Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Picking up from under the long white beard of this thread. We should be able to get a few years out of this one before it gets unwieldy.

Kicking off, here's my July 15th to 31st:

* The Thomas Crown Affair (Jewison, 1968) 📽️
* Bullitt (first three or four reels until the second projector broke: one had already died during Thomas Crown) (Yates, 1968) 📽️
Blade II (del Toro, 2002)
Ibiza (Richanbach, 2018) 📺
Hands Across The Table (Leisen, 1935) 📽️
* Bullitt (went back to see the latter reels) (Yates, 1968) 📽️
Leave No Trace (Granik, 2018)
Adult Beginners (Katz, 2014) 📺
The Apple (Golan, 1980)
* My Man Godfrey (La Cava,1936) 📽️
Blindspotting (Lopez Estrada, 2018)
Eighth Grade (Burnham,2018)
* Ronin (Frankenheimer, 1998) 📽️
To Live & Die In LA (Friedkin, 1985) 📽️
Across The Universe (Taymor, 2007)

The film ones were all on 35mm. The TV (streaming) ones were both bad.

what did you think of Eighth Grade & Blindspotting?

Deadpool 2 (4/10)
Comanche Station (7/10)
L'Amore Molesto (8/10)

The Counselor (Ridley Scott/Cormac McCarthy, 2013). I saw this in a theater and didn't like it much, but recently learned that the Blu-Ray included a director's cut that was 20 minutes longer. I bought it on eBay for $5 and miraculously, the long version is a really good movie! Recommended.

Eighth Grade I've said a little about in EIGHTH GRADE (2018, written & directed by Bo Burnham, starring Elsie Fisher) , but its most remarkable achievement is the way the audience get situated right with Kayla, both through Elsie Fisher's heart-open performance and the script. Everything feels as traumatic and monumental as stresses and anxieties do at that age, there's absolutely no adult tone present framing it as "one day she'll realise how minor all this was" or "oof, remember how that used to feel"." We're totally present in the milieu, despite so many elements deliberately excluding adult perspectives.

Blindspotting has a little first-film-iness to the script, but is totally carried by the onscreen charisma and chemistry of the writers. If civilisation lasts another ten years, it'll be interesting to see how much the tech-bro-gentrification themes feel like a period piece vs a valuable snapshot of a tipping point. Right now I imagine it'd be largely baffling to non-city-dwelling audiences.

xp wait, WHAT?

Yeah wow, I actually have that blu ray, maybe I’ll watch it tonight

Secret of the Blue Room (Neumann, 1933)
*Lost Horizon (Capra, 1937)
#A Kiss in the Dark (surviving reels) (Tuttle, 1925)
#Too Many Kisses (Sloane, 1925) (personal festival highlight)
#Your Technocracy and Mine (Benchley, 1933)
#The Mad Game (Cummings, 1933)
#We Faw Down (McCarey, 1928)
#The House That Shadows Built (unidentified Paramount drudges, 1931)
#On the Brink (Porter & Weber, 1911)
#Romola (King, 1924)
*#The Cocoanuts (Florey & Santley, 1929)
#Mamba (Rogell, 1930)
#The Circus of Life (Julian, 1917)
#The Stolen Ranch (Wyler, 1926)
#Princess Lady Bug (Barker, 1930)
#The Storm (Wyler, 1930)
*#Brats (Parrott, 1930)
#Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (Del Ruth, 1934)
#A Daughter of the Law (Cunard, 1921)
#The Night of Love (Fitzmaurice, 1927)
#Television Highlights (Schwarzwald, 1936)
#School for Swing (Schwarzwald, 1937)
#It's Great To Be Alive (Werker, 1932)
*#The Coming of Sunbeam (Guy, 1913)
#Twenty Dollars a Week (Weight, 1924)
#Ed Sullivan's Headliners (Schwarzwald, 1934)
#Her First Mate (Wyler, 1933)
#Call of the Cumberlands (Lloyd, 1916)
#The Rescue (Brenon, 1929)

#Capitolfest 16, or J.Lu Yet Again Is Reminded that Not All Silent and Pre-Code Films Are Classics.

celebrating the new thread with some all timers (uk folks nuts in may is back on the iplayer!)

Late Autumn (Ozu, 1960) 9/10
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson, 1951) 10/10
Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959) 9/10
* Nuts in May (Leigh, 1976) 8/10
* Love and Friendship (Stillman, 2016) 7/10
Hereditary (Aster, 2018) 5/10
Ordet (Dreyer, 1955) 10/10

I don't log short films like j.lu does, but I saw about 8 Sadie Benning videos (made in Pixelvision) that I last watched about 25 years ago; most of those would be 8-10/10.

Three Faces West (1940, Vorhaus) 6/10
*My Beautiful Laundrette (1985, Frears) 8/10
Flat Is Beautiful (1998, S Benning) (50min) 5/10
Swallow (1995, Subrin) (28min) 7/10
The Lovers of Montparnasse (1958, Becker) 9/10
The Young Savages (1961, Frankenheimer) 5/10
Another Girl, Another Planet (1992, Almereyda) (56min) 6/10
Wake of the Red Witch (1948, Ludwig) 7/10
A Girl’s Folly (1917, M Tourneur) 7/10
Gavagai (2016, Tregenza) 4/10
Les Amis (1971, Blain) 5/10

I'd suggest you watch more Davies as prep than Frears, but don't want to prescribe any other TV while yr still not moving forward on Twin Peaks

Davies? this guy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Davies

Russell T. Davies, the writer of A Very British Scandal. Roughly every second of his works deals with different facets of men-attracted-to-men negotiating a homosociality within heteronormative culture - Very British Scandal is the first that is a period piece, rather than directly contemporary.

Cucumber, his previous main project (eight episodes, twinned with another series called Banana, and a docoseries called Tofu, all named for the hardness of erections), was the best thing he's done ime.

Laundrette's focus on gay stuff is at most 33%.

I just figured Frears was on yr slate because you'd said you were planning to watch Brit Scandal; to me he's a director who is efficient in service of a script's tone and agenda, rather than having an authorial throughline or preoccupations that can be tracked through his work.

if you watch the Laundrette Criterion supplements, he denies being an auteur while his producer insists that he is. Frears does say he considers his string from The Hit thru The Grifters to be a reaction to Thatcherism.

I'm not actually likely to watch that scandal show anytime soon... always drowning in things to watch.

Frears otm! The Grifters as the end of Thatcher reactions, vs the good first step into a bad period of Americana, is interesting, would be curious to rewatch with that in mind.

("gay stuff" is only 7% of AVBS at most, except for how the closet is the driver for every bad action across the fifteen years or so it covers. fascinatingly handled, re. it being a period piece, is how no "character" in it identifies as gay, it's not even an option to consider: those who come out to each other instead compare to what point their bedroom preference is for which gender, how much marriage is a thing they genuinely value vs are having to take on for optics, etc.)

Mississippi (2015), streaming on Netflix - 36/42

*Mississippi Grind

xp I’m not sure what I think of A Very English Scandal. It had a breezy quality, but it was in a very different key than I was expecting.

I loved how lizard-like Hugh Grant was, though. Was he wearing contacts? because there was something very creepy about his black irises

OK, I had no idea Frears directed A Very English Scandal (u have to spell things out, sic) -- because why would I? I haven't seen anything of his since Dirty Pretty Things in 2002. Then he started doing all that Peter Morgan royal shite.

Dream Tower (7.0)
Our Nixon (7.5)
20th Century Women (9.0)
Eighth Grade (6.5)
Demon Seed (5.5)
Quadrophenia (7.5)
McQueen (6.0)
Ocean’s Eight (4.0)
BlacKkKlansman (7.0)
A Stranger Among Us (6.5)

The last one is a late Lumet I saw at the time and completely forgot about. Relatively low key for him. Explicitly quotes from Hud when Melanie Griffith says "I already put in time with one cold-hearted bastard, I'm not looking to find another one." Good one for that last-line-should-have-been-the-title thread: Ask Your Rabbi.

Mission Impossible (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018) - yup, that's how badly my year is going.

It was fun etc.

I forgot to note earlier how amused I was that it was j.lu who pitched for an Electric Boogaloo subtitle on the new thread.

/The Counselor/ (Ridley Scott/Cormac McCarthy, 2013). I saw this in a theater and didn't like it much, but recently learned that the Blu-Ray included a director's cut that was 20 minutes longer. I bought it on eBay for $5 and miraculously, the long version is a really good movie! Recommended.

last batch for a while

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch, 1992) - 10/10
Heat (Michael Mann, 1995) - 9/10
Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953) - 8/10
This Happy Breed (David Lean, 1944) - 8/10
Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980) - 7/10
Fantastic Planet (René Laloux, 1973) - 3/10

China Gate (Fuller)
The Search (Zinnemann)
From Here to Eternity (Zinnemann)
A Man for All Seasons (Zinnemann)
The Longest Day (Annakin, Marton & Wicki)
The Army of Crime (Guédiguian)
La Vie en Rose (Dahan)
Grace of Monaco (Dahan)
Cop (A. Refn)
Once a Cop... (A. Refn)
R (Noer & Lindholm)
Key House Mirror (Noer)*
A Hijacking (Lindholm)*
A War (Lindholm)*
A Second Chance (Bier)
Summer With Monika (Bergman)
Sawdust and Tinsel (Bergman)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman)
The Virgin Spring (Bergman)
Morvern Callar (Ramsay)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (Ramsay)
Katalin Varga (Strickland)
For Those in Peril (Wright)*
Hyena (Johnson)
Ex Machina (Garland)
Beast (Pearce)
Under the Skin (Glazer)
Her (Jonze)
Lucy (Besson)
Ghost in the Shell (Sanders)

All 3.5/5:
True Stories (1986)
Blackkklansman
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
The Lost City of Z

Mission Impossible Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018) 8/10
the Happy Prince (Everett, 2018) 7/10
Yellow Submarine ( Dunning, 1968) 8/10
Unseeworld U.S.A (Fuller, 1960) 7/10
The Last Emperor (Bertolucci, 1987) 6/10
Paddington 2 (King, 2017) 9/10
Hostiles (Cooper, 2017) 7/10

Um, Underworld U.S.A. that should be.

Gone With the Wind (1939) 7.5/10
Iron Man (2008) 7/10
Tangerine (2015) 8/10

bunch of airplane streaming on the way to and from berlin, the only one i'd seen before is philadelphia story:

all about eve (mankiewicz, 1951) 10/10
paddington 2 (king, 2017) 8/10
rocky (avildsen, 1976) 8/10
the philadelphia story (cukor, 1940) 9/10
happy death day (landon, 2017) 6/10
inside out (docter, 2015) 8/10

honestly happy death day was surprisingly enjoyable for what it was

the gospel of the bear film has reached the troposphere

lol

The Raid: Redemption (Evans, 2011) 6
Mission: Impossible Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018) 7
Disney Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018) 4
Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg, 2010) 8
Icarus (Bryan Fogel, 2017) 8

read that marwencol has been adapted & now will have steve carell in it

https://www.meta-sphere.com/wp-content/uploads/welcome-to-marwen_tete-600x220.jpg

yeah I watched it because i saw the trailer for the zemeckis movie. The trailer makes it out to be an "inspirational" true story but it's not really, not exactly.

baby driver (2017 edgar wright) 6.5/10
mollys game (2017 sorkin) 2/10
suburbicon (2017 clooney) 2/10
the killing of a sacred deer (2017 lanthimos) 6/10
angelo my love (1983 duvall) 3/10
eighth grade (2018 burnham) 8/10
thoroughbreds (2018 cory finley) 4/10

thoroughbreds (2018 cory finley) 4/10

I don't do the out of 10 thing but I'd give this at least a 6. It made me laugh a lot.

lil too try hard idk

*The Naked Spur : 7/10
Vampire's Kiss : 6/10
Dying Of the Light (Paul Schrader Edit): 7/10 -- only 7/10 because Nic Cage is in full on weirdo mode and Schrader's noodling around on Final Cut. The doctor accent is...wow...almost as great as the accent in "Vampire's Kiss"
*The Young One: 7/10 - minor Buñuel for me but still great

Crazy Rich Asians – kind of a riff on Philadelphia Story, but with better-looking people. Lots of film history embedded in it.

What Price Jazz (Baerwitz, 1934)
Felix Gets Broadcasted (Messmer, 1923)
High Flyers (Cline, 1937)
Inflation (Myers, 1933)
Felix in Fairyland (Messmer, 1923)
*Roast-Beef and Movies (Baerwitz, 1934)
*Big City Fantasy (Henabery, 1934)
The Magician (Bergman, 1958)
BlacKkKlansman (Lee, 2018)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman, 1955)

Re-watching Whit Stillman's Barcelona tonight.

I was hoping for good things from Crazy Rich Asians, but found it fairly bland. I may have had the wrong expectations for a mainstream PG rom-com, but I felt like it needed sharper jokes.

kind of a riff on Philadelphia Story, but with better-looking people

!!! I'm sure this cast looks fine, but you are aware that Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn were considered pretty attractive, right?

in theaters July 26 - August 22

Killer’s Kiss (Stanley Kubrick, 1955) - 6/10
Summer Interlude (Ingmar Bergman, 1951) - 9/10
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018) - 8/10
Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle, 2018) - 6/10
Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada, 2018) - 7/10
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (Peter Rida Michail, Aaron Horvath, 2018) - 3/10
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018) - 9/10

! at low rating for Three Identical Strangers

I knew nothing about the backstory before seeing it at SIFF but on a str8 narrative level it’s my favourite doco of the year

it is an incredible story. a documentary that makes itself, really. what bothered me was how much they reused the same footage from the same Donahue, NBC, + other TV appearances. the same lines. it kinda falls apart at the end, and felt padded even at ~95 minutes. that has nothing to do with the actual story being unresolved, i just thought with so much material to go through (and so many years passed over) the reuse of footage was bizarre.

and fwiw I knew not only the backstory but most of the twists before I saw it. I would've rated it higher if I had gone in completely cold, I wish I could've.

yeah fair enough! the repeated lines are very few & read in SUPER different context the second times around, but if you’re not seeing it / that footage cold, those won’t have the same kick

a documentary that makes itself, really.

this undermines the work they do in visuals and research and in editing the story though — I felt v impressed by how manipulative it was without cheats in the first half-hour, and how well the makers shift to mostly-archival telling thereafter.

i've seen much worse evaluations of 3IS

Apostasy (Dan Kokotajlo, 2017) - fairly ho hum drama around Jehovah's witnesses.
The Heiresses (Marcelo Martinessi, 2017) - this is going to be top 2/3 for the year. Loved the use of (de-)focus to mirror the main character's state of mind (which could've been too on the nose), the script really nails the intricacies of class mobility across a more Latin American milieu, and then the final encounter between Chela and the much younger Angy -- all that hidden passion and desire across age and class -- really was a terrific driver for the last 1/3 of the film.

Missed a trick by not taglining this thread "Oh yes... There will be blood"

https://resizing.flixster.com/2vtSOfiWCmXUQ8Brs-b4y5qFYIY=/206x305/v1.bTsxMTE3NzU3OTtqOzE3ODU5OzEyMDA7ODAwOzEyMDA

Electric Bloodaloo

Kagemusha (1980)
RoboCop (2014)
The Endless (2017)
Deadpool 2 (2018)
*The Social Network (2010)
Super Troopers 2 (2018)
A Ciambra (2017)
Frenzy (1972)
Call Me By Your Name (2017)
*The Cabin In The Woods (2012)
A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018)
*Nightcrawler (2014)
First Reformed (2017)
*Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
Super 8 (2011)
30 Days of Night (2007)
One Sings, The Other Doesnt (1977)

Re-watched Miami Vice tonight (the director’s cut). It’s kind of maddening how 90% of the shots are fantastically beautiful, and then the other 10% look like they were shot on somebody’s flip phone.

I've gotta get on that, watched Heat a few weeks ago for the first time and loved it. Haven't seen Collateral since it opened in 2004 but remember loving it, too.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall, good movie

The Heiresses (Marcelo Martinessi, 2017) - this is going to be top 2/3 for the year. Loved the use of (de-)focus to mirror the main character's state of mind (which could've been too on the nose), the script really nails the intricacies of class mobility across a more Latin American milieu, and then the final encounter between Chela and the much younger Angy -- all that hidden passion and desire across age and class -- really was a terrific driver for the last 1/3 of the film.

