February 20, 2012

The Last Ten Movies I Saw

By michaelgloversmith

1. Antonio das Mortes (Rocha)
2. Design for Living (Lubitsch)
3. Village of the Damned (Carpenter)
4. Love Stalker (Glasson/MacLean)
5. The Band Wagon (Minnelli)
6. House of Pleasures (Bonello)
7. L’atalante (Vigo)
8. The Rules of the Game (Renoir)
9. The Princess Bride (Reiner)
10. The Tracker (de Heer)

About michaelgloversmith

Filmmaker, author and Film Studies instructor. View all posts by michaelgloversmith
This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2012 at 2:35 pm and posted in The Last Ten Movies I Saw. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

11 responses to “The Last Ten Movies I Saw”

  • Zach Olmstead
    February 20th, 2012 at 4:52 pm

    I haven’t seen any of those, but that Love Stalker looks really interesting>

    If you’ve seen my blog lately, can you offer any comments of feedback?

    Reply
  • Zach Olmstead
    February 20th, 2012 at 9:00 pm

    Also, have you seen Take Shelter? I only saw it recently but it’s easily one of the best films of 2011.

    Reply
  • david
    February 21st, 2012 at 12:10 am

    just like last time,I’m interested how you rank The Rules of the Game in French cinema and The Princess Bride in all Reiner’s films.

    Reply
    • michaelgloversmith
      February 21st, 2012 at 9:40 am

      I really like Reiner’s first two films (This is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride). I don’t care about anything he’s done after that. I feel the same way about the early work of a lot of Hollywood directors who first came to prominence in the ’70s and early ’80s (Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, etc.)

      The Rules of the Game is my favorite Renoir film and indeed one of my favorite French films ever. The new Criterion blu-ray is magnificent. You can read my essay on Rule of the Game here.

      BTW, I just saw a great new French film, Bertrand Bonello’s House of Pleasures, that will probably make my list of the Top Ten Films of 2012. It’s a really haunting, enigmatic, beautifully shot film about the closing of a high class brothel in Paris in the year 1900. I have a feeling it will be released by Criterion at some point in the future; it’s being distributed theatrically by IFC films and IFC and Criterion have some sort of arrangement.

      Reply
  • Zach
    February 23rd, 2012 at 11:55 am

    You should do “Best of” lists based on your favorite genres. It’d be fun to see which science fiction, horror, and animated films you consider the best.

    Reply
  • Zach
    February 25th, 2012 at 1:44 pm

    Another thing I’ve always wanted to know. What are your opinions of directors Kevin Smith, Tony Scott, and Hayao Miyazaki?

    Reply
    • michaelgloversmith
      February 25th, 2012 at 4:54 pm

      The only Kevin Smith movie I’ve seen is Clerks, which I didn’t care for. Nothing I’ve heard about his subsequent work makes me feel like I need to fill in on what I’ve missed. Tony Scott represents everything that I think is wrong with contemporary Hollywood: he makes loud, overly busy, hyperkinetic films for the ADHD set. His movies strike me as nothing more than commercials for themselves. The only Miyasaki film I’ve seen is Spirited Away, which I enjoyed. I need to see more. Which of his other films would you recommend?

      Reply
  • Zach
    February 25th, 2012 at 5:30 pm

    I enjoyed Kevin Smith’s work on Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Red State, mainly because they were interesting uses of independent filmmaking. All his other stuff is just boring, crude, and easily forgettable.

    We all know Ridley is much more talented than his younger brother, and I often like to study their own careers compared to each other. I agree with your opnion of Tony; he is an overall bad director. However, I do think he got lucky with Top Gun, True Romance (his best), Enemy of the State, and Unstoppable. But while I liked those films as fun guilty pleasures, I can’t give many compliments to his other work, which is basically commericialized nonsense. I certainly don’t see him pumping out anything good in the future.

    Miyazaki, I think, is one of the greatest animators of our time. Spirited Away is easily his best film. If that’s all you’ve seen, I recommend his other works in this order:

    1. Princess Mononoke
    2. My Neighbor Totoro
    3. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
    4. Howl’s Moving Castle
    5. Porco Rosso
    6. Castle in the Sky
    7. Ponyo

    Reply

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