Last (x) movies you saw (II)

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

! at low rating for Three Identical Strangers

I knew nothing about the backstory before seeing it at SIFF but on a str8 narrative level it’s my favourite doco of the year

it is an incredible story. a documentary that makes itself, really. what bothered me was how much they reused the same footage from the same Donahue, NBC, + other TV appearances. the same lines. it kinda falls apart at the end, and felt padded even at ~95 minutes. that has nothing to do with the actual story being unresolved, i just thought with so much material to go through (and so many years passed over) the reuse of footage was bizarre.

and fwiw I knew not only the backstory but most of the twists before I saw it. I would've rated it higher if I had gone in completely cold, I wish I could've.

May

In The Land of Saints and Sinners (Lorenz, 2023) 4/10
Priscilla (Coppola, 2023) 7/10
Madeline's Madeline (Decker, 2018) 7/10
Pale Rider (Eastwood, 1985) 6/10
Love Lies Bleeding (Glass, 2024) 5/10
*Nomadland (Zhao, 2020) 8/10
Mars Express (Perin, 2023) 7/10
*Perdita Durango (De La Iglesia, 1997) 6/10
Speed Racer (Wachowski, 2008) 5/10
*The French Connection (Friedkin, 1974) 8/10
House of Tolerance (Bonello, 2011) 8/10
Yankee Doodle Dandy (Curtiz, 1942) 6/10
Pom Poko (Takahata, 1994) 8/10
The Delinquents (Moreno, 2023) 7/10
*The Player (Altman, 1992) 9/10
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Miller, 2024) 8/10
*Pennies From Heaven (Ross, 1981) 7/10

xp forgot to 'sterisk Die For, Desire, Lavender, Paprika, Gems and Cop

Hit Man (2024) 3/5
* The Music Room (1958) 4.5/5
I Saw the TV Glow 4/5
Furiosa 3/5
* Inherent Vice (2014) 4.5/5
Through the Olive Trees (1994) 4.5/5
Lumiere d'ete (1943) 3.5/5
* Heat (1995) 4.5/5
Life, and Nothing More... (1992) 4/5
Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (2023) 4/5
Trenque Lauquen (2022) 5/5

Throw Momma From the Train (DeVito) 4/10 so i started watching always sunny, wanted to watch one of the movies devito directed. i picked a bad one.
The Children's Hour (Wyler) 4/10 audrey had some bad performances
Girl, Interrupted (Mangold) 6/10
The Girl Can't Help It (Tashlin) 7/10 how can they look so bored during that Little Richard performance
*Topsy Turvy (Leigh) 10/10
Blue Collar (Schrader) 9/10 the only good richard pryor movie?

Ratings according to the Maltin System, i.e. **** for classic all the way down to BOMB for irredeemable shite

Black Girl (Sembene, 1966) ***1/2
Perfect Days (Wenders, 2023) ***
The Zone of Interest (Glazer, 2023) ***1/2
Poor Things (Lanthimos, 2023) ***
Love Lies Bleeding (Glass, 2024) ***
Mars Express (Périn, 2023) ***
I Saw the TV Glow (Schoenbrun, 2024) **1/2
Evil Does Not Exist (Hamaguchi, 2023) ***
Saltburn (Fennell, 2023) **1/2
Oppenheimer (Nolan, 2023) BOMB (ironically)

I was wondering if Leonard Maltin gave Oppenheimer four stars, so I looked it up and it turns out he was surprisingly cool on the film

I bomb ironically
Einstein’s discoveries and hypotheses can’t define how I be dropping these

xp good on Grandpa Malty

June

The Boxers Omen (Chih-Hung, 1983) 7/10
Godzilla Minus One (Yamazaki, 2023) 8/10
The Beast (Bonello, 2023) 7/10
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Jude, 2023) 9/10
In a Year with 13 Moons (Fassbinder, 1978) 8/10
Triangle of Sadness (Ostlund, 2022) 6/10
Blue Jay (Lehmann, 2016) 8/10

