"Pillow Coup d'état"

DAISIES

Original title: Sedmikrásky
Year: 1966
Country: Czechoslovakia
Language: Czech
Number: 450
Director: Vera Chytilová
Starring: Jitka Cerhová, Ivana Karbanová

Vera Chytilová's Daisies is an avant-garde film about two girls named Marie I and Marie II, who tries to understand this strange world. One day they decides to be bad, because the world is also bad. They start going out with older men who buys them dinner, and then run away. Otherwise they love to joke around doing vandalism and simply break loose. Daisies is a surreal comedy that you could interpret as both anarchistic and feministic. It is indeed a very liberating film both thematic and technical. It's experimenting. I really enjoyed watching this colorful mess, with the two girls playing around like they were having a sexy pillow fight, but as the movie goes on, it's getting more uncomfortable. It's like a young girl playing with her Barbie dolls. Daisies is a perfect example of how communist Czechoslovakia really was. Daisies are the definition of the sixties itself, wild and restless. Thumbs up.

Grade: A-

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"Post-Apocalyptic Deja Vu"

LA JETÉE

Year: 1962
Country: France
Language: French, German
Number: 370
Director: Chris Marker
Starring: Jean Négroni, Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich, Jacques Ledoux

Chris Marker's short film, La Jetée takes place some decades after world war III. A world ruined by atomic war. The few survivors lives underground. The future is not longer about weapons, but about getting more time. The leaders decides to experiment on a prisoner in order to send objects back in time. A prisoner that has obsessive childhood memories about a murder that occurred on the day of the apocalypse. He's being send back in time before the war occurred. It takes a long time before he's able to move. And when he finally does, the leaders decides to liquidate the prisoner. Now the prisoner has to make a run for it.

La Jetée is special because it's not a real film, but a slideshow full of still images that creates a story. That's right, it's a photo story, with a bunch of amazing photos that haunts you, featuring great sound effects besides the narrating, such like the metallic sounds, echoes, water drops, a German doctor and etc. All this creates the perfect post-apocalyptic feeling. Surreal filmmaker Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys was highly influenced by La Jetée, specially the great twist ending. A great photo story. Thumbs up.

Grade: A-

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"The Fragile Truth"

REPORT

Year: 1967
Country: United States
Language: English
Number: 461
Director: Bruce Connor

Bruce Conner's short film, Report, is an avant-garde documentary that focuses on the day of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas of 1963. What we see is a bunch of news footage of that day, plus some unrelated footage, that features previous wars, advertisements for american consumer goods and even the famous scene from James Whale's Frankenstein where the doctor creates the monster. The soundtrack features a bunch of news reports from that day, which makes it more intense to hear how that situation evolved. It's a pretty interesting little film. A film that haunts us, with its repeating and unconventional imagery. Thumbs up.

Grade: B+

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"Stronger Bullitts"

DRIVE

Year: 2011
Country: United States
Language: English
Number: 1097
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks
Oscar nominations: Best Sound Editing
Cannes: Best Director

Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive is what some one would call some kind of cult film, such as Fight Club or Reservoir Dogs. It has some of the same characters and some of the same unforgettable elements. But the problem is the plot, which isn't that original, but the way the whole movie is filmed, its graphic shock violence, heavenly cinematography, and its amazing soundtrack, makes it definitely a well crafted film, that are done right with real professionalism.

Drive is the story about a driver (Ryan Gosling) who remain nameless through the movie, is working in a garage, and some times works as a stunt driver in movies. But at night, he's a professional driver who is hired to help criminals get away from the crime scene. He owns both the night and day. But one day he falls for a young alone mother named Irene (Carey Mulligan), who live next door, and helps her and her son occasionally, and starts to appreciate life. But she has a husband, who is in prison, and are soon coming back. It's a forbidden love story. Meanwhile the Driver is hooked up with the mafia who is literary at war with each other.

