De Vierde Man (The Fourth Man) - Paul Vehoeven

Wow, just wow! This film was a fantastic piece of art and a gripping story about love, death, passion and lying. Jeroen Krabbe was brilliant as Gerard, an author who goes to give a lecture and meets Christine, played by Renee Soutendijk. The first 'femme fatale' that I have encountered during this movie marathon, she will take some beating.

I seemed to enjoy everything about it, the dialogue translation was clear, the characters were engaging and the storyline was puzzling but at the same time moved at a pace which kept me hooked for the relatively short 99 minutes.

As a man, I will admit that the scene in which Christine cut off Gerard's penis did make me flinch, but other than that the film worked very well. It has also sprung up one of my favourite quotes from the movies I have watched thus far, and that is "I lie the truth" and I like the way that works. At the end of the film, nobody believes Gerard as he is an author, so they expect him to exaggerate the truth, and this ultimately is his downfall and his 'death'

One thing has has struck me in the amount of sex that is in foreign films, this may just be a coincidence but the films I have watched, especially the European ones, seem to have a basis around sex. I shall keep an eye on this idea.

This is my favourite film I have watched so far, and it gets a 8 out of 10. The next film in my list is an epic, Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. I have seen this film before and I am excited to be viewing it again.

The Docks Of New York - Josef Von Stermberg

As I said in my previous post, this is my very first silent film and probably will not be my last. Here is what I thought: it was very good. The story kept me gripped throughout and the music actually fit every situation showed.

The only problem I had was the moral that the film portrayed, especially in conjunction to the main character, Bill Roberts. Bill is a very masculine, manly, blokey bloke, but he seems to think he can get his own way by just pushing people out of the way. Obviously this movie is from a different period to the one we live in now, but still Bill seemed to be compensating for something.

The female character, Mae, was absolutely beautiful. She plays a prostitute in the film, but due to the time it was released, 1928, the film is not made in any outlandish ways, it was just a good story about love, told in a very interesting way.

The ending shocked me slightly as Bill ended up in prison for 60 days, which is not the happily ever after that most love stories are meant to portray.

I will say that during parts, the lack of speech did bore me, but I blame this more on the fact that silent movies aren't made any more.

All in all a quality movie, and a lovely introduction to silent films. This cliche loving author gives this film 5 out of 10. I didn't hate it, but its not going to be on the list of my favourite films of all time.

My mind is slipping, just a heads up on the next movie. Its called The Fourth Man and it is a Dutch film. So currently the foreign films have outweighed the English films, but I look forward to it quite a lot.

What Time Is It There? - Tsai Ming-Liang

I have been looking forward to this movie since watching the shocking Piano Teacher, as I thought it would make a stunning difference. The only thing this movie has taught me is that I am not going to enjoy every single movie in the list.

This sounds harsh, let me explain a few things. There is a lot I like about the movie, I think the acting is brilliant, the story is well put together, and the main characters are likeable and believable. My problems, however, is to do with the way the film as actually shot. Long lingering shots, normally set back a few paces from the action, and if the character leaves the shot, then we are still focused on a suitcase, or a big wheel. It just seems like a one hour film has been stretched to over one hour forty.

Ok the long shots are often beautiful and do add a feeling of loneliness and grief to the situation, but they do not seem to have a point in my opinion. However, as I said before, the way the story is tackled is very clever, with one man's grief for his fathers death being portrayed through this fixation with setting every clock he meets with Paris time, and the female leads part of showing loneliness in a foreign country almost had me in tears, as sometimes it is easy to feel lonely in your own country. Also I enjoyed the portrayal of the mother's grief manifesting itself in completely different ways.

Most disturbing scene had to be in a montage of scenes to connote passion, where the mother seemed to be pleasuring herself with a wicker basket.

Overall I would give this film a 3 out of 10. I enjoyed part of it, but it did not hold my attention for long enough or make me want to keep watching.

The next film on the list is The Docks of New York. This will be the first ever silent film I have watched, and I hope it will keep my attention.