― xyzzzz__, 23. august 2018 15:15 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, for one reason or another Latin American cinema works a lot with de-focus these days, I find. Sergio Armstrong, most famous for shooting most films of Pablo Larrain, is masterful at it. Apart from Larrains films he does it greatly in From Afar and The Desert Bride. It's one of the most innovative little things happening in World Cinema at the moment, but I'll admit I have no idea what to make of it.

August 1st to 16th:

* The Brothers Bloom (Johnson 2008) 📺
Teen Titans GO! To The Movies (Michail, Horvath, Jelenic 2018)
True Confession (Ruggles, Binyon 1937) 📽️
* Sneakers (Robinson 1992) 📺
The Spy Who Dumped Me (Fogel, Iverson 2018)
Nothing Sacred [Kino restoration] (Wellman, Hecht, Schulberg, Lardner Jr., Parker, Howard, Hart, Kaufman, Carson 1937)
BlacKkKLansman (Lee, Wachtel, Rabinowitz, Willmott 2018)
Madonna: Truth Or Dare (Keshishian 1991)
To Be Or Not To Be (Lubitsch, Mayer 1942) 📽️

Re-watched Miami Vice tonight (the director’s cut). It’s kind of maddening how 90% of the shots are fantastically beautiful, and then the other 10% look like they were shot on somebody’s flip phone.

― grawlix (unperson), Friday, August 24, 2018 8:01 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've gotta get on that, watched Heat a few weeks ago for the first time and loved it. Haven't seen Collateral since it opened in 2004 but remember loving it, too.

― flappy bird, Friday, August 24, 2018 8:26 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

MV is the purest distillation of the Mann aesthetic. I actually recommend the theatrical cut over the director’s cut, though I’m not sure if one is easier to track down over the other. If you’re onboard with his “thing” it’s one of the greatest action films in recent years.

You can rent the theatrical cut on Amazon but the director's cut is the only one available on DVD/Blu-Ray.

Has the director's cut of Blackhat ever been released anywhere? I never saw the first version but the re-edit is supposed to be a substantially better movie, so I'm intrigued.

Apparently MV (theatrical cut, probably) will be free via Amazon Prime starting September 1.

*Out West (Arbuckle, 1918)
Charley on the Farm (Sullivan, 1919)
The Dippy Dentist (Goulding, 1920)
Standing Pat (Montgomery, 1928)
Campus Romeos (Pratt, 1927)
A Broadway Romeo (Blumenstock, 1931)
All the King's Horses (Tuttle, 1935)
*The Black Cat (Ulmer, 1934)
Re-Animator (Gordon, 1985)
Good References (Neill, 1920)

Primary (6.5)
A Bronx Tale (7.0)
Promised Land (7.5)
Shock and Awe (5.5)
Nico, 1988 (6.0)
Nico Icon (7.0)
Singer Presents...Elvis (6.5)
Twister (6.5)
Class Action (7.5)
Sorry to Bother You (6.0)

I was going to leave Sorry to Bother You unrated because a) I drifted a bit early on, and b) as it got weirder and weirder, I just didn't know what to make of it. So take the rating as more of a question mark than any kind of comment on how good it is.

lots of Hong Sang-soo, just hook it to my veins

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928) 9/10
Minnie and Moskowitz (Cassavetes, 1971) 7/10
Happy Hour (Hamaguchi, 2015) 9/10
La Collectionneuse (Rohmer, 1967) 6/10
Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong, 2015) 8/10
Three Colours: Blue (Kieślowski, 1993) 7/10
Three Colours: White (Kieślowski, 1994) 7/10
Three Colours: Red (Kieślowski, 1994) 7/10
In Another Country (Hong, 2012) 8/10
On The Beach at Night Alone (Hong, 2017) 8/10
Blackkklansman (Lee, 2018) 7/10
The Aviators Wife (Rohmer, 1981) 9/10
Woman on the Beach (Hong, 2006) 9/10
The Day After (Hong, 2017) 7/10

Crazy Rich Asians: 7.5

*Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971, Van Peebles) 8/10
The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928, Dulac) (41m) 8/10
La folie des vaillants (1926, Dulac) (46m) 6/10
La Belle dame sans merci (1920, Dulac) 7/10
Princesse Mandane (1928, Dulac) 6/10
Freaky Friday (1976, Nelson) 7/10
Surrender (1950, Dwan) 5/10
Dutchman (1967, Harvey) (55m) 7/10
Rendezvous in July (1949, Becker) 6/10
Nico, 1988 (2017, Nicchiarelli) 5/10
*The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961, Guest) 8/10

On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) - 10/10
A Colt is My Passport (Takashi Nomura, 1967) - 5/10
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) - 10/10
Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997) - 10/10
Auto Focus (Paul Schrader, 2002) - 7/10
Bamboozled (Spike Lee, 2000) - 10/10
Le Amiche (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1955) - 6/10
Monte Carlo (Ernst Lubitsch, 1930) - 7/10

A Ciambra, a story about a Romani family of low-level criminals in Italy, and a young boy's coming-of-age/becoming-a-scumbag.

Alex Strangelove (Johnson, 2018) 6/10
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Milestone, 1946) 8/10
Vision Quest (Becker, 1985) 5/10
*Mean Girls (Waters, 2004) 6/10
*Heathers (Lehmann, 1989) 9/10
A Man There Was (Sjöström, 1917) 7/10
Heartaches (Shebib, 1981) 6/10
The Story of Temple Drake (Roberts, 1933) 7/10

Nearest and Dearest (Robins, 1972) 4/10
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman, 1955) 8/10
The Boys From Fengkuei (Hou, 1983) 8/10
Cabaret (Fosse, 1972) 7/10
The Big Combo (Lewis, 1955) 7/10
The Final Programme (Fuest, 1973) 6/10
The Devil's Rain (Fuest, 1975) 7/10
Rawhide (Hathaway, 1951) 8/10
Further up the Creek (Guest, 1958) 6/10
The Women (Cukor, 1939) 8/10
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018) 6/10

The Finsl Programme is one of the rare movies that I watched, thoroughly entertained the whole way through, with absolutely no clue as to what was happening.

I'd read the book many years ago, so that maybe helped - I'm not sure it was intended to be entirely coherent, in the manner of New Wave SF. Moorcock-loving fans of my acquaintance (and Moorcock himself) detest it, but as you say it's pretty pleasurable to watch. The director, Robert Fuest, had come from TV and things like the (Steed-Peel) Avengers, and he was a great set dresser and stylist - this set is the standout in FP:

https://thegameofnerds.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/the-final-programme-02.jpg

The Good Marriage (Rohmer, 1982) - early to mid-80s Rohmer is really his best period. Also have an impression he is an interesting dabbler in these electronic music soundtracks - might be an idea to see them collected.

Heavy Love (Pembroke, 1926)
The Operation (Roth, 1930)
*That's the Spirit (Mack, 1933)
*Bubbles (Mack, 1930)
The Grab-Bag Bride (Hartman, 1917)
Guests Wanted (Ceder, 1932)
The Balloonatic (Keaton & Cline, 1923)
Take Next Car (Howe, 1922)
Pie-Eyed (Pembroke & Rock, 1925)
The Dummy Owner (Yarbrough, 1938)
The Door Knocker (Cline, 1931)
The Notorious Sophie Lang (Murphy & Menzies, 1934)
The Girl Ranchers (Christie, 1913)
Horseshoes (Davis & Semon, 1923)
This Can't Happen Here (Bergman, 1950)

in theaters August 25 - September 3

Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, 2018) - 3/10
Never Goin’ Back (Augustine Frizzell, 2018) - 3/10
Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018) - 5/10
Summer with Monika (Ingmar Bergman, 1953) - 9/10
Juliet, Naked (Jesse Peretz, 2018) - 6/10
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) - 10/10
The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet, 2018) - 6/10
The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper, 1971) - 2/10

have been off work following an operation and attacking the dvd pile (which started at about 30 unwatched films)

Shin Godzilla (2016)
The Mysterians (Honda 1957)
Lady Snowblood (1973)
L'Atalante (Vigo 1934)
Stroszek (Herzog 1977)
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (Herzog 1975)
The Soft Skin (Godard 1964)
Lady Snowblood 2 (1974)
Satantango (Tarr 1994)

(3 hours of satantango left to go, 5 days before work)

The Good Marriage (Rohmer, 1982) - early to mid-80s Rohmer is really his best period. Also have an impression he is an interesting dabbler in these electronic music soundtracks - might be an idea to see them collected.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, September 1, 2018 8:11 AM

I like Full Moon in Paris, which I don't see mentioned enough.

The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (Herzog 1975)

― koogs, 4. september 2018 22:40 (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This might be my favorite Herzog. Though I should definitely watch it again soon. I love that he basically already has achieved what every Herzog-hero wants, he has transcended his field and learned to fly, basically, and it's only brought him trouble and he's just trying to be able to compete properly.

i didn't really know what to expect. but 50,000 people at a ski jump competition? 70m jumps without helmets?

yeah, everything about that film is crazy. but the flying passages with popol vuh are amazing.

North Korea Exposes The Western propaganda cos it was being circulated on Pirate Bay.
Weird take on American advertising etc . I think it has some clips borrowed from Adam curtis. odd taht it was saying that Americans were a people being brainwashed by their leaders but I guiess the idea is that the public who get to see the filma re brainwashed enough not to think that they are too.
Semi had it on in the background.

Active Measures new documenatry on the Russian influence on the 2016 election, lead up to and aftermath. Quite enjoyed it.

Boss baby, watched a few computer animation type things last week. Also saw The Secret Life of Pets, Captain Underpants and half watched Despicable Me 3. & had seen Incredibles 2 at the start of the week.

I like Full Moon in Paris, which I don't see mentioned enough.

― The Silky Veils of Alfred (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes. I strongly suspect The Aviator's Wife and Pauline at the Beach are great. The Green Ray is my favourite.

Although looking at the filmography he didn't get going till the 80s. One film a year almost every year whereas before there are gaps with nothing.

Crazy Rich Asians (Chu, 2018) 6
Scarlet Street (Lang, 1945) 8
The Bat (Wilbur, 1959) 3
Alien Covenant (Ridley Scott, 2016) 5
Alpha (Albert Hughes, 2018) 5

August 24th to September 1st: not gonna lie, Moviepass nigh-collapsing is having an impact. But the elliptical at the Y now has Netflix, so I'm going to be watching more films in 45-minute chunks under fluorescent lights, the way the makers intended.

Green Room (Saulnier, 2015) 📺
The Happytime Murders (Henson, Berger , 2018)
* There Will Be Blood (PTA, 2007)
* No Country For Old Men (Coen x Coen, 2007)
The VVitch (Eggers , 2015) 📺
* Still Crazy (Clement, LaFrenais, Gibson, 1998) 📺
Landline (Robespierre, Holm, 2017) 📺
Mindhorn (Foley, Farnaby, Barratt, 2016) 🏋️
* Stop Making Sense (Demme , 1984)
Open Windows (Vigalondo, 2014) 📺
* Attack The Block (Cornish, 2011) 📺
Mission: Impossible - Rogue; Nation (McQuarrie, 2015) 📺
The Last Movie Star (Rifkin, 2018) 📺

Happytime was mulitplex DCP, the other cinema screenings were laser-projected at Cinerama.

Woman Walks Ahead. Free on Amazon Prime. Pretty good. Extra points for Jessica Chastain's character not sleeping with anyone.

I saw Nico 1988 in the theater it was good

Wonderstruck (Haynes)*
Chloe (Egoyan)
Fruitvale Station (Coogler)
Se7en (Fincher)*
Zodiac (Fincher)*
Great Expectations (Lean)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
A Passage to India (Lean)
Bad Timing (Roeg)
The Mission (Joffé)*
The Queen (Frears)*
The Browning Version (Figgis)
Control (Corbijn)
The Trip (Winterbottom)*
The Trip to Italy (Winterbottom)*
The Trip to Spain (Winterbottom)
The Deep Blue Sea (Davies)*
Les Miserables (Hooper)
Patience (After Sebald) (Gee)
The Third Murder (Koreeda)
The Fourth Direction (Singh)
Court (Tamhane)
Thithi (Reddy)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman)
News From Home (Akerman)
D’Est (Akerman)
Bad Circumstances (Kestner)
1989 (Østergaard)*
Truly Human (Sandgren)
The Sunfish (Balle)
Terribly Happy (Genz)
Satisfaction 1720 (Genz)

Akerman classics are as good as they say.

I Was a Male Yvonne De Carlo (1970, Smith) (28m) 6/10
No President (1967, Smith) (50m) 7/10
*Grandma’s Boy (1922, Newmeyer/Lloyd) (48m) 8/10
Any Number Can Win (1963, Verneuil) 7/10
Carefree (1938, Sandrich) 6/10
*The Driver (1978, Hill) 8/10
*Dead End (1937, Wyler) 7/10
*Humoresque (1920, Borzage) 7/10
PROTOTYPE (2017, Williams) 6/10
*The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968, Van Peebles) 7/10
L'invitation au voyage (1927, Dulac) (36m) 6/10
The Smiling Madame Beudet (1923, Dulac) (38m) 7/10

Fred I just watched News from Home with some friends that had never seen it last night. I was nervous but they all loved it and we talked for an hour afterwards about and for once a post-film group discussion actually had some insight and substance for me. it's my favorite film of hers and was very happy to see half a dozen of my friends hypnotized by it.

Recently watched that too and it was beautiful. Though my roommate and their significant other walked through and seemed rather perplexed, not sure my half-assed explanation while still locked in really helped.

damn that sucks. yeah, that was my main fear in showing it. luckily only like 6-7 people showed up, and I'm glad our plans to do it outside got rained out, the thought of people coming and going or talking during NFH makes my skin crawl... though I completely understand... "locked in" is it exactly. I was worried I wouldn't be able to focus after a long day at work and little sleep the night before, but 20 minutes in I was completely hypnotized.

her mother can be so funny. "you haven't written in 10 days, it's getting a little annoying!" and her encouraging comments about the screenplay Chantal sent her: "it seems good, but you know my tastes: it's very sad and depressing." those letters are from 1972-73, so she must be referring to the script for Jeanne Dielman right? her mother says "it's important to show these people and their struggle and how they're suffering," which could apply to JD.

Going Spanish (Christie, 1934)
Good Morning, Nurse (Bacon, 1925)
A Sleepless Night (Bowers, 1940)
The Telephone Girl and the Lady (Griffith, 1913)
Helter Skelter (Lamont, 1929)
Office Blues (Blumenstock, 1930)
The Antique Shop (Cozine, 1931)
A Panic in the Parlor (Roberts, 1941)
His New Mamma (Del Ruth, 1924)
Felix All Balled Up (Messmer, 1924)
Falbalas (Becker, 1945)
The Biffle Murder Case (Parrott, 1935 Schlesinger, 2015)
Imitation of Wife (McCarey, 1935 Schlesinger, 2015)
Antoine et Antoinette (Becker, 1947)

I know I've seen a lot of the shorts you list, j.lu, but what's with the crossouts? And is that Paul Parrott or Charley (Chase) Parrott?

From The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster, a fake 1930s comedy duo. The shorts are supposed to be in the style of Paul Parrott and Ray McCarey. A lot of love and knowledge of early sound comedy clearly went into these shorts.

Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969) - 9/10
Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, 2010) - 9/10
Heavyweights (Steven Brill, 1995) - 4/10
Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) - 8/10
No Regrets for Our Youth (Akira Kurosawa, 1946) - 6/10
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) - 10/10
EuroTrip (Jeff Schaffer, 2004) - 3/10
25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002) - 8/10

F for Fake (Welles, 1973) 8/10
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies, 1988) 9/10
Purple Butterfly (Lou, 2003) 5/10
Cocote (De Los Santos Arias, 2017) 8/10
Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966) 9/10
Cold War (Pawlikowski, 2018) 6/10
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Hara, 1987) 9/10
Sennan Asbestos Disaster (Hara, 2017) 7/10

Active Measures.
Think I knew most of this, though it goes back further into 80s trump than I was familiar with.
Has a load of people in as talking heads. Quite enjoyed it and my girlfriend did too when i rewatched it with her.
Oh yeah, had missed the story aboutPutin's mother the first time around because i'd been doing something else at the same time.
Also not that familiar with Ukraine situation which is covered here.

