Fenton Bailey
Randy Barbato
2005

I know I already blogged about this, but Helen Gurley-Brown says semen's good for your face because it's made of babies! MADE OF BABIES!

This was also interesting, as well as hilarious. I promise.

Billy Wilder
1944

This is one my favourite movies of all time.
I get all sappy when I start writing about it. I'll spare you.

Tay Garnett
1946

This was really bixarre for me somehow. I was expecting something much harder-edged. This is interesting to me, the way it ends, with the priest, etc.
It was good though. All the Lana Turner stuff is iconic. I love that she always wears nothing but white, except in that scene where she's all in black because she's in mourning.

Billy Wilder
1960

I had forgotten how fantastic this was. It was kind of a bizarre choice for a Valentine's Week screening.
I love how the people feel kind of real.
The moment when he's packing up and he finds the gun, which confirms his story of a suicide attempt? Genius.

Alain Resnais
1966

Kind of a thriller about a revolutionary who's getting tired of the fight. But mostly not.
I loved the scene with the floating naked girl.
I think Alain Resnais is probably one of my favourite directors.

Barbara Kopple
1976

It's a documentary about a miner's strike in Kentucky.
She really gets involved in the life of the town, and in the strike. You see the cameraman getting beat up by scab labour thugs. You see the funeral of the boy who was shot by the same thugs.
It made me cry.

It's a total classic in the field and has received lots of official recognition.

And the music is AMAZING.

Dziga Vertov
1929

This was the version with the Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack as opposed to the archived "official" soundtrack. I think it worked better. Possibly because it sounded more organic. The official archival version that is supposedly based on the filmmaker's notes is really harsh and plonky and metallic-sounding. This one made the city much more human and played off the rhythm of the film better.
It's all awesome, because he's showing reality, including the reality of the film's constructedness, so he'll cut to a shot of the editing room, etc.
But the scenes with the woman waking up in the morning played much better for me this time around.

Jean-Luc Godard
1967

So good. It just kind of jumps into people's heads. And then there's a whole section where the director contemplates truth while there's an extreme close-up of bubbles in a coffee cup.
I'm not explaining it very well, but it's good, I promise.

Roman Polanski
1974

"Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown."

So great. Oh, yeah, I have to write an essay on it. But whatever, I have seven essays. By the end of term I'll just be pumping them out. Hopefully.

(You should totally watch the special feature where they talk to Robert Evans and they shoot the interview from this totally ridiculous/hilarious angle, where he's like, contorted himself so they get his "good angle" and he has sunglasses and everything. I love people who totally invent ridiculous images of themselves and then totally just embrace them wholeheartedly. Like Prince. Or Barbara Streisand.)

Bryan Singer
1995

This held up pretty well. Kevin Spacey was still good and I found myself getting all caught up in the suspense even though I know the truth, which is basically that the whole movie is a lie. I was talking to this guy after class who doesn't like the film because it cheats--it has this big secret which it gives the viewer no real way to guess, but it's a lot more interesting if you start talking about the ambiguity of the flashbacks.