This is the thread where you list (/ talk about) the films you've seen recently.

*OtBS

Last three weeks or so.

i managed to download Terminator 3 the other week and quite enjoyed it - it has a really nice look, reminiscent of X2's slick finish at times, esp. in the Skynet building when the war starts - cleverer and generally better than i expected although actually too brief for me (maybe the length helped it tho)

Tonight I will go see Black Sunday

Last weekend I saw Ghostbusters in Central Park. It was good fun.

Touchez Pas Au Grisbi
American Splendor
Capturing The Friedmans

In backwards order (video)...

The Yakuza
Goodbye Columbus
The Quiet Man

Tonight I am seeing How The West Was Won in it's original Cinerama three-strip projection.

I am going to watch the original Insomnia tonight (on BBC4).

But

Dear Anthology Film Archives,

Please work on the changing reels things, ok?

love rosemary, Carey, and the rest of the audience

sitting in the dark depressed over family guilt and a movie I saw tonight and trying to get drunk but this wine tastes like shit, k/d

the ending is so strange. it seems to come out of nowhere, and sort of changes your persepctive on the whole film.

i don't really go to the movies.

i saw all of those films on video, except international house (a k-zany farce with burns and allen, w.c. fields, bela lugosi [!!], etc.)....

The last movie I saw was Sex, Lies, and Videotape. It's quite good and has neat droney synth music in it.

Bunuel film predating Slacker = Phantom of Liberty. Is that really not on DVD? It definitely had a VHS issue. It's ok, but nowhere near as good a satire as Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Actually, I am a moron and I am most certainly wrong about bunuel. I think i found him to be a bit juvenile, but now i realize that is part of the point.

Robocop - the unrated version is both funnier and more painful
About a Boy - better than i expected; not as good as i hoped
Naked Lunch - @%^*)@*(&532300-63462346-9027)@(*^#$%*()6....yes...

and all of these are incredible except for maybe Critters/Critters2

If I remember correctly, that's the first movie my parents let me see alone in a theater.

Garage Olimpo is due tomorrow.

What is Fassbinder like?
Disdainful.

Awesome. He wrote the greatest essay in the history of cinema (on Douglas Sirk) and was perhaps one of the most thoughtful and energetic people in filmmaking, to say nothing of manic and drug-fueled energy.

But what are his films like? Hard to say - contemptuously provocative playtime?

Regardless of what you feel about Fassbinder, the collection of his writings and interviews, The Anarchy of the Imagination is absolutely essential.

i saw "lost in translation", then. it was okay. it doesn't give me much hope irt the theory that i'm turning into bill murray.

(though I loved it)

Haha, no I know it's okay not to like it! I'm just trying to figure out if I did or didn't. And why I did or didn't. And why I said I did or didn't.

"ILX: I'm just trying to figure out if I did or didn't. And why I did or didn't. And why I said I did or didn't."

I didn't say I disliked it; I said that it wasn't incredible, but yeah you're right that was incridible!

Hey wait! ;-)

* "fuck" used for intratextual crossreferencing purposes only

One Hour Photo
Signs
Phone Booth
Panic Room
28 Days Later

All on video. Haven't been to the cinema since the first Harry Potter. I'm putting that right on October 3rd -- NFT showing of the 'restored' Touch of Evil, as I couldn't wait till I finally get a DVD player (and the DVD itself).

Best two of the five: Phone Booth and Panic Room. The former is tremendous; Kiefer Sutherland has a great voice! :) Both have Forest Whitaker, bizarrely enough...

I went to see Le Courbeau in a new print tonight at the GFT but the print hadn't arrived so they are only showing it tomorrow. At a time I can't manage. I did get a free consolatory pass though which I'll use to go see Floating Weeds tomorrow night.

Thirteen- powerful, mostly because I just wanted to tell the characters to fucking get it together, at least a tiny bit. Holly Hunter's accent stands out inexplicably, but her performance is great. Some eyeball-roll worthy moments. The handheld camera work is great but nauseatingly active for the first ten minutes. Strange racial subtext that goes totally unexplored.

25th Hour- Wow. Some insanely great performances, esp. Barry Pepper, who knocks Ed Norton out the box in every scene. Brian Cox! Amazing! Final! Monologue! which makes him three-for-three in stuff I've seen him in this year (+Adaptation and, sadly, Super Troopers)

Traitor.

What other Nicolas Roeg movies are worthwhile? I get the sense his filmography is sort of a mixed bag.

DEMON. I abjure you, etc.

Kinda. I like The Witches a lot and Walkabout is pretty darn classic.

We were discussing Lee Evans film career the other day. Man has he been in some good films. Oddly, since most of his TV work is utter shite.

Cherish was surprisingly sweet in parts, but erratic.

Aristocats, Head, and Tommy are terrific (and would make a really interesting triple bill!) The Secret of NIMH is not quite as good as I remembered, but it's fun, and I always liked the book better anyway.

Poltergeist II missed entirely the point of everything that made the first movie nearly perfect. Poltergeist III is on the same disc, but I haven't re-watched it with full attention yet.

The John Cleese episode of The Muppet Show is on right now, which isn't a movie but is a DVD, so nyah.

I've got Gormenghast but haven't had time to watch it, and Daredevil, Crash, and the second volume of Reign are awaiting the girlfriend having enough free time to watch them (she's an actual grad student, whereas I'm sort of .. flitty ... so her schoolwork takes more time than mine).

Ordered Spice World today, unable to resist temptation, because I needed to order a schoolbook anyway.

The, uh, finger-lickin' good scene had people leaving the theater. I didn't find it that disturbing.

