Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Picking up from under the long white beard of this thread. We should be able to get a few years out of this one before it gets unwieldy.

Kicking off, here's my July 15th to 31st:

* The Thomas Crown Affair (Jewison, 1968) 📽️
* Bullitt (first three or four reels until the second projector broke: one had already died during Thomas Crown) (Yates, 1968) 📽️
Blade II (del Toro, 2002)
Ibiza (Richanbach, 2018) 📺
Hands Across The Table (Leisen, 1935) 📽️
* Bullitt (went back to see the latter reels) (Yates, 1968) 📽️
Leave No Trace (Granik, 2018)
Adult Beginners (Katz, 2014) 📺
The Apple (Golan, 1980)
* My Man Godfrey (La Cava,1936) 📽️
Blindspotting (Lopez Estrada, 2018)
Eighth Grade (Burnham,2018)
* Ronin (Frankenheimer, 1998) 📽️
To Live & Die In LA (Friedkin, 1985) 📽️
Across The Universe (Taymor, 2007)

The film ones were all on 35mm. The TV (streaming) ones were both bad.

what did you think of Eighth Grade & Blindspotting?

Deadpool 2 (4/10)
Comanche Station (7/10)
L'Amore Molesto (8/10)

The Counselor (Ridley Scott/Cormac McCarthy, 2013). I saw this in a theater and didn't like it much, but recently learned that the Blu-Ray included a director's cut that was 20 minutes longer. I bought it on eBay for $5 and miraculously, the long version is a really good movie! Recommended.

Eighth Grade I've said a little about in EIGHTH GRADE (2018, written & directed by Bo Burnham, starring Elsie Fisher) , but its most remarkable achievement is the way the audience get situated right with Kayla, both through Elsie Fisher's heart-open performance and the script. Everything feels as traumatic and monumental as stresses and anxieties do at that age, there's absolutely no adult tone present framing it as "one day she'll realise how minor all this was" or "oof, remember how that used to feel"." We're totally present in the milieu, despite so many elements deliberately excluding adult perspectives.

Blindspotting has a little first-film-iness to the script, but is totally carried by the onscreen charisma and chemistry of the writers. If civilisation lasts another ten years, it'll be interesting to see how much the tech-bro-gentrification themes feel like a period piece vs a valuable snapshot of a tipping point. Right now I imagine it'd be largely baffling to non-city-dwelling audiences.

xp wait, WHAT?

Yeah wow, I actually have that blu ray, maybe I’ll watch it tonight

Secret of the Blue Room (Neumann, 1933)
*Lost Horizon (Capra, 1937)
#A Kiss in the Dark (surviving reels) (Tuttle, 1925)
#Too Many Kisses (Sloane, 1925) (personal festival highlight)
#Your Technocracy and Mine (Benchley, 1933)
#The Mad Game (Cummings, 1933)
#We Faw Down (McCarey, 1928)
#The House That Shadows Built (unidentified Paramount drudges, 1931)
#On the Brink (Porter & Weber, 1911)
#Romola (King, 1924)
*#The Cocoanuts (Florey & Santley, 1929)
#Mamba (Rogell, 1930)
#The Circus of Life (Julian, 1917)
#The Stolen Ranch (Wyler, 1926)
#Princess Lady Bug (Barker, 1930)
#The Storm (Wyler, 1930)
*#Brats (Parrott, 1930)
#Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (Del Ruth, 1934)
#A Daughter of the Law (Cunard, 1921)
#The Night of Love (Fitzmaurice, 1927)
#Television Highlights (Schwarzwald, 1936)
#School for Swing (Schwarzwald, 1937)
#It's Great To Be Alive (Werker, 1932)
*#The Coming of Sunbeam (Guy, 1913)
#Twenty Dollars a Week (Weight, 1924)
#Ed Sullivan's Headliners (Schwarzwald, 1934)
#Her First Mate (Wyler, 1933)
#Call of the Cumberlands (Lloyd, 1916)
#The Rescue (Brenon, 1929)

#Capitolfest 16, or J.Lu Yet Again Is Reminded that Not All Silent and Pre-Code Films Are Classics.

celebrating the new thread with some all timers (uk folks nuts in may is back on the iplayer!)

Late Autumn (Ozu, 1960) 9/10
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson, 1951) 10/10
Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959) 9/10
* Nuts in May (Leigh, 1976) 8/10
* Love and Friendship (Stillman, 2016) 7/10
Hereditary (Aster, 2018) 5/10
Ordet (Dreyer, 1955) 10/10

I don't log short films like j.lu does, but I saw about 8 Sadie Benning videos (made in Pixelvision) that I last watched about 25 years ago; most of those would be 8-10/10.