Death of Stalin
very dark, funny in places. Not really sure what girlfriend made of this.
Glad I finally watched it.

American Animals
THought i was going to see Blackkklansman but time I saw online a few days earlier wasn't showing it. Early afternoon showing is cheaper so went to see this cos had come across some of the promos tuff for it when I'd been in cinema a few weeks earlier.
Anyway interesting film about ineptitude in ambitious post-adolescents.
Quite enjoyed it though it has some pretty slow bits.
Funny and dark in places. It was odd seeing a number of people I thought i recognised from elsewhere.
Thought that the real Warren looked like Mark Kozeleik or someone so thought that reality might be another layer away from what was shown.

Blackkklansman
enjoyed this though it is a little cartoonish so makes me want to read the memoir it's based on to see how fictionalised it is.
Looks like they changed the time it was set in since black style is very much early 70s. Seas of massive afros etc. Events appear to have been in 78 in real life.
Have just seen taht book is only 2014 so not sure how long the story was around. Was it even much of a rumour before that came out.

Ocean’s 8 was smarter and funnier than 12 or 13.

The last six weeks:

Support the Girls (Bujalski, 2018) 6/10
The Wife (Runge, 2018) 3/10
Nico, 1988 (Nicchiarelli, 2018) 7/10
BlacKkKlansman (Lee, 2018) 5/10
The Third Murder (Kore-eda, 2018) 6/10
Love, Cecil (Vreeland, 2018) 7/10
Eighth Grade(Burnham, 2018) 7/10
Lean On Pete (Haigh, 2018) 6/10
Tully (Reitman, 2018) 7/10
After the Storm (Kore-eda, 2017) 8/10
Our Little Sister (Kore-eda, 2016) 7/10
* Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017) 8/10
Chi-Raq (Lee, 2015) 6/10
4 Little Girls (Lee, 1997) 8/10
* Close-Up (Kiarostami, 1990) 7/10
* The Glass Shield (Burnett, 1994) 7/10
Sharkey's Machine (Reynolds, 1981) 6/10
* Two English Girls (Truffaut, 1974) 6/10
The Trial of Joan of Arc (Bresson, 1962) 7/10
* Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958) 9/10
The Song of Bernadette (King, 1944) 4/10
Toni (Renoir, 1935) 8/10

* Close-Up (Kiarostami, 1990) 7/10

Too low!

When I first saw it an easy 8

After the Storm (Kore-eda, 2017) 8/10

loved this, didn't seem to get the attention it deserved

If Close-Up isn't a 10, nothing is a 10

Mandy (2018) 4/5
Othello (1952) 4.5/5
Sun Ra: a Joyful Noise (1980) 3/5
King Cohen: the Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen (2017) 2.5/5
* Hana-Bi (1997) 4/5
* The Guest (2014) 4/5
Mission Impossible: Fallout 4/5
Long Strange Trip (2017) 3.5/5
The Summer of Flying Fish (2013) 3/5
Un Flic (1972) 3/5
Pauline at the Beach (1983) 4/5

The Prisoner of Zenda (Ingram, 1922)
*Thrills of Yesterday (1931)
Roundhay Garden Scene (Le Prince, 1888)
*The Water Nymph (Sennett, 1912)
Hot Pepper (Blystone, 1933)
Edouard et Caroline (Becker, 1951)
Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves (Becker, 1954)
Rendezvous in July (Becker, 1949)
Limite (Peixoto, 1931)

Really annoyed with myself for not seeing Mandy for its one-night showing last week as it turned out "opens September 14th" meant precisely dick- it's not playing anywhere in or near Philadelphia.

Elle
In a Lonely Place
Los Angeles Plays Itself

I couldn't make it to Mandy on Thursday either - it's running for a week (once a day, at 9pm) here, but the premiere was a double-feature with Mom & Dad, which was only projected about 4/5 on screen when I saw it in January.

very suspicious of all the local Mandy hype here. sounds like Stranger Things for people who are too cool to watch or admit they watch Stranger Things. I think I'll see it this week. but if it's mostly just Nic Cage being extra, why? Herzog already did that with a movie that can't be topped.

and I got that impression from two people I trust who saw the movie separately in packed theaters full of knowing chuckles

love to divine the quality of a movie from secondhand reports of how people reacted to it in a theater

but then i haven't seen it either. i like and support cosmatos though

like I said I trust their opinions, and they're very different people. and yes, they described the movie too and their issues with the thing itself. crazy OTT throw everything at the wall genre movies are not my thing but I will see it with an open mind.

very suspicious of all the local Mandy hype here. sounds like Stranger Things for people who are too cool to watch or admit they watch Stranger Things. I think I'll see it this week. but if it's mostly just Nic Cage being extra, why? Herzog already did that with a movie that can't be topped.

I assume a lot of the people who wanted to see this initially are going in with similar expectations: for an 80s retro, wacky Nic Cage flick they can laugh at. It's nearly 45 minutes into the film before Cage is even much of a factor though, and by then it was already one of the most sensory immersive films I've seen in a while. No one will accuse the script of being particularly brainy, but the film doesn't collect cultural references so much as transmute them into a spiky, snarling beast. Johann Johannson's score is great and will remind you all over again what a loss his death was. And it does top the Herzog movie.

now that is some encouraging word of mouth. i'll definitely see it on wednesday. one of my friends said she liked the first half a lot more. can't name a movie with a Johannson score off the top of my head but surely I've seen one.

OK, last thing before I actually see Mandy:

I assume a lot of the people who wanted to see this initially are going in with similar expectations: for an 80s retro, wacky Nic Cage flick they can laugh at.

the made-to-order B movie / movie you can laugh at, I don't fuck with that at all. especially when The Wicker Man remake exists. even Bad Lieutenant veers a bit too much.

All the President’s Men (Robert Redford, 1976) - 10/10
The Capture (John Sturges, 1950) - 3/10
The Restless Years (Helmut Käutner, 1958) - 6/10
The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931) - 9/10
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) - 8/10
Irma la Douce (Billy Wilder, 1963) - 8/10
My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936) - 10/10
Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984) - 10/10
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) - 8/10

xp yea mandy trascends its genre trappings imo, reminded me of mad max fury road in that sense

The Last Boy Scout. In terms of "who's made more movies I would willingly re-watch," Tony Scott > Ridley Scott, though it's close.

Tony: The Last Boy Scout*, Enemy of the State, Man on Fire, Domino*, Unstoppable*
Ridley: The Duellists, Alien*, Blade Runner*, The Counselor*

*movies I own

marie antoinette (coppola, 2006) 9/10
the long day closes (davies, 1992) 10/10
a.i.: artificial intelligence (spielberg, 2001) 10/10
perfect blue (kon, 1997) 8/10
paprika (kon, 2006) 9/10
ms. 45 (ferrara, 1981) 9/10
the craft (fleming, 1996) 7/10

Close Up (Kiarostami, 1990) 8/10
Rope (Hitchcock, 1948) 6/10
Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997) 9/10
35 Shots of Rum (Denis, 2008) 9/10
The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Fassbinder, 1972) 9/10
Chocolat (Denis, 1988) 8/10
Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, 1948) 6/10
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010) 8/10
Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) 8/10
The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941) 9/10
The Great McGinty (Sturges, 1940) 6/10
Hill of Freedom (Hong, 2014) 8/10
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Yates, 1973) 8/10
The World (Jia, 2004) 9/10
Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (Renoir, 1936) 9/10
Metropolitan (Stillman, 1990) 9/10
Outrage (Kitano, 2010) 7/10
Fox and His Friends (Fassbinder, 1975) 8/10
A New Leaf (May, 1971) 7/10

mandy (cosmatos 2018) 7/10
greater southbridge (rod murphy 2003) 7/10
ex libris: the new york public library (wiseman 2017) 7/10
birds of passage (gallego/guerra 2018) 7.5/10
high life (denis 2018) 7/10
life itself (fogelman 2018) 7/10
greta (neil jordan 2018) 3/10
everybody knows (farhadi 2018) 6.5/10
support the girls (bujalski 2018) 2/10
vox lux (corbet 2018) 6/10
the hummingbird project (kim nguyen 2018) 5.5/10

I was expecting Upgrade to be a half-decent SF spin on Death Wish; it turned out to be a smart and beautifully shot thriller with an SF angle. Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36PDeN9NRZ0

The Tin Drum (Schlöndorff, 1979) 6/10
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Bird, 2011) 7/10
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation(McQuarrie, 2015) 7/10
Criminal (Vromen, 2016) 4/10
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (Russell, 1987) 7/10
Joe (Green, 2013) 8/10
*Local Hero (Forsythe, 1983)

Uncle Tom's Crabbin' (Messmer, 1927)
Felix in the Swim (Messmer, 1922)
Dangerous Corner (Rosen, 1934)
Fluttering Hearts (Parrott, 1927)
Sneak Easily (Meins, 1932)
Tomatos Another Day (Watson, 1930)
Bridge Wives (Arbuckle, 1932)
Kissing Time (Mack, 1933)
Careless Lady (MacKenna, 1932)
*Lazy River (Seitz, 1934)
Le Trou (Becker, 1960)

Magnolia (P.T. Anderson, 1999)
An Actor's Revenge (Ichikawa, 1963)
Charlotte Gray (Armstrong, 2001)
Bob le Flambeur (Melville, 1955)
Cul-de-sac (Polanski, 1966)
Night Mayor (short - Maddin, 2009)
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Macdougall, 1959)
*Dead Man (Jarmusch, 1995)
Blithe Spirit (Lean, 1945)
The Pianist (Polanski, 2002)
The Late Show (Benton, 1977)

I was expecting Upgrade to be a half-decent SF spin on Death Wish; it turned out to be a smart and beautifully shot thriller with an SF angle.

La Roue (1923, Gance) 8/10
Love and Anger (1969, Bellochio, Bertolucci, Godard, Lizzani, Pasolini) 6/10
*The Other Side of Hope (2017, Kaurismaki) 9/10
We the Animals (2018, Zagar) 7/10
The Sandpiper (1965, Minnelli) 4/10
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965, Ritt) 9/10
The Rider (2017, Zhao) 6/10
This Can't Happen Here aka High Tension (1950, Bergman) 5/10

Burton is brilliant in Spy.

and not so in The Sandpiper

The Rider (2017, Zhao) 6/10

Saw a trailer for this yesterday - looked p Malick-like, or Malick-lite, or Malick-light.

there is lots of fantastic grimy 60's real englandness in the first act of Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The scene where he decks the shopkeeper seemed absolutely brutal when I was a kid.

since shopkeeper is played by Bernard "M" Lee, i assumed he was undercover.

The Rider rather more docu-realist than Malick, sometimes mundanely so.

Women Make Film (Mark Cousins)
Transit (Christian Petzold)
An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)
Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
Maya (Mia Hansen-Løve)
The Innocent (Simon Jaquemet)
Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas)
What You Gonna Do When the World's On Fire? (Roberto Minervini)
In My Room (Ulrich Köhler)
High Life (Claire Denis)
The Trial (Sergei Loznitsa)
Dead Souls (Wang Bing)

thoughts on maya? skeptical about the concept but bought a ticket on the strength of things to come

Black 47
bloody, violent Irish Western (both thematically and set in the West of ireland)about a deserting Irish soldier taking revenge on the people who have directly and indirectly lead to the death of his family.
Stars 2 Australian actors who do pretty good at irish and English accents & also the son of Edward Fox as a British officer.
Also has that young Bobby Gillespie looking guy from Dunkirk and American Animals as a private soldier attached to the British officer.

very dark and really effective.
Think it's going out on general release elsewhere around the globe over the next couple of weeks. Saw it had a Guardian review today.

I've no idea where else to put this but I watched Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool and was surprisingly moved and impressed by it. That is one ridiculously charismatic performance by Annette Benning. I actually cried at the end.

The Blackcoat's Daughter is an atmospheric story about two girls left alone in an otherwise abandoned boarding school and the Bad Things that happen. The main girl is played by Kiernan Shipka (Sally Draper from Mad Men) and she's very good. There are some plot holes, but the lighting, photography, music and sound design are all excellent.

Maya is not among her best, it plays like a travelogue but is still worth a look.

You Were Never Really Here (Ramsay, 2017) 3/10
Ready Player One (Spielberg, 2018) 2/10
Private Benjamin (Zieff, 1980) 7/10
The Poor Little Rich Girl (Tourneur, 1917) 8/10
First Reformed (Schrader, 2017) 8/10
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett, 1946) 7/10
Sharky’s Machine (Reynolds, 1981) 6/10
Star Trek: Insurrection (Frakes, 1998) 5/10
Limelight (Chaplin, 1952) 8/10
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Johnson, 2018) 6/10

September 3rd- 29th:

The Last Kiss Goodnight (Harlin, Black 1996) 35mm 📽️
Live. Die. Repeat. (Liman, McQuarrie, Butterworth & Butterworth 2014) 📺
Goon (Dowse, Baruchel, Goldberg 2011) 🏋️
It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Kramer, Rose & Rose 1963) 70mm 📽️
Smokey and the Bandit (Needham, Levy, Barrett, Shyer, Mandel 1977) DCP
Everybody Wants Some!! (Linklater 2016) 📺
Raiders!: The Story Of The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (Skousen, Coon 2016) 🏋️
* Vertigo (Hitchcock, Coppel, Taylor 1958) 70mm 📽️
Mandy (Cosmatos, Stewart-Ahn 2018) 📺
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (McQuarrie 2018) DCP
White Heat (Walsh, Goff, Roberts, Kellogg 1949) 35mm 📽️
Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes) (Vigalondo 2007) 📺
Laissez bronzer les cadavres (Let The Corpses Tan) (Cattet, Forzani 2017 [2018 USA]) DCP
Blood Salvage (Johnston, Sanders 1990) 📼

*A Story of Floating Reeds (Ozu, 1934)
Floating Weeds (Ozu, 1959)
The President Vanishes (Wellman, 1934)
The Professor (Chaplin, 1919)
Punch Drunks (Breslow, 1934)
Men in Black (McCarey, 1934)
Is My Palm Read (Fleischer, 1933)
Sucker Money (Davenport & Shyer, 1933)

American Animals - a heist movie about four idiot college students who decide to steal some extremely rare books from a Kentucky university. The fictional version is interspersed with interviews with the real thieves in a very interesting way.

bummed I miss that one when it was in town

Death on the Nile (Guillermin, 1978) 5/10
Milford Graves Full Mantis (Meginsky & Young, 2018) 8/10
Cold War (Pawlikowski, 2018) 7/10
BlacKKKlansman (Lee, 2018) 8/10
The Magician aka The Face (Bergman, 1958) 8/10
American Animals (Layton, 2018) 6/10
Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin, 1947) 7/10
Nostalgia for the Light (Guzman, 2010) 6/10
Man Hunt (Lang, 1941) 8/10
Worlds of Ursula K Le Guin (Curry, 2018) 6/10
Faces Places (Varda & JR, 2017) 5/10
Raw Deal (Irvin, 1986) 6/10
The Trial (Welles, 1962) 8/10
Hell up in Harlem (Cohen, 1973) 6/10

Damn missed that Milford Graves doc!!

I think it had a little mini-tour of UK arthouses - one (packed) screening in Glasgow w/ Meginsky doing a Q&A after (couldn't stay for that). Hope you get to see it xyzzzz, think you will dig it - no stupid talking heads or extravagant art/historical claims, great footage and just the pleasure of Graves himself, definitely full mantis.

That's a relief on the content, ward! Yeah there were a couple of showings at the ICA, def try and pick up a screening or the DVD soon.