So being as Isabel has left me free of work for the next few days, I'll probably be posting in this thread more frequently this weekend, assuming power holds out decently well.

tim ernst's gaijin cartoon books adapted to film, featuring two vapid, xenophobic, ugly americans. "japan is a wacky country! they reverse their Rs and Ls! haha engrish!" if this was set in New York, the characters would stand out as even more unlikable, but as is, the setting becomes more important than the characters or the plot. sofia has good visuals and her soft camera tone carries over seamlessly from the 70s suburban michigan of her last film which is impressive, but there is a real lack of depth here, these losers aren't very lovable or redeemable. kevin shields's new songs are pretty good, especially the one early in the film (the 2nd song on the score). i'm gonna get a pirated copy on dvd and see it again, but as is, i was pretty disappointed.

Tokyo Drifter: great looking. hard to follow

Talk To Her : remarkable, but I can't pinpoint "why"

Bad Boys II : piece o' shit, Super Sized

Cannabis : Serge & Jane in '70s gangster caper. Very rocking.

Up for later tonight:
Dirty Pretty Things
Winter Light

It was very good...but not great, and certainly not perfect. I did like it quite a bit, but I have trouble thinking it his best since MBL.

Still no Winter Light yet, but maybe in a few hours.

Also on my table unwatched at the moment are:
Tokyo Story
The Pornographers
The Marriage of Maria Braun
A nous la liberte
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

If I can get it together, I'm going to try to see the re-released Scarface today.

1. The shock value of the illicit trade simply isn't that shocking anymore. I seem to remember seeing some movie about this on HBO in the middle of the night six or seven years ago, and it was old news then, too. The characters themselves, however, were completely compelling.

2. The melodramatic choice for Okwe about the Saudi girl is too forced - I simply don't buy that he'd truly be pigeonholed like that. I mean, if Tautou's character can avoid Immigration officials, then why not he?

I guess I just was expecting something a little differently played than this, since it was a Frears film. Again, I did enjoy it quite a bit, but I found that I enjoyed Okwe's non-plot-driven stuff best (his chess buddy, his first boss, casual time with Tautou, etc).

I should get back to watching The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Wonderful progenitor of Die Hard and Speed without pandering as much as those two.

Like Baise Moi, it's entirely phoney as a glimpse of "real life" yet is presented to look hyperrealistic (I like the reeling camerawork, actually). There are leisurely dwelt over scenes of rape and murder (a five-minute long shot of one man bashing in another man's head with a fire extinguisher). Part of me wonders how they made it look that realistic, but most of me wishes I could have that part of my brain back...

pelham 123 is great and matthau is a behemoth in it

Gets a little impressed with itself at times, and it's at these times that it strays a little too far from the narrative current and you get fidgety... Sofia C. definitely has talent but I thought Virgin Suicides was superior.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0075137/

On tap for this week:
The Marriage of Maria Braun
The Accidental Tourist
Terms of Endearment
Big Deal on Madonna Street
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Winter Light
Black Sunday
The Importance of Being Earnest
and probably more, though I can't remember anything else at this time

And speaking of Clair, have you seen Le Million?

I would have been much more into this movie had the fourth wall been intact. It just seemed so corny in the context of an otherwise genuinely frightening movie.

x-post

It's one of my faves.

As for the fourth wall, I gave Funny Games the benefit of the doubt because it's totally fitting with the dark humor - most movies don't justify it, or, for that matter, overuse it. I feel that Haneke made use of it just enough to make it work without overworking it.

I didn't watch it like a traditional suspense film, I guess. The outcome didn't seem to be in doubt.

(Granted, I was on a real vengeance trip at that point and mostly made that some good work had been undone by unnecessary plot trickery.)

But, agreed, the rewinding the film was unfair and a bit garish.

Lemme get this straight:

Haneke's trying to make a criticism of all the wanker/idiotic/thoughtless gimmickry of violence as used and perceived in modern "mainstream" films, and as apotheosis of this, he does something which, honestly, is no less plausible than the entire ending to Hard Boiled or any number of elements from a Tarantino/Bay/Bruckheimer film (just to pick on the most recent violators). And you feel cheated? That's it's unfair? OF COURSE YOU DO! THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT!!!

I knew nothing about the movie or Haneke's agenda when I saw it; all I saw was something that had all of the earmarks of being one of the best movies ever that ended up being really lame and unsatisfying due to the unecessary meta wankery. And really, I don't object to the meta wankery in and of itself as much as I object to the way it was used in the movie. I was already annoyed with the way that dude was winking at the camera and talking to the audience, so when the rewind scene came up, that was pretty much the final straw.

If the story had revolved around Metaman forcing the other characters to recognize the audience for their suffering as opposed to him making invisible asides, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. At the end of the day, it just wasn't a storytelling choice that appealed to me (and, since I really enjoy the movies being criticized in the first place, he was going to have to go a lot farther than he did to win me over to his side).

TS: "Funny Games" vs "Natural Born Killers"

we discussed DTMtBD after blade and during kalifornia because of david duchovney or whatever.

Why? You don't need to "get it" to appreciate the film, per se, although it does add to it quite a bit.

I mean, there's a lot of homosexual subtext in Sirk, for example. Doesn't mean you have to know that to enjoy the movie.

In this case, the message detracted from my enjoyment of the movie because of the hamfistedly stupid way it was put into the plot. I would have been much more forgiving of the meta nonsense if I'd thought it actually had a point while I was watching the movie; as it was, it came across like the writer wasn't convinced that he'd written a decent script so he threw in some "daring" filmmaking ideas to give himself some cred. Since I really, really loved the core concept of the plot, it completely interfered with my enjoyment of the movie.

Hit the Deck
Forbidden Planet

Woody Allen was absolutely classic. Nü-Woody Allen (Jason Biggs) was absolutely dud. Christina Ricci was awful. Stockard Channing was great. And the actress who played Connie was HOTT.

