Last (x) movies you saw (II)

The Concorde… Airport ‘79 is the epitome of an all-star cast doing nothing. Don’t get your hopes up for that one.

I'm just hoping George Kennedy will have a bigger role this time.

I left Sun Valley Serenade (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1941), which I watched in between Silent Scream and Whip It, off my last list. The Nicholas brothers, Dorothy Dandridge, and the Glenn Miller orchestra were all great. The main plot and characters were horrific, especially Sonja Henie's character and performance-really creepy!

I remember '79 being the worst and therefore the most interesting one.

Believe me, Alain Delon, Sylvia Kristel, Charo, Andrea Marcovicci - these are some of my favorite stars but the film is a big POS

Devil's Island (O'Connor, 1926)
Gallant Lady (La Cava, 1933)
Carolina (King, 1934)
Officer Thirteen (Melford, 1932)
The Boys Think They Have One on Foxy Grandpa, But He Fools Them (1902)
War of the Colossal Beast (Gordon, 1958)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (Øvredal, 2023)

Howl's Moving Castle 2004 Hayao Miyazaki Studio Ghibli
animation based on Diana Wynne Jones' novel which I had finished earlier yesterday. So can see what has changed and there is a lot different. Not sure where the new elements came from but I do think there probably needed to be some change for the different mediujm.
Do think I am beginning to love Wynne Jones' work as well as that of this studio, though they're a bit different.

The Flirty Sleepwalker (Lord, 1932)
I Lived With You (Elvey, 1933)
She Learned About Sailors (Marshall, 1934)
The Nervous Wreck (Sidney, 1926)
*Frankenstein (Whale, 1931)
Father Brown, Detective (Sedgwick, 1934)

The Day Of The Locust 1974 John Schlesinger
Finally got around to watching this after grabbing it a few months ago. Pretty slow but intense look at Holywood would bes at the turn Of the 40s.
I was trying to thinking I had the book somewhere. I do know I have City of Nets which is a non fiction book on Holywood around this time that I still need to read.

Blue Collar (Schrader, 1978)
Barbie (Gerwig, 2023)
Red Eye (Craven, 2005)
A Perfect Murder (Davis, 1998)
Wanda (Loden, 1970)
Oppenheimer (Nolan, 2023)
Rounders (Dahl, 1998)
Weekend (Haigh, 2011)
Mystic Pizza (Petrie, 1988)
Oldboy (Park, 2003)
My Best Friend's Wedding (Hogan, 1997)
12 Angry Men (Lumet, 1957)
Predestination (Spierig, 2014)
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Goldhaber, 2022)
Six Degrees of Separation (Schepisi, 1993)
Shiva Baby (Seligman, 2020)
Serpico (Lumet, 1973)

Don't splash the pot.

*twists Oreo apart*

The Swimmer (Perry, 1968)
Speed (de Bont, 1994)
The Ladies Man (Lewis, 1961)
Broadcast News (Brooks, 1987)
Signs (Shyamalan, 2002)
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Tashlin, 1957)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg, 2001)
RoboCop (Verhoeven, 1987)
Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977)
Bad Day at Black Rock (Sturges, 1955)

*Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962) 8/10
Tales of Terror (Corman, 1962) by tale: 4/10, 8/10, 6/10
The Premature Burial (Corman, 1962) 4/10
The Haunted Palace (Corman, 1963) 5/10 dinged it for the coded racism, then read the original story and uh no coding there
Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues (Charles B. Pierce, 1984) 2/10 mst3k version
Tanny and the Teenage T-Rex (Stewart Raffill, 1994) uncensored version; no rating but i enjoyed it. both intentionally good and unintentionally good-bad.
Mad God (Tippett, 2021) 9/10
In Search of Darkness III (2022) 5/10
Barbie (Gerwig, 2023) 7/10

no idea why i felt like watching horror movies this week

having seen all of them, i'd rank the corman-matheson-poe movies like this:
1. masque of the red death
2. house of usher
3. the raven
4. tales of terror
5. pit and the pendulum
6. premature burial
7. tomb of ligeia

i might rewatch tomb of ligeia to see if it's as bad as i remember.

