99. White Material (Claire Denis)
Isabelle Huppert continues her long streak as France’s toughest and greatest actress in a seemingly effortless and unsettling portrayal of a coffee plantation owner in an unnamed colonized African country who is obsessed with finishing her harvest despite the unraveling and chaos of the social structure. This is the masterpiece of the French Festival. It’s a film rich with ambiguities and points of view, and vivid in the smallest details and in the landscapes of this soon to be forsaken land. This is the most frightening and insightful film I’ve seen of all the movies trying to come to grips with the chaos of post-colonial Africa.

98. Leaving (French – Catherine Corsini)
Explores in short, and often blackout scenes, moments of a wealthy wife and mother falling headlong into a passionately sexual love affair with a working class builder. It also explores the fine line between clever and stupid. Kristin Scott Thomas is as good as she can be in this melodrama – and we’re collectively proud of actresses willing to get naked at 50. Sergi Lopez, who usually plays villains, nicely underplays the lover, but is he really worth all this? Her final dissolution is preordained by a gunshot we hear at the start of the film. This precedes the story, which is then revealed in flashback. It’s a nice touch. But it really is just becomes a tale of a mentally ill women. There’s no real reason for the affair (unless she really likes a good hairy butt). What about her kids, her practice, her background, her relationship – anything? We see it all, and there are some fun and squirmy moments. But in the end it just doesn’t add up, and it’s strains credibility in a big way.

97. Two for the Wave

96. Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont)
Dumont explores the fine line between martyrdom, fanaticism, faith, and delusion in this meditative (some will call slow paced) look at a young Christian fanatic who befriends a group of ‘terrorist’ Muslims. Throughout there’s a degree of sexual threat and violence so present in his films, as well as the very physical presence of nature, of weather, of the elements. It’s an edgy mix, yet most of the time we’re looking at the world through the vulnerable searching eyes and face of Julie Sokolowski as Céline/Hadewijch, the latter being a 13th century mystic who also sublimated courtship for a love to God, and who also took no vows as a nun. As Celine, the girl is sent from the convent for being too extreme in her devotion. She begins to naively explore the real world. Like the earlier poet and mystic Hadewijch – into whom she slowly seems to be transforming – Celine is also from a very wealthy family, a fact that sets up another set of questions and contrasts in this contemporary context. I love looking at the faces director Dumont offers up, and as always he sets up situations that call out for argument and conversation. The ending is sudden and unexpected, and you are left to question not only what might happen next, but to where exactly has the director led us.

95. Making Plans for Lena (French – Christophe Honoré)
Airless, complex, chattering, dysfunctional, and destructive – and I mean that in a good way. That is to say it’s what the director intends. The audience will measure its own family delusions, illusions, ideas of love, and ability to survive against these mostly unsympathetic characters. I liked it, but didn’t enjoy it. This is something the French do well. Featuring the Chiara Mastroianni, daughter of Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve, who mostly got her father’s looks, which she uses bravely and unglamorously in this film written for her.

I am teaching a horror film course in the Fall. Ye gods and little fishes. Here’s some research.

101. [REC] 2(Italian)
Sequel to [REC] where mock-doc is applied to being quarantined in a building with victims of a flesh-eating disease. This one is about demonic possession being quarantined in a building and creatures still need to eat flesh. Lots of thrills, special effects, nifty hand held and video cam ideas. Ultimately stupefying, unless you really love a good “gotcha” horror flick.

92. Dead Snow(Tommy Wirkola 2009)
Ye olde cliche-written (and ridden) “teenagers in jeopardy from Nazi zombies” movie. I think the reviewers have as much fun writing about it as they have watching it, because it is SO ridiculous. What separates it from other severed limbs, guts spewed-&-chewed type fare is that it’s really nasty and takes itself wonderfully seriously. So it’s better than just a good-bad movie. It’s along the lines of Evil Dead movies except blood and guts look really cool on frozen white landscapes nestled in the mountains of wherever.
The opening of the film, set to Grieg’s Peer Gynt, sets the tone. It’s full of enough clever Grand-Guignol to warm the palpitating hearts of those who need more Raimi type smirking splatter in their lives. Don’t rent the dubbed version. Director Tommy Wirkola is directing Hansel and Gretel for Will Farrell. Perfect!

93. Orphan(Jaume Collet-Serra 2009)
This is like if Disney decided to make horror films to give kids nightmares. There’s all this typical family behavior that morphs into really sick situations; the ‘orphan’ holding a gun to her little sister’s head, creepy repetitive singing, squashing a bird’s head, and of course lots of cold hearted very bloody murder. I think that’s why kids are reenacting scenes on youtube. The very good Isabelle Fuhrman in the title role with killer gonzo deadpan stare, says her character Esther just wants love – a smart choice for any actress and how else can a child of 12 so effectively play a complete psychotic? . The adorable and (actually) deaf little sister played by Aryana Engineer is only 8 and she goes through horrific scenes. Not all parents let their kids do this kind of role, but she claims it was ‘fun, and not hard at all’. I’m a huge Vera Farmiga fan who has this way of acting that always feels part of an ongoing life of a character. Peter Sarsgaard is always good as the honorable, but necessary flawed male manqué. So too late at night I got caught by this likely-to-be cult film which runs 2 hours! I couldn’t turn it off and had nightmares, so I’d say it does the job!

