Last (x) movies you saw

When you abbreviate ("I watched TTT...") is it because you assume everyone will know what you're talking about or because you're clueless and it never entered your mind that the point of making a post and communicating with others is to be understood. If you convey your message in a way that's not understood, then what's the point of making a post at all? You just enjoy touching the little letter keys on your computer?

Dredd (Travis, 2012) 7/10
Everything Must Go (Rush, 2010) 5/10
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Audiard, 2005) 8/10
King and Country (Losey, 1964) 8/10
La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960) 10/10

rewatches:
Wild at Heart (Lynch, 1991) - 7/10
Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997) - 7/10
The Fog (Carpenter, 1979) - 6/10
Midnight Run (Brest, 1988) - 8/10
Live and Let Die (Hamilton, 1971) - 8/10
Biggles (Hough, 1986) - 4/10
Batman Begins (Nolan, 2005) - 6/10
Interstellar (Nolan, 2014) - 6/10

1st time:
Trainwreck (Apatow, 2015) - 6/10
Foxcatcher (Miller, 2014) - 5/10
A Most Violent Year (Chandor, 2014) - 7/10
The Tale of Princess Kagua (Takahata, 2014) - 5/10
Jupiter Ascending (Wachowskis, 2014) - 7/10
Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellmen,1971) - 7/10
Vanishing Point (Sarafian, 1971) - 7/10
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr Moreau (Gregory, 2015) - 8/10

A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) - Super old fashioned but classy sexy times on a boat w Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando. Chaplin looking backwards in Swinging 60s Hollywood.

Beastmaster (1982) - Classic 80s Swords & Sorcery. GOT is built on this stuff. The weird witches were cool and kind of scrazy/strange-looking with kind of schlocky makeup that was hidden beneath the darkness of the film and kind of lo-fi look. Leads Marc Singer and Tanya Roberts are b-movie legends. Rad origin story. He has spy ferrets.

Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time (1991) - I mostly remember this for the crazy tonal twist, the first one being almost a horror movie at times w the tall dudes that are like venus fly traps for humans. It is cool that the twist doesn't happen for a while, so you still get sucked into this fantasy world they are building, before you see the fish-out-of-water stuff in LA. The streetwise valley girl character is awesome, and really kind of a crazy a wreckless person. She is introduced outrunning cops who she doesn't realize are trying to pull her over for speeding bc she is on the phone. *SPOILERS* So around the halfway point of the movie we are treated to two really great effects shots, a cop car and a tiger, separately, flying in slow motion through a time portal into this fantasy realm. I guess the series jumped the shark here because there is a 3rd Beastmaster movie and it has the production look of a Power Rangers episode, big rubber monsters and all. Maybe some other time.

Everything Will Be OK (2006) - This was really kind of depressing to watch. It was beautiful and technically amazing and inspiring, but a bit existential for my tastes at the moment. Not the kind of movie you just want to put on at random.

Reflections In A Golden Eye (Huston, 1967) 6/10
Ex Machina (Garland, 2015) 7/10
Y Tu Mama Tambien (Cuaron, 2001) 8/10
*World Of Tomorrow (Hertzfeldt, 2015) 9/10
The Testament Of Dr Mabuse (Lang, 1933) 6/10
Stray Dog (Kurosawa, 1949) 7/10

what's da problem w/ Mabuse?

Xyz otm re la grande bouffe, it commits to its one note but isn't great, enjoyable enough tho

what's da problem w/ Mabuse?

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Sunday, August 23, 2015 1:00 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dig that it's a brave allegory of Nazism but as a film I didn't get much satisfaction from it. Some neat visual effects but too long-winded and painfully slow for a suspense thriller.

Carnal Knowledge (8.0)
Straight Outta Compton (7.5)
The Pelican Brief (6.5)
In the Line of Fire (7.5)
Donnie Brasco (7.0)
The Possession of Joel Delaney (6.0)
Maps to the Stars (6.5)
21 (5.5)
Notorious (8.0)
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (6.5)

The Jobs documentary was interesting by default, but it's a real jumble--the exposé feels halfhearted, and the chronology is all over the place.