Faces Places (Varda & JR, 2017) - this was sweet (in the sense that I like Varda as a companion, as a voice and presence) but I couldn't stomach JR and their project was only interesting because of what (the little) Varda laid on it. JLG was right not to meet them! (and surely Varda played it up?)
Climax (Noe, 2017) - I like that this 50 year old guy just wants to be around young dancers. Why not? (and as for the interview scenes I didn't know La Mama et La Putain had been issued on VHS, nice touch)

The Emigrants (Troell, 1971) - 10/10
He Got Game (Lee, 1998) - 9/10
Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997) - 9/10
Love in the Afternoon (Wilder, 1957) - 9/10
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) - 10/10
La Strada (Fellini, 1954) - 7/10
The New Land (Troell, 1972) - 10/10
Under Capricorn (Hitchcock, 1949) - 4/10
Sweet Charity (Fosse, 1969) - 8/10

I watched The Emigrants and The New Land a week apart and couldn't believe at first that Troell shot & edited The Emigrants, too. The New Land is so much riskier & more stylized than The Emigrants, which is harrowing but played relatively straight. Both fantastic obviously... I think it does show something fundamental about America and the people that came here.

I'm currently reading philosopher David Benatar's Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence, which argues that being born at all is always a serious harm, procreation is always wrong, it is wrong not to abort fetuses at the earlier stages of gestation, and it would be better if humanity became extinct. He's really relentless about presenting his case, and as a result I'm finding lines like "In the coming chapter, I show that (with the exception of real pessimists, who may have an accurate view of how bad their lives are) people's lives are much worse than they think" surprisingly funny in context.

Anyway, I say that to say this: Destination Wedding, a movie starring Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder as two horrible people invited to the titular occasion (he's the groom's half-brother, she's the groom's ex-fiancée), made me laugh really, really hard. At one point, Reeves and Ryder's characters have a long discussion that covers all the major themes of the book: there's no such thing as love, existence is pointless and they both would have been better off having never been born, and on and on. I really started to wonder if it was a remake of a French movie at one point. Anyway, if that sounds like your idea of fun, it's free on Amazon Prime.

Star Trek: Generations (1994) 2.5/5
Star Trek: First Contact (1996) 2/5
The Sisters Brothers (2018) 3/5
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) 3.5/5
* No Country for Old Men 5/5
* The Age of Innocence 4.5/5
Boxing Gym (2010) 4/5
The Breaking Point (1950) 4/5
Uncle Yanco (1967) 3.5/5
Taipei Story (1985) 4/5

*The Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waititi, 2016) - 8/10
Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939) - 10/10
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966) - 10/10
Game Night (Daley & Goldstein, 2018) - 4/10
500 Days of Summer (Webb, 2009) - 3/10
Tully (Reitman, 2018) - 5/10
20th Century Women (Mills, 2016) - 6/10
*American Graffiti (Lucas, 1973) - 5/10
A Wrinkle in Time (DuVernay, 2018) - 1/10
The Stranger (Welles, 1946) - 8/10

The Magic Christian (1969, McGrath) 4/10
Hotel by the River (2018, Hong) 7/10
*The Odd Couple (1968, Saks) 8/10
Diamantino (2018, Abrantes, Schmidt) 7/10
High Life (2018, Denis) 5/10
Ash Is Purest White (2018, Jia) 8/10
Sorry Angel (2018, Honore) 7/10
Her Smell (2018, Perry) 4/10
The Other Side of the Wind (2018, Welles) 6/10
*F for Fake (1973, Welles) 7/10
BlacKkKlansman (2018, Lee) 5/10
*Smithereens (1982, Seidelman) 7/10

Tell me more about Hotel by the River.

no soju until the last 10 minutes

more concerned with death and family than sex

Speaking of sex, you thought the Denis just okay too.

xp I see that it stars Kim Min-hee. I'm in!

at least 3 actors are onscreen more than she; it's an ensemble piece

Jeff, Who Lives At Home. A whole movie about Susan Sarandon's character would have been better than following her two asshole sons around all day.

Madam Satan (de Mille, 1930)
Maniac (Esper, (1934)
Swing You Sinners (Fleischer, 1930)
The Seven Castles of the Devil (Zecca, 1904)
The Great Toe Mystery (Avery, 1914)
The Haunted House (Disney, 1929)
Adam's Apple (Whelan, 1928)
Bacon Grabbers (Foster, 1929)
The Spider (MacKenna & Menzies, 1931)
Enchanted Glasses (de Chomon, 1907)
The Haunted House (Keaton & Cline, 1921)

Did I ever mention 1987: When The Day Comes? It's really good.

you thought the Denis just okay too.

I wouldn't go that far. Maybe "disappointing" and "nuts."

Festival haul:

Florianopolis Dream (Katz)
The Rider (Zhao)
Diamantinos (Abrantes & Schmidt)
Sympathy for the Devil (Godard)
Girl (Dhont)
Madeline’s Madeline (Decker)
And Breathe Normally (Uggadóttir)
Holiday (Eklöf)
Dear Son (Ben Attia)
Those Who Work (Russbach)
Blind Spot (Novotny)
I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians (Jude)
Grass (Hong)
Our Time (Reygadas)
Lifeboat (Kirkeskov)
The Image Book (Godard)
Zama (Martel)
Too Late to Die Young (Sotomayor)
Puzzle (Turtletaub)
Amateurs (Pichler)
Asako I & II (Hamaguchi)
One Day (Szilagyi)
In My Room (Köhler)
Mirai (Hosada)
Boys Cry (D’Innocenzo & D’Innocenzo)
Ash is the Purest White (Jia)
When the Trees Fall (Nikitiuk)
Long Days Journey Into Night (Bi)
Donbass (Loznitsa)
Rojo (Naishtat)
Nervous Translation (Seno)
First Reformed (Schrader)
Ruben Brandt, Collector (Krstic)
Ága (Lazarov)
Khook (Haghighi)*
We the Animals (Zagar)

Keep an eye out for Nervous Translation and When the Trees Fall, those were the two biggest surprises. Many others are predictably great. Some slight disappointments.

update before lff starts, seeing asako I & II this evening!

Assault on Precinct 13 (Carpenter, 1976) 7/10
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938) 6/10
39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935) 7/10
The Mask of Dimitros (Negulesco, 1944) 8/10
Faces Places (Varda, JR, 2017) 7/10
The Saddest Music in the World (Maddin, 2004) 7/10
My Man Godfrey (La Cava, 1936) 8/10
Faust (Murnau, 1926) 9/10
Maison du Bonheur (Bohdanowicz, 2017) 6/10
Where is the Friends Home? (Kiarostami, 1987) 8/10
The Stranger (Welles, 1946) 8/10
His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940) 9/10
Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) 10/10
Othello (Welles, 1951) 7/10
A City of Sadness (Hou, 1989) 9/10
The Mission (To, 1999) 7/10
The Small World of Sammy Lee (Hughes, 1963) 8/10
Late Spring (Ozu, 1949) 10/10

i think there maaay be a few more 10s in that list

you might be right, i'm fairly certain a laptop screen is not the best way to experience Faust.

curious what you thought of the Bi Gan, Frederik?

Teen Titans Go To The Movies

turned up on a torrent site yesterday. I used to watch the tv series about 10 years ago.
I think this wanted to be a Lego Movie type deal not quite taht good but some of it was quite amusing.

^ the series started five years ago and is still running

curious what you thought of the Bi Gan, Frederik?

― devvvine, 10. oktober 2018 17:44 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's... definitely a trip, that final hour is pretty incredible. But I don't get why Bi Gan all of a sudden wanted to make such a noir-pastiche, and what the point of that is supposed to be. I watched Kaili Blues as preparation, and it's a much more humble film, but it honestly gave me much more to think about.

Sic could you possibly go and get a fixation on somebody else ?

TV series I was watching started in 2003.
So as i said I was watching it about 10 years ago

The Killing of Sister George (Aldrich, 1968) 7/10
The Post (Spielberg, 2017) 6/10
BlacKkKlansman (Lee, 2018) 8/10
Deadpool 2 (Leitch, 2018) 5/10
Somewhere in the Night (Mankiewicz, 1946) 7/10
*Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Brothers, 2013) 10/10
The Golden Coach (Renoir, 1952) 8/10
Cry-Baby (Waters, 1990) 9/10
How to Talk to Girls at Parties (Cameron-Mitchell, 2017) 3/10
Avengers Infinity War (Russo Brothers, 2018) 4/10
Enter the Void (Noe, 2009) 5/10
General della Rovere (Rosellini, 1959) 9/10
Hysteria (Wexler, 2011) 7/10

Inside Llewyn Davis is the best Coen Bros. film, change my mind

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Hidden Fortress
Lucy

the strange depiction of american communists in Hail Caesar soured me on those moments in ILD.

The Sisters Brothers (Audiard, 2018)
Menace (Murphy, 1934)
The Infernal Cauldron (Melies, 1903)
Felix the Cat Switches Witches (Messmer, 1927)
Felix the Ghost Breaker (Messmer, 1923)
The Non-Stop Fright (Messmer, 1927)
Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018)
Sculls and Skulls (Messmer, 1930)
Legend of a Ghost (de Chomon, 1908)
The Atomic Soldiers (Knibbe, 2018)
The Atomic Cafe (Rafferty, Loader, & Rafferty, 1982)

Searching (Aneesh Chaganty, 2018) 6
Chopping Mall (Wynorski, 1986) 6
Demolition Man (Brambilla, 1993) 5; good jokes, boring action. the character with 90s nostalgia has a Red Hot Chili Peppers poster lol.

watching too much TV to watch movies

Frederik, was the hour-long shot of Long Day's Journey in 3D when you saw it? If so, what was that like?

if this Bi Gan is anything like Kaili Blues then I think I will love it. The blurring of boundaries between past, present and future in that film was incredible, as was the concept of a 40 minute take that included the protagonist traveling on the back of the motorbike. The only director whose sensibility comes close to his I think is Weerasethakul Apitchatpong

or rather Apitchatpong Weerasethakul

Y’all we need to talk about Venom. Despite a generic plot and some truly abysmal CGI, I...kinda loved it? Tom Hardy almost singlehandedly pulls the movie out of mediocrity and makes it a blast to watch. He’s channeling some vintage Nic Cage gonzo energy and it rules so hard. It’s like he’s beamed in from another universe while everyone else is acting as if they’re in a regular comic book movie. And bizarrely, it works for the character. I did not expect this outcome at all!

Also saw Bad Times at the Tarantino Inn or whatever it’s called. It was pretty good, though maybe a smidge too long and it kinda stumbles a bit in the last act. Slickly directed, though. Worth seeing!

Re-watching my Japanese Blu-Ray of Charley Varrick tonight (the only way to see it in its original aspect ratio on a US machine; the domestic DVD is 1.33:1 for some goddamn reason). One of the best movies of the Seventies. Walter Matthau's whole mini-career as an action hero was so weird and awesome.

Rodin
'R Xmas
Police Judiciare
Between Worlds
Mom And Dad
Faust (Sokurov)
Blue Collar
Le Concierge

I Vitelloni (Fellini, 1953) - 8/10
Mon Oncle (Tati, 1958) - 9/10
Reality Bites (Stiller, 1994) - 5/10
Zodiac (Fincher, 2007) - 8/10
Collateral (Mann, 2004) - 9/10
Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990) - 7/10
La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960) - 9/10
The Love Parade (Lubitsch, 1929) - 8/10
Boyhood (Linklater, 2014) - 9/10
The Departed (Scorsese, 2006) - 8/10
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966) - 8/10
Road Trip (Philips, 2000) - 2/10
8½ (Fellini, 1963) - 10/10

Frederik, was the hour-long shot of Long Day's Journey in 3D when you saw it? If so, what was that like?

if this Bi Gan is anything like Kaili Blues then I think I will love it. The blurring of boundaries between past, present and future in that film was incredible, as was the concept of a 40 minute take that included the protagonist traveling on the back of the motorbike. The only director whose sensibility comes close to his I think is Weerasethakul Apitchatpong

― Dan S, 15. oktober 2018 01:40 (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it was in 3D and it was used very well. I don't think anything was coming out of the screen, it's just used to make this dark, dreamy world appear even more different. I'm very happy to have seen that part.

Solo: A Star Wars Story 1.5/5
Leave No Trace (2018) 4/5
Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) 1/5
Game Night 3/5
* Gun Crazy (1950) 4/5
Italianamerican (1974) 3.5/5

in theaters September & October so far:

Puzzle (Turtletaub, 2018) - 4/10
California Split (Altman, 1974 / 35mm) - 10/10
A Simple Favor (Feig, 2018) - 5/10
Life Itself (Fogelman, 2018) - 0/10 <----- this is a bizarre and unintentionally hilarious/horrifying failure, honestly worth checking out
Love, Gilda (Dapolito, 2018) - 6/10
Sawdust and Tinsel (Bergman, 1953) - 9/10
Blaze (Hawke, 2018) - 2/10
Lolita (Kubrick, 1962 / 35mm) - 7/10
A Star is Born (Cooper, 2018) - 5/10
First Man (Chazelle, 2018) - 6/10
22 July (Greengrass, 2018) - 1/10
Chinatown (Polanski, 1974) - 10/10

I watched California Split over the weekend (2nd time seeing it). Probably my fave Altman. The tinge of desperation despite all the camaraderie and hi-jinks. 10/10 for sure

a single shot makes the whole movie: after they've won at the end, and elliott gould is collecting the money all excited, and then it cuts to that wide shot of the empty bar slowly zooming into george segal sitting in the other room, morning light pouring in, completely dejected.

22 July (Greengrass, 2018) - 1/10

i feel like this is the exact type of film i hate to see, just basically a faithful recreation of the mass murders of a bunch of kids. I liked Bloody Sunday and Paul G's Bourne flicks but I ain't gonna see this one.

I was relieved that, while the attack is dramatized in full, it's only the first 25 minutes of the movie. most of it is about the aftermath & trial. still, exploitative and horrible, yes. it's also 143 minutes (!!)

Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me (2014, Keach) 6/10
*Hard Times (1975, Hill) 8/10
The Stork Club (1945, Walker) 5/10
Transit (2018, Petzold) 4/10
*O Fantasma (2000, Rodrigues) 8/10
Golden Exits (2017, Perry) 6/10
The Image Book (2018, Godard) 8/10
Sharky’s Machine (1981, Reynolds) 6/10
Your Face (2018, Tsai) 7/10
Come Back Little Shiksa (1953, Lewis) (39m) 6/10

well, I made a mistake here, shd be

Transit (2018, Petzold) 8/10

what did you think of Golden Exits?

Better than Her Smell! It seemed like Perry's Interiors for millennials. Enjoyed Mary-Louise Parker's performance, but was impatient with/hated all the characters.

(also it's set about 2 miles from where I live, so it seems I haven't been missing anything)

yeah, it was really light imo & I agree he either hates his characters or doesn't realize how boring and casually cruel they are. his cinematographer Sean Price Williams is great though, that movie looked fantastic.

was impressed by south korean debut feature last child, recommend if people get the opportunity to see it

Sic could you possibly go and get a fixation on somebody else ?

TV series I was watching started in 2003.
So as i said I was watching it about 10 years ago

...I had looked up the Teen Titans Go! series when I saw the movie, as listed upthread(s), so remembered when it started. Mentioned it thinking you might be amused in a "how time flies," "wow the world is turning to a hellscape even faster than it feels" way to find out it was only five years ago. From you saying you'd watched the series and thus were curious to see the film, there was no way of knowing that you were talking about a completely different TV series, with (it says here) a serious-not-parodic approach, adapting the Wolfman/Perez material, a Timm/Murakami design style, different episode lengths, different writers and different title.

anyway, September 30 to October 14th, on track to get 31 scary films into a, let's say, six-week Halloween period

Fear City (Ferrara, St. John 1984) 📺
A Bucket Of Blood (Corman, B. Griffith 1959) 📺
Portal To Hell!!! * (Caldinelli, Watts 2015) 📺
Strange Invaders * (Barker 2002) 📺
The Phone Call * (Kirkby 2013) 📺
* Mandy (Cosmatos, Stewart-Ahn 2018) [DCP]
Dirty Work (Saget 1998) 📺
Halloween (Carpenter, Hill 1978) 📺
Night Of The Living Dead (Romero 'n' Russo 1968) 📺
Leave Her To Heaven (Stahl, Swerling, Williams 1945) 35mm 📽️
Carrie ( DePalma and D. Cohen 1976) 📺
*Dressed To Kill (DePalma 1980) 📺
House On Haunted Hill (White & Castle 1959) 📺
Splatter ** (Dante, Matheson 2009) 📺
The 'Burbs (Dante, Olsen 1989) 📺
Wacko (Clark, Olsen & al. 1982) 35mm 📽️
*Blow Out (DePalma 1981) 📺
Shimmer Lake (Uziel 2017) 📺
Dawn Of The Dead (Romero 1978) 📺
Little Evil (Craig 2017) 📺

* these are shorts: I signed up for Kanopy on the 30th, only to find that the Seattle Public Library limits users to five films pcm, so squeezed in ever-shorter horror/spook flicks as midnight approached
** this was on Netflix as a Corman/Dante film; turned out to be three episodes of a ten-episode choose your own adventure series stuck together.

