In finally made it out to see an actual 2013 movie this week, the rather lackluster adaptation of The Great Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann. Other than that, I haven’t accomplished much of anything. I did make a list over at letterboxd of all 135 movies we played over 129 weeks at Metro Classics from 2007-2011. As surveys of film history go, one could do a lot worse than trying to watch all of those movies.

Not a lot opening in Seattle this week, other than the big mess that is the Seattle International Film Festival. Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share is playing in Tacoma, but I’ll be making my way into the city to see Jacques Rivette’s Le Pont du Nord at the Northwest Film Forum.

These are the films I watched and rewatched over the last week, and where they place on by year-by-year rankings, with links to my letterboxd reviews. Note that I’m not using the imdb date for Mama, which is incorrect.

Lonesome (Paul Fejos) – 4, 1928
The Moderns (Alan Rudolph) – 7, 1988
Mama (Zhang Yuan) – 11, 1990

Tale of Cinema (Hong Sangsoo) – 11, 2005
Chacun son cinéma (Various) – 24, 2007
607 (Liu Jiayin) – 7, 2010
The Great Gatsby – Baz Luhrmann) – 2013

Over the last couple I’ve weeks I posted the second part of my series on Resident Evil and Modern Auteurism, a lengthy review of Oki’s Movie, watched some Kurosawa movies in preparation for the next They Shot Pictures podcast and gave out some Endy Awards for the acclaimed movie year 1939. I also put up lists on letterboxd for Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and Hong Sangsoo.

I have a couple reviews of movies playing in theatres this week in the Seattle area, Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share, Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air, and Wang Bing’s Three Sisters, which is playing in New York.

These are he movies I’ve watched and rewatched over the last two weeks, and where they place in by year-by-year rankings, with links to my comments on them at letterboxd.

No Regrets for Our Youth (Akira Kurosawa) – 6, 1946
Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa) – 17, 1948
The Idiot (Akira Kurosawa) – 10, 1951
Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa) – 6, 1965

On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (Hong Sangsoo) – 11, 2002
Oki’s Movie (Hong Sangsoo) – 2, 2010

This week I finished up my run through the action films of the 2000s and I’m about to start research for my next They Shot Pictures episode, on Akira Kurosawa. In the meantime I spent three days getting lost in the NFL Draft (go hawks) and Gilmore Girls (oh when will Bunheads get renewed??) and not watching any movies at all.

I made a ranked list of movies written and/or directed by Paul WS Anderson (the Resident Evil/Auteurism project is still in progress) as well as updated my list of John Ford movies (I’ve picked up Joseph McBride’s Ford biography again after losing track of it for the first month of Henry).

Night Across the Street, the last film by Chilean director Raúl Ruiz, and one of my favorite movies of 2012, opened this week at the Northwest Film Forum. Also playing there is the documentary Leviathan, which I hear is very good but haven’t had a chance to get to yet. And Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder is still playing as well. So there’s no excuse for going to see the new Michael Bay movie.

These are the movies I’ve watched and rewatched over the last week, along with where they place in my year-by-year rankings, with links to my letterboxd comments. Another revision this week is that Spencer Tracy knocks Lowell Sherman off the nominee list for Best Actor in the 1932 Endy Awards.

Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh) – 6, 1932
The Gay Falcon (Irving Reis) – 25, 1941
The Muppet Movie (James Frawley) – 6, 1979
Event Horizon (Paul WS Anderson) – 53, 1997

Domino (Tony Scott) – 9, 2005
Hitman (Xavier Gens) – 71, 2007
Gamer (Neveldine/Taylor) – 41, 2009
Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (John Hyams) – 21, 2012

Continued with my project catching up on the action movies of the 2000s this week, and actually managed to write something other than a list as well. It was originally just going to be a single post about Paul WS Anderson’s Resident Evil movies, but my introduction about Vulgar Auteurism got out of hand and became its own post. Now the Resident Evil thing will be a series, the next part of which I’ll be writing whenever I can find another few hours of baby-free time.

Opening today in Seattle at the Grand Illusion is Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral, an interesting movie I saw and reviewed way back in September (someday I will finish my last three VIFF 2012 reviews, hopefully before VIFF 2013). The best movie in theatres now though is Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, the first movie I’ve been able to see in a theatre in a couple of months. Like all Malick films, there’s a lot of disagreement and dismissal following in the wake of its release, but I’m sure that in time it will find its place amongst the director’s other great recent works. I don’t know that I’ll be writing much about it: there’s already so much great stuff out there on it and I have so little time, but I loved it.

These are the movies I watched and rewatched over the last week, along with where they place on my year-by-year rankings. Links are to my letterboxd comments, where available.

