Many of the shorts in this collection were excellent, but “Faubourg Saint-Denis”, set in the Xe, by Tom Tykwer, starring Melchior Beslon and Natalie Portman was stunningly great.

Apparently, the double feature format wasn’t successful enough (and/or was too confusing) during the initial run; so the european release of the film splits the two parts. Tarantino’s half, Death Proof is the first out of the gate.

I saw it at Kriterion, my favorite Amsterdam theater. The afternoon screening was an ideal remedy to the previous night of heavy drinking, which is pretty much all that I was looking for.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was essentially a fairy tale to preempt fits of rage over plausibility and ethical conflicts. With that out of the way, it is a pretty cute movie with small charms.

not quite as dramatic as previous releases, but with such high standards set for themselves, even below average explosions in the sky is pretty good.

I saw the Host tonight and was underwhelmed. Maybe I like my monster/adventure movies a little more intense or scary? I thought that parts of it were really interestingly done, but others were so heavy-handed (the U.S. incompetency sections), and others felt really really slow. I kept wanting it to be something that it wasn’t.

Linklater enlists his favorites (and Avril Levigne?!) interesting narrative take on Schlosser’s nonfiction. Threads pick up and drop off loosely, and no one except the meat packing industry really “wins”. The odd thing about this message movie is that, like so many others of its kind, it’s unlikely to draw viewers who aren’t already aware of and already receptive to its lessons.

By the time a parade of elephants marches past a cafe window without comment, I was head over heels in love. So much so that I immediately forgave the way the movie falls off track toward the end, particularly when it picks up the seemingly unconnected story about an insomniac judge who’s losing his own grasp of reality.

The gorgeous new wave-inspired black and white & the slowblow soundtrack complement the hilarious (subtitled) dialogue and the absurd situations that the endearing, attractive cast get themselves into.

usually movies about everyday life should be incredibly boring, but I couldn’t help but love this one. it has almost no story or resolution, but it’s pitch perfect throughout with not entirely likable characters and brilliant awkwardness.

saying something like “Bujalski is the Whit Stillman of this generation” might be over-reaching and not completely accurate, yet it might also be partially true.

At several points in the very long run time of Zodiac I found myself wondering exactly what sort of movie it was trying to be. It’s an impeccably made film with a lot of fascinating and pretty surfaces, but almost no depth. A not particularly suspenseful thriller as motivation for an unrevealing series of character studies. By the end, the biggest mystery - the motivation for the legendary killer, the police investigators, and the obsessive journalists - remains (perhaps brilliantly) unrevealed.

... less about the difficulty of communicating than about a few people making improbably bad decisions. of course, all of the storylines connect in a schematic way. SPOILER: if only japanese big game hunters didn’t give their guns to tour guides, overpriviledged white children wouldn’t get lost in the desert.