Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Walter Hill has directed 22 movies. I've seen 15 of them; some were amazing and some just okay, but I've never been bored by one until tonight. DEAD FOR A DOLLAR is aimless and, worse, visually inert — a waste of everyone involved's time. Watch THE PROFESSIONALS instead.

Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979) 4/5
We Are Fugazi from Washington DC (2023) 4/5
Conquest (1983) 3.5/5
Rouge (1987) 4/5
Man Hunt (1941) 3/5
Beat the Devil (1953) 3/5
Fascination (1979) 2/5
Decision to Leave (2022) 4.5/5

I was going to ask you how you managed to see Chilly Scenes of Winter, but I see it's on YouTube for nothing. Good memories of that--will watch if for sure this week.

Yeah, that was where. Criterion are also releasing it next month, fyi.

still working through S&S list with the odd other thing thrown in because it was in the same box when i was digging through them

Daisies
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Playtime
Hourglass Sanitorium
Ugetsu Monogatari
Sherlock Jr

also the last two in the truffaut box that has been sat there for about 5 years, the one that isn't 400 blows. The Woman Next Door and Suddenly Sunday

Watched Black Rain (late 80s Ridley Scott movie — Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia go to Japan to hunt a yakuza) last night. Dumb in many ways, but could have been much worse. Significantly less racist than, say, Rising Sun.

Glad I watched Chilly Scenes of Winter. One of those late '70s American films that really does feel like a bridge between New Hollywood and the coming decade (I mean in terms of style and tone--in terms of the calendar, obviously). I was thinking about how both John Heard and Peter Riegert were in The Sopranos; Mary Beth Hurt is excellent, and I literally had no idea she was married to William Hurt (duh) or Paul Schrader (she plays Nolte's ex-wife in Affliction).

saw a showing of the 1977 Mexican (in English!) cult horror movie Alucarda last night with star Tina Romero (no relation to George) in attendance for a talkback. The film is a nonsense mishmash of lesbian makeout sessions and people catching fire and is sorta plot optional but Romero was magnetic! A real trip in person too, lots of fun stories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHokoP1dXP0

here's a recommended taste that had the audience hooting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k91WYulStck

SATAN SATAN I PROMISE THEE THAT I WILL DO AS MUCH EVIL AS I CAN

*Lost Highway (Lynch 1997)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Coogler 2022)
Thirst (Park 2009)
Rising Tones Cross (Jahn 1985)
Prince of Darkness (Carpenter 1987)
Call Northside 777 (Hathaway 1948)
A Prophet (Audiard 1009)
Bullet Train (Leitch 2022)
8 1/2 (Fellini 1963)
Emily the Criminal (Ford 2022)
Sherlock Jr. (Keaton 1924)
Glass Onion (Johnson 2022)
The Banshees of Inisherin (McDonagh 2022)
The Great Silence (Corbucci 1968)
They Live (Carpenter 1988)
Shaolin Soccer (Chow 2001)
PlayTime (Tati 1967)
The Worst Person in the World (Trier 2021)
Forty Guns (Fuller 1957)
TÁR (Field 2022)
Flux Gourmet (Strickland 2022)
The Dark Corner (Hathaway 1946)
*The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Fassbinder 1972)

not thrilled about how much my movie watching has slowed down, maybe I'll pick up the pace

un beau matin (8.0)
godland (7.0)
go west (9.0)
flux gourmet (5.0)
sharper (6.0)

oh and Walter Hill’s “Dead For A Dollar”. An ugly looking, cliché-ridden lost opportunity. 2.0

oh and Walter Hill’s “Dead For A Dollar”. An ugly looking, cliché-ridden lost opportunity. 2.0

THANK YOU. Such a complete waste.

Pillow Talk (Gordon, 1959) 6/10
Wanda (Loden, 1970) 8/10 #48
Dark Star (Carpenter, 1974) 4/10
Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1975) 8/10 #31
Return to Oz (1985) 7/10 those heads!

