Quick Bit of Happy News

Rialto's forthcoming run of Jean-Pierre Melville's Leon Morin, Priest is now scheduled to begin at Film Forum on Friday April 17th.

And I'm not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere but the Costa-Gavras film Z will also begin a run at Film Forum later this spring, and that will also be a Rialto release.

Expect both films on Criterion DVD in roughly two years.

Download Lisztomania

If I can attempt to summarize this tawdy homage to the equally tawdy Franz Liszt, let's see... Roger Daltry stars as the virtuoso composer, Ringo Starr is the pope, Richard Wagner is a vampire out to destroy Liszt. When Wagner dies, Cosima resurrects his body as a pseudo Frankenstein Nazi and Liszt -- taking a break from his gratuitous sex romps with massive dildos and cute homages to Charlie Chaplin -- descends from heaven to save the world.

The music is all set to Liszt's and Wagner's compositions, by tacky means only of course, with a few musical exceptions that you either love or hate. Overall the film is not as painful as it sounds, and if you were able to stomach the tone of Ken Russell's equally kinetic Tommy then you surely will get a kick out of Lisztomania. Dilettantes who skim through wikipedia before hand will also appreciate many of the inside jokes.

Below is one of the few scenes I can find shared online, where during a Liszt concert, Wagner -- dressed as a sailor and toting a "Nietzsche" hat -- develops his incipient theories on the state of humanity.

It's a crying shame that Warner has not released this puppy onto DVD, and as of their last online chat, has no plans to do so either. Until then, enjoy yet another goodie from rapidshare.

http://rapidshare.com/files/60916839/Lisztomania.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60916508/Lisztomania.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60916373/Lisztomania.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60919349/Lisztomania.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60916038/Lisztomania.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60916455/Lisztomania.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60916700/Lisztomania.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60916496/Lisztomania.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/60915313/Lisztomania.part09.rar

Best. Breakfast. Ever

Several months ago, theaters began to make room for what appeared to be yet another film cashing in on audiences' current fascination with the blackheads on the nose of suburbia. It was possible that this new film had perfected its analysis on our society far better than previous films in the sub-genre had, but a fart, no matter how loud, how long, and how melodic, is still a fart. The film was Revolutionary Road and the director, Sam Mandes, had already wowed audiences with his first take on the suburban problem. I was less impressed with his debut, but blame Alan Ball and his fierce simplification of "the typical American family" for the disaster that was American Beauty.

I'll summarize: Not only did Ball misrepresent this so-called ugly face of our culture, -- a seedy underbelly for those who already live in the other seedy shadows of film noir -- Ball also misunderstood beauty. Actually, the fact that he used the word beauty is a lame attempt at writing, and using it to describe paper bags in the wind and the tender echoes of Thomas Newman's piano and the saturated roses of Conrad Hall's photography is insulting to actual poets. It's too common that people like Ball climb the socio-artistic ladder by merely repeating the crap and static that Americans lap-up on first dates and funerals. We can acknowledging when those like Alan Ball creep into our culture, but as their definition would suggest, it's impossible to eliminate them. Looking back at 1999's Best Picture recipient, the American family of American Beauty was not the tragedy; the American family's consecration of Ball was.

I bring up Ball only to differentiate between the Sam Mendes of 1999 and the Mendes of 2008. Maybe this change was merely an accident. (Darren Aronofsky recently proved with The Wrestler that the potency of The Fountain was most likely a fluke, and I don't know who directed Rachel Getting Married, but it sure as hell was not our beloved Jonathan Demme.) Still, it's never too late to remind people just how big of a blackhead Alan Ball was on the face of cinema in 1999, and certainly Mendes had potential to be the benefactor of their separation. Of his two films that followed, Jarhead exhibited a more dead-pan approach to drama, and that dead-pan delivery is what makes his latest film so awesome.

Now, despite whatever its marketing and intentions may have been, Revolutionary Road is not a commentary on suburban life. Cynically speaking, its failure to garner nominations is a testament to this failure to be socially relevant. At some point Mendes & Gang opted to not have those speeches or montages that sum up the existential crisis of white picket fences and wives who sit on couches all day. And this lack of direct cultural significance surely made the film unattractive to guild members looking for the meaning of life in films like Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire.

Instead, Revolutionary Road is a delightful romp through a dysfunctional marriage. There's little Cassavetes-like sadism, and the acting is decent though pretty generic (think Helen Mirren and Gary Cooper). The film's greatest accomplishment is its reassurance that there is nothing wrong in watching marital misery in all its humor, irony, and sheer spectacle. The film is sincere about this joy, though given its oscarbatory resonance and Mendes's previous efforts, it might be difficult to look past the expectation that this film is trying to sell something.

