Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Yeah, I really expected to like it better, but I found it kind of aimiable to a fault. It doesn’t help that Altman (who also produced this) already made the much better version of this movie a few years earlier with The Long Goodbye. Tomlin has a few good moments, and I liked the scene where she keeps failing to notice a dead body in the refrigerator, but I mostly felt like I was watching one of those “cute old people” movies that George Burns and Walter Matthau fell back on in the later stages of their careers.

Dial M for Murder (Hitchcock, 1952)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1978)
Cluny Brown (Lubitsch, 1946)
Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (Akerman, 1978)
Kaiju Bunraku (short - Levya/Mayer, 2017)
* 3 Colors: Blue (Kieślowski, 1993)
* 3 Colors: White (Kieślowski, 1994)
* 3 Colors: Red (Kieślowski, 1994)
Widows (McQueen, 2018)
The Mackintosh Man (Huston, 1973)
*Close-up (Kiarostami, 1990)
Close-up Long Shot (short - Mansouri, Chokrollahi, 1996)

The Long Goodbye is not an antic noir comedy. Also, Tomlin was like 38 when that film was made. I thought her chemistry with Carney was good.

Sorry to Bother You is streaming free on Hulu (it's a paid rental on Amazon). It's mostly pretty funny with some good running gags, Armie Hammer is great in it, the turn into SF body horror is well handled, but the ending is weak. Still, worth watching.

The Long Goodbye is not an antic noir comedy.

It isn't?

while there are funny scenes, it has some serious things on its mind (while also being a genre travesty)

Both films are essentially about the classic noir detective navigating the weirdness of the 1970s. Altman's film just feels like the far more vivid, resonant take on this idea, to me.

The new Wreck-It Ralph was the rare movie the whole family agreed on. We all thought it was boring and lazy and ugly, and reminded us of something they would show before a ride at Epcot, but 10 times as long.

Saw Widows today; it's about a 2.5 out of 5. It's a half hour too long, with a lot of pointless digressions (Lukas Haas's character should not have gotten a second scene, and Viola Davis and Liam Neeson didn't need a dead son, never mind Carrie Coon's "role"). And how do you make a heist movie without one montage? Davis is good, but Elizabeth Debicki gets most of the best scenes.

College Humor (Ruggles, 1933)
Motherhood: Life's Greatest Miracle (Lawrence, 1925)
Something New (Shipman & van Tuyle, 1920)
Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti, 1960)
Cold Turkey (Lord, 1940)
*The Opry House (Roth, 1929)
The Dream Lady (Wilson, 1918)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen & Coen, 2018)

Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1964) - 4/10
Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) - 9/10
One-Eyed Jacks (Brando, 1961) - 6/10
Dekalog VIII (Kieślowski, 1988) - 8/10
La Captive (Akerman, 2000) - 7/10
Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990) - 8/10
Dekalog IX (Kieślowski, 1988) - 8/10
Dekalog X (Kieślowski, 1988) - 7/10
Daisies (Chytilová, 1966) - 8/10
Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 1953) - 8/10
Gaslight (Cukor, 1944) - 5/10
Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Makavejev, 1967) - 9/10
Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980) - 6/10
Paper Moon (Bogdanovich, 1973) - 10/10
Osaka Elegy (Mizoguchi, 1936) - 8/10
Miami Vice (Mann, 2006) - 6/10
Track 29 (Roeg, 1988) - 7/10
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson, 1951) - 9/10
Track of the Cat (Wellman, 1954) - 5/10

First Man (2018, Chazelle) 8/10
Wait and See (1928, Forde) 6/10
Pinkus's Shoe Palace (1916, Lubitsch) 5/10
*The Clock (1945, Minnelli) 9/10
*The Sunshine Boys (1975, Ross) 7/10
Abel Raises Cain (2005, Abel, Hockett) 5/10
Eighth Grade (2018, Burnham) 7/10
Mrs. Fang (2017, Wang) 8/10
The Best of Everything (1959, Negulesco) 6/10
The Return of the Living Dead (1985, O'Bannon) 6/10

xpost "Raging Bull' and "One Eyed jacks" rating the same as "Miami Vice" O0 ?

