Since the career peaks of Fargo and The Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers' previously astonishing career momentum has noticeably faltered. O Brother, Where Art Thou? had some good things going for it, but is probably best remembered for its soundtrack.
Straining to balance bog-standard biopic with anarchic art expression, Julie Taymor's biopic of Frida Kahlo is crammed with exquisite cinematic diversions (dream sequences, hallucinations, animated Kahlo paintings) while simultaneously stultified by the need to plod through Kahlo's life with startling apathy. Wild teen, bus crash, crippled, Diego Rivera, lots of sex, arguments, affair with Trotsky, big show in Mexico, the end.
A silent classic from the halcyon days of German expressionism, Der Letze Mann is FW Murnau's dreamlike melodrama of hubris—a big-budget 1924 masterpiece of light, shadow and set design. Restored to a crispness that's worthy of '40s film noir, it stars Emil Jannings as a shambling, walruslike doorman who's demoted to the hotel lavatories. Slow and emotionally laboured but fluid and spectacular to watch.
