I Love Your Work (Adam Goldberg, USA): 51 (Toronto 03)
[Scattershot perils-of-celebrity satire scores some great lines (dialogue, not coke) but stumbles badly when Goldberg tries to push his flimsy material into darker territory. Ribisi, who I generally like, is badly miscast; likewise Potente. Best opening title card of the year.]

Gilles' Wife (Frédéric Fonteyne, Belgium/France/Luxembourg/Italy/Switzerland): 54 (Toronto 04)
[Exquisite filmmaking in the service of a banal tale of romantic martyrdom -- imagine an early silent melodrama reconceived in the syntax of Late Modern Eurorigor. Emmanuelle Devos, with her penetrating eyes and her jagged wound of a mouth, does a heroic job of conveying the title character's interior monologue (the film was adapted from a novel, though you wouldn't necessarily guess that) entirely via minute facial adjustments, but it still felt to me as if something vital wound up lost in translation. Confirms Fonteyne as a major talent, though.]

Private (Saverio Costanzo, Italy): 48 (Toronto 04)
[Blunt, hamhanded metaphor -- Occupation as a House, Stults quipped -- but it's still kind of potent, perhaps simply because it's so direct. Unfortunately, the inherently gripping scenario and a host of strong performances wind up undermined by laughably on-the-nose dialogue ("Why don't you just leave this house?" "Why should I? It is my house. Why don't you leave this house?"), egregious shaky-cam videography, and a climactic, pseudo-Aesopian burst of Roger Waters circa 1992. At least Bellocchio knew enough to use instrumental Floyd.] [ADDENDUM 11/05: Ironically, Private and Good Morning, Night, which were made in separate years, wound up being released in NYC on consecutive weeks.]

Land of Plenty (Wim Wenders, USA): 48 (Toronto 04)
[Not sure why I kind of liked this, but I kind of did, despite the lowish rating. It's a silly and somewhat motononous film, shot in grimy DV, but it taps into post-9/11 anxiety in a way that's at once comforting and distressing, and John Diehl stubbornly refuses to let his wacked-out character devolve into caricature, even as he's the butt of some pretty good jokes. Or maybe it just looks good compared to The End of Violence and The Million Dollar Hotel.]

Dandelion (Mark Milgard, USA): W/O (Rotterdam 04)
[Let's see, how can we stack the deck against our sensitive young protagonist, who looks like he just wandered out of Elephant High and is first seen delicately putting the barrel of a pistol into his mouth? First, we'll saddle him with an overbearing, disapproving father; a passive, pill-popping mother; and a crazy uncle who fears that the boy will be killed fighting in Vietnam. (The film is set in the present.) Then we'll show him perform a mercy killing on a wounded bird. Then his asshole dad will allow him to take the fall for the old man's hit-and-run, because presumably a two-year juvie term means nothing compared to pop's campaign for...city council. "TWO YEARS LATER," read the intertitle, and I had to disagree. It had already felt like at least five.]

Novo (Jean-Pierre Limosin, France/Spain/Switzerland): 30 (Toronto 02)
[Memento reconceived as a bad French art movie -- protagonist passive rather than active, emphasis on sex rather than revenge. Give Limosin credit for successfully disguising the material's essential ludicrousness until late in the going. What was the deal with the tooth, though? Dopey symbolism? Obscure plot point? Please advise.]

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park Chan-Wook, South Korea): 33 (Toronto 02)
[Devoid of sympathy, empathy and ultimately even curiosity, I wound up observing each fresh act of violence or torture with the cold, impatient stare of a customer at the butcher shop. Give me the glossy, pat morality play of Joint Security Area over this random nihilism any day.]

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Dai Sijie, France): 40 (Cannes 02)
[Blatant, ungainly tale of covert intellectual shenanigans in one of Mao's re-education camps, theoretically buttressed by a tepid love triangle the combined angles of which add up to 155 degrees tops. Xun Zhou (of Suzhou River fame) singlehandedly saves the picture from outright wretchedness with her impish joie de vivre...and, okay, her succession of skimpy swimming costumes. Paean to Western lit frequently verges on the hilarious -- apparently even the water buffalo smell different the morning after you first experience The Red and the Black. Good to know.]

Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea): 61 (Toronto 03)
[Kind of a relief to eventually discover that Bong means to examine the genesis of police brutality rather than advocate its employment, but my addled brain failed to keep pace with the fabled S. Korean tonal shifts, especially when Goofus is juxtaposed not with Gallant but with Grim (or Grimm). Ends strongly, which helps.]

Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, France/Thailand): 85 (Cannes 04)
[Opinion seems divided about whether this exquisitely uncanny gay romance tells one linear, simple-yet-oblique story, switching rhetorical gears at the midpoint, or whether its mythic second half to some extent recapitulates its mundane first. Both positions have merit -- though I found a number of apparent rhymes on second viewing supporting the latter -- but more compelling than either, to my mind, is the film's implicit suggestion that no amount of artful, naturalistic observation can possibly convey the atavistic turmoil lurking within the human heart. Unexpected though the rupture may be, it arrives precisely at the moment when conventional representation, however inventive, precise and assured, starts to feel painfully inadequate. The jungle adventure that follows -- beautiful, mysterious, savage, tentative, spontaneous, unforgettable -- deserves a less hackneyed and misleading phrase than "pure cinema," but somebody else will have to come up with the neologism. I'm already a week behind.]

Undead (The Spierig Brothers, Australia): 46 (Toronto 03)
[Genially inept low-budget zombie flick boasts a handful of awesome moments, most notably an actor named Mungo (as a brooding loner named Marion -- a nod to John Wayne?) punching a school of killer flying fish. Not the greatest sendoff for the late, lamented Uptown 1.]

The World (Jia Zhangke, China): 58 (NYFF 04)
[Yet another portrait of aimless, disaffected Chinese youth unsure of their place in the new global economy, but spiced up this time with a truly inspired conceit, the film's theme-park setting providing a winningly absurd counterpoint to the characters' moping and flailing. Jia's use of offscreen space, always masterful, suddenly becomes even more poignant and hilarious, e.g. a slow pan reveals that the person who wandered out of frame a moment ago is now standing in ancient Egypt, the Great Pyramids sort-of-towering over his own forlorn frame. More energetic than Jia's last two films, too (my favorite, in a walk, remains his funky debut, Xiao Wu); the animated interludes don't really add much but were welcome nonetheless, just 'cause they shook things up a bit and boy does Jia need that. Demerits: way overlong, sometimes heavy-handed (the scenes with the Russian woman; "I don't even know anybody who's ever been on a plane"); kneejerk downbeat conclusion. But this still seems like a step in the right direction.]

Joint Security Area (JSA) (Park Chan-wook, South Korea): 67 (Berlin 01)
[Slick but satisfying, Park's DMZ drama -- reportedly the highest-grossing movie in South Korean history -- feels uncannily like Hollywood fare in terms of its tone, narrative structure, visual schema, etc. Also in terms of good old-fashioned star power: One of the lead roles is played by the Foul King himself, Song Kang-ho, and seeing those two movies virtually back-to-back confirms that he's an actor of tremendous range and bottomless charisma; JSA (as it's apparently known back home) is worth checking out for his performance alone. The Rules of Engagement-style military inquiry material doesn't really work, and the movie as a whole is neither profound nor especially probing, but its dream of rapprochement (think A Midnight Clear) is quite touching, and at no point during its two hours was I even remotely bored.]