My Talk with Florence (Paul Poet)
Xiao Mei (Maren Hwang)
Interchange (Brian M. Cassidy, Melissa Shatzky)
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)
Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Anthropocene (Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier)
All That Jazz (Bob Fosse)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies)

Is Anthropocene worth a look?

Yes, especially if you like their earlier work. I found it just as compelling as the previous films, with great visuals of course.

lff:

Asako I & II (Hamaguchi, 2018) 9/10
Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (Wheatley, 2018) 5/10
Ash is Purest White (Jia, 2018) 8/10
Last Child (Shin, 2017) 7/10
Non-fiction (Assayas, 2018) 6/10
The Image Book (Goddard, 2018) 7/10
Happy as Lazzaro (Rohrwacher, 2018) 7/10
The Green Fog (Maddin, Johnson, Johnson, 2017) 6/10
Long Day’s Journey into Night (Bi, 2018) 8/10
Maya (Hansen-Love, 2018) 4/10

other viewings:

*Late Autumn (Ozu, 1960) 10/10 - perhaps the most perfect film
The Day He Arrives (Hong, 2011) 8/10
Eros + Massacre (Yoshida,1969) 6/10
*Hill of Freedom (Hong, 2014) 9/10

The Wizard's Apprentice (Levee, 1930)
Frankenstein (Dawley, 1910)
Fast Life (Pollard, 1932)
The Frog (de Chomon, 1908)
Hallucinations pharmaceutiques ou Le truc de potard (Melies, 1908)
Bluebeard (Melies, 1901)
The Killers (Siodmak, 1946)
The Killers (Siegal, 1964)
The Headless Horseman (Iwerks, 1934)
The Mad Doctor (Hand, 1933)
Strange Justice (Schertzinger, 1932)
Son of the Border (Nosler, 1933)

xp is Late Autumn in the Late Ozu Eclipse box? been eyeing that one for a while

idk, this was a theatre screening but there's a bfi blu ray out there

A Life in Waves (6.0)
Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (8.0)
Deterrence (5.0)
Bravetown (5.5)
My Generation (6.0)
Buffalo ’66 (5.5)
The World of Henry Orient (7.0)
Cold Water (8.0)
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. (7.0)
Studio 54 (7.0)

One of the friends I saw Studio 54 with tonight was in there around '81 or '82, after Rubell and Schrager sold the club. I figure they would have asked me to vacate the line in 1977. Pretty conventional, but lots of great footage, including Rubell's 1976 club in Queens, and Michael Jackson dropping in on Rubell.

Really enjoyed that Studio 54 doc

Yayoi Kusama - Inifinity (Heather Lenz, 2018) - this was ok. Struck by the relation between someone asexual like Kusuma ending up on the end of transgressive art in the mid-60s. An under-explored facet.

The Night of the Shooting Stars (Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani, 1982)
Gabbeh (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996)

Small Foot.
musical animation about the tribe of the yeti's encounter with a Western film maker.
Quite fun. Noticed it had a G certificate which I don't remember having seen on a cinema screen before.
& for the lowest certificate there seemed to be a lot of what would be violence if it was real or is the idea that what would be physically or life threatening behaviour actually needing to be shown to have consequences before it makes the certificate go up.
Also questions of blasphemy and challenging received religious wisdom being a central theme of a lot of the film.

JUst hope 5 year old kids don't start dropping off the side of Himalayan mountains cos they've seen it's quite fun.
& there's easier ways of waking villages than displayed here.

I think i was just assuming that a worthwhile film couldn't be rated as low as G but may have been watching things rated as that without seeing the certificate.

Or taht since I'm so far above any certi8ficate age exclusion it becomes nominal but not really getting what allows anything to be a certain certificate. Presume for a lot of things the lower the certificate the better because the higher the potential audience. THough there is still the attraction/prestige of seeing a higher certificate or knowing that things may be more authentic and less bowdlerised if they're thought of as adult/mature.

Enjoyed most of this though.

The Merry Skeleton (Lumiere, 1898)
A Terrible Night (Melies, 1896)
The Bewitched Inn (Melies, 1897)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Henderson, 1912)
*Frankenstein (Whale, 1931)
Betty Boop’s Hallowe’en Party (Fleischer, 1933)
The Shriek (Lantz & Nolan, 1933)
The Monster Walks (Strayer, 1932)
The Smoke Scream (Messmer, 1928)
*Salome (Bryant & Nazimova, 1922) (Who would have thought half-naked men and an atmosphere of sacrilege and sex would be just what I DON'T need right now?)
*Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)

Being There (Ashby, 1979)
Hold the Dark (Saulnier, 2018)
The Gates (Maysles et al, 2007)
*Bulldog Drummond (Jones, 1929)
*King Kong (Cooper & Schoedsack, 1933)
Neighbours (short - McLaren, 1952)
My Josephine (short - Jenkins, 2003)
The Voice Thief (Adan Jodorowsky, 2013)
Army of Shadows (Melville, 1969)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Oplev, 2009)
Rebels of the Neon God (Tsai Ming-liang, 1992)
*Y Tu Mamá También (Cuarón, 2001)

Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957) - 10/10
Showgirls (Verhoeven, 1995) - 7/10
Schizopolis (Soderbergh, 1996) - 9/10
In a Year of 13 Moons (Fassbinder, 1978) - 10/10
Being John Malkovich (Jonze, 1999) - 9/10
Rome: Open City (Rossellini, 1945) - 8/10
The Graduate (Nichols, 1967) - 9/10
Basic Instinct (Verhoeven, 1992) - 8/10
Risky Business (Brickman, 1983) - 7/10
Before Sunrise (Linklater, 1995) - 9/10
Dekalog I (Kieślowski, 1988) - 9/10
Avanti! (Wilder, 1972) - 9/10
Uncle Yanco (Varda, 1967) - 9/10
Thief (Mann, 1981) - 9/10
Before Sunset (Linklater, 2004) - 9/10
Dekalog II (Kieślowski, 1988) - 9/10
Dekalog III (Kieślowski, 1988) - 9/10
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1978) - 8/10
Black Panthers (Varda, 1968) - 10/10
Dekalog IV (Kieślowski, 1988) - 10/10
Before Midnight (Linklater, 2013) - 9/10

The Eye (Pang Bros, 2002) 3/10
The Deadly Trap (Clément,1971) 6/10
The Comedy of Terrors (Tourneur, 1963) 7/10
The Mind of Mr. Soames (Cooke, 1970) 6/10
The Ugly Ducking (Comfort, 1959) 5/10
The World of Henry Orient (Hill, 1964) 7/10 (because of the ILX revive - slightly surprising credit for Boris Kaufman, but no wonder all the New York locations look so good)
Road to Utopia (Walker, 1946)
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (Wenders, 1972) 7/10 (this was the recent restoration supervised by Wenders, with some new 'cover version' soundtrack substitutions for the now prohibitively expensive rock and pop hits heard throughout the film on jukeboxes, radios etc. Film looks stunning, Robby Müller already fully formed)
Halloween (Green, 2018) 6/10 - Haluk Bilginer making for a great, tiny degree of separation between this film and the work of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose latest film opens in the UK next month

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (Joseph Green, 1959) 2
Night of the Ghouls (Wood, 1952) 2
Doctor X (Curtiz (!), 1932) 4
Dead of Night (Cavalcanti, 1945) 6
*Gremlins 2 (Dante, 1990) 8
First Man (Chazelle, 2018) 7; shame about the suffering wife trope
Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018) 8

Mandy (2018) 7/10
*Casino Royale (2006) 8/10
Sorry To Bother You (2018) 7/10
*Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) 4/10
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) 7/10
Nerve (2016) 4/10
Zero Dark Thirty (2012) 5/10
*California Split (1974) 10/10
*Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) 8/10
Straight Time (1978) 7/10
*Bone Tomahawk (2015) 8/10
The Negotiator (1998) 5/10

The Uninvited (1944)
Cat People (1942)

Went with a couple of spooky classics. Simone Simon is astonishing in Cat People, she's so adept at playing fearful and coy and sweet and kind and terrifying in equal measure, in subtle and smart ways. The two separate scenes where Jane Randolph is stalked are scary precisely bc you know the reason she's being stalked is something very personal, very primal, and she's being specifically targeted. Simon simply talking to her at the pool in the second scene is chilling.

Ant-Man 8/10

One of the better Marvel flicks out of the dozen I've seen thus far. It was funny to read the thread for this one, everyone groaning over production issues and trailers and what not, and it winds up being a really good breezy film, a good 30-40 min shorter than the other Marvels and less weighted down by Avengers business. Paul Rudd was *delightful*. Evangeline Lilly and Michael Douglas make for a great daughter/father pair, some proper tension in those scenes. I enjoyed Corey Stoll's villain, even though he ticked off a lot of the boxes that a few villains who have gone before him have also ticked off.

Cat People is great, I haven't seen any of the remakes, are they worth checking out?

also what should I watch tonite for hAlLoWeEn???

i'm watching Ringu. i already feel that this is a mistake.

Damn, probably, yeah.

I have The Thing and I've never seen it... should I?

yes!

the 1951 version first

def watch the carpenter thing tonight

I think you should work backward from the 2011 thing

Watching Ringu alone at night is one of the scariest thing to do, lol. Would not do it again, not even on Halloween.

i thought it was pretty tame (but ask me again in a couple of hours). i remember it being worse, and more jump-scary than it was. maybe i'm confusing it with part 2, or the remake.

it also seemed quite quaint - vhs cassettes and landlines and all.

ok im gonna watch the carpenter thing rn!!!!!!!!

October is the only month of the year where my viewing is genre-specific (thought not any good, even the cartoon I watched while babysitting my nieces fit the theme).

Psycho II (Franklin, 1983) 5/10
Suspiria (Argento, 1977) 7/10
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (Tartakovsky, 2018) 4/10
The 7th Victim (Robson, 1943) 7/10
The Dead Zone (Cronenberg, 1983) 8/10
Eyes Without a Face (Franju, 1960) 7/10
The Phantom of the Opera (Julian, 1925) 8/10
The Stuff (Cohen, 1985) 5/10
The Fly (Neumann, 1960) 6/10

er, The Fly is 1958.

Hereditary 2.5/5
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) 3.5/5
* The Wicker Man (1973) 4/5
* Suspiria (1977) 4/5
* Cure (1997) 4/5
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) 3/5
Spotlight (2015) 3.5/5
Venom 2/5

I Am Not a Witch(Nyoni, 2018), 7/10
Sorry to Bother You (Riley, 2018) 7/10
Cold War (Pawlikowski, 2018) 5/10
Mandy(Cosmatos, 2018)
Wildlife (Dano, 2018) 7/10
A Star is Born (Cooper, 2018) 5/10
The Guardians (Beauvois, 20218) 7/10
Burning(Lee, 2018) 8/10
Leave No Trace (Granik, 2018) 7/10
Museo (Ruizpalacios, 2018) 7/10
Support the Girls (Bujalski, 2018) 6/10
Love Songs (Honoré, 2007) 7/10
La Vie de Bohème (Kaurismaki, 1992) 8/10
High School (Wiseman, 1969) 8/10
* Richard III (Olivier, 1956) 7/10
* The Little Foxes (Wyler, 1941) 5/10
* Stage Door (La Cava, 1937) 9/10

film fest

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Gilliam)
The Raft (Lindeen)
Fortuna (Roaux)
The Waldheim Waltz (Beckermann)
Jean-François and the Meaning of Life (Portabella)
Mug (Szumowska)
You Go To My Head (de Clerq)
Studio Bankside (Jarman)
Journey to Avebury (Jarman)
Tarot (Jarman)
Sulphur (Jarman)
Sloane Square (Jarman)
Sebastian Wrap (Jarman)
Waiting for Waiting for Godot (Jarman)
Electric Fairy (Jarman)
Departure (Wüst)
The Blot (Weber)
The Chaotic Life of Nada Kadić (Hernaiz Pidal)
*The Ornithologist (Rodrigues)
The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (von Trotta)
Shoplifters (Kore-ada)
Birds of Passage (Guerra & Gallego)
Marquis de Wavrin: From the Manor to the Jungle (Winter & Plantier)
A Woman Captured (Tuza-Ritter)
Roobha (Sivam)
Burning (Lee)
Isabelle (Heydon)
Touch Me Not (Pintilie)
*Le Mepris (Godard)
Happy as Lazzaro (Rohrwacher)
The Silence of Others (Carracedo & Bahar)
Is That You? (Riverón Sánchez)
Trees Down Here (Rivers)
Snow (Jones)
A Year Along the Abandoned Road (Skallerud)
3 Days in Quiberon (Atef)
Eastern Memories (Kullström & Kaartinen)
The Skier (Najafi)
The Image Book (Godard)
The Image You Missed (Foreman)
Monsters and Men (Green)
Roma (Cuarón)

How is Birds of Passage? Been offered an interview with one of the directors, still wondering if I want to work on it.

Thoughts on Mug? I liked it quite a lot. Quite surprised by it.

and Gilliam's Quixote? it of the 25-year wait?

Birds of passage was cool tho I think I preferred guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent - this may have been the film I was most tired during* so I think I was a little impatient with some of the more inevitable genre story turns. There are certainly enough things that make it atypical, and it’s well done.

Mug was a highlight for sure, loved the grim humour, the stylistic gimmick, the way they shot the construction site

The Gilliam - well bearing in mind I’ve been assuming for years that this would be a shitshow if it ever got made, I ended up surprised at how successfully they pulled it off. Obv not worth 25 years, or 2.5 hours for that matter. It’s definitely better than the Johnny Depp version would have been, not just because of driver vs depp - I didn’t know this going in but they’ve made a couple of major changes to the original premise that not only make it less awful and misconceived but bring it closer to the spirit of Cervantes’s novel. So props I guess for credibly updating Quixote, which is kinda miraculous in itself, there’s just the slight problem that the film is nothing special

Oh yeah the asterisk: I was just proud to get through a festival without once nodding off tbh

Btw I should say Gilliam was a surprise guest at the screening and seemed quite aware of the film’s flaws (in particular its length) and was imploring people not to watch it as a 25-years-in-the-making culmination of a life’s work, but just as another movie

Rosa Luxemburg (1986, von Trotta) 6/10
Wildlife (2018, Dano) 7/10
*After Hours (1985, Scorsese) 8/10
Kuroneko (1968, Shindo) 9/10
The Dam Busters (1955, Anderson) 7/10
*Prime Cut (1972, Ritchie) 7/10
I, Jane Doe (1948, Auer) 5/10
The Oblong Box (1969, Hessler) 6/10
Exit Smiling (1926, Taylor) 7/10
*Silent Movie (1976, Brooks) 6/10

*The Ornithologist
*Le Mepris

-imo the last films in that list you should be nodding off to!

that's not what the asterisks mean, i don't think

i've always intensely disliked Le Mepris; had contempt for it, you could say.

really? I haven't seen every Godard film, but so far it's my favorite

hetero lovers fighting constantly -- blechhh

Yeah I guess but I was just turned off by the casual, romantic depiction of crime in Breathless and overall thought Contempt was a much better film

Godard is the ultimate *straight* director though

second rental from the brand new video store (!!!):

Pierrot le Fou
La Captive
Beau Travail
Hush.... Hush, Sweet Charlotte

got the Godard because Akerman said that seeing it as a child made her want to be a filmmaker. very excited for La Captive, most recent non-doc Akerman I've tracked down. only Denis I've seen are White Material (eh) and Let the Sunshine In (fantastic). consensus is Beau Travail is her best, yes? and the Aldrich I've wanted to see for a while and seen referenced often (most recently in a book about Nashville session musicians).