Update: Kevin alerted me that I neglected to mention Michael Shannon's role in the film. The supposedly insane son of Kathy Bates, Shannon speaks with the same empty clichés as the rest, only he criticizes suburban life as opposed to supporting it. His role is no doubt a playful satire of the glib-minded hipsters of the world, but notice that Shannon was the one who got the Oscar nomination. Hook, line, and sinker.

Oscarbation Season, Ahoy!

Joe notes that Sally Hawkins's absence from the Academy's nominee list is crap. Equally baffling is Happy-Go-Lucky's inclusion in the best original screenplay category. For me, I'm shocked that Harris Savides didn't see his photography for Milk nominated. Without his touch, the film would have been much weaker.

Not that any of this matters. We mustn't forget why The Academy Awards exist and how and why studios promote only certain films every year. It's a harmless practice, but the result creates a false impression that film is dead. Don't oscarbate. Fuck. Then, in between romps, take a look at my now dynamic best of 2008 list on the left sidebar.

I will be back after I finish playing catch-up at work, having missed more than I expected to over the weekend. Being a reluctant Obama supporter, I still got caught up on the 24 hour festival in Dupont's outer radius, which trickled down to Constitution every morning for another activity. Here's proof that indeed I did wake up early for Sunday's awful concert at the Lincoln Memorial:

It was a decent picture of Barack and Michelle Obama until Chode McDooshe raised her hand... right... about... now!(click)

Download Rivette's Duelle and Noroit

More goodies from rapidshare. These are two that need no introduction, and if you've been reading my blog long enough you'll know I think every film by Jacques Rivette is a masterpiece, including his sci-fi genre experiments.

Duelle (une quarantaine) (1976)

http://rapidshare.com/files/173678242/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173678775/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173678956/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173679855/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173680793/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173681064/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173681662/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173682030/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173682214/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173682568/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173682927/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/173681703/Duel.-.Karantin.1976.part12.rar

Noroit (une vengeance) (1976)

http://rapidshare.com/files/139158346/JRN.timb.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139163361/JRN.timb.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139174545/JRN.timb.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139180361/JRN.timb.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139287464/JRN.timb.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139099494/JRN.timb.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139108376/JRN.timb.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139116329/JRN.timb.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139123592/JRN.timb.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139129885/JRN.timb.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139136039/JRN.timb.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139142299/JRN.timb.part12.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139148056/JRN.timb.part13.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139153496/JRN.timb.part14.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139292453/JRN.timb.part15.rar
fixed subs: http://rapidshare.com/files/139862097/Noroit.zip

Political Cinema in 2008

2008 marks an end of an era for American politics (maybe policy, too), and hopefully, hopefully, so follows the hijacking of cinema by the dimmest of the dim political analysts and historians. Maybe Milk and Frost/Nixon weren't the best films of the year, and really, neither lived up to their respective director's previous masterpieces (those titles go to van Sant's recent Paranoid Park and Howard's much older Parenthood), but they both avoided the trappings that kill the propaganda films from the likes of Aaron Sorkin and Michael Moore. At a time when political cinema has been plagued by both the simplicity surrounding our president's current reputation as well as the unprecedented growth of shallow activism on both sides of the aisle, I almost wonder if Bush era political films deserve a sizable handicap.

Milk wasn't a perfect film by any means. It never solved how to deal with the self-importance of a typical biopic, and it fell victim to jazzing up already contrived plot-elements (suicides, history lessons, and a strange use of opera as a metaphor) with empty language and manipulation. Surprisingly, it's success was with its politics. Instead of teaching mainstream America how to understand homosexuality and its history of a complacent intolerance, it actually shows that Harvey Milk's misunderstanding of the heterosexuals in his life was ultimately the most fatal mistake. Had a straight director made this film, I wonder how not depicting Dan White with even a hint of homophobia would have gone over with liberal audiences. Now, if only its audience didn't associate the film with the battle of Prop 8.

