Randy probably coined it best in assessing its construction as a preparation for Code Unknown; I'd add that the joints connect more cleanly here, which isn't necessarily a great thing as, having seen Cache, I already know how brilliantly Haneke can use nuance to entangle a societal error into a thriller. His fascination with the intercut world news footage (especially the one that loops at the end) is a blunt contrast to the sideglancing obvservations of a slew of urban Viennesians who will cross paths in ways that almost suggest an Egoyanesque remove (but drier). Not dry enough, though, in fact, as venturing back through Haneke's early trappings, I feel more or less disappointed that I wasn't on board from the start: In retrospect, his career trajectory - love or despise his films - has been innherently progressive. While 71 Fragments is eerily compelling and, frankly, very entertaining, you're absorbed in a far less abstract forum. That Haneke can present in both vagueries and specifics with equal aplomb is a testament to how carefully he's learned to manipulate his subtexts. But I still never, ever want to watch Funny Games again.

Right now, we're stuck on "It's perfectly green" and the Andy Serkis ostrich walk (at preliminary rehearsal stage). I realized later how much I caked on the lauds last time for Broadbent - who is still stunning, don't get me wrong - but it was Corduner (and in particular, his speech patterns) who I found myself jamming under the microscope. Either way, the title perfectly describes everything surrounding this film, from the fact that Mike Leigh (of all people) would even make this in the first place, to the even more confounding argument that this is anything short of his best film to date.

It was sort of strange that accompanying the large sack of dingey-poos and high pitched tweeters on the new Criterion was the thing I was most looking forward to (yes, that's right, even more than watching deleted scenes), i.e. - the film itself. Possibly because it makes you supremely giddy to reflect on the carefree groove of adolescence in general, rather simply, than its slice of time (rather than its retro setting, that is). And Linklater excels at this: Look how quickly and effectively he dispels any notion that this movie is a mere commodity. No, sir. This has the warmth of Stolen Kisses or Ferris Bueller's Day Off: The director wants the characters to break the rules, he wants them to get away with everything. Also: Why is never pointed out that Dazed and Confused is likely the only studio film I can think of that doesn't care if the consequences of drugs aren't indicated, much less shown? I love that about it: It's not a Stoner flick in theory or DNA. That it turned into one probably has more to do with the editing (fragmented to a mini sprawl) and how genuinely freaking funny the film is.

Spatial concerns and a perpetual smile being chipped away by the same societal functions her father seems hell-bent on simultaneously upholding and defying. I enjoy Ozu on a larger canvas, probably because there's more time to navigate the thing; Nevertheless, I very much enjoy the way he observes custom at its slimiest and at its most logical.

The conceit makes it the most unique - and byfar the most chilling - of the three Haneke films released this year as a loose trilogy (Benny's Video and 71 Fragments). Looking at three times in a family's life - the establishment of security, the wavering interest in their world and the eventually tragic and extreme measures of alientation - Haneke puts particuarly emphasis on witholding the supreme "why". Watching it at the tail end of a pretty rough patch of job-related depression that I got all confused with my family life, I could really connect with the frustration and the hopelessness. The movie seems even more timely today, in America in particular, when a family as successful as this one can't possibly reach a pinnacle of satisfaction without first alienating itself from its members, thereby losing the "itself" tag and becoming an individual struggle to stay as in tune as possible with both the professional (or, in the child's case, student) and domestic vision. When the whole thing comes to pass, and Haneke is indexing act after act of destruction, he boldly follows the family headlong into their descent, watching the horrific nature of suicide and murder as the lines blur and the viewer is more and more a part of the immediacy of their sudden need to decipher the motives for such a heinous act. 

There are soap elements, but this is likely the most enjoyable of the Ozu's I have seen to date. The little boy's hilarious sequence with the grandfather who trades candy for "I love you"'s shows us a typically stuffy (however brilliant) master at his most playful, contrasted with all the talk of thriftiness. It occurred to me more than once that Yang may have been nodding towards this film when he made Yi Yi.

I bet there are folks out there that find this to be an absolutely brilliant evocation of insecurity and the toll it takes on your social consciousness. I happen to find it a sub-Woody Allen whinefest that never stops being grating - except when the occasional hilarious one-liner drops out of the flowing novellas of self-doubt Brooks spouts. That scene where he takes two ludes: I almost turned the thing off.

Strange concoction, this, with formally composed staging, a sparingly-used jazz score from Miles Davis and a B-noir plotline practically drenched in its own irony. If only the Jeanne Moreau scenes - where she wanders Paris in a fog of bettrayal and self-pity - didn't feel so much like filler, I think Elevator to the Gallows might have approached - dare I say - the quality of being hard boiled.

Brimming with the same charged mundanity that made both other films in Haneke's trilogy of sorts so edgy and uncomfortable, Benny's Video is an emptied version of the traditional lonesome rich kid model, expanded into another treatise on the magnetic appeal/inevitability of sudden violence filtered through unbiased perspective. What's especially noteworthy is the social commentary that dovetails from heavy-handed (the parents help cover up the son's murder because - I'm paraphrasing - "what would the neighbors think?") to aloof (the mom take the son on a quiet, nearly emotionally inept trip to Egypt while the father disposes of the body) back to heavy-handed (the son turns the parents in as Haneke gives us the same ambiguous-to-non-existant motive he stitched into the killing itself). While the ending could easily be probed for argument (Was it revenge? Was it Haneke giving the TV producers a more socially responsible ending? Was it a great comment on the consistency of a mindset (i.e. - if he was cruel enough to kill at will, he'll likely be cruel enough to implicate his parents)? The cozy corners of Benny's surveillance and monitor-clad room are as eerie to me as the post-destruction house in The Seventh Continent; The randomness of the violence - where a character just quick-snaps without buildup, without warning and without emotion - is very reminiscent of the climax of 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance.

How anyone could have made a lick of sense of this thing upon first viewing is entirely beyond me. Strong coffee, intense concentration and a confident, headstrong assertion session with the wife after the viewing satisfied me that I now understand how the joints connect. Which sucks. I was sort of hoping the joints didn't connect and the thing was this vague quasi-tone poem thing. Really, though, its a less personal version of Traffic, exploiting a different social problem and the overbaked circumstances that should be avoided but rarely are. While the details are all pretty sharp, the storylines are kind of blunt and generic, rarely making as tight a match with the tech dialogue as they should.