listography: films seen (in 2011)

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films seen (in 2011)

December
- Outrage (Kitano Takeshi)
  - More market focus and a Johnnie To-borrowed style make it markedly less interesting than his original yakuza films.
- Close-up (Abbas Kiarostami)
  - The film medium's self-awareness at its peak.
November
- The secret world of Arrietty (Yonebayashi Hiromasa)
- The blade (Tsui Hark)
  - The most visually intense an action film gets to be.
- The longest summer (Fruit Chan)
  - Absurd, stylish, smart, comical, tragic.
- b420 (Matthew Tang)
  - In debt with Made in Hong Kong.
October
- Running out of time (Johnnie To)
- City on fire (Ringo Lam)
- Fulltime killer (Johnnie To)
- One-armed swordsman (Chang Cheh)
  - Great example of idiosyncratic cinema.
September
- Palermo shootings (Wim Wenders)
  - Basic script but great formal work in the directing.
August
- Guest (José Luis Guerin)
  - 'Madly entertaining' is not what 'over two hours of travel recordings' brings to mind, however this film is both.
- The other bank (George Ovashvili)
  - Didn't reach the standard it set out for, but still a film that gets stuff right.
- Hija (María Paz González)
  - A tad naive in places, but still a good kind of documentary with wonderful characters.
- Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)
  - A bit of an emotional timebomb that triggered after I'd left the theater.
- Moacir (Tomás Lipgot)
  - Was for me the psychological counterpart to the more sociological Benda Bilili.
- Bombay beach (Alma Har'el)
  - A masterpiece.
- Paraísos artificiales (Yulene Olaizola)
- Benda bilili! (Renaud Barret, Florent de la Tullaye)
  - Best 'underdogs succeed' film I've yet seen.
- Elite squad 2 (José Padilha)
  - Both the director and the writer demonstrate they know what they're doing, but they now more clearly show that they're pandering to their audience.
- Norberto's deadline (Daniel Hendler)
- Essential killing (Jerzy Skolimowski)
  - I (dis)like how some synopsis I read beforehand explained what's at best suggested within the film, which needs no story proper.
- Rosalinda (Matías Piñeiro)
  - The director's economic yet extravagant mise-en-scène is something to behold.
- Jess+Moss (Clay Jeter)
  - The texture of memory.
- Iris in bloom (Valérie Mréjen, Bertrand Schefer)
- Disengagement (Amos Gitai)
- News from home/house (Amos Gitai)
- Ostende (Laura Citarella)
  - Curiosity and what stories are made of.
- Harud
  - Mourning and war come together.
- Meek's cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
- OK, enough, goodbye (Rana Attieh, Daniel Garcia)
  - The story seems to largely be an excuse to take a look at the lives of the citizens of Tripoli.
- Isabella (Pang Ho-cheung)
  - Stealth melodrama with a twist of Wong Kar-wai.
- Infernal affairs (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak)
  - Scorsese's remake was, frankly, a lot better.
- Ah Ying (Allen Fong)
  - Quiet yet meticulous portrait of a struggling middle-classed youth in 80's Hong Kong. *
- Men suddenly in black (Pang Ho-cheung)
  - Stylistically interesting, otherwise ordinary comedy.
- Comrades: Almost a love story (Peter Chan)
  - A sweet and well put-together romance.
- The mission (Johnnie To)
  - If Tarantino's films were sober.
- Boat people (Ann Hui)
  - I can find no words to describe this. *
July
- Somers Town (Shane Meadows)
  - Kids carrying out their roles well is always satisfying.
- Elite squad (José Padilha)
  - Not too dissimilar to City of God; same writer.
- All about my mother (Pedro Almodóvar)
  - Almodóvar exerts his strong control over everything in this film, as is usual, and the convoluted soap opera melodrama is masterfully reined into genuineness.
- Take care of my cat (Jeong Jae-eun)
  - Like quicksand.
- A dirty carnival (Yoo Ha)
  - Sports an attractive matter-of-factuality for a gangster flick.
- The president's last bang (Im Sang-soo)
  - Elegant satire.
- My sassy girl (Kwak Jae-yong)
  - She is the one thing worth it in this film, though she's worth lots.
- Stray bullet (Yu Hyun-mok)
  - This realism-styled portrayal of post-war South Korea is realized with thicker brush strokes than I'd hoped. *
- A bittersweet life (Kim Ji-woon)
  - Like Park Chan-wook meets John Woo.
- Peppermint candy (Lee Chang-dong)
  - The more you suck on it the more bitter and better it gets.
June
- Song of the exile (Ann Hui)
  - About the cracks in belonging, family kinship, and memory. *
- Revolutionary girl Utena: Adolescence apocalypse (Ikuhara Kunihiko)
  - Full of beautiful and perverse shoujo-pop post-modern rococo allegorical imagery.
- Nomad (Patrick Tam)
  - Strong taste of the nouvelle vague. *
- Beautiful (Jeon Jae-hong)
  - Alas, had Kim Ki-duk directed this story of his, it would have become a masterpiece.
- Ring (Nakata Hideo)
  - Felt rather empty. Disappointing.
May
- Ashes of time redux (Wong Kar-wai)
  - Like beautiful fabric full of folds.
- El zapato chino (Cristián Sánchez)
  - Truly, 'por la boca muere el pez'. *
- Rashoumon (Kurosawa Akira)
- Bab'Aziz (Nacer Khemir)
  - Pleasantly meandering.
- Velódromo (Alberto Fuguet)
  - Curiously unambitious; still hit home. *
- Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park Chan-wook)
  - Among the others in his 'vengeance trilogy', probably the least amazing.
- Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
  - Another layered one by Weerasethakul, this one a 'ghost story'.
- Love streams (John Cassavetes)
  - Empty, desperate, loveless people. Cassavetes.
- The sky, the earth and the rain (José Luis Torres Leiva)
  - South of Chile at its moodiest. Its strong point is its gorgeous cinematography and sound.
- M (Lee Myung-se)
  - Form is in the fore. Kaleidoscopic. *
March
- The king's speech (Tom Hooper)
  - Awesome 'negative space' in the script.
- Black swan (Darren Aronofsky)
  - Plays out as one would expect. Was good.
February
- A journey into piracy: Meeting the Somali Pirates (Rasmus Krath)
  - Shocked me. *
January (bad start; none)

feb 18 2011 ∞
mar 16 2012 +