Suzaku (Kawase, 97)
Shara (Kawase, 03)
The Mourning Forest (Kawase, 07)
Hanezu (Kawase, 11)
Babel (Inarritu, 06)
Cyrano de Bergerac (Rappeneau, 90)
Nikita (Besson, 90)
Léon (Besson, 94)
The Wonders (Rohrwacher, 14)*
Latcho Drom (Gatlif, 93)
Geronimo (Gatlif, 14)
Rodrigo D: No Futuro (Gaviria, 90)
A Royal Affair (Arcel, 12)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans (Herzog, 09)
The Piano (Campion, 93)
Holy Smoke (Campion, 99)
In the Cut (Campion, 03)
Brothers Grimm (Gilliam, 05)
The Search (Hazanavicius, 14)
Passion (de Palma, 12)
Malena (Tornatore, 00)
Taxi (Panahi, 15)
Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words (Björkman, 15)
Juno (Reitman, 07)*
Like Father, Like Son (Kore-eda, 14)*

Have enjoyed watching a bunch of Kawase and Campiion, and Taxi is obviously pretty much a masterpiece. Other than that, and some ok ones, I've watched some bad movies, huh?

I just watched The Final Program. It's based on a Michael Moorcock Jerry Cornelius novel.
Pretty trashy, made in the early 70s. Somewhat stylish and fab, but overall not a great movie.
Now need to read the source novel and see what they changed.
I've read a few of his from around the time but I don't think that one.

Straight Outta Compton (Gray, 2015) 6/10
Last Days of Vietnam (Kennedy, 2014) 6/10
Tom at the Farm (Dolan, 2008) 6/10
The High and the Mighty (Wellman, 1954) 2/10
* Sunrise (Murnau 1928) 10/10
* Simon of the Desert (Buñuel, 1966) 8/10

Tom at the Farm isn't quite that old, or good.

A 6 means watchable.

A 6 for Tom at the Farm is not unreasonable. I'd rate it a 5.

And, wow, The High and the Mighty is that bad?!

nope

Yes. Interminable. Each character gets his or her back story, complete with Oscar-worthy crisis.

The Legend of Barney Thomson (Carlyle, 2015) 5/10
Mistress America (Baumbach, 2015) 7/10
The Dance of Reality (Jodorowsky, 2013) 7/10
Straight Outta Compton (Gray, 2015) 5/10

Grey Gardens (Maysles/Hovde/Meyer, 1975) 7/10
Listen Up Philip (Perry, 2014) 7/10
The Past (Farhadi, 2013) 7/10
Bon Voyage (Hitchcock, 1944) 5/10
Aventure Malgache (Hitchcock, 1944) 4/10
Broken Arrow (Daves, 1950) 7/10
Kingsman The Secret Service (Vaughan, 2015) 4/10
Paisa (Rosellini, 1946) 7/10
Simon of the Desert (Bunuel, 1965) 8/10
The Secret in the Their Eyes (Campanella, 2009) 6/10
Pauline at the Beach (Rohmer, 1982) 8/10
The Far Country (Man,, 1954) 7/10
Wild Tales (Szifron, 2014) 6/10
Night Moves (Reichardt, 2013) 6/10
Story of My Death (Serra, 2013) 9/10
Ex Machina (Garland, 2015) 5/10
My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (Rohmer, 1987) 7/10
A Bullet for the General (Damiani, 1966) 8/10
The Letter (Wyler, 1940) 8/10
Enemy (Villeneuve, 2014) 5/10

Good to see a good grade to Story of My Death. I need to rewatch that somehow.

