Last (x) movies you saw (II)

yeah, border really should've already been on that list as it's been something I've wanted to see for a minute. May try to catch it at IFC.

Mutafukaz- I missed my chance to see this in Philly and it’s doing hat standard Funimation thing of no streaming (except maybe on their own service) and MAYBE a disc release in the distant future, but I’m curious about anything Studio 4C. But I’ve been concerned...how minstrel-y is it? Because it seems like it’s walking a real tightrope with that kind of imagery

if you're hyper-sensitive to that, it could be a cringe, yeah. But the two-elements-inspired levels of magpieing in the film are leavened by magpieing loads and loads of other snippets of US culture that have come, fragmented, to the author through relentless corporate exports. For mine, the aspects of the story that are about the characters feeling lost and overwhelmed by a city that seems built out of things that are alien to them, and the author's obvious passion for hip-hop, outweigh the perception of appropriation.

(I haven't read the books, though.)

Santa's Workshop (Jackson, 1932)
Jack Frost (Iwerks, 1934)
*Hogfather (Jean, 2006)
Prince Bayaya (Trnka, 1950)
Hello Sailor (Sandrich, 1927)
Passion (Trnka, 1962)
Cybernetic Grandma (Trnka, 1962)
Archangel Gabriel and Mistress Goose (Trnka, 1964)
The Hand (Trnka, 1965)

j.lu, what are the must-watch Trnka's?

The only one I've liked so far was The Emperor's Nightingale. Old Czech Legends and Prince Bayaya struck me as rather too twee. The Hand is as powerfully allegorical as it is polemical.

Yesterday: A Simple Favor, which was better than I expected. Blake Lively is very good at playing white trash grifters.
Today: Nico, 1988, which made me want to investigate her 80s albums (like most people, I stopped paying attention after The End). The lead actress is great.

Couldn't do anything with Shirkers, which seemed endlessly referential, self-mythologizing and the equivalent of a filmed zine, which sounded good to me in theory but not so much in practice.

Isle of Dogs was a Wes Anderson film through and through: visually interesting, technically impressive, mannered to the point of absurdity, outrageous cast generally thrown away, script better served to a picturebook. I will say that the animation was maybe a bit cutrate by the standards of Laika.

Isle of Dogs is the third Anderson film in a row that I just can't bring myself to care about enough to watch.

Mary and the Witch's Flower was (at least for the half hour I got through before i gave up) paint-by-numbers Miyazaki, right down to the character animations and poses. Felt weirdly manipulative.

Shirkers...sounded good to me in theory but not so much in practice.

otm. I was a little uncomfortable with how the director hung his friend and his own mother out to dry in service to his film.

wasn't into the last three Wes Anderson movies either, but his new one sounds like it could be good... 'The French Dispatch' starring Saoirse Ronan and Timothee Chalamet and a bunch of others of course... about journalists apparently

Moonrise Kingdom is one of his best imo

It seems like the greatest distillation of what he has to offer, yes. If you're not into his vision, it's not gonna win you over tho'.

It absolutely won me over. I love Benjamin Britten, though...

Royal Tenenbaums is the only one I have any time for

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse 4/5
* Christmas in July (1940) 4/5
Happy as Lazzaro (2018) 4/5
Ronin (1998) 3.5/5
Invention for Destruction (1958) 4.5/5
Paddington 2 4/5
Support the Girls 3.5/5
* My Fair Lady 3/5

Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (Perischetti, Ramsey, Rothman, 2018)
Meek's Cutoff (Reichardt, 2011)
Shirkers (Tan, 2018)
Phantom Thunderbolt (James, 1933)
Minding the Gap (Liu, 2018)
Morvern Callar (Ramsay, 2002)
Red River (Hawks, 1948)
Private Life (Jenkins, 2018)
Split (Shyamalan, 2017)
Trespassing Bergman (Magnusson, Pallas, 2015)
* Tombstone (Cosmatos, 1993)

The Girl in the Spider’s Web (5.5)
Joe (6.0)
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes (6.0)
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (6.5)
Battle of the Sexes (7.0)
The Front Runner (6.0)
The Babadook (7.0)
Munich (7.0)
Vice (7.0)
If Beale Street Could Talk (7.0)

I think Robert De Niro refers to himself as the "babadook of the year" somewhere in Raging Bull.