Drive is a well made film technically, the colors, the cinematography and the 80s soundtrack. Ryan Gosling also does a good job in portraying a foggy and confused soul. A pour soul that has no way out of this evil oasis. His handsome look doesn't bother me at all. Although many people would have preferred a Steve McQueen kind of guy. But it's different times, and Gosling is the ugliest they got. I'm just kidding. He's as perfect as he was in his Oscar nominated performance in Half Nelson. He has a good chemistry with co-star Carey Mulligan, though I'm little pleased with, or have very mixed feelings for her performance in a role that she isn't fit for, plus she's too young and always acts like an innocent little deer who we always feels sorry for. But it also creates a sense of innocence and likableness to the whole story. The innocent couple against all the cruel mobsters.

This film is truly special in case of stile, its 80s style, mixed with some shocking violence scene that will give you a shock, and that some film lover will find interesting, and a little funny or surprising. But it's no doubt that this movie have something for every one. Thumbs up.

Grade: B+

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"They See Me Rollin"

THE WHEEL

Original title: La Roue
Year: 1923
Country: France
Language: Silent
Number: 19
Director: Abel Gance
Starring: Séverin-Mars, Ivy Close, Gabriel de Gravone, Pierre Magnier

Abel Gance's La Roue, is the epic story about the railroad worker Sisif, who witness a fatal train crash that causes many people's life. He rescue a young girl named Norma English from the ruins, whom he adopts and raise as his own, along with his own son, Elie. Then we jump fifteen years forward in time, where we see a drunken and miserable Sisif, who is that way because he has fallen in love with his own adoptive daughter. His son does not know, but there is still a very strong connection between them. Sisif tells this secret to the railroad owner Jacques de Hersan, who propose that he might help Sisif, by marrying the young and beautiful Norma, in order to take her off Sisif's mind. Which of course Sisif does. But does it really help?

La Roue is a masterpiece of epic proportions. Gance's use of fast editing is also quiet amazing. This was some years before Sergei Eisenstein started experimenting. We have the fast editing when the train is rolling too fast, to make us audience more scared. And it also feature the very first "life flashed before my eyes" scene, with a bunch of random images from the past. There's no doubt that La Roue is a technical wonder. But the story itself is also great. It's an epic tale about forbidden love and selfless devotion. It's such a deep story, with a lot of deep characters. It's certainly no ordinary love story. It might even be something that todays directors can learn from. Thumbs up.

Grade: A

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"Close-Up Paradise"

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC

Original title: La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc

Year: 1928

Country: France

Language: Silent

Number: 41

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Starring: Maria Falconetti, Eugène Sulvain, André Berley, Michel Simon

Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc is the story about one of the most legendary warriors in western history. A woman that has been the subject for a countless of screen adaptions. Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) was just a normal peasant girl, whom according to herself was chosen by god to lead the French to victory against the British. But after she failed to defend Paris, she was handed over by her own to the British, who of course burned her at the stake, because of her heresy. She was just nineteen.

Dreyer's film evolves around Joan's trial in England, where all the priest and judges tries to convince her that she was send by the devil, and that she is lying. While Joan on the other hand is truly convinced that she is the messenger of god, and that she acted only according to gods words. After getting tortured, she then sign a document that she acted by the devil, but then change her mind and choose to die a martyr death for her belief.

The Passion of Joan of Arc was not a great success when it was released in 1928. It was such a big flop that Dreyer couldn't make a movie for ad least ten years, with the exception of "The Vampire". It was believed lost, until 1981 when an original copy was found in a mental institution in Norway. And has from then been counted as one of the greatest films ever made.

What makes this film so great, is the use of close ups, which are perfect, because they capture every emotions and horror in everyone's faces, every bodies facial expression, meaning that this is a film unfit for Nicholas Cage. The walls are white. The focus is entirely on the peoples faces. And Maria Falconetti who's never acted before, does a marvelous performance as Joan, she pulls it off like a professional. Even though I think it's a little to much crying, it's still a stand out classic. Thumbs up.

Grade: B+

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