5 x 2 -- Cinq Fois Deux (François Ozon, France): 47 (Toronto 04)
[Apologies to those who assumed I'd automatically flip for the backwards movie, but I'm afraid I can't get behind Prick Cowardly a Married I. Jane Campion employed roughly the same structural conceit in Two Friends with considerably more skill and nuance, and while I (shamefully) haven't yet seen any version of Pinter's Betrayal, I'll make a blind wager that it's far superior as well. Certainly it can't be this pathetically one-sided, although Ozon's belated, contrived attempt to balance the scales in the fourth segment is arguably more risible than the deck-stacking that precedes it (and both are even more annoying than the mixed metaphor you just had to reread twice in order to parse). Not to mention that Ozon has somehow managed to locate the only bad actor in France, who comes across like Bruce Greenwood on meds. A few sharply observed moments here and there deserved a more discerning context. Finally, do not on any account listen to Theo, whose admiration for the film is largely predicated on an exquisite and revelatory final scene that, when pressed, he admits doesn't actually exist.]

High Tension (Alexandre Aja, France): 46 (Rotterdam 04)
[Dutch subtitles again, but I have no qualms about giving a rating this time since (a) I understand French well enough to follow stuff like "Dormez bien" and "Qu'est-ce que vous avez regarder, Jimmy?" and (b) 90% of the movie is dialogue-free in any case. On the other hand, I do have qualms about assigning it this particular rating, since what we have here is a perfectly solid slasher flick -- nicely atmospheric, occasionally witty, constantly gripping, properly gruesome -- that winds up hamstrung by the single most retarded plot twist of all time. All through the movie I kept thinking "Why did the folks at TIFF not dig this?" and then it ended and I was all: Oh. Imagine a terrific rollercoaster ride that ends with the car pulling into the station and a bucket of pig vomit being dumped onto your head. Did you have a good time? You see my dilemma.]

Sequins (Eléonore Faucher, France): W/O (Toronto 04)
[The alternate English title is A Common Thread. The scenario concerns a pregnant teenager and a grieving middle-aged woman who form a tentative bond while working together as seamstresses. Need I continue?]

Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, USA): 47 (Toronto 04)
[Nice to see Araki maturing a little without abandoning his trangressive instincts, but this is still a fairly banal therapeutic exercise, building very very slowly to a revelation that's been painfully obvious since the end of reel one. Fearless, riveting work by Joseph Gordon-Levitt confirms him (following the little-seen Manic) as one of the best actors of his generation.]

A tout de suite (Benoît Jacquot, France): 50 (Cannes 04)
[Never would have guessed this was Jacquot, apart from its sympathetic but semi-detached observation of a young woman in distress. Here he shoots in grainy b&w (video? super-8? I was never quite sure) and employs a more jagged style than has been his custom -- not inappropriate, I guess, given this film's fairly conventional lovers-on-the-lam scenario. All too obviously based on someone's actual experience, with all the advantages (emotional specificity) and weaknesses (dramatic shapelessness) that implies; Isild Le Besco's fiery temperament serves her character well early on, but she overplays the catatonia in the second half, and the film kind of flatlines with her.]

Eros (Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong/China; Steven Soderbergh, USA; Michelangelo Antonioni, France/Italy/Luxembourg): 54 (Toronto 04)
[One out of three is about par for the international omnibus extravaganza, I suppose. Wong's contribution revels in the same soporifically gorgeous romanticism as 2046, substituting Chang Chen for Tony Leung but retaining Gong Li, Peer Raben, the 60s and a vague air of tragic languor. Antonioni populates various imposing locations with vacuous mannequins, who prance around naked and exchange risible dialogue as symbolic wild horses thunder past. Only Soderbergh delivers, though his brief comic sketch, featuring wonderfully garrulous work from Robert Downey Jr. and a symphony of furtive lechery from Alan Arkin, doesn't exactly qualify as erotic. And it's smack in the middle, too, so I'm afraid you can neither split super-early nor arrive very late.]

The Friend (Elmar Fischer, Germany): 61 (Rotterdam 04)
[Easily the best 9/11 movie to date, though most of its strengths are only tangentially related to the terrorism angle. In a way, it's a male version of Ghost World, with Enid's bus bound for an Al Qaeda training camp; not nearly as glib or offensive as that sounds, though, and Fischer wisely downplays the more sensationalist aspects of his inherently compelling story, letting his actors create characters rather than symbols. Too clumsy to recommend without reservation -- the flashback structure, in particular, is more hindrance than help -- but also too assured and subtly resonant to ignore.]

