Last (x) movies you saw (II)

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

Speaking of sex, you thought the Denis just okay too.

xp I see that it stars Kim Min-hee. I'm in!

at least 3 actors are onscreen more than she; it's an ensemble piece

Jeff, Who Lives At Home. A whole movie about Susan Sarandon's character would have been better than following her two asshole sons around all day.

Madam Satan (de Mille, 1930)
Maniac (Esper, (1934)
Swing You Sinners (Fleischer, 1930)
The Seven Castles of the Devil (Zecca, 1904)
The Great Toe Mystery (Avery, 1914)
The Haunted House (Disney, 1929)
Adam's Apple (Whelan, 1928)
Bacon Grabbers (Foster, 1929)
The Spider (MacKenna & Menzies, 1931)
Enchanted Glasses (de Chomon, 1907)
The Haunted House (Keaton & Cline, 1921)

Did I ever mention 1987: When The Day Comes? It's really good.

you thought the Denis just okay too.

I wouldn't go that far. Maybe "disappointing" and "nuts."

Festival haul:

Florianopolis Dream (Katz)
The Rider (Zhao)
Diamantinos (Abrantes & Schmidt)
Sympathy for the Devil (Godard)
Girl (Dhont)
Madeline’s Madeline (Decker)
And Breathe Normally (Uggadóttir)
Holiday (Eklöf)
Dear Son (Ben Attia)
Those Who Work (Russbach)
Blind Spot (Novotny)
I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians (Jude)
Grass (Hong)
Our Time (Reygadas)
Lifeboat (Kirkeskov)
The Image Book (Godard)
Zama (Martel)
Too Late to Die Young (Sotomayor)
Puzzle (Turtletaub)
Amateurs (Pichler)
Asako I & II (Hamaguchi)
One Day (Szilagyi)
In My Room (Köhler)
Mirai (Hosada)
Boys Cry (D’Innocenzo & D’Innocenzo)
Ash is the Purest White (Jia)
When the Trees Fall (Nikitiuk)
Long Days Journey Into Night (Bi)
Donbass (Loznitsa)
Rojo (Naishtat)
Nervous Translation (Seno)
First Reformed (Schrader)
Ruben Brandt, Collector (Krstic)
Ága (Lazarov)
Khook (Haghighi)*
We the Animals (Zagar)

Keep an eye out for Nervous Translation and When the Trees Fall, those were the two biggest surprises. Many others are predictably great. Some slight disappointments.

update before lff starts, seeing asako I & II this evening!

Assault on Precinct 13 (Carpenter, 1976) 7/10
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938) 6/10
39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935) 7/10
The Mask of Dimitros (Negulesco, 1944) 8/10
Faces Places (Varda, JR, 2017) 7/10
The Saddest Music in the World (Maddin, 2004) 7/10
My Man Godfrey (La Cava, 1936) 8/10
Faust (Murnau, 1926) 9/10
Maison du Bonheur (Bohdanowicz, 2017) 6/10
Where is the Friends Home? (Kiarostami, 1987) 8/10
The Stranger (Welles, 1946) 8/10
His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940) 9/10
Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) 10/10
Othello (Welles, 1951) 7/10
A City of Sadness (Hou, 1989) 9/10
The Mission (To, 1999) 7/10
The Small World of Sammy Lee (Hughes, 1963) 8/10
Late Spring (Ozu, 1949) 10/10

i think there maaay be a few more 10s in that list

you might be right, i'm fairly certain a laptop screen is not the best way to experience Faust.

curious what you thought of the Bi Gan, Frederik?

Teen Titans Go To The Movies

turned up on a torrent site yesterday. I used to watch the tv series about 10 years ago.
I think this wanted to be a Lego Movie type deal not quite taht good but some of it was quite amusing.

^ the series started five years ago and is still running

curious what you thought of the Bi Gan, Frederik?

― devvvine, 10. oktober 2018 17:44 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's... definitely a trip, that final hour is pretty incredible. But I don't get why Bi Gan all of a sudden wanted to make such a noir-pastiche, and what the point of that is supposed to be. I watched Kaili Blues as preparation, and it's a much more humble film, but it honestly gave me much more to think about.

Sic could you possibly go and get a fixation on somebody else ?

TV series I was watching started in 2003.
So as i said I was watching it about 10 years ago

The Killing of Sister George (Aldrich, 1968) 7/10
The Post (Spielberg, 2017) 6/10
BlacKkKlansman (Lee, 2018) 8/10
Deadpool 2 (Leitch, 2018) 5/10
Somewhere in the Night (Mankiewicz, 1946) 7/10
*Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Brothers, 2013) 10/10
The Golden Coach (Renoir, 1952) 8/10
Cry-Baby (Waters, 1990) 9/10
How to Talk to Girls at Parties (Cameron-Mitchell, 2017) 3/10
Avengers Infinity War (Russo Brothers, 2018) 4/10
Enter the Void (Noe, 2009) 5/10
General della Rovere (Rosellini, 1959) 9/10
Hysteria (Wexler, 2011) 7/10

Inside Llewyn Davis is the best Coen Bros. film, change my mind

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Hidden Fortress
Lucy