Movie "tweets" to May 19, 2026 (3 of 3)

 

Je t’aime je t’aime (1968) – Resnais transforms a familiar sci-fi premise into a mesmerizing fabric of loss, regret and helpless experience

 

Kill the Messenger (2014) – Cuesta provides plenty to chew on, even if his storytelling frequently seems too straightforwardly seasoned

 

Sansho Dayu (1954) – Mizoguchi’s gorgeous, tragic masterpiece encompasses immense narrative scope and great emotional and moral delicacy

 

The Walk (2015) – expected 3-D spatial high-points aside, Zemeckis delivers disappointingly little high-wire-level cinematic poetry here

 

Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) – Rosi’s quietly charged chronicle of exile and assimilation, impressive despite overly calculated elements

 

The Homesman (2014) – Jones again shows himself a darkly fascinating, alert director, crafting a very full and distinctively haunting tale

 

Elsa la rose (1966) – a charming Varda miniature, perhaps expressing a gentle wish for her own creative and personal partnership to endure?

 

You’re Next (2011) – Wingard slashes through the familiar set-up with skill and intelligence, although hardly to a genre-transforming extent

 

A Page of Madness (1926) – Kinugasa’s deeply disorienting onslaught of expressionistic images still leaves you ravished, and reeling

 

Magic in the Moonlight (2014) – Allen muses pleasantly again on the meaning of existence, tapping Rex Harrison more than Ingmar Bergman

 

Bad Luck (1960) – Munk’s well-sustained sad-sack comedy, in which the hero’s misfortunes reflect Poland’s ever-evolving traps and pitfalls

 

Going Clear (2015) – as pristine and well-organized as all Gibney’s work, which as usual constitutes both a strength and a limitation

 

That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) – Bunuel’s final masterpiece is both elemental & cosmic, a gracefully pointed undermining of everything

 

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) – Reeves’ sequel loses most of the first film’s pleasures, for a lot of standard-issue dystopian gloom

 

Tokyo Twilight (1957) – one of Ozu’s saddest, most desolate works, filled with indelible brief studies of loneliness and thwarted hope

 

The Misfits (1960) – Huston/Miller’s doom-ridden drama blends wrenching emotional observation and uncomfortable writerly/actorly excess 

 

Le garcu (1995) – Pialat’s last film explores familiar territory, but with all his brilliant feeling for turbulent, contradictory experience

 

Klute (1971) – Pakula’s investigation of sexual identities and narratives sometimes seems forced, but still a fascinating mesh of elements

 

Mommy (2014) – for a “natural filmmaker” of Dolan’s energy and panache, it’s a shame how substantively unrewarding his films ultimately feel

 

To Be or Not to Be (1942) – Lubitsch’s legendary wartime comedy is a masterpiece of structure, magically navigating moral darkness and light

 

Dreams (1990) – over time, it’s easier to tolerate Kurosawa’s visual & thematic didacticism here, to succumb to what’s beautiful in the film

 

Rio Lobo (1970) – Hawks’ last film is highly enjoyable, but it doesn’t have the emotional and behavioural coherence of its predecessors 

 

Love (2015) – Noe’s erotic meditation, shimmering with sometimes naïve conviction, at least doesn’t lack for intriguing moods and constructs

 

Night of the Living Dead (1968) – the brilliantly stark beginning to it all, with Romero’s chilling concept already rich in implication

 

Cure: the Life of Another (2014) – Staka’s politically-charged ghost story of sorts engages imaginatively & hauntingly with Europe’s traumas

 

Psychomania (1973) – certainly a nutballish concoction, but a more gleefully unhinged director would probably have helped (or “helped”)

 

Pirates (1986) – or, way too many knives in the water, given the strain of appreciating Polanski’s sensibility within this handsome oddity

 

Death of a President (1977) – Kawalerowicz’s deeply-immersed exploration of the complexity of political calculation, influence & consequence

 

Get on Up (2014) – Taylor’s approaches Brown’s life as a structurally audacious hall of memories, with overly academic, passionless results

 

The Bad Sleep Well (1960) – high-end pulp revenge drama, steered by Kurosawa into a gripping exploration of power in all its manifestations

 

Jimi: all is by my side (2013) – Ridley’s reflectiveness, alert to racial politics & cultural ambiguities, intriguingly rejects biopic norms

 

Les hautes solitudes (1974) – Garrel’s singular viewing experience, both liberating and troubling, permeated by Seberg’s sad resonances

 

Rosewater (2014) – Stewart’s mostly forgettable debut, too weighed down with artificialities to yield much emotion or sense of discovery

 

Days of Youth (1929) – Ozu’s silent film is largely driven by delightful goofiness, but you already feel greater reflectiveness percolating

 

The Color Wheel (2011) – Perry’s uneasy comedy is always smart and stimulating, then in its closing scenes becomes quietly remarkable

 

The Tin Drum (1979) – as filmed by Schlondorff, a conceptual carnival that seldom feels like a very illuminating engagement with history

 

Citizenfour (2014) – perhaps the rather muted impact of Poitras’ Snowden documentary fits the shadowy nature of the threat, I don’t know

 

The Last Day of Summer (1958) – …or maybe of anything at all, in Konwicki’s starkly beautiful, ultimately rather slight two-person encounter

 

S.O.B. (1981) – a festering evisceration of Hollywood from Edwards’ most fascinating period, bleakly seeped in the attitudes it disparages

 

Noroit (1976) – Rivette’s “pirate movie” is perhaps his most intensely strange; a complex dance with genre, narrative and performance

 

Love is Strange (2014) – it’s strange and often sad, and so is the way the world intrudes on it, in Sachs’ beautifully judged reverie

 

Macario (1960) – Gavaldon’s wonderful fable of death and illusion, full of magical elements, but with a properly stark sense of suffering

 

Mistress America (2015) – another Baumbach high-water mark in contemporary comedy, with wonderful, fully-loaded pace and unforced complexity

 

Helle (1972) – a quiet period study of small-town dysfunction; helps somewhat to broaden the usual view of Vadim, albeit not that memorably

 

The Skeleton Twins (2014) – Johnson’s film is often quite distinctively morose, but then settles for flimsy, uninteresting images of repair

 

Partner (1968) – another compelling early Bertolucci masterwork – a deeply strange embrace of untapped otherness, of unrealized revolution

 

Results (2015) – Bujalski’s most conventional, least interesting film overall, despite its engaging riffing on life-philosophy cliches

 

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) – Fassbinder’s landmark power study, told through startling visual and psychological compositions

 

Grace of Monaco (2014) – quite striking for Dahan’s explorations of artifice and performance, although a lot of the rest is pretty mundane

 

The Ipcress File (1965) – the first Harry Palmer movie is solid nuts-and-bolts entertainment, driven by unsubtle class-based discomfort

 

Tournee (2010) – Amalric’s directing, like his acting, distinctively blends provocation and desolation, the mercurial and the rueful

 

Bell Book and Candle (1958) – Quine’s ponderous Novak/Stewart bewitchment comedy gains some unwarranted interest from its odd Vertigo echoes

 

The Night of the Hunted (1980) – Rollin’s haunting premise spawns a lot of poignantly creepy image making, despite some narrative jerkiness

 

The Rose (1979) – Rydell’s ever-fascinating interplay of a somewhat unremarkable narrative and the mesmerizing presence at its centre

 

Le petit lieutenant (2005) – Beauvois’ extremely engrossing, surprising police drama encompasses a vast amount of low-key, fluid complexity

 

Journey into Fear (1943) – Foster’s tight little drama, dense with threat and behavioural eccentricity, and more than a trace of Welles

 

Level Five (1997) – a lesser-known Marker masterpiece, fascinated with new technologies, deeply aware of their capacity for obscuring truth

 

MASH (1970) – now seems not so much irreverent as merely crude and chaotic, despite the many points of Altmanesque interest

 

Triple Agent (2004) – Rohmer’s late masterpiece, a stunning reflection on the interplay of personal and political positioning and action

 

I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) – a wonderful spell of culture and community, woven by Powell’s lovely imagery and compelling interactions

 

Calvary (2014) – McDonagh serves up cracking lines and scenes like free drinks at a bar, so you hardly bother about the big picture, if any

 

Le baby sitter (1975) – an enjoyable, unsurprising thriller, Clement’s last; somewhat distinguished by his empathy for his lead actresses

 

Palo Alto (2013) – Coppola delves hauntingly into teenage experience; maybe the absence of much that feels new is largely the point of it

 

Young Torless (1966) – Schlondorff’s tale of evolving self-awareness doesn’t engage much as a film, for all its underlying complexities

 

Irrational Man (2015) – Allen’s bleak central concept often seems imperfectly articulated, and yet the film has a stark confessional force

 

Travelling Actors (1940) – one of Naruse’s quirkier explorations is pleasant but mostly slight, up until its whimsically liberating ending

 

Fury (2014) – Ayer’s exploration of war’s unfathomable psychological complexities evokes great respect, but little real sense of discovery

 

More (1969) – Schroeder’s sensually eventful dive into the period’s freedoms and risks; more striking now for the highs than for the lows

 

Jinxed! (1982) – Siegel’s last film, potentially an effectively peculiar little thriller, lacks his usual artful shaping and control of tone

 

Faraon (1966) – Kawalerowicz’s politically charged Egyptian epic increasingly turns inward, absorbingly exploring the limitations of power

 

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) – Lee repositions Ganja and Hess as an apparent cautionary parable on the draining of purpose and engagement

 

Scandal (1950) – Kurosawa’s libel yarn is enjoyable viewing, its real heart increasingly coming to lie in a mini-Ikiru-like character study

 

Savage Messiah (1972) – an energetic account of a difficult relationship, but one of the more monotonous works of Russell’s peak period

 

The Dreamers (2003) – Bertolucci’s erotic piece of nostalgia/denial all but wallows (quite mesmerizingly, to me) in its gorgeous irrelevancy

 

And God Created Woman (1956) – Vadim’s notorious breakthrough has a surprisingly desultory quality, punctuated by flashes of Bardot delirium

 

Kiss me, Stupid (1964) – Wilder’s nasty comedy of small-town moral hypocrisy leaves you little left to believe in (under God or otherwise)

 

Jeune & jolie (2013) – Ozon both titillates us with & deconstructs a teenage whore story, but would have done better with less of the former

 

Juggernaut (1974) – an enjoyably rollicking creation, with Lester bringing a distinct wryness to the impressively assembled disaster cliches

 

Lore (2012) – Shortland’s affecting journey through end-of-war Germany, quietly resonant about the breakdown of morality and certainty

 

The Boat (1921) – another master class in Keaton’s gorgeously multi-faceted imagination; Buster’s uniqueness transforms the world itself

 

The Second Game (2014) – with no visuals except dreary old soccer footage, Porumboiu whips up a stimulating personal & philosophical dynamic

 

Some Call it Loving (1973) – Harris’ entirely unique meditation, fanciful but utterly serious, on fantasy & play & their tragic limitations

 

The Territory (1981) – Ruiz transforms a relatively accessible core narrative into something wondrously, startlingly strange & implicating 

 

Othello (1952) – Welles’ highly stripped down version of the play, a brilliantly visualized and sustained study of manipulation and weakness

 

Eden (2014) – the thrill of the scene, the emptiness at its centre; Hansen-Love holds it all in terrific, minutely observant equilibrium

 

The House that Dripped Blood (1971) – Duffell’s solid anthology, from a time when everyone involved knew exactly how seriously to play it

 

Absolute Beginners (1986) – Temple’s ambitious period musical remains a disappointment, most everything about it seeming forced & affectless

 

Mother (1926) – Pudovkin’s drama of coalescing revolution remains stirring of course, but more narrowly so than his great Storm over Asia

 

Maps to the Stars (2014) – a Hollywood of disturbing rituals, excesses and breakdowns; fascinating, if not Cronenberg’s most vital work

 

Tout le monde il en a deux (1974) – rampantly porny Rollin work, built on a ritualistically dressed-up tussle between free and coerced sex

 

Boogie Nights (1997) – Anderson’s tremendously entertaining breakthrough, one of cinema’s more unique explorations of family structures

 

Eroica (1958) – two wartime stories from the astonishing Munk, fully demonstrating his great range of cinematic fluidity and human awareness

 

A Most Wanted Man (2014) – Corbijn’s defiantly generic Le Carre adaptation, perhaps great for connoisseurs of comparative movie spycraft

 

Rashomon (1950) – gripping for Kurosawa’s narrative cleverness & bold visualization, more than for its often-cited philosophical reflections

 

Blackhat (2015) – in a necessarily uneasy fusion, Mann applies his shimmering, tangible classicism to a new world of power and threat

 

All these Women (1964) – Bergman’s arch, male-effacing comedy is pitched very differently from his usual work, but it mostly just irritates

 

The Jersey Boys (2014) – Eastwood embraces the material’s artificiality, playing with ideas of memory, of the slipperiness of experience

 

The Spider’s Stratagem (1970) – an endlessly alluring early Bertolucci work, forged from his intuitive mastery of analytical, probing cinema

 

Belle (2013) – Asante’s historical drama is aesthetically conventional and overly glib, but skillfully sets out its complexities and ironies

 

Rape (1969) – Lennon/Ono’s unsettling tracking of a woman, implicitly questioning our collective complicity in multiple forms of violation

 

A Pigeon sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) – and did it damn well, thanks to Andersson’s mind-boggling exactitude and scope

 

The Fortune (1975) – an extremely minor interlude for Nichols and all involved; striking ending, but feels like you wait a long time for it

 

The Face you Deserve (2004) – one’s interest in Gomes’ unique, super-creative exploration of male anxiety ultimately dwindles a bit, sadly

 

Too Much Johnson (1938) – restoration of lost Welles footage, seemingly showcasing modest early inventiveness, and a youthful playfulness!

 

The Wonders (2014) – Rohrwacher’s family study is most fascinating at its Erice-like simplest; its grander inventions are a little puzzling

 

Gimme Shelter (1970) – the Maysles’ Rolling Stones film, justly famous for some of the most scarily vivid concert footage ever recorded

 

Warsaw Bridge (1989) – Portabella’s typically ravishing, challenging meditation on the generation of meaning and beauty in art and life

 

Johnny Guitar (1954) – Ray’s legendary Western, endlessly and gleefully analyzable for its intensely realized psychological maneuvering

 

Up the Yangtze (2007) – Chang’s film is a great eye-opener, even if it’s somewhat burdened with clichéd “great documentary” trappings

 

Play it as it Lays (1972) – Perry’s rather stunning exploration of existential despair, artfully hyped-up and yet chillingly naturalistic

 

No Man’s Land (1985) – another fascinating meditation by Tanner on inner and outer states of exile, if perhaps not his most fully-developed

 

The Awful Truth (1937) – McCarey’s joyous, wonderfully transgressive comedy; the very epitome of the kind of film they don’t make any more

 

From what is before (2014) – Diaz’s very long but immensely rewarding, unsettling, morally anguished study of utter induced destruction

 

Vault of Horror (1973) – Baker punches home the formula as if he, rather than the central storytellers, had been living it for eternity

 

The Mill and the Cross (2011) – Majewski’s deep exploration of a painting spawns an often ravishing dialogue between worlds and forms 

 

Daguerrotypes (1976) – Varda’s lovely, nostalgia-provoking record of her neighbourhood finds poignant magic in life’s mundane repetitions

 

Computer Chess (2013) – Bujalski’s super-smart comedy comes to suggest a weird, troubling synthesis; chess’s infinite possibility unleashed!

 

The Quiet Duel (1949) – Kurosawa’s stark, somewhat overdone drama of disease and sacrifice; moving for Mifune’s repressed pain and desire

 

American Sniper (2014) – Eastwood’s huge hit compels for its pared-away qualities, supporting multiple political/cultural interpretations

 

The Conformist (1970) – Bertolucci’s dark masterpiece is a stunning mesh of thematic and psychological richness, and compositional mastery

 

Keep the Lights On (2012) – Sachs’ modest but quietly impressive film, on how the weight of time and hurt gradually blocks out the flame

 

A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966) – Nemec’s fable of influence and coercion, allowing as much absurdist parallelism as one wishes

 

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) – Gunn’s well-calibrated nuttiness and oddball intimacy provide a nice trail through the digital overkill

 

The Bride wore Black (1968) – an intriguing blend of well-sustained “Hitchcockian” surface and milder-mannered Truffaut-ian subtext 

 

Third Person (2013) – it’s clear from the start this will be another Haggis waste of time; the only surprise is in finding out just how much

 

Strike (1925) - if not the “best” of Eisenstein’s films, the easiest to succumb to as pure narrative and (sometimes crude) visceral assault

 

Top Five (2014) – given an overly busy set-up, it’s a surprise Rock’s movie breathes as much as it does; no surprise about the laughs though

 

Le gai savoir (1969) – Godard’s almost spiritually austere work of cinematic divestment, reexamining the nature of knowledge and meaning

 

ABBA the Movie (1977) – by Hallstrom’s later standards, almost a gritty, cinematically fearless, no-holds-barred expose (well, almost)

 

Oil City Confidential (2009) – Temple can’t resist overly revving up his Dr. Feelgood documentary, but a grounded portrait still emerges

 

Three Faces of a Woman (1965) – Antonioni’s introduction has a recognizably desolate quality, contrasting oddly with the other two segments

 

Beyond the Lights (2014) – mostly conventional material, highly elevated by Prince-Bythewood’s awareness & empathy, & by the fine Mbatha-Raw

 

L’opera mouffe (1958) – Varda’s early short already illustrates her very distinctive brand of cinematic joy and wondrous fearlessness

 

Trash Humpers (2009) – well, Korine’s trash humpers aren’t really my type, but as visions of America go, I’ll take it over Ted Cruz’s

 

Bed and Sofa (1927) – Room’s Stalin-era Jules et Jim, vibrant with the pulse of new times, increasingly interesting for its sexual politics

 

Words and Pictures (2013) – Schepisi’s comedy does full justice to neither, but builds reasonable goodwill through its fluency and sincerity

 

Pearls of the Deep (1966) – a five-part Czech New Wave anthology, overflowing with creative energy, although periodically rather grating

 

Still Alice (2014) – Glatzer/Westmoreland demand little more of the viewer than reverent sympathy, which Moore of course makes easy to give

 

A Geisha (1953) – one of Mizoguchi’s finest, most quietly devastating films, chillingly frank about the reality of the geisha’s existence

 

Tales from the Crypt (1972) – Francis’ horror anthology delivers reliably no-nonsense, if often somewhat elderly-feeling squeamishness

 

A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) – Greenaway’s gorgeously rich intellectual frolic, dense with intertwining concepts of organization and decay

 

Master of the House (1925) – lacks the intense depths of Dreyer’s later works, but it’s notable for its detailed examination of domesticity

 

While we’re Young (2014) – Baumbach’s become virtually a brand for reliable mature pleasure, but this particular entry is a bit mechanical

 

Shoot First, Die Later (1974) – no-nonsense Di Leo drama ends by asserting crime doesn’t pay, but doesn’t make honesty look so hot either

 

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Kubrick’s final film is a grippingly strange deep dive into the convolutions of desire, repression and power

 

Street Without End (1934) – Naruse’s highly engaged, socially aware slice of life, focusing ultimately on a woman’s strength, and its cost

 

Afternoon Delight (2013) – Soloway’s comedy has much of the frankness and emotional acuity of her major subsequent achivement, Transparent

 

La notte (1961) – maybe Antonioni’s most exacting work of his great period, befitting its exploration of spiritual contortment & maroonment

 

Selma (2014) – DuVernay’s sombrely elegant, anguishingly ever-relevant investigation, far outpacing conventional historical reconstruction

 

Que viva Mexico! (1932) – reconstruction of Eisenstein’s unfinished work conveys its vast ambition, grappling with both beauty and cruelty

 

Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) – Schlesinger’s adaptation, although amply watchable, might be viewed as overly passive in various ways

 

Le Week-End (2013) – the film’s bittersweet character dance always feels too tidy and compressed; if only Cassavetes had gotten hold of it..

 

Miss Julie (1951) – Sjoberg elegantly and resourcefully “opens up” the play, while preserving its charged, fascinating shifts and shadings

 

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) – still effective as an upper-class weepy, but Benton’s reticence and tidiness resist real pain and discovery

 

Epidemic (1987) – early expectation-confounding von Trier film is most appealing at its lightest; overall, it’s a bit academic & distancing

 

Intolerance (1916) – one can enjoy Griffith’s epic melodrama (often a bit bewilderingly) as spectacle, but little in it resonates deeply now

 

Persepolis (2007) – an effective rendering of Satrapi’s autobiographical material, although impacting mostly as an accomplished curio

 

Pretty Baby (1978) – Shields is still fascinating, but Malle’s then-controversial provocations and ambiguities seem overly studied now

 

Hard to be a God (2013) – German’s “science-fiction” epic like no other, astoundingly well-realized, knowingly oppressive and exhausting

 

Meet Marlon Brando (1966) – Brando’s gleeful waywardness with interviewers makes for as great & evasive a show as many of his actual roles

 

Slumming (2006) – Glawogger’s comedy is initially rather grating, but intriguingly works its way to an unexpectedly reflective final stretch

 

The Sailor who fell from Grace with the Sea (1976) – Carlino’s diverting but pretty silly blend of romanticism, erotica, and creepy kids

 

Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) – Assayas crafts some classic art-movie pleasures and complexities, while musing seductively on changing times

 

Un chien andalou (1929) – in Bunuel’s hands, aggressive incoherence becomes a form of grace, measured by unforgettably potent images

 

Videodrome (1983) – still an amazing Cronenberg vision, even if his fleshy fusions are some way from our sterile screen-induced reality

 

The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) – one of Argento’s more mundane works, seldom very striking either as a narrative or as a cinematic rush

 

Fading Gigolo (2013) – Turturro’s reticent approach, and the film’s gentle acting, emphasize the fading rather more than anything else

 

Torment (1944) – Sjoberg’s ungainly drama is most compelling for the sense of scriptwriter Bergman developing his inclinations and concerns

 

Wild (2014) – Vallee vividly weaves together experience, emotion and memory; but the film never seems particularly important or compelling

 

Army in the Shadows (1969) – Melville’s Resistance drama charts the war’s brutal spiritual toll; the loneliness behind each act of heroism

 

Upstream Color (2013) – Carruth’s consistently wondrous, very high-concept but intimately grounded flow of heightened moments and mysteries

 

By the Law (1926) – Kuleshov’s intense drama of crime & punishment; fascinating as cinema, a bit less so as moral/psychological exploration

 

A Most Violent Year (2014) – Chandor’s somewhat underwhelming drama, most intriguing for how it undercuts the apparent promise in its title

 

The Demoniacs (1974) – Rollin’s disjointed mumbo-jumbo is more striking than it deserves to be, if only for its rather plaintive weirdness

 

The Double (2013) – Ayoade’s fable rapidly becomes thin and aesthetically limited, granted that it hardly seems intended as anything else

 

Libel (1959) – Asquith’s actor-friendly but largely staid, contrived courtroom drama, modestly enhanced by its subtext of class envy

 

Winter Sleep (2014) – Ceylan’s long study of character & conscience is very fine, although the work of a careful builder more than of a poet

 

Killer’s Kiss (1955) – a tight little crime/chase narrative, transformed throughout by Kubrick’s fascinated eye and simmering ambition

 

Ushpizin (2004) – Dar’s film sometimes feels headed toward stuffiness, but is truly deeply felt, and more subtle than it initially appears

 

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) – the film’s beauty & confidence surely indicated Cimino would go places; could never have guessed where…

 

Hurlevent (1985) – Bronte as a spatial and thematic labyrinth; the result is entirely Rivette, but less rewarding than his other works

 

Regeneration (1915) – Walsh’s early gangster film has relatively epic ambition, and a strong affinity for social deprivation and division

 

White God (2014) – Mundruczo’s dog epic is pretty interesting as a logistical exercise, not so much thematically, or in any other way

 

Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976) – a formulaic crowd-pleaser, rather weirdly interesting for its air of class-driven joylessness

 

The Theory of Everything (2014) – actually, it’s mostly the same old theories of tastefully life-affirming, conventionally well-acted cinema

 

Les dames du bois du Boulogne (1945) – Bresson’s piercing study of desire & manipulation, more tolerant of conventions than his later work

 

Carrie (2013) – hopes of a distinct perspective from Peirce are mostly unrealized, perhaps constrained by the material’s inherent hysteria

 

The Language of Love (1969) – odd, often stilted Swedish amalgam of sober instruction and flagrant titillation; “dated” hardly captures it…

 

Beyond Rangoon (1995) – Boorman’s drama maintains strong momentum and humanitarian outrage, but many aspects seem simplistic and untextured

 

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) – Herzog’s chronicle of difference explains little, but it’s a memorable exercise in multi-faceted oddity

 

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) – Liman’s live/die/repeat opus, imaginative enough in some ways to make you regret all the ways in which it isn’t

 

Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (1959) – Renoir’s compassion for human desire and weakness elevates otherwise hokey Jekyll/Hyde material

 

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Bad Words (2013) – Bateman’s debut is drearily tidy and smooth - too conventionally “good” for all the “bad” stuff to make it worthwhile

 

Bay of Angels (1963) – Demy’s drama is finely attuned both to gambling’s idiocy & its intoxication, as he surely was to those of film itself

 

The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002) – Russell’s deliriously silly home movie at least has an age-defying, semi-infectious joy about it

 

Ryan’s Daughter (1970) – Lean’s epic is far less passionate than a plot summary might seem to demand, yielding a rather beautiful enigma

 

The Silence before Bach (2007) – the graceful, fun complexity of Portabella’s methods meshes into an evocative, nicely contemporary tribute

 

The Three Caballeros (1944) – odd Disney patchwork; trivially pleasant, tediously dated and weirdly trippy in more or less equal measure

 

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010) – Ujica’s brilliant assembly of imposing official truths and simultaneously chilling falsehood

 

The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) – mostly conventional piece of anxiety-ridden Simon shtick, somewhat interesting as a time capsule

 

Wild Tales (2014) – of course, wildness alone only takes you so far; most interesting for Szifron’s intermittent shards of social commentary

 

The Professionals (1966) – none more professional than Brooks himself, as compared to Peckinpah’s feverish genius with similar material

 

Fallen Angels (1995) – a near-peak in Wong’s shimmering cinema of connection & memory, thrillingly intertwining the fleeting & the enduring

 

Theatre of Blood (1973) – what a mix – imaginatively nasty lowbrow thrills, and an actual relish for hammy Shakespearean declaiming!

 

Robinson in Ruins (2010) – Keiller’s meditation on landscape and consciousness, charting a unique intersection of serenity and ominousness

 

Storm over Asia (1928) – Pudovkin’s Mongolian epic is a brilliantly cinematic dissection of exploitation, with an unforgettable finale

 

Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013) – Pavich’s lively telling of the “visionary” failed project likely goes down easier than the work itself would have

 

Eden and After (1970) – Robbe-Grillet’s fragmented (even for him), beautifully chilly enigma navigates between the confined and the unbound

 

Tattoo (1981) – the skin art is lovely, but the stuff with three-dimensional people is mostly a silly puddle of lurid black ink

 

Loin du Vietnam (1967) – furious multi-director tapestry; functions now as an amalgam of historical record and ambiguous aesthetic mirage

 

Blood Ties (2013) – Canet’s attempt at an American movie of classic sweep and impact never acquires much power, conviction or atmosphere

 

Madame de…(1953) – Ophuls’ apparent beautiful frivolity reveals itself as a highly serious expression of society’s restrictions on women

 

Whiplash (2014) – Chazelle’s overpraised, no more than superficially gripping film is highly artificial on matters of life and art alike

 

Company Limited (1971) – Ray’s study of the price of success has all his piercing subtlety, even if the overall trajectory is a bit forced

 

Perfect Sense (2011) – Mackenzie’s high-concept film is a highly intriguing, observant expression of humanity’s fragility and resilience

 

Black Panthers (1968) – Varda’s fascinated brief portrait of the movement may temporarily stir you into forgetting our despairing present

 

Force majeure (2014) – Ostlund’s handsome study of relationship complexities doesn’t ring very true, for all its well-crafted ambiguities

 

Detour (1945) – Ulmer’s fascinating drama reeks of poverty, loathing, grievance; with Savage as an outright scary agent of destruction

 

Favourites of the Moon (1984) – Iosseliani’s notable transition to the West, observing humanity’s densely intertwined freedoms & limitations

 

The Front Page (1974) – Wilder’s late remake has old-fashioned expertise all over, but a lot about it now seems coarse and mechanical

 

Blancanieves (2012) – Berger’s silent version of Snow White inevitably evokes The Artist, but generates a fuller (if still limited) response

 

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) – must-see Keaton, especially for its triumphant finale, a gorgeous, graceful communion of man, chance & destiny

 

Timbuktu (2014) – Sissako’s starkly, chillingly beautiful expression of mankind’s self-destructive tangle of ideology, instinct and fate

 

Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1973) – a bumpy voyage through trivial Sellers/Milligan goonery: inspires a kind of respect at its very existence

 

Castaway (1986) – not perfect Roeg material, but an intriguing, fairly complex examination of mythic ambition yielding to human limits

 

The End of Summer (1961) – a fine late Ozu film, somewhat ominously exploring a complex opposition of self-determination and predestination

 

Exit through the Gift Shop (2010) – Banksy’s irresistible light provocation, very nicely embodying modern art’s perception/value paradoxes

 

The Middle of the World (1974) – Tanner’s mesmerizing, intimate but coolly analytical exploration of a time, a place and a love affair

 

Gone Girl (2014) – Fincher, for the second film in a row, applies a golden polish to mostly tedious, read-into-it-what-you-like melodrama

 

Les godelureaux (1961) – an early, often strangely gripping example of Chabrol’s forensic sensibility applied to odd, even anarchic material

 

Nothing Lasts Forever (1984) – Schiller’s odd comedic mashup gets by on threadbare charm, although a bit more substance wouldn’t have hurt

 

Madchen in Uniform (1931) – Sagan’s pioneeringly empathetic drama of female bonding and desire hardly seems dated, in the ways that matter

 

Captain America: the Winter Soldier (2014) – the Russos give it an appealingly no-nonsense, disillusioned quality, but it only goes so far

 

Stay as you are (1978) – content just to be working, Lattuada barely bothers pretending there’s any more to this than Kinski’s nude scenes

 

The Invisible Woman (2013) – Fiennes excels here as both actor and director, highly alert to emotional and social nuance and complexity

 

Uncle Yanco (1967) – Varda’s encounter with an American relative; a concise cinematic kiss to the joys of family, discovery, eccentricity…

 

Birdsong (2008) – Serra digs into the human experience of the Biblical three wise men; not a major film, but one composed with quiet power

 

Forbidden Planet (1956) – still a lovely piece of visual & aural design, but the narrative is a jarring tussle of the silly & sophisticated

 

Leviathan (2014) – Zvyagintsev’s film feels overly underlined, but maybe such a bleak vision of all-encompassing corruption demands no less

 

Chapter Two (1979) – low-energy Simon script isn’t very emotionally convincing as presented here, whatever its real-life underpinnings

 

The Quince Tree Sun (1992) – Erice’s detailed study of an artist attains a rare sense of privileged communion between observer and observed

 

Queen Kelly (1929) – what remains of von Stroheim’s abandoned epic is mostly a romantic romp, with delicious darker streaks (whips! whores!)

 

Two Days, One Night (2014) – a Dardenne fable, compassionately dramatizing the hopeless choices and “freedoms” of the working class now

 

The Blockhouse (1973) – Rees’ claustrophobic drama, perhaps aptly, is like taking a long squint at the murky shapes within a stagnant pool

 

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) – Greenaway’s breakthrough is almost chilling in its biting erudition and immense formal intelligence

 

The Boss (1973) – tightly plotted and executed Di Leo thriller doesn’t find too many points of spiritual light, on either side of the law

 

The Immigrant (2013) – Gray’s fine, luminous drama explores the profound contradictions of the American “dream”, its romance and corruption

 

Dreams (1955) – lesser-known Bergman examination of life’s poses and delusions has some piercing passages, but is rather limited as a whole

 

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) – formidably ingenious at times, but was it worth saving a world of such polished abstraction?

 

The Clowns (1970) – engrossing Fellini semi-documentary celebrates/parallels the clown’s art while drawing out its unsettling undertones 

 

Oldboy (2013) – most interesting, if at all, for Lee’s lack of conventional polish, making the film seem removed to the point of abstraction

 

Outskirts (1933) – Barnet’s multi-faceted WW1 drama overflows with such variety and incident, it might take you half the film to catch up

 

The Humbling (2014) – Levinson’s close thematic cousin to Birdman is to me a more steadily insinuating film, and Pacino is mesmerizing

 

Playing with Fire (1975) – a lesser but still almost elementally enveloping Robbe-Grillet oddity, with his work’s customary pleasures (!)

 

Snowpiercer (2013) – Bong’s drama, despite its flourishes, never seems like more than a wackier variation on the same tired dystopian moves

 

My Childhood (1972) – Douglas’ classic short work is painfully, ethically stark, without any sense of contrivance, pathos or imposed meaning

 

Mood Indigo (2013) – Gondry in creative overdrive even by his standards – massively accomplished, and all cringingly painful to sit through

 

Too Late Blues (1961) – despite limitations, the hard-edged behavioral choreography here is at least halfway to fully-fledged Cassavetes

 

Chloe (1996) – without the spell of Karina/Cotillard, Berry’s fallen teenager drama would probably seem merely dull & sleazily calculating

 

A Star is Born (1937) – Wellman’s version is still pretty sharp, but most interesting now as the skeleton for Cukor’s richer rendition

 

Gloria (2013) – Lelio’s distinctively intimate character study is well-observed and satisfying, despite various points of excessive tidiness

 

The Out of Towners (1970) – Simon’s hysterical if not outright reactionary urban chronicle; interesting enough but hard to really enjoy

 

I Love Beijing (2001) – it’s highly interesting, but Ning’s character study doesn’t say much new on modern China, nor on existential drift

 

The Three Ages (1923) – not the best vehicle for Keaton’s sublime inventions - the high-concept structure limits as much as it liberates

 

Mur murs (1981) – Varda’s lively, socially aware study of murals makes the form, despite its impermanence, seem all but indispensable

 

The Vampire Lovers (1970) – pretty nimble narrative keeps shifting and renewing itself (in vampire-like fashion!) to very enjoyable effect

 

The Imitation Game (2014) – Tyldum’s comprehensively undistinguished slab of prestige cinema, a sterile parody of the film Turing deserves

 

The Kidnap Syndicate (1975) – fast-moving, anguished Di Leo thriller, emanating disgust at the decrepitude of corporate/rich person morality

 

Tim’s Vermeer (2013) – feels like Penn/Teller’s persuasive but overly breezy anecdote should be a more important film than it actually is

 

The Holy Mountain (1926) – Fanck’s grandly-visualized paean to physical and moral robustness is often physically gripping, otherwise turgid

 

Listen up Philip (2014) – overflowing with exquisite observations and ideas, but Perry’s ultimate arrival point is a bit disappointing

 

5 Dolls for an August Moon (1970) – forget the plot, just go with Bava’s super-charged fragments of beautiful decadence and moral emptiness

 

Into the Woods (2014) – Marshall does a stronger job with individual songs than with the overall shape and tone; still, better than nothing

 

La luxure (1962) – given the limited driving concept, it’s rather remarkable how much variety and incident Demy packs into this short work

 

Inherent Vice (2014) – Anderson sustains the sense of an intimately textured cinematic refuge against rampant, exhausting complexity  

 

The Italian Connection (1972) – Di Leo basically delivers one long pursuit, with all participants heading grimly toward complete wipe-out

 

Mr. Turner (2014) – Leigh’s entirely marvelous, staggeringly detailed exploration of existential vision and its surrounding infrastructure

 

Twins of Evil (1971) – Hough keeps this teeming grabbag of Hammer horror elements moving at a cracking pace, which is basically good enough

 

The Free Will (2006) – Glassner’s lengthy, often disturbing drama is consistently rewarding, despite various points of artistic coarseness

 

Angel Face (1952) – Preminger’s very interesting, genre-transcending drama, built around unusually multi-faceted characters and desires

 

Adieu, plancher des vaches! (1999) – at its best, Iosseliani’s elegantly wry observation evokes a graceful blend of Tati and late Bunuel

 

The Reluctant Dragon (1941) – one part dream factory to one part shameless Disney corporate promo; easy to surrender to it for 75 minutes

 

Treasure Island (1985) – Ruiz’s inventiveness sometimes evokes a malady, but more often a deeply ethical process of intellectual husbandry

 

Straight Time (1978) – Grosbard’s character study/crime drama is always interesting, even as formula moves push out sociological observation

 

Glass Lips (2007) – Majewski’s audacious exploration of family myth, trauma, madness; “difficult,” but at least fitfully beautiful   

 

The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) – Astaire/Rogers reunion never transcends a sense of going through the motions, albeit pretty good ones

 

El sur (1983) – Erice’s fascinating jewel of a film - extremely specific as to period, place and incident, and yet boundless, timeless….

