Last (x) movies you saw

Jamaica Inn. Good.

Cronenberg's "Crash". Fantastic. One of his best for me.

Also on a bit of an Alberto Sordi kick atm. Will list once done but so far every one has been great especially because Sordi was brilliant.

Zappa (August)*
Twist and Shout (August)*
Pelle the Conqueror (August)*
Smilla’s Sense of Snow (August)
Night Train to Lisbon (August)
Babette’s Feast (Axel)*
Rasmines Bryllup (Schneevoigt)
Der er et Yndigt Land (Arnfred)
The Flying Devils (Refn)
I Belong to Me (Balling)
Fear Me Not (Levring)
Just Like Home (Scherfig)
An Education (Scherfig)
Their Finest (Scherfig)
Venus: Let’s Talk About Sex (Glob & Albrechtsen)
Flow (Ahmad)
Darkland (Ahmad)
Land of Mine (Zandvliet)*
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker)*
American Gangster (Scott)
Birdman (Inarritu)
The Namesake (Nair)
The Magnificent Seven (Sturges)
A Mighty Heart (Winterbottom)
Always (Spielberg)
Contagion (Soderbergh)
Conan the Barbarian (Milius)*
James White (Mond)*
Neruda (Larrain)*
Jackie (Larrain)*

back to the future 3 -- 7/10

Transatlantic (1931, Howard) 6/10
The Green Fog (2017, Maddin, Johnson, Johnson) 7/10
*Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock) 10/10
Dunkirk (2017, Nolan) 6/10
Lady Bird (2017, Gerwig) 8/10
Harvey (1950, Koster) 5/10
The Post (2017, Spielberg) 7/10
*The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944, Sturges) 10/10
*Good Time (2017, Safdie, Safdie) 8/10
*The Devil’s Cleavage (1975, Kuchar) 8/10

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I think this might have been a second viewing - some scenes were deja vu-ishly familiar.

perhaps you saw the miniseries (if not, do)

Two Plus Fours (McCarey, 1930)
Ghost Parade (Sennett, 1931)
Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)
Antoine et Colette (Truffaut, 1962)
Catalina, Here I Come (Rodney, 1927)
Max Entre Deux Feux (Linder, 1917)
Une Nuit Agitée (Linder, 1912)
The Booze Hangs High (Harman & Ising, 1930)
Ask Dad (Faulcon, 1929)
Max et Son Chien Dick (Linder et Leprince, 1912)
The Nickel Nurser (Doane, 1932)
The Hearts of Age (Welles & Vance, 1934)
The Big Shot (Davis, 1929)
On Essex Road (Cohen, 2016)
Bury Me Not (Cohen, 2016)
Birth of a Nation (Cohen, 2017)
World Without End (No Reported Incidents) (Cohen, 2016)
Peter Hutton (Cohen, 2016)
Asphalt (May, 1929)
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (McGuigan, 2017)
Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)

perhaps you saw the miniseries (if not, do)

No, but I have read the book. And I definitely had the feeling I'd seen specific scenes, with this cast, before. Probably just stuff that was in the trailer or uploaded to YouTube or something.

Fantastic Planet - OK, but somehow not French-hippie enough? I will say that I would watch Star Wars movies if they replaced John Williams' scores with the jazz-funk from this thing.

The BFG (Spielberg, 2016) a generous 4/10
A Ghost Story (David Lowery, 2017) 6; is this bathos?
The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) 7
The Ghost Breakers (George Marshall, 1940) 4
Colossal (Nacho Vigalondo, 2016) 6
The Disaster Artist (Franco, 2017) 7
*The Room (Wiseau) 1 or 8
Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma, 1974) 7
Personal Shopper (Assayas, 2016) 8
Phantom Lady (Siodmak, 1944) 7
The Post (Spielberg, 2017) 7

I apologized for taking my family to A Ghost Story

I liked it, but abyssal depression... sometimes it works at a matinee, sometimes it doesn't

I admired rather than enjoyed A Ghost Story. I think it didnt know how to resolve itself in the last 30 minutes but an unusual and ballsy film up until that.

