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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I'm not more widely familiar with Atom Egoyan's work, but this small curiosity of a film has piqued my interest. It's about a photographer (played by Egoyan) who, while on a commission to photograph churches in Armenia for a calendar, develops a riff between his wife, and later has to live with himself when she leaves him for their driver. These two temporal locations, the Armenian trip and his empty house afterward, are pulled together by a twelve-part structure to reflect the calendar that was made. While in Armenia, he is always behind the camera, while in Canada, he is always on camera. In this way we see both how he looks and also who he is. In Armenia, the name of the game is miscommunication: he can't tell what his wife, who is the translator, is saying to their driver, and he can't express how he feels about the two of them obviously growing attached to each other in front of his eyes; in Canada, he goes on date after date that basically just show off what a pathetic tool he really is (though of course there's some question as to the staginess of the situation, as on the final date he says, "Okay, you can stop now," leaving a sort of ambiguousness as to whether they were legitimate dates or he is re-enacting some important scene in his relationship with his wife with other women). Either way, Egoyan's character comes across as a sadder, less quirky Woody Allen, a character that is risky to showcase because he can be incredibly unlikeable. The thing is, though, Egoyan builds him well enough that he's recognizable and real. It's easy to care for him, through all of his faults.--PolarisDiB

It continues to amaze how gullible the viewers are with this film. When something is as bleak, tedious, pointless, and indecipherable as this, that does not signify that it is good. Rather, it signifies that it is bad. This is a basic point that I think many in the artistic community fail to perceive, intentionally, so to protect their own careers, which are often based on telling the public that there is more to film than meets the eye. Sorry, but there isn't, and that's the point.I didn't fall asleep during this one, but it was so boring that I found myself not even looking at the screen for minutes at a time, which is saying something since there isn't much else to look at. It didn't matter. Most of the time, the characters were speaking in a foreign language, with no subtitles. Their speech was unimportant. They never did anything particularly interesting, and the cinematography was horrible, so it wasn't even worth looking at. As a curiosity in an "anti-film" designed to antagonize the viewer, I suppose this succeeded, but as a film it is a failure. It has its good points (which is how it earned a 5 from me) but they aren't worth detailing since there are many here happy to sing the praises of this work.I've seen summaries of the film that indicate that women invited to eat at the photographer's place were in fact escorts. I saw or heard no evidence of that in the film. Maybe they revealed that in a language I do not speak. I have no intention of sitting through this again to find out what I missed.

A small project wedged between his first two more mainstream products, The Adjuster and Exotica, Calendar stars the director and his wife, Arsinée Khanjian as a photographer and his wife. They are traveling to different Armenian churches in order to photograph them for a calendar. Both of them are Armenian by heritage, but he is disconnected from it, while she speaks the language (and acts as translator). During the trip, their Armenian guide begins to grow closer to the wife. The film actually takes place much later, as Egoyan, now no longer with his wife, is trying to duplicate her by holding "auditions" with women, presumably re-enacting the first meeting with his ex. It's all rather confusing. I never quite figured it all out. I'm not sure the film works. I liked all the stuff about the Armenian churches (some beautiful images here, and the film's style in these scenes is great), but the whole narrative about the dates never seemed to come to fruition. However, it is an extremely interesting film, and it's rather haunting at the end. Calendar itself may feel somewhat incomplete, but Egoyan is definitely a fully-fledged artist here. The only earlier film of his I've seen, Speaking Parts, did not communicate his talent. This is definitely worth seeing, especially as it only runs at 75 minutes.

I don't usually give movies a rating of 1. Normally I have the good sense not to sit through movies that I'm going to hate. However, in this case the filmmaker was Atom Egoyan so I decided to bear it out.Calendar is one of those films which hangs in time. The events on the screen are initially incomprehensible to us, but as the plot drags on, the same basic scenes are repeated again and again, each time casting new light on the relationship between the protagonist and his wife.Egoyan seems to have a love affair with European languages. A large portion of the film is spent listening to women of various nationalities jabbering on the phone (without being able to understand what they are saying).Then there are the scenes where Egoyan films his wife's trip to Armenia. The whole episode is deliberately constructed to play like a home movie. The subtle nuances in these scenes are overshadowed by the fact that the scenes themselves are boring.A large part of the home video is spent having Egoyan's wife translate one character's narratives from Armenian to English. The last film I saw with that plot device was Godard's "Contempt" and I hated it then as well.Egoyan even ridicules this plot device in a subsequent scene when his photographer character spends several minutes (onscreen) videotaping a man talking without having any conception of what he is talking about.There is a section in the middle of the film where the plot seems to accelerate. We see the distance forming in the relationship between Egoyan and his wife; meanwhile, Egoyan opens up to his date about the Armenian foster child he supports.At this point, I had mentally upgraded my evaluation of the film to at least a 2. But shortly thereafter, the film reverted to its previous boring tone.