June in cinemas:
Hit Man (Linklater, Powell 2024)
* Furiosa (Miller, Lathouris, Bandopadhayay, Chakravarti, Collee, Maeda, Sixel Miller, Norris pere, Norris fils 2024)
Challengers (Gudagnino, Kuritzkes 2024)
† Purple Rain (Magnoli, Nelson, Blinn, Albert Magnoli 1984)
† In The Cut (Campion & Campion after Moore 2003)
Cruising (Friedkin after Walker 1980)
Crash (Cronenberg after Ballard 1996)
† Body Double (DePalma, Avrech 1984)
I Saw The TV Glow (Schoenbrun 2024)
† Bound (The Wachowskis 1996)
L'Inconnu du lac [Stranger By The Lake] (Alain Guiradie et autres, 2013)
† The Matrix (The Wachowskis 1999) 📽️
† The Hunger (Scott, Davis, Thomas after Streiber 1983)
† Train To Busan [부산행] (Yeon, Park 2016)
† Body Heat (Kasdan 1981) 📽️
Female Trouble (Waters 1974)
* Furiosa (Miller, Lathouris et al. 2024)

June at home:
Ricky Stanicky (Farrelly, Occhino, Decker, Bushnell, Oedekerk, Jarvis, Freeman, Jones, Cerrone 2024) 1/10 for Cena's commitment
Hot Dogs For Gaugin (Brest 1972) short
Ohayo [Good Morning] (Kon 2008) short
Hot Tomorrows (Brest 1977)
Succumb To The Crumb (Glazer 2010) short
* Midnight Run (Brest, Gallo 1988)

Man on the Roof (1976) 4/5. Kind of a Swedish French Connection. Really involving but has a strange ending.
Stripper (1985) 3.5/5. Heavily staged but interesting pseudo-documentary. An absolute explosion of 80s tackiness.
Challengers 3/5. I was watching this when the Trump assassination attempt happened, so I was a little distracted.
* The Mother and the Whore (1973) 5/5
Black God, White Devil (1964) 4.5/5
* Equinox Flower (1958) 4/5
* Messiah of Evil (1973) 4/5
Delta Space Mission (1984) Trippy Romanian cartoon. Would be wild to catch on TV at like 2 AM.
What a Way to Go! (1964) 3/5
Madame Web (2024) 1/5. Watched this on a plane. The villain in this is so comically bad and the French actor appears to have been totally re-dubbed by a guy who sounds like Lee Van Cleef.
Thrilling Bloody Sword (1981) 3/5
France (2021) 3.5/5
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) 4/5
Wild Side (1995) 2.5/5. Director's cut. Christopher Walken at his most unhinged, and I don't say that lightly. Way too much of Steven Bauer playing a rapist cop for this to be much fun.

sic, what does the dagger in front of your titles mean? I hope it’s not “this movie is dead to me.”

rewatch but first time on a big screen. the dagger came out more prominent than intended!

That’s a category of film viewership I’ve really been leaning into recently. Before all the cinemas close down, which seems inevitable, I want to see as many of my favorite films on a big screen as possible.

Challengers (5.5)
Drive (5.0)
Evil Does Not Exist (7.5)
Mr. Robot (S2-4 – 6.5)
Teenage Superstars (6.5)
Players (5.0)
Borg vs. McEnroe (6.0)
Battle of the Sexes (7.0)
Hit Man (6.0)
Kinds of Kindness (6.5)
Longlegs (6.0)

Took me since May 3 to accumulate nine films and two TV shows. I just don't watch movies anymore.

Watched the latest MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie on Amazon Prime but it just wasn't *fun* the way the fourth and fifth ones were. It's grim and dour and *dumb*. I mean, the villain is an AI, and in 2024 we all know that AIs are just racist, lying chatbots. Also it's 2 hours 45 and ends on a cliffhanger. (But does it count as one if I genuinely didn't care if they ever actually accomplished their goal?)

July big, projected:
Maxxxine (West 2024)
Audition [オーディション] (Miike, Tengan, Murakami 1999)
Kinds Of Kindness (Lanthimos, Filippou 2024)
M. Hulot's Holiday [Les Vacances de M. Hulot] (Tati, Marquet 1953/1962/1978)
The Hardest Line: The Story of Midnight Oil (Clarke 2024)
Koyaanisqatsi (Ron Fricke, Reggio, Hoenig, Walpole, Glass 1982)


small, LCD:
Scent Of A Woman (Brest, Goldman 1993) rental expired after 48 hours 2/3 of the way in, as a blessed relief
Knox Goes Away (Keaton, Poirier 2024)
WILL THERE BE ANYTHING ELSE ? (David Lynch 2024) 4min
Wicked Little Letters (Sharrock, Sweet 2024)

hoo h

hoo a

The Mikado (1939) 7/10
Sorcerer (Friedkin 1977) 9/10
Where the Sidewalk Ends (Preminger, 1950) 5/10
Born to be Bad (Ray, 1950) 6/10
*Don't Look Now (Roeg, 1973) 6/10
*Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978) 8/10
The Daytrippers (Mottola, 1996) 5/10
A Canterbury Tale (Archers, 1944) 7/10
Blue Steel (Bigelow, 1990) 4/10
*Before Sunset (Linklater, 2004) 6/10 hawk's book sounds awful
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe (Rice and Calleros, 2022) 8/10

