Last (x) movies you saw (II)

My Letterboxd = https://letterboxd.com/jer_fairall/

Me on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/PollyPrecoder/

also, me: https://letterboxd.com/jamesdevine/

49-17 (Baldwin, 1917) 6/10
Skate Kitchen (Moselle, 2018) 6/10
*Husbands (Cassavetes, 1970) 8/10
The Letter (Wyler, 1940) 7/10
The Merry World of Leopold Z (Carle, 1965) 6/10
Private Life (Jenkins, 2018) 8/10
The Only Game in Town (Stevens, 1970) 4/10
The Public Enemy (Wellman, 1931) 7/10
*The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940) 7/10
Rembrandt (Korda, 1936) 6/10

https://letterboxd.com/carrotbourke/

I just watched Coherence, which was fine, fairly impressive it's budget, I guess.

Then I watched Jarman's Wittgenstein, which I bought years ago and never got around to watching. It was much better than I expected, actually, but what an odd production. Co-written by Terry Eagleton, produced by Tariq Ali (I'm assuming it's the same Tariq Ali, anyway).

you can find me on L'boxd if yer clever

Leave No Trace was excellent; the subtle recurrence of the seahorse - an animal where the male carries the young - was a lovely touch. Great, honest understated performances and script.
Feel like you can give it a feminist reading as "we have to learn to let go of our toxic, self-destructive men" if you'd care to. Or not. Either way, totally worth a watch.

Eagleton and Ali’s involvement in Wittgenstein might account for why it depicts him as much more pro soviet than I recall him being (though it’s been ages since I read Monk’s bio).

Wasn't expecting much from "The Hate U Give," but it was really intense and pretty righteous, not even just for a YA movie.

I really liked the novel and heard the movie made some convervative changes, so I’m worried, but I’ll still give it a watch as soon as I can.

From Ozon and down it's seen to prepare for the Berlin Film Festival, but then I found out I screwed up the application, so I¨m probably not going anyway, lol.

Small Town Killers (Bornedal)
Checkered Ninja (Matthesen)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Persichetti, Ramsay & Rothman)
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Lanthimos)*
Heli (Escalante)*
The Untamed (Escalante)*
Post Tenebras Lux (Reygadas)*
Belleville Baby (Engberg)
Tulpan (Dvortsevoy)
Frantz (Ozon)
Double Lover (Ozon)
Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (Côté)
Boris Without Béatrice (Côté)
Beyond the Hill (Alper)
Frenzy (Alper)
The Dreamed Path (Schanelec)
Faces Places (Varda & JR)
Tuya’s Marriage (Wang Quan’an)

The Longest day
Heaven knows, Mr Allison
couple of Robert Mitchum films that were on Film 4 a couple of days ago when i was working on a shirt.

I really liked the novel and heard the movie made some convervative changes, so I’m worried, but I’ll still give it a watch as soon as I can.

I didn't read the book, but my wife and older daughter did, and they said it was mostly pretty faithful. It gave my younger daughter (11) nightmares last night. Does not sidestep or downplay some pretty serious stuff.

Shiraz (1928, Osten) 8/10
*Unbreakable (2000, Shyamalan) 5/10
I Met Him in Paris (1937, Ruggles) 7/10
One Way Passage (1932, Garnett) 6/10
Enter Laughing (1967, Reiner) 5/10
The Good Bad Man (1916, Dwan) 6/10
Tomorrow’s Promise (1967, Owens) 6/10
Night Tide (1961, Harrington) 8/10
The Half-Breed (1916, Dwan) 7/10
Bronco Billy (1980, Eastwood) 7/10
Faust (1926, Murnau) 8/10

'49-'17 (Baldwin, 1917)
Day Dreams (Cline & Keaton, 1922)
Kiki (Taylor, 1931)
Mr. Robinson Crusoe (Sutherland, 1932)
So This Is Africa (Cline, 1933)
The World Moves On (Ford, 1934)
Husbands and Lovers (Stahl, 1924)
Girls About Town (Cukor, 1931)

wow, u r very kind to Wheeler & Woolsey.

I like them (definitely a minority opinion) and I liked the gender role reversal.

oh I like them too, but feel guilty about it.

Fantastic Beasts 2 : 4/10
Forest Of Bliss : 8/10
*Women Of The Night : 9/10
Aquamaing : 6/10
S'en Fout La Mort : 8/10
*There Was A Father : 10/10
The Image Book : 9/10
The Shop Around The Corner : 10/10

I tried to avoid superhero movies in 2018, so I played a bit of catch-up this month.

