films

(that I saw in the theatre and kept ticket stubs for [so I could do this post]--in no particular order)

The Fast Runner
Spirited Away
Punch Drunk Love
Dirty Pretty Things
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (for Gollum)
Igby Goes Down
Master & Commander (for genre subversion--the battle scenes are confusing, insanely bloody, and short so we can get to the Galapagos for long slow shots of weird nature)
Elephant
Kill Bill Vol 2
The Mist
City of God
I Heart Huckabees
Dogtown & Z Boys
Bowling for Columbine
K-19: The Widowmaker (a movie about failed military technology tanked? in 2002?)
Touching the Void
Open Water
Super Size Me
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
The Aviator
Eastern Promises
District 9
Howl's Moving Castle
There Will Be Blood
The Aristocrats
Grizzly Man
Cloverfield
Coraline
Black Hawk Down
Inglourious Basterds

Speaking of the pre-director's cut Donnie Darko, critic J.E. Barnes offers one of the best explanations of how Richard Kelly hurt his own movie:

[T]he revision, however more closely it may dovetail with Kelly's personal vision, considerably dilutes the film's drama and power on almost every level. While the theatrical release was fueled by its own judicious editing, structural hard edges, glorious ambiguities, and evocation of the suburban weird, the so-called director's cut continually literalizes the plot while simultaneously altering the status of essential story elements.

In a grave error of judgement, the daimonic rabbit Frank, a dominant presence in and the very symbol of the theatrical release, is now overshadowed by Roberta Sparrow's previously obscure book, The Philosophy of Time Travel, which is brazenly promoted into the foreground. Additional superfluous scenes of the Darko family interacting (which were wisely included as outtakes only in the original DVD) undercut the film's pivotal forward momentum, while the deletion of some of the mean-spirited dialogue Donnie's peers direct towards one another weakens the satiric and parodic humor of the original.

Key characters, like the free thinking, anti-establishment teacher beautifully portrayed by Drew Barrymore, now seem to have briefly wandered in from another film entirely. Awash in new CGI effects, the director's cut should make more logical sense, but simply does not. The film's last ten minutes, in which everything that has gone before coalesces into terrible meaning, should have been considered sacrosanct and left unaltered. As a result of these changes and others, a clever, multi-faceted, fairly original, and genuinely tragic film has become a muddy, unfocused, and protracted exercise in the unthreatening and the banal.

So in a reversal of several well documented Orson Welles projects, including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)... Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut is a concrete example in which the much-maligned Hollywood executive machine has actually strengthened a creative work through forcible tampering.

Saw Donnie in a mostly empty NYC movie theatre during its brief, original run a few weeks after the World Trade Center attacks. The jet engine crashing through the suburban ceiling had a cosmic message ("temporal loops happen") as opposed to the WTC attacks' tawdrily pointless one ("enjoy a lap dance and then go kill some Americans, stir up the country and fatten the wallets of war contractors"). The film's cult built on DVD, the director got a big head, and then damaged his handiwork with the later cut as Barnes describes. After seeing it I made a point to buy a disc with the original version.

A grinning, soul-sucking Incubus from the low-budget film Ink, currently on Hulu.

Worth a watch--combining some of the better features of Run, Lola, Run (fast-forwarding and reversing through people's lives), The Matrix (kung fu protectors from another reality), Wings of Desire (the voyeurism of the disembodied) and a hint of the pre-director's cut Donnie Darko (eldritch forces swirl around suburbia).

A caveat, that tedg nails thusly:

The price they decided to pay was to put it all into the service of a profoundly syrupy confection of moral simplicity. family/child = good, money/career = bad. But one level higher it becomes coolly reversed. This is film, but the bad guys are the ones with the film presence. The saviors are a storyteller and a blind seer who never meet. The conflict is designed not to reflect real conflict, but something staged so that you can see.

It is an acceptable price. The storytelling is wonderful, just wonderful.

As for the bad guys, some creative use of low budget digital effects to create indelible images. The incubi, all male, sport '70s aviator glasses and square transparent shields suspended in front of their faces; these portable lens/monitors crackle and sizzle with CGI static and project jumpcuts of their moving features, suggesting some kind of time distortion. Terry Gilliam-ish but with a digital mashup vibe.

Afterthought: This would have been an arthouse hit a la Pi if anyone in the film biz had had the smarts to distribute it. The film found its audience through Torrent downloads and web buzz.

Criticism of the film Minority Report, written while that turkey was still gobbling in theatres seven years ago.

Via "links for the day" from The House Next Door, a film blog:

Montage of characters saying the name of the movie in the movie (not meant to be scary but fairly stomach turning)

Listicle called 25 Scariest Moments in Non-Horror Movies (from ifc.com)

Some interesting choices in the latter (the boy turning into a donkey in Pinocchio); some I'd rather not watch (Gene Tierney watching as a boy drowns--never heard of this film); some predictable (slug in Ensign Chekhov's ear); some debatably not "non-horror" (Deliverance). The list is recommended more for the writing by IFC guest critics, and their choices, than the clips. (Missing: De Niro's bat swing in The Untouchables.)