4.5 haunted palace

* The Driller Killer (1979) 4/5
Ears, Eyes and Throats: Restored Classic and Lost Punk Films 1976-1981 3.5/5
Demonlover (2002) 3.5/5
Flirt (1995) 3/5
* World on a Wire (1973) 4/5
* Wild Zero (1999) 3/5
Pacifiction (2022) 4/5
Empire of Passion (1978) 3/5
Showing Up (2022) 3.5/5
Sorcerer (1977) 4.5/5
* Pee-Wee's Big Adventure 5/5

Shorts:
Theory of Achievement (1991) 3/5
Opera no. 1 (1994) 3/5
Family Nightmare (2011) 4/5

Bottoms (Seligman, 2023)
Her Bodyguard (Beaudine, 1933)
One Run Elmer (Lamont, 1935)
The Maelstrom of Paris (Duvivier, 1928)
Wild Gold (Marshall, 1934)
Bobby's Day Out(?) (1926?)
Love and Rubbish (Lehrman, 1913)
*Do Detectives Think? (Guiol, 1927)

ugh i love Carnival of Souls so much, one of my favorite films

I love Wild Zero

Okay, America! (Garnett, 1932)
The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (Gleize, 1928)
Down on the Farm (Kenton & Jones, 1920)
Mr. Sardonicus (Castle, 1961)
I Cover the Waterfront (Cruze, 1933)

To Live and Die in LA (Friedkin, 1985)
Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924)
Stagecoach (Ford, 1939)
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
A Canterbury Tale (Powell & Pressburger, 1944)
Getting Any? (Kitano, 1994)
Miracle Mile (De Jarnatt, 1988)
The Fog (Carpenter, 1980)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Schrader, 1985)
Demolition Man (Brambilla, 1993)

I, Confess (Hitchcock, 1953)
*Punchline (Seltzer, 1988)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies, 1988)
The House of Mirth (Davies, 2000)
The Devil, Probably (Bresson, 1977)
Rotting in the Sun (Silva, 2023)
Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus (Silva, 2013)

Experiment Perilous (Jacques Tourneur, 1944) 4/10
Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (Tim Burton, 1986) tv movie with james earl jones as the genie

early hooptober:
Dario Argento's Dracula (2012) 2/10
Swamp Thing (Wes Craven, 1982) 4/10
Son of Dracula (Robert Siodmak, 1943) 3/10

a bunch of stinkers from good directors

Watched The Equalizer (Prime rental) last night because the third one has people raving about the first two. It was pretty good but not world-changing. The big innovation is how Denzel will set someone up to die, and then stand there and watch them die. Not typical action hero stuff in that regard. Don't know if I'll watch the other two.

Bull Durham (7.0)
Mare of Easttown (6.5)
Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd (6.0)
Fatal Attraction (5.0)
Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (8.0)
Contempt (7.0)
Still of the Night (5.0)
Dreamin' Wild (6.0)
Night Falls on Manhattan (5.0)
The Shock of the Future (6.5)

Alimony Madness (Eason, 1933)
Hello, Sister! (Walsh and/or Von Stroheim, 1933)
Get Along Little Hubby (McCarey, 1934)
The Fuller Gush Man (Boasberg, 1934)
Clancy in Wall Street (Wilde, 1930)
Pollyanna (Powell, 1920)
*The Return of the Vampire (Landers, 1943)
The Heart Punch (Eason, 1932)

Cutter's Way (1981) 3/5. John Heard in this movie: the real model for Heath Ledger's Joker performance?
Empire of the Sun (1987) 3.5/5
* A Summer's Tale (1996) 4.5/5
Benediction (2021) 4.5/5
* Boogie Nights 4/5. 70mm screening
Rumble Fish (1983) 4/5
Jewel Robbery (1932) 3.5/5
Toute une nuit (1983) 4.5/5

also, i believe, the inspiration for that one-armed vet on the early seasons of the simpsons

Talk to Me (RackaRacka, 2022) 8/10
Renfield (Chris McKay, 2023) 7/10 you can tell they tried to improve it in post with the narration and ADRed jokes, neither of which are beneficial.
Virus (Kinji Fukasaku, 1980) 5/10 fewer survivors than either The Stand or Seveneves -- impressive. I watched it for both Hooptober and my continuing investigation into 70s disaster movies.
Well Wishes My Love, Your Love (Gabriel Gabriel Garble, 2022) short; good
Global Pursuit (one of Kai Cenat's friends, 2023) short; very bad

