Edited Mid-2015
Inherent Vice has been making the critical rounds recently, and word on the street is that it’s a disappointment of sorts. We’ll get to that in a bit, for that is a matter of debate. But first a word on another question: is it an Anderson film to begin with? Not only is the critical consensus muted on this freak-out comedy from one of America’s finest modern dramatists, but many are out and about voicing their opinion that it sees the director rejecting his trademark clinical style for something a bit too pudgy. The thing that I think remains under-discussed about the film, regardless of its quality, is how Anderssonian it is at the level of core functionality, if not necessarily content. The norms of any of Anderson’s iconographic films are all at their fullest here: phenomenal sense of artificial place, landscape-of-the-mind filmmaking coaxing out sublime work from cinematographer Robert Elswit, intricate shot placement that doesn’t so much favor intellect over emotion as cram the idea of emotion into intellect head first, twitchy realism with a hypnotic, impressionist streak of age and wither, and camerawork that can’t decide whether it wants to glide or quaver. In fact, if anything, and this may be where a hefty portion of the hesitance to connect with Vice is found, these realities are pushed well beyond their normal limits into the realms of obtuseness here.
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That Alain Guiraudie’s 2013 film Stranger by the Lake (French: L’Inconnu du lac) has been taken up by some as an erotic thriller in many circles is a most curious designation. Sure, there’s a surfeit of nudity in the film and the entirety of its emotional arc hinges on the relationship between sex and death (the defining characteristic of erotic thrills), but it is not the least bit erotic. Furthermore, it does not for a second pretend to be erotic (in contrast to many erotic thrillers are not erotic out of failure of execution even when they intend to be so).
Blue Ruin
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Eyes Without a Face (French: Les Yeux Sans Visage) is technically a French-Italian co-production, but it was made by a predominantly French crew, by a French director, and is told in French. Plus, if we want to talk the style and feel of French vs. Italian horror, Eyes Without a Face is about as far on the French side as humanly possible. So, you know, deal with it. 
Seriously having difficulty viewing and wrapping my head around one specific film for Midnight Screenings, but I think I have it down for next week. In the meantime, here are two 2005 Midnight-appropriate horrors (one of them never really popularly understood as such, but somehow its Godzilla-sized budget only makes it all the more spectacular that it still has the look and feel of a grainy horror movie). Sorry for the delay. All will be corrected next week. 
One of the Coen Brothers’ most popular works, and with good reason, 
It would appear that selling one’s soul to the devil of commercial filmmaking can in fact serve a purpose, assuming of course you do so with a ruthless pragmatist’s eye. For that is exactly what one of Mexico’s most adored modern auteurs, Alfonso Cuaron, did with his introduction to English-language cinema in his one mercenary venture, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (no slouch as a film on its own, incidentally). For the success he had with big-budget tentpole cinema not only made a boatload of money (and made a franchise legitimize itself in the process, after two unflaggingly hum-drum entries beforehand), but it paved the way for one of the finest films of its decade, 2006’s Children of Men. If the entirety of the Harry Potter franchise only existed to validate the existence of this one film, well, it would be a job well done, for Children of Men is exactly the variation of cold-brewed, home-spun, plaintive sci-fi we don’t much see anymore, and exactly what the world of cinema circa 2006 needed. 
Doom-and-gloom maestro David Fincher has taken the 2000s and 2010s as his time to find respect, and as we all know, that is one of the worst things for a filmmaker to do. Mainstream success is one of the surest trains to cinematic acquiescence, and there ain’t nothing like acquiescence to numb the lifeblood of cinematic passion. Sure, 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was his only overtly Oscarbaity film, and he did follow it up with his second best work, 2010’s The Social Network. But recent years have seen him look back to his lurid earlier days with nostalgia and a drive to recreate his darker and more nihilistic earlier efforts, and his efforts have proven one thing: slick has replaced sick, and Fincher’s desire to find commercial success has smothered any breathing room for his pitch-black cinematic treats to truly submerse themselves in operatic melancholy and deranged lunacies.
Edited and Updated 2016
The Long Take 