*rewatch of Ernest Saves Christmas (Cherry, 1988) 6/10
Coco (Disney, Unkrich and Molina, 2017) 6/10
Black Panther (Disney, Coogler, 2018) 7
Thor Ragnarok (Disney, Waititi, 2017) 7
Mary Poppins Returns (Disney, Marshall, 2018) 6
Avengers: Infinity War (Disney, Russos, 2018) 4
Bird Box (Netflix, Bier, 2018) 5
Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955) 6
Reel Bad Arabs (2006) 6; recommended by neil cicierega on ernest roulette
Roma (Netflix, Cuaron, 2018) 6

Black Panther Panchali

last 3 was a trio of Marvel flicks, I'm playing catch-up:

Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange
Guardians of the Galaxy 2

CA: CW was a perfectly decent flick, suffering from the issue a lot of films have and one which always bothers me, which is that a bunch of people decided to end some conversations a couple minutes too early or not say something they should have said, and it led to conflict and misunderstanding. But it's entertaining enough and decent overall, the cast is good as usual. It's just nowhere near Winter Soldier. 6/10

Doctor Strange was alright. A 6.5/10 movie, with a good cast and visuals and storytelling and so on.

GOTG2 was a surprise, since I'd heard the sequel wasn't as good, but I really enjoyed it: the color scheme, the cast, the humor, it was long but not too, too long (ok just maybe a bit too long). The Marvel machine taking on a straight science fiction story is more up my alley (which is maybe why the craft being applied to the fantasy genre is a the reason why I enjoy the first couple Thor movies more than other people seem to). Maybe this was an 8/10? Whatever.

I don't put much effort in it these days, but: https://letterboxd.com/ephender/

just saw Three Identical Strangers, what a bonkers story. couldn't stop thinking about the 3rd guy picking up the paper and seeing the "twins, separated at birth!" headline. the fact that they all had the same mannerisms and resting poses and everything else was really interesting to me

Manhattan Baby (Fulci, 1982)- 2.5/5 - Didn't really feel this one. Unusually limp score from Fabio Frizzi, surprisingly setbound for something that starts with gorgeous location shoots and seemingly really did shoot exteriors in NYC. The stuffed bird attack that feels like it's finally going to finally ramp this movie up into proper batshit Fulci territory is basically the end of anything interesting
A Serious Man (Coens, 2009)- 4.5/5- FUCKING LOVED IT. The mostly unknown cast (Fred Melamed GOAT though), the cinematography (color grading especially), the fucking showstopper "Goy's Teeth" story...all of it
The Favourite (Lanthimos, 2018)- 4/5- Shockingly funny, the period detail scratches my ever present Draughtsman's Contract itch (I have seen none of the other nominees but if this doesn't win the Oscar for Best Costume Design...I will be unsurprised because the Oscars are more meaningless each year, but whatever), I want Olivia Colman to get more high profile roles outside of the UK bubble
*Phantasm (Coscarelli, 1979)- 3.5/5- Have loved this since I was a teenager and still holds up
Phantasm II (Coscarelli, 1988)- 3/5- Does not hold up as much; haven't watched any extras yet but obvious *massive* studio interference (I have major problems with 3 but even with that as evidence I don't think Coscarelli would have intentionally scrambled the timeline with a weird mess of epistolary voiceover, or a major character dying a gruesome, climactic, expensive sfx death weirdly early only to be immediately handwaved away as a hallucination)
The Lobster (Lanthimos, 2015)- 4/5- I had only seen Dogtooth before starting in on Lanthimos this month and I firmly intend to see everything else as soon as I possibly can
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (Coscarelli, 1994)- 2.5/5- A fucking mess; all the sidekicks introduced to disguise the fact that the returning/original Mike can't act suck (the kid is a serial killer, Rocky is a cringeworthy portrayal of a lesbian-coded character and Reggie constantly trying to get in her pants doesn't make him relatable, it makes him a fucking creep); Coscarelli's Sam Raimi envy (after the little shoutout in the previous movie) would be fine if he understood what made Sam Raimi's films work
*Goto, Isle of Love (Borowczyk, 1969)- 4/5- taking my time and really digging through Arrow's Borowczyk discs. I enjoyed this the first time I saw it but a rewatch convinced me it's absolutely brilliant. The color film inserts, the Handel piece, Borowczyk's perspective-free framing and shadowless lighting, etc
*Theatre of Mr and Mrs Kabal (Borowczyk, 1967)- 4/5- Still really fucking funny
Living to Die (Hauser, 1990)- 1.5/5- a selection for Philly's Psychotronic Film Society; things Wings Hauser, director, does not understand: film noir, the 180-degree rule, breasts, why mickey-mousing fell out of favor in film scores, what makes jazz music cool, the fact that it's not a great idea to actually name a character "Jazz"
Blanche (Borowczyk, 1971)- 4/5- Monty Python and the Holy Grail probably lessened the impact of its grimy, lived-in medieval setting but there's still the portrayal of medieval society as utterly psychologically alien that I found so compelling in (the half of) Hard to Be a God (that I managed to stay awake through) and that reminded me Marketa Lazarova has been on my to-watch list for ages. I also love the period music (naturally, since this is a Borowczyk joint, the first line of dialogue is a castrato joke)
Gunpoint (Graham, 1972)- 3.5/5- a documentary short on pheasant rearing and hunting, edited and partially shot in guerrilla style by Borowczyk for the translator & critic Peter Graham. There's a particularly striking shot of the hunting party marching through the shade cast by perfectly orderly rows of trees in a game hunting park that's going to stick with me for a while

