Last (x) movies you saw (II)

CPH:DOX festival haul. Last festival in six months, thank God. No grades, but ama.

A Cherry Tale (Mulvad)
Winter’s Yearning (Larsen & Pilskog)
Chinese Portrait (Wang Xiaoshuai)
The Reformist (Skovgaard)
Los Reyes (Perut & Osnovikoff)
La Flor (Llinás)
The Border Fence (Geyrhalter)
Your Face (Tsai Ming-liang)
A Moon for My Father (Akbari & White)
The Rest (Ai Weiwei)
I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead (Gibson)
The Grand Bizarre (Mack)
Graves Without a Name (Panh)
Dark Suns (Elie)
House of Furies (Matzen & Rebekka)
The Dream of Lady Hamilton (Cheval)
You See the Moon (Nunes)
Nakorn-Sawan (Aksornsawang)
Faust (Bussman)
The Edge of Democracy (Costa)
The Last Male on Earth (van der Meulen)
The Disapearance of My Mother (Barrese)
Ceremony (Collins)
Everybody in the Place (Deller)
Searching Eva (Hellenthal)
Kabul, City in the Wind (Amini)
Inland (Palacios)
American Dharma (Morris)
Evelyn (von Einsiedel)
Divine Love (Mascaro)

Thirst (1917)
Madcap Ambrose (Hibbard, 1916)
The Affairs of Cellini (la Cava, 1934)
*The Countess of Monte Cristo (Freund, 1934)
Eleanor's Catch (Madison, 1916)
The Hole in the Wall (Florey, 1929)

* Hudson Hawk (Lehmann, Waters, DeSouza, Willis, Kraft 1991)
* The Player (Altman, Tolkin 1992)
Todos lo saben [Everybody Knows] (Farhadi 2018) [DCP]
Climax (Noé 2018) [DCP]
Izzy Gets The Fuck Across Town (Papierniak 2018)
* Mission: Impossible (DePalma, Towne, Koepp, Zaillan, Pollack, Cruise, Wagner, Huyck and Katz 1996)
Us (Peele 2019) [DCP]
Dottie Gets Spanked (Haynes 1994)
Fear And Desire (Kubrick, Sackler 1953)

Finally caught LET THE SUNSHINE IN and the end credits placement was the highlight.

March:

The Heartbreak Kid (May, 1972) 8/10
The Sect (Soavi, 1991) 7/10
Black God, White Devil (Rocha, 1964) 7/10
Caught (Ophuls, 1949) 7/10
The Snorkel (Green, 1958) 6/10
Jeremiah Johnson (Pollack, 1972) 8/10
It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934) 8/10
Stromboli (Rossellini, 1950) 9/10
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979) 9/10
Captain Marvel (Fleck & Boden, 2019) 6/10
Night of the Big Heat (Fisher, 1967) 5/10
The Swimmer (Perry, 1968) 8/10
The Roaring Twenties (Walsh, 1938) 8/10
Cape Fear (Thompson, 1962) 8/10
The Fall of the Roman Empire (Mann, 1964) 7/10
Arsenic and Old Lace (Capra, 1944) 7/10
Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 1946) 7/10
City of the Living Dead (Fulci, 1980) 7/10
Real Life (Brooks, 1979) 9/10
No Blade of Grass (Wilde, 1970) 7/10
The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (Martino, 1971) 8/10
The Mephisto Waltz (Wendkos, 1971) 7/10

The Right Stuff (1983) 4/5
The Beaches of Agnes (2008) 5/5
Trouble Every Day (2001) 3/5
9 to 5 (1980) more like 3/5
Us (2019) 3.5/5
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019) 3/5
Shampoo (1975) 3/5
Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018) 3/5
Full Contact (1992) 3.5/5
The Loved One (1965) 2/5
The Magician (1958) 3.5/5
* Inherent Vice (2014) 4/5
Let the Sunshine In (2017) 3/5

Diane is highly, highly recommended; found it really honest and deeply moving. Place deserves an Oscar nomination.
Saw it in preview, followed by an hourlong conversation with the director and Scorcese about movies in general and was reminded that New Yorkers will literally walk out on ANYTHING

xxxxpost wait WHAT Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz were involved in Mission Impossible???