Three Faces West (1940, Vorhaus) 6/10
*My Beautiful Laundrette (1985, Frears) 8/10
Flat Is Beautiful (1998, S Benning) (50min) 5/10
Swallow (1995, Subrin) (28min) 7/10
The Lovers of Montparnasse (1958, Becker) 9/10
The Young Savages (1961, Frankenheimer) 5/10
Another Girl, Another Planet (1992, Almereyda) (56min) 6/10
Wake of the Red Witch (1948, Ludwig) 7/10
A Girl’s Folly (1917, M Tourneur) 7/10
Gavagai (2016, Tregenza) 4/10
Les Amis (1971, Blain) 5/10

I'd suggest you watch more Davies as prep than Frears, but don't want to prescribe any other TV while yr still not moving forward on Twin Peaks

Davies? this guy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Davies

Russell T. Davies, the writer of A Very British Scandal. Roughly every second of his works deals with different facets of men-attracted-to-men negotiating a homosociality within heteronormative culture - Very British Scandal is the first that is a period piece, rather than directly contemporary.

Cucumber, his previous main project (eight episodes, twinned with another series called Banana, and a docoseries called Tofu, all named for the hardness of erections), was the best thing he's done ime.

Laundrette's focus on gay stuff is at most 33%.

I just figured Frears was on yr slate because you'd said you were planning to watch Brit Scandal; to me he's a director who is efficient in service of a script's tone and agenda, rather than having an authorial throughline or preoccupations that can be tracked through his work.

if you watch the Laundrette Criterion supplements, he denies being an auteur while his producer insists that he is. Frears does say he considers his string from The Hit thru The Grifters to be a reaction to Thatcherism.

I'm not actually likely to watch that scandal show anytime soon... always drowning in things to watch.

Frears otm! The Grifters as the end of Thatcher reactions, vs the good first step into a bad period of Americana, is interesting, would be curious to rewatch with that in mind.

("gay stuff" is only 7% of AVBS at most, except for how the closet is the driver for every bad action across the fifteen years or so it covers. fascinatingly handled, re. it being a period piece, is how no "character" in it identifies as gay, it's not even an option to consider: those who come out to each other instead compare to what point their bedroom preference is for which gender, how much marriage is a thing they genuinely value vs are having to take on for optics, etc.)

Mississippi (2015), streaming on Netflix - 36/42

*Mississippi Grind

xp I’m not sure what I think of A Very English Scandal. It had a breezy quality, but it was in a very different key than I was expecting.

I loved how lizard-like Hugh Grant was, though. Was he wearing contacts? because there was something very creepy about his black irises

OK, I had no idea Frears directed A Very English Scandal (u have to spell things out, sic) -- because why would I? I haven't seen anything of his since Dirty Pretty Things in 2002. Then he started doing all that Peter Morgan royal shite.

Dream Tower (7.0)
Our Nixon (7.5)
20th Century Women (9.0)
Eighth Grade (6.5)
Demon Seed (5.5)
Quadrophenia (7.5)
McQueen (6.0)
Ocean’s Eight (4.0)
BlacKkKlansman (7.0)
A Stranger Among Us (6.5)

The last one is a late Lumet I saw at the time and completely forgot about. Relatively low key for him. Explicitly quotes from Hud when Melanie Griffith says "I already put in time with one cold-hearted bastard, I'm not looking to find another one." Good one for that last-line-should-have-been-the-title thread: Ask Your Rabbi.

Mission Impossible (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018) - yup, that's how badly my year is going.

It was fun etc.

I forgot to note earlier how amused I was that it was j.lu who pitched for an Electric Boogaloo subtitle on the new thread.

/The Counselor/ (Ridley Scott/Cormac McCarthy, 2013). I saw this in a theater and didn't like it much, but recently learned that the Blu-Ray included a director's cut that was 20 minutes longer. I bought it on eBay for $5 and miraculously, the long version is a really good movie! Recommended.

last batch for a while

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch, 1992) - 10/10
Heat (Michael Mann, 1995) - 9/10
Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953) - 8/10
This Happy Breed (David Lean, 1944) - 8/10
Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980) - 7/10
Fantastic Planet (René Laloux, 1973) - 3/10

China Gate (Fuller)
The Search (Zinnemann)
From Here to Eternity (Zinnemann)
A Man for All Seasons (Zinnemann)
The Longest Day (Annakin, Marton & Wicki)
The Army of Crime (Guédiguian)
La Vie en Rose (Dahan)
Grace of Monaco (Dahan)
Cop (A. Refn)
Once a Cop... (A. Refn)
R (Noer & Lindholm)
Key House Mirror (Noer)*
A Hijacking (Lindholm)*
A War (Lindholm)*
A Second Chance (Bier)
Summer With Monika (Bergman)
Sawdust and Tinsel (Bergman)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman)
The Virgin Spring (Bergman)
Morvern Callar (Ramsay)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (Ramsay)
Katalin Varga (Strickland)
For Those in Peril (Wright)*
Hyena (Johnson)
Ex Machina (Garland)
Beast (Pearce)
Under the Skin (Glazer)
Her (Jonze)
Lucy (Besson)
Ghost in the Shell (Sanders)

All 3.5/5:
True Stories (1986)
Blackkklansman
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
The Lost City of Z

Mission Impossible Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018) 8/10
the Happy Prince (Everett, 2018) 7/10
Yellow Submarine ( Dunning, 1968) 8/10
Unseeworld U.S.A (Fuller, 1960) 7/10
The Last Emperor (Bertolucci, 1987) 6/10
Paddington 2 (King, 2017) 9/10
Hostiles (Cooper, 2017) 7/10

Um, Underworld U.S.A. that should be.

