Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Elle
In a Lonely Place
Los Angeles Plays Itself

I couldn't make it to Mandy on Thursday either - it's running for a week (once a day, at 9pm) here, but the premiere was a double-feature with Mom & Dad, which was only projected about 4/5 on screen when I saw it in January.

very suspicious of all the local Mandy hype here. sounds like Stranger Things for people who are too cool to watch or admit they watch Stranger Things. I think I'll see it this week. but if it's mostly just Nic Cage being extra, why? Herzog already did that with a movie that can't be topped.

and I got that impression from two people I trust who saw the movie separately in packed theaters full of knowing chuckles

love to divine the quality of a movie from secondhand reports of how people reacted to it in a theater

but then i haven't seen it either. i like and support cosmatos though

like I said I trust their opinions, and they're very different people. and yes, they described the movie too and their issues with the thing itself. crazy OTT throw everything at the wall genre movies are not my thing but I will see it with an open mind.

very suspicious of all the local Mandy hype here. sounds like Stranger Things for people who are too cool to watch or admit they watch Stranger Things. I think I'll see it this week. but if it's mostly just Nic Cage being extra, why? Herzog already did that with a movie that can't be topped.

I assume a lot of the people who wanted to see this initially are going in with similar expectations: for an 80s retro, wacky Nic Cage flick they can laugh at. It's nearly 45 minutes into the film before Cage is even much of a factor though, and by then it was already one of the most sensory immersive films I've seen in a while. No one will accuse the script of being particularly brainy, but the film doesn't collect cultural references so much as transmute them into a spiky, snarling beast. Johann Johannson's score is great and will remind you all over again what a loss his death was. And it does top the Herzog movie.

now that is some encouraging word of mouth. i'll definitely see it on wednesday. one of my friends said she liked the first half a lot more. can't name a movie with a Johannson score off the top of my head but surely I've seen one.

OK, last thing before I actually see Mandy:

I assume a lot of the people who wanted to see this initially are going in with similar expectations: for an 80s retro, wacky Nic Cage flick they can laugh at.

the made-to-order B movie / movie you can laugh at, I don't fuck with that at all. especially when The Wicker Man remake exists. even Bad Lieutenant veers a bit too much.

All the President’s Men (Robert Redford, 1976) - 10/10
The Capture (John Sturges, 1950) - 3/10
The Restless Years (Helmut Käutner, 1958) - 6/10
The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931) - 9/10
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) - 8/10
Irma la Douce (Billy Wilder, 1963) - 8/10
My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936) - 10/10
Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984) - 10/10
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) - 8/10

xp yea mandy trascends its genre trappings imo, reminded me of mad max fury road in that sense

The Last Boy Scout. In terms of "who's made more movies I would willingly re-watch," Tony Scott > Ridley Scott, though it's close.

Tony: The Last Boy Scout*, Enemy of the State, Man on Fire, Domino*, Unstoppable*
Ridley: The Duellists, Alien*, Blade Runner*, The Counselor*

*movies I own

marie antoinette (coppola, 2006) 9/10
the long day closes (davies, 1992) 10/10
a.i.: artificial intelligence (spielberg, 2001) 10/10
perfect blue (kon, 1997) 8/10
paprika (kon, 2006) 9/10
ms. 45 (ferrara, 1981) 9/10
the craft (fleming, 1996) 7/10

Close Up (Kiarostami, 1990) 8/10
Rope (Hitchcock, 1948) 6/10
Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997) 9/10
35 Shots of Rum (Denis, 2008) 9/10
The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Fassbinder, 1972) 9/10
Chocolat (Denis, 1988) 8/10
Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, 1948) 6/10
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010) 8/10
Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) 8/10
The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941) 9/10
The Great McGinty (Sturges, 1940) 6/10
Hill of Freedom (Hong, 2014) 8/10
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Yates, 1973) 8/10
The World (Jia, 2004) 9/10
Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (Renoir, 1936) 9/10
Metropolitan (Stillman, 1990) 9/10
Outrage (Kitano, 2010) 7/10
Fox and His Friends (Fassbinder, 1975) 8/10
A New Leaf (May, 1971) 7/10

