Last (x) movies you saw (II)

(since I'm not doing ratings anymore, I'll just say that the Sirk, Fuller, Lang and Ashby (!!) were the ones I liked the best)

I've fallen out of updating this thread, but I watched The Out-Of-Towners at some point during lockdown, and very nearly gave up fifteen minutes from the end after being stoney-faced up until that point. Nothing improved.

I thought the most recent "Emma" was quite enjoyable, and always looked great. Given that it and "Invisible Man" were more or less the last two mainstream movies released in theatres this year, I say Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress (and I suppose the rest of the awards) are a toss-up between the pair. "Emma" is probably a lock for Best Costume Design, though, because I couldn't even tell what the Invisible Man was wearing.

Anyway, I look forward to more from Autumn de Wilde, and of course Anya Taylor-Joy.

Emma was the last film I saw in a theater this year, I enjoyed it

Mad to Be Normal the film with David Tennant as RD Laing. It seems to have way too much stuff happening at the same time ie coinciding. I assume that was narrative structure rather than documentary level accuracy. But may be a bit contrived.
Quite enjoyed it though.
Just got turned onto it by somebody sharing an image of a shirt Laing wears to a chat list elsewhere,

Cactus Flower (1969, Saks) 4/10
You Were Never Lovelier (1942, Seiter, 6/10)
Anna Christie (1930, Brown) 7/10
True History of the Kelly Gang (2019, Kurzel) 5/10
I Will Buy You (1956, Kobayashi) 6/10
A Married Couple (1969, King) 7/10
Heimat Is a Space in Time (2019, Heise)
*The Saddest Music in the World (2003, Maddin) 9/10
At 3:25 aka Paris qui dort (1924, Clair) (59m) 6/10
*Horse Feathers (1932, McLeod) 9/10

A Quiet Place
Didn't see this til now. Pretty well done. Interesting concept so may need to see the sequel now..

Followed on my memory stick by, so next thing I watched.
Coonskin
Ralph Bakshi blacplotation from 1974 1/2 live action 1/2 cartoon.
Very non PC features a lot of stereotypes in the animation. But really cool.
Think this has been sitting on the memory stick since before Xmas with me meaning to get to it. Glad I have now.
Think I listened to a podcast on animations based on Tolkien last year and heard about this through that since he did one.

Blaxploitation getting autocorrected there.

for anyone interested I've started a screening series for group viewings anyone can schedule/program. details in this ILF thread

Quarantine cinema club

Good idea!

In the meantime, we watched (as a family) the first "Paradise Lost" doc, and it had just the effect I hoped it would have on the kids. "Wait a minute, how could they be convinced with no evidence!?!?" Etc. I hope they'll be into and sit still for the sequel(s).

oh god paradise lost

Very nice!

May:

Lisa and the Devil (Bava, 1973) 7/10
Frightmare (Walker, 1974) 7/10
The Nude Vampire (Rollin, 1970) 7/10
The Black Cat (Fulci, 1981) 7/10
Blood for Dracula (Morrissey, 1974) 7/10
Make Way for Tomorrow (McCarey, 1937) 8/10
House of Mortal Sin (Walker, 1976) 6/10
Mad Love (Freund, 1935) 7/10
Werewolf of London (Walker, 1935) 6/10
Opus 5 (Williams, 1961) 8/10
The House of Fear (Neill 1945) 7/10
Cat Girl (Shaughnessy, 1957) 5/10
The Last Sunset (Aldrich, 1961) 7/10
Hello Down There (Arnold, 1969) 4/10
Eye of the Devil (Thompson, 1967) 7/10
The Mummy's Tomb (Young, 1942) 4/10
The Whip and the Body (Bava, 1963) 8/10
Lips of Blood (Rollin, 1975) 7/10
Village of the Damned (Rilla, 1960) 8/10
A Special Cop in Action (Girolami, 1976) 7/10
Planet of the Vampires (Bava, 1965) 8/10
Bob le Flambeur (Melville, 1956) 8/10
Dream Work (Tscherkassky, 2001) 10/10
Motion Picture (‘La sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière à Lyon’) (Tscherkassky, 1984) 6/10
Two Way Stretch (Day, 1960) 8/10
Demons of the Mind (Sykes, 1972) 6/10
Wagon Master (Ford, 1950) 8/10
The Cynic, The Rat & The Fist (Lenzi, 1977) 6/10
The Camp on Blood Island (Guest, 1958) 7/10
Colt 38 Special Squad (Dallamano, 1976) 6/10
Tower of Evil (O'Connolly, 1972) 6/10
Cry of the Banshee (Hessler, 1970) 6/10
The Legend of Hell House (Hough, 1973) 6/10
Antigone (Straub-Huillet, 1992) 8/10
The Undying Monster (Brahm, 1942) 6/10
Allures (Belson, 1961) 9/10

