Anne Hathaway Catwoman

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July 1st marks the halfway point of the year, and so I figured I'd do what I usually do and take a quick look back at the five movies I've enjoyed the most so far this year. Looking at the movies that open between now and then that I'm most curious about all there seems to be is Super 8 and Green Lantern - it that really it for June? - and I don't foresee either of those topping any of these at this point. (Prove me wrong, JJ Abrams!) There are a few duking it out, I could want something else in five minutes, but let's just roll with this.

Certified Copy (dir. Abbas Kiarostami) - Since seeing it back in March there kind of hasn't been a day that's passed where I haven't wanted to watch Certified Copy again. What baffles me looking back is I never wrote a proper review! I wrote a post telling y'all to remind me to write a review, and obviously you all failed me. Your fault! Anyway now I have a reason to watch it ASAP so I can write up some properish thoughts. There are visuals from this movie that accost me all the time. A slipping bra-strap or a boy following his mother or a sad bride.

Hanna (dir. Joe Wright) - my review - Okay okay so I've said enough about Eric Bana's wet longjohns at this point in the year, probably. There are other things! Wonderful things. Joe Wright making an action movie sort of feels like what would happen if one of those giant-headed bug-eyed aliens beamed down into your living-room and you told it to go and make you a peanut butter sandwich. This is that alien's peanut-butter sandwich. Strange and stranger.

13 Assassins (dir. Takashi Miike) - my review - I'm so glad to have another movie from Takashi to love - he makes more than it's possible to keep up with from this side of the world and the few that have trickled over have seemed more like emblems of his lack of concentration than, you know, coherent films. Not so with 13 Assassins, which is an astonishingly old-fashioned slow-burn to madness for the maestro of mayhem.
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Jane Eyre (dir. Cary Fukunaga) - my review - It's all there in that scene in front of the fireplace with Rochester and Jane sizing each other up - Mia and Fassy scouring each other's faces and dragging us along for the ride.

Insidious (dir. James Wan) - my review - Lawd knows I have plenty of issues with plenty of Insidious, but at the same time I had such a hoot jumping out of my seat that I'm willing to overlook a lot of silliness. It packs enough bang for your buck. Good old fashioned spook-sanctioned fun.

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The New York Asian Film Festival has just announced their line-up for 2011, and you can read through the list of films over here. It runs the first couple of weeks of July.

A few highlights - they've got Takashi Miike's latest, a swivel from the seriousness of 13 Assassins (serious awesomeness) called Ninja Kids!!! Yes, those are his exclamation points. It is about... okay, you know what it's about. They're also showing the director's cut of 13 Assassins which apparently has 17 more minutes of footage. 

They're showing several films by Tsui Hark, none of which I've seen but I've heard excellent things of, and he'll be there for all of them, it seems. Zu: Warriors From Magic Mountain sounds especially interesting.

The Yellow Sea is the new film from the director of the terrific (and terrifically underseen here) movie The Chaser, and sounds like more nail-biting suspense and action of that sort.

And speaking of The Chaser, they're showing that film and a bunch of the films that followed in its wake - it was a big hit in Korea and spawned all sorts of similarly twisty thrillers. One of them, The Man From Nowhere, is on Netflix and I just watched it a few weeks ago. Won Bin - who played the touched son in Mother - is a pleasure to stare at (especially when he strips down at one point, as seen above) but it was a little bit like a beefed-up Jean Claude Van Damme movie from 1993 (I know, I know, I say that as if its a bad thing?).

There's also a female version of Deliverance called Bedevilled which NYAFF is calling "the greatest women versus men movie ever made," although I've come to regard NYAFF's effusiveness with a very large grain of salt. They tend towards the ultra enthusiastic. Which, ya know, bless em for it. Anyway, "female version of Deliverance" kinda sells itself. Apparently the lead actress won some awards for her performance.

There's also gonna be 10 year anniversary screenings of Battle Royale and Versus, which are both such utter batshit insane delights. Looks like a great fest this year!