Okay, my month so far. I've seen 23 films in 15 days.

The Proposition
John Hillcoat 2005 Australia / UK (1st time; big screen)
A lawman in nineteenth century Australia an outlaw is sent to fetch his brother, a brutal murderer, to a lawmanin charge of a town in which a family was pillaged and killed.
Unusually fantastic film, unusual in that it doesn't quite add up to much as a whole, fantastic because it reaches such intense heights that it must be seen by all. As a series of episodes involving dirty-looking, rather savage men conversing with one another in a theatrical tone, it develops effectively, with each individual scene having a poetic weight to it. It's very well-written, almost novelistic (John Hurt's turn as a bounty hunter is brief but brilliant), and viciously acted. Becoming increasingly violent as it progresses, not only suggestively but visually, the fact that director Hillcoat isn't afraid to show these moments of brutality in all their bloody gore without succumbing to satisfaction of blood-thirsts is telling of some potential. Fully absorbing.

Back to the Future Part II
Robert Zemeckis 1989 US (1st time; DVD)
Marty and the Doc travel to the future to save the former's son from trouble, and end up having to go back again to 1955 in order to save 1985 from destruction.
An even more dense film than the first, both in terms of narrative confusion and the emotional complexities which would probably result from time travel. It is sometimes a mere retread of setpieces done in the first, but adapted to different contexts, which in itself becomes fun to watch, such as the way a skateboard in 1985 has evolved into a hoverboard by 2015. In the latter stages of the film, when the narrative returns to the events of the first film, we get a very clever bringing-together of two parallel stories at their climax, one we've already been told, and one we're being told, though the latter injects new interest into the former because it has the capability of changing it...though its goal is to maintain it.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Tim Burton 2005 UK / US / Australia (2nd time; DVD)
A down-to-earth boy living with his family in a poverty-stricken house wins one of five tickets to visit Willie Wonka's chocolate factory.
What is often a colourfully sumptuous work, glistening with an appropriately candy-like feel (if the opening credits look edible, you can almost taste the actual factory scenes), is also an unbearably preachy, moralistic one. It is set up very much in the vein of Amelie, but the comparison is unfavourable. Characters are superfluous, not least of all the Bucket family, and are set up with an ill-timed voice-over and acting which, if it is supposed to be like Dahl's cartoonish caricatures, is also very annoying. Depp's facial expressions are sufficient enough even if his accent has an awkward theatricality to it, and an horrendous script lets him down - the best bits are the various ways in which the despisable kids and their parents are discarded... though, sadly, the title character survives.

Blue Velvet
David Lynch 1986 US (Nth time; DVD)
A young man discovers a severed ear, and, investigating with the help of the local policeman's daughter, uncovers the darkness beneath the innocence of his suburban town.
Lynch creates a believably dangerous, surreal world by presenting it as a sort of nightmare, zooming into and out of, respectively, a rotten ear at the beginning and a healthy ear at the end. Told entirely from the point of view of its young male protagonist, it is a complex film, not least due to the disturbing voyeurism which drives the hero's investigations and thus the narrative. It means that there is always a tension present, not in the way which, say, Carpenter creates in Halloween, with points of view from the killer, but instead by filtering the narrative, and thus visual composition, through its hero's perceptions. A fantastic, multi-layered thriller, always dark, often funny, and very unique.

Caché (Hidden)
Michael Haneke 2004 France / Austria / Germany / Italy (2nd time; big screen)
When a bourgeois couple start receiving video tapes of their home under surveillance, the husband relates to an incident from his childhood.
A slow, riveting, austere work which explores cinematography to the point that the plot is almost irrelevant, though some might find it of interest as a reflection of Franco-Algerian relations, and the implications of guilt stemming from the Algerian War. Shooting in long-takes and without music, Haneke keeps his audience at arm's length throughout; the result is a cool, deeply ambiguous film which offers no (or many) solutions, ultimately as empty or as deep as you want it to be: it involves you insofar that you wish to be involved, and so many will no doubt walk away in confusion if not fury. Either way, to those interested in cinematic form, it will likely make you think about what and how you watch Cinema.

Sexy Beast
Jonathan Glazer 2000 UK (Nth time; DVD)
A retired thief now living in Spain is visited by a vicious gangster who wants him to do one last job.
Primarily of interest as a lesson in acting, and the ways in which Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley subvert their previous expectations to create two contrasting characters; the first a man whose past comes back to haunt him, and who is no longer interested in the life he left behind, the second a disturbed, violent psychopath obsessed with his own pride and reputation. As an exploration of male egos clashing, or on masculinity, it might not offer anything you can't find in, say, Scorsese's work, but there is much to be dug out of these characters, and whereas Scorsese's masculinity is measured only by its implosive self, here we have two female characters which lend weight, and happiness, to the retired men who do not wish to lead a life of crime anymore.