The Musketeers of Pig-Alley (DW Griffith) – 1, 1912
Man on Fire (Tony Scott) – 9, 2004
Alien vs. Predator (Paul WS Anderson) – 24, 2004
Crank (Neveldine/Taylor) – 8, 2006
Déjà Vu (Tony Scott) – 10, 2006
Death Race (Paul WS Anderson) – 49, 2008

Universal Soldier: Regeneration (John Hyams) – 22, 2009
The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott) – 31, 2009
Crank: High Voltage (Neveldine/Taylor) – 46, 2009
The Three Musketeers (Paul WS Anderson) – 35, 2011
To the Wonder (Terrence Malick) – 6, 2012
Bachelorette (Leslye Headland) – 25, 2012

Dave Kehr and R. Emmet Sweeney discussing Paul WS Anderson at Movie Morlocks last September: 

DK: It’s not like that audience is going to respond, “hey, this got a great review in the Times! Let’s go see Resident Evil 5!” It’s funny how people get that label of being schlock directors. I don’t know what he did to deserve that.
RES: It’s just received wisdom. His name has become shorthand for schlock.
DK: Yeah, but is he Uwe Boll or something?
RES: It’s the subject matter.
DK: But Christopher Nolan became an international star directing comic book movies.
RES: Yeah, but Anderson does video game adaptations, there is a difference. Comic books have risen in cultural capital the last couple of decades. Not so for video games. Roger Ebert says video games are not art, so Paul W.S. Anderson is out. He’s out. People always forget how Hawks and Hitchcock were regarded as vulgar entertainers in their day.
DK: It seems like that lesson never gets learned. Each generation of critics blows it in their own way.
RES: Not that I’m saying Paul W.S. Anderson should be compared to Hitchcock…
DK: Well, he’s at least Far Side of Paradise at this point. [laughs] Maybe he’s Gordon Douglas.

I watched a lot of movies over the last week, but have had no opportunity as yet to write more than a few lines on letterboxd about them as a very small grumpy old man takes up most of my free time. I hope to coordinate things better in the next week so I can write something about Paul WS Anderson’s Resident Evil movies at least, and maybe some other things as well. In the meantime I’ve been tweeting out some links to older content: this week saw a review of The Poor Little Rich Girl for Mary Pickford’s birthday and a They Shot Pictures episode for Hou Hsiao-hsien’s birthday. Also one of my favorite movies from last year is now available on Instant Netflix: Hong Sangsoo’s In Another Country. You can check out more in my Review Index or my Essay & Podcast Index.

One week ago marked the arrival of Baby #2, Henry, and so for the next few weeks at least I won’t have all that much time for writing about movies. I’ll still be watching them of course, but now at much weirder hours of the night (4 to 7 am has been prime movie-watching time over the past couple of days). If you’ve a hankering to read some of my writing, you can check out my Review Index, full of capsule and longer reviews from the past several years.

My next They Shot Pictures episode will be in May, discussing the non-samural films of Akira Kurosawa. Until then I’m hoping to dive into films from Paul WS Anderson, John Hyams, Tony Scott and Neveldine & Taylor. As I noted in this essay a few weeks ago, there’s nothing especially new about the “vulgar auteurism” that champions these directors, but it is a catchy name.

These are the movies I’ve watched and rewatched in the last week, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings. I’ve linked each to my letterboxd comments, which range in length from one-liners to capsule reviews.

Gremlins – 10, 1984
Peking Opera Blues – 12, 1986
Gremlins 2: The New Batch – 10, 1990
Hard Target – 48,1993
Resident Evil – 15, 2002
Resident Evil: Apocalypse – 20, 2004
Damsels in Distress – 2, 2011

This week we finally recorded the Johnnie To They Shot Pictures episode, you can read about it, download and listen by following the links in this post. Next up for me on the podcast will be the first of two shows on Akira Kurosawa, focusing on his more modern-day films. We’re thinking No Regrets for Our Youth, The Idiot and Red Beard right now, but that’s subject to change. I’ll be watching as many of them as I can in the next few weeks anyway. Look for that to appear on an internet near you sometime in May. I also made a list of the Best Movies of the 1990s over at Letterboxd.

Here are the movies I watched and rewatched over the past week, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings. I’ve linked to my Letterboxd notes where applicable.

Le Doulos – 9, 1962
Dragon Gate Inn – 4, 1967
My Left Eye Sees Ghosts – 11, 2002
Throw Down – 2, 2004

Yesterday Once More – 12, 2004
Exiled – 3, 2006
Eye in the Sky – 12, 2007
Romancing in Thin Air – 8, 2012

The latest episode of They Shot Pictures, wherein we discuss Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To is now available over at the website, or on iTunes. After six weeks and 50 or so movies watched, we were a bit disappointed to find that most of the Johnnie To studies we found focused almost entirely on his crime movies, ignoring his comedies and romantic films. So this podcast is an attempt to produce a unified theory of Johnnie To as an auteur, a way to integrate both halves of this highly prolific director’s career and examine the thematic ideas and visual styles that run through all his work, not just the more critically-esteemed action art films.

The discussion focuses on his 2002 Sammi Cheng-starring romantic comedy My Left Eye Sees Ghosts, his 2006 gangster-Western Exiled and his 2004 judo movie Throw Down, but as usual those films are only jumping off points for wider considerations of his work. Unlike other episodes, though, we manage to remain mostly spoiler-free.

Over at letterboxd I have a list of all 42 of the movies I’ve seen so far directed or produced by Johnnie To and/or his frequent collaborator Wai Ka-fai. I also wrote here about his early crime film The Big Heat, and about how the films Infernal Affairs and The Departed highlight certain unique aspects of To’s work in relation to Hollywood and Hong Kong films. I also created the Johnnie To Whimsicality Index, which is exactly what it sounds like.