It's the Cats (Ray, 1934)
Perfectly Mismated (Horne, 1934)
*Hasty Marriage (Pratt, 1931)
In the Dog House (Ripley, 1934)
Deliverance (Platt, 1919)
Hold Your Temper (White, 1933)
One Too Many (McGowan, 1934)
Stop Making Sense (Demme, 1984)
Vengeance (Mayo, 1930)
Madame Butterfly (Gering, 1932)

Elemental (Pixar, 2023) 4/10
I feel like I shouldn't be getting a headache while watching a children's movie.

Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935) 8/10
Freund directed 9 movies, but this and The Mummy are the only ones he's known for -- his next most popular movie on letterboxd has only 69 views counted. Possibly better known as the guy who invented the three-camera, flat lighting, live audience sitcom formula.

Dracula's Daughter (Universal, Lambert Hillyer, 1936) 6/10
Watch the scenes with the title character and skip everything else. a great performance in an otherwise bland movie.

The Deadly Bees (Amicus, Freddie Francis, 1966) 5/10
The Birds knockoff only notable for its unconvincing bee swarm effects. Has an MST3K version that I haven't watched.

Elvira's Haunted Hills (2001) 5/10
The Hole in the Ground (Lee Cronin, 2019) 5/10
My Best Friend's Exorcism (Amazon, Damon Thomas, 2022) 4/10
Jennifer's Body with 80s references instead of humor

The Deadly Bees notable for the appearance of the UK group The Birds - featuring a very young Ronnie Wood.

The Shout (Skolimowski, 1978)
Young America (Borzage, 1932)
The Miracle Man (McLeod, 1932)
Drums o' Voodoo (Hoerl, 1934)
Things Are Looking Up (de Courville, 1935)
Jean Eustache’s Wasted Breath (Díez, 1997)
Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Delights (Eustache, 1981)
Alix's Pictures (Eustache, 1980)
Offre d'Emploi (Eustache, 1982)

The Appointment (1981) 4/5. Seems like everyone who has seen this points out it has an impressive, surreal car crash sequence, and I'm happy to go with the flow.
* Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) 3.5/5
The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (2022) 3.5/5
Death Becomes Her (1992) 3.5/5
Fire of Love (2022). 3/5 Vastly different, more early 2010s-style twee tone than the Werner Herzog doc on the same couple listed above. The main draw of both films is the stunning volcano footage shot by the couple, which Herzog realizes and fully leans into.
Doctor X (1932) 3/5. See if you can spot the Dr. Octagon sample.
Azor (2021) 4/5
Vanishing Point (1971) 4.5/5. Finally caught up with this one and it exceeded my expectations.
* Dangerous Game (1993) 2.5/5. Really hated this when I saw it years ago. Still think it's one of Abel Ferrara's more tedious exorcisms, and that James Russo is unwatchably loathsome as the film-within-a-film's lead actor. Madonna was better than I remembered; probably the best she ever was.

Shorts and short-ish films:
The Rat Catcher (2023) 3.5/5
The Bones (2021) 3.5/5
You Are Not I (1981) 3.5/5
Surviving Desire (1992) 4/5
The Wonderful Story of Harry Sugar (2023) 3.5/5

Meant "self-exorcisms" above.

Howdy Duke (Taurog, 1927)
The Big Clock (Farrow, 1948)
Pitfall (de Toth, 1948)
The Mother and the Whore (Eustache, 1973)
*Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton, 1948)
My Little Loves (Eustache, 1974)