Monty Python's Life of Brian
Terry Jones 1979 UK (1st time; DVD)
A Jew in Roman times is mistaken to be the Messiah.
To envisage this deliberately noisy mess of a film, imagine one which drains, from every image, from every line, from each and absolutely every molecule of aesthetic or production value, the folly of human life. The comedy has a regurgitative rhythm, to the point that it might, given a chance and the right mood, be generally very funny, if only because humans can only go so far in resisting crude, cheap and frankly annoying humour.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Larry Charles 2006 US/UK (1st time; big screen)
A TV reporter from Kazakhstan travels to New York with his agent, and thence to California, in search of cultural enlightenment and Pamela Anderson.
It is perhaps too lazy to defend Sacha Baron Cohen's shameless anti-Semitism here by guarding him with the fact that he is devoutly Jewish himself. Similarly, it might also be naïve to assume his intention is to expose the ignorance in general, or racism in particular, of those unwitting individuals he confronts in the course of the film - or indeed, that of those who laugh at the film. As a mockumentary, it works a whole lot better than Ali G inda House, and, regardless of the (deliberately) difficult questions arising from possible racism, its best moments are its visual gags - Borat 'settling into' his new hotel room, an elevator; causing disastrous, expensive havoc in an antiques store; and a lengthy naked wrestle with his obese agent in the hotel at which they're staying, with Borat's penis covered with an exaggeratedly long censor.

Romanzo criminale
Michele Placido 2005 Italy/UK/France/US (1st time; big screen)
In 1970s, three childhood friends decide to take over Rome's underworld, and are undone by their own ambition and greed.
It sounds like familiar stuff, and for the most part it is, but this epic film, full of dingy, washed-out settings and brilliant acting, has a drive and sustained energy which must be admired, given its two-and-a-half hour running time. It isn't as romanticised as, for example, the Sicilian scenes from The Godfather Part II, which works in its favour, and the music, a mixture between American funk records and an original, composed score, lends it a weight it would otherwise miss. If anything, it could have been even longer, with deeper explorations into these characters, who find themselves, in the course of the film, at the mercy of the ebb and flow of likeable and expendable.

Back to the Future Part III
Robert Zemeckis 1990 US (1st time; DVD)
Marty travels back to 1885 in order to save Doc, happily settled in the Wild West, from murder.
Visually, probably the best of the trilogy, with the clear blues of the sky strikingly shot against the vast oranges of the desert; as a kind of mergance between the two, Fox does a lot of jumping around in a multi-coloured cowboy suit. Because this is no mere revisit of the first two, and is an extension of the same story, it's very complicated, especially early on - obvious exposition is excusable here, though the climactic rise in sentimentality, with Doc falling in love, might not be.

Shi mian mai fu House of Flying Daggers
Yimou Zhang 2004 China/Hong Kong (1st time; DVD)
As the government hunt down an underground group of assassins, three individuals find themselves in emotional dilemma.
A magnificently realised film, surely one of the most remarkable aesthetic achievements in recent Cinema. Zhang exploits colour to extraordinary effect, using it as a means of character portrayal, having costumes compliment and contrast against their surroundings depending on emotional state - it is seen best in the latter stages of the film, wherein one character is dressed in green, another in blue, and they journey from a bamboo forest, entirely green, to an autumnal red valley, and thence to a snowy, vastly open terrain. Zhang has a fine sense of pace and rhythm, and in terms of editing and visual composition, it is one of the most measured films ever made.

Konec stalinismu v Cechách (The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia)
Jan Svankmajer 1990 UK 1st time; YouTube)
Stalin's head is cut open, and what follows is the history of the last fifty years of Czechoslovakia.
Symbolism-heavy short, the best moments of which are the clay figurines being made and discarded on a conveyor belt which leads back to the beginning of itself, and the painting of the Czech flag on every object possible. Further knowledge of the history it depicts will probably enhance the appreciation.

Kárhozat (Damnation)
Béla Tarr 1987 Hungary (2nd time; DVD)
A hopeless man, distanced from society, is in love with a singer, but she's married…
Thoroughly bleak, visually gorgeous film, deliberately abandoning plot in order to allow its camera full chance to convey meaning. Its characters are captured, mostly, as secondary objects within the all-seeing frame, often obscured by walls and pillars in the foreground. It's always raining, the music is melancholic and neverending, and the dialogue is poetic and cynical, as its protagonist, a Beckett-like anti-hero, realises he would die for the woman he loves, but alas, she would not for him.

Touch of Evil
Orson Welles 1958 US (2nd time; DVD)
A Mexican cop clashes with an American captain over a murder on the border.
The opening shot is one of Cinema's finest achievements, and what happens thereafter is a lesson in sustained excellence: the acting, particularly from Welles as a corrupt, overweight cop, is fantastic, and the editing and visual storytelling are sublime, with two parallel narratives happening at the same time over the course of twenty-four hours. Notable moments are as follows: Heston phoning his wife at the motel, with the man who has been harassing his wife seen being arrested in the background; Welles telling somebody to shut the door and we cut, as the door is shut, to another door in the other story opening; and the climax, in which Heston follows Welles, recording what he says, with both beginning far from one another and finishing within actual earshot, so that the need for cutting is less necessary, and the situation more tense.