I knew she looked familiar! She was the Wiccan in Blair Witch 2 (which I'd so own, if they'd sell it for $9.99)

Until the Roberts laugh. God, that's annoying - why would you put that in the trailer? "Oh, look a period piece about women's empowerment. Hmmm - OH GOD NO, it's the laugh from Pretty Woman/Erin Brockovich/assorted romantic comedieis. Screw that!"

Solaris, which was good enough, but again, not mindblowing. cf. the "Solderberg is overrated" thread.

Tomorrow I will recieve the newest Eddie Izzard from Netflix. I am very excited.

did i like it? i fucked it.

Yikes. Absolutely engaging, but I'm not sure I feel like dating. Ever again.

Before that, the last film I saw was the original Oceans 11 on TCM (can you tell I can't afford to rent films or go to the cinema?), which was in no way better than the remake. Ace as a star vehicle, but rather dull as a film.

should i buy the dvd of "mary of scotland" with kath hepburn for $20?

how come i had never seen "drums along the mohawk" before? it was great. some astonishing moments that made me gasp. colbert does pretty well (i'm not a huge fan) although fonda has the best lines. the action scenes are tremendously exciting and the film is quite brutal overall. i wonder if it was ford's first film in color? the color is used to terrific effect, although it's rather muted for early technicolor. very rich cast incl. john carradine and, notably, edna may oliver who gives an incredible performance as a salty but generous widow.

he was already one of my favorite directors, but i'm coming to a new level of appreciation for john ford.

There's definitely a lot of goodies I want to hit up on that front, but my switch in homes last year and the increase in rent has really cut back on my ability to indulge in DVD shopping as much. Renting, admittedly, another story, and I might actually start doing that for the first time in ages.

http://www.portugalgay.pt/lxfilmfest/2000/presq.jpg

Is it worth $14.99 for Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily?

Anyway, one point of the story structure - which was otherwise very well done - really bugged me. A lot of films, and badly-written books and comics, often start near the end, just before everything resolves, so that when the story finally gets back to that point there's a cheap sense of closure or symmetry to the story. It's rubbish. There's nothing wrong with the (also common) converging back/front story thing, but just starting at the end with a "I bet you're wondering how we got to this point" or a variation on it, bugs me. It's not justified (internally) by the story, just by a need (external) to make the story shout NOW WE"RE DONE at the right point when it should be able to do that under it's own steam - as indeed CoG would have done.

I guessed all the passed-over/hidden plot bits, but that's not a bad thing.

*runs away in disguise*

On the table/on deck:
Hamlet (Olivier)
Walkabout
Autumn Sonata
The Magic Flute

Bodysong: Well-made full-length collage flick, put together entirely of archive material. Takes a look at the unifying aspects of humanity throughout different times and different cultures.

American Splendor: Wonderful meta version of Harvey Pekar's famous comic.

Uzak (Distant): A Turkish look into the alienation of urban life. Very slow, but ultimately rewarding.

Tan de repente (Suddenly): An Argentinian flick where little happens on the surface, a lot under it. Reminiscent of Stranger Than Paradise, and this is a compliment.

La Chambre des officiers (Officer's Ward): Gripping French drama about WWI hospital ward for soldiers whose faces have been deformed in battle.

Mekhong Full Moon Party: A humane examination on the dialectics between Thailand's traditional religiousness and modern-day scientific outlook.

Salmer fra kjøkkenet (Kitchen Stories): Touching film about the forbidden friendship between a social scientist and his subject of study, an elder rural bachelor.

Rok dábla: This film begins as a Czech folk-rock Spinal Tap, but turns into a study of human condition, creativity and salvation. Wonderfully weird.

Katakuri-ke no kôfuku (The Happiness of Katakuris): Besides Audition, this is the only Takashi Miike flick I've seen that's actually good, not just weird or sick. Better than the Korean film it's based on.

Drive: The best Sabu film ever? Sabu has a wonderfully idiosyncratic style, but none of his previous films have been exactly flawless. Drive is less absurd than Monday and less funny than Dangan ranna, but it's also as deep and touching as Posutoman burusu, and holds together better than the former.

Disappointing films seen on the festival:

Xun qiang (Missing Gun)
Fear X
Japón (Japan)
Hae anseon (The Coast Guard)
O Homem do Ano (The Man of the Year)

Also watched The Stranger (Orson Welles' worst film, allegedly) a couple of nights ago. Been ages since I saw it. It's really okay of its type.

The best video I've seen in a while is definitely All the Real Girls. Oh! ANd I liked Stepford Wives too, but it's obviously not new.

The Son's Room was another that I saw recently. I wasn't really in the mood for a serious movie, and it's about grief. And slow moving. Though I'm glad I saw it, in a strange way.

(also the aliens = mandy patinkin + THE LIMEY!)

the earth post-widely-known-alien-arrival is an under-used setting in film

Well, unless you're a true art film fanatic, don't go see it too tired, because it gets really boring halfway through.

Ugh, man was that bad. Any thoughts on why it was so bad? Other than everything?

See also me ranting a bit here: Rules & Attributes

I'm heading out in a little over an hour to see the new print of Drunken Angel. *creams self*

i saw "dirty pretty things" on sunday, which was ok. astonishingly i've seen nothing since.

the ozu retro comes to paris at the end of october. and manoel de oliveira's new film is out here now, so it's just a matter of time.

i saw Lost in Translation finally last night. it was really good i thought, tho i am a sucker for movies like that. reminded me of Wong Kar-Wai a bit... not sure why.

(fun -> misery -> redemption)

Saw a great surfing documentary Step Into Liquid. Really beautiful, I wish it had gone on for another 4 hours. Funny/touching scenes of surfers in Ireland, Viet Nam and the Lake Michigan. Frightening waves, cute guys, not too much macho brah bullshit, a nice enough soundtrack. Not enough girls, though..