Autumn Sonata (Bergman, 1978) - I don't why it took me so long to get around to watching this but its one of his best. It was screening on a double bill with Haneke's Piano Teacher which is quite a good choice. It was nice to see what Ingrid Bergman could do with such a challenging script. Bergman (the other one) really goes places and provokes, and the scene where the daughter is playing chopin to her mother is a real high.

I've seen it a few times because Ingrid is fun, but the way the movie keeps clobbering her for being awful makes me sympathetic toward her while forcing me to consider choking Liv.

Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018) 8/10
The Guilty (Möller, 2018) 6/10
*Burning (Lee, 2018) 7/10
Boy Erased (Egerton, 2018) 5/10
Monrovia, Indiana (Wiseman, 2018) 8/10
Wildlife (Dano, 2018) 7/10
An Actor's Revenge (Ishikawa, 1963) 7/10

Ingrid is fun, but the way the movie keeps clobbering her for being awful makes me sympathetic toward her

what keeps me feeling sympathetic towards Ingrid (who is good and fun I agree) is that scene at the piano - she really puts Liv through the grinder when she makes her play Chopin. I think her coldness toward her disabled daughter is possibly over the top but certainly adds to it. Doesn't spare you but maybe asks too much of the viewer.

I quite like to read any biog of Ingrid just to read an account of her time when making this film.

I like the movie because it explores the psychological warfare inherent in the parent-child relationship. We want more praise than they give, and parents don't realize when they're condescending to or undermining their children.

It's second tier Bergman because it's too damn didactic in the last third.

I quite like to read any biog of Ingrid just to read an account of her time when making this film.

― xyzzzz__,

Ingmar said he had to cure Ingrid of a lifetime of mannered Hollywood acting choice; she looked forward to speaking in her native language. You can see some of those bad choices when she reverts to English for that conversation with her agent.

xpost "Raging Bull' and "One Eyed jacks" rating the same as "Miami Vice" O0 ?

― An Uphill Battle For Legumes (Capitaine Jay Vee)

hmm yea One-Eyed Jacks is more of a 7/10. wonderfully weird, gay movie

And you don't need to change a word for the gay pr0n parody's title.

didnt get a real gay reading of OEJ when i rewatched last year

Alfred OTM re Autumn Sonata. I'd also say the business with the mute, disabled sister goes a bit OTT and ends up in camp territory.

and parents don't realize when they're condescending to or undermining their children.

But I think in this particular r/ship the mother very much knew she was condescending and severe to her child - she didn't perhaps know to what extent it had 'damaged' her, but Ingrid knew what she was doing - she was aware that she never had love to give.

It very much shares (with the Piano Teacher) and expands on how demanding it is to make any kind of art for a long time, and who is left behind, or the damage it leaves by its demands on the mind and body (the pianist's back, or the great performance that cannot be conjured up anymore - lost to time) for those that 'make it'.

idk, to me its top 5 - so much that I love about Bergman with some of the uglier aspects made relatively palatable. wrt the disabled sister it could be camp or OTT but I felt he was pushing the audience into uncomfortable territory - seeing disability on the screen (and never mind in this way) is always a challenge because we don't encounter it. I liked that the sister wasn't relegated to the background, and how she became something to be used in that battle between mother and daughter. Cruel, sure - but that's Bergman.

Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018) - this was quite good again - I just like what Kore-eda does. There was a lot more around sex and intimacy than usual for him with all the elements in previous films (getting by in an affluent society, or the unusual arrangements of family) in a light touch manner that brings people over.
Touch Me Not (Pintile, 2018) - there must be some hilarious reviews of this out there on the internet and I am not searching for them. I did like the documentary snapshot at the range of sexuality and desire on display. I saw it on MUBI so need to watch this in the cinema for a more concentrated view. Seemed one of a kind.

the sex scene was particularly, gratifyingly erotic for being unexpected

Yeah I didn't get the gay subtext ( or overt nature ) of OEJ. Why a 6/10 for Raging Bull?