 

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) – a disappointingly straightforward Preminger melodrama in many ways, but its core is still affecting

 

Lea (2011) – Rolland’s study of a student/stripper is often well-observed, but covers familiar ground with ultimately unenlightening relish

 

Tess (1979) – in Polanski’s hands, the world’s wondrous beauty constitutes a cruel denial of the tragic structures and experiences within it

 

Life is Sweet (1990) – Leigh may have used his “laugh and just keep going” template a bit too often, but seldom more effectively than here

 

The Hands of Orlac (1924) – Wiene’s effectively if forcibly creepy drama doesn’t have the broader resonance of the great horror films

 

Non-Stop (2014) – Collet-Serra’s superficially clever (substantively dumb), enjoyably cast action flick; if nothing else, I’ve seen worse

 

Caliber 9 (1972) – Di Leo’s crisp, impactful drama, in a city where the law exists only to be subverted, evokes a more grounded Melville

 

The Sheltering Sky (1990) – Bertolucci’s beautiful, wayward African odyssey almost comes to evoke the refined traveler’s Apocalypse Now

 

Pastorali (1975) – Iosseliani’s mild anecdote is as restrained and quiet as a film could be, which makes it hard not to drift off from it…

 

Foxcatcher (2014) – Miller labors glacially over this unimportant anecdote of the uselessly screwed-up mega-rich, as if it actually mattered

 

The Passion of Anna (1969) – Bergman’s challenging but rewarding reflection, precise yet mysterious, on the creation of identity and truth

 

I Origins (2013) – Cahill’s film has a lot of smart thinking and writing, but doesn’t finally amount to much more than an ethereal “what if”

 

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) – so many moments and concepts from Wiene’s pioneering nightmare still shudder with madness and trauma

 

Regarding Susan Sontag (2014) – more in the line of popular than critical biography, rendering Sontag’s life into a tempestuous page-turner

 

Le bel indifferent (1957) – Demy’s early filming of Cocteau; effective, but inevitably limited by the piece’s deliberately severe parameters

 

Youth without Youth (2007) – Coppola’s over-deliberate, oppressively intricate weirdo concoction, lacking cinematic youth to say the least

 

Santa Claus has Blue Eyes (1967) – fine early work, both concise and sprawling, by Eustache, one of cinema’s most tragic curtailed masters

 

Altman (2014) – Mann’s survey of Altman’s life and work is a pleasant memory-jogger, but barely engages with the substance of his films

 

Baron Blood (1972) – even for the genre, Bava seems excessively tolerant here of dumb exposition & arbitrary narrative, between grisly peaks

 

Fruitvale Station (2013) – Coogler’s film has an unforced feeling for the strengths & limits of community, with a powerful cumulative impact

 

Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920) – in a time of rising anti-Semitism, Wegener’s myth remains a complex, troubling reference point

 

A Hard Day’s Night (1964) – even with no Beatles, this would be a smart, wide-ranging Lester satire/temperature taking; with them, well….

 

Meantime (1984) – one of the fascinating Leigh films where the abrasive bleakness pushes past realism, into a kind of stylistic dance

 

Le mepris (1963) – a Godard masterpiece that ceaselessly questions love & cinema, while yet evoking an imposing, almost timeless certainty

 

The Drop (2014) – on the whole a minor variation on extremely well-trodden ground, although Roskam & Hardy give it a warily watchful quality

 

Les horizons morts (1951) – Demy’s strenuous early short shows little hint of his future greatness; no less interesting for that of course

 

Out of the Furnace (2013) – Cooper’s sadly only semi-palatable amalgam of blue collar integrity and hackneyed, tedious cartoon thuggery

 

Lived Once a Song-Thrush (1972) – Iosseliani’s study of a life in constant motion, teeming with beguiling, somewhat cautionary observation

 

My Old Lady (2014) – Horovitz doesn’t fully realize the material’s darker aspects, relying on a lot of rather flat, sub-Avanti machinations

 

Winter Light (1962) – Bergman’s study of utter spiritual isolation, so sparse and withholding that the priest’s loneliness becomes our own

 

The Two Faces of January (2014) – Amini’s Highsmith adaptation is a solidly old-fashioned pleasure, but could use a dose of malicious glee

 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) – Reineger’s beautifully expressive silhouetted images make much subsequent animation seem gauche

 

Dementia 13 (1963) – mainly of interest as Coppola’s debut, but that aside, a modestly moody and eccentric piece of concentrated mayhem

 

Vanishing Waves (2012) – whatever the intentions, Buozyte doesn’t deliver much more than a Lithuanian Altered States, and it’s less fun too

 

Oklahoma Crude (1973) – Kramer’s unpretentious comedy-drama might go down easier now than some of his more obviously “important” pictures

 

Nostalgia (1983) – Tarkovsky’s Italian film draws heavily on ideas of exile and mispurpose, ultimately crafting a grand vision of redemption

 

Moonfleet (1955) – perhaps unlikely Lang material, but much elevated by his hard-edged, astute depiction of dark, lusty human motives

 

Adieu au langage (2014) – Godard’s superbly disruptive film, deploying 3-D to extend his magnificent lifelong critique of human conventions

 

David Holzman’s Diary (1967) – McBride’s classic experiment seems a bit strained now, but still expresses the elemental joy & pain of cinema

 

Paganini (1989) – Kinski’s defiant, self-directed last film seems dragged up from some narrow corner of his distinctively turbulent psyche

 

Black Sunday (1977) – pretty solid, although of course Frankenheimer emphasizes exposition and set-pieces over politics and character

 

Venus in Fur (2013) – Polanski’s astute film of the play, both an affirmation of creation & an implied confessional on his own tangled past

 

Up the Junction (1968) – Collinson’s breezy chronicle of a rich girl’s working class adventures, kind of like a starter version of Ken Loach

 

Philomena (2013) – if only Coogan had livened things up a bit by goading Dench into the occasional Michael Caine or Al Pacino impression

 

Der verlorene (1951) – Lorre’s fascinatingly anguished post-war story has elements of “M”, but the madness now has eaten the nation’s soul

 

Lars and the Real Girl (2007) – Gillespie brings some finesse to the fable, but it’s still useless codswallop, nonsensical on every level

 

Trans-Europ Express (1967) – Robbe-Grillet loosens the narrative bondage, tightens the sexual kind; almost seems like light viewing now!

 

The Monuments Men (2014) – Clooney’s film could hardly be more ponderous and shallow, making its pontificating on culture merely eye-rolling

 

La drolesse (1979) – Doillon’s very distinctive study of a transgressive relationship, evoking the broader strangeness of social structures

 

Poison (1991) – one of Haynes’ best films, superbly appropriating/blending diverse styles for three radical, searching character studies

 

Il sorpasso (1962) – Risi’s largely captivating study of the joys, limits, tragedies of unrestrained momentum, amazingly embodied by Gassman

 

Birdman (2014) – Inarritu’s cleverly ambiguous extravaganza constantly recalibrates between intimacy & grandeur, to mostly interesting ends

 

Duet for Cannibals (1969) – Sontag’s Swedish film embodies a happy, hyper-engaged era when art cinema was the finest of causes, and of games

 

The Cat and the Canary (1927) – a prototype of the fine Hollywood tradition of presenting silly material with ultimately pointless panache

 

Our Beloved Month of August (2008) - Gomes’ playful, extremely smart film; a banquet that leaves you happily full and yet eager to eat again

 

Night Tide (1961) – far more gripping than a plot summary suggests, reflecting Harrington’s quietly rigorous attention to mood and character

 

Les Demoiselles ont eu 25 ans (1993) – for me anyway, Varda’s commemoration of Demy is one of the lovelier projects in recent cinema

 

Beat the Devil (1953) – an enjoyable off-kilter Huston yarn, even if nothing in it echoes as loudly as Bogart’s final rueful laughter

 

The Last of the Unjust (2013) – yet another towering moral & historical investigation from Lanzmann, with elements of aging self-reflection

 

The Terror (1963) – Corman puts an impressive unity on it despite its ragged nature, but “The Mild Interest” would still be a truer label…

 

Happy Together (1997) – an emblematic example of Wong’s very distinctive (potentially rather repetitive?) cinematic and emotional geography

 

Blind Husbands (1919) – less fully realized than Stroheim’s later films, but with a climax almost as rawly emotional & elementally physical

 

Promised Lands (1974) – Sontag’s interesting, not hugely prophetic film on Israel/Palestine privileges myth and trauma over specificity

 

Night Train to Lisbon (2013) – August’s multi-layered drama is intriguing for about ten minutes, but soon becomes a slow ride to nowhere

 

A Place for Lovers (1968) – De Sica’s turgid tragic-love-affair-against-beautiful-backdrops exercise seldom feels like anyone was trying

 

Metropolitan (1990) – Stillman’s first film instantly defines the Stillmanesque, deftly exploring an extremely precisely drawn social group

 

Donkey Skin (1970) - entirely satisfying as a children’s tale, but Demy also fills it with more complex, even rather disquieting resonances

 

Grudge Match (2013) – Segal’s glossily feeble concept movie, not worth wasting the most lightweight of critical punches on it

 

Hands over the City (1963) – Rosi’s incisive, ever-relevant dissection of how power relentlessly buys & bends social & political discourse

 

Flesh + Blood (1985) – the title accurately evokes the texture of Verhoeven’s melodrama, as if it were built from sheer visceral appetite

 

Sunflower (1970) – De Sica’s enjoyably episodic, old-fashioned wallow in wartime loss and noble suffering, broadly drawn to say the least

 

Kill Your Darlings (2013) – Krokidas largely overcomes the film’s familiar aspects with tightly structured, emotionally searching direction

 

The Doll (1919) – Lubitsch’s beautiful little comedy has a Melies-like happy inventiveness, and a more adult undertone of sexual anxiety

 

The Offence (1972) – Lumet’s examination of a cop at the end of his tether is technically well-executed, but ultimately distinctly hollow

 

The Wicked Lady (1983) – Winner’s instincts are consistently terrible, but at least you can sort of feel his enjoyment as he indulges them

 

Le joli mai (1963) – Marker and Lhomme’s ever-meaningful study of the social and psychic prisons that underlie the grand Parisian myth

 

Tabloid (2010) – Morris digs up an enjoyable old yarn and gives it his usual pizzazz, but it’s hard to pull any big insight from any of it

 

Le sabotier du Val de Loire (1956) – Demy’s beautiful early short study hints at the darker preoccupations that would underlie his own craft

 

Dream Lover (1986) – through escalating visual and thematic complexity, Pakula almost transcends the weaknesses of his central concept 

 

C’era una volta (1967) – if they gave a Nobel Prize for cinema, and Rosi won it, this tiresome fable sure as hell wouldn’t be the reason

 

Tracks (2013) – Curran makes the quest interesting enough, but what might peak-period Herzog and a female Klaus Kinski have unearthed in it?

 

Mes petites amoureuses (1974) – Eustache’s film, beneath a deceptively quiet surface, is exemplary in its navigating of formative memories

 

At Any Price (2012) – Bahrani’s eventful farming drama is too broadly drawn to be persuasive, with a disappointing lack of broader resonance

 

The House on Trubnaya Square (1928) – Barnet’s highly lively and varied comedy, one of the most delightful of the period’s Soviet classics

 

Old Joy (2006) – Reichardt’s perfectly observed, very gently ominous vignette of a friendship that’s seemingly inevitably run its course

 

Elevator to the Gallows (1958) – Malle’s classic thriller offsets its brilliantly contrived structure with a vein of melancholy fatalism

 

The Counselor (2013) – Scott and McCarthy’s interminable, head-shaking trash in deep thinker clothing; disgustingly full of itself

 

Marriage Italian Style (1964) – De Sica’s farce is more melancholy & fraught than its reputation may suggest, but not too demanding about it

 

School Daze (1988) – an early example of Lee’s dazzling strategic chaos, laying out faults & tensions beyond any easy narrative containment

 

Arsenal (1929) – Dovzhenko’s anguished symphony of loss and triumph, always galvanizing for its fragments, even when the whole is evasive

 

Rush (2013) – Howard’s perfectly-named boys with toys extravaganza does indeed deliver on its title (good thing it wasn’t called “Insight”)

 

Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974) – Robbe-Grillet strangifies (but only so far) some reliably disreputable cinematic pleasures

 

Loving Memory (1971) – Tony Scott’s peculiar early study of quiet derangement, painstakingly designed and composed, but of limited impact

 

The Trip to Italy (2014) – a beautiful, funny sequel, making you realize the paucity of mature fun and cultural engagement in movies now

 

Les amants (1958) – the film often feels overly calculated, like much of Malle’s work, but the final rush of passion and escape is indelible

 

The Act of Killing (2012) –Oppenheimer’s moral ambiguity & formal inventions left me mostly cold, and I don’t think that’s me being limited

 

Walk on the Wild Side (1962) – Dmytryk’s mostly ludicrous, overcrowded melodrama doesn’t evidence much actual grasp of any kind of wild side

 

The Fourth Man (1983) – Verhoeven’s almost unhealthily entertaining drama, teeming with lusty, happily scandalous images and concepts

 

Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978) – Reisz’s solidly textured drama draws on the catalogue of post-Vietnam dysfunction, personal and institutional

 

Head-On (2004) – Akin’s easily absorbing high-energy tale ultimately seems like too much momentum and provocation, too little inner truth

 

The Pajama Game (1957) – Donen and Abbott’s gorgeous, varied musical, one of the decade’s best, and a positive portrayal of union power!

 

The World of Jacques Demy (1995) – Varda’s cinematic scrap book is so enthrallingly, lovingly assembled, potential quibbles hardly matter

 

Foolish Wives (1922) – the restored version of Stroheim’s grand dissection of posturing venality, built around his own hypnotic performance

 

Vert paradis (2003) – Bourdieu’s somber drama on the enduring influence of roots and home soil lacks any great defining energy or character

 

The Long Goodbye (1973) – one of Altman’s most perfectly realized films, wittily repositioning the classically abstracted film noir hero

 

Renoir (2012) – Bourdos’ dawdling study of the painter’s declining years is prettily useless, in the way you’ve seen a thousand times

 

The Immortal Story (1968) – Welles’ wonderful, haunting miniature of the limits of power, each strange frame brilliantly suffused with myth

 

Smash Palace (1981) – marital breakdown drama connects pretty well, despite some overly heavy writing & directorial underlining by Donaldson

 

Ars (1959) – Demy’s eloquent early short film on priestly devotion, implicitly expressing the director’s own profound sense of purpose

 

The Zero Theorem (2013) – Gilliam’s colourful fantasy is never dull, but doesn’t ultimately yield much revelation or allegorical weight

 

Pourquoi Israel (1973) – Lanzmann’s study of Israel’s complex, imperfect necessity - no less valuable now, much as you long for an update

 

The Big Lebowski (1998) – a one of a kind Coen invention; perhaps amounting to almost nothing, but almost mythically masterful about it

 

Le feu follet (1963) – Malle’s painstaking but forced study of an alcoholic’s final days only elicits a strained, frosty form of sympathy

 

Exit Elena (2012) – Silver’s deft, often cleverly excruciating portrayal of a hemmed-in young woman, a rare film that feels much too short

 

The Saga of Gosta Berling (1924) – Stiller’s long chronicle has many interesting social and gender dynamics; still somewhat stodgy though

 

The Best Man Holiday (2013) – no point resisting, Lee makes a near-perfect, super- aspirational, ideologically unthreatening modern weepy

 

Fox and his Friends (1975) – Fassbinder’s class-sensitive tale of systematic exploitation is somewhat schematic, but still nastily potent

 

True Confessions (1981) – Grosbard’s solid tale has interesting moral shadings, but still feels in the end like a mostly familiar sermon

 

Viaggio in Italia (1954) – Rossellini’s piercingly desolate investigation of marital decay, inner and external excavation, glimpsed renewal

 

Thanks for Sharing (2012) – Blumberg’s sex addiction comedy/drama is best at its darkest, but a lot of it is unthreateningly soft stroking

 

Les rendezvous d’Anna (1978) – Akerman’s hypnotic, highly formal study of the elusiveness of meaning and connection in (then) modern Europe

 

The Armstrong Lie (2013) – customarily smooth documentary off the Gibney assembly line: is the ultimate hollowness a conclusion or a flaw?

 

The Oyster Princess (1919) – sumptuously fleet-footed Lubitsch comedy is delightfully silly, even if its only target is the uselessly rich

 

Gospel According to Harry (1994) – highly artificial Majewski parody of all things American, maybe too clever for its own good, as they say

 

Black Moon (1975) – very peculiar adult fantasy, on a bedrock of strange, primal sexuality, and yep, that really is the same Louis Malle

 

Purple Noon (1960) – Clement’s irresistible if limited Ripley adaptation remains the elegant epitome of tanned, inscrutable scheming

 

The Formula (1980) – Avildsen’s high-concept drama is dull and poorly executed in all respects; watch Pakula’s masterful Rollover instead

 

El bruto (1953) – Bunuel is entirely immersed in the hard-edged human dynamics, powerfully built on pervasive struggle and social injustice

 

Night Moves (2013) – despite (possible) flaws, confirms Reichardt as a major stylistically gripping, thematically relevant American director

 

The Salamander (1971) – Tanner’s absorbing, socially-grounded but playful tale of the capacities and limitations of engaged storytelling

 

Deathtrap (1982) – Lumet’s film of the play is of little specific interest, but you might feel nostalgic for such old-time Hollywood filler

 

Fellini Satyricon (1969) – grandly visualized of course, and not without thematic/political interest, but often a tough slog nevertheless

 

In a World…(2013) – for all the fluidity and intelligence of Bell’s film, it leaves little more impression than a fleeting voice over

 

The Wildcat (1921) – weird and often quite wonderful comedy, not so much an example of the Lubitsch “touch” as of the Lubitsch happy slap

 

Boyhood (2014) – the escalatingly graceful power of Linklater’s core concept more than outweighs some missteps and over-idealization

 

Calcutta (1969) – Malle’s footage is barely less relevant now, defeating all easy platitudes about India, or about our shared humanity…

 

The Garden of Earthly Delights (2004) – Majewski’s very fine study, both intimate and vast, of love and death, deconstruction and connection

 

The Pied Piper (1972) – Demy’s fascinating version of the tale is surprisingly dark and socially pointed, immersed in ruling-class venality

 

Stranger by the Lake (2013) – Guiraudie’s compelling network of desire, both painstakingly detailed and a classic cinematic abstraction

 

Period of Adjustment (1962) – Hill makes Williams’ insecurity-strewn material mostly grating; how much yelling/shrieking can anyone take…?

 

Toute une nuit (1982) – Akerman’s often ravishing string of incidents moves toward something elemental about cinema, about experience itself

 

The Chapman Report (1962) – two breezy Cukor hours of cautiously titillating “racy” material, most revealing (if at all) in its limitations

 

Like Father, Like Son (2013) – Kore-eda’s often schematic & obvious tearjerker, still highly palatable for his practiced lightness of touch

 

The Visitor (1979) – epically misbegotten supernatural mishmash prompts just one key question: what the hell did Huston & Peckinpah think?

 

La commune (2000) – a near-magisterial (apparent) ending to Watkins’ astounding career; who else will even try to occupy such a place?

 

Destination Moon (1950) – Pichel and Heinlein’s now somewhat doddery but still highly worthy uncle to 2001, and to a myriad of others

 

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (2013) – Cote’s quietly but deeply observant little drama admirably cuts its own path through the narrative forest

 

WUSA (1970) – Rosenberg ventures into the confused heart of America, but rapidly gets weighed down and overwhelmed, accomplishing little

 

The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990) – Schlingensief’s scabrous, semi-interesting expression of the psychic mess underlying reunification

 

Scarface (1932) – quintessentially nailed down by Hawks, with a still astonishingly expressive high-stakes blend of relish and disgust

 

The Roe’s Room (1997) – Majewski’s powerful if sometimes rather stifling spell reclaims mundane domestic space for both nature and culture

 

Electra Glide in Blue (1973) – like many a 70’s album cover, Guercio’s grandeur-deluded cop movie is both silly and quasi-magnificent

 

They all Lie (2009) – it may indeed be there’s nothing true in Pineiro’s film, beyond its inexhaustible delight in invention and interaction

 

Frenzy (1972) – Hitchcock’s penultimate movie is colorful & structurally interesting, but ultimately seems mainly like a nasty artificiality

 

Contraband (1940) – Powell in semi-Hitchcock vein, paying due tribute to the war effort while weaving in some stylishly improbable melodrama

 

The Attack (2012) – Doueiri’s focus on the personal enigma doesn’t ultimately serve the wrenching underlying politics particularly well

 

Sorcerer (1977) – despite its fine sequences, not really a Friedkin masterpiece, falling short as both spectacle and as existential odyssey

 

Korczak (1990) – Wajda’s tale of heroism in the ghetto surely miscalculates the balance of light and dark, however noble its intentions

 

$ (1971) – Beatty (doing lots of closing-stretch running) and Hawn serve as happy cogs in Brooks’ well-cranked if impersonal caper machine

 

Klown (2010) – a big comedy hit in Denmark – does this mean it’s a country consumed by deadly sexual and psychic malaise?...can’t decide…

 

Lost and Found (1979) – Frank’s weirdly underdeveloped, bleakly lurching attempt to make a second “Touch of Class” falls wretchedly short

 

Almayer’s Folly (2011) – Akerman’s visually stunning, deeply troubled drama, a meditation on the abidingly hurtful legacy of colonialism

 

The Pawnbroker (1965) – Lumet’s often moving drama retains its power, but its highly-strung manipulations are surely ethically questionable

 

Ariel (1988) – prime example of Kaurismaki’s mesmerizing, socially conscious if not ultimately that impactful fatalistic low-rent coolness

 

Semi-Tough (1977) – seems now like a rather odd grabbag of targets and notions, but Ritchie coaxes it into at least semi-satisfying shape

 

I’m So Excited (2013) – Almodovar’s oddly strenuous artificiality accumulates some minor resonance as a nutty modern-day melting pot

 

Camelot (1967) – Logan’s filming of the second-tier Lerner/Loewe musical doesn’t accomplish much more than a minimally acceptable record

 

Zombi 3 (1988) – poorly executed Walking-Dead-in-the-Philippines effort, bearing Fulci’s name but with little trace of his earlier signature

 

Performance (1970) – the core of Cammell/Roeg’s classic is less striking now, but the accumulation of style and detail remains mesmerizing

 

Enemy (2013) – Villeneuve sustains the tone of his modern-day enigma well, with finely-judged Lynchian touches, but even so it’s a bit thin

 

Cries and Whispers (1972) – a masterful, unsparing peak of Bergman’s mid-period, but less stimulating than many of the preceding works

 

Someone to Love (1987) – Jaglom’s rambling self-extrapolation would wear out its welcome pretty fast, if not for Welles, and Dave Frishberg!

 

Phantom (1922) – restored Murnau drama of human fallibility and pain is emotionally gripping throughout, often stunningly expressed

 

Buddy Buddy (1981) – a sad end to Wilder’s career, trying to disguise its lack of panache and energy with ill-judged bits of “raciness”

 

Black Sunday (1960) – briskly assembled but unremarkable basic material, made semi-classic by Bava’s sleek style and Steele’s iconic oddness

 

Still of the Night (1982) – Benton’s icy threading of Hitchcockian references is interesting enough, in a barren, academic kind of way

 

Informe general…(1977) – Portabella’s teeming information dossier for post-Franco Spain; exhilarated but also clear-sighted, even anxious

 

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013) – unsurprisingly, worth little as history, but generally successful as sentimental evocation & commemoration

 

Nine Days of One Year (1962) – Romm dramatizes an intertwined scientific & personal quest; interesting in theory - in actuality mostly dull

 

Daniel (1983) – Lumet’s quiet approach to Doctorow’s gripping material emphasizes chilling loss and incomprehension over righteous anger

 

Jonah who will be 25 in the year 2000 (1976) – Tanner’s good-spirited but sharp-eyed portrait of a Europe drowning in sociological sludge

 

Escape Plan (2013) – meaningless action concoction doesn’t even deliver the trivial narrative pleasures one might have minimally expected

 

Viridiana (1961) – one of Bunuel’s most stunning films, an unprecedented, multi-faceted overturning of order, tradition and virtue

 

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) – Sasdy turns in an efficiently solid, although seldom very stylistically striking, entry in the series

 

On the Road (2012) – easy to watch for Salles’ handsome image-making and the sheer volume of incident, but leaves sadly little impression

 

The Streetwalker (1976) – Borowczyk’s erotic mystery (of sorts) perhaps maintains its psychological and causal enigmas a bit too well?

 

Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) – Edwards’ weird patchwork might have been conceptually intriguing if it wasn’t so shoddy & self-satisfied

 

Viva Maria! (1965) – Malle’s ambitious, would-be rousing comedy is certainly beautiful to look at, but feels strangely inert to me

 

Promised Land (2012) – Van Sant in well-behaved message mode, sticking strictly to drilling pretty wells with nicely landscaped dirt

 

Face to Face (1976) – Bergman’s rather narrowly strained breakdown drama increasingly seems to be mainly about observing pure performance

 

The Normal Heart (2014) – Murphy’s adaptation is largely unremarkable as filmmaking, but still grippingly conveys Kramer’s powerful anger

 

Pigsty (1969) – Pasolini’s endlessly fascinating, biting, one-of-a-kind film bursts with great dialectical power and creative perversity

 

Shadow Dancer (2012) – Marsh’s worried Irish drama becomes increasingly consumed by spycraft mechanics, shedding much of its interest

 

A Flame in my Heart (1987) – Tanner’s gripping study of a passionate woman maneuvers rather too strenuously toward ambiguous desolation

 

Rollercoaster (1977) – Goldstone’s solidly-built drama has no depth, but is satisfying enough in an unshowy middle-aged kind of way 

 

Post Tenebras Lux (2012) – Reygadas’ beautifully imagined and visualized fusion of piercing localized detail and vast, ungraspable mystery

 

Railroaded! (1947) – Mann’s tight little film noir is no great shakes, but the thematic and visual play of light and dark is irresistible

 

We are the Best! (2013) – Moodysson’s perfectly judged expression of the (old-fashioned?) virtues of grabbing your own space & making noise

 

Kelly’s Heroes (1970) – Hutton’s logistically impressive but cold-blooded caper feels like it should/could have been a much richer satire

 

On the Beat (1995) – Ning’s intimate, revealing study of a Beijing police precinct sets out deep wells of personal and ideological fatigue

 

The Amorous Misadventures of Casanova (1977) – a sluggish Curtis blithely trashes what’s left of his image, propped up by rows of breasts

 

A King in New York (1957) – Chaplin’s generally dignified late summation, a sometimes sorrowful catalogue of American excesses and errors

 

City of Life and Death (2009) – Lu’s powerful, often harrowing drama of the Nanking horror, somewhat limited by its narrative calculations

 

Family Plot (1976) – notable as Hitchcock’s last, this pleasantly rambling, psychologically shallow creation isn’t so important otherwise

 

The Idiots (1998) – von Trier’s study of therapeutic cleansing (or is it?) is a perfect receptable for the likewise ambiguous Dogme virtues

 

Run of the Arrow (1957) – through a fascinatingly anguished protagonist, Fuller memorably expresses ongoing American errors and torments

 

Workingman’s Death (2005) – Glawogger’s remarkable, charged record of community and perseverance, more ambiguous than the title may suggest

 

The Wilby Conspiracy (1974) – turns out pretty mechanical in Nelson’s hands, only intermittently providing a meaningful window on apartheid

 

The Match Factory Girl (1990) – Kaurismaki’s exactingly composed, compact tale of suffering, almost has a touch of Bresson at times

 

The Quiet Man (1952) – Ford’s grandly romantic dream of Irish community, rich with intertwining simplifications and complexities

 

The Hunt (2012) – Vinterberg’s narrative has an inherent queasy power, but it’s the kind of film where you always know the dog won’t make it

 

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) – Sole’s quite interesting amalgamation of procedural 70’s flatness and of visually striking grotesquerie

 

Rendezvous in Paris (1995) – wonderful three-part Rohmer illustration of the complexities & missteps of youthful self-examination & desire

 

In the Year of the Pig (1968) – De Antonio’s impeccable dissection of America’s moral self-destruction in Vietnam still leaves you chilled

 

Betty Blue (1986) – Beineix’s three-hour version often feels arbitrary and shallow, but the sex and nudity work OK as connective glue

 

So Young So Bad (1950) – Vorhaus/Ulmer’s ragged, sometimes oddly touching institution drama, forged from sincere but compromised liberalism

 

Ida (2013) – in classic art film manner, Pawlikowski’s human exploration rivetingly evokes post-war Poland’s personal and political traumas

 

A Star is Born (1976) – Pierson’s update is mostly a mess, but somehow shambles its way to an iconic kind of diverting goofiness

 

The Magician (1958) – Bergman’s film ultimately seems like a rather hollow trick, but it’s enthrallingly odd and intriguing throughout

 

Under the Skin (2013) – Glazer creates an instantly classic filmic myth that’s also an unsettling reflection on acting, being and desire

 

The Last Wave (1977) – despite much anthropological interest and Weir’s strong imagery, it ends up an unpersuasive mythological grab-bag

 

Many Wars Ago (1970) – Rosi’s powerful depiction of war as moral wasteland, gripping even if occupying mostly familiar cinematic territory

 

What Maisie Knew (2013) – McGehee/Siegel’s somewhat over-sculptured but still sad, quietly chilling study of monied parenting uselessness

 

Hotel des Ameriques (1981) – certainly recognizable but rather distant early Techine work, his sensibility perhaps not yet fully channeled

 

The World’s End (2013) – Wright’s snappy handling & feeling for personal crisis only makes it seem more colossally dumb than it already is

 

Statues Also Die (1953) – Resnais/Marker eloquently reflect on black art, seeming overly fascinated though by elements of black otherness

 

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) – Jarmusch’s “vampire movie” is a magnificent reverie on our zombie-like immersion in a deadening present

 

Brink of Life (1958) – a relatively small, sociologically curious Bergman film, with some strikingly humane moments, and some chilling ones

 

Valentino (1977) – Russell feels strangely neutered here, yielding a mostly flat & unrevealing film, although with some closing poignancy

 

London (1994) – Keiller’s multi-layered charting of the city’s eroding identity, very poignantly prophetic given subsequent developments

 

Dragnet Girl (1933) – one feels Ozu moving past the gangster melodramatics, burying into the story’s universal, deeply melancholy centre

 

Don Jon (2013) - Scarlett Johansson gets to be in a dull, mechanical movie; later on, Julianne Moore scores a relatively somewhat richer one

 

Evening Land (1977) – Watkins’ rare, densely-packed Danish work on the destruction of democracy, single-minded but still as grimly relevant

 

Blue Ruin (2013) – Saulnier’s intelligent genre exercise has its distinctive aspects, but not enough to warrant the general high praise

 

Adieu Philippine (1962) – Rozier’s sort-of-love triangle, depicting denial through constant motion, makes for pleasantly loose viewing

 

The Tempest (1979) – Jarman’s fascinating interpretation seems like a displaced meditation on the artist, alternatively preoccupied & joyous

 

Adore (2013) – feels like Fontaine should have gotten much more out of the potentially transgressive material than just a golden-hued ramble

 

Ichijo’s Wet Lust (1972) – Kumashiro’s odd erotic trifle has some fairly interesting psychology, but probably works better for specialists

 

Into the Night (1985) – Landis’ shiny comedy-thriller works as a fable of self-invention through storytelling, or something like that

 

The Blue Angel (1930) – Sternberg’s classic of self-destruction remains entirely riveting, a collision of artificiality and seedy modernity

 

August: Osage County (2013) – I remember a bit more to the play than shouting matches and tedious revelations, but you can’t tell that here

 

Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976) – Jancso’s increasingly interesting study of self-destructive decadence, a cousin to late Pasolini

 

That Championship Season (1982) – being charitable, maybe the movie’s creaky decrepitude helps seal the sense of a vanishing American male

 

Nocturne 29 (1968) – Portabella’s experimental film evokes Bunuel, Antonioni and others, while achieving its own gracefully mysterious unity

 

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) – surprisingly effective end to the series, way less cheesy than its immediate predecessor anyway

 

Jimmy P (2013) – Desplechin’s most even-toned film in many ways inverts his usual expansive methods, creating a fascinating counterpoint

 

The Italian Straw Hat (1928) – Clair’s famous but distant farce is now more just interesting than it is funny or cinematically engaging

 

The Cannibals (1970) – Cavani’s beautifully weird provocation, a time capsule from when images of revolution seemed as necessary as sex

 

Pacific Rim (2013) – del Toro’s relentless epic is always powerfully realized, but disappointingly conventional, juvenile and affectless

 

Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) – if not the most complex Japanese film of the period, Kinoshita’s may at least evoke the most sustained sadness

 

The Shining (1980) – Kubrick’s study of (among other things) an overwhelmed man’s obliteration, a masterpiece of unease & strangeness

 

Mississippi Mermaid (1969) – Truffaut travels compellingly from classic, clue-strewn genre artificiality to bleak, gripping intimacy

 

Elysium (2013) – Blonkamp’s tiresomely hypocritical elite-toppling fantasy, with a conventionally overcooked grabbag of a narrative

 

Anita (Swedish Nymphet) (1973) – looks now like a chronicle of how the crappy drab 70s even screwed up the whole virgin/whore distinction

 

The Unknown Known (2013) – Morris’ prettily presented philosophically-tinged sorrow seems a poor substitute for the anger Rumsfeld deserves

 

Dr. Mabuse: the Gambler (1922) – Lang’s extended drama of societal and psychological manipulation, still amazingly potent and gripping

 

Women in Love (1970) – after forty years, Russell’s strongly-articulated film still seems almost radical in its no-nonsense frankness

 

The White Diamond (2004) – Herzog pushes into yet another interesting situation, but this time doesn’t really hit great thematic heights

 

Without Pity (1948) – Lattuada’s hell-on-earth neo-realist drama seems rather too tightly wound now, blurring the truth of its observations

 

Terminal Island (1973) – it’s true! – Rothman’s energetic film remains interesting both as a feminist statement & a broader progressive one

 

Daytime Drinking (2008) – Noh’s bleakly comic anecdote of bad luck aided by over-consumption; not revelatory, but intriguingly observed

 

The Great Race (1965) – Edwards presumably gets the extended triviality the way he wanted it, but it’s hardly his most enduring mode

 

Daughter of the Nile (1987) – Hou’s loss-heavy drama shares elements with many of his other films, but to a more minor effect than usual

 

The Laughing Policeman (1973) – Rosenberg’s solid but not Lumet-level police drama, as interested in process & wrong turns as in revelations

 

Jar City (2006) – whereby Iceland gets the cleverly grotesque drama that every land deserves, and Kormakur rightly arises to Hollywood

 

Touch of Evil (1958) – Welles’ masterpiece is rich with expressions of moral & physical decay, of the transition to a new politics & culture

 

5 Broken Cameras (2011) – deliberately incomplete as analysis or history, but remarkable and disturbing as personal testimony and witness

 

Across 110^th Street (1972) – Shear’s busy, often sociologically astute drama, seems to have been aspiring to multi-faceted grandeur

 

Prenom Carmen (1983) – Godard’s beautiful, sexy (if arguably limited) concoction illustrates the immense adaptive richness of his methods

 

The Spy who Came in from the Cold (1965) – Ritt’s desolate drama, properly if strenuously chilly, and heavy with Burton’s self-disgust

 

Nymphomaniac, Vol. 2 (2014) – von Trier pulls back on the giddier inventions of part one, evolving into occasionally piercing bleakness

 

The Messiah (1975) – Rossellini’s evenly controlled, worthy last film emphasizes the sociological and cultural over the supernatural

 

The Purge (2013) – DeMonaco has a reasonably promising pulp premise, but plays it out in shallow, ideologically unthreatening monotony

 

Umbracle (1970) – Portabella’s unique film, at times alluring or ominous or both, taking a brave step toward a radically reconfigured cinema

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) – one of Anderson’s best, refining his cinematic language even further, & allowing darker themes & portents

 

Love Meetings (1964) – Pasolini’s lively survey of sexual attitudes, in a nation of repressive conventions and largely unexamined instincts

 

The Thief who Came to Dinner (1973) – Yorkin’s undemanding fluff piece still has more adult contours than a modern-day equivalent would have

 

Wadjda (2012) – Al-Mansour’s film is largely conventional in tone & form, still riveting for what it depicts, & foresees for its protagonist

 

The Blue Gardenia (1953) – Lang’s generally atmospheric picture builds effectively, but is ultimately a bit underdeveloped in most respects

 

The Consequences of Love (2004) – Sorrentino impeccably delivers just about the least likely film one might expect from that title

 

The Paper Chase (1973) – Bridges’ briskly amiable, TV-spin-off-ready drama is pretty flimsy, once you strip off the handsome veneer

 

Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 (2014) – von Trier artfully weaves provocations, positionings and ambiguities, but little in the film feels really new

 

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) – Oshima’s sociologically potent POW film, also a Bowie-mystique-propelled, ravishing existential enigma

 

The Eclipse (1962) – Antonioni’s magnificent journey through the heavy puzzle of civilization, its interlocking beauty and order and chaos

 

The East (2013) – Batmanglij’s infiltration drama feels much like watching Costa-Gavras’ Betrayed again, with a slicker modern sheen

 

La collectionneuse (1967) – more academic & stifling than Rohmer’s subsequent wonderful films, even if that suits the characters & themes

 

The Spectacular Now (2013) – Ponsoldt & the actors generate some lovely moments, but the movie as a whole rather disappointingly peters out