Frost/Nixon was equally imperfect. Aside from also using unnecessary metaphors (shoes, duels, etc) to help tell the story (the writer's crutch, no doubt, after his inclusion of deer in The Queen), the film also includes a forced late-night telephone conversation between Nixon and Frost, a choice that actually undermines the potency of the on-camera interviews between the two. The film's strength, however, is in the casting. Frank Langella is a terrific actor, yes, and his impersonation of Nixon is eerie at times, yes. But when juxtaposed with Sam Rockwell's liberal college professor and Kevin Bacon's conservative military officer, two witnesses to history played by reliable script-manglers, Langella's prowess as an actor becomes an unspoken means of empathy for Nixon. With Rockwell and Bacon as the simpletons who will determine Nixon's legacy, Tricky Dick's misanthropy is beyond understandable; it is a necessity. And could we give a round of applause to Ron Howard for not handing the script to Akiva Goldsmith to re-write?

Now, compare these two films to two of the worst political films of the year: Oliver Stone's W. and Jay Roach's Recount (forgive me for not seeing David Zucker's An American Carol). Neither film was made by the intellectual side of the Democratic spectrum, so the attempts to frame a narrative out a series of recent events are total train wrecks. First, while there is nothing wrong with depicting Republicans as human beings, the films highlighted this in such a way that this observation was clearly an epiphany to both Stone and Roach. Second, the timing of these films are troubling. Both films were made during Bush's second term, a time when most Democrats became even more cynical toward Democracy and America. Though now, after Obama's win, that cynicism is far from interesting. And really, the only reason Stone and Roach delivered cynicism in the name of enlightenment (a trend in our culture that never deserved a pot to piss in) was because they are insecure about Austin Powers and World Trade Center as records of their own intellectual limitations.

Lastly, is anything as laughably nonsensical as Recount's trendy intolerance toward Joe Lieberman. According to the moral structure of the film, rejecting military absentee ballots in Florida would have actually been a terrific public relations move for the Gore team, and Lieberman's rejection of the idea was not only a tragic slap-in-the-face to the poor, hard-working, sympathetic lawyer who came up with the idea, but clearly Lieberman was motivated by his own ambition when speaking out against the tactic. All right, maybe it's not laughable, but this epitomizes why Bush's legacy must also include the quick and dirty political cinema that contradicts or supports the events surrounding his presidency. Please, please, can we raise the bar?

Andrew Bujalski's New Film

Joe has some good news for fans of Andrew Bujalski (pictured above during auditions for Soderbergh's Che). This year's Berlinale will premiere Beeswax, Bujalski's newest film since 2005's Mutual Appreciation, still the best film from the Mumblecore lot, which I know doesn't say much. Whether or not Beeswax lives up to Bujalski's two other films will surely be on the minds of many who get to see the film at The Berlin International Film Festival, and let's all hope that whoever decides to distribute the film in the states... I don't know, actually distributes the film (IFC, I'm looking in your direction).

More Garrel from Zeitgeist and The Film Desk

Quick news if you didn't already hear:

The Film Desk will be releasing their first two Philippe Garrel films, J’entends plus la guitare and Les Baisers des Secours, through Zeitgeist as a double-disc package this May. The set will have extra features including an hour long French television documentary. The Film Desk also promises to release more Garrel theatrically by the end of the year.

Download Pretty Maids All in a Row

Does Roger Vadim objectify women? Yes, and how!

Curiously moved by Vadim's reputedly weak chapter in Spirits of the Dead, I've been tracking down his other early work and stumbled upon a real gift to cinema, Pretty Maids All in a Row. This 1974 film stars Rock Hudson as a high school guidance counselor who sleeps with all the 'pretty maids' in the senior class, alongside Angie Dickinson as a substitute teacher who wants to cure the sexual frustrations of one of her students, and the incomparable Telly Savalas as the detective out catch the person who is killing the young girls. Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame adapted the screenplay from Francis Pollini's novel, and there's plenty of full frontal nudity.

That's why you should see it, but here's why it's interesting:

The staging in Vadim's earlier literary adaptations like La Ronde and La Curée constantly encourage you to transform the female body into a plastic set piece akin to the films' sumptuous art directions. For example, the camera work and costuming work together to create terrific games of find-the-nipple, and if you look at the face of these actresses, it's only to admire their vulnerability in looking back at you. The films do this not without some moral standard, of course. The tragedy of their narratives revolve around women who are unable to find that everlasting sexual fulfillment, and as you objectify their being and reduce actresses like Anna Karina and Jane Fonda in to two-dimensional pop-art, you can't help but feel somewhat responsible for their lot in life.