March:

Leaving Neverland (2019) 6/10
Mike and Dave need Wedding Dates (2016) 5/10
Danger: Diabolik (1968) 8/10
Filmworker (2017) 6/10
Shoplifters (2018) 7/10
The Gospel according to Matthew (1964) 7/10
*Darkman (1990) 5/10
Dragged Across Concrete (2019) 8/10
The Dirt (2019) 4/10
The Intern (2016) 6/10
The Double Life of Veronique (1991) 6/10
Umberto D (1952) 8/10
Poitin (1978) 7/10
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) 7/10
The Other Side of The Underneath (1972) 6/10
My Scientology Movie (2015) 5/10

probably the least involved in anything that made it to screen. DePalma basically ended up inventing the way McQuarrie makes them now: “I have three setpieces in different global locations figured out, Tom just had a new idea for one scene, nobody likes any of the scripts but I know Robert Towne’s phone number and we have a release date so let’s start shooting”

MUBI:

Portrait of a Lady (Campion, 1996) - Really good adaptation. Like it does things -- with Nicole Kidman's face, with the cast and locations -- and it possibly gets at the narrative difficulty present in James' novels (lol I just couldn't quite follow beyond surface detail...brain undergoing a meltdown, I just can't watch demanding fare on TV anymore). I think there is a correspondence with Dangeours Liaisons (in a very light way, mainly because Malkovich is in this).
Detour (Ulmer, 1945) - hilarious noir. Ann Savage is...savage as the fatale and the monologue on this is totally fucked up.

Cinema:
Us (Peele, 2018)
There's Always Tomorrow (Sirk, 1956) - loved the script and Stanwyck turning around on the adulterous husband's children was A+. With the final -- totally artificial -- line, and you can see what Fassbinder saw in him.

Heddy Honigmann's "Buddy" was honest, sweet, insightful and occasionally jaw dropping in terms of how outrageously capable the profiled animals are. Probably worth a watch on the big screen if you can, if only for the extreme cuteness. My friend and I were literally the only people in the theater tonight; first time that's ever happened to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xQjL-hmPiA

Hudson Hawk - still feels like it could have been something delightful if Willis hadn't caught lead singer disease, and Danny Aiello knew he was in the same movie most of the cast and crew were making, and Andie McDowell was an actress (nb: she's great in MMXXL), etc etc. 3/10 as a coherent film, 6/10 for the ambulance chase and the singing heist gag and Sandra Bernhard attempting t carry the entire flick on her shoulder pads

The Player - holds up, failed to resurrect Young MC's career after "Keep It In Your Pants." 8/10

Todos lo saben - a thriller with no twists that might have held up at 90 minutes, but takes two and a half. a film starring Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, set in wine country, that chooses to contain only 0.01% horniness is squandering its resources. 3/10

Climax - my first Noé, watched for the soundtrack, and was totally worth it. takes those moments in a night, especially on a come-up, that feel like everything might turn disturbing, and makes a horror movie out of them -- with, just like IRL, enough flickers of fun and dance that you keep riding through it. 8/10 for the ride, 9.2/10 for the choreo bits.

Izzy Gets The Fuck Across Town - amiable One Bad Work Day caper that makes the most of getting a bunch of character stars for a day's shoot each. 6/10

Mission: Impossible - coming back to this after one TV viewing 21 years ago, and watching/rescreening some BDP horrors last Halloween, it's a ride to see just how DePalma-y he made a slick blockbuster action film (and Snake Eyes totally plays as a B-side to it). 7/10

Us - lol at the opening being a stack of clue-giving VHSes around a 4:3 TV playing exposition, just like Climax. production design seems packed with references designed for VHS, too, where you'd rewatch before returning to maximise your rental, or get it out again periodically with the same group. 8/10

Dottie Gets Spanked - half-hour TV film about TV, and mediating one's identity through culture in lieu of IRL referents to your internal life. 7/10