 

Good News (1979) – Petri’s scathingly slippery comedy of scorching male inadequacy in a barely functioning, historically poisoned culture

 

The Great Gatsby (2013) – no doubt Luhrmann’s techniques can be justified as creative strategies, but they’re still mostly boring/annoying

 

Operation Thunderbolt (1977) – Golan’s authenticity-hungry Entebbe drama is fast and straightforward, with all the attaching pros and cons

 

20 Feet from Stardom (2013) – not fully developed as cultural history, but a pleasant, fluid essay on chance and pragmatism

 

La ronde (1950) – Ophuls’ beautiful, masterfully sustained artificiality, encompassing wonderful feeling for human frailty and turbulence

 

At Berkeley (2013) – Wiseman’s thoroughly absorbing record of the institution’s wonders, and the worrying practicalities of maintaining them

 

The Golden Thread (1965) – Ghatak’s bleakly powerful chronicle of personal rise & fall, torn from painful societal upheaval & confusion

 

This is the End (2013) – the more the fires burn and the returns diminish, the surer you are the wrong people got knocked off at the start 

 

Cousin cousine (1975) – Tacchella’s mostly plain, often forced little comedy at least has some happy non-conformity at its centre

 

Red Hook Summer (2012) – Lee’s most sustained and interesting movie for a while, not least for its startling sudden change of direction

 

Z (1969) – the emblematic Costa-Gavras film, employing somewhat dated techniques, but still enveloping, provocative and sadly relevant

 

Dallas Buyers Club (2013) – if time is limited, skip Vallee’s surface-scratching narrative and watch How to Survive a Plague instead

 

Mouchette (1967) – a young girl’s defeated negotiation with a largely pitiless world; one of Bresson’s most acute, overwhelming films

 

Oblivion (2013) – Kosinski’s sterile “vision” is laughably short of the humanity that it’s notionally concerned about redeeming

 

The Spiders (1919) – early example of Lang’s epic paranoia mode, at this point just hinting at the visual and thematic glories to come

 

Trance (2013) – Boyle’s aggressively incoherent “thriller” only becomes nastier and more wearying with each jarring forward motion

 

X, Y and Zee (1972) – Hutton’s drab direction is actually pretty well suited to Edna O’Brien’s fraught, emotionally claustrophobic material

 

From the Life of the Marionettes (1980) – Bergman, with clinical savagery, shreds one’s optimism about human structures and possibilities

 

Dead of Night (1972) – Clark’s dubious but never-dull horror expression of the psychopathy of Vietnam, with suitably anguished acting

 

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012) – von Groeningen’s film is contrived but still surprisingly engrossing, distinctive in joy and pain alike

 

A Woman under the Influence (1974) – Cassavetes’ brilliant behavioural dance, on the wrenching fight between stability and inner truth

 

The Great Beauty (2013) – Sorrentino’s teeming depiction of the circus and the void gorgeously pulls out the stops as you seldom see now

 

Alice’s Restaurant (1969) – as it recedes in time, the bleaker aspects of Penn’s film become more prominent than Guthrie’s mythic wanderings

 

Close-Up (1990) – Kiarostami’s reflective classic, humanely alert to how social injustice might pervert cinematic identification

 

House by the River (1950) – second-tier Lang, but with piercing imagery, and a gripping portrayal of escalating, all-consuming venality

 

Love is all you Need (2012) – Bier tones down her frequent structural artificiality, but replaces it with little more than pretty pictures

 

Wake in Fright (1971) – Kotcheff’s memorably traumatic culture clash, all the more excruciating for being so sociologically convincing

 

Shark (1969) – a famously messed-up Fuller movie, but with plenty of interesting pieces, even if he couldn’t fully punch them into shape

 

The Past (2013) – Farhadi’s conventionally well-crafted film suggests he might end up as (artistically) hemmed in as his characters are

 

The Baby (1973) – a strange but not negligible entry in the annals of, uh, unusual female motivation, executed by Post in poker-faced manner

 

The Counterfeiters (2007) – Ruzowitzky’s over-awarded film is engrossing enough, though drawing on familiar themes and contrasts

 

Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) – a fascinating human mess, but less incisive than either Renoir’s earlier great work or Bunuel’s later remake

 

Gertrud (1964) – near-hypnotic for what we increasingly perceive as the brutal emotional implications beneath Dreyer’s ritualistic surface

 

Stoker (2013) – despite Park’s constant virtuosity, mostly the same old wine (and blood) in a cold-heartedly pretty new bottle

 

State of Siege (1972) – as scrupulous and propulsive as all Costa-Gavras’ peak work, but all seems rather abstract and distant now

 

Mud (2012) – Nichols has a lot (too much) going on plot-wise; most interesting when digging into the worried heart of community & family

 

Two Men in Manhattan (1959) – Melville explores a thicket of moral fractures, beneath his clear pleasure in the scintillating surfaces

 

Lola (1970) – a real oddity in Donner’s and Bronson’s filmographies, and a major undisciplined mess, although seems unlikely they cared

 

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) – smoothly executed, but Cianfrance doesn’t come close to the epic emotional sweep he seems to aim for

 

Heart of Glass (1976) – one of Herzog’s strangest films of the period, allowing us little choice but to be carried to the edge of the abyss

 

To the Wonder (2012) – Malick’s sustained investigation of the connectivity of things, pushing fascinatingly toward a fresh filmic grammar

 

M. Hulot’s Holiday (1953) – most fascinating for the variety of Hulot’s disruptions, the multiplicity of his challenges to regularity

 

Her (2013) – Jonze draws in many of our evolving age’s anxieties & uncertainties, but it’s a pretty drippy, one-note exploration of them

 

The House by the Cemetery (1981) – Fulci traumatically expresses a damaged collective subconscious (embodied by the “Freudstein” monster!)

 

Union Square (2011) – Savoca’s strangely minor ode to family ties seems like a vague starting point for a film rather than the thing itself

 

The Slightly Pregnant Man (1973) – a pleasant satire, maybe because Demy is more interested in the quirks of community than those of science

 

Berberian Sound System (2012) – Strickland’s fascinating cinematic side street, strange and distinctively unsettling at every turn

 

The Ruling Class (1972) – Medak’s satire finds some novel ways to hit at easy targets, although it drags almost as often as it dazzles

 

Me and You (2012) – “small” material no doubt, but hugely enlarged by Bertolucci’s classic capacity for human and cinematic interrogation

 

Silk Stockings (1957) – contains beautiful moments of Charisse and late-period Astaire at their best, so it’s easy to take the other parts

 

Reality (2012) – Garrone’s film delivers some reliable Fellini/De Sica-type diversion, but doesn’t really muster much of a cultural critique

 

The Godfather, Part Two (1974) – still a great example of contemporary myth-making, brilliantly drawing on America’s intertwined hypocrisies

 

Oasis (2002) – Lee sustains a knowingly discomfiting multi-layered challenge to the often self-serving prevailing ideas of behavioral ethics

 

The Last Movie (1971) – Hopper’s cherishably mad, ego-strewn work shudders with love of cinema even as it dreams of obliterating it

 

Whores’ Glory (2011) – Glawogger’s astoundingly comprehensive, achingly humane but unsentimental film breaks through layers of complacency

 

Gun Crazy (1950) – Lewis’ wondrously vivid, cinematically and psychologically compelling classic, justly valued as one of the genre's best

 

L’esquive (2003) – Kechiche’s breakthrough film, highly immersed in its specific subculture, charming at times, but under no illusions

 

Chinatown (1974) – Polanski’s classic is one of the most formally immaculate of modern films, unforgettable for its fluidity and complexity  

 

Beau travail (1999) – for all its strange power and complex engagement with masculinity, surpassed for me by most of Denis’ other films

 

Enter the Dragon (1973) – a shame that the price of admission for watching Bruce Lee had to be all the other turgid sub-Bondian crap

 

Quartet (2012) – making a weirdly late directing debut, Hoffman decides it’s enough just to get some quality old-timers and happily hang out

 

Solaris (1972) – Tarkovsky memorably explores the liberation and the turmoil of seeking escape from personal and bureaucratic heaviness

 

Spring Breakers (2012) – Korine’s strangely beautiful, well-sustained dream of varied turpitude; alive to the raw, malleable hunger of youth

 

La bataille du rail (1946) – not hard to feel one’s way into how stirring Clement’s chronicle of determination must have been at the time

 

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – one of the Coens’ best-judged films, its unforced narrative of failure laced with gentle existential mysteries

 

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) – Herzog’s fine take on the material becomes a poignant meditation on helplessness and decay

 

The Company you Keep (2012) – Redford barely articulates the ongoing relevance of the underground movement, except in cliched terms

 

The Creatures (1966) – Varda’s strange, haunting fantasy of imagination & exploitation; satisfyingly contrived in classic art-house style

 

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) – Scorsese’s savage picture of ethical & moral vacuums in action; often astonishing yet also largely familiar

 

Anatahan (1953) – Sternberg somehow concentrates a whole world of inner churning and invention into this strange, highly-controlled tale

 

White Shadows (1924) – tempting to say one can feel Hitchcock’s presence in the background of this busy melodrama, but it would be a stretch

 

The Cars that ate Paris (1974) – Weir’s early work is an oddly sensitive, wittily Leone-inflected parody of community and its excesses

 

The Angels’ Share (2012) – after this and Looking for Eric, can feel a lot as if Loach’s socially-wired passion has become a form of shtick

 

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) – Varda’s gracefully biology-embracing celebration of women makes its political points lightly

 

American Hustle (2013) – another Russell movie that pretty much just goes by in a chaotic blur, with no great shape, meaning or impact

 

The Night Porter (1974) – Caviani’s study of Nazism’s abiding wreckage hardly constitutes the most significant perspective on the matter

 

Touch (1997) – unfortunately, not much of the Schrader touch comes through in this oddly passionless landscape of lost or incomplete souls

 

Stroszek (1977) – Herzog’s odd (of course) chronicle of America’s false promise; sadly meaningful despite its veins of coarse opportunism

 

Prisoners (2013) – Villeneuve’s ponderous film increasingly reveals itself as a grotesque contrivance, utterly lacking in moral seriousness

 

Une si jolie petite plage (1949) – Allegret’s fine, fatalistic drama, distinguished by an astonishing underbelly of exploitation and disgust

 

Pretty Maids all in a Row (1971) – has its peculiar merits, but Vadim could have made the satire much more biting and politically charged

 

Memories of Murder (2003) – Bong’s darkly ambiguity-laden serial killer piece is certainly a superior genre picture; not really much more

 

The Conversation (1974) – one of Coppola’s best observed movies, even if its examination of character and morality is blunted by contrivance

 

Comedy of Innocence (2000) – Ruiz leaves us elegantly disoriented about the truth & meaning of this peculiar tale, maybe those of all tales

 

Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) – given the attempts at "updating' the material, “Dracula A.D. 1972…maaan” might have been the better title

 

Nebraska (2013) – Payne’s bleakly flavorful, indelibly acted study of American limitations, ultimately as much fairy tale as social document

 

Rider on the Rain (1970) – Clement’s low-key drama has an appealingly melancholy undercurrent, but doesn’t amount to much otherwise

 

Private Benjamin (1980) – seems pretty thin now, but maybe audiences of the time were just desperate for any female self-discovery angle

 

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) – from Herzog’s most astonishingly fertile period, a bizarre but strangely meaningful vision of revolution

 

Magic Magic (2013) – Silva’s quite effective and distinctive appropriation of the “terrorized young woman” template (well-disguised though)

 

Xala (1975) – Sembene’s wonderful tale of corruption & impotence seems to encompass the pains, needs & rhythms of an entire time & place

 

Road to Nowhere (2010) – Hellman’s wildly self-referencing, somewhat over-extended cinematic maze is at least more compelling than not

 

Les cousins (1959) – Chabrol’s early film remains one of his best, ruthlessly laying out the cruel machinations of class and sex and fate

 

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) – the opening & closing credits remain the most striking parts of Kershner’s overdone, not very sensible thriller

 

Days of Being Wild (1990) – for me, this early Wong film remains one of his best, eerily weaving emotion, denial, myth, clarity and loss

 

Loving (1970) – essentially familiar, overly male-centric material, but within those limits, Kershner does better than fine by it

 

US Go Home (1994) – by design slighter and plainer than most of Denis’ work, but still a lovely study of young emotions and desires

 

Demon Seed (1977) – Cammell’s film is careful and well-imagined in some respects, somewhat goofily, trippily over-reaching in others

 

La guerre est finie (1966) – fully satisfying on every level, and more gravely gripping now than Resnais’ better known earlier work

 

Twelve Years a Slave (2013) – always powerful and stimulating, but subject to many (albeit maybe inevitable) compromises and limitations

 

Yeelen (1987) – Cisse’s film stares into a densely mythic past; the absence of Africa’s present & future is both its strength & limitation

 

The Entertainer (1960) – off-stage as on-, too much in Richardson’s melodrama feels over-calculated now, but the pieces are flavorful

 

Zardoz (1974) – hard to know exactly how to react to Boorman’s multi-dimensional oddity; at best, the vision is arbitrary and sputtering

 

Sandra (1965) – an unusual Visconti film; a study of barely buried anguish that’s almost as chilling as any tale of actual ghosts

 

Killing them Softly (2012) – Dominik’s cinematic fluidity only makes the thudding mediocrity of his “big ideas” all the more insufferable

 

Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970) – Bava’s intense but not quite fully charged, somewhat ragged expression of the ultimate wedding bell blues

 

Upstream (1927) – newly rediscovered Ford film in an atypical setting, narratively a bit thin but brimming with great zest and affection

 

The Battle of Chile, Part 3 (1975) – in a brilliant decision, Guzman circles back to tragically illuminate the underlying human commitment

 

Bullet to the Head (2013) – incredibly violent and absurd material, but you can tell there’s a conscientious old pro like Hill in charge

 

The Battle of Chile, Part 2 (1975) – Guzman builds impeccably on Part 1, crafting an unforgettable indictment of “nationalist” malignancy

 

42^nd Street (1933) – Bacon keeps it snappy and colourful and business-like until Berkeley’s nuttily fascinating fantasias take over

 

The Wicker Man (1973) – still as gorgeously odd as ever; drawing with eerie flavour on a tangle of myths, repressions and human weirdness

 

Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) – Kechiche’s greatest hits album of pretty lesbianism, kept aloft by spellbinding observational dexterity

 

Spider Baby (1968) – is this a more weirdly touching depiction of familial unity than many more high-minded films, or am I just losing it..?

 

The Battle of Chile, Part 1 (1975) – Guzman’s precisely rendered, chillingly relevant essay ought to give Tea Partiers something to consider

 

God Bless America (2011) – Goldthwait’s justly angry opus often spellbinds with its furious eloquence, although less so with its body count

 

The House is Black (1963) – Farrozhzad’s stark record of leprosy sufferers all but dares a purportedly benevolent God to explain himself

 

Romantic Comedy (1983) – even though the generic quality is (presumably) deliberate, the intertwining of art & life couldn’t be much flatter

 

I am Cuba (1963) – Kalaztozov’s classic provocation has such constant virtuosic energy, the film rather overruns its own analytical capacity

 

All is Lost (2013) – might almost be Redford’s fascinating atonement for past vanities, facilitated by Chandor’s painstaking stripping down

 

La faute de l’abbe Mouret (1970) – Franju’s gripping if incompletely realized negotiation between Catholic guilt and flower child freedom

 

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) – Coppola ultimately pushes the film toward pure mood, design, encounter, without much enhancing its relevance

 

Cairo Station (1958) – Chahine’s heated potboiler remains surprisingly raw, stark and sexually charged, of great anthropological interest

 

Casting By (2012) – Donahue’s documentary, like so many others, shows little of the distinctive attitude it purports to explore & celebrate

 

Lisa and the Devil (1973) – Bava’s singular mix of old dark house slasher, romantically tinged dream logic, & Telly Savalas (with lollipop)!

 

The Paperboy (2012) – Daniels’ valiantly pathetic, expectations-dodging attempt to rule the “so bad it’s good” category

 

Black Girl (1966) – Sembene’s indelibly sensitive case history of colonialism's false promise, an apt stylistic anomaly in his body of work

 

Seduced and Abandoned (2013) – Toback and Baldwin’s highly engaging, though somewhat ramshackle, things-used-to-be-better ramble

 

Quadrophenia (1979) – Roddam’s film is really all about the attitude & the scrapes; doesn’t dig so deep as a social document, but no matter

 

Boy (1969) – one of Oshima’s most bitingly immaculate films, consistently evading all conventional expectations and interpretations

 

Sisters (1973) – still as enveloping a creation as almost any other De Palma, with Hitchcock yielding to something almost pre-Cronenbergian

 

Un Coeur en hiver (1992) – for all the limitations of such icy precision, Sautet does steer his protagonist to a certain perverse grandeur

 

That’s Life (1986) – unfortunately, it’s not clear anything about Edwards’ film actually is life, outside a purely movieland concept of it

 

Thomas the Impostor (1965) – one of Franju’s more austerely strange, multi-faceted works, with some unsettlingly beautiful images

 

Captain Phillips (2013) – Greengrass remains a master low-bullshit orchestrator, although it ends up mainly another hymn to American might

 

The Stranger (1967) – Visconti presents a dutifully handsome transcription of the book, rather than a productive filmic dialogue with it

 

A Touch of Class (1973) – Frank’s comedy, slack as it generally is, remains a productive discussion topic re cinema’s treatment of women

 

Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 pm (2001) – a more concentrated illustration of Lanzmann’s methods, narratively gripping but superbly weighted

 

Betrayed (1988) – deeply unconvincing liberal-thrill melodrama, where Costa-Gavras’ energy seems spent on keeping up with the contrivances

 

Emak-Bakia (1927) – Man Ray luxuriates playfully in the possibilities of cinema, ultimately daring us to surrender to a sensual dream state

 

Save the Tiger (1973) – still a solid if over-extended drama; not quite the intended all-encompassing summation of its challenged times

 

A Touch of Sin (2013) – Jia’s provocatively bleak narrative, visual mastery and analytical precision makes this one of the year’s best films

 

Quick Change (1990) – given that Murray co-directed this amiable meander, it’s a bit strange and sad he kept himself on such a tight leash

 

King, Queen, Knave (1972) – Skolimowski’s odd little film, both classical and jitterily modern, sliding between caresses and knife-twists

 

Les maudits (1947) – Clement’s fascinatingly atmospheric dramatization of the perverse, malignant existential vacuum underlying Nazism

 

A Boy and his Dog (1975) – very strange, wayward material, which gets somewhat more striking as a distorted prophecy of American derangement

 

The Karski Report (2010) – a piercing annex to Lanzmann’s core achievement, on the Shoah's challenge to human capacity to believe & respond

 

Mean Streets (1973) – Scorsese likely never equaled this for raw empathetic conviction; much of what followed is (inevitably?) more mannered

 

Bastards (2013) - only for Denis could a film as richly controlled and allusive as this one seem like a relatively second-level work

 

Hell Drivers (1957) – Endfield’s socially-wired drama, with a once in a lifetime cast, is a pioneer of hurtling heavy-machine momentum

 

The Wicker Tree (2011) – Hardy’s late sequel doesn’t add much to the mythology, but has moments of intriguing (if rather diluted) flavour

 

The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971) – Petri’s scathing analysis of industrialized labour, as a choice between capitulation and madness

 

Hitchcock (2012) – even less relevant to appreciating Hitchcock’s achievements than The Girl was, although somewhat more goofily enjoyable

 

Le notte bianchi (1957) – Visconti crafts a lovely artificiality, but Bresson’s later version of the same material would be truly remarkable

 

Gravity (2013) – Cuaron’s visual achievement is remarkable; in other respects, it’s either less impressive, or at best harder to assess

 

A Visitor from the Living (1999) – a quietly devastating work, as Lanzmann meticulously exposes past errors and continuing complacency

 

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) – Hough’s no-bullshit, happily nihilistic chase movie; no great shakes, but pretty smart by today's standards

 

A Royal Affair (2012) – Arcel’s stuffy reliance on standard history-film vocabulary only squanders the material’s political resonance

 

Bullitt (1968) – Yates’ sparsely matter-of-fact styling holds up pretty well, & McQueen’s awesomely-controlled iconic presence even more so

 

Trouble Every Day (2001) – Denis applies her immense skill and fluidity to material with a unknowably dark heart, to remarkable effect

 

Airport ’77 (1977) – Jameson shows little passion for the dutiful melodrama, but perks up big-time when the mighty Navy rescue shows up

 

The Goddess (1934) – Wu’s silent Chinese classic is as fluidly complex and moving and as indelibly acted as any Hollywood film of the period

 

Enough Said (2013) – as smoothly insightful as all Holofcener’s work, but to more minor effect: could have said/shown/explored so much more

 

Eva (1962) – a fascinating entry in the ‘dangerous woman’ genre, marked by Losey’s masterfully heightened strangifying of every element 

 

Bay of Blood (1971) – Bava’s vividly enjoyable, gruesome parable on, I suppose, the unenjoyably gruesome toll of unchecked avarice

 

Excalibur (1981) – Boorman just about masterminds the nutty mythological mishmash into a moodily coherent, earthy vision

 

Shoah (1985) – Lanzmann far transcends the limitations of conventional documentary with mesmerizing, often startling authorial choices

 

World War Z (2013) – Forster delivers some striking sequences & jagged storytelling, but it’s been done before with much more sentient kick

 

Summer with Monika (1953) – the summer idyll aside, as close as Bergman ever made to a stripped-down, patriarchy-conscious kitchen-sinker

 

Stand Up Guys (2012) – Stevens’ modern-day Wild Bunch variation squanders all its potential gravity with endless cheap shots & contrivances

 

L'etoile de mer (1928) - Man Ray's early expression of the play of desire, fetishization and denial that fuels so much subsequent cinema

 

Town & Country (2001) – Beatty’s grievously unfocused return to Shampoo territory (with creakier bones) misses nearly every opportunity

 

A River Called Titash (1973) – Ghatak’s film often feels shaped out of pure pain, its confusions flowing directly from India’s injustices

 

Passion (2012) – De Palma persuasively creates a sustained state of waking dream, where nothing carries true weight or earthly consequence

 

Salon Kitty (1976) – Brass’ exploitation classic is more than just that – a real high-low hybrid like they truly don’t/can’t make any more

 

Goldfinger (1964) – rather like perusing an album of isolated iconic moments, with the reasons for that iconic-ness hard to remember now

 

Antiviral (2012) – Cronenberg Jr.’s boring, starkly imagined speculation is all premise, with little in the way of interesting elaboration

 

Parking (1985) – largely forgotten late Demy illustrates all his complexities – lovely, transgressive, piercing, banal, often all at once

 

The Impossible (2012) – the recreation is certainly impressive, but Bayona has little more in mind, the usual “human spirit” stuff aside

 

Le retour a la raison (1923) – Man Ray’s short film vividly (and, briefly, erotically) suggests how montage might encompass all things

 

This is 40 (2012) – Apatow no doubt effectively conveys the contours of his own life, but it’s not clear what that does for the rest of us

 

Cuadecuc vampire (1971) – Portabella’s intriguing repositioning of familiar material, reflecting on filmmaking’s rituals, its strange beauty

 

Drinking Buddies (2013) – higher-end casting gives Swanberg’s movie a finer sheen, but it doesn't really expand his artistic limits

 

Kanto Wanderer (1963) – Suzuki navigates to an endpoint of loneliness and displacement, setting out the stubborn toll of the yakuza code

 

Ishtar (1987) – May’s famous flop is actually pretty astute and clear-sighted on several levels, although still not her strongest film

 

Welcome (2009) – Lioret’s solidly multi-faceted film has lots of sociological interest, although the romantic fatalism is a mixed blessing

 

Linda Lovelace for President (1975) – an amiable softcore mess; Linda's satirical capacity starts off thin & only gets thinner as it goes on

 

Day for Night (1973) – among Truffaut’s most enjoyable creations, even if (or because) it downplays any possibility for directorial vision

 

Gambit (2012) – surely the plainest, most dispensable movie involving the Coen Brothers; seldom puts up more than the usual genre stakes

 

The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982) – an absorbing Taviani testimony, seemingly true to the texture of history, but quirkily seasoned

 

The Towering Inferno (1974) – as the 70’s disaster cycle goes, it’s no Airport; and hard to watch it now without thinking of 9/11 parallels

 

The Grandmaster (2013) – Wong doesn’t greatly expand his universe here, but still creates a meditative space of great, beautiful capacity

 

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) – would have been so much richer and thematically eloquent in the hands of Sirk or Ray or Minnelli

 

Come Play With Me (1977) – only in a pretty sad time and place could this weird, titillating hybrid have been the (albeit minor) hit it was

 

In the House (2012) – Ozon’s fable on personal and artistic ethics and boundaries is poised and engaging, although without his earlier bite

 

Only When I Laugh (1981) – Simon’s customarily polished fragments don’t compensate this time for the lack of overall substance and bite

 

Death in Venice (1971) – Visconti embodies here what was once perceived (some places) as cinematic art, but it’s not so galvanizing now

 

Red Lights (2012) – Cortes seemingly seeks to become progressively dark and disorienting, but manages only silliness and incoherence

 

Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972) – Truffaut pulls off his apparent ambition of making himself seem aggressively dumber than he really was

 

Clear History (2013) – length aside, David doesn’t stray too far here from the Curb Your Enthusiasm formula, but then, who needs him to?

 

La fiancee du pirate (1969) – Kaplan’s provocative, mud-throwing sex comedy is still enjoyably transgressive (in a museum piece kind of way)

 

Papillon (1973) – Schaffner’s approach is stylistically interesting at times, but no real reason to watch this over Bresson’s Man Escaped

 

Feeling Good (2010) – Etaix’s vision of imposed mediocrity is well-executed as always, but covers much the same ground as his other work

 

The Quiller Memorandum (1966) – hardly the genre’s high water mark, but draws with sparse precision on Cold War-era existential adriftness

 

Laurence Anyways (2012) – Dolan’s creative instincts, although rich and generous, are already starting to seem a bit over-stretched

 

Altered States (1980) – Russell’s fiercely committed Chayefsky//monster movie melting pot - too crazily compelling to worry about critiquing

 

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001) – Imamura’s late work, a pleasant, scenic grabbag of oddities, ultimately seems only vaguely meaningful

 

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) – Arzner’s sociologically penetrating masterpiece; both delicately executed and thematically tough-minded

 

The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980) – Temple’s one of a kind time capsule, crazy and fascinating and at least as coherent as it needs

 

Pas sur la bouche (2003) – the title maladie sums up Resnais’ enchanting musical exploration of cinematic delight’s proximity to disquiet

 

Airport (1970) – Seaton's legendary, still quite fascinating hymn to the American machine that holds its fractured human components together

 

Bed and Board (1970) – showing Truffaut’s rare gift of making largely indifferent material unnaturally captivating; often quite funny too

 

Lovelace (2013) – a flat disappointment, with dubious narrative strategies, misplaced emphases and little feeling for emotional complexity 

 

Salvatore Giuliano (1962) – Rosi’s powerful, multi-faceted debut shows his style, sensibility and forceful clarity already fully formed

 

The Man with the Iron Fists (2012) – seemed unlikely that such a collection of elements could turn out so murky and dull, but there you go

 

Une femme est une femme (1961) – one of the most joyous films (a dazzlingly rigorous, political, creative, only-from-Godard joy) of its era

 

The Canyons (2013) – hardly a train wreck; Schrader’s dead-eyed execution is depressingly well attuned to the fuck-everything material

 

Le deuxieme souffle (1966) – Melville’s bleakly spellbinding piece of cinematic, moral, thematic architecture is among his very best works

 

Blue Jasmine (2013) – one of Allen’s late career peaks, with the usual strengths and limitations, but rather more social bite than usual

 

Ten Days Wonder (1972) – Chabrol’s strange but assured exercise in unreliable narration, drawing on rich and varied actorly resonances

 

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) – has plenty of low-key, oddball charm, but doesn’t ultimately amount to a hill of non-metaphysical beans

 

Stolen Kisses (1968) – hardly Truffaut’s most consequential film, but warmly illustrating his great capacity for interaction and nuance

 

American Gigolo (1980) – Schrader’s film is as compelling as ever, as shimmeringly absurd as America's decadence dictates it must be

 

The Intouchables (2011) – smoothly/shamelessly deploying some of the oldest formulae in the book, for some actual laugh-out-loud moments

 

The Twelve Chairs (1970) – interesting as a contrast to Brooks’ other work, although in truth he was probably right to go on by aiming lower

 

Le capital (2012) – Costa-Gavras’ handsome examination of global finance is ultimately too simplistic to yield much analytical power

 

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968) – like nibbling forlornly on a mere hash brownie crumb, and wondering where the whole plate went

 

The Burglars (1971) – Verneuil’s caper movie is mostly plain and workmanlike at best, but with some striking extended action set-pieces

 

Only God Forgives (2013) – Refn’s mostly derided film is increasingly, troublingly fascinating for its formal embodiment of moral absence

 

Benjamin ou Les memories d’un puceau (1968) – Deville’s deft anecdote of hedonistic paradise fades as rapidly as most casual provocations

 

Blood and Wine (1996) – Rafelson’s unremarkable but pleasingly solid thriller, with some of Nicholson & (especially) Caine’s best late work

 

Antoine et Colette (1962) – very pleasant bite-sized piece (half an hour) of Truffaut-lite, with a nicely ironic but unforced arrival point

 

Smashed (2012) – Ponsoldt’s well-acted film has many sadly compelling moments, but perhaps moves too speedily from darkness to redemption

 

As Long as You’ve Got Your Health (1966) – Etaix’s mixed-bag anthology is at its best when elegantly skewering contemporary foolishness

 

Rumble Fish (1983) – Coppola’s aestheticized style creates an overly distanced viewing experience, even allowing that’s largely the point

 

Rebelle (2012) – Nguyen’s film is inevitably interesting, but dissipates its power and evocative force with trite storytelling decisions

 

Point Blank (1967) – still as tightly plotted & allusive as any thriller you can think of; Marvin pushes abstracted acting into a new realm

 

The Players (2012) – variable but mostly weak sex-themed comedy anthology provides ample time to muse on the oddity of Jean Dujardin’s Oscar

 

Badlands (1973) – if only the wonderfully allusive but grounded, character-attuned Malick had persisted for more than, well, one movie

 

Oslo, August 31st (2011) – Trier’s aesthetic calculations rather undermine the central devastation, for an oddly indifferent overall effect

 

Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) – Minnelli's expertly piercing account of exile and displacement, straddling the exotic and the downbeat

 

Vous n’avez encore rien vu (2012) – Resnais’ remarkable reflection on the inexhaustible glory of artistic creation shows him undiminished

 

Wild at Heart (1990) – kinetic and diverting, but among the more dispensable of Lynch’s major works, carrying something of a grabbag quality

 

Rendezvous at Bray (1971) – Delvaux’s immaculately-crafted period miniature, both painstakingly specific and emblematically enigmatic

 

Juno (2007) – Reitman maintains the film’s mega-distinctive tone very well, but it’s more technically than emotionally engaging

 

Happy Anniversary (1962) – Etaix/Carriere’s perfectly executed Oscar-winning short, a close cousin to Tati’s observer of modern problems

 

The Bling Ring (2013) – Coppola is mining a narrow vein of material lately, but it's a meaningful commentary on degraded values and morality

 

Le combat dans l’ile (1962) – Cavalier’s strangely structured but compelling thriller travels from political turbulence to romantic idealism

 

Killer Joe (2011) – beneath pretty much everyone involved, but at least they follow the golden rule: in for a penny, in for a pound

 

The Bear and the Doll (1970) – Deville’s rather stretched comedy works pretty well in showcasing Bardot’s beautiful pain in the ass quality

 

Sinister (2012) – Derrickson’s nastily inventive silliness might evoke various adjectives but strangely, “sinister” isn’t really one of them

 

French Cancan (1955) – Renoir’s matchless, tireless whirl of dance and colour and of the joy (and sometimes the cost) of the creative life

 

Frances Ha (2013) – by far Baumbach’s most wonderful film, marked by enchanting shifts, repositionings, heartbreaks and Gerwigian delights

 

The Ceremony (1971) – straining what can be absorbed on a first viewing, Oshima’s darkly handsome film is rigid with contempt and disgust

 

There Will Be Blood (2007) - Anderson takes classic raw materials, lays them like blood-spattered implements to bake under a murderous sun

 

The Suitor (1962) – wonderfully conceived, controlled and nuanced, but it’s still remarkable how rapidly Etaix would evolve from this start

 

People will Talk (1951) – a strange, unique, discursive movie, maybe the best evidence for Mankiewicz as a really distinctive director

 

Polisse (2011) – Maiwenn’s police drama is most piercing in its feeling for the children; otherwise often problematic (not unprodictively)

 

Another Woman (1988) – Allen’s meticulous but not particularly inspired box of regret doesn’t give Rowlands much space to unleash her power

 

Alexandra (2007) – one of Sokurov’s more easily accessible films, on the tough-minded persistence of human connection amid imposed bleakness

 

The Stranger (1946) – minor but with much interest, in particular when Welles’ sensibility emerges in the cracks in the polished surface

 

Raavanan (2010) – Ratnam keeps it revved up, but the persistent dramatic & emotional over-emphasis is wearying unless it’s really your thing

 

Separate Tables (1958)  - the tables surely seemed creaky even at the time, let alone now, despite the variable star power dining at them

 

Rupture (1961) – Etaix/Carriere’s funny, mordantly-subtexted debut short film is deftly handled, although evidently a set of training wheels

 

Starting Out in the Evening (2008) - Wagner's subtly crafted study is most uncommonly satisfying for such a knowingly "small" film

 

The Mattei Affair (1972) – one of Rosi’s most provocative, jam-packed investigations; a key film in cinema’s consideration of corporatism

 

Before Midnight (2013) - more hampered by contrivance & over-compression than its predecessors, even if dissatisfaction is part of the point

 

L’insoumis (1965) – Cavalier tersely takes Delon, in a classic fraught role, from political specificity to an existential vanishing point

 

Becket (1964) – powerful in a mainstream “great drama” kind of tradition; it’s often a joy to the ear, maybe not as much to the other senses

 

Three Times (2005) – Hou’s wonderfully poised, culturally specific trilogy about the abiding fragility and unreliability of human connection

 

The Arrangement (1969) – for all Kazan’s fascinating, raw neediness and experimentation, often seems naïve and forced next to his best work

 

Therese Desqueyroux (1962) – Franju’s masterly grasp of the complex constraints operating on Therese makes this perhaps his strongest film

 

Stories we tell (2012) – Polley’s family excavation is interesting enough, but the intimations of greater significance are mostly a stretch

 

There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) – Sirk’s starkly melancholy, typically visually eloquent slice of Eisenhower-era loneliness and compromise

 

Land of Milk and Honey (1971) – Etaix's mixed-bag documentary experiment, rather prophetic re Europe’s failure to reflect its aspirations

 

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) – Nolan’s would-be “vision” is ultimately a mere grab-bag, puffed up with trivial patches of topical reference

 

Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1985) – Garrel’s difficult, unpandering, but rewarding reflection on memory & representation

 

Mulholland Drive (2001) – one of Lynch’s most astoundingly charged films, nothing short of masterly in its layerings and repositionings

 

The Cranes are Flying (1957) – Kalatozov’s classic; too sculptured to be fashionable now, but still a moving chronicle of war’s dislocation

 

Behind the Candelabra (2013) – for lack of a better term, would be more historically and psychologically piercing if it were, well, gayer

 

Monsieur Ripois (1954) – Clement’s tale of a Frenchman working through London women; much more unpredictable than that summary suggests

 

The Invisible War (2012) – Dick’s important, efficient and highly informative briefing document, on yet another sleazy institutional outrage

 

Le grand amour (1969) – just about perfectly paced, conceived and executed Etaix comedy, with a darker subtext about stifling of the spirit

 

Your Sister’s Sister (2011) – Shelton’s pleasantly crafted slice of emotional messiness, ultimately more aspirational than observational

 

Good Morning (1959) – one of Ozu’s lighter, more minor films overall, but still full of piercing insights, and glimpses of darker currents

 

The Outfit (1973) – Flynn’s lean-and-mean, no-nonsense action movie; their move against the system becomes an unforced existential quest

 

The Raid: Redemption (2011) – Evans executes the violent physicality with such detail and commitment, it becomes almost revelatory at times

 

They Live by Night (1949) – Ray’s achingly beautifully-crafted, socially conscious debut, with its wonderfully tender central performances

 

Something in the Air (2012) – Assayas’ romantic but thrillingly rigorous recreation of a time and place rich in possibility and engagement

 

The Osterman Weekend (1983) – the paranoid rot goes deep in Peckinpah’s intriguing, deeply disenchanted but overly mechanical thriller

 

Happy New Year (1973) – Lelouch demonstrates an enjoyably varied palate here, making this an unusually well-rounded, reflective caper flick

 

The Loneliest Planet (2011) – no doubt “slow cinema,” but superbly well-handled by Loktev and the actors, around a brilliant central concept

 

Marat/Sade (1967) – Brook’s film of his unique stage production; valuable for sure, but in truth hard to imagine watching it more than once

 

Trishna (2011) – pictorial quality aside, Winterbottom’s transition of Tess to contemporary India is a bit flat & politically under-charged

 

Thief (1981) – Mann’s early film, a fully achieved, shimmering vision of isolation, is already more than halfway to his highpoint of Heat

 

Yoyo (1965) – Etaix’s one-of-a-kind comedy reinvents and renews itself so often you lose count, but keeps you oddly, happily transfixed

 

The We and the I (2012) – Gondry’s workshop piece is interesting enough, “life-affirming” and somewhat horrifying in roughly equal measure

 

Landru (1963) – one of Chabrol’s more cluttered, if not overwhelmed, films, but crammed with stylistic, political and thematic interest

 

Mighty Aphrodite (1995) – one of post-peak Allen’s funniest films; fanciful and hardly relevant to anything, but well-controlled and -played

 

Pleins feux sur l’assassin (1961) – far from Franju’s strongest film; even a master can lapse into little more than moving pieces around

 

Prometheus (2012) – at least halfway to an intriguing thematic & mythic mix, but Scott’s instincts are too earthbound to cover the last half

 

Quadrille (1938) – Guitry extracts quite surprising mileage from his narrow situation, though some might just view it as a one-note talkfest

 

Room 237 (2012) – Ascher enjoyably & affectionately indulges the benign follies and occasional breakthroughs of cinematic preoccupation

 

Beyond the Clouds (1995) – Antonioni’s ravishing late reflection on creation, possibility, the inexhaustible mysteries of human structures

 

The Central Park Five (2012) – a well-made but conventional operation, on material which needed to feel like a furious untreated wound

 

A Man and a Woman (1966) – thin stuff, which in Lelouch’s hands actually does come to seem iconic (is “iconic” always a compliment though?)

