(1994) dir. Michael Haneke
viewed: 03/28/08
My “numbers” film series, movies beginning with a number, allowed me to queue up one of director Michael Haneke’s earlier films, 71 Fragments of a Chronicle of Chance, part of his “early” period, in which his films were more “experimental” and fragmented.
I stumbled onto Haneke via his film Caché (2005), and have [...]
Archive of entries posted on March 2008
71 Fragments of a Chronicle of Chance
36 Fillette
(1988) dir. Catherine Breillat
viewed: 03/28/08
Though this film was familiar to me from its name and its poster, I had never seen a Catherine Breillat film before. I recall first queueing her films when I’d read a review of Fat Girl (2001) though I’d never gotten around to seeing any of her films. Her films, based [...]
51 Birch Street
(2005) dir. Doug Block
viewed: 03/21/08
51 Birch Street is a documentary shot on video, featuring some semi-home movies, in which director Doug Block merely wanted to catch his parents in their actuality, talking about their lives a bit, not so much for creating a theatrical film, but simply for posterity. But after his mother dies, his [...]
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
(1958) dir. Nathan Juron
viewed: 03/21/08
After watching the DVD of 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), I turned on the little documentary that the DVD featured of Ray Harryhausen and his work, showing lots of clips of all his films, plus discussing his techniques and history. My son wasn’t all that excited about 20 Million Miles to [...]
30 Days of Night
(2007) dir. David Slade
viewed: 03/18/08
30 Days of Night sets an interesting premise for a vampire/horror film. The story is located in “Barrow, Alaska”, the northernmost city in the United States, in which there is one “night” that lasts 30 days. So, for the vampires, who don’t dig daylight, this is the perfect scenario for feasting [...]
Paranoid Park
(2007) dir. Gus Van Sant
viewed: 03/18/08 at the Bridge Theater, SF, CA
I hadn’t made it to the Bridge Theater on Geary in years. Literally. I don’t think I’ve been there since I started this film diary, which is 6 years at least. I think that maybe the last film I saw here was John Waters’ [...]
20 Million Miles to Earth
(1957) dir. Nathan Juran
viewed: 03/16/08
20 Million Miles to Earth was one of my favorite monster movies of my childhood. I always loved the stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen, and I loved the monster, who like King Kong (1933), the movie monster that inspired Harryhausen, 20 Million Miles to Earth’s Ymir, the monster from Venus, a displaced [...]
Horton Hears a Who!
(2008) dir. Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino
viewed: 03/15/08 at AMC Loews Metreon 16 with IMAX, SF, CA
From the studio behind the Ice Age movies, neither of which have I ever sat and watched in their entirity, we have the latest take on Dr. Seuss in big time Hollywood feature film. That said, I have seen bits [...]
Elephant
(2002) dir. Gus Van Sant
viewed: 03/14/08
This was an odd choice to follow up Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), which I watched just prior in an act of decompression after a bad day. But I’ve been reading a lot about directer Gus Van Sant’s new film, Paranoid Park (2007), which has gotten very good reviews. Elephant won the [...]
Resident Evil: Extinction
(2007) dir. Russell Mulcahy
viewed: 03/14/08
Man, I’ve had the worst day today. I needed something completely mindless and stupid to take my mind off of things. I dropped into the video store. And came up with…Resident Evil: Extinction, the third in a series of films adapted from a video game and starring Milla Jovovich as an [...]