(also started watching this on Kanopy: THE AMAZING ADVENTURE OF MARCHELLO THE CAT is the first-ever live feature with a cast of real cats and was heartwarmingly filmed over six years, from the cats' point of view--eight inches from the ground. Turned out to literally be cat videos shot on VHS and edited together with very bad dialogue dubbed over the top, by real Hollywood actors, shouting. Finished it off later with the sound off and a podcast on bcz once you watch 2 seconds of a Kanopy stream, you've used one of your 5 for the month. At 67 minutes, it's a cut-down version of a 76-minute 2008 DTV called A Cat's Tale. 0/10)

Us - lol at the opening being a stack of clue-giving VHSes around a 4:3 TV playing exposition, just like Climax. production design seems packed with references designed for VHS, too, where you'd rewatch before returning to maximise your rental, or get it out again periodically with the same group. 8/10

I remember C.H.U.D. was one, what were the others?

Huh, I was really up for climax but found it quite disappointing iirc, loved the soundtrack and dancing and the slow shift into wrongness but found the last half hour, 45 mins, whatever of arseholes writhing around while the camera goes wOoOoOooOoo really dull

a lot of people told me to see Climax, one said "it's not so much a film as it is a ride" - pass

I remember C.H.U.D. was one, what were the others?

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Tuesday, April 2, 2019 11:04 AM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the man with two brains, goonies, the right stuff, nightmare on elm street

Todos lo saben - a thriller with no twists that might have held up at 90 minutes, but takes two and a half. a film starring Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, set in wine country, that chooses to contain only 0.01% horniness is squandering its resources. 3/10

I've been waiting for this to show up for rent on Amazon. Now that I know it's that long I'm substantially less interested. Did you see the movie with Bardem as Pablo Escobar and Cruz as the Colombian TV journalist he had a years-long affair with? It's not bad. His accent is way better than hers - she doesn't even try.

I didn't.

found the last half hour, 45 mins, whatever of arseholes writhing around while the camera goes wOoOoOooOoo

fair! for me it goes from the first half of dancers bonding & interacting as people, and the camera staying almost still to capture moments of their incredible control of their bodies, into a second half of the people losing control of everything, and the camera in constant questing motion w/ them only existing relative to it. flip of a coin, dark side of the moon.

I would have enjoyed 90 minutes of dance and a proper club soundsystem better, for sure, but that's probably the case for any film.

Well as ever when my reaction to a film is out of step with ilx’s, I doubt myself and want to see it again. I did give it props for capturing the essence of a bad trip, which ime = nightmarish + boring

Thriller: A Cruel Picture (Vibenius) 8/10
Der Todesking (Buttgereit) 7/10
Gummo (Korine) 7/10
The Terrorizers (Yang) 8/10
Certified Copy (Kiarostami) 9/10
Drug War (To) 7/10
Running in Madness, Dying in Love (Wakamatsu) 7/10
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai) 6/10
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1978 cut) 8/10
Le vent de la nuit (Garrel) 9/10

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (2006, Kijak) 6/10
God Told Me To (1976, Cohen) 6/10
The Mechanic (1972, Winner) 4/10
*The Most Dangerous Game (1932, Schoedsack, Pichel) 7/10
Genesis (2018, Lesage) 7/10
Projections of America (2014, Miller) 7/10
The Wild Horse Stampede (1926, Rogell) 6/10
*Shampoo (1975, Ashby) 9/10
Indiscreet (1958, Donen) 6/10
Birds of Passage (2018, Guerra, Gallego) 7/10

Re-watched Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers again last night. Now that's what I call a PG-rated movie!

The 10th Victim (1965, Petri)- didn't like this as much as I was expecting to, to be honest. The production design and costumes are incredible (in particular Mastroianni's bleach job and use of sunglasses to cover incredibly exhausted-looking eyes, and his wife's creepy lack of eyebrows), it incorporates Rome as a setting remarkably well, but it also feels weirdly static and stagey and Petri's recurring themes feel blunted by some retrograde gender politics. Still liked it, and I'll rewatch it at some point (it's becoming obvious that I need to do a Mastroianni-focused deep dive; besides, it's a gorgeous film to look at)

Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear (2017, a certifiable fucking lunatic)- I'd read a Vice article about this but I was totally unprepared to see it as a screening choice at Philly's Psychotronic Film Society. I haven't seen any of them- no, not even The Room; I keep meaning to make it to a midnight show but not really caring enough- but it feels of a piece with the Neil Breen/Wiseau kind of B-movie where it's an ego-stroking star vehicle for one man's very dubious talents. Here it's nominally to show off writer/director/goddamn maniac Greg Burke's son Sage and his surfing skills (approximately 40% of the movie is GoPro footage of Sage surfing) but Sage either cannot or does not care to act- fair- and Greg just eats the scenery, just shoveling handfuls of it into his mouth and flailing and shouting and making a goddamn fool of himself, including a TWELVE

MINUTE

MONOLOGUE conducted in a single take with no cuts or camera movement, with several obviously flubbed lines left in (I listened to as much as I could take of the Projection Booth episode on this thing and Burke revealed that he regularly used cue cards, asking someone to move them around in his and Sage's line of sight to make their performances seem more natural; it works about as well as you'd think). Full of bizarre violations of film language throughout, ranging from the static no-cuts approach to a totally unmotivated flurry of cuts in a totally unnecessary scene featuring a character who has no lines and no import; a badly green-screened background that includes the same loop of footage with the same seagull swooping towards the camera three times; the most egregious continuity error I have *ever* seen in a film...it's a treat if you can see it with an audience, but sitting through it solo would be absolute hell

*A Fistful of Dollars (Leone, 1964)- I haven't watched this in years but it's still shockingly great. It's definitely the first time I've watched it knowing who Gian Maria Volonte is; having a better idea of his persona made the antagonist that much easier to care about, though the other crime family remains weirdly underdeveloped. I hadn't seen this on anything but the ancient, kind of shitty MGM dvd, and this is the first time I've really seriously tried to get into spaghetti westerns, so I didn't know about Monte Hellman's bizarre prologue for network TV, starring Harry Dean Stanton and the back of someone who's about six inches shorter than Clint Eastwood, and saved from oblivion by one very dedicated fan who took out a bank loan to buy a Betamax recorder for $1500 in 1977 for the express purpose of recording Fistful.

Knife in the Water (Polanski, 1962)- Criterion's (assuming that's the version Kanopy uses) subtitles for this are absolute dogshit, fwiw; the general ethos seems to be if lines are short enough or their content can be reasonably guessed at from context, there's no need to bother, which makes tracking conversations understandably difficult. Anyway: ground zero for Skolimowski as well as for Polanski the feature director, some great deep focus cinematography, Krzysztof Komeda rules (and is dearly missed in the next Polanski film on my list), Polanski is fucking scum but at least his films aren't banal pastiche like Woody Allen's

A Quiet Place in the Country (Petri, 1968)- This is brilliant and shockingly underappreciated. I knew virtually nothing going in- just the cast, principal crew (Petri, Morricone and Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, who also shot Deep Red) and very misleading poster and tagline, which led me to expect some kind of revenge/captivity thriller- but its closest relatives are things like The House With Laughing Windows (Quiet Place's tenuously "giallo" elements are closer to Avati's film, where the trauma isn't so much Freudian as it is that left by fascism), as well as Petri's own Investigation of a Citizen etc (with its unhinged male lead and hallucinatory/delusional elements). Highest possible recommendation, and it doesn't hurt that Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave are one of the most attractive screen couples I've ever seen.

M*A*S*H (Altman, 1970)- I had never seen this! Altman is something of a blind spot for me still; The Long Goodbye and Brewster McCloud are some of my favorite films of all time, and I have a little mini-festival lined up at home based on an article by Samm Deighan for Diabolique lining up his gothic/"women's pictures" influenced films (That Cold Day in the Park, Images and 3 Women) but my first was Gosford Park, which would've been a poor point of entry even if it hadn't been during one of the deepest depressions I've ever experienced. MASH, though: problematic, sure, also super fucking funny and an interesting test of the Truffaut chestnut about war films. And again, just really, really goddamn funny; Sutherland or Gould are usually enough for me to check out a film on their own but they're unstoppable as a comedy duo.

Repulsion (Polanski, 1965)- On my to-watch list for over a decade and finally done; left me surprisingly cold compared to, say, The Tenant (which remains my favorite Polanski film). Remarkably empathetic toward its protagonist coming from a rapist. To be totally honest this was watched more for context for other films (the Altman trio mentioned above, Jose Larraz's Whirlpool and Symptoms) than on its own terms, which is probably a factor in how cold it left me. It's still an achievement and a landmark and etc, just not doing it for me this morning.