 

Hope Springs (2012) – Streep & especially Jones give real, often moving performances, which the film as a whole only intermittently deserves

 

Underworld Beauty (1958) – pretty damn entertaining, powered by its relentless narrative and by any number of striking Suzuki “touches”

 

Premium Rush (2012) – Koepp’s bicycle courier thriller pretty much only does the one thing, but does it with a lot of imagination and zip

 

The Railroad Man (1956) – Germi’s family drama ultimately seems largely conventional next to the strongest work of his contemporaries

 

Lawless (2012) – given Hillcoat’s and Cave’s participation, an inexplicably flat, unatmospheric and uninvolving viewing experience

 

The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (1993) – maybe Rohmer’s reflection on the burden of empathetically grasping an issue's complexity?

 

Total Recall (2012) – Wiseman's visually and narratively cluttered, massively undistinguished, boring (and instantly recall-defying) remake

 

Socrates (1971) – Rossellini’s patient, precise examination constitutes an eternally relevant reference point for our own deranged culture

 

The Queen of Versailles (2011) – has its scraps of relevance and insight, but for the most part a somewhat random, grotesque spectacle

 

Les bonnes femmes (1960) – one of Chabrol’s most disquieting films, for its unforced observation and its astute, escalating sense of threat

 

Pariah (2011) – Rees’ film has a largely conventional frame, but with much that feels new, earning its ultimate sense of the light coming in

 

The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942) – a witty and literate early expression of Clouzot’s layered sense of scheming and malignity

 

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 ½ (2005) – an old man’s indulgence, pleasantly playful and wide-eyed, even if with minimal ultimate impact

 

Touch of Death (1988) – creaky and fatigued next to Fulci’s greatest works, but still enjoyable for its grimly stunned sense of black comedy

 

Dark Horse (2011) – Solondz’ worldview remains limited, but the movie captures something poignant about the mental toll of being ordinary

 

Le quai des brumes (1938) - the sense of predestination limits Carne’s film as a human exploration, but it remains a pristine, charged dream

 

Phil Spector (2013) – Mamet’s expectation-confounding, only sporadically satisfying conception of the story as a darkly meditative “fable”

 

India: Matri Bhumi (1959) – Rossellini’s fictionalized documentary, extraordinarily poised between wonder & informed, premonitionary sadness

 

Blue Velvet (1986) – Lynch’s spellbinding, eternally rewarding meditation on the trauma and disquiet within the collective American psyche

 

Before I Forget (2007) – Nolot’s fine autobiographical reverie, excavating his very specific subculture in unsentimental, surprising detail

 

The China Syndrome (1979) – pushes familiar buttons of liberal indignation, but 34 years later, they're still such damn pushable buttons

 

This Must be the Place (2011) – Sorrentino’s distinctly, beautifully unprecedented cultural, geographical, historical, tonal, moral fusion

 

Blonde Venus (1932) – Sternberg puts through Dietrich through a breathless odyssey of submission, defiance, degradation, transcendence…

 

Like someone in love (2012) – Kiarostami’s luminous, endlessly compelling creation, far less problematically “enigmatic” than some have it

 

The Deer Hunter (1978) – Cimino’s messily powerful, flawed grapple with American community and incoherence remains as fascinating as ever

 

Les femmes (1969) – a dawdling, gauzy time capsule, not without interest, but unimaginative in its use of Bardot and in its sexual politics

 

Neil Young Journeys (2011) – Demme’s sideline in making moderately adorned Neil Young concert flicks beats stamp-collecting, as hobbies go

 

The Machine that Kills Bad People (1952) – Rossellini’s oddball fantasy appeals for its deep grounding in real people and real injustices

 

Breathless (1983) – McBride never puts together a meaningful critique of Gere’s character, and never draws productively on his kineticism

 

360 (2011) – Meirelles’ glacial deployment of the La Ronde structure isn't much of a gateway into character, meaning or globalization

 

The Big Sleep (1946) – Hawks’ classic investigation: famously confusing as detective story; utterly coherent in mood, attitude and character

 

Beyond the Hills (2012) – Mongiu’s painstaking attention to physical, psychological and social detail yields a riveting, provocative work

 

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) – Lynch compellingly (and weirdly, naturally) illuminates the darkness at the TV series’ tragic core

 

Culloden (1964) – Watkins’ debut is still savagely astonishing, laying out with painful vividness the human cost of imperial calculations

 

Post Mortem (2010) – Larrain’s creepily troubling illustration of how national atrocities perversely enable and spawn individual actions

 

Heaven’s Gate (1980) – the sad saga of Cimino’s fine film grimly resonates against its rich examination of America’s beautiful corruption

 

Bestiaire (2012) – Cote’s essay on watching animals is inherently interesting, even if the ethical space it occupies is largely familiar

 

The Wiz (1978) – at least Lumet makes it more fluent and coherent than the same era’s Sgt. Pepper musical; I know, faintest praise ever…

 

Ginger & Rosa (2012) – Potter gracefully and satisfyingly explores the interplay in charged times of radicalization and biological destiny

 

Fear (1954) – intriguing if largely conventional psychological thriller, made more disquieting by Rossellini’s observational exactitude

 

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) – Webb’s version is pleasant & resists being utterly deluged by digital artificiality, so I guess that’s fine

 

The War Game (1965) – Watkins’ indelible evocation of a nuclear attack on Britain almost seems more real than the reality we lived through

 

The Whole Family Works (1939) – Naruse’s sad, ultimately at best only conditionally optimistic tale of youth hemmed in by economic hardship

 

Life of Pi (2012) – Lee paints the prettiest of pictures, but the "story that’ll make you believe in God" stuff makes you roll your eyes

 

The Serpent’s Egg (1977) – unusual Bergman film – its disquieting preoccupation with loss of self acquires a new kind of resonance with time

 

Searching for Sugar Man (2012) – pleasant little anecdote from the margins of fame; hardly amounts to the year’s best documentary though

 

Germany Year Zero (1948) – chillingly gripping, illustrating how Rossellini’s neo-realism enhanced rather than rejected narrative models

 

Pennies from Heaven (1981) – Ross squanders Potter’s incredible source material with bland, unatmospheric handling and mostly poor casting

 

Les temoins (2007) – one of Techine’s most eloquent recent reveries, so poised that it’s easy to undervalue its complexity and breadth

 

Naked (1993) – a film of often dazzling, unsettlingly well-executed passages & concepts, even if not Leigh’s most perfectly conceived whole

 

The Fortune Cookie (1966) – expertly paced & structured (if disenchanted) Wilder comedy, with Matthau in peak form; couldn’t go down easier

 

Bullhead (2011) – the crime drama elements gradually recede, to reveal a rather unique study in masculinity and its turbulent sense of self

 

The Godfather (1972) – like a pilgrimage to the well from which all our subsequent ideas about powerful American adult storytelling flow

 

No (2012) – very skillful and engrossing, maybe too much so, as it slides away afterwards much faster than Larrain’s preceding two films

 

Caravaggio (1986) – Jarman’s deeply personal approach to the artist, crafting an aesthetically complex, emotionally dense filmic space

 

Suspicion (1941) – Hitchcock’s seductive, flawed film is perhaps most compelling for Grant’s fascinatingly, darkly ambiguous performance

 

Headhunters (2011) – a Norwegian entry in the global fight for supremacy in high-concept plotting – good fun, if limited otherwise

 

Beyond Therapy (1987) – the mismatch in Altman & Durang’s sensibilities increasingly yields something rather productively strange & lovely

 

Vincere (2009) – Bellocchio’s accomplished, visually muscular meditation on Fascism’s bizarre, distorting detritus and its cruel human cost

 

The Driver (1978) – Hill’s eternally fascinating genre distillation, a stylistic universe away from the tiresome excesses of such films now

 

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002) – stretching Varda’s gleaning metaphor to the limit, but hey, by now she can do what she likes!

 

Black Caesar (1973) – a great Cohen genre picture, with a smart, committed blend of strut and despair, and that startling, charged climax

 

Poppy (1935) – a finely realized, melancholy-tinged reflection on doing the “right” thing, if a little below Mizoguchi's greatest work

 

Wittgenstein (1993) – despite the film’s brevity and limitations, Jarman conveys both the torture and bliss of Wittgenstein’s life and work

 

2 Days in New York (2012) – compared to say Friends with Kids, Delpy at least generates some engaging silliness (Rock, Gallo, wacky French)

 

Santa Sangre (1989) – Jodorowsky gloriously sustains his intricate vision, you willingly surrender…but then at the end it means so little

 

Mea Maxima Culpa (2011) – Gibney tells the story chillingly well, but the sick rationalizations at its heart remain beyond comprehension

 

Zvenigora (1928) – despite Dovzhenko’s forceful expressive power, a bit taxing to succumb to across this span of time, distance and ideology

 

Nobody Walks (2012) – mostly successful study of a young woman’s complicated impact, even if its preoccupations are ultimately rather narrow

 

Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) – yet another uniquely poised, desire-ridden, politically charged Bunuel film, beyond anyone else’s imagining

 

Agency (1980) – tired Canadian paranoia thriller might have had a vague chance if Alan Pakula directed it, but he sure as hell didn't...

 

The Pilgrim (1923) – late Chaplin short film perfectly embodies the legend, moving smoothly between tightly executed, laugh-out-loud set-ups

 

Brighton Rock (2010) – one of those movies where you feel the filmmaking mechanics turn, never really creating a compelling cinematic space

 

Where Now are the Dreams of Youth? (1932) – Ozu’s fluid, funny silent film is as emotionally rich and eloquent as most garrulous talkies

 

Hysteria (2011) – Wexler chooses the most sterile possible approach – not enough hysteria, sex, dirt, anger, deprivation, anything

 

The Terrorizers (1986) – with great finesse, Yang builds to a finale privileging human sadness over our mechanistic narrative expectations

 

The Hunger Games (2012) – sadly under-nourishing, under-imagined, flatly realized; from the kiddie cookbook of dystopian fantasies

 

Days and Nights in the Forest (1970) – Ray’s film is increasingly, bleakly frank about the depth of India’s dysfunctionality and sadness

 

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) – hardly as stimulating a genre meta-rewrite as some suggested, although what about that monster purge scene!

 

The Organizer (1963) – compelling social justice filmmaking by Monicelli, even if it might seem a bit square next to the period’s key works

 

Arbitrage (2012) – squandered by gross simplifications & unhelpful contrivances, Jarecki’s artistic investment flames out, Madoff-style

 

Deux hommes dans la ville (1973) – striking if stolid exercise in misdirection; promises a standard Delon thriller, turns out much grimmer

 

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) – rather surprisingly lovely, if only for its odd premise, scenic qualities & old-fashioned performances

 

Hiroshima, mon amour (1959) – Resnais’ narrative landmark, interrogating almost every aspect of itself, & of the world that made it possible

 

Marley (2012) – feels like Macdonald might almost have had too great a wealth of material to work with, ending up all but overwhelmed by it

 

The Beast (1975) – strange tale of erotic displacement, whereby Borowczyk conclusively seals his place in the history of the cinematic penis

 

Side Effects (2013) – Soderbergh intriguingly explores how our ethically hollowed-out culture easily spirals into total moral bankruptcy

 

This Man Must Die (1969) – one of Chabrol’s most impeccably sustained, quietly despairing studies in displaced human motivations and guilt

 

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) – just as the legend has it, remarkably foolish, wrong-headed, cheesy, misconceived, etc. etc.

 

Farewell my Queen (2012) – Jacquot’s vivid, elegantly charged humanization of an often-told story, dense with intermeshing perspectives

 

Trouble in Paradise (1932) – what they say about the “Lubitsch touch”, it’s all true! – it’s extraordinarily, tenderly elegant and deft

 

Monsieur Lazhar (2011) – Falardeau’s intentions for this elegant fable of recovery and catalysis are too modest to place much value on it

 

Gloria (1980) – flatly conventional by Cassavetes’ standards, enlivened throughout by his alertness to behavior, interaction, possibility

 

Where Do We Go Now? (2011) – well, Labaki seems to ask, why shouldn’t Middle Eastern conflicts also be fair game for an airheaded movie?

 

House Calls (1978) – I’m a bit of a sucker for such low-ambition, mature-skewing 70's comedies; this is a pretty low-wattage example though

 

The Day I Became a Woman (2000) – wonderful reflection on Iranian womanhood, built on Makhmalbaf’s starkly powerful images and concepts

 

Our Hospitality (1923) – Keaton’s conceptual precision and grace are still delightfully modern; his larger inventions remain astounding

 

The Woman in the Fifth (2011) – Pawlikowski sustains it pretty well, but sadly, if a thing’s not worth doing, it’s not worth doing well

 

Tomorrow Never Comes (1978) – standard siege drama with weird co-production trappings; Collinson can do little more than direct traffic

 

Amour (2012) – Haneke’s highly accomplished proposition that the primary horror of death lies in our fuzzy denials of its specificity

 

Cheyenne Autumn (1964) – this late, discursive Ford drama never completely satisfies, but maybe that’s what this grim history demands

 

Seven Beauties (1975) – hard to understand now how Wertmuller’s artful grotesqueries and unsophisticated morality ever caught such a wave

 

Friends with Kids (2011) – straining impotently to capture some kind of zeitgeist, Westfeldt’s film all but dissipates before your eyes

 

Jour de fete (1949) – Tati’s wonderfully sustained, often exhilaratingly paced debut, powered by a very sweet take on modern threats

 

Bernie (2011) – another finely entertaining example of Linklater’s prowess as the most easy-to-take of experimental American filmmakers

 

Fellini Roma (1972) – Fellini has never seemed that major to me, yet his committed situation-making here is surprisingly enveloping

 

Darling Companion (2012) – could Kasdan’s weirdly minor lost-dog chronicle possibly be meant as deadpan parody?...sadly, probably not…

 

Accattone (1961) – Pasolini’s stunning debut, anticipating all the turmoil, interrogation, profound social awareness of his subsequent work

 

Being Flynn (2012) – Weitz’s conventionally scrubbed notions of craft generally squander the actors’ willing waywardness and ferocity

 

Conversation Piece (1974) – Visconti’s claustrophobic study in politically-charged decadence; maybe more provocative in theory than practice

 

We Bought a Zoo (2011) – you know kids, they do say that once upon a time, some considered Cameron Crowe a significant American filmmaker

 

Woman in the Moon (1929) – Lang’s lumpy, only sporadically visionary amalgam of paranoid thriller and romantic reverie; enjoyable but weird

 

Inventing David Geffen (2012) – pleasantly crammed with good stories, but doesn’t get far on examining the nature and perils of such power

 

Vivement Dimanche (1983) – Truffaut’s handsome but low-stakes final film is hard to dislike, despite the mainly cursory storytelling

 

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) – accomplished and gripping, but plainly a selected narrative: Bigelow’s “just the facts” claims are disingenuous

 

Il posto (1961) – Olmi’s insinuating premonition, bearing a watchmaker’s detail and a sad prophet's reach, of the terrifying road ahead

 

Savages (2012) – despite the perverse romantic streak and practiced gleaming kineticism, as disposable a movie as Stone has ever made

 

La femme aux bottes rouges (1974) – Bunuel junior’s surreal-flavored film lacks his father’s elegant precision, mostly seeming just messy

 

All Night Long (1981) – mostly minor stuff, but with an appealingly offhand, understated quality, and maybe Streisand’s oddest performance

 

Rust and Bone (2012) – Audiard knowingly courts near-absurdity, but transcends it throughout with his superb feeling for human possibilities

 

The American Friend (1977) – one of Wenders’ most enduring works, a well-maintained thriller-fable on America’s cultural seepage into Europe

 

Keyhole (2011) – Maddin’s film noir version of The Shining perhaps; strangely tangible & persuasive even as it evades any easy assimilation

 

Black Narcissus (1947) – dramatizing a culture of rectitude at the tragic end of its tether, through Powell’s most intensely charged images

 

The Lady (2011) – Besson couldn’t have followed the standard biopic playbook much more dutifully, nor achieved much more negligible results

 

Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) – the heavy-heartedness would be intriguing if Edwards did it deliberately, but he probably didn't...

 

Boudu sauve des eaux (1932) – Renoir is unparalleled in unforcedly evoking social fragility, the allure of so-called “creative destruction”

 

Django Unchained (2012) – a disappointment overall; this time round Tarantino’s tactics prove more stimulating in theory than practice

 

Weekend (1967) – Godard’s beautiful nightmare of a vision on the horror of the bourgeoisie and the further horror of overcoming it

 

Everybody Wins (1990) – just about the least a Reisz/Miller pairing could have yielded – ambitious but heavy-footed, with poor instincts

 

Barbara (2012) – with superb, almost subliminal precision, Petzold conveys the complex toll of lives lived under perverse constraints

 

The Yakuza (1975) – gets by on Pollack’s solid unforced genre mechanics, but its sense of Japan is superficial & unprobing to say the least

 

The Decameron (1970) – Pasolini’s utterly engrossing, highly diverse meditation on the earthly machinations that stifle our higher selves

 

A Late Quartet (2012) – a bit short on the transcendent moments Walken’s character talks about, although his final scene comes close to one

 

Desire (1937) – Guitry’s film stands far below the somewhat related (much more ambitious) Regle du jeu, but has its own pleasant contours

 

Breaking the Waves (1996) – almost absolute codswallop, no matter how much conviction von Trier and Watson bring to stirring up the pot

 

56 Up (2012) – Apted’s enduring project is severely limited as social history, but fascinating as a kind of serendipitous art installation

 

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) – amiable, ultimately limited ramble of discovery; shows Scorsese’s resourcefulness if nothing else

 

The Leopard (1963) – Visconti’s absorbing, vastly pictorial but painstakingly subtle study of figures in a complexly eroding landscape

 

The Tempest (2010) – Taymor’s digital paintbox stifles almost as much as it liberates, yielding a fluid but distinctly non-tempestuous film

 

Les amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) – not hard to see why Carax paid such a sad price for this; even what’s beautiful about it often feels forced

 

Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) – incomprehensible choice for Schlesinger (he thought it was Altmanesque?) – treats its woman especially shabbily

 

A Talking Picture (2003) – de Oliveira’s wonderful, slyly courtly reflection on our collective cultural heritage, and hey, what an ending!

 

The Iron Petticoat (1956) – incredibly heavy-footed, laughless long-lost comedy, with Katharine Hepburn as bad as you’ll ever see her

 

Girl Model (2011) – a documentary on young girls lost in translation, commerce and hypocrisy; interesting, but lacking full analytical force

 

Gate of Flesh (1964) – Suzuki’s often luridly erotic and yet deeply felt tale, a true vision of post-war hell, turns morality on its head

 

Into the Abyss (2011) – Herzog has never before applied his sense of the absurd to such a stark case study, nor with such steely discipline

 

L’amore (1948) – Rossellini’s transfixing meditation on female desire in two extreme situations, and on the nature of cinematic performance

 

The Girl (2012) – trivial “study’ of Hitchcock/Hedren relationship has little apparent point, certainly won't aid one’s sense of his films

 

I Can’t Sleep (1994) – somewhat cruder than Denis’ greatest works, but with all her mastery of connection, implication and impermanence

 

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) – despite Russell’s facility for nervily wound-up interactions, overall it’s a sort of poor man’s Desplechin

 

The Canterbury Tales (1971) – my favourite of the trilogy, for Pasolini’s brilliant formal experimentation and eye-popping earthiness

 

Sherlock Jr. (1924) – beautifully structured Keaton film, still belongs near the centre of any essay on cinematic dreaming and inspiration

 

Miral (2010) – well-meaning Palestinian chronicle does little to advance Schnabel’s standing as a film artist, even less that as a thinker

 

Britannia Hospital (1982) – what hope was folded into Anderson’s O Lucky Man has largely congealed (although fascinatingly) by this point

 

A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – still entirely fascinating and striking, although Leone's work would acquire much more layering subsequently

 

Skyfall (2012) – Mendes ably restores something of Bond’s classic essence, but it mainly shows how meaningless that essence has become now

 

Feu Mathias Pascal (1926) – L’Herbier fluidly crafts an engrossing psychological & existential space, built around the compelling Mozzhukhin

 

Lincoln (2012) – an engrossing, stimulating study of political process, limited by Spielberg’s adherence to Great Man filmmaking conventions

 

Pola X (1999) – takes on the sense of a deeply troubled personal testimony by Carax, powered by thrilling edge-of-darkness performances

 

Lola Versus (2012) – Gerwig’s best efforts notwithstanding, not quite a fair fight, given the movie’s low ammunition re laughs and insights

 

 “M” (1931) – still an amazing example of Lang’s control and reach; just slightly less powerful in its breadth than his very greatest work

 

Autoerotic (2011) – Swanberg/Wingard’s offbeat sex anthology is mostly, what’s the word, flaccid...has trouble performing for the 72 minutes

 

Detective (1985) – Godard plays with notions of detection while luxuriating in star power – not his most important movie, but very seductive

 

Tabu (1931) – initially a bit tedious, then escalatingly dazzling and tragic as Murnau’s play of shadow, desire and loss comes to the fore

 

Marina Abramovic: the Artist is Present (2012) – fascinating, but the movie’s conventional seductiveness doesn’t particularly serve the work

 

Ivan the Terrible, Part Two (1958) – continues the sense of escalating aesthetic & psychological siege, with a remarkable colour sequence

 

Mysterious Skin (2004) – Araki’s brave, unforseeable chronicle of abuse & loss of self, ultimately marked by great seriousness of purpose

 

Ivan the Terrible, Part One (1943) – Eisenstein’s intense filmic sculpture on power's inner & outer architecture; still elementally powerful

 

An Almost Perfect Affair (1979) – seemingly the sad no-return point where Ritchie’s satirical and analytical instincts largely deserted him

 

Millennium Mambo (2001) – its impact is perhaps more fleeting than most of Hou’s films, but then that’s fundamental to its portrait of youth

 

Games (1967) – Harrington’s drama of manipulation twists out in largely predictable manner; most intriguing when it’s at its freakiest

 

Holy Motors (2012) – perhaps the year’s most necessary movie; Carax stares the death of film in the mouth and extracts inexhaustible life

 

The Super Cops (1974) – pleasantly loose Serpico-lite, hardly major, but with an unforced colour almost absent from Hollywood movies now

 

Norwegian Wood (2010) – adaptation of Murakami’s novel drifts around in finely-crafted wistfulness and bewilderment, to no great end

 

Bye Bye Braverman (1968) – one of the many oddities dotting Lumet’s career, with good local flavor, and a sense of lives beyond the frame

 

Import/Export (2007) – Seidl’s single-minded immersion in Euro-grimness is almost hypnotically thought-provoking, both to his credit and not

 

Dial M for Murder (1954) – Hitchcock’s drama is highly artificial but compelling, meshing us in a complex network of cruel intentions

 

Sans soleil (1983) – astounding expression of Marker's soaring consciousness; might almost prompt depression at one’s relative limitations

 

Flight (2012) – a strong central character study & meditation on relative morality, although significantly limited by Hollywood conventions

 

Once Upon a Time in America (1984) – Leone’s engrossing, sometimes odd epic – musing on the unreliability of memory and of experience itself

 

Sebastiane (1976) – Jarman/Humfress’s gorgeous poetic/political appropriation for gay cinema of previously underexplored space and language

 

The Hunger (1983) – Tony Scott’s meaninglessly stylish debut falls unproductively between various stools, despite amazingly iconic casting

 

The Sword of Doom (1966) – Okomoto’s samurai film is almost unbearably bottled-up at times, and then the bottle breaks, and goes on breaking

 

Terri (2011) – Jacobs delivers on "troubled teen" genre pleasures, while keeping his eye consistently on larger spiritual & societal issues

 

Trois couleurs: rouge (1994) – might it ultimately all be a fiction imagined (eavesdropped on?) by the judge, or a tangled, longing memory?

 

The Sessions (2012) – certainly engaging viewing; does sufficient justice to O’Brien that you tolerate the overly conventional pill-sugaring

 

La main du diable (1943) – Tourneur’s effectively creepy piece of mythological yarn-spinning; a great ride, with Occupation-era echoes

 

War Horse (2011) – Spielberg largely destroys the play's stark impact; the focus on the horse here does nothing to deepen our sense of war

 

Judex (1963) – Franju’s stylish version of the silent-era serial is enormously entertaining, knowingly emphasizing intrigue over implication

 

Sing your Song (2011) – an unwavering tribute to Belafonte rather than any sort of examination of him, but then, man, he's easily earned it

 

Death Watch (1980) – Tavernier’s rather weirdly conceived and visualized speculative fiction is always interesting but seldom impactful

 

Cloud Atlas (2012) – the time goes by handsomely enough, but I can’t for the life of me see any meaning, much less "vision," to the thing

 

Kagamijishi (1936) – Ozu’s short, respectful documentary on kabuki; encourages a reflection on how its conventions helped shape his own work

 

Dust Devil (1992) (final cut) – Stanley’s troubled vision is indeed often very striking and charged, although hardly 4 DVD’s worth of it

 

The Iron Lady (2011) – flaunting one lousy artistic judgment after another, as if cinema had learned nothing about engaging with history

 

The Model Couple (1977) – Klein’s diverting, eye-filling meditation on the demented wrong turns and existential drift of the modern method

 

The Swell Season (2011) – monumentally unimportant documentary on the post-Once Hansard/Irglova relationship – mainly for fans I guess

 

Salo (1975) – Pasolini’s intellect, cinematic architecture and moral courage are so vast here, he all but defeats your powers of reaction

 

In Time (2011) – Niccoll’s movie is all convoluted Occupy-type metaphor, little or no actual content, beyond the usual bewildering momentum

 

Eyes Without a Face (1959) – Franju’s hypnotically perverse, strangely meditative horror, elevated by amazingly haunting, iconic images

 

Mystery Train (1989) – one of Jarmusch’s less necessary films, but a very engaging meditation on America’s tangled cultural influence

 

The Portuguese Nun (2009) – Green’s film feels like Bresson exhaled and then merged with a Lisbon travel agent, which wouldn’t be all bad

 

A New Leaf (1971) – Matthau's entirely awesome in May’s at least quasi-awesome comedy, edited down from legendarily even greater awesomeness

 

Route Irish (2010) – a bit schematic overall, but Loach’s severely pessimistic ending makes its point effectively (albeit not a new one)

 

Masculin feminin (1966) – an inexhaustible film - Godard brilliantly intertwines provocation and beguilement, possibility and melancholy

 

Argo (2012) – occasionally evocative, and always well-paced, but inherently no more worthy or serious than the sci-fi crap it mocks

 

Secret Defense (1998) – Rivette’s masterly deployment of thriller-genre concepts, full of ambiguities, doublings, and productive oddities

 

Lord Love a Duck (1966) – once the dated college trappings get scratched away, Axelrod creates a surprisingly wide-ranging and morose satire

 

We Have a Pope (2011) – Moretti keeps it all shambling along, and it looks good, but it's ultimately hard to muster much more than a shrug

 

Vertigo (1958) – if not the “greatest” film, perhaps the most moving illustration of an impact cascading beyond the mere sum of the parts

 

Montenegro (1981) – can’t help but seem relatively conventional, even timid next to Makaveyev’s remarkable works of the previous decade

 

The Experiment (2010) – pretensions notwithstanding, useless as any kind of window on human behavior, but passable as a B-movie timewaster

 

La truite (1982) – Losey's film is intermittently stimulating; lacks the glistening slipperiness its central metaphor might seem to demand

 

Looper (2012) – impressively structured and paced; despite its mindbending concepts, has a very grimly practical sense of earthly limits

 

Story of Women (1988) – one of Chabrol’s finest later films - a painstaking, sensitive case study of twisted morality in wretched times

 

Down the Road Again (2011) – 40 years of nostalgia gives the movie a big head start, which Shebib’s heavy-handedness doesn’t quite squander

 

Goin Down the Road (1970) – still a landmark although, in hindsight, Shebib sacrifices some social impact & grit for narrative efficiency

 

Baby Doll (1956) – the hungry underbelly of sexual frustration is still fairly compelling; as a whole though, one of Kazan’s plainer works

 

Audition (1999) – Miike’s very gripping and pristinely disorienting classic, makes the best possible case for transparency in relationships…

 

The Master (2012) – Anderson’s mesmerizingly intense contemplation of the fractured, incoherent, lie-ridden post-WW2 American landscape

 

Sweet Movie (1974) – maybe only someone supremely rigorous in his passion for freedom could transgress as stunningly as Makavejev does here

 

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) – Durkin’s minutely judged, very effective, existentially creepy study of a young woman’s disorientation

 

Don Juan ’73 (1973) – Bardot is seldom even titillating in her last film; Vadim all but submerges her with portentous glossy mythmaking

 

Jeff Who Lives At Home (2011) – surprisingly pleasant and beguiling, but any movie that keeps referencing Signs is gonna be meaning-lite

 

Wind from the East (1970) – Godard et al’s provocation seems mostly lost in time, but still underlines the paucity of political dialogue now

 

Sleeping Beauty (2011) – Leigh’s icily crafted movie raises some familiar issues re female sexuality, not least by being so damn watchable

 

Bamboozled (2000) – for me, Lee’s most fascinating film, dense with ambiguities and as mysteriously, darkly complex as its subject requires

 

Nuit et brouillard (1955) – Resnais’ unsparing, undiminished essay on the evil of the camps and the venal seductiveness of forgetting

 

Trouble with the Curve (2012) – old-time bread-and-butter star vehicle throws nothing but softballs, and even then doesn’t always connect

 

Ivan’s Childhood (1962) – can see why some might value the sparser beauty of Tarkovsky’s debut over his later works (even if I myself don’t)

 

Margaret (2011) – crammed with fascinating behavior & debate, but (at least in the shorter version) rather lacks true complexity and mystery

 

Credo (1997) – early Bier work is a weirdly overstuffed cult drama, probably best seen as capturing an artistic personality in formation

 

The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) – yep, she must really have been a goddess, to be this magnetic amid such unbroken, joyless stiffness

 

The Future Is Now! (2011) – inexplicably peculiar meditation on it all; kind of The Trail of the Pink Panther of philosophical investigation

 

The Young One (1960) – raw, sweaty, transgression-laden island drama, not easily recognizable as Bunuel’s work (at least superficially)

 

In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) – Jolie’s engaged debut is mostly proficient, but undermined by overly conventional instincts

 

Sweetie (1989) – Campion’s openness to varying structures is quietly & funnily radical, without diluting the feeling at the film's center

 

British Sounds (1970) – Godard/Roger’s manifesto for revolutionary cinema, built on a Britain at its drabbest – strangely romantic now..

 

Weekend (2011) – a politically charged repositioning of romantic conventions, deftly exploring the continuing compromises forced on gayness

 

Duck, you Sucker (1971) – Leone’s sort of displaced cartoon of modern America’s melting-pot origins; a great spectacle, even when overcooked

 

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) – a neatly executed fantasy of middle-aged reinvigoration through paranoia, but still a step to lesser Allen

 

Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess (2008) – the flood of family testimony often seems to obscure Veit Harlan more than it illuminates him

 

Seven Days in May (1964) – Frankenheimer’s political drama is rather arid at times, distinctly dated; still, good page-turner kind of stuff

 

Empty Nest (2008) – Argentinean Burman's increasingly impressive meditation on the shifting equilibrium between inner and outer lives

 

Scarecrow (1973) – Schatzberg’s bleak road movie (of sorts) is unusually attuned to underlying loss and pain, eschewing easy pictorialism

 

L’avventura (1960) – Antonioni’s legendary film is still overwhelming for its portrayal of modernity’s hopeless gaps and contradictions

 

Vito: A Man for all Seasons (2011) – a moving portrait of Russo, perhaps ironically more conventional in form than he deserves

 

Man with a Movie Camera (1929) – Vertov remains thrillingly provocative re the creative process (and for that matter, re everything else)

 

The Future (2011) – sure, July has things to say about the beauty and fragility of our moment in time,  but honestly, life’s just too short

 

The Cloud-capped Star (1960) – Ghatak's devastating study of a young woman's quiet destruction; the celluloid almost crumbles with shame

 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) – for all its oddly mythic qualities, polished to a dark gleam, surely Fincher’s least crucial film

 

Les enfants du paradis (1945) – still dazzling & surprising, even if its cinematic & thematic power ranks slightly below the greatest films

 

Another Earth (2011) – hard to imagine a wetter, fuzzier and less productive use of the parallel world premise; watch Melancholia instead

 

Yol (1982) – its greatest vindication lies in its very existence – sociologically and politically heartbreaking even when flagging as cinema

 

Compliance (2012) – terrifically executed by Zobel, capable of bearing almost as much metaphorical weight as you want to place on it

 

Death of a Cyclist (1955) – Bardem's bleakly precise examination of the Spanish bourgeoisie's degraded morality and desperate ruthlessness

 

Repulsion (1965) – early instance of Polanski’s mastery of trauma & claustrophobia – still formally impressive, although inherently limited

 

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010) – entertaining Ian Dury biography hits the rhythm stick real fast, still rather fails to illuminate his art

 

Red Beard (1965) – I prefer Kurosawa in this lower-key vein, although the film doesn’t ultimately yield much moral or thematic revelation

 

The Debt (2010) – dramatically and visually well-crafted by Madden, but at the cost of attaining the appropriate moral weight and complexity

 

Belle de jour (1967) – Bunuel’s astonishingly iconic reverie on fantasy and transgression; even the smallest moment feels indelibly rich

 

Buck and the Preacher (1972) – inherently interesting, but Poitier is too ordinary a director to exploit the historical & genre complexities

 

The Princess of Montpensier (2010) – Tavernier’s fascinating examination of a closed system, within which withdrawal is the only victory

 

The Doom Generation (1995) – wonderfully and sparsely iconic, as Araki comprehensively reshapes the meaning of a ‘heterosexual’ movie

 

Night and Day (2008) – ultimately seems like an endless series of evasions, although Hong almost makes this feel like an actual subject

 

The Best Years of our Lives (1946) – prime if largely conventional example of Hollywood’s classic fluidity, punctuated with piercing moments

 

House of Tolerance (2011) – Bonello’s painstaking recreation of a high-end Paris brothel; I’m torn on its merits, which is likely the point

 

The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover (1977) – Cohen makes Eastwood’s later version, for all its own strengths, seem unfocused & heavy-footed

 

Alps (2011) – in its own way (which sure isn’t anyone else’s) rather glacially magnificent, conveying Greece’s extreme existential turmoil

 

The Sunshine Boys (1975) – we all have our quirky tastes I guess - I find this cantankerous Matthau/Burns showdown just mesmerizing (sorry!)