Wild Pear Tree (Ceylan, 2018) - too many of the same things that are so prevalent in Euro film without adding that much to it, although I liked how the father and mother's roles were developed a bit more as the film went on, moving at times away from the main character.

Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018) - Everything has a baby-shot-at-birth feel, all possibilities closed off with only one way out. One of this year's best.

The Mule, the new Clint Eastwood, was surprisingly good after the dementia disaster of Sully. Similar to The Old Man and the Gun, and while that is definitely the better film, The Mule isn't bad - for what it is.

Buzzin' Around (Goulding, 1933)
The Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1934)
The Star Wars Holiday Special (Binder & Acomba, 1978)
The Hitchhiker (Gillstrom, 1933)
The Czech Year (Trnka, 1947)
She Wronged Him Right (Fleischer, 1934)
A Reckless Romeo (Arbuckle, 1917)
Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable (Freyer, 2018)
The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)

Food (Svankmajer, 1993) (short) 7
Idiocracy (Judge, 2006) 4
The Grinch (2018) 6
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Howard, 2000) 3
*Elf (Favreau, 2003) 7
The Mule (Eastwood, 2018) 4

Young Winston which I'm not sure I've seen through before. Had a launch near where I lived as a kid since it was his electoral ward. I live near a statue of him.
Quite enjoyable with a cast that seems to be filled with familiar faces. Notably Anne Bancroft as his mother & I just read the original book of The Graduate which makes her stick in the.mind even more

The Hobbit the first of the sequence, didn't really mean to sit through the whole film but wound up dojng so anyway.

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Wuthering Heights
2008 tv version I think, shown as a continuous whole. I missed the first half.
Been meaning to get around to reading the book cos I think I only know part of the story. I think one better known film version concentrates on the middle section doesn't it.

kellys heroes (missed first 40 mins)

it was about some heroes owned by a man named kelly it was good

The Wild Pear Tree (Ceylan, 2018) 8/10
The Quiet Man (Ford, 1952) 6/10
The Wrong Box (Forbes, 1966) 7/10
Nostalgia (Tarkovsky, 1983) 8/10
One-Eyed Jacks (Brando, 1961) 8/10
Roma (Cuarón, 2018) 8/10
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen Bros, 2018) 5/10
The Other Side of the Wind (Welles, 2018) 7/10
Contraband (Fulci, 1980) 7/10
Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (Baker, 1971) 7/10

xxp
Young Winston is not great at all, but Robert Shaw is a ledge!

Ward, what's yr beef w/ Ford's Ireland?

Irish ham sliced too thicky; a stout that soured over 129 long minutes. There's more twinkling and twirling than in a late Malick film, and Wayne seems hefty and charmless.

To Sir With Love.
Don't remember seeing this since my teens. Sidney Poitier as Guyanese teacher trying to tame an unruly mob.
Emotive I guess. Do like the music.
Title track played here by Lulu fronting the Mindbenders at the school prom thingy.

all your Tourneur questions amswered before I forget these films

Easy Living (1949, Tourneur) 7/10
The Fearmakers (1958, Tourneur) 4/10
Timbuktu (1958, Tourneur) 5/10
Stranger on Horseback (1955. Tourneur) 7/10
Wichita (1955, Tourneur) 8/10
Appointment in Honduras (1953, Tourneur) 6/10
Anna Boleyn (1920, Lubitsch) 6/10
*Canyon Passage (1946, Tourneur) 9/10
Libel (1959. Asquith) 7/10
Happy as Lazzaro (2018, Rohrwacher) 8/10
*A Star Is Born (1937, Wellman) 7/10
No No: A Dockumentary (2014, Radice) 7/10
Way of a Gaucho (1952, Tourneur) 7/10
Anne of the Indies (1951, Tourneur) 6/10
*The Young Lions (1958, Dmytryk) 7/10
The Favourite (2018, Lanthimos) 5/10

Irish ham sliced too thicky; a stout that soured over 129 long minutes. There's more twinkling and twirling than in a late Malick film, and Wayne seems hefty and charmless.

