Last (x) movies you saw (II)

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.

yeah fair enough! the repeated lines are very few & read in SUPER different context the second times around, but if you’re not seeing it / that footage cold, those won’t have the same kick

I've come to the ultimate conclusion that an 8-point rating works best for films, but somehow not for records. No idea how that works. Anything 4 or above is at least worth seeing once.

The Cranes Are Flying (8/8)
Mädchen in Uniform (7/8)
The Lady of Musashino (7/8)
Meet John Doe (6/8)
The Sun's Burial (6/8)
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (6/8)
Bubba Ho-Tep (6/8)
Memories of Underdevelopment (6/8)
Japanese Girls at the Harbor (6/8)
Cathy Come Home (6/8)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (6/8)
Scum (6/8)
Made in Britain (6/8)
Culloden (6/8)
Oedipus Rex (6/8)
Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (6/8)
Fox and his Friends (6/8)
Wife, Be Like a Rose (6/8)
The Wind (6/8)
The Text of Light (6/8)
Timecop (6/8)
Radio On (5/8)
The Hourglass Sanatorium (5/8)
Kuhle Wampe (5/8)
Man of Aran (5/8)
Nanook of the North (5/8)
Dillinger (1945) (5/8)
The Reckless Moment (5/8)
Midnight Express (4/8)
On the Beach (4/8)
One Battle After Another (3/8)

1/10 for Him.

the spooky season so far

The Death Kiss (1932) 7/10 but not actually horror
You'll Find Out (1940) 6
The Ghost Ship (produced by Lewton, 1943) 7
The Body Snatcher (produced by Lewton, 1945) 7
The Brighton Strangler (1945) 5
Grip of the Strangler (1958) 6
Magic (the anthony hopkins evil puppet movie, Richard Attenborough, 1978) 8
Piranha (Dante, 1978) 4
I Know what you did last summer (1997) 4
Nope (2022) 7
Heretic (2024) 6
The Monkey (Perkins, 2025) 8

godammit it’s been over a year since the two cinemas in town that still showed film on the reg separately closed,* I’m out of practice and forgot the film emoji on the first Battle, before another

*(one had their lease cancelled after 52 years, one had their ceiling explode — neither was trying to get out of projection.)

I started the month doing Hooptober rules but I ended up just watching a bunch of Vincent Price and Hammer movies.

The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921) 7
Mad Monster Party? (Rankin/Bass/Mochinaga, 1959) 4
The Hound of the Baskervilles (hammer, 1959) 8
The Phantom of the Opera (hammer, 1962) 5
Twice-Told Tales (1963) 7/6/2
The Evil of Frankenstein (hammer, 1964) 6
The Plague of the Zombies (hammer, 1966) 8
The Cremator (Juraj Herz, 1969)
Cry of the Banshee (AIP, 1970) 4
Theatre of Blood (1973) 4
Ganja & Hess (1973) 4
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (NOT PWS Anderson, 2004) 5
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch, 2013) 7

Ganja and Hess is a bit janky for sure but there's some really great scenes in it and such a strangeness to it unlike any other horror

Cutter and Bone (Passer, Fiskin, Thornburg 1981) 📽️
* Spider-Man 2 (Raimi, Sargent, Chabon, Gough, Millar, Koepp 2004)
Thelma (Margolin 2024) 📺
Play Dirty (Black, Mondry, Bagarozzi, Stark 2025) 📺 3/10
* Spider-Man 3 (Raimi, Ivan Raimi, Sargent 2007)
Are We Good? (Feinartz 2025)
* From Dusk Till Dawn (Rodriguez, Kurtzman, Tarantino 1996)
Roofman (Cianfrance, Gunn 2025)
A House Of Dynamite (Bigelow, Oppenheim 2025)
Creepshow (Romero, King 1982)
* Prince Of Darkness (Carpenter 1987)
Final Destination (Wong, Reddick, Morgan 2000)
Demolition Man (Brambilla, Daniel Waters, Reneau, Lenkov, Dekker, Lemkin 1993) 📀
Event Horizon (Anderson, Eisner 1997)
The Invisible Man (Whale, Sheriff, Wells 1933)
Seven Chances (Keaton, Bruckman, Havez, Mitchell, Belasco, Megrue 1925) 📀
The Devil's Carnival: Alleluia! (Bousman, Zdunich 2015) 📀
Paranorman: The Thrifting (LeClercq, Butler et al 2025) 7min
* One Battle After Another (Anderson, Pynchon 2025)
Halloween III: Season Of The Witch (Wallace 1982)

saw SORRY, BABY tonight. it’s nice, thought it was effective for what it was, though all the academic-related scenes struck me as a little false and caricatured