Missing Link
Animation about egocentric explorer and monster hunter finding the sasquatch and subsequent adventures.
All star cast etc.
Quite fun. Missed it at the flicks so just catching up now.

Heavy Traffic
Ralph Bakshi animwtion/live film about a would be underground artist and the people he meets.
Gross humour which I assume was considered underground. Not sure how sympathetic any of the characters are. Listened to a black podcast about Coonskin earlier and see a lot of the same problems they identified there as present here.they pointed out negativity of black portrayal in that here it extends to gays.

Wizards
Watched this before Heavy Traffic. Another later Bakshi from 4 years later. He's incorporating the rotoscope techniques he uses notably on Lord Of The Rings.
This is about a war a milennium after a nuclear war wipes out civilisation and magic has reemerged. The wizards of the title are 2 enemy brothers.
This was quite enjoyable though really not sure about portrayal of Eleanor the would be fairy companion of the good wizard Avatar. Verges on the misogynist.
Soundtrack had some good fusion which nearly verged on the krautrock.

Was Wizards the big fantasy thing before Star Wars. Mark Hamilton even gets a cameo.
Just thinking is this what fantasy fans would be creaming their jeans over massively at the time.
Can see some cult appeal.

God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance (Blank, 1968) - 7/10
*Le Beau Serge (Chabrol, 1958) - 8/10
A Well-Spent Life (Blank, 1971) - 8/10
Cisco Pike (Norton, 1972) - 9/10
Smithereens (Seidelman, 1982) - 8/10
*Chinese Roulette (Fassbinder, 1976) - 9/10
Orphée (Cocteau, 1950) - 8/10
Fracture (Hoblit, 2007) - 4/10
The Paradine Case (Hitchcock, 1947) - 5/10
The Clinton Chronicles (Matrisciana, 1994) - 9/10
Dry Wood (Blank, 1973) - 6/10
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Hittman, 2020) - 9/10
The Hustler (Rossen, 1961) - 7/10
*The Third Generation (Fassbinder, 1979) - 10/10
The Cremator (Herz, 1969) - 9/10
Foxy Brown (Hill, 1974) - 7/10
*Pioneers in Ingolstadt (Fassbinder, 1971) - 8/10
*The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Rohmer, 1963) - 6/10
*Suzanne’s Career (Rohmer, 1963) - 8/10
Humpday (Shelton, 2009) - 3/10
Guest Wife (Wood, 1945) - 4/10
Ornamental Hairpin (Shimizu, 1941) - 8/10
*California Split (Altman, 1974) - 10/10
This Gun for Hire (Tuttle, 1942) - 6/10
*Les Cousins (Chabrol, 1959) - 9/10
Spaceship Earth (Wolf, 2020) - 9/10
*The Master (Anderson, 2012) - 10/10
*High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952) - 5/10
Destry Rides Again (Marshall, 1939) - 8/10
*La Chinoise (Godard, 1967) - 9/10
The Petrified Forest (Mayo, 1936) - 8/10
Rounders (Dahl, 1998) - 6/10
Daisy Kenyon (Preminger, 1947) - 7/10
MacGruber (Taccone, 2010) - 5/10
*Fox and His Friends (Fassbinder, 1975) - 9/10
Unrelated (Hogg, 2007) - 5/10
*Blow Out (DePalma, 1981) - 10/10
*Good Morning (Ozu, 1959) - 9/10

two weeks:

Great 2020 Movies:
The Painter and The Thief (Ree, 2020)

Great (non-2020):
Safety Last (1932, Newmeyer/Taylor)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
Fourteen (2020, Sallitt)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good (non-2020):
Moon (2009, Jones)
A Kid From Coney Island (Ozah, 2019)

Almost Okay to Occasionally Pretty Good:
Hannah Gadsby - Douglas (2020)
Patton Oswalt: I Love Everything (2020)

