Last (x) movies you saw (II)

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)

Everything was nailed from what is one of my newly favorited books, but the additions of emotional range really screwballed it for me. I've never been an elitist type to call for incessant comparisons b/w superior/inferiority of source material versus adaptation, but --- to depict Leamas as a hopeless romantic was such a downfall. He was a man who denied being in love, who adapted his same cynicisms of the ideological war to his newfound relationship. That it was pointless. It wasn't until his cynicism backfired in the end that he realized what he had lost. I don't accept this as an embrace ideology, but rather an acceptance that his life in England was so devoid of meaning that Ann was all he had. Anyways, the film forwent with all that and chose to depict Leamas as in love with her from time of meeting to the very end. Maybe that still works. I don't think so.

Thank you.

Watched The Fugitive with the kids. Very '90s, but held up pretty well thanks to some good performances, and just a complete happy coincidence we happened to watch the Chicago-set movie on the very calendar weekend in which it was taking place!

Triangle (Smith 2009)
The Talk Of The Town (Stevens, Van Every, Shaw, Buchman, after Harmon 1942)
Touch Of Evil (Welles after Masterson 1958) [DCP]
* Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (Van Peebles 1971) [DCP]
Funny Face (Donen, Gershe, Gershwin & Gershwin 1957)
The Breaker Upperers (Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek 2018)
* Sorry To Bother You (Riley 2018) [DCP]
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (Coppola 2012)
Private Property (Stevens 1959)
* Wild Things (McNaughton, Peters 1998)
Scorchy (Avedis 1976)
Mississipi Grind (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck 2015)
Rock 'N' Roll Cowboys (Stewart, Young 1987) [cinema projection of an NTSC VHS of a PAL telemovie]
The Fortune Cookie (Wilder, Diamond 1966)
They Live (Carpenter & fake Carpenter, after Wray-after-Nelson 1988) [DCP]

It's a been a while since a movie knocked me out like Birds of Passage did.

yea i saw that @ tiff, good stuff

So far it’s the best film I have seen this year and there’s been some good competition!

The Fatal Mallet (Sennett, 1914)
The Rounders (Chaplin, 1914)
Flirtation (Birinsky, 1934)
Newark Athlete (Dickson, 1891)
Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (Dickson, 1894)
The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (Rector, 1894)
President McKinley and Escort Going to the Capitol (1901)
Berth Quakes (Yarbrough, 1938)
Snow-White (Fleischer, 1933)
False Faces (Sherman, 1932)
Dancing on the Moon (Fleischer, 1935)
Damaged Lives (Ulmer, 1933)
Captain Marvel (Fleck & Boden, 2019)

Dumplin' (Fletcher, 2018) 7/10
Boy Erased (Edgerton, 2018) 4/10
The Hate U Give (Tillman Jr., 2018) 6/10
*Jaws (Spielberg, 1975) 8/10
Caged (Cromwell, 1950) 6/10
Giant Little Ones (Behrman, 2018) 8/10
Upgrade (Whannell, 2018) 8/10
Never Steady, Never Still (Hepburn, 2017) 5/10
Paddington 2 (King, 2017) 7/10
*Atlantic City (Malle, 1980) 8/10

SuperClásico (Madsen)
Tarok (Riis)
The Ambassador (Brügger)
Cold Case Hammerskjöld (Brügger)
The Deposit (Kjartansdóttir)
Harajuku (Svensson)*
The Kindergarden Teacher (Lapid)
Michael (Schleinzer)
Ramen Teh (Eric Khoo)
The Living Desert (Algar)
Goodfellas (Scorsese)*
Rachel Getting Married (Demme)
Ahi Esta el Detalle (Bustillo Oro)
Los Tres Mosqueteros (Delgado)
Maria Candelaria (Fernandez)
Tizoc (Rodriguez)
Hellboy (del Toro)*
Pan’s Labyrinth (del Toro)*
Amores Perros (Iñárritu)
The Revenant (Iñárritu)

On the Basis of Sex
enjoyable emotive drama about Ruth Bader Ginsburg establishing herself. An RGB origin story.
I would like to see the film RGB now I've seen this since I think that was more of a documentary. Not sure if it passed through here yet.