June & July

Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang, 1945)
Queen of Speed (Barbie MacLaurin, 2021)
Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill (Andy Brown & Brian Lindstrom, 2022)
La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
*The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (Chad Freidrichs, 2011)
*Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
Europa (Lars Von Trier, 1991)
Civil War (Alex Garland, 2024)
*Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
Une affaire de femmes (Claude Chabrol, 1988)
The Assassination & Mrs. Paine (Max Good, 2022)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
Torakku yarô: tenka gomen (Norifumi Suzuki, 1976)
Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, 1962)
Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985)
Century of the Dragon (Clarence Fok, 1999)
*Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg, 1987)
The 27th Day (William Asher, 1957)
The Mystery of Aris San (Dani Dotan, Dalia Mevorach, 2007)
The World Is Yours (Romain Gavras, 2018)
The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973)
*The Beguiled (Don Siegel, 1971)
The Blue Dahlia (George Marshall, 1946)
The Walking Hills (John Sturges, 1949)
Concrete Utopia (Tae-hwa Eom, 2023)
La Cérémonie (Claude Chabrol, 1995)
Faye (Laurent Bouzereau, 2024)

More re-runs than usual - Ms. T and I got systematic about our checking off titles on the"classic movies that one has seen but the other hasn't" lists. I'm the person who only just now saw Desperately Seeking Susan. What a great movie! The 27th Day is a total outlier among 50s saucer movies - worth tracking down. The World Is Yours and Concrete Utopia both kinda meh for different reasons that are glaringly obvious when I look at the trailers for them now.

July

Aggro Drift (Korine, 2023) 4/10
*The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie (Bunuel, 1972) 8/10
The Small Back Room (Powell & Pressburger, 1949) 7/10
*Two Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971) 8/10
Longlegs (Perkins, 2024) 6/10
Nineteen Eighty Four (Radford, 1984) 7/10
Chameleon Street (Harris Jr, 1989) 8/10
Hackers (Softley, 1985) 6/10
Anything Else (Allen, 2023) 4/10
Challengers (Guadagnino, 2024) 8/10
I Saw The TV Glow (Schoenbrun, 2024) 7/10
Sabotage (Hitchcock, 1936) 7/10
Coma (Bonello, 2022) 6/10
A Visitor to A Museum (Lopushansky, 1989) 7/10
Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio, 1982) 8/10
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1962) 6/10

Desperately Seeking Susan is a very fun movie. I rewatched it recently, I hadnt seen it since I was a kid.

Maxxxine - All surface. Kevin Bacon is fun until he isn’t anymore. 4/10

Out Of Time - Carl Franklin’s “Devil In A Blue Dress” is a favorite. I had no clue he’s made a second film with Denzel. This was good fun. Solid B-crime thriller for a sticky Summer night. 7/10

Starve Acre - If “Geogaddi” was a movie. Properly wacko retro folk horror. Beautifully done. 8/10

*Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda 1962)
The World's Greatest Sinner (Carey 1962. Shouldn't count...I didn't make it to the end...)
Once Upon a Time in America (Leone 1984)
Furiosa (Miller 2024)
Godzilla Minus One (Yamazaki 2023)
Hit Man (Linklater 2024)
The Great Train Robbery (Porter 1903)
From Here to Eternity (Zinnemann 1953)
Dizzy Gillespie (Blank 1965)
32 Sounds (Green 2022)
Victims of Sin (Fernández 1951)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Herzog 2009)
Cairo Station (Chahine 1958)

Cairo Station probably my favourite discovery at Noir City this year.

The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993) 3.5/5
* Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) 4.5/5
Beijing Watermelon (1989) 4/5
* Seven Samurai (1954) 5/5
Danton (1983) 4/5
Lumumba (2000) 4/5
House of Tolerance (2011) 4/5
Kamikaze Hearts (1986) 4/5
Longlegs (2024) 1/5. Hated pretty much everything about this.
* Blood and Wine (1996) 3/5
My Own Private Idaho (1991) 4/5

some really great camera blocking in Longlegs tbf.

