Our New Errand Boy (1905)

This short film concerns a young boy and the various pranks he plays at people. It is funny and has some amazingly interesting outdoors landscapes, all in very sharp cinematography. A real time machine.

The Land Beyond the Sunset (1912)

Synopsis: A young boy works as a newspaper seller and lives with his alcoholic grandmother, who doesn't treat him kindly. One day he receives an invitation for a charity picnic and there one of the ladies tells the kids a fairy tale.
Appraisal: A remarkably well done if a little too unhealthily morbid tale of early last century's infant misery. It's the third film I see in less than a week that uses the metaphor in which an unfortunate child's death is depicted as his (her) removal to a magical or supernatural world. The other two are The Little Match Seller, like this one an outcry for better socioeconomical conditions for children, and El laberinto del fauno, which is simply a sadistic concoction with no redeeming social value.

Any Given Sunday (1999)

Synopsis: A football coach has to put his team back on the winning track, after a series of defeats; the captain gets injured and is replaced by a talented but individualistic player.
Appraisal: Not too different from other films about football; exuberant in color and camerawork, and also in the vigor of the acting performances; it features entertaining violence, while displaying some watchable drama. Possibly a triumph of style over substance. I don't know much about the sport and its rules anyway, so I watched it more as a sensorial experience, and it was not bad as such.
Rating: 56

El laberinto del fauno (2006)

English title: Pan's Labyrinth.

Synopsis: After the end of the Civil War in Spain there are still some isolated guerrilla groups that resist the fascists. This is the story of a 12 year old girl whose widowed mother has remarried to a fascist captain and now expects his child. The girl and the mother move to the house where the captain is staying and from where he is leading the counter-resistance against the rebels in the hills. In that environment the girl will come into contact with supernatural beings.

Appraisal (spoilers herein): This film has some points of contact with my previous viewing, The Little Match Seller. Both envision a poetic martyrization of childhood, and have very similar elements in their endings. This is a notion of disputable healthfulness in itself, usually derived from the authors' own childhood of vicissitudes and often associated with a strongly Christian upbringing. However, in 'El laberinto del fauno', the undertones are much more decidedly disturbing. The suffering in the movie is not caused by natural or economic odds, as in Andersen's tale, but by (1) the actions of a human character that is made to behave like an evil machine; and (2) sets of rules dictated by supernatural characters only one character can see. In short, it's the writer/director himself that is arbitrarily making his characters - one of whom a child of 12 - suffer and die, not some historical context that has been abstracted and exaggerated to the level of a cartoon. Apparently, there is a radical feminist agenda in the film, and nearly all the important female characters are systematically victimized. Even the rebels are found guilty: at one point, the doctor, who takes a fancy towards the governess, asks her brother, a rebel, why he insists on fighting a lost war when it is so imposing upon his sister. So, both sides are ultimately 'the oppressor', and the real victims are the women. The captain's obsession with his unborn child's gender ('It will be a boy', he decrees) is another manifestation of the sexism that the film denounces. The film's 'real' and 'imaginary' parts don't match well; also, the twist by which the faun's despotism is made to be a 'test' on the child's character is preposterous; a child's suffering is not 'better' because it comes from a supernatural agent (although most Christian people would probably disagree). Quite shortly put, a big mess of a movie, that is simplistic in its ideology and unpleasant to watch except for the well-designed monsters and related creatures.

Rating: 23

The Little Match Seller (1902)

Synopsis: A little girl makes a living by selling matches on the street; on Christmas night, the snow is falling and no one will buy her matches; cold and hungry, she decides to light her matches to warm herself; as each match is lit, she mentally pictures images of happiness and comfort.
Appraisal: Remarkable for its time, and even more so for its depiction of dream as cinema. Based on a 1848 short story by Hans Christian Andersen.

La conquête du pôle (1912)

English title: Conquest of the Pole.
Synopsis: A scientist builds an airplane to transport him and his crew to the North Pole. Once there, he encounters a man-eating giant.
Appraisal: One of the last Méliès films; he was losing his audience fast by then. But, based on the 8 and a half minutes I saw, which are probably not the entire film, it is a good, entertaining film, with nice visuals and interesting concepts.