Immoral Tales (if you can point me toward a print of the "X-rated Picasso" US poster for this film I will be eternally grateful)
*Zero for Conduct (supposedly a different restoration/cut than the Criterion disc I'm familiar with; I couldn't tell, honestly, and it's impossible for me to nitpick cuts while watching this movie)
The Flower Thief (I'm afraid I don't get Ron Rice, at least not yet)
*L'Atalante (see Zero for Conduct; I'm a latecomer to Vigo but I will never turn down the opportunity to see these films again)
The Beast (dryer than I was expecting, which is a good thing; reminds me I still need to see Juan Bunuel's Leonor)
The Third Part of the Night (holy shit, Zulawski really did arrive fully formed; devastating)
Man Is Not a Bird (finally starting in on Dusan Makavejev; this was absolutely charming)
The Legend of Hell House (INJECT THAT DEEP FOCUS RIGHT INTO MY VEINS)
The Entity (see above re: split diopter shots; also way more harrowing and affecting than I was expecting)
Death Walks on High Heels (it's okay, I guess? It's workmanlike in every sense of the word)
Death Walks at Midnight (it's better, but eh. Am I losing my love for gialli?)
Riki-Oh (somehow I hadn't seen this yet?)
The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (OH WAIT NO GIALLI CAN BE FUCKING AMAZING)
The Case of the Scorpion's Tale (not as revelatory as Wardh but still solid)
Premutos: Lord of the Living Dead (West German early Peter Jackson, kind of, only more mean-spirited and grubby and self-impressed)
*Mr. X (the Leos Carax documentary)
Black Christmas (LOVED THIS, holy shit. The best executed twist ending I've seen in ages, all before the rules of its genre were even close to codified)
*The Night Stalker
*The Night Strangler (both of these were to watch with Tim Lucas's predictably dry commentaries; there's valuable stuff, like learning just how extensive and acknowledged Dan Curtis's debt to Bava was, or the possible plagiarism of the original Jeff Rice novel, and it's not like I can pay much attention to anything new when I'm sick as hell and sneezing every 2-3 seconds)

Always enjoy your listings here telephone thing - the nice Shameless blu I have of Mrs Wadh now bumped to the top of my viewing pile.

Thanks! Also just want to pop in here and dump in the last couple films I watched (late last night and this morning) right away because hoooly shit:

Alice Sweet Alice (insanely grim even by the standards of, say, Black Christmas- I'm using podcast episodes to kind of motivate me through my backlog of classics, which is why these two are clustered together- but also has some really fascinating intertextual stuff; Psycho is thuddingly obvious- the score quotes Herrmann in places, there's a visible poster at a train station, who gives a shit- but Don't Look Now is *all over* this grubby New Jersey-set film and it's fucking wild)

Deadly Sweet (my first Tinto Brass; went into it misled into expecting a giallo, but it's far closer to early Godard, with Guido Crepax storyboards that really shine through in the finished film. And it predates Argento really permanently marrying the ideas of perception in the earliest gialli like Bava's Girl Who Knew too Much with the complementary aspects of Blow Up- the Blow Up homage is right on the surface, including Trintignant reading a direct quote from Antonioni on the soundtrack.)

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Huillet, Straub, 1968) 4/10
Othon (Huillet, Straub, 1970) 7/10
The Bridegroom the Actress and the Pimp (Huillet, Straub, 1968) 4/10
News From Home (Akerman, 1977) 10/10
If Beale Street Could Talk (Jenkins, 2018) 6/10
The Virgin Spring (Bergman, 1960) 6/10
The Lusty Men (Ray, 1952) 9/10
The Raid (Evans, 2011) 5/10
The Raid 2 (Evans, 2014) 3/10
Tokyo-Ga (Wenders, 1985) 6/10
Too Early/Too Late (Huillet, Straub, 1982) 7/10
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell, Pressburger, 1943) 8/10
The Hitch-Hiker (Lupino, 1953) 7/10
Babylon (Rosso, 1980) 8/10

Oof. Thanks for taking that Huillet/Straub bullet for the rest of us. Like they say in the current vernacular: "I can't even..."

The Virgin Spring (Bergman, 1960) 6/10

I have seen literally nothing else among your recent watches, so I have no way of gauging how this film coincides (or doesn't) with your tastes, but I am curious about this rating.

same rating on The Bridegroom the Actress and the Pimp for me, but 7/10 for Anna Magdalena

loved News From Home, 10/10 for me too, but of the Eclipse Series 19 Hotel Monterey made even more of an impression

the virgin spring is top five imo

will definitely try anna magdalena again at some point but my complete ignorance of bach/classical music made it one of the most alienating and tedious cinema experiences i've had. (the applause at the end confirmed that the proms crowd had turned out)

re the virgin spring, will concede 6 is a little harsh but this is a way off from his best; being shame and smiles of a summer night.

loved News From Home, 10/10 for me too, but of the Eclipse Series 19 Hotel Monterey made even more of an impression

will seek it out! fyi other london folks, there's a barbican showing of je tu il elle in june

1) It's amazing how many threads there are apparently on Men In Black 3.