obvious *massive* studio interference

never got this vibe from ii, just seemed to be on its own wavelength, especially since coscarelli extended (and complicated) the vibe for iii

a weird mess of epistolary voiceover, or a major character dying a gruesome, climactic, expensive sfx death weirdly early only to be immediately handwaved away as a hallucination

unfortunately phantasm iv is like 100 percent epistolary voiceovers so i also don't think this was the studio's request. also i can't figure out what what gruesome expensive sfx death you're talking about. the liz doppelganger that reggie cooks with the flamethrower? it's a little clumsily handled yeah (and the tall man never makes evil doppelgangers again unless you count the mercurial jodysphere)

have you seen iv before and if not are you planning to????

Marketa Lazarova has been on my to-watch list for ages.

By all means do see it. And then if you can, watch The Devil's Trap (1962) and Valley of the Bees (1968).

Yeah, I was thinking of the Liz doppelganger. Maybe it's the mindset I was in watching the film, but it (and the question of when Liz's voiceover even *happens*) seemed massively overcomplicated, like it was papering over a last-minute edit. Speaking of grue, it's also super weird to me that the major studio-backed film in the series has possibly the nastiest death yet (the gold sphere burrowing through one of the mortuary attendant goons) while III has a weirdly bright and cheerful visual style and deaths that are played more for splatter comedy, though again, that could be the developing Raimi envy.

And yeah, I plan to run the series- I picked up Arrow's excellent (if cumbersome; I have to wrestle a replica sphere out of the case and tip the individual digipacks out) box set during a sale.

Thank you so much for the additional Vlacil reccomendations! I'm trying to make more time for eastern European cinema this year (and read the Peter Hames book on the Czech new wave) and Vlacil's filmography is pretty intimidating

iv is my favorite of the whole series. actually deepens the mystery of the original, deeply melancholy and dreamy, no budget whatsoever. i mean the first is a very special movie and a fourth sequel from 1994 can't quite sustain that atmosphere but it makes a lot of cool decisions and looks great

I'm really looking forward to it! I know it sounds like I'm ragging on Coscarelli a lot here but I *love* the original Phantasm (I never saw the sequels because they were quite hard to get on disc for a while) and have a real soft spot for his later films like Bubba Ho-Tep and John Dies at the End.

La Grande Illusion (Renoir, 1936) - 9/10
Kes (Loach, 1969) - 8/10
Ida (Pawlikowski, 2013) - 7/10
Le Dernier Combat (Besson, 1983) - 6/10
Bad Timing (Roeg, 1980) - 10/10
They All Laughed (Bogdanovich, 1981) - 10/10
Amarcord (Fellini, 1973) - 7/10
Star 80 (Fosse, 1983) - 4/10
Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong, 2015) - 9/10
All the King’s Men (Rossen, 1949) - 5/10
Hour of the Wolf (Bergman, 1968) - 10/10
Lions Love (… and Lies) (Varda, 1969) - 7/10
On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong, 2017) - 8/10
Chocolat (Denis, 1988) - 9/10
Images (Altman, 1972) - 2/10
Carol (Haynes, 2015) - 10/10
Yojimbo (Kurosawa, 1961) - 9/10
Lonesome (Fejos, 1928) - 10/10
Alphaville (Godard, 1965) - 9/10
Shame (Bergman, 1968) - 7/10
Shampoo (Ashby, 1975) - 9/10

