My Favorite Movies

Between this and "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring", I've become a fan of director Kim Ki-duk...while the latter is a 4-part Buddhist themed story of life cycles, "3-Iron" very loosely touches on an Eastern spiritual theme/proverb, what in my mind is a "twisted, uber-quirky chick-flick". Worried about subtitles? There isn't much dialog, since both protagonists have no lines what so ever! The film is a unique, superbly crafted tale of clandestine love of two lost (or phantom) souls...who accidentally cross paths and fall in love despite Tae-suk's transient nature and Sun-hwa's married life. And while it looks as if the film will end in tragedy while the couple are on the run for a new life together...the boundaries between reality and fantasy become blurred...

A jem of a movie, that probably hardly anyone has seen. I caught it on IFC a few years back....wonderful performances all around, from the annoyingly acultural Raj, living the better life in the US as a doctor, being as assimilated as can be while beginning a family with his cold and bitchy American wife, Laura. She immediately takes a dislike to Raj's father, Kishan, who was recently widowed and comes to the US to live with his son. The dynamics of culture shock and indifference work on unusual levels in this movie, perhaps VERY realistic manner...because I watched the movie and was so frustrated with how mean Raj and Laura were to Kishan, who is one of those amazingly well read and wise retired school teacher types, extremely open-minded, but of course has his Indian customs and shares them with his granddaughter, that puts tension between him and his son and daughter-in-law....as well as a sort of tension already present in the marriage.

Just a wonderful character study of a whole family really, very real, sometimes annnoying, sometimes inspiring...great independent picture that again, has gone unnoticed...

Amazing movie from Chile, that takes us back to the 1970's when Pinochet was coming to power...recreates the era wonderfully and authentically (from what I've heard from people that lived there during that time), focusing on the son of an upper class family, who befriends a classmate from a poor background.

The acting is phenomenal, it plays out as a story of friendship that accentuates the political, economic and social divides that exist so markedly in Latin America, as we see through the eyes of Gonzalo and his place on the higher tiers of society. The divisions become even more fractured as the coup occurs in Chile towards the end of the movie, with the military and right wing upper class crushing any socialist/communist organizing...there's quite a bit of symbolism but not so much that it overtakes the general atmosphere recreated here of the 70's and the wonderful relationships developed between our protagonist, Machuca (the poor classmate) and his family/friends that are involved with some of the labor unions/marches.

This might be one of the best movies out of Chile, if not all Latin America in many recent decades.

BIZARRE! One of the most surreal movies I've seen, with a GREAT soundtrack, also done by the creators of this f-ed up animated feature.

Surreal, complex, and brilliant! The animation rendering was also some of the best you'll ever see, and I think there are many different layers to the story and message in this movie, and I don't mean the dream within dream moments! A masterful work of art, social commentary, and entertaining at the same time. Too bad the movie has gotten completely overlooked by major award festivals.

A total mindf*ck if you don't get too frustrated with the intentional misleading of the audience with narration juxtaposed with the opening of the movie. It's an art film: surrealism, social commentary, literary references, interpersonal relationship issues....it's a near masterpiece for Saura, on the heels of his other "obra maestra", Cria Cuervos.

Out of all Saura's films, this film should appeal to the David Lynch fanbase the most. I only hope Criterion will release this with a more refined quality than the transfer I saw.

This is one of Mike Leigh's masterpieces...fascinating, disturbing, upsetting...but I love the whole rant about the the apocalypse. Again I need to be see more by this director (life is sweet, and some of his more recent films)...

This movie made a lasting impression on me when I first saw it as a teenager. One of the most amazing anthology movies, by the masterful Akira Kurosawa...this film probably shaped my movie viewing for the rest of my life, having from this point gravitated towards foreign and independent film, and i still have on my "to do" list: watch all of Kurosawa's movies!!!

So sad that Robert Moog is no longer with us...an absolute joy to hear this man's story

Probably one of the best S. American films I have seen: pretty intense, loved the storytelling and the way whole thing unfolded. Rosario Tijeras is an excellent anti-hero you end up sympathizing with.

OK, couldn't wait for the Mexican theatrical release and got it on DVD while vacationing in the US/Canada.

Without a doubt "Into the Wild" gets my vote for best movie of 2007 (and makes me wonder how it was so overlooked at the Oscars, oh well...). Cinematography: amazing, the message: powerful, the screenplay: well done, the acting: good. I read the book(which I recommend) many years back and the details of the story are a little fuzzy to me now...you could tell where Sean Penn added a little embellishment to the Christopher McCandless journey but it played very well with the overall "true narrative" and helped make sense out of what was a tragic yet amazing journey of this young man. Books are often hard to translate to film....Sean Penn might've made one of the very best screen adaptation of a biographical book! Just a perfect film all around...

Ha, and one other thing: I'm really not a fan of Eddie Vedder in the least (which mostly stems from my teenage disappointment w/ Pearl Jam when they released their second album and subsequently went all "jam band"), but the soundtrack was well suited for the film, I really liked how Vedder channeled the folkier vibes and really only one time did I cringe a little when Vedder kinda did a Native American-esque croon. :P But overall great ST which I might have to pick up...

my long time favorite Spanish movie...that has since fallen down a few notches, looses it's staying time on repeated viewings, but still, great homage to low-budget horror movies (and this film itself is pretty low budget I believe), cleaver script, lots of hilarious moments, the antichrist being born on x-mas eve, cheesy occult tv program host...what's there not to love?