Gone With the Wind (1939) 7.5/10
Iron Man (2008) 7/10
Tangerine (2015) 8/10

bunch of airplane streaming on the way to and from berlin, the only one i'd seen before is philadelphia story:

all about eve (mankiewicz, 1951) 10/10
paddington 2 (king, 2017) 8/10
rocky (avildsen, 1976) 8/10
the philadelphia story (cukor, 1940) 9/10
happy death day (landon, 2017) 6/10
inside out (docter, 2015) 8/10

honestly happy death day was surprisingly enjoyable for what it was

the gospel of the bear film has reached the troposphere

lol

The Raid: Redemption (Evans, 2011) 6
Mission: Impossible Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018) 7
Disney Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018) 4
Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg, 2010) 8
Icarus (Bryan Fogel, 2017) 8

read that marwencol has been adapted & now will have steve carell in it

https://www.meta-sphere.com/wp-content/uploads/welcome-to-marwen_tete-600x220.jpg

yeah I watched it because i saw the trailer for the zemeckis movie. The trailer makes it out to be an "inspirational" true story but it's not really, not exactly.

baby driver (2017 edgar wright) 6.5/10
mollys game (2017 sorkin) 2/10
suburbicon (2017 clooney) 2/10
the killing of a sacred deer (2017 lanthimos) 6/10
angelo my love (1983 duvall) 3/10
eighth grade (2018 burnham) 8/10
thoroughbreds (2018 cory finley) 4/10

thoroughbreds (2018 cory finley) 4/10

I don't do the out of 10 thing but I'd give this at least a 6. It made me laugh a lot.

lil too try hard idk

*The Naked Spur : 7/10
Vampire's Kiss : 6/10
Dying Of the Light (Paul Schrader Edit): 7/10 -- only 7/10 because Nic Cage is in full on weirdo mode and Schrader's noodling around on Final Cut. The doctor accent is...wow...almost as great as the accent in "Vampire's Kiss"
*The Young One: 7/10 - minor Buñuel for me but still great

Crazy Rich Asians – kind of a riff on Philadelphia Story, but with better-looking people. Lots of film history embedded in it.

What Price Jazz (Baerwitz, 1934)
Felix Gets Broadcasted (Messmer, 1923)
High Flyers (Cline, 1937)
Inflation (Myers, 1933)
Felix in Fairyland (Messmer, 1923)
*Roast-Beef and Movies (Baerwitz, 1934)
*Big City Fantasy (Henabery, 1934)
The Magician (Bergman, 1958)
BlacKkKlansman (Lee, 2018)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman, 1955)

Re-watching Whit Stillman's Barcelona tonight.

I was hoping for good things from Crazy Rich Asians, but found it fairly bland. I may have had the wrong expectations for a mainstream PG rom-com, but I felt like it needed sharper jokes.

kind of a riff on Philadelphia Story, but with better-looking people

!!! I'm sure this cast looks fine, but you are aware that Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn were considered pretty attractive, right?

in theaters July 26 - August 22

Killer’s Kiss (Stanley Kubrick, 1955) - 6/10
Summer Interlude (Ingmar Bergman, 1951) - 9/10
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018) - 8/10
Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle, 2018) - 6/10
Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada, 2018) - 7/10
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (Peter Rida Michail, Aaron Horvath, 2018) - 3/10
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018) - 9/10

I've seen about half of "Evil Does Not Exist" and ... I like slow movies and have no problem with really slow movies, but this movie is so slow I sometimes think it is trolling. Like, it starts out with several minutes of a guy chopping wood. Later, it features two characters who visit the same guy, and he is chopping wood again. So for a few minutes we watch these people silently watch him chopping wood, again. And then he stops, he's about to move on, then one of the spectators goes, hey, can I try that? And then for a few more minutes we watch this *other* person attempt to chop wood. It doesn't help that a lot of the cast are apparently non-actors, so that even when stuff is happening there is not a lot of expression going on. I'm sure it's going somewhere, or I hope so, but it's pretty slow going so far!

I've got just the movie for you, except it's chopping celery instead of wood.