*1937

Fuckin wowsers Phantasm IV is good

Roma (6.0)
The Great Buster (6.0)
Turn Me On, Dammit! (7.5)
Napoleon Dynamite (5.0)
Boy Erased (7.0)
Hal (7.0)
The Bedroom Window (6.0)
The Whole Truth (4.5)
The Summer of All My Parents (6.5)
Shampoo (7.5)

Colette (Westmoreland, 2019)
Nina (Chajdas, 2019)
Nobody Daughter Haewon (Sang-Soo, 2013)
Right Now, Wrong Then (Sang-Soo, 2016)

January:

Yesterday's Enemy (Guest, 1959) 8/10
The Favourite (Lanthimos, 2018) 8/10
Putney Swope (Downey, 1969) 8/10
Electra Glide in Blue (Guercio, 1973) 6/10
Longing (Grisebach, 2006) 6/10
She (Day, 1965) 5/10
Split (Shyamalan, 2016) 4/10
The Hired Hand (Fonda, 1971) 8/10
The Terror of the Tongs (Bushell, 1961) 6/10
That Sinking Feeling (Forsyth, 1979) 7/10
Enter the Dragon (Clouse, 1973) 8/10
Carriage to Vienna (Kachyňa, 1966) 8/10
Too Early/Too Late (Straub-Huillet, 1982) 9/10
Stan & Ollie (Baird, 2018) 5/10
Curse of the Crimson Altar (Sewell, 1968) 6/10
At Five in the Afternoon (S. Makhmalbaf, 2003) 8/10
The Murder of Mr. Devil (Krumbachová, 1970) 5/10
Murder on the Orient Express (Branagh, 2017) 4/10
Vampire Circus (Young, 1972) 7/10

Vice
quite interesting to see 2 of the leads play against body type. Wondered why they picked Christian Bale to play somebody so much bulkier than him but it's a good performance. Also Sam Rockwell seems a bit skinny or wiry for George W but againhe';s quit e good.
Some Post modernist touches etc and quite amusing film.
NOt sure how sympathetic the leads are. But they do seem to be pretty evil people don't they?

Vice is a loathsome film.

haven't seen it yet, explain why?

Adam McKay's winks and nudges threw me out of the movie, and the straightforward chronology normalizes Cheney.

i don't get stunt casting stars who look nothing like their real life counterparts then applying makeup until you can't tell who it is. last year it was the darkest hour. a few years ago it was depp in black mass.

interesting take alfred

At Eternity's Gate : 4/10 (and this is cause Dafoe basically plays his Jesus again but wow what a dog)
Field Niggas : 8/10
Le Plein de Super : 8/10
Rampant : 6/10
Climax : 7/10

i don't get stunt casting stars who look nothing like their real life counterparts then applying makeup until you can't tell who it is.

The transformation narrative is part of the marketing buzz around the movie. Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder is supposed to be parodying such stunts.

Fyre Fraud (Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason 2019)
Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (Smith 2019)
Sudden Fear (David Miller, Lenore J. Coffee, Robert Smith after Edna Sherry 1952) [public screening on DVD]
That Touch of Mink (Mann, Shapiro, Monaster 1962)
Caught ("Opuls," Laurent 1949)
Mute (Jones 2018)
The Warriors (Hill, Shaber after Yurick 1979) [DCP]
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty 2018) [DCP]
The Kid Who Would Be King (Cornish 2019) [DCP]
Cold War (Pawlikowski, Głowacki, Borkowski 2018) [DCP]
Don's Party (Williamson, Beresford 1976)
Marwencol (Malmberg 2010 )
Six L.A. Love Stories (Dunaway 2018)
Black Dynamite (White, Sanders, Minns 2009)

Fyre docs: 5/10 each, 6/10 collectively

Sudden Fear: never seen a young Palance before iirc. his skeleton is a marvel, at least 40% of the menace just comes from the cut of his suit. 7/10

That Touch of Mink: you can feel Cary Grant falling asleep behind his eyes as the movie goes on, and he brings less and less every minute to justify Day's heterosexual-panic. 4/10

