The 2014 Oscars came and went since my last update, and I wrote a few things in relation to them: my predictions (turned out pretty well, though I missed on the biggest awards of the night), the 2014 (and 1998) Endy Awards, and a long Oscars-inspired editorial, the kind of thing I don't write very often. I also continued my look at 21st Century history films with reviews of Ridley Scott's Gladiator and Robin Hood.
Most of my writing has been over at Seattle Screen Scene, where I covered Valentine's Day, Lady Snowblood, A Fuller Life, the Fists and Fury Series, Casablanca, Chimes at Midnight, Maps to the Stars, 12 Golden Ducks, Ballet 422, Wild Tales, and Another Hitchcock Series.
Coming up over the next couple of weeks, I'll be introducing a number of screenings at Seattle's version of the big Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective that's been traveling the world in recent months. I'll be at Boys from Fengkuei at Scarecrow Video and then all five of the shows at the Northwest Film Forum (Dust in the Wind, Flowers of Shanghai, A Time to Live A Time to Die, Millennium Mambo and Good Men Good Women). I haven't watched or written much about Hou at all over the past few years, so I've been studying up lately. A few years ago, we did a They Shot Pictures episode on Hou (you can listen here), and around that time I wrote about Café Lumière and Good Men, Good Women, and collected some images from Flight of the Red Balloon.
These are the movies I've watched and rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings. Short reviews or comments for most of them can be found on my letterboxd page.
Where Danger Lives (John Farrow) - 23, 1950
Doctor Zhivago (David Lean) - 23, 1965
Darling (John Schlesinger) - 27, 1965
Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita) - 15, 1973
Farewell, My Lovely (Dick Richards) - 14, 1975
Christine (John Carpenter) - 9, 1983
Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann) - 1, 1992
Memoirs of an Invisible Man (John Carpenter) - 41, 1992
HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien (Olivier Assayas) - 23, 1999
The Insider (Michael Mann) - 31, 1999
Gladiator (Ridley Scott) - 40, 2000
Ali (Michael Mann) - 11, 2001
The Power of Nightmares (Adam Curtis) - 10, 2004
Collateral (Michael Mann) - 13, 2004
Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien) - 2, 2005
Cigarette Burns (John Carpenter) - 26, 2005
The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (Adam Curtis) - 8, 2007
Public Enemies (Michael Mann) - 10, 2009
Robin Hood (Ridley Scott) - 39, 2010
J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood) - 34, 2011
A Fuller Life (Samantha Fuller) - 28, 2013
The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann) - 55, 2013
Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 (Johnnie To) - 5, 2014
Tokyo Tribe (Sion Sono) - 20, 2014
The Last Five Years (Richard LaGravenese) - 36, 2014
Wild Tales (Damián Szifrón) - 37, 2014
Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg) - 45, 2014
The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland) - 47, 2014
The Iron Ministry (JP Sniadecki) - 49, 2014
Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy) - 52, 2014
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro González Iñárritu) - 58, 2014
Black Comedy (Wilson Chin) - 75, 2014
The Theory of Everything (James Marsh) - 76, 2014
Smog Journeys (Jia Zhangke) - 3, 2015