I'm so behind on all my movie-watching right now!

Trapped (Kevin Bacon and Courtney Love as baby snatchers)
Heavy Metal
Dr. Strangelove
Run (early '90s action/suspense flick)

Hardly Working (1980)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Jackass: The Movie (2002)
Xanadu (1980)
The Sea (2002, depressing Baltasar Kormákur movie)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925... or 1929?)
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)

Yup. I love Jack Black!

the last i can remember is sur mes levres. films i missed in the theater cos i am lame: the one about the paris opera ballet, sweet sixteen.

On deck:
The Blue Kite
Bob le flambeur
Broken Blossoms
The Silence

I tend not to do much well, so there's no reason not to believe this too.

Ocean's Eleven with George Clooney. A fun movie.

And Lilo and Stitch was on TV the other night.

lots of very dull-looking french movies advertised here, mostly about middle-aged couples undergoing crises (all seem to involve some comely 20something woman as well), that don't play in the states, featuring toothy actors with whom i'm only vaguely familiar. i suppose this is encouraging.

American Splendor
School of Rock
Lost in Translation
The Big Lebowski

A lot more, but they've all blurred together.

A quick question -- Ive seen all the Coen Brothers movies except the Hudsucker Proxy. Anyone here see it? Is it good?

...

Fishing with John - is this not the greatest parody of a TV show that ever made it to TV (albeit barely)? John Lurie (of Jarmusch films' fame, to say nothing of the Lounge Lizards) takes various celebrities on tax-free fishing vacations. Awkward moments ensue, few fish are caught, catastrophe invariably strikes. The Willem Dafoe and Tom Waits episodes are completely classico.

They Live - John Carpenter + social satire + Roddy Piper + Keith David + Piper/David knockdown = winner

Clean and Sober - surprisingly great Michael Keaton performance. I'm shocked that Glenn Gordon Caron hasn't moved on to anything bigger. Solid performances all around, in particular to supporting cast of Kathy Baker, Morgan Freeman, and M. Emmett Walsh. And I although I pretty much thought "Dream On" the second Brian Benben hit the screen, his performance is played so delicately that I almost instantly forgot "Dream On" a second later. Too bad he's essentially ham now.

On deck:
The Harder They Come
Billy Liar
Jackie Brown

Last Sunday: Finding Nemo = cute and engaging enough, but not as good as Monster's Inc.

Last Wednesday: Spirited Away = brilliant

Today: Kill Bill = ?

Tomorrow: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen = hmmm, it hasn't had a good review yet, has it?

Intolerable Cruelty= MUCH better than I expected, the script is a bit of a mess and halfway through you start to wonder what the point of it all is, but Clooney and Billy Bob are indeed both very watchable, and like all Coen films, there are some real star turns from the supporting cast. I laughed.

Sweet Sixteen=I really enjoyed this despite its similarity to several other films. Ken Loach's economy is truly incredible, and the film artfully treads a fine line between unsentimentality and sensationalism. The kid that played Liam makes that Billy Elliot kid look like an amateur.

I'm poor but I have lots of 99c vouchers for the video store, so I guess I'll be posting on here a lot now.

Koyaanisqatsi - what can I possibly say about this except that it should be mandatory watching. I've heard mixed things about the other two, so I'm kinda tepid about seeing them, since I'd rather not spoil the grand impressions this one made on me.

Zhantai (Platform) - re-watched this after listing it on a thread I honestly can't remember at the moment. It is indeed slowgoing, but I admire the freshness of style. Detachment indeed, but I think I'm going to keep my eyes on Zhang Kie Jia from now on.

On deck:
Jackie Brown
Straw Dogs
The Piano Teacher
Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie
Suspiria

I saw Kill Bill recently, anybody wanna talk about it?

Bram Stoker's Dracula: This remake has No-Talent Reeves and Shoplifter Ryder in, as well as Tony Hopkins and Gary Oldman. So opulent and pseudo-ernest camp, I laughed the whole way through. Plus the worst Transelvanian accent ever done.

DVD night a week ago: Love & Death, and 12 Angry Men.

Also, Kill Bill.

busy times.

Magnolia : Hammy, stupid retarded sibling of Grand Canyon . As usual, PT Anderson casts a few wonderful performers along with some overrated bad actors and has them act out as completely uncompelling characters. Jason Robards > wonderful/Julianne Moore > expressionless stick of wax.

Frida : Nice looking, uncompelling soap opera. Salma Hayek was just too darn purty/sexy to play Kahlo. Alfred Molina too darn normal looking to play Rivera.

Russian Ark : Shit made my jaw drop it was so beautiful in places. Up there with Time Regained as a fave recent depiction of dead rich European folks that has made me just want to live in their world it's so gorgeous. And the guy playing The Marquis would ,make a perfect Nosferatu/Count Orlock with just the right make up.

Magnolia : Hammy, stupid retarded sibling of Grand Canyon . As usual, PT Anderson casts a few wonderful performers along with some overrated bad actors and has them act out as completely uncompelling characters. Jason Robards = wonderful/Julianne Moore = expressionless stick of wax.

Frida : Nice looking, uncompelling soap opera. Salma Hayek was just too darn purty/sexy to play Kahlo. Alfred Molina too darn normal looking to play Rivera.

Russian Ark : Shit made my jaw drop it was so beautiful in places. Up there with Time Regained as a fave recent depiction of dead rich European folks that has made me just want to live in their world it's so gorgeous. And the guy playing The Marquis would ,make a perfect Nosferatu/Count Orlock with just the right make up.

Friday night I watched a South Korean movie called Nowhere to Run which was like an artier take on John Woo. Great murder scene to Bee Gee's "Holiday". Very novel take on action movies.

