1953: Ugetsu monogatari

Mizoguchi's film about two men who go out into the world to try their luck does have its moments of (typically Japanese) beauty, but overall it's hard for me to see what all the fuzz is about. (6)

2010: The Social Network

The Film Everybody's Talking about, a courtroom drama of sorts, is an all-around good, funny and well-photographed dramedy, though it's a little too textbook to excite me. (7)

1987: Kárhozat (Damnation)

Bela Tarr's early film deals with a man in love with a married woman in a small Hungarian town, but what it's really about is light and shadow and movement in space. Not quite Werckmeister, but recommended in the unlikely case you're into this kind of thing. (7)

1971: Confessione di un commissario di polizia al procuratore della repubblica

Though somewhat trashy in an Italian-film-from-the-1970s kind of way, the movie about a policeman and a DA with different approaches to fighting crime entertains throughout. (7)

1954: Ordet

Much like Vreden's dag, another sparse Dreyer film set in the Danish countryside. Generally a nice unspectacular offering, but the young man who thinks he's Jesus's appearances border on the unintentionally comic (at least in the dubbed-into-German version I saw) and the ending is, um, unconventional. (6.5)

1963: L'aîné des Ferchaux (Magnet of Doom or An Honorable Young Man)

Melville's road movie about an industrialist fleeing France for the USA and a failed boxer accompanying him as his "secretary" is typically slow and melancholic and untypically unstylized. Certainly not for everybody, but for me. (7)

1962: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

The film about a deviant youth's time in a reformatory and how he got there is generally done well, and I especially like the use of music in the running scenes. Could have done without the grandstanding in the final scene. (6.5)

1951: Ace in the Hole

The story of a reporter putting a man's life in danger in order to have a better story and hence enhance his carreer is sort of pointless: You learn he's an egocentric arsehole in the first five minutes, and then the film spells it out. Still, the script is tightly written in an old Hollywood kind of way, so it's a decent 100 minutes. (6)

1991: Homicide

Starts out as a cool cop flick, then devolves into a drama about Jewish identity. Shame. (6.5)

1983: Zelig

Woody Allen's mockumentary on the "chameleon man" whose looks change in response to his surroundings pretty much takes the format of a standard History Channel documentary and is about as entertaining - but a little more so for the occasional typical Allen joke ("I worked with Freud in Vienna. We broke over the concept of penis envy. Freud felt that it should be limited to women."). (6.5)

2009: Me and Orson Welles

The theatre's an attractive backdrop for movies anyway, and the setup here is nice, too: Young wannabe actor lucks into a job with pre-Citizen Kane, but already famous, Orson Welles, who is directing Julius Caesar and falls for a fellow employee, whom everyone else, including the boss, also finds attractive. It could be a great film, but was apparently streamlined according to screenwriting 101, which is rarely a good thing. I'm looking at you in particular, canned stupid foreseeable ending. (6.5)

2010: The American

The title character is a killer, played by Clooney, hiding out in a village and getting to know a number of people. But there are films in which the plot is not important, and this is one of them. Anton Corbijn, who previously directed the masterpiece Control, again is in no hurry, and lets the film breathe slowly like an old animal. Naturally, many people find this boring. Which is fine, as long as they don't express their boredom in pseudo-conoisseurish phrases like "that's badly narrated cinema". (7.5)

1980: Stardust Memories

This almost plotless picture is Woody Allen's Otto e mezzo, a film about a famous director (Allen) who gets pestered by half of the people about how brilliant they are and the other half about how his old films were funnier. But it's better than Fellini's movie, or at least the 25 minutes I managed to sit through, merging Allen's usual humour with some shots of real beauty. And aliens. (7.5)

1963: Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour (Muriel, or The Time of Return)

Four people meet in a room in Boulogne-sur-mer and their interconnected lives proceed from there. There's love and hate and the war in Africa and a lot of stuff I'm sure I didn't get on the first viewing. But, if that's a basis for that kind of opinion, it's not about the plot anyway, it's mostly about style. Muriel has a modernist soundtrack (think Stockhausen), shows lots of modernist architecture, both interior and exterior, and employs at least two ways of quick editing: First, a kind of proto-hip hop cutting, in which quick successions of cuts skip only a few minutes each; second, quick cuts away from the main plot to show small scenes that are not allowed to take any longer than they absolutely must (e.g., four seconds). That's a main technique for presenting a film not only about specific people, but also one about the city on the whole, as a kind of side order. Or is it the main order?

For the time being, I'm giving it eight points, but I think it's a grower.

1962: Salvatore Giuliano

The nonlinearly told film starts with the death of the title character, a 1940s Sicilian outlaw, and tells the stories of people connected to him, as well as the history of Sicily during that era. It's a little hard to follow at times, but nicely contrasts the city with the countryside, Sicily with Rome, and darkness with light. (7)

1962: Birdman of Alcatraz

You shouldn't think a film about a prisoner in solitary confinement who becomes a bird expert is all that interesting, but it's pulled off in a very professional manner: a well-structured screenplay (Guy Trosper) and no-nonsense direction (John Frankenheimer). Old Hollywood: It did have something going for itself. (7)

2001: Vanilla Sky

David Aames has it all: Good looks, great job, shitloads of money, and he gets to dump Cameron Diaz for Penelope Cruz. Naturally, fortune must soon deal him a bad hand, and deal him a bad hand it does. - Everybody seems to like the Spanish origninal (Abre los ojos) better. I haven't seen that one; at any rate, Vanilla Sky creates a cohesive aesthetic system which is pleasant in a Dido kind of way. Suits me fine. (7)

1963: Nattvardsgästerna (Winter Light)

I hear Jerry Bruckheimer's planning a remake of this one: A Swedish village pastor has doubts about the existence of god in Bergman's unremarkable, but decent significant-slice-of-life picture. (6)

1962: Cleo de 5 à 7

Cleo spends the two hours between visiting the hospital to have a test done which will tell her whether she suffers from cancer and receiving the test results driving in a taxi, being visited by her lover, talking to her maid, etc. Very good music (though sparse) and cinematography; overall decidedly decent. (6.5)

1962: El ángel exterminador

The bourgeois guests at a dinner party find themselves unable to leave afterwards. Their subsequent behaviour suggests poor stress resistance. Featuring lots of dialogue, perhaps too much, and the little surrealistic touches one may expect from Bunuel (in addition to the general surrealistic setup). Why not? (6)