CINEMANIA:

13 Assassins (Japan, 2011, T. Miike)

Ben said: The Seven Samurai meets Barry Lyndon plus six more samurai. I reference the Kubrick picture because it seemed to me that the evening interiors at the start of 13 Assassins were naturally lit by flickering paper lanterns. Looked cool. Wiki tells me that I shouldn't reference the Kurosaw picture, however, because 13 Assassins is a remake of the 1963 b/w film of the same name by Eiichi Kudo. Kudos to the makers of 13 Assassins, then, for carrying forward the Jidaigeki genre.

Wasp (2005, UK, Andrea Arnold)

Ben Livant:

OK. So I'm trying to catch up on all the things you've sent me. So I click on this link. And the minute the thing starts playing, I know I've made a mistake. Because it's a beautiful sunny day. And I don't want to watch a movie right now, not even a short one. I want to finish my email, shut off my machine and get out in the sunshine. But the thing is still playing. And the energy coming off of it is immediately powerful.

It Might Get Loud (USA, 2008, David Guggenheim)

And then Ben said:

It might've gotten louder as far as I'm concerned. I enjoyed It Might Get Loud but the film doesn't really deliver the goods. Ostensibly a document of a summit meeting of three well respected and highly influential guitar players from three different generations, the meeting happens but the three hardly reach the summit together.

Invictus (USA, 2009, Clint Eastwood

And so Ben sez:

I'm not into sports in a big way and I'm generally wary of patriotism. The supposedly sublimated violence of the former often fuels the organized xenophobia of the latter. Militant supporters on the sidelines are in a recreational dress rehersal for war. On the other hand, sometimes the aggression inherent in athletic confrontation is indeed sublimated into healthy competition and mutual respect.

Between the Folds (USA, 2008, Vanessa Gould)

Ben:

The brevity and modesty of this film are essential to it's efficacy as both an entertaining and educational documentary. For the reputation of it's subject matter is also that of something small and unprepossessing. That origami is actually something massive and marvelous is made evident by the soft-spoken and less-is-more power of this film.

The Raven/Le Corbeau (France, 1943, Henri-Georges Clouzot)

Ben Livant:

Just this week I watched and reviewed Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon (2009) and in my review I referred to Shirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery (1948).

The Pawnbroker (USA, 1964, Sidney Lumet)

Ben Livant:

Somewhere between the Taxi Driver New York of Martin Scorsese, the Annie Hall New York of Woody Allen and the Do The Right Thing New York of Spike Lee is a good beginning suggestion of the New York that came into my mind as an adolescent visiting relatives there and eventually living there for a year. In short, the mid 70s to early 80s.

Zorba the Greek (UK/USA/Greece, 1964, Mihalis Kakogiannis)

Ben begins (and middles and ends):

My categorization of Zorba the Greek as a comedy enabled me to critically observe what I took to be a tourist worldview. The latter might seem an unwarranted interpretation on my part considering that the film was based on a book by a man from Crete, the setting of the story, and directed by a man from neighboring Cyprus.

Waste Land (UK/Brazil, 2010, Lucy Walker, Karen Harley, Joao Jardim)

Ben begins:

Could the title be any more misleading? Fuck Facebook and the movie about it. This film is the real social network. This film is not about garbage at all. It is not about a dump at all. It is about human dignity. At its most essential core and therefore in its most profound expression. And just as essentially and profoundly a part of this, it is about community. Deep and serious social solidarity.

Marwencol (USA, 2010, Jeff Malmberg)

Ben Begins (and ends):

Hogancamp's camp is full of Hogan's Heroes. Sure, I say this to make the pun, but not just to make the pun. Indeed, had the pun been my top priority, I would not have capitalized the word "Heroes" to indicate a proper noun. A lower case spelling would signal that the heroes were merely those of Mark Hogencamp, the significance of which is entirely personal for him, privately idiosyncratic.