Last Saturday I watched about 15 minutes of Split Second (the one with Rutger Hauer in a flooded London after a vampire, normally I love Rutger Hauer but this movie was unmitigated shite so I turned it off)

Then watched The Great Gatsby on BBC, it was years since I read the book and I had forgotten it. The movie was quite enjoyable.

Tonight it's either 28 Days Later or House of 1000 Corpses, and maybe Mystic River this afternoon.

Merovingian. (It's the pre-Carolingian founding dynasty of the French monarchy.)

Pretty close to true, yeah. I can't get past how absolutely bored I was during the Neo v. Smith fights, though. It was close to the feeling I get playing first-person shooter games with cheat codes - "oh, wow, I am INVINCIBLE" for a second, and then "oh, hey, this sucks."

Saw Mystic River between classes - not bad, but really not that great. Sean "I Am Sam" Penn was pretty scary, Tim Robbins was hammy.

Almost made me want to go sign up to work for someone's campaign (notably Al Sharpton, who "doesn't hate white people, just hates white liberals" in Tucker Carlson's words - a sentiment I can rally behind!)

I cried at how great it was that she was wearing a translucent rubber dress with nothing on underneath. Rawr.

So all in all I want a giant hawaiian genetically created by BAD SCIENCE fish who is really really really REALLY good-looking.

Zoolander is BRILLIANT!

Ha, the strongest emotional reaction I've had lately was watching episode 6 of The Office, when Gareth breaks down because David Brent is leaving the office. And that's supposed to be a comedy. Fear my twee fuk.

Pete, you are quite right. I realized this just after I posted it. Damn,

Well, it was okay, a tour-de-force scene with the oil tanker, but the editing was incredibly jarring and odd. C+

"Be a good chap, and take me to your leader, if you'd be so kind..."

Actually, I should ward off pedants by saying this may have been a gas tanker or something. Get thee back, pedants!!!

Please tell me someone was paying you.

but irma vep rules the school!

josie and the pussycats is hellish and maddening

that is probably the worst sentence I have ever written.

"guess what? ELF is funny and good!

I cracked up frquently

WF has been good in lots of stuff, IMO. I haven't seen the "frat house movie" whose name escapes me.

Thanks, IMDB.

he really is a very very funny performer, and he really rocks the manchild stylee like no one else, especially in this movie elf.

http://www.2hot-hot-hot.com/images/12194.GIF

you don't have it rented out tonight by any chance do you? buddy?

Detour - oddly compelling, but I have a tough time showing much sympathy. But I don't know why. Maybe he was too whiney? In any case, the pacing is odd and off, but it tells itself quickly - they shot it in six days. The ending is suck - not for what happens so much as how badly they execute it.

The Blue Kite - my new favorite Chinese film. Ironically, the first one I can remember seeing on the big screen was To Live, which bears a more than passing (if less critical) similarity.

Don't Look Now - whoa. I didn't realize until recently how much my sensibilities parallel Roeg's.

I Was Possessed by God - Much like its hallucinogenic trip, flashes of brillance, much hilarity, and much pointless buffoonery.

In the Bathtub of the World - Genius. Traces of McElwee, but less interested in semi-obsession in anything other than small doses. I'm certain this film is what some would-be bloggers aspire to.

Casual Fridays (produced by TV Carnage) - Shatner, soap opera stars attacked, rough cuts of Orson Welles's wine commercials, Gary Coleman, John Holmes, telecined footage of Anna Nicole Smith takes, televangelism, Justin Timberlake at Star Search. The remnants of horrible TV recycled and reordered to turn the experience of watching it against McLuhan's "cold" medium. You may never want to watch TV again after seeing this.

Exasperado - Josh Slates desperately needs to be reloaded, methinks.

Straw Dogs - thank god England isn't generally like this. Peckinpah as master of the examination of manhood/violence by portraying both weakness and machismo honestly. Tarantino might be able to learn a thing or two by actually watching these films instead of viewing them. This and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia surely are Peckinpah's masterpieces (yes, I know I'm omitting The Wild Bunch).

That would seem to be all for now.

On deck:
A Little Stiff
Dracula (Browning)
Broken Blossoms

Just don't leave the city, GS.

But for recent viewings:

Willard - Liked parts of it, but it was too predictable and I practically cried when my favorite mouse was killed off

Don't Look Now - mid-70s horror flick which was more sad than scary

Charlie's Angels Full Throttle - I might have despised it, but somehow the randomness of it all made it a little better

though i do remember what a friend of mine said afterwards: "it's true kids can be surprising, but this kid was consistently surprising."

and he gets all the best lines too.

I got the sense that the horror was supposed to be more a dread-type horror, though. So I hope you're not discounting it for that.

andy

:o

La Dolce Vita
The entire Three Colors Trilogy
Bad Santa
American Grafitti
Rushmore
Stevie

I did. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen any of them before (though I have seen the Decalog and Veronique). Blue was a bit disappointing. White was fantastic. Red was possibly one of the best films I've ever seen. I'm still getting through all the extras (Geoff Andrew! Yay!), but the whole set is now on my Chanukah list.

also what did you think of stevie?

An interesting enough film, but something of a missed opportunity.

and bad santa?

Surprisingly good. See the thread!

actually I don't even know

Intolerable Cruelty
Memento
Igby Goes Down
The Happiness of the Katakuris
A Guy Thing
Elf

T-giving rentals: "Igby Goes Down," like it a lot, liked all the characters with the exception of Igby, nice to see Claire Danes playing an Angela-esque role, "Adaptation" wha? what was going on there?, and "The Safety of Objects," nice, post-Altman-y, but not terrific. Pleased to see Moira Kelly from "One Tree Hill." I'd like to read the book now.

