Sedmikrasky
i enjoyed it a lot. it's quite difficult to get into it at first, and rationality should be left at the door, to flow with the dreamesque atmosphere. it's visual poetry! literal reading is forbidden obviously, all is allegorical... the punch of the provocation equals the harshness of the (communist) cultural oppression.
i guess u need to have lived multiple decades under the rule of a tyranic administration to take this fairy fable like a huge bowl of fresh air.
lets put the film back in context : 1966, behind the iron curtain. this isnt the fun pop art of Warhol in the freedom orgy of NYC.
influence of the surrealists (collage, pixilation, patchwork, absurd editing, overlaping, mutilation, freudian symbols, staccato) pushes this film beyond visual experimentation, to convey powerful message-images (absurdity, existentialism, death, meaning of life, vanity, teenage rebellion, anarchy, free love)
this cynical critique hides behind a grotesque farce in an immature world. it comes out as a fairy tales like Alice in Wonderland confronted to the hard reality. (note the scene where the girls devour the banquet, and go down the elevator passing by windows to other worlds like in Svankmajer's Alice - 1988)
my preliminary theory that the 2 girls are one and the same (i like split personality portrayal), 2 contradictory personalities of an idealized woman figure : the good demon and the bad demon of teenage anarchy, discovering the power and delusion of love, fighting to win over decency and moral.

from a chapter of Diderot's "Jacques Le Fataliste", adaptaded in the begining of the 20th century in Paris, Bresson builds a somptuous dramatic romance, with discontinued scenes going every step deeper into the bitterness of vengeance.
Hélène (Maria Casares!) is clued in by a close friend that her lover, Jean, might not love her anymore. Her female pride pushes her to break with him first, and pretends her loved has gradualy stoped for him... the fool is too happy to see the ploy and confess he feels exactly the same way and is glad their break up is so clean and friendly. Hélène, fakes to the perfection, but will prepare a cold blooded vengeance of her own. Jean will meet a cute dancer girl, Agnès, and Hélène will make everything to make them marry until she can play a low blow trick to destroy their dignity and social honor.
there isnt much mystery in this story, the audience knows everything from the get go, but it's a pleasure to watch the characters doubt, fake, deceive, play pretend, discover parts of the scheme, from private confession to dinner... Bresson creates a bare atmosphere, in tune with the bold story, rough and cynical. a quasi-ethnologic depiction of the painful extremes where love wounds and manipulations can take people who follow their mindless instincts...

Mikhalkov is an excellent director, making truly cinematic films by playing with the mise-en-scène and the camerawork to make everything flow so smoothly and effortlessly. Unfortunately here the plot isn't very captivating... nor believable. Too much seem to be borrowed from Fellini's 8 1/2, and Visconti's Death in Venice (Sanatorium, fooling around, travel abroad...)
It's beautiful to look at however. Maybe an older audience, fond of nostalgic look back on past errors, and the lasting impressions of true love instants cast in unforgetable details, fans of Mastroianni too.

Le Jour Du Chacal
i also found it riveting because of this cinéma-vérité kind of documentary you appropriately mention, and because the story is true and set in a real background of names, places and actions. contrary to the americanized remake, the description of this double man-hunting (one tailing one stalking one) isnt bigger than life, so the shots are most of the time boring and unexciting, but the anxiety is touchable. it never wants to be sensational or impressing, like in a James Bond, or any action movie (like Bruce Willis' remake is).
the pace is slow and the storytelling is cold and distant. it never gets into the head of the characters if i recall well. both the Jackal and the policeman remain mysterious and we dont know what to expect of their next move.
some scenes are very nice, like the pause in the mountain hotel with the woman (wasnt it very Breathless like?).

This one is more subtle than Ordet, even if less spiritual. A humanistic depiction of the family conflicts in this darker age of Rembrandt's bigoted period. I don't know if Dreyer is a "christian-filmmaker" but I find his films to be highly critical of faith, and especialy of religious dogmes.

i was warry about the movie, but as the opportunity to watch it on the big screen arised i went anyway to see this film so many talk about. this is awesome! the film works its way through silences and observation of the evolution of behaviors.
the focus on pedophiliac aesthetic, that is almost an apology is very disturbing (even if nothing happens and it's purely intellectual). anyway, the cinematography is beautiful and the screenplay very powerful. i'm surprised Dirk Bogarde didnt win any award for this role.
a pure lesson of cinema. the kind of visual narrative i'd like t see more often developped in todays (oversignificant) movies.

