What a lovely bunch of films I've been watching recently! 
The first two I'll take formed the basis of a completely unexpected but perfect double bill thematically. I've liked Claude Chabrol for a while now, he's just a damn good filmmaker and from what I've seen of him always does solid, interesting stuff. I rented The Flower of Evil after a recommendation from a source of impeccable taste and I'm very glad I did. It's a moody, atmospheric, sexy film about a son (Benoit Magimel) who returns to his family after 4 years in America. It deals with his mother's attempts at being elected to the local council and the spotlight on the family's dark histories (including but not exclusive to murder, incest and collaberation with the Nazis) that the campaign inevitably shines unwanted light on. It explores how the new generation is doomed to repeat the mistakes of previous ones and that is inherently interesting to me. The massive selling point though is Suzanne Flon's immense supporting turn (well, it's an ensemble really, so everyone's supporting), which is one of the finest I've seen in many a year, but collaberation is a huge sore-spot in French movies so I'm not entirely surprised this got overlooked at the time for awards in France.
Now whilst a sub-plot of The Flower of Evil was Benoit Magimel's relationship with his "cousin", that, coupled with the broader theme of repetition of generations past also echoes in the BBC's adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts. The set up is basically that Oswald (a young Kenneth Branagh) has returned from years abroad (another link with the Chabrol) to live with his mother (Judi Dench). Dench is widowed and heeds advice from local Pastor Manders (the always reliable Michael Gambon). About a third of the way through we see Oswald kissing the maid Regina (Natascha Richardson) and we soon find out after Mrs Alving's cry of "GHOSTS!" that her husband had done the same thing years before and Regina is in fact Oswald's half sister. So cue lots of psychological unearthings and sterling work all round. It is Dench's show though, it's up there with, if not actually her best work as while the adaptation is chained to being stagey as it does not lend itself to being filmed, she acts it cinematically with tiny glances and looks. Well worth checking out if you can find it, it was buried in a BBC box set at lovefilm and it's definitely a good one.
So following the phantoms on show from Ibsen, I also watched a very different breed, namely all singing Lloyd Webber style as I finally got around to watching Joel Schumacher's version of The Phantom of the Opera. Sumptuous, luscious costumes and sets, fine versions of the show's most enduring songs, the acting is uniformly good (of the three leads Emmy Rossum takes top honours as she gets better the longer the film goes) and Minnie Driver probably steals the whole thing with her enjoyably over the top diva. Being a Schumacher film it is not without excess and I don't feel the tone is smooth throughout, but a very enjoyable romp through one of the few Lloyd Webber musicals I can stand. I liked it.
Purely because I don't want to end on a low I'll take the drugs now, namely in the form of Sherrybaby. I'm not that big a fan of recent drug films, I was not impressed by Half Nelson or Down to the Bone and the only one I've really found of true value being Clean. This is more in the vein of the first two - fine performance headlines lacklustre film. I did like the way they enevitably pushed Maggie Gyllenhaal (in her best work to date) back into a relapse (the situation prompting it while out of the blue, weird and excessive would CERTAINLY do the trick and I believed it much more than Farmiga's matter of fact relapse in Down to the Bone) but there's no real drama here, just obviously drawn situations stemming out of simplistic characterisation, but while far from even good remains better than most of its type.
So to end the stylised violence, in the form of Wong Kar Wai's martial arts movie Ashes of Time. Now this is intriguing because he is doing a "redux" version of it very soon as this has not been seen much out of Asia and is pretty difficult to find. I saw it via a LASERDISC copy up on youtube for crying out loud. Anyway, apparantly it's being recut, rescored, the whole shebang, so I took this opportunity to view the original material. It's extremely Hong Kong (the music and action puts the tone very 80s-ish) but inherently Wong, it has an eliptical structure that is very much in the vein of 2046 which keeps coming back on itself giving you more of a sense of fulfillment at the end - it's very difficult to follow for the opening half of the film but you get there eventually. Rewatches will only add to the experience. Anyway, strong cast (the standout being Maggie Cheung in a knockout reel or so towards the end of the film) and characteristically mindblowing work from cinematographic deity Christopher Doyle with all of Wong's obsessions and characteristics on show. A must for fans of his to see him putting so much of himself into a genre, before he has another crack at the same thing soon.