* Rio Bravo (1959) 4/5. Amazing (although not really since it's him) how completely uninterested Wayne seems in Angie Dickinson, even in the end discarding the sexy outfit she agrees to wear just for him.
Twentieth Century (1934) 4/5
Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus (2025) 4/5
* McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) 5/5
Fresh Kill (1994) 3/5
* There Will Be Blood 4.5/5
The Horse (short; 1973) 3.5/5
Bon Voyage, Sim (short; 1966) 2.5/5
* A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) 3/5. The Zaniness gets to be a little monotonous after a while.
Kitchen Sink (short; 1989) 3/5
Ganja & Hess (1973) 3.5/5
* The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 5/5. Little wonder Hopkins became iconic and Foster won an Oscar. Actors have rarely been better-served and framed by a director.
Deep Red (1975) 3.5/5
Cloud (2024) 4/5
* Popeye (1980) 4/5. Kind of a similar movie to McCabe & Mrs. Miller really, but with a different color palette.
Escape from LA (1996) 3/5
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) 4/5
Fool for Love (1985) 3/5
One Battle After Another 4.5/5

Nice to see a positive first-time response to Escape From LA.

The Running Man 6/10
OBAA 8/10
As a double feature, no less. One time there were two leftist action movies etc.

Saw All We Imagine As Light, was pretty good! Saw The Running Man, was pretty mid. Finally saw The Florida Project, was great.

Nice to see a positive first-time response to Escape From LA.

Actual knowing chuckle on my part, heh.

Black Christmas (Clark, 1974)
Bugonia (Lanthimos, 2025)
The Naked Gun (Schaffer, 2025)
His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)
Sorry, Baby (Victor, 2025)
Materialists (Song, 2025)
Dr. T and the Women (Altman, 2000)
Doubt (Shanley, 2008)
Blue Moon (Linklater, 2025)
Nouvelle Vague (Linklater, 2025)
Gone in Sixty Seconds (Sena, 2000)
Sentimental Value (Trier, 2025)

Under Siege (1992). What weird movies people used to be hits!

Bugonia, One Battle After Another, 28 Years Later, Eddington, Weapons, I'd Kick You If I Had Legs - a lot of interconnected batshit themes bubbling up lately

OBAA 10/10
*OBAA 10/10
*lady bird 8/10
blue moon 9/10
*blue moon 9/10
bugonia 5/10
sorry, baby 7/10
sentimental value 9/10
wicked: for good 2/10
twinless 7/10

wicked for good was one of the most insulting experiences I can remember in the theater

Boooooo

it looked terrible, the story is absurd, and half the cast can’t even sing! like what is michelle yeoh doing in that movie exactly?

erivo and grande were good!

Michelle Yeoh was looking beautiful and being Michelle Yeoh, and I chuckled when they let her sing one line

cmon man lol

srsly i'm not saying there aren't flaws or things that fall short of the stage show but i was in it for the fanboy fun and tbh if it was just a 2 hour set up for that duet on "For Good" it would have been worth it

November so far:

Bugonia 7/10
Flux Gourmet 6/10
El Planeta 8/10
Nemesis (1992) 7/10
Vulcanizadora 8/10
The Alchemists Cookbook 6/10
Frankenstein (2025) 6/10
Train Dreams 6/10

Nice to see a positive first-time response to Escape From LA

Very mediocre movie, but I had it on while taking care of my newborn rather than paying to watch it in 1996.

John Carpenter thinks it's better than Escape From New York! Says it all about his latterday career really.

He knows that everything else after Mouth Of Madness isn’t good, but he thinks the script of LA is more interesting than NY and actually has something to say about the city, and thus a reason to be. Plus he presumably just has fond memories of reuniting with Hill and Russell.

(Once you’re going in knowing how terrible the VFX are, it’s easy to not care, and treat it like a play.)

Bugonia (6.5)
The Mastermind (5.5)
It Was Just an Accident (6.0)
The Company You Keep (6.0)
Say Hey, Willie Mays! (6.0)
The Librarians (7.0)
Nouvelle Vague (7.0)
The Fabulous Baker Boys (7.5)
The Apprentice (6.5)
Fargo (S2 – 8.5)
After the Hunt (6.0)

Absolutely loved "Train Dreams." The Malick was strong in that one.

jay kelly 4.5/10
all the president’s men 8.5/10
hamnet 6/10
the new yorker at 100 (thumbs up)
orwell 2+2=5 (thumbs down)
the secret agent 8/10
nouvelle vague 6/10
materialists 3/10

ebony & ivory: 5 bags
phantasm II / III / IV unsure which was which i have covid again all seemed very S3 twin peaks to me, maybe 3 bags?
dumb & dumber: 4 bags
metalocalypse: army of the doomstar: 4 bags
love birds: 1 bag for brave sally, no bags for the rest of them
maudie: 4 bags full of tears
if i had my way (1940): 2 bags. el brendel is a delight, though.
just imagine (1930): el brendel again - he is excellent in this dumb shit of a sci-fi musical comedy: 3 bags
kuso: 4 bags (full of poop)
steak 2007: 4 bags
divinity: 1 bag for the hilarious claymation climax, 0 bags for anything else
toxic avenger 2023: 5 bags