La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher) - Michael Haneke

As predicted, today I started the mammoth task of watching all of the 1068 movies that have appeared in all versions of "1001 Movies To Watch Before You Die" and my first movie has shown me what diversity this list is going to provide. I would never of guessed that the first movie that would be selected was about a sadomasochist piano teacher.

I apologise now, but these 'blogs' are going to be fairly short, but I will try and pack them with my thoughts and feelings about the movie.

Firstly I applaud Michael Haneke for such a stunning movie, but the major applause has to go to Isabelle Huppert who plays the sexually repressed Professor Kohut. She was fantastic, even in the scenes where she was doing unusual things, such as watching a couple have sex in a car while urinating next to said car.

The musical that the pianists played was very well picked and well played, and seemed to capture the longing and repression of the main character. Also I would like to say that Annie Girardot, playing Professor Kohut's paranoid and abusive mother.

Personally, I felt some of the scenes went on a little too long, for instance the 'rape' (was it rape? one of the many questions this film throws up), and also the vagina cutting scene (which reminded me slightly of the Lars Von Trier movie, Antichrist)

A cliche of these sort of blogs is a score, but I am afraid I will have to conform with this cliche. Due to the marvellous acting and the brilliant score I will have to give this movie a 6 out of 10.

Probably not something I shall watch again, but I am glad I was able to watch such an interesting movie.

The next movie in the list, is What Time Is It There? a Taiwanese film which should prove a stark contrast to La Pianiste.

This Blog's Maiden Voyage

The title is a reference to Robert Frost's influential poem The Road Not Taken, and from this alone you can most probably work out a few things about me. If you can't, then let me clear up a few things for you:

• I love poetry
• I study English Literature at University

That is all you could really pick up from the opening gambit, so here are some other nuggets of information:

• My name is Lewis
• I am 22 years old (don't you just hate it when people say "years young")

I think that is enough for the moment. Let me tell you why I started this blog off, and hopefully carry on until I have finished the task in hand. No need to groan, I know every second blog that pops up online at the moment is a life changing task, one which sees people eat every different type of potato, or have a milkshake from every single McDonald's restaurant. Well, if I am going to be honest, this task is not going to change my life and it certainly will not influence my life in anyway.

I have always been a movie fan, I love the idea of movies, I love the publicity around movies, I love the process that movie makers go through, I love the award seasons that reward the movies, I even love the idea of finding that one movie which can be called "the one", but the only thing I seem to have a problem with is actually watching movies. I would say, that on average, I watch a film or two a month, and they are normally very new films or one I have seen a lot of times before.

This leads me then onto the task. Around three or four years ago a book was released, 1001 Movies To Watch Before You Die, and these books always fascinate me, as people buy them and then just ignore them. They flick through, commenting that they have seen that one, and then it ends up on a book shelf with tatty copies of the Highway Code and Martina Cole novels. Well I want to change this, I want to watch all of the 1001 movies. I know this sounds incredibly stupid, but I feel it will be enjoyable. Unlike many different task-blogs, I will not be setting a time limit, as I haven't got the time or money to set limits, but I will make a promise that I shall not go over 10 years. This sounds like a long time, but this works out roughly at 2 movies a week, which is a massive leap for somebody who does not watch many movies.

Now I want to watch all the movies, and this means that I will also watch any movies added to subsequent editions of the book, so altogether 1068 movies. There is a link to the list of movies at this site: http://www.listology.com/flogged/list/1001-movies-you-must-see-you-die, which I will be working from, as well as from the original book. Now the official start date of this mega movie marathon 10 year task will be Friday 26th March, the start of my Easter holiday at Uni and also the due date of my last essay.

If you are wondering how I will pick which movies to watch and in which order, then I shall be using a random number generator, which is available via http://www.random.org/. The number that is given will correspond to the list on the link I provided above.

I hope this explains the reasoning and the task in enough detail. And for anyone that may of read that, but I am not hopeful, the first movie I will be watching is number 984, which is The Piano Teacher, a French film which I have personally never heard of before.

Thank you again for reading!