Polanski is fucking scum but at least his films aren't banal pastiche like Woody Allen's

Username officially up for grabs.

Remarkably empathetic toward its protagonist coming from a rapist

expecting (or ruling out) this kind of correspondence in art is childish

Annie Hall is not a banal pastiche

Baby Driver. Loved it.

Watched that last night too. It took me a while to get to it because I expected the focus on the soundtrack to be way too cutesy, but it actually wasn't, and as a crime movie and a car chase movie it was better than I expected.

Guilty as charged. It's been a rough few viewing weeks trying to reconcile my ability to enjoy work by Klaus Kinski and Polanski; I'll absolutely concede that Annie Hall is a good (or even great) film and I'm taking that unease out on the easiest/most socially acceptable target. I'd still rather watch video of my own upcoming sinus surgery than ever see Shadows and Fog again.

The Working Man (Adolfi, 1933)
I'll Be Suing You (Meins, 1934)
Time on My Hands (Fleischer, 1932)
Open All Night (Bern, 1924)
The Delicious Little Devil (Leonard, 1919)
The Blacksmith (Keaton & St. Clair)
*The Black Pirate (Parker, 1926)

Limelight (Chaplin, 1952) - 7/10
*Melancholia (Von Trier, 2011) - 8/10
*Le Gai Savoir (Godard, 1969) - 6/10
Titicut Follies (Wiseman, 1967) - 9/10
*The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971) - 10/10
Saute ma ville (Akerman, 1968) - 9/10
Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939) - 8/10
The Music Room (Ray, 1958) - 8/10
Trances (Maanouni, 1981) - 7/10
La Pointe Courte (Varda, 1955) - 7/10
Cléo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1962) - 9/10
Mikey and Nicky (May, 1976) - 9/10
*Ici et Ailleurs (Godard, 1976) - 9/10
Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936) - 10/10
Red River (Hawks, 1948) - 9/10
High School (Wiseman, 1968) - 10/10
Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (Klein, 1967) - 7/10
Tokyo Chorus (Ozu, 1931) - 5/10
Mr. Freedom (Klein, 1968) - 8/10
Kamikaze 1989 (Gremm, 1982) - 7/10
Dial H for Hitchcock (Haimes, 1999) - 9/10
Histoire(s) du Cinéma (Godard, 1988-1998) - 10/10
Ministry of Fear (Lang, 1944) - 8/10
Rio Grande (Ford, 1950) - 7/10
Law and Order (Wiseman, 1969) - 10/10
*Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966) - 10/10

Unperson, completely agree!

Synecdoche, N.Y. (Kaufman, 2008)
The Favourite (Lanthimos, 2018)
The Heart of the World (Maddin, 2000)
Manuelle Labor (Losier, Maddin, 2007)
Windows (Greenaway, 1974)
The Raid (Evans, 2011)
Us (Peele, 2019)
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Zeman, 1962)
The Highwaymen (Hancock, 2019)
Shoplifters (Kore-eda, 2018)
Lick the Star (Coppola, 1998)
*L'opéra-mouffe (Varda, 1958)
24 Frames (Kiarostami, 2017)

continuing to watch some 70s disaster movies:
The Hindenburg (Wise, 1975) 6/10
The Big Bus (Frawley, 1976) 4/10
The Swarm (Irwin Allen, 1978) extended version, 3/10, entertainingly bad
Meteor (Neame, 1979) 3/10 just a terrible idea

misc:
Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011) 7/10
ARQ (Tony Elliott, 2016) 7/10, can't get enough of these time loop stories recently
Cold Pursuit (Moland, 2019) 7/10, much better than I expected
Free Solo (Chin, 2018) 8/10
Meru (Chin 2015) 7/10