The Suicide Squad (Gunn, 2021) 7/10 first superhero movie i've liked since... thor ragnarok?
Strange World (Disney co., 2022) 5/10
Wendell & Wild (Selick, 2022) 7/10
The Banshees of Inisherin (McDonagh, 2022) 5/10
Hocus Pocus 2 (Disney co., 2022) 5/10
See How They Run (George, 2022) 6/10
Bodies Bodies Bodies (A24, 2022) 6/10
short: James Baldwin: From Another Place (1973)
short: The Flying Sailor (2022)
short: The Martha Mitchell Effect (2022)
short: Donks (Colgrave, 2023)

Bank of Dave (Foggin, 2023) 6/10
The Place Without Limits (Ripstein, 1978) 8/10
Knock at the Cabin (Shyamalan, 2023) 8/10
Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (Fassbinder, 1974) 9/10
Pulse (Kurosawa, 2001) 8/10
Finder's Fee (Probst, 2001) 6/10
*Happy Gilmore (Dugan, 1996) 7/10
The Death of Louis XIV (Serra, 2016) 5/10
Skinamarink (Ball, 2022) 7/10
Joe (Avildsen, 1970) 9/10
Pacifiction (Serra, 2022) 8/10
Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea (Polak, 1977) 8/10
Double Down (Breen, 2005) 1/10
Fateful Findings (Breen, 2013) 2/10
*The Third Generation (Fassbinder, 1979) 7/10
When the Cat Comes (Jasny, 1963) 7/10

The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s “American Pie” (6.5)
Peeping Tom (8.0)
Roman Holiday (9.0)
Is That Black Enough for You?!? (7.0)
Chilly Scenes of Winter (7.0)
Bill Russell: Legend (7.0)
One Fine Morning (6.5)
The Offer (7.0)
Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (6.5)
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (7.0)

Sacrilege, I guess, but I was more interested in the story of The Other Side of the Wind than in watching the film itself; between the clips in They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, though, and finding out it's on Netflix too (accidentally started it when I was trying to resume the documentary), I will watch it. Found the last 10 minutes of Spurlock's film very moving. (Didn't really get Alan Cummimng as a narrator, and the use of Suicide's "Cheree" for some circa 1970 footage was really weird...and Rich Little?!)

Alan Cumming...

The doc is much better than the film.

I tried watching Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid a couple of weeks ago and tapped out shortly after the big bicycle-romance scene; it just wasn’t remotely charming or funny or interesting. But last night I noticed that The Sting (which I had also never seen) was on Netflix, so I checked that out and it was really good! A very well-written con movie — since I’d read David Maurer’s The Big Con a half dozen times over the years, I knew exactly what they were doing to screw the villain and how it would work, but it was still fun to watch and there were a few twists I didn’t see coming. I’m not a Robert Redford fan at all; he’s an empty suit with a blond wig on top. But he didn’t ruin any scenes, and the rest of the cast, especially Robert Shaw, was great.

Theodora Goes Wild (1936) 7/10
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Lubitsch, written by Billy Wilder, 1938) 9/10
short: All My Life (Bruce Baillie, 1966)
short: Lemon (Hollis Frampton, 1969)
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (the dog movie guy, written by James Gunn, 2004) 3/10
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) 5/10 war sad. can you believe it?

sight & sound list watch-through
#7 Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) 8/10
#67 The Gleaners and I (Varda, 2000) 8/10
#99 Black Girl (Sembène, 1966) 6/10
#102 The House is Black (Farrokhzad, 1963) 6/10
#136 Partie de campagne (Renoir, 1946) 8/10
#203 I Know Where I'm Going (the Archers, 1945) 8/10 rewatched

Theodora Goes Wild (1936) 7/10
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Lubitsch, written by Billy Wilder, 1938) 9/10

GIRL (DHONT, 2018) 9/10
HOLY SPIDER (ABBSI, 2022) 8/10

THE APOLOGY (LOCKE, 2022) 4/10
HALLOWEEN ENDS (GORDON GREEN, 2022) 7/10

Hardcore Henry (Ilya Naishuller, 2015) 7/10
Nobody (Ilya Naishuller, 2021) 8/10

somewhere between these he learned about rising action

One Fine Morning (Hansen-Løve, 2023) 9/10
Creed III (Jordan, 2023) 5/10
* Tár (Field, 2022) 8/10
The Bedroom Window (Hanson, 1987) 6/10
Legal Eagles (Reitman, 1986) 4/10
* Kramer v. Kramer (Benton, 1979) 6/10
Forty Guns(Fuller, 1957) 8/10
East of Eden(Kazan, 1955) 7/10
* Night and the City(Dassin, 1950 9/10
Merrily We Go to Hell (Arzner, 1932) 6/10