However, after Spirits of the Dead Vadim's films changed. In place of a direct moral agenda was a somewhat aggressive attack on the audience. Films like Barbarella, Pretty Maids All in a Row, and Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman aimed to give audiences guilt-free insanity of sex, humor, and violence, though the end result is conspicuously empty. Maybe his male audiences wanted to be slapped a little bit for enjoying the game of find-the-nipple, or maybe the game was only fun when it was forbidden and buried in the context of a serious, literary melodrama. Either way, these three films come across as bitter insults.

Now, my further interest in Pretty Maids All in a Row is that on the script-level, the film is about the process of watching films like La Ronde and La Curée. Who's murdering the pretty high school students? Well, you are, so you might as well enjoy it.

And now you can download it!

http://rapidshare.com/files/162315433/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162306676/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162300154/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162294865/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162289444/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162283364/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162276739/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162270023/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162262850/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162252463/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162411072/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/162235124/P_E_T_T_Y_M_A_I_D_S.part12.rar

The Whipped Cream: 2008 Super Edition

True story:
I added Cloverfield to my top ten list early on in the year, thinking that it would eventually get bumped by a better movie. But it didn't. Thus, my first list in this post is far from useful (not everyone can be as thorough as Joe):

List #1: Best Films of 2008

Be Kind, Rewind (Michel Gondry)
Cloverfield (Matt Reeves)
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
Definitely, Maybe (Adam Brooks)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Nicholas Stoller)
Frost/Nixon (Ron Howard)
Milk (Gus van Sant)
The Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green)
Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen)
WALL-E (Andrew Stanton)

Here are the films that didn't make the cut:

List #2: The Not-As-Good FIlms of 2008

Australia (Baz Lurhmann)
Baby Mama (Michael McCullers)
Burn After Reading (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher)
Doubt (John Patrick Shanley)
Drillbit Taylor (Steven Brill)
Eagle Eye (D.J. Caruso)
Elegy (Isabel Coixet)
Funny Games (Michael Haneke)
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood)
Hancock (Peter Berg)
The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan)
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg)
The House Bunny (Fred Wolf)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg)
Iron Man (Jon Favreau)
Lakeview Terrace (Neil LaBute)
Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster)
Recount (Jay Roach)
Semi-Pro (Kent Alterman)
Step Brothers (Adam McKay)
Transsiberian (Brad Anderson)
Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller)
Valkyrie (Bryan Singer)
W. (Oliver Stone)
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (Malcolm D. Lee)
The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky)
You Don't Mess With The Zohan (Dennis Dugan)

Most of 2008 was either spent playing catch-up...

List #3: Films from 2006 and 2007 that I Screened in 2008

2 Days in Paris (Julie Delpy)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik)
Balls of Fury (Robert Ben Garant)
The Benchwarmers (Dennis Dugan)
Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
Blood of a Poet (Lech Majewski)
Boarding Gate (Olivier Assayas)
The Brothers Solomon (Bob Odenkirk)
Cassandra's Dream (Woody Allen)
Charlie Bartlett (Jon Poll)
Clerks 2 (Kevin Smith)
Dans Paris (Christophe Honoré)
Disturbia (D.J. Caruso)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette)
Enchanted (Kevin Lima)
Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog)
Evan Almighty (Tom Shadyac)
Find Me Guilty (Sidney Lumet)
Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Friends with Money (Nicole Holofcener)
Georgia Rule (Garry Marshall)
A Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol)
The Grand (Zak Penn)
The Guatemalan Handshake (Todd Rohal)
Hairspray (Adam Shankman)
Hannah Takes the Stairs (Joe Swanberg)
The Heartbreak Kid (Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly)
I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (Chan-wook Park)
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (Dennis Dugan)
Inside (Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury)
I Think I Love My Wife (Chris Rock)
Klimt (Raoul Ruiz)
The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat)
Let's Go to Prison (Bob Odenkirk)
Love Songs (Christophe Honoré)
Lucky You (Curtis Hanson)
Nacho Libre (Jared Hess)
Paranoid Park (Gus van Sant)
Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi)
Quiet City (Aaron Katz)
Redacted (Brian De Palma)
Reno 911!: Miami (Robert Ben Garant)
Right At Your Door (Chris Gorak)
Sleuth (Kenneth Branagh)
Smiley Face (Greg Arakki)
Snow Angels (David Gordon Green)
Southland Tales (Richard Kelly)
Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Forster)
Tell No One (Guillaume Canet)
There Will be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Transformers (Michael Bay)
The Treatment (Oren Rudavsky)
The TV Set (Jake Kasdan)
The Walker (Paul Schrader)
Water Lillies (Céline Sciamma)
You Kill Me (John Dahl)

... or tracking down copies of the older films. Below are the ones I finally saw that really blew me away.