Recent cinema trips:

Queer (4/7)
The Good - Daniel Craig
The Bad - doesn't really go anywhere
The Ugly - using Nirvana on the soundtrack

The Girl with the Needle (4/7)
The Good - nice post-WW1 atmosphere
The Bad - seems like the story was following the wrong character
The Ugly - scenes with female genital self-mutilation all too reminiscent of Kim Di-duk

Vermiglio (4/7)
The Good - er, the cinematography?
The Bad - lacking an actual story
The Ugly - too obviously aiming for a prize at some minor film festival

Universal Language (4/7)
The Good - not your usual failure hence the extra point
The Bad - deadpan whimsy is harder than it seems
The Ugly - the Canada/Iran conceit gets old quite quickly

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (5/7)
The Good - ratcheting up of tension & secret footage of riots powerfully spliced in
The Bad - inconsistent character development
The Ugly - absurd climax

Mickey 17 (5/7)
The Good - fun enough, bonus point for presence of Thomas Turgoose
The Bad - kind of frothy and compromised. Needs Song Kang-ho or Bae Doona in the cast but you could say that about most films
The Ugly - honestly could have done with losing the alien tardigrades and making the story more bleakly comic

re chopping wood: that sounds like the beginning of twin peaks: the return, which is indeed a troll.

I saw Evil Does Not Exist in the cinema all in one go, as this thread probably attests, and do not remember finding any of the wood-chopping scenes interminable or objectionable. There are many scenes early on that establish aspects of local existence in general, and that character’s regular rhythms in particular, in order to show the viewer how the community functions, and what would be disrupted by having to fit a service lifestyle in *around* all of these types of subsistence / collaborative processes. Watching the other character chop wood is perhaps the most crucial scene in the film, in that it’s up to the viewer to decide whether his doing so is genuine enthusiasm, inept ingratiation, failed trolling, or an attempt to fool even himself, revealing a chasm of personality more profound than his occupation has already established,

Perhaps it hits slightly more potently if you’ve ever tried to teach one other person in a party of seven how to chop wood *after* arriving after dark at a place you’ll all be staying for the week, but it’s not exactly opaque about why the scenes are part of the story, I don’t think.

Yojimbo
A Fistful of Dollars
Zatoichi meets Yojimbo

(missed a trick by not also watching Sanjuro (which i prefer to Yojimbo tbh). there's also another that i don't have, although the Zatoichi film it could be argued it's not the same character because he acts very differently)

Finished Evil Does Not Exist. I ultimately didn't mind the pace, and the guy knows where to point a camera, but in the end I found it pretty frustrating.

I think we've invented the Chopping Wood genre: Mr. Robot also, backed by Gordon Lightfoot (no YouTube clip).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4NBV7p3MhA

(i watched Sanjuro and the character there was like halfway between the Yojimbo and the Zaoitchi incarnations)

Becoming Led Zeppelin (7.0)
I’m Still Here (6.5)
September 5 (7.0)
Seven Veils (6.5)
Big Little Lies (S1 – 8.0)
Big Little Lies (S2 – 7.0)
And Justice for All (4.0)
Nickel Boys (7.0)
Severance (S1 – 7.5)
Black Bag (6.0)

Being kind of generous with the Led Zeppelin film.

I'm Still Here (Salles, 2024)
Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972)
Girls' State (Moss/McBaine, 2024)
Legally Blonde (Luketic, 2001)
Flow (Zilbalodis, 2024)
Ghostlight (Thompson/O'Sullivan, 2024)
The Negotiation (협상) (Lee, 2018)
Mickey 17 (Bong, 2025)
Amadeus (Forman, 1984)
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Black Bag (Soderbergh, 2025)
September 5 (Fehlbaum, 2024)
It Could Happen to You (Bergman, 1994)

Certain Women (Reichardt, 2016) 9
Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984) 9
Longlegs (Perkins, 2024) 6
Civil War (Garland, 2024) 7
Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve, 2017) 7.5
Monster (Kore-eda, 2023) 8.5
The Shadow Strays (Tjahjanto, 2024) 6.5
The Big Heat (Lang, 1953) 9
The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer, 1962) 8.5
Sorcerer (Friedkin, 1977) 9
Revenge (Fargeat, 2017) 7
Anora (Baker, 2024) 8
Universal Soldier 5: Day of Reckoning (Hyams, 2012) 7.5
The Substance (Fargeat, 2024) 9
King of New York (Ferrara, 1990) 9
Color Out of Space (Stanley, 2019) 6

March so far:

Emilia Perez (Audiard, 2024) 3/10
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Jude, 2021) 6/10
The Shrouds (Cronenberg, 2024) 8/10
The Front (Ritt, 1976) 8/10
Black Bag (Soderbergh, 2025) 8/10
Some Kind of Heaven (Oppenheim, 2020) 8/10

march so far:
Night Gallery (movie/pilot) (Shear, Spielberg, Sagal, 1969) bad scripts, good effort from speilberg
Juror #2 (Eastwood, 2024) 6/10
Grand Theft Hamlet (Crane and Grylls, 2024) 6/10
Longlegs (Perkins, 2024) 5/10
The Substance (Fargeat, 2024) 9/10
Ruthless People (Z-A-Z, 1986) 7/10

> Black Bag (Soderbergh, 2025) 8/10

i saw this in another list and immediately thought of the viz strip... (Which was probably a single issue joke, a pastiche of an old comic strip about a dog redone to feature a plastic bag)

Saw this meme:
https://i.redd.it/x6l4femxe9ve1.png

There are a couple of things that are unsure (no indication the Malick or Ramsey will appear this year) and a couple of things that have changed, and a few missing things (there have been *two* Soderbergh films already, and Kelly Reichardt, Park Chan-wook, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Kathryn Bigelow etc. have new ones coming), a few who-gives-a-shit (Ron Howard) but looks like a stacked year!

