With three more days left in the festival, my sense of the films I've seen — as a whole — is starting to take shape. I'm posting very quick reactions at Twitter (140 characters or fewer), and I'll be posting about the best English-language features shortly at Paste; I'll put a link here at Daily Plastic.
But looking at the whole lot, if I list them in order, they'd probably break out as shown below.
Some films take more time and consideration than a festival allows, and many of these could grow or shrink in my regard as I noodle on them. I've only been able to see one of these films a second time (35 Shots of Rum), for instance. Also, I've broken the list into sections, and within these broad swaths there's no sense in fine-tuning. I mean, is Rachel Getting Married better than Wendy and Lucy? Or is The Burning Plain worse than Burn After Reading? Could be, could be, burn 'em both, burn 'em both. But there's no time for such nit-picking today.
35 Shots of Rum (35 Rhums) by Claire Denis
Rachel Getting Married by Jonathan Demme
RR by James Benning
Sarabande (short) by Nathaniel Dorsky
Wendy and Lucy by Kelly Reichardt
Winter (short) by Nathaniel Dorsky
The Beaches of Agnès (Les Plages d'Agnès) by Agnès Varda
A Christmas Tale by Arnaud Desplechin
Lorna's Silence by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Sugar by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Summer Hours by Olivier Assayas
Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman
The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky
Ashes of Time Redux by Wong Kar-Wai
Che by Steven Soderbergh
Of Time and the City by Terence Davies
Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle
Soul Power by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte
Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufman
I'm Going to Explode (Voy a Explotar) by Gerardo Naranjo
I've Loved You So Long by Philippe Claudel
The Lucky Ones by Neil Burger
Medicine for Melancholy by Barry Jenkins
Plastic City by Yu Lik-wai
Three Wise Men by Mika Kaurismäki
Appaloosa by Ed Harris
Burn After Reading by Joel and Ethan Coen
The Burning Plain by Guillermo Arriaga
Cold Lunch by Eva Sørhaug
Patrik, Age 1.5 by Ella Lemhagen
Didn't see the entire film so can't slot into the above: The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson), Nuit de chien Werner Schroeter
Can't slot without more thought: Le Genou d’Artémide (Jean-Marie Straub)
Still to see: Liverpool, Me and Orson Wells, Jerichow, Treeless Mountain, Blind Loves, Still Walking, and several others.
UPDATE: Added films screened before the festival.
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