Last (x) movies you saw (II)

that Disney Robin Hood from the 70s - kinda bad honestly

The gradually-revealed lack of a coherent ethos in Putney Swope, the film, mirrors the depiction of Putney Swope, the character.

risible? it's sposed to be funny

Putney Swope was a disappointment after wanting to see it for years

I've just been watching trash for the last 2 weeks really. Best of what I've seen are Crank 2 (yes trash obv, but deliriously demented trash) and Simple Men (I've retreated into 90s nostalgia since lockdown and this fitted perfectly)

risible? it's sposed to be funny

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius),Thursday, April 16, 2020 3:09 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

could use "laughable" here also. wouldn't mean that the movie is funny

the crank movies are fantastic trash

maybe u shd see the rest of Downey Sr's films for context

https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/eclipse-series-33-up-all-night-with-robert-downey-sr/

putney swope is hilarious wtf

the movies in that criterion set are all great, especially No More Excuses, where he interviews a bunch of college/high school students (I think) at some type of youth club in midtown Manhattan in early 60s. I think. its great. there's another one in that set that has one of my favorite jokes ever

*Europa ’51 (1952, Rossellini) 10/10
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957, J. Sturges) 6/10
*The Bank Dick (1940, Cline) 9/10
The Harder They Fall (1956, Robson) 6/10
My Name Is Julia Ross (1945, Lewis) 7/10
So Dark the Night (1946, Lewis) 7/10
Murder by Contract (1958, Lerner) 8/10
*La Jetée (1962, Marker) (28m) 10/10
Toni (1935, Renoir) 9/10
Never Weaken (1921, Newmeyer) (29m) 8/10

Safe (7.0)
The Dreamers (5.0)
Something in the Air (7.0)
Cold Water (9.0)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (8.5)
Adventureland (8.5)
Kramer vs. Kramer (7.5)
Margot at the Wedding (7.0)
American Graffiti (9.0)
Saturday Night Fever (8.5)

Still working my way through The Stand, which in indeed terrible. Three-quarters finished, should be done by the time a vaccine comes along.

Red Sun (Young, 1971)
Snow Trail (Taniguchi, 1947)
*Ghost World (Zwigoff, 2001)
Kinetta (Lanthimos, 2005)
Destiny (Lang, 1921)
Eyes of Laura Mars (Kershner, 1978)
Monos (Landes, 2019)
The Two of Us (Berri, 1967)
Side by Side (Kenneally, 2012)
Tomboy (Sciamma, 2011)
Titicut Follies (Wiseman 1967)
The Tram (short - Kieślowski, 1966)
Seven Women of Different Ages (short - Kieślowski, 1978)
Hospital (short - Kieślowski, 1976)
Railway Station (short - Kieślowski, 1980)
Factory (short - Kieślowski, 1970)
Talking Heads (short - Kieślowski, 1980)
A Dandy in Aspic (Mann, Harvey (uncredited), 1968)
Man of the West (Mann, 1958)
Water Lilies (Sciamma, 2007)
Come and See (Klimov, 1985)
The Scar (Kieślowski, 1976)
Bonjour Tristesse (Preminger, 1958)

Jogo de Cena (2007) - 7/10 i guess

that's it

Harriet
Quite moving, probably a bit Hollywoodised.
But good to see that there wasa commercial film made about the historical figure.
The guy who is the organiser for the Underground Railroad looks like he should play John Coltrane.
Quite enjoyed it but probably need to read an accurate biography.
& hope she gets on a currency note next year

Saboteur (Hitchcock, 1942) 7/10
Across 110th Street (Shear, 1972) 7/10
*Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, 1943) 8/10
Tom Brown's School Days (Stevenson, 1940) 5/10
The Panic in Needle Park (Schatzberg, 1971) 7/10
Another Year (Leigh, 2010) 8/10
The Lodger (Hitchcock, 1927) 7/10
Toy Story 4 (Cooley, 2019) 8/10
Cry of the City (Siodmak, 1948) 7/10
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Garver, 2018) 6/10

don’t know why Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s film Kandahar has been so ignored, it doesn’t even show up on IMDB, not sure why

it is beautiful

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283431/reference/

I remember Time magazine really liking it. It didn't click with me.

thanks for that link abanana, didn’t realize it showed up in Makhmalbaf’s filmography as The Sun Behind the Moon