The Bradshaw review of Touch Me Not was quite hilarious, especially because it was pretty clear he had skipped the press screening and was a bit annoyed that it won. The room was basically half full at that press screening in Berlin, it was a pretty fun experience.

xp Kinda the same feeling I got from The Master. I know Karl Malden is supposed to be a father figure but, like with Joaquin and PSH, it read to me as some impossible/doomed romance. and besides that, I always get a vibe from Brando. the jeans, too

oh and I never understood the acclaim for Raging Bull. this was the third time I'd seen it, first in at least 8-9 years, and yeah, still feel the same. I love the famous opening credit sequence in theory - classical music over a slow-mo wide shot of LaMotta warming up - but I don't dig the shot, I don't dig that particular piece of music, it doesn't move me, at all. But its fatal flaw is LaMotta, such an uninteresting and boring character. Movie feels so slow and only picks up, "gets good" with the subsequent fights, which are really well done (especially the photo montage ones). Final scene between DeNiro and Pesci is great. Otherwise, beyond Scorsese's superb direction (which alone rates the movie as a 6/10 for me), there's nothing there. for me

The B&W photography doesn't help.

crazee talk

oh the cinematography is the best thing about it

and hard not to compare to Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin, two of the most beguiling performances/characters ever

i admire it more than *love* it but it's great, i think the unrepentant ugliness of LaMotta as a human being vs the beauty of the film itself is pretty compelling. though i put it below a number of other Scorsese pics.

night and the city ('92 winkler) 7/10
the ballad of buster scruggs (2018 coens) 3/10
barfly ('87 schroeder) 7/10
the house that jack built (2018 lvt) 2/10
stepmom ('98 columbus) 7/10
hot summer nights (2017 elijah bynum) 7/10
wildlife (2018 dano) 6/10
american animals (2018 bart layton) 4/10
the price of everything (2018 nathaniel kahn) 8/10
kill me again ('89 dahl) 4/10
man up (2015 ben palmer) 9/10
crooked hearts ('91 michael bortman) 6/10

The Magnificent Seven (Sturges, 1960)
Quick Change (Franklin/Murray, 1990)
*Trainspotting (Boyle, 1996)
Dheepan (Audiard, 2015)
Performance (Cammell/Roeg, 1970)
Glastonbury Fayre (Neal/Roeg, 1972)
*No Regrets for Our Youth (Kurosawa, 1946)
Mr. Freedom (Klein, 1969)
Tess (Polanski, 1978)
and about 15 minutes of The Awful Truth before Filmstruck went black this morning

some shorts:
Hunger (Foldes, 1974)
Sea Devil (Marcial/Potter, 2014)
Alice's Mysterious Mystery (Disney/Iwerks, 1926)
The Fresh Lobster (unknown, 1948)
Ko-Ko Sees Spooks (Fleischer, 1925)

Kind of guesswork as to where I left off last time, but anyway:

The Czech Year (Trnka, 1947)
The Devil's Mill (Trnka, 1949)
The Emperor's Nightingale (Trnka, 1949)
The Asphyx (Newbrook, 1972)
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (Lynch, 1992/2014)
Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape (West, 2010)
Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (a committee of assholes, 1989)- this was the feature (all three goddamn parts) screened at my first Philadelphia Psychotronic Film Society meeting, and I experienced it as both a personal affront (it fucking sucks) and a test of endurance (it was something like three hours long)
Why UNESCO? (Trnka, 1958)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Trnka, 1959)
And Then There Were None (Viveiros, 2015)
Resolution (Moorhead & Benson, 2012)
Hereditary (Aster, 2018)
*Perfect Blue (Kon, 1997)
WNUF Halloween Special (LaMartina, 2013)
Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018)
V/H/S (various, 2012)- I don't know why I keep thinking modern anthology horror films will be any good, or that Ti West will ever impress me again
Heavy Metal Parking Lot (Krulik & Heyn, 1986)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Stoller, 2008)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen, 2018)
Forbidden Zone (Elfman, 1980)

The Night Walker (Castle, 1964) 7
Bohemian Rhapsody (Singer and Sigel, 2018) 6
Murder by Contract (Lerner, 1958) 9
The Thing From Another World (Nyby, 1951) 3; has a few scary moments
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Lanfield, 1939) 6
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Forbes, 1964) 8