* Amateur (1994) First viewing since the late 90s, when the owner of the small record store near my hometown decided to start renting out some of his favorite movies.
The Watermelon Woman (1996) 3.5/5
Women Talking (2022) 3/5
Buck and the Preacher (1972) 3.5/5
Trans-Europ-Express (1966) 3/5
Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992) 4/5
* Yes, Madam! (1985) 3.5/5
* What Happened Was... (1994) 4.5/5
Hyenas (1992) 4/5
* Phantom Lady (1944) 3.5/5
* Top Secret! (1984) 4/5
Once Upon a Time in China II (1992) 4/5

Oh yeah, Amateur = 3.5/5

Jackass Forever is on Amazon Prime. I laughed more than I thought I would.

Murder at Dawn (Thorpe, 1932)
Cocaine Bear (Banks, 2023)
The Lucky Devil (Tuttle, 1925)
*Hard Luck (Keaton & Cline, 1921)
Konga (Lemont, 1961)
*It's the Cats (Fleischer & Fleischer)
The Second Hundred Years (Guiol, 1927)

A few to catch up on...

Miami Vice (Mann 2006) 4/5
Killing Them Softly (Dominik 2012) 3/5
Death on the Nile (Guillermin 1978) 3/5
They Live (Carpenter 1988) 4/5
Hereditary (Aster 2018) 3.5/5
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950) 5/5
Rambo: Last Blood (Grunberg 2019) 2/5
Belle du Jour (Bunuel 1967) 5/5
Spirited Away (Miyazaki 2001) 5/5
Mirror (Tarkovsky 1975) 4.5/5
Extreme Prejudice (Hill 1987) 3.5/5
Stalker (Tarkovsky 1979) 5/5
Little Women (Gerwig 2019) 4.5/5
8 Mile (Hanson 2002) 3/5
Prey (Trachtenberg 2022) 3.5/5
Tombstone (Cosmatos 1993) 3.5/5
The Banshees of Inisherin (McDonagh 2022) 3/5
Sherlock Jr (Keaton 1924) 5/5
The General (Keaton 1926) 4/5
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Ming-liang 2003 5/5
La Ciénaga (Martel 2001) 4.5/5
The Depahted (Scorcese 2006) 3.5/5
The Searchers (Ford 1956) 4.5/5
The Night House (Bruckner 2020) 3/5
A Man Escaped (Bresson 1956) 5/5

The rest of Winter 2023:

Kansas City (Robert Altman, 1996)
Finger Of Doom (Hsueh-Li Pao, 1972)
August in the Water (Gakuryû Ishii, 1995)
Tár (Todd Field, 2022)
*The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
Delta Space Mission (Calin Cazan, Mircea Toia, 1984)
Meet Me in the Bathroom (Will Lovelace, Dylan Southern, Andrew Cross, 2022)
Death Watch (Bertrand Tavernier, 1980)
State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman, 2007)
Furie (Le-Van Kiet, 2019)
The Mephisto Waltz (Paul Wendkos, 1971)
*Hard Boiled (John Woo, 1992)
Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman, 1966)
*Miller's Crossing (Joel Coen, 1990)
State Funeral (Sergey Loznitsa, 2019)
To Leslie (Michael Morris, 2022)
Smog (Franco Rossi, 1962)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, 2022)
East of the Mountains (S.J. Chiro, 2021)
All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen, 2022)
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras, 2022)
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022)
Reprise (Joachim Trier, 2006)
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)
The Pyramid (Gary Kent, 1976)
Who'll Stop the Rain (Karel Reisz, 1978)
The Night Comes for Us (Timo Tjahjanto, 2018)

Pleased to discover that this season's minor unseen Altman,Kansas City, is a great movie. Wish I saw it when it came out. August in the Water, Furie, Paterson, and East of the Mountains are the other standouts here. Hard Boiled, of course, is one of the greatest movies ever made and of the three rewatches I can watch it again right now without picking it apart like a film student.