 

Cold Water (1994) – early Assayas film already demonstrates his sensitivity and facility, although the overall trajectory is a bit forced

 

Restless (2011) – you might say it’s delicate and impressionistic; to me it’s ridiculously fey and dreary; a wanton denial of pain and death

 

Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) – riveting early-ish Bergman; a brutally unsparing depiction of the pain and resignation underlying the cavalcade

 

London Boulevard (2010) – quirky (if strained) characterizations provide the main entertaiment; the rest is mostly just the same old trudge

 

The Man who fell to Earth (1976) – almost always dazzling, unprecedented; although some other Roeg films achieve a greater cumulative impact

 

Alphaville (1965) - as we watch Godard’s sparse, feisty vision, we feel more deeply and creepily how much of ourselves has become imperiled

 

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) – Zeitlin's rather remarkable modern myth, sometimes ungainly, but crammed with odd, memorable fragments

 

Les biches (1968) – one of Chabrol’s great intuitive, unforced enigmas of the period, perpetually but subtly shifting to keep us off balance

 

The Rum Diary (2011) – strangely muted , tired-seeming fictionalization of Hunter Thompson’s origins; not enough rum, not enough anything

 

The Damned (1969) – one of Visconti’s sludgier films, pounding simplistically away at Nazism’s malleable ideology and inherent decadence

 

A Face in the Crowd (1957) – helplessly watchable, but one of Kazan’s more mechanical films, its ‘prophetic’ aspects heavily underlined

 

The Lemon Tree (2008) – pleasant enough as a fable and intermittent postcard; negligible as an engagement with Palestinian complexities

 

Night and the City (1950) – Dassin's gripping expression of post-war dislocation & frustration, propelled by Widmark’s terrific needy energy

 

Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981) – Ferreri’s seems like the wrong kind of madness though, yielding a disappointingly ordinary provocation

 

Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011) – solid stuff, but often feels like it focuses more on the page B6 than on the page A1 material

 

L’Age d’or (1930) – still astonishing for the scorpion-like precision of Bunuel’s transgressions, for the rawness and outrage at its center

 

Sex and the Single Girl (1964) – hard to imagine by what process the source material led to this flat movie, but also not worth dwelling on

 

Le gamin au velo (2011) – more handsomely conventional than other Dardenne films perhaps, but its existential core is entirely as compelling

 

Homicide (1991) – Mamet smartly (a bit too airlessly?) baits us with melodrama before implicitly chiding us for thinking it’s ever so simple

 

A Man Escaped (1956) – Bresson illustrates how in war even the slightest of gestures and moral determinations becomes more deeply charged

 

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) – if only the movie’s devices were calibrated with the same mysterious care as the punctuation of its title

 

Le cercle rouge (1970) – mesmerizingly, almost transcendentally poised; ultimately still a simpler creation than Melville’s greatest works

 

Red State (2011) – at least demonstrates that Smith can operate in a different register, although not ultimately one with much more depth

 

Cleo de 5 a 7 (1961) – Varda's beautiful, timeless artificiality – you lose yourself completely in the film’s graceful glides and pivots

 

The Devils (1971) – one of Russell’s must-see films; eccentric and no doubt “excessive,” but remarkably powerful, stirring and sustained

 

Trigger (2010) – a predictable narrative contrivance (rock-chick Sunshine Boys), but gracefully and affectionately executed in all respects

 

La Strada (1954) – like much (not all) Fellini, to me a rather grotesque, unrevealing creation, far from the true heights of Italian cinema

 

To Rome with Love (2012) – happily confirming Allen’s late, unfussy serenity; his gentle transcendence of temporal and sexual boundaries

 

Empire of Passion (1978) – a handsome enough yarn, precisely told; but ironically or not, one of Oshima’s least impactfully passionate

 

Bigger than Life (1956) – one of the finest of 50’s monster movies (in effect); spellbinding when Ray’s expressive energy hits its peak

 

Impardonnables (2011) – Techine’s work remains perpetually underrated, but this one, although very smooth, adds relatively little overall

 

Alice (1990) – however pleasant, one of Allen’s more dispensable movies up to that point - a thin, rarified chronicle of self-awareness

 

Westfront 1918 (1930) – Pabst’s recreations of battle have remarkable verisimilitude and texture, but the film as a whole is a bit too dour

 

Magic Mike (2012) – pretty much emblematic Soderbergh – a virtuoso performance, but never really letting you see the size of his junk

 

Tout va bien (1972) – Godard/Gorin’s terrific provocation, alert to modernization’s perverse beauty, but fundamentally near-despairing

 

Finian’s Rainbow (1968) – passable record of lovely and provocative material; could only ever have been made by Coppola (no, I’m joking)

 

The Guard (2011) - fills out its conventional outlines with good colour, sometimes too much of it (philosophy-quoting drug smugglers?!)

 

Le boucher (1969) – one of Chabrol’s most gripping forensic examinations, charting a sick knot of pain and lack beneath a bucolic surface

 

Body Heat (1981) – repeated viewings make the pastiche seem a bit over-calculated, but it remains probably Kasdan’s best-realized film

 

Mad Detective (2007) – a worthwhile dip into Hong Kong genre cinema, energized by inspired plottings of inner states (whether mad or not)

 

Spartacus (1960) – a magnificent spectacle, yielding amply satisfying (if incompletely realized) Kubrickian complexities and intertwinings

 

Take this Waltz (2011) – Polley’s film is full of wonder, but almost overly alive to possibilities, denying us any ultimate specificity

 

The Milky Way (1969) – another extraordinary Bunuel film, rendering Catholic dogma the fount of immense narrative dexterity and visual grace

 

Dream House (2011) - continuing the mystery of why these garish, unrewarding meta-reality concepts are so appealing even to mature directors

 

The Innocent (1976) – Visconti’s last film, built on familiar entanglements, increasingly reveals itself as a satisfyingly dark moral tale

 

Absence of Malice (1981) – very little rings true in Pollack’s contrived, largely passionless consideration of media’s valueless "truths"

 

Partie de champagne (1936) – only 45 minutes, unfinished by Renoir, but perfectly calibrated, almost seeming to contain the whole world

 

Higher Ground (2011) – Farmiga is as sensitive a director as an actor, although the film’s equanimity limits its power and political clout

 

Floating Weeds (1959) – Ozu’s masterly late exploring of chance, fate, compromise, inevitability; blissfully full, even if not his very best

 

The Help (2011) – quite moving in its moments of hard truth, but it’s unduly difficult to figure out which moments those actually are

 

Persona (1966) – Bergman’s indispensable marvel of a film, intimate and vast, containing (yet evading) everything from Brakhage to Kubrick

 

The End (1978) – well cast, and interestingly deadpan at times, but Reynolds too often delivers mere blankness in lieu of real darkness

 

Even the Rain (2010) – ultimately has too conventional a sensibility to fully realize its intertwining of cinematic & real-world engagement

 

Mad Love (1935) – an arresting if tenuous assembly of images and concepts, with Lorre’s hypnotic presence almost making it seem coherent

 

My Week with Marilyn (2011) – a nice little anecdote, mostly well-evoked, but not very revealing, hardly ever approaching a heat wave

 

The Idiot (1951) – Kurosawa pounds tediously away at his notion of a good man destroyed by a faithless world; only minimally rewarding

 

Harry and Tonto (1974) – far from Mazursky’s most resonant film, limited by its episodic nature, but still a pleasant chronicle of renewal

 

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) – a deeply resonant assembly, alert to history’s inevitable conflicting truths & to overriding ones

 

The King of Comedy (1983) – my favorite Scorsese film: still his most rigorously analytical work, and crammed with incidental pleasures

 

Tuesday, after Christmas (2010) – an observant Romanian relationship drama; familiar cinematic territory, but often remarkably well-mapped

 

The Steel Helmet (1951) – the film where Fuller became Fuller; extraordinarily concentrated & expressive, but also with an unsettling purity

 

Cosmopolis (2012) – for all its provocations and intelligence, feels like a staid establishment movie dreamed up from a position of comfort

 

The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) – another gorgeously rich, politically resonant Fassbinder film, not quite the equal of Lola in my mind

 

The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010) – a piercingly poised and grave (if ultimately limited) study, remarkably free of "teen" clichés

 

The Flesh (1991) – Ferreri’s more garish, much less challenging or politically-charged variation on the central situation of his Last Woman

 

Cracking Up (1983) – bizarre by any measure, but at the risk of being pretentious, sort of holds together as a quasi-despairing Lewis vision

 

Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (1972) – more schematic than Pialat’s greatest works, but no one better captured the shifting human mess

 

Haywire (2011) – Soderbergh's "take it or leave it" statement; completely watchable, seemingly designed to solicit only lukewarm reactions

 

City of the Living Dead (1980) – not as fully realized a vision as Fulci’s The Beyond, but compellingly direct, unsparing and transgressive

 

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) – a beautifully crafted aesthetic object, rendering dreamily irrelevant the question of whether Anderson's “limited”

 

Autumn Sonata (1978) – engrossing reverie on the pained incompatibility of art (if not life) & family, but far from Bergman’s fullest work

 

The Bed Sitting Room (1969) – if nothing else, maybe one of the preeminent statements on the sheer desolate weirdness of the British psyche

 

Hemingway and Gellhorn (2012) – sporadically interesting for its craft, but lacking in much texture, or even in a real sense of character

 

Le plus vieux métier du monde (1967) – compilation of prostitution sketches is mostly dire, until Godard massively redeems the whole thing

 

Dark Shadows (2012) – not much reason to have woken up this material, but it's fluent and precise enough that it actually almost feels alive

 

The Last Woman (1976) – Ferreri’s amazingly primal, intense, committed, justly notorious meditation on sexual and structural breakdown

 

Riff-Raff (1991) – well-observed like all Loach’s work, but it's too transient to satisfy (even if this reflects its characters' plight)

 

Hollywood Dreams (2006) – Jaglom generally strikes a distinctive, sometimes beguilingly weird perspective on familiar tensions and tinsel

 

Boccaccio ’70 (1962) – a 4-part anthology: Monicelli’s episode is the most socially resonant; Fellini’s the most cinematically irresistible

 

Mammoth (2009) – facile and handsome, but doesn’t amount to too much, beyond an obvious meditation on the vast inequities of existence

 

Lightning over Water (1980) – fascinating by any measure, and moving for what appears real in it; sometimes a bit grotesque for what doesn’t

 

Logan’s Run (1976) – mostly silly, plasticky and perfunctory, running past thirty years’ worth of contrivances and unaddressed plot issues

 

Miss Bala (2011) – consistently and artfully disorienting, with provocative undercurrents, but doesn’t accumulate to as much as you hope for

 

Pretty Poison (1968) – more pretty than truly poisonous perhaps, but a wickedly easy pleasure; Weld and Perkins are mesmerizingly perfect

 

The Iron Rose (1973) – a very well-sustained, unforced Rollin mood piece, largely set in one of cinema's most lovingly filmed cemeteries

 

Midnight Run (1988) – one of my favorite mainstream entertainments, so finely structured, written and acted it seems mysteriously profound

 

Rocco and his Brothers (1960) – Visconti’s epically sad tale of the city’s toll, forcing a painful reckoning of familial gains and losses

 

Detachment (2011) – a diverting mix: two parts the fiery, committed, resourceful "Lake of Fire" Tony Kaye, to one part the notorious nutball

 

Ginger and Fred (1986) – a resigned, unforced evocation of Fellini’s circus of life; the transience of it all is a large part of the point

 

And Everything is Going Fine (2010) – Soderbergh’s perfectly judged commemoration of Spalding Gray, entirely in Gray's own recorded words

 

Carry on Camping (1969) – has the core cast at their most comfortable and emblematic; flies by as rapidly and classily as a propelled bikini

 

Bob le Flambeur (1957) – less stylized than most of Melville’s later films, but entirely as magnificently calibrated, both mythic and humane

 

Carnage (2011) – highly engrossing for Polanski’s drolly painstaking control of the elements and of its constantly shifting equilibrium

 

The House of Mirth (2000) – a quietly devastating study in cruelty & sociological complexity, poignant for Davies’ lost decade in its wake

 

The Herd (1979) – a film that feels torn from Turkey’s land and heart, an increasingly powerful portrait of its fractures and corruptions

 

The Baron of Arizona (1950) – a great yarn, although Fuller’s cinematic fist had yet to fully clench (take the soft ending in particular)

 

A Complete History of my Sexual Failures (2008) – fills time well enough, but as filmic essays go, not exactly in Chris Marker territory

 

Le dejeuner sur l’herbe (1959) – Renoir’s fantasia on France’s (and Europe’s) soul in an age of “progress” – odd, and oddly prophetic

 

Straw Dogs (2011) – the original’s mesmerizing strangeness is smoothed down throughout. leaving just another efficiently repulsive mutt

 

Lola (1961) – Demy’s beautiful reverie on love and chance; places one foot in the limitations of reality, the other in dreams, never tumbles

 

The Long Day Closes (1992) – superbly clear-eyed cinematic poetry, true to memory's odd contours without ever seeming remotely indulgent

 

Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (2011) – peppy, but without much perspective; sticks mostly inside the beat box

 

Leaves from Satan’s Book (1921) – early Dreyer meditation on the complexity of evil, full of interest, but lacks his later expressive power

 

The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) – Minnelli is sometimes touching, but the movie (unrecognizable as Pakula’s) too often turns away from the dark

 

Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait (2006) – intriguingly captures a loneliness within the hubbub, while strenuously aiming for the gallery wall

 

Sunrise (1927) – it’s still miraculous how Murnau intertwines the specific & the transcendent; at times the film’s capacity feels limitless

 

Gambit (1966) – a pleasant, modestly inventive dawdle, but with the rather stodgy affect typical of secondary star vehicles of the time

 

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) – an increasingly impressive reflection on the eternal multiplicity of human fictions and fallibilities

 

I Shot Jesse James (1948) – terrifically paced, concentrated Fuller version of the Bob Ford tale, its tone cast in anguish and self-loathing

 

Death Line (1973) – not a big deal, but a witty, well-considered injection of gruesome urban mythology into mundane, unadorned Britishness

 

The Red and the White (1967) – Jancso’s starkly beautiful, immense vision of turmoil, capturing both mankind’s magnificence and its futility

 

Damsels in Distress (2011) – a quietly intense project in deconstruction & strangifying; its hermeticism at times both a strength & weakness

 

I vinti (1953) – relatively early, episodic Antonioni, with more of a sense of rolled-up sleeves, but filled with his intelligent precision

 

Warrior (2011) – well, you didn’t come here to find something new; ridiculous in the usual ways, but well-grounded and moving in others

 

Carry on Loving (1970) – funny by its own standards (which rely a lot on repression & drabness) - thank God if those standards aren’t yours

 

JCVD (2008) – has its moments, quite deftly handled, but doesn't amount to much given Van Damme's inherent limitations and insignificance

 

Pulp (1972) – surprisingly pleasurable in its knowing incoherence, radiating laid-back imagination and delight in invention and storytelling

 

The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966) – very peculiar, funny but despairing, deliberately largely ungraspable in its fable of inherent confusion

 

The Deep Blue Sea (2011) – spellbinding for its delicacy and control; in Davies’ hands the smallest of films can feel like the largest

 

Barcelona (1994) – very interesting, funny reflection on the necessity and limitations of sex, family, country, structures, theories, etc.

 

Story of a Prostitute (1965) – for all its frequent despairing expressive power, most of the thematic and emotional space is familiar

 

Cold Weather (2010) – a generation where established meaning no longer holds; being Sherlock Holmes is as plausible as having a real career

 

Days of 36 (1972) – seems to me to verge at times on very bleak deadpan comedy, to reveal the odd kinship between Angelopoulous and Tati

 

Outrage (2009) – a bit inconsistent & possibly opportunistic in its thesis, despite one’s sympathy for the examination of extreme hypocrisy

 

Le diable par la queue (1969) – seemingly intended as a madcap send-up of the useless, venal nobility; mostly feels like watching old drapes

 

Singles (1992) – pleasantly loose, unforced and flavorful, although Crowe’s observations are mostly either contrived or else unremarkable

 

Jericho (1937) – a crammed portrayal of a black man’s ascendancy; progressive and compromised in ways that can hardly be disentangled

 

Conte d’automne (1998) – another beautiful precisely calibrated Rohmer examination of relationships, musing on what’s innate versus imposed

 

Friends with Benefits (2011) – cheekily parodies some Hollywood clichés while chewing lustily on others, but at least everyone looks great

 

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933) – stunning vision of crime and madness; the pessimism easily outweighs the notional victory of the good

 

Jesus Camp (2006) – anthropologically interesting for sure; some of the kids seem pretty happy, but I came out the same heathen I was before

 

Diary of a Country Priest (1950) – other Bresson films speak to me more directly, but this may be his most quietly complex and deeply felt

 

Beginners (2011) – ooh, isn’t life big and tough and scary and yet kind of, uh, sweet, and look how nicely and quirkily I captured all that

 

The Coward (1965) – an appealing Satyajit Ray miniature, illuminating both personal missteps and the stranglehold of societal expectations

 

Some Like it Hot (1959) – a terrifically maintained, if knowingly rather grotesque comic machine, by no means Wilder’s most resonant work..

 

Little White Lies (2010) – a French Big Chill of sorts; for all the glossiness and superficial skill, wearily over-calculated and artificial

 

The Last Hurrah (1958) – mostly warm-hearted dawdling & remembrance - it's a bit poignant its class-sensitive politics are still so relevant

 

Carry on England (1976) – lamentably old, tired and joyless; everyone seems too disengaged even ever to think of sex, let alone have any

 

Footnote (2011) – not ultimately such a major film, but enjoyably different, like taking time off to attend an enjoyably peppy seminar

 

The Man who would be King (1975) – perhaps Huston’s finest film, an adventure story with immense pictorial grandeur and behavioral relish

 

From the East (1993) – with great quiet intelligence, forces us to question our reading of the images & our sense of the underlying culture

 

Night Nurse (1931) – terrifically crisp, sexy, often cold-blooded illustration of the pre-Code sensibility, and of Stanwyck’s magnificence

 

Made in Dagenham (2010) – sacrifices grit and heart for easy formula; the movie might have trundled off the same assembly line it depicts

 

Padre Padrone (1977) – an interesting personal journey to enlightenment, quirkier and more lightly experimental than one might remember

 

Exposed (1983) – completely fascinating, odd and provocative; an artistic stream of consciousness barely possible in American cinema now

 

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) – the loveliest and most perfect (although not most complex) film by one of the directors I most cherish

 

Game Change (2012) – the movie is largely efficiently glossy, even amiable, assembly and memory-jogging - you supply your own revulsion

 

Pleasures of the Flesh (1965) – a lesser Oshima, ultimately mainly an exercise in bitter irony, but still startlingly well-articulated

 

Take Shelter (2011) – a horror movie of the most productive, resonant kind, calibrating modern American insecurities to the nearest dollar

 

Ordet (1955) – beautifully strange meditation on faith and knowledge, and how our dogma and culture may only obscure our sense of them

 

The Last Detail (1973) – grimly suggests the dehumanizing distortions of military culture; so darkly unadorned it seems almost radical now

 

Barbarella (1968) – generates some nostalgia for a time when a movie could be so confidently shabby and shoddy, but that’s about it

 

A Better Life (2011) – engages more from one’s preexisting sympathy for the immigrant experience than from any inherent skill or insight

 

Where is Liberty? (1954) – easy to imagine this as a standard star-driven comedy, but Rossellini makes it surprisingly socially resonant

 

Only Angels Have Wings (1939) – maybe Hawks’ most perfect self-expression, told with breathtaking behavioral and existential momentum

 

Heartbreaker (2010) – prime example of France beating Hollywood at its own game: utterly weightless, but the calculations mostly don't grate

 

Magnum Force (1973) – easy nostalgic diversion, despite a pervasive lack of subtlety and style and of any kind of analytical sensibility

 

The Crucified Lovers (1954) – so extraordinarily calibrated and well-told, the immense underlying social complexity might almost evade you

 

Filming ‘Othello’ (1978) – a wonderful late expression of Welles’ personality & creative force, if rather poignant for its modesty of means

 

The Beekeeper (1986) – much as if Angelopoulous was aspiring for the prototypical European “art house” picture (Mastroianni, young nudity..)

 

Rampart (2011) – hardly entirely successful, but constantly fascinating, bursting at the seams with incoherencies, implications and oddities

 

Sanders of the River (1935) – barely watchable as drama, but a grimly informative illustration of colonial attitudes and insecurities

 

Lacombe Lucien (1974) – extremely skillfully, sensitively controlled by Malle, but less cinematically exciting than Black Moon for instance

 

If a Tree Falls (2011) – a bit short of broader analysis, but maybe we’re so hopeless at this point that any analysis could only be a sham

 

The Nun (1966) – atypical for Rivette, but evidencing his interest in incoherent earthly structures and their toll, on women in particular

 

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) – fascinating, though Cassavetes is less focused here on expression than suppression & displacement

 

Seraphine (2008) – although interesting enough on its own terms, dwarfed by Pialat’s Van Gogh as an evocation of time, place and artistry

 

Under the Volcano (1984) – rather heavy-going chronicle, usually interesting for Finney’s showiness, but ultimately not very meaningful

 

Ceddo (1977) – gorgeous Senegalese film about a village jihad, stylistically almost unprecedented, but also still startlingly relevant

 

50/50 (2011) – constantly pleasant, but calibrates the pain and messiness too carefully, becoming  meaninglessly arbitrary and forgettable

 

Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980) – constantly satisfying, even weirdly beguiling, as it deconstructs art, commerce...well, almost everything

 

Four Lions (2010) – a foul-mouthed suicide bomber comedy, often funny, quietly scary for its take on the "existential threat"'s mundanity

 

The Exile (1947) – nonsensical as history, and certainly thinner than Ophuls’ greatest works, but still captivatingly beautiful at times

 

In Darkness (2011) – largely undistinguished presentation of important material, obscuring truth and meaning with constantly lame choices

 

The Anderson Tapes (1971) – a secondary Lumet movie, but still with more substance & individuality than most American films can harness now

 

Van Gogh (1991) – a fascinating evocation of the man, but highly attuned to how the man will ultimately be subsumed by myth and commerce

 

Island of Lost Souls (1932) – terrifically grotesque, the early-Hollywood limitations actually weirdly nurturing the twisted creation theme

 

Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010) – quite a bit less rewarding than its Australian predecessor, but with the same underlying giddy romance

 

The Mirror (1975) – a precursor of sorts to Tree of Life, but even less compromising, envisaging a memory-cinema as unrestricted as a poem

 

Passion Play (2010) – not quite as unwatchable as some claimed, but everything about the movie squeaks heavily of training wheels (or wings)

 

Circle of Deceit (1981) – gripping evocation of Beirut, but increasingly weighed down by writerly notions that ultimately illuminate little

 

We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011) – powerfully visualizes all-consuming trauma and bewilderment, easily transcending echoes of (say) Orphan

 

Under Capricorn (1949) – a deliberately paced but rich study in psychological trauma, drawing on the sense of a land still in formation

 

Flowers of Shanghai (1998) – a rigorously unerotic, mesmerizing film about brothels, meshing desire, calculation, convention, oppression..

 

Starting Over (1979) – Pakula tries to do for romantic comedy what he already did for urban paranoia, with intriguingly peculiar results

 

Leon Morin, pretre (1961) – one of the most galvanizing of films "about" religion, astoundingly rich in (tightly-controlled) implication

 

The Whistleblower (2010) – a very well-maintained expose of institutional evil, somewhat limited by its conventional narrative strategies

 

L'amour en fuite (1979) – pleasantly nostalgic, seemingly reflecting Truffaut’s contentment with (or resignation to) the state of things

 

Celebrity (1998) – pretty diverting overall, not least for Branagh's car wreck performance, but with an unusually inert center for Allen

 

A nos amours (1983) – a vital text on female sexuality and self-definition; few movies match Pialat’s scintillating emotional contours  

 

Bad Teacher (2011) – if she was bad like the Keitel bad lieutenant was bad, and with real sick laughs, then it might be on to something...

 

Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952) – rarely for Ozu, the conciliatory ending is less persuasive than the earlier portrayal of fractures

 

Night Moves (1975) – one of the best 70's genre films - a detective investigation that illuminates a whole clueless country and culture 

 

Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968) – almost bewilderingly loopy at times, but deadly serious about the grim price of imperialist folly

 

The Interrupters (2011) – a vivid, moving documentary, about an America almost incalculably far removed from the deranged political debate

 

La vie est un roman (1983) – a strategically absurd fantasia on the tussle between imagination and education, our capacities and limitations

 

Mr. Arkadin (1955) – Welles reconfigures Citizen Kane’s brilliant investigation (almost as brilliantly) for a time of paranoia & confusion

 

Tyrannosaur (2011) – a volatile, mesmerizingly well-acted (if ultimately a bit thematically limited) treatment of broadly familiar territory

 

L’amour braque (1985) – perhaps the film where diminishing returns seriously start to set in on Zulawski’s stylish exercises in extremity

 

City Lights (1931) – a lot of it is conventional Chaplin, not to say that’s peanuts, but the ending really is transcendent (I cried again…)

 

Black Venus (2010) – an unsparing, chillingly fascinating examination of exploitation, indicting culture & science (& our viewership) alike

 

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) – gorgeously articulates the limitations of Englishness, while also embodying its abiding virtues

 

Mikey and Nicky (1976) – feels much like a Cassavetes movie, but somewhat tougher-minded, more preoccupied by an underlying malignancy

 

A Separation (2011) – the ambiguity has its contrived aspects, but still compelling for how it explores the complexities of Iranian culture

 

Super (2010) – a home-made superhero yarn that often plays like an anguished, violent character study; bemusing, but weirdly good in parts

 

Orphee (1950) – a wonderful reverie on poetic inspiration and identity, with an entirely unique blend of fancifulness and practicality

 

I Spit on Your Grave (2010) – you hate how unflinchingly effective this is; feels classier (but perhaps not truer) to view it as a metaphor

 

The Moon in the Gutter (1983) – many glorious moments, especially when pushing to the extreme, but overall an incompletely realized vision

 

Fear and Desire (1953) – despite its poverty of means, has a powerful Kubrickian sense of war as a moral labyrinth born in human inadequacy

 

Attack the Block (2011) – a pretty cool deal - a tight, accomplished monster movie and a credible piece of social observation, all in one!

 

Chinese Roulette (1976) – bourgeois Germany's poisonous loose ends shaken up and bottled; the kind of film Fassbinder could do in his sleep

 

A Dangerous Method (2011) – brilliantly rigorous, seeped in implication, quivering with the sense of modern ideology painfully taking shape

 

Le lieu du crime (1986) – a strong example of Techine’s evasive complexity; easy to overlook the quiet radicalism of its rejection of norms

 

Margin Call (2011) – plays flashily, often grippingly with the cream of a fiendishly complex situation; leaves what's below mostly untouched

 

Playtime (1967) – my favorite Tati, dense with details, patterns, cross-references, alive to both modernity's possibilities and its lacks

 

Forever Mine (1999) – unrecognizable as Schrader’s, except for a wan obsession theme; lacks the energy to make a virtue of the absurdity

 

Secret Sunshine (2007) – a film of great humanity and awareness, subtly but firmly critiquing the easy blather about closure and coping

 

Ganja & Hess (1973) – revolutionary, genre-transcending vampire movie is also a rich meditation on black identity, provocative at every turn

 

Pina (2011) – a near-miracle after two decades of unproductive, grating Wenders gyrations; made me engage with dance as I never have before

 

Source Code (2011) – one of those concept-dense movies that’s glossily clever but not very intelligent, ending up merely fancifully loopy

 

Landscape after Battle (1970) – effective at evoking the depth of trauma and confusion, but the calculated artistry sits rather heavily now

 

The Adjustment Bureau (2011) – dubious theology (oh sure, belief is all about free will), but great star chemistry, and good use of hats

 

L’amour a mort (1984) – an elegantly devastating reflection on the limitations of conventional discourse, and a key text about suicide

 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) – admirably controlled, but this moral labyrinth is so well-explored already, hardly a new turn remains

 

The Housemaid (2010) – very interesting, if a bit limited; the evolution from the 1960 version eloquently indicts the widening social chasm

 

Shame (2011) – fascinating but utterly overwrought, a Spielberg movie for artisans; the hectoring title (why not, uh, "Glee"?!) says a lot

 

Roselyne et les lions (1989) – stunning lion taming sequences: the rest is variable and surprisingly conventional, but I can’t say I minded!

 

Bananas (1971) – funny enough of course, but feels more now like leafing through a formative notebook than like watching a realized movie

 

The Lost Son (1999) – doesn’t dishonor its terrifying subject, but the genre clutter is especially hard to take in the circumstances

 

The Artist (2011) – a pristinely engaging, even endearing oddity, especially when it uses silence as a strategy, not just a condition

 

Inferno (1980) – a diverting, tactile vision of all-consuming malignancy, although Argento’s visions never seem as potent as, say, Fulci’s

 

The Muppets (2011) - a happy enough Christmas compromise, especially if you enjoy old photos of the likes of Rich Little (and don’t you?)

 

The Devil (1972) – a scabrous, politically-charged vision of degradation, where the only hope of avoiding hell lies in man lacking a soul

 

Young Adult (2011) – lots of terrific observation and a striking cruel streak; suggests an even more fascinating, bleaker road not taken

 

The Illusionist (2010) – evokes Tati’s screen persona, but doesn’t otherwise feel like a Tati film, rendering the point a bit mysterious

 

Funny Face (1957) – a beautiful and joyous musical; for me it's perhaps the film best capturing Audrey Hepburn’s ethereally fragile appeal

 

L’Amour l’apres-midi (1972) – one of Rohmer’s most alluring films, a wonderful study in bourgeois diminishment of the capacity for action

 

The Ward (2010) – draws solidly and creepily on a long iconography of women oppressed by medicine, but the ending is woefully generic

 

Spies (1928) – Lang creates a sense of magnificent unreliability, of capitalistic advancement scheming absurdly, helplessly against itself

 

Hugo (2011) – Scorsese’s most cherishable picture in years; a dazzling feast of cinema, in generous commemoration of its origins

 

La femme publique (1984) – never achieves the alchemy of Zulawski’s best, feeling mostly rather sterile and distant, for all its provocation

 

Hanna (2011) – a fairy-tale for dehumanized, violent times; stylish and polished until it gleams, but essentially utterly silly and useless

 

I Only Want You to Love Me (1976) – more grimly resonant than ever in depicting how the math of a working man’s life just doesn’t add up

 

The Descendants (2011) – full of intriguing variations on familial parameters and responsibilities, but limited in its range and insights

 

Coup de torchon (1981) – a great little drama, laconically depicting escalating madness as a mirror for the perversions of colonialism

 

Unstoppable (2010) – an impressive exercise in physicality, raw industrial power, human limits, although with mostly conventional intentions

 

Le beau Serge (1958) – fascinating early Chabrol, with much terrific observation and flavour; less successful in its climactic spirituality

 

Family Diary (1962) – unusually somber and quietly anguished, defined by death and lost possibilities, and so knowingly embracing monotony

 

Limitless (2011) – entertaining in riffing on the material possibilities of enhanced capacity, but the inner life goes mostly unexamined

 

Violence at Noon (1966) –as fluidly bleak as any of Oshima’s movies, daring to posit double suicide as the only viable reward of love..

 

Possession (1981) – weirdly compelling parable of stagnation & renewal (sort of), built around fabulously outrageous scenes from a marriage

 

J. Edgar (2011) – an unusually quiet, oddly moving meditation on history, reflecting on the human frailty that drives the exercise of power

 

Sous le soleil de Satan (1987) – the film tempts us to read it too easily, reflecting our fallible tracing of God’s hand, and the devil’s..

 

Beeswax (2009) – engaging and well-observed, quite distinctive, but still a bit of a flyweight, lacking much thematic or existential impact

 

Fear of Fear (1975) – Fassbinder’s eerily well-controlled study of “mental illness” and its rationality as a coping strategy for a drab life

 

Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) – a piercing Minnelli melodrama of exile and displacement, cunningly straddling the exotic and the downbeat

 

L’important c’est d’aimer (1975) – like a Cassavetes film with bruised lipstick, on the necessity of extremity and pain in locking down love

 

Bill Cunningham New York (2010) – a pleasant chronicle of a decent man, but with no critical edge; about as important as last year's fashion

 

Blood Relatives (1978) – Chabrol in Montreal, seeming too preoccupied by logistics to make this much more than a perfunctory investigation

 

Melancholia (2011) – audacious by any measure, often stunning; I could imagine some restless soul responding to it as to nothing before

 

The Blacksmith (1922) – vivacious (if scattershot and fanciful) Keaton short, with enormous inventiveness and a terrific sense of pace

 

Equinox Flower (1958) – Ozu’s beautifully observed study of the inevitable capitulation of old men to the gentle strength of young women

 

Down by Law (1986) – a deadpan parable of existential repositioning, perfectly attuned to its raw ingredients (maybe Benigni in particular)

 

The Pearls of the Crown (1937) – quite the narrative banquet, full of inventive charm, but its impact is ultimately somewhat superficial

 

A Letter to Three Wives (1949) – irresistibly witty and poised, and sharp-eyed about the compromises entailed by the plush American Dream

 

SS Experiment Love Camp (1976) - bastardizing the moral decay of the Nazis to no good end, much of the time the film seems barely conscious

 

Submarine (2010) – a transplanted Annie Hall of sorts, crammed with minutely observed subtleties, flights of fancy, unconventional beauty..

 

The Third Part of the Night (1971) – strange, dislocating film on the degradation of war, both gruesomely intimate and wrenchingly visionary

 

Starting out in the Evening (2007) – very engrossing, surprisingly thematically and psychologically intricate, with a radiant Lauren Ambrose

 

Love Affair…the Missing Switchboard Operator (1967) – note Makavejev’s considerable sensitivity, often undervalued relative to his daring

 

One Night Stand (1997) – Figgis sure knows how to polish and jazzify conventional material, but falls short of working miracles with it

 

Attenberg (2010) – interesting if limited study of identity & the finding of one’s self, drawing much resonance from its bleak Greek setting

 

We Can’t Go Home Again (1976?) – a vital component of Ray’s overall artistic legend, by design almost impossible to anchor oneself within

 

Bitter Rice (1949) – perhaps crude if compared to Rossellini’s work of the period, but immensely pictorial, powerful, sexy and evocative

 

Love and other Drugs (2010) – uses up all its relative daring on the raunchy stuff, leaving everything else too often unfocused and bland

 

The Round Up (1966) – often feels like Kafka on the plains; masterfully done, although you respond as much to its theory as its practice

 

Page Eight (2011) – engrossing for its laconic articulacy, until its essential narrative thinness and familiar morality become inescapable

 

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1979) – Ruiz is the most brilliant, if difficult, antidote to an easy, complacent mainstream cinema

 

Lost in America (1985) – very nicely and concisely exploring the compromise and existential sacrifice at the heart of what we call “success”

 

Le Havre (2011) – a very pleasant, elevating tale of community and everyday miracles, emphasizing the weight of every moment and connection

 

Bridesmaids (2011) – some nice invention & observation; certainly capable of being more biting & affecting, but then doesn't want to be

 

The Profession of Arms (2001) – a heavy-going study in the bygone processes and ethics of war; more interesting in theory than actuality

 

Night on Earth (1991) – so cool and easy to take, you could overlook the existential precision, how death increasingly occupies the fabric..

 

Barbe Bleu (2009) – gorgeously distinctive reverie on sexual destiny and  ideology; beautifully intuitive and complex, often surprising

 

Hot Blood (1956) – overflowing with hokiness and dubious storytelling, and yet compelling for Ray’s often savagely dynamic compositions

 

Everyone Else (2009) – another exquisite illustration that the shifting mysteries and pained edges of relationships will never be exhausted

 

The Electric House (1922) – reconstructed early Keaton with missing scenes; a bit too breezy and conceptual to deploy his greatness ideally

 

The Skin I Live In (2011) – lovingly and lovably absurd; Almodovar’s sumptuous conviction overrides just about all potential reservations

 

Insidious (2010) – impressively handled throughout, demonstrating the “haunted house” genre’s eternal capacity for renewal and embellishment

 

Merry-go-Round (1981) – not Rivette’s strongest, but still a wonderful, playful reverie on family trauma, narrative, creation and fantasy

 

Never Let Me Go (2010) – not a major film, but achingly sad almost throughout, and delicately seeded with thematic and ethical implication

 

Machine Gun McCain (1969) – appealingly terse, but the real pleasure is in the trace of a phantom Cassavetes/Rowlands movie buried within

 

Barney’s Version (2010) – bland, mechanical concoction is just one thing after another, lacking flavor, intimacy, sense of time or place...

 

Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967) – a remarkable distillation of lost, violent times and twisted instincts; never remotely predictable

 

The Way Back (2010) – depicting extreme human endeavor and myth as inseparable, marked by Weir's surprising but unshowy creative choices

 

Age of Consent (1969) – appealing for its wacky primitivism, but very ragged, seldom approaching Powell’s major works (albeit, what could?)

