating? Showing it from her feet. Good.
The guy who played the guy who was mute from eating a can of expired pineapple (which came from Chungking Express, sort of)? So good.
Wong Kar Wai is awesome. So best.

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.