#76 Sound of My Voice (2011)

By Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling.

#57 Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Directed by Billy Wilder.

How lucky to get to see not one, but two absolutely classic movies in the span of 4 days! I do not have any desire to critique this movie in comparison to 8½ or perform an analysis of the two movies side-by-side or anything of the nature. In fact, these two movies seem to me to be so far apart from each other despite the iconic status that they both have deservedly received.

Sunset Boulevard is a great film for film-lovers. We saw it during the opening weekend of SIFF's "Noir City" mini-festival of restored and recovered Film Noir movies. This was easily the highlight. A digital restoration that was amazingly clear and flawless. It really made me realize that so many of the "classic oldies" seem not nearly as good as they could be because in many cases bad quality reproductions (bad sound is a huge detriment to old films or poor image quality, for example). I feel that many these films would have so much more appreciation if they could always be shown in the quality that they deserve to be shown in. 

This is a classic tale about a queen of the big screen many years past her heyday desperately awaiting her chance to become big and famous again. Norma Desmond was an icon in the silent motion picture era, but the film business has radically changed in the past 20 years. Or as she puts it in response to a comment that she used to be big, "I am big! It's the pictures that got small." 

Everything put all together about this film make it one of the all-time greats. I am happy that I got the opportunity to see it on the big screen. It is definitely one of my top ten of all time!

#55 Arcadia (2012)

By Olivia Silver.

The debut feature-length film of UCLA Film School graduate Olivia Silver starring John Hawkes. Congratulations to this young filmmaker for turning out a better than average coming-of-age story in her first feature-length film. Ryan Simpkins plays twelve year-old Greta who along with her brother and sister is being uprooted by their dad (Hawkes) in order to move the family across the country to California. Greta's disillusionment with her father and the fact that they are moving steadily grows as their journey progresses, however the fact that she is unable to find out any answers about the status of her mom (who is supposedly going to join them in California) makes her situation appear more and more desperate. There are some very nicely developed themes in this film. Greta's evolving relationship with her parents, and in particular her dad, is the main issue at hand, however the deeper story really revolves around Greta's personal growth and maturation as she struggles to find her identity as a pre-adolescent. Interwoven into the story, Silver has created some wonderful scenes of sibling bonding, which for me formed some of the best storylines that this movie contains. Greta and her younger brother Nat (played by Ryan Simpkins's real-life brother, Ty) possess a tight bond, the kind that seems most often to exist when there is a strong lack of parental involvement or emotional connection as is the case with this family, albeit primarily because of circumstances. I enjoyed this movie and also enjoyed meeting and speaking with the filmmaker following its screening at the Northwest Film Forum. Perhaps as a consolation for only receiving 3 stars from me, Silver should at least be proud that her movie appears in almost365films sandwiched between two movies that could easily be considered among the top ten of all time (8½ and Sunset Boulevard). So she's in good company!

#45 Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Written by Mark Boal.

SPOILER ALERT!!! We get Osama. (Or "UBL" as they like to refer to him in the movie.) I know I for one was sitting on the edge of my chair wondering. But yes, we do get him.

This movie was intense and forced you to pay attention almost to an extent that was tiring. However, it wasn't as smart of a movie as I had hoped. I very much dislike when "intelligence"-themed movies try to seem like they are smart by primarily making all the interactions slightly confusing. This movie was filled with a lot of jargon and incomplete conversations. I don't know if that sort of storyline makes other viewers think that they are using their brain a lot to follow the movie. For me, I really enjoy an "intelligence" movie when there is some actual intelligence involved in making the connections to either figure out whodunnit or find the bad guys. You know, where there's an actual point in the movie like a revelation, like, "wow, that took some smart thinking to figure that one out." Or, I don't know, at least used some sort of cool technology to outsmart the bad guys. There wasn't any moment like that in this movie. In fact, in many scenes I came away thinking how stupid the CIA was and how in reality they wouldn't have fucked it up like that at all. Namely, the upper al-Queda member who has been turned by Jessica, a CIA agent and best friend of Maya the main character, who the guards hesitatingly let through the checkpoints into the CIA black site simply because Jessica tells them to because now he's on their side. I think you can predict fairly well what happens at the end of this scene. Talk about a tense moment. Except for the fact that you could foresee it happening long before it does, and there are about a million "they would never have done that" moments involved. Anyway, as I was touching on before, there isn't really a very good connect-the-dots storyline of how they eventually get to UBL. They kinda just decide to try to find someone that no one wants to talk about regardless of how much they torture them and because he's acting kinda funny, like doing everything possible to not be tracked (a sure sign he's an important bad guy), and then the first moment they do find him, he just leads them right up to the compound by..... driving to it.

