Rating: 
Summary: BOO YA! This movie is AWESOME!
Review: After I got out of the hospital last fall I decided to do a bunch of things I'd been meaning to do but hadn't ever done. The first was eat eggs. Mission accomplished. (I don't know why I'd been avoiding eggs all those years. They're actually pretty good!) The second was to see "Last Year at Marienbad," since I'd heard that it was the ultimate "art" movie, and all my friends who'd seen it were, like, "Dude, that movie makes no sense!" Well, I knew everyone had to be wrong on both counts, since "Begotten" is still the ultimate art movie, since it's mostly just grainy black and white images squirming around together, and even though I couldn't understand it, it gave me terrible nightmares for months afterward. And I knew that this movie couldn't make any less sense than "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." Still, I wanted to see this flick and see what all the hoopla was about. Dude, this movie is AWESOME! I don't know what my friends were all talking about. It makes PERFECT sense. It's all in black and white. Everybody speaks like they're doped up on Thorazine (which, after being in the hospital for a whole summer I know a little something about). That hot lady from "La rouge aux lèvres" is in it, only with black hair instead of blond. This dude does this game with matchsticks that only he can win. There's freaky organ music playing during the whole movie. What could make any LESS sense? This movie is all there, dude! You just have to be open to its subliminal messages. Believe me, it's totally awesome! You just have to view it with an open mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Arguably the most hypnotic film ever made.
Review: Alain Resnais' 1961 classic "Last Year at Marienbad" is without peer in the annals of film history. It is a confounding yet brilliant work that defies categorization or explanation. Traditional narrative form is dispensed with in favor of a fragmented filmic rendering of the inconsistent and haunting nature of memory. Bizarre touches galore embroider this work: a repetitive monotone narration; figures freezing and unfreezing their actions in unison like voguing black tie androids; an organ accompaniment reminiscent of a carnival calliope; a game of chance one character never seems to lose."Last Year at Marienbad" is also one of the most technically sound motion pictures ever created. Uncanny performances and superb cinematography augment the psychological mystery surrounding the protagonists of this singular achievement. Who are these people? What really did happen last year, and was it even in Marienbad? For a film obsessed with the deceptiveness of memory, it's fitting that "Last Year at Marienbad" is unforgettable.
Rating:
Summary: It's just a flash-back....
Review: ... And it's just a masterpiece!
Rating:
Summary: smooth edit
Review: This film is one of the most captivating I've seen. To begin to interpret it in a conventional manner is not only impossible, but must be resisted. With incredible fluidity, the film undermines traditional methods of plot structure. Time, event, location become confused in an extremely interesting way. The editing techniques alone are masterfully executed. Not only are they intelligently conceived, but they are so fluid that they seem to have been executed through current technologies. One gets a window into the brillant minds of two auteurs, Resnais and Robbe-Grillet.
Rating:
Summary: HOME-WORK
Review: Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, director Alain Resnais's LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD is undoubtedly a milestone in Movie History. With a screenplay written by Alain Resnais and by Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the popes of the New Novel movement, this movie was doomed to fly high above our poor heads. In LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, the characters act like zombies, speak like zombies and walk like zombies. Unfortunately, George Romero wasn't directing. So we are left to suppose that the authors wanted to create uneasiness in the average movie lover's mind. And believe me or not, if you have the curiosity to take a look at this movie, you surely will be puzzled by the result. Let's admit that you haven't fallen asleep after half an hour ; you will be hypnotized by the monotonous voices of the two heroes caught in a the trap of a torrid (!) love story, by the gloomy baroque hotel haunted by strange creatures such as Sacha Pitoëff, a kind of John Carradine clone. At the end of the film, you will have the feeling that the whole story wasn't no more than the dream of a fool. But, and that's the ultimate pleasure, you will feel so proud that you will shout to the world's face : I did it ! I've watched LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD until its end ! Without sleeping. A DVD for your schoolteacher's library.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly disturbing
Review: Resnais takes his viewers into a world where time and space have no meaning. Sentences begin on a balcony and end a year later(?) on a grand stair case. This haunting story(?) of a man's attempt to convince a woman that they had an affair the previous year defies any traditional filmic explanation and soars because of it. Eerily similar to Kubrick's The Shining on a formal level, the most intimate of conflicts boils under the surface of liesurely decadence. The visuals are astounding, and moreso because of Resnais' masterly use of black and white. The acting is, however, a bit stiff, even for cinema vérité. The hotel where this non-narrative develops seems more alive than the people who inhabit it. In any case, This film is a must for any who enjoy a intellegent filmic experience.
Rating:
Summary: gorgeous visuals, if you take away the subtitles...
Review: If I was a rich and idle person, I would have a giant screen in my living room playing Last Year At Marienbad on DVD, just as a permanent artistic background. Of course, I'd remove the subtitles: they are indeed too high up in the picture (thank you, nonsensical DVD producers.Didn't you think before you slapped on these absurd subtitles?..)and barely needed. I am not looking for meaning in this amazing movie: I am hypnotized by the stunningly beautiful frames, and softly conditionned by the French voices soundtrack...Oooh,the bourgeois charm of luxury ...
Rating: 
Summary: You win some/you lose some
Review: The visual quality of this DVD is better than most Fox/Lorber releases. The letterboxing is accurate and the quality of the image is much better than the old Connoisseur VHS. However, at least that version kept the subtitles underneath the film image, on the bottom of the black letterboxed borders. With the kind of poor judgement they have become famous for among video/DVD collectors, Fox/Lorber has plastered the subtitles across the image itself. Considering the small size of the letterboxed image, this makes for difficult viewing at times. Granted, you can turn these subtitles off but that's hardly the point. Fox/Lorber charges thirty bucks for their sub-standard releases on classic titles for which they have virtually cornered the market. For students of cinema, the name Fox/Lorber on a video jacket almost guarantees that the title will not receive the treatment it desereves. (Witness their time-compressed version of UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG.) Isn't it time people began complaining loudly and more often?
Rating:
Summary: a joke?
Review: some people say it's a joke-an elegant one, and some say it's a masterpiece. well, it's both, actually. who are them? when is it? where are they? what's going on? is it love, a sexual game, a metaphor? these are a few questions that you may wonder after the viewing, along with are these guys (resnais & robbe-grillet) pulling my leg? and which one? sacha pitoëf's character, can be death, a vampire, her brother, her fiance? is seyrig's role a part of a math formula? is albertazzi any of us? this mesmerizing, elegant, out-of-time and -allow me to say- ever-challenging masterpiece will remain as a single, unique, genuine, non-imitated movie.
Rating:
Summary: Timeless, classic, brilliant, unforgettable.
Review: Last Year At Marienbad is a brilliant, timeless work of poetry. There is no film to compare with this one. Is it a story about vampires? Is it just a love tale? Is it an afterlife narrative? Is it horror, is it drama, or is it science fiction? YES, to all questions. The answer is: Allain Resnais's and Grillet's film is a masterpiece in every respect that defies yet invites rigorous interpretation. Last Year At Marienbad defies genre and film conventions by breaking down spacial-temporal consistency. A physical "reality" is thwarted in favor of a psychological "realism"; a perpetual state of catachresis, whereby "reality's" misuse constitutes its full use and demonstrates it's audiences' states of mind.
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