Getting My Feet Wet - Reflecting on This Year's Toe Dipping

For four months out of this year, I have dedicated myself to exploring movies that I wouldn't normally take a look at. They made a huge gap in my movie watching, and I thought it was time to fill those gaps. In June, I checked out French New Wave. The month after that, I looked at Anime films - which was super helpful considering I'm going to Japan next month/year. I took a break over August and September when I took a couple of breaks from blogging, but in October I was back into it with Horror films. Last month I took a deeper look into Nicolas Cage's filmography. They're all wildly different movies, but I thought I may as well rank them from worst to best, just to show how these new discoveries panned out for me. So here are all 34 movies, ranked:

34. The Wicker Man (2006), Dir. Neil LaBute - Obviously. Although Nic Cage in a bear suit is probably going to be the most memorable experience I'll have of 2012 through the eyes of movies.
33. Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Dir. Dominic Sena - Purely because that car-themed sex scene between Nicolas and Angelina Jolie. It was the most awkward thing ever.
32. Ghost Rider (2007), Dir. Mark Steven Johnson - Nicolas as a fearless stuntman? Yeah...no.

My Movie Biography: Where It's At Now in 2012

(2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) Well, we're heading into the home stretch now. Tomorrow is the big day. Just to let you know, you will probably have trouble visiting the site for a while. Don't worry, (fingers crossed) everything goes fine and I'll be back up and running this time tomorrow. Hope to see you there!  Anyway, 2012 in my movie biography...

• By some small coincidence, all of the movies I got at one time from Fatso were by Roman Polanski. So I started off the year with Chinatown, Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby. That was...fun.
• I saw The Muppets and The Adventures of Tintin on the same day. I felt so awkward being this 16 year old all alone in cinemas filled with children. Funnily enough, I preferred Tintin a lot more, but now The Muppets is pretty much my go-to movie when I want to feel better about life.
• I finally got out of NZ! My father and I went to Melbourne, Australia for a week and that was exciting. I was pretty excited for the plane trip, because Drive was playing on the plane and I hadn't seen it because it was an R18. I did really like it when I saw it, but I completely forgot about the fact that it was censored, so I was left wondering what was so R18 about it. Then I looked it up on the internet and apparently there were 70 swearwords in it, but I hadn't heard any of them. When I got the film on DVD, I finally embraced it and it became my second favourite movie of 2011. While I was in Melbourne I bought a crapload of movies because they had everything that I'd been looking for. And there's like, five JB Hi-Fi's in the city, so I was in heaven. Also heavenly was the Pancake Parlour, but that's another story. I also went to the cinemas a fair bit because I wanted to escape the heat. I only really wanted to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, because I thought it was going to be an R18 in NZ and it was only an MA15+ in Australia. I was so excited to be all rebellious. Then I got back to NZ and I found out that it was only an R16. Which was somewhat disappointing. I also saw The Descendants and Hugo just because I could. I really miss Melbourne. It was such a nice place. One day I hope to go back.
• While I wasn't as excited for the Oscars as much as I was last year (I blame the fact that I hadn't watched many of the movies), I still thought it was a good idea to wake up at 3am and watch the Oscar nominations for fun. It wasn't all that fun until I saw that Rooney Mara got nominated, in which case I let out this weird squeal that woke up everyone in the house. I stayed up until at least 4.30am ranting with people on Facebook about them. Which probably wasn't the best idea, because once the morning hit we were going to Palmerston North to watch War Horse. It didn't affect the experience. I still spent the entire film crying my eyes out. And when I say the "entire film", I mean the entire bloody thing. As soon as I saw that horse I was in tears.

Dipping My Toes in French New Wave: Hiroshima Mon Amour and Jules and Jim

It has been a fun month of getting into French New Wave, but I must admit, it kinda ended with less power than it did when I started. Hiroshima Mon Amour and Jules and Jim, the last films I watched for the series, were unfortunately the worst of the selection that I'd seen. That's not to say that they were bad, they just finished last. Anyway, my (brief) takes on the two, followed by my evaluation here...

The last time I saw a film by Alain Resnais, I was scarred for life. In fact, I watched Night and Fog a whole year ago and every time I think of it, my skin crawls. So I was a little weary about Hiroshima Mon Amour, one of the earliest New Wave films, but thankfully there was little scarring on this movie's part. Instead, this is a film about a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva, who is currently gracing screens in Michael Haneke's acclaimed Amour) and a married Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) who have an affair, but no that they'll have to part ways in a very short amount of time. The film is basically a compilation of the conversations they have over the 36 hours that they are together, which are mostly based around the idea of the limits of memory. While I am a self-confessed fan of hearing people talk, this film, for some reason or another, frustrated me. I'm not sure why that was, as the words said were beautiful - I guess it was either the fact that I was exhausted or I just couldn't really connect to what was going on. Aside from that, it was beautifully made (which I think is just a given because all New Wave films have such brilliant ways of expressing themselves). Also, the opening was great - even though it is different from Night and Fog, I could see how Resnais was building on what he'd done there with a mix of clips revolving around the terrible events of Hiroshima. Certainly something that I wasn't expecting, but Resnais does that sort of thing well.

Dipping My Toes in French New Wave: Vivre Sa Vie and Au Hasard Balthazar

This week brought another Godard film, and a donkey film from Robert Bresson. This month is going faaaaaaaaast, and I'm sad that I only have two spots left to fill. French New Wave makes me happy, which is kinda funny because all of the films have been sad. I'm definitely enjoying this little marathon...