Deeply Flawed to Barely Watchable:
Hellraiser (Barker, 1987)
Genius Party (Multiple Directors, 2007)
Buzzard (Potrykus, 2014)
DC Showcase: Adam Strange (Lukic, 2020)
Hala (Baig, 2019)
Villain (Barantini, 2020)

No:
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020, Hittman)
The Last Right (2019,Crehan)
Your Name (2016, Shinkai)

American Pop.
Bakshi from 1981 telling the story of American popular music over the course of the 20th century from Russian Jewish immigrants fleeing rotoscoped pogroms to a punk era band that turns out to be Bob Seger.
Gets a bit confusing over timelines especially the beatnik hobo guy who turns into a songwriter.
Was thinking this might just be the most coherent of his films I'd seen so far. But even there it isn't 100%.
There's a torrent of all of his films around so I'm working through them.
Listened to the How Did This Get Made? Podcast on Cool World a few weeks ago so may watch that soon.

I like Bakshi, but Cool World definitely ain't good.

Watched "The Social Network" with my older one today. It's remarkable how young people so quickly turned their back on something as seemingly pervasive as Facebook. She barely knows anything about the site, let alone Zuckerberg.

Safety Last cx = 1923

I really enjoyed "The Vast of Night." Refreshingly simple and sometimes ingenious, it plays like a great Ray Bradbury story or, more high concept, like a student film prequel to "Close Encounters." And it's got a tracking shot for the ages.

OK, just looked it up and sure, there was some cheating with the tracking shot, but I loved all the rest of the long, mostly still, mostly unbroken shots in the movie. I've seen some criticism that the movie itself is too slow, but it totally held my teen's attention, which is saying something!

Looking forward to new Hong Sang-Soo and Abel Ferrara movies out this week in "virtual cinemas."

I saw Yourself and Yours tonight, which was my first exposure to Sang-Soo. Remarkably clever and muted piece of work; I might need to rewatch it to get some of the greater nuances. Worth the time for sure.

Terminator Dark Fate - not good folks not good

*Son of Paleface (1952, Tashlin) 9/10
The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018, Cousins) 6/10
As Long as You’ve Got Your Health (1966, Etaix) 7/10
Death in the Garden (1956, Bunuel) 6/10
The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender (1997, Rappaport) 5/10
Six of a Kind (1934, McCarey) 7/10
River of Grass (1994, Reichardt) 7/10
The Canterbury Tales (1972, Pasolini) 6/10
The Decameron (1971, Pasolini) 7/10
The Italian Job (1969, Collinson) 6/10
The Forest for the Trees (2003, Ade) 7/10

not sure about its greatness, but I felt a lot of empathy for the main character in Maren Ade's The Forest for the Trees and thought the story was surprising. It was memorable and is one of my favorite first films

River of Grass was also an amazing first film and Kelly Reichardt has become one of my favorite directors

Agreed on Reichardt in general and River of Grass in particular. I need to see First Cow, tho Morbs panned it here.

At Almodovar's suggestion from his Sight and Sound COVID lockdown diary, I gave Howard Hawks' Monkey Business a shot and found it dead-on funny and impossibly problematic. Beyond the overt sexism and the immensely dated jokes, there's no way this is ever going to get a full critical reassessment with Cary Grant playing a fifth of the movie in redface. That said, the dialogue is crisp, the direction is expert and the cast is dynamite. Ginger Rogers is charming and endlessly fun, Charles Coburn is at his monocled best, Marilyn is at her it-girl apex and Cary Grant (redface aside) is an energetic live wire. There's a blu-ray out!

River of Grass bears zero resemblance to any of KR's other films, is the thing.

Son of Paleface doesn't bother me with all its Native gags cuz UH IT'S FROM 1952. It's also significantly funnier than, say, Blazing Saddles, though they certainly share some DNA.

not too similar too but wouldn't say it bears zero resemblance

don't remember that many final scenes, but the final scene of The Forest for the Trees really got to me

a thing can be from 1952 and still be offensive! Monkey Business is from 1952 and is offensive!

Coincidentally, I finally watched "Wendy and Lucy," which is so deceptively simple and heartbreaking, thanks largely to Michelle Williams (and lost dog sentiment), but also Reichardt, who does so much with so little. Though I can suppose see someone saying she does so little with so little, too.

