Last (x) movies you saw (II)

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.