mandy (cosmatos 2018) 7/10
greater southbridge (rod murphy 2003) 7/10
ex libris: the new york public library (wiseman 2017) 7/10
birds of passage (gallego/guerra 2018) 7.5/10
high life (denis 2018) 7/10
life itself (fogelman 2018) 7/10
greta (neil jordan 2018) 3/10
everybody knows (farhadi 2018) 6.5/10
support the girls (bujalski 2018) 2/10
vox lux (corbet 2018) 6/10
the hummingbird project (kim nguyen 2018) 5.5/10

I was expecting Upgrade to be a half-decent SF spin on Death Wish; it turned out to be a smart and beautifully shot thriller with an SF angle. Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36PDeN9NRZ0

The Tin Drum (Schlöndorff, 1979) 6/10
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Bird, 2011) 7/10
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation(McQuarrie, 2015) 7/10
Criminal (Vromen, 2016) 4/10
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (Russell, 1987) 7/10
Joe (Green, 2013) 8/10
*Local Hero (Forsythe, 1983)

Uncle Tom's Crabbin' (Messmer, 1927)
Felix in the Swim (Messmer, 1922)
Dangerous Corner (Rosen, 1934)
Fluttering Hearts (Parrott, 1927)
Sneak Easily (Meins, 1932)
Tomatos Another Day (Watson, 1930)
Bridge Wives (Arbuckle, 1932)
Kissing Time (Mack, 1933)
Careless Lady (MacKenna, 1932)
*Lazy River (Seitz, 1934)
Le Trou (Becker, 1960)

Magnolia (P.T. Anderson, 1999)
An Actor's Revenge (Ichikawa, 1963)
Charlotte Gray (Armstrong, 2001)
Bob le Flambeur (Melville, 1955)
Cul-de-sac (Polanski, 1966)
Night Mayor (short - Maddin, 2009)
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Macdougall, 1959)
*Dead Man (Jarmusch, 1995)
Blithe Spirit (Lean, 1945)
The Pianist (Polanski, 2002)
The Late Show (Benton, 1977)

I was expecting Upgrade to be a half-decent SF spin on Death Wish; it turned out to be a smart and beautifully shot thriller with an SF angle.

La Roue (1923, Gance) 8/10
Love and Anger (1969, Bellochio, Bertolucci, Godard, Lizzani, Pasolini) 6/10
*The Other Side of Hope (2017, Kaurismaki) 9/10
We the Animals (2018, Zagar) 7/10
The Sandpiper (1965, Minnelli) 4/10
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965, Ritt) 9/10
The Rider (2017, Zhao) 6/10
This Can't Happen Here aka High Tension (1950, Bergman) 5/10

Burton is brilliant in Spy.

and not so in The Sandpiper

The Rider (2017, Zhao) 6/10

Saw a trailer for this yesterday - looked p Malick-like, or Malick-lite, or Malick-light.

there is lots of fantastic grimy 60's real englandness in the first act of Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The scene where he decks the shopkeeper seemed absolutely brutal when I was a kid.

since shopkeeper is played by Bernard "M" Lee, i assumed he was undercover.

The Rider rather more docu-realist than Malick, sometimes mundanely so.

Women Make Film (Mark Cousins)
Transit (Christian Petzold)
An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)
Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
Maya (Mia Hansen-Løve)
The Innocent (Simon Jaquemet)
Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas)
What You Gonna Do When the World's On Fire? (Roberto Minervini)
In My Room (Ulrich Köhler)
High Life (Claire Denis)
The Trial (Sergei Loznitsa)
Dead Souls (Wang Bing)

thoughts on maya? skeptical about the concept but bought a ticket on the strength of things to come

Black 47
bloody, violent Irish Western (both thematically and set in the West of ireland)about a deserting Irish soldier taking revenge on the people who have directly and indirectly lead to the death of his family.
Stars 2 Australian actors who do pretty good at irish and English accents & also the son of Edward Fox as a British officer.
Also has that young Bobby Gillespie looking guy from Dunkirk and American Animals as a private soldier attached to the British officer.

very dark and really effective.
Think it's going out on general release elsewhere around the globe over the next couple of weeks. Saw it had a Guardian review today.

