1. The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937): I always forget how much I like this movie. It’s Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, who I think might be a better match for him than almost anyone ever, and they’re rich witty New York people who decide to get a divorce but of course they still love each other. But first off, who knew that the word “rebound” is over 70 years old? True story. I love this kind of screwball comedy (though this is fairly low-key in terms of “screwiness”) because it kind of disproves a lot of assumptions about the “ideal woman”: Irene Dunne is witty and smart and so much fun in this. The downside is that the implication at the beginning is that Cary Grant’s having an affair, and that’s okay, but if Dunne actually was having an affair (which she maybe was) that would be wrong. Or something.
  2. The Company of Strangers (Cynthia Scott, 1990): Despite my best feminist, anti-ageist intentions, I was pretty prepared to hate this, a fiction-documentary hybrid about old ladies whose bus breaks down. But lo! It is actually very charming. Think of a non-competitve version of Survivor or Big Brother: it’s just about these women being themselves in a completely artificial environment, and it’s very charming.
  3. Funny Girl (William Wyler, 1968): Okay, so somehow despite my love of musicals, melodramas, and camp icons, I somehow had never seen this movie. Oh man, so great! I actually missed the beginning, but I think I came in early enough it counts as me having seen the movie, since I certainly got a sense of it’s glorious-ness. Also, I realized that basically everything I liked in Carrie Bradshaw was Sarah Jessica Parker doing Barbara Streisand doing Fanny Brice. Seriously, this has a lot of A Star Is Born (Judy Garland version, one of my favourite movies ever) in it, what with the celebrity and keeping a brave face up even as your marriage is falling apart. I always love a lady who starts at 11.
  4. Of Freaks and Men (Aleksei Balabanov, 1998): This film is completely unexpected. It’s set in turn-of-the-century Russia, and it’s about…uh Siamese twins and pornographers and the cinema and photography and depravity. It’s all sepia-toned, and uses extensive intertitles even though the movie’s not silent. It got the film theory nerd in me all fired up, what with all the issues of representation and media it brings up.
  5. Brother (Aleksei Balabanov, 1997): After Of Freaks and Men, I was really looking forward to more of the same, and I was kind of disappointed. It’s more a Russian retread of Le Samourai with more CDs. It’s certainly not a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it really wasn’t my thing.
  6. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007): This is the sort of movie that just has to be competent and well-acted to get nominated for the international awards (especially with the Max von Sydow pedigree) but this movie was really exceptional. It’s fucking gorgeous. The cinematography does unbelievable things: there’s all this crazy steadicam work, and there’s all this pale blue which is actually the beautiful art direction, and I’m basically gushing at this point. (Me and everyone else.) Love!

Bonus pseudo-movie: Battlestar Galactica: Razor (Félix Enríquez Alcalá & Wayne Rose, 2007): I feel weird counting this as a full movie, since it’s a TV movie, and it’s really part of a TV series, but we finally got around to watching this, and I have thoughts about it. The TWOP recap actually made me think I like it more than I did at first. I loved with the fires of a thousand suns all the Pegasus flashback parts — I thought retelling those parts of the story from the other side was absolutely brilliant especially given the way things have gone for Galactica since then, what with the trial and all the living with having done horrible things everyone’s doing now. But I could have done without most of the Apollo commanding Pegasus parts; I realize you need to have the flashbacks there, and you need the hybrid to call Starbuck the Harbinger of death, but frankly I just was not feeling Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen’s performance. I realize that she has this quality of quiet and stillness that they wanted for this character, but I really would have preferred if they had cast someone who could do more with the stillness, given that she is supposed to be the anti-Starbuck and all. It’s cool though, I will take whatever Battlestar I can get until April. I wish there were more non-Adama series regulars in it though; I’d love to see more retrospectively Cylon Tigh and the Chief and stuff.