The First Omen (2024) 2.5/5. First overrated horror movie of the season!
* The Leopard (1963) 4/5
Touch (1997) 2/5
My America... or Honk If You Love Buddha (1997) 3/5
Suspicion (1941) 3.5/5
High School (1968) 5/5
Royal Warriors (1986) 4/5
Victims of Sin (1951) 3.5/5
Mr. Klein (1976) 5/5

August in large rooms with high ceilings:
The Zodiac Killer (Hanson, Cantrell, Cardoza 1971)
Cannibal! The Musical (Parker 1993)
* Donnie Darko (Kelly 2001) [theatrical cut, 4K resto]
Stand By For Failure: A Documentary About Negativland (Worsley 2022)
The Love Nest (Cline, Keaton 1923)
† Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, Bruckman, Havez, Mitchell 1924)
† Wet Hot American Summer (Wain, Showalter 2001)
She Freak (Mabe, Friedman 1967) [new restoration]
Blood Feast (Lewis, Downe, Friedman 1963)
Indecent Desires (Wishman 1968) [2K restoration from 35mm negative]
Crossing (Akin 2024)
Longlegs (Perkins 2024)
Cuckoo (Singer 2024)
Road House (Herrington, Henry, Henkin 1989)
* Coraline (Selick after Gaiman 2009) [remastered 3D]
* Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (Peebles 1971)
I Married A Witch (Clair, Pirosh, Connelly, Trumbo, after Smith completed by Matson 1942)
Between The Temples (Silver, Wells 2024)
She Mob (Wuest, Paschal 1968)
A Woman Under The Influence (Cassavetes 1974)
Chopping Mall (Wynorski, Mitchell 1986)
Trap (Shyamalan 2024)


low ceilings:
* Shiva Baby (Seligman 2020)
On Your Mark (Miyazaki 1995) 6min
Jackpot! (Feig, Yescombe 2024) 1/10, paused 45 minutes in to check bcz I couldn't believe the writer of Spy did this
Fury Has An Anthem (Newman 2023) 7min

spy was easily the best feig/mccarthy movie. take that bridesmaids.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coens, 2018)
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Mazursky, 1969)
Twisters (Chung, 2024)
On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1954)
The Beast (Bonello, 2023)
Trap (Shyamalan, 2024)
The Last of Sheila (Ross, 1973)
The Village (Shyamalan, 2004)
La Chimera (Rohrwacher, 2023)
Snake Eyes (De Palma, 1998)
Dead Ringers (Cronenberg, 1988)
WarGames (Badham, 1983)

August:

West Side Story (Spielberg, 2021) 5/10
The Wild Geese (McLagen, 1978) 4/10
Yannick (Dupieux, 2023) 5/10
Kneecap (Peppiatt, 2023) 7/10 (at the cinema)
La Chimera (Rohrwacher, 2023) 7/10
Perfect Days (Wenders, 2023) 8/10
*The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) 8/10
*Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954) 8/10
Alien Romulus (Alvarez, 2024) 4/10
*The Founder (Hancock, 2016) 7/10
*Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003) 7/10
The Hypnosis (De Geer, 2023) 7/10
The Five Devils (Mysius, 2022) 7/10
Frankenhooker (Henenlotter, 1990) 8/10
Major Dundee (Peckinpah, 1965) 7/10
Oddity (McCarthy, 2024) 7/10 (at the cinema)

Inferno - 1953 6/10
*The Last of Sheila - 8/10
Desert Fury - 1947 6/10
Eyes of Laura Mars - 1978 6/10
Hit Man - Linklater, 2023 7/10

Didi (7.0)
Closer (6.5)
The Americans (8.5)
Night of the Living Dead (8.0)
Only the River Flows (6.0)
Reagan (4.0)
Twisters (6.0)
Paris, Texas (7.5)
Amadeus (6.0)
Breaking Bad (8.5)

September:

features in cinemas
Le Samouraï [2024 4K restoration] (Melville, Pellegrin 1967)
† Paris, Texas [2024 4K restoration] (Wenders, Shephard, Carson 1984)
S/He Is Still Her/e - The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary (Rodrigues with Petrillo 2024)
† The Conversation [2024 50th anniversary 4K resto] (Coppola 1974)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp [2011 Academy resto] (Powell and Pressburger 1943)
Once In A Lifetime (Mack, Miller after Hart, Kaufman) 1932) 📽️
The Cohens And Kellys In Hollywood (Dillon, Green 1932) 📽️
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Lubitsch, Brackett, Wilder after Savoir trans. Andrews 1938) 📽️
Hollywood Boulevard (Dante, Arkush, Opatoshu 1976) 📽️
El espinazo del diablo [The Devil's Backbone] (del Toro, Muñoz, Trashorras 2001) 📽️
† The Hairy Bird [US theatrical Strike! cut] (Kernochan 1998) 📽️
Bye Bye Birdie (Sidney, Brecher, Stewart, Strouse, Adams, Green, Padula, Champion 1963)
* The World's End (Wright, Pegg 2013)