A hole in my heart (Lukas Moodysson, Sweden/Denmark): 46 (Toronto 04)
[A porn flick shot in my living room. A surgical needle in my labia. A sadistic bald dude vomiting in my mouth. A metal baseball bat in my personal space. A stiletto driven deep in my morose Goth-inflected childhood innocence. A fat pimply ass in my field of vision. A churning in my gut. An entry in my official Fox Searchlight notepad: "pathetic and repulsive not inherently more truthful than [unreadable]." An uncertainty in my response to an unexpectedly gentle, playful conclusion.]

Kontroll (Nimrod Antal, Hungary): W/O (Cannes 04)
[Painfully unfunny comedy-thriller about a group of allegedly lovable losers working as conductors in the Budapest subway system. With its forced banter, nonstop mugging and endless chase sequences set to bad techno, it resembles nothing so much as an attempt to go Hollywood made by someone who grew up watching TV broadcasts of Running Scared.] [Addendum: I now discover that Antal was actually born and raised in the U.S. This explains a lot.]

Look at Me (Agnès Jaoui, France): 51 (Cannes 04)
[Struggled with the rating on this one, because it's obviously a "good" film -- intelligent, literate, beautifully acted, nicely observed, chockablock with piercing bons mots and credible human idiosyncrasies -- and yet I watched the entire thing in a semi-attentive, fidgety stupor. In part this may have something to do with the dynamic being too blunt and constricted, particularly w/r/t the toxic relationship between dumpy, neurotic fille and monstrously insensitive père; in part it may involve my general lack of interest in the self-esteem issues of the French bourgeoisie. Mostly, though, I felt certain that I wouldn't remember much of anything about this movie even just a few months later. And I was right. I don't.]

Mondovino (Jonathan Nossiter, USA/Argentina/Italy/France): 43 (Cannes 04)
[More than you probably really wanted to know about the wine industry's movers and shakers, though those with a palette more refined than my own may thrill to Nossiter's endless interviews with high-priced consultants, recalcitrant French traditionalists, laid-back Napa Valley nouveau-snob entrepreneurs, pompous Italian aristocrats, and cute little doggies. (Well, he doesn't actually interview the dogs, but he sure seems obsessed by them.) Still, I really think this is mediocre filmmaking: self-indulgent, fatally disorganized, and repeatedly undercut by juvenile editorial inserts, like the weird repeated shots of one California family's automatic swimming-pool cleaner. And what's with all the gratuitous zooming, often in mid-sentence? Sip some overpriced Mondavi and calm the fuck down.]

Buffalo Boy (Minh Nguyen-Vô, France/Belgium/Vietnam): W/O (Toronto 04)
[Basically the Vietnamese equivalent of a cattle-drive picture -- not Red River, but one of those mundane, forgotten oaters that crop up on AMC around 4am. Often quite beautiful, but that's about it. Spooky flute score calls to mind various Japanese classics, which doesn't help.]

Millions (Danny Boyle, UK/USA): 56 (Toronto 04)
[Consistently cute, intermittently clever. Dopey subplot about the bad ol' robber trying to regain his booty will appeal to kids, I suppose.]

Sexual Dependency (Rodrigo Bellott, Bolivia/USA): W/O (Toronto 03)
[If I wanted to see people speaking Spanish in pointless, distracting split-screen, I'd watch Mike Figgis movies on Telemundo.]