Book of Christ (the fatal farm guys, 2014) short
Poison (Anderson, 2023) 4/10 short -- i'm sick of anderson's schtick
This is Financial Advice (Dan Olsen, 2023)
TMNT: Mutant Mayhem (written by Rogen & Goldberg, d. Jeff Rowe, 2023) 8/10

spooky month movies:
Thirteen Women (1932) 6/10 irene dunne vs. myrna loy and lots of deaths
Weird Woman (1944) 5/10 part of a 6-film series all introduced by a floating head in a crystal ball
Japan Sinks (Shirō Moritani, 1973) 4/10 great title, but the movie is mostly people talking in rooms
The Slumber Party Massacre (Amy Holden Jones, 1982) 4/10
The Conjuring (James Wan, 2013) 6/10
Ready or Not (Chad, Matt & Rob, 2019) 8/10
Freaky (blumhouse, 2020) 5/10 good kills in the first half
Barbarian (Zach Cregger, 2022) 9/10
Scream VI (Chad, Matt & Rob, 2023) 7/10
No One Will Save You (Brian Duffield, 2023) 6/10 liked the sensory experience, disliked the attempt at deeper meaning
Totally Killer (blumhouse, 2023) 7/10 as far as direct-to-streaming "algorithm movies" go, this is top notch

Us
finally saw most of it but missed the start.

year of the dog (mike white, 2007) 7/10
beau is afraid (aster, 2023) 4/10
*last summer (frank perry, '69) 8/10
*to live and die in la (friedkin '85) 8/10
*blood simple (coens '84) 8/10
down in the valley (david jacobson '05) 6/10
reality (tina satter, 2023) 7/10
things seen and heard (shari springer berman & robert pulcini, '21) 6/10
driving miss daisy (beresford, '89) 7/10
awakenings (penny marshall, '90) 7/10
on golden pond (rydell, '81) 6.5/10
when we were kings (leon gast, '96) 10/10
turn every page: the adventures of robert caro & robert gottlieb (lizzie gottlieb, '22) 7.5/10
when the levees broke (spike lee, '06) 9/10
if god is willing and da creek dont rise (spike lee '10) 9/10

Se7en (Fincher, 1995)
Marty (Mann, 1955)
Gleaming the Cube (Clifford, 1989)
Trust (Harley, 1990)
Diabolique (Clouzot, 1955)
M3GAN (Johnstone, 2022)
No One Will Save You (Duffield, 2023)
Blackhat (Mann, 2015)
The Changeling (Medak, 1980)
Stop Making Sense (Demme, 1984)
Madeline's Madeline (Decker, 2018)
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Greaves, 1968)
May December (Haynes, 2023)
Evil Does Not Exist (Hamaguchi, 2023)
In the Mouth of Madness (Carpenter, 1994)

D. Mann and M. Mann, respectively, obv.

Scotland Yard (Howard, 1930)
They Live by Night (Ray, 1948)
Hollow Triumph (Sekely & Henreid, 1948)
Unfaithfully Yours (Sturges, 1948)
The Night Stalker (Moxey, 1972)
The Velvet Touch (Gage, 1948)
He Walked by Night (Werker, 1948)
Cry of the City (Siodmak, 1948)

Julien Donkey Boy (Korine, 1999) 5/10
Head (Rafelson, 1968) 6/10
The Future Tense (Lawlor/Molloy, 2022) 4/10
*Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997) 8/10
*Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942) 10/10
China Girl (Ferrara, 1987) 7/10
*Dune (Lynch, 1984) 7/10 - this is the Spicediver edit which is available on YT
Death Spa (Fischa, 1988) 7/10
*Heat (Mann, 1995) 9/10
*The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986) 8/10
*Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957) 10/10
*Dawn of The Dead (Romero, 1978) 8/10
Killers of The Flower Moon (Scorsese, 2023) 7/10
Black Christmas (Clark, 1974) 6/10

Smoking Causes Coughing (Dupieux, 2022) 7/10
Spider-Man:Across the Spider-verse (Dos Santos, Thomas (2023) 8/10
Squaring the Circle (Corbin, 2022) 8/10
Medusa Deluxe (Harriman, 2022) 6/10 (9/10 for end credits)
3 Bad Men (Ford, 1926) 8/10
The Toxic Avenger (Kaufman, Herz, 1984) 6/10)
Past Lives (Song, 2023) 8/10
Marlowe (Jordan, 2022) 5/10

