Two-day moviethon!
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner: Really, really preachy. I accidentally got this confused with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and picked the wrong one. After having two-thirds of a film of uncomfortability without dramatic tension, it ups it so much in the final third that it undoes what little good it had going for it, then ends it with a well-meaning but horribly boring and dry speech by Spencer Tracy. Meh.
The Death of Mr Lazarescu: So black a comedy that the humour went over my head for the first ten minutes or so. When I realised what it was going for, it became a strange blast. Who would have thought hospital examinations could be so funny! The leads were also very good, but Luminita Georghiu much moreso.
New York, New York: The problems most people have with it (the artificiality, the length) didn't bother me, and were actually quite endearing upon reflection. What got to me was the complete asshat nature of Robert de Niro's character, Jimmy Doyle. *******s are common in movies, but there was something about both the way he was written as well as de Niro's portrayal that really bugged me. Liza Minnelli was really good, and Scorsese's direction was also top notch, but I couldn't fall in love with it the way its adorers do, unfortunately.
Annie Hall: Oh my god I love this film so much. It's been at least a double digit amount of times I've seen it, but it never gets old. There's several scenes that I'd rank as among the best of all time, it's so funny, and I just love it.
Potiche: Really really kitschy - sometimes in a bad way, but mostly for the good of the film. A really clunky start threatens to derail the narrative - as well as Deneuve's performance - but the film finds itself half-way through and embraces its limitations rather than becoming burdened by them. It's still too simplistic with its 'evil' characters, but Deneuve's performance elevates the sometimes shaky writing.