Cinema:
It Was Just an Accident (Panahi, 2025) 6/8
The Mastermind (Reichardt, 2025) 5/8
Die, My Love (Ramsay, 2025) 4/8
Bugonia (Lanthimos, 2025) 4/8

Elsewhere:
Invasion (Santiago, 1969) 8/8 - Co-scripted by Borges!
The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960) 8/8
Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970) 7/8
The Lady from Shanghai (Welles, 1948) 7/8
Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou, 1987) 6/8
Divorce Iranian Style (Longinotto / Mir-Hosseini, 1998) 6/8 - enraging documentary on Iranian divorce courts
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976) 6/8 - saw the longer version with all the terrible vaudeville numbers intact, oops
Hell is a City (Guest, 1960) 6/8 - UK noir-style thriller, great now-vanished Manchester locations
When Father Was Away on Business (Kusturica, 1985) 6/8
Marihuana, the Weed with Roots in Hell! (Esper, 1936) 6/8
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra, 1936) 6/8
The Dark Backward (Rifkin, 1991) 6/8 - has Neil Hamburger seen this?
Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong Sang-soo, 2000) 6/8
Riot in Cell Block 11 (Siegel, 1954) 6/8
The Shooting (Hellman, 1966) 6/8
The Hellstrom Chronicle (Green, 1971) 6/8
Miss Oyu (Mizoguchi, 1951) 6/8 - was Mizoguchi a better filmmaker than Ozu? Maybe
Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki, 2003) 6/8
The Firm (Clarke, 1988) 5/8
Outrage (Lupino, 1950) 5/8
To Live (Zhang Yimou, 1994) 5/8
Rubin and Ed (Harris, 1992) 5/8 - "there's an asswipe up there"
War of the Colossal Beast (Gordon, 1958) 5/8
The Quiet Duel (Kurosawa, 1949) 5/8
Screaming Mimi (Oswald, 1958) 5/8
The Grissom Gang (Aldrich, 1971) 5/8
Broken Blossoms (Griffith, 1919) 5/8
Summer Snow (Hui, 1995) 5/8 - nice Otomo Yoshihide soundtrack
Hot Rod Rumble (Martinson, 1957) 5/8 - better-than-average JD flick improved no end by the excellent (and non-stop) jazz score by Alexander "Star Trek" Courage. Band includes Barney Kessel, Shelly Manne, Maynard Ferguson and a bunch more stalwarts. Available on LP!
Schizopolis (Soderbergh, 1996) 5/8
Chappaqua (Rooks, 1966) 4/8 - spoiled rich-kid junkie cleans their veins out in pricey Parisian clinic, needed more Moondog and Burroughs
Smithereens (Seidelman, 1982) 4/8
The Cocaine Fiends (O'Connor, 1936) 4/8
Cat Women of the Moon (Hilton, 1954) 4/8 - doesn't live up to the title (do they ever?) but bonus points for characters smoking ON THE FUCKING MOON

gotta check out Hot rod rumbke" thx for the heads up.
as always, amazed at differing perspectives, "schizopolus" to my mind absolute perfect A+ 5 bags

*rumble

I went into Schizopolis cold and it wasn't what I was expecting at all, probably I'm not the first person to say that. It's not a style of wackiness I'm too fond of but 3.5/5 bags for not doing the obvious. I spent the duration thinking "Woody Harrelson sure looks weird in this film" then realised it was actually Soderbergh, lol.

Invasion is a film I would highly recommend, Alphaville scripted by Borges is the best comparison I can make.

* schizopolis you know already. addled w fever typing like a horse

Heretic (2025) 7/10

Magic Farm (2025) 4/10
A satire on edgy Vice style documentarians who travel to an Argentinian smalltown in search of wacky content. Feels 10 years out of date and its also not funny and pretty toothless as a satire. It's a shame as I really liked Ulman's "La Planeta" a lot

*Written On The Wind (1956) 8/10
Loved this, would be 5 stars but Bacall's role is a bit underdeveloped and her only purpose seems to be bounced around between Stark and Hudson. I love it when Robert Stark speaks especially when he's shouting for a BOTTLE OF CORN

*Belle De Jour (1967) 8/10
What a weird kinky movie

Jay Kelly (2025) 6/10
This didn't really convince me at all and not even a charm powerhouse like Clooney can help the movie burst out of its Oscarbait straitjacket

Boiling Point (1990) 7/10
Odd tonal shifts in this movie that don't work well but enough great stuff in it to make it worthwhile