*Starstruck (1982, Armstrong) 8/10
The Vikings (1958, Fleischer) 6/10
A Patch of Blue (1965, Green) 6/10
That Is the Dawn aka Cela s’appelle l’aurore (1956, Bunuel) 8/10
Robinson Crusoe (1954, Bunuel) 7/10
*Footlight Parade (1933, Bacon) 9/10
*Animal Crackers (1930, Heerman) 8/10
Raging Sun, Raging Sky (2009, Hernandez) 4/10
*It’s in the Bag! (1945, Wallace) 7/10
Street Scene (1931, K. Vidor) 9/10

MUBI:

Lola (Losey, 1962)
Army of Shadows (Melville, 1969)

BFI Player

Love Exposure (Sono, 2008) - A one of a kind film even if the guy can't really shoot it still manages to bring in almost moronically subversive and egdelord angles to teen love I just haven't seen before. As a japanese film its definitely engaging with it (the Sada Abe ref) and also trying to paradigm shift it by bringing in the Madonna Black Jeus stuff in a culture that isn't Catholic. The music is often good, reminds me of the ambient freneticism of The Genius.

An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu, 2018) - 8/10
*I Love You, Man (Hamburg, 2009) - 8/10
9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (Ferrara, 1976) - xxx/10 (this is just straight up hardcore pornography)
Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Straub-Huillet, 1968) - 7/10
What About Bob? (Oz, 1991) - 6/10
The Front Page (Milestone, 1931) - 8/10
Commando (Lester, 1985) - 7/10
Black Book (Verhoeven, 2006) - 8/10
Ride the Pink Horse (Montgomery, 1947) - 8/10
Glorifying the American Girl (Webb, 1929) - 8/10
*Escape from New York (Carpenter, 1981) - 9/10
*Beware of a Holy Whore (Fassbinder, 1970) - 9/10
*3 Women (Altman, 1977) - 10/10
Moses and Aaron (Straub-Huillet, 1975) - 7/10
Bullitt (Yates, 1968) - 8/10
*Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, 1943) - 10/10
Late Autumn (Ozu, 1960) - 9/10
*Sex Drive (Anders, 2008) - 8/10
Not Reconciled (Straub-Huillet, 1965) - 8/10
Stray Dogs (Tsai, 2013) - 9/10
Journey to the West (Tsai, 2014) - 9/10
Rififi (Dassin, 1955) - 8/10
Spun (Äkerlund, 2002) - 9/10
*Casque d’Or (Becker, 1952) - 9/10
The Kid Brother (Wilde, Howe; 1927) - 8/10
Bell, Book and Candle (Quine, 1958) - 7/10
Frantz (Ozon, 2016) - 8/10
The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941) - 8/10
Girls Trip (Lee, 2017) - 8/10
Toy Soldiers (Petrie Jr., 1991) - 3/10
*Ici et Ailleurs (Godard, Gorin, Miéville; 1976) - 10/10
The Grifters (Frears, 1990) - 9/10
*The Merchant of Four Seasons (Fassbinder, 1971) - 10/10
A Safe Place (Jaglom, 1971) - 8/10

April:
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Fassbinder, 1980) 8/10
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Lanfield, 1939) 7/10
Dracula's Daughter (Hillyer, 1936) 5/10
The Seventh Victim (Robson, 1943) 7/10
The Devil-Doll (Browning, 1936) 6/10
The Return of Doctor X (Sherman, 1939) 6/10
The Invisible Man Returns (May, 1940) 5/10
The House by the Cemetery (Fulci, 1981) 8/10
The Wolf Man (Waggner, 1941) 7/10
The Thing From Another World (Nyby, 1951) 7/10
The Leopard Man (Tourneur, 1943) 6/10
The Body Snatcher (Wise, 1945) 7/10
Vampyros Lesbos (Franco, 1971) 7/10
Daughters of Darkness (Kumel, 1971) 8/10
Bedlam (Robson, 1946) 7/10
The Masque of the Red Death (Corman, 1964) 8/10
The Oblong Box (Hessler, 1969) 7/10
Twin Peaks: The Return (Lynch, 2017) 9/10
Grip of the Strangler (Day, 1958) 5/10
Baron Blood (Bava, 1972) 6/10
Horrors of the Black Museum (Crabtree, 1959) 6/10
The Flesh and the Fiends (Gilling, 1960) 8/10
The Fly (Neumann, 1958) 7/10
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton, 1948) 4/10
Flesh for Frankenstein (Morrissey, 1973) 7/10
Vampyres (Larraz, 1974) 7/10