I saw the new Cronenberg movie, The Shrouds, at a film festival a couple weeks ago, and it was great. I'm seeing the new Kurosawa movie at a film festival coming up in a couple weeks and I'm really looking forward to it.

Severance (S2 – 6.5)
The Velvet Underground (9.0)
1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything (7.5)
Beastie Boys Story (6.5)
Heat (7.0)
Norman Mailer vs. Fun City (6.0)
State Legislature (7.0)
Sidney (7.0)
An Unmarried Woman (7.5)
Se7en (6.0)

A six for Se7en. Been ages, but I'm guessing I'd be a six or a seven for 10. Haven't seen Nine.

But an 8.5 for 8 1/2, right?

March:

Magic Candies (Nishio, Baek, Takano 2024) 20 min
در سایه‌ی سرو [In The Shadow Of The Cypress} (Molayemi and Sohani 2023) 20 min
Beurk! (Loïc Espuche 2024) 13 min
Wander To Wonder (Gantz, Bakker, Bosklopper, Cartwright 2023) 14 min
Beautiful Men (Keppens 2023) 19 min
Heart Eyes (Ruben, Murphy, Landon, Kennedy 2025)
Kick The Can (Spielberg, Johnson, Matheson, Mathison 1983) 📺, 23 min
Red Rock West (Dahl with Dahl 1993) 💿
Jade (Friedkin, Eszterhas 1995) 📺
† Say Anything (Crowe 1989)
* Twin Peaks: The Return Part 11 (Lynch, Frost 2017) 💿
The Fortune Cookie (Wilder, Diamond 1966) 💿
The Day The Earth Blew Up (Browngardt, Bachman, Costello, Dickman, Gemmill, Kirwan, Kramer, Reicher, Ruocco, Ryan, Trigueros 2025)
Black Bag (Soderbergh, Koepp 2025)
* Twin Peaks: The Return Part 12 (Lynch, Frost 2017) 💿
Novocaine (Berk, Olsen, Jacobs0n Lars Jacobson 2025)
Mickey 17 (Bong after Ashton 2025)
* Twin Peaks: The Return Part 13 (Lynch, Frost 2017) 💿
Witness For The Prosecution (Wilder, Kurnitz, Christie 1957) 📺
Surf II: The End Of The Trilogy [director’s cut] (Badat 1984) 💿
Opus (Green 2025)
* Twin Peaks: The Return Part 14 (Lynch, Frost 2017) 💿
Singles ( Crowe 1991)
* Twin Peaks: The Return Part 15 (Lynch, Frost 2017) 💿
On Becoming A Guinea Fowl (Nyoni 2024)
* Twin Peaks: The Return Part 16 (Lynch, Frost 2017) 💿
Strange Darling (Mollner 2024) 📺
* Twin Peaks: The Return Part 17 (Lynch, Frost 2017) 💿

April so far:

Fauna (Pereda, 2020) 4/10
Ned Rifle (Hartley, 2014) 7/10
The Russia House (Schepisi, 1990) 6/10
*Mean Streets (Scorsese, 1973) 9/10
Spice World (Spiers, 1997) 5/10
Neil Young: Heart of Gold (Demme, 2006) 6/10
Eephus (Lund, 2024) 6/10
*The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973) 10/10
*The Lighthouse (Eggers, 2019) 7/10
Sinners (Coogler, 2025) 7/10
A Real Pain (Eisenberg, 2024) 6/10
Grand Tour (Gomes, 2024) 4/10
*MacGruber (Taccone, 2010) 8/10

Good Burger 2 (2023) 6/10
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai... (1984) 8/10
Spice World (1997) 6/10
*The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (1974) 8/10
Waiting for Guffman (1996) 4/10
Native Son (1951) 6/10 with richard wright as bigger thomas
The Volunteer (the archers, 1944) short, not very good
The Shaggy Dog (1959) 2/10