 

Alice ou la derniere fugue (1977) - stylish, under-appreciated Chabrol, a precursor to later meta-movies, with a diverting feminist slant

 

Sweetwater (2009) – majestically scenic and respectful, but also increasingly troubled, generating an unexpectedly complex after-effect

 

Man is not a Bird (1965) – maybe not, but engaging as this is, you feel Makavejev gearing up to fly onto splashier, wilder canvases

 

All Good Things (2010) – doesn’t achieve the complexity and allusiveness it aims for, merely seeming increasingly messy and mechanical

 

Taris, roi de l’eau  (1931) – a small thing, but its sense of joy and fascination  is delightfully consistent with Vigo’s more major works

 

Punishment Park (1971) – still startlingly provocative & compelling, clearly as relevant as ever post-Guantanamo Bay (as complacency rises)

 

Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) – an enthralling film - it feels capable of extending itself forever without ever sacrificing your devotion to it

 

The Cameraman (1928) – very enjoyable, but creaking from limited resources, seldom exhibiting the gracefulness of Keaton’s greatest films

 

Red Psalm (1972) – stunning for Jancso’s gorgeously fluid staging and filming; at times almost persuades you the revolution might triumph

 

George Harrison..Material World (2011) – mostly effective; best seen as a largely impressionistic seasoning to the overall Harrison myth

 

Shakespeare Wallah (1965) – shows how early on the Merchant Ivory approach was honed; it’s sensitive but strangely bland and affectless

 

Alexander Nevsky (1938) – resembles now an artifact from a worldview of expired grandeur, and strenuous (if still fascinating) artistry

 

The Ides of March (2011) – so lazy and deficient it tends to make you reassess all you supposedly believed about Clooney’s taste and smarts

 

Taxi zum klo (1980) – a significant milestone of gay and human rights cinema; still eye-opening (and informative!) in numerous ways

 

Valhalla Rising (2009) – murky and ponderous mythmaking, only minimally interesting; Refn is much more rewarding in his splashier Drive mode

 

Wild Rovers (1971) – a quietly solid yarn, but the mythic ambitions, and musings on morality and predestination, are never fully realized

 

Before the Revolution (1964) – Bertolucci’s still fascinating amalgam of (perhaps rather strained) societal pessimism and cinematic optimism

 

Vanishing on 7th Street (2010) – not for the first time, Anderson’s proficiency seems largely squandered on thin, unrewarding material

 

The Touch (1971) – has an oddly displaced quality (Elliott Gould?); interesting but thin, adding little to one’s overall sense of Bergman

 

Poetry (2010) – one of the most stunning recent films; a delicately beautiful but unsentimental study of liberation and transcendence

 

Tiny Furniture (2010) – well-considered, resourceful study of a generation pre-wired for status, still floundering on how to make it happen

 

Christiane F (1981) – still kinda makes you want to flirt with degradation, while allowing you to believe YOU wouldn’t be consumed by it

 

Network (1976) – as everyone says, still spookily relevant and prophetic, bracingly mature and literate, full of indelible actorly moments

 

Sing a Song of Sex (1967) – dazzlingly provocative, constantly astounding Oshima reflection on horny Japanese youth in deranged times

 

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) – mostly successful as a shrewd cartoon of finance’s lost soul: but the home stretch is disappointing

 

Zero de conduite (1933) – among cinema’s most remarkable 45 minutes, and most cherishable expressions of creative and institutional freedom

 

Caligula (1979) – generally enjoyable as a grand folly, often visually striking, but its relative strengths are lost in a morass of genitals

 

Moneyball (2011) – highly enjoyable throughout, but hardly a significant case study, unless you really strain for metaphorical applicability

 

L’enfant sauvage (1970) – fascinatingly quiet and economical, focusing productively on incremental progress and its associated morality

 

The Scarlet Empress (1934) – an astonishing unified vision, although the play of desire grips slightly less than Morocco or Shanghai Express

 

The Keys to the House (2004) – intensely focused on the joy and pain of the unpractised caregiver; narrow in its aims, but very successful

 

Maurice (1987) – succeeds at setting out the stifling intricacy of class structures, somewhat less at conveying the pain embedded in them

 

Smiley Face (2007) – has the inherent appeal of Araki’s worldview, but could have used more ambition, even if its heroine doesn’t need any

 

L’Atalante (1934) – still a unique vision, with one socially conscious foot firmly in this world, the other consumed by fevers and dreams

 

Drive (2011) – the rare mainstream film in which the use of “style” (and silence) is viscerally jolting and even intellectually provocative!

 

Combat d’amour en songe (2000) – a gorgeously elegant challenge to conventional narrative, at once highly rigorous and awesomely unbound

 

The April Fools (1969) – the Deneuve/Lemmon pairing never really makes emotional sense, especially when dropped into such a ramshackle movie

 

Le pont du Nord (1981) – has one of Rivette’s greatest endings, a mystically grand assertion of intuitive self-discovery and connection

 

Machete (2010) – sporadically strikes the right garish iconic retro pulp mix, but Machete himself is a fatally underdeveloped focal point

 

Drole de drama (1937) -  strange plotting indeed; always elegant, but lacking the inspiration to amount to more than the sum of its parts

 

Contagion (2011) – highly engrossing and informative; even its omissions speak to the inherently ungraspable nature of such  mass trauma

 

Revanche (2008) -  makes unusually productive use of outrageous genre contrivance, drawing power from tonal contrasts & social undercurrents

 

Wanda (1970) – remarkably free of vanity and artifice, a quietly militant challenge to conventional portrayals of “fallen” women

 

Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975) – ventilated by Chabrol’s feeling for human perversity,  but nevertheless mostly perfunctory/indifferent

 

Doubt (2008) – never more than a contrived theatrical extravaganza; enjoyable actorly tension at times, but philosophically mostly vacuous

 

Tulse Luper Suitcases, Pt 3: From Sark to the Finish (2003) – likely only for Greenaway completists; even for them, a rather dull work-out

 

The Defector (1966) – interesting but under-powered Cold War dynamics, gaining depth from its steely grey images and Clift’s evident pain

 

The Company Men (2010) – lots of interesting details, but hampered throughout by the simplifying, too-tidy effect of Hollywood conventions

 

A Time to Live and a Time to Die (1985) – gorgeously illustrating Hou’s remarkable capacity for capturing the totality of life experience

 

Mr. Nice (2010) – works well enough as a mildly colourful diversion, but doesn’t inhale the material deeply enough to make a major impact

 

The Spanish Earth (1937) – valuable as a bleak historical record, and for Hemingway’s narration, almost anticipating later neo-realism..

 

Genova (2008) – perhaps one of Winterbottom’s most subtly complex and intuitive works, with an often superb sense of mood and place

 

Tony Manero (2008) – meticulously considered, superbly nuanced Chilean study of a vicious criminal obsessed with Travolta’s iconic character

 

Jew Suss (1934) – still whips up appropriate revulsion, but most interesting now as a (rather stodgy) chronicle of personal redemption

 

Win Win (2011) – blows a potentially productive premise through relentless superficiality, shallow characterization and moral obviousness

 

Peppermint Frappe (1967) – less scintillating than the many films it evokes at times (Vertigo, Blow-Up, Bunuel...) , but well sustained

 

The Arbor (2010) – a film where even the possible weaknesses raise stimulating questions about the nature of representation/interpretation

 

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968) – a movie strenuously in search of itself, ultimately yielding a kind of deadpan existential comedy

 

Les egares (2003) – unusually intimate for Techine, examining how the destruction of war yields some capacity for liberation and reinvention

 

The City of Your Final Destination (2010) – some interesting reflection, but flatly handled; the title is more evocative than the movie

 

The Man who Loved Women (1983) – no "10," but oddly (and often somewhat intriguingly) recessive, as much a study in bemusement as “love”

 

Haut bas fragile (1995) – a great, beautiful Rivette meditation on the attaining of feminine self-determination, with a complex use of music

 

Tamara Drew (2010) – Tamara herself gets increasingly lost among generally odd and/or pointless (if scenic and easy-to-take) conceits

 

Deep End (1970) – a fabulous creation; a perfectly sustained play of repression and desire, brilliantly attentive to time, place, character

 

Toy Story 3 (2010) – has enormous panache, and persuasive moral resonance; sure, it's a calculated commercial machine, but what packaging...

 

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945) – intriguing, but the entire film would be a mere strand in Kurosawa's later, fuller works

 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) – probably just about as sane & smooth an origin story for the Apes mythology as one could ever devise

 

La ville des pirates (1983) – stunning piece of poetic mythology, unbound by normal rules, evoking the dark fluidity of creation & identity

 

Munich (2005) – potent in many ways, but never feels sufficiently complex; a comparison with Assayas’ Carlos underlines the limitations

 

Essential Killing (2010) – often intriguing but somewhat limited in its impact; clinical abstraction isn't Skolimowski’s best register

 

Land of the Pharoahs (1955) – great spectacle; you vaguely detect a Hawksian worldview in the ultimate affinity for pragmatism over grandeur

 

The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures (1975) – moody & wacky; almost convinces you at times it has a viable theological vision & purpose!

 

Stone (2010) – a surprisingly stimulating, but strange, incompletely realized attempt at exploring spiritual/moral purpose and awareness

 

Folies bourgeoisies (1976) – in many ways a weird, ill-handled mess, and yet that's appropriate to the film’s theme of chronic dysfunction

 

The Next Three Days (2010) – mostly diverting, with some handy crime hints, but overall impact is much like the last three Hollywood flicks

 

The Children are Watching Us (1944) –still a delicately provocative examination of social structures and desires in hopeless conflict 

 

Sleeper (1973) – an enduring modest pleasure; the loosely-knit absurdity seems almost radical now at times, compared to most of later Allen

 

Small Town Murder Songs (2010) – demonstrates Gass-Donnelly’s control and discipline, but just too narrow a canvas to warrant major praise

 

Wings of Desire (1987) – often beguiling, but looks now like the start of Wenders’ decline away from relevance, frequently into pure drivel

 

Piranha (2010) – smart exploitation package, as proficient at tits and ass as at mass trauma; a shame Aja isn’t feeding in a bigger tank

 

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) – so alluring you can hardly disentangle the (often staggeringly) radical from the playful

 

Madeleine (1950) – inherently interesting as sexual politics, although Lean's rather passionless craftsmanship doesn't seem ideally applied

 

Project Nim (2011) – the story’s still a useful reference point for considering our hopelessly confused attitudes & morality toward animals

 

Goto, Island of Love (1969) – gorgeously strange, as if from a parallel universe; causing regret for Borowczyk’s later narrower evolution

 

A Prairie Home Companion (2006) – one of the most delightful, magically appropriate (as if prophetic) end-points of any director’s career

 

Red Riding…1983 (2009) – even with a "happy ending" of sorts, horrifyingly extends the endemic corruption & moral decay of the earlier films

 

World on a Wire (1973) – a forerunner to Inception, plopped down in the magnificently grim, tackily existential laboratory of 70’s Germany

 

The Tillman Story (2010) -  another kick-ass exposure of institutional lies  and evasions, in effect of America’s fear of its own richness

 

Red Riding…1980 (2009) – a more claustrophobic, slightly less artful vision than the first film, but masterfully integrating real & imagined

 

Spirit of the Beehive (1973) – comes close to forging an alternative language of childhood, and the quiet darkness underlying its innocence

 

Divorce American Style (1967) – surprisingly biting, instructive and inventive satire at times, although it largely goes soft in the end

 

Red Riding…1974 (2009) – a narratively powerful 1970’s Yorkshire-set Chinatown of sorts; a grim vision of corruption and degradation

 

The Beyond (1981) -  Fulci's astonishing vision of breakdown between worlds, leaving normal horror movie conventions in the bloody beyond

 

The Tourist (2010) – takes itself too seriously in some ways, not seriously enough in others; astute direction & acting take a big vacation

 

Billy Budd (1962) - gripping, but like Ustinov himself, the obviousness of the calculations and emotions evokes respect rather than love

 

La signora di tutti (1934) – a superb investigation of a woman, exploring throughout the fragile dance of truth and illusion, life and death

 

The Trip (2010) – consistently and distinctively entertaining; although satisfying more in the way of a great meal than of a great poem

 

Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010) – another pristine exposure (there’s a lot of ‘em) of the degradation at America's heart

 

Alice in the Cities (1974) – in some ways a familiar and contrived set-up, but increasingly intriguing for its echoes & lack of affectation

 

Kaboom (2010) – repositions raw materials of gay-friendly sex comedy as apocalyptic markers; softer than early Araki, but still subversive

 

The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968) – strange is the least of it; certainly stamps Marins as an intriguing go-his-own-twisted-way auteur

 

Shoot the Moon (1982) – magnificently angry and agonized at times, but Parker’s heavy approach strangles more often than it nurtures overall

 

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) – Herzog necessarily plays things straighter here than sometimes, but still delivers the “ecstatic truth”..

 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) – clever and tonally astute, but you get that after ten minutes; ultimately monotonous and unrewarding

 

Vivre sa vie (1962) – for all its structural brilliance and bleakness, has a delicacy and even a relative optimism rare in later Godard

 

Handsome Harry (2010) – a small, maybe overly restrained, but interesting contribution to the cinema of gay identity reaching for the light

 

The Freethinker (1994) – long, deliberately disorienting but rewarding example of Watkins’ radical approach to historical investigation

 

Knight and Day (2010) – most engaging when it escapes the machine and surrenders to happy abstraction, which isn’t almost often enough

 

Les astronautes (1959) – a quirkily sweet 14-minute addition to cinematic dreams of transcendence, gently prophetic in its fragility

 

Macao (1952) – full of echoes of Sternberg’s earlier work, but comparatively mechanical and starved of true desire; easily watchable though

 

Police (1985) – a powerful and insinuating drama; astonishing in the scope of its reflection on the fluidity of morals, structures, emotions

 

The Tree of Life (2011) – Malick’s deployment of cinematic possibility is often stunning, but the film is too intangible to fully satisfy

 

Ashes and Diamonds (1958) – most complex of the trilogy; less rawly powerful than Kanal, but appropriately to its theme of moral bereftness

 

Freakonomics (2010) – much like the book, saturated in misplaced breeziness; even serious implications seem like mere mental masturbation

 

Victim (1961) – limited by the necessity of telling rather than showing, but remains a landmark, and still very moving and provocative

 

Lola (1981) – a scathing fever-dream of post-war Germany, as a new venality and savage self-gratification push rectitude to the sidelines

 

Joan Rivers: a Piece of Work (2010) – surprisingly revealing, informative & serious-minded; feels more important than it objectively should

 

Kings of the Road (1976) – a fascinating, unadorned & unforced amalgam of myth and character study; Wenders’ early stature was well-deserved

 

The Pie-Covered Wagon (1932) – emblematic Western drama enacted in ten minutes by toddlers; every bit as vital to film history as it sounds!

 

Divorce Italian Style (1961) – the title promises a romp, but the undercurrents are rather gloomy; sad characters grabbing at what they can…

 

Howl (2010) – an effective memorial, although I wonder if the animation (however proficient) doesn’t deny the essential nature of poetry

 

Kameradschaft (1931) – still imposing for its grim physicality; the ideology (let’s dissolve European borders!) has a different flavor now…

 

Let Me In (2010) – amazingly successful at evoking the spirit of the original without merely replicating or inadvertently parodying it

 

The Green Room (1978) – strange, almost perversely narrowly-focused film from Truffaut, alluring for its lack of compromise if nothing else

 

Too Big to Fail (2011) – interesting and remarkably efficient, but that’s also a limitation: we need the 6-hour Olivier Assayas version!

 

Kanal (1957) – a  powerful, unsparing  vision of war as the death of all dignity, light and hope; perhaps Wajda’s most enduring film

 

Red (2010) – even with that cast, doesn’t take long until diminishing returns set in; Malkovich hints at a more rewarding road not taken..

 

La Bande des quatre (1989) – one of Rivette’s most vulnerable-seeming works, clinging to art as protection against the chaos and darkness

 

Young Mr Lincoln (1939) – among much else, remarkably contemporary in its focus on Lincoln’s control of what we’d now call his ‘image’

 

Le petit theatre de Jean Renoir (1970) – a beautiful farewell, evoking his classic achievements while still pushing in quirky new directions

 

Midnight in Paris (2011) – Allen at his most easefully assured and pleasantly self-referencing, evoking the comfort level of his heyday

 

Miss Oyu (1951) – another fascinating study in longing suppressed by ideology and culture, twisting lives into perverse, tragic structures

 

Scott Walker : 30 Century Man (2006) – near-revelatory documentary on the musical genius (yes!), superbly explaining his achievement

 

Le doulos (1962) – grimmer than Melville’s later films; painstakingly grows into a near-textbook of existential survival strategies…

 

Catfish (2010) – hard to react to, beyond asking which of the participants in this relationship is really ultimately the sadder case study?

 

Os Canibais (1988) – a rather neat filmic joke, with increasingly tedious high art suddenly giving  way after an  hour to sheer nonsense

 

The Southerner (1945) – Renoir's mesmerizing study of a land still in formation, but already carrying much embedded ideology and enmity

 

Le quattro volte (2010) – a sublime viewing experience, maybe as much cosmic joke as profound meditation (but maybe there’s no difference..)

 

Such Good Friends (1971) – very strange, often remarkably perverse take on the acquiring of consciousness, with Burgess Meredith’s bare ass!

 

N.U. (1948) – a reminder, if it were needed, of the social observation and unforced humanity that nourished the roots of Antonioni’s work

 

Quantum of Solace (2008) – squanders almost every aspect of the Bond formula without injecting anything in return; messy and humorless

 

36 Quai des Orfevres (2004) – yet another movie seemingly inspired by Heat, but more proficient with guns and attitudes than with souls

 

Stage Fright (1950) – structural & tonal oddities & general eccentricities make a pretty interesting counterpoint to Hitchcock’s major work

 

The Maid (2009) – an unusual, sometimes blackly funny, ultimately shrewd and convincing take on a familiar theme of feminine self-discovery

 

The Naked Kiss (1964) - carries a remarkable ideological scope beneath a dazzlingly tight narrative, exposing weakness and corruption galore

 

A Generation (1955) – the film’s effectiveness as character drama and with ‘action’ sequences perhaps limits its resonance as history now…

 

Rabbit Hole (2010) – well-crafted of course, but never much more than a series of devices, lacking any distinct insight on loss or grief

 

L’enfance nue (1968) – magnificent, rigorous, deeply humane examination of an abandoned child, deep in “nature vs. nurture” implications

 

The Informer (1935) – despite Oscar-winning status, a minor Ford work; atmospheric, but forced and overwrought and insufficiently nuanced

 

Alamar (2009) – a beautiful film, often gently but radically apart from almost any other in its storytelling & relationship with the planet

 

I Love You Philip Morris (2009)  - always energetic and proficient, but never really meaningful; one scene feels much the same as the next…

 

Scenes from a Marriage (1973) –  a virtuoso, exhausting behavioral dance; eerily fascinating, even if only intermittently identifiable

 

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) – easy to forget the seriousness (however genial) of Mazursky's underlying sociological investigation

 

Grown Up Movie Star (2009) – ultimately somewhat limited in its family dynamics, but with lots of real colour and provocation along the way

 

The River (1951) – a beautiful, gently complex meditation on maturity and acceptance, albeit deploying a selective portrait of India

 

Giallo (2009) – an oddly flat and mostly uninvolving Argento creation, with barely a trace of The Mother of Tears’ giddy flare and "vision"

 

Not Quite Hollywood (2008) – as happily galvanizing a documentary as you’ll ever see, breezily making the case for Australian genre cinema

 

A Tale of Springtime (1990) – despite the ultimate optimism, has a pervasive, fascinatingly conveyed sense of lives just missing the point..

 

Mother and Child (2009) – impressive, frequently even thrilling acting and characterization wins out over frequent over-calculation

 

Cronaca di un amore (1950) – fascinating early example of Antonioni’s filmic and emotional architecture, paving the way for later heights

 

Meek’s Cutoff  (2010) – a remarkably allusive, restrained, meaningful film; Reichardt is already one of the indispensable American directors

 

Trois couleurs: Bleu (1993) – handsome  and scintillating on its own terms, but in a way that’s ultimately unrevealing of real life I think

 

The Living End (1992) - still gorgeously vivid and provocative, even visionary, in setting out an unapologetic alternative ideology of HIV

 

Il Bidone (1955) – rooted in Fellini’s early grittiness while dropping hints of the greater sprawl ahead; a bit contrived, but engrossing

 

Slap Shot (1977) – hard to begrudge the film its semi-classic status; has a great feel for hockey lore and culture (the good, bad and ugly)

 

Last Train Home (2009) – finds an intimately gripping narrative within a life built on parameters and sacrifices one can hardly process

 

Nowhere Boy (2009) – a bit too polished to evoke the period, but a terrifically charismatic, legend-friendly portrayal of the young Lennon

 

The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004) – a very witty, graceful, dead serious but clear-sightedly optimistic essay on contemporary turbulence

 

Straw Dogs (1971) – still a savagely brilliant quasi-cartoon, but also an extreme, troubling parable on America’s directional crisis

 

Gente del Po (1943) – an 11-minute film that captures an entire grim, unchanging world; you feel Antonioni’s emerging mastery in every shot

 

Salt (2010) – very well-judged and controlled, with Jolie a perfect focal point; consistently seems much less absurd than it actually is

 

Notes toward an African Orestes (1970) - intriguing text on the relevance of our cultural heritage in diagnosing a complex, evolving world

 

The Party (1968) – it’s no Playtime, but still a fascinating fantasy on (relative) purity grinding down the venal (if only for one night)

 

The Adversary (1971) – an eloquent, troubled study of a transitional generation in India, oddly forgotten relative to Ray’s other works

 

Looking for Eric (2009) – much more fanciful than Loach’s usual work, with a significantly diluted impact; sadly, almost boring at times

 

Solutions locales pour un desordre global (2010) - terrifically provocative and informative, with no time for pointless gloss and "balance"

 

The Criminal Code (1931) – a cracking, expertly-paced crime drama, its moral preoccupations pointing the way to Hawks’ greatest works

 

W.R. – Mysteries Of the Organism (1971) – you remember the transgressive highpoints, but may forget the underlying vulnerability (of a kind)

 

Best Worst Movie (2009) – a documentary barely more objectively important than its subject, Troll 2, but no doubt a bit more warm and human

 

Paisan (1946) – perhaps the film that, through its amazing (if bleak) scope & humanity, best embodies the achievement of Italian neo-realism

 

This Movie is Broken (2010) – beguiling love song to Toronto, and to Broken Social Scene as embodying its diverse, romantic if messy heart

 

Proces de Jeanne d'Arc (1962) - perhaps a key counterbalancing statement by Bresson, in holding out the possibility of true transcendence

 

Fair Game (2010) - lacks the moral complexity of the greatest political movies, but still effective in pushing a lot of important buttons

 

The Soft Skin (1964) – a forensic, sociologically astute examination of a love affair; one of Truffaut’s gravest and most gripping films

 

The Great Dictator (1940) – a bizarre, brave amalgam of high and low; maybe its essential incoherence is its most potent statement on war

 

A la conquete du pole (1912) – as with much of Melies, delightful throughout, but also confirms his vision's repetitiveness and odd limits

 

Deep Throat (1972) – occasional goofiness aside, often now feels rather glum and grim, in part no doubt because of Lovelace's ambivalence

 

In a Better World (2010) – gripping throughout and often moving, but its modestly provocative thinking doesn't ultimately go too deep

 

One, Two, Three (1961) - a brilliantly constructed/paced comedic machine; one of Wilder’s most technically stunning  (if maybe not deepest)

 

When We Leave (2010) – engrossing and often moving, but too straightforward to evoke anything more complex than short-lived  blood-boiling

 

Ministry of Fear (1944) – a terrific, compact thriller; expertly & disorientatingly skeptical about allegiance, ideology, reality itself

 

Dr. Jekyll and his Wives (1981) – strangely alluring Borowczyk vision, driven less by eroticism than a dark sense of escalating desperation

 

The Last of Sheila (1973) – superbly conceived & pristinely executed; a nice cruel streak distinguishes  it from mere hermetic game-playing

 

La nostra vita (2010) – rattles glossily along, using up enough plot for two movies, but almost weirdly unprobing and unrevealing

 

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) - seems a bit forced and over-heated now, less subtle than Ray's greatest work, but Dean remains mesmerizing

 

The Seventh Continent (1989) – clinically eerie examination of a family’s utter breakdown; may leave you fearful for your own stability

 

We Live in Public (2009) – perhaps most interesting in contrast to The Social Network, emphasizing the capriciousness of success & “vision”

 

Il Generale Della Rovere (1959) – relatively conventional by Rossellini’s standards, but an increasingly rich and surprising moral canvas

 

Animal Kingdom (2010) – distinctive in parts, but ultimately another “whatever” addition to one of the most over-explored subjects in cinema

 

Last Tango in Paris (1972) - even clearer now how the sex is a device, deployed in a deconstruction of Brando both forensic and operatic...

 

Certified Copy (2010) – a skillful, alluring enigma, but smart rather than wise; you admire the film's tactics more than its ultimate vision

 

The Yes Men Fix the World (2009) – consistently funny and valuable, but like all that’s progressive in this world, confined to the margins

 

Chocolat (1988) – quietly builds to an astonishingly comprehensive critique of colonialism, ventilated by Denis’ peerless cinematic poetry

 

Solitary Man (2009)  - highly enjoyable for Douglas’ perfect grasp of the character, but ultimately seems merely to throw in its hand

 

6ixtynin9 (1999) – well done in a familiar post-Tarantino vein, but just a doodle next to the director’s luminous Last Life in the Universe

 

Saint Joan (1957) – an eccentric addition to the legendary films about Joan, best regarded maybe as a discussion-prompting counter-strategy

 

Tristana (1970) – magnificent study of power relationships; might ultimately almost stand as the most elegant and refined of horror films

 

City Island (2009) – quirky, colorful and fluid enough to lead you happily along, although ultimately ends up pretty soft (don’t they all?)

 

Immoral Tales (1974) – Borowczyk’s idiosyncrasies and rhythms separate him from a mere pornographer, but maybe not by as much as you’d like

 

Nights and Weekends (2008) – an interesting look at a particular strand of modern relationship, making a general virtue out of shallowness

 

Tartuffe (1926) – hardly Murnau’s most major work, but still very diverting and fluent, although with some definite structural redundancy

 

R.P.M. (1970) – a useful reference point at least in demonstrating why Zabriskie Point is so underrated; inadequate for most other purposes

 

Les anges du peche (1943) – much more conventional in its style and attitudes than later Bresson, but at least halfway to the master

 

Taxi Driver (1976) – a brilliantly vivid, intuitive movie, endlessly fascinating even if you suspect it’s largely an arbitrary quasi-fantasy

 

Les amours imaginaires (2010) – has a feeling of running on the spot (a 60’s Godardian kind of spot, stylistically if not intellectually)

 

The Docks of New York (1928)  - a more mature and exquisite balance between social realism and romantic stylization than in Underworld...

 

Around a Small Mountain (2009) – a beautiful, consciousness-enhancing Rivette miniature, albeit relatively less vital than his greatest work

 

Shock Corridor (1963) – a scaldingly iconoclastic expression of multi-faceted Cold War American madness (and it even has “Nymphos!”)

 

Incendies (2010) – study of war's perverse legacy might have worked as a theatrical abstraction; dubious in this glossy, literal-minded form

 

A Canterbury Tale (1944) – a relatively gentle, brilliantly integrated and intuitive expression of Powell/Pressburger’s preoccupations

 

The American (2010) – very stylish deployment of very familiar elements; but comparisons to Antonioni, Melville etc. not remotely deserved

 

Vampyr (1932) - owing less to vampire mythology than to Dreyer's vision of a cinema (and even a consciousness) moving beyond constraints...

 

Examined Life (2008) - the showcasing of philosophers is mostly interesting, but you wish the film did more than just nod and listen...

 

Midnight Cowboy (1969) - a classic of sorts I guess, but looks awfully contrived and melodramatic now, a garish would-be "adult" cartoon

 

The Life of Oharu (1952) - beautifully evocative tale of a woman's fraught life, carrying magnificent societal and psychological complexity

 

The Countess (2009) - sadly straightforward, hinting at times at a feminist metaphorical significance which it falls far short of achieving

 

Act of God (2009) - meditation on lightning doesn't deliver much of an intellectual or thematic jolt, mostly passing by in pretty passivity

 

Amarcord (1973) - a graceful memoir, full of striking moments, but hard to say it contributes heavily to Fellini's preeminent reputation

 

Green Zone (2010) - deploys one of the great crimes of our time as a basis for high-velocity myth-making; still, more cunning than it seems

 

Le silence de la mer (1949) – Melville’s exquisite treatment makes an inherently literary concept into a quietly enthralling moral tale

 

Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) - feels largely assembled from whatever/whomever was sitting in the MGM inventory, but what an assembly line!

 

Of Gods and Men (2010) - primarily of men though; immaculately examines the incremental steps (unknowing and knowing) toward an extreme fate

 

Alice in Wonderland (2010) - much like the Cheshire Cat, this flavorless version largely erases itself from your mind as you watch it

 

Le cake-walk infernal (1903) - the Lady Gaga video of its long-ago day, an inexplicable but exuberant Melies piece of musical mythology

 

Cemetery Junction (2010) - very entertaining, but ultimately feels more like a nostalgic pastiche than a full-formed story of real people

 

The Big Red One (1980) - in its expanded form, brilliantly & turbulently portrays how war rewrites all we know about the world & ourselves

 

Queen to Play (2009) - pretty schematic self-improvement story overall, benefiting from mild class consciousness & Bonnaire's inherent depth

 

Borderline (1930) - still interesting for strenuous experimentalism, despite unsophisticated basic content and clunky would-be liberalism

 

I'm Still Here (2010) - fairly diverting but seldom actually satisfying or instructive; the points it might be making would be minor at best

 

Jigoku (1960) – popping with dark and lurid imagery, and undeniably starkly handsome, but hard to see it as much more than a potboiler

 

Lovely, Still (2008) - acceptably sweet when playing things straight; the climactic "revelation" obscures more than it illuminates though

 

The Last Command (1928) - deliriously fascinated by grandeur and the perversity of fate, strongly anticipates von Sternberg's greatest works

 

Biutiful (2010) - dubiously focuses more on conventional spiritual blather & sentimental invention than on tangible exploitation & suffering

 

Hopscotch (1980) - a bit creaky in parts, but pleasing for how Matthau's unsentimental pragmatism shapes the personal and political alike

 

Year of the Carnivore (2010) - sells short a potentially workable premise through timidity and ill-considered cuteness...where's the meat?

 

L'ami de mon amie (1987) - instructively setting Rohmer's familiar preoccupations in the dehumanizing context of modern development

 

Lolita (1962) – maybe it ain't Nabokov, but seems now like a cunning blueprint for 2001, transcending to Quilty's mansion/the next dimension

 

Happy Tears (2009) - underwhelming family chronicle, consigning intriguing elements and a bright cast to drab, uninsightful mournfulness

 

Okaasan (1952) - Naruse's quiet, highly observant tribute to a mother's fortitude, set against post-war struggle and familial dislocation

 

Faces (1968) - a fascinating study in vulnerability and its covers and deflections; more raw and less stylized than much of later Cassavetes

 

The Town (2010) - reminiscent at almost every turn of Michael Mann's Heat, and not once to this movie's advantage; blandly efficient at best

 

Dogtooth (2009) - perfectly (if necessarily rather coldly) achieved; magnificently ambiguous, but spilling out meaning and provocation..

 

Body and Soul (1925) - still a moving depiction of the rural black community's inner fractures, marked by unusual emphases and rhythms

 

Ricky (2009) - nicely-crafted fusion of gritty and fantastical certainly has theoretical merit, but still seems kinda like Ozon's lost it...

 

Underworld (1927) - most alluring for how von Sternberg is drawn away from genre mechanics toward desire, obsession and provocation

 

Target (1985) - Arthur Penn in action director mode, and very effectively, but surely sublimating his great skills more than he might have..

 

Parade (1974) - a deceptively simple-looking final note for Tati, wondrously binding performers and audience in a celebration of creativity

 

Enemies: A Love Story (1989)  - humanely comic, often mesmerizingly understated fable on the Holocaust's incalculable emotional turmoil

 

La Luna (1979) - stunningly orchestrated psychological turbulence, classically beautiful and deeply perverse in almost all respects

 

Survival of the Dead (2009) - a tight, pristine, mostly conventional genre piece, with the zombies' allegorical impact largely eroded by now

 

Still Walking (2008) - graceful depiction of family get-together; largely unsurprising, but distinguished by its relative tough-mindedness

 

Paul Robeson: Tribute To An Artist (1979) - limited by brevity, but fully establishes his remarkable artistic capacity and symbolic power

 

Daddy Longlegs (2009) - a remarkable character study, and surely one of the most grievously under-appreciated of recent American films

 

Shame (1968) - superbly setting out the moral mess of war; perhaps the Bergman film that best resists the caveats sometimes applied to him

 

Another Year (2010) - gorgeously resonant; astonishing when it allows you to glimpse the existential hell engulfing some of the characters

 

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) - ends up more run-of-the-morgue than the title and initial sequences promise, but still fun

 

Citizen Kane (1941) - it's true, one of the most enthralling achievements in cinema, especially if you're in tune with Wellesian resonances

 

Cloud Nine (2008) - way too tough-minded and rigorous to be dismissed as old person porn, although one's reaction is inevitably ambiguous..

 

Missing (1982) - perhaps too schematic for maximum impact, but Lemmon's crumbling under the cold weight of realpolitik still hits home

 

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed (2009) - nicely ambiguous, well-controlled thriller; maybe it aims relatively low, but hits all its targets

 

City of Sadness (1989)  - superbly intuitive reflection on loss and dislocation, meticulously considered and yet almost mystically graceful

 

Somewhere (2010) - Coppola has a gorgeous sense of place and texture, although applied to a somewhat narrow thematic/existential purpose

 

The Killer Inside Me (2010) - less striking (or shocking) than the early notoriety suggested, but an interesting tonal exercise at least

 

Providence (1977) – engrossing for sure, but less aesthetically imposing than Marienbad, and less spirited than most of Resnais’ later work

 

Leslie, My Name Is Evil (2009) - it's stylistically interesting, but feels mostly like an artistic hammer applied to a mere thematic nut

 

The Law (1959) - sometimes seems intriguingly wayward and provocative, at other times merely lurid and shapeless...certainly not dull anyway

 

Four Friends (1981) - still engrossing for how the turbulence of America's evolution embeds itself in the film's structure and texture

 

Nostalgia for the Light (2010) - a smooth joining of philosophical and political dots, but doesn't strike me as profoundly as it does some

 

The Wolfman (2010) - entertaining and handsomely executed, but over-calculated and overly controlled, without a hint of wildness in its DNA

 

Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981) - another uniquely textured Bertolucci reverie, richly provocative on capitalism and its fractures

 

Shanghai Express (1932) - still a dazzling, intricate construction of pure cinema; its unity of purpose and vision remains entirely unfaded

 

Triage (2009) - fairly gripping when dramatizing war; less so as it gets bogged down in homefront therapy, even if sensitively done

 

Antonio das Mortes (1969) - near-mesmerizing, poetically intense political mythmaking, feeling as if torn from a country's bleeding heart

 

Alex In Wonderland (1970) - some striking if scattershot imagery, but I'm glad Mazursky stabilized and decided to go the Blume In Love route

 

New Gladiators (1984) - shockingly dull, murky and clumsy, with Fulci seemingly too disengaged even to take care of exploitation-film basics

 

Blue Valentine (2010) - a terrific, immaculately acted illustration of how cinema still illuminates even the most familiar human mechanisms

 

Angel (2007) - Ozon is typically effective at portraying feminine will and desire, although the overall impact is rather underwhelming here

 

Chimes At Midnight (1965) - the tone is regretful, but it's an immensely evocative affirmation & embodiment of Welles' commitment to renewal

 

Identification of a Woman (1982) - a gorgeously orchestrated expression of Antonioni's classic themes; a mere notch below his greatest work

 

Victor/Victoria (1982) - although widely celebrated, seems to me the start of Edwards' decline, neutering most of its potential provocations

 

It's Complicated (2009) - but of course it isn't - on the contrary, it's simple and banal; also glossy, complacent, a waste of great actors

 

Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (2004) - an eloquently bleak expression of the fragmentation of war, expressed through staggering imagery

 

How Do You Know (2010) - a pretty comprehensive, miscast failure, lacking any kind of pace or style; utterly irrelevant to all our lives

 

Native Land (1942) - as sure of itself as an old-time sermon, and stirring as much anger and shame; still sadly relevant to these grim times

 

Film socialisme (2010)  - Godard pushes us out to the edge of our understanding and endurance, in the hope we may crawl back with open eyes

 

True Grit (2010) – strips away the first film’s ingratiating layers to reclaim the gorgeous starkness; perhaps the most rigorous Coen film

 

True Grit (1969) - even before the Coen version, this never seemed like more than an easy romp, making lazy use of Wayne and much else

 

Genealogies d'un crime (1997) - imposingly clever and impressive, but perhaps too stately and tonally unvarying to stand among Ruiz's best

 

Fedora (1978) - a lost-in-time oddity in Wilder's filmography, it's insufficiently incisive and often stodgy, but still patchily intriguing

 

The King's Speech (2010) - well-told; intriguing enough about establishment symbolism, the embryonic media etc to avoid mere curio status

 

4 aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle (1987) – perhaps one of the purest, most delicate expressions of Rohmer’s concept of a “moral” tale

 

Remember My Name (1978) - intriguing, but ultimately rather thin if set against later, emotionally lusher Rudolph films such as Choose Me

 

Public Speaking (2010) - a smooth if limited showcase for the iconoclastic if limited Leibowitz; Scorsese's mostly happy to sit and chuckle

 

Les plages d’Agnes (2008) - a quirky, evocative delight, embracing whims and new technology, eloquently shaded by past loss and tragedy

 

Days Of Wine And Roses (1962) - atypically stark Edwards; still scary for depicting love and mutual delight becoming helplessly destructive

 

The Fighter (2010) - weirdly over-valued, adding very little to the Rocky tradition; to me feels caricatured and even condescending at times

 

Le royaume des fees (1903) - watching several Melies films reveals the limitations of his vision, and yet, what a miracle he existed at all!

 

The Boys (2009) - an unremarkable but engaging little documentary, easily opening up our hearts (as a song might put it) to the Shermans

 

The Proud Valley (1940) - still fascinating for its merging of social document, wartime myth and calm cultural fusion (Robeson in Wales!)