I've no idea where else to put this but I watched Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool and was surprisingly moved and impressed by it. That is one ridiculously charismatic performance by Annette Benning. I actually cried at the end.

The Blackcoat's Daughter is an atmospheric story about two girls left alone in an otherwise abandoned boarding school and the Bad Things that happen. The main girl is played by Kiernan Shipka (Sally Draper from Mad Men) and she's very good. There are some plot holes, but the lighting, photography, music and sound design are all excellent.

Maya is not among her best, it plays like a travelogue but is still worth a look.

You Were Never Really Here (Ramsay, 2017) 3/10
Ready Player One (Spielberg, 2018) 2/10
Private Benjamin (Zieff, 1980) 7/10
The Poor Little Rich Girl (Tourneur, 1917) 8/10
First Reformed (Schrader, 2017) 8/10
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett, 1946) 7/10
Sharky’s Machine (Reynolds, 1981) 6/10
Star Trek: Insurrection (Frakes, 1998) 5/10
Limelight (Chaplin, 1952) 8/10
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Johnson, 2018) 6/10

September 3rd- 29th:

The Last Kiss Goodnight (Harlin, Black 1996) 35mm 📽️
Live. Die. Repeat. (Liman, McQuarrie, Butterworth & Butterworth 2014) 📺
Goon (Dowse, Baruchel, Goldberg 2011) 🏋️
It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Kramer, Rose & Rose 1963) 70mm 📽️
Smokey and the Bandit (Needham, Levy, Barrett, Shyer, Mandel 1977) DCP
Everybody Wants Some!! (Linklater 2016) 📺
Raiders!: The Story Of The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (Skousen, Coon 2016) 🏋️
* Vertigo (Hitchcock, Coppel, Taylor 1958) 70mm 📽️
Mandy (Cosmatos, Stewart-Ahn 2018) 📺
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (McQuarrie 2018) DCP
White Heat (Walsh, Goff, Roberts, Kellogg 1949) 35mm 📽️
Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes) (Vigalondo 2007) 📺
Laissez bronzer les cadavres (Let The Corpses Tan) (Cattet, Forzani 2017 [2018 USA]) DCP
Blood Salvage (Johnston, Sanders 1990) 📼

*A Story of Floating Reeds (Ozu, 1934)
Floating Weeds (Ozu, 1959)
The President Vanishes (Wellman, 1934)
The Professor (Chaplin, 1919)
Punch Drunks (Breslow, 1934)
Men in Black (McCarey, 1934)
Is My Palm Read (Fleischer, 1933)
Sucker Money (Davenport & Shyer, 1933)

American Animals - a heist movie about four idiot college students who decide to steal some extremely rare books from a Kentucky university. The fictional version is interspersed with interviews with the real thieves in a very interesting way.

bummed I miss that one when it was in town

Death on the Nile (Guillermin, 1978) 5/10
Milford Graves Full Mantis (Meginsky & Young, 2018) 8/10
Cold War (Pawlikowski, 2018) 7/10
BlacKKKlansman (Lee, 2018) 8/10
The Magician aka The Face (Bergman, 1958) 8/10
American Animals (Layton, 2018) 6/10
Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin, 1947) 7/10
Nostalgia for the Light (Guzman, 2010) 6/10
Man Hunt (Lang, 1941) 8/10
Worlds of Ursula K Le Guin (Curry, 2018) 6/10
Faces Places (Varda & JR, 2017) 5/10
Raw Deal (Irvin, 1986) 6/10
The Trial (Welles, 1962) 8/10
Hell up in Harlem (Cohen, 1973) 6/10

Damn missed that Milford Graves doc!!