That's two out of two for Godard so far. While I really enjoyed Breathless, Vivre Sa Vie has been the stand out for me. It is told in twelve chapters, as it follows young Nana (Anna Karina) and her descent into prostitution. Breathless was a film that was dripping with style, but Vivre Sa Vie had that one extra factor that made it more interesting to watch. First of all, I loved Anna Karina. She just oozed this air of style from the way her eyelashes batted about and her hair formed that spectacular bob on her head - basically, she was my idea of everything stylish from the 60s. Plus, that dancing scene of hers completely one me over. The story that she performed was devastating, though. Nana was such a sweet, quite naive girl who needed to make ends meet, which unfortunately turned her to doing something that extreme. However, Godard doesn't handle the prostitution as a way of making us feel only pity for Nana. We're drawn into her world, where we find out the ins and outs of the job, and how the people doing it interact with each other. Again, it is the documentary feel that Godard achieved with Breathless, and achieved with this one, too. Instead of making this an overly melodramatic film about a woman's sad descent into something she does out of desperation, it is basically a close up on what can happen to a person. A real person. Not a movie character.

One of the things I loved the most about this film, though, was how philosophical it was. There was one particular chapter towards the end which had Nana talking to an old man at a restaurant. I can't really explain how wonderful this scene is - just the words thrown back and forth are so beautiful, so meaningful, and so interesting. In fact, I really want to get a transcript of this conversation to read every single day for the rest of my life, just to remind me of the little things I always forget. And at least six times a year I want to revisit this film to remind me of everything else that I always forget. It's that amazing.

Dipping My Toes in French New Wave: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Breathless

It has been an interesting week since my first entry, with lots of people answering my call and recommending lots of New Wave flicks. Super happy about it, guys, but the unfortunate thing is that I won't be able to watch everything you recommend by the end of the month. I only have eight spots, and half of them have been filled already! However, I'll continue on this education in the many years of life I still hopefully have to live. Anyway, this week's pickings were the musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

I consider myself to be quite the fan of musicals. Sure, 80% of them are really cheesy, but if the cheese is melted you right, I can't think of anything more fun. Then there's the other side to musicals: you know, Les Misberables, The Phantom of the Opera etc. These films bring sadness to songs, making heartache mean something so different. And you know what? I love it just as much as I love to see people dancing around in buses in the middle of the day. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is unlike anything I've seen before, though. This film does not have a spoken word of dialogue: everything is sung. I was very confused as to whether this was a New Wave film, since it didn't really look like any of the other ones, but then I realised that it was quite an experiment. It was very hard to get into the fact that no-one was going to just talk to each other, but once I came around, this more was a brilliant experience. As brilliant as it was, though, it was absolutely devastating.

The basic story is that young Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve, who is like my new favourite actress), who lives with her mother at an umbrella shop, secretly falls in love with Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), which her mother disapproves of. Guy is sent off to war, and when he leaves Geneviève discovers that she is pregnant. While he is gone, the wealthy Roland Cassard (Marc Michel) falls in love with her, and offers to marry her and bring the child up as his own. The film is absolutely heart-breaking. And it is simple heart-break, too, which is made even more heart-breaking by the way song and music is weaved into the plot. In fact, just thinking about it now makes my heart hurt a little. However, while the film is doused in sadness, it is extremely beautiful to look at. The 60's were such a colourful era, and director Jacques Demy uses colour to it's full extent. The art direction is beautifully bright and vibrant - for example, the house that Geneviève and her mother live in is filled with pastel pinks and purples, instead of boring creams like most houses. My eyes had a love affair with this movie. Which makes it the ultimate paradox: even though this movie made me hopelessly sad, I am helplessly in love with it.

Dipping My Toes in French New Wave: Cleo from 5 to 7 and The 400 Blows

I like to think I've dipped my toes into most things by now, but then I remember there are several sub-genres that have eluded me. One of which is the French New Wave. To tie in with the LAMB's Foreign Chops for the month, I've checked out a couple of definite New Wave films: Cleo from 5 to 7 and The 400 Blows. Throughout this month, I'll be watching a few more New Wave flicks and checking in every Wednesday to let you know how I'm going. Just think of this as a 'wider film education for a 16 year old who has nothing better to do'...

The main reason I saw Cleo from 5 to 7 was because it was directed by a woman. Call me strange or whatever, but whenever I watch a film directed by a woman, I feel a sense of pride (even when I'm watching Mamma Mia). However, there was a certain sense of pride that I felt while watching Cleo that I definitely didn't feel whilst watching Mamma Mia. This film was just indescribably great. It takes place in real time, starting from 5pm. It follows beautiful singer Cleo (Corinne Marchand) throughout an hour and a half of her life, as she waits to find out the diagnosis of her cancerous tumour and whether it is fatal. From the get-go, this film seemed pretty much perfect for me: I have a major weakness for these simple films where we observe a certain character going through life. This one is a step ahead of the other ones I've obsessed over in the past. For one thing, it is French, and I can't help it if I fall in love with anything from that country. Another thing is that it is so goddamn beautiful. However, the thing I liked the most was that this film started off in colour - and it had every reason to go on that way - but Agnes Varda chose to film the rest in black-and-white. Glorious black-and-white. From there, everything is more beautiful, more eerie, more feeling. Just the way I like it.