The Captive is the best Proust adaptation I've seen after Ruiz's.

Beau Travail not in my top 5 Denis

The Curse of the Cat People (von Fritsch & Wise, 1944)
The Haunted Castle (Smith, 1897)
Mr. W's Little Game (Shores, 1934)
Bimbo's Initiation (Fleischer & Natwick, 1931)
*Under a Spell (Smith, 1925)
Her Defiance (King & Madison, 1916)
The Cardboard Lover (Leonard, 1928)
*The Navigator (Crisp & Keaton, 1924)
Beauty's Worth (Vignola, 1922)
*Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Reisner & Keaton, 1928)
L'Inferno (de Liguoro & Bertolini, 1911)
*Safety Last (Newmeyer & Taylor, 1923)
*Show People (Vidor, 1928)
When Knighthood Was in Flower (Vignola, 1922)

xp morbs what are your top 5 Denis

lady gaga bradley cooper movie - it was ok..? i can already barely remember it. i guess on second thought, it sucked
basic instinct (verhoeven) - this was maybe the most enjoyment i've had watching a movie in a year
deep red (argento) - good, yet often boring when not slashy. sickchops prog soundtrack
andrei rublev (tarkovsky) - v good, didn't actually feel long at 3h perhaps because every terrible hollywood action movie is 2.5h?

flappy, w/out rewatching or thinking too hard

35 Rhums
Chocolat
Let the Sunshine In
Nenette et Boni
Friday Night

well, bless your heart, we finally agree *reaches for smoothie*

thou dost exaggerate, honeybunch

The Bench (Fly)*
The Inheritance (Fly)*
Manslaughter (Fly)*
Forestillinger (Fly)
The Woman Who Dreamt of a Man (Fly)
Monica Z (Fly)
Aftermath (Steen)
That Time of Year (Steen)
Art History (Swanberg)
Drinking Buddies (Swanberg)
Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (Decker)*
The White Reindeer (Blomberg)
The Harvest Month (Kassila)
Inspector Palmu’s Error (Kassila)
1. April 2000 (Liebeneiner)
Flamenco (Neville)
Main Street (Bardem)
Pickpocket (Jia)
Still Life (Jia)
Kaili Blues (Bi)
Wolf Children (Hosada)*
The Boy and the Beast (Hosada)*
A Page of Madness (Kinugasa)
Blue (Jarman)
El Movimiento (Naishtat)
The Dead Nation (Jude)
Bicycle Thieves (De Sica)
Le Plaisir (Ophüls)
Christopher Robin (Forster)

Tale of Cinema (Hong, 2005) 8/10
Cat People (Tourneur, 1942) 7/10
In The Mood for Love (Wong, 2000) 9/10
The Childhood of a Leader (Corbet 2015) 7/10
*A Brighter Summer Day (Yang, 1991) 10/10
The Other Side of the Wind (Welles, 2018) 6/10 - the unrestored version the great minds at netflix put up on the first day
The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice, 1973) 9/10
Love's Crucible (Sjöström, 1922) 9/10
Freaks (Browning, 1932) 6/10
Robocop (Verhoeven, 1987) 7/10
Winchester 73' (Mann, 1950) 8/10
The Woman in the Window (Lang, 1944) 7/10
Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018) 5/10
Emitai (Sembene, 1971) 8/10
*The Other Side of the Wind (Welles, 2018) 8/10
The Power of Kangwon Province (Hong, 1998) 9/10
Hotel by the River (Hong, 2018) 7/10

Fred what did you think of Drinking Buddies? I saw that at a fest 5+ years ago and it remains one of the worst movies I've seen this decade.

dev thank you for the Spirit of the Beehive reminder, I haven't watched that in 10 years and just found my copy buried in my basement last night.

oh yeah - has anyone seen the new Suspiria? I'm not a fan of the original, but I'm intrigued by the new one being described as more of a "cover version" than a remake - I'm getting heavy Blade Runner 2049 vibes from everything I've heard.

Drinking Buddies is... kinda okay? Utterly uninteresting and a really boring way for Swanberg to develop. But what did you so dislike about it?

his loose/improv dialogue style didn't work at all with those actors. I don't like mumblecore in the first place and that one felt like a gigantic waste of time and money - it felt like watching an awkward rehearsal.

The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West (Wong, 1917)
Mabel's Blunder (Normand, 1914)
Caught in a Cabaret (Normand, 1914)
Cendrillon (Melies, 1899)
The Ancient Law (Dupont, 1923)
*Seven Chances (Keaton, 1925)
*Mare Nostrum (Ingram, 1926)
*Corporal Kate (Sloane, 1926)
Barbed Wire (Lee, 1927)
Lilac Time (Fitzmaurice, 1928)

I thought "Neon Demon" was a fantastic "Suspiria" cover version.

Good point - and I liked Neon Demon a lot and don't like Suspiria at all.

The Thing (Carpenter, 1982) - 9/10
Veronika Voss (Fassbinder, 1982) - 8/10
Lola (Fassbinder, 1981) - 8/10
Ten (Kiarostami, 2002) - 10/10
Wings (Shepitko, 1966) - 5/10
10 on Ten (Kiarostami, 2004) - 10/10
The Fortune Cookie (Wilder, 1966) - 7/10
Dekalog V (Kieslowski, 1988) - 8/10
Fellini Satyricon (Fellini, 1969) - 7/10
Dekalog VI (Kieslowski, 1988) - 9/10
Man is Not a Bird (Makavejev, 1965) - 8/10
Pierrot le Fou (Godard, 1965) - 6/10
Dekalog VII (Kieslowski, 1988) - 10/10
Dick (Fleming, 1999) - 6/10
Topsy-Turvy (Leigh, 1999) - 9/10

* The Devils (censored version; 1971)
Burning (2018) 3.5/5
Vampire’s Kiss (1988) 3/5
* I Waked with a Zombie (1943) 4/5
* Mikey and Nicky (1976) 4/5
Cluny Brown (1946) 4/5
* Theatre of Blood (1973) 3.5/5
Derek (2008) 3/5
Belfast, Maine (1999) 4.5/5

on track to get 31 scary films into a, let's say, six-week Halloween period

made it to 30 in six weeks. here's October 19th to November 10th:

* Nightmare On Elm Street (Craven 1984) 📺
Entertainment (Alverson, Turkington, Heidecker 2015) 🏋️
Life After Beth (Baena 2014) 📺
I Am Road Comic (Brady 2014) 📺
The Happy House (Young 2013) 📺
The Cat And The Canary (Reni, Cohn, Anthony, Hill, after Willard 1927) [Photoplay restoration projected with live organist. Organ also recently restored. Organist original.]
Slice (Vesely 2018) 📺
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Selick, Elfman, Thompson, McDowell & Burton 1993) 4DX 😞
Summer Of '84 (Simard, Whissell, Whissell, Leslie, Smith 2018) 📺
Hearts Beat Loud (Haley, Basch, DeWitt 2018) 📺
Society (Yuzna, Keith, Fry 1989) 📽️ 35mm
Piranha (Dante, Sayles, Robinson 1978) 📺
The Stranger (Welles, Trivas, Veiller, Huston, Dunning 1946) 📺
Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko (Shindo 1968) 📽️ 35mm

I guess you could count Entertainment as a horror film tbh. 31!

What does the weight lifter emoji mean?

watched it in chunks at the YMCA while climbing non-existent hills

Anything Goes (1936, Milestone) 6/10
Artists & Models (1937, Walsh) 5/10
Burning (2018, Lee) 7/10
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018, Neville) 7/10
Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951, Lupino) 6/10
Monrovia, Indiana (2018, Wiseman) 8/10
*Ossessione (1943, Visconti) 9/10
*Orson Welles: The One-Man Band (1995, Silovic) 6/10
Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness (1979, von Trotta) 7/10
*Family Plot (1976, Hitchcock) 7/10

The Blob (1958)

Completely classic monster-from-space movie, with the perfectly odd titular blob oozing around killing people, and a nice setup for the killings at the beginning. It feels like a template for various other viral outbreak horror stories that followed in its wake, and it's a very swift 82 minutes slowed only by a couple of conversation scenes in the first act. It's fairly suspenseful in place, though obviously not grisly. However, the unstated fact that the blob has turned red because it's been consuming and dissolving humans is a nice touch.

McQueen is great, he doesn't look anymore like a teenager than he did when he played the Cooler King or Frank Bullitt but he's fully committed to the role and he delivers some great ridiculous dialogue as if it means something.

Best throwaway line (spoken by one police officer about another who's tired of these troublemaking teens): "Just because some kid smacks into your wife on the turnpike doesn't make it a crime to be 17 years old!"

I like how dark the backgrounds of the outside scenes are, like it was made for drive-ins.

is there a "Good books about movies" thread? not fiction, not biographies, I'm looking for anything on the beginning of cinema, early cinema, history of cinema as a sociological phenomenon, & the history of movie theaters. Grazi

The Blob has a great theme song too

...composed by Burt Bacharach

The Great Beauty - (Sorrentino, 2013) - 7/10 - empty
Anomalisa - (Kaufman/Johnson, 2016) - 5/10 - annoying
Sherlock Jr - (Keaton, 1924) - 10/10 - lol
Mandy - (Cosmatos, 2018) - 9/10 - swirly
Moonlight - (Jenkins, 2017) - 6/10 - oscar-bait

Linda (Davenport, 1929)
Bridal Bail (Stevens, 1934)
The Last Laugh (Murnau, 1924)
Carmen (Lubitsch, 1918)
*Flesh and the Devil (Brown 1926)
*The General (Keaton and Bruckman, 1926)
Salt Water Daffy (McCarey, 1933)
*A Woman of the World (St. Clair, 1925)
Heart to Heart (Beaudine, 1928)

Moi, un Noir (1958) 3/5
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) 2.5/5
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs 2/5
Paris Was a Woman (1996) 2.5/5
I Called Him Morgan (2016) 3.5/5
They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018) 3/5
Mad Love (1935) 4/5
A Page of Madness (1926) 3.5/5

I just saw Upgrade. It was pretty good! Clever b-movie premise, great execution for what must have been a low budget. Reminded me a bit of the original Terminator, or maybe Robocop, if it was directed by David Cronenberg.

the best film of the year only better on rewatch

Burning (Lee, 2018) 7/10
The Curse of the Cat People (von Fritsch, Wise, 1944) 7/10
Terminator (Cameron, 1984) 6/10
Terminator 2 (Cameron, 1991) 4/10
They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (Neville, 2018) 4/10
Bigger than Life (Ray, 1956) 8/10
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen, Coen, 2018) 6/10
*Claire's Camera (Hong, 2017) 9/10
My Night at Maud's (Rohmer, 1969) 10/10

Klute is free on Amazon Prime, so I watched that last night. The extremely giallo-esque score in the Jane Fonda-is-stalked-by-the-killer scenes was what stuck out to me the most. That, and the scenes between Fonda and Roy Scheider.

Autumn Sonata (Bergman, 1978) - I don't why it took me so long to get around to watching this but its one of his best. It was screening on a double bill with Haneke's Piano Teacher which is quite a good choice. It was nice to see what Ingrid Bergman could do with such a challenging script. Bergman (the other one) really goes places and provokes, and the scene where the daughter is playing chopin to her mother is a real high.

Eighth Grade (Burnham, 2018) 6/10
Panic in the Streets (Kazan, 1950) 8/10
Can’t Stop the Music (Walker, 1980) 4/10
To Be or Not to Be (Lubitsch, 1942) 9/10
Pinkus’s Shoe Palace (Lubitsch, 1916) 5/10
Sorry to Bother You (Riley, 2018) 8/10
Mavis! (Edwards, 2015) 6/10
The Late Show (Benton, 1977) 5/10
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Akhavan, 2018) 5/10
The Man with Two Brains (Reiner, 1983) 7/10

I\m pretty sure The Late Show is a lot better than that

Yeah, I really expected to like it better, but I found it kind of aimiable to a fault. It doesn’t help that Altman (who also produced this) already made the much better version of this movie a few years earlier with The Long Goodbye. Tomlin has a few good moments, and I liked the scene where she keeps failing to notice a dead body in the refrigerator, but I mostly felt like I was watching one of those “cute old people” movies that George Burns and Walter Matthau fell back on in the later stages of their careers.

Dial M for Murder (Hitchcock, 1952)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1978)
Cluny Brown (Lubitsch, 1946)
Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (Akerman, 1978)
Kaiju Bunraku (short - Levya/Mayer, 2017)
* 3 Colors: Blue (Kieślowski, 1993)
* 3 Colors: White (Kieślowski, 1994)
* 3 Colors: Red (Kieślowski, 1994)
Widows (McQueen, 2018)
The Mackintosh Man (Huston, 1973)
*Close-up (Kiarostami, 1990)
Close-up Long Shot (short - Mansouri, Chokrollahi, 1996)

The Long Goodbye is not an antic noir comedy. Also, Tomlin was like 38 when that film was made. I thought her chemistry with Carney was good.

Sorry to Bother You is streaming free on Hulu (it's a paid rental on Amazon). It's mostly pretty funny with some good running gags, Armie Hammer is great in it, the turn into SF body horror is well handled, but the ending is weak. Still, worth watching.

The Long Goodbye is not an antic noir comedy.

It isn't?

while there are funny scenes, it has some serious things on its mind (while also being a genre travesty)

Both films are essentially about the classic noir detective navigating the weirdness of the 1970s. Altman's film just feels like the far more vivid, resonant take on this idea, to me.

The new Wreck-It Ralph was the rare movie the whole family agreed on. We all thought it was boring and lazy and ugly, and reminded us of something they would show before a ride at Epcot, but 10 times as long.

Saw Widows today; it's about a 2.5 out of 5. It's a half hour too long, with a lot of pointless digressions (Lukas Haas's character should not have gotten a second scene, and Viola Davis and Liam Neeson didn't need a dead son, never mind Carrie Coon's "role"). And how do you make a heist movie without one montage? Davis is good, but Elizabeth Debicki gets most of the best scenes.

College Humor (Ruggles, 1933)
Motherhood: Life's Greatest Miracle (Lawrence, 1925)
Something New (Shipman & van Tuyle, 1920)
Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti, 1960)
Cold Turkey (Lord, 1940)
*The Opry House (Roth, 1929)
The Dream Lady (Wilson, 1918)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen & Coen, 2018)

Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1964) - 4/10
Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) - 9/10
One-Eyed Jacks (Brando, 1961) - 6/10
Dekalog VIII (Kieślowski, 1988) - 8/10
La Captive (Akerman, 2000) - 7/10
Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990) - 8/10
Dekalog IX (Kieślowski, 1988) - 8/10
Dekalog X (Kieślowski, 1988) - 7/10
Daisies (Chytilová, 1966) - 8/10
Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 1953) - 8/10
Gaslight (Cukor, 1944) - 5/10
Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Makavejev, 1967) - 9/10
Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980) - 6/10
Paper Moon (Bogdanovich, 1973) - 10/10
Osaka Elegy (Mizoguchi, 1936) - 8/10
Miami Vice (Mann, 2006) - 6/10
Track 29 (Roeg, 1988) - 7/10
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson, 1951) - 9/10
Track of the Cat (Wellman, 1954) - 5/10

First Man (2018, Chazelle) 8/10
Wait and See (1928, Forde) 6/10
Pinkus's Shoe Palace (1916, Lubitsch) 5/10
*The Clock (1945, Minnelli) 9/10
*The Sunshine Boys (1975, Ross) 7/10
Abel Raises Cain (2005, Abel, Hockett) 5/10
Eighth Grade (2018, Burnham) 7/10
Mrs. Fang (2017, Wang) 8/10
The Best of Everything (1959, Negulesco) 6/10
The Return of the Living Dead (1985, O'Bannon) 6/10

xpost "Raging Bull' and "One Eyed jacks" rating the same as "Miami Vice" O0 ?