There was a Serra season at the Tate earlier this year I was unable to attend :-(

The President (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 2014)
The Best of Enemies (Neville/Gordon, 2014)
The Wolfpack (Moselle, 2014)
The Look of Silence (Oppenheimer, 2014)

The Look of Silence was better than the Act of Killing (yes I had a problem with the 'quirky' recreations). 'Anonymous' still chills the spine. The quirk doesn't stop in The Wolfpack but there are a few things buried within the comfortably 'fake' doc (film as a life-saver, how people at a certain time hated work so much they'd do anything to get out of it, the hell that is love and being unable to quit and scram). Makhmalbaf is asking questions -- however uneven the process -- in a post-Libya way. What if you overthrow the dictator and you open the way for something worse? Like his A Moment of Innocence he knows the way to an ending you remember.

Saw Story of My Death on this DVD from Second Run

http://www.secondrundvd.com/release_story.php

Oh great txjust didn't think to check

My movie-watching seriously curbed this month thanks to being busy with a move and my electronics being inaccessible for a good chunk of it.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (Wrathall, 2013) 7/10
Don Jon (Gordon-Levitt, 2013) 6/10
The Way, Way Back (Faxon and Rash, 2013) 8/10
Get on the Bus (Lee, 1996) 7/10

foxfire: confessions of a girl gang (cantet 2012) 6/10
Rachel, Rachel (newman '68) 8/10
the guest (wingard 2014) 4/10
mistress America (baumbach 2015) 9/10
queen of earth (alex ross perry 2015) 5/10
suburbia (linklater '96) 5/10
the prince and the showgirl (Olivier '57) 6/10
a streetcar named desire (Kazan '51) 5/10
the end of the tour (pondsoldt '15) 5/10
obvious child (Robespierre '14) 8/10
tom at the farm (dolan '13) 6/10
Niagara (Hathaway '53) 4/10
tangerine (sean baker '15) 7/10
lone survivor (berg '13) 4/10
mortal thoughts (Rudolph '91) 4/10

u crazee on Mortal Thoughts, not to mention Streetcar

johnny, you must explain yourself re: Streetcar!

brandos great, meh to the rest. melodrama sometimes/often just doesn't read to me *shrug*

haven't seen Mortal Thoughts in years but thought it was a reasonably well done melodrama with a good Willis perf. Closer to a 6, I think, but it doesn't matter

willis is so arch, goatee and all. hes not bad. only other touch of life is john pankow. Keitel is sleepwalking, demi is ok, otherwise its just kinda rote idk didn't enjoy it

can't be reducing St'car to 'melodrama'

i mean, it was part of a radical new avenue in American theatre

streetcar is prob the single greatest american play, give or take an o'neill or two

The Lost Squadron (1932, Archainbaud) 7/10
Medea (1969, Pasolini) 8/10
The Tomb of Ligeia (1964, Corman) 6/10
'71 (2014, Demange) 7/10
Alice in the Cities (1974, 9/10)
*Chameleon Street (1989, Harris) 8/10
The Iron Ministry (2014, Sniadecki) 7/10
The Elusive Corporal (1962, Renoir) 9/10
The Skin aka La Pelle (1981, Cavani) 6/10
Life Is a Bed of Roses (1983, Resnais) 8/10
Ex Machina (2015, Garland) 7/10

Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) 6/10
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) 6/10
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) 5/10

Starsky & Hutch (2004) 5/10
Nightcrawler (2014) 8/10
Men in Black 3 (2012) 4/10
Interview with the Vampire (1994) 3/10
Flash Gordon (1980) 4/10
Vamps (2012) 5/10
Oculus (2013) 7/10
*Mission: Impossible (1996) 7/10
*Mission: Impossible II (2000) 3/10
*Mission: Impossible III (2006) 7/10
*Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) 8/10
*L'Avventura (1960) 6/10

I now love the scenes in MI1 where Tom Cruise goes to the newsgroup Job@3:14 to send a cryptic, apparently public message to Max@Job3:14. MI1 is from a different movie-making era than the others, with the special effects being limited to the crap stretch-masks and the ridiculous helicopter-in-the-Chunnel ending.