A lot of reviewers have commented about the use of torture in this movie and the movie-makers' stance on whether it was allowable or some say made even to look justifiable because it lead to finding Osama. I didn't much care for that aspect of the movie. Torture was bad. Osama was bad. I don't feel really strongly one way or the other about the fact that we got him. I'm really not a big "Yeah us!" proponent, so I didn't do any summersaults or anything when I heard that they killed him. I believe much more strongly that the anti-American sentiment throughout much of the rest of the world doesn't stem from terrorists and their inherent evilness as much as from our own foreign policy and the fact that corporate profits far and above anything else dictate national policy when it comes to oil-producing regions and the impoverished people that live there. But, the best review I came across of this movie was from an old classic movie reviewer, Roger Ebert (and he really went against the grain of what most other reviewers have been saying):

"The film's opening scenes are not great filmmaking. They're heavy on jargon and impenetrable calculation, murky and heavy on theory." He went on, "My guess is that much of the fascination with this film is inspired by the unveiling of facts, unclearly seen. There isn't a whole lot of plot – basically, just that Maya thinks she is right, and she is."

He gives it three stars out of four. And I give it 4 stars out of five.

#25 Amour (2012)

#13 Winter's Bone (2010)

By Debra Granik.

I decided to watch this one after we had made plans to see Silver Linings, since I hadn't ever seen Jennifer Lawrence in anything, and since she appears to be the current talk-of-the-town (or "the most talented young actress in America" according to Rolling Stone), I wanted to do a bit more investigation.

This movie is much better than Silver Linings, and the actress is much better in this one, even though according to some, Silver Linings is a "career-defining performance." This movie (Winter's Bone) kind of does give her all the prerequisites to get a best actress nomination. She plays the teenage poverty-stricken girl with the crazy mom, meth-cooking dad, taking care of her younger brother and sister by hunting squirrels, bringing them up right or at least as best she can, being too proud to beg, but is forced to track her missing dad in the underworld of hillbilly meth-cookers so she can save their house since he put it up for bond. You know what that takes? That takes courage. And she's got it. Oh, and then she unfairly gets her ass kicked so she gets the opportunity to be all bloody and then still look like a bad-ass with a swollen up face while still being beautiful in her grittiness. Honestly, I don't know how she didn't get the oscar. (I guess Portman was just more rawer.) Anyway, I could go on and on, but the movie is good. My ranting is more to complain about the Academy Awards than about this movie. I liked this movie a lot. I give it 4 stars. And Jennifer Lawrence was good. You should watch it.

#12 Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Directed by David O. Russell.

When some friends suggested we make an effort to see all the oscar-nominated films for this year's oscars, I thought it was an interesting idea and kind of opportune since I'm doing this almost365films thing (although I just realized it means I have to see Life of Pi). Since my parents were in town and we all wanted to go to a movie, we chose one that would be appealing to all the members of the family and went to the theater to see Silver Linings Playbook.

I didn't hate it.

