The Wild Bunch

1969, US, directed by Sam Peckinpah

I finally had the opportunity to see this on the big screen, in glorious 70mm -- such that every exploding blood pouch gets the epic treatment. Although there are many memorable moments, Robert Ryan is mesmerizing as an unusually ambiguous hero, the kind of conflicted character whose checkered past would rapidly become more familiar in the 1970s. While the blood-soaked finale of this uncompromising film lodges deeply in the memory, I'd completely forgotten the fine interplay between William Holden/Warren Oates/Ernest Borgnine. It's both a resolutely male film and a rough-edged critique of American masculinity -- almost a farewell, too, to a much-beloved genre, which still turned out to have a little life in it. 

Toy Story

1995, US, directed by John Lasseter

I hadn't seen this since its release, but it turned out to be a perfect Friday-night outing with the boys -- as charming and energetic as I remembered, and with the scary bits judged just right for the younger set. It's also brief -- I note that the running time creeps up with each of the subsequent installments.

So Long At the Fair

1950, UK, directed by Terence Fisher and Anthony Darnborough

A film that might pair rather well with Gaslight, as a young woman visiting Paris in 1889 becomes embroiled in what seems like an utterly absurd situation where her brother and his entire hotel room appear to have disappeared. Dirk Bogarde's not at his best here, but the set-up is rather well-handled, and there's a real frisson of strangeness at times. 

Shaun the Sheep

2015, UK, directed by Richard Starzak & Mark Burton

As good as anything Aardman as produced, with their usual spectacular attention to detail -- on every level, from the physical world to the numerous jokes (some of them intended more for accompanying adults). The Aardman films sometimes occupy a world slightly out of time, and the stylisation here often reflects that -- the urban backdrops, the vehicles -- but in terms of electronic communication it's absolutely up-to-the-minute, creating an enjoyable off-kilter sense of time.

No Abras Nunca Esa Puerta

1952, Argentina, directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen

Based on Cornell Woolrich again, writing as William Irish, and this time adapted in Argentina -- a country previously unknown to me as a purveyor of noir pictures. The same director made another Woolrich adaptation around the same time and indeed the original intention was apparently to do a triptych but they expanded the third story leaving this film with just two entries, both very fine: the camerawork is spectacular at times, showing that noir put down deep roots elsewhere, too, and both stories have a strong twist in the tail. 

The Boys from Fengkuei

1983, Taiwan, directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien

Very much a film where we see Hou's style coming into being, in particular with respect to the measured pace and the careful framing -- especially in the urban sequences, where the use of doorways (and other openings) or balconies foreshadows his later use of space. However, he also manages to capture a good deal of the vibrancy -- both good and bad -- of urban life: the film is certainly not stately in its progression. The main distraction is a classical soundtrack that's without subtlety -- very obvious choices, though apparently this is a step up from the film's original pop backing.

The Hunt

2012, Denmark, directed by Thomas Vinterberg (aka Jagten)

I haven't seen a Vinterberg film since his 1998 breakthrough Festen, and this returns to some of the same territory, a close-knit group of middle-class Danes dealing with a trauma. This picture depicts the aftermath of an accusation of child abuse in a small community, and the sense of blind groupthink is quite impressive, while the choice of subject matter is always challenging (to the point, just occasionally, of distraction: I found myself wondering how they worked with the child actor to ensure she was shielded from the more unsavory elements). 

Headhunters

2011, Norway, directed by Morten Tyldum (aka Hodejegerne)

More Scandinavian genre fare, reasonably interesting for the first half, completely lacking in credibility thereafter, though again with an edge of tough-mindedness one might not find in modern American genre films of this kind. There's also a slightly absurd edge at times that had me wondering if it was supposed to a comedy, though I'm not convinced that this was intentional -- certainly Tyldum is no Bong Joon-ho.  

The Big Short

2015, US, directed by Adam McKay

A very decent effort to comment on an exceptionally complex financial situation, making fine use of a variety of fourth-wall-breaking devices while also functioning as a more conventional modern interlocking story. 

The Chase

1946, US, directed by Arthur Ripley

An oddball noir from Arthur Ripley, based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, which features some spectacular narrative sleight-of-hand even by the standards of the mid-1940s. Ripley's career as a director encompassed only three features, and it's a shame he didn't pursue his interests more as this is certainly distinctive in its feverish Florida/Cuba atmosphere, while it is also blessed with a very fine cast: Robert Cummings, Peter Lorre (oily in a weirdly catatonic way), Michèle Morgan, and Steve Cochran are all in good form. Most memorable, though, for the feverish atmosphere. It's well-worth watching the picture in conjunction with David Bordwell's pair of 2016 blog posts, which contain major spoilers (though 1946 audiences would in many cases have known what was up, as Bordwell so expertly demonstrates). 

Suicide Squad

2016, US, directed by David Ayer

Entirely silly, and at least fifteen minutes overlong, this was still pretty fun, especially on the big screen, where some of the set-pieces played rather well -- the helicopter gunship/Spirit in the Sky sequence wasn't quite Apocalypse Now, but it captured some of that film's bombast and repurposed it to comic effect.

Jason Bourne

2016, US, directed by Paul Greengrass

Much less involving than its predecessors -- where the filmmakers previously managed to preserve some vague sense of Bourne as human being, here his invulnerability shades into the absurd, and at times the destruction becomes as mindless as in any superhero flick, to no greater purpose.