The Suspect (Siodmak, 1944) 6/10
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Gunn, 2023) 6/10
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Anderson, 2023) 6/10
Killers of the Flower Moon (Scorsese, 2023) 8/10

the spooky month continues:
Number Seventeen (Hitchcock, 1932) 3/10
Fiend Without a Face (1958) 3/10 criterion, why
The Mummy (hammer, Terence Fisher, 1959) 4/10
Horror Express (Eugenio Martín, 1972) 6/10 the thing on a train
*Suspiria (Argento, 1977) 9/10
Dead and Buried (Gary Sherman, 1981) 8/10
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Hooper, 1986) 6/10
Raising Cain (De Palma, 1992) 5/10
*Ravenous (Antonia Bird et al., 1999) 8/10 last seen on vhs shortly after its release
Resolution (Moorhead and Benson, 2012) 4/10 my first no-budget mumblecore. fuck this genre.
M3GAN (blumhouse, 2022) 6/10

Happy Landing (Bradbury, 1934)
Her First Affaire (Dwan, 1932)
Secret Sinners (Ford, 1933)
The Last of the Line (Ince & Hunt, 1914)
The Beast of Borneo (Garson, 1934)
The Night Strangler (Curtis, 1973)
The Eyes of the Totem (Van Dyke, 1927)

Messiah of Evil (1974) 4/5. Newly restored version. This looked really cool and had an excellent weird mood; a nice surprise.
Shivers (1975) 3/5
Twilight (1990) - Blind bought this as soon as I saw the description from Second Run. Bela Tarr fans need this in their life.
Sleepaway Camp (1983) 3/5
Gothic (1986) 3/5
Def by Temptation (1990) 3/5
* Trouble Every Day (2001) 3.5/5
The Five Devils (2022) 3.5/5
Killers of the Flower Moon 5/5
Past Lives (2023) 4/5
Passages (2023) 3.5/5
One Way Passage (1932) 4/5
Vive L'Amour (1994) 4.5/5

Sorry, Twilight was a 4/5.

The Alpinist (Mortimer 2021) 3/5
Enys Men (Jenkin 2022) 3.5/5
The Gleaners & I (Varda 2000) 5/5
Pickpocket (Bresson 1959) 5/5
Sisu (Helander 2022) 3/5
*London (Keiller 1994) 5/5
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (Gunn 2023) 2/5
*Psycho (Hitchcock 1960) 5/5
Bait (Jenkin 2019) 4/5
The Talented Mr Ripley (Minghella 1999) 3/5
Ip Man (Yip 2008) 4/5
Zama (Martel 2017) 4/5
Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki (Nai-Choi 1991) 4/5

The Lady of the Dugout (Van Dyke, 1918)
At the Circus (Buzzell, 1939)
The Lucky Dog (Robbins, 1921)
*45 Minutes From Hollywood (Guiol, 1926)
*Duck Soup (Guiol & McCarey, 1927)
*Slipping Wives (Guiol, 1927)
Within the Law (Lloyd, 1923)
Kingdom of the Spiders (Cardos, 1977)
Crime on the Hill (Vorhaus, 1933)

Robes of Sin (Allen, 1924)
The Man I Love (Wellman, 1929)
*Secrets of a Secretary (Abbott, 1931)
A Throw of Dice (Osten, 1929)
The Polish Dancer (Hertz, 1917)
Mothers of France (Mercanton et Hervil. 1916)
The Sleuth (Grey, 1922)
In the Grease (Howe, 1925)
*Careful Please (Taurog, 1926)

Matchstick Men (Ridley Scott, 2003) 6/10
It Came from Kuchar (Jennifer M. Kroot, 2009) 7/10
The Face of AIDS (Matt Wolf, 2016) short, ok
The Swan (Anderson, 2023) 4/10
Once Upon a Studio (two zootopia guys, 2023) short, bad

spooky month leftovers
Black Sunday (Bava, 1960) 8/10
The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971) 7/10 ugh, female sexual hysteria
Nightbreed (Clive Barker, 1990) 5/10
964 Pinocchio (Shozin Fukui, 1991) 6/10
My house walk-through (2016) short, good

noirvember
The Glass Key (Stuart Heisler, 1942) 6/10
Fallen Angel (Preminger, 1945) 7/10 my fifth preminger and he is 5 for 5
The River's Edge (Allan Dwan, 1957) 7/10
Sapphire (Basil Dearden, 1959) 5/10
All Night Long (Dearden, 1962) 8/10