I kind of enjoyed it at times. So I guess its gimmick is that it's not your typical rom-com because it also deals with deeper issues like mental health, recovery, etc. What it's gimmick really seemed to be was everyone yelling at each other a lot. My wife (who is not American) was fairly confused by this movie. The recurring adjective she kept using for it was "bizarre." I guess that we Americans understand and even enjoy people yelling at each other all the time. Especially if it's about football, bets or some competition of some sort. Or as a way of flirting. I guess America is addicted to dance competitions also, so that got worked into it. Charming. When we spoke about it with the friends with whom we are going to do this "see all the oscar-nominated films" project, we brought up that since it was nominated for best picture we were thinking it might have been something other than a typical romantic American, happy-ending, the team wins, our savings didn't get lost in the bet by a tenth of a point, the guy chases after the girl to tell her he loves her climactic-type movie. But as Bob put it, "Man, what the hell were you expecting when you have Robert De Niro acting like an idiot and the guy from the Hangover part 3?"

#9 Ginger & Rosa (2012)

By Sally Potter.

Well, there was bound to be a bad one in this expedition of mine. This was clearly the first bad one, and boy, was it bad. Man, I don't know how movie reviewers do it and find something interesting to write about movies that suck. I'm glad that I don't have the problem of anybody reading what I write. But this movie was a real (I don't know what to call it–something really bad).

Takes place in England in the early sixties. A bunch of American actors playing Brits. The main character, Ginger, played by child star Elle Fanning, is a precocious teenage poet/anti-nuclear bomb activist with a dreamy dad who cries when he listens to Shubert. I won't go any further. The story of Rosa is just as bad, trust me.

Probably meant to invoke strong emotion in the viewer, however the only emotion that it stirred in me was, "Man, what a bummer for having wasted the past hour and a half".

#7 - Hannah Arendt (2012)

By Margarethe von Trotta. Tour de force performance by lead actress Barbara Sukowa.

Incredible work!

A must.

We chose to see this one because it will be the opening night film in SIFF's Women in Cinema mini-festival. And indeed, Hannah Arendt is an incredible woman. 

Labeled a "self-hating Jew" by her contemporary "intellectuals", Ms. Arendt apparently initiated the necessary and wonderfully difficult debate over the Holocaust and the roots of the evil that caused it. The meat of the movie starts when Hannah, a well-respected German-Jewish emigrant philosopher, concentration-camp survivor, and author of "The Origins of Totalitarianism", is asked to report for the New Yorker on the trial of recently arrested Nazi chief Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Her highly controversial report correctly identifies the crime as too huge for any individual to be held responsible and Eichmann as simply too miniscule a cog in the totalitarian machine–a participant in the "final solution" without individuality in the least–even to the point of not being able to think. He, in fact, only acted according to the oath he had taken to always obey the fuhrer, and never acted of his own volition or even to think his own individual thoughts. He never killed anyone. All he did was load the victims onto the trains. What happened to them after that wasn't his responsibility, and therefore none of his concern. He was just a correctly functioning lever in a well-oiled machine.

The main contention her Israeli and American colleagues and friends had with her report stemmed from her delving deeper in her attempt at understanding the complexity of the phenomenon and her failing to admit the complete inculpability of the Jewish leaders. They too had fallen into a system in which their individuality had been taken from them. The victims, as the perpetrators, were unable to veer out of the confines of the machine of the totalitarian system. There was no freedom of choice, freedom to act, or freedom of thought. They only did what they were told. This system wasn't only in Germany. It pervaded all of Europe. Her detractors never forgave her for this betrayal. However, to her, these issues had to be brought up and examined. We all know what people who fail to understand history are destined for. Very much the intellectual, she adequately defended herself by explaining her position on Eichmann, "trying to understand him is not the same as forgiving him." If only more historians were like her...

Truly gut-wrenching, both sides of this argument are so terribly painful. As her close friend and strongest admirer admonishes her at the end with tears in his eyes, "you act like one of the superior Germans lecturing us inferior Jews! You forget that if you hadn't escaped the camp, they would have killed you too!"