List #4: Best Classics of 2008

Betty Blue (1986, Jean-Jacques Beineix)
Café Lumière (2003, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Crime and Punishment (1983, Aki Kaurismäki)
The Dead (1987, John Huston)
Death in Venice (1971, Luchino Visconti)
Le Deuxième souffle (1966, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Docteur Popaul (1972, Claude Chabrol)
Duelle (1976, Jacques Rivette)
The Heartbreak Kid (1972, Elaine May)
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964, Billy Wilder)
The Mother and the Whore (1973, Jean Eustache)
The Verdict (1982, Sidney Lumet)
What? (1972, Roman Polanski)

And finally, here's a list of all the other films I watched for the first time in 2008:

24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (1945, Jean-Pierre Melville)
50 First Dates (2004, Peter Segal)
Age of Consent (1969, Michael Powell)
All the Real Girls (2003, David Gordon Green)
An American in Paris (1951, Vincente Minnelli)
Angel (1937, Ernst Lubitsch)
Angel-A (2005, Luc Besson)
Ariel (1988, Aki Kaurismäki)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, Frank Capra)
At Long Last Love (1975, Peter Bogdanovich)
Autumn Tale (1998, Eric Rohmer)
L'Avante dernier (1981, Luc Besson)
The Awful Truth (1937, Leo McCarey)
The Bad News Bears (1976, Michael Ritchie)
La Belle Captive (1983, Alain Robbe-Grillet)
Behind Convent Walls (1978, Walerian Borowczyk)
The Big Mess (1971, Alexander Kluge)
Blood Relatives (1978, Claude Chabrol)
Bluebead's Eighth Wife (1938, Ernst Lubitsch)
Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice (1969, Paul Mazursky)
Boccaccio '70 (1968, Various)
Bringing Up Baby (1938, Howard Hawks)
Buddy Buddy (1981, Billy Wilder)
Calamari Union (1985, Aki Kaurismäki)
Caligula (1979, Tinto Brass)
The Candidate (1972, Michael Ritchie)
Chinese Roulette (1976, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Le Cochon (1970, Jean Eustache)
Consenting Adults (1992, Alan J. Pakula)
Convoy (1978, Sam Peckinpah)
Le Corbeau (1943, Henri-Georges Clouzot)
The Damned (1969, Luchino Visconti)
Deathtrap (1982, Sidney Lumet)
Demonlover (2002, Olivier Assayas)
The Descent (2005, Neil Marshall)
Diabolically Yours (1967, Julien Duvivier)
Diabolique (1996, Jeremiah S. Chechik)
Die Marquise von O... (1976, Eric Rohmer)
Diva (1981, Jean-Jacques Beineix)
Domino (2005, Tony Scott)
Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986, Paul Mazursky)
Dr. M (1990, Claude Chabrol)
Drifting Clouds (1996, Aki Kaurismäki)
Easy Living (1937, Mitchell Leisen)
Eros (2004, Various)
Fedora (1978, Billy Wilder)
Fletch (1985, Michael Ritchie)
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987, Eric Rohmer)
Garbo Talks (1984, Sidney Lumet)
George Washington (2000, David Gordon Green)
Gershwin (1992, Alain Resnais)
The Getaway (1972, Sam Peckinpah)
The Gingerbread Man (1998, Robert Altman)
The Green Room (1978, Francois Truffaut)
Hamlet Goes Business (1987, Aki Kaurismäki)
Hard Eight (1996, Paul Thomas Anderson)
Hardcore (1979, Paul Schrader)
Harry and Tonto (1974, Paul Mazursky)
Heist (2001, David Mamet)
Hieronymous Bosch's Garden of Delights (1980, Jean Eustache)
Hold Back the Dawn (1941, Mitchell Leisen)
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1979, Raoul Ruiz)
I Gired a Contract Killer (1990, Aki Kaurismäki)
If Lucy Fell (1996, Eric Schaeffer)
Immoral Tales (1974, Walerian Borowczyk)
Insignificance (1985, Nicolas Roeg)
Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968, Alain Resnais)
Just Before Nightfall (1971, Claude Chabrol)
Killer of Sheep (1977, Charles Burnett)
The Lady Vanishes (1938, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Lady Vanishes (1979, Anthony Page)
The Last Metro (1980, Francois Truffaut)
Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989, Aki Kaurismäki)
Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994, Aki Kaurismäki)
The Lost Sorrows of Jean Eustache (1997, Angel Diaz)
Love and Sex (2000, Valerie Breiman)
The Major and the Minor (1942, Billy Wilder)
The Man Who Loved Women (1977, Francois Truffaut)
