I enjoyed The Secret World of Arrietty. It's definitely not on the same level as Spirited Away, but still a very good movie.

Saw Dark Knight Rises last night and made it home safe and sound.

I thought it was pretty good. A clear step behind The Dark Knight but I really loved The Dark Knight, which (on top of being a great action movie) was great at blurring the lines of morality. This one didn't quite have that special sauce.

-A disappointed in Bane as a villain. He was great at being big, burly and scary. But he's also supposed to be a master tactician which didn't come through well in the movie.

-Anne Hathaway did not suck as much as I expected. I actually liked her overall. The Catwoman character wasn't particular well-written though (no real depth to her).

-Although I LOVE Christopher Nolan, one of my minor gripes is that I have trouble with his pacing sometimes (ie. I would've cut about 40 minutes off Inception). This one has a similar stretch in the second half of the movie. Would elaborate, but don't wanna spoil anything for now.

-Overall, a very fun movie.

Currently watching Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse. Finally.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1316540/

Good God, I'm saddened to know that this will supposedly be Tarr's final film. Truly one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

Ashamed to say I'm not very familiar with his movies. Any particular one I should start with?

Start with Werckmeister Harmonies.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0249241/?fr=c2M9MXxsbT01MDB8ZmI9dXx0dD0xfG14PTIwfGh0bWw9MXxjaD0xfGNvPTF8cG49MHxmdD0xfGt3PTF8cXM9d2VyY2ttZWlzdGVyIGhhcm1vbmllc3xzaXRlPWFrYXxxPXdlcmNrbWVpc3RlciBoYXJtb25pZXN8bm09MQ__;fc=1;ft=13

Just as a bit of background, Tarr comes from the Hungarian school of cinema like Miklos Jancso, which is characterized by long takes and pan shots and requires a lot of patience. The most extreme example is his film Satantango, which is seven hours long and consists of maybe 40-something shots total. Each scene lasts a long time and you have to get into the rhythm of it, almost meditatively. In a way the style is similar to Andrei Tarkovsky's and Theo Angelopoulos', but Angelopoulos' films are basically Greek theater put to film and Tarkovsky's emphasis is on elevating the mundane to transcendant levels (like showing puddles of water as mirrors for clouds), whereas Tarr will do the opposite and compress everything down to the same level.

Tarr is also big on repetition and aimlessness, and in some of the essays I've written on him (I used to do a fair bit of film criticism in college), I focus on how he uses this to convey his vision of hell. Sort of like the phrase "in hell, the devil walks in circles." The entire structure of Satantango for example is set up like an aimless dance (literally "Satan's Tango") that ultimately cycles back unto itself and is never able to truly progress, just like the characters and their situation within his films.

I also recommend checking out the written works of Laszlo Krasznahorkai on which many of Bela Tarr's films are based. In particular "The Melancholy of Resistance."