The Spy in Black (1939) 3.5/5
* The Cranes Are Flying (1957) 4/5
Yokohama BJ Blues (1981) 4.5/5. Another gem released by Radiance Films; this one inspired by Cruising and The Long Goodbye
A Different Man (2024) 3/5
Le choix des armes (1981) 4.5/5
Visitors from the Galaxy (1982) 2.5/5. Weird but draggy Czech sci-fi film that also has a scene where a father breastfeeds his son.
Nickel Boys (2024) 5/5. Amazing film, inexcusably failed by the studio and audiences.
Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948) 3/5
* Heart of Glass (1976) 4/5
Danger: Diabolik (1968) 4/5. Somehow had never watched this all the way through.
The Pied Piper (1986) 4.5/5
Better Man (2024) 4/5
Only the River Flows (2023) 3.5/5.
* Donkey Skin (1970) 4/5
Julien Donkey-Boy (1999). Did not plan to watch two "donkey" movies in a row.
Such a Pretty Little Beach (1949) 4.5/5. Exceedingly atmospheric discovery in Criterion Channel's "French Poetic Realism" collection.
Mickey 17 (2025) 3.5/5
Hobson's Choice (1954) 4.5/5

SHORTS:
Love Letter to Edie (1975) 3.5/5
* T (2019) 4/5

Paddington In Peru (Wilson, Burton, Foster, Lamont 2024) bailed out about 28 minutes in. absolute zombie Farnaby / King
* RRR (Rajamouli, Prasad, Burra, Keeravani 2022)
Twin Peaks: The Return Part 18 (Lynch, Frost 2017) 💿
Am I OK? (Notaro, Allynne, Pomerantz 2024/2022) ✈️
* Flow [Straume] (Zilbalodis, Kaža 2024)
Saturday Night (Reitman, Kenan 2024) ✈️
Warfare (Mendoza, Garland 2025)
The Shrouds (Cronenberg 2025/2024)
Drop (Landon, Jacobs, Roach 2025) hadn’t realised this was only Landon directing
† Swiss Army Man (Daniels 2016)
Sinners (Coogler 2025)
* Fast Times At Ridgemont High (Heckerling, Crowe, Crowe 1982) 📺

Mi Mejor Amigo (2018)- decent, quiet coming-of-age queer film
Challengers (2024)- I liked this, don't see why so many loathed it— I did get tired of Zendaya pursing her lips but I thought that the two male characters were drawn pretty interestingly, and honestly I wasn't expecting the ending!

I can't believe I missed Trenque Lauquen the first time around. Almost done with the second part (Criterion Channel).

Don't know that one! Looks good.

"Paddington In Peru (Wilson, Burton, Foster, Lamont 2024) bailed out about 28 minutes in. absolute zombie Farnaby / King"

I haven't seen the film, but wouldn't it be great if there was a huge plot swerve at the thirty-minute mark. Let's imagine that Paddington's plane crashes into the jungles of Peru, and he reverts to savagery, and there's a scene where he bites a man's face off while high on cocaine. And then he assembles a bunch of other bears into a savage militia, as in Apocalypse Now. The tagline? "Bears Together Strong".

Paddington: The Devil Beast Triumphs. I would pay to watch that.

Paris Blues (6.5)
Cactus Flower (6.0)
Metroland (6.0)
Pete 'n' Tillie (5.0)
Chilly Scenes of Winter (6.5)
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (7.0)
Bonjour Tristesse (2025 remake--6.0)
There Will Be Blood (8.5)
Malcolm X (10.0)
Capote (8.0)

The Actor (Johnson, 2025) 5/10
The Assessment (Fortuné, 2024) 7/10
Desert of Namibia (Yamanaka, 2024) 7/10
Gazer (2024, Sloan) 6/10
Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997) 8/10
Inland Empire (Lynch, 2006) 10/10
Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977) 10/10
Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (Okawara, 1995) 6/10
Snowpiercer (Bong, 2013) 5/10
Summer of Soul (Questlove, 2021) 7/10
Past Lives (Song, 2023) 8/10
Office Space (Judge, 1999) 5/10
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Haynes, 1988) 7/10
Corridor of Mirrors (Young, 1948) 7/10
Watership Down (Rosen, 1978) 6/10
Laserblast (Raeburn, 1978) - beyond assessment
Cowards Bend the Knee (Maddin, 2003) 6/10
Bloody Mama (Corman, 1970) 8/10

Wild in the Streets, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and Teenage Hooker Becomes a Killing Machine were not for me so I bailed. Lasted 20 mins into A Real Pain before deciding that I'd known/been the Benji character too often and didn't need to experience it again.

Let's imagine that Paddington's plane crashes into the jungles of Peru, and he reverts to savagery, and there's a scene where he bites a man's face off while high on cocaine

he and his family had recently boarded a Peruvian riverboat captained by Antonio Banderas and the story was about to create a subtle but heartwarming parallel between Paddington hunting the jungle for his aunt who had had a mental episode and fled the old bear's home she lived in, and Dry Banderas finding his lost ancestral golden heirlooms in uncharted El Dorado or something and I just noped. maybe if they'd gotten Elizabeth Banks in to replace King.

I haven't seen the film, but wouldn't it be great if there was a huge plot swerve at the thirty-minute mark. Let's imagine that Paddington's plane crashes into the jungles of Peru, and he reverts to savagery, and there's a scene where he bites a man's face off while high on cocaine.