This is has got to be one of the best low-budget Mexican movies I've seen. The landscapes of the Tarahumara sierras were breaktaking, loved the portrayal of the towns of indigenous Tarahumaras/Rarámuri (making me think I should've gone along w/ a friend last week up to the Barranca del Cobre right though this region of Northern Mexico). Very cute story w/ the two brothers making a trip from their town in the sierras to their great-uncle's place in the barranca/canyon.

I've read a lot of negative reviews of the movie (low budget, non-actors, depressing) but I really found it enthralling the way the director was able to capture rural indigenous life (much in the way Reygadas was able to also capture rural Mexican life) and gorgeous shot of misty forests and the Raramuri culture. The camerawork, while not mind-blowing amazing, had some creative moments and overall was well done considering this was not shot by movie veterans. Yeah, there might've been a lack of chemistry between the brothers in the film (who in real life *ARE* brothers) but this is very much a reality of how some indigenous communities are...don't be expecting a coming of age sort of brotherly relationship you'd see in urban ghettos or Midwestern America or rolling hills of the Swiss Alps. The Tarahumara/Raramuri are rural, poor indigenous communities...that have language and traditions predating what we comfortable consider warm and caring on the big screen for entertainment. Another layer to this as well is the language barrier...not too many viewers will understand what's being said to be critical of the acting. Many indigenous languages have a completely different cadence that might make it difficult to listen to and really get the gist of what's being communicated. I thought all the acting was very "true to life", somewhat documentary style ala Reygadas (yeah I'm rolling my eyes too), more natural than most other movies I've seen using non-actors.

The movie has a lot going for it, for me a really fine achievement in the ultra-low-budget film, ever more so remarkable that it was made in Mexico. It's a good family film as well, highly recommended for everyone that can appreciate the simple things in life.

A very different take on a borderlands/undocumented immigrant trafficking, in an area that not too many are familiar with: the US/Canadian border. Add in even another border, the Mohawk Nation Reservation, and indeed the setting is pretty unique to weave a story about two single mothers trying to make ends meet in the cold winter of the upper Eastern Midwest. Melissa Leo indeed brings a lot of realism to her role, the story itself is a train wreck, where dire circumstances lead to the protagonists digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole they cannot escape.

It's a great debut for director Courtney Hunt, though it seemed like the story was unfolded in ways to great more tension than there needed to be, to get the audience upset...which will have the effect of either driving them away or keeping them glued to what will happen next...though it was a bit too gratuitous. The setting was perfect though for the overall bleak tone, good performances by supporting and main characters. It was also quite informative and well researched (?), to see how human trafficking business takes shape at the northern US border.

One of the best movies to come out of Mexico in recent memory, social/political satire done extremely well! The movie pretty much sums up the history of Mexico in the 20th Century...and at least provides a little insight into why Mexican politics and the nation of Mexico itself keeps making the same mistakes over and over and over...

I didn't think Reygadas was capable of this, but Luz Silenciosa/Stellet Licht (or Silent Light) is a veritable masterpiece, even if some will cry it's the epitome of pretension, or the tr00 pretentious snobs will claim the film was ruined by the turn of events during the last 10 minutes. This film is a work of art, a (fictional) portrait of life, the first film to almost entirely use Plautdietsch. And note: if you can't sit through the beginning 7 minutes of the movie, depicting the gradual sunrise over the Northern Mexican plains, you can walk out of the theater and know THIS is not for you, this sets the pace of the film.

Stellet Licht is shot in a pseudo-documentary style, like Reygadas other films Japón and Batalla en el Cielo, though with a greater about of refinement here. Scenes focusing on the individuals and the landscape flaunted some WONDERFUL camera work, using it almost like a paintbrush. It captures a unique atmosphere of simple, slow, and quiet country life in Northern Mexico, the vast and delicate lushness of the countryside, the orderly and simple homes of the Mennonites that almost seems alien, like a David Lynch work. The film depicts a part of Mexico that no one ever sees, other than the occasional sunburned blonde haired, blue-eyed Mennonite families selling cheese and cream in some of the larger cities.

There are no trained actors (not a huge market for Mennonite thespians :P), and well perhaps you can fault the film a tad for a lack of emotional depth and realism at the very beginning, but I was actually shocked that once the film gets going, there was an authenticity in the performances that rarely gets captured, down to where you really don't take much notice that there is a fictional story driving the characters, even with the twist at the very end.

I really do hope the foreign language Oscar goes to Mexico this year, for perhaps one of the most unique films ever submitted by the country, if not maybe the only film ever to take place in a Mennonite community, spoken entirely in their native language. Probably nothing new was really introduced to the cinema world with Stellet Licht, but the craft itself was honed in such a degree that is a rare treat for lovers of art, life, and cinema.

This is really more of a movie for the Steven Wilson obsessed Porcupine Tree fans. I have some mixed feelings about the whole thing, but the general message is strong if not a little repetitive of SW's outlook on the music industry and the degeneration of the music consumer and artist. Great cinematography at times, though not a fan of much of the handheld stuff that Hoile edited in.

Not really a well thought-out review yet, but I can say this: Insurgentes is a very interesting doc...to get a glimpse into the head of Steven Wilson, to watch the surrealistic shots of the UK and Mexico.