Caught: put Karina Longworth's Seduction hardcover down a sentence or two into her description of this Howard Hughes takedown, and watched the whole thing on youtube before finishing the paragraph. possibly the greatest indicator of Hughes' mental damage, above watching movies naked 28 hours a day for years and shitting in the corner, was him insisting they change the Hughes character's shoes, but nothing about his misogynistic control issues, so ppl wouldn't get that it was about him. I feel bad enough for Barbara bel Geddes getting hyperfriendzoned every time I watch Vertigo; here I had to watch out of the corner of my eye half the time. 7/10

Mute: duplo Blade Runner. 1/10

The Warriors: watched six days before the 30th anniversary of this. was not prepared for a young, hot, hairy Jerry Horne. second-best NYC subway movie? 7/10

Can You Ever Forgive Me?: decent performances in service of a pretty rote script. I avoid 99.9999999% of trailers if I think I'll ever watch the film, but hadn't heard of this when it rolled in front of something eight months ago or w/e, and at the time it felt most of the plot was probably in the trailer. Nope: all of it. Winced in advance when a silence=death window sticker appeared 8 seconds before REG turns up all full-blownsies at the end. 3/10, saw it at the $4 theatre just bcz Reg was so excited about his Oscar nom.

The Kid Who Would Be King: god imagine spending 8 years in director jail after your excellent great-acting-kids-fight-monsters practical effects debut then only coming back with this thin gruel pretty-embarrassing-kids-fight-CGI-on-a-background-of-CGI blah. a perfectly okay kids entertainment tbh but 2/10 for me.

Cold War: I hate to rep a film just bcz it's 88 minutes, but by fuck it was nice to see something slow and bleak and dense with ennui that actually cracks the fuck along. pulls off the "shot on digital and converted to B&W" better than Roma, too. 6/10

Don's Party: this was filmed in a suburban house ten minutes walk from where I grew up. the only time I ever trick-or-treated in my life was in the same cul-de-sac. had never watched this: once I was old enough, in my teens, I vaguely figured I'd get to see a production or two of the play first. bad move! dunno if the outfits and decor were matched for the 1969 setting, or just undressed as they were found in 1976, but a) between the look, and the longys of DA, and all the adultery, it feels like The Most 1970s Film Ever, and b) tbh all local parents still looked exactly like this in the 80s anyway. 10/10

Marwencol: for the last 25 years, Zemeckis' commitment to pushing new technology has generally seemed a reasonable thing for him to do as long as he no longer has any story ideas, or real care for other scripts, and I don't have to watch them. but him seeing this sweet, contained, careful documentary about a damaged man protecting his brain through art and deciding that what it needs is a plastic Steve Carell to mocap cartoon war scenes is really ill-advised. 8/10

Six L.A. Love Stories: the absolute pure example of someone in Hollywood with just enough friends to make a film on favours, despite not having any money or anything to say. still, nice to see Alicia Witt a little more than in Twin Peaks S3. 2/10

Black Dynamite: had never heard of this until it ran at a revival theatre near me last year. didn't know it was on Netflix until a "here's what's leaving Netflix" article gave me two days notice. furious that I didn't see it in an audience now: it's impossibly dead on as both parody of bad blaxploitation and pastiche of good blaxpoloitation, and the Super 16 colour is so lush it's worth watching for that alone. 9/10

Gothenburg Festival Haul:

Aniara (Lilja & Kågerman)
Aurora (Tervo)
Extinction (Lamas)*
Woman at War (Erlingsson)
Monrovia, Indiana (Wiseman)
Obscuro Barroco (Kranioti)
Balangiga: Howling Wilderness (Khavn)
Dead Souls (Wang Bing)
Harajuku (Svensson)
Loro (Sorrentino)
Rafiki (Kahiu)
Angelo (Schleinzer)
The River (Baigazin)
Sons of Denmark (Salim)
Song Lang (Le)
Lucky One (Engberg)
Cutterhead (Bro)
What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire (Minervini)
Säsong (Skoog)
Divine Wind (Allouache)
My Favorite Fabric (Jiji)
Transnistra (Eborn)
Nona. If You Soak Me I Will Burn You (Donoso)
Koko-di, Koko-da (Nyholm)
Aquarela (Kossakovsky)
Aren’t You Happy? (Heinrich)
Queen of Hearts (el-Toukhy)
Ayka (Dvortsevoy)
Azougue Nazareth (Melo)
Sonia - The White Swan (Sewitsky)