10 on Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran): 4 (Cannes 04)
[What could be more exciting than a movie composed entirely of two fixed camera angles in a moving vehicle, focused on a series of conversations between driver and passenger? How about a movie composed almost entirely of one fixed camera angle in a moving vehicle, focused on the driver as he recites the most tedious director's-commentary track ever recorded? For that's all this "movie" is: Kiarostami driving endlessly around the location where Taste of Cherry was filmed, imparting scholarly lessons about the miracle of the digital video camera (people behave so naturally in its presence!), the superiority of non-professional actors (they don't act! they just be themselves!), and -- my personal favorite -- the inherent intrusiveness of non-diagetic music, intended only to manipulate the viewer's emotions...which is why, AK explains with a straight face, he uses music only at the very end of his films, as a means of signalling the audience that the picture is almost over. (I am not making this up.) Not everything he says is that resoundingly inane, but most of it is repetitive, banal and completely devoid of wit or insight...and all the while, save for a few interpolated clips from Ten (which suddenly looks riveting in this context), we've got nothing to look at but a middle-aged man steering and talking. That a major film festival would consider this worthy of attention is appalling; that other critics continue to pretend that Emperor Abbas is stylin', just plain sad.]

Bad Guy (Kim Ki-duk, South Korea): 58 (Toronto 02)
[Hideously misogynistic -- but then, so is The Piano, which tells basically the same story but tarts it up with "respectable" neo-Gothic atmosphere. This version's more honest.]

Cinévardaphoto (Agnès Varda, France): 61 (Toronto 04)
[Two keepers and a clunker. The newest film, about an exhibition of photographs that feature teddy bears, is simply marvelous, both as an exploration of the project itself (which is way more complicated and even profound than you'd guess from a mere description) and as yet another portrait of the workings of Varda's witty, humane, endlessly inquisitive mind. A 1982 short about one of Varda's photographs from the 1950s, recollected by its subjects decades later, works very nicely as an embryonic treatise on similar ideas. But the earliest film, a kaleidoscopic montage of images from a 1963 trip to Cuba, is little more than filler, lacking the philosophical reflections and playful verve of Varda's later work. Still, I adore this woman.]

My Mother's Smile (Marco Bellocchio, Italy): 45 (Cannes 02)
[Provocative premise -- committed atheist learns his late mother's being considered for canonization -- proves to be merely the framework for one of those coyly allusive, maddeningly indulgent journeys of self-discovery so inexplicably beloved by Italian auteurs. (See also most of Fellini, Rosi, et al.) And could somebody over near the stereo turn down the oppressively rapturous score at the next opportunity? Grazie. Seeing it did confirm, however, that Sergio Castellitto may be the most underrated thesp alive; his physical reaction to a compliment from his son's religion teacher -- a complicated repositioning of his upper torso that somehow clearly suggests "You're altogether too kind and also kind of hot I just realized" -- is in the running for the fest's single finest moment.]

Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan): 48 (Cannes 04)
[Actually, if anybody does know why Kore-eda felt this ripped-from-the-tabloids melodrama, about a family of small children abandoned by their terminally flaky sitcom mother, needed to be approximately 17 hours long, I'd appreciate a précis of his reasoning. First hour or so unfolds with well-judged deliberation and is impressively detailed in its depiction of the kids' hermetic universe -- in fact, with the exception of a handful of unfortunate musical cues, I can't really think offhand of any specific missteps anywhere. It's only in the second hour (and 20 minutes) that you start to realize that the film has never once budged from the slightly maudlin rut it carved midway through the opening reel. I know it's terribly jejune to say that a film is too long, but seriously, this movie is just way the hell too long. In the end, the thing just ground me down, eroding my goodwill. Pity.]

Fear X (Nicolas Winding Refn, Denmark/UK/Canada): 12 (Rotterdam 03)
[Where X = stilted dialogue; canned portentousness; endless footage from surveillance cameras for that sub-Egoyan effect; blood-red hotel corridors for that sub-Lynch effect; Turturro on autopilot; James Remar under the impression that he should look 5% more stricken in each consecutive shot; dumbass "all in his mind" plot twist (shut up, you should thank me for spoiling it); "also starring Deborah Kara Unger." Note to cbf: No sign of Kim Bodnia, you're off the hook.]

The Green Butchers (Anders Thomas Jensen, Denmark): W/O (Toronto 03)
[Attend the tale of ATJ/His wit was pale and his plot cliché/He switched to camera from his pen/And never thereafter was heard of again...]