Movies I watched in 2012

Capsule reviews of 15 films viewed since January 2012

(This post originally went up on Monday morning, but was quickly bumped. I fear it's been overlooked since, so I'm re-posting it now; I'd really like to hear back from readers on what they thought of these particular films; also I'd like to highlight "Who's Killing Cinema - and Who Cares", my response to the fascinating David Denby article; it went up middle of Saturday night because I couldn't wait, but deserves a bump now too...)

Histoire(s) du Cinema • The Long Day Closes • Madchen in Uniform • Me and My Gal • Melancholia • North Shore • Road to Morocco • Savages • Shoah • The Story of Film • Super 8 •  Tangled • Tanner '88 • Ways of Seeing • The Wind in the Willows

Remembering the Movies, Apr. 22 - 28

 Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

Some weeks are busier than others. This week sees three hugely popular films, any of which could take the top picture spot. Amelie is probably the most popular among the general public, while Yojimbo would have the lead among cinephiles, but my personal pick would be the iconic screen-cap from The Public Enemy. Ultimately the Amelie image, with its heroine sitting engrossed in front of the silver screen, proved too apt to resist yet I couldn't bear to part with the rain-soaked gangster's grin, so Cagney appears below. Yojimbo, along with the other seven other films (including Oliver Stone's first movie, and the recently deceased Elizabeth Taylor playing a young mother), appears after the jump.

On another note, the visual tribute has returned this week, though from now on it will be on Wednesdays rather than Thursdays. Next week's is one of my more imaginative ones, so stay tuned. On with the show...

Remembering the Movies, Feb. 25 - Mar. 3

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

This week, we finally take a break from 1931 (which has dominated the past few weeks) and skip forward for a screwball from Sturges. There are several classics in the lineup this week, as well as an interesting back-and-forth between Siskel and Ebert (as well as a Tom & Jerry cartoon from the fifties - hard to say which duo is more contentious).

This might also be the place to the mention for those who missed it that Blog 10, the year-end round-up, finally made its debut last week. Check it out for some great links, images, and excerpts...

W.

(W.) -Click here for the full review.

In the last scene of W., our hero imagines himself in a baseball park at night. He's on the field, alone, the stands empty. Yet he hears the roar of the crowd and the crack of the bat and runs back to catch the fly ball. He grins, puts his glove in the air and waits...and waits...and waits. He furrows his brow and peers up into the inky black sky. Nothing. No ball. He keeps waiting, and the movie ends. Like "Bushie," "Geo," or "W" as he's variously called throughout Oliver Stone's election-eve biopic, we in the audience keep waiting for that revelation, that home run or final out that clears everything up. We never get it.

By the end of the movie, we still don't quite understand what's going on in that head, why things came to this point - but the man at the center doesn't really seem to understand either, and we're brothers in confusion. In JFK and many of his other breathless, frenetic opuses, Oliver Stone tried to shine a bright light on all the chaos, illuminating some sort of Truth (perhaps a "counter-myth" as he calls it in reference to JFK). In W., Stone takes his time, doesn't rush, avoids stylistic fireworks, and delivers the movie with a great deal of clarity. Yet he doesn't illuminate any transcendent Truth, any "ah ha! so that's what it's all about!" comeuppance to the past 8 years of obfuscation. Instead he seems to suggest that even our president didn't understand what was going on, and has passed his perplexity on to us.