*Get Out (Peele, 2017) 6/10
Bright Future (Kurosawa, 2002) 6/10
Us (Peele, 2019) 4/10
No Man of Her Own (Leisen, 1950) 6/10
Black Panthers (Varda, 1968) 8/10
*Orlando (Potter, 1992) 9/10
Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954) 10/10
Inland Sea (Soda, 2018) 7/10
*The Green Ray (Rohmer, 1986) 10/10
Light (Tsai, 2018) 6/10
Your Face (Tsai, 2018) 8/10
The Skywalk Is Gone (Tsai, 2002) 7/10
No No Sleep (Tsai, 2015) 8/10
Autumn Days (Tsai, 2016) 5/10
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai, 2003) 9/10
Afternoon (Tsai, 2015) 7/10
Detour (Ulmer, 1945) 8/10
The Deserted (Tsai, 2017) 7/10

Bel Ami
2012 version of a 1885 novel by Guy de Maupassant which I picked up and started reading a couple of weeks ago. Have been enjoying the book, film diverges quite a bit at points I've read. Was wondering if i would want to be continuing to read the book after having seen the film, assume it is quite different though.
Film looks good anyway.

Light (Tsai, 2018) 6/10
Autumn Days (Tsai, 2016) 5/10
Afternoon (Tsai, 2015) 7/10
The Deserted (Tsai, 2017) 7/10

― devvvine, 9. april 2019 12:43 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I need a lot more info on these. Pleasepleaseplease... Saw You Face a couple of weeks ago, found it quite good but I can't stop wishing Tsai would make something as big as Stray Dogs again. Film of the decade, quite often.

will caveat this and say i've not seen any other tsai, so can't really speak to proper narrative features beyond dragon inn

Light (Tsai, 2018) 6/10 - the compostition of this is beautiful and tsai's reverence for the hall shines through, but think it works best as context / a companion to 'your face'.

Autumn Days (Tsai, 2016) 5/10 - i liked this but it didn't leave much of an impact, mostly a black screen with a recording of a casual conversation in a cafe with nogami teruyo - about translation/adaptation/what she likes about tsai's work, broken up some with a couple pieces of footage; the first: portraiture, a la your face, the second: alongside lee kang-sheng.

Afternoon (Tsai, 2015) 7/10 - this is really good, sweet and fascinating dive into tsai and lee's relationship. little disconcerting how close to death he thinks he is (he was around most of the weekend and seemed like the most content, healthy man alive)

The Deserted (Tsai, 2017) 7/10 - not sure this has as much depth as some of the stuff i saw at the weekend but this still kinda blew me away; the novelty of vr probably a factor. he does make use of the 360 degrees in a couple of breathtaking ways while retaining a sort of central framing for the most part. there's a central scene as a typhoon comes in, as other stuff happens in the room in front of you. that is astonishing.

wrote a little about the weekend/masterclass on the tsai thread

Recommend some Tsai Ming-Liang

Oh, right, The Deserted is the VR thing? He is making so much stuff, it seems. Is the hall in Light the same one as in Your Face?

deserted is very much vr and yes, same hall! about the same age as the elderly interviewees in 'your face', used to be common for people to go watch films there and also tsai ran a cafe there

I can't stop wishing Tsai would make something as big as Stray Dogs again

this seems unlikely in the near future, given how enthused he is about making works primarily for galleries atm. but said nothing that would explicitly rule a large project out; talked a great deal about the stray dogs exhibition he put on in taipei.

Starting to come around to the idea that Straw Dogs is his greatest work.

lol, Stray Dogs...