2) Rewatching the first one, I think it may be a perfect script, which helps it hold up. Though honestly the casting and direction and even FX are pretty good, too. I remember reading at the time that it cost $90 mil, so at 90 minutes runs an impressive $1 million a minute.

Streamers (Altman, 1983) - 7/10
Querelle (Fassbinder, 1982) - 6/10
Cruising (Friedkin, 1980) - 7/10
*ODDSAC (Perez, 2010) - 6/10
*Zabriskie Point (Antonioni, 1970) - 10/10
Fort Apache (Ford, 1948) - 9/10
All These Women (Bergman, 1964) - 4/10
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (Ford, 1949) - 8/10
Tomorrow We Move (Akerman, 2004) - 6/10
A Married Woman (Godard, 1965) - 7/10
Compulsion (Fleischer, 1959) - 9/10
Despair (Fassbinder, 1978) - 4/10
Volver (Almodóvar, 2006) - 7/10
*Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946) - 9/10
Shirin (Kiarostami, 2008) - 4/10
Diabolique (Clouzot, 1955) - 10/10
Seconds (Frankenheimer, 1966) - 7/10

The Ramen Girl (5.5)
Mississippi Burning (6.0)
Snow Angels (6.5)
Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable (7.5)
Malcolm X (10.0)
Jungle Fever (9.0)
American Beauty (8.5)
Welfare (10.0)
The Last Picture Show (7.0)
Us (6.0)
Down the Shore (5.5)
The September Issue (6.5)

Rampling is really incredible in Hannah imo, and I found the film overall impressive. Maybe it’s because it has barely any dialogue tho but the sound mix was kinda lol, it reminded me of the on the hour skit of the radio play that won an award for best sound design and it’s like “more tea?” *INSANELY LOUD FOLEY OF WATER POURING*

ftr I am entirely pro this

Also: dead whales kinda becoming an arthouse cliché at this point

Yeah, Hannah is absolutely incredible. The extreme closeups of the food, and all the weird daily details. It's an almost documentary film, and then there's just one of the best actors in the world creating an incredible character.

As soon as we went from the acting class (iirc) to that first scene with her husband at dinner I was like “oh boy, we’re in for something here”. An uncompromising 95 minutes

Street Angel (1928, Borzage) 8/10
Sollers Point (2017, Porterfield) 6/10
An Elephant Sitting Still (2018, Hu) 4/10
*I Walked with a Zombie (1943, Tourneur) 8/10
*Bedazzled (1967, Donen) 9/10
Apollo 11 (2019, Miller) 8/10
Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967, Hill) 5/10
Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970, Hickox) 6/10
Winter Kept Us Warm (1965, Secter) 7/10
Zoo in Budapest (1933, Lee) 6/10
The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1913, Griffith) 6/10
The Massacre (1912, Griffith) 7/10

Winter Kept Us Warm (1965, Secter) 7/10

Famous Canadian film--might even have been the first Canadian feature of any consequence. I saw it at the University of Toronto about 15 years ago, along with one of Cronenberg's early ones (Stereo or Crimes of the Future, can't remember which). Thought it was almost impossible to see...so of course it's on YouTube.

That's where I saw it, tho a NYC rep house recently showed a 16mm print.

Hypocrites (Weber, 1915)
Brief Encounter (Lean, 1945)
On With the Show (Crosland, 1929)
Bum Voyage (Grinde, 1934)
*The Wedding March (von Stroheim, 1928)
Blind Husbands (von Stroheim, 1919)
The Paneless Window Washer (Fleischer, 1937)
While the City Sleeps (Conway, 1928)

Just to correct myself a couple of posts above, Don Owens' Nobody Waved Goodbye predates Winter Kept Us Warm by a year.

American Beauty (8.5)

This film seems to have taken a fairly big hit in reputation, tho i disliked it in '99, and Alan Ball's subsequent shtick seemed milked from the same cow. What do you like about it?

Great cinematography, iirc.

well yeah, Conrad Hall. but kind of unnecessary for a windblown plastic bag.

In terms of its point of view, it strongly resembles a film from the '70s New Hollywood, is my guess?