94. Bigger than Life (Nicholas Ray 1956)
Read about it on IMDB. It’s so weird and overdone and overly colorful and melodramatic. But it sticks to you like a dream. Ray has one of the oddest sensibilities in film. If you ever get a chance to see it, stay with it, and guaranteed it will haunt your dreams. The same goes for many of his films. My own favorite nightmare might be his proto-lesbian western, Johnny Guitar.

90. Art & Copy(Doug Pray 2009)
I was really looking forward to this and it’s better than I even thought it would be. Doug Pray, who did Surfwise and Hype has such a clear, easy to watch crisply edited style. This film isn’t the usual tirade against advertising, but a celebration of its power as art and persuasion told through the voices of some of the masters of the best campaigns in advertising history. The film doesn’t doesn’t take a position on whether this is propaganda or art, only that it is powerful, enormously cleaver, often brilliant and can change direction culture. That says a lot.

87. Coming Apart (1969 NetFlix)
This was as disturbing as Trash Humpers for its time. People walked out and it wasn’t re released for decades. The entire film is shot into a mirror from a single camera angle in a one-room apartment. Rip Torn as psychoanalyst Joe Glazer rents a studio apartment away from his pregnant wife and has sexual encounters with a series of women which he films with a hidden camera. But it is an amazing experience and to watch Rip Torn blaze through this thing is to experience one of the best performances on film. You will not believe this is scripted. Totally hypnotic. Sally Kirkland and others give their heart and soul to the project. Not pleasant, but boy does it speak for its time, but probably any age.

74. The Man Next Door (el hombre de al lado)
Yet another great Argentine film. (The Secret in Their Eyes, The Custodian, Kept and Dreamless are others worth checking out) This strange story is about all kinds of things concerning communication, family, authenticity, seeing and being seen, architecture, and the modern world that has way of distancing us from one another with its obsession with technology. The brilliant opening let’s us know the movies style will border on what reminds me of ‘video art’ in its framing and clever shooting and concepts. It unfolds patiently, isn’t entirely sympathetic to its characters, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Don’t miss this one.

75. COCO AND IGOR
Gorgeous to look at and infinity better than Coco Before Channel which left you empty. The acting is great, sets, costumes, and cinematography all admirable. The opening scene of The Rite of Spring being performed for the first time in 1913 is worth the whole movie. I like the way Stravinsky’s music embellishes the whole thing, but it does really go anywhere. So you just sit back and try to imagine maybe this all really happened – that Igor had a passionate fling with Coco. I like costume dramas anyway, if a little cold to bio-pics. That they might have had this affair is a cool fact, but not necessarily made more real for me by seeing Igor’s naked heinie in an overhead shot pumping the very splayed thighs of Coco Chanel. Overall the movie it is fun to watch and listen to.

76. GET LOW
Robert Duvall should stop producing movies with scripts that let him play these inarticulate backwoods guys. The problem being that you wind up eventually with a film like this. It had me begging for something to happen followed by being actively pissed at the non-payoff ending. They build up this premise fed by artful flashbacks and then don’t have the good sense to conclude it.

77. TILLMAN STORY, THE
A story that needs to be told, and its told really well considering the limitations the director had with the family. This is one remarkable family seeking justice for their son a remarkable person and a war hero. It’s a shocking story, and I don’t know how much more disillusioned we can be about Bush, Rumsfeld and his arrogant and corrupt cronies. I hope this film gets seen. History will add it all up. At least that scumbag General McChrystal lost his job. See it. Watch the generals lie and deceive before your very eyes. An amazing story. See it. Arrg.

78. HIPSTERS(2008)
If you’re looking for an engaging quirky night of film, check out this bizarre Russian musical. I didn’t even think the colors in this film existed in Russia. I didn’t know the 1950’s existed in Russia but there is a serious and interesting historical component. The Stilyagi (’Hipsters’) were a rebellious youth subculture in Russia from the late 1940s until the early 1960s. They Soviet Union who dressed in modern fashions, and flew in the face of the communist-socialist realities of the time. This is great fodder for a film.The songs are generally very clever neatly worked into the plot. A hallucination of a movie. It’s in the tradition of midnight cult films. A great rental.

79. SOUL KITCHEN(Fatih Akin)
A bit unlikely and silly, but moves fasr. Akin having fun. Not his best. Be sure to see Head On and The Edge of Heaven first.

80. LUCKY
81. DRY LAND, THE
82. KILLED MY MOTHER (J’AI TUÉ MA MERE)
83. LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX
84. KINGS OF PASTRY