*Odd Man Out (1947) 4.5/5
What About Bob? (1991) 3.5/5
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (bad director's cut with the screensavers) n/a
Beastie Boys Story (2020) 3.5/5
Bamboozled (2000) 3/5
Intimate Lighting (1965) 3/5
The Great Buster: A Celebration (2018) 3/5
Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) 2.5/5
Other Music (2019) 3/5
Experiment in Terror (1962) 3.5/5

two more weeks

Great:
Bad Education (Finley, 2019)

Very Good to Very Very Good:
The Hottest August (Story, 2019)
The Mighty Atom (Greenstein, 2017)
Boy (Waititi, 2012)
Platform (Gaztellu-Urrutia, 2019)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
Ethiopiques: Revolt of the Soul (Bochniak, 2017)
The Woman Who Loves Giraffes (Reid, 2018)
Dolemite is My Name (Brewer, 2019)
Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (Lowney, 2013)
Bit (Elmore, 2019)
Circus of Books (Mason, 2019)

No:
Limelight (Corben, 2011)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton, 1948) 4/10

Double that 4!

(almost all their other films are around 4/10)

long time first time

April:
Bacurau (2020) 8/10
Half-Cocked (1994) 7/10
Jezebel (2019) 7/10
Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon (2019) 6/10
Legally Blonde (2001) 7/10
Obvious Child (2014) 8/10
Onward (2020) 8/10
Legally Blonde 2 (2003) 3/10
Sorry We Missed You (2019) 8/10
The Full Monty (1997) 7/10
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) 6/10
Jupiter Ascending (2015) 4/10
Morvern Callar (2002) 8/10

My pace has slowed way down. Watching movies at home = 4/10.

legally blonde - totally fine rom-com
legally blonde 2 - abomination

haha yep

Morbs, I used to like Abbot and Costello as a kid, but this was my first encounter with them for a long while, and found them pretty insufferable - a barking bully abusing a simpering man-child. And just not very funny. One good trivia fact I learned about Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is that this was the only other time that Lugosi played Count Dracula apart from in the 1931 Tod Browning original (of course he played lots of other vampires, some very like Dracula, but none named as such).

did you not like, for one example, Lou's famous reply to Lon Chaney's "When the moon is full I turn into a wolf"?

as was the case for Jerry Seinfeld too, the A&C sitcom from the '50s was a formative comedic experience for me in childhood.

Liberté (2019, Costa) 4/10
*His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940) 10/10
*The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982, Greenaway) 7/10
A Zed & Two Noughts (Greenaway, 1985) 5/10
The Wonders (2014, Rohrwacher) 5/10
*Vanya on 42nd Street (1994, Malle) 8/10
Vertical Features Remake (1978, Greenaway) (45m) 5/10
The Falls (1980, Greenaway) 6/10
*Monkey Business (1931, McLeod) 7/10
A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist (1979, Greenaway) (41m) 5/10

legally blonde - totally fine rom-com
legally blonde 2 - abomination

have never seen #1 but #2 is the worst movie I have ever watched all the way through. meeting up with friends in the city on a visit to Brisbane during a 42° heatwave (107°F), it was the only thing starting at a time that we desperately needed to escape into airconditioning. on walking out, all three of us admitted that we had wanted to walk out, but hadn't wanted to break the stony silence in case the others were enjoying themselves.

No streaming service in our home. Pulling out our DVDs.

Viva Las Vegas - in which Elvis unexpectedly out sings, out dances and out acts Anne Margaret. Cesare Danova , as a sexy Italian race car driver, competes for Anne's hand, and dies in a fiery crash at the end, but two minutes later nobody notices or cares and the audience leaves the theater in an ecstatic conga line. Schlock was never schlockier, but, hey, what's an Elvis for if not schlock?

Pat & Mike - in which Katherine Hepburn appears to be surprisingly athletic and falls in love with Spencer Tracy for no discernible reason. Aldo Ray also appears, speaks words, moves about. A good time had by all.