(/Canadian)

Glory Daze - um, yeah, I loved this movie when I was 15, because they quoted Camus and were wacky liberal arts majors, and went to a school I wanted to go to, and listened to the same punk rock I was listening to. Now, not so much. I guess it wasn't terrible for what it was, but I didn't find it funny or interesting.

About A Boy - Highly enjoyable, even if I spent the first 1:15 wondering when Weisz was going to show up as Grant's love interest, and then didn't care.

Frightening thread running through these that I realized while typing this - Glory Daze was produced by the head producer of Project Greenlight/BOSH, who also produced American Pie, which was directed by the guys who directed About A Boy.

Far From Heaven - Todd Haynes delicately retains the title of my favorite active American director.

Celebrity - Unexceptional Woody Allen. Kenneth Branagh = the Allen role. Why? Great props, though, to Charlize Theron and Leonardo Di Caprio. Oh, and another great job by Judy Davis. Actually, all the acting was fine, just I don't really get what Allen felt the need to say - that we're all celebrity whores? Like that idea hasn't already been somewhat latent in his work.

Jacob's Ladder - I had almost forgotten anything about this film (save the ending), so I decided to pull it again. Where the hell has Danny Aiello gone recently? Watching this film reminds me that he used to be a top-line star in the late 80s and early 90s. There is much I find extremely admirable in the film, especially in that pretty much all of the special effects are in-camera. Matt Craven's role was cut down quite a bit, and I felt that he just came in too late in the film. I wish that at least some, if not all, of the deleted scenes, were included (note that I watched deleted scenes in exception to my usual avoidance of them).

High Heels - Almodovar's build-up between Women of the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and All About My Mother was in his mastery of the finer points of the medium. High Heels does this well, except for its one weakness in that, solely due to one closeup too long and too early in the film, I figured out almost all the surprises within the first twenty minutes. Otherwise a great piece of fun, as Almodovar almost always is.

Chunhyang - rewatching this, I definitely want to check out more Im Kwon-taek and Korean cinema in general.

The Man Without a Past - ditto above, except replace Im with Aki Kaurismaki and Korean with Finnish.

Return of the King - definitely the best of the trilogy. As mentioned before, the six endings (I counted) were more than annoying; "there is an extended edition for a reason, Peter!" Does it deserve best picture Oscar? I don't think so, if only for the fact that it doesn't feel, for me, like the best motion picture released in 2003. I doesn't enlarge film or give us anything we didn't have before in the way of cultural, human, or intellectual need. Now, I know that this may seem to be over-valuing the Oscars, sure. But the whole LOTR series is only seen so well because it is, to my knowledge, the only blockbuster trilogy that has been well executed consistently across the board for all three films. Now, that's fine. But exceptional only from a production standpoint - really, we've deserved that for a long time from our blockbuster films, but haven't gotten that. It was only a matter of time. Were LOTR the second to do this, we wouldn't be creaming ourselves over it as much because it would already be a known sensation.

In America - Paddy Considine is going to be known as a great actor soon. The acting all around was perfect, especially from the two girls, who don't go too maudlin or too adult to be plausible children in their acting (although the older daughter almost overtreads the latter). My candidate for a best picture contender, although I'm not certain I'd give it the award even if it were within my power.

minority report: an equation [shouldn't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but don't read if you really, really want no clue]

Son of the Bride - An okay film but what bugged me was that something so Cold Feet-ish could be made in the same year and country that people rioted over poverty and mass unemployment. The thing could easily have been set in Ohio.

Laurel Canyon
I Love You, I Love You Not (Claire Danes circa MSCL years); excellent CD in NYC private school uniform action
Freaky Friday
Pumpkin
Tadpole

Exorcist Prequel
The Village
A Home At the End of the World
The Bourne Supremacy
Intimate Strangers

http://www.dvdmaniacs.net/Captures/CapturesE-I/El_Topo/topo1.jpg
http://www.karatemovie.com/cult/El_Topo_Rep.jpg

I saw stills from jodorowsky's other film extravangaza: the holy mountian (1973) which was probably more bizarre, so that's gonna be my next.

some of my favourite shots ever are in that movie!!

elias merhige, man. lookitthat.

but I would love to see that movie in a theatre sometime. the images scream for a wider view.

At The Height Of Summer. vietnamese film with Arab Strap on the soundtrack. who'd've thunk?

Woman Of The Dunes. Japanese film. and entomologist gets thrown down a hole and forced to live with a woman and spend all his time shovelling sand.

Pressure. First all-black english film based around life in Notting Hill around 1976.

Devil's Backbone. spooky Mexican ghost story set in an orphanage.

and this gem was a BBC2 matinee:

Hell Drivers (1957). great little black and white nothing of a film (about a trucking company) featuring (deep breath...) William Hartnell (Dr Who), Patrick McGoohan (Prisoner), Sean Connery (James Bond), David McCallum (Invisible Man From UNCLE), Herbert Lom (Lady Killers), Gordon Jackson (The Professionals), Stanley Baker, Sid James and Alfie Bass.

> not without my handbag

is great. lovely plasticky feel to the models.

Today I saw confidentially yours. watching a lot of french stuff lately, just by coincidence really.

i am bored by or indifferent to just about everything i watch lately. i need to either find some really good stupid movies or get myself a better attention span.

Haha... I *almost* went to that, but I had just been to all the Juracek movies at the Egyptian and skipped it.

Until The End Of The World (the full 4.5 hour director's cut)
The Professionals (the Lee Marvin, Jack Palance, Claudia Cardinale one)
Battle Royale
Croupier
Joseph Kilian
Case For A Rookie Hangman
Double Indemnity (outdoor screening at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery)

how did you stand it?

I love it for it's sprawling Eurotrashness - it holds my attention and looks good just enough for me ignore just how uncomfortable Dommartin and Hurt appear on screen. Whereas the short version of UTEOTW is a highlight reel of their utter lack of chemistry. Anyway, it's Wenders' best movie post-Paris Texas.