Autumn Sonata (Bergman, 1978) - I don't why it took me so long to get around to watching this but its one of his best. It was screening on a double bill with Haneke's Piano Teacher which is quite a good choice. It was nice to see what Ingrid Bergman could do with such a challenging script. Bergman (the other one) really goes places and provokes, and the scene where the daughter is playing chopin to her mother is a real high.

I've seen it a few times because Ingrid is fun, but the way the movie keeps clobbering her for being awful makes me sympathetic toward her while forcing me to consider choking Liv.

Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018) 8/10
The Guilty (Möller, 2018) 6/10
*Burning (Lee, 2018) 7/10
Boy Erased (Egerton, 2018) 5/10
Monrovia, Indiana (Wiseman, 2018) 8/10
Wildlife (Dano, 2018) 7/10
An Actor's Revenge (Ishikawa, 1963) 7/10

Ingrid is fun, but the way the movie keeps clobbering her for being awful makes me sympathetic toward her

what keeps me feeling sympathetic towards Ingrid (who is good and fun I agree) is that scene at the piano - she really puts Liv through the grinder when she makes her play Chopin. I think her coldness toward her disabled daughter is possibly over the top but certainly adds to it. Doesn't spare you but maybe asks too much of the viewer.

I quite like to read any biog of Ingrid just to read an account of her time when making this film.

I like the movie because it explores the psychological warfare inherent in the parent-child relationship. We want more praise than they give, and parents don't realize when they're condescending to or undermining their children.

It's second tier Bergman because it's too damn didactic in the last third.

I quite like to read any biog of Ingrid just to read an account of her time when making this film.

― xyzzzz__,

Ingmar said he had to cure Ingrid of a lifetime of mannered Hollywood acting choice; she looked forward to speaking in her native language. You can see some of those bad choices when she reverts to English for that conversation with her agent.

xpost "Raging Bull' and "One Eyed jacks" rating the same as "Miami Vice" O0 ?

― An Uphill Battle For Legumes (Capitaine Jay Vee)

hmm yea One-Eyed Jacks is more of a 7/10. wonderfully weird, gay movie

And you don't need to change a word for the gay pr0n parody's title.

didnt get a real gay reading of OEJ when i rewatched last year

Alfred OTM re Autumn Sonata. I'd also say the business with the mute, disabled sister goes a bit OTT and ends up in camp territory.

and parents don't realize when they're condescending to or undermining their children.

But I think in this particular r/ship the mother very much knew she was condescending and severe to her child - she didn't perhaps know to what extent it had 'damaged' her, but Ingrid knew what she was doing - she was aware that she never had love to give.

It very much shares (with the Piano Teacher) and expands on how demanding it is to make any kind of art for a long time, and who is left behind, or the damage it leaves by its demands on the mind and body (the pianist's back, or the great performance that cannot be conjured up anymore - lost to time) for those that 'make it'.

idk, to me its top 5 - so much that I love about Bergman with some of the uglier aspects made relatively palatable. wrt the disabled sister it could be camp or OTT but I felt he was pushing the audience into uncomfortable territory - seeing disability on the screen (and never mind in this way) is always a challenge because we don't encounter it. I liked that the sister wasn't relegated to the background, and how she became something to be used in that battle between mother and daughter. Cruel, sure - but that's Bergman.

Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018) - this was quite good again - I just like what Kore-eda does. There was a lot more around sex and intimacy than usual for him with all the elements in previous films (getting by in an affluent society, or the unusual arrangements of family) in a light touch manner that brings people over.
Touch Me Not (Pintile, 2018) - there must be some hilarious reviews of this out there on the internet and I am not searching for them. I did like the documentary snapshot at the range of sexuality and desire on display. I saw it on MUBI so need to watch this in the cinema for a more concentrated view. Seemed one of a kind.

the sex scene was particularly, gratifyingly erotic for being unexpected

Yeah I didn't get the gay subtext ( or overt nature ) of OEJ. Why a 6/10 for Raging Bull?

The Bradshaw review of Touch Me Not was quite hilarious, especially because it was pretty clear he had skipped the press screening and was a bit annoyed that it won. The room was basically half full at that press screening in Berlin, it was a pretty fun experience.

xp Kinda the same feeling I got from The Master. I know Karl Malden is supposed to be a father figure but, like with Joaquin and PSH, it read to me as some impossible/doomed romance. and besides that, I always get a vibe from Brando. the jeans, too

oh and I never understood the acclaim for Raging Bull. this was the third time I'd seen it, first in at least 8-9 years, and yeah, still feel the same. I love the famous opening credit sequence in theory - classical music over a slow-mo wide shot of LaMotta warming up - but I don't dig the shot, I don't dig that particular piece of music, it doesn't move me, at all. But its fatal flaw is LaMotta, such an uninteresting and boring character. Movie feels so slow and only picks up, "gets good" with the subsequent fights, which are really well done (especially the photo montage ones). Final scene between DeNiro and Pesci is great. Otherwise, beyond Scorsese's superb direction (which alone rates the movie as a 6/10 for me), there's nothing there. for me

The B&W photography doesn't help.

crazee talk

oh the cinematography is the best thing about it

and hard not to compare to Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin, two of the most beguiling performances/characters ever

i admire it more than *love* it but it's great, i think the unrepentant ugliness of LaMotta as a human being vs the beauty of the film itself is pretty compelling. though i put it below a number of other Scorsese pics.

night and the city ('92 winkler) 7/10
the ballad of buster scruggs (2018 coens) 3/10
barfly ('87 schroeder) 7/10
the house that jack built (2018 lvt) 2/10
stepmom ('98 columbus) 7/10
hot summer nights (2017 elijah bynum) 7/10
wildlife (2018 dano) 6/10
american animals (2018 bart layton) 4/10
the price of everything (2018 nathaniel kahn) 8/10
kill me again ('89 dahl) 4/10
man up (2015 ben palmer) 9/10
crooked hearts ('91 michael bortman) 6/10

The Magnificent Seven (Sturges, 1960)
Quick Change (Franklin/Murray, 1990)
*Trainspotting (Boyle, 1996)
Dheepan (Audiard, 2015)
Performance (Cammell/Roeg, 1970)
Glastonbury Fayre (Neal/Roeg, 1972)
*No Regrets for Our Youth (Kurosawa, 1946)
Mr. Freedom (Klein, 1969)
Tess (Polanski, 1978)
and about 15 minutes of The Awful Truth before Filmstruck went black this morning

some shorts:
Hunger (Foldes, 1974)
Sea Devil (Marcial/Potter, 2014)
Alice's Mysterious Mystery (Disney/Iwerks, 1926)
The Fresh Lobster (unknown, 1948)
Ko-Ko Sees Spooks (Fleischer, 1925)

Kind of guesswork as to where I left off last time, but anyway:

The Czech Year (Trnka, 1947)
The Devil's Mill (Trnka, 1949)
The Emperor's Nightingale (Trnka, 1949)
The Asphyx (Newbrook, 1972)
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (Lynch, 1992/2014)
Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape (West, 2010)
Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (a committee of assholes, 1989)- this was the feature (all three goddamn parts) screened at my first Philadelphia Psychotronic Film Society meeting, and I experienced it as both a personal affront (it fucking sucks) and a test of endurance (it was something like three hours long)
Why UNESCO? (Trnka, 1958)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Trnka, 1959)
And Then There Were None (Viveiros, 2015)
Resolution (Moorhead & Benson, 2012)
Hereditary (Aster, 2018)
*Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997)
WNUF Halloween Special (LaMartina, 2013)
Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018)
V/H/S (various, 2012)- I don't know why I keep thinking modern anthology horror films will be any good, or that Ti West will ever impress me again
Heavy Metal Parking Lot (Krulik & Heyn, 1986)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Stoller, 2008)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen, 2018)
Forbidden Zone (Elfman, 1980)

The Night Walker (Castle, 1964) 7
Bohemian Rhapsody (Singer and Sigel, 2018) 6
Murder by Contract (Lerner, 1958) 9
The Thing From Another World (Nyby, 1951) 3; has a few scary moments
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Lanfield, 1939) 6
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Forbes, 1964) 8

* The Marriage of Maria Braun 4/5
Theodora Goes Wild (1936) 3/5
Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989) 4.5/5
The Silver Cord (1933) 3/5
The Merry Widow (1934) 3.5/5
* Awesome! I Fuckin' Shot That (2006) 3/5
Manila in the Claws of Light (1975) 3.5/5
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) 4/5
Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) 4/5
Heaven Can Wait (1943) 3.5/5

only one this week:

Sicario: Day of the Soldado

The first film had a very sinister lure to it and its thin story was elevated to something more foreboding by both its direction and its screenplay POV from an out-of-the-loop protagonist, and the mysteries only somewhat answered really helped as well. Plus the astonishing score. The sequel is a lesser film which gets by on some great action scenes and a very good core cast (Del Toro, Brolin, Donovan, Isabela Moner.)

It definitely suffers from having somewhat more anonymous skilled craftsman direction -- Sollima seems to come more from the Philip Noyce school of Jack Ryan movies type action as opposed to what Villaneuve brings to the table. That's not an insult, more an observation!

The terrorism/government side of things is really uninteresting; Modine and Keener don't do anything story or character-wise. I wish they'd found another way in to the story, but whatever.

It's decent enough, better than a lot of action flicks but it's missing the original's singular spooky quality. ymmv on this one.

13th to the 30th:

120 battements par minute (Campillo, Mangeot 2017) 📺
* Starship Troopers (Verhoeven, Neumeier 1997)
Night Of The Hunter (Laughton, Agee, Grubb 1955) 📽️ 35mm
* Thor: Ragnarok (Waititi, Pearson & al. 2017) 🏋️
The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (Coen & Coen 2018)
* The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (Coen & Coen 2018) 📺
Three Days Of The Condor (Pollack, Semple Jr., Rayfiel, Grady 1975) 📺
Addams Family Values (Sonnenfeld, Rudnick 1993)
Slap Shot (Hill, Dowd 1977) 📽️ 35mm
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (Bernstein and Edelstein 2012) 📺
The Nice Guys (Black, Bagarozzi 2016) 📺
* Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Wright, O'Malley, Bacall 2010) 🏋️

To Have and Have Not (Hawks, 1944) 8/10
The One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh, 1967) 8/10
Suspiria (Guadagnino, 2018) 5/10
Burnt Offerings (Curtis, 1976) 7/10
Shoplifters (Koreeda, 2018) 8/10

Reading about this re-make of Suspiria and it just sounds awful.

Not reading about it cos I have tickets for it on my birthday

I went into it so determined NOT to be an Argento purist that it took me a while to realise how bad it mostly was. Happy birthday NV!

Not till a week on Tuesday. My son really liked it but I know our tastes don't always coincide. Still better than going out for a hangover tho :)

after reading our messageboard tonight I think watching anything but MOTD sounds like a plan.

lol wrong thread again, I'm losing it today.

but to keep it on topic I'm watching Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood tonight!

A Simple Favor (6.0)
White Boy Rick (5.0)
Mid90s (7.0)
Broadcast News (9.0)
The Passion of Anna (8.0)
Persona (8.0)
How to Steal a Million (6.0)*
Fahrenheit 11/9 (5.0)
Fanny & Alexander (8.5)
The Last Pogo Jumps Again (7.0)

Not sure if I drifted off for 10 minutes during How to Steal a Million or if it was longer. So the rating is somewhat provisional--there really isn't much there besides Audrey Hepburn anyway.

Persona is obviously a 10, maybe Fanny & Alexander too. If I rated films solely on how much their place in film history engaged me, the excitement of watching something masterful and unique, that's what I'd give it. But I rate almost solely on emotional engagement, and it is rather hermetic. (Both Kauffmann and Kael basically wrote that it was like eavesdropping on Bergman's innermost thoughts--praise for him, a limitation for her.) Broadcast News I'd give a, I don't know, 3.0 for its place in film history--it's of zero consequence. But it does, for whatever reason, move me.

Dead Souls (Wang Bing, 2018) - this has been compared to Shoah and while both centre around testimonies of camp survivors (in this case of the Jiabiangou and Mingshui re-education camps) its a completely different approach, to its credit. Bing seldom resorts to a cinematic approach, he allows the survivors the time and space they need to tell and share what they can (Lanzmann would cajole them to get what he wanted) and doesn't push them if they aren't able to (as in a couple of cases). In a couple of examples we hear from the wives of the men who either survived the camps or died (as in the last case - where the link to the events of the Cultural Revolution taking place a few years later is made in the most harrowing of ways). Wang Bing, unlike Lanzmann, doesn't appear to have as much of an ego - you only see him twice and in the most discreet of ways. All in all its quite an achievement.

On a plane to and from Oslo:

Kingsman: The Secret Service (.000001/10)
Avengers: Infinity War (.00001/10)
The Predator (.5/10)
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2/10)
The Meg (3/10)

sorry for your flight looks like it was a drag

I would never have watched any of these movies had I not been on a plane. The Meg had some decent jump scares, and, you know, Jason Statham fighting a giant shark. And with the Mission: Impossible movie, at least you knew Tom Cruise actually fucked himself up doing his own stunts. But that Avengers thing, holy fuck.

xxxp otm, also saw it this week. thought it was interesting that Wang only becomes a visual presence when he interviews the cadre.

*A Story of Water (Truffaut et Godard, 1961)
Les Mistons (Truffaut, 1957)
Broadway Love (Park, 1918)
Off the Record (Henabery, 1934)
*Leap Year (Cruze & Arbuckle, 1921)
Old Czech Legends (Trnka, 1953)
My Grandfather's Clock (Feist, 1934)
There Ain't No Santa Claus (Parrott, 1926)

thought it was interesting that Wang only becomes a visual presence when he interviews the cadre.

yes, and shot at this angle where Wang was looking at him at all times.

will have to catch Wang's Dead Souls at some point. I love Lanzmann and lots of the important work he did, but he could be a ruthless interviewer, and I think it's fair to say that you shouldn't do that any more. Not meant as a criticism of Lanzmann because it was a different era, a different scale of atrocity he was chronicling, a different generation etc...

in theaters past month & a half

A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971) - 9/10
The Old Man & the Gun (Lowery, 2018) - 7/10
Mid90s (Hill, 2018) - 5/10
Beautiful Boy (Van Groeningen, 2018) - 3/10
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman, 1955) - 10/10
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Heller, 2018) - 7/10
Wanda (Loden, 1970) - 10/10
Wildlife (Dano, 2018) - 4/10
Boy Erased (Edgerton, 2018) - 2/10
Widows (McQueen, 2018) - 4/10
Instant Family (Anders, 2018) - 6/10
The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957) - 10/10
Nobody’s Fool (Perry, 2018) - 4/10
Green Book (Farrelly, 2018) - 4/10
Playtime (Tati, 1967) - 10/10
Mirai (Hosoda, 2018) - 6/10
Baby Doll (Kazan, 1956 / 35mm) - 5/10
Casque d’Or (Becker, 1952 / 35mm) - 9/10

flappy bird your passion for Bergman has convinced me to explore his films

Aniki Bóbó (de Oliveira)
No, or the Vainglory of Command (de Oliveira)
Voyage to the Beginning of the World (de Oliveira)
Mandala (Im Kwon-taek)
Sopyonje (Im Kwon-taek)
The Housemaid (Im Sang-soo)
The Net (Kim)
The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (Hong)
Yourself & Yours (Hong)
On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong)
Claire’s Camera (Hong)
Five Boys from Barska Street (A. Ford)
Knights of the Teutonic Order (A. Ford)
The First Day of Freedom (A. Ford)
Dear Wendy (Vinterberg, script by von Trier)
The House That Jack Built (von Trier)
Titicut Follies (Wiseman)
Ex Libris (Wiseman)
A Bomb Was Stolen (Popescu-Gopo)
Opera Jawa (Nugroho)
Gosford Park (Altman)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen & Coen)
The Other Side of the Wind (Welles)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston, 1948) 9/10
Three (To, 2016) 6/10
No Home Movie (Akerman, 2010) 9/10
Predators (Antal, 2010) - a spanish dub, seemed ok?
Suspiria (Argento, 1977) 7/10
Dead Souls (Wang, 2018) 8/10
Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018) 7/10
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Coppola, 1992) 7/10
* The Red Shoes (Powell, Pressburger, 1948) 8/10

what's the streaming service to watch like bergman and ozu again? that exists right

no art house w/in 300 miles of me and i want to check some of these out. have no idea who kore-eda even is.