Wow --- The BFG. Even a for the most part dyed-in-the-wool Spielberg fan like myself will probably never watch that debacle again.

And people STILL dump on AI!

AI and BFG both have treacly John Williams scores that detract from the rest of the movie.

god how I hated colossal, sorry I just get annoyed all over again when I see a mention

xpost Yeah but I'd say AI overcomes the score's faults

I didn't consider The BFG a 'debacle' but it was his worst in awhile.

it's hard to defend any of the decisions he made in BFG, but i still didn't hate it.

I saw BFG a couple of days ago, and as far as movies go that I can watch with my preschooler, I thought it was not too bad. I would definitely put it up there with Paddington 2, and it was better than Boss Baby, though not as good as Zootopia.

Kagero-Za (Suzuki 1981, 8/10)
Mountains May Depart 8/10 (Jia, 2015)
*The Muppets Christmas Carol (Henson, 1992) 6/10
The Dead (Huston, 1987) 8/10
Christmas Holiday (Siodmak, 1944) 6/10
*Heat (Mann, 1995) 7/10
Yumeji (Suzuki, 1991) 7/10
Wet Woman in the Wind (Shiota, 2016) 3/10
The Red Shoes (Powell & Pressburger) 7/10
Filme socialisme (Godard, 2010) 6/10
Irma Vep (Assayas, 1996) 8/10
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975) 10/10
Antiporno (Sono, 2016) 6/10
Umberto D (De Sica, 1952) 8/10
Fanny & Alexander (Bergman, 1982) 9/10
The Age of Innocence ( Scorsese, 1993) 7/10
Tokyo Godfathers (Kon, 2003) 7/10
Paprika (Kon, 2006) 6/10
Daguerreotypes (Varda, 1976) 7/10
Spotlight on a Murderer 6/10
Scarlet Street (Lang, 1945) 8/10
La Grande Illusion (Renoir, 1937) 8/10
Boudu Saved From Drowning (Renoir, 1932) 7/10
Mur Murs (Varda, 1981) 8/10
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman, 1955) 9/10

Manifesto is kinda like that 80s movie Aria, except instead of a whole bunch of directors creating music videos for opera arias, it's one director dressing Cate Blanchett up in a bunch of costumes in a bunch of different settings and having her recite art manifestos as monologues. Some are hilarious (Cate as suburban mom reciting an endless manifesto instead of saying grace before her family can eat lunch, Cate as a news anchor and a remote weather reporter having a debate about the nature of conceptual art), others are just kinda boring, but visually it's fantastic and the manifestos are well chosen. It ends with Cate as an elementary school teacher, presenting the Dogme 95 rules to a bunch of kids. All in all, 90 minutes well spent. It's free on Amazon Prime Video.

*Gremlins 2 (1990) 9/10
*Gremlins (1984) 7/10
*Babe (1995) 8/10
Split (2016) 6/10
*Idiocracy (2006) 7/10
Land Of The Dead (2007) 7/10
Hounds of Love (2016) 6/10
Detention (2011) 4/10
The Lost City of Z (2016) 8/10
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) 5/10
Lady Bird (2017) 7/10
Silent Hill (2016) 3/10
Raw (2016) 7/10
A Ghost Story (2017) 6/10
Happy End (2017) 5/10
Bigsby Bear (2017) 4/10

La Grande Illusion (Renoir, 1937) 8/10

― devvvine, Friday, January 26, 2018 5:27 AM (thirteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what

yeah, I'm sayin...

oh forgot to add this one

rocky -- barely a 7/10 (most likely less on a bad day)

The Post (Spielberg, 2017)
A Ghost Story (Lowery, 2017)
Yours Faithfully, Edna Welthorpe (Mrs) (short - Shepherd, 2017)
*Dumbland episodes 1-8 (Lynch, 2002)
Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi, 1954) - baffled as to why the film is named after a villain who barely appears onscreen
The Lure (Smoczynska, 2015)
*Wild at Heart (Lynch, 1990)
Tokyo-ga (Wenders, 1985)
Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)
Rififi (Dassin, 1955)
Poetry in Motion (Mann, 1982)

Portrait of Jason (6.5)
All the Money in the World (5.5)
The Final Year (7.0)
Phantom Thread (6.5)
Twin Peaks: The Return (6.5—8.0 for Episode 8)

"Does this character have a name?"
"His name...is Reynolds Woodcock."
"His partner's name is Cyril Woodcock."
"Those are great names!"

Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)
After the Storm (Kore-eda, 2017) 6/10
Félicité (Gomis, 2017) 7/10
Battle of the Sexes (Dayton and Faris, 2017) 5/10
The Man Without a Past (Kaurismaki, 2002) 7/10
* Mikey and Nicky (May, 1976) 7/10
L'enfance Nue (Pialat, 1968) 8/10
* The Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi, 1952) 10/10
Wagon Master (Ford, 1950)
Watch on the Rhine (Shumlin, 1943) 4/10
After the Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1936) 4/10

Ford always getting an incomplete from you, prof?

I saw All the Money in the World today and I was taken aback by how much screen time Christopher Plummer has. The report I remember reading when Spacey was nixed and Plummer was brought in for reshoots saying that it would be relatively easy since the character was only on screen for "18 minutes." Holy shit, no. Plummer is in a solid 60-90 minutes of this 132 minute movie. Totally earned that Golden Globe nomination, which I thought was purely symbolic until today. Not a great movie but OK, and Plummer is so much better than I imagine Spacey was.

Oh yeah! Wagon Master's a 7.

(xpost) He was in it a lot, wasn't he? Thought it was pretty ordinary for the most part. I do finally understand the Aerosmith line from "Last Child."

January, in theaters:

Antiporno - 8/10
The Shape of Water - 10/10
Call Me By Your Name - 8/10
Molly’s Game - 3/10
The Post - 2/10
Paddington 2 - 10/10
Wendy and Lucy* (2008) - 10/10
Phantom Thread - 9/10
I, Tonya - 7/10
All the Money in the World - 4/10
Please Stand By - 5/10

The Shape of Water - 10/10
The Post - 2/10

Mmmm, kay.

The Post, unlike Spotlight, was so unfocused: it wanted to be newspaper hagiography, whistleblower homage, and a women's rights movie. Star power is distracting here, it's just a bunch of hot air and rote period piece / historical drama filler. Spotlight was great because it had a laser-like focus and superb pacing.

The Shape of Water really surprised me. I wasn't planning on seeing it, the trailer was unappealing to me & I'm not a big GDT fan, but a friend asked me if I wanted to see a matinee a few hours beforehand, and my cousin had just implored me to see it asap, so I went. Such a great movie that succeeds in being multiple things at once: Cold War potboiler, fantasy story, tearjerker, and a real crowd pleaser. So well paced, a high wire balancing act that was just stunning to watch. It really moved me and the rest of the audience: on a rainy Friday afternoon, a half-full theater of people applauded with enthusiasm and reverence at the end. That is such a magical thing, a religious experience- I know so many people that hate it when crowds applaud in movie theaters. Why??? It's amazing because it makes NO sense! When something can move you that much that you're literally applauding to no one but yourself/yourselves... that's God.

Worldly Goods (Rosen, 1930)
The Sphinx (Rosen, 1933)
Max Takes a Bath (Nonguet, 1910)
A Lesson in Love (Robinson, 1931)
Max and the Lady Doctor (Linder, 1909)
The Pharmacist (Ripley, 1933)
*The Grand Dame (Hurley, 1931)
Monte Carlo (Lubitsch, 1930)
Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (Griffith, 1916)
The Mail Pilot (Hand, 1933)
Stranger Than Paradise (Jarmusch, 1984)

Sami Blood is visually fantastic, and a strong meditation on identity, family, and more. Highly recommended.

