Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - 2010 - No Rating

Actors: Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas

Director: Apitchatpong Weerasethakul

I give Uncle Boonmee... no rating because it's such an unusual film. The 'story' is about the eponymous Uncle Boonmee who has a kidney ailment and is dying. Yet there are long interludes about his dead wife and a strange incident with his son. The meaning of some events in the film appears inscrutable, and it did sometimes struggle to hold my attention. Still, some of the shots in this movie are incredible. I think I say this too often, but while I love that there are films like Uncle Boonmee... - non-linear, inscrutable, prone to raise questions without answering them, I don't know how much I enjoy them. I also have to imagine that this film is far, far better on the big screen.

Shame - 2011 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan

Director: Steve McQueen

Drug and alcohol abusers usually have a social network of sorts - enablers, bartenders, co-addicts - who can at least pass as friends. It's part of why addiction recovery is so difficult; one not only has to give up the substance, but probably distance one's self from all of one's old haunts and enablers. Shame takes a look at sex addiction, something that's often looked at as a joke, but is perhaps more alienating than run-of-the-mill substance abuse.

The film has many long takes, some of which work beautifully to capture tension, and others which seem like they should've been left on the editing room floor. One issue with addiction movies is that the addict turns himself and his world into a series of objects - it's hard to care deeply about willfully self-destructive people.

The Driver - 1978 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern

Director: Walter Hill

I shouldn't write anything about The Driver except a single sentence, because that's pretty much all the speaking Ryan O'Neal does in the film. If you like car chases in downtown Los Angeles and Ryan O'Neal being a badass, this is the movie for you. I happen to like these things. Apparently the film was heavily influenced by Le Samourai, which is something that a person who has a film blog should notice. Maybe I was just too caught up in the car chases, which rival The French Connection and Ronin.

The Outlaw Josey Wales - 1976 - 3 Stars

Actors: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke

Director: Clint Eastwood

That's it, I'm not watching another Clint Eastwood movie for a long time. I enjoyed The Outlaw Josey Wales as a piece of fluff, which is to say, probably not the way that it should be enjoyed. Eastwood movies' characterizations are always awful - if we don't know exactly what a character is like within their first two lines, Eastwood thinks he's done a bad job. Now while these characters sometimes change, most of them don't.

I did like Eastwood's use of light and dark in this film, though - at the very least, it's much better than The Eiger Sanction.

Crumb - 1994 - No Rating

Subject: Artist R. Crumb and his strange life

Director: Terry Zwigoff

How perfect is it that I watched Crumb after watching American Graffiti? Amazingly perfect. R. Crumb was 19 years old in 1962, and his experience of America was quite different from the experiences depicted by George Lucas.

As an artist, Crumb struggles with the fact that not everyone is an artist. What may be more fascinating than Crumb are his two brothers, both of whom are basically non-functional and destitute - they're an even darker side to Crumb's already dark side. One gets the sense of just how lonely the true artist can be when he's left with only his art and his urges.

American Graffiti - 1973 - 4 Stars

Actors: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard

Director: George Lucas

Aren't we due for another one of these movies? American Graffiti came out in 1973 and was about kids in 1962. Dazed and Confused came out in 1993 and was set in 1976. Soon enough, there should be a movie about the last days of high school set between the years between 1995 and 2003.

American Graffiti and its blatant nostalgia masks the fact that the film's characters themselves are trying vainly to hold on to something even as it is falling away. Like Dazed and Confused, there isn't really a plot - things happen, sure, but it's all very loose; the conflicts aren't defined right away, they tend to emerge organically out of the characters' mere existence and interaction with one another.

As a sidenote, the characters seem to have contempt for the town they're thinking about leaving, but everything seems to be open 24 hours a day and there seems to be stuff to do at all hours of the night - I don't see the problem with it.

Everyone Else - 2009 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger

Director: Maren Ade

Everyone Else is the sort of film that it looks like it's easy to make but is in fact very difficult to do correctly. It's largely about a troubled relationship between two people in their late 20s or early 30s - but there aren't many grand gestures or long overtures. It's simply clear that neither person has much of an idea of what's going on in the other's head, and that can be both exhilarating and tormenting. And I think it's very difficult to make this kind of film without making it either overly boring or overly theatrical.

There's shades of Blue Valentine and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in here, but it's really not that kind of film. I don't know exactly what to make of it - it feels like a Woody Allen film with all of Woody Allen's pithy observations removed.