Busy month, so I didn’t get to watching as many films as I would have hoped. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is as beautiful as it is poetic, quite possibly Julian Schnabel’s best piece. Lars and the Real Girl only reinforces my love for Ryan Gosling’s acting, putting two of his films (Half Nelson and this) in my top favorites. I also watched Annie Hall again, it’s been years, and can’t believe how similar Larry David’s comedic prose are to Woody’s. To think the two will be in a film side-by-side next year really gets me excited.

• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly ★★★★
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead ★★★
• Lars and the Real Girl ★★★★★
• Atonement ★★★
• American Gangster ★★★
• Reservation Road ★★
• Annie Hall ★★★★★

Totally forgot to post these. No time to go in depth. Definitely check out Lust, Caution and Into the Wild.

• Mulholland Drive ★★★
• Into the Wild ★★★★
• Oldboy ★★★
• 30 Days of Night ★
• The Hoax ★★
• Lust, Caution ★★★★
• Arrested Development Season 3, Disc 2 ★★★★
• Blade Runner: The Final Cut ★★★

The 17th annual Philadelphia Film Festival began this past Thursday and runs through April 15th. The festival has grown enormously and will host over 240 films in its seventeenth year. There are about fifteen films I’m intersted in seeing including Deficit which is directed by and stars Gael Garcia Bernal (from Babel), Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame which is directed by 19-year old Hana Makhmalbaf and Roman de gare.

There is a wide range of genres spanning indie and documentary with a very substantial foreign showing including the North American premier of several Indian films. The festival’s website has been completely redesigned with a very convenient feature that allows you to create a schedule of all the films you want to see. Tickets can be purchased directly online or at TLA Video stores around the city. Packages of 5 or 10 tickets can be purchased at a discount.

This will be my first time attending the festival and would love some suggestions of films to checkout. Hopefully I will have time to writeup a few short reviews in the near future.

Update: I created a Facebook group so people can discuss, suggest and review the films with each other.

Another month goes by, some more movies were watched. Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding shows his interest, or perhaps experience with dysfunctional families but is no Squid and the Whale which I love. Gone Baby Gone was a job well done in the writing department by Ben Affleck but I wish they didn’t cast his brother Casey; looking at his face ruined the film for me. Peter O’Toole shows his slightly funnier side in Venus, the sad story of a an old, dying man that falls in love with his best friend’s young niece. Fracture got lost in the mail and never showed, The Kingdom was a surprisingly good “kill every terrorist in sight” flick and I was hugely disappointed in Across the Universe (how more cliche can The Beatles get?). Finished up season two of Arrested Development which in my mind is the funniest sitcom that ever hit the television.

• Margot at the Wedding ★★★
• Arrested Development: Season 2, Disc 3 ★★★★★
• Venus ★★★★
• Gone Baby Gone ★★★
• Fracture
• We Own the Night ★★
• The Kingdom ★★★
• Arrested Development: Season 2: Disc 2 ★★★★★
• Across the Universe ★★

You can also check out an RSS feed of my rental queue.

I’m going to start posting a list of the movies I rented each month from Netflix. January was a busy month with the start of the semester so I didn’t rent as much as usual. I also am going to post the star ratings I gave each film. King of California has no rating because it sucked so hard I stopped it 20 minutes in and same goes for Puddle Cruiser which I didn’t even watch and returned the next day.

• King of California, 2007
• Ratatouille, 2007 ★★★
• Halloween, 2007 ★
• Puddle Cruiser, 1996
• Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, 1983 ★★
• Powaqqatsi, 1988 ★★
• Chronos, 2004 ★
• Bizarre Foods: Disc 1 ★★
• 3:10 to Yuma, 2007 ★★★★
• The Kingdom, 2007 ★★★

You can also check out an RSS feed of my rental queue.

Found out last night that there was a free advance screening of J.J. Abram’s “Cloverfield” at the Ritz 5 and obviously I was ecstatic. I love Abrams work (he produces “Lost”) which despite being primetime television dreck, is very entertaining and has somewhat of a well written and developed plot line and characters. So, we headed down to the theater tonight and basically walked right in (thanks, Diba!). Now mind you, the Ritz is not a state of the art theater by any means - actually I’d call it more of an art house place based on the indie films they show and more, shall we say, “well informed moviegoer” crowd that heads there. Tonight however, the theater was packed with tons of randoms, shouting, carrying on, getting excited for the free flick. The entire center seats were reserved for various local critics and media types. We found ourselves some seats nestled in the far right corner of the third row — lovely.

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Ok so that might not be the best way to spell it but deal with it. This is not so much a review of the film, I just wanted to make a note that I finally made it out and saw it and I must admit that I hyped it up way too much. I’ve decided Jason Reitman’s directing just doesn’t do it for me. Even though I disliked Thank You For Smoking I was drawn to Juno as it was toted as the next Little Miss Sunshine (which I love) but Reitman just didn’t cut it. The performances were great though and I think Ellen Page is a cutie. Michael Cera played his typical awkward role and I personally think J.K. Simmons stole the show. I needn’t even mention Jennifer Garner (yawwwn) and Jason Bateman will never be anyone except Michael Bluth to me.

Despite a minor crisis that couldn’t be averted at the theater, it was a good time. What else am I going to do at 11:35 on the night after Christmas? I can at least be thankful that the company was perfect. Now that the holiday pandemonium is over I feel like everyone can get to work putting their lives back together piece by piece. I plan on spending the rest of this week working on my new year’s resolutions.