Kanopy.

Korla (Turner, 2015): Documentary about the musician and personality Korla Pandit. He had a pretty interesting story, and the doc was low-key enough to not get in the way. Interviews with Santana, Harry Edwards, Ben Fong-Torres, the Muffs, etc. Really changed the way I think about Liberace.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coens, 2018) 9/10
*Gilda Live (Nichols, 1980) 8/10
The Great McGinty (Sturges, 1940) 7/10
*The Fog (Carpenter, 1980) 7/10
The Mortal Storm (Borzage, 1940) 6/10
BlacKkKlansman (Lee, 2018) 7/10
*The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940) 10/10
The Incredibles 2 (Bird, 2018) 7/10
The Other Side of the Wind (Welles, 2018) 5/10
They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (Neville, 2018) 6/10

flappy bird your passion for Bergman has convinced me to explore his films

― Dan S, Monday, December 3, 2018 11:58 PM (six days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

get the box 😈

The Secret Bride (Dieterle, 1934)
Next Aisle Over (1919)
Triumph of the Heart (Molander, 1929)
A Little Hero (Sennett, 1913)
Woman Haters (Gottler, 1934)
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Yates, 2018)
The Night Before Christmas (Jackson, 1933)
The Emperor's Nightingale (Trnka, 1949)
Smash Your Baggage (Mack, 1932)
The Ascent (Shepitko, 1977)

how did you like The Ascent? I saw Wings and wasn't really into it

Terribly grueling, although certainly true to the subject and period. I saw Wings so long ago I don't trust my memories of it. (It does end with the teacher taking a plane for a joyride?)

Re-watching Carpenter's The Thing tonight.

xp yes, and that's pretty much exactly what I thought of Wings (although I do love that ending, but more in concept than execution)

* Pickup on South Street (1953) 4/5
Roma 3.5/5
Gotti (2018) 0/5
Shirkers (2018) 4.5/5
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (2012) 4/5
The Favourite 3.5/5

saw the Roger Ailes doc DIVIDE AND CONQUER, v good, catch it in theaters if you can bc it's doing terrible business. likability of subject never occurred to me as a factor but runaway success of Mr. Rogers, Gila Radner, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg docs this year gives me pause (and depresses me - Ailes is inarguably one of the most important and influential people of the last 50 years).

College Swing (1938, Walsh) 6/10
Filmworker (2017, Zierra) 6/10
For Heaven’s Sake (1926, Taylor / Lloyd) 9/10
*Love Songs (2007, Honore) 7/10
White Lightning (1973, Sargent) 4/10
*Porcile aka Pigsty (1969, Pasolini) 6/10
Wolfsburg (2003, Petzold) 7/10
Yella (2007, Petzold) 7/10
Vester-Vov-Vov aka People of the North Sea (1927, Lauritzen) 6/10
Bisbee ’17 (2018, Greene) 8/10
Son premier film (1926, Kemm) 5/10
The Hitch-Hiker (1953, Lupino) 7/10

Tried watching Eastwood's Hoover movie on a plane. Holy shit, what a smoking trash pile.

First Reformed (Schrader, 2018)
Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018)
Sorry to Bother You (Riley, 2018)
Deep Red (Argento, 1975)
You Were Never Really Here (Ramsay, 2018)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen/Coen, 2018)
Zama (Martel, 2018)
Let the Sunshine In (Denis, 2017)
Revenge (Fargeat, 2017)
The Other Side of the Wind (Welles, 2018)
The Polymath (Taylor, 2009)
Theory of Obscurity (Hardy, 2016)
The Night Comes for Us (Tjahjanto, 2018)

The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, 1942) - 9/10
M (Lang, 1931) - 10/10
Topaz (Hitchcock, 1969) - 3/10
Sisters of the Gion (Mizoguchi, 1936) - 9/10
Career Girls (Leigh, 1997) - 8/10
Trafic (Tati, 1971) - 9/10
The Thing Called Love (Bogdanovich, 1993) - 5/10
A Report on the Party and the Guests (Němec, 1966) - 8/10
Intimidation (Kurahara, 1960) - 9/10
Blue is the Warmest Color (Keciche, 2013) - 7/10
American Honey (Arnold, 2016) - 10/10
Brewster McCloud (Altman, 1970) - 9/10
Mouchette (Bresson, 1967) - 9/10
Roma (Fellini, 1972) - 6/10
Claire’s Knee (Rohmer, 1970) - 4/10
Parade (Tati, 1974) - 6/10
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Bresson, 1945) - 4/10
El Norte (Nava, 1983) - 8/10

Making Christmas Crackers (1910)
Santa Claus (Smith, 1898)
The Masquerader (Wallace, 1933)
Bubbling Over (Jason, 1934)
Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018)
The Favourite (Lanthimos, 2018)
L'Innocente (Visconti, 1976)

(xpost) Ratings are ratings, everyone has different taste, and I hate having a solitary rating of my own cherry-picked and held up ridicule here, so I'm not trying to doing that. But I'd be interested in hearing some elaboration on the 4/10 for Claire's Knee.

not only boring but contemptible, a film revolving around an absurd conceit and a 'moral tale' that gives too much (any) credit to the protagonist's dilemma. it's the first Rohmer I've seen and I will continue to plug away, but wow, after trying to see Claire's Knee for the better part of a year, it was a real letdown.

Loving You (To, 1995) 6/10
Miami Vice (Mann, 2006) 9/10
Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (To, 2011) 6/10
*Breathless (Godard, 1960) 7/10
The 15:17 to Paris (Eastwood, 2018) 7/10
Cosmopolis (Cronenberg, 2012) 6/10
*His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940) 9/10
An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu, 2018) 8/10
Shirkers (Tan, 2018) 7/10
xXx: State of the Union (Tamahori, 2005) 5/10
Patience (After Sebald) (Gee, 2011) 7/10

MUBI run:

Lovers of the Artic Circle (Medem, 1998)
Room in Rome (Medem, 2010)
Chaudhvin Ka Chand (Sadiq, 1960) - this was really great: utterly farcical plot pushed to the limit.

not only boring but contemptible, a film revolving around an absurd conceit and a 'moral tale' that gives too much (any) credit to the protagonist's dilemma. it's the first Rohmer I've seen and I will continue to plug away, but wow, after trying to see Claire's Knee for the better part of a year, it was a real letdown.

― flappy bird,

lol I understand. My favorite Rohmers aren't even CK or My Night at Maud's. His writing and filmmaking got better in the eighties.

Yeah, I saw Love in the Afternoon and Claire's Knee first, probably due to the Criterion stamp. It was years before I tried again and realized the actual breadth of his work.

yeah i just find men intellectualizing their horniness to be really tedious. I'll see if the video store has The Green Ray this weekend

Its probably his best film - there was a switch in his writing and he focused on women a lot more, and his films are perhaps better for it.

I like Claire's Knee a lot. But I'm like the Don, may he rest peace--my way of doing things is over.

the film he made before it, Full Moon in Paris, is almost as good as a record of the young chattering classes.

I like Claire's Knee now. I was just under a misconception that this was his whole shtick. It's more palatable knowing that he can also write amazingly sympathetic and natural female-centered stories.

are all of the moral tales m/l similar to Claire's Knee in approach?

I guess my favourite is Maud's, though. I've six or seven in all, some of them later.

"seen"

are all of the moral tales m/l similar to Claire's Knee in approach?

― flappy bird,

It's hard to say. Love in the Afternoon is my favorite of the batch in part because the male protagonist's confusion about Zouzou's character was honestly rendered; also, she makes it clear she doesn't need him.

It's been many years, though.

i own the moral tales box but i've only seen la collectionneuse and love in the afternoon, both of which are tremendous though i prefer love. every rohmer short i've seen is also excellent. boring but contemptible is my thing i guess

I like when his characters go to the beach. Rohmer's good at beach sequences.

That's the side of Rohmer that really won me over.

yeah i just find men intellectualizing their horniness to be really tedious.

Maybe that's why I like Triple Agent best of the Rohmer's I've seen?

Body Melt (Brophy 1993) [TV]
Batman Returns (Burton, Waters 1992) [TV]
Ralph Breaks The Internet (Moore, Johnston, Ribon, Reardon, Trinidad, Younger, Reilly 2018) [3D DCP]
Computer Chess (Bujalski 2013) [TV]
Results (Bujalski 2015) [TV]
Gräns [Border] (Abbasi, Eklöf, Lindqvist 2018) [DCP]
Gremlins (Dante, Columbus 1984) [DCP]
Never Goin' Back (Frizzell 2018) [TV]
* Role Models (Wain, Dowling, Herron, Rudd, Marino 2008) [gym]
Faces Places [Visages, Villages] (Varda et R 2017) [gym]
Nancy (Choe 2018) [TV]
Heat (Mann 1995) [DCP]
The Favourite (Lanthimos, Davis, McNamara 2018) [DCP]
* The Informant! (Soderbergh, Burns 2009) [TV]
Roma (Cuarón 2018) [Laser]
Burning [버닝] (Lee, Oh 2018) [DCP]

Vox Lux (Corbet, 2018) 6/10
Green Book(Farrelly, 2018) 2/10
The Favourite (Lanthimos, 2018) 7/10
Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018) 9/10
Hereditary (Aster, 2018) 7/10
Widows (McQueen, 2018) 6/10
Mirai (Hosoda, 2018) 8/10
Beautiful Boy (Van Groeningen, 2018) 3/10
Roma (Cuaron, 2018) 5/10
* A Day in the Country (Renoir, 1936) 9/10
* Boudu Saved from Drowning (Renoir, 1932) 9/10

Ex Machina (Garland, 2014) 4/5
*Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018) 4/5
*Opera (Argento, 1987) 4/5 (I like these films ok)

*A Blade in the Dark (Bava the lesser, 1983) 1.5/5. The ending is- rot13 to blank out spoilers for this insanely mediocre giallo- genafcubovp nf fuvg; seeing it in Italian (with the surrounding films, as part of Philly's Exhumed Films birthday screening) also made it obvious that what little enjoyment could be found came almost entirely from the infamously shitty dubbing ("Is it possible you're such a vacant nerd that your pleasure is to bake like a frog in the sun?!") Just a dreary film- boring locations (shot in a producer's villa on the cheap and it shows), a sub-Friday the 13th score that Bava thinks is compelling enough to put front and center (remember the amazing crane shot in Tenebrae where the music is suddenly revealed as diegetic? now imagine that it's almost two hours long and it fucking sucks) and no visible care or passion put into anything but the kills, which- with the twist mentioned earlier- make it feel even more misogynist than your average giallo. Garbage. Avoid.

Formula for a Murder (de Martino, 1985) 2.5/5. this, on the other hand! Also a minor giallo from the tail end of the genre, also cops some moves from American slasher movies, but it's so fucking coocoo bananas that it's kind of fun. Also much more pleasant to listen to because instead of beating us over the head with a single uninspiring cue for nearly two (!) hour (!!) it just recycles the score from The New York Ripper instead.

*Inferno (Argento, 1980)- 4/5. I'm back at the point in my cycle where I think this movie is brilliant again? I'm definitely past the point of wishing there was any strong central presence like Jessica Harper and embracing the confusion of viewpoints as the point of the thing. Emerson's score (with the one awesome exception still hasn't grown on me, which is a shame.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (Henson the lesser, 1992)- 4/5. OH MY GOD THIS WAS A PURE DELIGHT. I grew up in kind of a non-Muppet household so this was, believe it or not, the first mainline Muppet movie I've ever seen. And it's so good! Caine commits entirely to the part without a single wink to camera (not even at "Why, it's Mr. Fozziwig's rubber chicken factory!") and it's a surprisingly faithful adaptation, retaining most of Dickens' chewiest dialogue. The only complaint I could possibly have is the songs aren't up to the standard of like, "Rainbow Connection" or the Phantom of the Paradise soundtrack, but come on, it has the greatest kiss in screen history.

The Marleys were dead: to begin with...

Continuing my past year media dump; here's my 2018 seen and wanna see; would welcome any that I missed on the list:

Best Movies 2018:
Monrovia, Indiana
Hereditary
Zama
The Guilty
The Death of Stalin
Kusama: Infinity
Private Life
Life and Nothing More
Mama Africa

No:
Sorry To Bother You
Damsel

To See:
Free Solo* - Will likely see in theaters shortly
Shoplifters* - Will likely see in theaters shortly
The Favourite* - Will likely see in theaters shortly
Unsane (Amazon)
First Reformed (Amazon/Kanopy)
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (Kanopy)
Let the Corpses Tan (Kanopy)
The Other Side of the Wind (Netflix)
Roma (Netflix)
Black Panther (Netflix)
Shirkers (Netflix)
Filmworker (Netflix)
Mary and the Witch’s Flower
Eighth Grade
Burning
Mirai
We the Animals
Have a Nice Day
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Isle of Dogs
Three Identical Strangers
A Quiet Place
I Am Not a Witch
Incredibles 2
Leave No Trace
Won’t You Be My Neighbor
Vice
The Sisters Brothers
Paddington 2
Love, Gilda
Loveless
Annihilation
BlacKkKlansman
Amazing Grace

i'm not so full of myself to suggest this was a bad year in film but i did a bad job seeing good films apparently.

all great / very good:

Unsane
Burning
Paddington 2
First Reformed
Eighth Grade
BlackKklansman
Annihilation
Three Identical Strangers
Mirai
The Favourite

Can You Ever Forgive Me? was good too

you know if anything i didn't note with a streaming service is currently streaming somewhere on amazon/hulu/kanopy/netflix/hbo?

The Grace Jones doc is also on Hulu, that's all I got.

Three identical strangers is an incredible story, def worth seeing on Netflix or wherever but no need to see at the cinema - the presentation is very boilerplate Insane True Story Documentary, like it has pretty much the exact same structure of something like the impostor from a few years ago, with the obligatory landfill doc music

I wanted to see more of the amoral eugenicist lady.

I saw Three Identical Strangers in a big, full theatre at a film festival, not knowing the story already, and being in a gasping audience was great

forks! the following comic book movies are all better than Black Panther:
Teen Titans GO! To The Movies
Ant-Man & The Wasp
Mutafukaz
Bernard & Huey

these non-fiction films would probably be of interest to you:
The Road Movie
The Green Fog
Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story
Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records
Hal

and these might also work for you:
Blindspotting
Mandy (on Shudder)
Nancy (on Kanopy)
Border [Gräns]
The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (on Netflix)

Great Day in the Morning (1956, Tourneur) 6/10
*Stars in My Crown (1950, Tourneur) 10/10
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018, Coen, Coen) 7/10
Circle of Danger (1951, Tourneur) 6/10
*The Fortune Cookie (1966, Wilder) 8/10
The Fascist (1961, Salce) 7/10
*Nightfall (1957, Tourneur) 8/10
Humoresque (1946, Negulesco) 7/10
La Commare Secca (1962, Bertolucci) 7/10
Bitter Money (2016, Wang) 6/10
Ten Days Wonder (1971, Chabrol) 7/10

thanks sic; i'll add most if not all of those to the pile!

after deadpool and antman and as much of batman v superman as i could stomach, I honestly am done with DC/Marvel superhero movies (though MAYBE shazam will overcome as i am a huge cc beck nerd); the main attraction of black panther is solely for the cultural import and the ever necessary RIGHT TO HAVE AN OPINION

... though i _did_ just reread the Jungle Action books that the movie is at least partially based on so i'm curious to see the fidelity to McGregor's source material. Coates' writing with the character is just not good; would love someone to convince me otherwise though.

Is black panther from 2018?! Jesus fucking Christ

February!

Wow

seems like only 2 weeks ago i was chuckling at thinkpieces about its importance

some streaming additions to my "to watch" list if anyone else wants to play along:

Bird Box (Netflix)
Mary and the Witch’s Flower (Netflix)
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (Netflix)
What Still Remains (Netflix)
Nancy (Kanopy)
Bernard and Huey (Amazon)
The Road Movie (Amazon)
Paddington 2 (HBO)
Loveless (Starz)