The Mating Season (1951, Mitchell Leisen)
May Fools (1990, Louis Malle)
Medea (1969, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Midnight Run (1988, Martin Brest)
The Minus Man (1999, Hampton Fancher)
Mississippi Mermaid (1969, Francois Truffaut)
Moon in the Gutter (1983, Jean-Jacques Beineix)
Moon Over Parador (1988, Paul Mazursky)
Moscow on the Hudsen (1984, Paul Mazursky)
Mr. Freedom (1969, William Klein)
My Brother's Wedding (1983, Charles Burnett)
Nada (1974, Claude Chabrol)
Nathalie Granger (1972, Margeurite Duras)
A New Leaf (1971, Elaine May)
Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976, Paul Mazursky)
The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)
Noriot (1976, Jacques Rivette)
Notre Musique (2004, Jean-Luc Godard)
Le Notti Bianchi (1957, Luchino Visconti)
Numéro zéro (1971, Jean Eustache)
The Offence (1972, Sidney Lumet)
Oleanna (1994, David Mamet)
The Omega Man (1971, Boris Sagal)
Ossession (1943, Luchino Visconti)
Paris vu par... (1965, Various)
The Photos of Alix (1980, Jean Eustache)
Pirates (1986, Roman Polanski)
La Piscine (1969, Jacques Deray)
Pleasure Party (1975, Claude Chabrol)
The Power of Kangwon Province (1998, Hong Sang-soo)
Prince of the City (1981, Sidney Lumet)
Quai des Orfèvres (1947, Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Remember the Night (1940, Mitchell Leisen)
Rocky VI (1986, Aki Kaurismäki)
The Roe's Room (1997, Lech Majewski)
Roma (1972, Federico Fellini)
The Russia House (1990, Fred Schepisi)
Sans Soleil (1983, Chris Marker)
Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (1966, Jean Eustache)
Senso '45 (2002, Tinto Brass)
Senso (1954, Luchino Visconti)
Serpico (1973, Sidney Lumet)
Shadows in Paradise (1986, Aki Kaurismäki)
Shall We Dance (1937, Mark Sandrich)
She Done Him Wrong (1933, Lowell Sherman)
The Sign of Leo (1959, Eric Rohmer)
The Silence of the Sea (1949, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Spartan (2004, David Mamet)
Spirits of the Dead (1968, Various)
Story of Women (1988, Claude Chabrol)
Streamers (1983, Robert Altman)
Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972, Francois Truffaut)
A Summer's Tale (1996, Eric Rohmer)
The Swindle (1997, Claude Chabrol)
Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (1994, Aki Kaurismäki)
A Tale of Springtime (1990, Eric Rohmer)
A Tale of Winter (1992, Eric Rohmer)
Targets (1968, Peter Bogdanovich)
Ten Days Wonder (1971, Claude Chabrol)
Teorema (1968, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
That Day (2003, Raoul Ruiz)
They Live by Night (1948, Nicholas Ray)
Three on a Couch (1966, Jerry Lewis)
Three Times (2005, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Topkapi (1964, Jules Dassin)
Total Balailaka Show (1994, Aki Kaurismäki)
Track 29 (1988, Nicolas Roeg)
Twentieth Century (1934, Howard Hawks)
Two Men in Manhattan (1959, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Un Flic (1972, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Undertow (2004, David Gordon Green)
Une histoire d'eau (1958, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut)
Une sale histoire (1977, Jean Eustache)
An Unmarried Woman (1978, Paul Mazursky)
La Vie de Bohème (1992, Aki Kaurismäki)
Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie (2004, Adam McKay)
Wedding in Blood (1973, Claude Chabrol)
White Dog (1982, Sam Fuller)
The Widow Couderc (1971, Pierre Granier-Deferre)
With Six You Get Eggroll (1968, Howard Morris)
Zero Effect (1998, Jake Kasdan)

Aside from catching up on my Claude Chabrol (now onto it's third successful year), I did my best to track down films by Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean Eustache, Aki Kaurismäki, Eric Rohmer, Sidney Lumet, Mitchell Leisen, Paul Mazursky, as well as a whole bunch of schoolboy-humor comedies that slowly became God's gift to man at 2:00 am, just after finishing a long day at the office.

Yes, this entry is mostly for my records, but maybe you just learned something about me you didn't already know. Cheers!