very impressive film end to end, tied up in a fast pace with a density of events. it's not as realistic as other vietnam films, more biased also, but the idea to follow russian metal workers-deer hunters from pennsylvania in communist vietnam and watch them coming back up side down from the war was very interesting. the opposition between russian-american and vietnamese communist, in the scene when Walken is suspected to be a double agent for the russian, was very much thought provocative.
the very ending is a little lower than the rest of the film, especially the God Bless America anthem as a "climax"...
anyway, awesome cinematography and mise en scene, both in the still shots and the rush action sequences. Great cast! a good number of memorable scenes, original and powerful.
would you believe half of the audience in the arthouse was made of over 70 peeps? an old lady even asked me if i prefered Apocalypse Now or this one Eldery-powah!

an original look at the german occupation period during WW2 in Paris, through the life of a theatre owned by a famous jewish director, who is hiding in the theatre cave while the gestapo believes he has fled abroad. the art of theatre must go on, despite censorship, delation, arrestations, deportation, and resistance. because the people shelter in theatres every night, where they find electric light and heating. Catherine Deneuve (the director's wife) struggles socialy and psychologicaly to keep a straight face before the actors, the german authorities, the bureau of censorship and this evil antisemitic theatre critic who greed to takeover this theatre for himself. Gerard Depardieu is a multifaced young actor who plays an ambiguous role between the casual lust of a successful actor and the righteous ideals of a patriotic human. the performance of the film critic is excellent as well.
the social and psychological conflicts of WW2 told on stage.

Ruiz is back home after a long exile, and films in DV on location. Multilayered conversations between 2 friends throughout several generations at once, mixing dream/reality in a complex rendition of the novelist creative space around writer's block and nostalgic memories. Don Federico, an "imaginist" novelist, is alternatively dead in a limbo-coffee place (or is it a dream) called "The old Café of the future", middle-aged with his faithful servant Paulita in his chilean ranch, or projected back in the 19th century when his current issues are re-enacted. Surrealist atmosphere and literary narration. Notably a recurrant concern about a facecious leak migrating from ceiling to ceiling even during the dry season. I liked some creative plans like this counter-shot of 2 people talking at a table with a fixed camera (the actors sit at the same chair alternatively)

a woman's dog, that a man (Jean Pierre Bacri from "The Taste of the Others") is supposed to babysit, is miraclously changed into a human (Chabat)... absurd situations ensue. the woman falls in love of this dogman, who becomes a soccer star lol
best line: "you can't sniff women's a$$!"
i believe Chabat is working on a USA remake of the movie.

gorgeous. no solid narration in this puppetmaster tale, just a collide of individual destiny around love and loss.
The depiction of love of our present modern society through the archetypal format of an old traditional puppet tale, with depression, desair and erring was particularly clever and original. Because the opening sequence with the puppet is not only decorative, it sets the execution style of the entire film. It is a contemporean myth of impossible love, in a world clashing with the nostalgic traditions of the past (in Kitano's mind), these characters from another age, who believe in the noble love of medieval knights, appear to be in total contradiction with todays world, and are alienated by their peers.
The yakusa boss had somethin to do with Ozu's Tokyo story I assume, in the treatment of an old couple on a bench.
The color treatment, as well as the insertion of symbols, is the strongest asset of the film. Kikujiro his previous film was also strong on this.
But it's more to do with poetry and mythological love than with Kurosawa's shakespearian/warlord approach, IMO.
I guess most people would be turned off but so much pain and pity driven situation study, slow paced and "vacuuous", but the experience is worth the trip, and like you say this thought provocating film stays with us afterward, to question our understanding of love in a "materialist" world. Magnificent film with a powerful aesthetic.