― Ward Fowler, Monday, December 31, 2018 9:23 AM

more like Spam. I like many Ford films; this one is blarney.

Hokey and Oirish as it is, I still love The Quiet Man

Impetuous! Homeric! Love it very much as well. There's always corn with Ford.

quiet man is great

the rest of 2018

in theaters:

The Favourite (Lanthimos, 2018) 9/10
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes (Bloom, 2018) - 8/10
Burning (Lee, 2018) - 9/10
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975 / 35mm) - 10/10
Vox Lux (Corbet, 2018) - 3/10
The Hitch-Hiker (Lupino, 1953) - 8/10
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999) - 10/10
All That Heaven Allows (Sirk, 1955) - 9/10
Second Act (Segal, 2018) - 4/10
Roma (Cuarón, 2018) - 3/10
Vice (McKay, 2018) - 2/10
Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018) - 9/10
If Beale Street Could Talk (Jenkins, 2018) - 5/10
The Mule (Eastwood, 2018) - 4/10
The Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1934 / 35mm) - 9/10

at home:

Synecdoche, New York (Kaufman, 2008) - ∞
Brink of Life (Bergman, 1958) - 9/10
One Day Pina Asked… (Akerman, 1983) - 8/10
F for Fake (Welles, 1973) - 5/10
The Firemen’s Ball (Forman, 1967) - 8/10
A Wedding (Altman, 1978) - 9/10
35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2008) - 9/10
Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman (Akerman, 1997) - 8/10
Greaser’s Palace (Downey Sr., 1972) - 6/10
The Misfits (Huston, 1961) - 8/10
Miami Blues (Armitage, 1990) - 9/10
Welcome to the Dollhouse (Solondz, 1995) - 8/10
Love Exposure (Sono, 2008) - 10/10
Julien Donkey-Boy (Korine, 1999) - 7/10
My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946) - 10/10
From the Other Side (Akerman, 2002) - 9/10

Disobedience (Leilo, 2018) - I liked Leilo's Gloria (about a disco loving woman in her 50s on the look out for a partner). The script in this English language film is not as good: Rachel Weisz is often the woman someone falls in love with, except this time its forbidden - although the reveal had the Terminator II novelty value! Its very hard to get anything out of films set in closed-off communities. At this point I kinda want to see one where everything is just fine and dandy.
Image Book (Godard, 2018) - its on MUBI for a few more hours and in line with much of his essay film work in the last 30 years. The range of images, colour, subject (questionable or otherwise), sound - no one does fragmentation quite like him.

Other People (Kelly, 2016) 8/10
Black Christmas (Clark, 1974) 8/10
Roma (Cuarón, 2018) 5/10
Meet Me in St. Louis (Minelli, 1944) 7/10
The Informer (Ford, 1935) 8/10
*Love, Simon (Berlanti, 2018) 7/10
Remember the Night (Leisen, 1940) 7/10
Backfire (Sherman, 1950) 6/10
Paddington (King, 2014) 7/10
*Ordinary People (Redford, 1980) 7/10

end of December: all but 3 on a TV screen

Black Christmas (Clark, Moore 1974) 🎅
Night Moves (Penn, Sharp 1975)
What's Up, Doc? (Bogdanovich, Henry, Newman, Benton 1972)
36.15 code Père Noël [Dial Code Santa] (Manzor 1989) [DCP] 🎅
* The Apartment (Wilder, Diamond 1960) 🎅
Girlfriend's Day (Stephenson, Odenkirk, Zlotorynski, Hoffman 2017)
Dracula AD 1972 (Gibson, Houghton 1972)
* The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (Coen x Coen 2018)
* It's A Wonderful Life (Capra, Goodrich, Hackett, Swerling, Van Doren Stern 1946) [📽️ 35mm] 🎅
The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (Lanthimos, Filippou 2017)
Diner (Levinson 1982)
Bandersnatch (Brooker, Slade 2018)
Madeline's Madeline (Decker 2018)
Behind The Candelabra (Soderbergh, LaGravenese 2013)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Lord, Rothman, Persichetti, Ramsey 2018) [DCP]
* Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Black 2005) 🎅

Videodrome (re-watch; I own the Criterion edition)

a lot of inspirational posts

*Love, Simon (Berlanti, 2018) 7/10

crypto, it's rare you like a movie more than I did, and you re-watched it!