La più bella serata della mia vita

1972, Italy/France, directed by Ettore Scola

A genuinely strange film from Ettore Scola, an adaptation of a Friedrich Dürrenmatt novel in which Alberto Sordi stumbles into a mock trial conducted by a bunch of retired legal eagles in a sprawling castle. There's a sense of incipient madness almost all the time, an oddly hysterical atmosphere lurking just under the surface, both in the trial itself, which the "accused" and the members of the legal profession view very differently, and in Sordi's relationships with the castle staff, with miscommunication or non-communication the main feature. The main distraction, for me, was the post-dubbing of all the actors's voices, standard in Italy in the 1970s -- at times, the discrepancy between the studio-recorded dialogue and the setting, which would have had radically different acoustics, was jarring, and it's sad that there's no French-language audio in existence given that the legal minds are played by Charles Vanel, Claude Dauphin, Pierre Brasseur, and Michel Simon (in one of his final roles). 

The Wave

2015, Norway, directed by Roar Uthaug (aka Bølgen)

Norwegian genre fare, watched out of curiosity when it popped up on Netflix. In most ways the picture is very similar to its Hollywood counterparts (the terrible disaster is ultimately the backdrop for the reunification of one particular nuclear family), but with some interesting nuances: it's a disaster film that needs to turn its lack of budget for special effects (restricted to a few sequences) into a virtue, and it makes smart use of pace, music, editing to create tension, while it also boasts a female lead able to match the male in terms of pragmatism in the business of survival. 

Hell or High Water

2016, US, directed by David Mackenzie

Paired as a double-bill with Charley Varrick, this doesn't have quite the same grasp on character as the earlier film, but it's still a fine picture, with a grizzled Jeff Bridges performance that's a pretty clear re-working of Rooster Cogburn, terrific management of pace, a distinctive and well-used West Texas setting (the film was made in roughly the right geographical area), and some very fine camerawork by Giles Nuttgens.

Charley Varrick

1973, US, directed by Don Siegel

If Charley Varrick appeared today, I'd expect it on the small screen: Varrick is the kind of anti-hero/flawed hero that surely figures in the ancestries of characters like Walter White. As much as I enjoy the pleasures of the expansive series format, Don Siegel's film is a salutary reminder that one can pack a great deal into two hours without compromising on character detail or nuance. Indeed, the film does an especially fine job of shading in Varrick's many sides, part of its careful navigation of the fundamental problem of sympathy with/for the character given that he is, after all, an armed robber. Obviously, the choice of Walter Matthau helps greatly -- there's a kind of hang-dog affability trailing him at almost all times, providing an excuse for his actions almost as they occur, and the actor also finds beats of humour that leaven what could otherwise be a rather dour exercise in criminals turning on one another. 

Der Verlorene

1951, West Germany, directed by Peter Lorre

An excoriating film about the German experience during the Second World War, all the more notable for coming just a few years after the end of the conflict, well in advance of a more systematic historical reckoning. Lorre's only film as director makes adept use of flashback structure to bring us back to the moral compromises of the Nazi era, with the shifts in time also effectively emphasizing the ways in which the past overshadows the present. The film is especially strong on the ways in which the Nazi regime made use of the trappings of the law to bend individuals toward its ends, though Lorre doesn't make excuses for the behaviour of his compelling yet amoral central character (who evokes one of Lorre's most famous roles from the German phase of his career, in Fritz Lang's 1931 M).

A Brighter Summer Day

1991, Taiwan, directed by Edward Yang

An extraordinarily ambitious film that aims to paint a picture of an entire generation of (urban) Taiwanese still adjusting to live after migration from the Chinese mainland, drawing liberally from Edward Yang's own youth in Taiwan -- the Chinese title for the film makes reference to a tragedy that is woven into the latter stages of the film, and which transfixed Yang and his peers at the time. A degree of historical knowledge, such as that provided by the booklet accompanying the Criterion edition of the film, greatly helps with understanding of Yang's goals, in particular the unusual, loose-limbed first hour or so during which the film gradually coalesces around one protagonist while nonetheless retaining a sense of the broader fresco.* Indeed, the film is novelistic in the best sense, weaving a variety of destinies together to exceptional effect.

The English language title emphasizes the fascination that overseas, and particularly American, culture held for young Taiwanese of the 1950s and 1960s, just as postwar Germans delved into the depths of American popular culture, as in the films of Wim Wenders (like Wenders, Yang suggests a deep degree of alienation in the postward populace, an absence of emotional engagement that underpins the film's bursts of violence). Yang is looking back at his own youth, but there's little trace of nostalgia -- even when the film is lit with a wonderful warmth, there's often a sharp contrast with the events or words onscreen, while Yang makes exceptional use of naturalistic lighting effects during one of the film's most bewildering and brutal sequences.

* I also found John Anderson's 2005 book Edward Yang, published by the University of Illinois Press, very informative. Yang's untimely death in 2007 means that Anderson's book stands as a comprehensive career survey.

Deported

1950, US, directed by Robert Siodmak

Not classic Siodmak by any stretch of the imagination, and indeed the skill on display in his Hollywood films of the late 1940s seems temporarily to have abandoned him: though relatively brief, the picture overstays its welcome, and both photography and editing are disappointingly below par. The only real interest comes from the location shooting; though Siodmak apparently preferred to stay in the studio, he always had a fine eye for a good real-life backdrop.

You're Ugly Too

2015, Ireland, directed by Mark Noonan

Not a bad film -- the central pairing of Aidan Gillen and Lauren Kinsella is often effective, even affecting -- but one that's distractingly derivative, in a way that smacks of funding-body conservatism.