Agree with your rating for "Ghost Protocol". It's the most fun and best directed of the bunch. The new one was disappointing in that it looked like it was shot with TV in mind: all medium shots and close-ups and it felt somewhat...cheaper by comparison.

Hu-Man (7/10)
The Great Cuckold (6/10)
Venus In Furs (Polanski - 6/10)

Ghost Protocol is wonderful. Constantly inventive and elegantly staged all the way through. Maybe the best action film of the last 20 years?

While We’re Young (Baumbach, 2015) 7/10
The Wolfpack 7/10
Aloha (Crowe, 2015) 3/10
* Two Days, One Night (Dardennes, 2014) 7/10
Kill The Messenger (Cuesta, 2014) 5/10
* Odd Man Out (Reed, 1947) 8/10
Mata Hari (Fitzmaurice, 1931) 6/10

The only weakness of Ghost Protocol is the generic villain. I'd put the Crank movies and maybe Cellular above it.

Tellingly, I don't even remember the villain in GP.

Older guy. Briefcase. Car "factory" or car park at end.

His Kind of Woman (Farrow/Fleischer, 1951)
Valentino (Russell, 1977)
Witness for the Prosecution (Wilder, 1957)
Breaker Morant (Beresford, 1979)
Horse Feathers (McLeod, 1932)
The Woman on the Beach (Renoir, 1947)
Why We Fight: Prelude to War (Capra, 1942)
Shaft (Parks, 1971)
Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia (Capra/Litvak, 1943)
The Born Losers (Laughlin, 1968)

Results and Trainwreck - both self-described

Closed Curtain (Panahi, 2014) - loved all the switching. both in all the forms this took: there was a switch from the Beckett-like one man and his dog to an aborted thriller to a three way mini-play (much going up and down stairs) to this jaded magicky realist composition to take a look at the inside Panahi's mind. This just ran risks shot-by-shot by that point, just when you think the camera is lingering way too long on the man looking forlornly out and blank, with the pile on from woman-ghost -- and what a face she had for the job -- it pulls back and forth between a frustrated creative mind that cannot realise the dreams he has to a reality that he perhaps doesn't want to, that it would rather be left alone to physically stay, or to come and go from the place as it wishes, or to jump in the sea and not come back, despite what he says ("there is more to life than work" "But all that is foreign to me").

Yeah, it's amazing. Just in general, I love it's filmicness, as it comes right after This Is Not a Film, and complicates/discusses/refutes the strategies put forth in that film against censorship. And spoiler-warning, but Taxi makes the whole thing even more complex and artful and heartfelt and brilliant.

crucial, everlasting dog performance in cc also
i feel having seen his films i should be prepared for general fourth-wall-crumbling activity & narrative folds but his big reveals always just knock me for six

I am a tad blind to dogs in films (more into cats but actually never owned a pet) but yeah, come Oscar time etc.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (Amirpour, 2014) 7/10
The Servant (Losey, 1963) 9/10
*Alarm (Stembridge, 2008) 7/10
They Came Together (Wain, 2014) 6/10

Watched "Closed Curtain" - solid 8 or 9/10.

The Barefoot Contessa - 7/10 - loved the script and direction and performances overall but found Gardner to be seriously miscast. Still, she gave it her all it seems though they should've splurged on a Spanish dialogue coach for her. Can see why this was a favorite of the Cahiers crew.

Just watched I WALK THE LINE, a fun, sleazy little John Frankenheimer movie from 1970 with Gregory Peck as the morally flexible sheriff of some stain on the map in Tennessee, and Tuesday Weld as the possibly underage girl he takes up with after she more or less throws her panties in his path to keep him distracted from chasing her moonshiner dad, played by former Mike Hammer Ralph Meeker. Charles Durning's in it, too, and Estelle Parsons is great as Peck's wife. I was recently thinking about revisiting Jim Thompson, but after seeing this I don't think I need to bother. Recommended.