Love, Simon was a 6/10 when I saw it in theatres, but I kept thinking back fondly on it throughout the year, so when I saw it on cable during the holidays I decided to give it another go. I still don't like the climactic scene at all; the novel handled the same revelation in a less cringe-y way. The young cast is likeable, the plot contrivances are effectively handled, and the scene between Simon and his mom is genuinely poignant (I prefer it to the similar, overrated scene in Call Me By Your Name).

On the whole, I tend to be harder on newer movies than classics, and while I rarely end up re-watching things, if I do, they're score is likely to go up. The only time I ever tend to give something a lower score upon re-watch is when I'm taking a fresh look at something that I saw when I was younger and was curious about revisiting.

agree the scene between Simon and his mom in Love, Simon was the highlight of the film, but thought the scene between Elio and his dad in Call Me By Your Name was heart-stopping

I agreed with my mate when he said that the dad’s speech felt like it was meant to be performed by robin Williams (not a compliment). But that film is not for me in general.

Meet Me in St. Louis (Minelli, 1944) 7/10

Can I ask what you didn't like about this one, because to me it's about as perfect as American movies get (opinion bolstered by a recent big screen viewing).

I liked it! Another illustration of the arbitrariness of ratings, I suppose--my 7/10 is more an indication of my level of enthusiasm rather than objective quality. The best answer I can give you is that I'm new to the film; I totally get how it is a film that people love and watch every Christmas, but I'm not there yet. The second best answer I can give you is that, when it comes to classic Hollywood, I tend to lean more favourably toward noirs and westerns than musicals (again, arbitrary). It's certainly something I can see growing on me with repeat viewings, and I envy your big screen viewing (the movie is gorgeous, and feels like it is most ideally seen on a big screen with a crowd during the holiday season).

I always think of 7/10 as a good rating too. I save 9s and the occasional 10 for anything I've seen numerous times and I consider one of my favourite films ever. (I gave 20th Century Women a 9 on second viewing--I rarely do that.) An 8 means I really liked it and, if it's new, will be high on my year-end list, probably #1 or #2. A 7 means I liked it and I think it's worth your time.

Tree of Knowledge (Malmros)
Sorrow and Joy (Malmros)
The Guilty (Möller)
The Distant Barking of Dogs (Wilmont)
Skjold & Isabel (Hansen)
Bird Box (Bier)
Papillon (Noer)
Before the Frost (Noer)
Report From the Aleutians (Huston)
The Battle of San Pietro (Huston)
Let There Be Light (Huston)
Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (Cimino)
White Hunter, Black Heart (Eastwood)*
Unforgiven (Eastwood)*
The Bridges of Madison County (Eastwood)
Gran Torino (Eastwood)
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
All Is Lost (Chandor)
Oasis (Lee)
Burning (Lee)
Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti)
Death in Venice (Visconti)
The Innocent (Visconti)
Germany, Year Zero (Rossellini)*
Django (Corbucci)
Burn! (Pontecorvo)*
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder)
Rock ’n’ Roll Wolf (Bostan)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)*

Wonder Bar (Bacon, 1934)
Ship Cafe (Florey, 1935)
King Kelly of the USA (Fields, 1934)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Persichetti et al, 2018)
Strangers of the Evening (Humberstone, 1932)
The Ragtime Band (Sennett, 1913)
*Dickson Experimental Sound Film (Dickson, 1894)
Never Kick a Woman (Fleischer, 1936)
Plane Nuts (Cummings, 1933)
The Women in His Life (Seitz, 1933)
Beauty for Sale (Boleslawski, 1933)