Saw:
Paisa - Nice, human war movie with good a philosophy. However, I cannot help but feel it would've benefitted quite a bit from synchronous sound--as genuine as a lot of the performances were, the sound was not; didn't let that detract from the experience, just an observation.
McCabe and Mrs. Miller - Looked great and I love that first Leonard Cohen album. Beatty was great, Julie Christie was great. And it has perhaps the most cold-blooded scene I've seen in a long time (yeah, despite the constant editorial foreshadowing, I couldn't move for a second--slow zoom, near silence).
La Jetee - Seemed like kind of a gimmicky idea to me, but a) the special effects are spectacular (on par with a late '90s Hollywood moving picture), and b) it was really haunting. I naturally knew the story prior to seeing it, but I was easily more impressed by this short than I was by 12 Monkeys (and I like Gilliam). A different type of film; the way they should all be.
Three Colours: White - The one I hadn't seen. My pattern was kind of screwy for this one (unlike The Decalogue, which I watched in order over about a week). I rented
Blue about four years ago 'cause I had
White &
Red taped off of T.V., missing Blue. I watched the first--liked it a great deal--and left that tape alone for about two and a half years. Then I saw a screening of Red at the ol' art-house (the only one shown), and watched it on the tape a couple times after that. Then I finally saw White (same tape copy--waiting for the DVDs). I didn't mind the method at all--Kieslowski movies are in short supply, and they're always philosophy-affecting events (regardless of my frame-of-mind while sitting down to them), so I didn't want to blow my load all at once, so to speak. Anyhow, I loved it--it's extraordinary that one man could make a trilogy back-to-back-to-back of films so different, yet equally excellent.
All That Heaven Allows - Saw it after
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and
Far From Heaven (in that order). Definitely a classic--though it could be considered as such based solely on what it has spawned--but I'm a little torn. I mean, I love T.V. so much--how could he make it so contemptible?
(which brings me to my favourite of those I've seen off the list recently--)
Le Mepris - As an aspiring filmmaker (I know--you never heard that one before, did ya?) my own bitterness toward the business of movies is growing the closer I get--capped by a badly-ending brush with spiked-club subtlety and student filmmaking stereotypes on a collaborative project. But I love
Contempt not only in a "oh, how true, man" way (I never thought I really would with a Godard picture), but I had no idea how romantic an artist Godard was. Sure he'd romanticized women before in
Breathless and
Pierrot le Fou, but they seemed an integral part of the character the character Belmondo was playing was playing. Here, though, it was just painful. As opposed to Michel's and Ferdinand's 'I need a girl on my arm to go with my gun'; Paul was desperate for Camille's love and reassurance, because the gun thing
just wasn't working, dammit. There's nothing like being adored in a time of self-doubt.
Of course I was--for some reason--ignoring his post-'80 pictures (particularly
Prenom: Carmen and
Eloge de L'Amour).
Oh yeah, and the contempt--there's plenty of that, too.
Great DVD, too. 'The Dinosaur and the Baby' was great--two people showering each other with praise like any DVD extra, but this time it was deserved.
Edit: I do believe that puts me up to 151 now seen from this list. However, I've got plenty more coming, as I am now done school for a while.