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) 4/5
Logan (2017) 4/5
Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) 4/5
Phantom Thread (2017) 4.5/5
The Meyerowitz Stories (2017) 3.5/5
Neshoba (2008) 3/5
David Bowie: The Last Five Years (2017) 2.5/5
The Thief of Bagdad (1940) 3.5/5
49th Parallel (1941) 3.5/5

Shorts:
The Above (2015) 3.5/5
Saute ma ville (1968) 3.5.5

Many xps manifesto is good fun yeah, much more visually inventive than I thought it'd be. Blanchett was mostly great, only the one where she's a punk at a squat party or whatever was really embarrassing, & maybe a couple of others felt a bit too improv workshoppy

I've been watching a bunch of horror films with my free month of Shudder, I'm off work with a shitty head cold so not always paying strictest attention. Had forgotten the doctor in re-animator is called HANS GRUBER

halloween ii - hadn't seen this before. Are all classic horror part iis just "the first one but with a shitload more knockabout comedy"? The opening scene with the neighbour watching night of the living dead & the raspberry jam made me even more convinced that we never needed scream
halloween iii: andrew packard's toy factory? - I'd built up this idea in my head for years that this would be really good, knowing only that it was the one without Michael Myers that was about an evil toymaker, that people didn't go for it and they went back to slashers after. It's mostly really boring tho. lolwtf at all the 20something nymphos going wild for Tom Atkins. I liked the latex masks turning to bugs and the ending

Bergman @ BFI:

Private Confessions (Liv Ullmann, 1996) - this is from a script by Bergman.
The Passion of Anna (1968)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017) 7/10
Call Me by Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017) 6/10
The Honeymoon Killers (Kastle, 1970) 6/10
King Cobra (Kelly, 2016) 4/10
Certain Women (Reichardt, 2016) 8/10
It (Muscheietti, 2017) 7/10

January at home:

Something Wild - 8/10
In a Lonely Place - 7/10
Babo 73 - 7/10
Ace in the Hole - 6/10
Black Narcissus - 5/10
12 Angry Men - 10/10
The Night of the Hunter - 9/10
Au Hasard Balthazar - 9/10
Old Joy - 5/10
Written on the Wind - 6/10
Boogie Nights - 10/10
Mildred Pierce - 9/10
Naked - 10/10
It Happened One Night - 10/10
Y Tu Mamá También - 7/10
Foreign Correspondent - 7/10
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - x/10 (i just couldn't watch them sing the whole time, but it was nice to listen to so i kept it on & read a book)
All About Eve - 8/10
My Dinner with Andre - 9/10
The Palm Beach Story - 7/10
The Piano Teacher - 9/10
The Earrings of Madame de… - 5/10

It's a pretty good month in which Madame de and Black Narcissus are the worst films you see.

Since the director's poll, I've been binging on Renoir and Vigo.

Renoir: Whirlpool of Fate, Nana, Charleston Parade, The Little Matchstick Girl, La Marseillaise, Boudu Saved From Drowning, A Day in the Country, The Lower Depths, La Bête Humaine, Elena and Her Men

flappy bird in essence otm about The Post.

The Signalman (Clark, 1976) 7/10
Mr Majestyk (Fleischer, 1974) 7/10
Green for Danger (Gilliat, 1946) 6/10
Good Time (Safdie bros, 2017) 7/10
A Brighter Summer Day (Yang, 1991) 9/10
Accident (Losey, 1967) 7/10
Fun With Dick and Jane (Kotcheff, 1977) 4/10
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (McDonagh, 2017) 5/10
Lover for a Day (Garrel, 2017) 6/10
Three Outlaw Samurai (Gosha, 1964) 8/10
Torn Curtain (Hitchcock, 1966) 7/10
Outer Space (Tscherkassky, 1999) 10/10
Ran (Kurosawa, 1985) 8/10
Magic Mike (Soderbergh, 2012) 6/10

flappy bird in essence otm about The Post

I can accept that if we agree to also accept that The Shape of Water is closer to 0/10