(Before I forget: re shit subtitles for Knife In The Water busted upthread, I saw it with good subs in a 70s theater; maybe that edition is still around somewhere)(no clue how true those 70s subtitles were to the spoken, but the whole thing was effective.)
Red Dust (Fleming, 1932): Harlow is a harlot on the lam but she ain't no sheep; Gable is useful to in several ways, while operating a rubber plantation way up the river from "Say-gon," as all the white people call it, with Gable and his fellow Men agreeing that you gotta watch the "coolies." Then Gene Raymond, an old friend of Gabe's, a little eager beaver who's talked his way into a job on Gabe's old home place and can't shut up, shows up with his blushing bride, omg Mary Astor, a classical poster child (Harlow calls her "the Duchess"), horny and picky and understandably flustered by this place and the whole situation---Hubby promptly catches jungle fever and there's no doctor and he won't stay the fuck in bed, he's gotta go work and prove himself.
All of these people have been programmed to prove themselves, and are becoming aware of it---except Jean Ho apparently found it a given long ago; in any case, she's practical about living each moment as enjoyably as possible, incl. call other people on BS when it gets too tiresome (although delivering sermons would be at least as tiresome).
Implications of the ending are satisfying enough to spin your own sequel.
6/10, docked a couple of points for pro forma racism, speaking of whoring.
Jean Harlow's husband, MGM executive Paul Bern, committed suicide midway through filming (some biographies suggest he was murdered and the studio covered it up) and MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, fearing a scandal, appealed to Tallulah Bankhead to step into Harlow's role. She refused out of respect for Harlow and the blonde bombshell was soon back on the set, though considerably subdued. During her first day back at work, Fleming reportedly said to Mary Astor, "how are we going to get a sexy performance with that look in her eyes?" But Harlow proved herself the ultimate trooper...
Co-star Gene Raymond agreed it was a difficult picture to shoot and said, "...the whole thing was done at MGM. Stage 6 was now a jungle with a hut in it, and it stank to high heaven. The rain would seep in and all of a sudden you had mud. Then they put the hot lights on and it steamed up. So it was not a pleasant picture; it was hard for everybody, especially the crew." Regardless of the hardships, Red Dust was a hit and would later inspire a remake - Mogambo (1954) - directed by John Ford and with Gable repeating his original role opposite Ava Gardner (in the Harlow part) and Grace Kelly (in the Astor role).

A final bit of trivia: Jean Harlow would later marry Harold "Hal" Rosson, the cinematographer on Red Dust. Thanks, TCM!

her monologue on cheese makes it at least 8/10

don't know which subtitles I saw it with, but I loved Knife in the Water

xpost She's great---also from TCM: When Time Magazine covered the film, the reviewer wrote: "The best lines go to Harlow. She bathes hilariously in a rain barrel and reads Gable a bedtime story about a chipmunk and a rabbit. ("Say I wonder how this comes out?" her character wisecracks). Her effortless vulgarity, humor, and slovenliness make a noteworthy characterization, as good in the genre as the late Jeanne Eagels' Sadie Thompson." Gable: "People have to drink that!"

he's her straight man, and perfectly so (he's Astor's too, in a weirder, Astory-as-hell way).

I don't normally like or endorse movies about children, but COP CAR is a fun way to spend 85 minutes.

The Birthday Party (Friedkin, 1968)- baby's first Pinter; I've been wanting to dive in for like...Jesus, 20 years at this point, but never got around to picking up any of the readily available complete works, or tracking down any of the Losey movies, or etc. That's going to change; I've started tracking down anything else I can because this just ruined me for a day.

Lost in La Mancha (Fulton & Pepe, 2002)- another one from the "too depressed to watch for 10+ years" pile. Makes the business of 1st AD gripping and terrifying and for all its flaws (see below) at least makes me glad Adam Driver stepped in to fill the Johnny Depp part

*Towers Open Fire / The Cut Ups (Balch, 1963, 1966)- I'd seen these years ago at the Whitney's Brion Gysin exhibit; the former is a loose sort of Burroughs sci-fi routine in film form, and the latter a demonstration of the titular technique with Gysin, dreamachines, Ian Somerville, etc.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Gilliam, 2018)- wanted to love it, I think I at least liked it; it's the best film he's made since Fear & Loathing, which is not a particularly impressive claim. Still has no idea what to do with women; kind of tiresomely self-aware re: Gilliam's own enfant terrible schtick without necessarily any real reflection on the subject; but at least it's often successfully funny

Secrets of Sex/Bizarre (Balch, 1970)- absolutely bugshit anthology film of shaggy dog stories loosely tied together by sex; weirdly prim, very British, shades of early Scientology in places, a Burroughsian twist in the last story, and one segment that will stick with me long after I've forgotten the rest of it (with the unforgettable line "Oh! My contact lens has dropped amongst your charms")

*The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973)- perfect film will not be taking arguments at this time

Horror Hospital (Balch, 1973)- Michael Gough; weirdly anticipates the Rocky Horror Picture Show but drawing more on Hammer/Amicus productions of the very recent past for camp value instead of classic Hollywood. Fun, stupid.