I think it had a little mini-tour of UK arthouses - one (packed) screening in Glasgow w/ Meginsky doing a Q&A after (couldn't stay for that). Hope you get to see it xyzzzz, think you will dig it - no stupid talking heads or extravagant art/historical claims, great footage and just the pleasure of Graves himself, definitely full mantis.

That's a relief on the content, ward! Yeah there were a couple of showings at the ICA, def try and pick up a screening or the DVD soon.

Faces Places (Varda & JR, 2017) - this was sweet (in the sense that I like Varda as a companion, as a voice and presence) but I couldn't stomach JR and their project was only interesting because of what (the little) Varda laid on it. JLG was right not to meet them! (and surely Varda played it up?)
Climax (Noe, 2017) - I like that this 50 year old guy just wants to be around young dancers. Why not? (and as for the interview scenes I didn't know La Mama et La Putain had been issued on VHS, nice touch)

The Emigrants (Troell, 1971) - 10/10
He Got Game (Lee, 1998) - 9/10
Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997) - 9/10
Love in the Afternoon (Wilder, 1957) - 9/10
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) - 10/10
La Strada (Fellini, 1954) - 7/10
The New Land (Troell, 1972) - 10/10
Under Capricorn (Hitchcock, 1949) - 4/10
Sweet Charity (Fosse, 1969) - 8/10

I watched The Emigrants and The New Land a week apart and couldn't believe at first that Troell shot & edited The Emigrants, too. The New Land is so much riskier & more stylized than The Emigrants, which is harrowing but played relatively straight. Both fantastic obviously... I think it does show something fundamental about America and the people that came here.

I'm currently reading philosopher David Benatar's Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence, which argues that being born at all is always a serious harm, procreation is always wrong, it is wrong not to abort fetuses at the earlier stages of gestation, and it would be better if humanity became extinct. He's really relentless about presenting his case, and as a result I'm finding lines like "In the coming chapter, I show that (with the exception of real pessimists, who may have an accurate view of how bad their lives are) people's lives are much worse than they think" surprisingly funny in context.

Anyway, I say that to say this: Destination Wedding, a movie starring Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder as two horrible people invited to the titular occasion (he's the groom's half-brother, she's the groom's ex-fiancée), made me laugh really, really hard. At one point, Reeves and Ryder's characters have a long discussion that covers all the major themes of the book: there's no such thing as love, existence is pointless and they both would have been better off having never been born, and on and on. I really started to wonder if it was a remake of a French movie at one point. Anyway, if that sounds like your idea of fun, it's free on Amazon Prime.

Star Trek: Generations (1994) 2.5/5
Star Trek: First Contact (1996) 2/5
The Sisters Brothers (2018) 3/5
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) 3.5/5
* No Country for Old Men 5/5
* The Age of Innocence 4.5/5
Boxing Gym (2010) 4/5
The Breaking Point (1950) 4/5
Uncle Yanco (1967) 3.5/5
Taipei Story (1985) 4/5

*The Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waititi, 2016) - 8/10
Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939) - 10/10
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966) - 10/10
Game Night (Daley & Goldstein, 2018) - 4/10
500 Days of Summer (Webb, 2009) - 3/10
Tully (Reitman, 2018) - 5/10
20th Century Women (Mills, 2016) - 6/10
*American Graffiti (Lucas, 1973) - 5/10
A Wrinkle in Time (DuVernay, 2018) - 1/10
The Stranger (Welles, 1946) - 8/10

The Magic Christian (1969, McGrath) 4/10
Hotel by the River (2018, Hong) 7/10
*The Odd Couple (1968, Saks) 8/10
Diamantino (2018, Abrantes, Schmidt) 7/10
High Life (2018, Denis) 5/10
Ash Is Purest White (2018, Jia) 8/10
Sorry Angel (2018, Honore) 7/10
Her Smell (2018, Perry) 4/10
The Other Side of the Wind (2018, Welles) 6/10
*F for Fake (1973, Welles) 7/10
BlacKkKlansman (2018, Lee) 5/10
*Smithereens (1982, Seidelman) 7/10

Tell me more about Hotel by the River.

no soju until the last 10 minutes

more concerned with death and family than sex