* The Marriage of Maria Braun 4/5
Theodora Goes Wild (1936) 3/5
Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989) 4.5/5
The Silver Cord (1933) 3/5
The Merry Widow (1934) 3.5/5
* Awesome! I Fuckin' Shot That (2006) 3/5
Manila in the Claws of Light (1975) 3.5/5
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) 4/5
Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) 4/5
Heaven Can Wait (1943) 3.5/5

only one this week:

Sicario: Day of the Soldado

The first film had a very sinister lure to it and its thin story was elevated to something more foreboding by both its direction and its screenplay POV from an out-of-the-loop protagonist, and the mysteries only somewhat answered really helped as well. Plus the astonishing score. The sequel is a lesser film which gets by on some great action scenes and a very good core cast (Del Toro, Brolin, Donovan, Isabela Moner.)

It definitely suffers from having somewhat more anonymous skilled craftsman direction -- Sollima seems to come more from the Philip Noyce school of Jack Ryan movies type action as opposed to what Villaneuve brings to the table. That's not an insult, more an observation!

The terrorism/government side of things is really uninteresting; Modine and Keener don't do anything story or character-wise. I wish they'd found another way in to the story, but whatever.

It's decent enough, better than a lot of action flicks but it's missing the original's singular spooky quality. ymmv on this one.

13th to the 30th:

120 battements par minute (Campillo, Mangeot 2017) 📺
* Starship Troopers (Verhoeven, Neumeier 1997)
Night Of The Hunter (Laughton, Agee, Grubb 1955) 📽️ 35mm
* Thor: Ragnarok (Waititi, Pearson & al. 2017) 🏋️
The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (Coen & Coen 2018)
* The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (Coen & Coen 2018) 📺
Three Days Of The Condor (Pollack, Semple Jr., Rayfiel, Grady 1975) 📺
Addams Family Values (Sonnenfeld, Rudnick 1993)
Slap Shot (Hill, Dowd 1977) 📽️ 35mm
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (Bernstein and Edelstein 2012) 📺
The Nice Guys (Black, Bagarozzi 2016) 📺
* Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Wright, O'Malley, Bacall 2010) 🏋️

To Have and Have Not (Hawks, 1944) 8/10
The One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh, 1967) 8/10
Suspiria (Guadagnino, 2018) 5/10
Burnt Offerings (Curtis, 1976) 7/10
Shoplifters (Koreeda, 2018) 8/10

Reading about this re-make of Suspiria and it just sounds awful.

Not reading about it cos I have tickets for it on my birthday

I went into it so determined NOT to be an Argento purist that it took me a while to realise how bad it mostly was. Happy birthday NV!

Not till a week on Tuesday. My son really liked it but I know our tastes don't always coincide. Still better than going out for a hangover tho :)

after reading our messageboard tonight I think watching anything but MOTD sounds like a plan.

lol wrong thread again, I'm losing it today.

but to keep it on topic I'm watching Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood tonight!

A Simple Favor (6.0)
White Boy Rick (5.0)
Mid90s (7.0)
Broadcast News (9.0)
The Passion of Anna (8.0)
Persona (8.0)
How to Steal a Million (6.0)*
Fahrenheit 11/9 (5.0)
Fanny & Alexander (8.5)
The Last Pogo Jumps Again (7.0)

Not sure if I drifted off for 10 minutes during How to Steal a Million or if it was longer. So the rating is somewhat provisional--there really isn't much there besides Audrey Hepburn anyway.

Persona is obviously a 10, maybe Fanny & Alexander too. If I rated films solely on how much their place in film history engaged me, the excitement of watching something masterful and unique, that's what I'd give it. But I rate almost solely on emotional engagement, and it is rather hermetic. (Both Kauffmann and Kael basically wrote that it was like eavesdropping on Bergman's innermost thoughts--praise for him, a limitation for her.) Broadcast News I'd give a, I don't know, 3.0 for its place in film history--it's of zero consequence. But it does, for whatever reason, move me.