 

A Brighter Summer Day (1991) - Yang's meticulous, spellbindingly resonant examination of a country and its youth in painful formation

 

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010) - shrewd, utterly depressing anecdote on America's distorted values & power structures

 

In Praise Of Older Women (1978) - bland, murky and mostly unerotic; a bit like a sleepy man's Unbearable Lightness of Being

 

Yi Yi (2000) - Yang's luminous, enveloping, ultimately optimistic vision of the continuum of life and the enduring possibility of renewal

 

The Bitter Tea Of General Yen (1933) - a simultaneously idealistic and perverse drama; weird and insinuating in a way you seldom see now

 

Kick-Ass (2010) - shows the strain of trying for new routes through well-explored territory; zippy, but no more than the sum of its parts

 

A Hen In The Wind (1948) - one of Ozu's saddest, most pointed films, an immensely humane examination of the bitter price of just keeping on

 

Penn And Teller Get Killed (1989) - first a showcase, then a cosmic extrapolation; more aligned to earlier Arthur Penn films than it seems

 

The Emperor Jones (1933) - almost plays now like a white man's confused, fearful blackness fantasia; fascinating even when essentially nuts

 

Numero Deux (1975) - Godard's grim depiction of decayed relationships in a corrupted age; deliberately offputting, but ultimately haunting

 

Brigadoon (1954) - Minnelli's gorgeous direction makes this (potentially merely silly) conception almost impossibly lovely and transcendent

 

Black Swan (2010) - seems to me a pretty thin aesthetic and psychological creation, surprisingly monotonous to watch and largely meaningless

 

Vision (2009) - at heart, another account of a strong-willed woman challenging the prevailing order, but with some satisfying ambiguities

 

O.C. And Stiggs (1985) - another case study in how Altman's bag of tricks turns unpromising material into something weirdly alluring

 

Duelle (1976) - Rivette is one of my all-time favorites, but this is a second-tier work, adds only incrementally to his overall achievement

 

Mark Of The Vampire (1935) - weirdly disconnected (but entertaining) for most of the way, and then suddenly all makes sense! (sort of...)

 

Hearts And Minds (1974) - a milestone of documentary & morality, exploring the multiple levels of horror & delusion surrounding Vietnam

 

Le voyage dans la lune (1902) - still a gorgeous, resourceful fantasy; a visionary affirmation of cinema's possibilities, and of mankind's

 

Edge Of Darkness (2010) - effective but overly mechanical, under-politicized thriller, with an unusually acute strand of pain and steeliness

 

Un chambre en ville (1982) - astonishing, troubled Demy musical, moving into much darker, provocative territory; should be much better known

 

Les Girls (1957) - pleasant enough, but not hard to list all the ways it should have been better; seems muted and dampened down overall

 

The Army Of Crime (2009) - an ambitious cross-section of occupied France; effective, but conventionally so next to Guediguian's earlier work

 

Brewster McCloud (1970) - Altman indulges himself to the hilt here, but it's surprising how coherent a vision he ultimately generates

 

The Father Of My Children (2009) - mostly familiar virtues but with a lot of extra seasoning for cinema lovers; astutely engaging throughout

 

Love & Money (1982) - very strange early Toback, grandly ambitious & radical at times, knowingly absurd at others; quite rewarding overall

 

The Only Son (1936) - more raw, socially charged and nakedly moving than most of the later Ozu films, but entirely as enveloping

 

127 Hours (2010) - adequately fulfills the challenges it sets for itself, but doesn't really offer much reason why anyone should care

 

The Woman On The Beach (1947) - the end is overly literal, but for the most part it's a quietly strange, rather hauntingly lovely miniature

 

Diabolically Yours (1967) - flat, assembly-line psychological thriller glossiness, although pretty well suited to Delon's steely remove

 

The Crazies (2010) - much sleeker than the ragged original, which of course makes it less interesting, and with minimal allegorical clout

 

Metropolis (1927) - amazing how much tighter it seems in this restored version; the political undercurrents remain as ambiguous as ever

 

Pandora And The Flying Dutchman (1951) - perhaps the best Powell/Pressburger movie made by someone else - intensely mythic and expressive

 

Inside Job (2010) - less insightful or galvanizing than it should be, never getting much of a handle on the ideological/cultural issues

 

The Man Who Loved Women (1977) - highly idealized, but oddly if drably persuasive, reflecting Truffaut's considerable sensitivity & fluidity

 

The Ballad Of Cable Hogue (1970) - Peckinpah beautifully ventilates this cantankerous yarn, almost at the peak of his confident mythmaking

 

Ajami (2009) - well-handled, anthropologically intriguing at times, but pretty conventional compared to, say, the transcendent Une prophete

 

Alexander The Last (2009) - interesting, but rather strenuously experimental and elliptical; the lilting tone is nice enough anyway

 

The Girl On A Motorcycle (1968) - blissfully ridiculous fetish drama; even seen through trash-friendly glasses, gets monotonous pretty fast

 

Carlos (2010) - dazzlingly conceived & executed, though with less room for the artistic daring that makes Assayas' work so thrilling overall

 

Trucker (2008) - so predictable and straightforward it might have been stenciled rather than actually filmed; doesn't exhibit much courage

 

The General (1926) - a perpetual delight, alert both to the grandness of America in formation and to human mysteries (& oh yeah, it's funny)

 

L'amour par terre (1984) - without delving deep into Rivette you'd never realize his almost Ozu-like devotion to certain themes and motifs…

 

8 1/2 Women (1999) - a diverting creation overall, but less stimulating than any random five minutes from Greenaway's titanic film The Falls

 

Jennifer's Body (2009) - a pretty complete missed opportunity, with glossy genre mechanics swamping any allegorical or satiric intentions

 

Rikyu (1989) - a rather plodding and understimulating historical study, especially in comparison to Teshigahara's earlier achievements

 

Caught (1949) - in many ways a rather strange tale of values and morality, made utterly compelling by Ophuls' fabulously nuanced direction

 

Hereafter (2010) - as low-key and matter-of-fact a "supernatural" picture as you'll ever see, which seems to be the Eastwood way of things

 

Stalker (1979) - strange, troubling and increasingly thrilling, suggesting the hopelessness of any intercourse between faith and rationality

 

A Letter To Elia (2010) - Scorsese's truly more galvanizing and moving nowadays when illuminating his heroes than he is in his own films

 

Tales Of The Golden Age (2009) -  doesn't add much to one's preexisting sense of the era; entertaining but surprisingly straightforward

 

Morocco (1930) - a movie where the perversity of desire is baked into virtually every frame, leading to one of the all-time great endings

 

An Autumn Afternoon (1962) - I'd rather lose myself within Ozu's cinematic universe than almost anyone else's; this is a gorgeous final note

 

The Social Network (2010) - yep, just about as good as they say; a gorgeously stylized & nuanced modern fable, honed with terrific instincts

 

The Chess Players (1977) - a deliberately artificial creation & an old man's film, but it's always historically interesting, sometimes more

 

The Hangover (2009) - surprisingly coherent & consistently handled; way less crass than it might have been (sure, damning with faint praise)

 

Death In The Garden (1956) - much more constrained than Bunuel's greatest works, but he fills the movie with elegant, biting commentary

 

The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights (2009) - a solid, visually striking showcase for the band's amazing musicianship

 

Une Femme Douce (1969) - Bresson explores the terrifying allure of suicide as a logical response to a compromised, suppressing world

 

The Prowler (1951) - a terrific thriller and commentary on the limits of the social contract, with a memorably resentful Heflin performance

 

Va Savoir (2001) - beautiful late Rivette; a benevolent expression of the liberating power of creativity and theatricality

 

The Promise (2010) - solid examination of Springsteen's methods, but too pristine to be ranked among the great rock documentaries

 

The Gold Diggers (1983) - Potter elegantly taps the pleasures of classical cinema while wittily freeing it from dull masculine dominance...

 

The Circus (1928) - one of Chaplin's loveliest films; there's some egotism at its center, but also a deep sense of the fragility of glory

 

Arabian Nights (1974) – probably the least enveloping of the Pasolini trilogy, but still provocatively evokes an alternative ideology

 

Love Streams (1984) - one of my desert island movies; an audacious and gorgeous quasi-fantasy, superbly extending Cassavetes' previous work

 

Pirate Radio (2009) - certainly watchable, but stuck in the same rompish groove from start to end, with little period flavor (& few laughs)

 

The Aviator's Wife (1981) - doesn't have the revelations of the greatest Rohmer work, but then the weightlessness is inherent in the theme

 

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010) - has some resonance if you've followed Allen since the golden days; maybe not much otherwise

 

Death By Hanging (1968) - breathtaking at times in how the remarkable Oshima keeps shifting the cinematic, thematic and moral space

 

The Merry Widow (1934) - completely charming illustration of Lubitsch's elegance, and very clear-eyed at its center about human compromises

 

The Big City (1963) - a terrific, instructive illustration of Ray's sensitivity, exploring traditional values under threat in changing times

 

The Damned United (2009) - brassily & very entertainingly reminds you how big-time sports used to be rooted in community & in real passion

 

Man Hunt (1941) - less sulphuric than Lang's greatest work, but exciting for the theme of moral flippancy coalescing into righteous purpose

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) - one of the year's most graceful films; profound about our governing spiritual malaise

 

Where The Wild Things Are (2009) - Jonze makes stunning choices of design and tone throughout; it's surprisingly affecting and grounded

 

Miss Mend (1926) - fascinating as cultural history for its ideologically loaded take on the US, and still pretty effective as story-telling

 

Bitter Victory (1957) - a magnificently stark indictment, drawing on the symbiosis of biting human intimacy and the desert's bleak symbolism

 

A Perfect Couple (1979) - one of Altman's relatively minor, eccentric diversions, but still showcasing his offbeat, intuitive handling

 

Dersu Uzala (1975) - highly scenic tribute to noble primitivism is always engaging, but isn't one of Kurosawa's strongest in any sense

 

The Red Shoes (1948) - shimmers with intense beauty & powerful undertones, although not quite as valuable to me as Powell's "weirder" works

 

Passing Strange (2009) - terrific record of a kick-ass show, transcending post-modern cliches through great energy, eloquence and musicality

 

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (1967) - can anything be salvaged from the banal, depraved structures in which we've locked ourselves?

 

Limelight (1952) - expresses with rigid poignancy a psyche largely defined by distortions and past glories, with no redemption but applause

 

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) - interesting for evoking, albeit a bit messily, a very specific time and place in movie culture

 

Boy Meets Girl (1984) - unfolds like a troubled, sometimes transcendently sensuous dream, clawed from the darkness; gorgeously intuitive

 

A Matter Of Life And Death (1946) - emblematic Powell - extremely old-world English, but also wildly exotic and cinematically daring

 

On Dangerous Ground (1952) - has a great physicality at times, but overall carries the feeling of a prototype for Ray's fuller achievement

 

J’ai tue ma mere (2009) - finely crafted with a great control of style & tone, but still minor - hard at this stage to accept the Dolan hype

 

Bringing up Baby (1938) - almost mystically funny and profound; still dazzling for how the relationship can be so irrational and yet so true

 

Four Nights Of A Dreamer (1971) - as the title suggests, foregrounds the abstract, quasi-romantic aspects of Bresson's stunning cinema

 

If God Is Willing...(2010) - instructive and provocative in parts, overly familiar and sketchy in others...but easily worthwhile overall

 

Dust In The Wind (1986) - less provocative and instructive than Hou's greatest work, but overflowing with gorgeous imagery and observation

 

Advise & Consent (1962) - massively gripping, exploring the necessity and limitations of structure and ritual with almost supernatural poise

 

Day Of Wrath (1943) - compelling expression of how female desire, in a superstitious world, seems almost indistinguishable from pure evil

 

Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009) - appealing for its idealistic sense of community & loyalty, & for making Gere look like a dog's dream owner!

 

Daisies (1966) - an giddy, thrilling but principled vision of liberation, implicitly criticizing all that we squander in free societies

 

Crime And Punishment (1935) - a weird, barely-controlled melting pot, but Lorre's crazed engagement with the world carries a real charge

 

Le signe du lion (1959) - early Rohmer seems as interested in playing God as exploring inner mysteries; an intriguing launching pad anyway..

 

My Darling Clementine (1946) - one of Ford's starkest and greatest works, depicting stability and myth gradually asserting itself over chaos

 

The State Of Things (1982) - I hate to go with the flow on this, but Wenders' key films sure seemed more important then than they do now

 

Verboten! (1959) - packs a remarkably potent survey of attitudes into less than 90 minutes, with incredible low-budget resourcefulness

 

Chloe (2009) - massively lamentable effort; even calls into question Egoyan's basic competence and feeling for how humans actually function

 

Lebanon (2009) - functions more as a blackly clever concept movie than a  progressive commentary on war; always intriguing, but limited

 

The Shanghai Gesture (1941) - von Sternberg conveys a total immersion in the crazed artificiality, creating something truly weird & striking

 

The Ascent (1977) - one of the most vivid portrayals of humans being tested and (in part) failing, allowing a spawn of provocative readings

 

The Wrong Man (1956) - one of Hitchcock's most reality-anchored films paradoxically becomes one of his most existential, even Bressonian

 

The Key (1983) - functions like a Bertolucci knock-off without his exquisite sensibility; interesting enough, but doesn't gel into much

 

To Have And Have Not (1944) - a film of mystical unity; how can it be so alluring & stylized while also so gripping & morally instructive?

 

La Dolce Vita (1960) - I'm not the greatest Fellini admirer, but this is undeniably fascinating, phenomenally orchestrated and calibrated

 

My Dinner With Andre (1981) - an indulgence for sure, but the emotional and thematic takeaway is pretty satisfying, almost despite itself

 

The Music Room (1958) - stately and quietly moving, attentive both to the majesty and the hopelessness of its protagonist's worldview

 

Women In Trouble (2009) - I guess the big message here is that the porn life is just a life like any other; sure, I'll subscribe to that...

 

Celine et Julie vont en bateau (1974) - simply one of the most rigorous, sustained, tangible, meaningful fantasies in all of cinema

 

Petulia (1968) - less interesting now for the flash and "kookiness" than for the sure sense of a society losing touch with its own needs

 

Last Year At Marienbad (1961) - the comparisons re Inception aren't entirely misplaced, but they only show up Nolan's literal-mindedness

 

Minnie And Moskowitz (1971) - perhaps more revealing of the coarseness in Cassavetes' sensibility than his more complex & accomplished works

 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) - seeing this unremarkable movie in isolation, it's a mystery why this material is currently so hot

 

She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949) - beautifully explores the rituals and myths of the West, their glory and fragility and inadequacies

 

Europa 51 (1952) - a thrilling expression of faith taking root among the post-war ruins, and the governing ideology's rejection of it

 

Everybody's Fine (2009) - largely like a glossy, maudlin, schematic variation on Tokyo Story; still, De Niro is quietly affecting at times

 

The Mother And The Whore (1973) - one of the greatest films on sexual politics - despairingly chronicles the limits of the human project

 

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - always intriguing how Kubrick seems as fascinated by our banality as our (still dazzlingly imagined) promise

 

The Girl On The Train (2009) - another impeccable, insinuating Techine meditation on human interactions, possibilities and mysteries

 

Get Low (2010) - never achieves any great lift-off, and often fussily handled, but expert old-timer acting keeps it interesting enough

 

Psycho (1960) - the formal discipline and astonishing structure almost distracts you from its magnificent strangeness & near-abstraction

 

Malpertuis (1971) - a much more intimate form of mythmaking than we're likely to see again; remains odd and surprising even if you know it

 

Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009) - commendably disciplined; focuses on process & musicianship, leaving intact what remains of his mystery

 

The Devil, Probably (1977) - mesmerizing and remarkably tough-minded, although ultimately one of Bresson's simpler works, probably

 

The Box (2009) - it's no surprise when the initial intrigue gets crushed by overblown mythology, but it's still disappointing just how much

 

Le Samourai (1967) - over time you view it increasingly as endlessly fascinating performance art, built around private versus public rituals

 

The Runaways (2010) - largely successful in transcending cliches and methodically tapping the (albeit rather confused) feminine perspective

 

The Mother Of Tears (2007) - has all of Argento's weaknesses, but the strengths overcome them this time - repulsive, but ruthlessly gripping

 

Woodstock (1970) - the director's cut; probably evokes the scope & the heart of the overall event as well as any mere 3 1/2 hours ever could

 

Helas pour moi (1993) - achingly beautiful; transmits profound sadness that (to put it very basically) the world can't be better than it is

 

Paranormal Activity (2007) - effective enough, although only by declining most of the possibilities the genre (& cinema in general) present

 

Paris Belongs To Us (1961) - Rivette's fascinating debut; often feels like a cross between the later him and someone a bit more conventional

 

Motherhood (2009) - casting Thurman in this put-upon role is fanciful, but on the other hand she does carry the movie (what there is of it)

 

La naissance de l’amour (1993) - very haunting, sculpted in extreme melancholy & lost possibility; evokes strong desire to see more Garrel

 

Prodigal Sons (2008) - interesting throughout, but never amounts to more than the sum of its parts, despite somewhat strenuous attempts

 

The Phantom Of Liberty (1974) - Inception my foot!...the stuff of dreams is here, but also of profound engagement (and it's way more fun)

 

Moon (2009) - not much here to disrupt one's orbit; could have used the color of Silent Running, or just a sliver of anything 2001 had

 

Le Plaisir (1952) - remarkable in every way; almost seems to distill all human knowledge of desire and fulfillment into just 90 minutes

 

The Invention Of Lying (2009) - hard to believe Gervais settled for such a conventional, fuzzy approach to this concept, but here it is...

 

L'amour fou (1969) - unusually raw and gritty for Rivette, and completely fascinating, not least as a "prologue" of sorts to Out 1

 

Inception (2010) - seriously overpraised in some quarters; an impressive piece of structuring, but with little overall meaning or relevance

 

Dillinger Is Dead (1969) - ...but hope survives (barely), in Ferreri's weirdly playful, meticulous, iconoclastic prescription

 

Soul Power (2008) - terrific if fragmented piece of strutting archaeology; falls in the tiny category of movies you wish had been longer

 

Lions Love (1969) - Varda takes a ride on a conceptual bronco and mostly holds on; knowingly messy, but also moving and piercing at times

 

Taking Woodstock (2009) - pretty fatal evidence for those who try to claim Ang Lee as a great director; has no texture or feel for anything

 

Out One (1971) - a truly unique viewing privilege, rich in creativity & mystery while exploring an immense intellectual disillusionment

 

Surrogates (2009) - some arresting images and ideas, but overall very thin; reminds you at every stage of other more fully-developed movies

 

The Long Long Trailer (1953) - enjoyable, eternally resonant missive from a culture defined entirely by commodities and stereotyped desires

 

I Am Love (2009) - remarkably sensual and attentive and pleasurable, although just too narrow I think to be valued at the highest level

 

Julia (2008) - a remarkable, daredevil study in performance, with Swinton just scintillating; I sure wish Zonca worked more frequently

 

Lady Oscar (1979) - sadly plain and straightforward compared to Demy's great work, barely tapping the material's considerable possibilities

 

The Joneses (2009) - has some nice satirical touches here and there, but it's seldom as biting or disquieting as you'd like it to be

 

Variety Lights (1950) - largely sentimental, although with a cold streak; expertly engrossing, but only hints at Fellini's later ambitions

 

All Of Me (1984) - still a joyous viewing experience, galvanized by Martin's amazing performance and a total conviction in the fairy tale

 

No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos (2008) - a bit unbalanced (what's with all the Frances coverage?) but valuable and evocative overall

 

The Human Condition II (1959) - patiently & eloquently extends the first film's humanist project, reaching a chilling arrival point

 

The Kids Are All Right (2010) - a surprisingly conventional (while well-executed & funny) surface, but with real underlying conviction

 

Legal Eagles (1986) - lumbering and almost entirely toothless, but quasi-interesting for a kind of courtly quality that's seldom seen now

 

The Fireman (1916) - moves rapidly from balletic ass-kicking to a potted arson drama, as if summing up Chaplin's escalating ambition

 

Ponyo (2008) - as charming & iconoclastic as all Miyazaki's work, with an accessible (but hardly simple) vision of delight & transcendence

 

Cold Souls (2009) - certainly well handled; intriguing for how Barthes makes elements of potentially nutty fantasy seem almost desolate

 

Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy (1955) - a sad sight by any measure, especially for the duo's overwhelming lack of energy and intuition

 

El Topo (1970) - amazingly confident, visually ravishing, structurally startling mythmaking, with more humanity than the legend may suggest

 

Downhill Racer (1969) - remarkably desolate sports movie, with Redford at his coldest, finding little distinction between triumph & wipe-out

 

Sherrybaby (2006) - puts most of its chips on Gyllenhaal, which works out fine, but the "grittiness" remains within accessible limits

 

The Unholy Three (1925) - mesmerizing whenever it hits its gorgeously freakish stride, although it ultimately peters out a bit

 

Nobody Waved Good-Bye (1964) - fascinating study of a glib teenager, born in wrong time and place, basically talking himself into oblivion

 

Hello Goodbye (2008) - utterly underdeveloped; feels like the main motivation was to deploy two stars for some kind of tax write-off scheme

 

Going Shopping (2005) - pretty and pleasant but utterly toothless Jaglom creation doesn't exactly suggest a very expansive worldview

 

Night Of The Demon (1957) - increasingly anguished blend of British drabness & wild mysticism; full of fascinating linkages & implications

 

Ossos (1997) - precisely evokes a startling local reality while experimenting with Bressonian aesthetics...a long way from later Costa

 

The Art Star And The Sudanese Twins (2007) - despite the odd background, a pretty flat reverie on the fine line between art and exploitation

 

Middle Of The Night (1959) - despite Mann's drab direction and a weak ending, fairly moving for the fluid writing and March's authenticity

 

The Prisoner or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair (2006) - absurd/horrifying, tightly-focused complement to wider-scale Iraq condemnations

 

Blaise Pascal (1972) - not quite as meticulous as Cartesius in charting the topography of a great mind, but immensely informative and worthy

 

Winter's Bone (2010) - provocative and seemingly informative as a window on a startlingly self-contained community; very cannily handled..

 

The Carey Treatment (1972) - always intriguing for how Edwards' deadpan style so perfectly wraps around Coburn's near-mystical sense of self

 

The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee (2009) - interesting to try building a movie around such a self-effacing character, but doesn't yield much

 

Mr. Thank You (1936) - sets out many of Japan's strains & tensions of the time, but with a delightful sense of community & possibility

 

The Honey Pot (1967) - hardly Mankiewicz at his best, and outright clunky at time, but mostly gets by on classically elegant performances

 

New York, I Love You (2009) - feels like everyone involved had a gun at their heads, forcing them to do the dreamy wistful thing...

 

Intentions Of Murder (1964) - extremely twisted and disconcerting tale of female empowerment in a painfully mixed-up post-war Japan

 

Splice (2010) - ideas count for much less here than the genre's demands for speed & clarity; imagine Michael Mann addressing such themes...

 

The Human Factor (1979) - suitable final note from Preminger dryly captures the Cold War's weird mixing of formality and derangement

 

La constellation Jodorowsky (1994) - doesn't adequately convey his artistic significance, but valuable for various personal insights

 

Let There Be Light (1946) - a window on the dawn of our new ultra-therapized age, simultaneously both humane and somehow depersonalizing

 

The Burning Plain (2008) - diverting enough, but ultimately predictable and unrevealing; the smart-alec structure counts for very little

 

The Human Condition I (1959) - powerfully sets out the meagre possibilities for progressive humanism in a time of fear and self-interest

 

A Perfect Getaway (2009) - has the same surprise ending as every other movie now; genre pieces like this sure used to have more color

 

Return Of The Secaucus Seven (1980) - still engaging but seems very conventional now, and often pretty forced; provides only modest insight

 

Intimate Enemies (2007) - soberly gripping; an effective historical reference point re appropriate terms of engagement with "terrorists"

 

The Exiles (1961) - utterly no feeling of artifice; the sense of existential loss and separation from their original purpose is overwhelming

 

Spread (2009) - good evocation of decadence, but otherwise pretty soft; Kutcher is much better at cool distance than at loss & devastation

 

The Grim Reaper (1962) - parade of deprived souls has early signs of Bertolucci's analytical prowess & some sad, chilling social observation

 

Gumshoe (1971) - the dissonant, stylized Liverpool setting works well at first, but ultimately the impact is self-defeatingly generic

 

Brothers (2009) - has some pleasant naturalistic moments, but overall too sculptured & pretty; way below the (overrated) Danish original

 

In Vanda's Room (2000) - fascinating as anthropology, dissolving any conventional relationship between humanism and aesthetic calculation

 

Harry Brown (2009) - relentlessly and distastefully silly, although Caine's dignity and the over the top "grittiness" help it roll along

 

L'histoire d'Adele H (1975) - elegantly & enigmatically reflects on the historical perception of female empowerment as a form of madness

 

Three Lives And Only One Death (1996) - very elegant metaphor for creativity & engagement, so gracefully handled it almost seems rational

 

The Girl In The Park (2007) - certainly modest, but benefits enormously from Weaver's moving performance and from some intriguing psychology

 

The L-Shaped Room (1962) - not too distinctive, but true to Caron's lovely fragility and to the lousy economics governing all the lives here

 

The Yacoubian Building (2006) - epic saga of changing times in Egypt, sometimes cheesy, but also often bold & anthropologically interesting

 

The Two Jakes (1990) - surprising Nicholson would be such an uninspired director; lousy instincts & pacing kill off the promise throughout

 

Oceans (2009) - easily labeled a spectacle for kids, but forget being a cineaste - just as a human, what could be more elevating than this?

 

The Unknown (1927) - the closing stretch is still as unnerving as anything you'll ever see, with Lon Chaney at his most mesmerizing...

 

The Czech Dream (2004) - amusing real-life anecdote of expert hoax, ultimately crafting some nice parallels with the pro-Europe movement

 

Orphan (2009) - throws a silly excess of ingredients into the pot, and it's hopelessly formulaic, but done with darkly handsome proficiency

 

No Regrets For Our Youth (1946) - variable but evocative early Kurosawa; a stylistic mixed bag, building to a back-to-the-land paean

  

Choke (2008) - largely rancid viewing experience; feels like being cornered in a topless bar by a smutty relationship therapist

 

Surveillance (2008) - makes most sense if seen as a kind of depraved performance-art tone poem, otherwise it just seems messy and tone d

 

O'Horten (2007) - pretty thin, even by the standards of such throwaway quirkiness; intriguing at times for its sense of a waking dream

 

Moby Dick (1956) - inadequately sustained, but with the right sense of inner coherence, however self-destructive, found only in obsession

 

Battle For Haditha (2007) - for me much more impactful and moving than The Hurt Locker, although some might consider it unsubtly anti-US

 

Vertical Features Remake (1978) - a major step ahead in the fascinating progression of Greenaway's short films, cranking up the mythology

 

Voices From Beyond (1994) - Fulci's last film shows him in sure decline; it's visually undistinguished with little sense of conviction

 

Stuck (2007) - a highly gripping little curio, pumping everything there is to be had from its nutty premise, and then knowing when to quit

 

Please Give (2010) - nicely explores issues of fulfillment & obligation within a very smart structure; intriguing and engaging throughout

 

The Falls (1980) - amazing myth making, even when heavy going; makes you marvel anyone could have so much creative capacity and discipline

 

Everlasting Moments (2008) - restrained memoir, usually choosing not to stare directly into the hurt; the impact is precise but modest...

 

The Good Night (2007) - one of those celebrity-laden exercises where you get the feeling they all forgot halfway through why they bothered..

 

The Daytrippers (1996) - perpetually underrated, nicely balanced between sharp observation and whimsicality (a pointer who can't point!)

 

I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958) - from the opening stag that feels like a wake, effortlessly resonant about 50's discontent..

 

Tickets (2005) - Loach's bit is happily familiar; Olmi's overly sculptured; Kiarostami's surprisingly easygoing; overall elegant but limited

 

You Don't Know Jack (2010) - Pacino is terrific, but a bland-ish movie -mostly limits itself to presenting Jack's side cleanly and clearly

 

Walkabout (1971) - gorgeously achieved; constantly surprising & productively disorienting, although without the layers of Roeg's later works

 

Nothing But The Truth (2008) - mostly workmanlike, with little texture, but easy to watch & an OK primer on some freedom of the press issues

 

The Diary Of An Unknown Soldier (1959) - Watkins' style is already remarkably formed and raw, even if the antiwar sentiments are familiar

 

Simon Of The Desert (1965) - how do you prove your piety without placing yourself as close to Satan as possible (like, on the dancefloor!)

 

Lianna (1983) - conveys a real fascination with the possibilities for female growth & self-expression, although often succumbs to convention

 

Golden Boy (1939) - Holden still feels modern but a lot of the rest is pure shtick; generally compelling though, sometimes even dazzling

 

The Secret In Their Eyes (2009) - the best foreign film Oscar goes once again for easy glitz; this beats Audiard & Haneke?...gimme a break..

 

River Queen (2005) - reminiscent at every turn of better films, and a bit of a slog, but has its watered-down Malick/Campion-esque moments..

 

The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Runner (1962) - compared to similar films of the time, a bit strenuous in its structure and symbolism

 

Save The Green Planet (2003) - potentially tiring high-octane fantasy (spanning Kubrick to Saw) easily gets by on polished giddiness

 

The Gladiators (1969) - hits plenty of punches, and delightfully strange at times, but more didactic and narrow than Watkins' best work

 

The Knockout (1914) - almost embryonic in its technique, but takes a leap when Chaplin appears, already radiating screen-friendly agility

 

Dead Snow (2009) - Nazi zombie gore against pristine white backgrounds; utterly nutty, but gets the pace and attitude bloody right

 

Sitting Ducks (1980) - as always, Jaglom's heart is in the shambling, sometimes touching sense of community; but not his most achieved work

 

And Now For Something Completely Different (1972) - even some of Python's best bits struggle against the heavy-footed overall approach

 

Jules et Jim (1961) - after many viewings, it seems often forced to me, although with perpetually intriguing technique & sexual politics

 

The Wild Angels (1966) - the early sense of liberation doesn't last for long; turns into a surprisingly rigorous deconstruction of the myth

 

There's A Girl In My Soup (1970) - the cardboard-like Sellers/Hawn relationship never makes an iota of sense; pointlessly watchable at best

 

La petite Lili (2003) - evolves rather unexpectedly into a strange meditation on cinema's healing power; overall enjoyable, but unsatisfying

 

The Uneasy Three (1925) - quite elegant Leo McCarey comedy showing his escalating complexity, riffing nicely on the era's moral principles

 

The Blind Side (2009) - sure, might have deserved the Oscar attention, just like I might be eating the world’s most nutritious Twinkie bar

 

Coraline (2009) - very tangibly enchanting, and watching it shortly after Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders helps jazz up the subtext

 

Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders (1970) - mysteriously fascinating, overflowing reverie on the potential havoc of unleashed female sexuality

 

Spring Breakdown (2009) - shrill, shallow spectacle tries to talk a good game about poor female empowerment, when not crudely exploiting it

 

La bete humaine (1938) - still a disquieting, hugely confident work, most chilling for its grim insinuations on impact of industrialization

 

All The President's Men (1976) - as free of cliche & excess as such a film could possibly be; handsomely resonant about corruption & power

 

Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours (1989) - strangely ripe and moving, crafting a zone of expression outside normal laws & conventions

 

Heller In Pink Tights (1960) - some heavy plotting, but enchantingly illustrates how theatrical flourish enchants even the tough & the jaded

 

The Immigrant (1917) - Chaplin calibrating & deepening his comedy here, growing increasingly intricate & subtle as the backdrops get bigger

 

Mother (2009) - Bong is a shrewd and subtle stylist, and it's a gripping narrative, but the movie's after-taste is ultimately pretty generic

 

Tracks (1977) - Jaglom's artful swing from the convivial to the deranged speaks volumes about the impact of Vietnam on the national psyche

 

Killing Me Softly (2002) - idea of applying a (way) outsider's perspective (Chen Kaige!) to familiar titillation material falls utterly flat

 

The Young Girls Of Rochefort (1967) - a sprawling dream of community; takes your breath away how many things Demy holds in alignment here

 

Management (2008) - minor and stilted, with an old-hat turning-round-your-life theme, & two stars who seem to belong on different planets

 

Some Came Running (1958) - fascinating melodrama, with a persistent sense of longing and rootlessness and enormous depth of expression

 

Greenberg (2010) - has its moments throughout (Gerwig brings a lot), but seldom as original or existentially captivating as Baumbach intends

 

Empties (2007) - has an amiable glow, but suggests no reason at all for existing, other than the director finding a lead role for his dad

 

The Cheat (1915) - a rich narrative of transgression; more evidence of how inadequately DeMille's later reputation sums up his full career

 

Human Resources (1999) - examines with great, sympathetic precision the toll of an ideology built on inherently soul-destroying structures

 

Transsiberian (2008) - very gripping in a somewhat old-fashioned, wintery way, and highly atmospheric; Brad Anderson is quite underrated...

 

Crisis (1946) - premonitions of later Bergman, especially in the tortured gigolo character, but for now he lets small-town values win out

 

Precious (2009) - less of a "“sociological horror show” than I'd feared, but minor; often feels like a weird collage of gimmicky ideas…

 

Barfly (1987) - diverting enough, but flatter and less informative than its roots and Schroeder's achievements elsewhere would suggest

 

Cartesius (1974) - a transcendent project in education & illumination, particularly viewed now, with integrity & reason so widely degraded..

 

The Passionate Friends (1949) - highly engrossing as it acts out the ambiguity in the title - a relationship lacking a natural equilibrium..

 

Outsourced (2006) - conventional in its approach to emotions and issues, but makes some good points about the West's dwindling hegemony

 

Macbeth (1982) - told in just two takes; conveying the spooky sense of maybe being Macbeth's posthumous telescoped tortured recollection...

  

The Godless Girl (1929) - maybe God wins the day this time, but DeMille doesn't leave much doubt it might ultimately swing the other way

  

Un prophete (2009) - a punchy narrative for sure, very intuitive & resonant re implications for Europe's old guard as its power hollows out

  

Twentynine Palms (2003) - the elemental, searching quality is intriguing, but hard to shake off the sense of a cruder Zabriskie Point

  

When Did You Last See Your Father? (2007) - well, not as recently as I saw a dozen other equally inconsequentially "sensitive" movies

 

Battle In Seattle (2007) - effective overall in navigating the big picture; less so when resorting to conventional character arcs

 

Walker (1987) - pretty didactic at times, but a concentrated fist of a movie, mesmerizing as the deliberate anachronisms start to invade

 

Saute ma ville (1968) - as striking as Jeanne Dielman in a "performance art" kind of way, making domesticity spooky and imprisoning

 

A Foreign Affair (1948) - some flimsy foreground maneuvers, against a devastating Berlin backdrop & satisfying barbs at the hand that feeds

 

The Ghost Writer (2010) - a steely take on power: exhibits all Polanski's skill, but limited by genre-driven conventionality I think

 

Temple Grandin (2010) - bathed in an unimaginatively pristine glow, but generally engaging & informative about her achievements

 

Fish Tank (2009) - strong and intriguing throughout, with memorably abrasive character dynamics; almost unbearable tension at one point

 

Can She Bake A Cherry Pie? (1983) - really just a series of fragments, but striking for the sense of something deeply personal at its centre

 

The Holy Mountain (1973) - an astonishing, uncompromising, rebellious, exacting vision; all modern epics look merely disposable next to it

 

Desaccord parfait (2006) - feels like a tacky relic from the 70's; has possibilities on paper (like, Rampling!), realizes none of them

 

The Messenger (2009) - a moving, complex reverie about crafting meaningful self-identity within the  military worldview's distorted contours

 

The New York Ripper (1982) - benefits from Fulci's zealous approach to the slasher stuff, & from the backdrop of a crummy guilt-ridden city

 

Baghead (2008) - entertaining so-called mumblecore approach to Blair Witch-type material, although greater ambition wouldn't have hurt

 

Un lever de rideau (2006) - a pleasant & fluent, somewhat Rohmeresque miniature, but with a sense of strain that confirms Ozon's limitations

 

On The Beach (1959) - actually works better if taken as a metaphor for our slow-motion response to environmental & other pending crises

 

A Letter To Uncle Boonmee (2009) - on The Auteurs website; a suitable intro to Apichatpong's gorgeous (if initially head-scratching) work

 

Lake Of Fire (2006) - pristine & scalding; both sides have honesty & passion, but one side has more crazed (mostly male) self-righteousness

 

Vers Mathilde (2005) - a graceful, intuitive and logical documentary counterpoint to Claire Denis' awesome narrative films of this decade

 

Shutter Island (2010) - absorbing and fluent, but comically unworthy of a so-called greatest living director (low ambition, or insecurity?)

 

L'intrus (2004) - truly on the outer edge of what you can expect a (merely human!) filmmaker to create; just thrilling to contemplate

 

The Dragon Painter (1919) - a sweet, graceful, although immensely abbreviated (and, sure, silly) little fable; Hayakawa is very empathetic

 

Munchhausen (1943) - mostly a charming if chilly fantasy, very visually inventive at times, although has an air of superiority somehow

 

Anvil! The Story Of Anvil (2008) - good fun, well-pitched re both the poignancy and the Spinal Tap echoes, no Some Kind Of Monster though

 

The Happy Ending (1969) - quite personal & touching at times; too glossily calculated at others; hides a hankering to get raunchier I feel

 

Je, tu, il, elle (1976) - says much on societal/psychological strictures, while probing possibilities for productive human collision..