La lanterne magique (1903)

English title: The Magic Lantern.
Synopsis: Two men assemble a huge square-shaped device that works at first as a cinematographic projector; subsequently, they open it and several dancing girls come out of it; from then on, it will either produce people or make them disappear inside it.
Appraisal: One of the many 'trick' films made by Méliès around that time. It is moderately entertaining, and has some additional interest for showing a 'trick' film within it.

Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1903)

This is the first film in which the famous character by Arthur Conan Doyle appears. He doesn't do much detective work though; he surprises a burglar in his house, but the burglar keeps disappearing and reappearing; when 'Holmes' grabs the sac with the stolen goods, it disappears as well.

Blacksmith Scene (1893)

This is the first film made for commercial distribution. It's just a bunch of blacksmiths hammering on a piece of metal, then one of them takes a beer bottle, drinks some and passes it around.

Dickson Greeting (1891)

This is the first film shown in public exhibition. It's just what the title says, a guy performing some sort of greeting to the audience.

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888)

This is the second film ever made. It is an outdoors scene of a city, as the title indicates.

Roundhay Garden Scene (1888)

This is the first film ever made. It is 2 seconds long, and shows four people walking in a yard, two men and two women.

"Unseen Cinema: Viva la Dance" [DVD]

This is the 7th and final volume, with the subtitle "The Beginnings of Ciné-Dance". Its contents are:
7 Annabelle Dances and Dances (1894-1897)—W.K.L. Dickson, William Heise & James White
Davy Jones' Locker (1900)—Frederick Armitage
Neptune’s Daughters (1900)—Frederick Armitage
A Nymph of the Waves (1900)—Frederick Armitage
Diana the Huntress (1916)—Charles Allen & Francis Trevelyan Miller (excerpt)
The Soul of the Cypress (1920)—Dudley Murphy
Looney Lens: Pas de deux (1924)—Al Brick
Hände: Das Leben und die Liebe eines Zärtlichen Geschlechts (Hands: The Life and Loves of the Gentler Sex) (1928)—Stella Simon & Miklos Bandy
Mechanical Principles (1930)—Ralph Steiner
Tilly Losch in Her Dance of the Hands (c. 1930-33)—Norman Bel Geddes
2 Eisenstein’s Mexican Footage (1931)—Sergei Eisenstein (excerpts)
Oramunde (1933)—Emlen Etting
Hands (1934)—Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke
Joie de vivre (1934)—Anthony Gross & Hector Hoppin
Wonder Bar: "Don’t Say Goodnight" (1934)—Busby Berkeley (excerpt)
Dada (1936)—Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
Escape (1938)—Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth
An Optical Poem (1938)—Oskar Fischinger
Abstract Experiment in Kodachrome (c. 1940s)—Slavko Vorkapich
NBC Valentine Greeting (1939-40)—Norman McLaren
Stars and Stripes (1940)—Norman McLaren
Tarantella (1940)—Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth & Norman McLaren
Spook Sport (1940)—Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth & Norman McLaren
Danse Macabre (1922)—Dudley Murphy
Peer Gynt (1941)—David Bradley, starring Charlton Heston (excerpt)
Introspection (1941/46)—Sara Kathryn Arledge

Lathe of Heaven (2002) (TV)

Synopsis: A man has the power to change the universe - including its history - with his dreams. His psychiatrist uses him to improve his own status.
Appraisal: The plotline of this movie is interesting, making a perfectly good point about psychiatrists and therapists, adding another angle of satire to that in What About Bob? . Its development, however, suffers somewhat from the pauperism and lack of imagination that are customary in TV movies. The performances are good though. Based on a 1971 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Rating: 40

Mua he chieu thang dung (2000)

English titles: Vertical Ray of the Sun; At the Height of Summer; The Summer Solstice.
Synopsis: Three sisters and a brother, as well as two of the sisters' husbands, are the subject of this film. Lien is single and lives with her brother, with whom she is infatuated; Suong's marriage has been stagnant for a long time and she has an affair; Khanh, who has just found out about her own pregnancy, is happily married. Hai lives with his sister and is a struggling actor. Quoc, Suong's husband, is a botanical photographer and has another family in another town. Kien, Khanh's husband, is a writer with a block.
Appraisal: Superficial account of six lives, that has the approximate feel of a Brazilian soap opera, except slower and with less dialog. The cinematography is gorgeous, though.
Rating: 39

Shao Lin ta peng hsiao tzu (1980)