Watched "Cast Away" as a family tonight. Kind of remarkable it's only 2 hours 15 minutes. I feel if it was released today it'd have at least 30 minutes extra minutes in there, given it covers 4 years on a deserted island. Anyway, Hanks is good in it, but those bookends remain if not problematic than certainly pretty boring ways to frame the movie.

lol i remember loving the bulk of castaway watching it in theaters and then being utterly furious that they didn't just end the damn thing when he loses wilson. i should prob rewatch some day.

does Monkey Business need a critical reevaluation? it's a great concept stretched thin, not enough good jokes, not enough MM. (but of course Ginger & Cary are great)
the 15 minutes where Cary Grant is playing cowboys and Indians with some kids is not what's keeping it from being looked over again.

it ain't helping. I'd argue it's a pretty great showcase for all involved that has not aged particularly well but likely deserves more revival love than it gets.

It would definitely still hit better in a virally-exposed non-distanced audience than at home on youtube.

Just saw a lovely documentary called "Hear and Now" about a pair of 65-year old deaf-from-birth grandparents (with hearing children, one the filmmaker) who decide to get cochlear implants together. At the very least it offers a fascinating glimpse into their life story, but I guess the meat of the movie is how they react (as individuals and as a couple) to getting the implants. What (if anything) changes between them, what (if anything) changes in their life, the difference between hearing and communication, that sort of thing. Quietly profound about what we take for granted in life, what is or is not important, and how we are able (or unable) as humans to change and adapt to challenging situations.

be offended all the time by a culture that's dead and gone

that kinda bores my socks off

Yeah, we absolutely solved racism long ago, a--

Axing of Little Britain, Chris Lilley shows from streaming services prompts outrage

This was hilarious, award-winning comedy up until (checks notes) yesterday, when it suddenly became slightly racist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL8R8k7q4_Q

okay, this 2011 song about an Aboriginal child being run over by a truck, performed by a middle-aged white Australian man in blackface, playing an African-American rapper attempting to sing for pathos, was also briefly racist when the writer/actor re-promoted it in connection to an Aboriginal child being murdered in WA by being run over by a truck, but that was July 2017. A very different time.

also for the record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MQEjg7N4y8
George Winslow and Cary are both great in this scene but it couldn't be much more racist

westerns were big in the '50s; kiddies played along

it could be a lot more racist

It likely WAS a lot more racist.

directors cut

Le Jeu (Cavayé, 2018) 5/10
Knives Out (Johnson, 2019) 7/10
White Material (Denis, 2009) 7/10
The Highwaymen (Hancock, 2019) 1/10
Matilda (DeVito, 1996) 5/10
Let The Sunshine In (Denis, 2017) 7/10
Le Passé (Farhadi, 2013) 9/10
Le Havre (Kaurismaki, 2011) 8/10
35 Rhums (Denis, 2008) 9/10
Clouds of Sils Maria (Assayas, 2014) 9/10

not been watching a _lot_ of film over the past week but it's mostly been high quality.

Great:
8:46 – Dave Chapelle (2020, Netflix)
Monkey Business (1952, Hawks)

Consistently Pretty Good to Very Very Good:
You Don’t Nomi (2020, McHale)
Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-Soo, 2020)
Giant God Warrior Appears in Tokyo (Higuchi / Ghibi, 2012)
80 Blocks from Tiffany’s (1979, Weis)

No:
Miwa: Looking for Black Lizard (2010)
Days of the Bagnold Summer (2020)

New Stuff on Deck:

The Personal History of David Copperfield
For They Know Not What They Do
Hill of Freedom
Air Conditioner
Hammer
The Quarry
Graves Without a Name
Dreamland
Shirley
The Vast of Night
Da 5 Bloods
The Cow and I (1959)

random garbage i've sat through in the past few months

Dear Zachary 5/10
Good Time 8/10
Uncut Gems 8/10
Midsommar 6/10
Jane Eyre (Fukunaga, 2011) 4/10
DisneyNature Elephant 5/10
The Servant (1963) 6/10
Escape Room (the 2017 one) 2/10
Deadpool 2 5/10
Colossus: The Forbin Project 6/10 -- I dig early depictions of computers in movies, when Hollywood thought they could get away with anything.
Shrek 2 2/10
Avengers Endgame 3/10 -- I am sick of superhero movies and this is the type of "all plot details, no themes" children's movie that I especially hate (see also transformers)