Believe it or not, a relative of mine was involved with the making if Detropia. I've lived in the suburbs outside my whole life. Sad story, that once-great city :(. Haven't seen the film yet though.

Caché (Hidden)- My first Michael Haneke film, an unusual, icy drama shot on cool, detached digital video with a camera that rarely moves. It's nominally a thriller, but it certainly doesn't play anything like a thriller would in the US. Very European, slow, and deliberate, but with a deeply creepy atmosphere and some moments of explosive shock. Answers very few of its questions, it's one of those cryptic art films which wants to be analyzed and dissected more than liked. Fascinating movie.

Spirit of the Beehive- Fascinating, frustrating, slow, but often hypotonic Spanish art film about a little girl under the fascist Franco regime who loses her innocence to the heavy weight of the monstrous regime. It's a quiet, subtle film, and though director Victor Erice cites Ozu as a big influence, it feels like Malick with a bit of Haneke. Though acknowledged as a major influence on Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, and though it shares a number of similarities, it's a subtler, more melancholy film without any of del Toro's uplift. I was reminded of Haneke in the film's depiction of fascism's suffocating banality, characters going about their lives mechanically as creativity and reasons for living are bled away. Though the film shies away from any real violence, the atmosphere is genuinely oppressive, and highlights evil's way of taking away hope and innocence. A bit slow, but I'm not convinced I'd say "dull." I don't feel I fully acclimated to the film's pace, somehow waiting for it to "get going" as though it were a regular film. I think a second viewing is in order after some reading. As a quick side note, there's a wonderful scene where a group of children away cans of 35mm at a traveling cinema, whisked off into the world of movies through the clicking projector. Sadly, with the recent announcement of film's final death knell, it's a reminder of a vanished magic in more ways than one, and adds another sad layer to a film about loss .

Can we PLEASE get new forum software? Posting on this motherfucker on an iPhone is psychotically difficult!