As soon as I think of more examples, I want to start a "films that succeed in spite of the cast"

http://tedstrong.com/graphics/twolaneposter.gif

huh?

but at 2h50m and playing opposite the jet li on bbc1 i don't think it has much of a chance... 8)

also have 3 mitchum films taped during the week to watch (the one i did see, The Locket, had a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. phew)

he was an artist who threw himself out of a window in The Locket...

returning the favour:

---

Tue 14 Sep, 22:00-00:50 170mins Stereo Widescreen B&W

A Touch of Zen
In 14th century China a young artist befriends a pretty girl, unaware that she is the daughter of a murdered nobleman and a mistress of the martial arts.

King Hu's classic Kung Fu masterpiece was one of the first Hong Kong action films to gain recognition in the West. [King Hu, 1969]

---

and there's another taiwanese(?) 'comedy western' next friday (i missed the beginning of friday's, taped the last 3/4s but it was too gaudy to watch)

others from last week:
Sailor Beware! (1956)
Peggy Mount and Gordon Jackson.

Beyond A Reasonable Doubt (1956)
Bloke frames himself for murder to prove how easy it is (and how dangerous the death penalty is). Great twist.

From This Day Forward (1946)
US Demob romance.

Twin Warriors (1993)
I saw an advert in the cinema once for Jet Li's 'The One' and thought it looked like the biggest Matrix ripoff since time begain. Then i saw Twin Warriors and, well, you know the Burly Brawl from Matrix 2? iit borrows a lot from one of the scenes in this.

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
Great and another entry for Best Opening Titles (Saul Bass). 60s, B&W, reminded me of Polanski.

A Kid For Two Farthings (1955)
Great little East-End of London drama. Kid buys a goat with one horn believing it to be a unicorn. Wrestling. Diana Dors.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1997)
nuff said.

am on 15(.5) films this month and it's only the 13th...

Lots of Preminger on recently or soon too. (Man With Golden Arm, Bunny Lake, Angel Face...)

part of the Film Comment review of Catherine Breillat's new movie -

As Gaspar Noé taught us, the gates to hell can be found inside raunchy gay clubs. It's to one such disco inferno that the Woman goes to slit her wrists. Was it the popper fumes and the slutty Gaultier tank tops that drove her into the abyss? Nope: "Because I'm a woman" will suffice. Luckily, a concerned Man (Rocco Siffredi) intervenes, helps bandage her up, and chaperones her on a stroll through her murky Walpurgisnacht. Woman thanks Man with a blow job and a job offer. As an "impartial" audience, she'll pay him to spend several nights at her cliffside mansion critiquing her exposed flesh. "Watch me where I'm unwatchable."

The key word here, in more ways than one, is "unwatchable." What follows is a quasi-Sadean scenario spread - and I do mean spread - over three nights. The first night vividly one-ups Gustave Courbet's epochal crotch-canvas, The Origin of the World, and posits a bold companion piece, Finger-banging the Origin of the World. Night two dispenses with dialogue ("Your words are inept reproaches!") before sounding the swampy depths of the Woman's unmentionables with a garden tool-cum-tuning fork. Night three is an extended meditation on the use of bloody tampons as tea bags. We can be thankful, at least, that the Woman doesn't offer "biscuits." Meanwhile, the ocean outside is "roiling like a bitch in heat," and audiences are starting to roll their eyes.

Personally, as a member of the so-called impartial fraternity, I haven't had this much exposure to a vulva since I was born. So let me come clean: the moist, hairy spectacles of Anatomy of Hell made me say, "Ew!" Busted, homo!

Matador - Almodovar with a decent thriller. I can't say too much more, I guess I'm just PA'd out for now.

The Hours - the whores, more like. Who the fuck allowed this monstrosity to exist?

The Dancer Upstairs - a political revolution thriller with a heart. Real props to Malkovich, although I wonder if he chose for it to be in English b/c it's his first language or b/c of his target audience. If the latter, for shame... I really enjoyed this film - it seemed to call out a bit towards the personal impact of slow considered moves and a very well implied sword of Damocles.

Meet the Fockers - Hoffman's very enjoyable, for sure, and my bro and me were the only ones in a packed SoFlo audience laughing at the Empire Strikes Back reference, but it's more or less the same movie, no?

Kinsey - decent film that seemed to be heading towards greatness until...WHAT A HORRIBLE ENDING. What was that? So many ways to conclude a biographical film, and they pick the most inexplicably pointless one. Ah, metaphor overblown like a dead beached whale.

Sideways - Thomas Haden Church completely stole this film, and if you don't admit it, you're hanging on to American Splendor way too much. Giamatti's good, no doubt, but Church....

Return of the Jedi - I got dragged into watching the new DVD. The changed ending sucks even worse - now there're Gungans shouting "weesa free!" and Hayden is making an evil grin to Luke at the end. Otherwise, the film is painfully aged compared to my last looks at it several years ago. All the fart and belching jokes from the prequels...they started here. The delivery of most of the lines is piss poor even from Harrison. (Actually, Hamill seems to be the most pragmatic as far as how to approach the script.) Fisher clearly is having no fun. The Ewoks aren't as annoying as I remember, believe it or not, it's just that they can't interact well with characters like Leia, Han, Threepio, or Chewie. Quite frankly, I blame the pro actors - most people go with them b/c they're the heroes, but they blew the Ewoks' chances of going down well, IMHO. Jabba actually looks decent in this film b/c, well, he's a real physical puppet instead of a plasticene buncha bytes. The dancing stuff is more embarrassing than before - the new celebration music at the end, though, is starting to settle in. I don't miss Yub Nub anymore.