English title: Return to the 36th Chamber.
Synopsis: The workers at a dye factory are exploited down to near slavery by their boss, who brings kung-fu fighting thugs from Manchuria to keep them obedient. The brother of one of the workers decides to get a training in kung fu in order to help them.
Appraisal: Possibly one of the better kung-fu pictures, yet for me this still doesn't mean a quite satisfactory experience, because I find this genre a bit limited. The plot is of a comic nature, very energetic and quite childish. There are memorable sequences alright, like the one in which Chao has to get water from a well without a bucket, and more. The scaffolding style of kung fu is ingenious and well choreographed, as are practically all the fighting sequences in the film. As usual, if you look beneath the surface, the film is quite anti-Marxist, since a minority initially oppresses a working community, being eventually defeated by an even smaller minority (of one). It is probably set in the 18th or 19th century (wild guess, seeing as the film doesn't offer clues to that and I am not a China expert anyway), which makes labor union notions unthinkable - not that it matters: the goal here is to offer entertaining action and not historical reflection. The camerawork is zoom-based throughout.
Rating: 50

The Octagon (1980)

Synopsis: An ex-martial arts fighter who had a Ninja training suspects a former training colleague of his of being involved in a series of murders, including that of a woman he recently dated. When his best friend decides to investigate the affair, he must go after him all the way to the training camp located in a remote country.
Appraisal: Above average martial arts adventure. While still rooted in the old machismo notions that pervade the genre, it has a reasonably coherent plot, and dialogue that sounds like coming from intelligent beings (perhaps due to having been written by a woman). The action and fight sequences are well done, and the whole film is quite watchable, albeit without really offering much substance.
Rating: 42

Red Heat (1988)

Synopsis: A Soviet drug dealer comes to the U.S. to close a deal and a Soviet cop whose partner was killed by the dealer travels to the U.S. in his pursuit. There, he teams with an American cop.
Appraisal: This film is lukewarm in all departments: plot, action, dialog, performances, you name it. Its subjacent theme are the differences in the Communist and Capitalist ways of life; it only touches the subject in the most superficial way. In the action department, it has an opening shootout in Moscow and a later chase in Chicago involving two big buses; none of that is really exciting, but it is professionally done. I've seen it dubbed in Portuguese.
Rating: 31

"Unseen Cinema: The Amateur as Auteur" [DVD]

This is the 6th volume in the 'Unseen Cinema' set; this volume's subtitle is 'Discovering Paradise in Pictures'. The contents of this volume are:
7 Case Sound Tests (c. 1924-25)—Theodore Case & Earl Sponable [including Gus Visser and His Singing Duck (1925)]
Windy Ledge Farm (c. 1929-34)—Elizabeth Woodman Wright
A Day in Santa Fe (1931)—Lynn Riggs & James Hughes
4 Stewart Family Home Movies (c. 1935-39)—Archie Stewart
Children’s Party (c. 1938)—Joseph Cornell
Cotillion (c. 1938)—Joseph Cornell
The Midnight Party (c. 1938)—Joseph Cornell
Haiti (1938)—Rudy Burckhardt
Tree Trunk to Head (1938)—Lewis Jacobs
Bicycle Polo at San Mateo (1940-42)—Frank Stauffacher
1126 Dewey Avenue, Apt. 207 (1939)—John C. Hecker

La vie est un long fleuve tranquille (1988)

English title: Life Is a Long Quiet River.
Synopsis (with spoilers): Two babies from different social classes are switched at birth. Twelve years later the fact is revealed to both families, and they agree, after a monetary settlement, to let both children live with the rich family. The boy who had been raised in a poor environment slowly corrupts his rich siblings by putting them in contact with his former family; he also tells the whole truth to the girl with whom he was switched, making her feel bad and stop communicating with her rich non-biological family; the mother eventually has a nervous breakdown.
Appraisal: An interesting study on the effect of the environment on people; it is very cruel and unsentimental. The screenplay has a few loose ends, like the crimes against Arabs which are only mentioned in the beginning, or the doctor and the nurse who get a lot of screen time in the beginning of the film and then vanish (except for a brief appearance, as you will see). The film, even with these extraneous bits, clocks in at just 1h30, which means that there isn't a lot happening in its main thread of events. Still, it's quite an enjoyable film; its satire is mostly of an obvious kind, but is effectively conveyed and works quite well on a scene-by-scene basis; an uniformly perfect cast is one of its assets.
Rating: 63