A Chinese romantic drama directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung.
A man whose wife is constantly busy with work and goes on business trips to Japan meets a woman next door whose husband is always busy with work and goes on business trips to Japan.
Very pretty, but pretty boring. The blocking in Wong Kar-wai films always stacks characters and items in focal depth. A prime example in this film was the woman standing in front of the man and walking away. She is in focus, then he is in focus as she walks past him and goes out of focus into the background. It's just brilliant camerawork! The music was alright too. Everything else sucked. The plot held my attention like a wet paper bag holds battle axes. Sex could have been implied in a very discreet and classy way, but we don't even see them taking their shoes off to enter the homes. They never touch one another. Is having a friend next door this scandalous in Hong Kong? I rate this poor. Read that first sentence of my review paragraph again.
An American fantasy directed by Norman Z McLeod, starring Cary Grant and Gary Cooper.
A compressed version of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
Holy shit! I didn't know that such great films were made in 1933. As far as early movies go, I would rank this among Nosferatu, Haxan, Metropolis and Journey to the Moon. The special effects were as cheap, cheesy and easy as they come, but looked so "in place". I liked that the plot spanned both sections and that it went through them so quickly. Watching a film this old should not be a long, drawn out process. I got a version on Archive.org with incoherent subtitles that I was tempted to pause and read for humor, but turned them off to actually watch the movie. The sets were absolutely beautiful and the costumes matched. I have to rate this best because for that time, it is one of the top 5 films I've seen.
An American Disney animated mystery directed by Ron Clements, Burny Mattinson, Dave Michener and John Musker, starring Vincent Price and Frank Welker.
A rat criminal overlord has abducted the mechanic father of a small mouse child. A mouse man returning from a journey finds the child and they meet up with a Sherlock Holmes style detective. As the case unravels, it turns out that the rat is using the child's father to build a machine which will kill the detective and a robotic replacement for the mouse queen so he can rule the city.
This is the best and most coherent detective film I have ever seen. Maybe my brain works in a different way from live action detective films. The only one that made sense to me was Sin City (2005). I liked that the animation was classic Disney style and there were only 3 musical style songs, none of which were the "heartstring" style. There was an equal amount of humor and suspense. I'm rating this awesome because when it finished, I wanted to reset and watch it again.
A Swedish music documentary directed by Stefan Rydehed.
The history of the Norwegian metal band, Mayhem is told through interviews.
I thought this was excellent. The interviews were far more serious than Until the Light Takes Us (2008). There was lots of background noise in most of them, but the monologues came through very clearly. The video was 1 camera angle per interview, but it looked fine except for one point. There was a few second clip going into one of the sections in which camera or sound gear could be seen to the left. Being 90 minutes just about Mayhem, it was obviously more informative about that band. What I really liked was seiing different photos of Pelle/Dead. I rate this good and would probably watch it again sometime.