So This Is London (Blystone, 1930)
DuBarry, Woman of Passion (Taylor, 1930)
The Bad One (Fitzmaurice, 1930)
The Woman I Stole (Cummings, 1933)
The Broken Melody (Vorhaus, 1934)
Blood of Dracula (Strock, 1957)
The Lady and the Beard (Ozu, 1931)

Tár (Field, 2022) 9/10 watched twice
Scream (2022) 4/10
Oxygen (Aja, 2021) 6/10
Creating Rem Lezar
Santo in the Treasure of Dracula (MST3k version)

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) 3.5/5 Having watched the original on blu-ray with almost no memory of it except thinking it sucked, I had to be dragged to the very end of this one's theatrical run. I was surprised how entertaining I found it by the time the final battle came together. It really is so seamlessly done and stridently anti-militarism that it instantly rendered the vague demographic signaling and shoddy VFX of Marvel movies obsolete.
John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) 4.5/5
The Verdict (1982) 4.5/5
Salvatore Giuliano (1962) 4/5
* The Trial (1962) 4.5/5

Heritage of the Desert (Hathaway, 1932)
Sweet Mama (Cline, 1930)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
Salute (Ford, 1929)
*Long for the City (Cohen, 2009)
Makeshift (For Mekas) (Cohen, 2019)
The Ballad of Philip Guston (Cohen, 2023)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960)
*The Radio Bug (Roberts, 1926)
*Home Cured (Arbuckle, 1926)
*Smith's Baby (Cline, 1926)
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (Lamont, 1955)

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (6.5)
Marlowe (5.0)
The Quiet Girl (7.0)
Berkeley in the Sixties (6.5)
The Banshees of Inisherin (7.5)
Insomnia (7.5)
Emily (6.5)
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (7.0)
The Bedroom Window (5.5)
Dream Lover (6.0)

j.lu: If an asterisk means re-watch, was that your first time seeing Citizen Kane?

Yep. And I'm still not sure what to think.

Clash of the Wolves (Smith, 1925)
The Killers (Tarkovsky et al, 1956)
Plane Crazy (Mack, 1933)
The Man Outside (Cooper, 1933)
Syncopation (Glennon, 1929)
Up in Mabel's Room (Hopper, 1926)
Poor Papa (Disney, 1928)
Trolley Troubles (Disney, 1927)
The Mechanical Cow (Disney, 1927)
*The Old Dark House (Whale, 1932)

A Tale of Springtime (1990) 3.5/5
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) 3/5. John Huston's most Altman-esque movie?
White Material (2009) 4/5
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) 4.5/5
Tokyo Medley: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto (1985) 3/5
* Bound (1996) 3.5/5
Made in Hong Kong (1997) 4/5
White of the Eye (1987) 3.5/5. Donald Cammell oddness.

Tokyo Melody, not Medley.

Finally got around to 2021's "Pleasure," which is pretty uncomfortable stuff but not without merit. I pretty quickly picked up that the film is basically "Showgirls" minus any hint of camp or humor and basically (for better or for worse) fulfilling that film's promise/threat of explicitness in a way that Verhoeven could/would probably never have. There's a lot of style in it, too, and kudos for never depicting any of the sex for titillation.

Black Sunday 1960 Mario Bava
This was the English dubbed version so wonder how it is in Italian.
Had some moments and I thinki I might grab some photos of the frockcoats for future reference.
Based on a Gogol story, this is about a 17th century witch being brought back to life in the 19th century.
THought it a biit cod and not exactly the greatest story telling and some really cliched exposition . Apparently it is quite revered though,.
I grabbed this when I was looking at a load of European, African and Japanese films a couple of years ago. Didn't watch it at the time though. So it was on my memory stick from then .
I could see this being a drive in fav but apparently the gore level had it banned in a few places.

Watched The Andromeda Strain on Tubi. I read the book when I was a teenager and have vague memories of liking it. Anyway, the movie's pretty good — lots of shots of scientists staring at stuff and thinking. Also, most of them are rude assholes who don't like each other or even want to be there, which is always good fun.

I saw that when it first came out with my dad at the RKO Keith’s on Northern Boulevard. Remember liking it a lot, especially the tension of them climbing in that tunnel and avoiding the lasers or whatever. Haven’t seen it seen.

There's a late 60s /early 70s version that used to turn up on then late night tv quite a bit. So saw it a few times in my youth. The film where people are left as a pool of powder.
Found out years later that it was a Michael Crichton story so possibly the first one I came across.
Think its been remade at least once since.

The trailer is grebt! Directed by Robert Wise! I wonder if it is held in high regard anywhere, hardly even come across any discussion of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qEsqjJAY-k

That seems to be a restored trailer. Fuzzy distressed trailer may actually enhance the experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw-k50EIGyM

Haven’t seen it since.