I don't usually do this, but rather than just repeat myself, here's some stuff I wrote about it about 10 years ago. I'm basically in the same place today. (Scroll down to #32.)

http://phildellio.tripod.com/movies1.html

I think I understand some of the main reasons people hate it, above and beyond standard backlash against films that win a lot of awards.

1) It's a couple of British guys commenting on American life.
2) It's written by and stars two guys who could be interpreted as being self-hating gay men--I think that's a complaint, I'm not sure.
3) It's the nine-millionth film to say there's this dark side to suburbia, and the makers seem to think they're the first people to hit upon this.

And there are no doubt other things people hate about it. I'm not oblivious to the counter-arguments.

In addition to what I wrote then, Eric's right, I probably do get the mood of a mid-'70s film.

After this last rewatch, I went back and read some of the original reviews in Salon, Slate, the Times, Slant, and a few others. Most were really positive; one or two weren't. Also looked at some ILX reaction, and found two or three people who said they liked/loved it initially, then hated it second time around. It was already doomed to vanish--in a way, Spacey's troubles may be the one thing that keeps it around.

I shouldn't let this fall under the umbrella of "other things":

4) In its treatment of Thora Birch and Mena Suvari, it's male-gazey or creepy or worse. I get that too.

5) bag headed straight for the ocean

I tried my best to shield that poor plastic bag from further vilification, but was not to be.

who is British besides Sam Mendes?

I blame Alan Ball (from Atlanta) first.

You're right--a British guy, not guys. That's a common thing, though: Zabriskie Point, Lost in Translation, etc. The tourist charge.

But it's clearly Ball's -- and I hate to use the word -- vision.

Maybe that reason doesn't apply then. I'm trying to understand why people loathe the film--not just a poor pick for Best Picture but possibly the worst pick ever--and maybe it's as simple as glib and facile most of the time, occasionally (plastic-bag monologue) wildly pretentious. I go back to it every few years, and I've just never felt that way.

If it hadn't won, by the way, I'm guessing The Sixth Sense would have (which I never watched a second time); people here would have gone for The Insider (which I find very slow).

Loathing toward American Beauty is probably the potent combo of treacly, precious, dumber than it thinks it is, and arrogant. It goes beyond pretension, there's something mean and dumb in that movie. Nothing to do with Spacey, I think his performance is the best thing in it.

Sorry to Bother You (man WHAT; I have some problems with the big twist, and much as I admire its politics, for some reason even magical realism didn't help with my suspension of disbelief re: the world being breathlessly attentive to a strike at a call center;loved it nonetheless)

*L'Important c'est d'aimer (loved it more on this latest rewatch where I'd previously found it somewhat cold; Fabio Testi is ok I guess but Romy Schneider deserves all the accolades, and Kinski is spellbinding, pulling off the greatest acting challenge of his career in portraying a fundamentally decent human being [fuck him for real though] and a sympathetic gay character in a movie that unfortunately leans on homophobia for some cheap shock value)

Death Laid an Egg (started with the drastically shortened original "giallo cut," will return to the Touch of Evil-esque restoration on the blu-ray in a few days; absolutely fucking bughouse, reminds me of a more flamboyant Elio Petri, with a score by composer Bruno Maderna that bounces between Stockhausen-esque electroacoustics, melancholy guitar that reminds me of Lech Jankowski's work for the Quay brothers, and manic scat-heavy nonsense)

Please Kill Mr. Kinski (still on my mind a few days later)

*The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (rewatched with Ernesto Gastaldi's commentary; as ever, the man misses no opportunity to shit-talk Argento or any thriller where the villain's motivation is pathological, which is an entertaining listen at the very least- especially since my introduction to the giallo, as with so many other non-Italians, is very much one that started with psychos and supernatural horror thanks to Argento, Fulci, etc)

L'Assassino (first film in as exhaustive a Petri rewatch as I can manage with what's available on disc in the US & UK)

The Killer Is On the Phone (middling 1972 giallo with Telly Savalas as the heavy; decent Stelvio Cipriani soundtrack heavy on the fuzz guitar; unusual Bruges setting; very little else to recommend it beyond those three factors- Luigi Bazzoni's Footprints on the Moon does the amnesia plot a thousand times better, plus gorgeous Vittorio Storaro cinematography and an actual sense of dread, minus this film's gratuitous homophobia)

I say Petri "rewatch," all I've seen until now is Investigation... and read some of his writing, so this is mostly uncharted territory for me.