Monster - it's a helluva performance by Theron, but the film just really put me off in a way. Not so much the performance, or the acts, or the plot, or anything like that. I just had difficulty having sympathy for them. It just got maybe too realistic.

The Sopranos, Season Two - Tony's cleaning house. Jeah. Robert Patrick as a gambling schmuck, the whole D-Girl subplot with Chris, Livia going demented, Silvio being Silvio, Janice...ah, I could eat this all for dinner.

On deck:
Metropolis
The Last Movie
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Before Sunset

I couldn't agree more. This was the worst film of 2002. I kept thinking that the friction from Meryl Streep's fidgiting would cause her to burst into flame.

Also--at which point in his life did sunny Jeff Daniels wake up and realize, "I'm an elderly, obese queen?"

Girolamo, be sure and post your thoughts on Sex, Lies, etc. when you've seen it. I haven't seen it since it came out. I remember thinking that it was really fresh at the time. But now, I wonder. We've seen the shrewish Laura San Giacomo so much on TV now doing her horrible act--likewise Andi McDowell and Peter Galagher. Turns out too that James Spader doesn't just play creepy guys... May be interesting anthropologically.

last movie i saw was Dr. Akagi--it was very strange and im pretty sure i didnt get it at all (what's with the whale and the bomb and is the hepatitis some overarching metaphor? i dont get it!) but i was entertained.

before that House of Flying Daggers--most fun i have had in a movie theater in some time.

Star Wars - awful
Dominion: The Exorcist Prequel - not awful, but not very good

watched Videodrome last night, good, I didn't realize Debbie Harry could act that well, felt like it could have been longer to flesh out the transformation/hallucination process, it really seemed to just throw that on you and explain it away rather than proceeding organically.

Donnie Darko Special Edition
thoroughly diluted through overexplanation. The o.g. edition had mystery going for it and with that came a weird poignance, here with all the cards laid out it's just much more of an exercise and much more...annoying.
almost done with F for Fake(thanks to the Orson Welles LSD thread), very fun so far.

House of Flying Daggers - This was quite a good film! If I recall, this was meant to be Zhang Yimou's "answer" to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and while I'm not sure how it works in that regard, it does work better than that film in most ways. Zhang Ziyi is good, as she usually is, as is Takeshi Kaneshiro, but Andy Lau owns the film, despite a thankless role. Based on this and Infernal Affairs, he's grown into a far greater actor than I would have imagined based on his earlier works (of which I've only seen a small handful, admittedly).

,br>I don't feel like saying much about them, though.

: /

No, it did make up for it - that's how good it was.

I finally got round to buying - and watching - the new DVD of 'Céline and Julie go boating'. It was like an especially clever episode of Buffy - if the lead characters were Willow and Tara, and if Tara were less of a drip. High praise, indeed. I half-dread, half anticipate a Charlie Kaufman meta-adaptation that digitally inserts contemporary characters into the existing film.

I also finally got around to buying the Preston Sturges box set. 'The Lady Eve' is just grand, but what on earth does Barbara Stanwyck see in Henry Fonda? Not even Stanley Cavell can convince me of this match.

lost interest in Preminger's Laura about halfway through at the weekend too. not enough explosions.

someone mentioned a bunch of out-of-copyright / public domain films available on the interweb recently (maybe the gadget show last night). lots of old films and the odd new one that i guess the producer has gifted, Driller Killer being the one i remember.

oh, here:
http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/nshowcat.html?category=ALL

Silent Hill - not bad at all, one of the better games/movies translations and a half decent horror flick to boot. quality ending as well.

Eternal Sunshine blah blah - yeah didn't do nothing for me im afraid.

Time to Leave - a bit dull and mawkish, but the main french guy was hot and Jeanne Moreau rules.

JtN, I also like the font on the subway signs.

I've steered clear of movies this year, but here's 2007 so far:

Canonize
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)

See
trailers from Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez/Rob Zombie/Edgar Wright/Eli Roth)
Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright)
The Simpsons Movie (David Silverman)

Consider
Black Snake Moan (Craig Brewer)
main features from Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino)
Day Night Day Night (Julia Loktev)
The Host (Joon-ho Bong)

Pass
Once (John Carney)
First Snow (Mark Fergus)
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (Mary Jordan)
Padre Nuestro (Christopher Zalla)
Congorama (Philippe Falardeau)
Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)
The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

Destroy
300 (Zach Snyder)
Rome Rather Than You (Tariq Teguia)
Creepshow III (Ana Clavell & James Glenn Dudelson)

Creepshow III????? oouf!!!

This year I've only seen:

The Departed
Pan's Labyrinth
28 Weeks Later (pretty good for a movie, very good for a modern horror film, excellent for a sequel)
Hairspray (fun, but Travolta sucks at being a chick)
The Simpsons Movie (fucking hilarious)

where's a good list of movies released this year?

best was absolutely Killer of Sheep, second best was Death Proof or Pan's Labyrinth (was it a 2007 release?)

IMDb must have a list somewhere.

Past few weeks:

1. Little Miss Sunshine - sweet. I did not expect that ending but it really couldn't have ended another way. :)
2. Blades of Glory - skip.
3. Pan's Labyrinth - Loved it.
4. Harry Potter V - I liked it better before I read the final book. Needs more wand battles.
5. The Simpsons movie - Excellent! Way funnier than I expected it to be.
6. The Devil and Daniel Johnston - Good. I'm not much of a Daniel Johnston fan but this was pretty harrowing.
7. Alpha Dog - Justin Timberlake was good in this but otherwise, hilariously terrible.

DVDs I have but haven't watched yet:
1. Cronenberg's Stereo/Crimes of the Future
2. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
3. A Scanner Darkly
4. Howl's Moving Castle
5. Touchez Pas Au Grisbi

I watched Da Vinci Code last night. Wow.