You haven't seen the film, but were you at the London CBB show where Paul F Tompkins as Werner Herzog pitched this exact scenario?

Blink Twice (Kravitz 2024)
La Tete d'un Homme (Duvivier 1933)
Querelle (Fassbinder 1982)
Presence (Soderbergh 2024)
Shockproof (Sirk 1949)
Key Largo (Huston 1948)
Anora (Baker 2024)
Black Bag (Soderbergh 2025)
The Accountant (O'Connor 2016)
Forever a Woman (aka The Eternal Breasts) (Tanaka 1955)
The Good German (Soderbergh 2006)
*Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick 1987)
The Big Clock (Farrow 1948)
Captain America: Brave New World (Onah 2025)
Fast Company (Cronenberg 1979)
Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus (Lindsay-Hogg 1968/1996)
Kimi (Soderberg 2022)
Companion (Hancock 2025)
The Shrouds (Cronenberg 2024)
Thunderbolts* (Schreier 2025)
Sinners (Coogler 2025)
Cheaper Than Cheep (A. Zappa 1974/2025)

May:

Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997) 8/10
A Cock and Bull Story (Winterbottom, 2005) 7/10
Nickel Boys (Ross, 2024) 7/10
The Spy Who Came in from The Cold (Ritt, 1965) 8/10
Rockers (Bafaloukos, 1978) 6/10
Torment (Chabrol, 1994) 8/10
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut (Brass, 2023) 5/10
The Man in the Iron Mask (Whale, 1939) 6/10
Head-On (Akin, 2004) 8/10
*Get Shorty (Sonnenfeld, 1995) 7/10
The Working Class Goes to Heaven (Petri, 1971) 6/10

He ran all the way (1951)
Showgirls (1995) 7/10 i guess? what an amazing mess.
Fountain of Youth (Guy Ritchie, 2025) 3/10, mostly terrible, an algorithm mashup of indiana jones and the da vinci code.

March, April, and May

A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, 2024)
Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023)
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (Robert Siodmak, 1945)
Tuesday (Daina Oniunas-Pusic, 2023)
In a Silent Way (Gwenaël Brees, 2020)
Fuck Cinema (Wenguang Wu, 2005)
Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhang-ke, 2018)
Duelle (Jacques Rivette, 1976)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges, 1943)
Öndög (Quan'an Wang, 2019)
Thanos and Despina (Nikos Papatakis, 1967)
The Wicked City (Tai-Kit Mak, 1992)
Krylya (Larisa Shepitko, 1966)
Strange Voyage (Fernando Fernán Gómez, 1964)
No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor, 2024)
The Garage (Eldar Ryazanov, 1980)
On Company Business (Allan Francovich, 1980)
The 51st State (Ronny Yu, 2001)
Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (Wenguang Wu, 1990)
*Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (Adrian Maben, 1972)
Leonor Will Never Die (Martika Ramirez Escobar, 2022)
*The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
You and Me (Larisa Shepitko, 1971)
Chaos: The Manson Murders (Errol Morris, 2025)
The Forty-First (Grigoriy Chukhray, 1956)
In the Dust of the Stars (Gottfried Kolditz, 1976)
Bunker (Jenny Perlin, 2021)
Liberation Day (Ugis Olte, Morten Traavik, 2016)
Take Out (Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou, 2004)
Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd (Roddy Bogawa, Storm Thorgerson, 2023)
*Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) 3.5/5
* Paris, Texas (1984) 5/5
Vermiglio (2024) 3.5/5
The Italian Connection (1972) 4/5
The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) 2/5
* F For Fake (1973) 4/5
Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) 3/5
The Bitter Stems (1956) 4/5. From Criterion Channel's Argentine Noir collection. Pulls out many of the genre's stops, including a symbolic dream sequence.
Revolver (1973) 3.5/5
Town Bloody Hall (1979) 3.5/5
Close Your Eyes (2023) 4/5
Angels with Dirty Faces (1958) 4/5
Drylongso (1998) 3.5/5
The Hunt for Red October (1990) 3.5/5
A Moment of Romance (1990) 4/5
Owning Mahowny (2003) 3.5/5
Pink Floyd: Pompei 2025 re-release 4/5
Sinners (2025) 4/5

So, uh, I quite dug Materialists, ineffective framing device and ehh ending and all.

Cinema:
Sister Midnight (Kandhari, 2024) 5/7 - recommended!