North by Northwest - in which Cary Grant creates a deathless monument to the Cary Grantness of Cary Grant. Hitchcock plays with the audience as deftly as a cat plays with a mouse, plays with the camera and lighting like a maestro, and gets away with murdering plausibility with a truncheon. No one minds. Eve St. Marie is also excellent.

beg pardon, Eva Marie Saint.

full moon features odyssey pt 1:

trancers (1984, dir. charles band) - 8/10 -- blade runner/terminator/back to the future rip all at once, cool sets, cool story, ridiculous '80s action movie energy, helen hunt, the works
trancers ii: the return of jack deth (1991, dir. charles band) - 7/10 -- same director yet this shit looks like a soap opera. someone on letterboxd mentioned every shot/reverse shot conversation has each character looking directly into the camera. it's true. it's mesmerizingly inept. one of the funniest scripts ever imo, there's even an exploding ham
trancers iii: deth lives! (1992, dir. c. courtney joyner) - 7/10 -- you can tell it's good because there's an exclamation point in the title. the time fuckery gets weirder and stupider and the plot centers around this weird futuristic military compound connected to a strip club in the year 2005. more competent and visually interesting yet less funny and weird than trancers ii. still, hell yeah
subspecies (1991, dir. ted nicolaou) - 7/10 -- early '90s direct-to-video horror pretty much hit its peak here as far as i can tell, the perfect balance of hokey and creepy, and really boring in the best way. i wish i were watching this on a really dark and distorted pan-and-scan vhs, i think it would come off as intended
bloodstone: subspecies ii (1993, dir. ted nicolaou) - 10/10 -- were full moon suddenly flush with cash in '92-'93? i ask bc trancers iii and this feel like theatrical features, this especially, there's this incredible murnau-esque lighting in EVERY scene, the story is interesting, the characters matter... idk this is basically a '70s horror film to me, a creepy visual poem

oh and the movie that started it all for me

dark angel: the ascent (1994, dir. linda hassani) - 10/10 -- very difficult for me to describe the vibe of this movie to anyone. it is a... vaguely christian... horror... romantic... comedy... morality play... from hell. it is lit and shot wonderfully and makes the most out of its absolutely nonexistent budget and is just so charming. it's about a demon angel ascending to earth from hell in order to cleanse the earth of sinners such as rapists, racist cops, and corrupt mayors whose housing policies drive people out of their homes! five stars

i should say for fans of decker, i bet tim heidecker has seen and loves trancers ii, it is verrrry jack decker

recent-ish (rewatches marked with asterisks):

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) -- 10/10
The Lighthouse (2019) -- 7/10
The Lure (2015) -- 8/10
Blow the Man Down (2020) -- 6/10
Escape From New York* (1981) -- 8/10
Peterloo (2018) -- 8/10
The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) -- 6/10
Gilda* (1946) -- 9/10
The Lady From Shanghai* (1947) -- 8/10

going back to two days ago, Rohrwacher’s The Wonders seemed inconsequential story-wise but I thought it was beautiful, I saw it a while ago now and still have an imprinted visual memory of it

and going back two weeks ago, I liked that Hamaguchi’s Heaven Is Still Far Away didn’t shy away from its inexpensive home video quality, it had a lightness and transparency that felt really new to me

looking forward to seeing Happy Hour and Asako I & II

77 Minutes (6.0)
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (8.0)
Breaking the Waves (8.0)
I Shot Andy Warhol (7.5)
Jesus’ Son (7.5)
Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (7.0)
American Honey (9.0)
Melvin & Howard (8.5)
Single White Female (5.5)
Dazed and Confused (8.5)

*McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971) - 6/10
Wild 90 (Mailer, 1968) - 2/10
*Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 1959) - 9/10
*Ariel (Kaurismäki, 1988) - 9/10
*Katzelmacher (Fassbinder, 1969) - 9/10
La Religieuse (Rivette, 1966) - 9/10
Betty Blue (Beineix, 1986) - 6/10
*The Match Factory Girl (Kaurismäki, 1990) - 9/10
The Lincoln Lawyer (Furman, 2011) - 8/10
*A Mighty Wind (Guest, 2003) - 8/10
Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti, 1960)
Suddenly, Last Summer (Mankiewicz, 1959) - 9/10
Mr. Thank You (Shimizu, 1936) - 8/10
Come On Children (King, 1973) - 8/10
*Wagon Master (Ford, 1950) - 9/10
I Live in Fear (Kurosawa, 1955) - 7/10
*Love is Colder Than Death (Fassbinder, 1968) - 8/10
The Masseurs and a Woman (Shimizu, 1938) - 7/10
Lured (Sirk, 1947) - 8/10
The Rock (Bay, 1996) - 8/10
My Cousin Vinny (Lynn, 1992) - 5/10
Sorry We Missed You (Loach, 2019) - 9/10
Monkey Business (Hawks, 1952) - 8/10
*Little Miss Sunshine (Dayton, Faris; 2006) - 7/10
The Big Country (Wyler, 1958) - 6/10
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols, 1966) - 6/10

