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Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA): 53The first warning flag was the sock -- singular because Wendy's only wearing one of them, a costume decision that immediately struck me as a way-too-calculated bid for our sympathy. Then came the almost comical self-righteousness of the supermarket stockboy, who isn't merely keen to ... read morePosted on 10/13/2008 by dangelo Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea): 71Almost busted out laughing when our hero pointed out the Musée d'Orsay at one point, thereby reminding me of Hou's cosmopolitan visit to France just last year -- and underlining the fact that Hong flew all the way to Paris to make a movie in which ... read morePosted on 10/08/2008 by dangelo 
Four Nights With Anna (Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland/France): 39Having already seen this basic lovelorn-stalker scenario realized to devastating effect by both Patrice Leconte (in Monsieur Hire) and Krzysztof Kieslowski (in Decalogue Six, only one of the greatest films ever made), I quickly grew impatient with Skolimowski's lumbering, faintly comic variation, which takes its protagonist's ... read morePosted on 10/08/2008 by dangelo 
The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Italy/Spain): 77Simply one of the most confounding filmgoing experiences I've ever had, and as usual I'm uncertain how a "normal" viewer -- i.e., someone who hasn't made a point of entering the theater with no advance knowledge of any kind -- would likely respond. (If you want ... read morePosted on 10/08/2008 by dangelo 
Changeling (Clint Eastwood, USA): 67As I've argued for over a decade now, Eastwood-as-director, with his so-called "classical" style that really amounts to a sort of measured impatience, is only as good as his material. Here, via former Babylon 5 geek J. Michael Straczynski, he's stumbled onto a true-life tale so ... read morePosted on 10/07/2008 by dangelo 
The Northern Land (João Botelho, Portugal): 12Make no mistake: This film is deadly -- a stilted, stultifying pomo costume drama that makes Oliveira look like Aronofsky. There is no conceivable projection scenario that would not make me wish myself elsewhere. But it's possible that I might have found it somewhat less odious ... read morePosted on 10/07/2008 by dangelo 
Che (Steven Soderbergh, France/Spain): 48As movies with no compelling reason to exist go, this one is really quite good. Soderbergh's shift from freewheeling, widescreen Cuban triumph to flat, plodding Bolivian nightmare packs the intended dialectical punch, and you couldn't ask for a less flashy, more committed portrait of Guevara -- ... read morePosted on 10/07/2008 by dangelo 
The Class (Laurent Cantet, France): 61I guess there's just no pleasing me (cue vigorously nodding heads), because for the first hour, when the film seems wholly dedicated to observing the student-teacher dynamic in a multiculti Paris classroom, I found myself admiring its rigor and intelligence but also wishing that something a ... read morePosted on 10/03/2008 by dangelo 
Tony Manero (Pablo Larraín, Chile/Brazil): 33"Ah, one for the boys over at Slant," I thought, and sure enough. For those not temperamentally inclined to celebrate uncompromising cine-machismo for its own sake, however, this is pretty thin gruel, deeply unpleasant without ever coming within spitting distance of enlightening. Once you've been ... read morePosted on 10/03/2008 by dangelo |
