3 quick ones

You know, this wasn't actually that bad. Especially if you fit one or both of these qualifications: you can see bad horror movies in the theater and generally be entertained (especially if you are with a friend who gets scared easily), and you like Jessica Alba. Thankfully, I am in both categories. There are actually some pretty good jumps, and creepy imagery. Obviously, there could have been more, but for a PG-13 horror movie, you really couldn't do too much better than this. Well, you probably could. But still. 5.5/10 The Experiment, based on the Stanford Prison Experiment (even though a confusing screen at the beginning says it's not based on anything whatsoever), starts out really tense and enjoyable. Twenty men volunteer to take part in a psychological study where 8 are made prison guards and 12 are prisoners for 14 days. Things start lightly enough, with the prisoners making fun of the guards, but when everyone starts taking their roles seriously, things go really wrong. The first half of the film is intense, especially when you consider that this is a German film, and the Germans have an interesting (to say the least) history with follow-the-leader mentality. But the second half just goes over the top and loses its grip on reality. Sure, it would be less spectacular if things didn't become so explosive, but it also could have been more of a creepy, subtle character study. 6.5/10 Considered to be Fellini's masterpiece, I was a little...underwhelmed. It's not that it's not a great movie, because it is. Rather, I found myself less emotionally invested in these shallow people than in, say, Nights of Cabiria. Marcello Mastroianni is predictably fantastic as Marcello Rubini, a jaded gossip journalist who wanders around 1960 Rome, cheating on his suicidal girlfriend with a friend and then a Swedish actress (even though they don't really speak the same language). You can't take your eyes off of Anita Ekberg as the actress, but you don't feel for her, either. I did, however, find the last half hour incredibly depressing and touching; Marcello has lost touch with any sense of humanity he might have had -- is it the soul-crushing nature of his job, his alcoholism, his inability to be faithful to one woman, or something else? Certainly a film that has to be seen, but let me down a tiny bit. 8/10

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Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957)

This is another film that I feel sort of silly writing about; everything I want to say, I'm sure, has been said countless times and by better people than me. But in my estimation, Nights of Cabiria is Fellini's masterpiece, surpassing 8 1/2 by a pretty big margin. The story of tiny Cabiria, a Roman prostitute who will have you know that she owns her own house. She's been abused by every authority figure, from her mother, who started prostituting her at 15, to Georgio, who opens the film by pushing Cabiria in a river, nearly killing her, and running away with her purse. This man had spent a whole month with Cabiria just to do that, but she still believes in him for a while. She tries to explain the incident away, as maybe he had gotten scared when she fell in the river and ran away, but once he doesn't return for a few days, she finally gets the awful truth. This doesn't stop her from being any less optimistic about love, however, from her night with famous actor Alberto Lazzarri, to Oscar, the man she thinks she finally finds true love with. Fellini sets Cabiria up for disappointment every single time, but we never end up hating him, nor does Cabiria's bad luck ever seem manufactured. She is just a woman who has been dealt a raw deal by life every single day, yet finds a way to persevere in spite of her desperate surroundings. In fact, Cabiria is the only one in her life who does not realize what kind of life she's living - from her friend Wanda (a beautiful perfomance by Franca Marzi) to the friend that tries to offer his pimping services to her, everyone seems to have an idea on how Cabiria could make her life better. She knows that only love will do that. I was a bit reluctant to see this movie at first, even though it has such a sterling reputation, because I was pretty annoyed with Giulietta Masini's performance in La Strada (but less so in Juliet of the Spirits) - the extremely childlike, naive Gelsomina sorely grated on my by the end of the film. Masini takes Gelsomina's naive characteristics, but combines them with adult emotions and fragility to make Cabiria a fully developed, believeable person. Francois Truffaut said it best, I think: we love Masini (and Cabiria) in the movie because Fellini does, and translates that love to every single frame in the film. This is a movie of and about love, perfect and imperfect. 9/10

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8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)

It seems nearly pointless to talk about 8 1/2; it's widely regarded as one of the finest films ever made. Fellini is another of those directors whose entire ouvre I'm trying to see, but it seems so intimidating at times to even try to get into the head of this master. 8 1/2 tells the story of a director, trying to make a film, even though he has written a (seemingly) terrible script, has financial troubles, and, most of all, has troubles with all the women in his life. It is the best movie I've seen about filmmaking ever, but it wasn't quite the revelation I expected it to be. This movie has some of the finest moments of any film ever - the temper tantrum Guido throws on his way to the cocktail party with the media, and one of my favorite scenes I've seen in a film ever, Guido's imaginary harem. He controls "his" women with chores and a whip, and threatens them with banishment when they get too old, because he has no control over the women in his life. Of course, Fellini's direction of women make them more gorgeous than one would ever have thought possible - it sounds corny and stupid, but whenever Fellini trains his camera on one of Guido's girlfriends, you can see everything in her eyes, and she is the stereotypical (only not) Italian heroine. He's kinder and harsher to women than any other director I can think of. All in all, a wonderful, magical, surreal movie that anyone who loves film should see. 8/10

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