Lourdes (Hausner) 8/10
Teorema (Pasolini) 6/10
Ema (Larrain) 7/10
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson) 10/10
The Old Dark House (Whale) 6/10
Panic (Bromell) 4/10
The Wonders (Rohrwacher) 8/10
The Nude Vampire (Rollin) 7/10
Ghost World (Zwigoff) 8/10
Showgirls (Verhoeven) 7/10
Mulholland Drive (Lynch) 9/10
Chloe (Egoyan) 7/10
Mr Klein (Losey) 8/10
Eva (Losey) 7/10

Wild Tales (Relatos salvajes), 2017, Damián Szifron, 6/10, predictable, though consequent entertainment, +1 as episode-movie-bonuspoint
The Drop, 2014, Michaël R. Roskam, 7/10, Gandolfinis last film; surprise fact: Tom Hardy *is* a serious actor
The Library Music Film, 2018, Paul Elliot & Sean Lamberth, 7/10, a satisfying watch & listen
Now You See Me, 2013, Louis Leterrier, 3/10, tried to watch with good intentions, but has much to high production value for a trash movie
Wild Mouse (Wilde Maus), 2017, Josef Hader, 7/10, people of Vienna are escalating things in a charming way, always skewed never evil
The Gruffalo (Der Grüffelo), 2009, Max Lang & Jakob Schuh, 8/10, short & infantile fairy tale with some gloomy undertones

two more weeks; both South Mountain (Brougher, 2019) and América (Stoll and Whiteside, 2019) are IMMENSELY recommended, especially the latter.

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
Sorry We Missed You (Loach, 2020)
Nina Conti: Talk to the Hand (Conti, 2013)
Driveways (2019, Ahn)
Nina Conti: Make Me Happy (2012, Eastall – https://vimeo.com/49714692)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
Spaceship Earth (Wolf, 2020)
How I Came to Hate Maths (Peyon, 2012)

Deeply Flawed to Barely Watchable:
Greed (Winterbottom, 2020)
The Land of Steady Habits (Holofcener, 2018)

No:
Raising Buchanan (Dellis, 2019)
How to Build a Girl (Giedroyc, 2020) - I lasted six minutes

Greed was the last movie I saw in theaters 😔

It’s... not good

Got tired of assigning arbitrary numbers to things (not that I don't enjoy it when other people do it). I definitely like some of these films (PlayTime) better than others (Bloody Mama), but the only thing here that flat out sucks is Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

*Dial M for Murder (Hitchcock, 1954)
Wicked Woman (Rouse, 1953)
*The Grifters (Frears, 1990)
Saint Jack (Bogdanovich, 1979)
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (Linklater, 2019)
PlayTime (Tati, 1967)
Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945)
Stars in My Crown (Tourneur, 1950)
Bloody Mama (Corman, 1970)
The Decameron (Pasolini, 1971)

Neil Young Trunk Show (2009) 3.5/5
Shin Godzilla (2016) 3.5/5
* Clue (1985) 3/5
La Haine (1995) 3.5/5
Capone (2020) 2/5
Fearless Hyena (1979) 3.5/5
The Fog (1980) 2.5/5
* Throne of Blood (1954) 4/5
Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (1978) 4/5
Gloria (1980) 3.5/5
* Beyond the Mat (1999) 3/5
Ball of Fire (1941) 4/5
Bad Education (2019) 3.5/5

Ghost in the Shell cos it was on tv a couple of days ago.
Hadn't seen it when it was in the cinemas. NOt sure waht was out at the same time but probably a lot of things i wasa lot more interested in.
Just about enjoyable but i think other things have used some of its elements a lot better.