 

Satantango (1994) - as per legend, a starkly magnificent, slyly funny, not unduly punishing (!) 7-hour spiritual/social devastation epic

 

Ballad Of A Soldier (1959) - surely unfairly forgotten now; get past the pro-Soviet paeans and it's well-observed, touching, even surprising

 

In Search Of A Midnight Kiss (2007) - even at its best a poor dude's Before Sunrise, although unusually informative about the LA topography

 

Last Life In The Universe (2003) - a wonderful luminous film, with real weight and poignancy to its genre-grounded magic realism

 

10 Items Or Less (2006) - a self-regarding, tone-deaf stunt, rendering Morgan Freeman more annoying than would have seemed possible

 

Knight Without Armour (1937) - formed by long-out-the-window aesthetic conventions, but Feyder finds a tender core within the creakiness

 

Seance (2000) - narratively fairly straightforward, but genuinely creepy and troubling, with elements of strange, plaintive social critique

 

A Shot In The Dark (1964) - a very consistent, deadpan take on a brilliantly ambiguous “idiot” challenging order in a flatly venal world

 

Crazy Heart (2009) - the great Bridges could surely have gone further, into more complex territory, but the film doesn't want to go there...

 

La chambre (1972) - almost uncanny how such a simple formal idea seems to accommodate so much unsettling implication

 

Irma La Douce (1963) - 2nd rate Wilder at best: handsome and peppy, but so ridiculous it almost takes on an air of liberating abstraction

 

Fury (1936) - still potent damn-your-land-of-opportunity viewing, although melodramatic contrivance weighs too heavily in the second half

 

The Cure (1917) - important early insight that stuffy institutions are only validated by being mocked (for which it helps to be blind drunk)

 

Police, Adjective (2009) - a shrewd, deadpan expression of a cop's loss of individuality (which mainly only consisted of tedium anyway)...

 

Man Of The West (1958) - a fascinating, brooding genre piece, full of sublimated pain at old relationships and codes breaking apart

 

Smoke (1995) - nicely done and endlessly convivial; but acknowledging its own weightlessness doesn't ultimately equate to countering it...

 

The Phantom Carriage (1921) - grippingly structured and genuinely creepy, eerily conveying the pain both of this world and the next

 

Seems Like Old Times (1980) - was it really only thirty years ago that such amiable middle-aged plasticity could be a big-screen event?

 

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (2009) - plot has an utter "whatever" quality, but it's a good skeleton for Gilliam's inventive clutter

 

The Local Stigmatic (1990) - weird and almost entirely viewer-resistant, although testifies to Pacino's wayward theatrical roots

 

Grey Gardens (2009) - finds an honorable and moving approach to the characters, but still never completely shakes off a sense of redundancy

 

Gervaise (1956) – just as handsome as Children Of Paradise, poignantly contrasting her sweet industriousness and her lovers' venality

 

Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) - cinematically dull, with lots of stilted activity, but also some elegance in the embryonic slapstick

 

Up In The Air (2009) - disappointingly weightless; feels created by people whose entire sense of the business world comes from other movies

 

Chinese Coffee (2000) - standard minor-league theatrics; Pacino and Orbach just have too much presence to embody these sad, minor lives...

 

The Little Fugitive (1953) - a great 50's New York time capsule, showing the ambiguous freedoms of youth in a less neurotic and cautious age

 

Tropical Malady (2004) - amazingly alluring and sensuous; takes a second viewing though to appreciate it as prose as well as poetry

 

Kings And Queen (2004) - often feels like a gorgeous caper, even as it skirts despair; Desplechin's grasp of human capacity is peerless

 

Avatar (2009) - full of pleasing (if confused) political provocation, although ultimately feels more like experiencing a game than a film

 

The Fatal Glass Of Beer (1933) - near brilliant in its beyond-whimsical form and content; Fields' persona is as stubbornly radical as ever

 

The Nutty Professor (1963) - shot through with elements of nastiness and twisted self-regard, with no interest in real people generally

 

Le Rayon Vert (1986) - not sure why this is so often cited as one of Rohmer's best, not that it isn't utterly engaging of course...

 

Big Deal On Madonna Street (1958) - a nice mix of broad and more subtle comedy, caper mechanics, and sometimes poignant social portraiture

 

Nine (2009) - I can’t recall a recent film with so little sense of spontaneity (especially murderous, obviously, for a musical)

 

Boomerang (1947) - fascinatingly ambitious procedural, built on meticulous organization, laying groundwork for Kazan's richer work to come

 

Confessions Of A Window Cleaner (1974) - under the relentless surface, really quite a melancholy window on a repressed and mediocre society

 

La regle du jeu (1939) - one of the truly great films; elegant beyond comparison; scintillatingly complex; possessing a mysterious harmony

 

Clean (2004) - another terrifically quirky examination by Assayas of globalization's existential toll, full of remarkable observations

 

Invictus (2009) - Eastwood's mega-pragmatic but principled form of stylization might by now be the most reliable tool-kit in the business...

 

La Chinoise (1967) - gorgeously vivid and stimulating; triangulates intellect and playfulness in a way that seems lost to mass culture now

 

Don Quijote de Orson Welles (1992) - shockingly slapdash in realizing Welles' intentions, but still an eye-opener, sometimes even beautiful

 

Casualties Of War (1989) - Vietnam as a purely cinematic creation, illustrating its horrible malleability both as experience and history...

 

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) - the grungy afterlife for suicides is initially intriguing, but peters out into meet-cute/new-age stuff

 

A Single Man (2009) - so being gay, it seems, mainly means being polite and pretty and wistful; a beautiful installation, but barely a film

 

La Route de Corinthe (1967) - some good moments, but an early sign of Chabrol's willingness to ease off artistically and enjoy the good life

 

Force Of Evil (1948) - compelling and politically charged; Garfield's is one of the all-time great portrayals of morally-bankrupt go-getting

 

Through A Glass Darkly (1961) - is the poor woman swallowed up for the sake of male unity, or liberated (to join God the spider?), or both?

 

Pigs And Battleships (1961) - inspired provocation of a chronically misled post-war Japan gone all but mad; leaves a corrosive aftertaste

 

Me And Orson Welles (2008) - knowingly old-fashioned and affectionate; feels true and informative as an evocation of Welles’ working methods

 

The Balloonatic (1923) - Keaton's customarily elegant staging and the ultimate escape from earthly ties creates something quite transcendent

 

The Valley (Obscured By Clouds) (1972) - a shaggy mysticism time capsule; goes from stilted to moderately enlightening, but always watchable

 

Jimmy Carter Man From Plains (2007) - maybe Carter was just too decent and thoughtful to be an effective President (Obama parallel ahead?..)

 

Claire's Knee (1970) - a kind of abstracted, sun-kissed Dangerous Liaisons; fascinating and nicely ambiguous, but second-tier Rohmer I think

 

Collapse (2009) - at least 90% correct if you ask me, and 100% riveting, even if you barely react to it with your usual aesthetic criteria..

 

L'Argent (1983) - I'm always in awe of Bresson's navigation between often horrifying specific causality, and inter-connection/predestination

 

The Insect Woman (1963) - an amazingly ambitious study of venality, although at least seems to allow mankind some faint remaining hope...

 

Knowing (2009) - if this had been made forty years ago pre-CE3K with a bit more grit, might have seemed like a true wonder; now, not so much

 

Ne touchez pas la hache (2007) - much more radical and adventurous than it first appears; beautifully strange and quietly savage...

 

Baby Face (1933) - concentrated spectacle of magnificent Stanwyck dissecting and blasting through men; amazing (except for soft ending)

 

L'aimee (2007) - Desplechin's quietly brave object lesson in creating resonance and texture from highly localized material

 

The Road (2009) - a bleak film for sure, but to little end; separated from the zombie apocalypse genre only by its self-righteous austerity

 

Killshot (2008) - efficient enough, but nothing about it even vaguely suggests the possibility of a higher-echelon Elmore Leonard flick...

 

Koko: A Talking Gorilla (1978) - through its careful observation of existential complexity, links compellingly to Schroeder's other work

 

The Candidate (1972) - the triumph of image-making over substance... perpetually resonant no matter how much the hairstyles change...

 

The International (2009) - like making a Bernie Madoff movie and, just to jazz things up, having him be a serial killer too...

 

The Headless Woman (2008) - strangely puts me in mind of Lynch's Inland Empire through its multiplicity of (real or imagined) implications..

 

The Ninth Gate (1999) - sad to see Polanski's sly sense of the perverse reduced to such glossy gobbledygook, no matter how easily watchable

 

Goya's Ghosts (2006) - handled fluidly enough, but the heavy use of dramatic contrivance puts it firmly in the annals of the second-rate...

 

White Cannibal Queen (1980) - as lousy a creation as you'll ever see, embodying every disdainful cliche applied to low-budget genre cinema

 

The Big Heat (1953) - Lang goes to the edge of the then-permissible, letting the stink of layers of corruption seep right to the surface

 

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) - shimmers with painstaking respect for the integrity of an ecosystem, however quirkily and dreamily imagined...

 

Clash By Night (1952) - with everyone highly expressive of some deep block, feels much like Lang encroaching (with great precision) on Sirk

 

I Am Curious - Yellow (1967) - actually rather touching in portraying Lena's somewhat reckless curiosity & desire to make a difference..

 

Ornamental Hairpin (1941) - no Ozu, but still an engaging, structurally quirky miniature, full of insight into Japanese social rigidity..

 

Carnal Knowledge (1971) - now feels like a narrow performance art piece, if not a stunt, although Nicholson is eternally mesmerizing

 

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans (2009) - funny how Herzog flourishes again as the state of our societal misdirection deepens..

 

House Of Bamboo (1955) - could be seen now as a beautiful abstract parody of globalization - men in suits whipping up cross-border mayhem..

 

Fando and Lis (1968) - Fellini, Makaveyev, apocalypse, chicks with whips, Garden of Eden...you gotta problem with that?...didn't think so!

 

The Racket (1951) - condensed and sharp, although its approach to visuals and relationships often feels too much like series TV to come..

 

The Railrodder (1965) - rather uneasily grafting an affectionate late Keaton tribute onto a Canadian travelogue; nice but not much more..

 

The Leopard Man (1943) - a remarkably strange, spare and concentrated parable on responsibility and self-definition in a confused world

 

Francesco, giullare di Dio (1950) - a stunning, humane evocation; perhaps Rossellini's necessary corridor to his great, complex 50's work..

 

Antichrist (2009) - suggests a horrific dislocation in our relationship with Gaia and so with each other...interesting when not too dour..

 

Putney Swope (1969) - funny how much resonance/vision some of the dada stuff has - the grotesque President even looks a bit like Reagan..

 

Felix Saves The Day (1922) - an inventive (if primitive) delight, still pleasing in how it defines and ventilates the physical & comic space

 

La boheme (1926) - you certainly understand how Gish evokes such sympathy, but she's so ethereal, physical desire seems almost grotesque..

 

A Clockwork Orange (1971) - I often think I'd be content (safer?) never to see this terrifying masterpiece again, and then I return to it

 

Bronson (2008) - watching this you feel relieved our social structures, lousy as they are, work as effectively for as many of us as they do

 

The Red Desert (1964) - sets out a form of hope and adaptation but at the terrible cost of alienation from all that's natural...

 

Blonde Cobra (1963) - "What went wrong?"...a suitably anguished final note for a deceptively tough-minded, uncompromising artwork...

 

Amreeka (2009) - now there's the immigrant experience - integration means being able to wear your White Castle uniform in public...

 

Promise Her Anything (1965) - almost (but not quite) dislocated and clunky enough to be intriguing, with Beatty's most ineffective work ever

 

An Education (2009) - Mulligan is a mixed blessing: not charismatic enough to be stunning, not ordinary enough to be convincing...

 

Fists In The Pocket (1965) - pivotal movie of modern Italy: moments of bonding and release intercepting the ongoing momentum toward doom..

 

35 rhums (2008) - might argue it unrealistically romanticizes normal life's quiet wonders, but for me Denis is now one of the very best..

 

Avanti! (1972) - conveys a moving sense of meditative renewal despite some questionable mechanics (and Mills really isn't so fat either..)

 

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) - resist the self-serving capitalist machine by not paying a premium price to watch this second-hand news..

 

Pickup On South Street (1953) - still potent, triangulating Fuller's disdain for Communism with his gritty delight in Widmark's neutrality

 

The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009) - missed opportunities throughout - just stare at this obvious list of structural and thematic weaknesses

 

7 Women (1966) - Ford's transplanting of Western codes to China is fascinating, but did his Western heroes ever go through such contortions?

 

The September Issue (2009) - Wintour says fashion’s always about looking forward, not back, but that's the road to disposability, not art

 

Early Summer (1951) - one of my favorite Ozus...happiness as a weighing of outcomes, relative to possibilities seized and lost...

 

The Stalking Moon (1968) - a quietly insinuating Western, forged from absences and distances and wounded beauty

 

A Serious Man (2009) - I sometimes think the Coens know the workings of almost everything, but not the value of it...

 

Night Wind (1999) - a world with a limited supply of human viability and too many walking shells, and they grimly try to make it reconcile

 

Touki Bouki (1973) - challengingly structured Senegalese film conveys the country's parched texture while spinning some aspirational magic..

 

The Apartment (1960) -still striking for its cynicism and frequent callousness, but carries surprisingly little satiric force now

 

Flight Of The Red Balloon (2007) - Hou's transcendentally enchanting tribute to the intertwining of life and art; one of the decade's best

 

Breathless (1960) - never loses its sense of the near-miraculous, not least for seeming so impossibly coherent, and inevitable

 

In The Loop (2009) - very vivid about why things just get worse and worse; deranged performance art having replaced rationality and debate

 

House Of Games (1987) - works best the first time of course, but Manet's neurotic delight in his artifice remains clinically fascinating

 

Trouble The Water (2008) - even after Spike Lee's great Katrina work, there's enough there to disgust and depress you all over again...

 

Che (2008) - takes on a sad grandeur in the almost deathwish-tinged second half, as the limits of the revolutionary project become clear

 

Bright Star (2009) - remarkably moving; at its most beautiful when finding physical expressions for the ethereal web they create together

 

I Am Curious - Blue (1968) - every element is dated, from the politics to the pubic hair, but the earthy delight is still quite endearing..

 

The Informant! (2009) - rather under-nourished, unimportant application of Soderbergh's favorite "limits of control" theme...

 

North By Northwest (1959) - one of the most sublimely slippery movies ever made, supremely serious, and yet not at all...

 

Visage (2009) - sometimes quite mesmerizing, but most of the time, visual and thematic gibberish..Tsai's work is almost a chore to watch now

 

Inland Empire (2006) - you miss the easier pleasures of Lynch's earlier works, and yet at times this film seems to be redefining the world..

 

Pierrot le fou (1965) - watching prime Godard remains one of the most exhilarating journeys in cinema, and with the least amount of coasting

 

The White Ribbon (2009) - almost intimidatingly rigorous and subtle, allowing as many readings and implications as a coldly wrinkled palm

 

Mon Oncle (1958) - from the dogs running free, to mankind's declining spontaneity as it climbs the wage scale, seems richer every time

 

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) - it's a sorry state when a Herzog film is most interesting for speculating what David Lynch put in

 

Boarding Gate (2007) - beneath the decadent surface, a vibrant, sensitive chapter in Assayas' gradual construction of a theory of everything

 

Life During Wartime (2009) - "In the end China will take over and none of this will matter"...Solondz, none of your crap matters now either

 

Fin aout, debut septembre (1998) - one of Assayas' very best films; the delicacy of emotion and complexity of interaction is often thrilling

 

Honeymoons (2009) - very accomplished although devastatingly depressing...a whole lot of hell and just shreds of (probably misguided) hope

 

Death At A Funeral (2007) - might have been directed by an extra-terrestrial...just a few token gross-out laughs escape from the coffin..

 

Soul Kitchen (2009) - well, why shouldn't Akin take a break if he wants to...the Hollywood remake will barely need a rewrite...

 

Bonnie And Clyde (1967) - I see more now how it's Bonnie who touchingly embodies the 60's metaphor, traveling from transcendence to oblivion

 

White Material (2009) - a shimmering Denis masterpiece, uncannily capturing every fraught moment, the weight of history, their intertwining

 

Walk Don't Run (1966) - drawing relentlessly on conventions that used to work but now don't..makes sense Cary Grant bowed out after this

 

Enter The Void (2009) - easy to disdain, but haunting (at least!) for attempt to dramatize trauma, to simultaneously regress and transcend..

 

The Life Before Her Eyes (2007) - another example of painstaking craft applied to material that's not worth a damn (in this life anyway)..

 

Le refuge (2009) - has the typical Ozon allure and skill with actors, but doesn't feel very necessary or important; dubious ending too...

 

Jeanne Dielman (1975) - the 2001: A Space Odyssey of domesticity, equally as rich in mystery and strange drama as the programming slips...

 

Hadewijch (2009) - still has elements of what alienates people about Dumont, but feels less like a lecture, more like a genuine search...

 

Mr Smith Goes To Washington (1939) - one examines the movie for signs of hope of turning round our current mess, but we're just too far gone

 

Vengeance (2009) - a dour creation, with failed Melville wannabe streak - memorable use of compacted trash bundles, among other "touches"

 

Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974) - bring me even just 1 or 2 movies a year with such gritty mythic power (still 2nd level Sam tho)

 

District 9 (2009) - well, we screw up everything on earth, so why would alien arrivals fare any better...no CE3K-type wonderment here...

 

Targets (1968) - drawing an affectionate line under an expired horror aesthetic; if only Bogdanovich had remained this fresh and adept..

  

Tetro (2009) - not so thematically interesting except as an echo of earlier Coppola ground, but has an energetic, shimmering confidence

  

Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (2009) - any film with lines like "Commerce shuns a sentimental accountant" has to be cherishable!

 

L'intrus (2004) - utterly life-enhancing; perhaps the greatest film of the decade, although I might need an eternity to articulate why

  

Agora (2009) - impersonal and over-digitized, but all the contemporary resonance you want (Iraq? Putrid political cultures? Got it!)

  

The Rounders (1914) - very early, booze-sodden Chaplin is a static trifle, but startling for its full-on venomous portrayal of marriage...

  

Air Doll (2009) - often striking, but never transcends the feeling of being a movie you'd only make when you're out of good ideas..

  

Broken English (2007) - mostly conventional, but Posey nails her character, the dynamic with Poupaud is intriguing...and there's Paris!

  

Les herbes folles (2009) - in his late 80's Resnais still manages to suggest cinematic (and even behavioral) space not yet charted..

  

Big Eyes (1974) - difficult at this time/space remove to know how much his closing despair reflects a national existential fatigue or fear..

  

Swing Time (1936) - doesn't have the Minnelli/Donen-level moments, but it's astonishingly happy and sustained, and meticulously integrated

  

L’enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot (2009) - Clouzot's lost film would likely have been just a dated curio by now, but seen this way, it glows

 

Husbands (1970) - this biting dance with trauma is what awaits the Mad Men guys as the social contract fractures and darkens...

  

Cinema Museum (2008) - the sadness of the online era is we've lost the physical intricacy and splendor that once attached to film-watching

  

Backstory (2009) - documentary on rear projection vividly embodies how cinema not only survives but even thrives on its own deconstruction

 

Broken Embraces (2009) - highly entertaining, but Almodovar's inventiveness comes to feel like he's always turning away from something..

  

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) - take my once-decent concept and turn it into a romper room for old men, please!

  

The Last Days Of Disco (1998) - finely calibrated, stylized vision of disco's happy banality as never-to-be-regained social lubricant

  

Lorna's Silence (2008) - a more supercharged narrative than usual for the Dardennes, but bleeds truth about constraints of the new Europe

 

Jeanne La Pucelle: Les Prisons (1994) - moving second part sets out her downfall in a cultural/patriarchal context; overall - just brilliant

  

Jeanne La Pucelle: Les Batailles (1992) - Rivette superbly explores Joan of Arc as a social phenomenon, and a form of living theater..

  

Darling (1965) - feels like a hollow attempt to merge Antonioni (and a bit of Fellini) and the kitchen sink genre; minimal lasting interest

 

Le Testament D’Orphee (1959) - the closest modern cousins might be Matthew Barney's films, but they don't have Cocteau's playfulness

  

Love In The Afternoon (1957) - essentially incoherent but fascinating mixture of sentimentality and sleaze filtered through 50's codes..

  

Hannah Takes The Stairs (2007) - for all the naturalistic trappings, an idealized notion of young, brainy, accessibly pretty interactions

  

American Swing (2008) - story of New York swingers club is inherently diverting; not a very distinctive or expansive treatment of it though

  

Toronto Stories (2008) - imaginative second segment is easily the best - otherwise all appetizers, no kick - barely evokes the city I know..

  

Inglourious Basterds (2009) - Tarantino's gifts are formally dazzling at times; only immoral to me in the sense of any playing with history

  

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) - never loses its rambunctious pleasure, even if it's a bit like watching a freeze-dried "official" version...

  

Thirst (2009) - the vampire genre just keeps on giving; works both as grim character study and as super-charged creator-destroyer metaphor

 

Lakeview Terrace (2008) - LaBute's early raw provocation still vaguely beats on, beneath levels of generic thriller gloss..

 

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) - if only anything in this incredibly minor movie was as evocative and expansive as the title...

  

The Cove (2009) - increasingly, serious documentaries make you want to kill yourself; the only mildly cheery ones are on crappy marginalia..

 

F For Fake (1976) - becoming one of my favorite of all films - incredibly distinctive, provocative and (I increasingly think) self-revealing

  

It All Starts Today (1999) - good solid piece of muck-raking, but for posterity's purposes blown away by Cantet's later The Class

  

Mishima (1985) - Schrader over-thought and over-prettified himself here; should have channelled some of that delirious Cat People energy ..

  

Trafic (1972) - cinematically cruder than Tati's greatest work, although again shows his prescience, and unique approach to the punchline..

  

The Train (1965) - still exciting for the gritty physicality and the clever narrative - nowadays would be hyped up every which way...

  

Cria Cuervos (1976) - beautiful, masterfully constructed expression of intertwining memory and longing and childhood's complex perceptions..

 

In The Electric Mist (2009) - hardly smooth, but ultimately finds a distinctive way of conveying the pained legacy of the South's past...

  

Funny People (2009) - a big leap forward; a distant cousin to Scorsese's King Of Comedy, tho Apatow doesn't yet tap any broader implications

  

O Lucky Man! (1973) - more proof you never lose in the eyes of posterity by being imaginatively cynical about institutions and leaders..

  

Made in U.S.A. (1966) - made as the ratio of play and politics starts to shift - dazzling, but you miss some of the earlier, easier delight

 

Pineapple Express (2008) - perhaps the most persuasive claim for the Apatow factory to date; alchemy of vulnerability and carnage works!

  

Antonio Gaudi (1984) - you likely couldn't divine the Japanese perspective if you didn't know, but it makes perfect sense if you do..

  

What Just Happened (2008) - no doubt has some anthropological merit, but it's already the planet's most over-satirized milieu, so who cares

  

Nightwatching (2007) - interesting and accomplished in how form and content interact, but just doesn't seem too relevant to anything bigger.

 

Cassandra's Dream (2007) - an attempt to capture what worked pretty well in Match Point, but just seems marooned and flavourless here..

  

Silent Running (1972) - visionary in its way of course, although Dern sets a main tone of cantankerous individualism rather than idealism,,,

 

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1967) - the peak of Godard's rapturous engagement with complexity, decay and its strange surface beauty..

 

Wendy and Lucy (2008) - brilliant, tragic, ultra-relevant depiction of the precariousness of quiet self-sufficiency in an age of decline..

  

Good Neighbor Sam (1964) - flabby, un-penetrating but amiable take on familiar theme of contemporary man stifled by corporatism and suburbia

  

The Music Lovers (1970) - Russell was always one of the best at capturing hedonistic bedlam, which almost makes up for everything else..

  

La sentinelle (1992) - early Desplechin in a quasi-thriller mode - has some directions he later abandoned, others he pursued and perfected..

  

La femme infidele (1969) - the barren bourgeoisie life virtually invites adultery and murder; dated of course, but still pretty potent..

 

Vendredi soir (2002) - a wonderful evocation of a one night stand, documentary-like and yet finding new ways to express the magical rush..

 

Humpday (2009) - excellently captures how articulate, educated guys can talk themselves into just about anything, and then back out again..

   

The Pornographers (1966) - full of startling compositions of all kinds - visual, narrative, psychological - evokes immense (if clinical) awe

 

Hair (1979) - mostly a forced attempt to find cinema in the joyously theatrical, although the final sense of loss is quite well realized..

  

Bruno (2009) - seems to me like a peppy, low-brow performance art thing, often real funny, but about as significant as a tiara on a poodle..

 

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) - initially has the effective flowing Preminger-brand ambiguity; but maybe genre mechanics take over too much..

 

Out Of The Blue (1980) - goofy but highly productive, fusing an often delirious foreground and a couldn't-be-flatter Canadian background..

 

Filth And Wisdom (2008) - well, if you didn't know Madonna made it, you'd never guess - deserves credit for pace and variety at least..

  

Johnny Got His Gun (1971) - unusual exercise in subjective cinema; you feel Trumbo wanting to get wilder, more perverse: wouldn't have hurt!

  

Food Inc. (2008) - in a more focused world, this would prompt real anger and action - in the decrepit one we occupy, likely nothing...

  

Of Time And The City (2008) - eloquent but rather too jaundiced; doesn't give any sense of how Liverpool spawned such humour and music..

  

Ramona (1910) - an entire novel in 20 minutes - cinematic narrative still working out its most basic moves; fascinating as history lesson..

  

Early Spring (1956) - Ozu bleakly examining post-war Japan's failed promises - a broader and sadder canvas than most of his later works..

  

New York, New York (1977) - endlessly intriguing, brilliantly abstracted take on dawn of modern popular/performance culture and its cost...

  

One-Eyed Jacks (1961) - Brando's really a fluid director - movie often seems ready to bust through convention more than it ultimately does..

  

Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989) - Wenders' modish pronouncements about this and that just seem arbitrary, essentially meaningless...

  

Late Spring (1949) - more tragic with every viewing - the sense of a society demanding constant sacrifice of even modest personal desire..

  

Lilith (1964) - basic idea of carers being as troubled as the patients is familiar, but this really feels traumatized to its chilly bones..

  

Tokyo-Ga (1985) - idea of Ozu tribute is touching, but vague approach suggests Wenders' appreciation of Ozu is superficial at best...

  

Late Autumn (1960) - many echoes of previous Ozu of course, but also some sublime reinvention and surprise, and even successful defiance!

  

Kwaidan (1964) - maybe an investigation of how the creepy spirit world is also the best ventilation for a crushingly orderly society..

 

Une femme mariee (1964) - meticulous dissection of femininity as consumer culture takes off, swamping historical/psychological readiness...

  

The Hurt Locker (2008) - as solid as hell, but sure sounds like a lot of critics were mainly glad it wasn't Transformers 2 all over again..

  

La vie des morts (1991) - right from the start, Desplechin was already a master of physical, emotional and existential geography..

  

I Could Never Be Your Woman (2006) - wants to say something re distorted self-image of female baby boomers, but has no clear idea what..

  

The Girlfriend Experience (2009) - in common with his previous Che, this revolution cannot be maintained - a sadder future surely awaits..

 

Venus In Furs (1969) - enjoyable campy creation, not aesthetically that interesting despite the overflow of stylistic and thematic ideas..

 

Crazed Fruit (1956) - essentially about post-war Japan losing its way in the shadow of the West - simplistic but coldly fascinating..

 

Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008) - biggest French hit of all time; if we (or even they) knew why, it would help a lot at the G8 summit..

  

A Married Couple (1969) - almost moving now in showing a certain kind of masculinity fading into oblivion (for the greater good of course)..

  

Reprise (2006) - the specifics are less interesting than the overall design and artifice; you get little real sense of the literary life..

  

The Class (2008) - fascinating as performance art; provocative about what makes for meaningful education in a multi-cultural world...

  

Cruel Story Of Youth (1960) - cruel indeed, suffused with pain, still a potent metaphor for Japan's underlying stasis and insularity..

 

There Was A Father (1942) - Ozu's great tragic theme - sense of duty and propriety limiting even simple happiness (personal and societal)..

 

The Peach Girl (1931) - still delicately moving for all its stiff primitivism, but one regrets so little sense of space or the masses..

  

Don't Touch The White Woman (1974) - unique, splatter-arty way of evoking a history of self-absorbed, deranged American imperialism..

  

Piccadilly (1929) - most striking for scintillating Anna May Wong - good reference point for studying evolving treatment of race and culture

  

Public Enemies (2009) - actually works as quasi-abstract meditation on image-making in age of corporatization and depersonalization...

  

Small Change (1976) - Truffaut's infectious delight in the variety of childhood experiences, nicely placed here in the surrounding community

  

Tokyo Sonata (2008) - excellent, fluid parable of dehumanizing, weirding effect of modern economy, and urgent need to go back to basics...

 

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow (1963) - first sequence is best; all very easy and fluid with Loren always a dazzler - good 2nd level stuff...

  

Whatever Works (2009) - title meant to connote openness to possibilities; movie feels more like a series of random, drunken lurches..

  

Kill, Baby Kill (1966) - setting and state of mind fuse almost perfectly – story bleeds out in a collision of encounters and insinuations..

  

Recount (2008) - entertaining and cleanly (if blandly) told, but where's the anger - is all of this merely an amiable comedy of errors..?

 

Blame It On Rio (1984) - astonishing lumbering time capsule, has its transgressive elements, but general ambiance of a retirement home...

  

Ma nuit chez Maud (1969) - maybe the best movie argument for an examined life (or at least for calibrating the degree of unexamination!)..

  

Esther Kahn (2000) - strange, evasive, fascinating distant cousin to Cassavetes' Opening Night, about murderous cost of great acting...

  

Three Days of the Condor (1975) - has the Pollack trick of feeling meaningfully understated, without putting itself on any kind of line..

  

Cathy Come Home (1966) - brilliantly shows how quickly upward mobility turns; still as relevant as hell, since we never learn a damn thing..

 

Barocco (1976) - Techine later hit on an endlessly renewable template for easy-to-take complexity - this movie came before that though..

  

Deconstructing Harry (1997) - must have taken work to be so rancid and self-loathing, though often feels he edited the thing on imovie..

  

Boeing Boeing (1965) - the movie's sexism would be metaphysically challenging if it wasn't so bland and mechanical about everything..

 

Revolutionary Road (2008) - do they really carry unfulfilled potential, or are they the first seduced wave of now-chronic self-inflation?

  

The Brothers Bloom (2008) - the women bring infectious joy and style ; the men mostly bring the usual caper movie stuff; call it a draw..

  

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) - primarily a technical exercise; never feels Allen has real affinity for the unleashed spirits stuff.

 

Le ballon rouge (1956) - always strikes me how the adult world integrates the balloon while the boys, symbol of the future, destroy it...

  

Edge Of The City (1957) - a second-tier On The Waterfront; balanced depiction of the black family is still fresh; other elements less so..

  

Getting Straight (1970) - still a useful time capsule if only for the Gould character's misogyny, homophobia, insecurity and self-loathing..

  

When a Woman Ascends The Stairs (1960) - women always bear the worst of it, although the men with their lies and evasions are barely freer..

 

Beyond The Rocks (1922) - huge ambition, subtle and nutty at different times, like early Hollywood ironing out the kinks in the formula...

 

Nixon (2008) - strange this quirky anecdote got so much attention - historical/thematic payoff is minimal, though it goes down easy..

  

A Christmas Story (2008) - Desplechin is a genius - basic form here is familiar, but complexity of execution is stunning and fearless..

  

Le Petit Soldat (1961) - ambitious early Godard, pained window into troubled national soul, but more constricted than great work to come...

 

L'Appat (1995) - compelling viewing in what's-the-world-coming-to vein, but you feel Tavernier imitates greatness more than exhibiting it..

  

Cadillac Records (2008) - you kind of miss the days when a little friendly corruption might be the price of true social/cultural progress...

  

Gomorrah (2008) - great, sociologically persuasive evocation of a hopeless network...you watch with despair, hoping we avoid the same fate..

  

Departures (2008) - a weepy dawdle, but the time spent on dead bodies does kind of get to you, if just through identification mechanics...

  

Up (2009) - great to watch, but more a technological achievement than an aesthetic one, or at least blurs the difference, like the iphone...

  

Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon (2007) - Rohmer's lifelong project at its most elemental and sublime, yet still defining new territory..

  

The Sailor From Gibraltar (1967) - so preoccupied with "existential" poses and metaphors, it almost completely breaks up and drifts away..

  

Duplicity (2009) - sometimes so immaculate it seems to skirt profundity, although needed to hit the corporate amorality indictment harder...

  

Nobody's Fool (1994) - contrived take on small-town virtues, although maybe a partial blueprint for a better-proportioned future, I dunno...

 

Pontypool (2008) - a witty riff on the cracks in the Canadian melting pot; maybe it's our failed ideals that spawn the killer plague...

 

Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) - focusing on failings and regrets, maybe echoing Wilder’s own ideal artistic climate passing by..

  

One Week (2008) - well, good to know he doesn't blame his sappy music-type problems and unfulfilled ambitions on his glorious homeland...

  

Sin nombre (2009) - very kinetic, but you suspect it reflects an outsider’s quasi-romantic impositions on a sadder and duller reality...

 

Hunger (2008) - sometimes recalls one of Kubrick’s filmic labyrinths, without ever reducing the potency of the central human experience..

 

The Palm Beach Story (1942) - unimaginable now a movie could be so deft and funny while also so giddily challenging in its sexual politics..

 

Bye Bye Monkey (1978) - extremely distinct take on decay - worth it if just for images of dead King Kong against the twin towers (yep!)...

  

Away We Go (2009) - basically about life momentum either making you grotesque or else defined by inner sadness; minor pay-off at best...

 

Shall We Kiss (2007) - as sterile and intuition-free as this kind of French relationship stuff ever gets, possibly directed by a computer...

  

Sugar (2008) - interesting angles on how major-league sports machine distorts economies and expectations (evokes debates re foreign aid...)

 

Fingers (1978) - highly subjective, somehow coherent, goofily satisfying portrait of dysfunction, in a world of confusing signs and traces..

  

1941 (1979) - Everything gets away from Spielberg here; like watching a robot deliver one-liners, you get the concepts, but miss the heart..

  

Sunshine Cleaning (2008) - minor tribute to heartland entrepreneurism, but with integrity; economic crisis gives it extra resonance...

 

PS re The Legend Of Lylah Clare - that's basically meant to be positive...

  

The Legend Of Lylah Clare (1968) - a touch of Hitchcock, a bit of Fellini, a taste of Wilder, and a whole lot of pretentious posturing crap!

 

Two Lovers (2008) - another example of finding greater profundity in the small machinations of conventional lives than in saving the world.

  

My Sex Life...(1996) - my favourite film of the last 20 years, a profound, varied, tumbling essay on self-examination and reinvention...

 

State of Play (2009) - already seemed outdated when it came out; best contemporary paranoia stuff still belongs to 1970's Alan Pakula...

  

La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928) - stark, stunning choreography of patriarchal vested interests spooked to the core by female activism...

  

Goodbye Solo (2008) - unconvincing central premise, but with rich, complex, moving insights into America's bumpy ongoing diversity ride...

  

Tokyo! (2008) - Carax's sequence is just loopy, but the other two nicely capture the city's complex negotiation between dreams and despair..

  

Tulpan (2008) - it's remote Kazakhstan, but might as well be the moon - feels anthropologically valuable, even when you suspect manipulation

  

Tyson (2008) - is he ultimately more than an outlandish mega-version of the prodigy that naively burns itself out? Damned if I know

  

Wise Blood (1979) - built from "damn the red states" building blocks, set on fire and molded into strange, sadistic, scary eloquence..

  

The Harder They Come (1972) - hard to separate anthropology from myth now..still mostly productive viewing, but a Sweetback extra lite...

 

Star Trek (2009) - finally goes where every bright progressive idea has eventually gone before - to another airless, graceless "franchise"..

  

Adoration (2008) - another treacly Egoyan puzzle movie, pleased as hell with itself, but wheezing under layers of stale "commentary"

 

Is Anybody There? (2008)...existential boundary-busting in Thatcherite Britain, from cradle to grave and beyond; less drab than it looks

 

Every Little Step (2008)...good fun, reminds you infrastructure of Broadway theatre often just as heavy and self-deluding as Hollywood..

  

Babes in Toyland (1934)...figure out how physical/psychological laws apply in this creepy thing..good future territory for (wooden?) shrinks

  

The Limits of Control (2009)..all we love and aspire to (aesthetic appreciation, uncomplicated eroticism) rises against Bush-era poison..

  

Zabriskie Point (1970)..now a beautiful tragic map of dreams/revolutions not seized, in a California not yet become the world's biggest lie

  

California Suite (1978)...I almost miss when such prosperous soft-concept bantering and low-energy plotting was fit for the big screen...