Then catching up (on YT) with a bunch of things I'd never got round to seeing before, plus some fun trash:
Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu, 1948) 6/7
The Phantom Carriage (Sjöström, 1921) 5/7
Lessons of Darkness (Herzog, 1992) 6/7
Big Bad Mama (Carver, 1974) 5/7
The Palm Beach Story (Sturges, 1942) 6/7
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (Herog, 2009) 6/7
Attack of the Giant Leeches (Kowalski, 1959) 4/7
Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi, 1954) 6/7
A Field in England (Wheatley, 2013) 4/7
Thief (Mann, 1981) 5/7
Accattone (Pasolini, 1961) (5/7)
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (Deren/Ito/Ito, filmed 1947-54) 5/7
The Devil's Eye (Bergman, 1960) 5/7
The Hired Hand (Fonda, 1971) 4/7
It Conquered the World (Corman, 1956) 4/7
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jarmusch, 1999) 5/7
Gilda (Vidor, 1946) 6/7
Close-Up (Kiarostami, 1990) 6/7
La Notte (Antonioni, 1961) 6/7
The Eternal Breasts (Tanaka, 1955) 4/7

June:

*Tár (Field, 2022) 8/10
The Mattei Affair (Rosi, 1972) 9/10
*Naked (Leigh, 1993) 10/10
*Carnal Knowledge (Nichols, 1971) 8/10
The Ipcress File (Furie, 1965) 7/10
*Casino (Scorsese, 1995) 8/10
*Hard Boiled (Woo, 1992) 8/10
Four Nights of A Dreamer (Bresson, 1971) 6/10
The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (Kar-Leung, 1984) 8/10
Drug War (To, 2012) 7/10
*Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966) 8/10
*Broadcast News (Brooks, 1987) 8/10
An Evening with Beverley Luff Linn (Hosking, 2018) 3/10

because of poker face,
Out of the Blue (Hopper, 1980) 7/10

what an amazing song to base a film on, right after the song's release, even if they missed the more notable grunge version. shame that the chaos at the end of the film is just messy.

Out of the Fog (Litvak, 1941) 4/10
Brando-influence John Garfield as a dock racketeer trying to impress a girl named Stella

I'm now tempted to rewatch breathless and out of the past.

Since I am resting and recuperating:

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (Cone, 2015) 9/10
Night Moves (Penn, 1975) 7/10
Teen Apocalypse Trilogy* (Araki, 90s) 8/10 overall

As far as the Araki goes, I forgot how good Totally Fucked Up is in comparison with the other two— Doom Generation being the weak link among the three— too much lifting from Lynch and not trusting his own instincts, which TFU and Nowhere prove are pretty good!

Night Moves rocks.

It’s a strange film, I did like it quite a bit, but like many films of that era, I was both taken and repulsed by the sleaziness of the whole thing. It felt slimy!

Inspired by the recent activity on the letterboxd thread, I decided to actually start using my account to rate and review things, starting with a handful I've movies I've (re)watched lately.

The Phantom Carriage (Sjöström, 1921) 8/10
*A Dog's Life (Chaplin, 1918) 9/10
*The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973) 10/10
*The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938) 9/10
*Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1953) 8/10
A Complete Unknown (Mangold, 2024) 5/10
All Shall Be Well (Yeung, 2024) 8/10
A Real Pain (Eisenberg, 2024) 8/10

(meant to link to my profile rather than my "Diary," but whatev)

May:

Johnny Dangerously (Heckerling, Colomby, Harris, Kukoff, Steinberg, Proft, Israel 1984) 📺
Ratatouille (Pinkava, Bird, Capobianco 2007)
Cleaner (Campbell, Uttley, Williams, Orton 2025) 📺
The Accountant (O’Connor, Dubuque 2016) 📺
Junk Head [ジャンク・ヘッド] (Hori 2017)
The Surfer (Finnegan, Martin 2025)
The Accountant 2 (O’Connor, Dubuque 2025)
Kingdom of Heaven (director’s cut) (Scott, Monahan 2005)
Spermageddon (Wirkola, Sivertsen, Sundnes, Hoel 2024)
Fucktoys (Sriram 2025) - James Franco’s best performance since Spring Breakers
Paying For It (Lee, Sarazen, Brown, Gamble 2024)
The Glass Web (3-D) (Arnold, Blees, Lee, Ehrlich 1953)
Les Femmes au balcon (Merlant et Sciamma avec Munier, Codreanu, Costa, Belguermi 2024)
She’s The He (McCarthy 2025)
Happyend (Sora 2024)
Good Boy (Leonberg, Cannon 2025)
Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (Kaplan, Scoppettone 1972)
I Could Never Be Your Woman (Heckerling 2007) 📺
* Going Down (Keenan with MacLaine-Cross, Barry, Woods 1982)

Better Call Saul (S1-S6 -- 7.5)
Every Little Thing (7.5)
Pavements (6.5)
The Phoenician Scheme (2.0)
Handmaid’s Tale (S6 – 5.0)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (5.0)
Materialists (6.5)
The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox (6.5)
Babygirl (6.0)
The Hart of London (--)

The last is a semi-famous experimental film by Jack Chambers from 1970; saw it in London (Ontario), where he was from, in 16mm tonight. I didn't get much out of it--first half I could hardly make out what I was seeing, second half had some slaughterhouse footage I couldn't watch. A rating would be beside the point.

(On YouTube if you're interested; one of the greatest films ever made, according to Stan Brakhage.)