TOD
ROSEMARY'S BABY would have to be my first ever Polanski film, though I think I didn't see it until it had been playing for a while. I'd read the book first, and thought it the most gripping thing I'd read up to that time, and of course the movie was thrilling.
BK's list makes sense to me. I'd add KNIFE IN THE WATER to the great early ones, most of which I saw a few times each at the L.A. revival houses.
If THE TENANT isn't the creepiest film ever, I don't know what is. I went to it several times at the Mann Westwood, and it hit just at a time when I was desirous of getting out of the apartment I'd been in for a few years and moving to a nicer place in a more lively neighborhood, so I let that one run away with my impressionability.
I need to get the Blu-ray of THE GHOST WRITER and really sit down with it. I unfortunately utterly failed to get to the theater to see it, in spite of all good reports. There was a rave review of it in The New Yorker, in which the reviewer took the pains to detail exactly why it is great, and that we aren't likely to see its equal again.
As for THE NINTH GATE, which I watched and loved the other night: When I first saw it, I pooh-poohed the handling of the book thing as totally ludicrous, and I agree the ending is way out there. Then at some point I read someone's take on why Polanski would have the Depp character handling the book that way, and I totally forget the gist of it now but it made sense to me at the time, so when I watched it this time I just let that go completely and went with the movie. And loved it. As for the rest...well, it's a supernatural story, so I kind of let that go, too.
To this day I haven't ever seen FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS all the way through, so I'll take it out and do that, maybe this week.
