The Lady Eve

Saw The Lady Eve. I think I hate screwball comedies. They always work everything out when I wish they wouldn't. I always want the lighthearted disaster turning into an actual disaster. To hell with their little one-liners and arched eyebrows.

Help Me Eros

Saw Help Me Eros. A chilly and inaccessible film about the redemptive and destructive powers of sex. Full of inexplicable sequences (the ending in particular) and weird sex acts. The bits linking food to sex I found a bit too carnal though they were interesting. A trip of a film, in both a good and bad sense.

My Dinner With Andre

Saw My Dinner With Andre (Thanks, Steven Gilbeau! I've actually Seen Coffee and Cigarettes and also Waking Life, but thanks anyway, Laura) It was a dense film. It reminded me of when I was back in the theater what with the talk of energies and performance and slightly hysterical phrases. The film is very spare in its staging with only a few slow zooms to keep your eyes busy. It worked for me on some level, I feel because I keep wanting to rebut and respond to the characters which of course means they've made some kind of emotional impact on me. I would like to hear the film-maker's take on the modern internet-fueled panopticon we live in. As a CS graduate student I'm sure it would annoy me, but it would be interesting.

Talk To Her

Saw Talk To Her. It was very interesting but, like most Almodovar's work, I could almost hear the whoosh it made as it sailed over my head. An interesting humanization of a man who falls in love with a woman in a coma. This one-sided love was done to much more comic effect in Lars And The Real Girl. Some excellently integrated dance sequences and a Wes Anderson-esque diorama quality to some shots.

Seven

Saw Seven. It was lurid and fun. I like films where you get to go into the homes of cartoon-evil-crazy people. It really gives the set/props people a chance to go nuts.

Manhattan

Saw Manhattan. I think I've seen enough Woody Allen for now. Either I've exhausted his shtick or he's flying over my head, but either way I feel he's blurring together for me. Saying the same thing over and over. Also this movie features a barely legal love-interest which gives it a mighty creepy feel in the light of Woody's later life.

The Amityville Horror

Saw The Amityville Horror. It was pretty good, with some homages to/thefts from other famous scary movies (shrieking violins, axing a door down, an old priest and a young priest) but enough original fun images (blood seeping out of the wallpaper, a pig's eyes seen through a window, a black pit) to make me happy. It was a little jumpy but I was calm enough to weather the storm for those images. Not bad.