Elephant
Gus Van Sant 2003 US (4th time; DVD)
An ordinary day in an American high school turns into a disaster when two friends go through with their plan to randomly kill their fellow students.
A powerful, multi-character drama which, when viewed, is immediately excellent, though one is not necessarily sure why. Shot in long-takes, with the camera tracking from behind its characters through empty hallways, it is a haunting depiction of human tragedy and a subtle exposé of society's finger-pointing. Upon revisits, one can't help but think it could have been even better, with tighter editing and the discarding of chapter titles, which add little.

2046
Wong Kar-wai 2004 France/Germany/Hong Kong/China (3rd time; DVD)
Returning from Singapore to Hong Kong in the late 1960s, a writer of futuristic erotic novels tries to forget a past love affair.
More ambitious than In the Mood for Love, both aesthetically (a CGI future, more eclectic choice of music) and narratively (enhancing the protagonist's heartbreak by means of including his own fiction), it develops from an erotic, rather cold affair into a poignant, reflective hymn to lost love.

Gerry
Gus Van Sant 2001 US/Argentina/Jordan (3rd time; DVD)
Two friends on a day's hiking trip casually stroll off path and become lost.
A film largely improvised and ironically dealing with the perils of improvisation; it is astonishing to look at, with many long takes giving otherwise ordinary images of two men walking a surreal, unfamiliar edge. Van Sant will often cut to an empty shot of mountainous terrain and hold the camera there, and because of the rather abstract visual of such framing, the viewer cannot tell how close or how far away the camera is from the rock, how big the rock is, or where the characters will enter and how big they will be - close up or in the distance? It's a unique way in conveying the increasing anonymity of the two characters as they walk further into peril. Recommendable to friends as a kind of endurance test.

Grand Canyon
Lawrence Kasdan 1991 US (1st time; big screen)
In LA, the lives of an immigration worker, his wife, his secretary, his son, and the black man with a deaf daughter and poor sister who saves his life, all interweave.
Terrible, for the most part; it's a love or hate affair, and many may find some moments of worth. Haggis' Crash owes much to it, and as a comment on life-changing coincidences, Magnolia may even too. Still, it's entirely missable, often risible stuff.

Garden State
Zach Braff 2004 US (2nd time; DVD)
An actor on medication all his life returns to his home town to attend his mother's funeral.
Braff establishes a world of subversion, accessible enough to attract fans of the rom-com, and original enough to stand on its own accord, and even mark him as a promising debutant director. It's a very lazy film - if the editing is economic in cutting when awkward moments arise, the writing isn't as good as it ought to have been; and it has an annoying tendency to deflate genuine heartfelt moments with obvious, and out-of-mood humour... the most unforgiveable of the bunch is the dive into cliché at the end.

True Lies
James Cameron 1994 US (2nd time; big screen)
An American Secret Agent battles with terrorists while lying to his wife about his job.
An action feast made for Schwarzenegger's one liners and physical presence on screen; being knowingly ridiculous does not excuse an excessive running time - cutting of about forty minutes would have helped.

Hana-bi (Fireworks)
Takeshi Kitano 1997 Japan (1st time; big screen)
A cop in debt to the Yakuza retires, robs a bank, and takes his wife, dying of Leukemia, on one last trip.
A lesson in understatement - Kitano's performance lies at the heart of a film whose emotional weight lies entirely within and is never allowed to expose itself. Those wishing to will find and be able to extract the most poignant of moments, such as those in the scenes between the fatalistic cop and his wife. The static camera and use of silence compliment Kitano's onscreen persona with such intensity that it's unmissable and original stuff; tender and funny with explosions of violence.

Le genou de Claire (Claire's Knee)
Eric Rohmer 1970 France (1st time; DVD)
A writer spends July at the summer home of an old female friend, and finds himself tempted by two teenaged girls living there.
One of those acutely measured films that fly by - in this case as a series of conversational episodes - that, when it comes to end, you really don't want it to…though it ends when it should. A perceptive, witty film whose disturbing premise is given a credible, even charming, touch, through the outrageously naive characters. Each scene is given a chapter title - a quick intertitle informing us of the new date, and thus indicating a jump in time; but really, it's just another transitional effect, and the sense of time doesn't really matter. Impressive.

Fellini-Satyricon
Federico Fellini 1969 Italy/France (1st time; DVD)
A "free-form" adaptation of Petronius' Satyricon. [Specific narrative synopsis will help little.]
Messy to the point of being of vague interest, Fellini adds from start to finish a new energy, a new visual, with each new scene and often even within the same scene; after two hours, you really don't know what to expect. But it is not to say it is visually impressive - energy and innovation are two different things, and there isn't one memorable image in the entire work - more a feeling, stemming from the excessive ugliness of it all. Subtitles, presumably left over from the original print, are telling: character after character mumbles, as we're told, "Vulgar Latin". You get the feeling it's all meant to shock and engage - rather ineffective, though.