Beaches of Anges really gives you a feel for who Agnes Varda is. I loved listening to the way she narrates this documentary about her life, and seeing all the fanciful, whimsical images she comes up with.
Beaches of Agnes is basically about Agnes Varda remembering some stuff that happened to her around beaches. I just like Agnes Varda. It's interesting to see the things that she comes up with. They're so fanciful and whimsical. The mirrors at the beach at the beginning are so cool.
Faces Places is an enchanting French documentary about the beauty of
life and everyday people. It's not exactly thrilling, but it's worth
seeing.
I've seen 13 documentaries, and Faces Places is only the third that's gotten at least 3/5. So you could practically call it a 5, relatively speaking. I like the idea of it. Agnes and JR are such an unlikely couple. I like the way the narrative is laid out, starting with how they met each other first through their art. I liked the narration of them reminiscing about their travels.
It was cool getting to see different people and places in France. The pictures looked neat on the buildings and things, too. Kind of reminded me of Banksy's work. The score was great. It turns out Agnes was very involved in making it. She also did the editing. So in a lot of ways, it was really her movie.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams is Werner Herzog's look at the oldest known
cave paintings. It's intriguing just from the perspective of the fact
that basically no one ever gets to see them in person. He explores some
other facets of life back then, like the landscape and other forms of
art, so it's not only about the paintings. It's interesting to think
about.
I wasn't interested in Cave of Forgotten Dreams when it came out, but someone (hi, ZT) said it "literally (literally)" blew their mind, so I figured I'd check it out. I watched the same way I always watch documentaries – in 10-minute intervals over the course of a day. It's a little slow sometimes. And it bugged me when they were first exploring and getting lots of shots of them shining lights on the drawings that were so bright that you couldn't actually see the drawings. But they eventually stopped doing that.
Let My People Go! is a really weird French farce. I don't regret seeing
it, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it, either. It has its funny moments, but
the main character can be tough to watch.
This looked interesting from the trailer, and at least the
person whose IMDb review was on top liked it, so that was enough for me. I
liked the idea of Finland and France and a Jewish family and it all seemed very
confusing and bizarre, and it was. Bizarre anyway, not so much confusing. It
was tough to get a handle on the context. All the houses in Finland were so
bright; was it exaggerated to make a point, or is that just normal? Everything
in Ruben's house was so old. Was that supposed to say something about his parents,
or is that just how it is in France?
I'm glad they didn't do the whole movie in Finnish; I
didn't like that very much. I didn't like the French much better. It was kind
of distracting because I kept getting caught up on words I could recognize. One
time I even figured out a whole sentence. I think it was "how are things with
Teemu." Not exactly a monumental achievement, but still.
In the House was appropriately tense, and it had some interesting
moments, but it all fell apart at the end and rendered the entire movie
pointless.
It's been five months since I saw a movie I disliked as much as In the House, so I guess that's a good thing. I was interested in it based on the trailer, and I forgot to check and see if it was any good or not before I decided to watch it, but I probably would've watched it even if I had done my research. It's tough to watch movies in a foreign language. You have to read the whole time, and you miss out on getting to watch what's going on. French is cool, though. I didn't used to like it, but it's starting to grow on me.
The Illusionist's beautiful animation is captivating, but
the story is really depressing.
Triplets of Belleville was a great movie. I loved the
musicality of it, and how there was hardly any (no?) dialogue. The Illusionist
is also beautifully animated. I love the small quirks of the animation, like
how The Illusionist's hands move when he packs up his poster. I loved how crazy
the rabbit was. But ultimately it's basically the saddest movie ever, and if I
had known that going in, I probably wouldn't have watched it.