shorts in an apartment
Sean Young filmed the making of Dune with David Lynch 1983 (Young 2010)
* Lady Blue Shanghai (Lynch 2010)
City Island: Movies (Lopez, Correll, Augenblick, Wendt & al. 2024)
Absurda (Lynch 2007)

shorts in a theatre
"My Directorial" (Harderson 2024)

*Blackmail (Hitchcock, 1929) 6/10
Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 1953) 9/10 -- I think I only saw the first half previously, because the second half rang no bells
The Comedy of Terrors (Tourneur, written by Matheson, 1963) 6/10
Don't Torture a Duckling (Fulci, 1972) 7/10
Lifeforce (Hooper, 1985) 5/10
John Jacobs and the Power Team (1991) like
*Microcosmos (Nuridsany & Pérennou, 1996) 9/10

Kinds of Kindness (Lanthimos, 2024) 5/10 (barely)
The Vourdalak (Beau, 2023) 6/10
Kneecap (Peppiatt, 2023) 6/10
Sleep (Yu, 2023) 6/10
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Oshii, 2004) 6/10
It's Such a Beautiful Day (Hertzfeldt, 2012) 7/10
Moving (Ohikkoshi) (Sōmai, 1993) 7/10
Suburbia (Spheeris, 1983) 7/10
Blazing Saddles (Brooks, 1974) 6/10
North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959) 5/10, I think I'm just not a Hitchcock fan tbh, he was a smarmy git
The Conversation (Coppola, 1974) 9/10
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001) 10/10

Here (2023) 4/5. VERY low-key and quiet movie on Criterion Channel. Making soup and studying moss are important plot points.
Lifeforce (1985) 3.5/5. Wild stuff.
The Strangler (1970) 4/5. One of those movies that's so much stranger than what a basic plot description promises.
Megalopolis (2024) 1/5
Mr. McMahon (2024) 3/5
The Substance (2024) 3.5/5
Bend of the River (1952) 4/5
Red Rocket (2021) 4/5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) 3/5
The Whole Town's Talking (1935) 3.5/5
Trouble in Mind (1985) 4/5. Kris Kristofferson shares a scene with Divine here. The man did it all. RIP.
The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists (1995) 4/5

*Jackie Brown (Tarantino, 1997) 10/10
*The Duellists (Scott, 1977) 8/10
Ad Astra (Gray, 2019) 7/10
Snack Shack (Rehmeier, 2024) 6/10
*Point Break (Bigelow, 1991) 8/10
Rebel Ridge (Saulnier, 2024) 8/10
Hound (Lazraq, 2023) 8/10
*The Silence of The Lambs (Demme, 1991) 8/10
*The End of The Tour (Ponsoldt, 2015) 8/10
Gift (Farrell, Niccoli, 1993) 6/10
The Substance (Fargeat, 2024) 8/10
Motherhood (Dieckmann, 2009) 4/10
Megalopolis (Coppola, 2024) 5/10

Some Play for Today's:
Your Man From Six Counties (Davis, 1976) 7/10
Shut Down (Mackenzie, 1973) 6/10
One Day at A Time (Wilson, 1977) 8/10
Blue Remembered Hills (Gibson, 1979) 8/10

the spooky month so far:
Lifeforce (Hooper, 1972) 5
Someone's Watching Me! (Carpenter, TV, 1978) 6
Humanoids from the Deep (Peeters and others, 1980) 4
The Entity (1982) 8
Christine (Carpenter, 1983) 6
The Company of Wolves (Jordan, 1984) 7
The Toxic Avenger (Kaufman & Herz, 1984) 5
The Toxic Avenger Part II (Kaufman & Herz, 1989) 3
The Toxic Avenger Part III (Kaufman & Herz, 1989) 3
The Toxic Avenger IV: Citizen Toxie (Kaufman & frat boys, 2000) 2
The Stuff (Cohen, 1985) 8
Cemetery Man (Soavi, 1994) 8
Alien Resurrection (Jeunet, 1997) 5
The Faculty (Rodriguez, 1998) 6
Saw (Wan, 2004) 6
The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (Aster, 2011) good
The Vast of Night (2019) 7
Gatlopp (2022) 4
Beetlejuice x2 (Burton, 2024) 7