*Midnight in Paris (2011) 8/10
Total fluff but very entertaining fluff! Probably the only good Woody Allen movie of the last 25 years

Sorry Baby (2025) 6/10

Toxic (2025) 6/10

The Mastermind (2025) 7/10

Tiger On The Beat (1988) 6/10
This movie is awful and borderline evil but the last 20 mins of action are INCREDIBLE

Quintet (Altman 1979)
Touchez pas au grisbi (Becker 1954)
The Swordsman (King Hu, Tsui Hark 1990)
Cloud (Kurosawa 2024)
The Adventure of Iron Pussy (Weerasethakul, Shaowanasai 2003)
Nouvelle Vague (Linklater 2025)
Brewster McCloud (Altman 1970)
God's Angry Man (Herzog 1981)
Les Carabiniers (Godard 1963)
*My Winnipeg (Maddin 2007)
Guilty Bystander (Lerner 1950)
Scarface (Hawks 1932)
Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival (Misumi 1970)
*The Piano Teacher (Haneke 2001)
*A History of Violence (Cronenberg 2005)
Me and You and Everyone We Know (July 2005)
Hell's Angels (Hughes, Whale 1930)
Ballerina (Wiseman 2025)
Wake Up Dead Man (Johnson 2025)
The Mastermind (Reichardt 2025)
Train Dreams (Bentley 2015)
Misericordia (Guiraudie 2024)
It Was Just an Accident (Panahi 2025)

La Commune (Paris 1871) (1871/2000) 4.5/5
The Beast to Die (1980) 4/5
Krakatit (1948) 4/5. Very interesting find by Deaf Crocodile. Sort of a cross visually and thematically between early and late Fritz Lang, with some foreshadowing of Guy Maddin.
The Mastermind (2025) 4/5
Wake Up Dead Man (2025) 2.5/5. latest in this series of newsy, parent/child holiday conversation pieces.
Lost in New York (1989) 3.5/5
Elegant Beast (1962) 4/5. Proto-Parasite
Maps to the Stars (2014) 4/5.
The Annihilation of Fish (1999) 4.5/5
Sentimental Value (2025) 4/5
Downey Wrote That (2025) 3/5
* Industrial Symphony No. 1 (1990) 3.5/5
* Dead Man (1995) 4/5
Hotel (2004) 2.5/5

Elegant Beast and Krakatit sound interesting, I'll add to the ever-expanding list of films I may never get around to seeing

I just watched Krakatit, though maybe i should have waited for the reissue rather than renting an old DVD-R. Still looks wonderful and seems to be operating on dream logic half the time. It’s also on Tubi!

Elegant Beast set in a single japanese high density 'danchi' apartment, with no two shots the same. reminded me of Tati, somehow.

(the recent Radiance release came with a 15 min featurette on the architecture)

kinds of kindness 4 bags
everything everywhere all at once 5 bags
leningrad cowboys meet moses 4 bags
united trash (schlingensief 1996) 1 bag german edgelord shit
ein grosser verhau unter sternen (the big mess - alexander kluge 1971) hippies mess about in bedsits and expect you to believe they are in space. 4 bags
black bag 4 bags

finally watcvhong some 2025 movies on streaming

superman 8
mi final reckoning 8
house of dynamite 7
new yorker at 100 6
elio 6
wake up dead man 9
freakier friday 6
fantastic 4 baby steps 5
cap america brave new world dnf

Sentimental Value (6.0)
Fargo (S1 – 7.0)
Sunday (6.5)
Jay Kelly (5.0)
Fargo (S3 – 7.0)
The New Yorker at 100 (6.5)
Wonderland (7.0)
Nobody (3.0)
Daydream Nation (4.0)
Breakdown: 1975 (6.0)

Saw quite a lot at the cinema last year, most of it via Mubi Go.

Presence
Hard Truths
Bring Them Down
The Brutalist
I'm Still Here
Queens
The Last Showgirl
On Falling
Mickey 17
Flow
The End
Four Mothers
One to One: John & Yoko
Sinners
Parthenope
North by Northwest
Motel Destino
Magic Farm
The Big Lebowski
When the Light Breaks
The Phoenician Scheme
The Encampments
Tornado
The Last Journey
Caché
28 Years Later
Hot Milk
F1
Barry Lyndon
Harvest
Friendship
Savages
Bring Her Back
Materialists
Sorry, Baby
The Life of Chuck
Tomboy
Caught Stealing
Deaf
Steve
Steve
One Battle After Another
Urchin
The Smashing Machine
Souleymane's Story
The Mastermind
Frankenstein
Die My Love
Bugonia
The Ice Tower
Pillion
One Battle After Another
It Was Just an Accident
One Battle After Another
It's a Wonderful Life
Sentimental Value
Marty Supreme

My stand out new films were One Battle After Another, Steve, Flow, and I'm Still Here.