Livre à vendre

Structured around Alain Fournier's haunting novel "Le Grand Meaulnes/The wanderer" (1913), the contraried love story of an enigmatic adolescent. A classic of french literrature, and his only book, he died in the 1914 World War. Ruiz imagine a character, Antoine, who pretends to be the hero of the novel, written by his best friend. Antoine, is one of the aviation pioneer, his firstname refering directly to Antoine de Saint-Exupery, ace of the transatlantic post service, and also author of the famous books "Le Petit Prince", and "Vol de Nuit".
Adaptating excerpts of the lives and literature of these two writers, Ruiz interlaces his narration on five parallel epochs, sometimes seamlessly connected in a plan-sequence pan on the same set. Three main episodes are confronted symbolically echoing Ruiz' personal history between Chile and France, maybe incarnated by Max. 1932, Antoine lands in Chile where he meets Max a 10 yold boy fascinated by the flying engine. 1940, Max has became a flight instructor in the RAF and Antoine wants to fly again and fight. 1973, as president Allende dies during the military coup, Max shelters Augustin (name of the hero in Le Grand Meaulnes), grandson of Antoine. The story incessantly jumps back and forth across the ages, to link details together as if recalled by a tortured memory trying to fix the truth, a complicated history merging the love and descendance of two men running after the same book in their own ways.
Shot in Romania, and sounded in post-synch, which doesn't help the weak acting direction. François Cluzet (Antoine), and Grégoire Colin (Max) use good makeup to performe their aging characters. Grégoire's real father plays Max aged 51. The premise is rich, developping a combination of time and stories, although inferior to the fond impressions a reader will have cherished in the referenced novels. And the direction isn't up to Ruiz' best work unfortunately. Sadly better written than filmed.

C:+ W:++ M:0 I:++ C:+

Capturing the same gloomy atmosphere of this italian tortuous city than Visconti's Death in Venice 2 years earlier, Roeg creates a haunting thriller merging the bounderies between subconscious nightmares and reality. A film full of symbols and surrealism. Magnificent photography with a creative montage.

just a filmed play à la Beckett. the concept it interesting and works but at the expanses of the cinematography. an anti-film IMHO.
Nicole is excellent, Paul Bettany is unexisting by contrast. interesting side characters, a bit stereotyped maybe, hard brushed. and very unique stunning story all along. a trilogy? wow!
this is a fable. even if it sets in 18th century's america, it is actually universal, about humanity (just like Tom says in the film in place for screenwriter Lars Von Trier).
the twist to make the bad one (the fugitive) the victim of the good ones (the people of dogville) is very powerful to change our perspective of the world. we realize that a very simple setting of caricatural characters can be deluding, and we regret we gave an hasty judgement on what appears to be a very complex situation with unsolved contradictory human feelings.
although it is the most anti-film u can do, closer to a verbal greek myth told by the fireplace, Lars von Trier pushes the limits of abstract movies. it seems he doesnt care for the eyes and talks directly to the mind, with a rather rough language asking for imagination and fantasies. really a filmed-conceptual-play, it recalls as much The Castle (Haneke/Kafka) and Delicatessen (Jeunet/Caro) as THX-1138.
LvT cared more for cinema in Dancer in the Dark. here he only makes a point across, transmits a message, which would be much more powerful live on stage, with no adaptation needed.
he uses ultimate low-tech tricks (galaxies away from Matrix!!!) that were never used even in cinema prehistory... there is a lot of silent movie history in this film. the saddest Chaplin's movies come to mind. the pace is slow, the words describing like a book, the actors with shy puritan contained performance.
but everything fits the purpose of this theatre, and the stingy decoration becomes part of the absurdity, the silence becomes a judge of our conscience, the stage acting becomes portrayal of our conflictual human nature.
i thought this shoking mise en scène was just a lazy minimalist post modern and vain act. on second thought i realize it tells more about the cinema itself. with Lars von Trier impersonating himself in his film, struggling to write it (like Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation), and lecturing us about philosophy while making a point to destroy his own theories, we get a feeling of a circular universe where the cinema repeats itself endlessly, with a bunch of legendary actors/actresses where the settings are useless.
the humanity criticism of this tale is more cliché, than the criticism of cinema and especialy the audience who would buy anything as long as it is on the screen, and told by the mouth of pretty faces.
real or not, this virtual town gets u thinking!

Silent - B&W
Bram Stoker's Dracula adapted for the ballet by Mark Godden, and shot in the old fashion by Maddin. the combo of ballet dancing (all characters are ballet dancers) and silent cinema (intertitles) makes a very sexy vampire story. the textured image (DV + FX), sparsingly colored in post production painting with bright Red or Green, on symbolic objects (blood, cape, dollars), translates the appropriate spooky atmosphere, enhanced by blur and fog on stage. the lighting plays dominant role, to organise the screen. the lovely choregraphy replaces the words with meaningful sensuality. both respectful of the old masterpieces of the genre and adding a contemporean look to an old story.