Cemetery Man a.k.a. Dellamorte Dellamore is my discovery of the month: something like a combination of Possession and Dead Alive.

also:
Will & Harper (Greenbaum, 2024) 6

Spooktober viewing (although I didn't totally limit myself to spooky movies)

The Black Cat (Ulmer, 1934) 8/10
The Asphyx (Newbrook, 1972) 6/10
Angst (Kargl, 1983) 9/10
Lifeforce (Hooper, 1985) 5/10
Duck, You Sucker (Leone, 1971) 8/10
Old (Shyamalan, 2021) 4/10
The Hills Have Eyes (Craven, 1977) 8/10
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Hooper, 1986) 7/10
Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001) 8/10
El Conde (Larrain, 2023) 5/10
*Tetsuo The Iron Man (Tsukamoto, 1989) 8/10
Rap World (O'Malley, 2024) 7/10

i watched Spike Lee's Malcolm X for the first time on monday, despite owning it on VHS for 32 years...

spook cinema:
* Hundreds Of Beavers (Cheslik, Tews 2024 [2022-2023 festivals])
I Know Where I'm Going! [BFI restoration] (Powell and Pressburger 1945)
My Old Ass (Park 2024)
Ravenous (Bird, Griffin 1999) 📽️
Les Yeux sans visage (Franju, Boileau-Narcejac, Redon, Sautet, Gascar après Redon 1960)
Blade (Norrington, Goyer 1998)
A Matter Of Life And Death (Powell and Pressburger 1946)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Burton, Gough, Millar 2024)
Megalopolis (Coppola, Coppola 2024)
Black Narcissus (Powell and Pressburger 1947)
Blade II (del Toro, Goyer 2002) 📽️
Opera [4K Severin restoration] (Argento, Ferrini 1987)
Bell, Book and Candle (Quine, Taradash after Van Druten 1958)
The Red Shoes [UCLA restoration] (Powell and Pressburger and Winter and Helpmann et al 1948)
Rumours (Maddin, Johnson & Johnson 2024)
† The Evil Dead (Raimi 1981)
Demon Knight (Dickerson, Bishop, Reiff, Voris
1995) 📽️
The Fall [4K restoration] (Tarsem, Gilroy, Soultanakis after Petrov 2006)
The Small Back Room [FF/BFI restoration] (Powell and Pressburger after Balchin 1949)

happy home:
Kiss Me, Stupid (Wilder, Diamond 1964) 💿
Bones And All (Guadagnino, Jajganich after DeAngelis David Kajganich after Camille DeAngelis 2022)

Trap (2024) 2.5/5
* Let's Get Lost (1989) 4.5/5
* Play Time (1967) 5/5
Anora (2024) 4.5/5
High Sierra (1941) 3.5/5
* The Brood (1979) 4/5
The Crazies/Code Name: Trixie (1973) 4/5
Rap World (2024) 4/5
The Witches of Eastwick (1987) 3/5
Martin (1977) 4/5
* Bride of Frankenstein (1935) 2.5/5. I hate the scene with the little people in jars A LOT.
Distant Sky (2018) 4/5. Nick Cave concert film
The Facts of Murder (1959) 3.5/5
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024) 4/5
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) 3/5
Q (2023) 3/5. Documentary on Criterion Channel about the director's mother, a longtime member of a Lebanese religious cult
The Church (1989) 3.5/5
Christine (1983) 3.5/5

“Curse Of The Werewolf” is such a bizarre Hammer: Spanish setting, rape, cursed offspring of that crime as main protagonist, Ollie Reed as one of the coolest looking werewolves in cinema but onscreen for - iirc - a small fraction of the film. Still - prob my fave werewolf flick.

The Ring (Verbinski, 2002)
The Substance (Fargeat, 2024)
The Blob (Russell, 1988)
His Three Daughters (Jacobs, 2023)
Saturday Night (Reitman, 2024)
The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)
Emilia Perez (Audiard, 2024)
Heathers (Lehmann, 1989)
Hard Truths (Leigh, 2024)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962)
Woman of the Hour (Kendrick, 2023)
It Follows (Mitchell, 2014)
Glengarry Glen Ross (Foley, 1992)
Anora (Baker, 2024)
Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945)
Conclave (Berger, 2024)