Too Late For Tears (Killer Bait) - 1949 - 3 Stars

Actors:  Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea
Director:  Byron Haskin

There's something exhilarating about watching obscure older films - everyone involved in the making is either dead or at least eighty years old.  It's entirely possible that they forgot working on the film.  The movie isn't exactly anything special either, but someone's watching it more than sixty years later.  And that someone is me.  I feel like I'm making someone's day by watching this.

The film is a capably plotted noir - although the story doesn't quite hold up, all the pieces are there for an entertaining 90 minutes.  The film's direction and print leaves something to be desired - the film clearly shot night-for-night.  Most of the action is terribly dimly lit.  But hey, it's a B-picture, not everything about it can be perfect.

Floored - 2009 - No Rating

Subject:  Futures traders in Chicago and the death of the 'open outcry' market
Director:  James Allen Smith

We live in radically changing times - just go outside your virtua-house this evening and look upon the beautiful green sunset - and the world is becoming a more impersonal place.  80s movie buffs will recall Ferris Bueller and friends attending the options market on his eponymous Day Off - thanks to the computer, the frenzy of men shouting buy and sell at one another has largely gone away.  So too has the money stream with which shrewd traders would line their pockets.

Floored provides a solid portrait of men who don't realize when the world is changing around them - one day they're essential, the next day they're replaced.  How much responsibility do they place on themselves for being obsolete, and how much belongs to the world?

The Third Generation - 1979 - 3 Stars

Actors:  Hanna Schygulla, Udo Kier
Director:  Rainer Werner Fassbinder

This is a film where one is definitely better served knowing what it's about before going in.  I, on the other hand, did not know.  Concerning a group of West German revolutionaries, unclear what they're fighting against, my perception of the film was totally changed when I read it described as a 'black comedy' on Wikipedia.  'Ohhh, I get it!', I said.  Satire doesn't always come across in foreign languages, especially satirizing an attitude that I could see the filmmaker agreeing with (and maybe he does).  Perhaps I should've picked up on the fact that the film is in six parts and each part begins with an epigram supposedly lifted from a bathroom stall.

The film is visually interesting - Fassbinder loves his camera movements - and it's also full of ideas, name-dropping philosophers galore, but the characters are mere playthings and the plot is a shambles.  This film was likely revolutionary in 1980, but the central idea of the film is so central to the way we now live that we take it for granted.

Martha Marcy May Marlene - 2011 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes
Director:  T. Sean Durkin

I have a feeling that Martha Marcy May Marlene is either a better or worse film than I think right now.  Covering what happens to a woman of indeterminate age (early 20s?  mid 20s?) after she runs away from home and when she returns, the film wrestles with the notion of faulty memories.  If we can't accurately remember what's happened to us in our lives, how can we move forward?  When we're not sure of what we are or were, how can we put ourselves where we want to be?

Where the film runs awry, it's because it's putting too much responsibility on the viewer to construct the story.  Still, it's far from dogmatic, and that's a relief given the impulses of most writers/filmmakers.

Cul-De-Sac - 1966 - 3 Stars

Actors:  Donald Pleasance, Francoise Dorleac
Director:  Roman Polanski

For the first fifteen minutes of Cul-De-Sac, I thought I was watching a great 'small' film.  These I consider films with low stakes and low budgets that might have other flaws, but the direction/cinematography/acting is all excellent and the movie is fun.  However, it transitions into something else entirely - it's more of an absurdist farce.  Once the plot gets set up, the film becomes a shaggy-dog story with layers of absurdity piled on more and more.  I guess this is one of those times where it would've helped me to know what the hell this movie was about before going in, as it's more of a comedy than anything, but I didn't find it particularly funny.

Meek's Cutoff - 2011 - 4½ Stars

Actors:  Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood
Director:  Kelly Reichardt

Meek's Cutoff is clearly a film dreamed up by a postmodern author - a film about pioneer life that's so 'lifelike' that it's ostensibly dull and plotless.  In Thomas Pynchon's world, this film would be unimaginably popular for presenting a world that's totally unlike our own.  However, while this movie is not a smashing success at the box office, it is successful at just about everything it sets out to do.  It manages to evoke pioneer life (or at least, how I might imagine pioneer life) without being tedious or overexplanatory.  I might just be inured to it - after sitting through The Man From London, this movie is a breeze.

A minor thing that bothered me is the need to, in the words of sports columnist Joe Posnanski, volumate.  Volumating is the act of adjusting the volume up or down for a tv show or movie (usually a movie) because the volume level is so inconsistent.  This film was one of the worst for it - I guess it just tells me that I have to see more films in the theater, where they're meant to be seen.